Chapter Text
Bruce stands in on a thin crust of snow, the wind blowing needle-like against his cheeks. The small pond is frozen over, the snow covering it pristine. The sky is a clear pale blue, the sun sparkling and refracting off the snow against the leafless hedges and dark stone of the manor at the edge of the grounds.
It’s February second. Six more weeks of winter. Perhaps Bruce will live to see them after all.
A gust of wind tugs on his jacket, and one end of his scarf flaps loose from the zipper. Bruce releases a breath, hunching his shoulders as he eyes the ice-covered pond. He doesn’t need to be out here. He probably shouldn’t be out here. He should be inside, with his family.
One minute more. Then he’ll go back inside.
“Robin, DOWN!”
Robin dropped without a word, cape flaring about him as the magician’s shot went wide. Nightwing at once descended on the man, escrima snapping out against the animated cloak. They did little to nothing, given the caution Nightwing needed to exercise in order to not become compromised himself, but it was enough; the magician turned, a snarl on his face, distracted for a moment the more immediate threat.
Batman took the moment to dart to Robin’s side, putting himself squarely between the two and trusting Nightwing to watch his back. “Retreat,” he said, putting the edge of an order into his voice. “You’re done for the night.”
Robin’s face twisted beneath his mask. “I will not run cowering from this mediocre mad-man in a Halloween costume!”
“He is targeting you,” Batman returned bluntly. “You are a liability.”
“He poses no threat -”
“Robin, this is an order.”
Robin’s shoulders jumped to his ears. “Fine!” he snapped. “Fine!”
Robin leapt away, disappearing into the shadows of the warehouse rafters. Batman turned back to the fight behind him.
None of them were quite sure what the magician was doing in Gotham, or what his endgame might be. He had simply shown up, pronounced Batman a threat to humanity, and started slinging curses at Robin. Having experience fighting the occasional evil sorcerer which decided to make Gotham their conquest unfortunately did not make them any easier to fight. Humans were erratic at the best of times, and magic made them almost unpredictable.
Almost.
“Operation Nimue?” Nightwing called, leaping out of the way as Batman hurled a handful of marble-sized explosives at the magician. A sparking cloud of smoke rose up and Nightwing rocked back in a crouch, taking the brief respite.
“Plan Delta-07,” Batman corrected shortly. He caught Nightwing’s smirk in the corner of his eye, and felt something in him soften at the expression. He stepped back and melted into the shadows.
Ten minutes and several small explosions (magical and incendiary both) later they were on the roof of the warehouse beneath the overcast sky. Batman stepped up to the ensnared magician, gazing into vivid magenta eyes which seemed to spark with rage.
“You should not have come to Gotham,” he said quietly. Nightwing stepped up behind him, snapping his escrima onto his back. “No metas. No magicians.”
“I’m not here for you,” the magician scoffed. “Esaeler—”
“Ah-ah,” Nightwing interrupted, hand shooting up to cover the man’s mouth. After a moment he lowered it. “I wouldn’t try that again if I were you. See, me, I’m all for letting you off easy. Batsy here, though....” Nightwing trailed off, letting the silence hang a moment before letting his lip curl up, just slightly. “Let’s just say your teeth wouldn’t be the only collateral.”
“What are your intentions with Robin?” Batman demanded, keep his voice deliberately soft. Pale purple eyes locked onto his, burning.
It still confounded him, that anyone would wish harm upon a child.
The magician opened his mouth to answer, and then his gaze snapped to something behind them. And that, right there, was where everything went wrong.
Whatever being this was, it had made a deal with a demon far more powerful than any Batman had encountered before. Steel cuffs fell molten from the magician’s wrists and he shouted, hands flying up even as both Nightwing and Batman launched once again into the offensive. But Nightwing wasn’t at his side; as Batman leapt forward Nightwing leapt back, arms out to tackle the small boy who had appeared on the roof behind them.
Batman would be having words with Robin when this was over. Insubordination was not to be tolerated, and Robin had disobeyed a direct order and thus compromised the safety of everyone on this case. The boy had held the title of Robin for nearly two years at this point, Batman knew that he knew better -
“A wols elbaepacseni htaed!” the man snarled, hands out, and Batman leapt forward, batarang already flying from his fingers. The enchanted blade, a last resort Batman had reluctantly commissioned from Zatanna several years before, sliced through the magician’s shielding and embedded itself below the man’s collarbone. At the same moment he felt a piercing pain in his abdomen, sending him flying back. His head slammed against the metal roof and for a moment, everything went white.
“—man! Batman!”
Nightwing’s silhouette came into view against the polluted sky, his face tight beneath the mask. Bruce felt the pressure of his hand on his shoulder as he pushed himself up with a grunt.
“Pain?” Nightwing asked.
There was an echo of agony radiating from his naval, but it was manageable and swiftly abating. More pressing was the sensation of a hot coal being pressed into his palm. Not bothering to answer Nightwing, Batman yanked off his glove with a heartfelt curse.
As soon as it was exposed to the open air the feeling began to fade, along with the glow radiating from his skin. In the center of his palm remained a mark, red and raw.
“Manageable,” Batman growled at last, clenching his fist and forcing the lingering pain to the back of his mind. “Robin?”
Nightwing’s lips pressed together in a thin line. “Dealing with the magician,” he said tightly. “Unharmed. You were hit, B.”
“I’m fine,” Batman said curtly. The magician’s words looped through his mind, demanding his attention, but he pushed them away and accepted Nightwing’s hand up from the ground. A single look told him that the magician was out of it, and would be for a long time. Blood, an unnatural milky color, spread from his shoulder; Robin had preemptively gagged the man, a measure that was likely unnecessary given the amount of blood on the roof.
“We’ll call in the Dark League to take him away,” Batman decided. His gaze lingered on his son, the boy studiously avoiding his gaze. “We’ll debrief immediately in the cave.
“It was a death curse,” Bruce said evenly, studying the output on the screen. Beside him, Dick let out his breath in a puff of air.
“Shit, Bruce.”
“The timeline wasn’t specified,” Bruce replied, focusing on the diagnostics. Facts he could deal with. An output of rational numbers which provided the basis of a plan, a methodology to be carried to completion. And yet, the readings were frustratingly vague. “It could take effect at any moment.”
“How’s your hand?” Dick asked after a moment, his voice carefully controlled.
Bruce flexed his fingers, lifting his palm to examine the mark. In the time it had taken them to secure the magician and return to the cave, it had turned a sharp black against his pale skin. A semi-circle, the meaning unknown to Bruce.
Bruce let his hand drop back to his side. “Nothing new. Zatanna has informed me that she can be here tomorrow for a consult.”
Dick was silent. He studied the screen and Bruce studied him, automatically searching out all the tells of his eldest. The way he was chewing his lip was the most obvious; Dick only did that when he wanted to say something, but wasn’t sure how it would go over. Which itself was telling, because under normal circumstances there was no power on Earth that could keep Dick from speaking his mind.
Dick caught him looking and grimaced. “Have you considered Operation Phil?”
“I have.”
“So is that a yes, then?”
“That’s a last resort, Dick.”
“So?” Dick demanded. “You’ve been hit with a death curse, Bruce, and a powerful one. That sounds pretty near last resort to me.”
“Operation Phil?”
Both men turned to the young boy standing behind them. Damian was staring up at the large screen, reading the certainty of Bruce’s death upon it.
“Plan Delta-11,” Bruce said. “A self-imposed time-loop.”
“Apropos, almost,” Dick said lightly, his posture shifted to a slightly more relaxed shape in the presence of the twelve-year-old. “Tomorrow’s Groundhog Day.”
“Do it,” Damian said. His gaze slid to Bruce, serious. “Father, I—” his gaze dropped, his arms stiff by his side. “I apologize. My behavior tonight was unacceptable. Perhaps—perhaps it need not have been so.”
Bruce’s eyes jumped to the clock in the corner of the screen. 11:51. “Perhaps.”
It seemed, strangely, like an unnecessary course of action. But that was the human part of him, the part that said surely this isn’t serious. Bruce knew better. He spent years—decades—training that instinct out of himself. Magic was real, curses were serious, and anything that could go wrong would go wrong. Plans were the anchors in a veritable storm of unpredictability. In a life of a million unknown deaths, meticulously crafted contingencies were what kept you alive.
“Bruce.”
Bruce took a moment more to contemplate his course of action. He played the night over in his head, each choice and consequence clear in his mind. He flexed his fingers again, examining the black mark on his palm. An almost-circle, the ends almost but not quite touching.
Amazing, how such a damning thing could hold such strange beauty.
“Plan Delta-11,” Bruce repeated at last, decisively. His gaze went once more to the clock on the monitor— 11:54— before he turned and strode to the lockers in the back. He opened one and pulled out an amulet, an unassuming blue stone wrapped in a copper alloy. It hung lightly between his fingers as he lifted it into the air.
“See you soon, then,” Dick said, a relieved note threading his voice. Bruce turned to see him herding Damian in the direction of the stairs. “You’ll keep us informed, yeah?”
Bruce grunted, slinging the amulet over his neck. Five minutes until the clock reset. Four minutes until he turned back time; until he took the future into his own hands and saved himself from a death unknown.
11:55.
“Up, Dames, come on.”
Bruce turned to see Damian paused halfway up the stairs. He was staring at Bruce, a strange look in his young face. Guilt, fear, and something that might have been anger. As though he knew something Bruce didn’t; as though he had realized something that Bruce himself hadn’t yet considered.
“Father—”
“Damian, up,” Dick commanded. “We’ve only got a minute, and we can’t be here when the clock resets.”
Damian jerked away from Dick’s hand, his face flushing. He ran up the remaining steps, and Dick turned to wave once more at Bruce before darting after him.
Bruce lifted the amulet between his fingers as the door slipped shut above him, his gaze trained on the clock. He had only a few minutes to set the loop, and yet he found himself hesitating, the picture of Damian’s face fresh in his mind. What had Damian seen, what had he known, what had Robin understood that Batman had yet to grasp -
Oh. Of course.
Bruce lowered his hand, watching the clock tick one minute closer to midnight. Of course, of course. Alone, with only the endless flutter of bats to fill the dead air, Bruce allowed himself a small smile. Good Robin.
The final minutes to midnight felt endless, when any second could be the second of Bruce’s death. The time seemed almost arbitrary, irrational, but of course that was how magic worked. If Bruce activated the amulet before midnight it would loop this day; any time after midnight, and it would loop the next.
Bruce waited until the clock slid past midnight before activating the loop.