Panic Room

by envysparkler

Summary:

“You locked a Pit-mad, murderous vigilante in a small, enclosed space with one of his biggest triggers. In some ridiculous parody of training.”

Notes:

• Translation into 中文-普通话 國語 available: 【授翻】颤栗空间 Panic Room by tiktiktiktiktam

Regular notice that author's entire knowledge of the batfam comes from fanfiction.

Chapter 1

 

“Damian?” Grayson said absently, checking near the Batcomputer and peering into the medbay as he made his way to the training mats, “Do you know where Tim is?”

 

Damian did not falter as he spun through his kata.  “I didn’t realize that I was supposed to keep track of the whereabouts of the Pretender.”  He hadn’t expected the scrutiny to arrive so early.

 

“I’m a little worried,” Grayson hummed, scanning the rest of the Cave with a frown.  “Jason said he’s dropping by to hand over some intel.”

 

“I fail to see the relevance.”

 

“Tim needs to stay away when Jason comes,” Grayson said, his mouth twisting, “But he’s not answering his phone and I can’t find him in the Manor.”

 

“So you hide the Pretender whenever Hood shows up?” Damian tsked.  This was exactly the weakness that needed to be prevented.  “I am not surprised by his cowardice, but that you choose to enable it.”

 

Grayson stopped and stared at him.  “It isn’t cowardice,” he said levelly, in the tone of voice that meant he was definitely upset but trying to hide it.  “Jason has nearly killed Tim twice.  Until we’re assured of his stability, I’d prefer if both of them stayed apart.”

 

“Tt.  Pit madness doesn’t go away.  Drake and Todd need to face their weaknesses.”

 

Grayson was still staring at him.

 

“Damian,” he said, in a voice that wasn’t cold so much as dangerous.  A reminder that Father’s eldest son wasn’t the cheerful simpleton he usually pretended to be.  “What did you do?”

 

Damian tensed.  “In the League, we are confronted with our fears in order to ensure we overcome them and gain stronger.”

 

“What.  Did.  You.  Do.”

 

Grayson definitely looked furious now.  Damian tried his best to salvage the situation, “I gave Todd and Drake an opportunity to—”

 

“Where are they?” Grayson asked, jaw tight.

 

Damian opened his mouth and then snapped it closed—right now, Grayson looked a lot like Father when he was in the cowl.  He pointed mutely to the set of doors built into the cave walls.

 

“The safe rooms?” Grayson rushed over and Damian followed him sullenly.  He didn’t understand why these people were so unwilling to take the necessary steps to achieve greatness.

 

Only one of the doors was shut and Grayson pounded fruitlessly on the reinforced metal slab.  “Jason?” he called out, despite knowing full well that the rooms were soundproof.  “Tim?”

 

Damian wasn’t sure what the futile action was supposed to accomplish.

 

“Are they both inside?” Grayson asked through gritted teeth.

 

“Yes.”  It had been easy to lure the Pretender inside, and even easier to send Hood in before he closed the door.

 

Grayson cursed and pounded on the door again, as though he wasn’t aware that it would only open when the timer was up.

 

“How long?” he asked.

 

“Four hours,” Damian replied.  It was a reasonable amount of time—the safe rooms were stocked with food and water and given that patrol would be wrapping up six hours from now, it would have a minimal impact on scheduling.

 

Grayson, however, made a low moan and clenched his hands into fists.

 

“Let me see if I understand this correctly.  You locked a Pit-mad, murderous vigilante in a small, enclosed space with one of his biggest triggers.  In some ridiculous parody of training.”

 

Damian drew himself up, eyes glittering.  “Hood needs to learn control if he is to be trusted, and Drake cannot keep hiding whenever he is confronted with a stronger opponent.  They—”

 

“Damian,” Grayson cut him off.  “They’re going to end up hurting each other.  We’ll be lucky if someone doesn’t get killed.”

 

Damian remained silent, because he had considered and dismissed the risks.  The only losses would be an unstable killer or a subpar placeholder.

 

Grayson turned to glare at him.  “Damian,” he said, his voice quiet and very, very cold, “You are Bruce’s son.  You’re a part of this family.  But you’ve shown very clearly that you can’t be trusted as a part of this team.”

 

Damian felt like someone had shoved him into a freezing waterfall.

 

“Go to your room,” Grayson said in that same, icy tone.  “Bruce will deal with you when he gets home.”

 

Damian left mutely.

 

---

 

Tim should’ve known.

 

Tim should’ve known.

 

Well, he knew that Damian was a little shit, and he knew the brat was up to something when he said he’d stashed Tim’s phone in the safe room in some twisted game of hide and seek, but he was running low on coffee and definitely low on sleep.

 

He’d expected the door slamming shut behind him, or a booby trap, or Damian leaping out with a knife and when all three threats had failed to materialize, Tim had cursed and started looking for his phone.

 

The thing was, the safe room wasn’t very large.  A small cupboard of snack foods, water bottles and a medkit, a low cot in one corner, and nothing else.  Tim had just finished searching under the cot when he heard loud, booted footsteps and an angry growl—“I will end you, Demon Brat!”—and went very, very still as a heavy door slammed shut.

 

The thing was, the safe room wasn’t very large.

 

Tim straightened up to meet Jason’s scowl.  Ten feet wide, ten feet long.  Timer-controlled.  3:59:53, the display on the door blinked.

 

“What the fuck,” Jason said, and Tim could already see the green begin to flicker in his eyes.  “Is this.”

 

Tim took a slow, careful step back.  He kept his body as still as possible, relaxed, telegraphing every movement as he edged back another step.

 

Jason swiveled around to stare at the closed door.  He tugged on the handle.  Tim could see the tension creep up his spine when it didn’t give.

 

“What the fuck is this,” Jason repeated, quieter but no less murderous.  Tim’s back hit the wall.

 

A distant part of his mind noticed that he was trembling.  The larger part of his mind was focused on tracking Jason as he cursed and yanked violently at the handle.  He spun around, aggressive, and Tim flinched when Jason glared at him.

 

“What the hell is going on, Replacement?” Jason growled.  His eyes were almost glowing.

 

Tim kept his palms facing out.  “I was just trying to find my phone,” he said, in a voice that sounded far too calm to be him.

 

“You left your phone in the safe room?” Jason sneered.

 

“Damian.”

 

Jason’s glower deepened.  “I am going to strangle that brat.”  He took another look at the door, “Why won’t this open?”

 

“Timer-controlled,” Tim pointed out.  His voice was level.  His voice wasn’t stuttering and shaking and trying not to scream because he was too close, too vulnerable, and Jason’s eyes were doing that thing they’d done right before he slashed Tim’s throat open.  “It’s locked.”

 

Jason took a long, deliberate glance at the display.  “No.”

 

Tim stared at him, silent.

 

“No,” he repeated, “I have places to be and people to kill.  Open it.”

 

“I can’t—” Tim cut off when Jason turned his glare back towards him.

 

“You’re supposed to be the smart one, Replacement,” Jason snarled.  His hands were clenched into fists.  “Open it.”  The or else wasn’t needed.

 

Both of them knew what Jason could do to him.  Tim didn’t have a single weapon, unless he counted crackers and water bottles.  Jason’s obvious holsters were empty, but he undoubtedly had several concealed weapons.  It wouldn’t be a rematch.

 

It wouldn’t even be a match.

 

Tim swallowed and edged towards the door, pressing close to the edge of the cot.  Jason watched him approach, eyes narrowed.  His fists tightened, and he took one deliberate step back as Tim hesitated at brushing past him to get to the door.

 

He really didn’t want to turn his back to Jason.  He also didn’t have much of a choice.

 

Tim kept his shoulders up, tense, waiting for the strike, more attention on the presence behind him than on the handle he was examining.  Jason was hovering, the weight of his suspicion a tangible thing as Tim moved his examination to the screen that controlled the settings.

 

It was all locked out, which Tim had already expected, and he couldn’t do anything without any tools, which he’d also expected.  They had made the safe rooms as tamper proof as they possibly could.

 

Tim ate up a couple of minutes dithering over the display like it would magically unfreeze and the door would open and he would not be two steps away from a man with magical rage issues and a personal vendetta against him.

 

Three hours, fifty-three minutes, and seventeen seconds.

 

And then Jason’s breathing shifted to something harder and faster and Tim knew his patience was up.  He straightened and slinked away from Jason, backing up to the cot.  “I can’t do anything without tools.  It was designed not to be tampered with.”

 

Jason gave him a cold look.  “You’re fucking useless, aren’t you, Replacement.”

 

Tim hid the wince and edged around the cot and back to the far wall as Jason stomped over to the monitor.  He was shaking again, and Tim let his knees give out as he slid down the wall.

 

He curled up—the cot against one shoulder, his arms wrapped around his knees, watching as Jason bled into sharper, harder, more frantic movements as he cursed at the door.  There were bands constricting tight around Tim’s ribs and it was getting painful to breathe.

 

The thing about fear toxin was that it could never quite replicate real fear.  It was terrifying and dangerous and panic-inducing, but it wasn’t real.

 

Not like the pulse of blood in his veins as boots turned towards him, footsteps jerky and echoing.

 

Not like the dread seizing his muscles, forcing them still under the reanalysis of memories he’d done a thousand times before, looking for weak spots and vulnerabilities and anything he could exploit to never again end up half-conscious at the Red Hood’s feet.

 

Not like the twist in his stomach and the vise around his lungs as the boots came to a stop right in front of him, as Tim imagined what it would start with this time, where the slashes and breaks would go, how long it would take him to recover—if he would ever recover.

 

Jason moved faster than Tim could track—one moment he was sitting on the ground and the next he’d been slammed against the wall with a fist around his throat.

 

“Not going to fight back, Replacement?” Jason sneered.  His eyes were flickering eerily.  The green turned his expression into something manic.

 

Tim kept his arms limp, even as Jason’s grip constricted.  “We both know that you’ll win,” Tim said, quiet.

 

Jason’s expression twisted as he growled.  He pushed Tim up, his grip now in the territory of strangulation as Tim balanced on his tiptoes to keep from choking.  “Not even going to try?”

 

“Waste…of…effort,” Tim forced out, his nails biting into the wall behind him.

 

Jason’s expression went blank.  He let Tim go in an abrupt motion and Tim nearly fell, catching himself against the wall in order to stay upright.

 

Jason stalked back to the door in stiff, rough movements.  Tim coughed, rubbing his throat gingerly, somewhat surprised he still had a functioning trachea.

 

Jason was pacing—five steps from wall to wall, opening and closing his fists as his stride got longer and faster.  Tim stayed where he was, pressed against the wall, hoping he could turn invisible.  Or melt into the wall.  Or do something other than hide in the corner and pretend he didn’t exist.

 

Jason was muttering something under his breath, the words too choppy and disjoint to be clear, the cadence definitely not English.  It looked like it was taking him a significant amount of effort to not attack, and Tim could do nothing but stay out of his way and pray that it was enough.

 

“There has to be a way out of here,” Jason snarled, harsh.  He didn’t look at Tim as he started a grid search of the room.

 

The corners and walls were swept and dismissed.  No easy divot or seal to break.

 

Tim slipped to the front as Jason stomped towards the back of the safe room.  The cupboard was dismantled in sudden, violent motions and each piece of wood was examined.  The water bottles were thrown aside.  The snack mixes followed.  Jason was more careful with the medkit, but he searched through it only long enough to confirm that it was a standard one before he slammed the lid shut and kicked it aside.

 

Tim winced at the grating scrape of metal and winced even harder as Jason dragged the cot from the wall.  His motions were frantic—Tim recognized the signs of suppressed panic well.  This wasn’t about not attacking Tim.  Jason wasn’t taking the cot apart so that he wouldn’t murder Tim.

 

Jason was afraid.

 

Tim’s breath caught in his throat when the obvious registered.  This was a small, enclosed space.  Jason didn’t have a good history with small, enclosed spaces.  Especially underground.

 

Oh, this was so much worse than Tim had imagined.  If Jason managed to stave off a Pit-heightened breakdown for four hours, it would be a miracle.

 

Tim took a shaky breath as Jason’s movements slowed, then stilled.  The room looked like a localized tornado had hit it.  And Jason was straightening up in the middle of the chaos, hands tightening into fists.

 

“Is this some kind of test?” Jason seethed.  He wasn’t looking at Tim.

 

The thought hadn’t occurred to Tim.  Damian and Jason barely interacted—it was clear that Jason refused to return to the family, and Damian would have no reason to go after him.

 

“I don’t think so,” Tim said quietly.

 

“Then what is this about, Replacement?”

 

“Damian wants me gone,” Tim replied easily.  On a good day, it was gone.  On a bad day, it was dead.  Damian eyed the Robin suit, already planning alterations.

 

Jason spun and met his gaze—the green pulsed when Jason’s eyes landed on him.  “So he locked you in here with me?”

 

Tim half-shrugged.  “Murder attempt number…twelve, I think.  Depending on whether or not he knew I was allergic to eggplant.”

 

“Murder attempt number twelve,” Jason repeated flatly.

 

Tim watched him warily.

 

“Funny, I only got two attempts before they kicked me to the curb,” Jason said, his voice curiously blank, “But I suppose the old man made an exception for his real son.”

 

Tim opened his mouth, and then closed it again, not sure what he was protesting.  Jason was right.  After the time Tim’s throat was slit, Dick had jumped into overprotective big-brother mode and at least three people tracked both Tim and Jason to make sure they were never in the same area.

 

And yet Tim had to triple lock his bedroom door and install an alarm on his window so he could get sleep without being worried about being jumped in the night by a tiny assassin.  Of course, nothing Damian had done had been severely debilitating.

 

Until now.

 

---

 

Jason’s nails were digging into his palms, a flash of pressure and pain that was trying to keep him grounded.  He was probably bleeding.  He didn’t care.

 

Like he hadn’t cared at the quick burst of a splinter digging in as he tore the cupboard apart, or the sharp scratch from one of the nails in the cot.  It was nothing.  A brief flash of pain, not nearly enough to quiet the howling in his mind.

 

Everything was green.  It was terrifying.

 

It had started once the reality of being trapped had set in, and flared whenever he saw the Replacement.  Jason could still feel that scrawny neck under his hand, and knew exactly where to push and twist to snap it like a twig.

 

And Tim had stared at him, utterly resigned and Jason had just.  Clawed back control.  Barely.  Like fingertips on a ledge as gravity tugged him down.

 

If he fell, he wasn’t getting back up.

 

The last two times, the green had receded when the kid faded into unconsciousness, the greed in his veins satiated, and Jason had managed to regain enough control to leave before he did more damage.  This time, he couldn’t leave.  This time, Tim would die and his tenuous peace with the Bats would be shattered.  Forever.

 

Jason’s thoughts swiveled back to the demon brat.  This hadn’t been a trap just for Tim.  Oh no.  Jason had League training.  He knew how they thought.  This was the perfect opportunity to force two rivals to get rid of each other while you maintained clean hands.  Dick and Bruce wouldn’t see it, too caught up in the idea that Damian was a child.

 

Damian al Ghul was an assassin, Bruce’s son or not.  And Jason was really fucking tired of the League of Assassins screwing up his life.

 

His rage swelled and Jason’s arms trembled with the effort of keeping still.  He couldn’t.  He had to control the anger.  There were too many triggers, too many of his buttons being pushed and he didn’t know which one would trip him over the line.

 

He was stuck in this room for another three and a half hours.  Tim couldn’t hack their way out and Jason had been unable to find any tool that would help.  Three and a half hours in a room that seemed like it got smaller with every breath.  He had to deal.  He had to.

 

He was stuck with goddamn Timothy Drake.  The room was fear-panic-dread, but the Replacement was bitterness-jealousy-rage.  He didn’t know where Talia’s manipulations ended and his own fury began, but that didn’t matter to the Pit.  Not when it hissed every time he saw the kid’s face.

 

He had to control the rest of the anger—the demon, Bruce’s double standards, the faint laughter he could hear if he strained his ears just right—

 

No.  No.  There were two things he hated more than the Replacement and closed spaces and if he thought of either of them, he was going to lose it.

 

At least the kid had the sense to stay out of his way.  Quiet and silent, tucked away in a corner.  Jason hadn’t realized that teenagers could be so thin.

 

Jason’s fists tightened.  If he’d been alone, he could’ve let the control slip.  Could’ve demolished everything in the room, could’ve punched the walls until his knuckles bled, until the Pit slunk away and left him with exhaustion.

 

But if he started punching anything now, he’d end up turning the kid’s face to pulp without even realizing.

 

“Say something,” Jason hissed.  The room was silent.  Too silent.  He could hear mutters and scrapes in the silence, the ringing after an explosion and manic laughter, the venomous whispers that coiled through his mind, as acidic as the Pit that was its home.  “Say something!” Jason snarled, louder, clenching his jaw at the continued silence.

 

“W—what?”

 

“Talk.”  The walls were creeping closer, he knew they were, he was watching them shrink and shrink.

 

“About what?” Tim asked, his voice guarded.

 

“I don’t fucking care!  Something.  Anything.”

 

“I—I don’t—”

 

“Either you start talking, or I start hearing laughter,” Jason bit out through gritted teeth, “And I guarantee you’re not going to like the second option.”

 

A beat, before the Replacement finally opened his mouth.  “I, uh, I have an essay that I was working on before Damian stole my phone—our class sort of got into a philosophy tangent and we were supposed to pick a theory of cognition to talk about, and I picked panpsychism, which is basically the theory that everything has consciousness, from other animals to plants to non-living things and—”

 

“Like all the stuff in this room?” Jason opened his eyes and glanced at the carnage, “This all has consciousness?”

 

“According to panpsychism, yes.  I’d imagine the cupboard and water bottles would be slightly annoyed.”

 

Jason huffed.  It wasn’t a laugh.

 

“My essay was going to touch on panpsychism in more abstract concepts, like the city of Gotham—”

 

“Because what we really need is an anthropomorphic city.”

 

“But I really wish I got the chance to do it on solipsism, which is the theory that you can only be sure of your own existence.”

 

“What.”

 

“It’s pretty fascinating, actually, this idea that you really only have proof that you yourself are conscious and everyone else could be zombies as far as you know—”

 

“Funny,” Jason said.  He had dropped to his knees.  “Given that I’m actually a zombie.”

 

Tim’s voice stuttered, but picked up, veering back into panpsychism, what his essay topic was going to be, what he was learning in his other classes, and overall way more information about high school than Jason wanted to know.

 

Jason stayed where he was, facing the wall, letting Tim’s words wash over him as he breathed, in and out.

 

Three hours.  He just had to keep it together for three more hours.  Then he could go and murder every drug dealer in Gotham.

 

Three fucking hours.

 

---

 

Tim’s voice grew hoarser and hoarser as he continued talking—he’d exhausted all the school-related topics and Jason had flinched when he started talking about Dick, so he’d shifted into the long, detailed history of all the archaeological digs his parents had ever been on.

 

When his voice cracked in the middle of describing a site in Guyana, something was launched at his face.

 

Tim flailed at the attack until he realized that the missile was a water bottle.  Full, seal still unbroken.

 

Jason was sitting in the corner furthest from Tim, staring resolutely at the wall.  Tim felt a little better at the confirmation that Jason’s issues with him were at least somewhat Pit-induced.

 

It hadn’t helped a whole lot, considering Tim was still locked in with him and had spent the last hour rambling in a frantic attempt to keep Jason’s sanity intact, but it was definitely better than thinking that Jason actually, sincerely wanted him dead.

 

“Thanks,” Tim rasped, taking a long gulp.  Jason didn’t respond, but three bags of snack mix were also launched in his direction.

 

Tim poked at one, his stomach still twisty with dread.  “Thank you, but I’m good.”

 

“Eat,” Jason ordered, glaring at the wall, “You’re as thin as a stick.”

 

Tim blinked, and then scowled.  He didn’t appreciate the admonishment, and he knew full well how to take care of himself.  “I’m—”

 

Jason twisted towards him, green eyes narrowed.  “Eat,” he said in a tone that made it sound remarkably like a threat.

 

Tim opened a bag of snack mix.

 

For a long moment, there was nothing but the sound of munching—Tim deliberately tried to be as loud as he could, because the sound of nuts and crackers was irritating but remembering the Joker’s laughter was far, far worse—before Jason said, in a voice kept deliberately toneless, “Your parents travel a lot.”

 

Tim paused mid-chew.  “Yes,” he ventured out slowly.

 

“Not home very often, I imagine.”

 

Tim was unsure where this line of questioning was going.  “No, they’re not,” Tim narrowed his eyes, “Are you planning on attacking me at home?”

 

Jason turned slightly towards him, head tilted, an unamused smile on his face.  “If I wanted you dead, Replacement, you’d be dead.”

 

Tim couldn’t really argue the point.

 

Jason turned away from him again, quiet in the crinkling of the bag and the crackling of food, until—“Must’ve made it easy to be Robin.”

 

Tim choked.  Actually, literally choked on the nuts he’d been eating and when he finished coughing violently, face red, he saw that Jason had lurched to an upright position, his face frozen in surprise, like he’d moved automatically to help before he realized it was Tim.

 

Tim stared.  Jason slowly shifted back to a seated position.

 

“Yes,” Tim said, turning back to the snack mix.  “It makes it easy to be Robin.”  Very easy to sneak out to Gotham at night when no one was home.

 

“So what did you steal?”

 

“What?”

 

“I tried to take the Batmobile’s tires,” Jason gave a half-shrug, “So what did you take to get the suit?”

 

“I—nothing,” Tim said, well aware that he was treading on delicate ground, “I sort of…forced Bruce to make me Robin.  He wasn’t handling—” your death “—things well and someone needed to watch his back.”

 

“Someone to watch his back,” Jason muttered, low and displeased.  Tim definitely wasn’t hungry anymore.  “Because that’s what Batman needed.  Another kid to send into another warehouse to get beaten and blown up.”

 

Shit.  They need to get out of this conversation now.  Tim cast his mind back to the dig he’d stopped in the middle of explaining and started up again, “So, Mom and Dad were in Guyana and—”

 

“How long?”

 

“What?”

 

“How long have you been chasing after Batman, Replacement?” Jason asked, looking straight at him.

 

“I became Robin two years ago,” Tim answered, trying to keep his voice level.

 

Unfortunately, Jason had caught the deflection.  “I didn’t ask you how long you’ve been Robin,” Jason hissed, “I asked you how long have you been chasing after Batman.”

 

Tim didn’t know the right answer to that question.  Tim didn’t know if there was a right answer to that question.  All Tim knew was that words were sputtering and dying in his throat and Jason was rising from his crouch.

 

“How long?” Jason demanded, his eyes alight with green fire, “How long were you waiting in the wings—black-haired, blue-eyed, but not gutter trash, not some thief he picked up off the streets, no, a worthy heir.  How long was he waiting to swap the old model out with the better one?”  Jason’s steps were fluid, like a tiger slinking forward.  “How long before he would’ve gotten rid of me anyway, if the Joker hadn’t done the job for him?”

 

“No, Jason, he didn’t—”

 

Jason lunged and Tim couldn’t get out of the way before he was slammed against the ground, hands wrapping around his throat.

 

“Answer the question,” Jason seethed, his grip tightening as Tim gasped.  “Answer the fucking question, Replacement—how long?”

 

“Jason,” Tim spluttered, grabbing his wrists and trying futilely to break his iron grip, “Stop.  Jason.”

 

“How long.”

 

“Five—five years,” Tim managed to get out, and choked when the grip turned into a steel trap around his neck.  “He didn’t know!” Tim rasped.  His lungs were burning.  Jason was pinning him to the ground and he couldn’t move.  Couldn’t breathe.

 

“Bullshit,” Jason snarled, his grasp turning crushing as he pulled Tim up to slam his head against the floor.  Stars erupted across Tim’s vision as he wheezed, clawing at Jason’s arms in a desperate attempt to get the older boy off.

 

“Jason,” Tim gasped.  He couldn’t suck any air in.  His throat was blocked and his chest was burning.  “Please.”

 

“Are you begging me for the life you never should have had?”  His voice was furious.  Jason’s face had gone blurry, but those green eyes were still shining bright.

 

His fingers faltered, slipping off of Jason’s arms.  There had to be something he could say.  Jason had kept it together for an hour.  Tim should’ve never let him start talking about Robin.  There had to be something he could say to get him to stop, something that wouldn’t make him angrier, something…

 

Darkness, pulsing at the edges.  Dry, sputtering wheezes.  Green.

 

The pressure vanished.

 

Tim took a huge breath and choked on it, coughing and spluttering but unable to stop himself from taking another and another and another until he could force himself to calm down.  He brought a hand up to his aching throat as he curled up as much as he could, fitting back into the corner.

 

“Fuck.”

 

Jason was on the other side of the room, staring at the wall, his hands balled into fists.  He was shaking again.

 

Tim watched him carefully, and took a second to glance at the display.

 

2:33:26.

 

---

 

“So?” Dick asked, unable to stop fidgeting.  He felt like a live wire, worst-case scenarios pressing against his mind in an unending loop.

 

Bruce shot him a tired look as he stepped away from the door.  “I can’t open it,” he said quietly.

 

Dick hadn’t really expected him to be able to—they had designed these things to be tamper proof, and that included from Batman—but the small part of him that thought Bruce would come back and fix it gasped out its last breath.

 

“Bruce,” Dick said tightly, “Four hours.  I don’t—can Jason even—Tim can’t—”

 

“Dick,” Bruce said softly, curling a hand around his shoulders, “We have to hope that they’ll be okay.  Both of them.”

 

“Jason hates Tim.  He’ll try to kill him.  The Pit will make him kill Tim.”

 

“Jason is working on controlling the Pit rage,” Bruce said, “You know this.  And Tim is very smart.  If anyone can find their way out of this situation, it’s him.”

 

“Bruce,” Dick choked out, because he can see it in his head, Tim gasping out his last breaths, Jason covered in blood, eyes green and blank, and he was the adult, he was supposed to be supervising, he’d let this happen—

 

“We’ll call Leslie and have her here when the room opens, just in case.”

 

In case what, his mind screamed, in case Jason finally finishes the job he’s barely been able to stop himself from completing?

 

Dick took a slow, stuttering breath and nodded tightly.  He couldn’t focus on the negatives.  He couldn’t.  It was Schrodinger’s cat.  Either Tim and Jason were fine, or they weren’t.  He would only know in four hours.

 

“You need to talk to Damian,” Dick said instead, clipped.  He’d been trying to get the kid adapted to the house, to feel comfortable around his family, to help him adjust.

 

And clearly he’d been getting nowhere.

 

“Yes,” Bruce shot a troubled look at the safe room door, “Yes, I do.”  He headed back up to the Manor and Dick hesitated before staying right where he was.

 

Just in case.  In case Tim managed to break through the safeguards or something glitched and the door opened and his brothers needed him.

 

Dick stayed, and fretted, and tried very hard not to think about what was happening on the other side of the door.  Maybe Jason and Tim were just bored in there.  Maybe they were sleeping.  Maybe Jason had slid Tim’s throat again and was lying in a pool of blood.  Maybe—

 

Dick hadn’t noticed Bruce coming back down, but he did notice the hand squeezing his shoulder.  “Damian?” he asked.

 

“I think I made some progress,” Bruce sighed, “He still doesn’t understanding why locking Jason and Tim together was wrong.  But I’ve managed to explain that we don’t operate like the League and the only training in this house is done on the mats.”

 

“You think that’s going to stick?”

 

“If it doesn’t, I will look into alternatives,” Bruce said mildly, “Starting with round-the-clock supervision.”

 

Dick chanced a look up.  For someone who was hoping for the best, he was awfully tense.

 

“Bruce…”

 

“They’ll be fine.”  Bruce sounded like he was trying to convince himself.

 

“They’ll be fine,” Dick echoed, settling in to stare at the door.

 

---

 

Jason couldn’t.  Couldn’t deal with this.  Couldn’t keep his hands off the kid for one goddamn hour, and Tim hadn’t even done anything—had, in fact, done exactly what Jason ordered him to and prattled about inanities until Jason felt like he was back in control, he wasn’t angry, the Pit was only simmering in the background.

 

And then he had to go bring up Robin.

 

He had to go and trigger himself while locked in a room with a fifteen-year-old who couldn’t stop Jason if he tried and that brief moment of normalcy was ripped away with Tim’s choked gasps as Jason squeezed tighter and tighter and tighter because he was so angry and so hateful and—

 

No.  He couldn’t keep thinking about it.  Not the way Tim’s hands went slack and fell, not his eyes fluttering closed, not the feeling of his windpipe under Jason’s fingers.

 

Not that hoarse coughing when Jason tore himself off and got as far away as he could.

 

Not the kid curled into a small ball in the corner, eyes peering out from behind his knees, watching Jason—he could feel the weight of his gaze, it itched between his shoulder blades and he wanted to tell Tim to stop but he was afraid to open his mouth—and trying to take up as little space as possible.

 

Jason couldn’t suppress the rage.  Not forever.  Not for two more hours.  The anger was fueled by panic, by hate, by terror and it was thrumming in his veins, seizing around his muscles and the pacing wasn’t enough.

 

It was only five steps and then Jason had to turn back and only five steps and he wanted to take a circuit around the whole room but Tim was still staring at him and another five steps and—

 

Jason picked up a wooden slat and threw it at the wall.  It fell with a clatter.

 

He picked it up again, and swung.  Again, and again—harder and harder until it was jagged splinters in Jason’s hands.

 

It wasn’t enough.

 

The water bottles and snack bags, no, the pillow and mattress would be useless, the metal frame—Jason shuddered at the thought of having it in his hands, a long, thin metal pipe, hearing it whistling through the air, feeling it crack—

 

Jason strangled the snarl and curled his hand into a fist and punched.

 

A burst of pressure and the tension in him ebbed—a target, and Jason set his jaw and punched the wall again.

 

And again.  The paint cracked, but it was metal over stone and it wasn’t going to yield, not even to the Pit-enhanced, enraged actions of a human, and Jason punched and punched and punched and the wall was red and his hand was screaming but he didn’t have control anymore, he had only rage and fury and hate and if he was going to break something, he might as well break himself.

 

Someone was saying his name.  Shouting his name.  Jason gritted his teeth and punched harder and—the shock reverberated up his arm and he stepped back for a moment, panting—and there was a hand on his shoulder and Jason turned on instinct, twisting through the movement and—

 

Tim, on the floor.  Staring at him with wide eyes.  Blood.  So much blood.

 

No.  No.  Nononononono.  This wasn’t supposed to happen.  He’d tried.  He’d tried so hard.  He’d played by their stupid rules and—and—

 

There was no coming back from this.  There was no—Bruce would never forgive him—and they didn’t kill, they made that damn clear, which meant—

 

No.  Jason wasn’t going to Arkham.  He couldn’t.  No.  There was laughter there and Jason knew that he was crazy, knew that the Pit was ever-present, but he’d done so well, he’d showed them that he wasn’t a threat, that he could—

 

“Jason?  Jason!”

 

But not anymore.  They wouldn’t believe him anymore.  They would lock him up and the laughter and the screaming and the Pit would never let him go and Jason couldn’t go there, he couldn’t, not back to the Joker, not back to Ethiopia, not back to a crowbar and screaming and crying and knowing that Batman would never come.

 

“Jason?  Jason, I—I’m not going to touch you, but I—Jason, breathe.”

 

Jason couldn’t go back to him.  Jason wouldn’t go back to him.  The Bats didn’t kill.

 

But Jason did.  Jason could.

 

A sharp inhale.  “Jason.”

 

A hand closed around his wrist and Jason trembled—no, too late yet again, why was he such a failure—

 

“Jason, I know I said I wouldn’t touch you, and I’m sorry.”  A high, wavering breath.  “But I really need you to drop that knife, Jay.”

 

The grip on his wrist wasn’t tight.  It was just there, a solid point of grounding even as Jason shattered into pieces.

 

“Jason, please.”

 

Jason looked up.  Tim stared at him, eyes wide and watery, one hand holding the balled-up edge of the bedsheet to his face.  The sheet had been white once, Alfred was not going to be pleased.

 

Tim’s other hand was on Jason’s wrist.  The wrist of the hand that held a knife.  The knife that was resting on Jason’s neck.

 

“Jason, please let go of the knife.”

 

Tim looked scared.  Jason was scared.  He uncurled his fingers and let the knife fall.

 

Tim snatched at it, a quick flash of movement and Jason flinched.  “No, it’s all good, throwing the knife away,” Tim said—his voice was hoarse and stuffy—and Jason watched as the knife skidded towards the door.

 

Tim exhaled shakily and slumped back onto his heels.  There was still blood leaking out of his nose.  “Shit, Jason, that was fucking terrifying and please never do that again.”

 

Jason tightened his hands into fists and immediately aborted with a strangled scream as his right hand shrieked at him—his knuckles were torn and bleeding, his hand was swollen, and there was definitely something broken.

 

“I’ll—I’ll get the medkit,” Tim said softly.  Jason took a ragged breath and let his head drop.

 

1:58:03.

 

---

 

Tim frowned—and immediately winced when the movement pulled at sensitive skin.  His whole face was throbbing, and he tasted pennies with every swallow.  Half the medkit’s tissues had been stuck around his nose.

 

What kind of idiot tried to touch a guy in the middle of a rage-induced breakdown?  Tim, apparently.

 

Though in his defense, the crunch of bone against metal had been pretty distinctive and definitely spine-chilling.

 

Jason had stayed still and mute while Tim very carefully—and warily, balanced on the balls of his feet to spring back if necessary—dabbed antiseptic over the cuts.  The hand was definitely broken, but there was nothing they could do about it here.

 

Jason had gone back to pacing, squeezing his injured hand every few steps as though he was using the pain to stay grounded.  Tim tried to focus on breathing—his nose was a throbbing, stuffed mess and his throat had gone from bruised to difficult-to-swallow, which made his every breath into a raspy whistle.  It wasn’t ideal.

 

Jason flinched every time he heard it.  He was getting twitchy again.  When he got twitchy, he attacked Tim.  Tim was running out of uninjured body parts and they still had more than an hour to go.

 

Tim took a deep—hacking, whistling, coughing—breath and tried to stop imagining what he’d do if Jason attacked him.

 

The broken hand.  Easy target, and from there it would be easy to pull him off guard.  The knife near the door, the one Tim had kept careful tabs on since the moment it had appeared out of one of Jason’s pockets.

 

And then what?  Tim’s thoughts stuttered.  Slitting Jason’s throat, like he’d so easily slit Tim’s?  There was no point in taking the knife if Tim wasn’t going to use it, and if he wasn’t using the knife, there was no way he could keep Jason down.

 

Jason’s footsteps stuttered before picking up again.  His broken hand was curled up tightly, and Jason’s expression was tense.  Green eyes perfectly blank.

 

Tim exhaled slowly.

 

The problem was energy.  Jason needed a better outlet than strangling Tim or punching the wall.

 

“Do you want to do something else?” Tim asked hesitantly.  Jason stilled completely, frozen mid-step.  “Like exercise?”

 

“What?”

 

“Crunches.  Or squats, or one-handed push-ups, or something.”  Tim bit his lip, “It might help with the…pacing.”

 

“Exercise,” Jason said, turning towards him.  Tim flinched when the green eyes landed on him.  He didn’t look murderous.  He looked…considering.

 

“Why not,” he said finally, more resigned than enthusiastic, but Tim was ready to take any emotion that wasn’t rage.

 

Tim watched as Jason began moving through the start of a conditioning set—not following along, because a broken nose and reduced breathing capacity was not conducive to heavy cardio—and felt something in his heart clench.

 

It was the conditioning set that Bruce had taught him.  All these years—dying, the Pit, the League—and Jason still chose the training Bruce had given him over anything else.

 

It wasn’t that Tim forgot that Jason had once been Robin, it was just that, for the sake of his sanity, he kept them separate in his head—Jason-as-laughing-joking-bright-Robin and Jason-as-angry-dangerous-threat-Hood.

 

It just wasn’t fair.

 

Not to Bruce, whose face got pinched every time Jason responded with hostility.  Not to Jason, who was caught between hating the boy he used to be and wishing for it back.

 

Not to Tim, who had to watch his childhood hero turn into his almost-murderer.

 

Jason leapt up from the ground into a squat and—lunged up, face twisted, eyes electric green and Tim was already stumbling back because he didn’t know what he did wrong, he didn’t know why, he didn’t know anything but he was hurting and it wasn’t going to stop.

 

His back hit the wall.  No escape.  Nowhere to go.  His head was hurting, his neck was hurting, his chest squeezed like someone was wrenching his ribs into a vise and—

 

“Tim!”

 

What was it going to be next?  Which bone?  Which knife, which gunshot, why was he so angry, what did Tim do, he was trying to apologize, trying to say sorry—

 

“Tim—goddammit—”

 

He was so angry, so furious, so hateful—and he was Robin but Tim was Robin but he was Robin—Tim couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think—it hurt, it hurt so much—

 

“Tim, you need to breathe.”  Angry, growling, too close, too close.  A sharp, vicious curse.  Something tightened around his hand, something pressed down on his chest.

 

“Tim, I don’t know how long I can—” The bones in his hand creaked as the grip constricted, lightning-fast, and Tim choked on the cry, waiting for the crack, waiting for the pain—

 

The pressure disappeared suddenly.  Tim was falling and the world was closing in around him and—

 

A dull thud and a sharp, muffled scream.

 

The pressure on his chest was back, in and out, and Tim coughed as he exhaled.  “Come on, Tim, breathe.  In for five seconds.  Hold.  Out for five.”  Tim tried to obey, struggling to inhale—his throat was sore, his face felt crushed—matching his breathing to the rhythm of alternating pressure on his chest.

 

He coughed again, and it was easier to draw the next breath, and the next.  He opened his eyes—blurry, sticky—to see Jason crouching in front of him, his expression frantic but not angry.

 

Jason eased off and inelegantly scrambled back when he saw that Tim’s eyes were open.  His hand was bleeding again.

 

Jason squeezed his eyes shut and muttered a curse.  Tim echoed the sentiment.

 

01:19:24.

 

---

 

One hour.  He cast a glance to the display every few minutes, checked the door handle on every circuit.  One more hour.  That was all he needed to get through.

 

He was three-quarters of the way there.  There’d been some setbacks, but no serious injuries.  He had to ensure it stayed that way for one more fucking hour.

 

Tim was sitting in the corner, leaning his head against the wall, staring blankly at the floor.  He tensed whenever Jason passed him on his loop around the room.  There was purple ringing his eyes, bruising spreading from the broken nose, and dark shadows around his neck.

 

Jason tightened his right hand into a fist and let out a ragged breath at the jolt of pain.

 

The exercise had been a good idea, but flawed.  It focused him, the exertion helping with his restlessness and panic, tamping down on the itching in his veins.  Unfortunately, it focused him, and Jason did not want to be focused locked in a room with someone he didn’t want dead.

 

He tested the door again.  Locked.  Still locked.

 

For a second, it was a different door, a different handle, hard and unmoving under his broken fingers, pulling harder and harder in panic and dread as a timer ticked down and—

 

He squeezed his broken hand until the pain made everything go white.

 

One more hour.  One.  More.  Hour.  He had to hold on till then.  He had to.  He didn’t know how—he was getting restless again and he didn’t know how to stop it, couldn’t think of a better way to burn up rage than punching the wall—

 

Except the pain was definitely starting to harm, not help, his heart rate kicking up as body registered danger, registered threat—

 

Jason stopped, cradling his hand to his chest and breathing raggedly.

 

This wasn’t working.

 

He looked over at the kid—the talking had worked for nearly an hour, and he was sure that Tim had plenty of stories about his parents on archaeological digs given that they never seemed to be home and—

 

Jason could see the outline of his hands on the kid’s throat.  Shit.  Right.  He did that.

 

Talking was not going to work.

 

The Replacement knew Jason was looking at him.  He’d gone tense again, his body frozen in rigid lines as he stared fixedly at the floor.  Not looking at Jason.  Not acknowledging Jason.  Ignoring Jason.

 

Jason didn’t like being ignored.  He especially didn’t like being ignored by the kid who’d put on his costume probably before he’d even been cold in his grave, like Robin was nothing more than a torch to be passed over, like it hadn’t been Jason’s whole life, like it hadn’t been the one thing that had given him meaning before a clown and a crowbar and a bomb and a bat yanked it all away.

 

Tim was looking at him now.  Jason was crouched at his feet as Tim pressed himself further into the wall.  He looked afraid.

 

Good.  He should be afraid.  He should’ve known he couldn’t take the suit that easily.  Should’ve expected Jason to come crawling out of the grave and take it back.  Should’ve been prepared.

 

Tim’s eyes were very wide.  Jason was hovering over him now, braced on his good hand.  He could see the shadow of his fingers on the Replacement’s throat.  He could match his hand to them, one by one, and feel the tremors in his skin.

 

“Jason,” Tim rasped.  He wasn’t moving.  He wasn’t fighting.  He was limp, eyes watery and breaths harsh.  Jason could see his reflection in Tim’s eyes.

 

“What am I doing?” Jason whispered.  Everything was green.  It pulsed in and out.

 

“I don’t know.”  Tim’s face was too wide, too open, too tired.  Jason wanted to smash it to pieces.

 

“Your face is pissing me off.”

 

Tim made a soft, high-pitched sound that was too abrupt to be a laugh.  “Then stop looking at it.”

 

That was…surprisingly logical.

 

Jason let himself drop.

 

Tim went absolutely still under him, not even breathing as his heartbeat raced under Jason’s ear.  Jason didn’t move—the soft lub-dub was out of sync with the haze of green and Jason closed his eyes and focused on the sound.

 

“What are you doing?” Tim whispered softly.  He started breathing again, but slow and shallow, like Jason was going to knife him if he took too deep a breath.

 

“Ignoring your stupid face,” Jason replied.

 

“And you could find no other position in this entire room to do that from?” Tim’s voice climbed into a half-hysterical hiss.

 

“No,” Jason said, taking full advantage of his weight to trap the kid to the floor.  He sighed.  “Your heartbeat.  Something to focus on.”

 

“I—”

 

“No talking.”

 

“Jason—”

 

“Tim.  Timmy.  Replacement.  Right now your heartbeat is the only fucking thing keeping me from gutting you so how about you make like a grave and shush.”

 

Tim shut up.

 

Jason felt Tim’s heartbeat vibrate against his cheek and matched his breathing to it, in and out.  He was fine.  He wasn’t in a locked room.  He wasn’t with the new Robin.  He was listening to a heartbeat and no one was attacking him and he was fine.

 

In and out.  In and out.  In and out.

 

00:46:31.

 

---

 

Bruce wouldn’t admit how worried he was.  Leslie was hovering in the medbay, along with Alfred, and Damian had been ordered to stay in the Manor to avoid a variable he couldn’t control.  Dick was next to him, all but vibrating in place as they stared at the door.

 

Less than a minute before the door would unlock.  Less than a minute before they would finally be able to see the condition his boys were in.

 

Bruce wanted to believe that Jason had enough control to not give in to the Pit and Tim was resourceful enough to prevent an attack.  But the cold, analytical part of his mind insisted on running him through every worst-case scenario.

 

Tim dead, body broken and bleeding just like the other times, only Jason hadn’t been able to stop himself from the final blow.

 

Jason dead, Tim lashing out in frantic self-defense to avoid being murdered.

 

Both of them dead, in fury and terror and panic.

 

Bruce breathed out, slow and steady, and readied himself for whatever the door would reveal.

 

Dick edged closer, eyes wide and face pale.

 

A few more seconds…

 

The door was flung open almost before the click-and-hiss as the timer released the lock, and Jason stumbled out, Tim lying still in his arms, blood and bruises and—

 

“Here,” Jason snarled, shoving Tim into a startled Dick’s arms.  Tim woke up with a squawk, limbs flailing, and Dick nearly unbalanced.  Bruce felt his knees go weak.

 

Alive.  They were both alive.

 

Thank all the gods, they were alive.

 

Jason was moving forward, his jaw rigid and his eyes green and pulsing, “Now where is that fucking brat?”

 

Bruce rebooted in time to block Jason’s path, shouldering in front of his son as Dick set Tim back down on his feet.  “Jason.  Jay.”

 

“Get out of my way,” Jason hissed, pushing at Bruce, his gaze fixed past him like he wasn’t really registering the scene.  In the background, he could hear Dick fussing over Tim’s injuries and Tim replying in a voice that sounded like blended gravel.  “If that demon wants League training, I’ll fucking give it to him.”

 

“Jason,” Bruce said softly, catching his shoulders as Jason pushed at him again.  Jason fisted his hands in Bruce’s shirt—one of those hands was swollen and bleeding—and then Bruce was suddenly supporting two hundred pounds of extra weight as Jason crumpled.

 

“Oh, Jay-lad,” Bruce said, easing them both to the floor and keeping his grip firm but not tight.  Jason’s breaths hitched as he buried his head into Bruce’s chest, shuddering violently.  “You’re okay.  You’re safe.  You’re home.”

 

“The door was locked,” Jason mumbled, shaking, “The door was locked and I couldn’t get out.”

 

Bruce felt like someone shoved a dagger into his heart.  “I know.  I know, son.  It’s okay.”

 

“I couldn’t hold it together.  The room was too small and the door was locked and I—” Jason’s voice cracked, and Bruce could feel wetness spreading through his shirt.

 

“It’s okay, Jay-lad.  You’re home.  You’re safe.  I’m right here.”

 

“I hurt Tim,” Jason said quietly.

 

Bruce looked up—Tim had deep purple and black bruising below his eyes, courtesy of what looked like a broken nose, and a distinctive dark outline of fingers around his throat.  Dick and Leslie were with him and as Bruce watched, Dick turned to him and gave him a slight nod.

 

“He’ll be okay,” Bruce reassured, “He’s going to be just fine.”

 

“I couldn’t stop it,” Jason whispered, voice breaking again, and Bruce gave into the impulse he’d been fighting and tugged Jason fully onto his lap, wrapping him in a tight hug.

 

“You did a great job, Jay,” he said, rocking him slightly as Jason’s breaths hitched and stuttered, “I’m so proud of you.  You did fantastic.”

 

“The Pit will never go away,” Jason said, his voice small, “It—it’ll never stop, I’ll be like this for the rest of my life, and what if I lose control the next time, what if I—”

 

“There are a lot of things that never go away,” Bruce said gently, “We learn to live with them.  We learn to accommodate them.  We learn to adapt.  I have faith in you, my son.”

 

Jason shuddered, still for one long, stretching beat, before he tentatively wrapped his arms around Bruce.

 

Bruce buried his nose in his son’s hair and exhaled quietly.  His sons were alive.  They were going to be okay.

 

And Bruce was not going to sleep until he completely redesigned the panic rooms.

 

 

Chapter 2

Summary:

This time, it was not Damian’s fault. He refused to take responsibility for this mess.

Notes:

I was not intending to write a second chapter for this, so you can thank everyone in the comments section who asked for Damian to get a taste of his own medicine.

Me: okay this will be short. Maybe another 4k words max. I have only like four scenes in mind.
Me, 20 pages later: welp.

 

Damian glared at the mats as he wiped the sweat out of his face.  He’d run through the conditioning set five times now.  Batman and Nightwing were supposed to be back three sets ago.

 

The cabinet with the weapons was against the far wall, taunting him.  It was locked, and not by something that Damian could pick.  Not without alerting someone anyway.

 

No weapons without supervision had been the punishment.  Damian didn’t understand—what was the trick, what was the test, what was he supposed to do—but he knew that if he was caught opening it, they would be angry.

 

But Batman and Nightwing were supposed to be back and he had to practice to maintain his form because they were all displeased with his performance and Damian still hadn’t figured out all the rules.

 

Damian hadn’t been trained for long-term infiltration.  He didn’t know how to…blend in.  He had been trained as the heir to the Bat, but after coming to Gotham it was clear that his mother’s and his father’s idea of a good heir were not the same.

 

Damian had never needed supervision in the League—had, in fact, been expected to continue his training on his own time.  But here he wasn’t even allowed in the Batcave without a minder—usually Father or Grayson, but since they were both out on patrol, it had fallen to Drake, who was still off patrol duty due to his injuries.

 

Of course, Drake was nowhere near proficient enough to watch Damian, so Grayson had only left after enlisting Hood as backup.  Damian had hoped that Todd would decline—hoped that the circumstances would mean that he’d get to go on patrol—but Todd had seemed amused at the idea of being a ‘babysitter’.

 

Damian had clenched his jaw to refrain from pointing out that the only reason Todd was even trusted in the Cave anymore was because his self-control had proved up to the task of not murdering the Pretender.  Damian was aware that Father was extremely displeased over that exercise, even though it had worked out exactly as Damian had intended—Todd had managed to limit himself to some minor maiming, the Pretender no longer flinched every time he saw Hood, and some of the lines on Father’s face had eased.

 

But no one bothered to show their appreciation.  Ungrateful imbeciles.

 

Damian had been slightly concerned that if Hood showed that he was not an unstable murderer, he would be back in contention for Damian’s birthright, but Todd proved himself just as incompetent as Drake.

 

Case in point, both Todd and Drake had disappeared, leaving Damian without any ‘supervision’.

 

Damian trudged sulkily back to the platform.  Maybe he could comm Batman and Nightwing to ask when they were getting back, and subtly work in that he had seen neither Hood nor the Pretender in twenty minutes.

 

But no, he could hear voices coming from the safe rooms at the far edge of the Cave—honestly, how traumatizing had the experience been if both of them were back in the room, training was supposed to hurt—and Damian changed direction.  He doubted either Hood or the Pretender would agree to supervise his weapons training, but surely he could aggravate one of them enough to agree to a spar.

 

The door was open at a half-slant and there were mounds of wiring and tools and circuits just inside the room.  Two voices were echoing oddly in the dark room—Drake’s too-fast mutter and Todd’s raspy grumble.  Damian knew that Father had started a project to redesign the safe rooms and prevent anyone being locked inside, but it was clearly taking longer than anticipated.

 

Damian stepped inside quietly, intent on standing and glaring until someone noticed—

 

His foot snagged a wire barely visible in the flashlight-lit darkness.  Damian tried to extricate himself, unbalanced further, and fell into the mess of tools and circuits with a ringing crash.  He heard a faint creak as he fought free of the jumble and the light behind him disappeared with a click.

 

Todd, near the far wall of the safe room—which had been stripped to reveal a small crawlspace with a mess of wires crossing in and out—blinked at him, squinting against the flashlight.  And then his gaze skipped past Damian and his face paled.

 

“Jason?” Drake’s voice echoed from where he was half-inside the crawlspace, “What was that?”

 

“What,” Todd forced out through gritted teeth, his eyes dancing green, “Did you do.”

 

Damian swallowed and turned to see what Todd was glaring at.

 

The door had closed behind him and the knob refused to turn under Damian’s hand.  99:99:99 the timer blinked unchanging.

 

“Jason?”  Drake’s voice was closer and he broke off into a sharp inhale.

 

“What the hell did you do, Demon Brat?”

 

---

 

Damian watched Drake curse at the door.  Todd was hovering at his shoulder, holding the flashlight and glaring at the timer—though since it wasn’t counting down to anything, it was merely a lock.

 

“If we got locked in a safe room by the little demon again—”

 

“It’s hardly my fault that you chose to work in a defective safe room without properly ensuring that the door was kept open—”

 

“We did ensure the door was kept open, before you came in and kicked out the doorstop!”

 

“A mess of wires and tools cannot be called a doorstop, you—”

 

“Really, brat?  You want to piss me off?  Here?  You’re going to—”

 

“Stop it!” Drake shouted.

 

“Your pathetic threats do not cow me, Hood.”

 

“Oh, you want a threat?  I’m going to tear your limbs off, piece by piece, and then I’m going to carve your chest open and break every one of your ribs and once I’ve done that, I’ll plunge a knife into your eyes and listen to you scream—”

 

“Jason,” Drake said levelly, stepping in between Todd and Damian.  Todd had a knife in his hands now and he was breathing hard, his eyes almost glowing in the darkness.

 

Damian swallowed and reminded himself that Todd was not Grandfather and that the flickering green meant nothing.

 

“Get us out of here,” Todd growled, his gaze fixed on Damian.

 

“I’m trying to,” Drake said, keeping his voice steady.  Damian could see his fingers trembling.  “The door is locked, but all we need to do is set the wires for the timer relay to zero.  It’ll take me a little time, but we’ll be out of here soon.”

 

“How much time?” Todd spat out through gritted teeth.

 

“Fifteen minutes, if both of you manage to sit silently and let me work.”  Drake turned to aim a sharp glare at Damian.

 

Damian crossed his arms in lieu of audible acquiescence.  He certainly didn’t want to be locked in a small room with Todd and Drake, and hopefully if they managed to get out before Batman and Nightwing showed up, he’d escape this particular mess without another lecture.

 

It wasn’t his fault this time.  It wasn’t.

 

Drake shot both of them a wary look.  Todd retreated to the corner closest to the door, spinning the knife in his hands and staring at Damian.  Damian sneered back.  Drake seemed to take the silence as agreement and held his hand out for the flashlight in Todd’s hands.

 

Todd just barely stopped himself from visibly balking.

 

“We brought only one flashlight,” Drake said.

 

“What kind of idiot brings only one flashlight when digging through a—”

 

“The kind of idiot that has only two hands,” Drake snapped back, “I never asked you to join me in the safe room and if you were doing what you were supposed to be doing and watching Damian, this never would’ve happened.”

 

“Are you saying this is my fault?” Todd asked quietly—his tone rang warning bells in Damian’s head.

 

Clearly, Drake had caught it too, because he sighed.  “Can we argue about whose fault it is once we’re out?” he asked.

 

Todd handed over the flashlight, a muscle in his jaw jumping.

 

“Thank you,” Drake said politely, before crawling back into the hole in the wall with a wire-cutter and a screwdriver.

 

Todd continued glaring at Damian, his hands balled into fists and his body tense.  Drake was clearly out of view, and they’d resolved their differences anyway, so Damian was uncertain as to why Todd’s eyes were pulsing green.

 

Unless Hood was unstable.

 

Perhaps not murdering the Pretender had been a fluke.

 

Damian wished he hadn’t hidden all his knives to stop them from being confiscated.  He examined the piles of rubbish on the floor in the little light that filtered from the flashlight Tim had jammed into the crawlspace, his eyes catching on the gleam of metal.

 

A wire-cutter was better than nothing, and the copper wire would be a serviceable garrote.

 

Todd’s eyes followed Damian’s gaze—when they snapped back to his face, they were narrowed.

 

Damian cursed himself for his lack of discretion and lunged at the wire before Todd could act.  Given Todd’s volatility and the years it had been since Todd had trained with the League, Damian had the advantage and he intended to press it.

 

If he could get the wire around Todd’s throat, and unbalance the man enough to grab one of the knives Damian knew he kept, it would end with a straight slash across the throat.

 

No.  Father said no killing.  He wasn’t sure where self-defense fit into the picture, but Father would not believe Damian without physical evidence.  So be it.  Damian would stab Hood somewhere non-lethal, and if Hood managed to expire of blood loss before he could get treatment, Damian would feign ignorance.

 

Children were always underestimated, and it was a fact that Damian took full advantage of.

 

When Hood twisted out of Damian’s choke hold with the sharp snap of bone and sudden, searing pain, Damian realized he’d miscalculated.  Badly.

 

He was thrown at the opposite wall, the impact jolting through his body, and he barely managed to struggle to his feet before Hood lunged at him.

 

“What was it, little demon?” Hood snarled, slamming Damian back against the wall, “Tim failed to kill me so you decided to give it a second try?”

 

Damian lashed out, but Hood was still in his suit and without a weapon he—

 

Fingers constricted around his throat and it was abruptly very difficult to breathe.

 

“You want to play by League rules, demon?” Hood sneered, green eyes vibrant.  He…he sounded a lot like Grandfather.  “I’m willing to oblige.”

 

The grip shifted up, until Damian lost purchase with the floor.  He clung to Hood with his unbroken arm, trying desperately to choke in a breath past the crushing grip around his throat.  Someone was shouting, but toxic green was all he could see.

 

He needed to breathe.  He needed to breathe.  He needed—

 

Something slammed into Hood’s side and Damian was unceremoniously dropped.  He sucked in air greedily, pushing away to roll back upright, his broken arm twisted away from the fight, his head ringing, defend defend defend—

 

“Jason,” Drake croaked out.  He was in the same position Damian had been in, choked out against the wall.  “Jason, stop.”

 

“You’re taking his side?” Hood hissed, wrenching him up another inch.  Drake gasped.

 

“Jason.  Please.”

 

Hood let go with a furious hiss, but his hands were still curled into fists and his body was trembling.  “He attacked me.”

 

“You were about to kill him,” Drake wheezed.  He sounded horrible.

 

“That’s what I do to the people who attack me!”

 

“Jason,” Drake said wearily, “Give me ten minutes.  Please.”

 

Hood snapped his mouth shut with an audible click before he retreated, keeping his back to the wall as he eyed Damian balefully.

 

Damian glared back, and tried to tell himself that he wasn’t afraid.  Damian was the heir to the Bat and the heir to the Demon.  He had been trained by the League of Assassins.  He had been deemed worthy.

 

Hood had been trained by the League of Assassins.  Hood had been trained by Batman, who was the only person who’d taken on Ra’s al Ghul and lived to tell the tale.

 

“Damian,” Drake stopped in front of him, glaring.  His voice was raspy, but definitely furious.  “That was a beyond stupid thing to do.”

 

“He was going to attack me,” Damian hissed.  His throat felt raw.  “I saw it in his eyes.”  Grandfather’s would flicker in the same way right before an assassin was terminated.

 

“He was not going to attack you.  At least, before you jumped him.”

 

“He’s unstable!”

 

“Jason doesn’t like being locked into rooms,” Drake said, clipped, “I can fix that in ten minutes if you don’t attack him.”

 

“He tried to kill me!”

 

“Damian, if attempted murder meant anything in this family, you would’ve been out on your ass weeks ago.”

 

“But I’m—”

 

“I swear to god, you brat, if the next words out of your mouth are ‘blood’ or ‘heir’, I’m not going to stop Jason from murdering you.”

 

Damian gritted his teeth and glared.  Something that might’ve been amusement flickered across Hood’s face.

 

Drake’s eyes were flashing.  “I am very much not enjoying being locked in here with two murderous idiots so if you would kindly shut up for the next ten minutes so you can go back to being Bruce’s problem, that would be great.”

 

Damian opened his mouth, but Drake cut him off.

 

“Anyone else know how to rewire the lock?”

 

Damian regarded him sullenly.  “I could figure it out,” he muttered.

 

“Before or after Jason snaps you in half?”

 

Damian glowered.

 

“This is your fault, Damian.  I’m not asking for a lot here.  I’m just asking you to stop making things worse.”

 

“He was—”

 

“Jason was controlling it until you attacked him, because he doesn’t actually go around murdering everyone that makes him angry.”  Hood shrugged behind Drake’s back and made a so-so gesture.  “So for the next ten minutes, Damian, you’re going to shut up and stay still.”

 

“You can’t—”

 

“Tell you what to do?  Sure I can.  You’re holding none of the cards here, Demon Brat.”

 

Damian could feel the burning spread out from his chest and wash over his face.  He curled his unbroken hand into a fist and calculated the likelihood of managing to break the Pretender’s nose without setting off further and likely fatal hostilities.

 

Drake caught the movement, and his eyes narrowed.  “You know what?  Do whatever you want.  I’m not coming back to save you if you piss him off again.”

 

Drake turned on his heel and stalked back to the crawlspace, growling about idiots and stone walls.

 

Damian stayed where he was, his ears burning, and kept his broken arm still against his chest.

 

---

 

“Tim,” Todd drawled out, “Timmy.  Replacement.  Timbo.  Timothy.  T—”

 

“What?” Drake snapped from inside the crawlspace, “In case you haven’t noticed, Jason, I’m a little busy—”

 

“Remember that architectural dig you were telling me about?”

 

A beat of silence.

 

“What?” Drake asked.  He’d gone still.

 

“You mind finishing the story?”

 

Drake actually crawled out at that, shining the flashlight in their direction.  Damian hadn’t moved from his position, mainly concerned with the dull, stabbing pains emanating from his broken arm.  Todd had braced himself in the corner and seemed to be breathing too fast, his eyes squeezed shut.

 

“Jason—”

 

“Don’t.  Just.  The story, Tim.”

 

Drake stared at Todd, clearly debating something.  “I can tell you the story,” he said softly, “But it’ll take me longer to get us out.”

 

Todd inhaled sharply.

 

“Or I can walk you through what I’m doing,” Drake suggested, “That sound okay?”

 

Todd leaned back, letting his head hit the wall.  He swallowed.  “Yeah,” he said quietly, “That’s okay.”

 

Drake pursed his lips, staring at Todd for a second longer before he turned back to the crawlspace.  Damian bit his lip to avoid making a comment about the delay.

 

Drake’s voice soon filled the silence, muttering gibberish about resistor colors and polarities and integrated circuits and Damian could see Todd’s tension slowly begin to ease.  Damian wasn’t about to admit that Drake’s grating voice was in any way soothing, but it made the room seem a little less dark and let Damian focus on something other than his broken arm.

 

Of course, Drake being Drake, he had to go screw that up too.

 

His narration shifted to talking about a set of green wires that he was reconnecting and Todd flinched every time the color came up.  Soon, he was as tense as he’d been when he interrupted, and a few seconds past that, his eyes had started flickering again.

 

Damian wanted to kick Drake, to alert him to the situation and get him to stop, but was very aware that moving would make him a target.  Todd exhaled slowly, his fists trembling.

 

“—and now I’m fitting the green wire, uh…one of these wires, dammit, I should’ve marked which was which, now I have to untangle them and—wait, okay, this green wire—”

 

Todd took a stuttering breath and held it.  His gaze darted to Damian and stayed.

 

“Drake,” Damian snapped, cutting off the older boy’s narration.

 

But it was too late.

 

Damian darted away, ducking to the right a full second before Todd lunged.  Unfortunately, the meagre light that came from Drake’s flashlight was not nearly enough to illuminate every tripping hazard in the room and Damian stumbled over a coil of wire, nearly unbalanced to avoid landing on his broken arm, and straightened only to get caught with a kick to the chest.

 

Damian banged his head against the wall, hard, and he barely had enough time to blink past the colored stars and drag a breath through the searing splinters in his chest before Todd was on him again.

 

Drake was shouting, fingers were wrapping around his throat, he needed to breathe—

 

He fought, clawing at Todd’s arms with both his hands, fingernails biting in deep—

 

Todd grabbed his broken arm and wrenched.

 

The darkness surged with his strangled scream.

 

---

 

Damian remembered the year they’d begun training his pain tolerance.  He remembered the shadows of it, the near-constant haze of pain, the way that things dimmed in and out of focus as he fought to keep his attention on something other than the agony.

 

He remembered learning that there were a lot of different ways to hurt.  That a bruised trachea would be dull-sticky-dry and broken ribs were sparks-splinters-tight and a broken arm was fire-weakness-target.

 

He remembered that he never saw Mother that year.  He remembered never asking if it was by choice.

 

He knew that the last time she had ever comforted him had been after an operation when he was a child, before his training had really, truly started, when something had made his whole body feel like it was on fire.  He remembered the hands carding through his hair, the soft crooning of a song whose name he didn’t know, the quiet stories of a bat whose wings protected the world.

 

There was no song now.  The conversation was about wires and connections, not bats.  But there were fingers slipping through his hair, easing the ache in his head and quieting the pain from the sharp jabbing in his chest and the shrieking agony in his arm.

 

His head was cushioned on something soft and warm.  Something vibrated next to his head, in tune with the conversation, and Damian became gradually aware that he was lying in someone’s lap.

 

He cracked open his eyes a fraction.  Assess your surroundings was a well-learned lesson.

 

Assorted electrical debris around him.  The outline of a body illuminated in the crawlspace.  Todd was cursing.  Drake was providing instructions.

 

It was Drake’s lap he was lying in.  It was Drake’s fingers in his hair.

 

The thought was startling.  It should’ve sparked caution and warning.  He knew what he would do should any of Father’s other protégés end up helpless at his feet, and he was expecting the same from them, regardless of their no-killing rule.

 

Killing didn’t preclude torture, after all.

 

He should rip himself from this undignified position and retreat to a more defensible one.  He should catalogue his injuries and reassess the situation and their timeline for getting out.  He should—

 

Tim’s fingers were gentle.  And it had been so very long since someone had stroked his hair.

 

Damian closed his eyes, intending to feign sleep for a minute more, just one, but his next breath scraped against his ribs and Damian couldn’t hold back the hiss.

 

The fingers stopped.  Damian let out a heartfelt curse inside his head.  “Damian?” Tim asked softly.  Todd went silent.  “Dami, are you awake?”

 

Damian pushed himself upright, intending to make it clear that despite Grayson’s ridiculous habit, he would be sticking to his full name—but his ribs grated unpleasantly and Tim’s arm braced against his shoulder blades before gently lowering him back to the ground.

 

Damian decided to allow it.

 

“Careful,” Tim rasped.  His fingers were back in Damian’s hair.  “Your ribs are broken, and so is your arm.”

 

“I know,” Damian muttered, “I am competent enough to do a basic diagnostic.”

 

“Tim,” Todd interrupted, “Next step?”

 

“Uh—the red wire you unhooked two steps back, connect that to the second pin.  Then the last step is connecting the ground.”  Tim’s voice still didn’t rise above a whisper, and Damian realized with a jolt that it wasn’t on purpose.

 

“What happened?” Damian asked softly.  Why was Todd the one doing the rewiring when it was evident that Tim was both better for the job and not hindered by small spaces?  How long had it been since Damian had passed out?

 

“You were out for around ten minutes,” Tim said hoarsely, “We’re almost done with the rewiring—if Jason followed my instructions correctly anyway—and we should be out of here soon.”

 

Todd let out a huff, but made no further comment.  Damian frowned, shuffling slowly until he was looking up at Tim.

 

“What happened to you?” he pressed.  Tim’s face was barely visible in the faint light, but he appeared to have a black eye again.  “Why is Todd doing the rewiring?”

 

Tim’s expression went pinched.  “Because he broke four of my fingers and dislocated my shoulder.”

 

“I said I was sorry,” Todd grumbled.

 

“I can’t exactly move my arm or fingers enough to do the rewiring, so it became Jason’s job.”

 

“I offered to snap your shoulder back in.”

 

“Forgive me for not wanting my injured shoulder anywhere near you right now,” Tim said flatly.

 

“Ouch,” Todd responded.

 

Damian tried to sit up again, going slower this time, and Tim helped tug him up.  He was still leaning against Tim, half in his lap.  Damian decided not to say anything.

 

Besides, he was now between Todd and Tim.  Despite his broken arm, Damian was clearly the superior combatant at the moment, and would assume the appropriate position.

 

“He attacked you?” Damian asked.

 

“Well, no, I attacked him.”

 

“What?  Why?”  After the lecture he’d gotten—

 

“Because he was hurting you,” Tim said softly.

 

Damian wasn’t quite sure how to categorize the feeling in his stomach.  It felt like it did whenever Mother came to talk to him, something halfway between hope and suspicion.

 

“You attacked a homicidal maniac—” for me, Damian couldn’t quite finish.

 

“I didn’t want to attack a homicidal maniac, I just didn’t see another way to get him to let you go,” Tim said.

 

“The homicidal maniac in question would like to interject that all of this could’ve been avoided if you stopped locking him in small rooms.”

 

“The homicidal maniac in question should learn better coping mechanisms than strangulation,” Tim muttered snidely and Damian felt his lips twitch.

 

---

 

Todd practically tore himself out of the crawlspace the moment the lock clicked open and had seized the handle before Damian had fully straightened up.

 

By the time Damien and Tim had made it out of the room, Todd was halfway across the Cave, movements jittery as he paced.

 

Damian turned back to look at Tim—and paused, because in the light of the Cave, Tim looked even worse.  His left shoulder was swollen, the arm hanging limp, and several fingers on his right were bent of line.  He had a black eye and his breathing was harsh and uneven.

 

His skin had gone eerily pale, or perhaps it was the contrast between his dark bruises.

 

Todd had stilled, and was looking at Tim with an emotion Damian couldn’t identify.  “I can reset your shoulder now,” he offered.

 

Tim looked skeptical.

 

“Don’t trust me, baby bird?” Todd asked, something sharp sliding into his smile.

 

“I would prefer my shoulder to be set somewhere with easy access to painkillers,” Tim said mildly.

 

“Pennyworth could set it,” Damian offered.  He knew that the butler wasn’t a doctor, but his skills were very useful in dealing with minor injuries.  Damian had only a few breaks, those could be wrapped easily enough.

 

Tim and Todd exchanged wary glances, looked at Damian, and exchanged another glance.  They looked…afraid.

 

“Leslie?” Todd suggested.

 

“Probably the best idea,” Tim agreed.

 

“Alright.  I’ll drive.”

 

Damian narrowed his eyes, “No one has major injuries, we can all get treated in the Cave.”

 

“That broken arm needs to be X-rayed and wrapped in plaster, that’s not a Cave job.”

 

“It’s a clean break,” Damian scowled, “And I am not an infant.  Drake only has some broken fingers and a dislocated shoulder, there is no need to go to a doctor.”

 

“There is if we want to avoid Alfred,” Todd said, already heading to the garage.

 

“Why are we avoiding Pennyworth?”

 

“Because he’ll murder us if he finds out we got injured while we were supposed to be safe in the Cave,” Tim said, herding Damian towards the far edge of the Cave.

 

“He will?” Damian frowned.  He knew that the butler had a record of service in England, but was unaware that he kept his fighting skills up—Damian had certainly never seen him train in the Cave.  But wait—Pennyworth was in charge of all sustenance in the house and it made sense that—

 

“What—oh, no, Dami, it’s an expression.  He’ll give us a very disapproving look and scold us.  And I don’t want to face that.”

 

“Nobody wants to face that,” Todd said grimly, “Not even Bruce.”

 

“And this other doctor will not scold us?” Damian asked as Todd swung into the driver’s seat of a nondescript black car.

 

“No, she will, she’s just not in charge of dessert.”

 

“Ah.”  So Todd and Tim were attempting to hide or at the very least delay the reveal of their injuries.  “Very well.”  Damian would go along—he could still feel the icy punch when Grayson told him that he couldn’t be trusted as part of the team.

 

Damian could be trusted as part of the team.  And he just had to prove it to them.

 

The medical facility they went to was substandard and dilapidated—they had to wait.  He, heir to the Bat, had to wait—and in a particularly lawless part of Gotham—Damian would be surprised if their car was still where they left it—and he had to suffer through the indignity of some nurse asking him if he wanted a sweet for the task of sitting still to take a completely unnecessary radiographic image—Tim’s warning hand on his shoulder had been the only thing stopping his vicious diatribe—but they did manage to get back to the Manor before Batman and Nightwing, and sneak up to their rooms without Pennyworth noticing.

 

“Drake,” Damian called out as Tim slipped past his door.  Tim stopped and blinked at him, his arm in a sling, his breathing still harsh—Todd had promised to watch and make sure Tim didn’t stop breathing in the middle of the night, and then he’d ruffled Damian’s hair with a smirk, which Damian did not appreciate—and very clearly exhausted.

 

Damian swallowed.

 

“Yes, Dami?” Tim prompted.

 

That ridiculous nickname.  Better than demon brat, his mind whispered.

 

Damien ignored the issue of the name and focused on the more important matter.  He didn’t want to do this, but it was a matter of honor.  “I—I wanted to thank you,” he said, keeping his voice level as he stared at the bed, “I owe you one favor of protection—call upon it when you’d like.”

 

He continued staring at the bed.  He didn’t want to see Tim’s expression.  Didn’t want to see whether his face had twisted into glee at the offered leverage, or disgust at the idea that Damian could protect him.

 

“Damian,” Tim said, still in that raspy whisper.  Damian very slowly lifted his gaze—Tim was leaning on the door frame, staring at him.  Damian didn’t recognize the look on his face.  “I didn’t protect you because I wanted a favor.  That’s not how this works.”

 

Oh.  Damian had miscalculated again.  He’d already acknowledged the debt, now he had to find out how it did work and what deal he’d managed to sign up for.

 

“Damian, it’s my job to protect you.  A ‘thank you’ is all I need.”

 

Damian squinted at him—no one had ever mentioned that Tim was supposed to be a bodyguard, and he was doing a subpar job if that was the case.

 

“You’re my little brother,” Tim said softly.

 

Damian kept the frown.  They were not related by blood and Damian had done nothing to engender a feeling of brotherhood.  “I have been hostile to you since I arrived.”

 

“So was Jason,” Tim said dryly, “Attempted murder is apparently how this family shows love.”

 

“Nah, your face just inspires murderous urges,” Todd said, appearing in the doorway, “The longer we spend chatting here, the slimmer our chances become of not getting caught.”

 

Right.  Damian did not want to test Pennyworth.  There were supposed to be waffles for breakfast.

 

“Everything else good?” Tim checked, waiting for Damian’s nod before continuing to his own room with Todd.

 

Damian slipped under the covers, extending the arm with the cast to rest it on a pillow.

 

“You’re my little brother.”

 

Damian…had never had a brother before.  Further research needed to be done.

 

---

 

Damian woke up with the thought that, despite his injuries, it was a better day.

 

And then he saw Father sitting at the side of his bed and those hopes shriveled up.

 

“Father,” Damian said, immediately moving to straighten up.  Father smiled, but his expression looked strained.

 

“Jason and Tim told me what happened.”

 

Oh.  He had expected it of them, but after their collusion to avoid Alfred, he’d thought—

 

He’d expected it of them.  Damian was aware that they were going to blame it on him from the moment the door had closed behind him.

 

“I was not intending to lock the door,” Damian said stiffly, because Father had been explicitly clear on that point.  “The door was improperly secured.”

 

“I know, I talked to Jason and Tim,” Father said, and leaned forward.

 

Damian went very still.  He was not allowed to flinch.

 

Father stopped halfway, his face shifting to a frown.  “Damian…are you okay?”

 

“I am fine,” Damian reported, “My injuries have been treated and will not impede my training.”

 

Something spasmed across Father’s face.  “You won’t be training,” he said with finality.

 

Of course.  They’d threatened it last time.  It made sense that at the appearance of a second transgression, the threatened consequences would follow.

 

Damian kept himself still as Father’s hand landed on his shoulder.  He hoped it wouldn’t be his broken arm.  He vividly remembered how much it had hurt when Todd had wrenched it.

 

“Damian,” Father said quietly, still staring at him with an odd expression, “Are you expecting me to attack you?”

 

Damian blinked at him.  “I broke the rules,” he said, proud that he could keep his voice level, “I understand that I will be punished.”

 

Father’s expression shifted to something sad.  He removed his hand from Damian’s shoulder.  It had been warm.  “Damian, I told you that we only train on the mats in the Cave.”

 

“Punishment is not training.”

 

This time the sadness shifted to something close to anger.  “Damian,” Father said firmly, “I am not going to hurt you.”

 

Oh.

 

“Do you understand?” he asked, his eyes sharp.

 

“Yes,” Damian forced out.  Something was aching in his chest.

 

“Are you sure?”

 

Damian nodded.  He could feel the corner of his eyes itching.

 

Father frowned.  “Can you repeat it?”

 

Damian took a moment to fix the sentence in his head.  “You are not going to hurt me,” he said.

 

Father’s expression cleared to a smile.  “Yes, Damian,” he said, getting up, “We can discuss further after breakfast—I’m sure you must be hungry.”

 

Damian waited until Father had left the room before he began preparations.  He had until the end of breakfast, he didn’t know about after that and he couldn’t rely on having more time.

 

The things that had been bought for him were clearly not his, but he would hopefully be allowed to retain the belongings he had arrived with.  The knives were hidden in the vent in his room, and he packed that with the all-black hooded outfit he’d been wearing when he arrived.  The sword, however, was in the Cave, behind a locked door.

 

Damian imagined asking for it, and shivered.  But it was his sword.  Mother would not be pleased if he asked for a new one.  Grandfather would not be pleased if he asked for a new one.

 

Neither would be pleased that he was returning at all.

 

Perhaps Father would allow it.  Or perhaps he could ask Tim.  As a favor. 

 

“You’re my little brother.”

 

But assassins weren’t allowed to be little brothers.

 

Damian wavered in front of his sketches.  Father didn’t know about them—no one knew about them.  He couldn’t take them with him, no matter how badly he wanted to.  The League would never allow it.  But he couldn’t leave them here as—as further evidence of his unsuitability.

 

He didn’t want to burn them.  His throat grew thick as he picked them up and folded them carefully.  Todd would have a lighter.  He would—he had to—

 

“Damian?”

 

He froze and ruthlessly suppressed the burning in his eyes.  Tim had poked his head into the room and his expression was growing more concerned by the second.

 

“I—what are you doing?”

 

“Nothing,” Damian said, dropping the sketches and nudging them under the bed.  Tim didn’t look like he’d caught the motion, his gaze fixed on the pack on Damian’s bed.

 

“I came to call you to breakfast,” Tim said, stepping in, “Alfred’s making waffles.”

 

“I will be down momentarily.”

 

“Dami,” Tim said—and he wasn’t allowed to sound that soft, it wasn’t fair, he shouldn’t—Damian couldn’t—he—

 

“Are you okay?”

 

“I’m fine,” Damian said, and he couldn’t hide the way his voice cracked, so he chose to go on the offense.  “You must be overjoyed, Pretender, that your position is no longer in doubt.”

 

“Damian,” Tim said, bewildered, “What’s going on?”

 

“Nothing that concerns you, you imbecile—”

 

“Are you crying?”

 

Damian choked on a sob and couldn’t hold the tears back any longer.

 

“Damian, what happened?” Tim awkwardly curled his uninjured arm around Damian’s shoulders, and he let it happen because he knew it was weak and pathetic but Grandfather was going to be displeased either way and at least this way he could bury his head in Tim’s shirt and let it muffle the sobs.  “Is it your wounds—do you need painkillers—did you—”

 

“Can you—” Damian’s voice hitched, “Can you get me my sword?”

 

“Your sword?  Yes, Damian, I can get your sword, but why—what happened—”

 

“I would like to take it with me,” Damian admitted quietly.

 

“Take it with you where—”

 

“What’s going on?”  Todd.  Damian clung tighter to Tim, stopping him as he tried to face the doorway.  Damian didn’t want to show his face to anyone right now.  Not until he composed himself.

 

“I—I don’t know—he says he wants to take his sword with him—I think you should get Bruce—”

 

“No!” Damian shoved away from Tim and scrubbed at his face.  “No need to get Father.  I’m fine.  I will accompany you to breakfast now.”

 

Tim stared at him, confused.  Todd was blank-faced, blocking the doorway.  “Oookay,” Todd said, stretching the word out.  “Something is definitely going on here.”

 

“There is nothing going on, we will be late to breakfast—”

 

But Todd’s gaze had been drawn to the pack.  Damian couldn’t stop him from advancing on it, and he stifled the urge to snatch it away.  Todd was still a favored member of the team, he acted with Father’s authority.

 

Todd opened the pack and dumped its contents on the bed.  Damian winced at the pile of knives.  Now they were aware that he’d been concealing his weapons.

 

He was never going to get his sword back.

 

Tim sorted through the weapons to uncover the ration bars and water bottles.  Todd stared at the pile, frowning.  “Were you planning on running away?” Todd asked.

 

“No,” Damian responded quickly, his voice climbing an octave in horror.  Run away?  He wouldn’t make it out of Gotham before a League assassin slit his throat.

 

“Well you seem to be going somewhere,” Todd pressed.

 

“I am not running away,” Damian said stiffly, “The supplies are merely to aid my return to Nanda Parbat.”

 

Tim and Todd both froze.

 

“I’m going to get Bruce,” Todd said, easing off the bed and muttering something about not getting paid enough.

 

“No, you can’t—”

 

“Damian,” Tim stopped him, his eyebrows furrowed, “Why are you going back to Nanda Parbat?”

 

Damian clenched his fists at his side.  His eyes were burning again.

 

“It is what’s expected of me.”

 

“Why are you expected to return to the League?  And why is this the first we’re hearing of it?”

 

“If I—if I have failed—if Father no longer wants me here—” It hurt, it tore at him.  “If I am not worthy, I must return and train until I am.  I—I have embarrassed the al Ghul lineage and—”

 

“Whoa, slow down there, nobody said you failed anything.”  Tim gathered Damian in another careful embrace, tugging him up on the bed, and Damian stopped trying to fight the tears.  “And Bruce definitely wants you here, you’re his son.”

 

“I have failed,” Damian repeated miserably, “Father said that my training has ended.”  He didn’t even want to bother punishing Damian.  Why would he?  It was an encumbrance he could not afford, not with his work trying to protect Gotham.

 

“Okay, Dami, I’m sure Bruce didn’t mean it like that, he probably meant until your injuries have healed.”  Tim was running his hand through Damian’s hair again, but it was no longer soothing.  Just a reminder that Damian was too weak.  “And even if he did, he’s not going to kick you out!”

 

If he wasn’t training Damian, then why would he keep him?  Everyone else had a clearly defined role in the team, including Pennyworth.

 

Footsteps sounded down the hallway and stopped at the door.  “Alright, who got stabbed this time—” Tim twisted to face the newcomer, and Damian let him— “What happened to your face?”

 

He could see Grayson standing in the hallway, his shocked expression blurry.

 

“Not the time, Dickie,” Todd said roughly, appearing in the doorway, followed by Father.

 

“What is going on here?” Father said, his voice dropping to a growl as he caught sight of the knives.

 

Damian tried to straighten up, but Tim kept him folded under his uninjured arm.  “Damian thinks you’re forcing him to go back to Nanda Parbat.”

 

Grayson’s eyes widened further, Todd raised his eyebrows, and Father inhaled furiously.  Damian kept his gaze level, waiting for the punishment.

 

But Father’s hands were gentle when he cupped Damian’s face.  “Damian, my son,” he said softly.  He nudged Damian’s chin up so that he was staring straight at Father’s eyes.

 

Father was…crying?

 

“I swear that you will not go back to the League for as long as I live,” he said, and Damian didn’t—couldn’t—

 

“You are my son and this is your home,” Father said, his thumb brushing over a tear track on Damian’s face.  “And if Ra’s and Talia want you back, they will have to go through me first.”

 

“And me,” Tim chimed in.

 

“And me,” Grayson said softly.

 

“I would put a bullet in Ra’s and Talia before they’d get to you, baby bat,” Todd said, “Of course, I’d put a bullet in Ra’s and Talia on principle—”

 

“Jason,” three different voices groaned.

 

“You’re not going anywhere,” Father said quietly but firmly, “I’m sorry for upsetting you.”

 

“But you said—” Damian dropped his gaze, unable to bear looking at them.  “You said you wouldn’t punish me.”

 

“I did not say that,” Father said, “But the greater share of punishment will fall on Jason and Tim, as they were supposed to be watching you.”

 

“You said—” Damian swallowed, “You said you wouldn’t hurt me.”

 

There was a long, tense pause before he was suddenly dragged out from under Tim’s arm—Damian yelped in surprise before he was enveloped in warmth.

 

“Yes, Damian,” Father’s voice rumbled, his grip firm but not suffocating, “I will not hurt you.  No punishment is supposed to hurt.  Punishment is supposed to teach you that you did something wrong and remind you that actions have consequences.  Punishment does not mean pain.  Training does not mean pain.”

 

Damian still didn’t understand.  How would you teach without pain?  How could a punishment be effective if it didn’t hurt?

 

But Father said he wasn’t going back to Nanda Parbat.  He hadn’t failed badly enough to return to Mother in disgrace.  “Okay,” he acquiesced, leaning further into the hug.  He hadn’t initiated it.  If Father wanted to embrace him, then Damian would let him.

 

Warmth draped itself on Damian’s back and Father shifted slightly to curl one hand around Tim as well.  The bed squeaked as Todd leaned against Father.  Grayson joined on the other side, careful of Damian’s broken arm.

 

“Wait,” Grayson said, “What happened last night?”  Silence.  “Why is everyone injured?”  No one spoke up.  “Jason, you were supposed to be in charge!”

 

“Well, that was probably your first mistake.”

 

 

Notes:

The author: Damian is a little brat and spoiled and how dare he get everything he wants and—
The author's eldest sibling senses: I will wrap this boy in all the hugs.

Tim's POV of the scene where Damian passes out. [Batcellanea ch125.]