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Tim crouches on the roof, half hidden by a softly humming elevator engine. He’s watching his prey, a gang of crooks on the ground in the harbor. They have no idea he’s there. Yet.
Someone lands behind him. The landing is nearly silent, but the person knows fully well that you don’t surprise a vigilante unless you absolutely have to. Soft boots behind him shuffle some gravel around to announce their presence. Wise choise.
“Thank you for coming, Nightwing,” he greets without turning around. He doesn’t want to lose his view of what’s happening down there. He mentally prepares for the oncoming greeting. Dick never misses out on a chance to touch his family and, unsurprisingly, a warm hand lands on his shoulder. Tim leans in towards Dick’s hand, a barely perceptible movement.
“I’m just happy you’re asking for help, baby brother.” How can someone sound so fond and genuine, without a hint of sarcasm?
Tim lacks that ability, and he can’t resist turning towards his brother when he replies. “Coming from you, that’s rich. You would have been shot in your civvies if Oracle hadn’t sounded the alarm.” He sounds snarky without really wanting to be. A baby brother’s privilege, presumably.
Dick laughs, embarrassed, and rubs his neck, a nervous gesture he just doesn’t seem to be able to get rid of, no matter how much he tries. “We should have training for the whole family.”
”That might not be a bad idea.”
Tim focuses on the case he’s working on. He draws a deep breath, mentally dons the Red Robin cape, and leaves Tim Drake shut in a little box deep inside his brain. “Report,” says his inner Batman. ”I thought those guys down there were smuggling drugs, but today, I saw them locking three girls up in a container. There’s just four of them, with handguns but not machine guns. I could probably take them alone, but I’m not sure I could save the girls at the same time.”
“Good thinking,” Nightwing replies, in the same reporting tone. Their experience takes over. Nightwing has been doing this for fifteen years and Red Robin for five years. They’re coordinated and well trained. They only need a few words to plan this, and then they’re off.
Red Robin swings down, and before the crooks have even seen him, he’s landed feet first on Number One’s head and struck Number Two unconscious with his bo staff. The two who are still standing turn toward him. A rookie mistake. Nightwing jumps from his grapple line with a perfect triple somersault. He lands with his knees on Number Three’s back, and there’s an audible crunch. Number Four is met with a bo staff to his neck from the right and an electrified escrima from the left.
”Where’s your boss?” Red Robin asks, deceptively calm. Number Four points towards the harbor’s watch tower but can’t speak, seemingly terrified. “Please, go ahead,” he tells Nightwing, with a tiny bow.
“After you,” Nightwing replies, also with a bow.
“Sir, I insist,” Red Robin says, choking on a laugh.
Nightwing smiles, and it’s both beautiful and terrifying. It’s not his usual humor or joy, but something wicked, something insane shining through. He says nothing else, but he gives Number Four an electric shock that knocks him out and makes him pee his pants.
Red Robin is just happy his suit is insulated.
Nightwing makes a gesture in the direction of the watch tower, but Red Robin shakes his head. He points to a container instead. The two of them run over there and kick the lock open. Inside the container are three girls. He estimates their ages to be around twelve. Their feet are bare, they’re tied by their wrists and ankles, and they have gags made of dirty rags. Two of them have tear tracks along their cheeks, but the third one doesn’t seem to have cried. She looks into the distance with empty eyes. When they see their rescuers silhouetted against the container door, they start to scream, but the gags muffle the sound. All that’s heard is a terrified mumbling.
Nightwing goes down on his knees, and uses his warmest, most trustworthy “calm down frightened people”-voice. “Don’t worry, they can’t harm you. We’ll help you get home. We’ll make sure you get medical care.”
This was the reason Red Robin had asked Nightwing, and nobody else, for help. No one else did this voice as well as he did. Red Robin moves away from the container door. Rationally, it should be easier for the traumatized girls to face one man instead of two. He turns his communicator on and goes back to his reporting voice again. “RR here, in the North Harbor. N and I have saved three kids from a trafficking gang. We need assistance to get them to a hospital and then home. No masks, they’re scared of us. I’m going to take out the boss.”
Oracle replies immediately. ”Ambulance and police headed towards your trackers. Red Robin, wait for backup.”
He turns the communicator off again and pretends he didn’t hear the last part.
The watch tower is on the other side of the harbor area, and it has a rotating spotlight. He runs towards the tower through the shadows, ducking between containers and keeping out of the light. Unfortunately, the light hides the boss’s office, but he’s seen one muscle guy backlit in the window. It’s not a big tower, and it’d be hard to get more than two or three people into the office at once. Make it four, if you count high. No matter how many they are, the tight quarters are something that can work to his advantage, if he can surprise them. The staff is not the best weapon for tight spaces, and he wishes he had borrowed Nightwing’s escrimas. Too late now. He aims his grapple gun at the top of the watch tower and smashes the window with his staff on his way up. In the same movement, he knocks out the bodyguard he had been able to see. Unsurprisingly, there are more, but seemingly just one and then the boss. The second guard gets in a mean kick towards his left flank with his rough boots.
”This is where I’d say ‘Ow, my spleen,’ if I had one,” he says, just a little bit winded. It was apparently absurd enough to stop the attack. The mook stops and just stares at Red Robin as if he were completely insane. (”Insufficient data to answer the question,” says a voice in his head. It sounds like a combination of his own and Batman’s.) The pause gives him a chance to jump up and kick the guard in the crotch, with great success.
The pause also gave the boss a chance to react, unfortunately, and Tim finds himself staring into the muzzle of a gun. Damn. Fuck, fuck, fuck. He hopes the dude likes to monologue.
”Work in Gotham, they say. Nobody cares about kids in Gotham, they say. But nobody says anything about how many fucking masks are working in Gotham. I’m so damn tired of running into you wherever I go. Black mask, red mask, purple mask, green mask, everywhere a new goddamn mask getting into my business. What the hell are you even doing here? Is it a cult or something? Do you procreate behind the back of hardworking people? We should exterminate all you fucking mask bitches in Gotham!”
”Good thing I’m from Blüdhaven, then!” Nightwing says, as he jumps down from the roof and lands with his thighs around the neck of the screaming boss.
(Tim has seen Dick squeeze watermelons with his thighs until they popped, when that was a viral challenge, and the internet just didn’t stop thirsting after his brother for months.)
The boss’ lips are turning blue, and he desperately tries to smack Nightwing off, but his movements are weak and lack coordination. The pistol lies forgotten on the floor, and Red Robin confiscates it immediately. He rushes to tie the boss up with his arms behind his back and wishes he had some of those dirty rags. A torn off shirt sleeve would have to do as a gag instead.
***
One hour later, the noise has calmed down. They’re sitting by Tim’s vantage point, legs dangling off the roof. Dick has somehow managed to buy burritos (vegetarian for Tim, chicken for himself). They’ve taken their masks off and put the weapons on the ground, but they’re still in their uniforms. This liminal state---between Red Robin and Nightwing on the one hand and Tim and Dick on the other---is something special, something fragile. He ponders the years he used to follow Batman and Robin around, taking photos in secret. This moment would have been a perfect photo, with the full moon behind them. His action shots are awesome, but the pictures he looks at most often are the ones who show the more human side of the heroes.
“I should have waited for backup,” he says silently.
“Yup. You pulled a Robin.”
Tim doesn’t laugh. It’s more of an amused little huff. “I pulled a Robin. I wonder when we’ll ever learn?”
“Communication training and asking for help-exercises for the whole family,” Dick says. He lets the silence descend on them for a little while, and it’s the best moment of the night. Dick puts his arm around Tim, pulling him closer. His muscles, slim but solid, make the gesture feel safe, like a weighted blanket. “You know,” he continues eventually, “you scare me when you joke about your spleen. You’ve lost a whole organ---”
“A non-vital organ,” Tim interrupts.
”A whole organ,” Dick says firmly. “You’re a little more fragile than the rest of us.”
“I’m immunocompromised, Dick, not fragile. I even think I can take more of a beating, since I don’t have a spleen that can rupture.”
”Tim…” Another long pause. ”You’re sensitive to infections, and that means you need to take care of yourself more than you do. You know, and I know, that lack of sleep and unhealthy eating habits wreck the immune system.
Tim doesn’t say anything else. He could argue that Dick’s own lack of sleep is probably way worse than his, but he doesn’t have the energy for an argument. It’s nice that someone cares about him.
They stay there, sitting on the roof and leaning on each other. Like brothers do, Tim guesses. He never had any siblings when he was a kid, and then he got the whole Batfamily, with all of their compliated relationships. Once, he had drawn a diagram, showing who had tried to kill whom, and who had tried to leave the family completely before coming back. When he showed it to Bart, he just shrugged and thought it sounded like completely normal sibling interactions.
Dick stands up to leave, but tosses out one last line. “You’re definitely something unique. Hero teen without a spleen!”
His bad pun makes him cackle as he jumps down from the roof. Tim tries to throw gravel at him, but he misses. He’s not sure how much his heart was in the throw, anyway.