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This might’ve been the best idea Tim had ever had.
And Tim had had a lot of really good ideas.
“ Robins three and five, converge on the targets at the end of Seale Street Alley B,” Barbara’s voice directed over the comms.
“ O,” Dick whined, dragging out the vowel, “ It’s no fun if you just number us. You have to use the names we came up with.”
Barbara let out the most arduous, long-suffering sigh of the night. It lasted a solid five seconds; they’d been getting progressively longer as the hours passed. Tim was counting.
“ Whatever, OG Robin.”
Tim could hear Dick’s sun-bright grin at Barbara’s concession.
His cape snapped like a gunshot in the wind as he whistled past rooftops. It didn’t have to sound-reducing feathered edges of his current cape, but they weren’t going for stealth that night. No, that crisp March night was one of celebration.
The Robin suit he’d plucked out of storage was lighter and thinner than what he was used to, but it was recent enough to fit like a well worn gauntlet. No one else could say the same. No one except Damian, anyway.
Speak of the devil.
Tim arrived at the mouth of Alley B and caught sight of the youngest Robin poised on a roof ledge, ready to intercept the rogues making a break for it through the Diamond District. The half of the current Royal Flush Gang they were assigned to were easy to spot against the soot-stained bricks, all clean, white fabric with red accents that practically glowed in the dark. And if they weren’t easy to spot, they sure as hell were easy to hear, feet slapping and breaths panting as they sprinted fruitlessly towards freedom.
“ Baby Robin and Emotional Support Robin, you know what to do.”
‘Emotional Support Robin’ was a bit of a mouthful, but it was accurate. Stephanie had lobbied for Spleenless Robin, but Tim wasn’t in the mood to broadcast his medical condition to the general public.
Damian dropped like a stone into the path of the rogues, stopping them in their tracks.
“Leaving before the Showdown, scoundrels?” Damian taunted. “Doesn’t seem like very sportsmen-like behavior.”
One of the rogues swore vehemently. Ten, Tim saw from the number on her bicep as he drew closer, still unseen. Both of them squared up, fists raised, feet planted, and chests still heaving.
“Get out of our way and this doesn’t have to get ugly, kid,” the other one said, taking one menacing step forward.
Damian didn’t so much as twitch.
Tim slid down next to some decorative statue on the side of his building that might have been a minimalist’s idea of a gargoyle. He propped his arms up on the head - top? He could never tell when there weren’t any details - casually leaning forward to observe the interaction.
“If you didn’t want this to get ugly you two should’ve worn masks,” Damian quipped, extracting his quarterstaff from the depths of his cape. From his vantage point, Tim couldn’t see much of Damian’s face past the edges of his hood. For all the little costume updates he didn’t care for, Tim had to admit the hood was a pretty badass addition.
“Two against one ain’t good odds, little bird,” Ten said, all gusto to hide her obvious nerves. Tim could smell blood in the water. “I call your bluff.”
Damian’s head quirked to the side and he could read the amusement in the gesture before his next words came out.
“You’re right. It doesn’t seem very fair, does it? Would you two like to go and retrieve some more friends before we begin, to even out the playing field?”
“ Hey, guys,” Duke’s voice came over the comm. “ Get your asses over here already, the midnight barbecue is starting!”
“Alright, alright, I’m coming,” Jason griped. “ I’ll stop by to see what’s taking the baby bats so long since it’s on my way. ETA two minutes to Seale Street.”
It was protocol to deal with established rogues quickly and efficiently, but, well, Tim couldn’t resist having a little fun, especially not when he knew Jason was on his way.
With the two rogues distracted by Damian’s god-given ability to annoy the shit out of people, Tim slunk down the side of the building until he was lurking right behind the two idiots with the losing hand.
“Quick question,” he called out, more to announce his presence than anything else.
The two buffoons in white whirled around at the sound of his voice, fumbling between taking in the vigilante at their front and watching for the one at their back.
“Oh my god, there’s another one,” The-One-That-Wasn’t-Ten said.
“What’s it called in poker when you start off with two of a kind and your opponent has no idea they never stood a chance?” Tim finished, taking way too much enjoyment from how flabbergasted they were.
“Pocket pair,” Ten croaked, hand inching not-so-subtly towards the club-shaped hip pouch she had strapped around her waist.
“Right. Well, I don’t know much about gambling,” Tim said, “But I think now is about when you should cut your losses.”
A look of steely conviction spread across Ten’s face, promising nothing good for any of them.
“What’s the fun in that?” She said while rolling forward onto the balls of her feet. “I’m all in.”
The razor sharp playing card flung from her hand flew at Tim almost too fast to see, but he dove out of the way just in time for it to sail past his head without leaving a scratch. Just like that, the battle began. Damian descended like a viper, striking low and hard, a blur of familiar red, green, and yellow, the same colors Tim was wearing.
The same colors all of them were wearing.
Tim didn’t wait to jump into the fray, jabbing at their wrists and elbows before more flying cards could get whipped at them. The cards were nasty, but easy enough to deal with when you were familiar with them. What Tim was more worried about were the mini explosives in the shape of casino tokens.
Most of their weapons were far-range though. It was difficult to set off a bomb during hand-to-hand without blowing your own head off. So Tim stuck close, pushing pushing pushing anytime either one of them tried to get some distance. He and Damian fought like a well oiled machine, corralling their targets and wearing them down with practiced efficiency. There was no doubt in his mind that the two of them could handle it, but he also didn’t mind when Jason alerted them to his imminent arrival.
“ Comin’ in hot, baby bats. Get ready to tuck and roll.”
Damian caught his eye over a bleached spandex clad shoulder. In a hair width of a second, they both took stock of the engine growling down the street. One breath and it was just around the corner. A second breath and two Robins braced for a leap.
Jason came screeching into the alley on his bike and Tim took the cue to leap out of the way, watching Damian do the same.
Ten and Not-Ten, however, were less than prepared for Jason to spin his motorcycle at the last second so the side of it came up like a brick wall at the rogues, slamming into them and launching two bodies across the asphalt with a nasty whump.
Before they could so much as think about getting back up, Jason had come to a full stop and had a pistol leveled at them.
“Gun Robin, motherfuckers.”
Tim bounced to his feet, brushing alley grime off his pants. “Nice tights,” he teased. Jason was a bright spot against the tar, wearing the same custom Robin suit he’d worn to beat up Tim after leaving the League, featuring a pair of banana yellow leggings.
It was a wonder that Tim could see him in it now and smile.
Not-Ten groaned from the ground. “There’s more of you?!”
“How many of you are there?” Ten said, though it sounded more like a complaint than an actual question.
The usual number was one. Two if Tim and Damian were fucking with Bruce. Five if you totaled them all up. But at that moment it was anywhere from half a dozen to several hundred. Today, anyone could be a Robin.
“Does it matter?” Damian asked, approaching them with a pair of batcuffs. “You two wouldn’t have stood a chance against a single one of us.”
“Wait, shit,” Not-Ten said, the light of a sucky revelation in their eyes, “What day is it?”
“Um, Thursday?” Ten replied, not bothering to fight Damian’s restraints.
“No, I meant the number.”
“Uh…the seventh?” Ten guessed.
“The sixth,” Tim corrected. “March sixth to be exact.”
Ten blinked at him, then dropped her chin to her chest and let out an extremely put-upon groan when she realized exactly what that meant. “Damn it. Of all the frickin’ days of the year, we planned a heist on Robins’ Day.”
Tim had been the first to point it out several years ago - the historic occasion of Dick’s debut as Robin on the streets of Gotham - but it wasn’t until 4 sidekicks later that it became a running gag, the whole lot of them squeezing on their old uniforms and wreaking havoc around the city to mark the milestone. Bruce had been so baffled by it the first time, he’d called the Flash on the assumption that something had gone bizarrely wrong with the timestream.
Alfred thought it was hilarious. Of course the old man would, considering he’d been the one to give half of them the mantle.
But as much as Tim wanted to take credit for the whole thing, Duke was the real reason Robins’ Day had become a city-wide holiday, featuring cosplay competitions, themed cocktails, and snowglobes. Between his previous involvement in the We Are Robin group and the fact that he was the only one who made a concerted effort to communicate with civilians, his encouragement had caused the idea to spread like wildfire.
Duke stuck to his usual alias, on account of the fact that it was what he was known by the community as, but everyone else tacked some ridiculous label onto the Robin name and went out to be a menace to the criminal population.
Dick wore a version of his original suit that was tailored to fit, but elected to keep the pixie boots and green booty shorts for reasons Tim couldn’t comprehend.
Stephanie had borrowed one of Dick’s later suits because the last time she tried on the one from her brief stint, it had felt like, quote, ‘stuffing ten pounds worth of sausage into four pounds worth of casing.’ Tim had dubbed her ‘Rent-a-Robin’ which she pouted at for a while until she decided it was the funniest thing ever and wouldn’t stop referring to herself in the third person so she could say it more.
Even Cass had stolen the previous iteration of the costume Tim currently wore. Just because she wanted to be included.
Tim had looked around at all of them in the cave at the beginning of the night and wished he could go back in time to tell his 15 year old self that everything would work out. That the guy who called him Replacement would later call him baby bird. That the kid who fought tooth and nail for a mantle he deemed its current holder unworthy of would ask him to take it back to play pranks on their dad. That all the complicated feelings he had about Stephanie taking over after he retired and Dick giving Robin away when he was at his lowest and being the only partner Batman had never really chosen would all be softened by time and affection.
It had taken a long time, but Tim had learned that Robin was never really Batman’s to give away. It was a tool you used to make the world around you a better place.
Robin was about community. Robin was about family. It was, after all, a nickname given by a doting mother to her little boy.
“Either of you want a ride?” Jason asked after both rogues had been tied up and GCPD was alerted to their location.
“No thanks,” Tim said, resting a hand on his grapple. “I’d rather fly.”
The three of them took off back down the street, following the glow and roar of a cheerful crowd gathering in Robinson park.
As they traveled, Jason on the ground, and Tim and Damian gliding above opposite sidewalks, an elderly woman leaned out a top floor window, waving a red flag with a familiar R printed on it.
“Feliz dia de Robins!” She cried out to them. They echoed it back without stopping on their way to the celebration.
And if anyone tried to ruin the fun?
Well, Robin would be there to stop them.