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Dick was mid-fight when he got the call. He swung himself around a streetlight to kick at the guy he'd found robbing a jewelry store, and heard the ping of an incoming call. The kick landed square in the guy's chest and he fell backwards into a trash can before crumpling to the ground, dazed but still conscious.
Dick tied him up, and accepted the call while he waited for PD to arrive. He swung himself back up to the roof, enjoying the cool, fresh breeze as he gained momentum.
"What's the sitch?" he asked, landing in a crouch.
"Nightwing! Oh, thank god. There's a…Jesus, fuck! Can you—"
Dick frowned. Tim's voice was barely audible over a flurry of noise around him, voices Dick couldn't decipher shouting and arguing in the background of the call.
"Hey, hey! Slow down, what's up?"
Someone screeched close enough to Tim that Dick winced at the sound. "Tim?" Dick asked, concern starting to set in.
"Sorry, I just—grab him, Cass!—can you come home? We need you, I... Damian, don't—!"
The line went dead and Dick stared out over Blüdhaven, ears still ringing. There wasn't much that Tim, Cassandra and Damian couldn't take care of between them. And there were plenty of others right there in Gotham they could call in as needed. If they were calling Dick for back-up, it likely meant one thing and one thing only.
It was serious.
It was Bruce.
Dick ran and leapt across to the next rooftop, jumping off and grabbing a flagpole on the way down. He swung from it, propelling himself towards an awning, which he bounced off of into a somersault, landing on his feet just around the corner from where he'd stashed his bike.
He hopped on and revved the engine, setting off for Gotham.
As he rode, his mind came up with a dozen scenarios for what might have happened—had Bruce been injured? Had he been injured, or had something worse happened? The way Tim had shouted for Cass to grab someone with such desperation was chilling. He'd never heard Tim so worked up over a fight before.
Dick kicked it up a gear, speeding a little more than he usually would. He pressed a button in the handlebar of his bike as he approached the cave's garage entrance and didn't slow down until he swung into an open spot and parked the bike. He ran out of the garage and into the cave, calling Tim again on the comm.
"Where am I needed?" he asked.
"Are you here?"
"In the cave. Give me an address and I'm right there."
"Get upstairs! Now!"
The line went dead and Dick frowned. Upstairs? He looked up at the roof of the cave, stalactites looming overhead. A bat flew across the space, screeching as it went.
Upstairs. Dick didn't know what to expect as he made his way from the cave into the manor above. He heard the commotion before he even made it to the top of the stairs. He slipped out through the hidden entrance in Bruce's office and followed the sound of raised voices into the dining room. He froze in the doorway, taking in the scene.
Damian was kneeling on Tim's shoulders, holding a towel over his head, while Cassandra stood to the side with a giant butterfly net in her hands. Stephanie was under the table, covering her head and shouting incomprehensible orders at the others.
Above their heads, screeching loud enough to pierce eardrums, was a bat.
"Dick!" Stephanie shouted as soon as she spotted him. All eyes—except the bat's—turned to look at him.
"Oh, thank god." Tim dropped Damian and they both ran to him, speaking over each other in a clamor of voices.
"I was on patrol and—"
"—Don't know where it came from, but—"
"—Out of nowhere, and—"
"—there one minute, and the next thing—"
"—managed to get him home, but—"
"—won't stay still—"
"—flew into Steph's hair!"
Dick held up his hands, trying to get them to stop. "Please, just take it slowly. What's going on? Where's Bruce?"
He looked around, and one by one, they all pointed upwards.
They pointed at the bat.
Oh, fuck. He should've stayed in Blüdhaven.
Dick pulled his mask off just to rub his eyes, then took a steadying breath.
"Okay. Okay, first things first, let's get hold of him." Dick took stock of his surroundings. "Why are we in the house, anyway?" he asked. "If you brought him back from patrol like this…?"
"If he got free in the cave, he'd be lost with all the other bats in there. Figured this way, we'd at least know which bat he was," Tim explained.
"Of course, it would have been simpler to merely contain him in an effective manner, but—"
"Shut up, Damian," Tim snapped. "Didn't see you coming up with—"
Dick shushed them. "That was a fair plan, Tim. Definitely makes this easier, I'm not complaining." He was forming a plan quickly as he surveyed the situation. "Steph, can you make sure all the doors are closed? Cass, stand by with the net, I might need the assist. Tim, I'll need something to put him in. Is that giant birdcage still down in the cave?"
They all rushed to their jobs, leaving Damian standing with his arms crossed. "What do you need from me?" he asked.
"Bait."
Damian's eyes went wide. "This is an absolute—"
"Not—I don't mean you're the bait, Dami, I meant—I figure you'd have a better idea than anyone else what might lure a bat into a trap. Could you go see what's in the kitchen that could work?"
"Ah, of course. I will not let you down." Damian ran out of the room, ignoring the way Steph yelled at him to keep the doors closed.
Bat-Bruce was perched on a wall sconce, the picture of innocence. "Heey there," Dick whispered, approaching with caution. He exchanged a look with Cassandra. He had no fucking clue what he was doing here, but he hoped he'd at least managed to convince everyone other than her that he was vaguely competent.
She gave him a thumbs up just as the door flew open again, Tim dragging in a large cage with Damian following close at his heel with a bowl of fruit.
Stephanie swore at them both, slamming the door behind them. The sudden uptick in volume sent bat-Bruce flying overhead again, and Stephanie ducked back under the table with a squeal.
"Shhh!" Dick and Cass both shushed at the same time, and everyone fell silent.
"Okay," Dick whispered. "Tim, open the cage as far as you can. Damian, put some bait in there." They bustled around the cage, making far more noise than necessary. "Who taught you two stealth?" Dick asked. "Jesus. Silently, please."
Bat-Bruce flew back and forth overhead. "Okay, when he lands, Cass, I want you to slowly lower the net over him, and I'll slide the towel over the opening."
Bat-Bruce was clearly in a frenzy, however, screeching and chirping as he swooped from one end of the room to the other.
"I don't think he's gonna land again," Tim whispered. "Not before he stresses himself out bad enough to have a heart attack."
Dick hummed. Plan B, then. He tracked bat-Bruce's movements, and nodded to himself. "Okay, Cass? Ready with the net. Tim, Dami, when he's in, I need you to close the cage door." Dick ran through his trajectory once, and nodded to himself. "Let's do this."
He picked up the towel Tim had discarded on the floor and weighed it in his hand.
The silence was deafening as he climbed onto the table, only broken by the high-pitched bat chirps and his own heartbeat. Dick counted down in his head, bounced on the balls of his feet, and leapt. He swung one-handed from the chandelier and flipped himself upside-down right as bat-Bruce flew past. He got the towel wrapped around the tiny creature and dropped it right into Cass' waiting net. She tipped him right into the cage, and Tim slammed the door shut. Damian grabbed a corner of the towel between the bars and pulled it free, leaving a small, trembling pile of fluff and leathery wings trembling on the bottom of the cage.
Stephanie hooted in victory as Dick swung himself back down from the chandelier as Tim clamped a hand over Steph's mouth.
They stood around, looking at the creature in the cage, relishing in the victory.
"So, what now?" Cass asked.
You could hear a pin drop in the silence following her question. Bat-Bruce crawled across the floor of the cage and started nibbling on a piece of melon.
"Do you think he like…knows who he is?" Tim asked.
Damian knelt on the floor, putting his face right up next to the bars. "Father?"
Bat-Bruce turned his large, bulbous eyes towards Damian. "Father," he repeated. "If you understand what I am saying, raise your left wing." Bat-Bruce shifted from side to side a little, spreading one wing and then the other.
"What does that mean?" Steph asked.
Damian hummed. "Unclear. Father? If you understand me—" Bat-Bruce crawled over to Damian, standing nose-to-nose.
"Getting anything?" Dick asked, frowning at the scene.
Damian was laser-focused on bat-Bruce, eyes crossed to look at him with how close he was to the cage.
"He's actually kind of cute like this," Tim said. His head was tilted, eyes narrowed as he took in the scene. "The big eyes, you know?"
"Tell me how this happened again?" Dick asked out of the corner of his mouth.
Tim sighed. "I don't know. It was chaos—we were all fighting these guys, someone was chanting, then there was this…smoke? Like purple smoke poofing into the air, and Bruce was…" Tim gestured at the cage, at bat-Bruce who was now climbing the side, Damian's nose practically poking through the bars to look at him.
"Magic?" Dick guessed.
"Can only assume so. Should we—"
"I'll put the word out. See if there's any JL Dark members who might be free to check him out."
Dick turned and reached for the door handle, just as someone flung it open from the outside.
"What is going on here?" Bruce demanded, looming in the doorway.
"Uh—"
"Wait, what—"
"Father!" Damian stood and ran to Bruce, stopping just short of throwing his arms around him. Dick put a hand on the kid's shoulder.
"Why on earth is there a bat in a cage on my dining room floor?" Bruce asked.
Dick was stunned to silence as the others once again began to clamor over each other with explanations and excuses.
Bruce stood, frowning, listening to everything until the room once again fell silent. Bat-bru—the regular, non-magical, completely wild bat in the cage chirped again and began munching on a peeled banana, dark eyes wide and oblivious to the chaos.
"Why on earth would you assume that the bat was me?" Bruce asked.
"Well…" Tim winced. "There was the smoke. And then you were…gone."
"And the bat was there," Damian added.
"And, well…" Stephanie gestured at him. "There's the whole Batman thing."
"The whole Batman thing," Bruce repeated, deadpan. "Emphasis on the man." He sighed, before his eyes landed on Dick. "And you believed them?" he asked. "You came here, heard the story, and you believed it without question. No verification required."
Dick rubbed the back of his neck, wincing. "Well, there really wasn't time to…I only just got the full story, and I…" He trailed off, shaking his head. "It's really not the weirdest thing that's ever happened around here, is it?"
Bruce pursed his lips and hummed—one of the longest hums Dick had ever heard from him.
The bat in the cage let out a series of high pitched squeaks and they all turned to look at it. Large, bulbous eyes looked out at them, the tuft of black hair on its head speckled with mushy banana.
Bruce snorted, then chortled, which turned into a full, booming laugh. "You all thought that was me! It's so tiny!" Bruce was propping himself up on the doorframe, laughing uncontrollably. "Tiny and furry and—" he wheezed, face red.
Stephanie started to giggle, and Dick couldn't hold it together anymore. It was ridiculous, the whole thing.
"But… But the eyes!" Damian was still frowning. "They were so intelligent, he knew me!"
"Dami, I think—" Dick gasped for breath. "I think it just recognized who brought food."
Everyone else collapsed into laughter, and even Damian's frown began to twitch into a smile, lips pursed and brows furrowed in an attempt to maintain a serious expression.
Bruce reached out and pulled Damian into a one-armed hug. "Well, it looks to me as though you've taken good care of the little fellow, at least." His laughter faded into an amused smile. "He seems quite happy here, doesn't he?"
Damian finally cracked a smile as he started to explain how he had chosen the specific fruits to feed the bat with.
"He's kind of cute, huh?" Dick asked, taking in the sight of the little guy.
"We can't keep him in the dining room, of course, but—"
Damian's eyes went wide. "What do you—"
"Looks like another pet to add to the collection, kid. Keep him away from the cat?"
Damian beamed. "Really? I'll make sure he doesn't get out, and I bet I can train him to do all kinds of things. I don't know if the cage is a perfect permanent home, but I'm sure I can—"
Bruce clapped his hands together, commanding silence once more. "Alright. Enough frivolity—debrief in ten down in the cave, I will have Alfred prepare the rabies shots for anyone who needs it." Bruce turned on his heel and marched out of the room, shaking his head.
"Did you even try to call him?" Dick asked Tim, who was standing stock still, face bright red.
"How long do you think it'll take to live this down?" he asked.
Stephanie put an arm around him, messing up his hair. "How long do bats live?"