Work Text:
“You know,” Tim says. “In theory, it was a good plan.”
Behind him, Damian kicks aside a rock. “It was an idiotic plan and I told you as much.”
“It would’ve worked if that guy hadn’t shot the thing and caused it to go haywire.”
“No, it would not have.”
He just shrugs, stepping over a fallen log and looking back at Damian, who is in the process of doing the same. The boy is scowling, dirt streaked across his face and sweat beading on his forehead. There's a couple of tears on his uniform from when they had come out of the portal just above the treeline and tumbled into some branches, and he’s limping slightly. Tim, thankfully, had come out of the fall mostly unscathed, more annoyed than anything.
“Do you have any idea where we are?” he asks.
Damian looks up at him, then around them, lips pressing into a thin line. He shakes his head after a moment, and—yeah, that’s fair. The only thing around as far as either of them can see are just trees and trees and more trees, as well as a few small mountains in the distance. Seeing as it is still night, they’ve gotta be somewhere in the Western Hemisphere, but where exactly is an entirely different story.
“Whatever energy the machine was using to send us here fried our trackers and comms,” Tim says after a moment. “It might take the others a while to find us. We should get to a high point, make a bonfire maybe. Or search for civilization.”
“Finding civilization by wandering around like lost sheep will take months in this place,” Damian huffs. “We’re better off just jumping into the nearest river and letting it take us wherever it pleases.”
“Not a bad idea, considering people tend to settle near water sources.”
“I wasn’t being serious, you fool.” Damian looks at him like he’s stupid. Which is fair, except Tim is pretty sure that he bumped his head on the way down and thus feels as if he has an excuse to be just a little more stupid than usual. “You’d freeze to death before you even made it to any sort of town.”
Right. At the mention of freezing, Tim suddenly remembers just how cold it is here. New Jersey never gets incredibly cold, not even in Gotham except for the wintertime. Not like here, which, if he’s estimating right, must be around twenty to ten degrees Fahrenheit. His ears are frigid. At least Damian has a hood to keep his own from getting cold.
He wraps his cape tighter around himself, exhaling and watching his breath come out in white fog. There’s no snow around here, thankfully, but he’s not sure how long that’ll last.
Slightly ahead of him, Damian gets his foot caught on a rock jutting out from the ground and trips. Curses leave his lips in at least three different languages as he rights himself, fixing his hood and hissing in annoyance.
Tim clears his throat. “I can carry you, if you want. You probably shouldn’t walk if you sprained your ankle.”
“I can walk fine,” Damian snaps. He turns away with a huff. “There’s a cave over there. We should take shelter.”
Tim follows the direction of his finger, spotting said cave, and nods. “That’s a good idea.”
They head over to the cave. It’s not a big one by any means, but it’s good enough for the two of them, and thankfully empty. Tim doesn’t know what he’d do if he had to fight off some sort of wild bear or something like that. He’s already exhausted enough from half a night of patrolling, getting warped across the country by a strange machine, falling into trees, and also trudging through the forest with a grumpy Damian.
Resisting the urge to sit down, he sighs. “We should get some stuff for a fire.”
Damian nods wordlessly, so they both turn around and trudge back out. Most of their time spent collecting small sticks and dry leaves is done in silence, and by the time they get back to the cave, both of them are shivering.
As Damian gets the fire going, Tim sits down and empties his belt. Other than his bo staff, he manages to scrounge up five batarangs, one flare, an extra comm (that’s useless), two sets of lockpicks, a monocular, and a lollipop that Steph must’ve slipped inside one of his pouches before patrol.
The fire, now going steady, crackles as Damian tosses a stick into it. Tim looks up. “What do you have?”
“Not much,” the boy says. He dumps the contents of his belts onto the floor, which brings them to a total of seven batarangs, two flares, three packets of assorted smelling salts, five sets of lockpicks, three daggers, two small blades, a roll of pressure bandages, one metal flask of water, and a ziploc bag of cat treats. His sword had been shot out of his hand in the middle of the fight before they both got knocked into the machine.
“Why do you keep cat treats in your belt?” Tim asks.
“There are tons of strays in the city,” Damian says flatly. “I am cultivating them into my own personal army.”
He laughs, maybe about eighty-percent certain that it's a joke. “Selina would hate that.”
“She won’t know until it’s too late.”
Tim snorts, and maybe being stuck out here in the wilderness with Damian isn’t exactly ideal, but he can admit that it isn’t the worst. Damian can be funny, sometimes, with his dry humor and his sarcastic remarks.
Still, though, what they haven’t isn’t exactly optimal for survival out here in the long term. Tim sighs, massaging his temples for a bit before he motions for Damian to come closer. “C’mere.”
Damian stares at him on the other side of the fire, the lenses of his mask narrowed. “What?”
“Let me see your leg. If your ankle is sprained, we should compress it at least, since we don’t have any ice.”
“It’s not sprained,” Damian says with a scowl, yet he scoots over regardless and sighs, pulling off his boot, then his sock, and rolling up the leg of his pants. There’s a faint bruise forming, but it doesn’t look any worse than what Tim has gotten from sparring with Dick. Still, he reaches for the bandages and makes quick work of wrapping up the ankle.
As Damian stuffs his foot back into his boot, Tim exhales and leans towards the fire, peeling off his mask with a wince. He folds it up and stuffs it into one of the spare compartments of his belt, then sets about dividing the rest of the supplies between them.
By the time he finishes putting everything away, Damian has tied his boot again and is glaring outside, face bare of his domino, the dark forest glaring right back.
Somewhere in the distance, a wolf howls. Tension cords through his muscles, subtle but there.
After a moment, Tim offers him the lollipop. The kid glares at him, but takes it, tearing off the wrapping and shoving it into his mouth. He makes a face. “Lemon lime? Seriously?”
“Hey, blame Steph, not me,” Tim says with a shrug. He waits a beat, then says, “I’ll take first watch.”
Pulling his cape around himself, he watches as Damian’s brow creases, eyes flashing as if he wants to argue. But in the end all he does is huff, pulling his knees up to his chest and turning away.
He doesn’t say anything for the rest of the night and neither does Tim, until his shift is over and it’s his turn to sleep.
When he wakes up the next morning, it’s to Damian once again sitting on the other side of the fire as sunlight streams in through the entrance of the cave. Tim groans, rolling over onto his back and throwing an arm over his eyes to shield himself from the piercing rays.
Something slides across the ground towards him, knocking into his elbow harshly. He winces and reluctantly opens his eyes as Damian’s unimpressed drawl curls through the air. “It’s well past dawn, Timothy. You should be grateful that I allowed you to sleep this long.”
“Not all of us are freaks who wake up at six am every morning,” Tim grumbles. He sits up, noticing that the thing that had collided with his elbow is the metal flask, filled to the brim with water. Then, he looks up and sees Damian with an assortment of different plants and berries laid out on a small strip of bandages. “You went out?”
“Someone here had to find more kindling and food,” Damian huffs. “Clearly you weren’t going to do it. There’s a stream southeast, fifty or so meters from here. I presume we’re somewhere in Alaska.”
Tim blinks at the sudden influx of information, mind working slowly to process it all. He slowly reaches out to grab the metal flask, takes a sip, and says, “How do you know?”
Damian tosses something at him. Tim catches it, opening his hand to peer down at the red berry lying in his palm. “A raspberry?”
“Arctic raspberry,” says Damian. “Also known as a nagoonberry. Native to most Alaskan regions. Since we cannot possibly be in another hemisphere due to the time similarities, it’s highly likely we’re still somewhere in North America. The plant life generally matches up with the type found in Alaska.”
Tim hums, popping the berry into his mouth. It’s sweet and juicy. Not half bad. “How good do you think our chances of finding civilization are?”
“Alaska contains more than half of the wilderness in the entirety of America.” Damian scowls. “We’d sooner die of old age. Unless a plane miraculously flies overhead, manages to see our flare, and finds a spot to land, the likelihood is not high.”
“Okay,” Tim sighs. He holds his hand out for another berry. Damian hands one over and he chews it thoughtfully. “I guess our best bet is scaling that mountain. Let’s finish eating the rest of what you’ve gathered before leaving.”
Damian doesn’t protest, so they sit in relative silence and snack on the various plants that Damian had gathered before Tim woke up. Tim isn’t ashamed to admit that his wilderness survival training barely progressed past the basics, and that he doesn’t recognize a majority of the plants Damian brought in. After all, what need do you really have for knowing all the types of edible vegetation when you mainly operate in a city?
In that way, he supposes he’s lucky that Damian is here.
Eventually, they snuff out the fire and leave the cave. The mountains they saw before aren’t insanely far, maybe a two or three hour drive if they had a car. But they don’t, so they settle for walking, picking their way through the undergrowth and across streams. Every so often, Damian stops to pick at a berry bush, naming each one—cloudberries, salmonberries, regular blueberries, etcetera—before offering some out to Tim. Most of them don’t taste bad. He’d probably like them more if he wasn’t stranded out in the middle of a forest with no way to contact his family.
“You know,” Tim says as they hop across some rocks jutting out of the shallows of a river. “This isn’t as bad as it could be.”
“I don’t recall there being anything good about this situation,” Damian bites back. Tim pauses and looks back, watching Damian try to jump to another rock. He lands hard, boot slipping on the slick stone, nearly falling in with a sharp curse and a face twisted in pain. His cape dips into the water and comes up dripping.
“You okay?”
“Fine,” Damian grits. His eyebrows are knit together in a hard scowl.
After a moment of consideration, Tim takes out his bo staff from its holder on the small of his back, clicking the button to allow it to expand, before holding it out so that the other end hovers in front of Damian’s face. “Try not to put too much weight on your foot. It’ll be bad if your ankle gets worse.”
Damian looks up at him, still scowling. He opens his mouth as if he wants to argue, but then clearly decides better of it, snapping his jaw shut before snatching the staff from his hand.
They cross the river without much more fanfare. In the end, Tim never asks for his staff back, and Damian never offers it.
He is limping slightly less, though, so that’s something.
“It’s kind of impressive how much you know about this stuff,” Tim mumbles as his foot lands on a particularly crunchy leaf.
Damian scowls in his direction, sidestepping a twig, his footsteps nearly silent despite all the debris on the forest floor. “Of course I do. It was a mandatory part of League training. My m—” He cuts himself off, sourness twisting his features. Tim thinks he knows what he was gonna say anyway, but doesn’t push it.
Tim watches him carefully for a few beats, then looks away, eyes drawn to a particularly colorful berry bush. “I think the closest I got to this stuff was camping, which is not really that close at all if you think about it.” He pauses, trudging over to the bush. “Even then, I only went a couple of times. A handful of times with Bruce for my basic survival training, and once with my parents when I was a kid, not that we did much because I was a kid.”
“Your parents?” He can feel Damian’s eyes on him, the lack of shuffling indicating that he’s stopped moving.
“Yeah. They used to take me out, sometimes, when I was a toddler.” Tim smiles wryly to himself, realizing that out of all of his siblings, Damian is probably the one who knows the least about Tim’s parents. “Don’t you know that’s how I met Dick the first time? They took me to a Flying Graysons show once. Got a picture with him and everything.”
A beat. Then, “I see.” Damian’s footsteps start up again, accompanied by the soft thuds of Tim’s staff hitting the ground every time he takes a step. “My mother was… fond of leaving me in the wilderness to survive alone. It was a part of my training.”
Yeah, that sounds about right, Tim thinks. He says, “I don’t think I really like camping that much, to be honest.” And it’s not a lie, because although the scenery is nice and being out of Gotham is sometimes refreshing, the only time Bruce ever took him was for Robin related duties, which meant absolutely zero access to any wifi or electronics of the sort for “immersion” purposes. He can’t even remember the trip with his parents.
“Me neither,” Damian says quietly, and they fall into silence.
Until Tim reaches for the berries and Damian roughly yanks him away, scowling. “Those are poisonous, you imbecile.”
“What? But they look just like the other ones you picked up before we crossed the river.”
“No, they don’t. The leaves are different.”
Tim squints. “Are they?”
Damian bonks him on the head with the staff.
They make it to the base of the tallest mountain by sundown. Damian says that if they keep up their current pace, they’ll make it to the top sometime by evening tomorrow.
“In comparison to the Himalayas,” he sniffs, “these are like hills.”
Tim, eyeing the way that the kid is leaning heavily on the staff-slash-makeshift-walking-stick now, doesn’t say anything. He just nods along, and they find themselves a small cluster of boulders in a clearing to take shelter by.
Tim gets a fire going. Their single flask of water has been emptied and refilled countless times already, and just about now it's halfway full. He’s got a handful of berries and Damian a sprig of some plant that he’d claimed was edible, literally picking off the leaves and shoving them in his mouth. Tim had tried one and it was horrendously bitter, so he’d opted to let Damian eat that and just stick to the berries.
It’s colder tonight than it was yesterday. Not even Damian protests when Tim scoots up next to him till their sides press together, though he does hiss when he shifts and accidentally jostles his ankle.
At least out here, this far from civilization, there are stars. If he stares at the sky and ignores the biting cold and everything else, Tim can pretend that they’re really out on a normal camping trip, just him and his little brother…
… and miles upon miles of untouched wilderness.
Surprisingly enough, it’s Damian who breaks the silence first, adjusting his weight, pressing further into Tim's side with. With a sharp exhale, he says, “How long do you think it’ll take Father to find us?”
“Depends,” Tim says honestly. “We got kicked out halfway through the fight. If things went well, they managed to get the machine and can use it to track its energy signature to wherever we came out, which would take maybe a few hours or days depending on what happened. We’d be able to see them coming, though.”
“And if not?”
He chews on his bottom lip, thinking about whether he should answer. Eventually, he just sighs, knowing that whatever he says couldn’t be worse than what Damian would imagine on his own time.
“If worse comes to worst, then they'd have to manually search for us, or we'd have to contact them ourselves, so. Weeks, maybe.”
Damian is quiet for a long time. That same wolf howl from the other night pierces through the air again, slightly closer this time. It makes Damian stiffen, press slightly further into him with an inhale.
Tim doesn’t say anything, but he wraps an arm around the kid's shoulders in a silent reassurance. And maybe a silent invitation to elaborate, if he wants to do so.
“My mother dropped me in the tundra once,” Damian says quietly. “I was four. It was the first time she tested my survival skills. All I had was a dagger and the clothes on my back.”
Four. Tim tries not to let his breath hitch, inhaling and exhaling as smoothly as possible. His free hand curls into a fist, pressed against his thigh, and not for the first time in his life he’s overcome with an abrupt, violent loathing for Talia and Ra’s al Ghul.
“I almost froze to death on the first night, but that wasn’t the hard part.” Damian swallows, spiky hair brushing against the underside of Tim’s jaw as he leans closer, breaths shaky. “Near the end, after two weeks out there, when she was due to pick me up, there was—were wolves. Hunting me. All night. They didn’t go away no matter how often I waved a torch in their face or how much I yelled.” He pauses for a long time, and when Tim glances down he can see the minute flexing of Damian’s hand, curled into a tight fist, thumb rubbing back and forth along the side of his forefinger. “I killed them. Every single one.”
Tim swallows around a lump in his throat. “You did what you had to,” is all he finds himself able to say.
“They didn’t deserve it,” Damian whispers. “They were hungry, they were just following their instinct. But I killed them.”
He stares into the crackling fire, watches the flames dance and orange embers float into the air before they fizzle out. He squeezes Damian again, hoping that it can be something even remotely close to comforting.
“You’re not alone this time,” he says. “And the wolves are still pretty far.”
As if it had heard, the wolf howls again. This time, three other howls rise to join it.
Damian doesn’t say anything. He just tugs his cape tighter around himself, leaning towards both the fire and Tim, and he doesn’t argue when Tim takes first watch again.
Despite their best efforts, trekking up the mountain proves to be a difficult feat since walking is hard for Damian, whose ankle has swelled up a concerning amount. After refilling their flask of water and assessing the way he holds back a wince every time he has to put weight on his bad foot, Tim opts just to carry him on his back. Not without a heavy amount of protest from the kid.
“This is idiotic,” he mutters as Tim carefully crosses another stream, concentrating hard so that he doesn’t slip and cause them both to fall into the chilly water. “I can walk fine.”
“Okay, Bear Grylls,” Tim says, tightening his hold on Damian's legs. “Gimme another raspberry.”
Grumbling, Damian reaches up and holds a berry in front of his face. With care not to bite his fingers (because god knows he’d never hear the end of it), Tim takes it into his mouth and chews, swallows, then says, “You know, I don’t even like raspberries.”
“What are you on about?” Damian says crossly, arms tight around his neck.
“I’m more of a blueberries guy. Or, like, grapes. I think I’ve eaten more raspberries today than I have in the past two years, honestly.” He stops, leaning slightly back to peer through the trees. “I think we’re about halfway up. Then we’ll be able to see the landscape and figure out what to do from there.”
Damian grunts. Waits a moment or two for Tim to start walking again before asking, “Who’s Bear Grylls?”
“You don’t know who Bear Grylls is? You know, Man vs. Wild?”
“Is that some sort of movie?”
“It’s a survival show, actually. He goes out into the wild and like, you know, does shit. People eat it up.”
Damian’s scowl presses into the back of Tim's neck when he rests his head there. “Why would people enjoy watching a man attempt to survive in the middle of nowhere?”
“Because they think it’s cool? I honestly have no idea.”
“They think that a show about a man trying to survive in the wilderness is cool in comparison to superheroes, aliens, and magic?” Damian deadpans.
He shrugs, which doesn’t really work that well considering the entire kid resting on his back, but he thinks the intent comes across regardless. Damian really isn’t that heavy, only weighing a little over a hundred pounds. Steph seems set on the idea that the kid will grow up with a body type like Bruce, but Tim is pretty sure that Damian will end up like Talia or Dick at most; lean frame and slender muscles and all that.
And also, just the idea of Damian—his twelve year old little brother who can be picked up by one hand with Jason and doesn’t even reach Dick’s chest—growing up to be Bruce or Jason levels of muscular is a little horrifying to think about. With genes from both Talia and Bruce, he can definitely see Damian getting a growth spurt and hitting six feet, but with the build of a pro wrestler? No. Absolutely not. Horrifying.
“It sounds stupid,” Damian says.
“Hey, I just told you that I have no idea,” Tim snorts. “Watch an episode or two and see what the fuss is about if you’re so interested, dude.”
“I have better things to do.”
“Do you? Do you really?”
“Shut up before I shove my elbow into your spleenless gut, Timothy.”
“I will drop you. See if I come back for your bony ass when you go rolling down the mountain.”
“Next time I’ll simply let you eat the poisonous plants.”
“You know,” Tim says as he plops himself down on a felled log for a break. “This would’ve been better if I had my camera.”
Beside him, pulling off his boot to examine his ankle and barely hiding a grimace at what he finds, Damian huffs. “Why? So you could take pictures of the water hemlock you nearly stepped in? Or ones of how terrible you look?”
“You wouldn’t be saying that if you were the one doing most of the uphill walking, brat.”
“You’re the one who insisted I shouldn’t walk.”
“Point,” Tim concedes. He switches the subject, motioning loosely towards the vast lands stretching out before them. “If I had my camera, I could take pictures of the view. At least it’s nice.”
Damian laces up his boot again. Looks out in the direction he motioned to and frowns, reaching for the ziploc bag (they had dumped the cat treats) full of berries sitting in his belt. He pops one into his mouth, then wordlessly stretches out an arm to let Tim grab a few for himself.
Honestly, he’s not sure how long they can go with living off fruit and whatever edible leaves Damian finds, but he doesn’t say anything. Out here, a vegan diet won’t keep either of them alive for more than a week max. While having to hunt for meat wouldn’t necessarily be difficult, it’s just the principle of the matter that makes it a touchy subject. Tim thinks that having to kill an animal, even if it’ll keep the both of them alive, would kill a little part of Damian too, so he doesn’t have the heart to suggest the possibility of them needing to eventually start hunting for meat when they're only two days into their little impromptu camping trip.
There’s still hope that Bruce’ll find them soon, and that’s enough.
“It’s nice, I suppose,” Damian concedes. “I’ve seen better.”
“Yeah?” Tim says, tilting his head back and letting sunlight wash over his skin. Temperatures here still aren’t high, especially up on the mountain like this, but at least the sun is out.
“I have paintings,” Damian continues after a brief pause. “When there was free time after missions, sometimes Mother would let me paint the landscape.” He glances down at his hands, fiddling with his gauntlets. “Richard bought me my first sketchbook, and Father bought me art supplies once he learned about my art.”
“I have pictures too,” Tim offers. “Most of them are old, though. I haven’t done photography in a while.” Truthfully, he’d fallen out of the practice ever since Bruce ‘died’, but he doesn’t say that.
He can feel Damian’s eyes on him. “What did you take pictures of?”
“Gotham, mostly.” The stream below them trickles by, water slithering through the gaps of the rocks until it disappears behind the undergrowth. He tucks his legs up to his chest, watching the bubbles appear, then pop. “Or whatever trips I went on with Bruce and Dick. I have some of Batman and Jason back when he was Robin. A couple of Nightwing, I think, but those are pretty old. He might be wearing the disco suit in those ones.”
“You took pictures of Jason and Father when they were Batman and Robin?” Damian asks, his surprise thinly veiled and his nose wrinkling slightly at the mention of the dreaded Discowing suit. “Were you not a child back then?”
“Yep,” Tim says, popping the ‘p’. “My parents weren’t really around all that much though, so I would sneak out and follow Batman and Robin around the city with my camera. Do you know how many times B or Jay would find me and have to drag me down from the rooftops?”
Damian gapes at him. “You stalked them.”
“Well—no—,” Tim pauses, grimacing. “Okay, maybe a little? But listen, if I didn’t stalk them, I would never have become Robin, so… I don’t regret it.”
“Tt. And Richard lectures me about personal privacy,” Damian mutters sourly.
“Hey, it’s not like I stalk people nowadays!”
“Really?” he asks skeptically.
… Tim doesn’t have an answer for that, so he just shoves a handful of raspberries into his mouth to avoid responding.
They make it about three-fourths up the mountain by the time the sky starts bleeding orange and pink, sun dipping past the horizon. Somewhere along the line, the trees had tapered off, leaving just stone and grass and the occasional boulder. They’re not quite at the top yet, but they’re close, and up here he can really see how far the forest stretches.
No sign of any sort of nearby town or village, though. So although the view is nice, his appreciation for it has been slightly soured by the realization that they truly are in the middle of fuckass nowhere.
Once the moon comes out, they stop for the night. Tim lies on a flat rock, legs aching from the hours of walking and climbing. Damian sits near his feet, poking their meager fire and doing inventory of their supplies, once, then twice, then a third time, even though Tim is absolutely certain that neither of their counting skills are that terrible. Damian just needs something to do to keep his mind away from the worry that the others aren't gonna find them anytime soon. He gets it.
“I miss Alfred’s cooking,” he sighs after a while. Damian glances back at him, shifting around a little until he’s able to pull Tim’s feet into his lap, unlacing his boots and slipping them off to free his feet. “It’s only been, like, a couple of days but damn. I miss Alfred’s cooking. And Alfred.”
“Me too,” Damian agrees quietly. Without any prompting, he begins to massage the lower half of Tim’s legs.
Faintly surprised, he opens his mouth to ask why, then closes it. Opens his mouth again to say that he doesn’t need to, but then he takes one look at Damian’s face, forehead creased as he focuses on his legs, tiny fingers pressing into his muscles and chasing away the ache, and he shuts it again.
It does feel nice, admittedly. He’s fit, sure, but he’s got nowhere near the amount of leg strength that Dick does.
Soon enough, he’s drifting off to sleep to the gentle crackling of the fire and Damian’s careful hands massaging his sore legs.
“—imothy. Timothy!”
Tim wakes up to a sharp, stinging pain across his left cheek.
He launches up immediately, nearly falling off the rock, but a hand fisting into his cape and yanking him back keeps him from doing so. Tim yelps, flailing slightly before turning to Damian with a vicious glare. “Did you just slap me? What the hell, Damian?”
Unrepentant, Damian hisses, “Shut up, you imbecile! Look!”
He points to the sky and Tim follows his finger, blinking away any lingering grogginess as he searches the darkness. It takes him a bit, but he sees it—the faintest glint of the lights, soaring through the sky.
The lights come a decent bit closer, the low hum of an engine following it. Suddenly, Tim feels nothing but relief, rushing through his body and coming out in a single breath of, “Grab the flare.”
Damian grabs the flare. With one sharp crack, it goes off, red light spilling around them. He raises it as high as he can, waving it around. Tim watches the Batplane turn towards them, the single light it has been casting onto the forest below veering their way.
Tim hobbles to his feet, grabbing Damian by the arm to haul him up too as they both wave at the red tinted cockpit windows. The Batplane nears until it is hovering just above them, then the hatch opens and a ladder drops out, followed by Dick Grayson’s grinning face emerging soon after.
“Go on,” Tim says to Damian, taking the flare from his hands and nudging him towards the ladder. “Don’t jostle your foot.”
“I'm not an idiot,” Damian snaps back, though he glances back at Tim once before grabbing the ladder, carefully hauling himself up every step. Tim puts out the flare and waits until he’s halfway there before starting up himself, and soon enough he’s being pulled into the Batplane’s belly by the warm, firm grip of his older brother.
After the ladder has been pulled up again and Bruce has begun veering away from the mountain, Tim finds both him and Damian being wrapped up in a bone-crushing hug.
Dick squeezes them tight with a long sigh. “Thank god you’re both alive.”
“It was only three days, Richard,” Damian says, his words muffled into the spandex of the Nightwing suit. Still, Tim doesn’t miss the way one of his hands goes up to clutch at Dick’s shoulder, but he doesn’t have the heart to tease about it when he’s so close to collapsing out of sheer relief.
“That’s three days longer than I would have preferred to lose the both of you,” comes Bruce’s voice from the entrance to the cockpit. The cowl is down, his cape swishing softly around his feet as he steps into the room.
Tim catches his eye and smiles weakly. “I mean, you did find us. Honestly, I’m just glad we didn’t get transported back in time… or to another dimension. That would’ve been so much worse.”
“Very much so,” Damian agrees. Dick finally pulls away, letting them go if only so that he can run a hand through Damian’s hair and grab Tim’s chin to tilt his head every which way.
“Dick,” Tim complains, “I’m fine. Seriously.”
“I’m just making sure,” Dick says indignantly, but he lets his hands slip down to rest on both of their shoulders, expression softening. He squeezes once before stepping away, giving Bruce the opportunity to come forward and pull them into an embrace of his own.
It’s always hard not to let himself melt into the protectiveness of Batman’s heavy cape and hulking mass, but this time Tim doesn’t even try.
“I’m glad you’re both alright,” Bruce rumbles, the vibration of his words rolling through Tim's entire body before it settles into a pleased warmth at the center of his chest.
“But,” Dick adds from behind Bruce, crossing his arms. “For the stunt you pulled, you two will be lucky to be on the field within the next month.”
That gets Tim to groan, Damian joining him with an indignant cry of, “Are you serious, Richard—”
“No! I don’t want to hear it. Do you know how many gray hairs I got from the last seventy-two hours? When I tell you that B was freaking out—”
“I specifically remember one person here refusing to sleep before his brothers were located…”
“Ha! As if you were any better, Bruce—”
“Richard—”
“Listen, it was a good plan in theory! Come on, Dick—”
Tim doesn’t even notice the fact that Damian has grabbed ahold of his cape until Dick agrees to save the benching conversation for when they got home, citing the fact that they should both rest during the trip back to Gotham.
When he goes to sit down, Damian follows. His fingers never uncurl from Tim’s cape, and Tim doesn’t say anything, but he understands and he thinks that Damian knows he does.
(After they get home, he’ll have to dig around for his old photos. Maybe Damian, in turn, will let him see some of his paintings.)