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Robin falls.
Damian doesn’t make a noise as he twists in the air, positioning himself into a less painful position. His hand goes to his grapple, eyes scanning for a ledge to aim for, finger grasping the trigger with a little more force than necessary. This is a scenario he’s trained through several times, a maneuver he’s successfully pulled even more. Nobody will come to catch him, because he doesn’t need to be caught. It’s muscle memory, reflex, and he would have caught himself.
But the grapple clicks without launching, and Damian continues to plummet.
Nightwing gracefully flips off the edge of a building, landing in the alleyway below. He’s off running as soon as his feet touch the ground, nothing more than a shadow cast on the buildings. The vigilante skids to a stop as he approaches Robin, leaning heavily against a wall, and kneels in front of him.
“Robin —”
“I’m fine.”
“You fell.” There’s a weight to those words that a normal onlooker wouldn’t understand. “What’re your injuries?”
A beat of silence. “I’ve been through worse.”
Nightwing laughs bitterly, lacking any joy. “Doesn’t matter, baby bird. Injury report. Now.”
Robin sighs, wincing as he shifts his weight. “Twisted ankle, gash on my forehead, bruised ribs. Overall, it could be worse.”
The older vigilante nods, stepping forward and picking up the younger in one swoop. Robin squawks in surprise, attempting to get out of the hold, only to wince in pain. He goes still, seeming to accept his fate. Tim takes the opportunity to zip down into the alleyway; Dick has always been the best with Damian, if Tim had tried to get an injury report, it would have been ineffective.
Nightwing looks over at him as Red Robin pads closer. “Hood and his people are packing up the drugs. I’ll send him the chemical analysis when I’m done running it and they’ll figure out what to do from there.”
A nod. “I’m going to patch Robin up and take him back to mine.”
Tim looks to Damian, limp in Nightwing’s arms, already out like a light. He imagines Bruce checking up on the two of them — which should be in half an hour, give or take — and finding his youngest missing. “The Doc won’t be too happy about that.” He says carefully, each word measured.
Nightwing’s gaze remains on the ground. “Robin can’t exactly go to him like this, can he?”
“We’ve had him patch us up.” It’s a poor argument, and Tim knows it. Knows that Damian getting patched up by Bruce as Robin while still living with him is likely to lead to crossed wires. It’s too messy. And the kid isn’t the best at poker faces, yet, at hiding injuries when they occur. It’s not a smart move, even if they’ve used Bruce as their medic when wearing the masks in the past.
“You know that’s a bad idea this time.”
Tim just shrugs, rocking back on his heels. “I’ll try to stall him. Give you time to figure out how you’ll be spinning this.”
“Thanks.”
“Nu-uh, Replacement, that’s not how we’re doing this.” Jason’s voice is laced with distortion and followed by a loud thud, thud as he stomps into the alleyway. Red Robin and Nightwing both snap to look at him as he emerges from the shadows, red helmet glaring in the moonlight. He stops in front of Dick, jabbing a finger into his chest. “This is bad.”
The lens of Nightwing’s mask narrows. “I know.”
“He needs a hospital , Dickhead.”
“I know that.” Damian shifts in his arms, murmurs something, and then goes still. The other three vigilantes pause for a moment, watching. Tim idly wonders if the kid has more injuries than originally reported. A flu was going around the academy this week, and he really wouldn’t be surprised if Dami went out on patrol even if he was coming down with it. That would explain some sluggish movements and — he puts a pin in this train of thought for later. Focuses on making sure Jason and Dick don’t beat each other to death. “But we can’t —”
“Then tell him.” Jason snarls. “Go to the manor with your tail between your legs, ask him to help, and tell him .”
Dick’s jaw drops as he tries to formulate a response. His mask lenses are impossibly large. “I can’t.”
Red Hood remains silent for a moment, watching his older brother carefully. His mask hides his features and any chance for Tim to read his expression — but he can practically feel the rage radiating off him in waves. Tim finds himself holding his breath, waiting for whatever explosive sentence is next in this argument, but instead Jason whispers, almost too soft to hear; “Why the fuck not?”
No response.
“Give me one good reason. One reason why he still doesn’t know, why you still refuse to tell him, even after everything that happened.”
Dick inhales sharply at that. “I didn’t tell him then because it would’ve broken him.”
“Fuck that.” Jason’s voice is a growl at this point, the vocal modifier unable to keep the venom out of his voice. “I fucking died and instead of telling him like a big boy, instead of telling him it was your fault , you dragged more kids into this. And you won’t even let them get real help —”
Tim’s heart leaps into his throat. He knows exactly where Jason is going with this, feels the words hanging in the air like some weight ready to crush them. And Dick knows it, too, because he whispers sharp and warning; “ Jay .”
“No, Dick, be honest,” Jason roars, “how many of us are you gonna let die because of your fuckin’ daddy issues?”
Silence.
Tim takes a hesitant step forward, not-so-subtly putting himself between his older brothers. Jason takes a few steps back, still fuming, and the younger boy takes his place. He gestures to the limp boy in Nightwing’s arms. “We need to focus on helping Damian.”
Nightwing takes a step back, adjusting the unconscious Robin in his arms. “I’ll take care of Robin, you stall the Doc. I’ll…figure out what to tell him.”
And then he’s gone, before Tim can even nod, and it’s just him and Jason left in the alleyway.
Dick isn’t the best medic by any means, but he has over ten years of vigilantism under his belt and has collected enough medical knowledge from Bruce and Harley collectively that he can do a decent job. A decent enough job so that everything can heal properly, even if it hurts like a bitch. A decent enough job that a professional or a hospital isn’t needed, most nights, even if they are preferred.
Patching up Damian isn’t the hard part. The hard part is that it’s Damian — because no matter how many of his little siblings run around in spandex, he’ll never get used to a kid hurt in his arms. His mind will always flash back to Jason in Ethiopia, even when he tries to redirect it and get it to focus on the task at hand. Because Damina is a kid, and shouldn’t be hurt like this, but he is.
And Dick knows this isn’t the most Damian has been injured, knows he’s been through worse when he was with the league, but that just makes it hurt more. Talia sent him here to get him away from all that, and Dick went and recruited him to be Robin.
But…but he’s fine.
He’s fine.
Damian is fine.
Everything is fine.
Shaking his head and thoughts that will spiral if he lets them, Dick grabs his phone to check his messages — it wasn’t uncommon to get a few rants from Wally on the weekends, or heads ups from Babs, or late night Twitter pings from Tim — and freezes in his tracks as the screen illuminates.
Bruce
5 missed calls
Bruce
Dick, do you know where Damian is? He left his phone at home but he’s not here.
18 more messages
His gaze immediately snaps towards Damian, face flushed from his fever and his leg in a makeshift cast. The wound on his forehead has been stitched closed and ice packs are lumped on his stomach. Dick looks back to his phone, his chest tight. Crap.
The phone is ringing and in his ear within a second. Bruce picks up on the second ring with a worried; “Dick.”
“Yeah, hey, dad, uh —” Dick takes a deep breath, pinching the bridge of his nose, “— promise me you won’t be mad.”
Silence. Then, again; “ Dick. ”
“I know, I know, but it’s fine — Damian’s with me, alright? He’s fine, he’s asleep on the couch, he just — wanted to get away from things for a bit, and —”
“I’m coming to pick him up.”
“Can it wait until morning?” A long pause. Dick can feel the tight thread between them tighten even more. “It’s three in the morning, B. He’s asleep. He’s…let him have the break. It’s not worth the drive to Bludhaven. And it’s a weekend, he doesn’t have school tomorrow…” He trails off. If this was any other circumstance, any other scenario, it wouldn’t be a big deal. Little brothers leave to visit older brothers all the time. Bruce would be worried as fuck because Damian disappeared in the middle of the night, but it wouldn’t be a cause for this much tension. A thread connecting them across cities, always threatening to snap.
And Dick can’t really complain, because he brought this upon himself the minute he decided to dress up and run around rooftops in the middle of the night. The minute he let Jason do the same, resulting in destroyed warehouses and cold bodies and a severed relationship that they’ll never be able to properly mend.
Dick closes his eyes against that thought, against the memories of that warehouse, and reminds himself that Jason is alive and breathing now. But Bruce doesn’t know that. And just because someone crawled out of their grave doesn’t mean they lost all their scars.
He takes a deep breath, opening his eyes to look back over at Damian. He just needs enough time to weave together a plausible lie — it’s Gotham, and Damian is a supposedly untrained kid out on the streets in the middle of the night, and the son of Bruce fucking Wayne. He just needs time, which means keeping Bruce away from the kid for as long as he can. “Can you just trust me here, Bruce?”
There’s a long pause, a knife hovering over a thread. “You don’t exactly have my trust back, Dick.”
The thread snaps.
But nobody falls — it’s anticlimactic as two threads, no longer one, fall to the ground below. Dick’s heart fall with them, and he can’t be upset because he brought this upon himself, but fuck. Fuck . He really misses his dad. And hearing their broken relationship spoken out loud makes him feel grounded in ways he hasn’t since he was a kid.
“I know, B.”
A heavy pause. “I’m coming over. Damian can stay the night, but I’m coming over. We need to talk.”
Shit. Dick’s eyes slip closed and he pinches the bridge of his nose. “Yeah, okay.”
The line goes dead.
Bruce is at his door twenty-five minutes later. He takes one look at Damian, asleep on the couch, sighs, and just…walks away. To the kitchen. Dick follows him, hesitating in his steps, and leans against the counter. “Do you…want to hear what happened?”
A pause. “Will you tell me the truth?”
And. Damn. Isn’t that a heavy question? Dick inhales sharply, shifting his feet. Thinks about Jason, alive and breathing, but unable to see his dad without a red helmet hiding his face. Thinks about Damian injured in the other room, needing better medical attention than he can give. Thinks about Tim, always working damage control instead of really interacting with them. Thinks about that night at Jason’s grave, when the words were on the tip of his tongue — it’s all my fault — but he never found the courage to say.
He can think about all the ways he wants to say it, all the reasons he wants to. But he can’t exactly find the words, can’t push them past his tongue. “I…want to.”
“But you won’t.”
Unable to find the words, Dick just shakes his head.
Bruce nods, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I’m going to walk you through something. Don’t interrupt me, just listen. Before I took you in, you were with Harley Quinn, running around the streets doing God knows what. And after I took you in, you didn’t stop, but I thought you did, and when I found out you hadn't, we fought about it. It was a criminal crowd, and you were young, and you got hurt.” He pauses, mulling over his words. “Harley had a sidekick, back then.”
Dick feels his heart stop.
“There’s only so many conclusions to draw there, Dick.”
“Bruce.” It’s a warning, a tread carefully , a please stop thinking that train of thought because it will ruin everything, please please please . The pleading in his eyes must come across, because Bruce is redirecting his gaze to the couch, to Damian, and collapses into himself.
He changes the topic — leaves that hanging in the air, leaves Dick’s heart hammering in his chest — and says; “I’ll check him over in the morning. Drive him home if he’s up for it.”
Dick, once again unable to find the words — there’s a million things he could say, from I know you know and I’m sorry, I’m so sorry to a list of injuries as Bruce walks over to Damian and brushes a hand across his forehead. A million things, none of which he says, because his tongue is heavy in his mouth and his heart is too fast in his chest, and he hears Jason’s words echoing in his head.
And he wonders if his sleeves are stained red with more than blood he drew himself.