Chapter Text
Robin was tired.
He did all the same things as before, praising their work and showing them combat skills and looking genuinely interested to learn from them. He still played games with them, trash talking Bart so badly the other night that the speedster had almost forever quit Mario Kart. He laughed and he smiled, not often, but not less than before. He talked and talked and talked to anyone who would listen and anyone who wouldn’t.
But any time they had a mission debrief, the weight on Robin’s shoulders grew. He shouldered any and all blame aimed at the team easily, coming to their defense, offering strategies to fix it, but everything aimed at him made something in him wilt. It was barely noticeable, the smallest clench of his jaw, a deliberately slow blink of the white lenses. They wondered if it had always been there and they had just missed it.
Robin was tired.
He still switched between the tower and Gotham, but every time he came back from Gotham, his eyebags were a little bigger, now unable to be hidden even by his sunglasses. One time, Robin had stumbled in and had mumbled something about hallucinations, which meant he’d been up for days. He’d crashed on the couch, only to be up less than five hours later, a spring in his step and a smile on his face as he rambled about his latest case.
“How do we fix it?” Bart asked, thigh moving up and down, up and down, up and down.
Cassie put her hand on his thigh and he stopped with a sheepish smile.
“We could call Nightwing,” she suggested.
There was a moment of silence, unease in the air. They had no idea how much loyalty Nightwing had to Robin and how much he had to Batman.
“I’m not even sure what it is we should be fixing,’ Kon admitted.
“His confidence,” Cissie suggested thoughtfully.
But the thing was, Robin was plenty confident. He gave his orders sharply and precisely. When Cassie had been sceptical about how to incorporate a back handspring of all things into a combat maneuver, Robin had moved into a set of flips and tricks paired with weapons so effortlessly that it had given Kon a crisis. When he had seen their looks, he had simply shrugged. “What? Nightwing taught me.”
“I think he thinks that they’re all questioning his ability to lead,” Cassie mused. “But it’s only-”
Batman. It was just Batman. Except with Robin, Batman was never only just nor was he just for that matter, not in their opinion anyway.
“So we show him,” Bart said, his eyes lighting up with an unholy light. It should have tipped them off that this was not a plan they should be following.
The plan was simple. They would just not do what Robin said. It would go terrible. Then, they would do what Robin said and it would work and go exceptionally well and nobody would ever question his leadership again. Plus, if they did it in front of Batman and it was very clear that it was entirely their fault, Batman couldn’t fault Robin. He would have to admit that not all of it was on Robin.
Perhaps, they forgot some small details.
Like the fact that Robin was not in on the plan or the fact that such a plan could easily end in injury.
“What the hell were you thinking?” Robin asked, his voice cracking down the middle in a horribly unfamiliar way, but it wasn’t quite clear what was causing it.
It could have been stress or the pressure or the fact that even despite his freakishly high pain-tolerance, Robin went white every time he tried to put weight on his left ankle.
They stayed silent. It was still according to the plan, even if they hadn’t meant for Robin to get hurt because of them.
“What? You decide to ignore my orders completely, but then you all decide, at the same time, that the original plan was good enough after all?” Right, they had also forgotten how good of a detective he was. “I’m not sure what stunt that was or why you pulled it, but do not do it again,” he added quieter.
Robin was tired.
“We won’t,” Cissie promised immediately.
“We’re sorry,” Bart added, before moving his chin forward slightly in a typical show of his brash stubbornness. “But it was necessary, Rob.”
Robin searched their faces, one by one, before he dipped his head into a nod. “Alright. If you say it was necessary, it was necessary. I trust you.” He said it like it was the easiest thing in the world.
It made it all the more gutwrenchingly awful when Robin stopped where he was being held up by Kon immediately upon seeing that Batman was doing their debrief. Apparently, he had not known.
Something very, very complicated moved over Robin’s face, but he let Kon keep half-carrying him forward to stand besides his team.
“That was terrible,” Batman said simply.
None of them wilted. It had been terrible, after all.
“There was a communication issue,” Robin lied, so smoothly that if they hadn’t known that it was a lie, they might have believed it.
“That’s not true,” Bart said immediately.
“We disobeyed his orders and didn’t follow the plan at first,” Cassie reported.
Batman watched them silently, crossing his arms in front of his chest. “So a leadership failure,” he stated.
Robin swallowed. It looked slightly painful.
“No,” Cassie said immediately, shaking her head so hard it sent her hair flying. “It wasn’t Robin’s fault. We thought we had a better idea and when it didn’t work, we executed his plan and it worked perfectly.”
“So you had an issue but he neither noticed nor did you feel confident enough in his leadership to approach him and criticise his approach openly,” Batman summarized.
They gaped at him. Robin was quiet, Kon’s arm still around his shoulders, eyes on the floor. He made no move to defend himself.
After last time, none of them expected him to.
Which did not mean they couldn’t.
“No, what the hell,” Bart exclaimed, nearly a yell. He caught himself and continued in a more measured tone. “It wasn’t Robin’s fault. His plan worked, we were just being dumb.”
They all echoed the sentiment except Kon who had his head slightly cocked and was staring at Batman with an expression that couldn’t very well be qualified as anything but hostile.
“So what were you trying to do?” Batman asked. “Proof a point?”
Right, he was a detective too.
“We were just stupid,” Cissie said, voice curling in on itself, her eyes flickering from Robin to Batman and back again.
“No, I don’t think so,” Batman said simply. “I think Robin’s leadership has become lax enough that you feel the need to test boundaries. Clearly, this is not working.”
A pause as dread settled in their stomachs. Robin didn’t even move.
Robin was resigned.
Robin was tired.
“I’m suspending Robin from his leadership position until I’m confident he can handle it. Cassie, you’re in charge.”
Robin didn’t even twitch.
“What?” Kon started, outraged.
“You can’t-” Bart yelled.
“I don’t want-,” Cassie started.
“But-”, Cissie whispered.
Batman glared and silence fell. “I have made my decision.”
The verdict was cold. Final. It rang through the room and bounced oddly off the walls.
“Robin, with me.”
“He can’t even walk,” Kon said through gritted teeth.
“I can walk just fine,” Robin replied with an easy smile, meant to reassure, choosing that moment to finally say something.
The smile fell flat. Robin was tired. They could all tell.
They all wished he’d stayed silent.
“Robin, come,” Batman said and Robin went, limping over so quickly that they almost didn’t notice the way his entire body clenched in pain at the slightest jostling of his hurt ankle. “He’ll be back once he is healed. Clearly he is in need for some remedial classes about leadership, so it works out nicely.”
With that, Batman was gone, leaving them frozen in their wake.
“It’s fine,” Robin said.
They all startled, having not realised that he was still there.
“It’s not,” Cassie argued, angry tears glinting in her eyes. “This is all our fault.”
“Yes,” Robin agreed lightly. “But you said it was necessary and I trust you.”
Him repeating the sentiment did not make the guilt lessen any.
“So I’ll see you soon and we’ll come back stronger from this.” He turned, before pausing again. “You’ll do great, Cassie,” he said, genuinely encouraging. “Text me if you need anything.”
With that, Robin was gone too.
“I’m going to be sick,” Cissie gasped and they hastily moved out of her way as she stumbled towards the nearest bathroom.
“That’s enough,” Cassie stated once they were all showered and fed, aimlessly sitting on the couch in glum silence and trying not to look at the empty space Robin usually sat in. Her voice was eerily calm, calm enough that they all shot her alarmed looks. Kon didn’t. Kon could hear her heart fluttering. “That’s enough,” Cassie repeated.
“I agree,” Bart said, but his voice wasn’t calm, teeth gritted.
“I think,” Cissie started, faltering slightly when their attention fell on her, drumming her fingers against her pulse point. “I think maybe we should call Nightwing after all.”
So they did.
They sat crowded around the phone in the big space of the living area that felt too empty for four people. They waited as the phone rang and rang, before Nightwing finally picked up.
“Cissie?” he asked. “Is Robin worrying again?”
“No,” Cissie replied. A pause. “Well, maybe.”
Nightwing listened patiently. He didn’t interrupt, not once, even as they rambled about Robin’s rambling, going through a few too many facts they had learned from him before remembering that maybe they shouldn’t go through all of Robin’s knowledge lest they’d be here the whole night. They told him about how Robin talked about everything but himself. They told him about his pain tolerance and the fact that when he was completely unguarded, too sleepy to care or under the influence of a toxin, he flinched away from their hands. They told him about his smiles and his care and his worry and how little he applied any of that to himself.
They told him about Batman. Told him about how he had made Robin curl in on himself, how he had made Robin back down with nothing more than a few words. They told him about the invisible pressure on Robin’s shoulder for every debrief.
They told him about their stupid plan.
They told him that Robin was suspended.
They told him that Robin’s last words before he’d disappeared to what was essentially a grounding had been that he trusted them and that they would do great, that Cassie would do great at replacing him.
“I see,” Nightwing said after all that. He sounded calm, but Kon tilted his head slightly and Cissie grimaced a little and Bart looked in confusion between the two. “Thanks for bringing this to my attention.”
“Will you help?” Cassie blurted out. “You were Robin once. Surely you get whatever is going on with him.”
There was a long, long, long moment of silence on the other end of the phone. If they hadn’t heard his breathing, they would have thought that Nightwing had hung up on them.
“I don’t think I was ever Robin in the same way he is,” the man said eventually. “But I’ll help.”
They breathed in relief. The space felt warmer already.
“I think Robin is long overdue a visit from his brothers,” Nightwing muttered and then he thanked them and hung up.
“His brothers?” Bart said, face scrunching up.
“Nightwing and Red Hood?” Cissie asked, very slowly.
“It can’t be,” Kon immediately refuted.
Cassie looked at him. “Why not?”
“Well,” the clone said. “Wouldn’t that make Batman his…” And then, the son of Lex Luthor and Superman trailed off, because it wasn’t like he had any high ground to stand on for this topic.
Bart exhaled shakily.
“We’ll fix it,” Cissie said with new determination. “We’ll help him.” They all stared at her. “We will,” she repeated stubbornly.
Cassie nodded firmly. Then she shifted slightly. “Until then, I should probably ask Rob for those leadership tips.”
Something in the room broke and they all started to laugh, small giggles at first that grew more unhinged as the time went on. After that, they stayed where they were, leaning against each other.
Robin was tired.
They would fix it.