#no25

“Little Wi~ng,” Dick whines, "Make me lunch."

“You did not skip out on Alfred’s meals for mine.”

“Don’t knock your own cooking, but yes.” Dick feels the smile slide from his face and watches Jason’s turn grim in response. “I want to talk to you about the Escabedo Cartel pushing into Gotham. And,” he takes a deep breath, “About Tim.”

Jason steps aside and allows Dick to crutch into the apartment. “Warning you now, I’d been on my way to the grocery store.”

“I’m sure you can whip something up.” 

Dick collapses into a chair at the kitchen table and pulls off his backpack. It’s a hard plastic seat, but Jason passes him two pillows and Dick uses one as a prompt on a second chair for his leg and another to cushion his back. Then, he pulls out his stash of files. 

It’s a mix of things. Bat files on the Escabedo Cartel’s push into Gotham, as well as chemical readouts of Kinvy and the modified stuff they liberated last weekend. The subtle photos he’d taken of Tim’s care package from Ra’s. Dick doesn’t have blueprints of Tim’s Nest, but he’s brought out notes on what he has deduced about set up, contents, tech. There’s public financial statements for Wayne Enterprises and Drake Industries, even if one is currently a subsidiary of the other. There’s estimates of Tim’s net worth. Tim’s five most recent case reports. Stats comparing the Bats based on case load, solves, arrests, and injuries as well as public polls on favorability, hotness, and social media followers. 

Jason watches him pull things out in mild concern, boiling box pasta while doctoring a can of tomato sauce. Dick just buys the glass jars of pasta sauce, but Jason’s actually adding things like oil, herbs, and garlic. It smells so good it’s unfair.

When Jason sits down across from him, placing two plates down complete with freshly shaved parmesan, he gestures to all the paperwork. “What’s all this?”

Dick hesitantly places his last piece of evidence on the pile. It’s a collection of paparazzi shots and articles about Tim. On top is a fluff piece about the museum exhibit, with the headline photo of Tim subtly passing a drink to a lady who is practically drooling. Timothy Drake enjoys the arts the large caption reads.

Somewhere in that pile of papers is also copies of Tim’s adoption, emancipation, and employment paperwork.

“Tell me what you think about Tim.”

Jason gives Dick a look, but plays along. “Workaholic obsessed with perfection. Annoying. Skinny as a lamppost. But he’s hardy, skilled. With tech and cases. I know Bruce taught us all a lot, but I swear Tim could talk circles around us if he felt like it. I wish he’d ask for help more - he takes on too much work and thinks he can do it all himself.”

“Yeah, well, we didn’t help with that.”

They’d done the opposite, pulled their support, and instead of dropping it like Dick expected Tim had gone and found Bruce anyway. He hadn’t needed their help. He still doesn’t. But they offer and Tim accepts and that makes Dick happy, knowing Tim isn’t pushing them away. That Tim can let go of so much and simply be Dick’s brother, without some of the harsh, long bumps that have gotten in between Dick and Jason.

“He’ll be the best of us eventually,” Jason says.

Dick shovels pasta in his mouth. 

Jason smartly realizes it’s a tactic to not talk and starts pulling at the pile of paper. It’s a casual look, just to classify things, but Dick can tell when Jason realizes so much of it is Tim focused and not case work. Jason snorts as he yanks free the bar charts of Bat Comparisons. 

Red Robin has finished more cases this year than any other Bat or Bird. His time to complete them is shorter. The only reason Dick and Bruce have more cold cases solved is time - Tim will catch up in two years. Red Robin also has more social media followers, more Gothamites call him their favorite, and he's the most wanted at a rescue. Dick’s not sure if that’s because of how attractive the city views Red Robin (a few percentage points under Nightwing, but he knows the numbers skew the other way in Blud) or because they believe him to be the most competent. 

Jason whistles. “Okay, Tim might already be the best of us.”

“He’s nineteen.” Dick clutches his fork tightly.

“To many a lady’s woe, I imagine. They can’t buy him a drink.”

“He’s nineteen,” Dick hisses. Jason doesn’t get it. He hasn’t seen all the pivots: too isolated in Crime Alley, in the manor as little as Tim, too sheltered from media engagements. 

Dick shoves aside his half-eaten pasta and slides the paper pile into his lap, flipping through them. 

“He’s nineteen, and Gotham’s social elite are fawning over him.” He slaps down the photo from the gallery.

“He’s nineteen, and he’s a better detective than all of us. Red Robin is the city’s favorite.” He adds the graphs to the pile, and then slides his finger to the bottom right. “They would rather Red save them than Batman.”

“He’s nineteen, and has drawn the attention of Ra’s al Ghul in a way Bruce never did. Ra’s sends him care packages. Tim enjoys them, thinks finding the poison is fun.” The photo of the green box is next.

“By the time he’s thirty-five, his net worth might surpass Bruce’s.” Dick’s calculations on Tim’s inheritance, investments, salary, and the insurance money on the stockpile of his parents’ possession. 

“He’s nineteen, and has teams and networks we barely know.” Dick throws down a photo of Young Justice, but also other people Dick had to search to identify. School kids, ex-assassins, heroes Nightwing has only caught glimpses of during large JL missions. 

“Pretty sure he’s also got his own Alfred and Lucius." A photo of Tam Fox. Tim is smart with computers, but mechanical engineering? Chemical? Lucius still designs so much Bat tech and Tam’s his daughter, only playing at Tim's admin assistant. Dick would bet his suit she designed the poisoner's kit from scratch. That she’s made Red Robin’s unique tools. She handled Dick’s poisoning with just as much aplomb as Alfred would.  

He adds to the pile Tam’s resume and Dick’s deduced inventory of Red Robin’s Nest. 

“We both call ourselves independent heroes-”

“Anit-hero, please,”

“Vigilantes,” Dick corrects. “But we’re not. We’re too connected to Batman. We have some of his gear, share case notes, patrol together often. But Tim can, and has, gone completely solo. He’s got the chops and cash. For Red Robin and his own set of charities if he wants.”

“What are you getting at, Dickhead?”

“Tim is nineteen. He’s done all that at nineteen. Build networks and followers and enemies. Bruce didn’t even put on the suit until he was my age.”

Dick pulls out Tim’s emancipation paperwork. His full name is on there, but no one uses it. Not since it was filed. To the media, to the press, to Damian, Tim is a Drake. 

“We had our own fight about the cowl. About who should wear it, what it means, but we agreed on what Batman was. He’s the Dark Knight, the protector of Gotham. Just his shadow can prevent a crime. For the sake of the city, there should be someone in the suit.”

“Damian wants it,” Jason says.

“Yeah, when he’s older. But, at the warehouse this weekend, I learned something. Those goons working for the cartel? They were more scared of Red Robin than the Bat. They were watching the roof lines, not the shadows, because they think a nineteen year old kid, with a reputation that spans years to Batman’s nearly two decades, is a bigger threat.”

“Fuck.” Jason rubs a hand through his hair. “I knew there was something off about how they responded to a bust Red and I did a month ago. I thought they were just surprised Red Hood and Red Robin teamed up. But they scattered pretty quick from him.”

Dick locks eyes with Jason. “Gotham, the light and the dark sides, are turning their attention way from Bruce. Tim has had more media coverage than Bruce in the past month. Tim has solved more cases. Bruce Wayne and his escapades are old news. The cartels don’t care about Batman. Tim is nineteen. He’s our baby brother. I don’t know if he’s noticed. I don’t know if I want him too. I don’t want Tim to be, to be such a target.”

It’s too late, Dick knows. Tim has grabbed so much attention from every corner of the city. But just because the spotlight is turning doesn’t mean Dick can’t gunk up the gears.

“Gotham’s losing faith in Batman, so we need to stop it. Or at the very least, show that he’s still a threat. Up our game. Tim can’t be the one who gets all that attention from rogues. He can’t.”

Could Tim survive? Yes. Has he? Yes. But Joker’s latch on Batman has led to terrible, disastrous results. As has the LoA’s. If Dick can stop that attention from focusing on his baby brother for even a day, Dick will do it.

“So we what?” Jason asks. “Be better than Tim?”

“What, don’t have confidence in your skills?” Dick drops the thick manila folder of printed off files about the Escabedo Cartel and Gotham’s Kinvy problem. “Tim’s on this case. He’s got data we don’t. We need to solve it first, and make sure Escabedo doesn’t gain a foothold before Tim clears them out. Rogues can’t see Red Robin as the biggest threat.

“It’s not like we can’t solve this, Jason. Tim just does things faster. He has resources we don’t, his brain just goes. He’s, as you said, a workaholic perfectionist who focuses tightly and checks every data point several times.”

“He does catch things we don’t. Sees patterns we don’t.”

Paintings and codes and clues across time.

Dick shuts his eyes, breathes, then pulls himself up. He looms as much as he can from across the table and with his shot leg on a second chair, staring down at Jason.

“We are going to protect our little brother by proving to Gotham Red Robin isn’t the hottest thing in town.”

Jason leans back, hands up in a defensive position. “Never said we’re not. Just saying, he is better than us, Dick. He’s stepping into his own. We can only delay the attention he gets.”

“I know.” Dick will work cases into the night, he’ll show up to more socialite events in Gotham, encourage the rest of the family to make more public appearances. He’ll even wear the cowl more if he needs to, if a different Batman is needed to draw criminal attention. He’ll learn to punch harder.

“I know,” Dick says, falling back into his chair. “I know and that scares me.”

Tim is nineteen. He’s CEO and Red Robin and a Wayne and Ra’s special interest and a good damned good detective. He’s lost friends and partners and family and organs. 

Tim will never be a normal teen. But if he could have as normal a life as possible, if he could be spared the creeping hands of heiresses and terrifying rogues, if he could grow to twenty one before he takes over Bruce Wayne’s stardom completely, Dick will call that a win.

“We have his back, Dick.”

“I know.”

“We’ll let Gothman know they can’t just dismiss Batman. That Tim isn’t all that. Think we can release baby photos?”

“We don’t have those.”

“There’s got to be an embarrassing middle school photo somewhere. Barbie can find it.”

 “She probably could.”

They’ll try. They’ll try real hard to keep Gotham’s focus away from Tim Drake-Wayne and Red Robin, but Dick can privately admit he doesn’t have much faith in himself to slow Tim’s ascent for more than a year. Tim has already surpassed them all. Dick’s waiting for the world to get the memo. 

And once it does, it won’t be Dick blazing a trail for his brothers to follow. It’ll be Tim leading the way, leading the family. Dick will happily stand at his shoulder.

“We should publicly release a Wayne Christmas photo. Remind the world that Tim’s a Wayne," Dick says.

That he has family. That he has support. That the spotlight can be shared instead of hyper focused on Tim and casting dark shadows.

I’m drowning. The rational part of Sakura’s mind acknowledged and accepted the feeling. It felt like too much effort to raise her head from its position on her chest. Her tongue filled her cotton dry mouth, making it difficult to breathe. Sakura wheezed a breath into her lungs then hissed at the pain. Her entire right side ached like she’d been beaten within an inch of her life. She had at least two broken ribs, probably more.

Before Sakura could complete her cursory examination, something pinched her nose. When she opened her mouth to take another breath, sticky liquid flooded across her tongue. Before she could gag or spit it out, someone forced her jaw shut. The deep pain on her neck suggested that this wasn’t the first time she’d been forcibly drugged. Something nagged at the back of Sakura’s mind, but she couldn’t grasp it. Consciousness slid beyond her reach, and she went willingly.

Fire, agony, death. Something dragged Sakura from the comfortable numbness of unconsciousness. She tried to catch the pieces of memory before they fled to the dark edges of her mind, but they wouldn’t come. She blinked, trying to figure out where she was. Blurry vision made it impossible. When Sakura went to wipe her eyes, her right arm wouldn’t move. Panic gripped her chest, sobering her as she looked for the cause.

A slim metal restraint bound her right wrist to the wall. Her left remained free which seemed a terrible mistake of her captors. Sakura frowned, wondering why she’d allowed something so flimsy to stop her from escaping. She reached her hand forward and immediately doubled over in pain so intense her vision darkened. Dry heaves spent themselves until she managed to control her body the way she’d been taught. A distant part of Sakura’s mind noted that she didn’t vomit the sedative. It must have been hours since she’d ingested it.

Frown deepening. Sakura studied the wall and chain, but couldn’t find anything remarkable about either. She raised a trembling hand to her head, wincing at the tender, swollen spot on her temple. In the back of her mind, she felt a gnawing emptiness that threatened to overwhelm her, but she couldn’t think about that. Death lay down that path. Sakura could only deal with the things she could change. The weakness in her body was more than deprivation and torture, it was chakra exhaustion. But how—

Screams tore through Sakura’s mind, sharp and panicked. Even so, she could differentiate the voices. Nami was crying on the ground, great sobs that wracked her entire body. Genki lay beside her, an ugly gash bisecting his middle. Usagi was nowhere to be seen but her wordless roar of pain filled the room. The world exploded in a roar of heat and brilliant light that threw Sakura backward. Chakra flowed through her body when her seal released its stored power. She jerked to her feet and pushed through the flames. Sakura’s skin bubbled and sloughed away, renewing before it could kill her. She reached two of her genin, but she couldn’t bring herself to look at their faces. Sakura threw her body over them like a shield.

And then, nothing. Sakura didn’t know. She’d used up her stored chakra, but she’d still been taken captive. Her body hadn’t healed itself, so her current injuries must have come after the seal spent itself. The memory of her genin struck something deep and primal inside Sakura’s chest, but she couldn’t remember what happened to them. Her stomach locked tight as a second bout of nausea passed through her.

Another memory surfaced, and Sakura felt the air leave her lungs like she’d been punched. Her hand dropped to rest on her stomach as she rested her head against the stone behind her. “Oh fuck,” she hissed in the silence of her cell. Don’t think about it. There’s nothing you can do yet. “I can’t stay here.”

Sakura pulled against the chain a second time, putting as much pressure as she could against the metal without touching it. It didn’t give way, even when she fed a tendril of chakra into her arm to strengthen it. She continued, grunting with the pain that her efforts produced in her ribs. After a couple of minutes, Sakura released her chakra and sank back to the ground. A sob threatened to rise through her throat, but she pushed it away. She had to be stronger, who knew when her captors would be back.

Nodding sharply, Sakura infused her arm with chakra a second time and pulled until her muscles ached. Nothing happened. She studied the chain, then decided to focus on the anchor point in the stone behind her. If she could pull with enough force, she’d be able to jerk it free. Blowing out a breath, she counted down from three and jerked with enough force to pull a door from its hinges.

Pain exploded through Sakura’s arm, sharp and sudden enough to steal her vision. She collapsed. Every shift of her body sent pain stabbing through the bones that he’d broken. Her arm hung limp at an awkward angle, unmovable. Angry, frustrated tears worked through the grime on Sakura’s cheeks. She wiped her eyes with her free arm, then steadied her resolve.

Then, the solution came to Sakura as clear as if someone had whispered a plan in her ear. Her chakra reserves were dwindling, she couldn’t afford to waste them with healing until she got free. Fumbling with the knot of her hitai-ate, Sakura pulled it free. She tied it around her arm just below the elbow and searched around for something to use as a windlass to make it tighter. Sakura waited until the pain in her wrist numbed, then she formed a chakra scalpel with her other hand.