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THE APARTMENT had that new-in-town smell: mothballs and desperation. Boxes upon boxes were strewn on the floor. One of them had a dirty plate forgotten on top of it. Old pad thai grease. Armed to the teeth in his full Robin regalia, Tim felt vaguely underdressed in Dick’s kitchen—like there was a speech to do, and he was already forgetting the words.
“Did I lose you again?” Dick said, through a mouthful of his second demolished mango. He was eating them fatherless-style. Dick had been talking about—insurance, maybe. “What’s up?”
Across him, Tim straightened. “Nothing, just.” Mortified, thinking about how I almost spritzed myself with cologne before coming here. What was this, prom? Tim just needed this to go better than last time, was all.
Last time: Tim’s absolute trashfire of a Bludhaven visit; Dick’s rictus of a smile; Dick’s face going bloodless in the half-dark as Tim mentioned Bruce’s adoption offer, absolute god-tier cringe; why’d he do that? It was the same look Dick wore, that first time Tim brandished the original Robin suit from its glass case. Of course Dick disappeared then, all dark and brooding into the night, seeyanara, or never; Tim never could stomach a Never.
He wanted to tell Dick he was working hard to learn it, too—the Bat’s art of Sheer Presence. The way its silhouette inspired awe, stillness. That lately Dick spooked easy, like an animal trying not to be seen. That on nights Tim was almost catatonic with grief, his first half-formed thought was, I want my brother.
Tim said, “It’s not every day you eat scrambled mangoes in Richard Grayson’s apartment.”
“Ever since I saw one of our knife-throwers eat it like this, I always wanted to try it.” Dick picked up a comically large knife and bisected the mango, carving the hairy seed out, before scraping its insides silly. He handed one of the halves to Tim, anointing it with a too-big spoon. Where was this man’s cutlery? “It’s supposed to look like a bowl, then you can walk around eating like that. Neat, huh?”
“Guess so.” Tim accepted Dick’s mango concoction with a smile. Maybe a spoonful, to be polite. Watch and weep, Alfred. “You know, I always wanted to try eating a mango like an apple.”
“Well, we got two left,” Dick snorted, digging into the plastic bag. “Make your dreams come true?”
Do, please. Truth was, Tim daydreamed of it often—no capes, no mission, the solace of a brother only a nightmare-city away, and his quiet balcony. If Tim was lucky, a heart-to-heart. Namely, about the No Good, Very Bad Year he was having.
Same one he was sure Dick was going through now, if only Dick deigned to tell him anything.
“Let’s try it together,” Tim said, conspiratory. “Skin and everything. Sprinkle some seasoning. Alfred would call it… positively diabolical.”
“Oh, I’d move heaven and earth to see that look on that man’s face again.” Dick tipped the mango-bowl into his mouth, then licked his lips with sticky satisfaction. “God. This stuff is top-shelf. Which sunny, tropical island did you pick them from, Tim—the Philippines?”
“Just a freebie. From a grateful citizen.”
Wow, and he was starting to lie to Dick the way he lied to Bruce: with alarmingly little remorse!
The truth: Tim had seen the streetcam footage. Dick Grayson liked to linger longer than normal by that market stall on Hammerstone; stuff was always overpriced, but he stayed for the small talk, exchanging recipes and turning over spotted fruit, face soft with a small secret joy until some goon on busted tires screeched by, or the disembodied voice in his comm summoned him back into the fold—exit Richard Grayson, bereft of mangoes.
“A freebie, huh?” Dick said.
Tim shrugged. “Stopped a mugging on my way here.”
“‘Course you did.”
Tim looked up to see a secret smile on Dick’s face, the dimple deepening. Tim ducked his head—it was always intense when Dick did that, holding your eyes to wait for his words to land. When Dick pushed himself away from the table, Tim was glad to look without being seen.
The scrape on Dick’s elbow matched Batman’s data: Nightwing smashed himself free from a plexiglass wall when it came down on him; there was that wispy patch of petrified-looking hair near his left ear where the flames nearly singed his scalp off. Take a few drunk accidental teenage arsons, a rice cooker, and a wall outlet that hadn’t been maintained since the 80s, and you get a nice, toasty residential building that collapsed in forty minutes. With their training, Nightwing should’ve been in and out in five, tops.
Dick coughed as he groped inside the cupboard. Lung irritation, Tim noted. Possible airway inflammation. Shoddy haircut. Dick must’ve tried to trim the charred split ends. If Tim was there. If Tim had covered his blind spot. If Tim was someone Dick could count on from time to time, maybe.
Maybe.
If, if, if.
“Sorry, haven’t stocked the fridge yet,” Dick said. “Water fine?”
“Yep,” Tim said, popping the P, and looked at the carpet the moment Dick’s stagelight-eyes turned his way. His gaze had scanned Tim with that same cataloging sweep earlier. If Dick noticed the weight of Tim’s Mission, paling him like some kind of sepsis, he said nothing. Tim knew what Dick was trying to do. This polite distance, not quite cold, not quite warm, was a dead sea any man could drown in. Bruce currently was. Dick intended to leave Tim here too, in the rolling distance, where no eyes could follow. Fat fucking chance.
Watch me on the trapeze, Tim, said Dick from the memory; staring from a boy’s impish face; those torch-bright eyes, holding his frightened ones. I’m going to do my act—’specially for you. And Tim had watched. And Tim had never stopped, how could he ever stop?
“So, this friendly visit…” Dick slid him a chipped mug of water. “B asked you to check in, or is this gonna be a regular thing from now?”
“Naw, I was just,” Tim waved vaguely. “around.”
“And you got free mangoes.”
Tim sipped. “Thought I’d share my spoils of war.”
The cold hard truth: Tim needed a reason to see his brother now. A work reason. No one wasted Nightwing’s time. While dodging stilted dinners at the manor and Bruce’s guilt-marred face, Tim had spent the better part of his days turning the adoption offer in his head, plugging a fake uncle into his stage-life, not calling Dick, and tracking transactions in the deep web black markets. He had a lead to a CP ring tied to Gotham’s cluster of orphanages—just more children slipping through Her fingers, with no one to come looking. But Tim was looking now. Ten years too late, maybe, but looking all the same.
Bless Barbara and her detailed surveillance notes. He’d set up the alert as instructed and lost himself in the Styx waters of rote work, wading deep, the world submerged into the dull clack of fingers on a keyboard.
Tuesday morning, a new video was uploaded—the price tag: half a million in crypto.
The preview was fifteen seconds long. The footage, cast in near-darkness, had grain matching those recorded on a point-and-shoot that hadn’t been in the market for at least eight years. JVC VHS-C Camcorder, that was how old it was. But Tim knew that figure in the thumbnail. Canary-yellow cape, bloodied knees and pixie boots. A costume for someone ten apples tall.
Only one Robin was fighting against the affliction that was Gotham in single digits. And Tim would know him; his eyes had memorized him, the heft and shape and dazzle of him, imprinting like an afterimage.
Watch me on the trapeze, Tim.
“Get a visual,” was all Batman said, when he called an hour before. This was a case he didn’t think Batman was even supposed to know about, but Tim didn’t press; that voice, floundering in the undercurrent, was all Bruce. “I’ll take care of things here.”
Lung irritation, Tim thought. Grainy footage. Bruce’s cryptic-as-hell phone call. Charred split ends. Nightwing’s casual suicidal patrols? Yeah, Tim was going to dry-heave across Dick’s apartment floor; the inside of his mouth was all sour, like something gone bad overnight. Dick knew about the leak, but not that Batman and his underperforming Robin were on the case, too. Tim was gonna have to do it again—like his first day at the Cave, digging up the memory of Dick’s ghosts, not letting the damn dead stay dead.
Dick threw a hand towel at Tim’s face with a laugh. “Wipe your mouth, Timmy.”
Nicknames, huh.
If Dick hated him, he was hiding it well. Like a child, Tim obediently cleaned the pulp from his mouth. Then, like a coward: “Could I—bathroom?”
Staring at Dick’s glossy Subway tiles, Tim forecasted the ideal scenario:
T: Hey, man! So, I saw that footage of you. You know… that time you were kidnapped as Robin and stuff?
D: Which one?
[BA-DUM TSS] [Audience laughter]
T: Oh, Dick, I know it’s hard. But this doesn’t change how we feel about you. It wasn’t your fault, what happened.
[Soft blue light floods the stage]
D: You promise?
T: I promise, Dick. We’re doing everything we can to find the disgusting creep, and we’re gonna blow his whole operation sky-high. No more kids are getting hurt, not on my watch.
D: Thank you, Tim! You’re so reliable, I’m not worried at all! I’m sorry for icing you out for the past year. And for not answering your messages. Wanna split a pizza and talk about our feelings?
Tim grabbed his hair and pulled.
Batman trained him to assume success and work backward, but even this scenario was a doozy. But Tim would do this; he’d be cool and On Top of It and use his Robin Voice without cracking, and Dick would lose that tautness in his shoulders and maybe even give Tim a hair ruffle, plus points for Timmy! Maybe they’d make a mango crepe and eat it up on the balcony, watch the city soften in the early light, and have that awful heart-to-heart that Tim really, really wanted to unlock by now. Tim wanted Dick to know—about everything. And nothing at all. About the rattling emptiness in his chest that wouldn’t go away. Would it ever go away? Dick would know.
Tim emerged from the bathroom, feeling electric. Stepped over cardboard boxes. In one of them was a pull-up bar, still entombed in plastic wrap. Dick wasn’t going anywhere, at least for a while. Something in his chest settled.
“Hey, Dick, look, I just wanted—” Tim began, at the same time Dick said, “Listen, Tim, about last time—”
They stared.
“You first,” Dick offered magnanimously.
“No, you.”
“My place, my rules, twerp.”
Tim sighed. Showtime. “The truth is,” he said—then backtracked. Girl, not the admission of guilt. “To be honest, I wasn’t sure you wanted to see me again, after last time. I’m pretty competent with most things, but I don’t know how to deal with…” he gestured helplessly at the space between them, “Fighting with you sucks.”
“Are we?” Dick said. “Fighting?”
“Maybe? Not? I just feel like you’re mad. At me.”
“I’m not—” Dick pinched his nose. “I’m not mad. I mean, I am, a little. But not at you, Tim, I’d never—why would you think I’m—?”
“Thought I was going first?” Dick’s smile was strained but it was back, sweeping his face like fleeting light through the blinds, and Tim flung to catch it. “I want you to know that—that we’re doing everything we can to locate the source of the footage. You don’t have to do this alone, you know? And it’s not your fault.”
“Not my fault?”
“And never will be. And I—it must be terrible, having to relive that. Having to see—it makes me angry. Dick, I’m so angry, it makes me sick. Don’t worry, I kind of crashed the servers the moment it came out—sorry. Um, but I have a copy for us to study. Whoever this sorry creep is, I’m gonna find them, and when Bruce figures it out—”
“Bruce?” The name was a counterspell. Whatever warmth or playfulness they shared in their temporary truce vanished like fog. “Tim, what?”
“I—” Tim recalibrated. Desperately, he scanned Dick’s face—his features blurred over, a wall of nothing; Tim chipped away: “You were a kid, who’ll blame a kid? They won’t hurt any kids again. If you want to, to, to talk to anyone—but it was a long time ago, you’re Nightwing now—” Tim felt, bizarrely, like someone veering into asphalt road, into the wide-eyed gaze of a small animal standing in its grave; but he needed Dick to know, to hold fast before Tim was all alone again with his dead and his winding grief, “—and I know I don’t inspire as much confidence, I’m working on it, I’m working real hard to be a better Robin—not better than you, obviously that’s, haha—I mean like, better in general—and I swear, Dick, I’ll be real useful, so you don’t have to run. We can do this together—only if you let me, of course. Which you should. Please.”
“What,” Dick said, “in the world are you fucking talking about, Tim?”
So—a tiny miscalculation.
Dick had cornered him into booting up his laptop and showing him the footage—the one he lived in blissful ignorance of, only a few minutes until Tim arrived. In the kitchen, the clip didn’t look so bad, now that the initial terror of it released him. Dick watched the video, Tim watched Dick. His irises dilated as they filtered image after image: a young Robin, ziptied and blindfolded on a warehouse floor. Out cold. A man’s arm—a tactical sleeve covered any tattoos, Tim checked—coming into frame to pat Robin’s face, turning it left and right like fruit in the market for an invisible shopper. He slid his dirty thumb over Robin’s cheek. It was round with baby fat.
The video went dark and flattened the light in Dick’s eyes.
“There he is,” Dick said.
Tim angled his laptop screen away. “It could be a trap.”
“Nothing beats the original, huh.”
“It feels targeted to be—what?”
“Boy Hostage,” Dick said, but the mirth in it felt faraway, ornament.
“Right.” Tim’s breakfast burned in his stomach like a star. “Look, this whole thing feels off. I’m saying it must be targeted—I mean, it’s his only video on sale.”
“Or her.”
“Huh?”
“Could be a her. Yeah, let’s say it’s a trap. Where’s the rest of it?”
“That’s it. Just the preview.” Dick nodded, pushing himself off the table. “I’ve dug through the archives, scraped the metadata, nothing. What’s the motive? And why now? They didn’t unmask you, so that’s not their goal, but we can’t be sure yet. I’ve read your report to supplement my digging—the old squad’s in jail; ringleaders dead. Stroke, can you believe? The Rankins always had a sugar problem, and his father—anyway, this could mean the copies of the videos you and B destroyed all those years ago are still... out there.” Dick’s gaze was wandering over the kitchen, climbing up the ceiling, over grooves, like vines heading into little nowheres. “I know this must be tough to hear, but we can’t rule out the possibility that those videos may be in the hands of another underground ring, or some old creep collector that's strapped for cash, let’s say. Has to sell their dirty movies, I really don’t know. What I do know is—”
“Three things, Tim.” At the tone, Tim’s spine lengthened; Dick loomed over him, and he had that look in his eye; lacerating but tempered; a bubbling under the surface; Nightwing. “First, this is no longer your case alone.”
Tim expected as much.
Dick continued, “You may have done the intelligence on it, but I started this. My mess, my cleanup crew. If we’re doing this, it’ll be on my terms.” A pause. “Or you can just hand me the files right now and be on your way. No hard feelings.”
“No way,” Tim scoffed. “Who do you think you’re talking to?”
“Alright, walked into that one.” His jaw ticked. “Second, no heroics. We’re not partners in this mission. You answer to me. When I say jump, you say—”
“Spare me The Bat speech, Dick, I know how this works.”
“Third—” Dick’s smile was grim, “you don’t tell Bruce.” When Tim opened his mouth, he added, “Or Babs, especially Babs, she’s nosy. Or any of your friends.”
“But Bruce could have a lead!”
“He won’t.”
“C’mon, I get it’s weird between you now—”
“Robin.”
“Nightwing, be reasonable, this is just—”
“He won’t have a lead,” Dick's eyes were incandescent, his palm colliding with the table like a gavel, “because Bruce doesn’t know. Okay?”
“Bruce... doesn’t..."
“Was nothing worth writing home about,” Dick said. “Even during capture, Robin’s mission didn’t change: figure out the components of the narcotic they were manufacturing to drug and transport people. You know they had trouble finding buyers? Guess they were scared of getting poisoned, too. Tried to do their own marketing in the end. Ha. Should’ve given Robin an influencer’s fee.”
Tim read Dick's report, a crisp half-page thing, barely adorned: setting, an undercover mission at a covert celebrity party. Robin was separated from Batman, but 43 hours later returned—maybe lightly drugged but overall injury-free—with incriminating evidence to bust a CP ring and its affiliated pan-European trafficking group. The drugs, confiscated. Missing children, returned, with free lifetime counseling funded by Wayne Medical. A glowing success. Dick had been eleven.
Tim searched Dick's face. “And—that’s all?”
“They forced me to juggle on cam, it was horrible. Don’t worry, Tim. I’ll fix it,” Dick said, like he was talking about a carpet stain, a little oopsie! “Gonna smoke this creep out. Get it nice and clean this time.” He stood up, squeezing Tim’s shoulders. “You’re doing well, Robin, you shouldn’t be—because of what I—” Dick turned away. Something happened in that space of a second, a reassembling of a mask: Dick–Robin–Nightwing. He was dangerous again. “Okay, Mr. Drake. Think: all your leads are dead. How do you find a faceless thug and an invisible cargo?”
Dick took the CR-V, and the drive was terrifying. The provocative showboating the open road seemed to inspire in the men in Tim’s life was not new. He remembered Bruce’s punishing grip on the wheel, in those first grief-gummed months after Jason. He remembered Jack, on the day they lost everything.
Because it was Dick’s mission now, they spent the early hours letting their tires eat up the road. Better to be hurtling towards something, Dick decided, while they pinned down a location. Five minutes. That was how fast things could’ve been over, if Barbara was here, but Dick refused. Tim knew better than to ask again. He longed to be back at Dick’s apartment, scarfing down sweet mangoes, instead of running frantic searches on his laptop while sitting shotgun, Dick a stony, silent god on the wheel, while around them, the road lurched in and out like a fever dream: Tim had scraped forums, sub-marketplaces, secret chat rooms, reciting his meager findings to Dick (“DvrkRoom—that’s—it’s a sick place, Dick. To access other rooms in the market, you need to upload your own video, then you do the same as you go down and down—” “So they’re all creeps, that makes this easier.”) Again, without Barbara’s coding finesse, it was like a bunch of kids trying to read tea leaves.
So Tim was back to scouring the damn video. Even a freckle of evidence would save them. Then Tim stiffened. “The cut.”
Dick pulled into the state road, a severe gray line. “What about?”
“It’s unnatural for VHS. Look at the scratches. And at 0:08, the dust—”
“It’s too clean, I know. The video’s tampered.”
“Professionally." Tim looked at him meaningfully. "This type of footage is extremely rare, look—no, sorry, keep your eyes on the road—I mean, if my guess is correct, then this camera’s phased out; hardly any photography studios service them anymore. Niche market and all that. You know I always wanted to make movies, for fun? But it was such a pain, having to record audio separately, then, hunt down a studio that’d actually listen to some kid’s terrible Hollywood-wannabe pitch. I remember this model—the first photos of you and B I took were terrible, you know, I mean, you could hear the shutter all the way in Metropolis—”
“What’s your guess, Robin?”
“They’ve used some kind of tech to upscale the footage. This clarity just would not be possible at the time; look, I bet this is in 60fps, too. If we can narrow down the studios that helped restore it, studios that service vintage cameras in particular, maybe—” Dick ran through a red light; Tim didn’t point it out. “According to the metadata, the video was uploaded from Hub City. I’ll make a guess and say that’s their home base. Or at least their underpaid video editor’s.” Tim leaned over and set the location on Dick’s dash, just to see traffic predictions. “And if they're stupid enough to keep it in the books, then…”
Dick’s smile was already widening into a gash. “Make it a habit to live up to the hype, boy wonder?”
“You mean, the hype you started?” Tim yelped at the light punch Dick set on his shoulder. “I’m not that kind of Robin. Ow.”
“Never woulda happened to you,” Dick said.
Tim watched Dick's hands on the wheel: firm hold, fingers carefully loose. “Nah, I read the report, remember? You were—everything. I would’ve stuck by B-man the whole night. Never would’ve had the guts to try slipping away to trail Rankins in his armored van. In loafers, no less.”
“Hey, I kept the boots in the bag. And you’d find your way.” The car picked up speed as they passed the toll gates; the world outside stream-rolled into green-gray-green. “You always do.”
“Well, I was trained by number 1 and number 2. You’re number 1, by the way. Don’t tell Bruce.”
Dick snorted. “You have too much faith in me, kid.”
“Faith, huh?” Brutal sun out here. Not a single cloud to hide in. “You know, sometimes I think Robin was the first thing I ever actually believed in.”
The needle on the speedometer nosedived, before picking up speed fast. Dick said nothing, though his next breath was a slow, harsh pull. Tim let the air sit undisturbed as they whirled ahead; it was a long drive to their first stop, Nostalgic Lens Co., and Tim sure as hell wasn’t going to talk about everything he was dying to talk about with Dick, even when his brother was finally within arm's length, so he let himself nod off; in the dream, there was Robin, prince of the high wire; this was always how it began: Robin grinning bright and vicious, flickering above the crowd like a trick of the light. He leaped and soared. Soared! To frame him in Tim’s viewfinder was like trying to catch a butterfly in a tattered net. And Tim—always too fawn-clumsy, always too-slow. In the pictures, Robin's face was a black hole, swallowing even sound—but Tim was resolved. CLICK-WHIRR. Tim did it, he got the picture!—CLICK; he looked up—Robin, shattering into a thousand particles of light—
When Tim awoke, Dick had parked the car in an abandoned corporate building; the plan was standard fare: Nightwing would plant a backdoor via a surveillance chip in the studio computer, leaving Tim to perform an electronic sweep on the rooftops, searching for hidden servers where illegal material could be ferried; a ping-ping-ping indicated something bizarre: a telling signature of a hidden back-office system. Tim clambered onto the rooftop. Early evening, humid on the back of his neck. Somewhere, the sound of old movies; crying; singing; lovers united in the rain. The door to the HVAC system was easy to pick; inside, a sparsely decorated working area, bare shelf, and control panel. Tim's breath thinned; right there were photos of Robin, all of Robin, through the years—Dick Grayson in the boots, Dick Grayson and Two-Face, Dick Grayson at the end of Robin, the years finally souring him at the edges; it was different than Tim's own photos, he knew, though with a horror, jamming the control panel open, he could not say how, and in the next half-minute, when the wall exploded—
Tim awoke to warm fingers carding his hair. “You with me, Robin? You're alright. You were almost Boy Shishkebab.”
Desperation, folded expertly to disappear into the joke. Tim jolted awake.
Bed, creaky. Safehouse, one of Dick’s?
Dick himself, flickering around Tim like a skittish shadow.
Bleary-eyed in the half-dark, Tim felt Dick press their foreheads together. Dick's breathing was shaky, his long eyelashes brushing Tim's cheek as Dick scanned him in close proximity. Tim grabbed Dick’s wrist before he pulled away and let his eyes take their own manic, methodical inventory; Dick let it happen.
“Trap,” Tim rasped.
“Yeah.” As soon as Tim released him, Dick pushed a glass of water under Tim's nose. “I'm pretty confident now; the video’s to lure Batman. The merchant was prepared in case their base would be compromised. No—they were counting on it. It’s a win-win, either way. Ambush the Bat, or cash in a couple thousand dollars of crypto from the Adventures of the Boy Hostage, the really bad pilot episode.”
There it was again. The boy in the video was not Dick but Robin. It was the Boy Blunder. It was some kid on a grainy commercial somebody else knew, worthy of scorn.
“It was a dummy control room, Dick. Fucking—rookie mistake. Sorry.” Tim moved his legs over the bed’s edge, then winced. His right foot was bandaged. In between snatches of sleep, he recalled Dick wrapping it, hushing him softly back to sleep. “Did you find anything else, at least?”
“I thought you got blown up, Tim," Dick snapped. “Change of priorities.”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean—I just—this whole thing sucks.” All of it, Tim wanted to say; the video, Dick’s dead eyes, the quiet between them widening into a chasm where nothing lived for long. “What now?”
“For you? Paracetamol and bed rest, lots of it. I'll take care of the fun stuff."
“What, no! I can still help.”
Dick left to the corner of the room to grope for the light switch. “Tough. Your metatarsal bone's crushed. You're staying here, and I’m going to meet up one of my contacts; they were involved in the Rankins case a few years ago. If anyone would know about potential buyers, it’s them.”
“But you can't go alone. Please, I—" Light flooded the bed; Tim winced. "I think we should tell B.”
“You know what?" Finally, Dick faced him; the shadows turned him gaunt. “Lets. While we’re at it, why don’t we tell him about your fake uncle too?”
Tim stiffened. “What?”
“Don’t, with the act. Just—drop it. I called him to say you were injured. You know what he told me?” Dick’s eyes were righteous with rage. “He said his HMO only covered annual checkups.”
“See, he hasn’t been regularized at his job yet, so—”
“Enough, Tim.” There it was, the voice that flayed even Batman himself. “All I did was triple your offer, and the idiot folded. Told me everything. Next time, try to find someone with above average acting chops, yeah? C’mon, I mean, not even asking what happened to you? Where you were?” Dick suddenly looked tired, worn like a sepia photograph. “If you wanted space, trust me, I get it. But why lie to me, Tim?”
White-hot, the rush of anger that flooded the back of his throat; Tim let himself be angry, because anger was easy. “Well, if you wanna turn this into the lying Olympics, why don’t we talk about you, huh, Dick? Why go through all this, just to hide from B?"
Dick laughed, “Nosy as fuck, aren't you? Sometimes there are things you don’t need to be a part of.” Tim winced; it felt like a physical blow. “Password.” Dick held out Tim’s laptop.
Tim’s own reflection stared back from the dark, oil-smudged screen. “Why?”
“You wanted to be useful, didn’t you? I’m reviewing the footage.”
“I’ll do it.”
“Password, Robin.”
God, sometimes Dick was such a— “I don’t know, maybe try F-U-C-K O-F–”
“Real fucking mature, Mr. Drake. I'm not asking again— ”
BEEPING, from the laptop. “Video.”
“I’m not one of your pals, I don’t have time for your—”
“Dick, new video.”
Later, Tim wished he'd chucked the thing out the window, to be trampled under wheels like roadkill, its shrill song gone forever. Instead, hands possessed, Tim unlocked the screen—he’d need to update all his passcodes, now that Dick memorized the naming conventions—and navigated to open the notification of the search alert. It was Dick who pressed play, and the video threw new shadows across their faces. There he was again: Tim’s Robin, the one and only, a red, yellow, and green smudge on the warehouse floor. Later, what he'd remember most was Dick's bare, brown feet. Scuffed with dirt, anointed with a cigarette burn. The camera jerked. One hand held Dick's thrashing back in place. Another dragged the green shorts down.
Dick’s fist went through the screen.
Knuckles on glass like a gunshot. The laptop cracked against the wall, before sliding to the floor where it lay open, the screen sputtering in digital protest.
Heaving, Dick stared at his fist. He looked taken aback by it. Glass and grit were stuck in the Kevlar of his hand. Dick's eyes slid towards Tim.
Then Dick's legs were moving, moving to the window.
“Where are you—?” Tim scrambled after him; his chest was a fast-sinking gravel pit, hollowing him out. Two clicks, and the window was unlatched. Dick was always fast. Faster, Tim. Think, Tim! Where’s your goddamn clever now? With one ruined foot, he could do nothing but tumble to the floor and thrash in the sheets. The wind stirred Dick's hair. “Please, Dick. Please, please.”
One leg out the window now. The sounds of a city howled around his brother.
“Please,” Tim begged hoarsely; he didn't know what he was asking for. Somewhere, a siren wailed.
Then the noise was gone, the window was sealed, and Tim was being hauled up, and carried back to bed. “Sorry, I don’t know what I—” Dick’s voice was high and strange all over; he laughed, arranging Tim’s leg on a pillow. “It’s just—it’s you again. It’s funny. When my parents—and then now, it’s you again.”
Grief and shame, his twin stars; they burned Tim’s eyes until they watered. “Dick, I’m so—”
“Sorry about the laptop.” Dick bent down to retrieve the shattered husk of it, then two other smaller pieces. “Got a backup?”
“You want—you want to see it again?”
“Looks like everyone else has a front row. Might as well.”
“Dick, please. This could be over if we just ask Bruce, or, or, Barb—”
“Tim.” Dick’s voice went quiet, and Tim staggered under the grief that bore upon him, brutal and complete as a car wreck, when he realized Dick wasn't meeting his eyes. “Just—do this for me. Won’t you?”
Trust me, Dick had asked him once, going 60mph on a moving train, slipping a blindfold over Tim's eyes. How one wrong move courted death. How most confident Dick sounded when Tim couldn’t see—like he was evening the odds. He’d cackled as Tim lurched on his toes when the train swayed—even as Nightwing, that was his Robin-cackle, vicious as the years, free as any minor god.
Again, the familiar, weak refrain: I’ve missed you. I miss you. Am missing you. I want my brother. Not this one. Tim felt wretched for thinking it.
"Alright," Tim said. "Alright, Dick."
Tim handed Dick his backup laptop. Dick went to the other room and shut the door.
The night droned; Tim missed some calls.
Maybe human beings were not static, like photographs.
Maybe Tim was wretched, for changing this way, this fast; Tim was not the same boy Dick took train-surfing either.
“They're expecting a Bat,” Dick said, when he emerged from the other room. “When you’re healed up, make sure you’re seen on patrol with B. Let them think they just blew up some random Joe.”
Tim nodded.
“The bid’s up by a couple thousand. No one’s biting, as you can imagine.” He handed Tim his laptop with his good hand. “Wipe it off the server, if you can. Just need a bit of time before I come after them.”
“Can,” Tim acknowledged. "You know where—?”
“While you were asleep, I managed to scrape more old public-facing content from this merchant,” Dick said. “Still need to confirm with my contact, though, but buyers of this stuff move like addicts; they keep coming back. That makes them sloppy.”
“How can I help?”
“You—you'll stay here. Lay low, and contact no one. Can you do that for me, Robin?”
“Can, Dick." Tim had survived nearly everything in his life; he would learn to survive this too. “Can I look at your hand, at least?”
A second, in which Dick hesitated too long. But he sat by Tim on the bed and offered his hand; a truce. They had to pull the suit halfway off his torso to do it. Dick's hand was cold; it was like holding an ice cube. Along his knuckles, the skin was angry-red where he'd destroyed the aluminosilicate glass. But unbroken. Tim pressed a soft plea into the knuckle, though the tyranny of the memory was inescapable. When he opened his eyes the memory was still dancing in Dick's eyes, they were still boys, still trembling on the bed; trembling like two strange animals.
“Wipe it," Dick said. “Then show me.”
Tim did.
When everything was gone, some of the tenseness left Dick’s shoulders. He stood up; a shadow fell over his face; lacerating but tempered; a bubbling under the surface; Nightwing.
This, Tim could do for Dick: he pulled the zipper of Dick's suit closed; handed over his domino; looked away at the performative rites as Dick put it over his eyes, like a porcelain chip returned to its missing crack.
Watch me. I’m going to do my act.
“Thanks, Timmy." Their reflection stared back at Tim from the empty screen, a negative image. “Rest up. I’ll leave my card on the table, order whatever you like. I’ll be back tomorrow. Then—then we’ll talk. About your uncle. About everything. Would you like that? I think… that’d be good. To talk.”
“I’d like that. Will you call? If—if something happens.”
“Sure, Timmy. I'll see you."
“Dick?” Dick turned, already outside; Tim watched him through the open window. “It’s not your fault. I don’t—I don't think any less of you, you know that. Right?”
“Yeah, I know.” Tim was dizzy with it, the tenderness in Dick’s smile; how many times had he daydreamed of this; a brother and his quiet balcony; tomorrow, a heart-to-heart; Dick spun a beautiful lie. Dick would keep leaving him here, lurching in the half-dark, until Tim pulled the blindfold free.
“And that whatever happens—” Tim touched his throat; it kept closing like a fist.
"Yeah?"
Watch me, Dick.
“—I’m on your side,” Tim promised, and as Dick smiled and vaulted into night, Tim clicked the panic button programmed on his backup folder in the cloud—the one he'd created the first day he found the videos, knowing Dick's brutal checkmate could only ever end this way—and imagined the journey the folder would make to get to the one person who could save at least one of them; there was no going back from this, Tim knew, blinking fast and wet against the sudden blinding light in the distance he could almost, almost see.