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Another kidnapping. Because of course it is. Kidnappings of members in this particular family are just as common as Arkham breakouts.
This time the kidnapping victims are Tim and Damian. The pair had been in civilian mode so whoever had been paying their kidnappers is after their civilian personas, not their vigilante ones. That is both good and bad.
The kidnappers did the stereotypical kidnapping shebang: chloroform over the mouth and nose, black bag over the head, and all.
Damian comes to an indescribable time later to find himself in a different setting. A nondescript room. His arms and legs bound (surprisingly well) to a high-backed metal chair. Timothy is bound in a similar manner opposite them.
His brother has yet to awaken. Damian is not sure if that is a good or bad thing. They will just have to see how this plays out.
While they are alone (mostly, whatever) in this room, he will use the time to case their new surroundings.
There is not much of particular value. The room is bare, plain concrete walls and floor. There is no carpet. Nor a window. The door on the far side of the room is metal, no hinges in sight.
The lack of a window indicates the possibility of being underground. While the bare walls and floor suggest wherever their kidnappers have taken them is located in the industrial precinct (assuming that they are still within Gotham’s borders, that is). The chance that they can kick it down is, as their brothers like to say, fifty-fifty.
The moment that Timothy awakens, the door swings open.
Damian includes the possibility of cameras in his assessment of the room. It will be included in his report later. That is, if he ever gets to write that report.
Through the open door strolls a man with broad shoulders. There is a rifle slung over his right shoulder, one of the man’s hands is holding the grip. He is closely followed by a lady in a sapphire blue dress. She is also armed, with a sword instead of a gun.
The lady in the sapphire dress crosses the room to the pair. Timothy has, by now, already blinked the world back into his usual camera-clear focus.
“Timothy Drake-Wayne.” she says.
Then she turns to face Damian, long chestnut hair spilling over her shoulder as she does so. “Damian Wayne.”
“You know who we are, congrats,” Timothy snarks, already sounding bored.
“Yes, and I know that you — and your family are practically sitting on top of an absolute mountain of money,” the lady says. “All I ask is that you get old Brucie to hand over some of that dough, say four thousand dollars? And I’ll let you go,”
“How about no,” Damian says. “The Wayne family does and will not stoop to the level of those who have to resort to kidnapping,” he tells her primly.
The lady unsheathes her sword.
Damian will never, ever, admit it out loud but he does admire its fine craftsmanship. The design of the hilt resembled that which they had seen during their time in the League but that was the only similarity, the rest of the weapon was unlike anything he had ever seen before.
“I was not asking,” she tells them both, her tone icy. The sword has yet to be pointed at anyone’s throat, it remains by the lady’s side for the time being.
Timothy still looks bored, even with the possible threat of the sword.
The man-with-the-gun holds out a phone to Damian, it’s his own he realizes. At least the lady has the intelligence to give them their own phone to use instead of a burner.
“You will call Bruce to ask him for $4,000, and there better not be any funny business,” she tells him.
“No.” This lady’s unwavering conviction that Damian will call his father so that the man will give her any money is almost laughable. If they were anyone else, they most certainly would have laughed.
The tip of the sword is pointed at Damian’s throat. “You’ll do as I say or this sword will find a new home in Timothy’s chest,”
Their brother is looking less bored and much more alert now there is a true threat of injury looming over him.
Damian has a choice to make: continue his defiance and risk Timothy being impaled by the sword or call his father for the money, and pass along the Bat-code that alerts him that they are kidnapped and need retrieval.
Tim can see the choice that Damian is weighing up. It’s not the best one, he can agree on that.
Their Bat Training™ (yes, that more than certainly deserves the trademark by now) should force them to choose the call option. $4,000 dollars is not all that much money in the grand scheme of things, Bruce has it. But Damian, like the rest of the family, is stubborn.
By now, the eleven-year-old is most likely weighing up whether it would be worth transferring that money and therefore giving their kidnappers (and any possible future ones) the leverage of getting easy money from the Waynes.
“Time’s running out, boys,” the lady croons. “So what’ll it be?” she goes on.
He catches his brother’s gaze. To the elder vigilante’s dismay, Damian has chosen defiance.
Tim had tried to get through this week without being stabbed, shot, or otherwise impaled. He really had. And he almost got there too! Today was Friday.
Now he owes Jason ten dollars. If he ever got out of this room alive, that is.
Come on, Damian, just accept the damn phone. He thinks at the kid, wishing for the first time in his life that he was a meta, telepathy would have been real helpful right about now.
“I will not say it a third time, we do not stoop to the level of those who resort to kidnapping in order to get money,” Damian says instead.
Damn it, Demon Brat!
The sword is removed from Damian’s neck and instead placed at Tim’s chest. Luckily nowhere near his heart. It shouldn’t hit any vital organs. He’s about 97% sure of that.
“Wrong answer, child.” The lady snarls, ever so slowly pushing the sword further.
He can hear the material of his shirt tearing. Then the pain starts. At first, it’s barely noticeable, akin to a pinprick. But then.
The slow increase of pressure, the slow way the lady is inserting the sword into his chest, is more excruciating than a quick shish kebab-ing would.
Isn’t it funny? That Tim has been stabbed enough times that he is able to identify just how painful a stabbing is supposed to be. The halting manner that this particular sword is taking is only making it ever more painful.
Despite this, he keeps quiet. It is not that the pain is not deserving of noise (it very much is), it is more that making noise from pain has long since been trained out of him.
“If it ever gets too painful, I am giving you the option to transfer it to your brother,” the lady says.
Now that is something that Tim will never, ever, do. Even if he ends up dying.
There is regret swirling in Damian’s eyes now but they do not say anything. His brother knows how much he can tolerate, they all know each other's limits. While it’s obvious that this hurts, it’s nowhere near his (concerningly and sadly high) limits so no intervention is needed, yet.
But when the blade begins to glow blue all previous thoughts of this going smoothly, as a kidnapping involving blades could go, went out the metaphorical window.
Now I’ll have to write a long report. Tim thinks dismally.
This had been just another kidnapping until magic got involved.
“Stop this!” he hears Damian say. “Stop this right now!” The lady says nothing.
She has stopped the shish kebab-ing for the meantime. But the pain continues as if she has.
A whine squeezes its way past his lips with each new wave of pain.
Damian hadn’t expected the lady in the sapphire dress to actually go through on her threat of using the sword against Tim.
There was no denying it. Damian’s defiance and obedience to his father’s rules had caused his brother pain.
Goddess be damned if they didn’t do something about it.
“Stop!” he shouts. Even as the word forms in their throat, they know its a futile effort. “Stop this right now!”
His plea demand goes expectedly unheard.
Their brother’s whine of pain only makes the guilt inside him burn hotter.
Damian knows how much it takes for Timothy to make a sound while in pain. And if he is doing so now, they cannot imagine the pain that he is in.
He should have accepted the offered phone and made the call. If they had then Timothy would not be in the situation he is now.
But if he had done so then what would Father have thought? He would have gone against one of his father’s most crucial instructions to save their brother from pain. Timothy, like the rest of his siblings, is intimately familiar with pain; It comes with their line of work. He is sure that Father’s response would not have been merciful.
Through the pain, Tim feels the blade of the sword brush against a rib.
Is it getting more painful? That can’t be possible but it somehow is.
The most probable answer is that the pain has gotten to a point where his body cannot differentiate if it is increasing or not.
He can see Damian attempting to get free from the bounds that bind them to the chair. They both know it’s a useless endeavour; whoever tied the ropes was good.
From somewhere outside this room comes gunfire and shouting. And suddenly the door is kicked in.
A person clad in a familiar leather jacket and red bucket helmet over their head enters the room.
Tim could cry right now. If he had less decorum and wasn’t preoccupied with being marinated from the inside by a magic (?) sword.
He can’t see Jason’s face but he’s willing to bet one of Alfred’s cookies that Jason looks absolutely murderous under the helmet.
He remembers the last time anyone in the family was kidnapped (it had been Cass, which was a stupid choice all around), Jason had come very close to murdering every single person involved. They almost succeeded too. If it wasn’t for the bomb.
This time isn’t that much different (he hopes). They shoot the henchman dead.
“How did you find this place?” The lady in the blue dress asks before she turns to yank the sword out of Tim’s chest.
As soon as it is out, the excruciating pain stops. Absent-mindedly he wonders if he should be worried about bleeding out.
Jason answers her with a bullet to the heart. The lady’s body falls dead to the ground, the sword still in her grasp.
Dick appears in the doorway. A frown on his face.
“Hood, you untie Damian, I’ve got Tim,” his older brother says as he crosses the room.
The world slants suddenly to the side when Dick pulls him carefully to his feet. As the world fades from existence, Tim hears someone swear and fragments of various sentences struggle their way to his ears.
“…Lot of blood…”
“That…stabbed him…”
“….sword…magic…pain…”
They’re missing something. Tim thinks as the world dims.
Tim is not sure exactly how much time has passed when he wakes. Long enough for them to return to the manor.
He wakes in a bed. Whose is it?
Bruce’s bed, he concludes after noticing the dark wooden bed posts and the size.
He’s not alone. Damian is sitting on the end of the bed, a sketchbook in his lap. The eleven-year-old looks to be asleep. Although that doesn’t last long.
“Timothy, you’re awake!” His youngest brother sounds so relieved.
“Yeah. What time is it?”
“10 PM,” Damian answers. “You’ve been out for three hours,” he adds. A silence settles over them.
“Why did you endure it for as long as you did? You had the option to transfer it to me,” Damian asks. “You could have had done so as soon as she informed you of the option,” they go on.
Is he being serious right now? Tim thinks. Does he really believe that I would do that?
“Because, Dami, I did not and will not willingly make you suffer so I can be free of that pain,” he tells them.
The kid doesn’t protest at his use of the nickname.
Damian looks like someone has just told him that he has to unalive someone that has already been unalived.
“But why? I do not understand; it was my defiance that caused you pain, therefore you had justification to pass on that pain to me,” they say.
Tim sits up and faces him. He’ll say this a thousand times if that’s what it takes.
“You defied that lady because you were following protocol, I knew that. But following protocol doesn’t and will never give me or anyone else justification to hurt you,”
Damian looks away, taking his sketchbook with him to look like he’s actually doing something.
“Anyways, it was better that it was me than you,”
“Do not say that!” Damian’s voice is stony as he looks up sharply. He’s struck a nerve somehow, interesting. “You do not deserve pain any more than I do.”
It seems that some of what he and the rest of their siblings had been trying to get Damian to learn had stuck after all.