Chapter Text
It was supposed to be a straightforward mission, in and out and get back to the cave in time for a protein shake and, if they were lucky, cookies and tea from Alfred. This particular dealer, going by the alias of “Blitz”, had become increasingly prevalent over the past two months. Dick knew that the man’s business mostly had been dealing in cocaine and firearms (and really, what a combo), but the bats needed a full inventory of what he had stocked before handing this over to GCPD. If they could shut it down, great, but there was always a chance that there was more going on than anyone had realized. Hence this infiltration mission to gather intel and hopefully get complete copies of all the hard-drives.
Bruce was currently off-world with Cass, and Stephanie was busy with finals this week. That left just the brothers to deal with this mission. To everyone’s surprise, Bruce had given them the go-ahead. It probably had something to do with the fact that all the rogues were currently locked up and accounted for, and even the Red Hood had last been seen in Japan nearly a month ago. Other than Blitz’s newly uncovered drug operation, Gotham had been unusually quiet for several weeks.
So Red Robin was upstairs, Robin watching his back as Tim hacked into the main computers. The mission was going well, and they had successfully avoided the few guards on night shift. Oracle had found a separate circuit, one that seemed to contain a completely separate drive of files and a potential slew of information on Blitz and his organization. Blitz seemed to take the phrase, “Don’t keep all your eggs in one basket” quite seriously. Dick hated to admit it, but it was pretty clever, separating the location of the files. They had almost missed it.
Dick made his way to the lower levels to get the newly discovered drive, only running into one group of goons who fled the other way as soon as they saw him. So much for secrecy. He updated the others, but they had collected all they needed and were preparing to leave anyway.
“I’m not detecting anyone in the basement level if you still want to go for that last drive,” Oracle said.
“Might as well,” Dick quipped back. He felt good, confident in his own abilities, secure about his younger brothers being safe, pleased that Bruce trusted them enough to let them handle this without the compulsion to oversee every minute detail. Sure, he would want a full report and had demanded to review their plans before they headed out. But he hadn’t done more than grumble a bit when Dick “forgot” to give an exact time table for their planned movements throughout the night. Overall, Dick felt pretty pleased with the whole situation.
The mission was going perfectly. That honestly should have been Dick’s first clue.
“Nightwing,” Oracle’s voice broke his train of thought from the com in his ear. “I’ve just intercepted a command from Blitz, they are set to blow the building in three minutes. That’s why you’ve encountered so little resistance - everyone fled the building already!”
“Mission abort.” Dick commanded. “Drop whatever you’re working on, get out immediately. I repeat, mission abort!”
The birds scattered.
“Why are they blowing the place?” Tim asked over the coms.
“Obviously it is because they don’t want us to know this information,” Damian quipped back.
“They can just wipe their drives for that…”
Dick switched channels momentarily, deciding that this conversation seemed civil enough without his immediate intervention. He also needed to focus on not getting blown up. “Oracle, keep an eye on their trackers, let me know when they are out of the blast radius.”
“Affirmative,” Barbara’s cool tone replied. “Get yourself out of there, Wing. Red Robin’s right though, I’m trying to figure out what the panic is about.”
Well, that sounded somewhat foreboding. Dick didn’t bother responding, just pushed himself faster. Dick let some tension drain from his body as Barbara reported that his brothers had fled out the rooftop exit and were grappling away. Barbara directed him to a stairway in the back of the building that led to the parking garage.
Faster, faster, faster, he chanted to himself. Around a corner, through a door, into the cool night air. Place your front foot just so, take aim with your grapple line, launch forward and out -
The force of the explosion sent Dick flying. For a moment, he was weightless, before pain filled him as his torso slammed into something hard.
And then he was falling again. Dick had just enough awareness left to reach out his arm and shoot his grappling line. Someone must have been watching out for him, because his blind shot landed true. It wasn’t graceful, but it slowed his descent enough that when he hit the rooftop, it felt like he was being hit with a minivan instead of a semi-truck.
Dick allowed his body to roll to a stop, and took a moment to relish the stillness. A deep breath in his nose confirmed that his ribs had taken the brunt of the impact with whatever it was the blast had thrown him into. His shoulder was out of socket, loose and unresponsive in a way that gave him nausea when he thought about it too much.
Frustration welled inside him. Night after night of scouting, money paid to moles under various aliases, countless times playing referee between Tim and Damian’s pointless arguments - all for nothing. He was sore, and tired, and at this point Dick wasn’t sure he could handle any more from the night. He just wanted to go home.
“Oracle to birds, how is everyone?”
Dick continued to take careful breaths as Barbara’s voice came in over the coms, listening as his younger brothers gave their reports.
“I am unharmed,” Damian said, a sneer evident in his tone. Dick braced himself, and sure enough, Damian continued, “Red Robin was imbecilic enough to misjudge the distance he needed to get from the blast, and sustained multiple contusions and mild lacerations.”
“I was saving a civilian who was too close to the building,” Tim snapped, not sounding at all traumatized from having just barely survived an explosion. “There is nothing imbecilic about that.”
“If you were truly as intelligent as you like to think, you would have figured out a way to save both yourself and the civilian from such injuries,” Damian quipped. Dick was about to interject when Damian continued. “In the future, you should restrain your impulsive heroics and employ safer tactics and more strategic planning.”
Dick allowed himself to laugh before saying, “Thank you for your concern, Robin, I’m sure Red will take your advice into consideration.” Dick smiled as Tim sputtered and Damian grumbled. Tim hadn’t picked up on it, but Dick recognized Damian’s strange way of showing concern; it was a step in the right direction that Damian was aiming that concern at Tim, even if Tim didn’t quite comprehend it yet.
The two younger birds continued to bicker as Dick rolled gingerly to his feet, groaning as his ribs protested. He gripped his injured shoulder with his good hand, wondering if it was worth going back to the cave or if he could pop it back in place on his own. Some gentle prodding had him letting out a hiss of pain.
“Nightwing, are you okay?” Barbara said, cutting off the noises of Tim and Damian.
Shit. “Took me a minute to get out of there. Had a rough landing, but nothing too bad.”
“Nothing too bad means something very different for you than it does for most people,” Tim said. “Injury report.”
“Pot, meet kettle. I’m not dying, or in danger of dying. Just bruised.” Okay, maybe that was a lie. Dick found himself scowling. “There’s a safehouse a few blocks from here, I’m gonna go there for the night.”
“Nightwing, you should not -”
“Go back to the cave, Robin,” Dick interrupted before Damian could begin his tirade. “I’ll be fine, we’ve all had way worse. Besides, I have errands I want to run in the morning, and I don’t want to be up late all the way across town.”
There was a pause. And then, “That has to be the most Old Man thing you’ve ever said,” Tim snickered.
“Truly, you resemble a fossil more and more every month,” Damian added.
Dick sighed. Why was it that his younger brothers only seemed to get along if they were ganging up on him or Bruce? It wasn’t fair.
“Alright, you’re both hilarious,” He grumbled. “Oracle, how does it look as far as survivors go? Do we need to go back there?”
“Negative,” Barbara said, a bitter note to her tone. “I don’t know how I missed it, but they sent out a command to get everyone out about ten minutes before the bomb went off. Looks like they were ready for us.”
Dick let out a sigh, one part relieved at not having to conduct rescue, one part irritated at the idea of anyone getting ahead of them. “Alright then, I’m calling it a night. We can reconvene tomorrow for a debriefing. In the meantime, everyone take care of yourselves.”
With that, Dick turned off his coms. If anyone needed him, they could buzz him to talk, but he wouldn’t have to listen to idle chatter. Usually Dick joined in on the banter, but tonight his ribs were sore, his shoulder was killing him, he was tired, and crashing on his couch to watch some Brooklynn 99 with leftover ramen and a beer sounded utterly divine.
Careful to keep his arm close to his chest, Dick made his way across the rooftop. He just needed to make it to the other end of the block to get to his motorcycle, and he would be home free. He was just considering where to hook his grapple when his coms beeped, signaling someone wanting to reach him privately.
“Nightwing, you stayed in the building until right before the explosion, right?” Barbara said.
“Yeah, and I’m regretting that now. The ice packs in my freezer are calling my name.”
“And you entered through the roof with the Robins?”
Now Dick stopped his movements completely. “You know I did. Oracle, what’s going on?” Why had she messaged him privately, why was she asking questions she knew the answer to?
“I only noticed this a few moments ago. I was going back, looking for why they blew the place; looking at video surveillance instead of coms, since someone seemed to have jammed the signal. My cameras picked up a figure moving quickly outside the building. They entered through a third floor window about two minutes before Blitz called for the bomb, 12 minutes before you exited.”
“Any idea who it was?”
“I didn’t get a positive ID, but he was over six feet tall, wore armor, and moved quickly.” Dick felt something tighten in his gut. There weren’t many people who fit that description, who would also be climbing through the second floor window of an arms ring’s hideout, and who wouldn’t bother communicating with the bats to do it. Before he could ask, she continued. “It was too dark to see if there was a hood.”
“But you think there was probably a hood.”
“Probably.”
“I thought he was out of town? No one’s seen him in weeks.”
“I guess he decided he’d been gone too long.”
Dick grumbled to himself, but didn’t respond. Jason had been in and out of Gotham for over a year now, apparently done working exclusively with the Outlaws. From what Dick could tell on his irregular visits from Bludhaven, the family had reached a sort of uneasy truce with the wayward vigilante; they all stayed to their respective territories, had mostly stopped attacking one another on patrols, and Hood had even joined them on some of the rougher missions where the extra muscle was appreciated. Bruce gave Jason an extremely wide berth, and Jason sometimes left a package of tea for Alfred. But Jason still refused to let them help him on his own missions, and still left shattered bones and maimed bodies in his wake. Jason was a wild card at best. At worst, he was downright deadly. Dick felt a crawl of unease at the realization that Hood had been in the same building as the youngest bats and none of them had even realized.
“I’m going over more footage now…” Barbara said, sounding distracted.
“Let me know what you find.” There was a long pause in which Dick could picture her leaning forward in her chair, eyes squinting from behind her glasses at the computer screens.
“Dick….” The trepidation in her voice made his shoulders tense. “I’m looking, but I don’t see him exit the building.”
There were moments when Dick was flying through the streets of Gotham, wind in his face and muscles burning, that he felt glorious. How could a bullet catch him, how could a bomb stop him, how could anything ever touch him? He was invincible.
There were other times, when a grapple line shivered with a little too much uncertainty, when the ground rushed up a little too quickly, when Dick was reminded of just how fragile his very mortal body was. He wasn’t like Superman or Koriand'r, he wasn’t like Hal Jordan, he wasn’t even like Zatana with magic to make up for his physical fragility. He was just a human, mortal, just like the rest of the bats. He had felt that certainty since watching his parents plummet from the trapeze.
He felt it now.
“...He’s still in the building…” Dick heard himself whisper.
“I’m running scans, looking for any coms signals that could be Hood trying to get something out to us,” Oracle said, voice still as professional as ever. Only someone who knew her well would hear the thread of urgency in her tone.
Dick opened his own coms to all channels that the bats regularly used, hoping against hope that doing so would allow someone trying to contact the bats (a trigger-happy younger brother, perhaps) to break through. Then he headed back towards the building, already thinking of possible ways to cover as much ground as possible should he have to search for Jason in the rubble.
“Whatever was jamming my coms just stopped,” Oracle reported.
There was a buzz in his ear, a quick krsshshhh before they were silent once more. Dick paused, tilted his head as he listened. It almost seemed like someone thinking about calling in, then deciding against it.
“This is Nightwing,” He tried.
Another moment passed. Then, “This is Red Hood.”
“Hood!” Dick’s body thrummed with mindless energy, wanting to rush into the building and find the other vigilante, safety and protocols be damned. “Status report?”
There was another crackling noise, as if the coms couldn’t quite convey whatever sounds they were picking up. Dick could hear rustling, movement of some sort, but Hood didn’t answer. Dick swept his hair back from his head impatiently as silence stretched out from the other end of the coms. A strained grunt, and Dick felt his heart clench. “Hood, report!”
More sounds of movement, then, “Stuck in the building. I was in the east s-stairwell, second floor, when it went down. Don’t know if I’m still there.”
Hood wasn’t exactly slurring his speech, but Dick knew the helmet modulated a lot. “Are you injured?”
Another long pause. “A bit.”
Dick closed his eyes and took a deep breath. In the nose, out the mouth, ignore the pain in your ribs. “Can I have some more details, here, bud?”
“Get me out from under this building,” Hood pauses, and Dick holds his breath, wondering if Hood is having to collect his thoughts, if he’s bleeding out, if it's getting hard for him to breathe - “ and I will be fine.”
“That’s not an answer, Hood.” Another gaping pause during which Dick approached the east corner of the building. The exterior wall was still standing, but there was no telling how the interior looked. “Hood?”
Still no answer. Dick pressed a finger against the com in his ear, as if that would help him to hear better. Silence echoed. “Hood?” He barked.
There was a gasp, a strange sucking sound mutilated by the helmet’s modulators. “Here. I’m here.”
“Okay, stay with me, okay?” Dick’s heart rate picked up at the faint sound of Jason’s strained grunt. It was loud enough that the helmet couldn’t hide the sound, even over coms. “Can you move at all?”
There was another pause, and Dick had to actually count the seconds to prevent himself from shouting for Hood to answer. Finally, the younger man responded. “There isn’t really anywhere for me to go.”
“But you aren’t pinned down by anything?”
“... No.”
“Okay, that’s good. I’m gonna be right there, Hood. Promise.” Dick waited for an answer, but none was forthcoming. Really, with Jason’s history, Dick couldn’t imagine that the reassurance was readily trusted. Dick took a few breaths before switching com lines. “Oracle?”
“I heard it all,” she said. She was such a saint.
“Think you can get me in the building?”
“I think you need to wait for emergency services,” Barbara cautioned.
“Oh, sure, and leave him to be sent off to Arkham?”
Silence answered him.
Dick paused his restless pacing. “Oracle…”
“I don't want him to go to Arkham,” she snapped. “But I don’t want you to get hurt or killed. The whole structure is unstable, and I know you’re more injured than you’re letting on. Hood may be stuck, but you can’t help him if you get hurt, too.”
Dick was silent for a moment, his mind awhirl with images of Black Mask’s rage-twisted features as he set a bounty on the Red Hood. Penguin offering rewards and protection to anyone who could bring him information on the vigilante. The Joker cackling maniacally in the background of the files he left for Batman to find, as the videos showed Jason’s broken and bloodied body thrashing in pain on the warehouse floor while Dick was gallivanting in space.
“If they find Hood, they will arrest him.”
“Dick -”
“He doesn’t deserve to be stuck in the same prison as the people who try to kill him every day!” Dick didn’t mean to yell. He really didn’t. But from the silence at the other end of the coms, and the slight sting in his throat, he supposed he might have. Just a little bit. Sourness gnawed on his innards. “God, O, I’m sorry -”
“Don’t,” she all but snapped at him. Dick winced. “You’re lucky you’re so easy to sympathize with, D. But if you yell at me again, I will decide you’re too emotionally compromised to make these decisions, put out an Urgent Response Request on this explosion, and call back the Robins to come get you.”
“Okay,” Dick replied meekly. “Thank you, Oracle.”
Barbara let out an exhausted sigh, and Dick felt a pang in his gut. “I don’t want anything bad to happen to either of you. It’s my job to keep you all safe.” Before Dick could protest, she plowed ahead. “I can tell you areas that likely held up best under the explosion, and I can tell you that there are two cameras in the building still working, but neither are currently showing Hood.” Dick waited as Oracle paused to no doubt scan her monitors. “GCPD and emergency responders are preoccupied with a fire across town, so this is low priority since the building was already condemned. You have less than half an hour.”
There was a bit of back and forth then how Dick might best navigate the building without fatal consequences. Oracle accessed some outdated blueprints of the building, and a few video feeds had miraculously survived the explosion; she was working on downloading the recordings of other cameras to play those back and hopefully get more information.
“Just be careful in there, Wing.”
“Will do.” Dick wondered if she was more concerned about the imminent collapse of the structure or about Hood’s history with guns and short fuses (literally and figuratively).
Taking a deep breath, Dick muted his coms, and before he could think twice about it, wrenched his shoulder back into place. He bit his cheek hard enough that he tasted blood, but he didn’t scream. His vision swam, but he didn’t pass out. Tears pricked at his eyes, but he didn’t cry. He had a job to do.
A few deep, shuddering breaths later, Dick switched channels again. “Hood?”
“Wing.” Dick was almost surprised at how quickly Hood answered.
“You still got your helmet?”
“Yeah.”
“Good, keep it on. It’ll help protect you.”
A grunt, startlingly reminiscent of Bruce, and then, “… ‘kay.”
“Hood?”
“Wing.”
“I’m gonna get you out of there. Promise.”