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The explosion, even forty feet away, shoved Damian back ten feet, slamming him into the abandoned building on the opposite side of the road. The rotted wood door he hit was what saved him, as he went clean through it, while the walls of the warehouse held back the heat and debris.
Dusty and bruised to hell, he shoved upright and tapped at his comm. “Explosion in a warehouse on 75th, 400 block.” He took a cautious step forward. Through the open doorway was nothing but flame and debris. The warehouse he'd been standing watch at while Hood poked around inside was nothing but a wall of flame.
“Status.” Batman's voice was its usual, emotionless growl.
“Six minutes out,” Dick said, the whine of a firing grappling hook matched the slight ringing in Damian's ears.
“Eleven minutes, but I need to finish up with Penguin's goons here, fifteen tops.” There were a couple of annoyed shouts in the background of Tim's comm, and he continued, not speaking to the bats, “do you really think I need more than four more minutes here?”
“Minor injuries for myself.” Damian swallowed. While he certainly didn't care about the moron who held himself entirely apart from the Waynes, Father and Grayson still did. “Hood, do you copy?”
Silence.
“Hood, report.”
Nothing.
“Hood, answer,” Batman ordered. When nothing happened, he asked, “Robin, where was Hood when the explosion went off?”
Damian gritted his teeth, pointedly not allowing sadness, let alone grief, wash through him. “He entered the building seventeen minutes ago. He checked in at five minutes to report drugs and five traffickers, but no victims yet. He failed to check in at the ten minute mark. At the fifteen minute mark, I started toward the building when it exploded.”
“Oracle!” Batman turned to next.
“CC TV is limited over there. I have a view of the explosion from four buildings away. Robin, you were knocked into a building, are you sure–”
“Tt, I'm fine.”
“Robin, return to the cave.”
“I am fine!”
“That's an order. Nightwing and Red Robin are en route.”
“Tt.”
“911 call from a payphone at the 800 block of 74th. She says she and several others were being held hostage.” She paused, listening to the call live. “Red Hood freed them and shot one of their kidnappers…there are six people with her. I'm pulling CC TV…Hood is not part of their group. First sign of them is two blocks away. Looks like the explosion blew out the front of the warehouse, not the back. The camera shook and the victims tripped and looked back, but I don't actually see anything and there is nothing closer.”
Silence stretched horribly.
“Little Wing?” Dick whispered into it.
“I'm done, heading your way,” Tim said after a moment.
Damian shook rubble out of his hair and stepped through the broken doorway. Flames consumed the whole facade. Sirens began to sound in the distance but it was impossible to tell if they were for this or for everything else happening in the city. “Fire, police and paramedics heading in your direction, Robin,” Barbara murmured in his ear.
Damian jogged gently around the next building over, giving what was left of this one a wide berth. The back of it, an alley between it and the next building, was mostly intact. A door hung open and flickering light was visible beyond it, but internal walls and distance had protected the back wall. How long that remained the case was anyone's guess. “Open door at the back, likely where the victims escaped.”
“Robin!” Batman snapped. Damian's mask hid that he was rolling his eyes. If none of the others listened to him when one of their own was in danger, why did he think this one would?
…Not that Damian cared or considered Todd part of the family…
Nightwing arrived in tandem with the ambulance, which didn't stop, heading for the payphone where the victims waited. He dropped down beside Damian and took in every detail. His gaze settled, calculating, on the door.
“Don't be a fool. You cannot think to go in there.”
Dick's lips thinned and he rocked on his feet. The roar of the batmobile made Damian look behind him for a split second.
That was all Dick needed. He bolted forward and disappeared into the building. “Grayson!” Damian snapped. He started toward the building but was stymied, once again, by Batman’s arrival. He stepped out of the car and approached Damian swiftly evaluating. Damian stood straight.
Dust still fluffed from his hair at the motion.
“Wait here.”
“But Fa–”
Nightwing emerged from the doorway at that moment. He had at least put a rebreather on at some point, but he was staggering like he couldn't breathe. At the sight of the other two, he dropped to his knees, clutching something in his fist against his chest. He started to shake.
“Chum?” A little bit of Bruce leaked into the voice. Damian squashed the stab of jealousy that Grayson remained the only one who could break through the Batman facade while on the clock.
Bruce stepped closer, towering over his eldest, trying to see what he held. Dick began to sob. Red Robin and Oracle both clamored for information.
The whine of the sirens announced the arrival of the fire trucks. They needed to get out of here. Damian moved closer, intending to drag Grayson if he had to, and saw it.
The red gleam of a chunk of Red Hood's helmet, the jagged edges biting into Nightwing's gloves.
Damian looked away. “We need to go.”
Dick threw such a vicious glare up that even Bruce was taken aback. “We can't leave him here! Not again! Not a…again…” he keened, clutching so hard that the bit of helmet cracked. His face twitched in fear, and he loosened the grip, changing it from one of desperation to one like he was holding priceless, spun glass.
There was a flash in the sky. They all glanced up automatically to see the bat signal.
Batman's mouth tightened. “Get him in the batmobile,” he ordered before straightening and disappearing into the building.
He slipped on his rebreather and stalked the hall. Flames were crawling up the walls but he ignored them.
The building creaked ominously. He didn’t have a lot of time, but he needed–
He reached the end of the corridor and took in the open plan of the rest of the building, what was left of it. Debris everywhere was burning and ash and smoke made visibility nearly zero.
He moved slowly, trying to find bodies but there was nothing. He reached the far wall with nothing. A metal barrel appeared in the flames and smoke before him on his way back, a few feet further into the room, but nothing else, he was hoping, at this point, to just trip over a body. But still nothing nothing nothing.
A noise other than the crackling of flames made him turn to barely make out a firefighter who was checking for survivors, not that he’d see Batman, being a shadow in the smoke. Water would be blasted through here before long. Last time…last time, he’d had more time, he’d been able to find Jason. He wasn’t dealing with the raging fire and blinding smoke that stemmed from something highly flammable in this room.
The building groaned this time. If it came down and his other boys were still outside, they might get hit. They needed to know.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered to the room, knowing it wouldn’t carry. “I’m sorry, Jaylad.”
He was too late.
Again.
…
Dick didn't know how he got from the ground to the backseat of the batmobile, on the way to the precinct. His world continued to revolve around all that was left of his brother.
He couldn't tell the others that he'd checked every empty room along the back corridor, reaching the end to find everything fully engulfed in flame.
He couldn't tell them how something cracked under his foot and, when he looked down, found this bit of Jason's helmet, the thing that was supposed to protect him. It was a piece near the eye socket, based on a single, smooth curve where a lens had fit. Jason had probably looked at this bit of his helmet a lot.
Jason had–
Dick wished they didn’t have to talk to Gordon, that he could go home, not write up a mission report and go cry, maybe in Jason’s old room at that. Maybe no one would look for him there and he could just wallow in the place that spoke of a boy who shouldn’t have died far from home while his big brother fucked off to space and ignored him and treated him like crap because Bruce had to be an asshole–
The bit of helmet creaked alarmingly again and fresh tears swam in his eyes, there was nowhere for them to go as the others were also still trapped behind his mask.
He became generally aware that the batmobile had stopped and Damian put a hand on his knee. Batman was already gone.
…
Gordon took a long drag on a cigarette as he looked out on the city. The red haze in the middle distance was a fire on 75th St., a warehouse exploded and while firefighters attempted to put out the blaze, it had come down completely. According to the 911 call, two women, three teenage girls and two teenage boys had been held in the warehouse for around two days. They’d been, allegedly, rescued by Red Hood who had freed them, but stayed behind to fight their kidnappers.
They’d had to go four blocks to find a payphone. In that time, the building had exploded.
Jim was never entirely sure where the Bats stood on the Red Hood. He was “good for the community” as Crime Alley locals would put it if they ever talked to cops. A murderous crimelord to Jim and the police force, but a sometimes-ally to the Bats. Jim had seen the aftermath of their fights in grainy cell phone footage, bullets and batarangs flying, but it had been at least a year since the last one and he had seen Red Hood and Nightwing fight aliens in tandem, that one time where aliens had been stupid enough to think Gotham was a good place to start their invasion of Earth.
The back of his neck prickled. “The witnesses say Red Hood was in that building shortly before it exploded,” he said, not turning to search the shadows. If his hunch was right, Batman would reply.
“I’ll need to look at all the bodies you pull out of there.”
“I suppose the helmet will signify which one you’re looking for.” Jim finally turned and his frown deepened. Batman looked…wrong. He was still tall, stoic, grim and darkness personified, but there was something.
“It may not have survived the blast,” Batman responded.
“Oh?” Jim asked, eyebrows rising.
“It was designed for tech and to protect his identity, not to protect his skull.”
That confirmed that. “So you know who he is.”
Batman was silent.
Jim brought the cigarette to his lips and pulled, nicotine filling his lungs. “Why doesn’t that surprise me? Will you at least tell me which one is Hood?” Batman didn’t respond and Jim sighed. “The warehouse collapsed a few minutes ago. The fire is still going strong, as you can see.”
Batman was entirely motionless. As if, if he tried to respond, he’d break. It was nerve wracking. Could Batman care about the Red Hood?
“Let me know when to visit the coroner.”
Then he backed away into shadow, and was gone.
…
Batman was back and the batmobile was moving once more.
Dick should probably wonder where Tim was but he couldn’t. Tim was alive, after all. That would have to do until he could allocate more thoughts to the world around him. He wasn’t sure he’d moved an inch, but they were arriving in the cave and their speed was slowing.
When it stopped entirely, His door was opened and Bruce had ditched the cowl to look at him. Bruce’s stare was heartbreaking. It was what broke Dick out of the general fugue, only to start crying again. Tears once more swam in his vision and he ripped the mask off, the pain a sharp reminder of the present and not sinking back into the nothingness waiting for him.
Bruce didn’t wait for him to get out on his own, just scooped him out like he was twelve again. Dick just cried into his shoulder. They passed Jason’s bike, the tricked out one he used when working with them. He had ridden his own tonight, wanting it to blend in on approach, though Damian, who’d been paired with Jason because Batman needed to be sneaky and because he wanted them to bond and increase the ties to keep Jason coming back, wasn’t thrilled about being that close to Jason since they’d had to squeeze onto the smaller bike.
Not that it mattered now.
Damian was using the distraction to avoid getting checked out in medical. He disappeared into the showers, hoping that if he looked fine by the time he got out, Father would let it go, or that he finished quickly enough that he would still be busy consoling Grayson and Damian could get upstairs.
A small part of him longed to also comfort Grayson, in a way he didn’t understand, save that it was sentimentality that these people had forced upon him and now he must suffer under.
The echo of Dick’s sobs suddenly breached the showers and Damian knocked his head against the wall. Grayson was in pain. He couldn’t do anything for him.
Well, he could piss off his mother, his grandfather, the entire League and, most likely, his father by tossing Todd in the Lazarus Pit again, but they still had to find him first.
…
Bruce carefully set Dick in the computer chair but his son refused to let him go and he shifted awkwardly until he knelt with Dick’s arms wrapped around his neck. For a long moment, they held there, Dick shaking hard enough that it masked Bruce’s own shudders. His son was dead, again. He was too late, again. He could have also lost Damian, had the boy gone in after Hood any earlier.
Dick started to pull away finally, only to blink his eyes and spot one of Jason’s spare dominos, the red ones he wore under the helmet, on the desk behind Bruce and broke into fresh wails. Gods, would he ever stop crying? How did he have any tears left?
Were these on top of the ones he’d been too late to shed when he got home to find out Jason was gone the first time?
There wouldn’t be anyone to take out his sadness and rage on this time. The traffickers were likely dead right along with Jason. No vengeance to be had this time.
Bruce just let him cry, holding him tight.
Tim roared up on Jason’s regular bike and Dick had a brief moment of hope before Tim came slowly into view. He and Jason had started to grow close, they’d had managed civility for several months after Jason apologized “for being a dick (heh) and attacking a kid for things he was mad at Bruce for”. It had been approaching true friendship.
“I…I found it a couple of blocks away,” Tim said softly. He pulled his own mask off, using the solution and then came over and awkwardly hovered until Dick allowed Bruce to let go so he could glom onto Tim for a bit instead.
Bruce noticed Damian, dressed in loose clothing, moving silently to the staircase. “Ask Alfred if he’ll come down?”
“Yes, Father,” Damian replied.
Bruce watched his other sons. Tim was filthy. He’d chosen a rooftop a little too close to the fire and gotten a fine coat of ash that lingered still, even after riding here on a motorcycle. They were all filthy, come to think of it, but they couldn’t leave Dick like this and he wasn’t sure Dick could even stand.
They’d been doing so well, him and Jason, rebuilding that scrap of an old bond and creating a new and better one. They fought so well together, Jason moving the way he did and Nightwing nearly reverting to his Robin days with unnecessarily showy flips and tricks and jumping off things, knowing if it went wrong, Jason would catch him.
None of them were going to recover from this.
Damian had been gone barely four minutes before he returned with unholy screeching. He was yelling dire threats and just howling wordless, indolent rage as he dragged along another person behind him toward the staircase.
Jason…
…
Damian knew this was a test. If Pennyworth looked at him and determined he would need treatment, he was going to have to get treatment. The butler ruled this house with an iron fist, one which usually also held cookies. Benevolent tyranny.
He just had to look perfect. Then he could retreat to his room and…and what? There was no way in hell he could sleep. Perhaps he’d just go out and pet Batcow for a bit.
And hug Titus.
And play with Alfred the Cat.
Anything to avoid picturing the broken expression on Grayson’s face.
He reached the kitchen door and stalled out. Should he be the one to tell Pennyworth what happened to Todd? Surely he couldn’t just let him go down to see Grayson crying on Drake’s shoulder and have to be informed that way.
He could do this.
He was Damian Al Ghul Wayne and did not fear the reaction of an old man to the death of (the same) member of the household a second time.
He swallowed hard and pushed open the door.
Alfred was seated at the table, polishing a silver teapot, a delicate teacup before him and a plate of cookies in the middle of the table. He looked up at the sound of the door and a smile spread across his face. “Good morning, Master Damian, have you and the others returned home?”
“Fucking finally!” a voice Damian never thought to hear again said.
Damian jerked the rest of the way into the kitchen to see Jason Todd, in a t-shirt, sitting opposite Pennyworth, his own teacup before him, and a polishing rag with some silverware being slowly worked through.
Damian stared silently as Jason got up, the chair scraping behind him. “Sorry, Alfie, gotta go let B hassle me about the flour bomb.”
As Todd started toward him, Damian snapped out of his frozen state and lunged, pulling a knife and swinging.
“Whoa!” Jason yelled, catching his wrist before pinning them both when Damian suddenly had another knife.
“Master Damian!” Alfred said sharply, interrupting and making them both freeze. “There is no knife play in the house.”
“You’re supposed to be dead in a collapsed warehouse!”
“What are you talking about?” Jason spat, releasing him and taking a step back. Damian didn’t immediately sheathe the knives, despite Alfred’s warning. “I said they triggered the bomb and I was getting out. I know I lost the helmet, but I came straight here so no one would worry.”
“You did no such thing!” Damian snapped. He finally sheathed that knives, grabbed Jason by the shirt and started dragging, yelling things like “stupid” and “liar” and several things in Arabic he didn’t understand. He also released several loud, frustrated noises and clicked his tongue more times than he’d heard in a single sitting. What the hell was going on? Jason glanced behind him to see that Alfred had decided to follow.
They went through the clock and with a few more invectives, they reached the top of the staircase.
Jason took in the scene and dread pooled in his gut. B looked wrecked. He was still dressed as Batman, sans cowl and filthy. There was a literal line demarking where the mask didn’t protect his mouth, jaw and chin, which were blackened with what looked like ash.
What made him freeze were the others. Tim was wrapped around a sobbing Dickiebird. Both of them also looked like they’d rolled around in a fire before getting here. Dick had literal tear tracks through the grime.
What was scarier was that he hadn’t even noticed there were more people here.
“Who the fuck died?” he asked.
Bruce just stared at him, dumbstruck. Damian seethed beside him. Tim looked up at him, then started trying to get Dick’s attention.
Jason looked over to Alfred, who shook his head minutely. He didn’t know either.
Jason yanked his shirt out of Damian’s grip and leapt down the stairs. “I asked a question,” he spat at Bruce whose eyes just followed him as he moved, but continued to remain silent and shattered. What the ever loving fuck?
“Who fucking died?” he yelled.
“You did!” Tim snapped back.
Jason wrinkled his brow. “I mean, yes, but that was like five years ago and it’s not the anniversary or anything so what the fuck broke these two?”
“We thought you died tonight…again.”
Jason scowled. “Why?”
…
Earlier…
Jason hoped the demon brat stayed put and kept watch. This place was gonna be a pain in the ass to not get noticed in and he didn’t need the “Stabby Robin” bursting in while he was trying to find Meera, Toby, Lainey, Tian, Ronaldo, Sarah, Mariah and Dani in this place. They’d been kidnapped off the street three days ago, in broad daylight. No one had gone to the cops, but one of his people had reported it to him. They obviously weren’t in the main room; basic open floor plan, with five men, one on the phone, the other four packaging drugs. Cutting heroin or cocaine with…something white, he couldn’t tell from this distance.
Whatever, he could blow the warehouse later if the Bats didn’t do anything about it once the trafficking victims were free. Damian wouldn't let him kill anyone, but he could come back another day.
“Drugs and five traffickers in the main room, no civilians, gonna check the back room,” he murmured into the helmet comm.
“Affirmative,” Robin replied, stiffly.
Jason clicked off and slipped out of the main room into the back hallway. He picked the lock on the first door, empty. The second and third were unlocked. The fourth found his people. All seven, cuffed to each other or furniture stuck fast to the floor.
Weary gazes met the blank face of his helmet and he raised his finger to where his lips would be. A couple nodded and he got to work, picking more locks.
Once they were all free, he gestured for them to follow. He opened the door to one of the traffickers looking completely surprised, holding granola and water bottles. He dropped it all to pull his gun but Hood was faster.
Unfortunately, gunshots make a lot of noise.
“Run!” Jason yelled, pointing. “That door!”
All of them bolted, pushing open a door marked Emergency Exit. Another trafficker rounded the corner and Jason winged him. Might as well deal with them now. He stalked back down the hall to the main room and started firing around the corner.
A sharp jolt had his head slamming into a wall. There was the sharp crack of the helmet breaking. The first one he’d taken out had come up behind him with a 2x4 and struck him in the head. He growled and pointed the gun point blank at the thug’s head, but then he heard the tell tale beep beep beep.
Of all the fucking luck.
He wasn’t allowed to kill on bat-sanctioned missions. If he did, well…no more hanging out with Alfred, no more hugs he pretended he didn’t want from Dick.
No more hanging out or fighting alongside his stupid brother who had become his friend this go around. No more team ups, hanging out on rooftops to eat pizza, playing dumb board games that always ended in violence, eating Sunday brunch while Alfred looked on or Bruce smiled indulgently.
Muting the external modulator, he tapped on the comm, “Robin, there’s a bomb, get out of here, I’ll meet you back at the cave.”
Switching back, he called, “Hey, douche bags, your dumbass here just triggered the bomb in my helmet. Might wanna bail.”
Then he yanked off the remains of his helmet and chucked it into the main room.
“Dude, we got fucking flour in here!”
Shit, that’s what they were cutting the drugs with.
“Gonna be a bit bigger than planned then.”
Jason started running. He heard all the traffickers start racing after him back into the corridor and out the emergency exit. He wasn’t about to let these fuckers get away, he turned a corner between buildings and stopped, waiting until they ran past him, he watched to see if they turned a a different corner and, when they did, grappled to get ahead of them.
With all five quickly incapacitated, he snagged one of their phones to tell the police, “five to pick up,” with his voice higher, trying to mimic Dick since he was without his distinctive modulator.
He glanced around. If the demon brat did what he was told, he would, hopefully, have taken Jason’s bike and started heading back to the Batcave. He hotwired a car and started heading back. He ditched it about a mile from the manor and jogged the rest of the way. Alfred might have cookies for him as a reward for not shooting anyone in the face.
…
Now…
“You went into the warehouse and didn’t come back out,” Damian growled. He was a tiny ball of fury. How dare Hood hurt Grayson like this.
Jason rounded on him. “What part of ‘Robin, there’s a bomb, I’ll meet you back at the cave’ was unclear?”
“I received no such communication,” he spat back.
Jason swore softly. “Musta broke the comm when he hit me.” He looked up at Bruce, who was still just staring. “Sorry, Baby Bat.”
“I do not require your apologies. I require you to fix Grayson.” Damian’s words were icy, any worry about Todd’s well-being long gone.
Jason’s eyes slid unwillingly back to his older brother.
Dick was entirely unaware of the fact that any conversation had been happening. Tim had given up trying to make him notice Jason was, in fact, less than five feet away and just let him shake silently against his shoulder.
“Dickiebird?” Jason asked.
Dick’s shoulders twitched, but he didn’t look up.
Jason approached carefully, reaching out to put a hand on Dick’s shoulder. “Dick, you can’t be doing all this crying over me.”
No response.
“I’m sorry for scaring everyone. The failsafe timer only has two minutes and I honestly didn’t know they hit the comm too. I need to rewire my spare helmets so one blow can’t trigger the C4 and disable comms at the same time.”
“The what?” Alfred and Bruce asked at the same time.
Jason looked around. “One of the guys I thought was already down got the drop on me. I’ll put it in the report, but he clocked me and triggered the failsafe for the bomb in my helmet.”
Bruce finally showed some emotion. Shocker, it was anger. “You have a bomb in your helmet? ”
“Yes? So no one can find my identity if they take it off by force.”
“That’s a horrible idea,” Tim put in.
“I’m being safe! There’s the two-minute failsafe I can trigger if I fuck up the combination myself or I really need to blow something up and didn’t bring any grenades with me.”
“But if they pull it off, it could kill you.”
“And then my identity, along with all of yours, stays safe. Besides, no one even died this time. I caught all the traffickers like three blocks away and called it in before I came here.”
Bruce closed the gap between them and yanked Jason into his arms. “No more bombs. I’ll buy you replacement helmets. Our identities are not worth your life.”
Jason stiffened in his grip, he hadn’t been hugged this tightly since before he died. “While that’s very nice, I’d still prefer not to drag you all down with me.” For all he hated to admit it, Tim was right, Gotham needed Batman.
This was going to be a battle of wills, or Bruce would just track down and swap out all of Jason’s helmets. One way or another, he would not have a bomb that close to his skull ever again.
And they still had to deal with Dick.
…
Dick kept hearing Jason’s voice. It was agitated, confused, so very angry and, if he lifted his head and found only the other members of his family looking at him with concern, he was going to shatter entirely.
“Dickiebird?” Jason asked in his head and it was so hard to keep his head on Tim’s shoulder, where the darkness of his closed eyelids let his imagination run wild.
The other voices also grew agitated, then wheedling.
And then Jason’s voice was right beside him. “Dickiebird, I need you to look at me.”
No. No, don’t destroy the illusion.
“Come on, Dickface.” Warm fingers brushed his cheek and slid under his jaw to pull his face up. “Oh come on,” Jason’s voice said at, presumably, Dick’s squinched shut eyes. Something hard poked his cheek. “I can do this all day, Dickhead.”
Dick caved and opened his eyes.
Jason’s teal ones stared back. “There you are.”
Dick unlatched from Tim to wrap around Jason instead. He was here, he was really here, he was warm and alive and Dick’s brain wasn’t really processing more than that.
“Oof, okay, sorry for worrying you. You don’t need to choke me to death via hugging. ‘Specially since I apparently already died tonight.”
“I don’t want to hear another joke about your death ever again, Little Wing,” Dick whispered against Jason’s ear.
Jason’s shoulders sagged in a sigh. “I don’t think that’s a promise I can make. I’ve just got so many of them. Besides, you like dumb jokes and puns.”
“Not about that.” Dick pulled back so he could look at Jason. He was still there, still hugging him, still alive.
The others had gone, though. Dick settled back into the hug. He’d stay there as long as Jason would let him.
…
Full excavation of the collapsed warehouse took three days. There were no bodies. But by now, that wasn’t a surprise. Jim’s officers had picked up five hogtied men a few blocks from the crime scene and the victims identified them as their kidnappers.
Red Hood had been spotted patrolling Crime Alley with Nightwing last night.
It was probably for the best.