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"What happened?"
"I told you. I arrived at the scene, and you were already unconscious. I started fighting the guys, but they got the upper hand. Tim showed up and rescued us both."
Bruce grunts. "My cowl footage shows absolutely nothing of tonight. Do you have any idea why?"
Dick gives him a one shoulder shrug, his left arm solidly immobilized. "I don't know. It must have malfunctioned. I was a bit too busy trying to save you to check on your cowl camera."
Bruce ums. "Would you let me borrow your mask to check yours?"
"Why? So you can tell me everything I did wrong?"
The snappy answer is typical, but there is something else. Something Bruce can't quite put his finger on.
"What are you hiding from me?"
"Nothing," Dick replies, maybe just a bit too fast. "Nothing. Look, I'm really tired, can the interrogation wait until tomorrow morning?"
"A chemical had been made using the Batcomputer. The process has been initiated by Tim, but with your password. What was it?"
"So, it cannot wait until tomorrow morning. Fine. It's for another case. I asked him for help. Happy?"
"What case?"
"Something in Blüdhaven. You don't know everything I do. It's part of the whole 'having my own city' thing."
Again, this could be just Dick being tired and irritable, but Bruce can't help but feel something is wrong about the entire situation.
"Alright. I'll go see Tim, ask him for his mask."
Dick's right hand jumps for his arm. "Kid is asleep. Don't bother him. He needs rest and so do we. This can wait until tomorrow."
"So you would have time to erase the mask footage?"
Dick looks like a deer in headlight. "What? No, why would I do that? Now you're just being-"
"Stop lying to me!" Bruce yells and Dick flinches, a very small thing but from someone who learned how to hide his fear since he was eight, this could have been a scream. He's terrified. Of what? Bruce? He thought they were past that.
"What happened?" He asks again.
"I told you. You were unconscious when I arrived and-"
"Please. What happened?"
Dick looks at him a bit more. His protegee, officially his son since a few months now, so grown up, terrified and lying to him. He doesn't want Dick to turn against him. If anything, just from a strategic point of view. Not that he never thought about how he would take Dick out if they were to fight, he thinks as his eyes fall absentmindedly on the injury report on the medbay's bed.
First, he would go for his right knee, that had been weakened for years, to take away his mobility.
fracture to the right knee
Then, he wouldn't let him get back up, he would pin him to the ground with as much force as necessary.
three broken ribs
He would free one of his hands buy taking away one of Dick's.
multiple fractures on the left arm
And find a way to make him lose consciousness or...
strangulation wound
The purple bruises on Dick's neck matche the shape of a big hand. His hands. On his shoulder, band aids had been put on what is probably small cuts. The claws of the Batman's gloves.
"I wasn't unconscious when you arrived," he says. It's not a question.
"You were," Dick replies. "Please, can you just accept it?"
"I did this."
"No. No, they did. To you. To me."
"If Tim hadn't made it in time-"
"He did. It's okay."
"I could have killed you."
"No. I know what a killer is," Dick says and his right hand closes a bit. There are still some cuts from that fight with the Joker. "And you're not that. You're better than that."