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Timothy Drake’s skin is so pale that he would blend right into the stark white hospital sheets if not for his black hair. The heart monitor beeps, marking the jagged line of Drake’s pulse. It’s proof that he’s still alive.
His blood pressure is dangerously low. He’s receiving fluids intravenously, tubes taped to his arms. The wires attached to the round pads on his bare chest—he’s not wearing a hospital gown because any delay if they have to rush him back to surgery could spell his end—frame the scar where Jason Todd once stabbed him.
The wad of gauze that hides the new sutures is rust-colored with blood already.
That’s where—
Damian al Ghul Wayne squeezes his hands together so tightly that he’ll fracture his own bones if he doesn’t loosen his vicious grip. It’s only the certain knowledge that doing so will result in him needing to leave the room to have his injuries attended to that makes him stop. Damian will not leave this bedside. Not for anything.
It’s his fault, after all, that Drake is in that bed.
The door opens and Damian can’t help the way he bristles defensively. This is Gotham’s premier hospital. Drake’s recovery room is the most expensive private suite in the entire building. Yet, that doesn’t mean that it’s secure.
A nurse with her hair up in a no-nonsense bun walks across the room. Her flats click on the flooring; it sounds all too similar to a countdown.
“Get out,” Damian demands because this isn’t the Indian male nurse from earlier that he thoroughly vetted by hacking into the hospital’s network.
The blonde woman startles. “I’m doing my rounds, kid. I—”
Damian stands from the armchair that he dragged across the room earlier from where it belonged in the little sitting area by the faux plants and television. He placed it at Drake’s bedside that’s closest to the wall of windows. It allows him to guard against outside threats without hampering those attending to Drake’s medical needs.
He stalks around the bed and stands as tall as he can. He’s thirteen and he doesn’t even reach her chest—she’s very tall for a woman—and glares with all of the hatred and terror that’s bottled up inside of him.
If she’s not careful, he’ll explode like a carbonated beverage that’s been vigorously shaken.
“You do not have clearance to be here. Get out!” Damian snaps, using the blunt, brutal tone of voice that was common when he lived in Nanda Parbat. It’s the tone he utilizes when he’s doing everything in his power to shelter a weakness.
Drake is—
The nurse, if she even is a nurse, frowns at him with thin lips that are painted with orchid lipstick. “Look, kid, I get that you’re scared, but—”
“I am not scared,” Damian snarls.
Who is this woman to tell him how he feels? She is not family. She is nothing to him. What right does she have to barge into Drake’s hospital room? How dare she claim that Damian is scared?
Her accusation is so incorrect that it would be laughable in any other situation and location. Because Damian is not scared. Scared doesn’t even come close to describing how Damian has felt since the moment Drake tackled him on the red carpet, taking the bullet that was meant for Damian.
It’s Damian’s fault.
That bullet should have ripped through his flesh. He was the sniper’s target.
And despite how Damian has treated him, despite every cruel word Damian spit at him, despite every single time that Damian attacked him, despite the veritable laundry list of injustices that Damian has committed against him, Drake shielded Damian with his body anyway.
As Timothy Drake, a bespoke tuxedo his only armor.
And then, as his blood was gushing all over Damian, the pretender dared to ask, “All right, baby brother?” before passing out on top of Damian as camera flashes went wild from the journalists who were too desperate for a scoop and the perfect picture to flee in the presence of an active shooter.
The nurse leans down as if addressing a small child and says softly, “I know this is traumatic—”
“You know nothing!” Damian hisses. If he were still with the League of Assassins, if he were still more his mother’s son than his father’s, he would crush her larynx for daring to continue to speak to him in such a way.
This situation is not traumatic. It is not emotionally disturbing or distressing. Those words are paltry, a mere specter of how he feels. It feels like someone has punched their way through his ribcage only to shave minuscule slices off of his heart while it still beats in his chest. Soon, there will be nothing left.
Damian isn’t a fool. Drake only ever attends The Gotham Museum of Art when they have a new photography exhibit that catches his interest. Tonight they unveiled a traveling exhibit of Impressionism paintings, a style which Damian has been attempting to learn, that would only be on display for two weeks.
So when Drake announced, earlier in the week, that Damian was required to accompany him and “scowl for the cameras” as his contribution to public relations for the month.…
It’s Damian’s fault that they were at the museum. It’s Damian’s fault that Drake is lying motionless and as pale as a corpse on the hospital bed behind him. Damian is the one that the sniper was hired to assassinate. It’s his fault—
“I need to check—”
“You do not have authorization to be in here,” Damian states, exerting every scrap of self-control that remains.
If the assassin wasn’t working alone, if she’s someone who’s come to take advantage of Drake’s unconsciousness, if she’s a tabloid reporter looking for exclusive details, he will not allow her to succeed.
“Get out of this room or I will call security,” Damian says as he pulls his cell phone out of the pocket of the scrubs the hospital offered when the police confiscated his clothes.
The water washing down the drain was nauseatingly pink as Damian scrubbed Drake’s blood off of his golden-bronze skin.
It’s expected for a hero in the field to cover another. It’s not expected of a civilian. Tonight, they weren’t Red Robin and Robin. They were Timothy Drake-Wayne and Damian al Ghul Wayne.
And yet—
“No need to call security, kid. I’ll go,” the nurse says.
“Immediately,” Damian orders.
He’s the only one here. He’s the one at the hospital, dealing with the aftermath. It’s … a lot.
Father was in Japan on business. His jet won’t land for another seven and a half hours. Richard Grayson was on a very public vacation in Rome, a cover for Nightwing’s presence in Europe. He had to hop a commercial flight because of it and won’t arrive for at least two more hours, even though Drake was in surgery for over six hours.
Damian has been staring at the single text he received from Todd, while the surgeons were digging the slug fragments out of Drake, off and on since it arrived.
I’m handling it.
It has been almost a year since Damian last wanted to end someone’s life with his own hands. Tonight, nothing would give him greater pleasure. Whoever did this deserves everything that’s coming for them. And considering that’s The Red Hood with a heart full of hatred and rage … well, Damian highly doubts there will be anything left of the culprit when Father and Richard have returned.
The nurse turns to the door moments before it opens, revealing Nurse Tej Arya, who Damian vetted earlier. Originally born in India, the man has dedicated himself to his studies with a dedication that Damian can’t fault. His scores and aptitude are impressive. He’s worthy of attending to Drake’s needs.
“Mister Drake-Wayne is not one of your patients, Linda. Why are you in his room?” Nurse Arya asks.
She splutters wordlessly, cheeks red.
Damian scoffs and folds his arms over his chest. “How much did they offer for pictures of my br—Drake in his hospital bed, you honorless money-grubber?”
He barely cuts himself off. The near miss of it frustrates him even more. No one has the right to hear that before Drake does. Especially since Damian has spent years denying him that connection, refuting it viciously at every given opportunity, even as his dislike for Drake eased over time. Drake saved his father, whom he believed to be dead. Anyone who can remain unchanged in the face of such a service to their bloodline is not worth the blood in their veins.
Linda rushes from the room with tears in her eyes. They don’t move Damian to forgiveness, not even as she runs right into a pair of security guards who are doing rounds on the floor. They grab her at a gesture from Nurse Arya.
“Please excuse me, Mr. Wayne. You have our hospital’s sincerest apologies for this incident and my word that it will be dealt with swiftly,” Nurse Arya states.
Damian nods sharply. If he opens his mouth, cutting vitriol will spill from his lips, aimed at someone who doesn’t deserve it. Bridling his tongue is a work in progress. The progress is slow; even he can acknowledge that. But Damian is not a child. Such behavior might have been generously labeled “impertinent” when he was younger. He knows better, now.
Richard painstakingly taught Damian the lessons that Mother and Grandfather deemed unnecessary. There were many.
“I don’t know where the officer guarding the door went,” Nurse Arya states, sounding thoroughly unimpressed with the Gotham Police Department. “Unless you use the nurse call button, I should be the only person entering or leaving this room. I’ll enter precisely every half hour. I’ll have two of our security guards stationed outside the door immediately.”
Nurse Arya pointedly doesn’t say that a plethora of nurses will come running, regardless of assigned patients, if Drake crashes.
Damian refuses to dwell on the possibility. Drake is not allowed to die.
He observes every movement the nurse makes as the man checks Drake’s pupil response, vitals, and so on before noting the particulars in the chart at the end of Drake’s bed.
“I appreciate your prompt attention in these matters,” Damian says.
“I’ll request those security guards now,” Nurse Arya promises.
When the door closes behind the nurse, Damian walks back over to the armchair and collapses in it. He fists his hands in his hair and tries to hold himself together.
Damian is strong. He is. But there’s no denying that he’s overwhelmed.
His eyes burn grittily. He hasn’t cried since it happened. What right does he have to cry when Drake didn’t even sob when the sniper shot him?
The outside wall of the suite is nothing but windows. Damian hates the vulnerability of it. They’re not bulletproof; what if the sniper tries again? What if Damian being at Drake’s bedside puts him in more danger? But how can Damian possibly leave when he’s the only person here to defend Drake’s unconscious body? It’s simple. He can’t.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Damian watches the jagged line on the heart monitor create peaks and valleys one after the other. He tries to forget that Drake doesn’t have a spleen. He tries desperately not to think about what will happen if Drake gets sepsis. He fails.
He curls up in a ball on the chair and wraps his arms around his legs as if that alone will be able to hold him together. Maybe Damian is a fool after all. Because no physical pain compares to the anguish that comes with loving someone.
If his bro— If Drake dies because someone put a price on Damian’s head, he will never—
The cell phone in Damian’s pocket chimes. It chimes a second time before he withdraws it from the scrubs with a forcibly steady hand. The preview on the lock screen shows a text from Todd that contains a single word.
Handled.
Damian drops the phone on the cushion of the chair and stifles the animalistic noise that rips itself from his throat. Tension melts out of his muscles. He’s no longer increasing Drake’s risk profile by being at his bedside.
The ventilator rasps, helping to inflate Drake’s lungs—which the bullet miraculously missed—and providing him with a higher concentration of oxygen. It almost covers the sound of the sobs he fails to fully smother as his body wracks with a confusing amalgam of grief and relief. Almost.
A pale hand twitches against stark white sheets.
Damian lurches forward, uncaring of the tears pouring down his cheeks, nearly falling out of the chair. Drake’s eyelids are slits, revealing the tiniest hint of deep blue. He can’t speak, not with the ventilator, but that doesn’t stop him. Drake prepares for every eventuality; to him, this will be no different than being in a situation where it’s impossible or inadvisable to communicate verbally.
With clumsy fingers, Drake is performing admirably given the dosage of painkillers he’s on, Drake stumbles his way through signing a single question.
All right, baby brother?
“I’m safe,” Damian states, his voice raspy as he answers the question Drake first asked as he bled all over Damian on a red carpet outside of The Gotham Museum of Art. “You saved me, Akhi.”
Damian has never seen Drake cry before. Not when Damian punched Drake out in the Batcave, not when Richard handed the Robin mantle to Damian without telling Drake first, not when Damian cut Drake’s line during the stakeout and brawled with him across Gotham, not during any of the many times that Damian has spewed vitriol at Drake … or any of the other countless incidents that would render someone into a weeping mess.
There’s a high probability that the painkillers are to blame. And yet.
Drake is crying, tears rolling down his too pale cheeks to drip onto the sheets of the hospital bed mere moments after Damian called him “brother” for the first time.
Before Damian can figure out how he’s supposed to react or what he’s supposed to say, Drake’s hand falls limp on the sheets. His eyelids close the little bit they were open as sleep claims him.
Damian hopes that Drake remembers this when he wakes up, even though he knows it’s unlikely. He doesn’t want Drake to be robbed of the memory of the first time that Damian verbally acknowledged they’re brothers. Not when Drake’s eyes flared at him with naked wonder and longing, displaying an emotional vulnerability he never allows in Damian’s presence.
And for good reason.
He will wait until Drake is consistently coherent before addressing him by his given name. Damian has already taken too much from his third brother. It’s time for him to give, instead. Long past time, really. Damian cannot change his past behavior, cannot go back and erase his actions and words, but he can choose to treat his brother with all due respect and love from this moment onward.
The ventilator rasps. The heart monitor beeps.
Damian turns his attention to the wall of windows, mind alert and attentive, even though his body is exhausted. If Grandfather foolishly believes that now is the opportune time to retrieve Drake and force him to be Grandfather’s heir, Damian will swiftly disabuse Ra’s al Ghul of the notion.
No one will remove Drake from his presence. He will keep his brother safe at all costs. If that involves maiming or killing Shadows or Rogues, he will do so without hesitation.
His brother was injured saving his life. Damian has the watch.
He will not fail.