Chapter Text
Robbing a bank is depressingly easy. So easy Dick spends 30 minutes of stunned shock staring at the racks of money on the motel bed.
Once again, he beats down the thought that he should have stolen it from some rich asshole instead. But Dick’s not as good at computers as Tim and Barbra are; he'd have left a trail, a bright neon sign pointed to him. But he's good at sneaking and breaking codes and now, apparently, robbing banks.
He counts the money for the fifth time that night. The amount doesn’t change. There’s enough there to last him at least 2 months. He just needs a bank account. Well, actually, first he needs an identity. There’s a bang of a door a few rooms down, but it sounds like an explosion. He squeezes his eyes closed around the memory.
~Two Weeks Ago~
Dick sighs, cracking his neck side to side and shaking a hand out where he watches over Red Robin’s shoulder. The mission had been months coming, tireless weeks of research and tracking and seemingly endless stakeouts. Now that it’s here, there’s the underlying simmering of nerves, but there’s also an ever-pressing feeling of… boredom, Dick can’t seem to shake. All hands on deck, relentlessly working to this very day, and here they are, on yet another stakeout.
It had been a few months ago, when summer still clung in the air, that someone magical had contacted someone magical, had contacted the Justice League dark and like an earwig, the news had made its way all the way to Batman. Someone somewhere was disappearing adults and returning them as children. But, and as much as everyone in the magical community had supposedly been hoping, they weren’t being de-aged but somehow swapped with their younger selves.
It had been two dragging months later, when someone mystical in some far-off reaches of the world had found the answer. Creating portals back through time, surprisingly to anyone not in the know, was very common and easy. However, their secrecy had been borne under the fact that one could only be created inside a body. The portal connected the person’s soul at one point in time to their soul at their destination time, and they, well, simply stepped through. It was honestly a lot of fancy Latin-sounding words to Dick, but he could get the gist. The problem seemed to be that the human soul could only handle a certain number of these portals before it just… gave up. Some crazed lunatic of a magician had been using his victims as a way of wandering back and forth through time. Hitching a ride through someone else's soul with no effect on their own. Then, on the way back, taking the child version of their ride, in the hope that no one would notice and that the victims wouldn’t be able to tell anyone and reveal their nefarious deeds. And it seemed for a good while no one had. Who would notice if one homeless old man switched places with a homeless boy. They’d been caught out when the young addict of a girl had actually had a few more people watching out for them than obviously originally planned.
It had been three months of searching and scouring before they’d managed to pin the magician down, skipping over the border from Metropolis to Gotham.
Dick wasn’t sure what the magician was doing, skipping all around time, he hadn’t been privy to that information, no matter how many times he’d needled Bruce for it. All he knew was that they needed to be stopped, and that he was currently on some dingy warehouse roof playing look out while someone else did just that.
He taps his foot in time to the blinking of the trackers Tim’s watching on his wrist. He wishes he were down there helping out, but Batman had been clear: no non-magics in the line of fire. There’s a crack and flash in the sky of lightning, the rest of the sky is clear of even a single cloud, magicians. Dick tuts, switching feet back and forth. He can tell Tim’s getting annoyed with his fidgeting, but playing look out has always been boring to Dick.
There’s another crack of lightning, and the crunching, crumbling sound of brick as the roof of the warehouse opposite caves in. Out of the dust leaps a figure in a dark hooded robe, behind them, and cursing up a storm, follows John Constantine and, barely a blink later and far more composed, Zatanna.
Dick pulls out his escrima sticks, twirling them in his hands as he watches the figures fight. Tim stands up with a sigh, pulling out his bo staff but looking far less primed for the fight to make its way over to them. Dick follows the figures’ movements, keeping pace with them as they move along the roof, ready to jump across the gap and straight into the fray the second it’s needed.
The hooded figure keeps sending bright orange flashes of light like a spear towards Zatanna and Constantine. They each, respectively, parry with their own blows of light, cracking like gunshots in the night. The hooded figure spins violently, an orange flash arcing sharply towards Zatanna. Constantine leaps forward, his hand sweeping to the side and sending the flash out over the warehouse roof's edge. Dick watches it sail and glide in almost slow motion over the gap between the buildings. Shining brighter and brighter as it spearheads towards him. Dick’s barely registered that the light is coming for him, that Tim’s shouting for him to move, that the hooded figure is manically laughing, that it’s going to be on him right now if he doesn’t move. But his fingers won’t even twitch, watching slack-jawed as the flash grows and grows so bright he squints against it.
Until.
Until.
It’s like the resounding crack of one of Jason’s explosives. Blowing out his ears into an ear-splitting screaming ring. But where he expects to feel searing heat on his skin or a shockwave pushing him back. All he feels is the tingle of warmth caressing his face, his arms, like a warm blanket being draped over him. Like his mom’s hand feeling his cheek when he was sick.
Then he’s blinking open his eyes, and he’s staring up at the sky.
And…
And there’s stars.
Gotham doesn’t have stars. Not anymore.
There’s a maniacal giggle somewhere beside him. Through molasses, Dick turns his head towards the sound. There, hunched over their own knees, is the magician. They jerkily turn towards Dick.
Dick knows that the magician is the one who can undo whatever they’ve done to him. That he needs to stop them before they hurt someone else. That if Dick can just grab them, then some magic user can come and help.
Shakily, Dick rolls onto his side.
He claws at the ground. Using his nails to find purchase on the uneven gravel.
Feels the slight tear of one of the fingers of his glove.
Feeling the ache of his muscles from the fall as he gets his knees under him.
The burn of something hot on his chest, like his ribs have been pried open, and his heart is beating out into cold air.
Moving through the feeling that something isn’t right.
Until he’s crawled close enough to the hooded figure that he can reach out and grasp their sleeve.
Their arm.
Their shoulder.
Slowly moving his hand up, until he can feel the slight brush of the skin on their neck through the tiny tear in his glove.
The contact feels excruciating.
Like every molecule of his body is being dragged out through that tiny tear.
His ribs feel like they’re creaking and straining, and his heart just keeps beating out into the air even though it’s still firmly held between skin and sinew.
The ringing returns to his ears.
His whole body lurches.
A nauseating spinning in his brain that ends with him back on the ground on his side.
Watching as the hooded magician seems to twist and contort, until Dick can almost see all the way through them.
Then softly, like a feather, they float through his chest, and everything stops.
The pain.
The ringing.
His consciousness.
~
That was two weeks ago. Dick’s not dumb, he knows what happened. The bright flash pulled him and the magician back in time. Then, when he’d grabbed them, instead of them both returning, somehow only the magician returned.
He’d been confused and disoriented for the whole day after, obsessively checking every newspaper he came across to check that yes, the date really was 13 years in the past.
Right now, he’d be 11, somewhere out in the world still clinging to his mother’s side. He’s not with Bruce yet.
He swallows thickly as the piles of money count out to the same number yet again. Dick had accepted that it might take a while for people to get back and find him. But by the third day, he’d started to get apprehensive. By the sixth, every clench of his empty, hungry stomach whispered that no one was coming. On the seventh, he’d given up hiding in the warehouse. Instead, he’d stolen some clothes and some food before scurrying back. By the tenth day, Dick knew no one was coming soon, they’d have already been here. On the 13th, he’d finalised his plan to rob Gotham General Bank, timing it as closely to what he knew about B’s and GCPD’s patrol routes of the time. Now it’s the 14th night, or really the morning of the 15th day, and Dick has just robbed a bank.
The piles of money sit before him. He knows it was necessary that stealing and starving weren’t going to help him get back. That this way, he might be able to find help. But making a career out of being a criminal as a vigilante feels a whole lot different from actually being a criminal.
He scrubs at his face. Turning away from the sickening wads of paper. Dick wants to march straight up to Wayne Manor, straight to his mentor and demand he find a way to send Dick home. But Gotham’s sky is clear and light, and yesterday Dick heard a child laughing unabashedly freely on the street corner; the city has yet to know the horrors that will rip through homes, so Dick knows it won’t be right. There’s no Justice League, no open magic yet, no matter how good Bruce might be, right here, right now in time, there’s no way home.
And Dick? Dick’s the only one who knows what’s to come.