Chapter Text
Hurry. Hurry, hurry, hurry.
Hurry, you don’t know who is going to kill you. You wish you knew who walked amongst you, waiting for one of them to turn their back on you. And then they stab you, shoot you, gut you up like a fish, as if your life and the trust built up over years of partnership, is utterly meaningless.
You may leave with a friend. But they aren’t your friend. You can’t trust them. If you want to live, you can’t trust anybody. Why? They won’t hesitate when they get the chance to eliminate every single person on this ship. Nobody except them, knows why they want to take the ship for themselves. Hell, maybe even they don’t know.
But do you know what Barbara knows? Oh, she knows that they don’t care about you. They never have. They don’t care about the history between you two. They don’t care about those memories that you have made with each other, the years of trust and partnership.
Walking through the silent empty halls, scared that any empty crevice could hold someone waiting to put a bullet in your skull; someone waiting to slide a knife in between your ribs. This is terror.
You’re fine, Barbara thinks to herself as she walks amongst the halls, scanning her checklist. You’re just going to recircuit the communications control panel, something you’ve done a thousand times before. Simple; easy; no need to stress.
Before she can even pull the burnt wires out of the wall though, the lights flicker before completely shutting down. Goosebumps rise along her skin and her breath picks up in the slightest as she’s surrounded by complete and utter darkness. As the room around her drops into a pitch-blackness that could hold anyone.
Fuck. Babs would be cursing out loud, too, had she not been wary of giving away her position. Internally groaning, she flicks on her flashlight, shining it into the dark recesses of the panel and getting to work fixing the wires one-handedly. As soon as she finishes, she spins, pointing the light at every corner of the room and checking her surroundings for any of the others.
Map so ingrained into her memory that she doesn’t even have to glance at it despite the darkness, Barbara moves quickly to the electrical room.
She’s not the first one there. Red and Batgirl are hunched in front of the electrical box, working in tandem with Batman hovering over them. Babs can also see Hood coming down the hall when she shines her flashlight down that direction before entering the room. He nods at her and she nods back, as he gets to work on popping off the lid of the box to see if it was just a hardware issue. Babs makes sure to keep an eye on him, and when she looks up again Batman catches her eye before breaking away. They have an understanding, after all. Keep them safe and get out alive. As the eldest, it was her duty.
Batgirl curses at a light shock the machine gives her, ducking underneath the box and getting back up, trying to rub off the smudges of dust from her suit. Babs cuts off the reprimand that’s lying on the tip of her tongue; this isn’t training, she isn’t the girl’s mentor, and for all she knows, no matter how much she hates to think it, there’s a one in nine chance that the blood that will inevitably be shed will be on Steph’s hand. On any of the people in the room’s.
So Babs just kneels next to Tim and picks up where the blonde had left off.
She duly notes the presence of others flooding into the electricity room who are also trying to get the lights fixed. Several suits of various colors surround her and her mind scrambles to catalog each person in case of the need for alibis.
Barbara sighs as the lights finally boot up again, recalibrating and turning back on with a click. Sparing the others a glance, she walks away from the circuit breaker. No time to waste, Babs reminds herself as everyone quickly disperses, throwing distrustful glances behind their backs as they race against the timer that could be set again at any moment. She has an assignment in the electrical room anyway, so she supposes it’s good luck. Don’t jinx it, Gordon she thinks, making her way over to one of the key electric panels behind the rows of equipment. Hooking the wires, she focuses on completing the task as quickly as she could.
“Okay,” she breathes once she finishes, checking off another box from the mental imprint in her mind. She pulls up the next thing that needs to be done as she makes her exit through the door. “That’s completed, now I just need to—”
There is a sudden metallic clatter that echoes faintly through the hallway.
Her blood freezes in her veins as she darts to one side of the hallway, plastering herself against the wall and letting the shadows obscure her. She doesn’t dare to even breathe, as she silently waits for someone to appear. Her mind races with possibilities of who it could be, but she can’t be sure, she can’t be sure till their systems are back up and they can only do that if they get the ship fixed, but she still can’t see anyone.
No person appears to accompany the noise she heard, and a shiver runs down her spine, liquid fear pooling at the base. She clenches her fist, swallowing. Babs had been Batgirl, and she is the Oracle now. She wants to say she could beat and capture their saboteur, like so many before, but she knows that this time, she won’t be able to.
Barbara is tempted to call out to whomever it is, but she won’t risk it, can’t. Eyes jerking from one corner of the room to the other, her heart skips a beat at the sight of a long shadow being formed on the ground, just behind the turn. In the end, though, it’s just Tim who slinks out behind the corner and she can’t help but let out a sigh of relief. Tim had been right next to her, sweat pooling around the corners of his brown domino as they’d worked tirelessly to fix the lighting issue. It couldn’t be him.
“Oh, great,” she breathes, smiling. “It’s just you, Red. I—”
Shock, anger, terror, and a thousand other emotions bubble up as she finds herself staring down the barrel of a gun. No, she should have kno-
Tim takes a step closer, gloved finger closing over the trigger, and as it presses down Barbara can’t help but remember, remember another gun, another doorway, another maniacal smile paired with a loud bang—
The bullet doesn’t go through her spine this time, but it does lodge itself into her heart and she gurgles at the feeling, the sight of her bright green stained with red, eyes blown wide.
She coughs, calling out, as if a whispered damnation to the one who’d wronged her, “Re—Tim?”
A hand moving to cover the wound in an attempt to stem the bleeding, lowering her pulse to slow the pounding in her ears, leaning her weight on the wall next to her. But she knows. She knows it’s too late. Her breaths are coming out in pants, now.
“Wh—why? Tim?” How—
Tim only laughs, but she can’t seem to hear it. His mouth is split in a harsh, maniacal grin, but she doubts anyone else could hear it even if they weren’t dealing with the major blood loss, no, the boy would have been too careful for that. They should have realized. The tablet that was once in her hands falls to the floor and she follows a second later, crumpling with heaves, beginning to cough up tacky blood, even as the wound gushes between her fingers.
As the life drains out of her eyes, she notices Tim leave, pulling out a strange tool that he uses to unscrew the vents that even Bruce had seemed to be baffled about and disappearing into their black darkness, only to be soon replaced with someone else who she can’t quite see, lines blurred and gray and getting harder to discern by the second. Barbara grits her teeth, her last breath hissed out.
Damn it, Tim. Is there anyone else?
***
Tim quickly hides the gun in its nook, a little space he’d made sure was there before they’d even taken off. He’d made sure not to leave any evidence behind, made sure it wasn’t messy because he can’t be turned against this early in. No, no, that would ruin his plan! He doesn’t normally like using guns, the intimacy of a knife is so much more alluring, but he knew how to work with what he had, to adapt. It was what had made Batman finally start to believe in him, after all. Barbara’s question as she choked on her blood still rang through his ears, though, making it worth it.
Skillfully locking the weapon in its safe, Tim begins the complicated process of crawling through the intensive network of tunnels. Eventually, he gets to one where he can hear a few muted sounds, so he silently screws it open. As he exits the vent, he notices Dick tapping away at a screen in the security room. Perfect. Tim grins as he realizes that Dick isn’t paying attention, at the perfect opportunity, and so he easily slips out of the vent and into the man’s vision without suspicion.
“Hey, Dick,” Tim greets, muting down the happiness on his face till it's more appropriate. Dick offers him a smile in return, and once he’s satisfied with the acknowledgment, Tim turns to read through a set of reports on the screen next to the man.
Tim catches the slight frown on Dick’s face when he glances at him though, so he puts the reports down. Making an exaggerated eye-roll, he points to the power panel that he’d purposefully made sure was open and half-finished.
Dick’s face tilts consideringly for a moment, before breaking out in a sympathetic smile and going back to fiddling with the computer.
They fall silent and Tim vigilantly watches Dick finish up out of the corner of his eye, stepping away a couple of seconds afterward to keep the man’s suspicions to a minimum (and wasn’t it just funny, how Dick hadn’t even flinched when he’d seen Tim, had even looked happy).
It takes a few minutes, minutes in which Tim makes sure to build rapport with his brother, moving around each other seamlessly as the other goes about his tasks, until a meeting is called. Dick looks at him with a worried face and he mirrors it, but when he turns away, Tim clears his throat, rolling back his shoulders. Time to step into the lion’s den. Or rather, the bat’s cave.
***
Dick looks around the room, apprehension clawing at his gut. Bruce is standing stoic and solemn at the head of the dark wooden table, and all the others are seated haphazardly around the room. The atmosphere is dense, heavy, and suffocating. It makes Dick feel like he could barely breathe, but he puts out a heavily fabricated smile for the sake of the younger ones. There always has to be somebody who could keep up the optimism.
He has to be strong. He was the leader of the Titans, a prominent member of the Justice League- hell, he’d even been Batman. He knows exactly what loss is and means, and he knows when tough decisions have to be made.
That still doesn’t make the pain any easier to bear when Steph stands up at Bruce’s prompt, and addresses the room with stricken eyes: “Ba- Oracle was killed.”
The words are barely a whisper but they still make the room shatter around Dick’s ears. Both for the fact that his teammate, the love of his life, his family has been murdered in cold blood by someone who he’d also thought was his family. The other reason was that at the knowledge that their Oracle, their communications expert, one of their experienced and most capable members was down, the room’s occupants erupted into chaos.
Some part of Dick’s mind is telling him that Jason’s out of his seat, emerging from the shadowy corner of the room he’d claimed to point a finger at Bruce, yelling viciously even as Steph falls back into Cass’s arms, burying her face into the elder’s hitching shoulders. But the other part, the larger part has gone offline completely, repeating the same phrase over and over again; Babs was killed, Babs was killed, Ba—
His eyes blink blurrily up into Tim’s crystal blues. Dick’s not sure if they’re his natural color or just the color of Dick’s own suit reflected into the tears shining at the corners of Tim’s eyes, wetting his lashes. “Little brother,” he murmurs even as his own spill over, and a wrenching sob finally pushes out of his throat.
Dick vaguely registers Tim climbing into his lap, hands gripping his shoulders and shaking him out of the headspace. The boy’s shaking hands are carefully wiping away the tears that have begun tracking down Dick’s face even as he shakes him again, forcing him to focus on him. “-ick, listen to me,” Dick realizes Tim’s saying.
Dick shakes his head, he doesn’t want to, doesn’t want to face the reality of this and— “Dick, please,” Tim whispers. Dick feels awful all of a sudden, how can he just sit here crying when his little brother is begging him, when his other baby brother has gone stock still, likely shell shocked. His little wing is yelling insults at Bruce, who’s already cut himself off emotionally, he knows. He can’t see Duke anywhere, and his little sister is trying to hold up a shaking Steph, and he’s failing. He should be able to put this to the side, to stand up and lead, but how is he supposed to do it without Babs? How is he supposed to keep this family from falling apart without his rock?
“Dick, Dick, fucking listen to me,” Tim doesn’t quite yell, but he sees Dami stiffen out of the corner of his eyes at the noise overlapping with the sound of Bruce giving Jason a taste of his own medicine, voices rocking up to find their only resistance in the paneling of the high ceiling. It works though, and Dick jerks up, gripping the front of Tim’s suit before the boy can fall off.
“T- Timmy,” Dick rasps and feels his heart hurt a little at the soft relieved sound Tim makes.
“She’s gone, Dick,” and the feeling claws up again, like a growing monster in his belly, “she’s gone, and now the only thing left to do is to find out who killed her. Dick, we can’t, we can’t let this happen again.” Tim’s lips part a little, eyes growing a little bit larger and Dick can’t help but hold him closer, praying that his little brother isn’t imagining his death, but for real this time.
He has to be strong, for his family. He has to be. “I won’t let it, little brother. I promise.”
Eyes alight with renewed determination that has a familiar undercurrent of anger fueling it, Dick studies the room again, before shaking his head and sighing. “Yelling isn’t going to solve anything,” he murmurs, looking up again when Tim tugs at his hands.
“Well, if they’re only going to point fingers, we’ll have to do the work ourselves. Just like old times, right?” And despite the fear, the tension, the oppressive weight of knowing Babs’ killer was in the room with them now, Dick allows himself the small moment of nostalgia, taking the branch that Tim was offering.
“Yeah, just like… you were always the better detective, though,” he says, leaning back a little to allow Tim to settle on him more comfortably.
“She was the best of us.”
“Yeah,” Dick smiles softly. “Yeah, she was.”
Tim took a deep breath, hiding his flinch at the sound of Jason smashing something against the hard floor that Dick caught anyway. “Okay, so, process of elimination. It can’t be either of us, because you were with me, so that’s two out of ten down.”
It hurts, to hear Tim talking like this, to know that what he’s saying, what he’s doing is perfectly logical, but none of that erased the hurt. This is their family. He—he can’t—
But he has to, he has to because Tim is looking at him with big, scared-looking eyes, and he refuses to let his little brother be killed. Eyeing the room’s occupants with a more critical gaze, his eyes land on Duke, who’s bright yellow is half-hidden in the shadows. The boy has a deep scowl on his face, watching the proceedings, only heightened by the darkness of the corner he’d tucked himself into at the report.
So Duke was a suspect— what was Dick even thinking? This was his family, his brothers, how could he even—
Dami’s voice, cracking slightly at the volume yet still laced with pride, snaps him out of the spiral. “It was Brown!”
Tim twitches slightly even as Dick frowns at the accusation. “Dami, do you have any proof?”
Snarling, Dick watches the green-clad boy point a finger at the offending blond across the table, who bares her teeth right back. “Everyone knows that Brown is weak; she is playing on your sympathies, she self-reported after committing the heinous act so you would pity her—”
“Oh, you fucking asshole!” Cass’s arm around Steph’s midriff is the only thing holding her back from leaping across the table and strangling the younger boy. “She was my mentor, how fucking dare you, you—”
“Enough!” The whole room fell silent immediately at the sound of Bruce raising his voice. Standing at the head of the table, even Jason having fallen in line, Bruce gives them all a hard look. “It’s useless to stand around here yelling at each other.” Dick sees Jason give the man a dirty look. “The more time we spend here, the more time we give to the killer. So, we’re going to take a vote.”
“We’re taking a what?” Dick’s not sure who says it, probably multiple people, but the worst part is that Dick gets it. These are Bruce’s children, the people he trusts, and a collective decision is easier to stomach than him solely deciding who to exile. Because Bruce may be the Greatest Detective, but he knows he’s been too often blind in front of his children to take the risk of being wrong.
“A vote,” Bruce repeats, silencing all protests once more. He looks around again, posture stiff yet Dick can still see the way his foundations are practically crumbling beneath the facade. “Whoever is found guilty will be ejected with a 24-hour oxygen canister,” and his eyes blur for a second before they’re blinking, replaced by the whites of the cowl. He nods, one more time, expression almost hungry as he takes yet another sweep of the room, as if he’s memorizing their faces for the last time. “Let’s begin.”
Surprisingly enough, it’s Bruce who goes first. As the man opens his mouth, Dick can see Jason tense, before his face goes slack in confusion when Bruce skips. But Dick had known he would.
Cass is next. She skips too.
Damian is the first to vote, calling out Stephanie’s moniker with confidence that he didn’t have, obvious in the slight twitch of his palm. Stephanie grits her teeth and votes him right back.
Jason votes Bruce. Tim skips.
Then Duke votes Steph. A hush falls over the already silent room, at Stephanie’s devastated face, shock at what could soon happen. Duke sends an apologetic look her way, but she turns away, trembling.
It’s Dick’s vote. He has to decide; skip the vote and be sure that Babs’ killer, the killer that is still here, still hungry for blood, is still on board with them, or vote out his sister, reject the pleas he can’t seem to hear falling from Steph’s lips, and still run the risk of being wrong.
No, maybe, maybe a clue or something will come up later, and he’ll be able to figure it out. They’ll be able to rule out the killer without any more deaths, he just needs to wait, to be patient.
Dick skips.
***
Tim quietly leaves the meeting room, copying the somber mood that’s fallen on the group. They don’t know. A sinister smile forms on his face, that he carefully tucks away as Steph and Cass run up to join him. Everyone has no idea. Well, Cass might, but she hadn’t said a word after Stephanie had announced Babs’ death.
Yes, obviously he’d had to get rid of Barbara, the Oracle. She was a formidable opponent who wouldn’t have let any emotional issues obstruct her view of the truth. She wouldn’t have hesitated to crush him if she knew for a fact—and she always finds out—that he was the killer. And Tim couldn’t let her tell anybody. She’d understand, right? If she wasn’t with Tim, then she was against him. And everyone who is against him will receive no mercy. And they were all against him.
Cass tugs on Steph’s hand, and so she links hers up with his also. Tim accepts it with an external smile, but one glance over his ex’s head twists it into a grimace. Cass’s accusing eyes are boring into his, and he feels that familiar rage boil in his stomach as he realizes that her plan is so that he can’t kill either of them, not without the other one calling an emergency. And he can’t leave either, risking tipping off Steph’s instincts.
So instead he keeps his mouth shut, and follows them into the medical bay, and tries not to show his anger. Good thing he’s so good at pretending.
***
Steph hops off the medical scan, making sure the system has updated her file before switching the machine off. Cass is still finishing up scanning some of the important documents that needed to be copied, and Tim was hunched over and scribbling out some readings for a sample, muttering to himself about the components.
It was fine. Everything was fine, Tim and Cass, the two people she probably trusted most on this ship were with her, she was safe, she was okay, everything was—
Except for it wasn’t. It wasn’t because Steph still had blood on the bottom of her shoes, marring their previous pristine purple, because she’d slipped on the pool of red on the ground when she’d ran down the hallway, racing with excitement. After all, she knew she only had three more tasks left, because she’d sunk to her knees and seen her mentor, the one who’d taught her how to hold the Batgirl mantle high, with glassy eyes and a bullet in her chest. Except for of course it was.
Because she could die at any moment, any of her newfound family could die, and there wasn’t anything she could do about it because she didn’t know which one of them it was. Glancing over at Tim, her brow furrows. She’d bet her newest pair of purple sneakers that he had an inkling as to who it was, but either it was too early in the game for him to make a deduction, or it was because he was th—
No, no thinking like that. Not until she needs to, at least. Humming, she walks over to the computer where Cass has started filing her scan, Tim finishing up his formula behind her. It’s that moment when the emergency alarm goes off, and they all glance at each other, worry and apprehension etched into their bodies, except for maybe Cass.
Steph swallows the heavy feeling that’s settled in the back of her throat and hopes that she sees her family at the dining table, as whole as they can be with the green headset lying in an empty chair.
Dragging her eyes away from the forgotten utility, she focuses on Duke, who’s standing in Bruce’s place at the head of the table, practically foaming at the mouth with how righteous he looks. Before Stephanie can make a quip about it though, she finds an accusing finger is pointed at her.
“Hey now—”
“I saw her venting!” Duke snarls, prompting Jason to stand up so quickly his chair fell over, looking at them both with flashing eyes.
Steph’s mouth falls open. Duke had voted against her last time, but she didn’t think he’d go so far—
Tim jumping out of his seat, mouth set in a thin line cuts off that train of thought. “Oh? Then explain why I was with her the whole time, in med, nowhere even near you?” He throws back, and Steph can’t help the little skip of her heart at the sight of his worked up face, all angry and defensive for her. In another situation, she might even have said that it was cute.
“And how do we know you both are not the ones at fault?” Damian demanded, and Steph feels her vision going a bit red, sue her. “You could be going against us, conspiring against us like the traitors you, which I would expect from you, Drake. You’re probably the killer—”
“You’ve got a higher kill count than him, brat,” and Steph’s not exactly sure where this is coming from, but the immediate drop in color in Damian’s face is just so satisfying to watch.
“And why the fuck would he defend me if he was the imposter?” Stephanie continues, “It’s probably you, what with you desperately trying to throw everyone else under the bus. What are you hiding, Dami—”
“Batgirl.”
Steph sits back down, feeling cold, yet at least her debt to Tim had been paid. Bruce continues, addressing the room gravely. “Does anyone else own witness to the original allegations?”
Cass stands up and Steph tries to suppress the hurt at seeing the spark of hope in Bruce’s eyes. But it dies anyway, when Cass doesn’t speak, just points to Steph, to Tim, and then to herself, before twisting three of her fingers together.
Bruce nods. “So we know that Batgirl didn’t do it—”
“Hey, so just because Black Bat says something it’s automatically true?”
“Are you disagreeing?”
Jason closes his mouth, something that Steph would have laughed at, had Bruce’s next words not been, “Let’s vote.”
Everyone falls silent, just like last time. Just like the time where she’d gotten the most votes, and she can’t help when her heart rate picks up a little at the possibility of it happening again, except for this time there’s no skip, just an endless void of space—
Tim places a hand on her, giving her a comforting look before standing up and voting against Duke. Cass does the same and Steph gives them both relieved smiles. Then both Duke and Damian vote against her.
That was okay, though, she’d expected that. What she hadn’t expected, was when Dick, her brother, her Batman stands up and votes against her. It’s like a punch to the gut, the way Duke smiles triumphantly at her from across the table, the apologetic, guilty look Dick directs at the ground, and she can hardly breathe—
It had apparently pissed off Jason too, because when he stands up, he shoots Dick a dirty look before voting against Duke. Everyone’s eyes turn to Bruce, who’s looking uncomfortably still, the lights reflecting on his bright pink suit.
But he skips again and Steph and Duke tie. Again, no one is ejected.
***
Dick grimaces as he heads to storage, mind whirring with what had just happened. No one had been ejected, but this hadn’t been a skip. This had been a tie, and Dick had voted to throw one of his family members into outer space. He feels absolutely awful, the look on Stephanie’s face is sure to haunt him till this whole thing is over and done with. But they have to make the hard decisions, especially if Bruce wasn’t going to do anything about this, if he was just going to let them all be picked off one by one.
Shaking his head, Dick pulls out his ID, swiping it at the monitor before the screen opens up. He sits down with a sigh, and gets to work making sure their course has been calibrated correctly.
It’s not hard, but rather monotone, and so Dick lets himself get lost in the faint hum of the machine, tapping his shoe against the linoleum floor as he keeps his eyes fixed to the screen in front of him. He’ll regret that distraction, that negligence in keeping perfect awareness of his surroundings later.
Later comes sooner than he expects, a low, grating laugh from behind him making him stiffen where he stands. Looking up from the glow of the computer, he spins around slowly, heart catching in his throat because he’s going to see Stephanie, Damian, Duke, Jason, Bruce, Cass—
Tim. It’s Tim, standing in front of him. It’s Tim, who killed Barbara, maybe even with the same knife that he has in his hand, the same glint in his eyes that he’s looking at Dick with now. The same slowly curling smile as he takes a step closer, and Dick’s eyes are frantically darting around the room as he backs away, but it’s still empty.
God, he was so stupid. He should have stuck with someone, should have made sure—
Dick gasps as Tim finally reaches him and wrenches the dagger into his gut. “Li-Timmy,” he breathes, as the boy pulls it out again.
“Don’t do this, Tim,” he whispers, pretty sure he’s not capable of more as the pain fogs his head, and he slides down to the floor. “Please, littl—”
***
Tim snorts as Dick’s wordless pleas finally stop when he slashes the elder’s throat. Finally, it had been getting a bit annoying. Still, he thinks consideringly, tilting his head this way and that like he’s looking at a painting, it could use some work.
It is a masterpiece, though, pretty red lines carved in patterns only his mind could discern, bleeding profusely. Dick’s eyes had gone blank and glassy, and as much as Tim likes that, it’s funnier when they’re wide and watering, fear blowing out the pupils. He pouts, a little exasperated with how impatient he’d been. He could have taken so much more time, could have enjoyed himself with the look of betrayal painted across Dick’s face.
Well, it was a good thing there were so many more people on board. So many more blank canvases to make into pretty red paintings. Tim’s lip peels over his teeth as he imagines it, excitement thrumming in his veins.
Still, he has to be careful. He has to wait, but if he plays his cards right he won’t have to wait for much longer. Pulling up the southern controls on his wrist computer, Tim quickly taps out a few code sequences, smiling when the doors close with an audible slam. That should buy him a few minutes at the least
Dagger still clutched tight in his hand, Tim slinks into the shadows that the monitor allows, brown suit letting him meld into the darkness all the more seamlessly.
Now all he has to do is wait for his next victim.
***
Damian steals another glance at Cain from where she’s standing across the room, refilling one of the gas tanks. His instinctive response is to trust her, with her calm and measured ease at handling the equipment in the storage room, even though the rooms had just been put on lockdown. Despite that, the killer could be nearby.
He wants to, but he knows he can’t. Ora-Gordon is dead, their ship is compromised, and the traitors are among their own, and Damian can not let himself trust anyone, except for maybe Father. But even then, who knows?
It almost feels like he’s in the League again, the constant fear, with how his nerves rise every time that he looks up, only to see Cain watching him too, eyes taking in the tenseness of his stance. She hasn’t spoken, she barely ever does, but after Gordon’s death… not a single word has fallen from her lips. Damian knows Father is unhappy about it because if there was one person who could detect the murderer from their own family, it would be her. In Damian’s mind, though, this only increases her suspicion (and she was born an assassin as well as him, it is not as if it would be difficult for her).
When the failsafe finally kicks in and the doors open, Damian can’t help the sigh of relief that falls from him as he scurries out of the room, the release from the stifling room lifting a weight on his shoulders that he does not want to acknowledge, because he’d expected this with the League, the fear of ninjas and deadly knives ready to slit your throat behind every turn of the hall, but Father had promised him that it would never happen here. That there would be no death, no blood, no corpses.
How foolish they were, how foolish they all were, to proclaim loyalty to one who did not hesitate to blow out the brains of their communication specialist! And now there was only one solution, to fix the ship before any more damage could be done and they could get home, and be able to find the killer and avenge Oracle in relative safety.
Recalling the tasks that were assigned to him and the map of the ship he had embarrassingly spent hours excitedly pouring over before the trip, unaware that an ill omen had followed them aboard, Damian takes a right turn only a few minutes after walking down the starkly lit hall.
His guard is up as he enters, it has to be, with the traitor in the very walls among them. And even though he’s been trying to prepare himself, to be ready to see the worst of the worst that their betrayer could come up with, he’s still not prepared to see his brother’s desecrated body lying broken and bleeding on the floor of the administration room.
“No,” he gasps out, falling to his knees in front of Dick, ignoring the blood that stains the knees of his dark green uniform pants as he reaches out with a trembling hand to carefully brush a darkened strand of hair outside of the man’s blue eyes. Except for they’re not blue anymore, no, they’re blood red.
Damian had always regretted that he couldn’t have been there for the man who had cared for him, who’d looked after him when there was no one else left to love him, after his fake-death, regretted that he’d had to whisper his prayers to a glass case, that he couldn’t be with his brother when he’d died. But looking down at the skin that still looks so full of life, the blood gushing from multiple cuts on the man’s body, a body that had, while in life never seemed to stop moving, was now deathly still, Damian realizes that this was the worse feeling.
“No, no, Gra-Richard, you can’t be de-, Richard, please, wake up, please-” and it’s below an al Ghul to plead, to wish for mercy from the dead, but Damian can’t stop as he collapses, not able to stop the sobs that spill from his throat like the blood that is still spilling over the mouth from the elder, despite the voice of his mother lecturing him in the back of his mind. Damian doesn’t care, he doesn’t, because-
“Not you, please, anyone but you,” he can’t help but wish, clutching the fabric of the other’s bright blue suit, that looks more purple now than anything, no matter the guilt that threatens to claw up his chest and swallow him whole. “Richard, you promised, you promised you wouldn’t leave me!” Dami’s learned the hard way that some promises are never kept, but the grief is like agony anyway.
Instead of his brother’s cheerful voice gracing his ears, a rough, grating laugh slowly fills the room. Damian looks up with horror only to see Drake walk menacingly out of the shadows.
He scrambles up quickly, cursing as he slides a little in the pool of blood around him. Drake laughs again, a sound that echoes around the room in its insanity as Damian registers the long, serrated knife clenched loosely in the other boy’s hand, dripping with his brother’s blood. There’s red around Drake’s face too, smudges surrounding his wide, smiling mouth, making his pale skin tone even more translucent than usual under the fluorescent lights.
“You-” Damian snarls, because this is the man that killed Richard, someone he can hurt, punish for his brother’s spilled blood. Pushing aside his earlier blunder, he brings his arms up and readies his stance, before launching himself over Richard’s corpse and at Drake.
Within seconds they’re fighting, at each other’s throats, and as Drake makes a lunge that Damian side steps before trying to trip the other, over which he backflips, Damian can’t help but think that Richard would be sorry to see them fighting after so many years of tentative peace. He has no doubt though, that the man would be all the more grieved at finding out that his little brother, the one who he’d trusted with his back countless times in battle, the one who he loved, who he’d seen grow up, had changed into this, this monster who ended up killing him like the worst sort of tragedy.
Damian moves with fury, intent on getting revenge for Richard, even though he’s at a disadvantage he’s sure that if he gets close enough to Drake he can—and that’s when Drake pulls his gun.
He immediately freezes, because if there’s one lesson that he’d learned from Father it was that firearms were not to be messed with. Drake laughs at seeing his hesitation, before raising the gun, muzzle aimed directly at him.
Damian’s not proud of it, but the feeling of helplessness is too strong, too overcoming as he looks, looks at Drake’s gun, at Richard’s body, at the smile that still hasn’t left Drake’s face. Damian wonders if that’s how he’d looked when he’d killed Richard, too.
As Drake’s finger closes in on the trigger, Damian succumbs to his failure and turns the emergency meeting signal on.
***
Jason slams a fist on the table, startling the room’s solemn occupants. Except for Bruce of course, who’d been expecting it ever since Damian had pressed the signal. “Goddamn it! Who was it this time?” he demanded, glaring at the room whose numbers had visibly dwindled.
Bruce sighs, rubbing his eyes. He wishes Jason would stop hitting the furniture, but it’s better than him trying to punch one of the others.
Cass stands up and for a second Bruce lets himself hope that she’ll say something, condemn the person that has been terrorizing his family, so he can pull out a contingency, a plan, anything, but she only points to Damian and smiles.
Despite the disappointment, he remains standing tall, face impassive as he looks at his trembling son. “Damian, did you have something to say?”
“Ri—Nightwing was killed,” Damian says, his voice deceptively dry, staring down at his feet. But then he looks up with a fire in his eyes as he points an accusing finger at Tim. “And it was Drake who killed him!”
Bruce wants to mutter ‘codenames’ but the shock that rattles him at hearing that Dick—his son, his rock, his first Robin had, had… Bruce couldn’t even think about it; how had it come to this?
Tim looks up from his tablet with a confused face, a tinge of offense at the fact that Damian was accusing him of killing his brother, but that was to be expected. “What are you talking about? I literally saw you kill him.”
This wasn’t happening. His son, one of them at least, had murdered the other in cold blood—
“Wait a second, hold up!” Duke waves his hands to capture everyone’s attention to the end of the table. Bruce internally adds another checkmark to Duke’s name, because that was the third time the boy had isolated himself from the group; it wasn’t like Duke, and while Bruce wants to believe that it’s just because he’s scared... “Why are you suddenly pinning this on Red Robin? Do you have any proof?”
Duke was defending Tim. That was odd, the two hadn’t had any previous agreements, had voted against each other in previous votes.
“Of course!” Damian says, puffing his chest out a little. “I saw the traitor standing there, waiting for me, after finding Richard’s corpse on the floor of the administration room.”
“Oh, yeah? And why were you there? Why didn’t you report immediately instead of looking for Tim?” Duke shoots back mercilessly.
“I wasn’t lo—this is ridiculous! The solution here is obvious: we must vote Drake out immediately!”
Jason narrows his eyes at Damian, leaning forward to stare him down. “Why are you in such a hurry? You don’t have an alibi?”
Bruce notices that Cass, while smiling, still hasn’t said anything despite the frustration clear on Damian to even him.
“What tasks were you doing?”
Damian pulls his glare from Cass to direct it to the room at large, as they all regard him more and more suspiciously. Bruce wants to tell him that his open hostility is just making it worse, but this is neither the time nor place. “I was—”
“No,” Tim says suddenly, turning several heads, including Bruce’s. “Stop. It’s my turn now; let me show you all exactly what happened.”
Bruce grunts, before giving the boy a nod of assent.
“Okay, so, Robin. Where were you coming from, before you found Nightwing?”
“I don’t have to answer you,” Damian spits angrily, fists clenched up.
“Robin,” Stephanie groaned, despite the boy having voted against her in both of the meetings. “When you say stuff like that, that makes you look really suspicious.”
“Yeah, just answer ‘im, or else we’re voting you out,” Jason shrugs, but he keeps his stance threatening.
Cass nods.
“I—I went,” Damian furrows his eyebrows as if trying to think. “I was—”
“See,” Tim interrupts, raising his brows. And he’d made a point with that, this wasn’t like the boy, though Bruce suspects that Dick’s death must be affecting him.
“I was trying to answer, you insolent—”
“No,” Tim shakes his head. “It’s obvious what he’s trying to do, guys. Can’t you tell? When does Robin ever stammer like that? He’s trying to buy himself time, to figure out an alibi, because he doesn’t have an alibi.”
Jason frowned, before answering slowly, “As much I hate to admit it, you have a point, Replacement.”
“Thanks,” Tim says dryly, before continuing. “Robin is trying to place the blame on me. You know why?”
He waits a couple of seconds for suspense. “Because I saw him, right next to Dick’s body and he wasn’t reporting his death. And when he saw me coming and realized that I’d seen him… he immediately reported. Isn’t that suspicious?”
The others give vague hums of agreement which prompts Damian to leap up from his chair, furiously slamming a hand on the table.
Bruce mutters a silent prayer for Alfred’s peace of mind if his furniture didn’t make the trip before lending an ear to his son’s defense.
“I can’t believe you fools are believing him!” Damian hisses. “That’s exactly what happened, except for reversed! Red is the one who killed him!”
Stephanie exhales deeply. “Sorry, Damian. If you’re actually innocent, you’re not doing a very good job at proving yourself. You seem to be the murderer, so I’m voting for you.”
“Yeah, it probably is the baby-assassin.” Bruce sends Jason a look, but the man unrepentantly grins at him.
“It’s going to be okay, guys. We’re going to vote out Robin, and then there will be only one murderer left,” Tim tries to calm the pandemonium. His voice is clear and calm, and despite knowing what a good liar his third son is, Bruce can’t help the little voice next to his heart telling him to believe him, that this was the Robin that had kept him from straying. He couldn’t be the one, right? “Keep a clear head, and we got this. We just have to figure out who the last one is.”
The rest of the crewmates nod their agreement, and Bruce mentally gives Tim a clap on the back for the leadership display.
But, there was still the issue of Damian. Bruce gnaws at the inside of his lip in contemplation, acknowledging that they’re both suspicious, as Damian growls in frustration when he realizes that all of them are voting for him. He gets up and angrily votes for Tim.
And then it’s Bruce’s turn. Damian is looking at him, they all are. He has to vote; he could skip, but doing so at this point would become too suspicious and after Oracle’s death he was the only voice of reason. So, the question remained; which son?
Bruce regrets it, even though he’s sure that picking the other option would have made him regret even more. He regrets it because of the look on his son’s face when he votes him out as a murderer. He regrets it because of the defeated slump in his shoulders when he realizes his fate. But Bruce regrets it most when he’s saying goodbye, his small, so, so young son standing before the doorway that would lead him adrift in the cosmos, because he looks up at him, the stars reflected in his shiny eyes, and whispers;
“Goodbye, Father. I hope you will soon realize that I have served you well, and even in my final breaths will my life be spent in your protection.”
Bruce clears his throat, arms wrapping around him under the watchful eye of the others. “Goodbye, Damian.”
And then there are six.
***
Duke smirks to himself as he follows Jason from behind. Jason doesn’t see him, and he won’t, not until he sees Duke standing over his body as he draws his last breath (again). Duke glides carefully against the walls, not daring to even breathe wrong, fearing if he made even one incorrect step that Jason would notice his presence.
This is what they deserve, he reminds himself. Gripping the handle of his gun in his hand, Duke quietly crouches, ducking into the doorway and hiding behind the lab table. Watching Jason stride to the Medical Scanner, Duke waits patiently as Jason climbs on and…
Jason’s task is cut off halfway when one, two, three bullets embed themselves into his head. Duke lets out a sigh of relief that there was nothing more to it besides him falling to the floor. No further outcome, no more coming back to lives.
The adrenaline that was once pumping his veins with courage and willingness to complete whatever needs to be done leaves him and he collapses onto the floor. His arms that were once able to hold firm enough to allow him to shoot the gun are now shaking and trembling.
“I’m sorry, Hood,” Duke tells the headless body. “But it had to be done.”
Out of the corner of his eye, as he readies himself to abandon the corpse that once held the life of Jason Todd, he sees a hint of bright pink.
“Shit, shit, shit,” he repeats to himself, realizing that Bruce is coming in his direction. He doesn’t have any readily available cartridges of bullets, can’t restock till he gets to the stash Tim’d put in the vents, so he pulls out the emergency button. Duke exhales. He’s got this. He and Tim come out on top.
Duke presses the signal.
***
Tim is a businessman. He knows exactly what he has to do, the steps he needs to take to get what he wants. He’s had to know how to take risks, and precisely what risks he should take to reign victorious over other rival companies. And so he knows when he has to be utterly ruthless.
Duke, while he is technically Tim’s ally, is going to have to be sold out. It’s for the greater good, Tim reminds himself, hoping Duke will understand what he has to do. For the endgame.
The meeting starts with Duke saying, “I’m the one who found his body. Ja—uh, Red Hood’s, I mean.”
Tim cocks his head innocently to the side. “Where?”
“Medical Bay.” Duke swallows, and it’s blatantly obvious to everyone in the room.
“Really,” Tim asks, but his voice is humming and so Duke doesn’t answer the rhetoric. “Because, you see, Signal, me and Black Bat were both by reactor,” and an amused nod from Cass confirms it, “so the only person who was near Hood when he died was—”
“It wasn’t me!” Duke is practically quivering in place now, and one glance at the heavy set of Bruce’s face sends relief through Tim. The man would probably have been shattered at realizing that he’d sent his youngest to his death for no reason, and would now be looking for a person to blame. Good thing Tim was going to give him exactly that. “It could have been Batman! He probably killed Hood to stop him from constantly accusing him—”
“How dare you accuse B of murdering one of his own goddamn children,” Tim hisses. “It was you, Signal.”
“I—what?!” Duke splutters, sounding completely betrayed.
“Come on, Signal. You self-reported. It’s obvious.”
“He does have a history of doing that,” Stephanie cuts in. Tim internally thanks any entity available for Steph backing him up.
Cassandra raises an eyebrow but doesn’t speak.
Bruce stares at Duke intensely, “Did you kill Red Hood?”
“No, I didn’t!” Tim watches Duke shout furiously, slamming a fist on the table. “I can’t believe this. History means nothing in here. I’m not an idiot, I wouldn’t keep trying to do the same thing again and again after knowing you all think I do. If I was the murderer, or imposter, or whatever, I obviously wouldn’t try the same thing again!”
Crossing his arms, Bruce growls, “I suppose techniques may vary throughout time, but it certainly doesn’t mean nothing. You could be saying all of that so you self-report again and use that argument.”
Duke scowls. “That type of argument of truth versus lying to persuade is what makes figuring out who is killing everyone so hard. No one knows unless they actually watch it happen, and even then, they may not be believed.”
The remaining group sits quietly, thrown by Duke’s argument. Tim inwardly acknowledges Duke’s efforts; it was pretty solid. But he knows exactly what everyone is going to vote. Stephanie stands up.
“I’m voting for Signal,” she says curtly, staring at Duke straight in the eye. “I bet you killed Barbara then voted for me as a cover. This is revenge.”
“No!” Duke shouts, getting up and moving to stand to meet her eye level. “I swear, I absolutely did not kill her. If you vote for me, we’re going to lose our chance to catch the imposter.”
“We’re?” Tim raises an eyebrow. “I don’t think you’re talking about us crewmates. Are you talking about ‘we’re’, as in you and your imposter friend? Because you two are absolutely going to lose once we vote for you. But we will all be fine.”
Bruce and Stephanie make agreeable noises as Cass raises an eyebrow.
Huffing with annoyance, Duke throws his hands in the air in exasperation. “Fine! Do what you want, then. But I still think it’s Batman.”
“Huh?” Stephanie scrunches up her face as they all consider Bruce. “You make a valid point I suppose… but I don’t think he has the heart, or lack thereof to kill any one of us.”
“Unless that’s what he wants you to think.”
Bruce frowns, angrier than surprised like when he’d been accused before, “What? No, I’m not the perso—”
“No, no, no,” Tim shakes his head. “Bruce isn’t it. We know for a fact it was Duke. Let’s get rid of him now, and then we’ll survive.”
“Okay!” Steph chirps over Duke’s spluttering, “We’re voting Signal.”
They all respectively vote. As Signal is forcefully taken off of the ship, he glares at all of them. Tim notices that the one directed towards him is especially brutal.
And right as the boy falls out, Tim glances at him from the wide windows and winks.
***
The remaining four people crowd amongst themselves, suspiciously glancing at each other. Steph can hardly breathe, it’s so stifling. Cass starts to lead the group in a direction that is most likely towards one of her last tasks… or this is how she wants to separate the group so that she could kill one or more of them. Wait, why is she thinking like this? She’d sworn to herself she wouldn’t get paranoid, but now she couldn’t even be not startled by B’s ‘one with the shadows’ shtick.
Slowly moving so that they can stay in a group and keep an eye on each other, the crowd continues to walk together, when Bruce suddenly randomly branches off, running in the opposite direction they had been going.
Stephanie narrows her eyes at him, tempted to follow but fearing running straight into his trap. Sighing, she continues to follow Cass and Tim. She knows for certain that—well, she doesn’t really know if anyone is for certain, not anymore. She can’t trust anyone. With not much to do, since all her tasks have already been completed, Stephanie watches from the corner of the same room that Babs had been killed as Cass splits off from them, running off to presumably to a different task.
She continues to follow Tim. If their group is going to split up, he’s probably the safest option, the one that was finally able to figure the imposter out.
Her attention is suddenly caught by a metallic glint nearby Tim’s hands, not that it was anywhere specific because as mentioned, boredom. “Hmm?”
“Oh, hey, Red,” Stephanie hums. “Whatcha doin’ over there?”
Tim doesn’t answer. Instead, he turns away from the electrical panel and pulls out a gun.
“Oh, no.” Stephanie freezes in horror before scrambling to her feet, backed into a corner. “Oh, no, no, no, no! I thought you were innocent!”
Tim only smiles in response. “Sorry, Steph.”
The last thing she sees is the speeding bullet, before black.
***
Cass sits in her chair elegantly with one leg crossed over the other. Bruce notes the big smile on her face as she leans forward with a teasing Cheshire grin before pointing at Tim.
“Damn it, BB,” Tim curses, exhaustedly dragging a hand through his hair. “I can’t believe it was you.”
Cass tilts her head back and laughs. She points to herself and laughs again, shaking her head.
“I can’t believe you killed Ba—Oracle,” Tim continues. “Your mentor! She taught you so many things, I can’t believe you would do this!”
Bruce gives him a look. “How do we—I know it wasn’t you, Red Robin?”
“Batman.” Tim’s jaw clenches, but he makes sure it doesn’t show. “You know me. Batgirl was one of the only people who were on my side—” and get a bit teary for emphasis “—so why the hell would I kill the person who I knew trusted me? I accused Black Bat last round, that’s why she’s doing this. If I had wanted to get rid of someone, it would make the most tactical sense for me, in this case for her to kill the person most suspicious of her.”
Tim considers getting on his hands and knees but decides it's overkill. But he is going to need to put a lot into this if he wants Bruce to believe him over his favorite child. “And you know for a fact how smart and devious Black Bat could be. You taught her all of her detective skills. If she was the imposter, she would obviously kill Batgirl, because Batgirl wasn’t supporting her.”
Bruce turns his head between them, grimacing. Good. “But that's an obvious plan. You could be the murderer, Red Robin. You’re making an excellent case for yourself, but that could just be reinforcing your success in ruining this family.”
“B, you have to believe me,” Tim pleads. “We’ve been in this situation before. You know what Ca—Black Bat is capable of.”
Bruce is silent. Tim narrows his eyes at him—his father. “Batman. Listen to me right now. If you make the wrong choice here, we’re going to die. I know you don’t want to believe that Black Bat, one of your own children, would ever kill someone you love, but she did.”
Black Bat merely raises her eyebrows.
“B,” Tim’s voice is soft, so soft as he practically begs. “I’m so sorry, B, but you have to make the right choice. To make things right, and get justice for all of them. All of your children, my siblings.”
“Do we—” Batman clears his throat, “Do we have to do this?”
“I’m sorry, Bruce, but we do.” Tim reaches across the table to rest a hand on his father’s pink-clothed shoulder, squeezing it consolingly. “You know we do.”
B nods and looks towards Cass. “Black Bat. Do you have anything to say for yourself?”
Cass shrugs as a smile toys at her lips. Perfect.
Tim narrows his eyes at her. “Of course you’re still keeping quiet.” Turning to Batman again, Tim defends himself, reiterating his case, “B. It’s not as if she’ll admit it. Hell, if it had been anyone but her, she would have told you, right?”
Bruce hesitates and Tim sighs sadly. “I must sound like a broken record, B—Dad. But we can’t let her win. Not after all she has done. Not after how long we have allowed her to go unpunished.”
Bruce bites his lip before turning his gaze towards Cass. “I’m sorry,” his voice is grave and genuinely apologetic.
Cass laughs. But after a few moments, Tim is the only one laughing. Because this means that he’s won—
***
Cass’s laughter practically fills the whole room as Bruce stares at Tim in betrayal reading the ‘Defeat’ on his screen.
“I told all of you! Father!” Damian shouts at Bruce, who only chuckles in response. “I can’t believe you believed Drake, over me!”
“Shut up and accept that fact that I reign victorious, demon-brat!” Tim cackles, standing up on his chair and proudly showing off his screen that reads ‘Victory’ to the room.
“Yes!” Duke crows and Tim, without looking, puts a hand up to high-five him. Duke doesn’t even have to stand up on his tiptoes.
The hand is wrenched away from Duke, though, when Dick aggressively bear-hugs Tim making them both fall off the chair in the process and tipping it over, “I knew you were the imposter!”
Tim snorts, carefully sliding his tablet away, somewhere a little further away from the warzone that one may call the Wayne family living room during game nights.
“No, you didn’t, Dick,” Tim laughs, standing back up. “You had nooooo idea. And you were such a drama queen, with Babs dying.”
Barbara, perfectly on cue, wheels around and glares at Tim. “You had to kill me first? It’s so boring when you’re the first person to die.”
“Well, someone had to die first, and you’re like, the best at this game,” Tim defends himself, grinning wildly. “
“Yeah, yeah, Red,” she laughs, “I’m still assigning you to the fishing harbor during shark season.” Her face suddenly becomes stony and serious as she stares warningly at him. “I am.”
And then she breaks back into her pleasant countenance. “I’m just joking, Tim.” She smacks him on the shoulder teasingly, snickering at his face.
Tim weakly laughs with her, wincing at the punch that was definitely harder than necessary. Still, totally worth the win, though.
“Are you staying for another game, Babs?”
“Nah, Dad’s home tonight. He’s making dinner, so I gotta make sure he doesn’t burn the house down,” she chuckles.
Dick smiles and kisses her on the cheek before she rolls over to Bruce to inform him that she’ll be absent for the early patrol.
“I swear,” Dick says in a playfully exasperated tone, shaking his head. “Every time I play with you guys, my trust issues get so much worse.”
Tim laughs, throwing finger guns at him. “You’re welcome!”
Tugging him into a brotherly chokehold and messing up the kid’s perfectly styled hair—to Tim’s protests—Dick chuckles, “How are you such a good actor, anyway?”
Nervestriking Dick’s wrist, Tim slides out of the hold. “Well, we were trained by the world’s biggest drama queen.”
Dick raises an eyebrow before they both say in unison “Brucie.” They burst into laughter.
“What are you guys talking about?” Jason pops up.
“Batman is a drama queen.”
“Preach.”
Duke huffs a laugh as he knocks his shoulder with Tim’s. “But still, dude, I can’t believe you sold me out like that.”
Sorry, man,” Tim shrugs, but the big grin still doesn’t leave his face. “But at least we won? We make a good team.”
“Yeah,” Duke snickers. “It was risky, but it all worked out in the end.”
“They were all too dumb to figure my master plan,” Tim says tauntingly, eyeing the other two.
They don’t hesitate to take the bait. “You take that back right now, bitch.”
"Never,” Tim sticks his tongue at them. “Make me.”
“Oh, that’s it.” Jason narrows his eyes, before sweeping Tim’s feet out from under him, causing Tim to fall backward onto the carpeted floor with an overly exaggerated ‘oof’.
Dick waggles his eyes playfully at Duke. “Revenge!” He cries out, tackling the boy to the ground. They both wrestle for a few seconds, rolling over and accidentally knocking over one of the small tea-tables, but no one pays it much mind. Dick eventually gets the upper-hand though, proclaiming “Aha!” as he finally pins him down, but Duke’s uncontrolled laughing ruins the effect a little.
“Well, isn’t this rather a spectacle.” Alfred steps into the room with a perfectly raised eyebrow.
Everyone immediately freezes where they are. Some in the positions in which they are wrestling one another, Bruce where he is chatting with Barbara about the police department (because they somehow always get distracted), Stephanie who is sharing a tube of potato chips with Cass both of whom have been told multiple times that they were not allowed to have food on the couch, and Damian, who is trying to figure out how to hack the game.
"If you are all still expecting to patrol tonight, I suggest you start preparing by getting some food in yourselves, and hydrating after all of that screaming,” he admonishes. “And dinner is ready.”
“Thanks, Alfred,” they all chirp and allow him to leave calmly before…
They clamber to their feet, pushing each other behind with curses and insults as they all fight to get to the doorway the moment Alfred is out of sight.
“Agh, fuck you,” Stephanie quietly swears as Cassie steals away the pringles. Cass only laughs in response and dashes for the door.
Tim climbs over Jason’s shoulders in an attempt to get ahead of the crowd, snickering when Jason flips him off (and Bruce warns him from behind).
“Catch up, old man!” He cackles as they all push and shove as they scramble to get to the dining table first.
Yup. Just another Batfamily game night.