Chapter Text
In his dream, Dick was flying. Unsurprising. Unoriginal. His subconscious was barely trying. He couldn’t tell if he was leaping through Gotham or catching a trapeze, but either way he knew how the rhythm of this dream went. Someone was chasing him, someone he couldn’t see or remember. He would try to crane around for a glimpse of his pursuer, and would never see them. He would just keep flying, hoping to outrun them. The dream would go one or two ways; either he would fall and then wake up with a start, or the unknown pursuer would catch him in a talon-like grip. Either way, Dick never saw who was chasing him.
He knew this dream; he had had it so much that it almost didn’t scare him. Almost. He was still flying, but could feel the pursuer getting closer and he was slowing down despite all his efforts to move faster. Dick landed on a building roof. So he was in the city this time. He looked around for another place to jump. Wind whistled in his ears, warping sound -
“...up, Richard!”
I’m trying, he thought. Trying to get…
A sharp sensation ran down his right arm.
Dick sat up. He was at home. No…not at home. At his room in the manor. Alfred must’ve convinced him to stay the night. Damian was crouched next to him, staring. Dick rubbed his arm. “What was that for?” he muttered. He almost rolled over, until his vision cleared enough to give a good look at the expression on Damian’s face. “What?”
“I - I need your help, Richard.”
Ok. Now he was awake. “What’s up, Dami?”
“It’s Tim.”
That could mean a million things from “Tim and I fought over who got shotgun in the batmobile” to “I severed Tim’s Achilles’ tendon in a murderous rampage.”
“What about Tim?” Dick asked, fully sitting up. He squinted at Damian in the dimly lit room. Every muscle in the boy’s body was taut, ready to run.
“I think he’s hurt,” Damian whispered.
“And why do you think that?” He kept his tone calm. Damian was trying to admit a mistake, which was something difficult to do when he’d spent the first ten years of his life not allowed to make mistakes.
“I tried to fix it. But I don’t know how. I tried to put it back the way it was but-”
But I don’t know how to fix things, only take them apart. I don’t know how to do anything except break.
“Damian, slow down. Explain to me what happened. I’ll help you fix it, but I can’t help until I understand.”
Damian took a deep breath. “I sabotaged Drake’s communication lines.”
“Just where do you think you’re going, Drake?”
It was nearly nine o’clock and Drake was fully dressed as Red Robin. Drake stopped checking over his motorcycle and turned, unable to keep a smirk off his face. “Patrol,” he said.
“Tt. No you’re not.” Batman was out of Gotham. Nightwing was taking his mandatory day off. Without them, or another approved vigilante, neither Robin was allowed to patrol.
“Batman approved it.” Again with that stupid smirk on his face. Damian glared.
“Why do you get to do a solo patrol?”
“Dunno. Guess Bruce trusts me more.” Damian’s frown deepened. Tim shrugged and turned back to his bike. He started the engine, which hummed to life and echoed in the cave. He looked back just once as he sped out of the cave to begin patrol, and Damian could swear he was laughing at him.
Drake thought he could hold it over Damian, doing a solo patrol. As if it wasn’t a farce. Not a real patrol. All the safety nets in place, the beacons, vital trackers, backup on call - just to do a general patrol of the city- not even on a case or after someone specific. Damian scoffed. Bruce trusted him more? As if. A real patrol meant you were alone. No one would come to save you. Damian told himself again that father had to be soft on Drake. Drake couldn’t handle it. He needed the safety measures. Not like Damian. Damian had done solo missions in the Himalayas when he was nine. Been thrown into the streets of Taipei with nothing but a stick and told to bring the head of a syndicate leader to his grandfather by morning.
Still.
Damian moved to the computer, swiping in a few commands.
Oracle had shown him once how to access the tracking beacons in the system, and Damian had enough of a grasp on the fundamentals of hacking that he was able to change the code on Drake’s tracker. It wasn’t a sophisticated hack and far from traceless. But it only had to be effective for a few hours.
If you’re so high and mighty, Drake, Damian thought, Let’s see if you can do this on your own.
Dick stared at the cave computer, wishing he’d taken the time to pay closer attention to how Tim and Barbara used it. There was the map of Gotham open, with a red dot signifying where Tim was according to his suit tracker. He tried the communication system.
“Red Robin, status report.” Nothing but static. He tried again. Still nothing. He turned to Damian. “Alright,” he said in a voice of forced calm. “Show me how you did it.”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know?”
Damian typed in a few commands. A black coding box popped up, running lines of code across the screen. Damian turned to Dick. “I don’t - I can’t remember how I did it.”
Dick took a deep breath. Demanding how Damian had learned to hack into the com lines without learning how to fix the damage would not make this situation go any better. He tapped Oracle’s com.
“Oracle. Do you read me?”
“Nightwing. This is supposed to be your night off.”
“Red Robin’s communicator has been compromised.”
“What?” He heard typing. “How did - that isn’t possible.”
“Please just - can you fix it? The code’s been corrupted, basic commands rewritten. It shouldn’t be hard to fix, but I can’t locate the error.” Dick could hear more typing on the other end. Barbara swore under her breath. “How? How did that happen?!”
“Can you fix it?”
“Of course I can.” The line was silent for a few seconds, then she said, “Coms restored. Red Robin, do you read me?” There was a pause. “Red Robin, status,” Oracle said.
“Oracle?”
It was Tim’s voice, but something was wrong. It was winded. Waterlogged.
“Red Robin, status report.”
There was violent coughing on the other side of the line. Dick’s grip tightened around the back of the chair. He squinted at the red dot indicating Tim’s location on the map. He was in the downtown area, somewhere between 5th and 9th.
“F-four hostiles neutralized,” came Tim’s voice. “Two fled.”
Oracle was silent for a moment. Then she said, “Red Robin, has there been damage to your tracking beacon?”
“Damage?” Tim sounded dazed. “No. It’s off.”
“What?”
“The beacon…I turned it off.”
“You turned off your beacon?” Dick could hear Barabra’s fingers fly over the keys. In a moment, the map of Gotham on the cave computer screen reloaded. The red dot indicating Tim’s location reappeared. He wasn’t in downtown. He was in the Wharf.
The little shithead… The Wharf was off limits for solo patrol. Too dangerous.
“Red Robin, I am sending backup for immediate extraction. Stay where you are,”
It took an hour for Dick to find Tim. When he did find him, it took another twenty minutes to get him out of the murky canal and into the car. Tim spent the ride back to the manor throwing up canal water. His injuries were superficial, the worst being a gash in his arm that would require stitches. Tim told him some story about being hazed with some kind of drug and shoved into the canal. Dick wasn’t really listening, except to tell Oracle to prepare a blood test.
The vomiting purged Tim’s system of the drug, and Dick made quick work of cleaning up the rest of his injuries. Damian stood in the background the entire time, nails digging into his arm, rubbing the back of his hand obsessively.
Dick looked from one boy to the other and said, “The both of you are benched, effective immediately.”
“Damian is the one who hacked the computer!” Tim protested.
“And you turned off your tracker!” Dick said.
“That was Damian!”
“No it wasn’t, don’t you dare lie to me. Bruce trusted you with a solo patrol, isn’t that what you wanted?”
“I just - I didn’t need the training wheels!”
Dick looked from Tim to Damian. “Are you for real? You let him,” he pointed to Damian, “Bait you into turning off your com, didn’t you?” Tim looked away. Dick actually closed his eyes for a moment. Why did it have to be him? Why? “Alright that settles it. You two cannot be trusted alone. You’re coming to Bludhaven with me until Bruce is back on world.”
This, of course, was immediately met with protest.
“ - not fair!”
“Pennyworth can keep an eye on us!”
“I’m not leaving Alfred to babysit two petty, arrogant children who can’t learn a self preservation instinct to save their goddamn lives.”
“I’m injured,” Tim protested.
“You once grappled two miles with a dislocated knee. You can survive a car ride from here to Bludhaven.”
“Richard, you are being unreasonable,” Damian said.
“Upstairs. Pack. Now.”
Damian tilted his head up in defiance.
“This is not up for negotiation,” Dick said.
“You’re not Father.”
“No, and you’re lucky I’m not. Get upstairs and put some things in a bag, now. ”
Tim was injured enough that Dick ordered him to stay put and went to put the boy’s things into a bag himself. On his way to Tim’s room, he passed Alfred’s room. Dick hesitated. It always made him a little nervous to invade Alfred’s domain. It wasn’t as though he wasn’t welcome, but it was generally understood that Alfred’s room was the only place he could get any kind of respite from their insane vigilante lives. No one wanted to disturb that.
Still, Dick should tell him his plan to take the boys home.
Alfred, to Dick’s surprise, was awake. He answered the door in his dressing gown.
“Master Richard?”
“Hi Alfred. I just wanted to let you know. I’m taking Damian and Tim with me to Bludhaven. They’re on probation from patrol and I don’t trust them on their own at the moment.”
Alfred blinked. “I see. And you think taking both of them is a good idea?”
“Well - no, but it’s the best one I’ve come up with. If Bruce was here…” Dick actually had no idea what Bruce would do. He was so inconsistent with parenting. Maybe he would’ve had the bandwidth to come up with something, maybe he would’ve just chewed out both boys and told them to hit the showers.
“But he is not,” Alfred finished. “You’re quite at liberty to do what you think is necessary, Master Richard. Do you require any assistance?”
Dick paused. “So you do think it’s a good idea?”
“I trust your judgment, my boy.”
“Oh.”
“You’ll let me know if you need assistance?” Alfred added. Dick assured him he would. “Goodnight then. And good luck.”
Tim tried to climb in the passenger seat as soon as Dick pulled the car around. Dick told him and Damian in no uncertain terms that they were both exiled to the back seat. The boys sat as far apart from each other as physically possible, looking out the window.
“Tim, make sure you keep your arm elevated,” Dick said. Tim glared.
It was so late that the only other headlights on the road belonged to semis and the occasional van. Dick took the interchange for Bludhaven. He glanced in the rearview mirror. Tim was on his phone. Damian was surreptitiously whetting a knife against the bottom of his boot.
“Phones and weapons away,” Dick ordered. Neither of them acknowledged him. “As you are both fond of reminding me, I’m not Bruce and I can’t ultimately tell you what to do.” Not that you listen to Bruce, either. “But if you want to be back on patrol anytime soon, I’d suggest you start listening.”
Tim glowered and stowed his phone. Damian begrudgingly stuffed the knife back in his boot.
“What are we supposed to do, sit in silence?” Tim said.
“Yup,” Dick said and turned on the radio.
They pulled into Dick’s apartment complex forty five minutes later. The lights in the parking lot flickered as they trudged up the stairs to his third story apartment. He made Damian carry Tim’s bag because of his injury. Dick fished his keys out of his pocket and unlocked the front door.
“Damian, hit the showers,” he said as soon as they got inside.
“I don’t need-”
“Yes you do. Go on. Towels are in the hall closet.”
Damian glared at him, but did as directed. He slammed the bathroom door unnecessarily hard. Tim tried to slink away into the spare room.
“Tim. With me, in the kitchen.” The boy followed him and took the glass of water Dick offered with a defeated air. Dick crossed his arms. “How about explaining what the hell you were thinking, turning off your tracker?”
“I told you, I don’t need training wheels. I just - I just didn’t think it would be a big deal.”
“The Wharf is off limits for solo patrol, you know that.”
“Steph goes there alone all the time.”
“And you’re not Steph. It was irresponsible. God, Tim. This isn’t a competition. For the last time, it’s a team and teams-” He took a breath, trying to avoid raising his voice. “If you’re going to turn patrol into a game, then you’re clearly not ready for that responsibility.”
“What do you want me to say, Dick?”
“Sorry would be a good start. Your solo patrol was supposed to be so I could get some rest. Instead I had to fish you out of a canal at two in the morning.”
Tim had the decency to look ashamed. “Sorry.”
“Good. Now, why did you decide to turn off your tracker?”
“Excuse me, are we going to ignore that Damian hacked my coms?!”
“No, definitely not. But I’m also not giving you a chance to slip out of answering a direct question. Don’t bullshit me, Tim. Why did you turn your tracker off?”
“I-” Tim paused and glanced toward the bathroom door.
“You did it because Damian implied you couldn’t handle a solo patrol without training wheels. Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Tim muttered.
“And I probably don’t need to explain to you how childish and immature that is?”
“No.”
“Ok good. As for Damian-”
“He was right,” Tim said quietly. “I couldn’t do it.”
Dick felt his response die in his throat. He sighed. “That is not the takeaway here. You intentionally put yourself in danger in a situation you were not equipped to handle. That’s not failure, that’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
The bathroom door opened and Damian exited wearing his pajamas and his wet hair plastered to his head. He shot Dick a reproachful look and shuffled into the living room.
“Doesn’t matter,” Tim muttered. “If I’d just been…better. No one would have even known what happened. No one would’ve known I’d turned it off.” He pushed past Dick and went toward the bathroom. Dick stared after him.
Tim was right. If he hadn’t gotten hurt, no one would’ve probably been any the wiser about his choice to turn off his tracker.
That’s an issue… Dick wasn’t sure how to fix that. He got a mug out of the cupboard and began making coffee. The sun was beginning to rise. He wasn’t going to sleep anyway. He should’ve said something else to Tim. Shouldn’t have made him feel worse. Just confirm all the terrible things he believed about himself already. And Damian…where to begin with that? He’d been sorry enough about his actions to wake Dick up, but was he really sorry or just worried he’d get caught?
Dick went into the living room. The lights were off, but enough early morning sun crept through the window that he could see that Damian was lying on the couch, eyes closed.
“Damian. I know you’re not asleep.”
The boy’s eyes opened, but he said nothing. Dick stood in the doorway for a minute, waiting.
“So. You wanna tell me what happened?”
Damian shook his head. Dick took a few more steps into the room and turned on the lamp.
“I turned off Drake’s communication lines," Damian said.
“Yes you did. Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“Alright. At the moment I’m not concerned with why you did it. I’m more concerned that you don’t seem to understand what it means. Damian, you betrayed a very serious trust. You-”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“I was angry.”
That was something. “Ok. Why?”
“I - I should be entrusted with solo patrols. I am more skilled than Drake. I have proven this on multiple occasions and yet Father still doesn’t trust me.”
“Your father trusts you.” Probably more than you deserve. “You have skills, that’s true. However, Tim has more-”
“He does not have more experience than me.”
“Experience isn’t everything.”
Damian scoffed. “Of course it is.”
“Tim has proved his ability to think through decisions and that is more valuable than raw skill.” Although in this particular instance Tim had proved to be rather incredibly stupid. Dick hoped Damian wasn’t thinking about that part. “Damian, you have to…” But Dick wasn’t sure what to say. He couldn’t force the boy to see what was wrong with his actions. He couldn’t make Damian do much of anything. He sighed. Should he give up, try again in the morning?
“Damian, why did you wake me up?”
Damian seemed confused. “I fail to see how that is relevant.”
“You came to wake me up instead of trying to fix it yourself. No, that was good,” he said as Damian began to scowl. “I’m glad you did. But why did you do it?”
“I assumed Drake had gotten himself injured,” he shrugged.
“His patrol wasn’t supposed to be over for another two hours. He wasn’t late.” Damian hunched even further, refusing to look at Dick. “Damian, why did you think that Tim was injured?”
“Why are you badgering me, Grayson?” Damian snapped. “Asking pedantic questions is supposed to be Father’s job, so I will wait until he gets here to punish me himself.”
“You said you didn’t know why you messed with Tim’s com. I’m trying to help you uncover why.”
“Why would I need you to help me? How could you know if I don’t even know?”
“Damian, please. Just try. Why did you think Tim was injured?”
“I didn’t! I was just - just afraid he might be.” Damian shuddered at the admission and clenched his shoulders more tightly.
Dick almost said with exasperation, was that so hard? But stopped himself. It was that hard for Damian to admit he felt fear. Fear was forbidden in the League. The League’s heir was not permitted to feel fear.
Wait, did that mean Damian’s first response in feeling afraid was to find Dick? That was…something to unpack later.
“So you were afraid he might be injured. And you came to find me?”
Damian nodded.
“You didn’t want Tim to get hurt.”
“No,” Damian whispered.
“That’s good. Tomorrow when you and Tim have a conversation, you should talk about that, ok?”
“Ok.” His voice was small and pained. “I just - I don’t know why. Sometimes I do things and I don’t want to do them, but I do because I don’t know what else - but I didn’t want to. It’s like there’s another me, the one Mother made. And it’s always telling me what to do, taking control when I don’t expect. But I like it, Dick. I like how powerful I am and the control the power gives me - but I also hate it, I hate it, I hate it! Why can’t it stop? I want to apologize to Drake, I want to tell him what I did was unfair and says nothing of his abilities, but I can’t say it I don’t know how to say it, he wouldn’t believe me and why should he believe me? I can’t fix it, I can’t fix anything I don’t know how-”
“Damian, slow down.”
“I don’t want this, I don’t want to be so angry.”
“Hey. Hey, you’re ok.”
“It would be easier if you hated me like Drake does,” he said.
“Tim doesn’t…” but he stopped. He couldn’t speak for Tim. At the moment, he probably did hate Damian. And Dick couldn’t exactly fault him for that. “We don’t hate you. Why would it be easier if I hated you?”
“You’d stop asking so many stupid questions,” Damian muttered. He looked so much like Bruce when he did that.
“Well. I don’t hate you and I will keep asking stupid questions. So looks like you’ll have to deal with that.”
Damian fiddled with the blanket on the couch. “What happens now?”
“What do you mean?”
“I messed up. What happens now?”
“For now, you go to sleep. Tomorrow you and Tim will talk. Ok?”
Damian seemed to struggle for a moment, then slumped back on the couch. “Very well, Grayson.”
“Love you too, kid.”