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The League’s base is not built to welcome strangers.
Bruce is not a stranger.
He whips around another hidden corner, not bothering to try and silence the snap of his cape. There are no assassins waiting for him.
On the far side of the compound, another explosion echoes dully, Jason fulfilling his role with enthusiasm.
There will be bodies left behind when they leave this place. There is no time to dwell on it - Bruce compartmentalizes. It is easier than it might have been, some other time, some other mission.
He already found the room where Tim was being kept.
Another sharp corner. The angles of this place are all off - built to disorient, easy to get lost in. He takes the next turn without hesitation.
The room had been where their intelligence indicated - the third room of the seventh corridor on the fifth level down below ground level, nothing special to mark it. The surest sign of its value to the League.
Of Tim’s value to the League.
Only Tim was not inside.
The only thing it held was a bed, sheets of soft cotton and embroidered silk curtains draped from the canopy.
Titanium handcuffs attached to the headboard.
And Tim wasn’t there.
A fact that should be a relief, if not for the fact that he had been there. There is little doubt of that.
There is no room for terror in Bruce’s heart, not now, not in Batman’s heart.
It finds its way in anyway.
Another explosion, closer this time. The others are doing their best to keep the assassins distracted, but there is a limit to how long they will be able to hold them away. Bruce doesn’t know how long his timer is, but he knows it can’t be more than a few more minutes.
A choice in this hallway - a ladder to a trap door leading up to the level above, or a staircase down, going deeper. He takes the stairs three at a time.
The map of the base that Prudence Wood was able to provide them with had been incomplete. She had never been in this base for more than a few days at a time, and she hadn’t been here since before Tim was taken - Ra’s knew better than to arrange for Tim to be kept in a base with a potential ally.
But Bruce knows that the next level is mostly weapons storage.
If Tim were moved - if he was gone before they ever got here, then they’re back to square one.
But if he escaped -
There is little room for hope in Bruce’s heart, not now, not when his son is missing, not when there is a room behind him with handcuffs on the bed frame.
It finds its way in anyway.
The lights blink off when he’s halfway down the stairs. One of his children must have made it to the building’s power. Good.
He quiets his footsteps but doesn’t stop moving for a moment, already to the bottom of the staircase by the time the night vision in his cowl finally catches up.
Just in time to block the sword that comes straight at his head.
A twist of his gauntlet and the blade glances off harmlessly. There’s no snarled curse in response, just a quick, familiar hiss of air that to Bruce expresses just as much.
“Robin.”
He’s not Robin. He hasn’t been Robin since Bruce came back to find another son wearing the mantle, longer, even. In his relief, the name still falls off Bruce’s tongue as easily as any name his parents may have given him.
In front of him, Tim’s footsteps stutter, arms jolting as he halts another swing of the sword before it can start. In the sharp contrast of the night vision, the whites of his eyes flicker the same color as the blade as he searches the darkness blindly. “B?” he gasps.
Bruce is already reaching for a glowstick. He refuses to admit he fumbles with the pouch on his belt before he can draw it, cracking it in his palm and casting them both in watery yellow light.
Tim squints against the sudden glow, shoulders slumping in relief as his eyes adjust. “Oh thank god,” he blurts out. “Gonna be honest, I was working on a plan to get out of here, but I had nothing, I don’t know where anything here is, my plan was literally just to hit ninjas with sharp things until I ran out of ninjas - ”
In the glowstick’s dull illumination, Bruce can see the dark circles under his eyes, limbs shaky in a way that speaks to having been drugged not too long ago. He’s dressed in nothing but a pair of what looks like embroidered satin boxers.
He cuts off the boy’s rambling with a tight hug.
Tim squeaks, smushed against his armor just gently enough to avoid aggravating any injuries he might be hiding.
“Are you okay?” he asks hoarsely.
The tension drains out of Tim so suddenly that Bruce’s heart skips a beat, before his arms come up to wrap around Bruce in return. “Had a pretty shitty day,” he mumbles. “Not hurt, though.”
Bruce swallows. “Did anyone -”
“No,” Tim cuts him off before he even has to ask. Relief floods Bruce’s system like melting ice. “No, nothing, uh. Nothing happened. There was an explosion in the compound - I’m assuming that was you guys - and I got out of my handcuffs before she could come back.”
She. The Daughter of Acheron. An enemy Bruce didn’t even know to guard his son from until he disappeared, until Cass told them what happened in Paris.
He hadn’t understood the distance that’s existed between Tim and the rest of the family since his return. He thinks maybe he’s starting to.
But that is something to focus on mending later. Right now, assured of his son’s safety, the most important thing in Bruce’s world is getting all of his children out of this place.
By the light of the glowstick he leads Tim upwards, through winding passages and angles meant to trick and trap.
Three floors up, and Cass materializes beside them like a ghost.
“Others safe,” she signs rapidly, and then throws herself at Tim. Out of instinct, Bruce almost intercepts, but of course she hasn’t misread her brother. He hugs her back just as fiercely, letting out a sharp breath into her shoulder.
She draws back, just enough to sign “sorry, sorry,” in almost jerky movements.
“It’s okay,” he murmurs, voice catching. “S’okay, Cass, you guys got here in time. You got here in time, again.”
Bruce feels like he should look away, but can’t quite bring himself to do more than angle his head so it looks like he’s studying the passageway around them.
He gives them another few moments before clearing his throat. “The batplane will be here soon,” he says gruffly. “We need to be there to meet it when it does.”
Cass angles her face so he knows she’s looking at him through the mask. “Red Hood collapsed the entrance,” she signs. “Ninjas can’t get through, but neither can we.”
“That’s okay,” Bruce says, activating his comm link. “Everyone - Red Robin is with me. Follow my tracker - I’m taking us through a back entrance.”
He keeps the glow stick hidden in his glove as they rise once more through the levels of the underground compound, listening for Tim’s near-silent movements as he and Cass trail behind him.
There aren’t many he can detect. Somewhere between Bruce disappearing and coming home, his son has become more wraith than boy.
The small tablet he draws from his utility belt shows everyone else’s trackers are in motion, heading their way. They hit no resistance, even in the darkness.
In all likelihood, the Daughter of Acheron has already fled the compound, along with most if not all of the remaining ninjas, unwilling to go head to head against the entire Batclan, especially after having already failed once against Tim and Cass alone.
Ra’s was probably never here to begin with, and they had no evidence Talia ever was.
It doesn’t stop him from catching glimpses of her in every doorway they pass.
They reach the entrance to the courtyard at the same time as Dick. He’s breathing heavily, jaw sharply set and knuckles clenched around his escrima sticks. “Tim,” he breathes as soon as he sets eyes on him. He fumbles one of his sticks into the other hand, reaching out to clasp a hand against Tim’s shoulder.
And that, too, is different now - the Dick he left wouldn’t have hesitated to scoop his younger brother into a hug in this moment, and the Tim he left would have accepted it with the same hunger he once accepted all affection.
Now, though his grip is almost bruisingly tight, he makes no move to draw his little brother closer. And Tim, though he seems to consciously lean into the touch, holds himself stiffly, like he’s not sure how he’s meant to move.
Another thing Bruce has missed, another thing he doesn’t know how to fix.
The whir of the batplane’s engine comes from above as Bruce pushes open the door to the outer courtyard.
There’s no one outside. There doesn’t even appear to be anyone on the outer walls.
“Robin,” Bruce says gruffly into his comm. “What can you see?”
“No one,” Damian snaps back. His frustration at being left on the plane for a mission into the organization he was raised in is clear. Bruce knows he was too sharp when he gave the order - too impatient, too inexperienced at how to handle his youngest with the patience Dick so consistently seems to manage.
His oldest will know how to negate the fallout. He’ll have to trust him with this - because he has no plan of his own.
“This has to be some sort of trap,” Dick mutters, looking out at the empty courtyard.
Behind them, Bruce hears the rest of his children arriving, hears them speaking to Tim, but he keeps his eyes turned outward, scanning obsessively for any threat that might be waiting to strike.
“No,” he murmurs finally. “It’s not.”
They want them to escape. They want Tim to escape unharmed, because they’re completely confident they’ll be able to get him back.
He clenches his jaw against the snarl that wants to emerge.
“Drop the ladder,” he growls instead into his comm. “Don’t land. Be ready to pull up immediately.”
He’s partially speaking to Damian, partially to Barbara, who has remote access to the plane. With the delay in the connection caused by their distance, however momentary, it will be up to Damian to pull the plane up quickly if anything goes wrong.
But nothing does. They cross the courtyard unimpeded, make it up the ladder into the plane without so much as a single shot fired at them. Nonetheless, the moment he’s onboard, he takes the controls from his youngest, who vanishes into the back of the plane to where the others are gathered, and pulls them up as high as the plane can safely fly as soon as the doors are closed.
A few minutes pass before Dick comes into the cockpit. He’s taken his mask off, expression weary but without the tension he’s been carrying these past few days since Tim was taken.
“C’mon, B, come join us,” he says.
Bruce ignores him, double-checking the anti-radar features. “No,” he grunts. “Not until we’re back on the ground.”
Dick lets out an exasperated sigh. “Last I checked, this thing has autopilot,” he says drily, leaning on the back of Bruce’s chair.
“Autopilot won’t be enough if the League has anything else up their sleeve,” Bruce growls.
Dick hesitates, then lets out another sigh, patting the back of his chair, deciding that this isn’t a fight worth picking. “Right. Good talk.”
He leaves the cockpit, annoyance still lingering in the air even once he’s gone.
Bruce checks the security settings once again.
***
Three days after they come home, Tim cautiously suggests over breakfast that he should go back to his own apartment.
Whatever he sees on Bruce’s face, it makes him backtrack quickly. “Or I could stay here for a bit longer!” he says hastily. He looks down at his scrambled eggs and toast. “I mean, uh. Damian’s actually being pretty decent, so I guess it’s fine.”
Damian has been decent. Bruce isn’t sure how much of it is Dick’s teaching while he was gone (for there is little doubt that the boy Damian is becoming is far more Dick’s influence than Bruce’s) and how much of it is that he feels some measure of guilt over the League’s behavior.
He hopes Dick has taken the time to tell Damian that such guilt is unnecessary.
On the other hand, if it’s keeping Tim safely in his view -
No.
He can’t allow himself to start leveraging the well-being of one child against another, no matter how much the thought of Tim leaving the Manor and falling back into her the League’s hands makes him feel like something is strangling him from the inside out.
He grunts in response to Tim, staring down at his tablet and pretending he can’t feel the way Tim is studying him uncertainly, searching him for cues Bruce has never been sure how to give him.
Once his plate is clear and he knows Alfred won’t scold him for it, he returns back downstairs, where he was before he came up for breakfast and where he plans to stay until he finds her and makes sure she never has access to any of his children again, leaving Tim alone at the table.
***
He’s not totally shocked when Tim comes to find him a couple hours later.
At the same time, he’s a little taken off guard. When he’d taken the time to dwell on it, he’d thought it likely that recent events would push Tim more into the independence he’s developed since Bruce disappeared, and his apparent eagerness to return to his own apartment that morning had seemed to support that theory.
But here he is, standing awkwardly by the batcomputer, waiting for Bruce to notice him in a way that reminds Bruce strikingly of the boy he was when he first came into Bruce’s life, always off to the side waiting for acknowledgement from someone.
Bruce swiftly minimizes the file he was looking at, tracking the Daughter of Acheron’s last known locations. Judging from the carefully blank expression on Tim’s face, he doesn’t do it fast enough.
“Tim,” he greets cautiously.
Tim takes a deep breath, seeming to refocus on Bruce. “Look, I came to talk to you about my apartment,” he says.
Bruce sucks in a tiny, sharp breath, and Tim plunges ahead before he can speak. “You’re treating me different,” he says sharply, and Bruce freezes in surprise. “You’re - you’re treating me different,” he says again, and this time it doesn’t sound sharp, it sounds brittle.
“I’m not - ” Bruce tries to say, but Tim has clearly decided his best strategy for this conversation is to get as much out as possible before Bruce can argue with him.
“You didn’t mind me staying away from the Manor when you came back from the timestream,” he points out. “Even though you had to know from the files I gave the Justice League to help find you that I’d had interactions with Ra’s and the League, which means you had to know there could potentially be danger, but you let me go anyway, which means this time is different, and that’s not fair.”
“Fair isn’t what I care about right now,” Bruce says, and Tim scoffs.
“I’m legally emancipated. I have my own apartment, I have my own identity, I’m the CEO of your company. What else do I have to do to get you to treat me like a partner instead of a child?”
“You’re not my partner!” Bruce is shouting it before he’s even aware the words are coming out of his mouth.
Tim flinches back like he’s been struck, eyes wide, and Bruce immediately regrets it.
I just want you safe, he should say. I don’t want you to ever go through what I went through and you have already come so much closer than you ever should have.
But it’s like his tongue has abandoned him, and he says nothing at all.
The shock fades from Tim’s face quickly, and his expression crumples, and then smooths out, carefully blank.
He has never been the most openly emotional of Bruce’s children, but he never used to be able to lock his emotions away and make them invisible the way he can now.
“All the more reason why I don’t need to listen to you,” he says quietly. Without another word, he turns and walks away, and still Bruce’s traitorous tongue remains silent, even as he walks out of the cave.
At the desk, Bruce slumps forward, shutting his eyes and wishing for the thousandth time that he could know the right thing to say before hurting his children.
He doesn’t flinch at the pointed scuff of a footstep only thanks to his training. He had completely forgotten that Dick was still in the locker room, changing after a training session.
“Well, that went about as well as it always did with you and me,” he says drily.
“Dick, now isn’t the time,” he murmurs, pinching the bridge of his nose with his fingers.
“No, I think it is the time, actually,” Dick replies, coming to lean against the desk beside him, arms crossed. His jaw is set, and Bruce can sense another argument waiting to happen, a familiar storm cloud that’s gathered in this cave many times before. “I get why you’re treating him differently. I do. That’s not the biggest issue here, though.”
“The biggest issue is that this could happen again,” Bruce snarls.
“We‘re not going to let it.” Dick’s voice is fast and fierce, incombatable. “But Bruce, you’re killing yourself here. You haven’t slept since we got home, you’re barely eating,” he huffs. “Would you just talk about what’s going on in your head for once, instead of taking it out on everyone else?”
Bruce’s knuckles have whitened where he grips the arm of his chair. Dick’s eyes on him are too keen, too heavy. They score against his skin like sandpaper.
“Bruce,” Dick says again, and this time his tone is gentler. “Come on. I used to be your partner too, remember? Talk to me. Let me in.”
“You’re my son,” Bruce chokes out, finally finding the words he should have said to Tim. “There are things that - ” he stops, fingernails digging into the arms of the chair. “There are things you shouldn’t have to know.”
Dick’s reaction is subtle. For all that he can be the most expressive of all Bruce’s children, he is just as capable of hiding his emotions as the rest of them.
He takes in a short, sharp breath, and falls very still. A long moment passes in silence, and then he slowly, carefully draws over another chair and sits down beside Bruce. “Is this about Tim, or is it about you?” he asks quietly.
“Tim is fine,” Bruce says sharply.
“I know Tim is fine,” Dick responds, ever patient, still in that same gentle tone. “We got him out. He’s safe.”
Bruce jerks his chin in a nod. His chest aches. He’s not panting, but the sharp, trapped ache is there.
Dick sees it, as Bruce has always feared he would. “Hey, Bruce,” he says, urgent now. “It’s okay. Everything’s okay.”
Suddenly, his hand is gripping Bruce’s, detaching his nails from the chair and squeezing gently.
Bruce blinks at it, feeling strangely baffled. His hand doesn’t fully feel like it belongs to him.
“I love Damian,” he says softly, barely noticing the words are leaving his mouth until they’re already out.
And Dick, clever Dick, always so aware of the things Bruce leaves unsaid. He hears what’s unsaid now, too.
His fingers spasm around Bruce’s.
Bruce wants to keep his gaze on their interlocked fingers. It would be easier than meeting his son’s eyes, than analyzing whatever expression he knows he’ll find there.
He has never been one to be able to look away, even when it would be easier.
Dick’s expression has barely changed, carefully controlled. But it’s like there’s something missing underneath, a sheet ghost with no one wearing the costume.
“I thought - ” he swallows. “I thought you and Talia - ”
“So did I,” Bruce says softly. “Once.”
The sheet billows and shifts, and settles back into the imitation of a human expression.
“I love Damian,” Bruce repeats himself, feeling an urgency to make sure that Dick knows that, that whatever the circumstances of his conception may have been, that Bruce wouldn’t take it back for anything. “I love him, I just - I didn’t choose - ” it, her, for him to be born this way “- him.”
It’s wrong, it’s the wrong thing to say, and he knows it as soon as he says it, even before the way Dick’s expression fractures.
“I didn’t mean - ”
“I know,” Dick says softly.
“I love him,” Bruce repeats insistently, desperately.
“I know.” The sheet’s gone now. It’s just Dick before him, expression crumpled, biting his lip like he’s trying not to cry. He takes a shaky breath. “I, um. I didn’t know that happened.”
Bruce swallows. “You weren’t supposed to know.”
“I’m really sorry,” Dick whispers.
“It’s not important,” Bruce replies harshly. “Right now, our focus needs to be on the Daughter of Acheron.”
“It is important,” Dick’s voice is twisted with frustration. “How can you say - ” he cuts off, looking away.
There’s anger in his voice, but even more cutting is the hurt written across his face.
It’s… off, somehow. Bruce can’t quite place how.
He only knows that he is the one who’s caused it.
“I need to talk to Tim,” he says quietly.
Dick still isn’t looking at him, face angled away towards the darkness of the cave. “Yeah,” he says, a little hoarsely. “You do.”
Still, his hand doesn’t let go of Bruce’s, and Bruce holds onto that connection like a lifeline.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to say to him.”
Finally, after a long few seconds, Dick turns back to him, clearing his throat. He takes a deep, shuddering breath. “You need to tell him you still trust him,” he says. “He’s gotta know your opinion of him hasn’t changed because of what almost happened.”
“It hasn’t,” Bruce says swiftly.
“He needs to know that.” Dick is studying him now. “You don’t need to tell him what happened to you if you don’t want to,” he adds gently.
Bruce swallows his automatic reaction, absolutely not, and thinks about it. Whether it might help Tim with his own experiences. He thinks about Tim and Damian, their contentious relationship that has just barely begun to grow less strained. Would this knowledge add to that strain? Further color Tim’s already negative views around Damian?
He doesn’t know. All the facts he has, and he has no intuition on what the right thing to do for his children would be.
“You’re better at this than I am,” he admits.
Dick, to his surprise, scoffs. “Trust me, I’m not,” he mutters.
Again, that hurt, etched in his eyes, in the way his lips turn down, bitter and clear.
Suddenly, Bruce understands what bothered him earlier. It’s not directed at him.
Dick’s gaze catches his, and something passes between them - the sudden, chilling understanding that just as there are things about Bruce’s life that he has never told his son, there are things about Dick’s life that he has never shared.
He wants to ask, to pry those secrets out from under the rotten floorboards they’re stashed beneath.
But his own heart is raw, exposed. He cannot bring himself, in that moment, to demand his son feel the same.
“I need you to know I don’t regret that Damian is here,” he says, leaning forward, holding Dick’s gaze. “There are no circumstances that could make me regret any of your presences in my life. There’s - ” he stops, swallowing thickly. “There’s nothing that could ever happen that would make me love any of you any less.”
Dick blinks rapidly, shiny in the light of the cave. “Yeah,” he says in a choked voice. “I know. I love you too, dad.”
And for once, just once, Bruce thinks maybe he’s said the right thing.
He squeezes Dick’s hand, and doesn’t let go.