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To say that Dick’s day has just gone from bad to worse would be an understatement.
“What’s going on?” Dick asks, trying to ignore the oncoming headache.
“Nothing,” says Tim, with the world’s guiltiest expression.
“Fuck off!” says the animatronic dinosaur, the one that Bruce for some unfathomable reason insists on keeping in the Batcave. The one he insists is completely harmless, completely disarmed, completely one-hundred percent for display purposes only.
“Really,” Tim insists, trying to hide his bleeding arm with minimal success behind his back. “I have everything under control!”
Dick is supposed to be resting. He’s supposed to be elevating his sprained ankle, he’s supposed to be watching Legally Blond, he’s supposed to be eating Alfred’s raspberry pudding and helping Tim with his homework. He’s supposed to be resting his bruised ribs and stretching his strained muscles, and he’s supposed to be spending a calm, peaceful day at the manor while Alfred takes a day to volunteer at a food shelf and Bruce deals with a crisis at Wayne Enterprises.
But now Tim is bleeding out on the floor of the cave, and Dick is sorely regretting his decision to climb down the stairs (it’s going to be murder trying to climb back up), and to cap it all off there is an unknown individual currently giving their T-Rex indigestion.
“You’re bleeding,” Dick points out, not even trying to hide the incredulity in his voice. “There’s someone in the dinosaur. Tim, how long have you been down here?!”
“Okay, so it’s not actually as bad as it looks,” Tim hedges, not meeting Dick’s gaze. And then, when Dick ramps up the judgmental nature of his silence, Tim wilts and mutters, barely audible - “Six hours.”
Dick stares. “You’ve been down here since four o’clock in the morning?”
“Hmm,” Tim mumbles.
“Tim!”
“Look, I know, but I had to finish those files and I was planning on going to bed, it’s not all my fault -”
“Who’s in the dinosaur?”
Tim goes a little pale, and his mouth snaps shut.
“Hey!” Dick says, raising his voice. “Who. Is in the dinosaur?”
“You’re the fucking bane of my existence,” comes the voice from the dinosaur’s stomach, at the same time Tim says, barely audible, “Don’t freak out.”
Dick wasn’t planning on freaking out. He thinks he deserves a little recognition, actually, for how admirably he’s currently keeping his cool. He thinks that if there were ever a person who was not freaking out, it would be him. He is the definition of calm. He is the definition of collected. He is the definition of serene.
He smiles, and Tim actually takes a stumbling step back. (Maybe he should tone it down a bit. But maybe he’s not in the mood, because maybe his ribs hurt like hell and he’s currently craving a pudding that’s waiting for him five flights of stairs above his head.)
“So, uh,” Tim starts, and then swallows, and glances at the dinosaur. “So it wasn’t my fault. Let’s just make that clear, because -”
“Like hell it wasn’t your fault, you little shit -”
“ - because this is actually really good news! Like, I think this will actually go over really well, I think you’ll be really happy, and you won’t freak out, and I think it doesn’t matter that he was trying to kill me -”
Dick can be patient. He can watch the blood slowly drip from Tim’s fingers to the floor, and he can see the bullet holes he had somehow missed cracking the screen of the Batcomputer (where Tim had no doubt been working for way longer than the aforementioned six hours) and he can hear the words ‘trying to kill me ’ said so casually and not try to strangle Tim on the spot.
“Goddamn fucking Replacement,” says the dinosaur.
“It’s Jason,” Tim whispers, eyeing Dick like he’s about to explode. “Jason Todd.”
...
Jason Todd is dead. Jason Todd has been dead for just over three years.
...
According to Tim, Jason Todd is currently trapped inside Bruce’s animatronic monstrosity, cursing a blue-streak, and making increasingly creative death threats.
Dick feels a little faint. Dick thinks he might be freaking out a bit, actually. He thinks he should probably sit down before that choice is taken away from him, and he thinks maybe Tim wasn’t exaggerating when he accused Dick of panicking. He also thinks Tim should have given him some warning before springing this on him.
“Jason Todd is dead,” Dick says through numb lips.
“Jason Todd is alive, actually,” Tim says, wincing at Dick’s expression.
“Jason Todd is going to fucking murder both of you,” Jason says, voice echoing from the dinosaur’s stomach.
“How did this even happen?” Dick asks, ruthlessly suppressing the embarrassing urge to burst into tears. “Are you sure?” Because maybe Tim is mistaken. They’ve been under a lot of stress lately, and if Tim hasn’t been sleeping who knows what he’s capable of convincing himself of. It could be a clone, it could be a hallucination, it could simply be an incredibly convincing actor. It could be a lot of things (it could be Dick’s little brother).
“I’m trying to get him out, I swear,” Tim says, pointing to a pile of discarded tools. “And I’ve checked for authenticity, it really is him, you can go check the DNA scanner -”
“Never in my life,” Jason declares, “have I felt this betrayed. You took my DNA? I think there’s a lesson about consent here -”
“What was I supposed to do?!” Tim snaps, spinning on the dinosaur with the aggrieved expression of one who has been putting up with the same shit for the past six hours. “You attacked me, Jason, I thought you were a villain! Or a clone or something, I don’t know.”
“Okay,” Dick says, voice barely above a shaky whisper. He can see the blood analysis machine out of the corner of his eye, on the other side of the room. The way everything has taken on a slightly fuzzy edge, he doesn’t really feel like making the trip. And Tim has checked. And despite all evidence to the contrary, Tim is not an idiot. And if Tim is not an idiot, and if Tim checked and double checked like Dick knows he will have, then that’s Jason. That’s Dick’s Little Wing, his kid brother (and god, he sounds so different, Dick hadn’t even recognized him (how could he not have recognized him)) and that’s the kid who was brutally murdered, wearing a legacy Dick had left.
“Okay,” Dick repeats, a little louder, and he should really sit down, he should stop ignoring how tingly his fingers feel, how light his head is. “Can we - can we get him out? What happened?”
And Tim tells him, starting in on a tale of innocence and betrayal and secret identities, interrupted every sentence by Jason’s threatening corrections and muttered “fucking deserved it”’s.
Dick wonders where he had been, when the gunshots rang through the Batcave. He wonders what he had been doing during the ensuing fight, as Tim had fought for his life, leaping and dodging and fleeing through a place that should have been safe. He wonders what could have been so important that he hadn’t noticed his dead brother returning home, the attempted homicide of his baby brother, and the ensuing battle resulting in Tim tricking Jason into falling into the dinosaur’s waiting jaws.
Tim finishes his tale with a wince and a glare in the direction of the T-Rex, and Jason lets out a loud, long-suffering sigh that can be heard even from the inside of the dinosaur.
“So,” Dick says, frantically compartmentalizing. “So, first things first. Let’s get - ” God, Jason’s alive “ - Jason out of there. Then we can figure out... everything else.”
“Yeah,” Tim says, looking immensely relieved. “Yeah, that sounds like a good idea. Um. I’ve tried a lot of things, but. Do you have any suggestions?”
“And you’re sure you can’t crawl out?” Dick asks, feeling a little giddy as he tries not to think about what he’s asking Jason to do.
“Fuck you and your ideas,” Jason replies. “At least the Replacement had better ideas than that. No, I can’t crawl out, the entire thing’s jammed. Who the fuck has been feeding this beast?”
Tim suddenly finds his fingernails to be of the utmost interest.
“... wait a minute.” Jason’s voice comes incredulously from the dinosaur. “Wait a fucking minute. Is this homework? Jesus christ, how many worksheets did you lose? Oh, Replacement, you are so screwed. Guess what Alfred’s going to find pinned to his door tomorrow morning?”
Dick stares at Tim, and Tim wrinkles his nose, scowling.
“Like you didn’t ever ‘conveniently’ lose your homework,” he mutters, ears turning beet red.
“NO!”
“Okay, it’s not actually that bad of an idea -”
“Don’t listen to the party-pooper, Replacement, I think it’s a fantastic idea - get rid of this menace to mankind, get rid of me -”
“We are not blowing you up!” Dick yells, and then immediately winces, reaching for his ribs. He has no regrets, as Jason falls silent.
“That’s not what I meant!” Tim immediately defends himself. “I said ‘strategic placement of small detonation devices,’ that’s completely different.”
“No,” Dick repeats himself firmly. “Absolutely not.”
“I’ll do it,” Dick says firmly, already shrugging the bag over his shoulder.
“I really think that's a bad idea, if you fall you’re gonna land on your ankle - not to mention your ribs - !”
“What’s wrong with Dickhead’s ankle?” Jason demands, and then, when neither Tim nor Dick speak up. “What’s wrong with his ribs?”
“I’ll be fine,” Dick says curtly, beginning to creep (okay fine, limp) his way closer to the T-rex’s foot. “Better than you and your mangled arm.”
“Fucking deserved it,” is Jason’s input, as Tim scowls and makes an aborted move to cross his arms. He stops short with a wince, a direct result of said mutilation.
The plan is to crawl up the dinosaur’s side, and start prying off the scales in order to get at the inner workings and somehow pry everything apart to get Jason out. It’s not the best of plans (Bruce is going to be DisappointedTM when he sees the hole in his prized robot) but it’s the next option on a very short list of ideas that Tim has yet to try, and at this point Dick just wants to get Jason out. To verify with his own eyes that it’s Jason, that Jason’s alive -
Dick makes it up five feet above the ground, ribs throbbing in protest and ankle screaming, when the dinosaur begins to move.
It’s not very fast. Almost ponderously slow, gears turning as the thing opens its jaws, angling as it turns towards where Dick is clinging to its leg.
“Dick, abort, abort!” Tim waves wildly, running over to stand directly beneath Dick, almost like he wants to try and catch him.
“Hey - hey! It’s moving, there’s not room for two of us, I swear Dickwad if you get eaten -”
The jaws snap, and Dick lets go, sliding gracelessly to collapse on the floor. Hands instantly find his shoulders and Tim starts dragging him frantically away even as the dinosaur straightens, turning cool, lifeless eyes on them.
“Okay,” Dick finally manages, clutching at his ankle as tears sting his eyes. “Next plan.”
“This’ll work,” Tim offers, handing Dick one of his training staffs.
Dick hefts the weapon in his hand, and then turns, eyeing the dinosaur’s metal jaw. It might work. He might be able to throw it in such a way that it wedges the thing’s mouth open, catching between its teeth like a dinosaur-sized toothpick.
What happens next is another question, and one Dick hopes doesn’t end with a rampaging T-Rex, but, well. That’s all in phase two. Phase one is getting the staff to stick.
“Ready?” Dick asks, adjusting his grip and angling his feet.
“Fuck’s sake, just do it already,” Jason says, and despite everything Dick finds a smile spreading across his face.
“On three!” he calls, and then nods at Tim, who stands braced and ready with a giant grapple gun (what the plan there is Dick doesn’t even want to ask, but as long as it makes Tim feel better, he’ll allow it). “Three, two -” Dick throws, hurling the staff with all his strength. “One!”
The staff spins through the air, Dick’s aim flawless as it flies into the T-Rex’s mouth and sticks, wedging vertically. And then the T-Rex’s jaw snaps shut, the staff breaks into splinters, and Jason lets out a few colorful curses as the remains doubtless rain down on his head.
“Well,” Tim says, relaxing slowly with a slightly disappointed look. “Nevermind.”
“What about climbing up?” Dick asks.
“Already tried that,” Jason grunts. “Rollers on the inside of the throat make it damn difficult.”
“I was reading up on it in the manual,” Tim offers, from where he’s spinning lazily in the bullet-ridden desk chair. “Apparently there’s a cavity in the dinosaur’s stomach that’s supposed to release a strong acid when it swallows something, killing whatever’s inside it. The rollers are to make sure they can’t climb out before that happens.”
Dick stares at Tim, horrified.
“What the fuck, Replacement!” Jason yells, “When were you going to tell me this?!”
“Obviously I checked!” Tim says, instantly defensive. “Obviously Bruce must’ve removed the acid, otherwise you’d already be dead.”
The silence that follows this is pointed and prolonged. Tim slowly sinks down in the chair, looking highly uncomfortable.
“Hang on,” Dick says at last, holding up a hand. “Wait a minute. This thing has a manual?”
Dick can only stare in disbelief at the painstakingly hand drawn diagrams, neatly placed in the handwritten Users Guide that Bruce has been keeping hidden in the filing cabinet. The drawings are flawless, the instructions thorough; everything anyone would want to know about an animatronic Tyrannosaurus Rex, condensed down to two-hundred pages. Written and researched by one Bruce T. Wayne.
“Who taught you how to throw? Because you have shit aim,” Jason grouses, voice having lost a bit of its bite as the hours continue to drag on.
“Not my dad,” Tim replies, unconcerned from his perch in the supports. “And it’s your fault anyway, if the dinosaur hadn’t decided to use my good arm as a chew toy -”
“And who decided to play chicken with the dinosaur in the first place?!”
Dick flips a page, and Tim chucks another protein bar at the dinosaur’s mouth in lieu of an answer.
There’s a release button somewhere on the dinosaur. Buried on page one-hundred-forty-two, in a small footnote in the margins, the words ‘catch release’ attempt to hide from the reader’s view. The problem is, it doesn’t say where. The problem is, it doesn’t say what it looks like, or how to find it, or if it’s a button or a lever or some combination of both.
“Some detectives you two are,” Jason complains, half an hour later when they still haven’t found anything.
“It’s a little hard when this thing keeps trying to eat us,” Dick snaps, barely managing to limp his way out of the way in time as the dinosaur makes a grab for him, teeth catching on his sweater and ripping a new hole. Tim takes the opportunity to dart forward and investigate the dinosaur’s left ear, before it realizes that he’s there and turns to its newest source of prey.
“Boohoo, it’s trying to eat you. How about you start complaining when it’s actually eaten you, and your idiot brothers can’t figure out how to beat a fucking sloth of a robot!”
Dick loves his little brothers. He loves them so much, he would do anything for them, he would catch the moon and eat the sun, he would swear off sugary cereal for the rest of his life. Dick loves his little brothers, but Tim has been making increasingly provocative remarks in Jason’s direction, and Dick kind of wants to shove a sock in his mouth. Dick loves his little brothers, but Jason hasn’t been alive for twelve hours and Dick already wants to murder him.
Dick’s entire core aches. The pain from his ankle is slowly radiating up his leg, and is currently pooling somewhere around his knee. Dick is trying to save Jason, he’s trying not to freak out, he’s trying not to collapse in a puddle and weep because Jason needs him, but it’s hard and only getting harder. And it’s not like this is a situation Dick has ever thought to prepare himself for.
“Hey, Jason?” Dick asks, breathing through his teeth as he hobbles another step back.
“... What?” Jason asks, suspicion evident in every inflection of the word.
“What’s going to happen when we get you out?” Are you going to dissolve? Am I going to wake up, and discover this was all a dream?
“I’m going to fucking finish what I came here for.”
Across the room, Tim goes still, some of the color draining from his face as he meets Dick’s gaze. Then his eyes flutter shut, and before Dick can say anything, before he can ask what exactly that might be, Tim opens his eyes again (and there is a resolve there, a terrifying thing, that Dick has only seen from one other: from Bruce, when he’s made up his mind).
“It’s okay.” Tim says, still looking at Dick. “If - if that’s what it takes. You can have Robin back, Jason, you don’t need to kill me for it. I’ll just give it to you. It’s okay.”
And Dick remembers, abruptly, why Jason is in the dinosaur in the first place.
“No one is killing anyone,” he says, loudly, just in case that wasn’t clear. Tim makes a face (like he doesn't believe Dick, and thinks he's being a bit silly maybe, a bit optimistic), and there’s an ominous silence from the dinosaur. And Dick is getting ready to repeat himself, to really drive this point home - no one is killing anyone, this should be obvious - when a faint sound reaches his ears. Light footsteps, and the distinct clearing of a throat. Tim’s eyes go impossibly round.
“I should certainly hope not,” Alfred says, stepping out from behind a stalagmite with an unimpressed look on his face. “Would you boys like to explain to me what exactly is going on, or shall I make a guess?”
“Uh,” Dick stammers, trying to balance in a way that looks like he has not just been severely aggravating his injuries. (It looks bad. Broken, bullet riddled machinery, trampled training equipment, blood - it... looks bad.)
“Nothing,” Tim says, straightening and trying to hide his arm.
“ ... Go away,” says the dinosaur, and Dick thinks it probably sounds more like a question than it’s supposed to.
Alfred sighs, and Dick winces, and Tim looks like he wishes the floor would open up and swallow him whole.
“And I presume the blood tests in the cycler belong to the young man currently in the bowels of the Tyrannosaur?” Alfred asks, as if that sentence is one he speaks every other week. As if the words Jason Todd are not even now blinking from the machines, as if Jason Todd hasn’t been dead for three years. As if Jason Todd is alive.
“We’re trying to get him out -” Tim begins, at the same time Dick attempts to take a step forward and Alfred holds up a hand.
“Not another step, Master Richard!” Alfred says, and Dick freezes, wobbling. “I don’t want to see you move a muscle until I’ve wrapped that poor ankle of yours. Not to mention your ribs. Master Tim. I hope you have been drinking more than coffee, blood loss requires fluids. No? Then I suggest you do so immediately, there is a water bottle to your right. Master Jason? Hold tight, I’m about to release the catch.”
And then (without looking at the manual, without consulting Tim and Dick on what they’ve already tried) Alfred marches straight up Bruce’s animatronic beast, flips up one of its iron talons, and presses a large, red button labeled in bold font: RELEASE.
The stomach of the dinosaur opens outward on hidden hinges, and Jason tumbles out in a hail of papers and other miscellaneous objects. And Dick doesn’t hesitate. He ignores Alfred, he ignores his ankle and his ribs, he ignores all common sense because it’s one thing to hear his little brother’s disembodied voice, but it’s another thing entirely to see him spring so effortlessly to his feet, to see his face twist into a snarl as he raises a gun from his side.
Dick practically collapses against Jason as the shot is fired, and Tim ducks behind the stalagmite he had preemptively hidden behind. There’s the sound of shattering glass, and then Jason lets out a curse, strong arms wrapping around Dick as he’s hauled unceremoniously back to his feet.
“You’re a fucking idiot!” Jason snarls, and Dick is still half convinced this is a dream, but he’s half convinced it’s not, and he will risk over steeped tea for a month if it means breaking Alfred’s rules and giving Jason a hug.
“Are you quite finished?” Alfred asks, stepping delicately around the shattered remains of Robin’s memorial. Tim pokes his head out cautiously, eyeing the situation with all due caution before finally stepping back out into the open.
And Jason is alive. It’s a chant in Dick’s brain, a mantra stuck on loop, repeated over and over until the words lose all meaning, a senseless litany ingraining itself into Dick’s being. Jason is alive. And taller, bigger, angrier, older, different in so many ways, but - his eyes. The way he looks at Dick, that incredulous confusion, the quiet hope buried beneath mountains of snarling wariness. It’s the same way Jason had looked at Dick all those years ago, when Dick had caught him for the first time in Robin’s colors, and smiled.
And then Alfred is there, pulling Dick gently away, taking his weight on one shoulder as he reaches out to pull Jason into a hug of his own. Jason suffers the embrace much more gracefully than he’d suffered Dick’s, allowing Alfred to reach up and thread his fingers through dark locks, muttering something about a trim and a haircut.
“But first,” Alfred says, stepping back and leveling Jason with his most cowing look, “Apologize to your brother.”
“Like hell!” Jason explodes, before a look of instant (if brief) mortification sweeps across his face.
“That’s right,” Tim says, arms finally crossed as he steps forward, no doubt emboldened by Alfred’s presence (and rightfully so). “I told you, it wasn’t my fault, he attacked me - ”
“Because you’re an entitled little brat who doesn’t get out of the goddamn way when I tell you to - ”
“I didn’t know it was you! And you were pointing a gun at me, of course I wasn’t going to do what you said!”
“And you fucking got what you fucking deserved, you little shit!” Jason spits.
Beside Dick, Alfred squeezes his eyes shut, and reaches up to pinch the bridge of his nose. And Dick realizes, all at once, exactly where Bruce had picked up this particular expression from.
And Dick... Dick is going to stay out of this. Tim is alive, and Jason is alive, and Alfred is here. Dick can retire for the day, and start in on that list of reasons why he should never have left his bed this morning (and all the reasons why it’s the best decision he ever made).