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“Oh, look,” Tim remarks offhandedly. “I almost passed out in that dumpster once.”
Duke blinks but doesn’t let his eyebrows furrow. He’s concerned, he thinks, but then again, the alleys are full of shadows, and he can feel the wind whipping around his ankles as he makes the jump to the next rooftop, and it’s a pretty tame comment, considering—
Red Robin grins.
There’s a chatter over the ‘informal’ comm channel.
“Almost, my ass,” Spoiler chimes in. “I had to climb in ‘cause you couldn’t get out on your own.”
Duke reaches out and flicks Tim’s elbow. The older boy hisses back and darts away across the concrete. Duke starts running, tugging at the muscles that are already sore from earlier that afternoon, but Tim is long gone by the time he hurtles toward the edge and pushes back the brief flicker of what if this time I don’t jump far enough—
Duke catches up to Tim three streets down.
“That sound was like a cat,” he observes, melting out of the shadows behind the other vigilante. Tim’s expression doesn’t change on his arrival, but Duke does catch the faintest wrinkles around his eyes, like Tim wants to hiss again but doesn’t want to give him further ammunition.
The wind picks up. It’s been playing with them like a wild thing all night. Duke is glad he doesn’t use a cape, because the bright yellow lining Robin’s cloak had ended up tangled over his head a few hours ago, and he doesn’t even want to consider how many photos Oracle took. The kid will never live it down.
“There’s only one cat around here,” Tim replies. “Although, have you heard the demon brat sneeze?”
“I am going to decapitate you, Drake,” comes the tinny reply.
Duke snickers.
“Your request has been processed,” Tim shoots back. “You will receive a response within three to five business days.”
“Ooh, break-in at the jeweler’s, again,” says Steph. “I’ve got it.”
They all hear glass shattering through the communicator, and then a few fleshy thuds.
“That was disappointing,” Spoiler huffs. There’s a man yelling in the background.
The other channel pings. “Some civilians just called 911. Found a bomb. Corner of 19th and 6th. Riddler and Scarecrow are both currently at large, so could be either of them. Likely not a standard bomb if a call got put in. Timer was down to six minutes when I caught the call a minute ago. Black Bat, you’re the closest. B, you’ll need to reroute further downtown to cover her streets.”
“Understood, Oracle.”
He wants to yawn.
Red Robin frowns.
They’re standing still, almost, just slightly swaying from side to side to the tune of the shadows dappling along the bricks around them. There is a moment when everything feels still, and cold—then silently a cloud slips under the edge of the moon. Light washes over them.
They shiver.
“Why the fuck is it so bright tonight,” Tim says furiously as they both scuttle back into the shadows. He checks his watch and sobers. “Signal, it’s half past twelve.”
Damn.
When he doesn’t outwardly respond, Tim taps him on the shoulder and raises an eyebrow. “O,” he repeats pointedly into the comm, “it’s half past twelve.”
“But the bomb!” he tries dramatically.
“You’ve been up since seven this morning.”
Ugh. “Not like you can talk.”
“I slept for nineteen hours on Tuesday,” Tim counters mildly.
He looks out at Gotham. At the city he belongs to, with its’ twisted skyline and gloomy streetlamps that don’t do much more than flicker half-heartedly. “Sure you’ll all be fine?” he asks scratchily.
Red Robin’s professional composition melts into Tim’s conflicted expression. He can’t promise anything, as much as he’d like to. None of them can. One day out of nine, Duke wakes up to find someone asleep in the Medbay. One day out of four, somebody needs stitches.
He knows they worry about him, too. He’s the first to suit up and head out in the early afternoon. Killer Croc cracked five of his ribs a month ago and Alfred had to wake Bruce up from a pre-patrol nap at 4pm in the evening to pick him up in the Batmobile because Duke couldn’t make it to a safehouse on his own. He was so ashamed, but Bruce didn’t say a single judgemental word. Just evaluated Duke’s ribs and made the gruff, hesitant sound that he’s learning means I should have been backing you up in that fight. I’m sorry that you’re in pain.
“Bomb dismantled,” Cass says quietly.
“Wannabe jewel thieves tied up outside!” Steph whoops.
Duke sighs. He’s run out of excuses.
He turns his back on the skyline and heads for home.
He wakes up at 2:57am. His room is coloured navy blue from the shade of the letters on his alarm clock. Duke slides out of bed.
He’s been staying at the Manor for seven months now. He knows how to tilt the blinds so that the morning sun warms his pillow but doesn’t squeeze painfully under his eyelids. He knows without looking that the looming, shapeless mass in the corner is not a foe but a wooden wardrobe probably older than he is. He knows that the bed is slightly higher than his old one and that he has to get closer to the edge to put his feet flat on the floor. He knows what the carpet feels like on bare toes and how to walk around in the dark without bumping into anything to get to the bathroom and most importantly, he knows what sounds Damian makes walking up the stairs after a long night.
He opens the door just in time to catch the thirteen-year-old passing and snags the sleeve of his shirt.
“You’re supposed to be asleep,” Damian tells him steadily, and sucks at his teeth.
A long night, not a good one. Duke doesn’t know what Damian’s footsteps sound like on a good night, because on a good night they cannot be heard at all.
He stands in the hallway with his fist balled up at his side, and says softly, “who was hurt?”
Damian’s eyes are bright green. “Nobody as of yet,” he replies stiffly. “My mandatory,” he pauses, then continues with a snarl, “bedtime, came just as Oracle alerted us to the presence of Scarecrow in the downtown mall.”
“The bomb was his?” Duke says.
“Yes, and we found more.”
The boy that he is beginning to label little brother is as tense as Duke feels. “But everyone was okay when you left them?”
Damian nods. Duke realises that he’s still holding onto the kid’s sleeve, and carefully unclenches his fist.
“Goodnight,” he whispers.
Robin nods.
Duke wants to tell him that he will wake up and everyone will be fine. He can’t quite get the sentence out of his throat. Hollow words, the lot of them.
He watches as Damian walks further down the hall, then swings the door closed and gets back into bed.
This time it’s the lack of feet on the stairs that wakes him up. Half past five in the morning and he’s lying spreadeagled on his bed, ears straining despite himself, and he can’t hear a single whisper in the hall. Not a peep. Steph and Bruce are supposed to be home by now. Dick, too, but he’s away in the Haven. They’re supposed to be asleep in the rooms beside his. They’re supposed to be—
Duke thinks, well I wasn’t exactly getting much rest anyway and scrambles over to the door.
He doesn’t bother with the light switch. He twiddles the curtain at the end of the hall and sends a shaft of piercing moonlight swimming down the stairs. He’s wearing a shirt with a duck on it. The duck is bright yellow and wearing a top hat. Duke has outlined the duck’s chest with a bat symbol in sharpie. Suddenly, he doesn’t quite feel like he’s in the right place.
Damian’s room is perfectly silent. Duke stands outside awkwardly for what feels like an uneasy eternity before calculating that the kid is most likely already awake. He’s right: the door is opened smoothly before the third knock.
“Thomas,” Damian greets. It’s not terse as usual, but the manner in which he forms the words is a little detached. He’s tired.
Duke looks at him.
“I’m going down to the cave,” he bluffs, because he’s not sure what to say, and if Damian closes the door he’ll probably just go back to his room and stare at the ceiling until his alarm goes off or Steph and Bruce and Cass and Tim come home. “Would you like to come?”
Damian opens his mouth and then closes it again. Duke waits.
“Yes,” he says, a little sullenly.
Duke twists the hands on the clock and Damian goes first down the stairs.
Oracle’s working from the Clock Tower tonight. They can hear Alfred stacking bandages in the Medbay. The moonlight wafting through the rest of the manor can’t touch the cave: tones shift from silver to gold. The space is pitch black, with little circles of warm light at the computer, at the Medbay, but there are enough weird rock formations and dividing walls for them to find their way into the gym without passing Alfred. Duke drags the clean mats down from the walls to the centre of the room. Damian produces blankets and pillows (the chilly air in the cave is absolutely no joke, Duke has learned). They don’t talk, working in tandem to set up a makeshift sleeping pallet in the corner. Duke doesn’t dare breathe a word. If they talk, Alfred will find them, and send them back to bed.
Neither of them wants to go back upstairs to the empty manor, full of moonlight.
Duke sinks into the mattress as quietly as he can. Damian sniffs and tries to shove toward him an insult in ASL for the noise. At least, so Duke assumes. He can’t see Damian’s fingers well enough to be sure. The light is greying. If he squints, it looks like the whole world is fraying at the edges.
Damian gets onto the practise mat and immediately tries to steal Duke’s blankets. Duke tugs them back and puts an arm around his little brother. There’s more than enough blankets to satisfy them both if they share.
Damian wiggles once, and then relaxes, inch by inch.
Duke hums under his breath, eyes still open. He can hear the rustle of the real bat colony living in the cave; hundreds of winged mammals chittering and squeaking. What do they think of these humans, bringing glow to the edges of their caves? Do the bats watch them sweating and researching and training and crying and holding each other close on the gym mats, like a promise they can’t make, waiting for family who haven’t come home?
Damian stirs, and Duke goes still, but the younger boy just moves slightly closer and relaxes further into Duke’s side.
It should be funny. Damian never lets people cuddle him. Never asks for a hug. Stakes his reputation on never seeking out physical comfort.
It’s not funny. Not at all.
Duke wants to cry, just a bit. But he doesn’t. It’s not an emergency. Forty minutes late is not anything to panic over. If he could reason, logically, that the others were in danger, if he could justify taking out comms and calling to Oracle, to Batman, then he would, but—
It’s not funny.
He holds Damian a little tighter, and they wait. They wait for what feels like hours.
Alone in a corner of a cave. Waiting for the noise. The Batmobile might have an engine quieter than a refrigerator’s soft hum, but it’s a heavy car, and it tears through the streets like thunder in the ground. The Medbay, too, has a habit of echoing. They won’t miss it. They’ll be the first ones to know when Bruce arrives. They won’t have to wait until morning to find who was confined to the Medbay. They won’t wake up to people unexpectedly missing from the breakfast table.
They’re waiting.
Duke’s waiting for his family.
The bats above him are flapping around. Duke’s eyes are getting scratchy, and heavy. He’s still awake, definitely, but he thinks maybe his body has fallen asleep. It feels a bit like floating. He can’t seem to muster up the energy to move.
It isn’t long before his eyes slide shut.
“—no wait, hang on a second! BRUCE! COME HERE! I found ‘em!”
“Oh my god, what are they doing there?”
“B! They’re both safe, it’s fine. Relax. They’re asleep in a corner of the gym.”
“—on the safety mats, yeah.”
“Is that the demon brat willingly cuddling someone?”
“I thought he called Duke an ‘impertinent upstart’ last week.”
“Steph? They must’ve been really worried about us.”
“Yeah.”
“How much sleep do you think they got?”
“Guys? Maybe we should quieten down a bit.”
“They can’t stay on the gym mats, Timbo.”
“Duke? Damian?”
Duke stirs unwillingly. “Mmph,” he groans.
“Mmph to you too, lightbulb boy,” says a very amused, familiar tone.
“…S’eh?” he tries, failing to crack open his eyelids. They feel like they’re full of sand. He’s got a sore back and tight shoulders and a dull ache in his ribs. There’s a warm, heavy weight on his sternum.
“Yeah, that’s me,” says the voice, a little less jovial.
Duke hums, contentedly.
“What were you doing down in the cave?” a new voice chips in. There’s a thread of anxiety running through it, poorly disguised.
“Oooo, big brother Timmy,” taunts the first voice in the background.
“Mmph,” Duke says again. “T’m. S’eh. N’t dead.”
A sad chuckle. “Never dead,” Tim says gently. It sounds almost like a promise, except Duke knows that it’s not, because they can’t promise that. They can’t promise something like that and keep it.
His heart aches.
“Inj’ries?”
“None,” Steph reports. “Bruce dislocated his elbow. But that’s it. Alfred’s setting it now, he wouldn’t sit still earlier because we couldn’t find you, but he’s fine.”
“I’m gl’d you’re okay,” Duke manages.
“Yeah.”
Duke shifts slightly. The warm thing on his chest is pinning him to the mat, but that’s okay. He thinks it might be Damian's head. He kind of wants to get up and go verify that Bruce and Cass are alive, but he doesn’t think he’d make it onto his feet. How much sleep did he get last night? With immense effort, he splinters his eyes open, and the searing light tries to rub them raw.
“We got back at six-forty,” Tim says. “Scarecrow was more of a nuisance than anticipated. Really threw off the schedule. Bit rude of him, really.”
Duke looks at him. Still in the Red Robin suit, sitting cross-legged at the edge of the gym mat.
He lifts an arm in invitation.
“I’m sorry,” Tim whispers. He slides in beside Duke. He smells like sweat and Gotham’s dust: a special blend of alley dirt and wind and smog.
Duke doesn’t particularly care because this is Tim and he’s still alive.
Tim says, “why didn’t you call us on comms? Or ask Alfie? He could’ve reassured you.”
Duke thinks about shrugging. He decides that it would be too much effort.
“If I asked,” he replies, slowly, “the update might have been worse than it was in my head.”
The words are still getting stuck before they enter his mouth, but they don’t taste as ashen as the promises did. He tries again.
“Even if you all were fine when I asked,” Duke murmurs, “it might not have stayed that way while I was sleeping. And then I wouldn’t know about it until I woke up.”
Tim considers that. Duke can hear it. He wipes his nose on his Red Robin sleeve and sighs.
“We could give you an emergency comm unit,” he offers. “You can keep it in your room, and if anything happens Alfred will wake you.”
“B wouldn’t like that,” Duke replies. “He’s very insistent about sleep.”
“Hypocrite, right?” Tim responds, and Duke snorts a laugh into his older brother’s shoulder. “We can talk him around. Or just flat-out smuggle you one. Oracle will help.”
“Aw, cuddles?” Steph shouts suddenly. Duke suddenly feels like he’s about to be squished. “You were getting cuddles in that sweaty costume while I was off showering like a hygienic person? No fair!”
“Uh oh,” Tim manages, before Duke hears a strangled wheeze and somebody puts their legs over his. There’s some scuffling beside him on the mat.
“Go shower,” Steph shrieks, and pushes Tim away.
“Yeah, yeah.”
Duke closes his eyes. His back is still sore. He’s not getting up just yet, though.
“Sleep,” Steph tells him. “We’re safe.”
They’re home.