Chapter Text
Bruce silently cursed the inaccurate weather report as he landed on the roof of the GCPD building. Rain battered his face. Water sluiced down his cape and dripped off his nose. He could already anticipate hours of striding around in wet leather.
For twenty-nine minutes, he crouched under the spread-winged gargoyle on the northwest corner of the roof, glumly attempting to think dry thoughts.
The clock ticked past eleven. Finally, there was a creak and bang of a door. Footsteps crunched over wet gravel. Bruce rose and slid out from beneath one carved stone wing.
“You’re early,” said Gordon, raising a tired hand in greeting.
“You’re…not,” said Bruce, biting off the word he was going to say, which was late. That wouldn’t have been fair to Gordon.
The system they’d worked out was that whoever arrived first would wait for the other to show up, but lately, the one doing all the waiting had been Bruce. Ever since Gordon got promoted to Police Commissioner, he’d been one of the busiest men in the city. He had more important things to do than to stand around on a rooftop waiting for a vigilante to show up.
Bruce was mostly just relieved that he hadn’t ruined the man’s career by associating with him. For awhile, he’d worried that Gordon might taint his own future prospects by being GCPD’s designated ‘Bat wrangler.’ But Gordon — tenacious and upright and stubborn about doing good in a way that matched Bruce’s passion — hadn’t stopped believing in Batman. And now his gamble had finally paid off with the biggest promotion of his career.
“There has to be an easier way of getting ahold of you,” said Gordon, as he joined him with umbrella in hand. “Maybe I should set up a hotline for us.”
“Too easily hacked.”
“Anonymous letter box? Voicemail? Email?” Gordon raised his eyebrows. “I hate making you come all this way for minor updates.”
“It’s no trouble.”
“You sure you don’t want a coffee or a donut?” Gordon was cradling a steaming mug in his hands. Bruce noted the creases in his clothes, the scruffiness of his mustache, the tired lines gouged into his forehead. Gordon had been sleeping even worse than usual.
“I ate before coming out,” said Bruce. This was the closest he ever got to discussing his private life. Anything more would jeopardise the image he’d so carefully crafted.
“Funnily, I can’t imagine you eating,” said Gordon, giving him a skeptical once-over. “Guess even bats need sustenance, huh?”
“What have you got for me today?” said Bruce. Gordon meant well, but small talk of any kind made him want to shrivel up inside.
“Caught two more Nutters just this week,” said Gordon. He shook his head. “One was trying to take on two armed thugs by himself. The other almost killed himself falling out a window. These people have no sense.”
“Did you charge them?”
“With what — vigilantism? Seemed a bit hypocritical, especially for me.”
“How many this month?”
“Five. There was an uptick after you saved the mayor’s life again last month.”
The internet called it ‘Batman Fever.’ Ever since the Riddler flooded the city six months ago, Gotham has been in the grip of a furious preoccupation with its resident vigilante. Over the past several months, a spate of clumsy Batman lookalikes have sprung up from out of nowhere, infesting the city like woodlice. Several of them apparently liked to run around pulling sloppy parkour stunts and getting into ill-advised fistfights with criminals.
Bruce hadn’t yet encountered any in person, but Gordon and his men were beyond fed up.
“They’re going to give you a bad rep if this keeps up,” said Gordon.
“I don’t care.”
“It’s your name on the line. And if they piss off the wrong people, these dollar-store knockoffs are going to get themselves killed, or worse. You ought to issue some kind of statement.”
“On what platform?” said Bruce. “I’m not a public figure. I’m not officially affiliated with the police or the government. I can’t tell people what to do.”
Gordon grunted. “You’ve got a point there. But I need them to stop wasting police time with their antics. This can’t end well for any of them.”
Bruce shifted slightly, rearranging his cape. “I’ll see about…discouraging them. Did you have anything else for me tonight?”
Gordon took a folder out of his coat. “I’ve got reports that the Maroni Family is rising up to take Falcone’s place. Thought you might want to stay updated.”
Inside his head, everything in Bruce went still. Maroni. The name was now synonymous with murderer in his head. His father’s murderer.
“I’ve looked into him,” said Bruce, feeling his heartbeat quicken. This had been his side project for months now. “He’s gotten better at hiding his illegal activities under the guise of legal businesses, but are you thinking —”
There was a sound. Bruce stopped mid-sentence and pivoted towards it. A scrape of metal against stone. A gravelly scuffle. Then all at once, a figure in black cleared the parapet and landed on the roof.
Plated armor. Bat-eared cowl. Cape so matte it seemed to absorb all moonlight.
Gordon turned two seconds after Bruce did, and almost slopped coffee all over his own hand.
“Shit. Another one? That makes three this week.”
“New record for you,” said Bruce, without taking his eyes off the interloper.
This one immediately struck him as different. For starters, his suit was too sleek and sophisticated. This wasn’t some home-sewn budget Batman cosplay — this was functional armor, designed to absorb hits and stop bullets. It was also, Bruce couldn’t help but notice, much more waterproof than his. Rain was beading on the weave and rolling off in fat droplets, like he’d coated himself with something hydrophobic.
Bruce made a mental note to add that as a feature to his own suit.
The second thing was that this person moved like river water over stone. A dancer’s grace, infused into what should have been stiff plate armor. Bruce instinctively slid into a ready stance. He’d seen men like this before when he was studying with Ra’s al Ghul’s acolytes in Nanda Parbat. This was the sort of man that could kill you in two surgical strikes with a single finger.
And he was heading straight for Bruce.
“B? Is that you?”
There was a harsh, artificial growl overlaid on top of his voice that Bruce suspected was a feature of his souped-up cowl. It obscured his age, but it didn’t obscure how out of breath he was.
Bruce sank deeper into his stance.
— And the copycat halted immediately. His head swivelled, but the opaque lenses over his eyes made it impossible to tell what he was looking at.
“B?” the copycat repeated. When nobody answered him, he turned and said to Gordon, “I came as soon as I saw the signal. What’s going on?”
“Signal wasn’t for you, pal,” said Gordon, rolling his eyes in exasperation. “Wrong time to show up and play hero.”
“Yeah, I’m starting to get that…” He trailed off and turned in a slow circle. “Huh. This really is the wrong time.”
He put an odd emphasis on the word.
“I’m only going to say this once,” said Gordon. “But for your health and my sanity, take that silly getup off.”
The copycat was now poking at the circuitry on his gauntlet. The lights on it beeped and flickered. He looked distracted. “Honestly, I’d love to, Commissioner. But I’m not currently wearing anything underneath this, and I sadly don’t have a change of clothes right now. It’s gonna have to stay on for the time being.”
Gordon sighed and unsnapped a pair of handcuffs. “All right. You’re coming with me.”
Immediately, the copycat stepped back and raised his hands. Everything in him telegraphed surrender, but Bruce grabbed Gordon’s arm all the same.
“Wait.”
There was something off about this man that he couldn’t quite put his finger on— some sixth sense that warned him this man was dangerous. There wasn’t much to go on. But his subconscious mind had probably catalogued the clues too fast for his conscious mind to articulate. That happened sometimes.
The stranger shook his head slightly, like he was clearing it. Then he took a breath and stepped back. “All right. Everybody relax. I think there’s been a mixup.” He sounded almost apologetic, though it was hard to tell through the voice filter. “Look, I’m not actually Batman.”
“No shit,” said Gordon.
“Believe it or not, I don’t usually go out like this,” the copycat continued, gesturing down at himself. “I actually go by Nightwing.”
Gordon and Bruce exchanged a quick, baffled glance. Gordon raised his eyebrows to say, Does that mean anything to you? And Bruce twisted the corner of his lip to say, No, not really. It sounded like a 4chan username. Or maybe a pro gamer handle.
“Well, Nightwing,” said Gordon, keeping an admirable rein on his skepticism, “I don’t care what you call yourself. If you’re copying his costume, that’s going to be a problem.” He tilted his head in Bruce’s direction.
Nightwing just laughed. “Look, it’s clear to me I wasn’t invited to this party, so let’s pretend it never happened. Don’t let me disturb your tête-à-tête, gentlemen. Please, carry on.”
The whole time he was speaking, he continued moving backwards, hands still held aloft. He didn’t look behind him, or otherwise acknowledge that they were currently standing at the top of a twenty-story building.
“Hey, stop right there,” said Gordon, starting forward in alarm.
Bruce was faster. “Wait. Don’t back up any furth—”
But Nightwing was too quick for either of them. Before Bruce could say another word, the man had tipped himself backwards off the ledge like he was doing a trust fall into Gotham’s unwelcoming arms. Behind him, Gordon made a strangled sound. Bruce closed the distance to the lip of the roof in a burst of speed and aimed his grapple downwards.
Selina had kicked a man off a skyscraper in front of him once. The memory of it was still enough to make his heartbeat triple, eight months after the fact. Bruce had spent four months afterwards obsessively redesigning his grapple gun to make damn sure it could never happen again.
Thin, tensile ropes deployed faster than thought.
In theory, they could grab a man out of the air. In practice, it turned out that Nightwing was too fast to be grabbed. Before the ropes could touch him, his trajectory had changed.
Suddenly, he was flinging himself at nearly terminal velocity towards the Central Bank building. At the apex of his parabolic flight, he spun into a series of flips. On the descent, he redeployed his grapple and swung sideways in a smooth falling curve, tucking and rolling into a perfect landing atop the Grand Union Train Station. Then he took off running across the spine of the skylights.
Bruce gripped the stone ledge and stared. The tension in his shoulders wound tighter. He’d been prepared for this latest copycat to be an annoyance. He hadn’t been prepared for him to be a world-class athlete.
Next to him, Gordon gave a long, low whistle. “Damn. I take it back. This guy knows what he’s doing.”
Bruce squinted into the dreary night, doing his best to follow Nightwing’s progress across the city, but the falling rain soon obscured his vision.
Gordon took a drag of his cigarette. “Looks like you might have some competition,” he said.
Bruce shot him a narrow look. Was that a joke? He had a hard time telling sometimes.
“Better get his number before he one-ups you in the field.” Gordon tossed back the rest of his coffee like it was a shot of vodka.
“Put out an internal memo. Tell your men not to approach this ‘Nightwing’,” said Bruce, before snapping open the glider on his back and leaping off the building too.
He’d never really taken any of his imitators seriously, but that might have been a mistake. Nightwing was too skilled to be just some guy in a cape. Gordon was right. For the first time, the idea of someone marauding around in his city, wearing his insignia, disturbed him.
As a vigilante, Batman operated within a rigid set of rules. It was the only way he could maintain even an iota of legitimacy with the mayoral office; the only way the police could trust him enough to work with him. He’d poured blood and sweat into building up that trust. If an imposter were to go out there in his uniform, with no regard for his self-imposed boundaries, it could topple the delicate detente that Bruce had achieved.
And if this Nightwing killed someone? What then?
Bruce kept his eyes peeled as he floated between the skyscrapers of Midtown. But Nightwing’s suit was better camouflaged than his; he’d already melted seamlessly into the shadows of the city.
+++
The next time he ran into Nightwing, it was less than a week later.
It was past midnight, and Bruce had just finished breaking into one of Maroni’s offices. Now he was attempting to gain access to the condemned building next door, where Maroni was supposedly stockpiling his drugs, but he’d been perhaps a tad too ambitious. There were more guards than expected. A small mob had emerged to confront him. Bruce had just thrown himself into the fight when he heard the whisper of a cape.
Too similar to his own for him to miss it.
“Need a hand there, B?”
Bruce glanced behind him just long enough to see a second bat-eared shape wade boldly into the fray.
“Stay out of this,” he snapped, dodging a fist.
The fact that Nightwing was still in the batsuit irked him. Gordon had already warned him once. Was the man deliberately attempting to provoke him?
“You say that like it’s going to stop me,” said Nightwing with a laugh. Today his voice overlay was gone. Without it, he sounded younger, warmer. More carefree. “It’s like you don’t even know me.”
Bruce carefully avoided knocking a man’s teeth out as he punched him in the face. Six down, twenty more to go. “I don’t know you.”
“Sorry. Force of habit,” said Nightwing, still smiling. “I keep forgetting that.”
There wasn’t much talking after that, because they were both swept up in the battle, but Bruce managed to sneak glances at the other man between blows.
After seeing his aerial display the other day, he’d been curious about what other abilities the man might possess, but Nightwing surpassed all expectations. He had a fluidity that reminded him of Selina, and an aesthetic presence that reminded him of Khoa, but he also had a third, undefinable quality.
When Bruce fought, it always felt strenuous, no matter how efficient he was. But Nightwing made it look effortless. Like he didn’t have to even think about it. He moved like a figure skater flying over the ice, each movement transitioning smoothly and seamlessly into the next.
As Bruce watched, the man took down his opponent with an improbable backward flip-kick. Then he spun and knocked the next guy off his feet with a low hooking maneuver that immediately reminded him of something Ra’s al Ghul once taught him. Now he was just showing off.
It wasn’t so much that his movements were unnecessary. It was more that he always seemed to know just which marks to hit to display himself to the best advantage. Nightwing fought like a reality show contestant who knew there were sixteen cameras pointed at him at all times. Like he was planning on immortalizing this for TikTok.
“Don’t kill them,” said Bruce through gritted teeth, as Nightwing leapfrogged over two men, who promptly ran into each other and bashed their heads together. It would have been comical, if one of them hadn’t accidentally gouged a hole in the other’s face.
“Me? I’m barely lifting a finger. They’re doing all the hard work themselves,” said Nightwing with another laugh.
He was constantly smiling. At everything. Bruce guessed he might be around the same age as him. But his attitude was unmistakable: this was the school’s star quarterback, the company’s top earner, the movie’s biggest headliner, all rolled into one. Loud, brash, confident. He reminded Bruce of the proud, self-important C-Suite executives at Wayne Enterprises — the ones who talked too much because they knew they would be heard.
“You’re using excessive force,” said Bruce. He sidestepped one of the men running at him and used his momentum to knock him against the wall.
“Oh, please. I’ll tell you what’s excessive, and it’s that black greasepaint thing you’ve got going on.” Nightwing tripped another brute, sending him spinning face-first into the ground. “I’m slightly concerned about the amount of makeup remover you must be using every night.”
Bruce knocked his own opponent unconscious and turned to glare at him. As someone who had been thoroughly trained in all the deadliest of martial arts, he was often obliged to hold back in fights, especially when up against untrained thugs and incompetent civilians. It was too easy to kill someone by accident. So he pulled his punches, lest he hit someone too hard. But it was clear that Nightwing had no such scruples. Worse, he fought while laughing, which Bruce found distasteful. Fighting crime was a serious endeavor. Lives were at stake. This wasn’t a part-time gig; this was a vocation.
“Is this a game to you?” he demanded.
“It’s my Saturday night cardio, and I’m only just getting warmed up. Have a little faith in me, okay? I am a consummate —” he dropped the last man with a spinning high kick Bruce had never seen performed outside of a video game, “—professional.”
Bruce turned and surveyed the alley. There was a trail of collapsed, groaning men behind them. Their breaths rose in little puffs of condensation. A wave of relief settled over him. Minimal bloodshed. Nobody dead. Good.
He rounded on Nightwing, whose head was tilted like a question mark.
“You keep calling me B,” Bruce growled. “Why.”
Nightwing grinned at him. It felt wrong to see someone flash that much teeth under the cowl. “Isn’t it obvious? B is for Batman.”
Bruce frowned. Nicknames have been the bane of his existence since his school days. His latest gripe was the way the journalists and Gotham’s wealthiest elites all referred to him as ‘Brucie’, as if they were somehow old friends just because his parents used to be famous. It left a bad taste in his mouth.
“Gotham is mine,” he said, “and I don’t like interlopers.”
He got a cheeky smirk in return. “Oooh. Do I get a ‘stay out of Gotham’ edict? I’m so flattered. Next you’re going to tell me to stay out of your cases.”
Bruce snapped his own mouth shut. He didn’t trust people who smiled this easily, this often. It reminded him too much of the Riddler’s knowing, secretive smiles. Only nut jobs smiled like this.
This imposter’s behavior echoed the over-familiarity of the truly obsessed. Bruce could still remember what it had been like, to be the focus of the Riddler’s sick, stalkerish attentions. How grimy it had made him feel afterwards.
“Look—” he began.
That’s as far as he got before Nightwing suddenly closed the distance between them and shoved him. “Get down—”
A sharp — crack — blistered the air.
Suddenly, Bruce was eight years old again, staring down at a string of bloody pearls as they rolled, one by one, over the uneven gravel street, before falling through the gutter.
Plop.
Plop.
Plop.
“—atman? Batman! Are you with me?”
He blinked, and the world snapped back into focus. Someone was dragging him around the corner of a building. His back thumped against the brick wall. Nightwing raised the edge of his cape and flung it over both their heads like a makeshift shelter. Two of his fingers pressed against Bruce’s carotid artery to check his pulse.
Bruce batted the hand away. When he tried to peek around the corner, Nightwing pressed him back into place with one hand. For someone so slight, he was surprisingly strong.
“Stay behind me. Yours isn’t as bulletproof as mine.”
“Who—”
“Sniper. Five stories up, two buildings over.”
“How—”
“Infrared vision in my cowl. You don’t have that.”
“What—”
“I can get him, but I might have to leave you here. Are you good with that?”
Was he good with that? Was Nightwing asking his permission?
Three more shots sounded, and they pressed themselves flat against the brick. This time, Bruce didn’t flinch. He could stay cognizant if he was mentally prepared for it. It was only when he was taken unawares that sometimes, he got thrown back to that night.
“There’s a second shooter,” he says under his breath. “Lower down, near the —”
“I know. I saw. Hang on, I’ve got this.”
Without warning, Nightwing reached over, plucked the metal bat insignia right off Bruce’s chest, and hurled it in one swift motion around the corner. Three seconds later, there was a distant yelp.
Nightwing flexed his fingers in satisfaction, like a concert pianist. “Sorry I had to borrow yours, I was out of batarangs.”
Bruce’s eyes darted between Nightwing’s hand to his own chest. Batarangs? He hadn’t designed his insignia to be throwable. Hadn’t even known it could be aimed like that.
“Is he dead?” he demanded.
Nightwing stole a glance around the corner. “Nursing a shoulder wound,” he reported. “You have got to stop doubting me on that one, B. I know your rules front and back. It’s been tattooed into my brainstem. I promise I’m not here to kill any—”
Before he could finish, Bruce heard the tell-tale sound of a rifle being reloaded.
“I’ll go after the first shooter,” he said quickly. There would be time enough later to go over all this footage again, to parse the meaning of Nightwing’s words one by one. “You need to leave. I’m the one they want. You have nothing to do with this.”
Bruce was the one who’d incited Maroni’s ire by breaking into his office. He was the one with a grudge against this family. He wasn’t going let an innocent bystander get within breathing distance of a man as dangerous as Sal Maroni if he could help it. He’d learned his lesson after Selina. The fewer people involved, the better.
But Nightwing was already fiddling with his utility belt, counting something in one of the pockets. “Yeah, too late for that. I’m already hip-deep in this case. Here’s what we’re going to do—”
Bruce reached out and grabbed his arm to make sure the man didn’t make any sudden moves. Now was not the time for some desperate, hairbrained gambit.
But instead of pulling away, Nightwing lost his balance and stumbled. With a hiss, he awkwardly righted himself. That was when Bruce saw a dark patch on the ground. He hadn’t noticed it before, but when Nightwing moved, the patch caught the light and glistened.
Bruce squinted closer at Nightwing’s dark armor. There was a trail of darkness dribbling down his thigh. His eyes followed the trail back up, to his flank, where it originated. Bruce dragged the heavy cape aside to get a better look.
“You’re hit.”
“Just a tiny little bit,” said Nightwing. There was no strain in his voice, but the pitch of it had gone up. “It’s a nick, I swear.”
“You said your suit was more bulletproof than mine.”
“I said my cape is more bulletproof than yours,” Nightwing corrected.
Voices echoed down the ally towards them. Reinforcements. Sick of waiting for them to come out of hiding, Maroni must have sent more men in to find them.
Bruce was already recalculating his escape plan when Nightwing turned and said, very calmly:
“Listen. We need to split up. You’re going to go left while I go right. I’ll lead them on a merry chase, and then we’ll rendezvous at —
“No. You’re going to the hospital,” Bruce interrupted him. That was the only logical course of action. He wasn’t going to stand here and watch someone exsanguinate.
“Can’t. I don’t have ID here. Or citizenship.”
So he was an undocumented immigrant. Or a foreign national. That wasn’t a problem. This was Gotham, where plenty of unscrupulous doctors would do any surgery you wanted, for the right price. And Bruce had money.
“Come on,” he growled. He put his shoulder under Nightwing’s arm and pulled him deeper into the darkness of the alley, keeping close to the walls for safety. From memory, he conjured up the locations of the three closest medical centers, and tried to figure out which was the easiest one to reach.
“No hospital,” Nightwing panted as they hurried through the streets. He had to half-hobble, but even hurt and bleeding, he managed to keep up with Bruce’s gait.
More gunshots echoed behind them. The idiots were just firing at random now. Their voices were growing louder too. Bruce could move twice as fast if he ditched Nightwing, but he wasn’t going to leave behind a man who’d taken a bullet meant for him.
“B. Hey. B? We’re going to need a smoke grenade or something soon, because they’re going to be here in ten seconds.”
“A what?”
Nightwing sighed. “…gotta do everything around here myself,” he grumbled as he awkwardly fumbled with his belt, found what he wanted, and threw it behind him with a wince.
Seconds later, the concussive force of his grenade hit. The air rippled around them. There was a series of crashes. Smoke billowed up and outwards — an acrid stink. The voices turned to yells of outrage and confusion. Bruce craned his neck around in alarm, but Nightwing kept pushing onwards, steadily and inexorably, without faltering.
“Eyes up, B.”
“You’re bleeding out.”
“No vitals hit. You should be more worried about —” he heaves a short, pained breath “—the blood trail I’m leaving. It’s like I’m posting up road signs to our location.”
His voice was slowing down, even if his movements weren’t. Bruce told himself that was probably just due to the pain. Should he offer him a bandage? Tape to temporary stem the bleeding? Bruce kept a small first-aid kit in his utility belt for emergencies, but there was nothing in it that would help a gunshot wound. Was there enough time to actually stop and see how bad it was?
“We need to find a secure location.” The smoke grenade was only going to hold them for so long.
“Yeah. Go up — go high. On — the roofs.”
Bruce tilted his head back. “Up?”
There were no tall buildings around them — nothing that would get them of range of a sniper on the fifth floor.
“That one, there — look —”
Bruce followed the line of Nightwing’s arm. The building was two blocks down, jutting up from behind a row of shorter buildings — twenty-four stories of gothic architecture. He froze.
“Wait. Don’t tell me you don’t have a grapple.” Nightwing halted and shot him an incredulous look.
Bruce did, but his grapple maxed out at eighty yards. Based on eyeball triangulation alone, he’d need a line at least a hundred and twenty yards long for this.
“Too far,” he said.
Nightwing muttered, “Holy early days, Batman,” under his breath as he shoved something that looked like a black baton into Bruce’s hands.
Bruce felt his pulse pick up. He’d never done this with another person riding pillion before — it had always felt too dangerous to attempt. His mind blitzed through the options. Carry him? Impossible with only one free arm. Piggyback? Did Nightwing have the strength to hang on?
“Now, B. Now,” said Nightwing, voice jumping in panic just as six men appeared out of the smoke in the mouth of the alley behind them.
There was nothing for it. Bruce tightened his grip and took aim. A hand closed over the other end of the baton, and suddenly Bruce understood. It would work like a trapeze bar, with his weight on one side, and Nightwing’s on the other. The line would deploy out the middle. They’d have to balance perfectly so that the other person didn’t slide off, but this way, Bruce wouldn’t have to take all his weight. Nightwing hooked his free arm around Bruce’s waist and plastered himself close to minimize drag. What had seemed like an impossible maneuver moments before now seemed… doable.
Bruce hit the button and jumped.
His arm was almost jerked out of its socket as line retracted at shocking speed. His stomach dropped. The acceleration on this thing was at least double his grapple. The windows of the buildings next to them blurred. It felt like they were hurtling towards certain death.
The only thing grounding him was Nightwing’s voice in his ear, breathlessly giving instructions. “— release at the same moment, for balance. There’s going to be a bump at the apex, that’s our cue — remember to tuck and roll —”
Bruce only half-listened as they shot past the lip of the roof. Right at the apex, Nightwing let go and tucked into his own roll. Bruce copied him instinctively, letting his body guide him into protecting his head and vitals. He hit hard and rolled thrice. His momentum was arrested by his cape catching on something sharp. There was the sound of fabric shredding. Bruce staggered to his feet, caught his balance, and realized in dismay that his cape now had a massive rip down the middle.
Given their velocity on entry and their combined weight and the difficulty of the maneuver, Bruce was surprised he hadn’t cracked open his skull. The wild hammering of his heart almost felt like exhilaration. Not bad for a first try.
Nightwing had fared worse than him. He’d lost control of his trajectory, rolled right into one of the giant air conditioning units, and was now lying in a crumpled heap.
Swiftly, Bruce went to his side and crouched down. With a grunt of effort, he rolled Nightwing onto his back, till he was lying flat. Up on the roof where there was more ambient light, the sticky redness coating his armor was bright and garish. There was more of it than he’d expected. A lot more.
“You lied,” said Bruce accusingly. “You were hit twice.”
“Wasn’t lying. Didn’t say how many times I got hit,” Nightwing retorted. He seemed to be trying to suppress a fit of coughing, without much success.
“Stay still.” Bruce applied pressure to the worst wound with both hands.
Nightwing dragged in a desperate breath and panted, quick and shallow.
Bruce swung his gaze around the forlorn rooftop. Escaping up high had gotten them temporarily out of sniper range, but it was a double-edged sword. It was going to be even harder now to get to a hospital from here.
“There’s a clinic only six blocks from here —” he began.
“No. No clinics. Take me to Alfred,” said Nightwing through chattering teeth.
Everything in Bruce stilled. “Who?” His entire face went utterly numb. It was like all the nerves there had died.
“Alfred? Your butler? The one who knows basic surgery and can do perfect field stitches?” He coughed again, and arched his back with a low groan when Bruce accidentally pressed too hard.
He knew.
The thought looped wildly through Bruce’s head as he woodenly went through the motions of emergency first-aid. His hands knew what to do, but his head was retreating rapidly into the upper stratosphere. Somewhere in the back of his mind, a siren was shrieking. A part of him wanted to keep Nightwing talking, so that he’d at least have continuous confirmation that the man was still alive. The other part of him wanted Nightwing to shut up so he could think.
“You know Alfred?” he said.
“Of course.” His voice had gone faint and scratchy, but he was definitely still lucid. “Used to work for MI6. Likes his Earl Grey with a splash of milk, no sugar. Makes great pancakes, but not-so-great waffles. Can still beat you at the Sunday crossword by thirty seconds every week.”
“Alfred’s waffles are fine,” said Bruce, feeling the incongruous urge to defend him.
“I’m still three for four.”
“Stop talking.”
Nightwing started to laugh, but it turned into a wet cough instead. A shudder ran through him. “Oh, wait. I did lie about one thing.” He swung his head around more fully, like he was centering his gaze. Catching him in his crosshairs. “B is for Bruce.”
All the muscles in Bruce’s body stiffened at once. He was frozen in his crouch, unable to even jerk to his feet. The confirmation hit like a kick to his solar plexus.
How?
None of this made sense. The Alfred angle concerned him the most. After receiving the Riddler’s explosives-laced delivery last year, he was now hypervigilant to all the ways Alfred could be hurt — all the ways he could be hurt, if Alfred was hurt. He’d sworn to himself he’d never let it happen again. Everything about this man posed a monumental risk to his life.
But Nightwing had leaped in front of a bullet for him.
“Who are you?” Bruce whispered through numb lips.
“If the last thing I see is you, I’m okay with dying,” said Nightwing, slurring heavily now.
“You’re not going to die,” said Bruce firmly.
Blood bubbled up from beneath his fingers, which is how he realized that his hands had gone slack in his shock. Immediately, his reflexive jolt of panic slid away, swallowed up by a even greater fear. Compartmentalize. Box it up. He could think about this later. There was a human life on the line right now, and nothing else mattered in the face of that — not even his secret identity.
If anything, it made his next decision easier.
Bruce tapped the comm link in his ear. “Agent A?”
It felt like an eternity before he heard Alfred’s voice come back, gruff and disgruntled. “Yes. What do you need?”
“Bring me the chopper. Medevac. Now.”