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Dick sawed furiously. The rope around his wrists and ankles had been tied tightly, but he could use that tension and the exposed screw he had found to his advantage. The screw was one of several that had recently installed the false wall in the back of the storage trailer. Nightwing and Robin had been installed behind it.
Judging by the rumbling floor beneath him, they were on the move. He wanted to be ready when they arrived at their destination.
Stripped of his gear and bound in the dark wasn’t necessarily his idea of a good time, but he wasn’t quite panicking yet.
A groan rose up from nearby.
Dick paused his sawing and wiped away the sweat that had accumulated on his brow in the closed air. “Robin?” he asked. The smaller boy had been unconscious when he was shoved into the back with him. Dick hadn’t gotten a good look at him before all of their light was sealed away.
“Richard?”
A flood of relief washed through him. Damian was awake, which countered one of the anxieties that had been beating in Dick’s chest. He shushed the boy, though the odds of anybody hearing them through the false wall and over the noise of the road were low. “Codenames,” he reminded. “Report. Where are you hurt?”
“Nnn.” Damian’s speech was slow to come to him. “My head hurts,” he whispered.
“Your head?” Dick asked. He groped through the dark to find Damian’s bare foot and began to trace his way up. “Anywhere else you were hit?”
Damian was quiet a moment. “Where are we?” he finally asked, as though he hadn’t heard Dick.
“We’re in a cargo trailer,” Dick explained. “On the way to a secondary location, by the looks of things.” He found Damian’s face and awkwardly brushed a thumb against his cheek. There was something tacky coating it. Blood. “Think you’ll be up for a fight?”
Dick could feel Damian shake his head, and then, realizing it was dark, speak instead. “I do not feel well,” he said. His speech sounded odd, half of it over enunciated and the rest slurred together. “What happened?”
“You don’t remember?” Dick traced up to Damian’s hairline, only to find it soaked. Sweat or blood, hard to tell until it dried or he got some light. He found a swollen spot and palpated it gently. “Is this where they hit you?”
He didn’t get a response.
“Robin?”
“Tt.”
The tut was distinctly petulant, which was a good sign, so Dick answered the boy’s earlier question. “We were on stake out, and our perps must have been tipped because they got the jump on us.”
“Oh.”
Dick found another bump and sucked in a breath through his teeth. This one was larger than the last and warm to the touch. A cut along it still bled sluggishly. “Is this where—”
Damian slapped his hand away before he could finish the sentence. “Stop it.”
Taken aback by his outburst, Dick settled himself a moment. He wished he could see Damian’s face, get a read on him. “We need to bandage it,” he said, placatingly. “It’s been at least an hour and it’s still bleeding.” Not too much, but any amount of bleeding after that long was worrying.
Damian said nothing, which Dick took as permission to rip a strip from Robin’s cape. It was awkward, with his hands bound together, but he’d done more with less. “Come here,” he said, sitting with his back to the wall and his shoulder to Damian’s. “Lean on me so I don’t lose you.”
When Damian didn’t move on his own, Dick gently pulled him over himself. The kid didn’t resist.
“Is Batman coming?” Damian asked.
Dick had to use his teeth to hold one tail of the strip as he wound it around Damian’s head, so he spoke through closed teeth when he said, “Emergency beacons were taken. I pressed them, but there’s no guarantee they’ll lead him to us.” He tied off the ends and smoothed the edges of the makeshift bandage down. “That should help, at least.”
“Am I going to be okay?”
The question caught Dick by surprise. It was really out of character for someone like Damian to ask it. “Of course,” he said, trying to keep his tone light. “I’ve got your back, and you’ve got mine. Nightwing and Robin, yeah?”
Damian tutted his tongue, but it lacked any heat. The smaller boy wriggled until he found a more comfortable position, and lapsed into silence.
“You can’t fall asleep,” Dick warned. “Not after a head wound like that.”
Damian sucked in a breath, like he was surprised to hear him. “Richard?”
“Codenames,” Dick reminded again. He felt along the wall until he found that nail head again, and returned to his task of sawing the ropes off.
“My head hurts,” Damian whispered.
“I know. You’ve probably got a concussion, if that’s what knocked you out.” He opened his mouth to say more, but Damian beat him to it.
“Where are we?”
The words died on Dick’s tongue. A pit of dread opened up in his gut. “Like I said,” he started, forcing his tone to remain calm, “We’re in a cargo trailer, behind a false wall.”
Damian leaned into him more heavily and shook his head slightly. “I do not feel well. What happened?”
Dick leaned his head back against the wall and took a deep, deep breath. “We were ambushed. I think you hit your head.”
“Is Batman coming?”
“I’m sure he is, but he may not find us in time. We will—I will have to fight our way out.”
“Am I going to be okay?”
Dick found Damian’s bound hands and took them into his own, stroking his thumb over the small, split knuckles. “Yeah, yeah.” He said it with a lot less confidence than he had felt two minutes ago.
Damian tutted and adjusted his posture so he could tilt the uninjured side of his head onto Richard’s shoulder. He went quiet.
Dick listened for Damian’s breathing, struggling slightly over the sound of his own heart jackhammering in his ears. He counted thirty-seven shallow breaths before Damian shifted again.
“Richard?”
“Codenames,” came unbidden to Dick’s lips. Force of habit. “Yeah?”
“My head hurts.”
Richard squeezed Damian’s hands, still held between his own. “I know.”
“Where are we?”
“We’re in a cargo trailer.”
“I do not feel well. What happened?”
“We were captured.”
“Oh.” Damian’s fingers found the rope around Dick’s wrists and gave a sluggish, ineffectual tug. “Is Batman coming?”
“Yes. He’ll be here soon.”
“Tt.” Damian’s grip slackened around his wrists at the words. He leaned into Dick’s shoulder again, tension easing out of his frame. “Am I going to be okay?”
Dick choked down a lump in his throat. “Yes.”
It felt like a lie.