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Tim’s breathing stutters for a millisecond—half excited gasp, half resigned sigh—and the room around him stops. Everyone turns to look at him, some take a few scrambling steps towards him in the tiny white room. He’s sitting on the floor, cross legged. His laptop is connected with the electricity through a panel they’d ripped off the wall—an accident done in Jason’s panic and anger—and connected to the bomb in the middle of the room as he half-leans against it. Bruce would be stressed about that, if he weren't so stressed about everything else already.
“What?” Jason asks, who’d moved closer to Tim, and he drops to his knees beside him, hand landing on Tim’s shoulder and staring over his shoulder, eyes scanning the green code that’s whizzing past the screen faster than anyone can read it. The others gather, and Bruce takes a deeper breath before he also steps behind Tim and crouches, eyes on the code. Scanning, scanning, scanning…
Oh. Oh.
“What is it?” Damian asks, because whilst he’d been learning and he’s smarter than Bruce will ever consider himself to be, he’d never got the hang of code and computers. He’s tried, and he was relentless in his studies, but some things just weren’t for some people. Not that Bruce would ever be disappointed in that—each of his children was skilled in something different, and code simply was Tim’s (and Barbara’s, though he’s not sure he can call her one of his children, no matter how much he loved her). “Drake, please, explain,” Damian asks, again, whilst the silence lingers.
The only people who could understand code well enough to read it in a glance were Tim, Bruce, and Dick. Which means—
Bruce cannot hide it from the one they’ll save, can’t pretend it was an accident that only one survived, just a bit too late. He takes a breath, and offers to the silent and still room: “The door will open for three seconds, and then the bomb fail-safe will activate: the bomb will detonate, no matter how long the timer has left.”
“That’s enough time for one person to get out and run as far as they can,” Steph says, flatly. “One person. If more than one of us goes—” She can’t finish the words. She can’t even finish the thought.
“We won’t be able to get far enough to survive,” Duke finishes, and the silence lingers. He knows as well as anyone what that means.
They need to do damage control.
Bruce knows who he is going to save. The others have the same determination in their face, so he knows that they know who to save, too.
Jason starts working before anyone else can. He removes his helmet carefully, tapping it at the back so the mechanisms unlodge and he can slide it off his head. He explains, “It’s more reinforced than the cowls. It’ll make sure no head injuries are too bad. I turned the bombs inside off.” He offers it to the middle of the room, right beside the bomb. When he places it down, he tries desperately not to cry. No use, now. He’s been through this before, too, so he should be brave. Should show them all it was okay.
Cass moves next. She offers her cape, clipping it off slowly. “More kevlar is good. My cape is the lightest, the smallest. Easiest to carry. Still effective,” she lets out the last word in a quiet sob. Her voice shakes, her accent devolves, and she nods, unable to say anymore. Stupid words, she thinks, and crouches beside the helmet. The cape is folded, neatly, beside the red helmet.
“Father,” Damian says, his voice cracking, as he grabs at Bruce’s sleeves, his hands shaking. Damian’s never shook like this, before. He’d never—never been so scared. Not outwardly, not like this. “Father, we cannot waste time. We must choose someone to go, why are—?”
Duke unclips his escrima from his sides, retracts the blades, and turns them into the grapple mode. “These’ll be more useful than just the grapple,” he says, slowly. He knows that blades aren’t everyone’s weapon of choice, but they are—they are—Duke can’t stop the sob from escaping from his throat. He needs to be brave. He needs to show them that he’ll be okay. He knows—he knows that this is the only way.
Bruce has to press his lips together to stop himself from crying, hearing Duke choke down a sob.
“I can’t offer anything big,” Steph says, trying to laugh. “I can offer my mask, since it has a really good smoke filter, so the smoke from the explosion doesn’t affect—doesn’t cause harm,” her eyes water as she looks towards Jason. “Unless your helmet is already a gas mask?”
Jason does a so-so symbol with his hand at her. “It’s okay. Not the best. Plus it’s too big for—you know. And what Cass said, right? More protection or whatever.”
Steph nods and takes her mask off, places it gently over Cass’s mask, then steps back to take hold of Cass’s hand.
“Please,” Damian says, again, because apparently he’s the only one that hadn’t gotten the memo “We need to choose someone. We can’t be wasting time. It’s only—minutes. Minutes before it detonates. This is dire, please, Timothy,” He sounds so unsure of himself, so anxious, and suddenly Tim realises with a strange feeling of melancholy that Damian’s acting like a kid. He wants to scream and cry, for his brother who never got a childhood, who never got to act irrationally or selfishly.
Tim wants to bite his lips off to relieve them. He’s been chewing on them for hours, and he’s pretty sure he’s bleeding like he’s never done before. “The laptop,” Tim says, shakily, as Jason helps him to his feet. “It has the info needed to track down the guy,” he swallows, and chokes on his own spit. When Jason holds his shoulder, strong and firm, he continues, “It has all my notes, for my open cases.”
“I think,” Dick begins, and has to clamp down his teeth to stop them from chattering against each other. “I think that covers everything, no, B? Nothing else we can offer.”
Bruce nods, “Yes. I think so, chum.”
“Hold on,” Damian says, and he sounds terrified. “Hold on, we haven’t even—we haven’t even chosen anyone to leave. What do you mean? Richard, what do you—” It dawns on him, then. He takes a wary step back. “No.”
“It has to be you,” Bruce says, in lieu of an explanation or argument, an argument he knows that Damian’s trying to start. “You should have known this.”
Damian shakes his head. “No, no, father you can’t—” He’s backing away, into the wall, and he collides against something hard and steady. It’s not the wall. He turns, “Richard, speak sense into the man. Please.”
“He’s right, Dami. It has to be you.”
Damian can feel his eyes water. “No, no it doesn’t,” he’s breathing heavy and fast and erratic, and he turns to the others, “Tim,” and isn’t that something new? He’s never, never called him by his nickname before, “Timothy, please. You are the smartest. Please, talk some sense—”
Tim stands, shaking his head. “They’re right, Dames.”
Damian shakes. “I won’t. I will not leave without you. All of you. Either we all die or we all live, you must know this.” He suddenly turns to Jason, frantic, teeth chattering and hands shaking so bad he has to grab his cape to steady them, “Jason—Jason you—you can go, instead. You’ve been blown up once, you can’t—”
Jason laughs, steadiest out of all of them. As if he’s already made peace with it. As if this is okay. “Don’t fight it, baby bat. You know we’ll win.”
Damian growls, suddenly angry. “I could, I could beat you—you can’t make me. Can’t make me do anything.”
Bruce sighs, weary. “Cass, Jay, please get a hold of him. Tim and Dick, start preparing him,” he sounds tired and resigned, as if he’s telling them to do their post patrol reports. And Damian feels sick, because that was what they were meant to be doing, what was meant to be happening, instead of this—this nightmare.
He feels like he’s been doused with a ton of Scarecrow Fear Toxin. He—he would prefer that, over this. Maybe if he blinks hard enough, he’ll wake up and—
He’s brought back to the present (to his reality, because the feel of the hands holding his back is strong and clear, unmoving, and it’s softer than it would have been had it been anyone else but his siblings) by hands pulling his back. He feels adrenaline rush through his blood, into his legs and arms and brain, and he starts kicking like a wild bull being ridden without warning.
“Fuck off,” he shouts, to no avail, because even though he’s League and Batman trained, he doesn’t have the muscle on Cass and Jason, who are years older and have years more training. “Unhand me, Cassandra—Cassandra, please, you know—”
“You will live, baby brother,” she says, and presses a kiss to his temple. He stills, unused to the affection, and realises belatedly that it was a trick, and now Steph’s own arms and legs are around his legs, holding him still. “You are all tricksters. You are all—immoral, you are frauds. Let me go!”
Dick clips Cass’s cape on his front, the side not protected by his own cape, and Tim wraps Steph’s mask around his face. He immediately begins to squirm, using his tongue to let slide the mask away from his face. He snarls his teeth. Dick laughs, eyes glossed over.
Duke, who’d been watching, tucks the escrima he’d offered onto Damian’s utility belt. He holds Damian’s face with both hands, and laughs wetly when Damian snaps at his fingers. “You’re gonna do great,” he says, in lieu of reprimand. He darts forward, places a kiss onto Damian’s forehead. “Make us proud, okay? I love you.”
Damian snaps his teeth again, darting forward, and Cass has to hold him back from the chin. “Duke, you of all people should know that it should not be me. Duke, please listen—”
“Time for the helmet,” Cass says, and Damian refuses to look at her because she sounds destroyed. He’s seen her cry before, but—but— “It will stop his biting, at least.”
The others let out low laughs and chuckles, and Jason and Cass and Steph tighten their hold on him when he tries to use that to escape. Tim tucks the laptop into the cloth underneath his shirt. “You idiots, you stupid fuckin’—let me go! Let me go! You’re all fucking insane!”
Bruce is holding the red helmet. Damian doesn’t want it, doesn’t want—
“Baba,” he says, “Baba, please. Please don’t…” he begins to cry properly, fat tears rolling down his cheeks as his whole body begins to tremble. “Baba, please don’t leave me.”
Bruce stills, and his eyes glaze over. He’s condemned his son to the very thing that’s haunted him for his whole life. He’s letting him watch as his family dies. He wishes he could save them all—wishes he could trade his life for all of theirs. If he could only save one other—just one more. Jason maybe, to show that the first time he died wasn’t because Bruce didn’t care, but because he was too late. Tim or Duke, they were all so young, so smart, such fundamentally good people, with so much potential. Steph had such a zest for life, one no one else in the family had. Cassandra would’ve been a better human than he’d ever hope to even dream of. And Dick, his oldest, his baby, his first—he wishes he could save just one other. He wishes he could save them all.
“I’m sorry, habibi,” Bruce says, and pulls Steph’s mask over Damian’s nose and mouth. He leans forward, places a kiss on his son’s cheek. “I love you so much. More than you will ever know.” He hugs Damian, red helmet still in hand. Damian feels the fight spill out of him quickly, feels it bleed into the floor below him. Like they’d felt the fight spill around their feet, too, Cass and Jason and Stephanie let go of him, step away.
“Be a kid, okay? I love you, Damian,” Duke says, and kisses his cheek like Bruce had, when Bruce has pulled away. “Don’t be so serious all the time,” Stephanie adds, as she stands and kisses his hairline, standing on her tip-toes. “I love you, Damian.”
“Fight for us, okay?” Cass says, and kisses his temple again. Damian can feel the tears slide off her face and onto his. “Be brave, little bat.” He sees the way Bruce takes hold of her hand, and sees the way she squeezes his in return. She steps away. “I love you, Damian.”
“Don’t give up,” Tim says, and it takes all his power to not ugly sob into Damian’s chest. “Finish what we started, okay? Don’t let the maniac win. Don’t let the sadness win.” He leans forward, places his hand on the back of Damian’s head, and his nape, and pulls him forward, knocking their foreheads lightly against each other, not enough to hurt. Not like they had before. He breathes deeply, and his eyes water. He kisses the bridge of Damian’s nose. “I love you, Damian,” he says, his breath hot and warm and alive against Damian’s nose.
Jason ruffles his hair, and despite being the only one not crying his eyes are the reddest, the most glossed over. “Endure the hurt, kid. Feel the struggle, and persist anyway. Okay?” When Damian doesn’t nod, only stares at him with wide and watery eyes, glaring and angry, he laughs wetly and kisses the corner of Damian’s eye. “Just like that. Be stubborn. Be the best of us. I love you, Damian. So much.”
Dick kisses his temple, and smiles. Doesn’t say anything, like anyone else has. Damian knows it means so much more. I love you forever, Dick says, with the tilt of his eyebrow, the upturn of his lips. You’ll be okay, I promise.
Damian wants to scream.
Bruce finally puts the helmet over his face. It’s slightly too big, and he clicks it shut anyways. Damian can see the room around him, and can see the way everyone is crying. He wails, loud enough for it to get through the helmet, through the voice modulator of Jason’s helmet.
“Please, god, please,” he says, and tears roll down his face and out of the helmet, onto Steph’s mask, onto Cass’s cape, onto Tim’s laptop and Duke’s escrima. Onto Dick’s hand, on his stomach and waist. Onto his father’s hands on the side of his face. “Please, please, baba. Guys, please.”
They don’t listen. Tim begins fiddling with the bomb, saying, “When I say ‘go’ you pull the door open, push him out as hard as you can, then slam the door shut.” His eyes catch where Damian assumes the helmet’s eyes are. “Dami, you run, okay?”
Damian doesn’t answer.
“Damian, okay?”
He swallows.
Tim begins to sound hysteric, as he asks, “Damian, please respond. Please say okay. Please listen to us.”
“Okay,” Damian manages, and the voice modulator makes his voice sounds so off. It’s not him. His last words to his family, and they’re not even in his voice. He takes a steady breath, unclasps the helmet enough to uncover his mouth. “Okay. I love you,” he pulls the helmet off farther, and looks each of them in the eye. “I love you all.” He turns to each of them, in turn. “Duke. Stephanie. Cassandra. Timothy. Jason. Richard,” his voice cracks. “Baba. I love you all. Thank you. Thank you.”
They don’t hide their tears. Tim pulls at the bomb’s outer layers , peels away metal to access the wiring and the motherboard. “On go,” he says, and Damian nods, pulls the helmet back onto his face, clasps it shut. “Three, two, one—” There’s a momentary silence, and Damian soaks in everyone’s face. This is one thing he will not forget: his family’s faces, their expressions. He will not forget them. Then, the moment passes, and Tim says, “go.”
In the next three seconds, it goes like this: Duke and Stephanie pull the door open. Tim smiles at him, nods encouragingly, from right beside the bomb. Jason and Dick push him—hard and desperate and almost angry—out of the room, and he has a singular millisecond to look at their face, at his father’s face behind them, all of them smiling even now, at all his other siblings, before he turns and dashes.
The door slams shut. The bomb’s sound, the shaking of the floor, the smell of smoke and fire and ash and cut off cries resonate behind him.
Damian does not turn back to look.
He runs.