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In Tim’s short time on the earth, sixteen years, seven months, two days, and a handful of hours to be exact, he’d developed a very impressive talent. This talent wasn’t impressive to anyone except himself and maybe Bruce, but it was a talent nonetheless.
His talent, the ability to end up in terrible situations, was unbelievable. This current example took the cake. He was pretty sure he’d rather be back in the alley that the Penguin hit him over the head with a golf club in. Or the night that he went flying into the river after an explosive went off and got shit water in his lungs.
Anywhere would be better than here, biting back tears as below zero temperatures whipped against his face. Oh, and, with Jason Todd trudging along beside him, silent as ever.
This mission was only supposed to take two days, thirty six of those hours being ample travel time. Another six for recon. The remaining six for carrying out what needed to be done.
Unfortunately, things don’t always go as planned, and there was a situation that happened to have some guns, bombs, and batons hard enough to break bone (Tim was more than personal with those, by now).
He adjusted his arm against his chest, teeth sinking into his lip as pain radiated from the area in long waves. It’d only grown worse. Funny how that worked.
“If you keep moving it, you’re gonna make the bones displace,” Jason muttered, his voice barely audible against the wind.
Tim wanted to skewer him. Or staple his mouth shut. Of course he knew he shouldn’t be moving his arm, he wasn’t an idiot, but the circumstances were a hell of a lot different now than they would be in Gotham. Or anywhere within two hundred miles of signs of civilization. So he’d move his fucking arm if he wanted to.
Tim shivered, really wishing he had brought along a thicker coat. Stupid doppler radar lied about whether it would snow or not, so he didn’t think he would need it. Wrong. So, so, so wrong. “It’s freezing.”
“Great observation, kid.”
He supposed he walked right into that one. He debated over complaining about being called ‘kid’ but moved on when a bundle of snow flung against his leg. “We need to stop soon, standing out here longer is just going to make hypothermia set in quicker. Our pants are wet.”
Jason sniffed next to him, the sound distorted by his mask. He’d ditched the helmet a few months back, currently sporting the muzzle look. Fitting, for someone like himself. Tim just wished it would make him quieter. “Obviously. You see anything?”
Tim couldn’t see thirty feet in front of him, so, no. They’d been following the tracker pads on their respective suits to make their way towards mountains, their plane far too unsafe to attempt to get to by now, but walking through the quickly multiplying inches of snow was taking ages. “Map shows a topographical change coming up on the right,” He pointed over to wherever it should eventually be. “We can check there for a cavern or some type of cover.”
“Topographical,” Jason grumbled mockingly, adding a nod a moment later. Tim would’ve made a comment on how Jason should have a bigger vocabulary, since he was an English major, but he was much more focused on not being able to feel his fingers anymore.
They veered to the right.
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Thankfully, it only took another eight minutes of walking before a slightly darkened blotch showed along the mountain side. Tim pointed again, “There. Cave, hopefully.”
Jason picked up the pace, stepping in front of Tim to beeline for the cover. Tim happily stepped into the footsteps he left behind, saving himself from having to get even more snow flung against the millimeter of space that separated his suit from his boots.
The cave wasn’t much, but it had just enough room for them to get out of the wind and lay low. There was some brush in it, enough to make a short lasting fire—if they were lucky and it wasn’t all damp.
Regardless of that, they both silently went around and grabbed any pieces that they could, tossing them into a small pile in the back of the cavern.
“If our beacon’s went through, someone should be here in… four and a half hours. Ish,” Jason announced, his wavering voice echoing slightly off of the stone walls.
Their beacons should have gone through, at least both of their chests were flashing with green dots, which typically signaled that they did, but they couldn’t be too sure. Not in this type of situation, where they could die if they rely on that hope.
“Until then, we need to figure out how to make this place warmer. You need a sling on that arm, too.”
“Urgh,” Tim replied, his working hand shaking as he picked up another tiny twig.
“I think I have fabric for one in my belt,” The sound of twigs dropping onto the pile filled the space, quickly followed by the unsnapping and resnapping of utility belt pouches. “Nice, still tied from last time. C’mere.”
Tim turned around slowly, looking at Jason slightly apprehensively. He didn’t think Jason would outright make his arm worse, at least not present day Jason, but he was more than familiar with how awful setting it would feel. He looked down at the piece of fabric in Jason’s hands, which was more like a rag. “That thing has blood on it.”
“Dry blood.”
“What, you ran out of bleach?”
Jason gave Tim a look, his hands spread apart as though he was about to go ‘Seriously, dude?’. “Yeah, actually. Didn’t have time to run to Walmart because oh, you know, being called away to missions like this, where I’m freezing my nuts off in the middle of butt-fuck nowhere.”
Okay. Point taken.
Tim shuffled closer, stopping right in front of Jason. He froze as Jason’s, surprisingly steady, hands unclipped one side of his cape.
“This is gonna hurt,” Jason warned.
“I can’t feel my fingers anyway.”
“I meant the–you know what, I’ll just tell you after. Lock your elbow.” There wasn’t much of a loading period for those words to process before Jason was moving, hoisting the fabric sling up and around Tim’s arm before he could even blink.
The pain started in his fingers for some reason, clawing its way up the rest of his hand, his forearm, his bicep, before exploding throughout the rest of his body. He wasn’t sure what came first, the yelp, the sob, or the vomit on the floor in front of him. He could hardly feel the slam of his knees against the frigid stone through the haze.
He sucked in each breath like it was his last, only to let them go in choppy, quick succession.
“Kid, you need to breathe,” Jason supplied helpfully. Tim was glad he could barely understand him and therefore could pretend he didn’t hear him in the first place. He scrabbled at his chest instead, trying to dig the pain out from beneath his skin. Jason pushed away his hand. “You’re alright, you’re alright.”
“Urk,” Tim coughed, his good hand flying around in the air until it locked around Jason's forearm. He wheezed, “Fuck! You!”
“Yeah, yeah,” Jason grumbled, his hand patting Tim’s back a few times in a weak attempt to work the cough out of his chest. “Assumed Boy Genius would remember how nerves react with the cold.”
“Don’t chastise me for forgetting,” Tim bit, spitting onto the stone. It froze as soon as it hit the ground. “My arm is snapped in half.”
There was some more rustling, paired with the snaps of Jason’s belt, before he crouched next to Tim and leaned into his line of sight. “I’ve got Midol. Take it.”
“The…menstruation one?”
“What?” Jason produced two of them in his hand, holding them out to Tim.
Tim snorted at his own words before he could get them out, fingers fumbling to grab the two pills from Jason. “Do you even know a girl?”
“One, it works better than Excedrin. Two, take the damn pills. Asshole.”
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Somehow, their fire lit. They had to tuck it in a little corner of the cave so it would stay out of reach of any potential gusts of wind, so they rotated which side of them faced it after everything vital was mostly warmed up.
Tim kept his knees tucked up, or at least as high as they could go without jostling his arm. His head was tilted to the side, resting on his good arm. Jason stared outside blankly. Their beacons blinked in sync, making the cave light up with green every few seconds.
He wasn’t sure how long it’d been, but he was positive that he’d like to go home now, please. The mission was a total bust, and not only because they got blown up, beat up, and shot at, but due to the fact they couldn’t see shit anywhere. Majority of the facilities were camouflaged with white, making them hard enough to pick out over the snowy tundra. That, combined with the snow blowing around as soon as Tim and Jason needed to actually act, left them with little to bring back.
Of course, they had more in depth scans of the place than they did before, and a few names of people involved, but the goal had been to get to the leader–or at least take care of this branch of things. Weapons traders were everywhere, sure, but the majority of lines they tracked seemed to be coming from this particular post.
Obviously, things don’t always go to plan. They’d be able to try again. Still, it was irritating to come back with nothing–especially when neither of them were heading the mission. It was a Batman thing, one that had gotten pawned off when he got called in by the League, so it had a larger sense of urgency than their own smaller cases.
“Bruce was probably snug as a god damn bug at the Manor,” Jason said. Both of them assumed that the League mission, or meeting, or whatever it was, didn’t take that long, because they never did. When you put that many top-class heroes on the same mission, they’re bound to get things done awfully quickly. “It’s been two hours and…forty five minutes since we got here. Should be here within an hour.”
“If they got the distress call.”
“Hush up, Timiffer. They’re coming. You think dear ol’ Bruce would let me die again?”
Tim raised a brow, thinking for a moment. Jason always was giving them stupid nicknames. Usually just variations of their names, or things like Bulb Boy for Duke and Bernese for Robin (which originally arose from Dick yelling “Robin needs–” with his mouth full of food, making it sound identical to Bernese). “Probably… Jasonania.”
Jason pretended to gag, flinging himself forward to hang his head over the ground. “Yuck. Never do that again.”
As they worked their way into silence once more, Tim did his best to mask the familiar sense of panic that was settling in. It was kind of ironic to fear death as bad as he did, being a vigilante. He’d been closer to it than he was to life a multitude of times, and was well aware it was part of his job, but it didn’t stop the sinking feeling in his stomach.
He’d dealt with this before. Probably hundreds of times. Forcing his shoulders to drop and his lungs to force in a long breath helped, but only enough for his mind to have enough time to spiral deeper. Freezing to death was a shitty way to go out, not to mention it would be after their entire mission flopped. Like, jeez, they couldn’t go out on a high note?
They weren’t going to die, he told himself over and over. Someone would be there relatively soon. Since they’d hit the beacons as soon as the snow began dropping in sheets rather than flakes, many hours had already passed. The batplane was a hell of a lot faster than the one they’d taken, too, especially if Bruce was the one flying it. He knew that. He knew that. He knew that.
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By the time the roar of the batplane finally sounded, Jason and Tim were tucked up next to each other, Tim’s cape wrapped around their backs and Jason’s jacket thrown over their legs. It was the absolute last way either of them wanted to have spent the past forty or so minutes, but both of them had been practically vibrating despite the waning fire.
Tim had gotten over the overwhelming panic a bit ago, settling more into an exhausted haze instead.
“Oh, look who’s here, Greaseball,” Jason poked Tim’s bicep, clearly having held onto the line to use when their savior finally showed. He’d passed the time curled over holding onto his throbbing head, but there was a priority to terrorize Tim. Typical. “Just as I predicted: Bruce!”
Tim tugged his cape back and off of his companions shoulders, relishing in the small shiver Jason gave in response. He didn’t bother trying to get to his feet, his feet throbbing from the cold and knees having locked twenty minutes ago. “You’re insufferable, Dirt Nap.”
“Uh. Woah. No way,” Jason spun on his heel, having already managed to limp his way to the mouth of the cave. “Nope, I’m the only one allowed to make jokes about dying around these parts.”
Tim tilted his head, resisting using his hand to mock his older brother. “Don’t be greedy, I was assumed to be dead for a while. I’ve earned the right.”
“Unbelievable. I’m telling,” Jason sighed, leaning out the opening. Tim assumed he was waving his arm around, trying to flag down whoever came for them. A minute later he spoke again, this time directed towards the outside world. “Hey, B, the twerp just called me Dirt Nap. Aren’t you going to defend your precious four year old son?”
Jason liked to measure his ‘new’ birthday as the day he became aware of himself again, which made him four years old, instead of nineteen. Tim thought it was hilarious when he first announced it at the dinner table his first year back, but it was quickly getting old.
“Jason, you are an adult,” Bruce’s voice bypassed the wind and flowed into the cave. Tim felt his body settle immediately, a sense of relief flowing through him. Of course he knew that someone would show up eventually, this was established during his silent panic attack, but he’d simultaneously convinced himself that they’d be popsicles by the time anyone did show their face.
Jason was blabbing something about them not being able to make it back to their own plane, the path blocked by their new friends and far too difficult to get to in the current conditions.
“Sorry about the plane,” Tim threw in, referencing the fact it was probably found, taken apart, and looted by now. They’d made sure to take out anything identifying before they left, creatures of habit, but still, they’d lost an entire plane.
“I can replace the plane, Tim,” Bruce said, finally all the way inside. “But I can’t replace either of you. Are you both alright?”
Jason snorted at what Bruce said, always quick to find the irony in things. Tim and Bruce both elected to ignore him.
“Ulna snapped. Blunt force object. Not an open fracture. Took Midol roughly three hours and thirty five minutes ago. I can still feel my fingers and toes,” He rattled off and moved his good hands fingers as proof, wincing when his joints protested every millimeter of the way. “Both knees locked up twenty minutes ago.”
His partner in misery gave a fairly similar report, but replaced the broken arm with a raging migraine. He’d gotten them ever since Ethiopia, and they were always triggered by the cold, so it wasn’t a surprise. His hip was his version of Tim’s knees, both of their joints well known for looking creative on x-rays. It came with the job. Bruce’s x-rays lit up like a Christmas tree due to the amount of metal inside of him.
It was both fascinating and mortifying to look at, the human nature to be curious accompanied by the lingering knowledge that Tim would, in fact, end up like that someday. Boo.
Bruce crouched in front of Tim, pushing his shoulder back just slightly so his arm was more in view. He studied the angle of the sling closely, complimenting Jason on the placement of it, before pulling it open to try to look at the arm itself. It was covered by the sleeves of Tim’s suit, but that didn’t stop Bruce from noting that it was progressively bruising. Everyone thought it was creepy how he did that, managing to use the slightest change in the looks of something to make some left field conclusion. It was even worse that he was always right about it, too.
Tim stifled a flinch when Bruce’s hands landed on his knees, the heat of them travelling through his layers to make his legs sting. Bruce poked them gently, acting as though they were broken rather than just frozen.
“Can you walk?” Bruce asked, his head upturned to look at Tim. He’d pulled off the cowl the second he was out of the wind, soft eyes watching every movement of Tim’s face.
“Haven’t exactly had the chance,” Tim lightly pointed out. “Might need a second to get myself together, but probably.”
With a sharp nod, Bruce put a finger to his ear and asked for Dick to get out warming blankets and to drop the ramp down. He sent Jason out to the plane and stepped behind Tim in one movement, crouching to put his arms out in front of him.
Tim knew the drill, raising his arms away from his sides as far as he could manage so Bruce’s hands could slot beneath his armpits.
“I’ll be quick,” Bruce promised after Tim gasped at the jolt of his arm. He knew that Bruce would wait for him to give some sort of confirmation that he understood, so he gave a short nod and slammed his eyes shut.
Turns out it didn’t matter how quick Bruce was, because the explosion of pain lingered long after the hands switched to steady him at the waist.
“Breathe through it, Tim,” Bruce urged, following it with a hushed apology against the side of his head. Tim could hardly hear him over the rushing of his own blood, every cell of him busy focusing on staying on his feet and the fireworks that radiated from his forearm. “Just a little longer.”
Tim was tempted to cuss Bruce out, knowing damn well it was a long flight back and he’d be dealing with it for at least the next six weeks. But, he trusted Bruce’s word and tried his best to calm himself.
He wasn’t sure how long passed between when he first stood up and when he gained the ability to shuffle towards the exit, and Bruce’s never ending patience didn’t reveal anything either. He didn’t want to be the one holding them up, not when Jason was probably clutching his head in the plane. Hopefully the stubborn asshole accepted some sort of help.
It was a slow walk to the plane, something closer to a crawl. Tim could tell Bruce just wanted to pick him up and get there already, so he was forced to mutter ‘I’ve got it, I’ve got it.’ every few steps to prevent it. Not that his exhausted self wouldn’t appreciate it, but he knew he could get there on his own.
Dick stood at the end of the ramp in the bat-tech equivalent of football players sideline capes, a blue blob among the snow. Even though the batplane was black, it looked more like a shadow than anything else.
He was yelling something about Jason’s stats, temperature and other medical things that were arriving as a jumble of letters to Tim’s fogged mind. Bruce responded with another jumble of letters. Tim yawned, carefully placing his feet into the shuffle marks Jason left behind.
“Almost there, chum,” Bruce assured. “You’re doing great.”
After what felt like forever, but what was probably only thirty paces, they made it to the ramp. Tim made his way up gingerly, purposely walking right towards Dick.
“Hey,” Dick said warmly, like he always did. He was putting something thin over Tim’s shoulders, but he couldn’t be bothered with seeing what. “Sorry about your arm, buddy. Medbay and then bunks, ‘kay?”
“Mhm,” Tim muttered, leaning into Dick’s warmth when he and Bruce traded places. Bruce quickly walked towards the cockpit, the ramp beginning to close behind them as soon as they were inside. Dick used his body weight to veer them towards the small med-bay, one that only held a cot and a few cabinets.
Jason must have made his way into one of the bunk rooms, the cot barren apart from a bunched up warming blanket. It took a moment for Tim to realize that was what was around his shoulders, too.
He stumbled onto the cot, immediately hunching over and resting his forehead against Dick’s back. There wasn’t much room in the area, so Dick was able to reach all of the storage areas while still acting as Tim’s pillow. Thank fucking god for that. Or Alfred, who had been in charge of the blueprints of the plane.
After a few tears, an injection of codeine, and a new non-stained sling, Tim was changed into sweats and someone's zip-up sweatshirt. His suit lost a sleeve in the battle of getting himself undressed. Dick assured his drugged self that it was not the end of the world, but rather a cool fashion statement.
“Alrighty, bunks in portal two or portal four?” Dick asked, gently helping Tim to his feet.
“I love that game,” Tim answered, everything feeling much better now that his body was warm and his mind was swimming.
Dick snorted, brushing Tim’s hair out of his face. “Why don’t we go see Jason in two?”
Things were moving a hell of a lot faster now that he wasn’t fully aware of the world, so it seemed as though they stepped away from the cot and were immediately in the bunk room–doors sliding shut behind them.
“Timmers? You’re alive?” Jason mumbled from somewhere in the darkness. Tim looked around for the dim glow of his eyes until he saw them on the bunk to his left.
“I took your diseases off,” He headed towards the bunk to his right, or, well, allowed Dick to lead him that way. There was a sound of question and some shuffling of the sheets from Jason’s side of the room.
“The sling. He means the sling,” Dick clarified, like it wasn’t obvious.
Tim climbed beneath the lifted covers, flopping onto his back rather abruptly, wincing at the small amount of pain that barged through the medication. Dick stared at him like he was an idiot before tucking the blankets around him.
“Either of you need anything?”
“A goddamn cigarette,” Jason groaned. “And a crowbar to re-beat my skull in with.”
“I’ll get the sumatriptan,” Dick sighed. “Tim?”
Tim wiggled until he was comfortable. Letting out a long, relieved sigh, he spoke from his heart. “I think a new mass spectrometer would be neat.”
“How about a bottle of water?”
“Guess so.”
By the time that Dick made it back, Tim was long gone–his brain three minutes deep into replaying the video he’d watched on mass spectrometers two weeks prior. While he was busy reviewing isotopic signatures, Dick set the bottle of water within reach and told them to yell if they needed anything other than a two hundred thousand dollar piece of equipment. Tim hummed in both agreement and disappointment, his brain's movie theater moving onto electron multipliers.
In a haze run by vacuum tubes and some scientist named Eugen Goldstein, Tim happily welcomed the contentment of sleep. He just hoped his video would finish in his dreams.