Chapter Text
It was supposed to be easy. Constantine had lost track of a magical artifact but after some unexplainable crimes and a report of an inexplicably flying cat a few days back, he had traced it to Gotham. All Tim had to do was hunt down whatever gang had gotten ahold of it, take them down, and give the artifact back to Constantine before it could cause any more trouble.
Easy.
Almost routine at this point.
He was banking on organized crime, not a teenager that just happened to be in the right place at the right time to get her hands on an immensely powerful magical staff.
Tim's first sign that something was bound to go horribly wrong should have been the fact Robin was tagging along, but Damian had been slightly less demon-ish recently (mainly due to Dick's influence), so he was cautiously optimistic that the night wouldn't end with that sword plunged through his chest.
His second sign should have been crossing paths and subsequently joining forces with Nightwing himself, who had traced the teenage girl and magical artifact across the river from Blüdhaven.
The nail in the coffin really should have been when they traced a shadowy figure for a few blocks before realizing it was Red Hood, also searching for said girl because she'd caused some issues for the kids in Crime Alley earlier that night.
Scratch that, the final nail was the moment right before they realized it was Hood, when Robin tackled him. An event which the two were still arguing about as the group climbed through a broken window and into the rafters of an abandoned warehouse at the docs.
“I wear a goddamn bright red helmet, demon. How fucking hard is it to recognize me?” Red Hood hissed, carefully making his way across the narrow support beams.
Robin clicked his tongue. “Obviously I recognized you. You just deserve to get tackled sometimes,” he scoffed.
“Maybe sneaking through an abandoned warehouse is not the best time to be arguing,” Nightwing whispered, carefully grabbing the back of Robin's cape to stop him from lunging at Red Hood again.
Robin tugged at his cape, indignant. “I am not a dog, I do not need to be leashed.”
“You do bite,” Tim noted.
Nightwing sighed. “Robin, we talked about the biting.”
“He deserved it. If he didn’t want to get bitten, he shouldn’t have—”
“Guys,” Red Hood hissed, “shut the fuck up.” He jerked his head down towards the warehouse floor.
Knelt next to a pile of old crates was the girl they had been chasing all night. From what Tim could see, she had tangled red hair and wore a worn gray hoodie with holes in it. Agewise, he’d guess she was somewhere between him and Damian, maybe fourteen. She wouldn’t be a threat if not for the gnarled wooden staff clutched in her hands, topped with a blue gem that glowed with otherworldly light.
A gem that she was currently hitting against the ground. “Work you stupid—gahhhhh!” she yelled, bashing the top of the staff against the ground as the light flickered.
Nightwing winced. “That’s…not going to end well. For her or for us. You think we could talk to her?”
“She’s too dangerous with that staff. I say we take her out.” Robin’s hand tried to go to his sword’s hilt, but Nightwing grabbed his wrist. Tim couldn’t help but think that if he tried that, he would get bitten.
“She’s young, Robin. And she’s angry. We don’t want to hurt her. Or scare her.” Nightwing released Robin’s wrist and crept further across the support beam they were balanced on.
“Red Robin, you and Robin climb down there, hide behind those crates.” He pointed towards a shadowy wall that led down behind where the girl was. “You two need to have our backs in case anything goes wrong. Hood, you and I will repel down on either side of her and try to talk her down.”
Tim cocked his head to the side, staring at his oldest brother the best he could in the shadows. “You want Hood on your side for a diplomatic attempt instead of me?”
“He deals with children far more often than you do.”
Red Hood looked torn between disagreeing with Nightwing on principle and tearing Tim down. Eventually, he went with. “Yeah, replacement. I think you can stand to sit this one out.”
Tim resisted the urge to roll his eyes, knowing that Hood wouldn’t see it anyway through his mask and the darkness. He did as he was told, climbing across the support beams with Robin and repelling down in the shadows, then creeping up behind the stack of hold crates near the girl. Up close, he could hear her cursing under her breath.
On either side of the girl, Nightwing and Red Hood repelled down from the support beams above. Nightwing severed his line early and hit the ground with a roll, landing on his feet with his hands out in front of him as though he were calming a frightened animal. Hood landed more simply, detaching his grapple when his combat boots hit the warehouse’s dusty floor.
The girl stiffened up, holding the staff out in front of her in a defensive position, but unable to decide whether she should face Nightwing or Red Hood. Eventually, she decided on whirling back and forth between the two of them.
“Stay back!” She yelled. “I’m not afraid of using this thing!”
“We don’t want to hurt you.” Nightwing held his hands up higher, as though in surrender. Tim knew that showing the girl he wasn’t armed meant nothing, and that having his hands up higher actually put him in a better position to grab his escrima sticks if need be. “We just don't want you to hurt yourself or anyone else with that staff.”
“It's not yours,” Red Hood added. “We need to get it back to someone who can lock it up and keep everyone safe.”
“No!” the girl screeched, clutching the staff in a white knuckle grip and swinging it towards Red Hood. He easily dodged her desperate attack and Nightwing used the distraction to take a few silent steps closer to her.
“I need this staff,” she continued, holding it closer to her chest. “I found it, now it's mine. You can't have it.”
“I know it's tempting, magic and all that.” When Nightwing spoke, the girl whipped towards him, brandishing her staff, which Red Hood took as an opportunity to advance towards her. “But we don't want anyone to get hurt. Just give us the staff and we’ll pretend this never happened. We’ll find you somewhere warm to stay too, how about that?”
“And food,” Red Hood added, and just as before, when the girl turned to him, Nightwing stepped closer. “A nice, warm meal. Multiple even. Just hand it over.”
For a moment, it looked like the girl might actually take the offer, her grip loosening on the gnarled wood, but then her face changed, twisting into fearful desperation. “No, no, no! Adults lie. They always do! You don’t remember what it’s like to be small, to be powerless! So you lie, and you take, and you don’t really care!”
Tim had just enough time to think that, against all odds, it might have actually gone better if he and Robin had tried to talk her down given their ages, when the girl lunged with her staff. Both Hood and Nightwing grabbed for her, but she hadn’t aimed for them. Instead, she had twisted the staff around and aimed the gemstone at the top squarely at the ground. It connected with the concrete floor with the sound of a thousand glass panes shattering, and then Tim’s world turned white.
...
When his vision cleared, Tim found himself curled around Robin, instinctively using his body and cape to protect him, as if it would have done anything against a magical blast like that. He quickly scrambled backwards, feeling dazed but knowing he didn’t want to get bitten again.
He thought Damian would yell at him, something about not needing his protection, but the young vigilante seemed just as dazed as he was from the blast. All he managed to mumble was “...Night…Nightwing…”
“Shit,” Tim hissed, clamoring to his feet and vaulting himself over the stack of crates they had been hiding behind. The girl and magic staff were nowhere to be seen, instead a fine layer of blue, shimmering dust covered the ground. In the center, where Red Hood and Nightwing should have been, was what looked like a pile of yellow and black fabric until it started shifting and moving, revealing itself to be two human forms.
Tim stopped dead in his tracks, nearly slipping in the dust, causing Robin — who was apparently right behind him — to crash into his back.
Robin mumbled a few curse words directed at him, but stopped short when he saw what was in front of them.
It was two young boys, both with messy black hair, both covered in a fine layer of glittering blue dust, and both wearing the old Robin costume. It was Dick's design, the brighter one, closer in color to what the Flying Graysons had worn, and with a startling lack of pants. But it was the one that Jason had worn too.
As the two Robins got to their feet, each seemed to notice Tim and Damian before they noticed each other.
The Robin on the right regarded Tim with a hesitant curiosity, tilting his head to the side and rocking back and forth on his heels as a small, confused smile flickered at the corner of his mouth.
The Robin on the left snapped himself into a defensive position the moment he gained his bearings, glaring at Tim as though he were ready to tear his head off.
Tim had seen photos — hell, he’d taken photos — of Dick and Jason in their Robin days, but it hadn’t occurred to him how truly identical they looked in costume until they were standing right next to each other. Because that’s what this was standing in front of him, wasn’t it? Dick and Jason in their early Robin days. He knew there were tells, signs, small things that should set them apart. Things that he’d studied. But that had been a long time ago, and Dick was older by the time he really looked into him. Right now, he thanked the powers that be for differing temperaments, because his brain was working overtime trying to process and problem solve what was happening directly in front of him, he didn’t need to be mixing them up too.
“Who are you?” the one on the left — angry, defensive, Jason — growled, surprisingly intimidating for a boy in a leotard that looked about eleven years old.
At the same time, the one on the right — curious, wide-eyed even under the mask, Dick — said, “Hello?”
That was when the two Robins noticed each other. They both took several steps away from each other, looking the other over in detail. After a few tense moments, they both said, “...You’re not me.” The one on the right — nice Robin — Dick — phrased it as more of a question, while the one on the left — angry Robin — Jason — phrased it as an accusation.
Tim opened his mouth, as though he could explain and just make everything better, but his brain was still trying to catch up. Before he could say anything at all, Jason lept at Dick and the two went rolling, one over the other, across the warehouse floor. Damian reacted faster than he did, sprinting after them and joining the Robin fray. For a moment, all Tim could see was a blur of Robin colors — both the bright old ones and Damian’s more muted tones — until Damian came out of it restraining a struggling, thrashing…Jason? Jason.
“Let go of me you creep!” he screamed, trying every maneuver in the book to get out of Damian’s grasp. Damian managed to keep a good grip on him, until Jason suddenly reared back and clamped his teeth down hard on Damian’s wrist. That had to hurt, even through his costume.
“What the fuck!?” Damian yelled, momentarily losing his grasp. Luckily, Jason didn’t run to pounce on Dick again. Rather, he climbed on top of the same pile of crates that Damian and Tim had hid behind earlier.
“Who are you? Where am I? Where is Batman?” Jason growled.
“I’m Robin, that’s Red Robin, you’re in an old abandoned warehouse near Gotham harbor, he’s probably back at the cave by now, and you just bit me,” Damian hissed, rubbing his wrist.
Jason looked like he wanted to take Damian’s head off, which wasn’t too different from how normal, adult Jason usually looked. “I’m Robin. I don’t care who you are or who that imposter over there is, Robin is my name. What do you know about the cave?”
“We know where it is, for one thing,” Tim sighed. “Look, I know this is confusing, and probably scary, but work with us here, please. We got wrapped up in something we shouldn’t have gotten wrapped up in, and now the two of you—” he looked back over at Dick, and saw that Damian was helping him off the ground, doing his best to brush some of the blue dust off of his costume “—are here. And you’re really, really not supposed to be here. But if we go back to the cave, then B will hopefully know what to do. Or, at least, he’ll know how to call someone that can fix this.”
“You’ve given us no real reason to trust you.” It was Dick that spoke, hesitantly stepping towards the pile or crates that Jason was balanced on.
“There’s no us in this situation, imposter.”
“But we’re both—”
“No, you’re nothing but a mockingbird in my colors.”
Tim couldn’t help but think that his tone was achingly similar to Damian’s, but the current Robin probably wouldn’t enjoy that comparison. “Look, if I prove to you I’m one of Batman’s allies, will you come back to the cave with us?”
Dick nodded.
Jason perched himself closer to the edge of the crates. “Batman doesn’t have allies. Just a partner. Just me. This better be good.”
Tim looked around the abandoned warehouse, as though there were someone there to listen into this conversation at nearly four in the morning. “The Batman is Bruce Wayne. Happy now?”
Dick took a step back, hitting the pile of crates behind him.
Jason leapt down from his perch, still regarding Tim and Damian skeptically. “Fine. Lead the way.”
Tim took one last long look at the two Robins standing before him. His older brothers. He’d never actually known them like this. Studied them, sure, but that was from afar. By the time he was really around, Jason was dead and Dick was gone, leaving Bruce broken in the process. He really, really needed to see what Bruce’s reaction to all of this was going to be.
Finally, he turned away and went about exciting the warehouse to return home, hoping that neither Robin would try to make a run for it between the harbor and the cave.
As they climbed through a broken window, Tim heard Damian mumble to himself, “He bit me.”