Chapter Text
“Robin!”
“I’m the lightest one, I’m going!”
Damian doesn’t wait for his father’s opinion before sliding on the ice. He knows he’s the one who should go, and not Batman. It’s common sense.
He tunes off what is coming out of his comm to focus solely on his objective. In the middle of the frozen harbor, a toddler is crying. Her father has contracted dept with the wrong people, and she’s paying the price. The man is on the shore, beaten up, held by two of the goons. He’s screaming, but he can’t save his daughter.
Damian knows a things or two about a child not having to have to pay for the crimes of their parents. He’s going to save her, and bring her back to her father, or her mother, or whoever would be a fit caretaker for her. He moves, fast but careful, on the ice.
“I’m Robin,” he says when he reaches her. He tries to smiles and to put has much confidence and reassurance in his voice, just like Grayson taught him. “I’m here to help you.” He needs her to stop moving.
“I want my daddy!!” the little girl screams. “I want my daddy!!”
“And I will take you to him,” Damian says. “You just need to come with me.”
She seems to think about it, wasting precious time, but he can’t afford to have her being uncooperative.
“I can’t go with strangers,” she says after a time, and it’s final. Damian would appreciate the caution if there wasn’t a time and a place for it.
“I think this is the type of situation where we can really forget-”
Something in his guts screams of danger, and he grabs the child just before he hears the gunshot. Someone is shooting at them. He curses.
“Bad word,” the toddler remarks and she should build some situational awareness.
But he doesn’t have time to dwell on it because he hears a sound that is even more worrying than the gunshot.
The ice is breaking. The bullet didn’t hit either of them, but the damage might be the same, in the end. He holds the kid a little tighter, looking for an escape. Looking for a way to get out. He will find it, he’s Robin. He will-
Truth falls on him, colder than the winter wind: they won’t make it in time.
Batman is on the shore, having just taken the shooter out, and so is the kid’s dad. They’re both going to die in front of their fathers. Damian might be able to make it out but he won’t abandon the kid. He can’t.
He moves away from the crack, still holding her. He knows he won’t be nearly fast enough to reach the shore, but he needs to try anyway. He’s a dead man walking. Well. A dead man crawling. The kid is squirming and crying again, which doesn’t make it easier.
He would love a miracle, right now. He looks up, and, in the skies, he sees it.
Red, green and yellow.
He never thought his miracle would show up in the form of Timothy Jackson Drake, but here it is. He’s rushing toward them, grappling between buildings, and he might fly close enough for…
Well, not close enough to catch Damian’s hand and get both him and the kid out of harms way, but that’s not what Damian needs him for. Not really.
The crack is catching up on him. Time’s up.
“ROBIN!” he screams, his own name, directed at someone else, and it doesn’t seem as foreign on his tongue as it usually do when he calls Drake on the field.
And he tosses the kid toward him.
In the end, it’s simple physics. Newton’s third law. The rebound. When a force is applied in a direction, a similar force gets applied in the opposite direction.
He knows the second he lunches her that he will fall trough the ice. He does.
The icy choc of water is still a surprise. Not for him, but for his body, all his muscles tensing despite himself. He didn’t have time to take a deep breath, too focused on yelling out for Drake – he hopes he could catch her – and his lungs hurt the second he’s underwater.
Even if he could fight the sub zero water temperature, the strong current take him away from the hole he made while falling.
Everything is quiet down there. Above him, a thick layer of ice he doesn’t have the strength to break. Below, only darkness.
He remembers death. Some nights, he wakes up with the feeling of death still in his chest. But it’s been violent, loud, dirty. Compared the Heretic, the icy harbor feels almost gentle as it holds him in its lethal arms.
Still, he’s the son of Batman. He’s Robin. He won’t go down without a fight. He can’t break the ice, but he still has allies in the surface. He cracks up a flare, the chemical reaction breaking the silent darkness with a bright red light just as he open his mouth, body desperate for some oxygen it won’t get, and feels the cold hands of death reaching within his chest.
The bright red light goes away when he passes out.
“- breathe, dammit!”
Water crawls up his chest, death moving away from his lungs as Batman scares it away, and Damian coughs and cries and vomit seawater.
His father found him. Within the darkness of the harbor, just like he did in Apokolips, his father found him.
Damian feels pain before he feels cold, but when he does, it’s overwhelming, taking over any coherent though beside the need to get warm. Still, there is something important he needs to check.
“The kid,” he croaks between coughs, pushing himself on his elbows “Is she-?”
“She’s fine,” Batman says, and he moves so Damian can see Drake, who is holding the child in his arms. She seems to have quieted down, but is looking at him with wide, scared eyes.
Finally some situational awareness from her, he thinks grimly as he wonders how traumatized she’s going to be from tonight specifically.
He falls back on the pavement, swallowing icy cold air that makes a weird sound as it goes down his throat.
“You need medical attention,” Drake remarks. If Damian had some breath to spare he would tell him he get why they call him detective, now. “I can-”
“Take him to the cave,” Batman orders. “Give me the kid.”
Drake doesn’t discuss the order, and just hands Batman the girl. It’s only when his father gets up that Damian realizes one of his hands has gripped the cape. He tries to will it to let go, but he can’t feel a thing in his frozen fingers, let alone make them obey.
His father gives him a look he can’t quite understand before uncliping the cape, leaving it with them.
Drake bends down next to him. “Alright, Robin,” he says, and Damian is glad he’s not trying to go for a nickname like Thomas or Grayson would have. “Batmobile is just around the corner”
Drake doesn’t ask him if he can stand, he just picks him up and starts walking. Part of Damian want to tell him to let go, but every other part of him are is so cold and hurting he doesn’t care anymore.
He closes his eyes. They’re sore from seawater, a small thing in the grand scheme, but it will do good to rest them a little.
“Hey! No falling asleep!!”
They’ve reached the Batmobile. Damian wants to tell Drake he wasn’t falling asleep, but all that get out of his mouth when he opens it is wet coughs. Drake put the car on autopilot, increases the heating to the maximum and goes to fetch their emergency blankets.
Damian knows he should probably do something, but all he can do is focus on breathing.
“Let’s get you out of these clothes,” Drake says, and he doesn’t wait for Damian’s permission to start removing the Robin uniform.
Damian’s eyes fall on the cape. He’s still holding it. He feels, more than he sees, his pants being removed and a heating blanket on his legs. Feelings return with new, more pain, and he starts shivering, sending fire all over his chest. It’s already turning purple, broken ribs from the CPR, and scar from Heretic’s sword is showing, a clear line in the middle of the chaos.
Drake stays frozen, mesmerized by it, as he sits there with a blanket in hand.
“Drake?” it’s not that he’s cold, but he’s cold.
“Shit, sorry.” Drake put the blanket on him. “You scared me, kiddo.”
Damian will let the nickname slide. Just for tonight. “Good job catching the kid. Maybe you’re slightly more capable than I thought you were,” he says between chattering teeth.
Drake laughs. “Maybe I am.” His eyes fall on the cape. “You can keep it, if you want. I know it’s comforting.”
Damian should probably say he doesn’t need comfort, but he just nods. He closes his eyes again.
“Hey,” Drake shake him a little. “No sleeping yet. I will need to do a full checkup once we reach the cave. Then you can sleep.”
Damian huffs. He just want some rest. He’s so cold.
“I know, I know,” Drake says. His hand stays on Damian’s shoulder, some additional warmth above the blanket, and Damian finds he doesn’t want it gone. “For what it’s worth, I also think you did good job. You saved that kid, and lighting up a flare… that was quick thinking.”
“Of course I did,” Damian croaks. His eyes find Drake’s. “I’m Robin.”