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“Dick always smiles like the cat that got the cream. He's the craziest of them all, with a sadistic sense of humor to match."
There was a biting chill in the air, and the slanting streaks of rain pouring down from the sky didn't particularly make the night more pleasant, either. Dick was squatting beside one of the many gargoyle's lining Gotham's rooftops, nearly indistinguishable from the stone statue beside him through the haze overtaking the skyline. The crackle of his comm in his ear interrupted the steady patter of rain on the rooftop.
"I'm seeing some movement on the upper east side," Tim's voice came through. "But there's also some radio chatter of the shipment coming in through the roof."
Bruce grunted in response. "Nightwing and Robin, take the roof of the building. Keep an eye out for any incoming vehicles and hold off any men that come your way. Red Robin and I will take the upper east side."
Despite his exhaustion from being stuck in one place for the whole night, a course of relief went through Dick when he realized he wouldn't be partnered with Bruce again. They made a great team, of course, but when they two of them worked together, old habits came back. They were less 'partners' and more 'Batman taking point so there's no chance Dick could get hurt. Or contribute in any way'. Which, Dick supposed, was just Bruce's way of showing that he cared. But in all honesty, it had been a while since they last blew up at each other and Bruce backed off. He started encroaching on Dick's independence again, and Dick was getting sick of it. He had the last seven years of his life reestablishing himself as a perfectly capable and independent hero, and he really didn't need Bruce to come back and trash his reputation and self-esteem allover it.
A chorus of affirmations came through the comms in response to Bruce's instructions and Dick snapped back to reality, relaying his own, and he found himself grappling to another building corner purely off muscle memory.
He greeted Damian with a silent nod and moved to perch just above the men they were surveying, Damian followed in suit and crouched on a rafter in a similar manner across from him. Bruce's voice came to life in his ear again. "We have to move at the same time, else we risk them communicating and getting more organized just before the shipment arrives," he said. "Move on my mark. Three….Two…. One."
As the final word left Bruce's mouth, Dick and Damian dropped from their hiding spots and launched into action. The grunts and sounds of gauntlets meeting flesh over the comms solidified that Bruce and Tim were doing the same, and their timing had been right on. Dick ducked underneath a punch swinging towards his face before kneeing the man in the gut and swiping his legs out from underneath him. He threw a wing-ding at the one who drew a knife a few feet away and leapt over another who's leg flicked out in an attempt to take out Dick's knee. Dick brought his elbow down on the man's head as he descended and the man dropped like a rock.
Dick looked around, everyone close enough to him subdued for the moment and checked each of the exits. He moved to grab one of the men's radios, only to look up and glance at Damian fending off the two men in front of him from across the room. Dick's mouth opened in an attempt to distract them and give Damian an opening, failing to see another thug raising the butt of his gun to the back of Dick's head.
A batarang flew from one of the exits Dick could have sworn he already blocked off, whipping the man's wrist to the side. Dick spun around, bringing an escrima down on the back of the man's neck, looking up to see Tim flitting amongst the hoards of men that had piled into the warehouse with him and Damian.
Dick's eyes narrowed. Bruce wouldn't have sent Tim here alone… not with the amount of confusion they had about the transport details and security information between bases. Which meant…
Sure enough, Batman dropped from the rafters, taking out another one of the thugs as Dick had been about to raise his batons to attack him. Dick let out a slight growl, turning to take out another man near him.
"We had this handled," he said, the words coming out clipped.
Bruce have him a look, as close to a dry raised eye brow as he could give under the cowl. "I'm sure the thug who almost pistol whipped you from behind would say otherwise," he replied smoothly, his actions never faltering as he threw a batarang and pinned one of the men to the floor by his shirt collar.
Dick bit back a retort as he spun his heel into the last thug, turning towards Tim and Damian on the other side of the room. "All good over there?" he asked, the words coming out light and so utterly different from the tone Bruce had just been subject to that Bruce started a bit. Even Dick's words had a mask. One, judging by the way Tim and Damian grinned and shrugged off his casual brushes, even his brothers couldn't even see through.
The only sign of Dick's irritation on the ride home was the lack of mindless chatter. The lack of jokes and quips about any creative take downs or idiotic attempts from the thugs was replaced by Dick's advisements about Tim's and Damian's technique. His tone still came through as relaxed and casual, and with Damian and Tim on the verge of falling asleep in the back seat, they didn't seem to notice the change in typical topics.
They couldn't see his body language either. Tensed and wound up, his leg bouncing and eyes staring out the window beside them.
Dick slid out of the car the second it came to a stop in the cave, giving Alfred a tired smile and a nod when he came to take the other two boys upstairs. Dick made a beeline for the showers, but Bruce's hand snapped out, holding his wrist and preventing him from taking another step.
The doors to the elevator had barely slid shut when he started. "Are you alright, Dick?"
Dick huffed out a breath Bruce didn't quite know how to interpret. "Of course I'm alright Bruce," he said with a smile that was just a bit too wide. "It's not like there's a chance in hell of me getting hurt on any missions while you're around."
Bruce blinked, the only sign of confusion he would show. The words themselves sounded innocent enough, but there was something about the way he seemed to be almost biting them out that was off putting.
Bruce's next words came out low, his irritation with the backhanded tones finally rising to match Dick's. "Are you going to tell me what's going on, or are you going to make me keep dealing with your passive-aggressive bullshit until you get over it?"
Dick's eyes flashed and he jerked his wrist out of Bruce's hold. "Stop coddling me," Dick snapped, his cool façade finally crumbling.
Bruce stared at him "I'm not. I just--"
"You keep doing this," Dick interrupted. "You weren't happy when I started to run my own missions with the titans, you kept spying on me when I moved to Bludhaven, and now you're doing it all over again. I can handle a simple combat op with me and Damian," he growled, "And I don't need you stepping in every time you think that I need help."
Bruce's eyebrows shot up. "Are you serious right now? You would have gone down on tonight's mission. Hard. And you're going to try and convince me you can keep an eye on your own surroundings while watching out for Damian's?"
Dick took a step towards him, fists balling at his sides. "Yeah? Well I guess we'll never be ever to find out now, since the great and all powerful Batman can't handle the fact that someone might actually be capable of doing anything without him." He spit the name out like a curse, rolling his eyes in a way that had Bruce stiffening.
Bruce ground his teeth in frustration. "Dick, I'm only trying to help you--"
Dick cut him off. "I don't need your brand of help, Bruce," he snarled.
Bruce huffed out an incredulous laugh. "You sound fourteen again, you know that?"
Dick shook his head, his eyes trained on the floor in front of him. "Fuck you, Bruce."
Bruce took a deep breath, trying to calm himself against the steady rise of irritation that he had been fighting all night. "Dick, you need to pull yourself together."
Dick let out a strangled laugh. "Yeah, B, I do. And this clearly isn't the place to do it." He peeled his mask off his eyes and threw it in Bruce's face, Bruce's hand only just barely making it up fast enough to catch it. Dick turned away and strode to his across the cave as fast as he could, the silence absolutely eerie in contrast to the heated tension that had been present not 30 seconds ago. Dick tugged his helmet on over his head, fighting the tightness in his chest from an emotion he wasn't quite able to name.
Bruce turned away as Dick strode towards his bike, working on dismantling the minute amount of tech he and Tim had recovered before going to intervene on Damian's and Dick's sector. He listened to Dick's bike roar to life a tad more aggressively than necessary, but didn't shift his gaze from the tools in front of him as the sound of the bike ebbed as it grew more distant.
Dick didn't contact Bruce that week. Or the next. In all honesty, that wasn't entirely abnormal after the type of fight they had, so Bruce was content to leave Dick to his own devices until he needed him. But by the time the third week rolled around though, he was starting to get a bit worried.
It was Tim who really gave in as the bridge between them, like he always did. Bruce caught him on his way out on Friday night, a bag slung over his shoulder. "I don't know what's going on between you and him, but he's not answering any of my calls," Tim shrugged. "Thought I'd go over to check on him and spend the weekend in Bludhaven."
Bruce nodded. "That's probably a good idea. Ask him to call me, if you can
Tim gave him a small smile before tugging his hood over his head and stepping out the door. "Sure, B. I'll try my best. But you know how he can be sometimes."
Bruce huffed a sigh, the words affecting him more than he'd like them to. Dick could be stubborn as hell when he wanted to, and after spending 17 years of his life living with Bruce, that hadn't wavered in the slightest. The words from their last fight kept echoing in Bruce's ears, and he couldn’t help but have a bad feeling about the way they'd left things. Dick was always great at ignoring Bruce, but ignoring his brothers wasn't normally something he did out of spite for more than a week at a time.
"I understand," Bruce replied. "I'll see you Monday."
Tim waved him off with a flick of his hand over his shoulder, his back already turned as he stepped into the cab and put in a pair of headphones.
The drive to Bludhaven felt longer than usual. It wasn't unusual for Dick to disappear without telling anyone for a while, usually when his day job caught up to him and he was pulling extra shifts at the precinct to make up for it. If that were the case, he just needed someone to show up, get him some food, and convince him that 7 hours of sleep wouldn't cause the end of the world.
What had Tim feeling off though was Dick's lack of message when there was a large drug shipment moving in to Gotham from Bludhaven. Large enough that Dick couldn't have missed it--in either job--and that he'd never want anyone on the Gotham team to be blindsided. Tim was lucky he'd caught it as early as he had, or someone could have gotten seriously hurt.
The sense of dread Tim had been feeling since taking down the group's base had never really faded--even when he double, triple, even quadruple checked that they were contained by GPD and wouldn't be going anywhere. But why hadn't Dick told them about it?
Tim realized with a jolt that he was outside Dick's complex, and he paid the driver in a daze before shaking his head and stepping out of the car.
The pit in his stomach wouldn't stop growing as he ascended the stairs to Dick's apartment. The world seemed to be screaming at him wrong, wrong, WRONG.
The feeling compounded when no one came to the door as Tim knocked. Twice. Almost on instinct, he was pulling lock pick from his jacket pocket and twisting the door handle open less than a minute later.
The world seemed to come to a screeching halt as Tim took in the apartment. It was silent, with a vague dankness in the air that indicated no one had been there in a while. There was a half full pot of water on the stove, some slightly moldy bread out on the kitchen counter. All signs that Dick had been in the middle of something, but left. And hadn't come back.
Tim felt his hands begin to shake as he searched through the apartment, finding Dick's shattered phone on the floor by the bed and an abandoned comm unit by the Nightwing suit. Oh, no.
I need to call someone, he thought, trying to take breaths deep enough to get his vision to stop blurring. It took him three tries to unlock his phone and tap the first contact on the list.
"Bruce Wayne speaking," came the voice over the phone.
Tim let out a sob.
**************
"Damian, smallest but no less ruthless. He kills with precision and unmatched efficiency. It is said no one ever saw him coming."
It had been four months since Richard had disappeared. Four months since Damian had gotten a full night of sleep. Four months since Damian had been able look anyone in the eye without feeling like the world was falling apart.
Father had been searching relentlessly, hardly coming up for air as Bruce Wayne anymore. He split his time between searching every database he could think of in the cave and tearing through Bludhaven's streets trying to find any connection to where Richard had gone. It was safe to say he hadn't slept very much recently either.
With Batman preoccupied elsewhere, Red Hood, Red Robin, and Robin had been splitting up patrols for the city. Every night Damian laced up his Robin boots with a hollow sort of feeling in his chest he refused to acknowledge. It had probably been because the suit's original owner would have been terrified to see the state his family had fallen into. But that was no matter. There was still work to be done.
It was nearing the end of Damian's patrol route when he noticed he was being followed. He'd blame it on the exhaustion and the stress for not noticing earlier. Father would want me to call for back up, he noted absently, but dismissed the thought almost immediately. He was a Wayne and an Al Ghul, and he was Robin, dammit. He could handle a tail.
He was very quickly proven wrong.
No matter how fast he ran, or which convoluted route he took across roof tops, the figure refused to leave him. Eventually, Damian managed to get far enough ahead to reach an empty rooftop without the figure immediately on his heels. He took a few deep breaths, trying to slow his breathing, before turning to face the thing that had joined him above the city.
The figure came close enough for Damian to make out the shape of its mask, its armor. Damian went absolutely still.
A talon, he thought. Father had warned him about them, but he never thought they'd actually be an enemy he would have to deal with. Especially not on his own.
The talon drew closer, and Damian's hand crept up to the sword sheathed across his back. He tensed, pulling the blade in front of him and preparing for the figure to lunge at him.
Then it did the last thing Damian expected.
It removed its mask.
Damian's sword clattered to the ground.
"Richard," Damian breathed, his eyes wandering to take in every inch of the man in front of him. "Is that really you?"
He looked so familiar, every inch of him the Batman and the brother he had grown familiar with. God, he'd missed him so much.
Relief went coursing through Damian's body, and he wasn't sure whether to let out a laugh or a sob. Every part of it felt right to see Richard standing there in front of him. Every part, except his eyes.
Richard's eyes looked… pained. Far different than any expression Damian had grown familiar with on his face. Fear gas and bullet wounds couldn't hold a candle to the hollow golden eyes that seemed to reflect everything emitting life but looked so soulless at the same time.
Grayson…always felt better when Damian allowed him affection, was the only thought echoing through Damian's head. Damian couldn't stand to look into those eyes any longer, not without doing something, anything, to fix it. So Damian took a step over his sword in a daze, breaking in to a sprint to close the distance between himself and the Talon in front of him.
Damian launched himself into Richard's arms, and felt them coming up to hold him. He absolutely melted into the hold and for a moment, just for a moment, everything felt right again.
Then Damian realized he couldn't breath. The arms that had felt so comforting just seconds before constricted like steel bands across his back.
"Richard," Damian wheezed. "Richard let me go."
The arms across his body didn't falter.
"Dammit, Grayson," Damian forced out, his chest growing tighter with black spots appearing in his vision.
He managed to free a hand enough to force his fingers into a pressure point beneath the Talon's armor. The arms holding him fell away, and Damian dropped like a stone to the gravel rooftop, gasping to try and banish the fuzziness in his head.
"What's wrong with you?" Damian moans, glancing up only to propel himself to the side on instinct alone. The Talon lunged for him, and Damian shakily forced himself to his feet.
"Richard, please," Damian begged. "I don't want to fight you."
Talon's only answer was a roundhouse kick to Damian's head.
Damian ducked, sliding into a defensive stance. He dodged whatever hits he could, and bit back grunts when his blocks only barely held up against Talon's attacks. It almost felt the same as it did when they sparred in the cave. Damian could hear Richard's quips and corrections in his head, but he was barely holding his own against the barrage of hits.
It was so familiar, but so different. The man who raised Damian wasn't like this. Not this ruthless. No this violent. And that realization ached more than any hit the Talon landed ever could.
The thought had Damian's arm dropping a fraction of an inch too low, an opportunity the Talon didn't miss. Talon grabbed Damian's wrist, and Damian let out a yell as he was thrown across the roof and onto the course gravel.
A heavy weight settled across his stomach, and ice cold hands wrapped around his throat.
Damian kicked and clawed, twisting his hips back and forth in an attempt to fling the shell of his older brother off his body. "Richard, stop this, please!" he wheezed.
Eventually though, his body gave out. His hands dropped away from arms pinning him to the ground. His legs fell flat against the gravel.
Damian didn't really register any of the pain. He just felt betrayed.
**************
"Tim. The cold and calculating one. He treats killing as an artform and has perfected his methods. His kills are clean, unless he has reason to torture his victims. In which case, he has also perfected the art of inflicting pain."
Tim just felt… numb. Two of his brothers were missing; it had been two months since the last one disappeared, and six months since the first. The only alternative to the vicious silence in his head was to let himself feel the pain of it all and scream until his throat bled. But that wouldn't solve anything. He needed to hold himself together, because if he didn't, no one else would either. And that definitely wasn't an option.
So Tim drowned himself in the numbness.
Bruce didn’t let anyone patrol anymore. And with Cass in Hong Kong, Steph in New York, and Bruce bouncing between them, Bludhaven, and the League of Assassins headquarters, he wasn't in Gotham very much of late. So, Tim found himself patrolling with Jason more often than not.
It had been a long night. No breakouts at the moment, thank god, but the petty crime on the street seemed never ending. Not to mention, Jason was starting to worry Tim. And god, Tim did not have the mental capacity to worry about another person in this damn family.
Jason seemed… angrier. Not angry in the way he was after the pit, but angry in the way Bruce was in Tim's early Robin days. Was he watching history repeat himself in front of his eyes? If that were the case, he sympathized with the Dick from that period of their lives a little more. He simply didn't have the energy to bring someone back from the edge anymore.
By the time they made their way back to the cave, Tim was swaying with exhaustion. He was in desperate need of a break. He went through his post patrol routine in a daze, and felt into bed, his eyes almost immediately falling shut.
But he couldn't fall asleep sleep. Hadn't been able to make It through a full night in about six months. He tossed and turned for about an hour, before letting out a groan and sitting up while rubbing at his eyes. Well, he winced, as the light of his bedside lamp overtook the room, if I'm not gonna sleep I might as well make myself useful.
He headed down to the cave, pausing in the kitchen to brew himself a fresh cup of coffee. He settled himself in front of the computer and started scrolling through the never ending files collected on his missing brothers.
There was an endless amount of hazy photographs, unread text messages, and surveillance video to go through, but it was the blood sample collected from a recent murder scene that was still bothering Tim. They collected the sample in hopes of connecting it to the killer, or at least someone else present at the scene. When they ran it through their databases though, it only returned a 70% match, which, with a system as extensive as theirs, was very much an anomaly.
The stranger piece, though, was that it was a 70% match of Dick's DNA. Bruce had chalked it up to cross contamination at the scene, but Tim wasn't quite convinced.
He then thought back to the location where Damian had gone missing. That rooftop had been one of their handful of blind spots throughout the city. The chances of some random abductor getting that lucky was slim, but if Dick's disappearance was somehow linked… ?
No, no, no. There's no way. Dick would never voluntarily lay a hand on Damian. Unless… Suddenly, Tim was pushing himself out of his chair and changing into his suit before he could finish the thought.
Tim's bike skidded to a stop outside the apartment where Dick's DNA had been found. Tim stepped off and flicked on a flashlight, pressing forward to gently push the front door open.
Immediately, the space felt different than the last time he had visited. The furniture looked like it had been moved, and the blinds on the windows looked like they were pulled to a different level than they were in the crime scene photos. It seemed almost… inhabited.
There was something eerie about it though. Something that left Tim's skin crawling the longer he looked around. Maybe it was they dead, grey flecks of skin on the carpet. Maybe it was the strange scraps of metal on the kitchen table.
Tim's heart was pounding in his ears when he noted the bandolier of knives thrown across the bedroom floor. He reached out to touch them, and a shock when through him when he noted they were freezing to the touch.
The hairs on the back of his neck rose, and Tim twisted around to face what had approached him from behind.
Wide blue eyes met gold.
**************
"Jason is the silent one and keeps to the shadows. He takes no particular pleasure in killing, preferring to get a job done quickly."
It was kind of ironic, in a sick sort of way. He was the only robin that wasn't supposed to be here, that Bruce didn't want at some point in his life. Yet now he's the only one left.
He and B fight a lot less, surprisingly. It's probably because if they actually blew up, there would be no reason for them to fall back together again. There's no more buffer between them, no more support for the aftermath. The only thing they had left to hold themselves each together was each other.
Jason realizes he misses his brothers. More than he ever thought he would. From Dick's mindless chatter, to Tim's relentless quest to prove himself. Even the Demon Brat's sniping comments of everything they were doing to "tarnish his father's reputation." Jason bit back a laugh. God, there was nothing he wouldn't give to hear Damian say that one last time.
The thoughts and memories of his brothers' laughs echo around his head, and Jason realizes he can't quite breathe anymore.
He tries to take deep breaths, his chest stuttering between them as he climbs out to the roof of the manor. The roof had always been Dick's space. His place to think. And he's finally able to catch his breath.
Jason quickly lost track of time, staring up at the sky and alternating between I should stop wasting time and do something, and I don't know if I can do this anymore. He feels something blocking the cool breeze blowing over his shoulder and half turns. He lets out a sardonic but pathetic laugh with an undercurrent of… something. An emotion Jason isn't sure he could identify even if he wanted to.
"Well, there you are. I suppose it's my turn, isn't?" He called out with a bitter laugh. "You tore this house apart, you know that?. It's not like there's anyone left standing here to try and fix it." Jason's voice filled with something thick. "Not really."
The presence behind him doesn't respond, and Jason gets up from his perch, frustration mounting and begged it to do something. "So take me then!" He roared. "Take me, and get it over with, you bastard!"
The figure still doesn't respond, and the silence is really starting to piss Jason off.
"The whole strong, silent thing doesn't work for many people, and I have to say you're not--"
Jason cuts himself off abruptly.
The presence he's been yelling at isn't a presence. It's three. The same three presences that, when they left him, made his home feel more like a prison. Like a coffin, buried six feet underground, with Jason frantically clawing at the surface until he ran out of air.
So he turned to them, faced them head on, and said four cursed words.
"Take me with you."
**************
Bruce fell silent after presenting the info. The League stood speechless to once side of him. On the other side, Midnighter crossed his arms, frowning. Apollo closes his eyes in sorrow.
Slade glared. "And pray tell, how did you manage to lose not one, but all four of them?"
"From acts of foolish negligence."
The accusation echoed around the room. The Al Ghuls strolled in with assassins followed closely behind them. "The important question now is, what are you going to do to remedy this error?"