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“Damian, you could at least smile,” Tim says.
Damian was betrayed – offended – humiliated.
Tim finding out about his solitary mission hadn’t been in the cards. Tim telling the entire family that Damian was planning to infiltrate a zoo, separate Lucky Lane from his family, and then interrogate him about the Red Mask Mob was the cherry on top. It was the last thing he had wanted. Lucky Lane had been arrested years ago, long before Damian had been born, but his release invoked the return of his organization. Damian doubted it was coincidental. Thus, he'd been eager to get to the bottom of it by catching Lane alone, but Tim just had to tag himself along.
“I didn’t ask to be paired with you,” Damian grits. “I also didn’t ask for the entire family to get involved!”
“Damian, lower your voice,” Tim hisses as he tightens his grip around Damian’s hand. “I don’t want our cover blown because you can’t keep your mouth shut.”
Damian gives Tim a hardened glare, a look that Tim deliberately ignores by turning forward and feigning interest in the exhibit in front of them. It was stupid that they had to be stuck together like this – that Damian had to hold his hand so that they could ‘look like a family’ – that Damian didn’t have much say on the matter when it’d been discussed. Father had made the decision for him, and Tim had been ever agreeable (he’s such a daddy’s boy). Damian’s opinions were buried underneath rejection and dismissals.
It was infuriating that they weren’t taking him seriously.
“Besides,” Tim begins again, muttering low enough so that he could not be overheard, “I wasn’t just going to let my kid brother throw himself head-first into gang business.”
“I would have handled it fine by myself,” Damian swears.
“Yeah, yeah,” Tim dismisses as he leads them away from the aquatic exhibit.
Damian trails along after him, frown so deep that an older woman, with blonde hair tied up to a bun, and a baby-carriage at her front, decides to make a passing comment on it. “Oh,” she croones, in jest, “someone isn’t happy to be here. I get you bud, I do, but you need to help your father out! I’m sure he meant well!”
Damian wanted to wrench his hand free from Tim’s grip, walk up into that woman’s face, and swear at her for talking down to him. Tim stops him from even entertaining the idea by tugging him forward and quickening his pace. Tim was in a hurry now – would be for a while – until they reached the primate section.
“Drake, you can’t run away from everything,” Damian grumbles as they stare into the gelada enclosure.
“I was stopping an incident before it happened,” Tim defends, glancing around the area like a clueless tourist, “and sometimes it seems like you’re looking to cause trouble.”
Tim grumbles under his breath. Damian barely hears the words he mutters.
“I can’t believe she thought I was his dad. I’m not that old.”
Damian wrinkles his nose, gives his left side a brief glance, and then does a double take. It doesn’t cross his mind that he looks like his age when he starts tugging at Tim’s hand for attention.
“Drake,” he urges, “look at your eight o’clock.”
Tim’s eyes dart and, sure enough, he lays eyes on their target. Lucky Lane had an arm wrapped around his wife’s shoulders, and their teenage daughter was trailing after behind them, eyes glued to her phone. The trio looked happy, free of care. Lane’s features were soft. His eyes were aged with wrinkles and his hair faded into a dusty grey. From looks alone, one wouldn’t think he spent twenty years in prison. He would have had a longer sentence if Gotham wasn’t crooked. The court proceedings had been botched. Damian found several strings of evidence that suggested the judge had been bribed. Strangely enough, despite being randomly selected, the members composing the jury had ties to the Red Mask Mob. Too coincidental.
“He doesn’t have any guards,” Tim mumbles as pulls out his phone. With one hand, he shoots a text to the family. It takes him a good minute to type it out, only because he has one thumb available. It did a good job of making him look distracted, though. He looked as if he didn’t care about his surroundings.
Tim holds out his phone and pretends to take pictures of the gelada.
“Can’t believe he’s fifty-five,” Tim comments. “He looks good for his age. Takes care of himself.”
“Of course, he’s a wealthy criminal,” Damian keeps his voice low. “He has the money to do it.”
“Look at those smile lines,” Tim continues. “Must make him happy to be with his family again.”
Damian doesn’t reply, discretely glancing in Lane’s direction again, and taking note of their pause. Lane removes his arm from his wife’s shoulder and twists to make certain that their daughter is following them. He says something. Whatever it is, it grabs the girl’s attention. She looks up and her eyes brighten. She takes on a playful expression as they exchange conversation.
Damian looks away to maintain his façade.
“He won’t be with them for much longer,” Damian says, feeling bitter in his heart. Why was Lane willing to jump back into criminal life instead of spending the rest of his days with his family?
Tim hesitates. “I feel like we’re missing something here. Think about it.” He lowers his phone. “He’s not attentive to his surroundings. He has no guards with him. He’s left himself vulnerable and exposed. He’s a big-time crime lord, right? Shouldn’t he have some protection with him? He doesn’t even look armed.”
“He could be hiding it well,” Damian suggests, irked that Tim was doubting their objective.
“Maybe,” Tim agrees reluctantly, “or maybe not.”
Damian inhales his frustration, lets it sit in his lungs for a second, and then huffs out.
He would have expressed his irritation had not Lane physically approached Tim and tapped his shoulder for attention. “Excuse me, young man,” he says, “I’m sorry to bother you, but would you mind taking a picture of my family? We tried doing a… self-portrait.”
“Selfie,” his daughter corrects.
“A selfie,” he repeats, “I hate that word.”
Tim blinks at the man, surprised, and no-doubt caught off-guard.
“Uh, yeah,” he clears his throat, “I could take a picture.”
Lane smiles in gratitude. “Thank you.” He hands Tim his phone. “I appreciate it.”
Lane backs up his family towards the garden display where a horrid looking statue sat. Damian felt he could do better than whatever artist had conjured up such a monstrosity. It was supposed to resemble a gorilla, but it was anatomically incorrect. If it had been purposely cartoonish, Damian might have forgiven it. He doubted that was the case, though.
“He wants a picture with that?” Damian scoffs.
“Shut it, Damian,” Tim grits through his smile. “They might hear you.”
“You’ve done nothing but told me to shut up today,” Damian complains.
Tim takes his time adjusting the camera settings – the photographer in him couldn’t help it – before tapping the button a few times for several shots. All the while, Lane stood with his family. Smiling with his heart on display. Slipping his arms around both his daughter and his wife.
“Maybe if you weren’t such a brat, I wouldn’t have told you to shut up,” Tim argues as he gives the family a thumbs up.
“Drake, I have every right to voice my complaints,” Damian growls. “This was supposed to be my mission. I was finally going to prove to father that I could be trusted without support. Then you had to come along and ruin it. Told everyone, without asking me!”
“You were going to run off without telling anyone where you were, what you were doing, and expected all of us to sit back without any questions.” Tim hisses. “What was I supposed to do? Let you throw yourself to the wolves? Gotham is dangerous, Damian.”
Lane approaches Tim and Tim plasters on a quick smile. Strained. Damian’s fault, no doubt.
“I hope this is good enough,” Tim says as he hands back the phone. Lane looks at the results silently, flipping through images. He looks up curiously.
“These are better than I thought they would be,” he admits. “Are you a photographer?”
“Eh, of a sort.”
“Well, consider me impressed,” Lane radiates admiration. “I think this one might end up in the album!”
Tim laughs sheepishly as Lane hurries back to his wife to show off Tim’s work. Damian watches them geek over the photos, shoot Tim glances, and look back down at Lane’s phone. At some point, the wife turns away to fish out her own phone. The daughter glances over her arm to watch what she was doing. Lane engrosses himself in his gallery until his phone vibrates. Whatever he looks at puts a frown on his face. Something that looked misplaced.
Damian stares at him openly.
“Damian, now would be a good time to stop staring,” Tim says.
Damian doesn’t because Lane looks up from his phone with a pale expression on his face. Happiness fades from his features. Fright replaces it.
“Drake,” Damian begins slowly, “I think something’s wrong.”
“What?”
Damian doesn’t get to answer because it happens so quickly. It’s hard to describe what happened when the impact of – whatever it was – sent him barreling towards the ground. Damian can’t feel anything for a long moment, let alone think, hear, and register what was going on around him. He was stunned. Sprawled across the ground and yet… floating. Damian can’t do much beyond roll his head limply and take in a rattling breath.
Tim laid several feet away from him. Damian could see his back. It was red. In the crevice of his mind, he understood that he was seeing blood. However, it takes him a long, long, long, time to register anything with his mind at a standstill.
Tim comes to before Damian, weakly pulling himself upward with pain, desperation, and physical fatigue. Damian sees when Tim lays eyes on him, and he feels a special kind of weak when Tim starts dragging himself over to him. Damian would like to believe he was staying close to the ground for safety reasons, but he’d seen the wound in Tim’s back when he’d first laid eyes on him. It was probably hurting him something fierce.
Still, Tim manages to curve himself over Damian's body. A sad attempt to shield him from whatever might happen next.
Damian opens his mouth. Nothing comes out. His hearing is starting to come back again, though. There was a lot of screaming. A fire alarm going off. Running and racing. Damian wonders how Lane and his family is doing. His last reaction… put some thoughts into Damian’s head. Made him think that maybe Tim had been onto something… about missing important details.
Tim finally meets his gaze with fear in his eyes.
“Tim,” Damian manages to say, “your back.”
Tim doesn’t answer him, pulling Damian into his arm, even though it made him wince, and twisted his face with significant pain. “Who gives a damn about my back.” He sounds distraught. “You’ve got something lodged in your abdomen.”
Oh.
“I can’t feel it."
Tim exhales and looks sick when he glances at Damian’s wound.
“I’m going to have to apply pressure,” he says.
Damian hums as his vision blurs. It was getting hard to think for some reason.
“It’s going to hurt,” Tim warns.
“Right,” Damian is breathless as his lungs rattle again.
Tim trails his hands down, lifts Damian’s shirt, and flutter over Damian’s wound.
Damian can barely get a noise out of his throat when Tim presses down, and a subdued shout of wrenching pain remains buried in his chest. It’s the shock that keeps him from shouting, but it’s the pain that brings it back up. Damian cries out in agony and wrenches himself. Tim grits his teeth as he presses in harder to compensate for Damian’s sudden movement.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he repeats. He looks sick when Damian bites his tongue to muffle his screams.
Damian feels his vision fade to black when the pain becomes too much. His head lolls and… nothing. Damian feels sweet relief and bliss for a short amount of time. His body had shut down because it couldn’t deal with the agony. Damian wasn’t conscious to pretend that he was stronger and that he could take it. His body did the talking for him and made the decision before he could defend his image. Not that his image really seemed to matter in the peak of his suffering. It was the last thing on his mind before falling into oblivion.
When he comes to, the pain is sharp again. Damian sobs as hands flitter around him. Complete strangers lift him off the ground. He couldn’t focus on any of their faces. The woman to his right was calling him sweet names and talking to him. Damian couldn’t reciprocate.
“Sir, don’t move,” a voice nearby pleas.
“No, he can’t go to the hospital alone,” Tim’s voice echoes in the background, grieved and enraged. “I have to go with him.”
“Sit down!” someone yells at him.
Tears run down Damian’s cheeks as he’s rolled into an ambulance. Smoky grey is replaced with white. Someone runs their hands over him and the sirens blaze in his ears. “It’s okay sweetheart, you’re going to be okay,” the paramedic promises him.
Damian doesn’t believe her once he blacks out from pain a second time.
This time, his sleep is longer. Damian’s mission is now on the back of his mind, and Lucky Lane isn’t as important to him anymore. All that was prevalent was… rest. For a temporary reprieve, he’s once again given relief from his pain. Damian sucks up all the time he’s given – chases sleep when his mind even brings up the idea of having thoughts – of being conscious. But something starts pulling him out of it. Damian tries to fight it, grabs at sleep like a safety blanket, but consciousness creeps in slowly. Voices echo in the abyss. Damian… hears things.
“Bruce,” a violent demand, “you better get him out of this hospital. I don’t care if they say his chances are low. Damian’s going to live through this, and he’s going to get proper help.”
“I already made some phone calls.”
“And that’s supposed to mean?”
“Proper help.”
Damian’s cold sleep – once thoughtless – transitions into a warm state of being. It takes him a good while to open his eyes, but when he does, he’s snug in his blankets. Back in his room as if he’d never left to go to the zoo. Never having aspired to put Lane back behind bars.
He stares at his ceiling for a good while. Something wet slicks across his hand. Damian’s fingers twitch and his hand lifts to run through fur. Alfred. His tender-hearted friend, once feral. Now, loving, and affectionate. Much like his owner, in some ways.
Titus does something Alfred is incapable of and starts barking. Damian winces, breathily pleas Titus to stop, but his words are weak. His body might feel fine, but rousing from a long, long, sleep had taken its toll.
Titus doesn’t stop barking.
“Bad dog,” Damian whispers.
He rolls his head to the entrance of his room. Just in time to watch someone bust the door open and center their attention on him. Tim, looking like a right mess, with hair unkempt, shirt skewed, and pants loose on his hips, pants as if he’d exerted all of his energy in one burst. Fear was in his eyes, but the fear was soon replaced with surprise.
“Damian,” he realizes aloud, “you’re awake.”
Tim looks as if he’d been removed from his body, and stumbles forward in auto-pilot mode. It’s a wonder he can even sit himself down and collapse on the neighboring chair. Most likely fetched from the dining hall. It was too sophisticated to belong to a desk.
Damian considers Tim’s appearance for a moment longer before attempting to lift himself off the bed.
Tim lurches and hovers his hands over him. “Careful,” he says.
Damian ignores the urge to swat his hand away, only because Tim looks like a mangled dog, and says the first thing that was on his mind.
“I’m sorry.”
Tim blinks. “What?” He breathes.
“You were right.” He sounds defeated. “About… doing everything alone. Clearly, I was in the wrong.”
Tim blinks again, slowly sits himself on the edge of Damian’s bed, and reaches out to touch him. He hesitates. When Damian doesn’t make any movements, he regains a bit of confidence. In fact, it explodes out of him. Damian is stunned when Tim grabs his head and buries it in his chest.
“I don’t care about that,” Tim’s voice is hoarse. “I saw you nearly die. I… I… if Bruce hadn’t…" Tim tries to find the words. "We could have lost you."
“Lost me?” Damian is confused. “What happened?”
“An explosion, a big one,” Tim mumbles as he gently readjusts their positions. He lets Damian draw back, but he links their hands together. A reminder of what they had to do at the zoo. “The shrapnel got you bad. Nearly lost you on the operating table.” Tim adds with a croak. “Three times.”
“Oh,” Damian says, looking down at their joined hands, “but I feel fine?”
“Bruce,” Tim offers in explanation. “Mr. Freeze’s extracted research on cellular regeneration was implemented using Justice League technology.”
“Ah,” Damian acknowledges. Beyond that, he’s not sure what to say.
He was alive.
Damian sits there. Thinks about what could have happened. How numb he feels. It as if nothing had even happened to him.
“Your back, then?” Damian remembers. “It’s okay?”
“Better than okay.” Tim promises. He squeezes Damian’s hand. “Probably going to feel phantom pains for the rest of my life.” He offers Damian a weak smile. “Guess it was worth it, though. Can’t imagine what would have happened if you were alone. Might have lost you for real, there.”
Damian goes quiet. He knew Tim was right.
“Thank you,” he finally whispers.
Tim laughs breathily. He brings Damian’s hand to his forehead and closes his eyes.
“Lane?” Damian questions. “What’s the status on him?”
“Little to no injury,” Tim reports, “but the bomb was aimed for him. Jason investigated it. Apparently, the Red Mask Mob wants Lane dead. He’s got a lot of secrets, after all, and he made his intentions clear that he wasn’t going to rejoin them. “
Damian nods shortly and then… and then feels something damp on the back of his hand. Tim was crying.
“Drake,” Damian protests.
“Sorry, I’m just relieved,” Tim weeps. He shifts his face. He rests the back of Damian’s hand on his cheek. “It happened so fast. Thought you were a goner, Damian. Couldn’t stop thinking about how I told you to shut up.”
Damian snorts. “I was being an irritable child.”
“I might have thought that in the moment,” he admits, “but I still wish I would have chosen my words carefully. I… I missed you.”
Damian’s features soften, he slips his hand away from Tim, and puts him in for a surprise when he opens his arms. Slowly, giving Tim the time to reject his gesture, Damian wraps his arms around Tim, and takes in a breath. He tries not to think too hard about what he's doing. He feels Tim deserves the comfort.
Tim is still for a moment.
Then, he shutters and slips his arms around Damian’s shoulders.
"I love you, dork," he confesses.
Damian grunts and buries his face in Tim's shirt.
"I love you too."
"Alfred, are you taking that tray upstairs?"
Bruce glances up from his magazine, folded in his hands, and Alfred turns to give him a questioning look.
"It's for Master Damian," he says. "You told me he would wake soon. I thought it would be best to have some food ready for him."
"Save it for later," Bruce says. He looks back down at the magazine. "I stopped by his room. He probably won't be getting up for a while."
"Truly?" Alfred tuts. It's a rhetorical question.
Bruce recalls the image. His youngest son. Curled up in Tim's arms, feeling safe enough to snooze away peacefully.
Alfred grumps as he heads back to the kitchen.
Bruce smiles.