Chapter Text
“Nightwing’s down! I repeat, Nightwing’s down!”
The urgency in Red Hood’s voice sent a wave of terror through Batman. Red Hood, of all his children, was the best at hiding his concern when one of the others got hurt. He scoffed at minor scrapes, offered no sympathy over burns. But this…
“Converge on Red Hood’s location immediately,” Batman instructed.
Batman should never have let any of his family out that night. There was an unknown threat rearing its head in Gotham. First a scientist had gone missing. Dr Jesper Howell had disappeared in the middle of the night from where he slept beside his wife, mobile phone and glasses still on his bedside cabinet. There had been other missing people too. Homeless people disappearing off the streets, trails of sludge left behind. Batman had found them now: they’d been the sludge.
So Batman had not wanted any of his children out there that night but they’d all insisted. Because they always insisted when there was a new threat.
He just hoped Nightwing hadn’t just paid for it.
“What the-?” he heard Red Hood question over the comms.
And then came a thud.
Batman had already been racing to the scene but he felt his body reach for speed he didn’t even know he had.
Dick. Jason.
He needed to get to them. He needed to protect them.
And then Red Hood was in sight. He was lying on a rooftop, broken helmet lying on the floor beside him. Dazed but conscious. There was no sign of Nightwing.
Batman landed beside Red Hood. His eyes scanned the young man carefully. There was the first hints of a bruise already forming on his temple. Whoever had attacked him had gotten in at least two good hits: one to break the helmet, the other to down Hood. He reached down to help Red Hood up.
“What happened?” Batman asked.
“Blue light came out of nowhere, hit Nightwing mid swing. He came crashing down onto this roof so I landed, expecting to see sludge.”
“There’s no sludge,” Batman said. “Whoever attacked you must have taken Nightwing.”
Red Hood looked at him incredulously.
“Nightwing was the one who attacked me. But he’s not Nightwing anymore, he’s…”
A laugh from the shadows drew Batman’s gaze. He knew that laugh. Normally he had to fight the urge to smile when he heard it, the recordings of it, the shining memories that almost felt like guilty pleasures. And yet in that moment it felt like a punch to the gut.
Because that laugh had gone. He’d not heard that laugh in person for twelve years. Not since Dick’s voice had dropped.
There was movement in the shadows. Batman watched them carefully. Slowly he stepped toward the subtle shifting of the darkness. It was very obviously not a human movement but that didn’t mean it wasn’t something Batman needed to investigate.
What was happening? Was Nightwing okay? Was whatever had happened to him reversable?
“What a poor imitation,” a voice called from the darkness. “Your voice isn’t deep enough. Your movements are too slow.”
Batman got close enough to see what was causing the movement. It was a piece of black Kevlar – material from Nightwing’s suit – rammed into a gap in a chimney stack and shifting in the breeze.
“And my Bat wouldn’t fall for a trick like that.”
The voice came from behind him, rapidly approaching. Batman turned just in time to throw his arms up, block the bare foot flying toward his face. The foot’s owner changed tact quickly, flipping away to put distance between the two of them, give himself a chance to attack again.
Red Hood lunged toward the attacker.
“Stay back, Hood,” Batman growled. “He’s disorientated. He doesn’t understand.”
The figure attacked again, a blur of tanned skin and black fabric. Batman tried to catch him but the moment he grabbed the attacker, it was immediately twisted against him. A foot slammed into his jaw and Batman had to fight to keep a hold.
“I don’t want to fight you,” Batman told his prisoner. “But I cannot let you run off alone.”
A foot slammed into Batman’s side, attempting to hit a space that ten years ago would not have been heavily protected. Batman heard a grunt as exposed toes slammed into layers of body armour. He let the struggling boy go, not wanting him to hurt himself anymore.
Immediately the boy retreated, analysing, trying to come up with his next attack. Batman stared. Red Hood let out a long low whistle.
A boy of thirteen stood before them. He had coal black hair and olive skin, chimney soot circling his eyes. He wore nothing but a tangle of black and blue material hastily tied around himself like a loin cloth.
“He’s been turned into a kid,” Red Hood spluttered. “A little kid.”
“Apparently you’ve just been turned into an idiot,” the teenager remarked, folding his arms across his chest. “Why don’t you two give me answers and I won’t have to knock you off this roof?”
Batman reached up to his neck and unclipped his cape, keeping his cowl in place. He held it out to the barely dressed teenager. The boy didn’t move to accept it.
“I know you’re not Batman,” he said. “You don’t even move like him. I can do a better job.”
“You’re thirteen, aren’t you?” Batman said.
He let his voice soften. How could he not? Dick stood before him, scared and confused. And not just that. He was a child. Batman had never wanted to become a figure children feared and no child more so than any that slept under his roof.
And Dick blinked. It was enough to tell Batman his guess had been correct.
“I’m forty,” Batman told him.
“Batman isn’t forty,” Dick replied.
Red Hood scoffed.
“Can we just tranq him and take him back to the cave?” he asked.
“No, you can’t,” Dick replied with certainty.
He turned back to Batman and there was a little less certainty on his young face. Batman could tell he was getting through.
“The evidence that you are missing the last thirteen years of your life is tied around your waist,” Batman told him. “Your suit. The suit you wear as a twenty-six-year-old. It doesn’t fit you yet but it’s yours.”
“Promising,” Dick remarked, looking down at the suit tied around his waist. “Good to know I grow.”
Batman took a step toward him. Dick raised a hand.
“The oath.”
Batman knew he didn’t need to ask what Dick meant. The boy could read the need for clarification off his face. He’d taken Dick in when he had been nine. To the boy before him, that had been four years ago. Just because Batman’s body had taken damage, been forced to move in different ways over the years, didn’t mean Dick wouldn’t be able to read him.
“The oath you made me swear when I became Robin.”
Batman looked into Dick’s eyes. In spite of the soot forming his mask, the teenager’s eyes shone out, a brilliant blue. Batman needed him to be sure, needed the boy to willingly come back with him. It was dangerous enough on the streets with an unknown enemy about for those who knew what Gotham was like in the modern day. For Dick, who was thirteen years behind on technology and enemies and Gotham politics, it could easily prove deadly.
“Do you, R.J.G., swear to fight against crime and corruption and never swerve from the path of righteousness?”
He’d used his initials. How could he not when he had given the boy’s full name when he had made him swear that first time? How could he not use just another scrap of proof to prove to the boy that this was not just some trick devised by their enemies to get him to reveal some sort of information that could be weaponised against them.
“B,” Dick said, the edge melting away from his voice, “what do you mean it’s been thirteen years?”
“Some used technology or magic to turn you from an adult into a teenager once more. No motives. Yet. But we will get to the bottom of this.”
He passed Dick his cape and the young man readily accepted. All of the other Robins would have enveloped themselves in the fabric, rested it on their shoulders. Dick might have done if he was upset or scared or simply cold. But adrenaline was fuelling him and any fear he might have had had melted away. How could he be scared when Batman was with him?
He used the cape to make himself a toga.
“Who’s your friend?” he asked once his work was done. “And why is he dressing like the Joker?”
“I’m co-opting it,” Red Hood announced proudly. “Taking it back from him.”
“You can have more answers at the cave,” Batman said.
If there had been any chance to final discussion, and Batman had tried to use his firmest voice to end the conversation until they were in private, it was entirely stopped by the arrival of Robin and Red Robin. They were both looking around frantically, trying to spot the wounded Nightwing. Robin particularly fumed as he landed beside Batman while Red Robin landed beside Red Hood’s helmet and studied it intently.
“Where is Nightwing? Why fuss over this insane child when Nightwing is in danger?”
Red Hood grinned.
“That ‘insane child’ is Nightwing,” he answered.
Robin turned, masked eyes running up and down the teenaged boy draped in his father’s cape. And yet even he could not match the intensity of disgust that Dick was able to work into his glare.
“Who on Earth is that?” he asked in a voice dripping with venom.
He stalked toward Robin who didn’t let his expression wavier even as it became clear he recognised something in the teenager before him.
“B?”
“Yes,” Batman said tightly.
Out of all his children, Dick and Damian were the closest. They had been partners and that had continued into a friendship made of understanding and patience. The last thing Batman ever wanted to do was have to separate them. And he had never had to. Never once. Dick always defused the situation in a mature, compassionate way.
But the Dick before him was thirteen. He’d not had the time to mature, the chance to realise that most people didn’t need a punch, they needed an outstretched hand.
“I swore to fight against crime, yeah?”
“Yes.”
“And that extends to thieves?”
He didn’t wait for a response. Instead his fist flew out slamming into a startled Robin’s jaw.