Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

An impressive headache and a diabolical combination of odors greets Robin when he wakes.

The headache’s so bad it’s actually passed from a splitting agony into numbness. Robin’s aware of the pain, but it throbs, it throbs, and whatever’s around him stinks like hell, and like pinching your leg to distract from a needle in your arm, it cancels itself out.

First thing he realizes, through the haze of what is certainly a mild concussion, is that it’s daytime. Not dusk, not the timid wash of soupy Gotham dawn, but bright, fuck-your-head-trauma high noon. It’s hot. He’s sweating through goddamn Kevlar.

A list of facts:

1. He last remembers it being a disgusting hour. 3-ish, he’d say. Therefore, dark.
2. Summer patrol ends at sunrise.
3. If he gets his bell rung mid-patrol, he wakes up in the Cave, without fail.

Robin grimaces, squeezes his eyes shut. His head flops back and something squelches underneath him. Pop, and a rush of wet, greasy heat down his neck.

He lets himself commiserate with the cosmos about his bad luck for a solid five seconds. Situations like these come with the job, but hell, again? He’s just coming off an ankle sprain from two weeks ago. His first night back. Fantastic job, Boy Wonder. Really putting the ‘wonder’ in there, as in he wonders how he hasn’t kicked it spectacularly yet.

Okay, focus. What the fuck happened, where the fuck is he, and what the fuck is going on?

The hot-wet has trickled under the neck of his suit. His head still hurts too much to open his eyes.

He hears traffic. It’s not close, so he’s on a side street, or an alleyway. People are talking and laughing a little ways away, in English, so that rules out Little Odessa, where he last remembers he was. That was 2-something, he thinks, so he’s within a 1-hour range of Little Odessa as the Bat flies. Which could be anywhere on the Mid-Isle. Yay.

Whatever he’s laying on is soft, but hot as shit in the sun, and he runs his hands over the material. It’s thin and plasticky, like trashbags. He’d see if he can smell the Harbor from here, but the stench of whatever he’s on covers up any hope of that.

Is Robin in a dumpster?

A second list of facts:

1. He’s alone.
2. It’s noon.
3. Robin is in a fucking dumpster.

Robin cracks open an eye. He lifts his head, and the trashbag of food scraps squishes. This would be funny if he weren’t currently experiencing it. God, at least nobody’s taken out the trash yet today, or he’d have been a traffic light stain on the inside of a truck hours ago. 

As a middle finger from the powers that be, an innocent bystander walks by with a bag and heaves it into Robin’s hidey-hole. It nails him in the stomach, and he yelps a noise not unlike a rubber chicken being chucked at a wall. His attacker screams and skedaddles.

Robin sits up and shoves the trashbag off him. It clatters, and rips, and a dozen battered old keyboards spill into the recesses of the dumpster. He is sticky with trash juice. A pallet of gas station sushi is slowly and tenderly rotting next to him. Whatever has trickled down his neck has made it to his underwear, and he is not happy about it. Suspected old grease slicks his hair flat to his head.

He does not make a graceful exit. He heaves his leg up, over, and the rest of him flops after it onto asphalt. The sun beats down on the alley. He’s between apartment buildings, a line of shops, and a busy thoroughfare, placed perfectly under the apartment building’s fire escape. Tattered remains of a grapple dangle from the balcony on the third floor. The railing on the second floor is twisted and bowed, and a breeze catches a yellow scrap of fabric hanging on a loose screw.

Mystery solved.

What evidence of his stupidity does not tell him is why he got left here. Robin’s pretty self-sufficient, he’ll give himself that, but he didn’t think the Bat would forget about him. He wouldn’t.

Robin frowns and combs his fingers through the grease slick on his scalp. His comm’s gone, probably making friends with the rats at the bottom of the dumpster. That’s only if it’s still operational. If the Bat thinks he’s gonna dig for it, he’s got another disappointment coming. 

There are two possibilities, Robin decides, after much deliberation and pacing and more sweating next to a dumpster: the Bat is testing him, or something has gone terribly wrong, and it’s up to Robin to do Robin shit. Both are equally likely and unlikely. The Bat is not cruel enough to leave him, possibly dying from a head injury, alone in the city all night. This kind of challenge does, however, have the Bat’s brand of neurosis all over it. He wouldn’t put it past the Bat to see how Robin reacts to having all his resources stripped.

And, well, if this isn’t a perfectly-concocted bundle of fuckery. Robin’s going to play the middle of the field and act like both are true. When in doubt, pick C.

He shrugs off a banana peel. There’s a back door to a Jitters Coffee next to the dumpster. A hopper window to what he assumes is the bathroom is cracked open to air it out. The plan forms before he realizes he’s already scrambled halfway up the wall, inching the window open with one hand.

Wash, undress, escape with incriminating evidence of vigilantism, run. That’s all he’s got. He’s not in prime scheming shape right now. A fact doubly evident because he doesn’t notice the back door swinging open until it smacks him on the ass and he slides down the brick wall, scraping his cheek and stomach, and lands in a pile on the asphalt.

A barista in a yellow Jitters apron, trashbag in hand, goggles at him. He goggles back, caught.

Famously, Gothamites have inoculated themselves against most of the nonsense Gotham throws at them. New Yorkers and Robin’s nine million neighbors are comrades in that way. But there are a few things guaranteed to raise any stubborn Gothamite brow, and daytime sightings of nocturnal creatures like him is one. He gives the good people of Gotham a little too much credit for their tolerance of batshit bullshit and bullshit Bat shit. 

The barista is still staring. Robin reaches up with hands encrusted with garbage to feel for his mask. Valiantly, it is still cemented to his face.

The barista is blue-haired, bespectacled, bedazzled, bepiercinged and bemused, you know, the Barista Works, and Robin immediately decides that he can trust them. The barista, Ash, (yeah, figures, Robin thinks with a rush of congenial affection tempered by his pounding head) according to the nametag, clearly decides the same. Having a costume visible from space helps a lot with civilians. Personal branding is a (boy) wonder. If Robin the Vigilante had a LinkedIn, it’d kill.

Robin’s probably a little more concussed than he thought.

“Can I use your bathroom?” he asks Ash.

Ash blinks and shakes themself. “Uh, yeah. Sorry for, um, dooring you?”

Robin slips on the Robin voice and musters up the rest of the dignity he’s got left as he stands. He brushes himself off, doing nothing but dislodging a candy wrapper off the ‘R’ seal. “My fault for trying to break and enter, really.”

“Sure,” Ash breathes, giving him a once-over that’s confused and star-struck at the same time. They shake themselves again, and with the tacit allyship Robin adores Gothamites for, says, “Use the employee one. Someone exploded something in the customer bathroom yesterday and we haven’t gotten whatever it is out.”

Robin nods, goes to pat Ash on the shoulder, but reconsiders, given their spotless polo and his stained gloves. Ash’s nose wrinkles when he passes by, but he’s too grateful for running water to apologize for the olfactory offense he’s caused.

Robin locks the employee bathroom door behind him and immediately starts stripping. He reeks like hell. Armed with pink liquid soap, an eye wash station, and a tiny sink, he scrubs his hair, arms, and legs as best he can. Hooking his fingers under the peaks of his mask, he pulls, and it dislodges with a soft sucking noise. It leaves a pink ring and bits of adhesive around his eyes. Once he’s about five degrees less repulsive he starts to plot.

At least he wore something under the suit this time. It’s a compression shirt and Nike Pros, but it’s better than nothing. His ankle wraps are soaked with sweat. They drip when he peels them off. He’s barefoot now. Barefoot in Gotham is a one-way trip to Tetanusville, population Robin, so his next order of business is finding a pair of shoes that isn’t a neon green-and-black pair of tactical boots (thanks for nothing, Batman). Then he can worry about getting back to the Cave.

He chucks the Robin suit and his boots out the window, and with an apology toward Ash for the locked door, shimmies out the window back into the fray. He lands with more grace than previous, his feet slapping onto the asphalt. He flicks his soaking hair out of his eyes.

To-find list:

1. Shoes. Shoes that fit, preferably. Will settle for flip-flops.
2. Opaque bag.
3. A dollar for the Gold Line. He left his wallet and his phone at the Manor, which was fine for Robin-who-has-a-ride, but not for Robin-who-doesn’t, stranded in what he now recognizes as the Upper East Side. He could’ve used his G-Zip card if he had his wallet. Hell, he could’ve called a Lyft or something if he had his phone. No use complaining now.

A bag’s as easy as ducking into a Wawa and yanking one of the not-legal black plastic bags from the checkout before the cashier, dead to the world with his head cushioned on the cigarette case, notices. It’s emblazoned with “Z-Mart” in bright blue letters, and in goes the Robin suit, gently dripping garbage juice on his bare feet. The next order of business is a little harder. The only pair of shoes he spots is looped over a power line on Cherry Street. It’s all he’s got. He grimaces, and looks for something to shake them loose.

A man with a full shopping cart watches Robin from his post on a bench with half-interested eyes. The plastic broomstick Robin found on a stoop, next to yet another full dumpster, gives him just enough reach to poke the sole of the lower shoe. Shopping Cart Man raises an eyebrow each time Robin gets the shoes swinging on their laces.

“Almost got it,” Shopping Cart Man calls, bored.

Desperate, impatient, and barefoot, Robin grunts and swings wildly at the shoes, clips them with the end of the broomstick, and they slip off the line to the street. Robin murmurs a thanks and a sorry to whoever threw the shoes up there. He brushes his feet off as best he can before he puts them on. They are slightly damp and slightly big. Shopping Cart Man gives him a polite golf clap in celebration. Robin laughs to and at himself.

“Thanks,” he says. Shopping Cart Man waves at him, and with his show finally finished, starts off down the street with his shopping cart. As the man rounds the corner, Robin notices a pair of clean, dry sneakers that look to be his size in the bottom basket. He sighs and watches the man go, his toes squishing in his pilfered gym shoes.

On further thought, his third item doesn’t seem so possible. A half-dressed teenager, smelling slightly of garbage and wearing shoes that are clearly not his, badgering people on the Upper East Side for money in the middle of the day seems like the kind of thing that would get Gotham’s Finest sniffing around. He comes up with an alternative that isn’t very Bat-approved.

When he’s descending the stairs of Monroe Station, a nun in full gray habit is coming up the other side. He must forget exactly what city he’s in for a moment, because that’s the only plausible explanation for why he thought it was a good idea to lay a hand on her shoulder to get her attention. In two seconds he’s got a bright blue switchblade pressed to his pulse point and his wrist pinned to the subway wall. He doesn’t try to free himself. What, is he gonna punch a nun? He’s not even Catholic and he still feels like that would get him eleventh-plagued by somebody.

Gingerly, so she doesn’t shave off what little peach fuzz he’s got on his jaw, he gestures surrender. “Just wanted to know if there were any cops on the platform,” he says. The nun’s brow irons out and her little blue switchblade disappears into her bag. 

“Sorry about that, dear!” she says. “I thought you was trying to rob me.”

“That was pretty clear, yeah,” Robin says. He massages the nick her knife left under his jaw.

“I didn’t actually look,” she hums. “I don’t think I saw any. Watch yourself.”

Thus ends his fruitless quest for a dollar. The nun takes off before he can ask for further mercy. Robin will take his chances. 

Monroe Station is one of the nicer ones. It’s tiled in the Edwardian style all stations south of 50th on the Mid-Isle and South Isle share. The station name should be written in copper letters on the back of the platform, if Robin could see it, but there’s a train in the way. It’s a westbound Gold Line train, which means it goes straight to Burnside across the Gotham River, and will take Robin closer to Bristol. 

The doors are hissing as the pneumatic mechanisms and air filters engage, so he’s got about four seconds to get to the car. He’s halfway through vaulting over the turnstile when a GCPD officer makes direct eye contact, hidden behind the boarded-up ticket stand, where he would have been hidden from Sister Switchblade. Robin’s already over the turnstile. The officer’s already going for his radio. Robin puts on a burst of speed and careens into the train carriage, smashing into the opposite door. 

Gotham’s subway doors could withstand a grenade blast. In fact, they have. The officer doesn’t even try to stop them from closing for fear of his extremities. He’s talking into his radio, watching Robin pull away to the next station, which Robin thinks is Kane. Because of course, Gotham’s Finest have nothing better to do than hunt down turnstile jumpers cheating the Gotham City Transport Authority out of a cool one dollar and zero cents. God, he doesn’t know how many cops like to hang out at Kane. They’ve got the fucking Batmobile! He gets driven to school!

He knows how to disappear in a crowd, even in the Robin suit. It’s about changing your profile. Taking things off, putting things on. Make the you they saw disappear. The problem as of ten seconds ago is if Robin takes off anything else he’ll have a public indecency charge on his hands, and if he puts on anything in the bag he’s got the situation will be Bad and Worse and Also Smelly.

He’s startled out of his minor panic attack by a sea of tennis ball yellow. A group in matching T-shirts advertising a WayneTech business conference this weekend stare at him. Twenty eyes. He’s desperate.

“Do youse have any extra shirts?” he asks. His question startles a woman at the front of the crowd into digging through her canvas tote bag, faded merch from a breast cancer charity run that happened before he was born. A younger man grabs her wrist, hissing, “Jen!” but she swats him away, and lobs an XXL at Robin. Robin catches it and shrugs it on. He’s swimming in it, but it works.

“I don’t want to carry that around all day if he’s not going to bother to show up!” Jen hisses back. She’s got spectacular cat-eye glasses Robin thinks Oracle would be a fan of.

“Uh, thanks,” Robin says, but Jen is too busy arguing with tall-and-mad to pay him any mind.

“What if he’s held up at the office or something? What are you going to tell him, that you gave his shirt to some random kid who was running from the cops?”

“He’s hardly running from the cops—”

“I cannot stress enough how much he actually is running from the cops—”

“It was like five dollars flat!”

Jen has a wedding ring, Tall-and-Mad does not. Her blonde hair dye is grown out, and so is her gel manicure. Tall-and-Mad’s hair is frozen with gel and he’s chosen a shirt a size too small. Tall-and-Mad wants to look good, and Jen is having financial troubles. Judging by the tired looks on their coworkers’ faces, this occurrence is constant. Before the argument can come to blows, and before Robin can melt into the wall out of embarrassment, the train slows. He ducks under Tall-and-Mad’s arm to press himself into the door between train cars, behind the main mass of matching T-shirts.

On the platform, two GCPD officers are scanning the windows of train cars. They don’t spot him. Robin sighs. He sticks to the crowd until they get off at North Row, Jen and Tall-and-Mad still bickering quietly, and Robin sinks to his heels on the sticky subway floor. A man in a black battlejacket and red liberty spikes is crocheting at the end of the car, bobbing his head to the thrashing guitar in his headphones Robin hears all the way down here.

They don’t have turnstile watchers at Riverside West. The slower train that crosses the river into Burnside is empty except for Robin. Bristol doesn’t really need train service, because most everyone that lives in Bristol has their own drivers, but a commuter line to Bristol Township comes every hour or so, on weekdays. So Robin sits and waits. And when the train comes, he sits on the train and waits. And when he gets to Bristol, he walks the two miles to Wayne Manor. He doesn’t bother with the gate buzzer — Alfred’s gone, naturally, because his current situation was cooked up in God’s mad laboratory of fate to make everything as difficult as possible.

He scales the wrought-iron fence. Finials snag his XXL T-shirt on the way down, ripping a hole through June 23-25, and then, at the very end of his journey, his goal two inches of fine Victorian ebony away, he tries the handle on Wayne Manor’s front door, and it’s locked.

Robin has to sit there in silence for two minutes. Otherwise, he’d do something fun and silly like go for the axe he knows is buried in a stump out back, and he’d shame great-great-whatever-granddaddy Wayne with what he does next.

After some breathing exercises, he tries the kitchen door, the veranda door, the mudroom door, each of the massive French doors to the ballrooms, plural, the sunroom, the seldom-used servant’s entrance, and in a fit of pique, tries to kick the cellar door down. Hell, he didn’t even bring his lockpicking tools in his utility belt, like a dumbass. Robin’s considering the dimensions of the chimney when a hinge announces itself by squeaking in the wind. Robin looks up. He didn’t lock his casement window after sneaking out and down the tree two nights ago. His salvation is a half-inch of space between the sill and the rail.

He’s in the basement in under three minutes. He exits the stairwell to an empty Batcave. The half of Robin that’s still treating this like a test is getting a little worried.

He dumps his suit, cape and all, in the Bat-washing machine next to the Bat-dryer, where it’s going to marinate in Batsoap and Batbleach and whatever else he dumps in there for a Batwhile. He rips the laces out of his boots and spreads them over a vent to get the stink out. Alfred has refused to do night job laundry since September, after their last run-in with Clayface, and Robin can’t say he blames the guy. He does miss the good laundry soap Alfred uses on everything else. It’s something industrial and nosehair-burning down here.

Then he calls Oracle. Who sends him straight to voicemail. 

He sits in awe of his circumstances for a second. And he calls again. This time she picks up on the big screen.

“Yes, Batcave, what can I do for you?” She starts, facing away from him. She pivots, then grimaces. "Jesus Christ, Robin, you look ridden hard and put up wet.”

“Hi. I’m getting that impression,” Robin says. “I woke up in a dumpster in East Gotham at noon with a mild concussion and no Batman. Did he say anything to you about training me?”

She blinks a little, frowns, remembering. "What? Did you say noon? I logged the Batmobile's locator chip in the Batcave at like 3:30 last night. I assumed you guys got back alright. Are you okay?"

Robin turns, and sure enough, the Batmobile is parked behind him.

“No, I’m concussed, napped in garbage, took a sink bath where no man should, nearly got knifed by a nun, and got chased by cops. I’ve had an afternoon,” Robin says. “I thought this was some kind of fucked-up Robin test, but that’s looking less likely.”

Oracle shakes her head at the new information and steamrolls forward. “Robin, I don’t think he’d cook up something like this.”

“Barbie, please look me in the eyes and say that again,” Robin says.

Oracle hesitates for half a second, but it’s long enough. "There’s training, and there’s abandonment. Why didn’t you call me? I could have picked you up. Had somebody pick you up. Where’s your earpiece?”

Robin groans and scrubs his eyes with his hands. “It’s probably at the bottom of a dumpster on the Upper East Side.”

"Ah,” Oracle says. “Okay. I’m going to self-destruct that now.”

Eight miles away, a loud pop echoes through the alley, scaring exactly twenty-seven rats out of the dumpster, terrifying Ash the barista, who’d finally remembered to finish taking the garbage out after running into Robin. Ash’s scream startles a retired journalist in the apartments above, in the middle of her daily calisthenics. She stumbles into the window, rattling her fire escape, unfurling the ruined grapple from its railing, sending it sailing to the alleyway below, where it cracks Ash in the head. Ash screams again out of misery instead of fear, takes this as a sign from God, rips off their apron, and quits their job on the spot to pursue any career that will make proper use of their bachelors in communications.

“Seems a bit dangerous to have a tiny bomb in our ear,” Robin says.

"Don’t think about it too hard,” Oracle says. "I don’t want you vomiting on the terminal, Mr. Head Trauma.”

“I’m not that concussed,” Robin says. He starts flicking through the in-out logs of the Batcave.

“Says the guy with a bruise covering his entire neck,” Oracle says. Robin reaches up and touches his neck. There’s a little dried blood behind his ear. He understands a bit of the look on that barista’s face, now. He was probably bloody from scalp to nape. 

Oracle notices him typing. “Ah ah ah! Stop that!”

The keyboard locks. Robin grumbles. He flops into Batman’s spinny chair and crosses his arms like a kid in time-out.

“We are gonna limit your screen time, you and me, and we’re gonna figure this out, I promise you,” Oracle says. She’s close enough to the camera, bent over her keyboard, that he can see the smudges on her glasses. Robin smiles despite himself. “But first, I think bathtime is calling your name. And a change of clothes. You look like you’re wearing a dress that got put through a woodchipper. With you in it.”

“Thanks, Gordon,” Robin mutters. He plucks his collar, surveying the damage.

“I mean it. I’ll try to figure out when you two got separated last night. In the meantime, you bring yourself back to life, ‘kay, Wonder Boy?”

“Fine,” he says, stripping off the ragged yellow shirt and borrowed sneakers as he heads back up the stairs to the empty house. “Half an hour. I’ll be back.”

Oracle gives him a brutal once-over, and deadpans, “Uh huh. I’ll be waiting.”

He scrubs his entire body red raw. He shampoos his hair until it squeaks between his fingers. He shaves for good measure. In the forty-five minutes it actually takes, he stews.

It’s official. It’s Robin’s time to do Robin shit. A list of deductions:

1. Oracle was clueless about Robin and Batman’s whereabouts, meaning her GPS software is limited to their vehicles. They don’t have reliable locator chips in these suits. This will have to be something they rectify when — if he can find Batman.
2. Oracle was clueless about their separation, meaning Batman had no reason to, or no opportunity to send out a distress signal. Robin, in those mushy hours before his concussion, didn’t send a distress signal either. They were surprised, ambushed, or otherwise incapable.
3. Batman did not log a successful patrol after the Batmobile was registered as docked at 3:30 a.m. He is so anal about logging patrol. He did not come with the Batmobile to the Cave. The car was on auto-drive mode, with no one inside. Something only possible through Batman’s belt controls, the Batcomputer, or the dashboard. This gives them a timeframe. Leave it to the detective to drop clues.
4. Robin has been concussed, drugged, delirious, blind, deaf, but he’s not run away from Batman. If anything, he clings to him. If they’d been separated, it would have been forceful. Batman wouldn’t have left him in a dumpster otherwise.

Batman might have been taken during patrol (impressive feat in itself, the man is the size of a box truck). If that was true, they didn’t think Robin was important, or threatening enough, to take with him. Ouch. Or Robin escaped. Less ouch.

A second possibility: fear gas. The only drug that’s made Robin run.

Robin jolts. And he just took a fucking shower. Like an idiot.

He shuts off the water and scrambles out of the tub so fast he almost brains himself on the tile. He roots through his drawers, swabs his nose, his tear ducts, his teeth, his ears, between his toes, the shower drain. Any powder residue. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

He sticks the swabs in the first clean baggie he finds and gets dressed while falling over himself. He sprints down the stairs, audibly startling Oracle, who’s still on the call, and preps the swabs for the test tubes in the spectrometer. Only once the door clicks shut does he realize Oracle's watching him, unimpressed.

“I assume the mania means you had a shower thought,”  Oracle says, dryly. 

“Maybe,” he says. He watches the progress bar on the display click forward, one percent at a time. “If Mahogany Teakwood didn’t take all the evidence away.”

“If you’re done staring the computer to death, I found a few things,” Oracle says.

“Hit me,” Robin says.

“You don’t want that, fencepost,” Oracle says, pulling up a video interface. It’s a fuzzy nightvision security cam. Robin recognizes Little Odessa by the Dzerchenko Greengrocer on the corner of 80th and East Pine. 

“Squint,” Oracle says. She clicks play. “ Or watch it in your peripheral.”

Robin does neither of those things.

The Batmobile paints an aerodynamic black smudge against the limestone brickwork of Little Odessa. Other than the requisite discomfort of seeing oneself from behind (is that really what his hair looks like?), nothing strikes him as unusual about their behavior. He and the Bat grapple to the top of the greengrocer (flick, a view from a birdwatcher’s cam on a distant rooftop), take off across the rooftops (flick, a view from a traffic cam at an intersection), make a pit stop to foil a mugging, dash across a building Robin knows houses a money laundering scheme disguised as a hair salon (flick, a view from a window webcam pointed at another building’s second floor, for nosy neighbors’ spying purposes, he suspects) and jump to street level, disappearing behind the hair faux-lon. The video stops.

Robin glances up at Oracle in surprise. “That’s all?”

“I’m your eyes in the sky, not a miracle worker,” Oracle says. “But yes, that’s all. You drop toward the Shevchenkos’ neighborhood and then you’re gone. I lose you. Do you remember any of that?”

He shakes his head. Beyond little flashes of that mugging, his concussion has stolen the rest.

“No traffic cams?” he asks. None. “No Batmobile movement?” Not since 2:45 that morning, when they parked, or 3:00, when it started moving on auto. “Dammit.”

He spins the chair around, kicking off the terminal to go faster, faster. The Batcave smears. The dark mouth of the abyss, the searing blue light of the computer, the dark blur, the blue blur, again and again. 

“You’re making me dizzy,” Oracle says, but vacantly, like she’s thinking too.

There aren’t accessible tunnels in the Shevchenko section of town, besides sewers. If he’d been splashing through sewers, he’d probably know, since hot human sewage has a smell distinct from the garbage he’d been snuggled up in. They might’ve ducked into a building, but that block’s all residential. 

“What were you even doing in Little Odessa?”

Robin remembers at least that much. “Literally nothing. It was just patrol.”

He hooks his foot around the side of the terminal, jolting to a stop.

“Oracle, when do I pop up again?” he asks.

She clicks around for a few minutes. In the silence, he gets a vague sense that he’s hungry, but he’s too focused on the current problem to register it.

Oracle makes a little noise. The security camera feed of a helicopter pad at a hospital pulls up, and Oracle zooms in toward a section of roofs a block or two away. A timestamp reads 03:01. From the right, a lonely figure moves across rooftops. His gait is stilted and slow, but he staggers like he’s still trying to run. Robin leans in, watches his last-night self drag his arm up, fire a grapple that, based on its aborted movement, is damaged. The motorized rotor pulls him forward, limp like a doll, then stalls, and Robin tips over the side of the building. The cable gives. He slams into the fire escape, ribs first, and disappears behind a billboard. 

Robin grimaces and palpates his side. He’d discovered a florid bruise covering his entire left side while in the shower. He has the armored sections of his suit to thank for not having half his ribs broken.

Disappears at 2:51, reappears at 3:01. Ten minutes of nothing. Batman evaporating between.

“You can’t find me before this?” he asks, though he already knows the answer. Oracle frowns and shakes a negative. Oracle lets him sit in silence while he thinks. He sees her typing, so she’s vetting her own theories.

From the Shevchenko neighborhood to the Jitters on Finger Ave., it’s about 40 blocks. Robin tops out at a block every 15 seconds, a 20-block mile in 5 minutes, with a grapple. 3 a.m. Robin looks injured. 3 a.m. Robin doesn’t have a functional grapple. Traveling 40 blocks in ten minutes would be impossible. Top-shape Robin would just about make it in 10 minutes on foot on the ground level, not even taking into account finishing whatever fight he clearly lost, and scaling a building out of the visual range of the helipad cam to appear on the rooftop on Finger Ave. 

… he was in a vehicle. A not-Batmobile vehicle.

It’s a little bit of a stretch, but if he was a henchman, and he had the Boy Wonder and the Dark Knight on, or in his vehicle, he’d probably be frantic. He’d probably not want to risk any sort of delay.

“Oracle, are there any traffic cam flags in that time window in those forty blocks?”

"Well, yes, it’s a Thursday night, Friday morning in Gotham,” Oracle says. “ There’s like a hundred traffic violations in those ten minutes alone just in Somerset. If I exclude vehicles on the west side, that’s still a little under sixty.”

So he’s got to narrow it down. Any crew big enough to get the jump on Batman and Robin won’t fit in a sedan. A fully-geared Batman won’t fit in a sedan, either.

“Rule out any small or mid-sized sedans,” Robin says. In the spreadsheet next to Oracle’s head, several cells black out. A pause, and then another follows. “What was that?”

"A city bus going seventy in a thirty,” Oracle says. Good old Gotham.

Plates that don’t match the car? Two, neither have Batman in the footage. Three appropriately-sized work vans are caught for illegal U-turns or California-stopping through an empty red light, so no dice there. A U-Haul goes the wrong way in a one-way. No distinctive vehicles on the list. No one with arrest warrants.

They could sit here for hours and sort through all the footage, but they won’t if Robin can help it. He’s got to get narrower. Big enough to hold a crew and the two of them, and anonymous enough to avoid scrutiny.

Who’s driving at 3 a.m. on a Friday on the Mid-Isle? Racers, Ubers from bars, graveyard shift workers, and…

“Garbage trucks,” Robin breathes. All those full dumpsters. Friday morning was trash day for the far eastern Mid-Isle. One truck didn’t complete its route.

Robin hears the smile in Oracle’s voice when she says, “Bingo.” One result.

A Gotham City Utilities garbage truck blows through a red light on the main drag of the gayborhood between Little Odessa and the commercial section of the Upper East Side. It almost causes a pileup. It’s shaking back and forth down 65th, scrapes up a parked Nissan Altima on Longshore Ave., and next to a lesbian nightclub on 63rd, Robin busts out a window in the cab and tumbles onto the street, his fall cushioned by a Honda CRV and a patch of hedges. He stumbles to his feet and half-grapples, half-drags himself up a neighboring brownstone. Based on how he’s moving, he’s already injured. He didn’t follow the truck, like he would’ve done if he had all his faculties, so he was probably already concussed  — or drugged. The street’s crowded. The program that helps Oracle search footage must’ve registered him as a pedestrian.

So, Robin did escape. He tries not to feel a little smug. Then the worry for Batman squashes the smugness.

Oracle follows the truck down through the Upper East side, south of Robinson Park, down into the South Isle, and across the Vincefinkel Bridge. Toward Blüdhaven. The truck stops shaking around the courthouse. Robin left him there. He left him.

Robin groans and sags in his seat.

Beep. The analyzer’s finished. No fear gas residue found.

Fuck.

Oracle tracks the truck back to the garage. Stolen at midnight, thieves unseen. Dead end. He kicks the terminal hard enough that it rings throughout the silent Batcave. Robin jolts up from the seat and starts pacing a hole in the floor. He snags his hair between his hands. He’s swearing at himself so colorfully Alfred would probably lay him out. Oracle interrupts his episode.

“Are those your girlfriend’s shorts?”

He blinks at the non sequitur and looks down. They’re jean cutoffs. He’s got stars embroidered on his butt pockets. He doesn’t correct her on the whole girlfriend/ex-girlfriend thing. If she wanted them back, she shouldn’t have left them in his laundry. Finders keepers.

“What, jealous of my digs?” he asks. Leave it to Oracle to screw his head back on.

She blows past his fashion choices and her fashion critiques, steepling her fingers in front of her monitor. “Listen, Robin, this is… I’m gonna call —”

“Do you think I’ve never had to rescue him before?” Robin asks. He leans against the terminal. An array of emotions flashes over her face.

“You’re gonna need help,” she protests.

“I have help,” he smiles. It’s only a little fake. All this screentime has escalated the needle in his forehead to a fire axe. He tries not to make it look like a grimace, and judging by Oracle’s wince, he doesn’t do it very well. “I have you.”

She smiles a little at the flattery, but still scrubs her hand over her forehead. “Take another earpiece with you, please. And I’ll call Dick, you’ll be in his jurisdiction. You know the rules.”

“I know the rules,” he echoes. He tilts his head back. Air from the ventilation system rocks the acrobatic bars behind him gently. A thin layer of dust cakes the chains.

“I mean it, Robin, if I hear anything…” she trails off, but the threat is implicit.

She shifts in her chair. Robin sees the anxiety in the tense line of her shoulders. “You don’t have to worry about me, Oracle.”

“Worry about you?” she says. "Robin, I know you. It’s not you I’m worried about.”

She moves back, and the late afternoon sun pools into the clocktower behind her, in great golden ponds, gleaming on picture frames and her sleek, modern coffee table. “Put your shirt on right.”

And with that, the call ends. Robin is alone in the Batcave with a backward jersey and a splitting headache. Now, he’s gonna go upstairs and pop what is scientifically known as a metric fuck-ton of ibuprofen.

A list of objects which cannot be legally classified as stolen from Wayne Manor:

1. Dick Grayson’s old pair of blue Converse, beaten to hell and therefore comfy as hell, forgotten in his closet, signed in Sharpie by no less than a dozen then-teenaged heroes, some dead, some famous, some forgotten.
2. Bruce Wayne’s pickpocket-proof backpack.
3. A cracked WayneTech Lightning 9, in a waterproof red Otterbox.
4. A fine leather wallet, fit for a “young gentleman” as per the gifter, containing only 20 USD, a library card, a high school ID, a G-Zip student pass, a gold AmEx, and a loyalty card to a bubble tea shop on Leighton Boulevard, halfway to one free drink.
5. A pair of dollar-store earbuds. A set of housekeys on a Nightwing-themed keychain, for the way it makes Batman’s eye twitch.
6. A rightways Gotham Knights jersey (Campbell, #12, to be precise), a pair of American Eagle size 28 acid-wash jean shorts with pink stars on the ass, and a plain black zip-up hoodie, folded neatly and stowed away.
7. Five calorie-bomb protein bars, an apple, and a Diet Coke.
8. A top-of-the-line Bat-tech earpiece, market value ~$4,000. A new grappling gun.
9. A spare domino mask, just in case. 
10. A collapsible titanium alloy bo-staff.
11. A second Diet Coke, taken without a butler nearby to give a withering stare.

Oracle calls him again when he’s taken an entire row on the commuter line to Blüdhaven all for himself. The dark wall of the Pine Barrens whizzes past the window, interspersed with glimpses of Highway 61. Distant cars gleam and scuttle like little beetles in the sun. Robin crosses his borrowed raggedy Converse against the window and lays back on his bag, warding away potential neighbors in the seat next to him. He’s alone in the car, for now.

“Dick isn’t answering,” Oracle says, in lieu of a greeting.

“Good afternoon, Barbie, hi, how are you?” Robin says. He traps his phone between his ear and shoulder to study the rainbow of bruises along his knees and thighs a little closer. Splotched in livid watercolor, splattered with red flecks of broken blood vessels, slashed with pink and white scar tissue — he’s got the legs of a soccer player who isn’t particularly good. Or that’ll be his cover story if anyone’s rude enough to stare.

“Hi,” Oracle drawls. Robin can hear the eyeroll. “Dick’s not answering his personal cell or his Bat-whatever. I checked the City of Blüdhaven EMS staff logs and he didn’t clock in today, but he was scheduled for 11 a.m.”

“You hacked the City of Blüdhaven municipal website? That’s illegal,” Robin says. He chews on a hangnail.

This eyeroll is even louder, and it’s paired with a scoff. “Don’t be ridiculous. I have his username and his password. He uses the same ones for everything.”

Robin pauses, hangnail halfway separated and bleeding a little now. “Everything?”

Oracle snorts. “Pretty much.”

“So, what?” Robin says. “Did he sleep through his alarm? Is he dead in a ditch?”

“I wish I could tell you,” Oracle says. “I’ve got a tracker in that shitty little beater of his, but it hasn’t moved either. I would call his landlady to check on him if I knew he wasn’t passed out in his bathtub in the uniform, or something. You’re gonna have to track him down, Robin, sorry.”

Robin sighs. He tucks his knees to his chest, wiggles so his head is hanging off the seat into the aisle, and studies the pink bubblegum on the bottom of the neighboring seat.

“It won’t be the first time,” he says. Oracle huffs in his ear. 

His phone buzzes in his hand, startling him bad enough he nearly drops it. He fumbles and catches it. Dad’s calling. Robin winces.

“Sorry, my dad —” Robin starts. 

Oracle interrupts. “I know, I saw. Talk to you later. And stop chewing your nails, it’s gross.”

Robin frowns. After a moment of searching, he finds the camera above the exit door. “You’re a weirdo.”

“Pot, kettle. Bye,” Oracle says.

After Oracle hangs up, Robin hesitates a moment, finger hovering over the ‘accept call’ button. Dad smiles down at him, slightly less gray and crow’s feet shallower. The picture’s from a gala the summer before 6th grade, when he was on break from boarding school, and Robin had felt grown-up and handsome in a new tux that matched his dad’s. It’s cropped, the photo, so on the left edge his mom’s shellacked movie star waves brush his dad’s shoulder, his arm stretching past the frame to tug her in by the waist. Mom’s contact photo is the other half, but he doesn’t get to see that one anymore.

Robin picks up. He sits up straight, feet tucking under his thighs, staring out at the Pine Barrens.

“Hey, Dad,” Robin says. He presses a green-going-yellow bruise on his inner thigh with his thumb. 

“Hey, kiddo!” Dad’s voice is light, jovial. An eavesdropper wouldn’t think anything of it, but Robin detects a note of anxiety. “ Just wondering where you were. I know you said you’d be spending the night with…” — a very tetchy pause —   “...the Waynes, but I wasn’t sure when... are you — well, I thought — do you know when you’ll be home?”

Fuck, fuck, fuck. Robin’s the worst son ever. He didn’t even think to call his dad and tell him he was, you know, alive. His dad’s at home all day getting stir-crazy, and they’ve got plans on Sunday — fishing, he remembers, with no small amount of dread.

“Oh, yeah,” Robin says. He flips through his mental rolodex of alibis. “Sorry, uh, I slept until noon, and then Ives called me. He wanted go see… a movie? I’m heading to his house right now.”

“Oh! ” his dad says. There’s a half-second too-long pause. Robin presses his bruise harder. Dana must be busy today. “Which one?”

Shit. He has no idea what movies are in theaters right now. He hasn’t gone to a movie theater in like, four months. He doesn’t think his dad will fact-check him, but…

“...Planet of the Apes?”

“That sounds, uh, fun?” 

“I mean, I can call him and tell him I won’t make it, if you want me to come home,” His dad won’t say yes. He’ll feel too bad about dragging him away from his friends to be stuck inside the house all day. Robin hates manipulating his dad like this. He’ll have to make up for it on Sunday.

“No, no,” his dad says, like he expected. “You go hang out with your friends. It’s summertime. This old man can keep himself entertained.”

Robin shifts uncomfortably where he sits. “Okay, um, I will.”

He hears the smile through the phone when Dad says, “Talk to you later, kiddo.”

“Bye, dad,” Robin says. His dad hums in reply, and the call ends. Chino Moreno’s tenor picks up mid-lyric through the speaker, guitars shrieking, right where Oracle interrupted a few minutes ago. Robin leans his forehead against the glass, breath fogging. Blüdhaven’s red brick outskirts are winding through the trees, evergreen sea giving way to Gotham’s littler, messier sister. 

Blüdhaven’s creeping toward Burnside, the handwringing anchors on the 6 o’clock news are always saying, and in twenty years or so they might share a Spine and arteries, school districts and crime. Grand theft auto, burglary, muggings, oh my! What terror! Dad is always grumbling to himself while the chirping hosts bicker back and forth, about crumbling infrastructure and the Blüdhaven Police De-fart-ment and Nightwing, said with the venom reserved for masks. Robin always pretends to not be listening when they mention Nightwing, but he keeps an ear open. Sometimes, that’s the only time he learns about what Nightwing’s up to — Dick files reports when his cases cross into Gotham, which isn’t often enough to ease Robin’s worries. GCN doesn’t seem to like Nightwing very much. Nightwing doesn’t like GCN very much.

Parkthorne Avenue isn’t far from the train station, a couple of run-down residential blocks away, close enough to walk. This section of Blüdhaven is part failed warehouses, converted into apartments, and part old company tenements, converted into storefronts if lucky, crumbling to ruin if not. Dick lives in a little brick low-rise squashed between an abandoned cannery and a corner store that’s got the door propped open with a brick, a singer’s sugar-sweet warbles floating into the street. When Robin passes by, the cashier’s turned around to face the TV behind the counter. A tabby cat snores in the empty shelves between cooking oil and pallets of grape Zesti, bottled, not canned.

Dick’s building is soot-stained and in desperate need of renovation. The fire escape is rusted. Glass panes are smudged with fifty years of filth. As a point of pride, he goes for Dick’s window first, but Dick’s learned his lesson and has jammed it shut with a rod and set a new device with a bright green LED just out of sight on the sill. He’ll have to subject Dick to the dejected act later, see if he can get the taser moved, at least. It’s easy to make Dick feel guilty. Dick and Dick’s dad are more similar than they like to pretend, and wallow in their guilt like pigs in mud. Robin’s in no mood to smash a window nor get tased, so he decides the old-fashioned way will have to do.

The front concrete steps are crumbling. He braces himself on the wobbly wrought-iron rail and presses the buzzer for 3A. Then, for good measure, every other buzzer. Someone’s always waiting for company. The voice that answers the buzzer is gregarious, extremely Irish, and eats up the sweet, concerned kid brother act with zero further interrogation. He’s in Dick’s apartment without any more fuss, using the key he 3D-printed in the Batcave, because Dick’s too smart to outright give him a key, but it’s not like that was gonna stop him, and Dick knows it too. 

Dick’s door alarm is easy to disable. It takes two seconds standing in his foyer to know that he’s not home. The air is stale and cold. Dick’s shitty pair of Doc Martens are missing from the shoe shelf at the door. Robin tugs his shoes off in a pile on the peeling linoleum and strides further into the apartment.

His blinds are open. A half-vivisected piece of tech spills its guts across the coffee table, glittering wires twisting in the crusty shag carpet square Dick uses as a living room rug. A miniature toolbox, excreting a screwdriver set Dick didn’t bother to put back straight, balances an empty Chinese takeout container on the open lid. Wooden chopsticks stick straight up between the couch cushions, a stained garbage day cast-off Dick and one of his Titan friends had lugged in off the curb, because it “only had like one stain, and it wasn’t that smelly, I promise.” Robin thinks it’s supposed to be green. Dick’s bed, tucked behind a crane-patterned paper divider, is unmade, navy sheets, flat pillows, and striped comforter tangled so bad Robin knows Dick can’t be sleeping well lately. 

Dishes are piled high in Dick’s sink. His trashcan is full and he’s resorted to using a cardboard box as secondary trash. Half his cabinet doors hang crooked. The microwave door is open, orange light shining around an abandoned mug. Robin pulls the string to turn the kitchen light on, spurring a moth trapped in the glass, whack, whack, whack. He rescues the mug from the microwave, takes a sip, gags, and spits it out into the sink. That coffee’s not from this morning, and it’s not from yesterday, either. Robin empties the mug, doing some cursory funeral rites for whatever ecosystem Dick had begotten.

Blood stains the sink in Dick’s shoebox bathroom. Suture trimmings are stuck to the drain. Dick’s medicine cabinet is a veritable buy-one-get-one felony possession charge, a vigilante career hazard. A $1 Irish Spring bar is getting cozy with the jumbo-sized Redken Frizz Dismiss in the shower.

A deduction:

1. Holy shit, Dick, what the fuck?

Robin chooses his favorite from Dick’s vast array of crazy straws (red, twisty, can be worn as glasses) and cracks open his now lukewarm, second Diet Coke on Dick’s biohazard couch. Cola swirls around his eyes and into his mouth. Dick hasn’t been here for at least two days, and maybe Robin should drop in on him a little more often. He’s not dying in the tub. He’s not at work. If some two-bit criminal got the jump on Nightwing they’d never shut the fuck up about it. His car hasn’t moved.

Robin figures it out just as two pairs of feet are coming up the stairs. Their owners are talking in low, hoarse tones that cut off when they see Dick’s front door cracked. A second of silence. Robin sips.

The door busts open and slams into the opposite wall. Dick jumps in first, in full Muay Thai guard, followed by Wally West, armed with the dusty vase of fake flowers Robin saw in the hall.

“Hey,” Robin says. Wally shrieks and chucks the entire vase at his head. All the outlets in the room spit blue sparks, Robin’s ears pop, and Wally’s caught the vase an inch from smashing into Robin’s face. Wally lets out a long breath. He hugs the vase to his chest and smiles down at Robin. There’s a tightness around the eyes. It’s strained.

“Hi, Robin, long time no see!” Wally says. Robin twiddles his fingers up at Wally, letting the soda spiral away. Wally’s wearing basketball shorts, Crocs, and a zip-up hoodie over a tank top. Comfy home clothes. 

Robin slides his gaze over to Dick. He’s looking back at Robin with heavy, tired eyes. Dick’s hair is still a little wet from a recent shower. His Docs are on, but unlaced, gray sweatpants tucked under the tongues, an oversized band T-shirt hanging off his shoulders. His arms are splotched with bruises. Dick looks how Robin feels.

Never let it be said Wally West doesn’t know Dick Grayson. He glances once between Robin and Dick, senses some brewing tension, and places the vase between them on the coffee table. A sacrifice.

“How’s school?” Wally asks. He fidgets. Dick bends to tug his Docs off. He notices the Converse, and a twinge of pain flashes across his face, there and gone.

“Um, good, I guess?” Robin says. He watches Dick cross his apartment and wrench the fridge open in his peripheral. “It’s summer, so…”

“Oh, right,” Wally says, humor weaker. He glances at Dick, and Dick’s eyes pop up over the fridge door, glittering at Wally. They have a silent conversation, and Wally sighs. “Is something, uh, wrong?”

Dick frowns into his fridge. The contents are sparse: mustard, sriracha, eggs, protein shakes, wilted lettuce, leftovers from that Ethiopian place down the street Robin’s loved ever since Dick took him after their first patrol together, moldy cheese.

“We’ve been looking for you all afternoon,” Robin says, to start, and it must press one of Dick’s hidden bruises, because he slams the fridge shut so hard the shelves rattle. Robin bites his cheek.

“Right, I forgot I was on a short fucking leash,” he mutters, turning away from Robin and pinching his nose bridge in a gesture so Bruce Robin realizes several things about what exactly is transpiring here. Robin’s mouth thins, and this time he and Wally have the silent conversation with their eyes.

Dick paces his peeling linoleum like a caged tiger. Wally’s mouth opens and shuts without mustering up any words. In diplomacy’s stead, he tidies Dick’s coffee table. His hands blur. Robin waits out Dick’s temper. He cards his feet through the carpet.

Dick stops pacing. He folds his hands in front of him, takes a measured breath, and spins back to Robin. “Well?”

“The Bat’s gone,” Robin says.

The last of Dick’s temper drains. His shoulders relax, he stands taller, stance spreading, Nightwing folding over him. He looks at Robin this time, really looks at him, in his bruised, exhausted, concussed glory, and crosses the apartment in two strides. He crouches in front of him. A haze of purple shadows his cheekbone. There’s stitches in his eyebrow. 

Discretion being the better part of valor, Wally retreats toward the kitchen and starts scrubbing dishes to act like he isn’t listening. Dick reaches up to pull the straw glasses off his face. For one electric, humiliating moment, Robin lurches forward, toward Dick’s touch, but Dick’s already pulled the crazy straw off Robin’s face and let it swing on his index finger. It’s a twitch more than a lean, a movement Robin only feels and Dick can’t see, but the embarrassment at his desperation creeps in all the same.

You don’t know-know him, he reminds himself. Dick the nice guy, Dick the friend, Dick the role model, Dick the fucking sunspot, Dick whose shoes he steals and whose mantle he sometimes feels like he grave-robbed, Dick who isn’t his brother, but who calls his rambling spouts of heroing and teenagering advice his “mentorly duty.” Robin kicks his socked feet up on the coffee table and focuses on the framed Flying Graysons risograph hung crooked on the opposite wall. Dick, clueless, spins the crazy straw on his finger and collapses next to him on the sofa in a deceptively nonchalant sprawl. His under-eye circles and furrowed brow betray the picture of cool he’d otherwise be.

“Go ahead, Robin,” Nightwing says. He used to stumble over that name when Robin first started. He’d turn to him during stakeouts and address his chin first before jerking up to his eyes. Now, there’s no delay. Robin is Robin. “Fill me in.”

With help from Oracle over the phone, Robin relays the sordid tale of his afternoon, Wally punctuating with sympathetic noises where appropriate. Nightwing steeples his hands and leans forward on his knees. His thinking face is exactly like the Bat’s. Robin bites his tongue.

“And before you ask, yes, I followed the truck into Blüdhaven. Haven hasn’t really gotten the memo that we live in a surveillance state, now, so I lose it around 4:30 in Markettown,” Oracle says. She’s tinny through Robin’s phone speaker. Nightwing scrubs his hand over his mouth. The couch is shitty but comfortable, Robin is exhausted, and Nightwing’s hip is leeching warmth against his own. Let it be known he fights the drowsiness best he can. “I’ll keep digging. They’ve got to hit a toll booth. Or a traffic cam. Or some doomsday nut’s perch! It’s like whoever’s behind this wants to drive me crazy, specifically.”

“You’re fine, Babs,” Nightwing says. “Whatever you’ve got, we’ll take. We’re very grateful.”

Robin yawns. Mary Grayson grins back at him. Nightwing elbows him, hard, right in his bad ribs. Robin squawks, twisting away from his pointy elbows. 

“We’re very grateful,” Nightwing repeats. 

“So grateful,” Robin parrots. Oracle snorts.

A fat sealpoint cat lands on the fire escape outside. Robin turns to watch it, and at the same moment, Wally takes out the garbage (door, stairs, entrance, street, dumpster, and back, 0.4 seconds, 341 miles per hour), and upon zooming into Dick’s studio apartment, yelps. Both Nightwing and Robin’s heads whip toward him. Robin blinks, hard, against sudden vertigo. The cat puffs up and leaps out of sight.

“You’re bleeding. Like, bad,” he says. Nightwing grabs Robin by the head like he’s palming a basketball and cranks it around. His fingers card through the longish flicks of inky hair at the base of Robin’s skull. Robin tries not to shiver. Exposing his scalp to air cools the tacky wet creeping down his neck. Nightwing twists his head back around. He plants his thumbs in Robin’s eye sockets and pulls his eyelids up. 

“I thought I saw a hemorrhage,” he says, half to himself. “What the hell, Timmy? Nothing about the head wound?”

“I thought it stopped bleeding,” Robin says. It comes out faint. He touches his head and marvels at the blood coating his fingers. Nightwing barely has time to call for Wally before he’s back at Nightwing’s side, first aid kit in hand, cue fretting. He’s muttering while sewing Robin’s scalp back together with butterfly closures. Wally stands unsure and somewhat useless between kitchen and living room, flitting betwixt his self-appointed duties. Nightwing sends him an affectionate, if tired, glance.

Nightwing makes a confused noise and prods the hot skin bordering Robin’s gash. “How long ago did you get this?”

“Over twelve hours ago,” Oracle pipes up.

“You’re not…” Nightwing starts. Robin can hear gears grinding in his head. He’s getting more agitated with each bandage applied, as the zipping and banging in his kitchen and bathroom escalates. “Babs, Robin’s not a hemophiliac, is he?”

“Not that I know of, thanks for asking,” Robin says.

“Humpty Dumpty here cracked his noggin open on a dumpster and sat there for hours, a fact he conveniently brushed over,” Judas Iscariot offers, instead. 

“I am fine,” Robin protests. He raises his voice to be heard over Wally’s clattering.

“I’m sure you believe that,” Brutus parries.

“You’re barely scabbing over,” Nightwing says. When his hands pull away from Robin’s hair, they’re stained. “And all these bruises — Wally, buddy, will you please cool it?”

Wally freezes, wielding a screwdriver and amputated cabinet door, buzzing with interrupted purpose and nothing else to do with his hands. The exposed cabinet in question contains a yellowing spider trap, a packet of Goldfish crackers, and an untouched bottle of peach soju.

“I don’t know what the fuck else to do, man,” Wally pleads. He gestures with the cabinet door at the mess in front of him, physically and metaphorically. Yet another volley of expressions passes between Dick and Wally; a tennis match of raised eyebrows and grimaces and sighs. An overdue light bill flutters off the kitchen counter and onto the linoleum, and when Robin looks back up, all the cabinet doors hang straight.

“If you’re sure,” Wally says, reluctantly. Dick gives him a weak little quirk of the mouth and nods. Dick holds his dirty hands away from him and Wally squeezes him in an awkward side-hug. He stops an inch from ruffling Robin’s bloody hair and settles for a shoulder pat instead. With one last cryptic look at Dick and a peppy “Bye, Oracle!” Wally zips out of Blüdhaven just slow enough he doesn’t leave a shockwave in his wake. Dick glances at the now-empty sink and smiles to himself.

Then he’s turned the weight of his regard to Robin and the affection melts away in favor of business. Nightwing swats Robin’s knee, rises, and gestures for Robin to follow. Across the hall, Nightwing has converted apartment 3B into a Batcave — Wingcave? — bare of furniture in the traditional sense. What he does have is a plastic folding chair sitting on a tarp, blackout curtains on all windows, a kitchen sink full of dirty lab glassware, and every flat surface occupied with some machine or gizmo or shredded suit or weapon. The plastic folding chair is dingy. The ghost of a dark stain is still visible, despite clear efforts to scrub and bleach. When the door clicks shut behind Robin, a beep and a whine signal a security system activating, green LEDs flickering to life on every window. Oracle rustles in Robin’s phone speaker.

Nightwing catches him wrinkling his lip at the chair. “Don’t start,” he says, like Robin isn’t also in a glass house. He yanks open a drawer in the kitchen and starts rooting around while Robin’s surveying the rest of the apartment. The blackout curtains are duct-taped to the sills, except for Nightwing’s preferred exit/entrance toward the fire escape. Chunks of body armor sit in shining piles of volcanic glass, stiff fibers sprouting from bulletholes. .45, .22, buckshot. Robin grimaces. A new suit is half-finished on a formica-topped table, black and blue tongue lolling out of a sewing machine’s mouth. New carbon fiber panels wait to be fed into the Nomex-Kevlar beside them.

Without preamble Nightwing grabs his hand and pricks his finger. Robin yelps because ow. Nightwing snorts at him, distractedly, and feeds a little red bead of Robin’s blood into a device the size of a softball. 

“Lowish INR levels,” Nightwing hums. “Fear gas, you said?”

“No clue,” Oracle says. “ Occam’s razor. Crane’s psilocybin derivatives aren’t usually anticoagulants, though. ”

“No palpitations, no dyspnea?” Nightwing asks. Robin shakes his head. “Well, damn.”

He frowns and leans up on the counter. The device falls to his side. Robin hops up next to Nightwing between a centrifuge and a dissected domino mask, tucking his legs under him. He stirs the pile of cracked domino lenses with his finger.

Nightwing visibly shakes the funk off his shoulders, throws the device back on the counter with a whack, and gives him a megawatt grin that Robin only clocks as performative because he knows what a happy Nightwing looks like. He stretches a kink in his back, oversize shirt drawing up around his waist. He flings his hands wide like a ringmaster announcing an act.

“No use in sitting around, then,” Nightwing declares. “Thanks to our wonderful Oracle, we’re bound for Markettown, aren’t we? We’re just gonna have to… ah, well, wing it.”

Oracle groans and hangs up immediately. Nightwing cackles. Robin giggles and tries to avoid blinding himself from Nightwing’s dimpled white smile. 

“One problem,” Robin says. “My uniform’s soaking in heavy-duty soap right now. Probably.”

“Ye of little faith. I’ve got every drawer in this place full,” Nightwing answers.

“Dick, I saw your Robin costume. I’m not eight. Pants are a need not a want,” Robin says.

If possible, Nightwing's smile widens, and he says, "Ye of littler faith.”