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The low humming of the computers cooling system and an occasional bat are the only things attempting to mask the silence. They’re failing.
In a mausoleum, the silence will always be deafening.
Here, between high tech equipment and training matts, too many ghosts linger for it to be anything else. They haunt the place with every chipped railing, overlooked blood drop and empty costume in yet another glass case.
With one inglorious click, point nemo turns red. The shade of red which indicate where Tim could be by now. From the monitor, a fully crimson tinted globe stares back at Batman.
He blinks. His head is throbbing.
Whatever small chance of finding Tim they had, has slipped thru his fingers by now. Batman knows it has. He had known it the second they found the trackers. But Bruce is not yet ready to add another ghost; to pick up the perfectly folded Red Robin costume and place it next to Jasons. This time the good soldier would even be true.
He’s not sure he’ll ever be ready.
It hasn’t stopped the world before. It won’t stop it now.
Batman knows, the way an analytical mind always knows, that sooner or later, he will close the window with the red tinted globe and dawn the cowl anew. He will bare Tim’s loss with the same stoic dedication he has all others and offer up even more of himself and those he loves for Gotham to devour.
He will smile, charm and let the wound fester, so when the darkness courts him, he can feel their pain and remind himself why he will rise again tomorrow.
But soon is not now. His eyes are glued to the computer. Dick will have to endure a bit longer.
Batman buries his face in his hands. Four days in, the sleep deprivation is starting to get to him. His eyes feel too big for their eye sockets. The sharp stinging has dulled into pressure waves washing over him in a familiar rhythm.
He grabs the cold coffee cup net to him and empties it in one gulp. He puts it down, reaches for a new one and finds it lacking. He grabs another one: It’s cold and empty as well. When did Alfred stop cleaning them up?
He shuts his eyes for a second of respite. He will have to do without.
Then the Batcave is flooded with blinding light, as it is exactly at 6am every morning when all the monitors switch from dark to light mode.
He flinches. Blinks; once, twice.
Is it morning already?
His fault for not dealing with Tim’s whatever you can call this sooner. He had turned on the setting and password protected it after Batman pawned off another two investigations on the already sleep deprived boy. “No sleep for me, no sleep for you”, the he had said. Batman’s eyebags were just as dark, but Tim had smiled, so he stifled the lecture.
He has learned to stifle a lot of lectures. And lessons.
Tims letter lies buried under print outs and maps.
Thank you for letting me stay as long as I have. I will never forget it.
Please don’t come looking for me.
Tim
It strikes him, that this is the first and last genuine favor Tim has asked of him.
A better person would have respected it.
A better father would have never let it come to this.
Batman is neither.
So the bots keep scraping and the trackers beep on.
Because Red Robin knows too much.
Because with each message, he is more sharply reminded how big an asset he’s lost.
Because Batman needs a Robin and Damian will always be Dicks.
Because, deep down, the remnants of the person Bruce could have been without the cowl, misses his son.
A status message pops up. The Batcave door opens. Dick slips in, clad in black, bearing a burden never meant to drown anyone but Bruce himself.
Bruce turns back to a list of Tims past purchases.
Dick peels the armor off with too much haste. He’s out of the suit before the door closes. A few sharp breaths and bandages later the man is patched up and standing next to Bruce, cowl in hand.
Batman klicks on another transfer and waits for his eldest to tell him the truth; Tell him to get a grip, to say that none of this should've ever been Dick's responsibility. “Nightwing. Drop it”, he will say instead. And Dick will huff and puff and give up another piece of himself regardless.
Tim never even argued before doing so. Tim offered.
“You should sleep”, Dick says instead, because his eldest’s kind in a way no lesson of his could ever quite extinguish.
It's what makes him Dick Grayson. It's also what keeps dragging him back here; To a haunted mausoleum where the list of demanded sacrifices, started too young, grows longer each year.
At night Bruce wonders if Dick regrets holding onto his kindness.
He can’t bring himself to ask.
“Thought so”, Dick says after a while, “well, I’m going to visit Timmys favorite rooftop. You can join if you want to.”