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Funny how under the right (wrong) circumstances, fine high thread cotton can feel the same as hessian sackcloth. Especially when you’ve crammed a fitted neoprene bodysuit over a formal dress shirt and pants, and then stretched armour over that.
There was chafing, to put it mildly.
Robin was in the old underground railway – the old, old one. A disused labyrinth of tunnels that were mostly made up of a very unfriendly kingdom of rats and the surprise-filled dumping ground for bodies or whatever other shady shit Gotham was up to this week. The bug he’d managed to plant in the kidnappers van while also gaining a lovely collection of road rash being dragged behind it, had led him to the tunnel entrance in Coventry.
So, while his feet, knees, and arms all throbbed with a sickly, burning orange—also not helped by being crammed under extra layers of pressure—Robin paced his way through the tunnels, tracking his prey. They might have ditched the van in the reservoir but that hadn’t thrown Robin off their track for long.
Sure enough, up ahead there was light and movement. Robin ghosted along the side of the tunnel, keeping to the shadows, noting various tripwires and surveillance to avoid. These guys were pros.
Or, some of them. “What the actual fuck, G?” One of the ski-masked goons said angrily. “You said we were getting the Wayne brat! Does this look like the Wayne brat to you?!” he waved a wild hand over the tiny figure in equally tiny formal wear, bound tightly to a chair with a sack over their face. Robin could see the sack moving as breath passed through it, which was comforting.
“I-It all happened so fast,” so-called G quavered in the face of the yelling goon, who seemed to be in charge of the operation. “One kid got in the way of the other kid and security was coming. I-I-I just grabbed who I could.”
“It’s okay, really,” another one spoke up. This one was a woman. “It is . This is the Drake heir. The Drakes have got plenty of money, right, Honey?” she asked of the masked kidnap victim, who, to Jason’s surprise, nodded silently.
“Fuck. Fine. You know where the parents are, how to contact ‘em? Then fucking get on that. The Bat hangs around with the Waynes, so we ain’t got a shitload of time to make a demand and collect the money before he shows up. Then you two are shit outta luck, because the boys and I ain’t sticking around to tangle with that fucker!”
“But we had a deal!” G’s voice was shrill.
He got slammed in the gut with the butt of an assault rifle for his troubles. “We had a fucking deal for the Wayne brat. It ain’t me failing to hold up my end of our fucking bargain, capiche? So hows about you pull your dumbass fucking heads out of your asses and get to it. It’s fucking nothing to me to put a bullet in your head and this brat’s head and cut my losses!”
“It’ll be fine!” the woman held up her hands in supplication. “It's fine! We’ll get the money, it’s fine!”
“You got an hour,” the goon growled. “Me and the boys’ll keep a lookout.”
Fuck. Robin backpedaled silently through the tunnels, squeezing himself into a claustrophobic gap left by shifting masonry of a walled-up tunnel intersection. The Goon Squad grumbled their way past—not enough to make a platoon, but too many for Robin to be sure of the outcome of a fight, even if he did have the element of surprise.
Okay, so, the script would normally run like this; if the villains kindly and conveniently separated themselves from the hostage, Batman would take care of the bad guys while Robin got the hostage out of harm’s way, ensuring both sides of the mission were covered.
Right now Robin was off-script in a big bad way because, like an enormous dumbass, he’d crammed himself into the armour and gone haring off without waiting for backup. There was no team; it was just him. Batman was likely tracking him, but didn’t know exactly where Robin was because, well, see: this dumbass who didn’t tell Bruce where he was going. Comms were spotty as fuck down here as well, and Robin hadn’t thought to check in before tearing down here after his prey.
If he got out of this alive, B was definitely going to kill him.
Goon squad didn’t notice him though, so he took the opportunity to ghost back up the tunnel. If he couldn’t take out the bad guys then maybe he could grab the hostage and go deeper into the tunnels. The pair they’d left behind didn’t seem to be a part of Goon Squad; they didn’t strike him as experienced criminals at all.
In short, easy pickings. Robin could knock ‘em out, grab the hostage and run for it. A minor script re-write. No problem!
“They’re not answering! Why aren’t they answering?” the woman’s voice was shrill.
“They never do,” a sigh was in those words, all resignation. It pissed Robin right off. What the hell kind of parents don’t pick up when it’s their own flesh and blood calling in the middle of the night? Robin’s mom wasn’t always, you know, compos mentis all the time, but he was damn sure she wouldn’t have ignored the phone outright if he’d been calling, ever.
Robin shook himself and focused on the problem at hand. G was pacing a groove in the floor, agitated and oblivious to the proceedings. The woman was kneeling next to the chair. Both the adults’ eyes were white-rimmed behind their ski masks. Neither was even remotely situationally aware enough to notice Robin crawling into the tunnel section, ripping open field packs of useful goodies and heading for the guy, since he was bigger and armed from what Robin could see. Knock out big goon, then take out lady goon, then grab the kid and book it. There. A plan.
Robin slid carefully close to the guy’s path, keeping to his blindspot. He loomed up behind him, shadowing his steps and…
“If I can get your dau-dau-daughter onto the Vitaxil program, will you help me?” the hostage piped up, voice weirdly thoughtful for someone tied to a chair and blindfolded.
The man and woman both froze. So did Robin, for that matter. What the fuck? Was this in the script?
“H-how do you-?” the man stammered as the woman shrieked. “Shut up! What—” she grabbed the kid with harsh fingers. “What did you just say?”
“I nu-nu-know who you are,” came the stammered answer. “George and Isabel W-Walker. You-you-you-you used… to do the landscaping fu-fu-for us for years. I rec-rec-recognized your voices.”
Robin gaped. Okay? What the fuck was happening now? He felt like he might be losing control of this situation. Though he did file the names in his memory because even a two-year-old could have read the shock and guilt in the adult’s eyes. Their hostage had them pegged dead to rights.
“Row-Row-Row…” the kid swallowed harshly. “ Rosa is sick, isn’t she? Leu-Leu-Leukemia. If… If I can put her nuh-nuh-name onto Druh-Druh Drake Solutions experimental drug program, wuh-wuh-wuh, would that help? Vitaxil has an eigh-eigh-eighty percent success rate for Acu-cu-cute Lymphoblastic Leukemia. E-E-Even the aggressive kinds.”
Silence. Then, “You could do that?” George said, voiced pained, like he didn’t dare hope.
“Don’t be stupid! A panel of adults wouldn’t get Rosie onto that study!” Isabel snapped. “You’re just a kid. You can’t pull that off! We need the money! I’m sorry about all this,” she added, voice wobbling. “But we need the money.”
“Dial this number,” the number rattled off in clear, concise beats. “Put it on speaker.”
The Walkers looked at each other, then shrugged. With no other options, Isabel dialed.
“Sysops, Jaenelle speaking.”
“Jaenelle, it’s muh-muh-muh-me.”
“Oh, hey kid! Ready for the next W&W tournament? I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to kick some sales department ass!”
“I’ll be there,” the voice was remarkably calm through the sack cloth. Not even a hint of tension or fear showed. “Jaenelle, you knu-knu-know how you owe me a fay-favour? A big one?”
“Yeah, I remember. What do you need?”
“Has Doctor Erzolin filled all the can-can-candidate slots for the Vitaxil stuh-stuh-study… uh, yet?”
“Nope. Why? You couldn’t possibly need it!”
“I nuh-nuh,” swallow, then a breath. “Need you to add a name. Rosa… Walker. W-A-L-K-E-R. She’s a goo-goo-good candidate. ALL, aggressive. Six years old.”
“Okay, hang on,” Jaenelle clattered away in the background. “Just gotta hack through a couple of firewalls… Rosa Walker. DOB?”
“11th February,” Isabel burst out shrilly, before releasing a flood of social security numbers and medical information she could apparently reel off the top of her head. The look in her eyes was a sight to behold.
“Okay,” Jaenelle said after everything had been arranged. “She’s on the study list. Her parents should be getting an information request through her regular doctor tomorrow. Hopefully, Erzolin doesn’t notice, but I’ve postdated her record through the candidate list record pretty thoroughly. He probably won’t. You up for next Saturday?”
“Thanks, Jaenelle,” the kid nodded under the sack. “I’ll bu-bu-bu… uh, I’ll be there. Bye!”
Silence. George and Isabel both stared at each other, flabbergasted. They were so distracted that they didn’t even notice Robin standing in the back, his mouth hanging open. Call it a lack of experience, if you will; but he’d never actually seen a hostage successfully negotiate their way out of their own kidnapping before.
“Whu… uh, what do we do now?” George seemed to be asking his wife, but his voice had the quavery note of a man who would accept any guidance at this point, as long as the world started making sense again.
Robin obliged. “You and your lady are gonna stand your stupid, wannabe criminal asses against the wall, hands over your head, while I untie the poor kid you idiots kidnapped for no fucking reason.”
Isabel screamed and George jumped, but Robin moved like greased lightning and wrenched the weapon from the man’s shaken fingers before he could blink. Or, you know, accidentally fire it.
“Ro-Ro-Ro-Robin?”
The question came out a lot quieter and shyer than before.
“Hey, right the first time! My reputation precedes me,” he replied, his voice all cheerful calm. He jabbed a finger at the two hapless adults. “Against the wall, hands on heads. You make a sound I don’t like or move I catch, I will make you regret it, got it? Move it!” he barked, wincing a little when the kid flinched.
“You don’t understand,” Isabel was crying, tears and snot all over her mask. “We needed the money-”
“I don’t need your sob story lady, I heard ‘em all,” Robin crowded her to the wall of the tunnel. “Kidnapping some poor kid who knows you and trusts you is fucking inexcusable . In case you’re wondering, that means can the excuses, ‘cause I ain’t interested. Good? Great.”
Once he was sure the pair was cowed enough not to start trouble, he went over and yanked the offending sack off the victim’s head. The girl underneath blinked at him owlishly. “Tiamat Drake, I presume?” he said in his hammiest, plummiest theatre voice.
It managed to win a frail smile from her. She was amazingly composed considering the circumstances, but there was definitely a lot of tension in that face. “Um… ye-yes, that’s me.”
“Alright, Tiamat, just hold on a sec,” he sidled around her to see to the cable ties. “I'll have you loose in no time.”
“Tha-Tha-Tha,” swallow, breath. “... thank you.”
“You got a stutter, huh?” Robin asked idly.
He saw the tips of her ears go red. She nodded.
“Hey, don’t feel bad. I had one of those too when I was a kid,” Robin admitted cheerfully. “I used to think it was the most awesome thing.” He had. The stutter had been fascinating to watch; colours and trails painted and repainted on the air, even as it was frustrating to not be able to get the words out. Tiamat’s voice was much the same; Robin never saw many actually multicoloured voices before, but hers was a sunset; reds, oranges, golds, pinks, as each layer of lost or aborted words made swirls in the air. “I thought one day an alien race would come, and no one would be able to talk to them, but I would because the stutter clearly meant I would speak an alien language, right, that’s why my brain had trouble with English. So then I could save the day. I dunno what to tell you, it sounds ridiculous now but it made perfect sense to me when I was a kid. I was a little bit sorry when it went away.” A lot, actually, since it had more or less been beaten out of him, but she didn’t need to hear that.
“Muh-muh-mine...uh, didn’t,” she said softly.
“She was in a car crash when she was little,” George broke in. “That’s why she wears the brace, too.”
“Did I ask you for your input? No? Then shut up,” Robin snapped. Honestly, the brace thing pissed him off the most. It clamped over her leg from knee to foot, a full-on KAFO brace. These assholes had strapped it to the chair with more cable ties than it needed and Robin didn’t even want to think about how helpless that would have made the kid feel. “Hey, so, uh… you got kidnapped from a gala, right? One of those fancy Wayne shindigs.”
“Um… yes,” she said quietly.
“I heard you pushed one of the Wayne kids out of harm’s way,” Robin grinned at her, stripping off tie after tie. “Got him out of the path and ended up gettin’ snatched instead. That was pretty damn brave, Tiamat.”
“Ti-Ti...” she swallowed, all flustered yellows and oranges. “Tia. O-Or Tim…. is fine.”
“Tim,” Robin grinned. “Nice to meet you.” There, all but free.
Tim went rigid. The braced leg shot out.
The next thing he knew Robin, the chair, and Tim were flying backward. The jolt was mixed in with the ugly grey-blue-red-fleck of a gunshot and the green spiky noise of the Walkers screams. Robin landed harder than he expected to and slid a lot further than he’d have thought, Tim’s chair clattering over him and somewhere into the distance.
Tim herself was a crumpled heap, formal dress battered and hair askew. There were blood drops on the floor.
Fuck.
There was a hoot from the entrance to the tunnel. “Two birds, one stone. Hows about that! I told ya these babies had enough bang to take out a Bat,” the lead goon chuckled.
“What the hell are you doing?” Isabel shrieked. There was a scuffle and a grunt of pain, all hot purples and pinks, as Goon Leader or one of his cronies took exception to the woman leaping to render aid.
“Izzy!” George bellowed, grabbing at her and pulling her back from the guns pointed at them.
“What the hell am I doing? What the fuck are you two doing? ‘Cause it looked to me like you were standing there like piss-weak assholes and lettin’ that Bat take away our meal ticket!”
“Why’d you shoot the kid?” George was aghast. “She hadn’t done anything!”
The Goon Leader laughed in his face. “You shit-for-brains. You didn’t actually think we were gonna leave witnesses, did you? Tell you what, while I go and make sure our reputation is one hundred percent secure for the future, you and the missus can decide between you who dies first, okay? Fuck you very much. Fucking cut-price milksop Bonnie and Clyde,” he muttered as he walked past with a couple of members of his squad. He toed the limp Tim dispassionately. “Fucking waste. Time and money,” he spat on her.
Which is the exact moment her leg shot up like it was spring-loaded and hit him square in the groin.
The crunch of the blow damn well echoed in a neon red starburst.
Even as Goon Leader shrieked at a pitch that would make a bat wince (and did), Robin set off the smoke bombs he’d planted in the initial stages of his plan.
The narrow space was suddenly cotton white, as impenetrable as a plaster wall.
Robin was up and the two sub-goons were down before anyone could start even panicking.
When the panic started, it became a rainbow of unidentifiable bursts of colour, each one locked in place and unable to fire lest they hit a wall and ricochet themselves to death.
Robin grinned. He didn’t even need thermal sight for this.
*
“Sparrow! Where the fuck are you? SPARROW! Fuck me, the one night we need that little goober and he’s suddenly nowhere to be found?” Robin turned this way and that, daring the foliage of Robbinsville Park to disgorge what he sought.
Tim swung with him since she was being carried. The ripped-off sleeve of her dress was bandaged tightly around one bicep and she started to cough. “H-H-H… He?” she managed in a squeaky voice.
“Yeah. Annoying little dwarf. About six inches tall,” Robin grumbled as he walked along the park trails, towards the streets. He had no doubt that now his transponder was out from underground, Batman and his endless filing cabinet of Bat Lectures was on his way. “He follows us around with bandaids and stuff. Figures he’s scarce now when we could actually use some first aid.”
Tim fidgeted a little. “Yu-yu-yu-you don’t… uh, like… hi-him?”
“I hate his guts, the sassy little twerp,” Robin grunted, before softening at her wide-eyed stare. “Not really, really. He’s just a little kid.”
Tim fidgeted some more. “Maybe hi-hi-hi-he’s just trying to h-help?” she assayed. “I mean, maybe he’s trying to bu-bu-bu… uh, be like you?”
Robin grumbled, mostly for the look of the thing. “Yeah, well, I don’t need some nutso fanboy playing pretend, not when he’s out there with the real scum. He’s gonna get his dumb ass killed if he keeps this up.”
“That’s unfair, though,” Tim argued. “I muh-muh-mean you du-du-du-du… arg, don’t really know him, do you? He-He might have his re-re-reasons. Sure-sure-surely you must und-und-understand what it’s like to want to bu-bu-bu-be someone else. Anyone else. Even if you ha-ha-have to wear a mask to do it,” Tim sighed. “I do.”
“What are you talking about?” Robin snorted. “You thwarted a kidnapping then damn well problem-solved your way out of your own kidnapping. I’da never thought of what you did in a million years. That was freaking impressive!”
She shrugged. “I du-du-don’t always make the best first imp-imp-imp…” she swallowed, face twitching with frustration. “ Impression… on people. I… I don’t tuh-tuh-talk very much because,” she waved her uninjured arm to encompass the stutter and all the humiliations therein. “So pe-pe-people think I’m… rude. Stuh-Stuh… Stuck-up. My-my parents don’t luh-like my to dru-dru-draw attention to my de-de-defect,” she grimaced. “Suh-so I never really get a chance to ex-explain to people.” Tim slumped. “I’m puh-puh-pretty sure the buh-buh-boy I saved thought I was a to-to-total snob.”
Jason winced because that was actually a little bit true. “Well, if he felt that way before I’m a hundred percent sure he doesn’t now. He’ll probably want to send you a big, gushing thank you note.” Robin thought about it. “Do people still do those?”
Before they could debate on the topic, Robin heard the familiar, pure white whine of what he considered the finest perk of being The Batman’s partner. The Batmobile roared up the park trail; B had eschewed conformity and just driven it straight through the park. The groundskeepers were going to be pissed.
Batman rose from the car, face in Unamused Mode. “Robin.”
The single word and all the purple overtones made Robin grimace. “Yeah, yeah, B, I know. Could we postpone the lectures for later? I got one wounded hostage and a bunch of goons cable tied in the underground rail tunnel. Maintenance access is half a mile that-a-way,” he beamed his most winning smile. “Some of ‘em might have gotten away in the scuffle though.”
Batman narrowed his eyes at Robin’s shiny, twinkling smile. He softened a bit when he looked at Tim, who, to her credit, was doing her best to look extra pathetic for Robin’s sake. “Take her to the hospital,” Batman ordered before striding past them to go clean up Robin’s mess.
Robin sighed. Yeah, he had a shit tonne of vehicle-cleaning in his future.
“Hey… Robin?” Tim mumbled. “Thanks. Fu-fu-for coming for me.”
Robin smiled. “Anytime, Timmy.”
Worth it.
Jason spent the next day researching thank-you bouquets that he could order online. He got a bit distracted by the discovery of Floriography and ended up interrogating Alfred for details.
Tiamat spent the next day going over her design notes, wondering if she made the Sparrow suit a tad too androgynous. She got distracted by the thought that… maybe that wasn’t a bad thing.