Chapter Text
The mission was risky. They all knew it. More so for Tim than the others, as Kon and Cassie had the added bonus of literal superpowers, but nonetheless it was still nerve wracking to deal with explosives. The team had no clue who was behind the smattering of bombs hidden throughout a nearby library, but Oracle was working on tracing the anonymous tip so it wouldn’t be too long before it came to light.
Whether or not they knew who was responsible, it was their responsibility to clear out the building and disarm any of the bombs they could find. Clearing it out would be the most difficult task. It was especially busy due to a children's book club, the closest university’s overly large study group, and a poetry workshop that happened every March.
Tim was stressed to say the least. Not only was the team down a few people and it was the first mission Tim had led since becoming Red Robin, a section of the somehow three story building (seriously, how could a library possibly be three stories) was already in flames; several ambulances arrived at the same time they did.
Tim was so stressed.
However, stress wasn’t what the situation needed, so he took a breath and looked at the scene unfolding. Smoke billowed from two windows on the third floor. Pedestrians watched from the ground in terror as others spilled out of the library in a panic. Several had burns snaking up their arms and charred clothing. Paramedics were rushing to help those injured and the sound of sirens filled the air as finally some firefighters sped towards the building. Tim took a deep breath before turning to Kon and Cassie.
“Superboy, I want you to find where the first bomb went off and find any other injured civilians.” He nodded sharply and took off, Tim then turned to Cassie who had a look of anticipation on her face. “Wonder Girl, we need to see if we can find any more of the bombs before they go off.”
“Alright!"
Without warning, Cassie grabbed him by the arm and as quick as a flash (though Bart was nowhere to be seen) they were on the far side of the third floor. Tim had nearly forgotten what flying felt like. He missed it. No time to think about that though, they had a job to do. They needed to search the entire floor. Now that he actually thought about it, it might've been better to take Kon with him, given his x-ray vision, and have Cassie evacuate the building, but they were on a time crunch. No use to change the plan now, or beat himself up over it. He'd do that later.
"The likeliness of more bombs is high, we don't know just how many there are, but we can guess that there will be more, especially in a building of this size." He spoke as he started walking towards nearby air vents, Cassie following behind. "It might be best to split up, but you'll need to be careful, these bombs are powerful."
"Don't need to tell me twice, but I'd be more worried about you. Try not to get blown up." She said, punching his shoulder. Tim gave a half-hearted nod, focused on unscrewing the vent more than anything.
"Uh huh. Be sure to look more in secluded spaces first, book shelves and vents and under desks and such, then check more open areas. Any bombs are probably going to be hidden. Hopefully, we don't exactly know who they are, or their MO, but until we find that out, this is the general assumption for most bombers."
"Alright, stay safe Boy Wonder."
"You too, Wonder Girl."
Tim stuck to searching the vents, nearly positive that he was going to find something when Cassie's voice interrupted his hunt over the comms.
"Red, I think I've got something," A muffled beeping cut her off. "Okay, I definitely have something."
"Heard. Coming to you now." He took off towards her location as fast as he could, kicking himself when he saw that she was next to a window. Of course. When Cassie noticed he was approaching, she stepped back, wringing her hands.
"There's no countdown, but it says '2:50' on it." So set times rather than remote detonation. 2:50 gave him four minutes to work with, so he sat down, brought out his tools, and began carefully tinkering with it.
"We are so like that one tv show right now." Cassie said, smiling widely. When Tim shot her a quizzical look, she elaborated. "You know, Breaking Bombs?"
"Do you mean Breaking Bad?" Tim laughed, momentarily distracted from the very pressing task at hand.
"No, no, they cook meth and break bombs, I know this." She was so convinced that Tim just let her have it, grinning and shaking his head before focusing on breaking said bomb, like he was supposed to. He briefly heard Kon chuckle over the comm line as well.
"They call me Walter White, I suppose."
After two minutes and 46 seconds, Tim's personal record, the bomb was diffused, and Tim's trust in Cassie's pop culture knowledge was also. They decided that Cassie would stay and scan the rest of the floor while Tim would move down to the first floor. He also decided that he would stick to the perimeter of the floor at first.
Twice might have been a coincidence, but better safe than sorry.
It had been nearly ten minutes of nothing coming up, and Tim was starting to get worried. On one hand, if there were no more bombs, that was great! Less danger for passerby's and less property damage in general. But if there were more, and Tim just wasn't finding them… He was getting rusty, too overconfident with his old team. He had hardly been a vigilante in the past year or so and maybe that had been affecting him more than he would've guessed. It didn't matter in that moment, so he pushed it aside, just as another voice began to speak in his ear.
“Red Robin, you there?" Oracle. She cracked it.
“Yep, what’s up O, who was it?”
“Riddler. Got one of his goons to send a message, sick of a paper trail or something. Just be careful, he probably has some sort of trick planned.” She said, an edge of irritation in her voice.
“Got it. Thank you.”
“Anytime.” She said, going dark a moment later.
Riddler. That meant he needed to think. Something needed to stick out.
Something did.
Three stories. Three events. Third month. It screamed something important. Not a coincidence. Never a coincidence. Three… three bombs. Where the hell could the last one be? The first one, on the third floor, went off nearly twenty minutes ago. The second one, one the second floor, scheduled for 2:50. The third one… the first floor… planning to go off at…
He glanced at his wrist, 2:59 displayed brightly on the watch. A beeping sounded to his left. Fuck he thought.
“Fuck.” He said aloud, beginning to run, thankful that the floor was essentially empty. “Fuck. Not good.”
“Not good? What happened?"
“Rob, are you okay?"
He forgot the comm was still on. He didn’t have time to answer his worried teammates before the explosion.
Besides being thrown to the floor while shrapnel flew in every direction, and fear of his eardrums being blown out, he was relatively unharmed. The shouting voices in his ringing ears did not get the memo.
“Shit, Rob answer!"
"I can’t see him!"
“Are you there?"
“Are you hurt?"
He rolled onto his back, painfully snagging some metal on his side. He took a breath through his rebreather and sighed softly against the newly forming headache.
“Yeah guys, I’m fine. Not injured, don’t worry about me, just get the rest of the civilians out.”
“Like hell!” Kon yelled, anger combatting the lingering fear. “You nearly got blown up, I’m getting you out first.”
“I agree.” Cassie said, unhelpfully.
“Focus on the mission. I’ll get myself out.”
He must’ve sounded too firm to argue with because the only things he heard over the comm line after that were two unimpressed huffs.
He sat up, testing any other injuries. His head stayed clear thankfully, the only pain coming from his side, but it was probably just a scrape or some bruised ribs. He stood, putting his rebreather on properly to fight the rising smoke and started towards the exit.
His thoughts spiralled. How could he be so stupid? He should’ve paid more attention, worked it out quicker. The intonation of the call made it clear that Riddler was behind everything in retrospect. But retrospect wasn’t enough. He put himself and the surrounding people at risk due to his damned incompetence. He’d be lucky if Bruce wasn’t already waiting with a lecture.
As he sped out of the building, he came across a young boy who was sitting in a corner with tears streaming down his face as he coughed. The kid was probably scared shitless from the explosion, not to mention how he was struggling to breathe. Tim took his rebreather off and knelt in front of him, taking the smaller hands in his own.
“Hi,” He said quietly and with a comforting smile, weary of the way the boy shrunk back, “I’m Red Robin, what’s your name?”
It took a few seconds, but the boy was able to quietly stutter out “Matty.”
“Well Matty, I think now’s a great time to get out of here, don’t you?” Matty nodded shyly and Tim picked him up in a side carry, careful not to groan when pain bloomed in the area. He placed the rebreather on Matty’s face when he began to wheeze. “Here, it’ll help you breathe through the smoke.”
Tim didn’t run into anyone else in his mission to get out of the burning library, luckily, and made quick work of dropping Matty off with a readily waiting paramedic. Said paramedic gave him a sideways glance, almost like she was going to say something, but ended up just thanking him and rushing to get the small kid to an ambulance.
He sank down onto the curb and watched as probably two hundred people gathered around each other, some hugging, some crying, some needing medical attention. He coughed roughly, headache getting worse and slowly feeling lighter. If he wasn’t already sitting, he definitely would’ve needed to.
Then Kon was there, floating just above the ground, looking down at him.
“Is that the last of them?” He asked, landing down in front of Tim. He nodded and looked towards where Cassie was dropping a young girl off to one of the paramedics. He stood up and brushed the soot off of his pants.
“Yeah, yeah, everyone’s out, we just need to…” He trailed off with a wince, then a cough, and another, mind fuzzy and side aching more noticeably. He absentmindedly brought his hand up to put some pressure where the pain was. “We just… we have to…”
“Rob?” Kon said, stepping closer and holding his hands out, “Rob, hey what’s going on?”
Tim couldn’t form any more words. He knew he needed to say something about clearing the surrounding area in case there was an explosive they missed, but the sentence got lost somewhere between his brain and his mouth. Kon’s worried look blurred and he realised how his hand was getting… wet? His stomach dropped and he ripped it off his side, only to be greeted by a pool of red. Shit. shit shit shit.
He didn’t see Kon’s eyes widen. He didn’t notice Kon pushing his own hands into the apparently gaping wound as his TTK caught him as he fell. He didn’t hear Kon’s rushed muttering of comfort laced with fear. He only recognised the blood on his hand, the way his legs gave out, and the darkness rushing to claim him.
Waking up came slowly, too slowly, a telltale sign of some kind of drug in his system. Given the fact that he was definitely in some kind of medbay, and had an uncomfortable pressure in his side, he was quick to assume that a. it was just pain meds, and b. he had royally fucked up. (Oh, his brain clicked suddenly, the bomb, the explosion, the shrapnel.) No need to be worried about a kidnapping, but a lot of need to be worried about stressed, angry, or frustrated teammates.
Almost as soon as he woke up, Kon was there, his arms crossed. Tim waved sheepishly from the bed, and was about to say something dumb like hi, before he got cut off.
"You're an idiot, Rob."
"I know."
"You scared me."
"I know."
"You collapsed."
"I know."
"Why didn't you say you were injured."
"I didn't realise."
That was definitely not the right thing to say, no matter how true it was. Kon clenched his jaw and walked over from where he was leaning on the door frame, eyes narrowing in hardly hidden annoyance.
"How do you not notice something stabbed you, or that you were struggling to breathe due to smoke inhalation, Tim? You needed to be put on oxygen. It was bad. You should've said something."
"I didn't know." He said softly, looking away. The two fell into silence after that, not strictly uncomfortable, but not as warm as it usually was. Kon ended up sitting in the chair just beside him, and when Tim reached for his hand, he took it without hesitation, giving a small squeeze.
Their quietness was then interrupted by Cassie storming into the room, a glare on her face.
"I told you to do one thing dude. 'Don't get blown up'. One simple instruction, and you can't even follow it."
"I'm sorry…?" He tried, not wanting to agitate her more, since she was already on the verge of tears. That really didn't work, as next second, she was actually crying and also crashing into him, enveloping him in a hug.
"You bet your ass you are. I don't forgive you. …Alright I do, but not if you ever pull another stunt like that."
He could live with that.