Chapter Text
A somersault off the rooftop turned the whole city upside down. Dick watched it in free-fall, blue sky against the inverted skyline, view interrupted by his yellow cape whipping past his head and the wind against his bare legs between his green shorts and pixie boots. Then, he threw a line, flipped right-side-up again, and landed lightly on the next building. A flock of pigeons promptly took to the sky in startled, cooing offense.
“Sorry, birds,” Dick muttered, squinting against the sun and setting up for his next gambit, him against gravity.
“Robin,” said the voice in his ear. “Focus.”
It tickled a little, the comm, the vibration of the plastic when Bruce spoke. “I am focused,” Dick muttered back and took off before Bruce could contest that statement.
Soon enough, Bruce would be in his meeting and wouldn’t be able to talk, anyway. The big, important Wayne Enterprises meeting that trapped Bruce in his office and away from what he considered his real work—their real work. Dick didn’t feel bad for him so much as he felt bad for not feeling bad. The illicit thrill of being out in the daytime, and alone, and actually missing school because Bruce had called him in sick, all carried too great a pull. Right now, Dick was supposed to be in Ms. Robertson’s sixth-grade science class, learning about the periodic table. Being here instead had him biting his tongue so he wouldn’t shout for joy on the next jump and attract unneeded attention.
The work was too important; Dick wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t important. Hours of stakeouts and sneaking tracking devices on cars and acting as lookout while Bruce growled threateningly at someone beneath his Batman cowl still hadn’t given them the full extent of Marconi’s network. And then, like the sun breaking through the clouds, Bruce had gotten wind of a meeting the man was supposed to have today with someone unspecified and very important.
A job for Batman and Robin, and with Batman stuck sitting at a long table in a Wayne Enterprises boardroom and discussing shareholders, Robin would have to work alone. Dick reached the building across the street from Marconi’s, settled into the concealing shadow of a gargoyle jutting out from the corner of the roof, and took out his binoculars. Blurred color met his eyes through his domino mask, resolving into clear lines and shapes as he adjusted the frames.
On the roof across the street, a pool sloshed chlorine-blue water onto the tiles lining its sides. A figure passed beneath the water, smooth and formless and at last surfacing at the end. Marconi shook his hair out of his face, raining droplets back into the pool, and then dived again.
“Visual,” Dick whispered into his comm.
“Mm,” Bruce grunted, which meant his meeting had started.
Another dive, another length of the pool. Dick fit his body more securely alongside the gargoyle and kept silent, his earlier excitement mellowing as he watched. He didn’t mind; something about the pass of Marconi’s body beneath the water was almost meditative, even if he was a drug-trafficking, woman-hitting jerk. It ended about seven minutes later by Dick’s count when Marconi swam over to the shallow end and surfaced one last time, resting his elbows on the side of the pool and catching his breath.
Zooming in with his binoculars, Dick watched the water droplets trail down through the dark hair on Marconi’s heaving chest. He had thick arms and a bit of a paunch in his belly and reminded Dick in that way of the strongman back in the circus, fascinating to watch. Enough so that he missed the harried man exiting the set of glass doors that led from penthouse to pool, starting in surprise when a shadow fell over Marconi. Guiltily, Dick readjusted his binoculars and thanked his stars Bruce wasn’t there to see.
The man had brought out a phone and a deeply worried look on his face. Recognition sparked, and Dick placed him as Falco, one of Marconi’s men that they hadn’t managed to get to yet. Marconi said something with his head turned that Dick didn’t catch, and a tucked chin and mumbled answer didn’t let him read Falco’s lips, either. Bending down, Falco held the phone up to Marconi’s ear. The following conversation passed rapid and short, Dick reading and carefully memorizing the phrases, “behind schedule” and “what the fuck do I pay them for?”
As Marconi talked, Falco’s agitation grew, eyes flitting nervously to their surroundings as if concerned about eavesdroppers up on the twentieth floor. Dick held back a snort at the irony and uselessness of the motion. The call ended, which Dick could tell because Falco straightened again, shoved the phone in his pocket, and all but ran back into the penthouse. Marconi, left alone, closed his eyes and tilted his head skywards.
In his hiding place, Dick frowned. Falco’s behavior bothered him with a splinter’s insistence, the paranoia and how quickly he’d fled. Dick replayed the way his eyes had darted around and began following their trajectory to the surrounding rooftops. Glass, concrete, and gargoyles—and then he sucked in a quiet gasp. A couple blocks to the east, a figure stood on the rooftop, one foot propped against the ledge. Focusing his binoculars, Dick took in the details of the mask on the man’s face, the suit that covered him from head to toe. The handle of what looked like a broadsword over his shoulder the barrel of a rifle held loosely in his fist, the metal glinting in the sun.
“B, company,” Dick warned into his comm, fast and urgent like his own stepped-up heartbeat as he assessed the new threat. “He’s a cape, or trying to be. Not one I recognize. I think he’s here to kill Marconi.”
Through the comm, Dick listened to Bruce excuse himself, a bout of empty air, and then the sound of a door closing. “Maintain position and describe him to me,” he ordered, and that wasn’t Bruce anymore, that voice—it was Batman, as sure as if he crouched on the rooftop over Dick in his cowl and cape.
“Um.” Dick fiddled with the binoculars some more, but the angle of the sun worked against him and obscured the figure’s details with glare. “Gonna have to get closer,” he said, casting a quick glance to make sure Marconi wasn’t facing his direction before vaulting to the next roof.
Bruce grunted “Mn” in response; he wasn’t happy with Dick’s decision to disobey orders, but he also wasn’t going to stop him.
A block closer, Dick crouched behind a satellite dish and peered out from a better vantage point. The figure hadn’t moved, one foot still propped on the ledge like he was waiting for something. Dick took in a breath and started his report.
“Eyes on suspect. Estimated height over six feet, maybe six and a half. Estimated weight around two hundred and fifty pounds, and that’s all muscle,” Dick began. “Other physical features unknown due to suit and mask. Suit colors are black and red—no, sorry. Black and orange,” Dick corrected himself. “The base is black and looks armored. Orange gloves, boots, and mask, and he wears his underwear on the outside like Superman.”
He paused and grinned, but the dead silence on the line quickly wiped it away. “Orange utility belt. Weapons appear to be a sword and...that’s not a rifle,” Dick said as he got a closer look at the object in the man’s hand. “It’s some sort of, uh, metal tube? I don’t know how it works, but something tells me it can—”
“Robin, get out of there,” Bruce said so quickly he almost didn’t leave room between the words.
“But—” Dick bit his lip. “He’s going to kill Marconi.”
“He won’t. I’m on my way,” Bruce said, accompanied by the sound of rustling clothes and motion. “Meet me at the rendezvous point.”
That lay a mile away from Dick’s current location and almost three from Wayne Enterprises. “You won’t make it,” Dick said as the figure on the roof lifted the thing that wasn’t a gun and aimed it in Marconi’s direction. “He’s going to kill him now.”
Dick curled his fingers around the edge of the satellite dish for balance and rolled his weight onto the balls of his feet. Time trickled like sand through an hourglass, running out. Bruce thought he could find a way because Batman could always find a way, but Batman wasn’t here. Just Robin, armed with his bo staff and batarangs and the R on his chest, two rapidly closing options laid out before him. He could either save Marconi, or sit back and watch him die.
“I’ll be there,” Bruce promised as if reading his mind, as if saying it could slow time and force reality into a shape he could fix to his liking.
Because it had never really been a question, Dick slid down from the satellite dish to the edge of the roof and said, “There’s no time, B. I’m going in.”
“No. Robin. Robin. Stop. I need you to listen to me,” Bruce said, tightly controlled, but Dick knew him well enough to hear the desperation in the undertone, the way Bruce sounded when he could feel a plan unraveling without a backup in place. “Abort mission and get to the rendezvous point. I know you think you know what you’re doing, but believe me when I say you cannot face that man alone. Robin. Do you hear me?”
A single rooftop away, now. Dick could see the links of chain on the man’s armor, even with his binoculars tucked back into their pouch. “Sorry, Bruce,” he said. “I’ll talk to you in a minute.”
“Robin—” Bruce tried again, but Dick didn’t hear the rest. He cut his comm and crept along the rooftop, calculating his jump point and the best angle for closing in on the target.
Later, Bruce was going to kill him, and he’d probably never let him do a solo mission again, but that didn’t matter. They’d sworn an oath that night in the Batcave, the subterranean chill creeping in past all its furnishings and upgrades, Dick’s smaller hand on the back of Bruce’s larger one: to protect the innocent and uphold justice. He hadn’t just signed on to Bruce’s mission, even though Batman had been taking to the night sky longer than Dick had even been alive—they’d promised each other. That meant something.
It meant, at the moment, that Dick bent his knees, flipped through the air, and landed soundlessly on the rooftop behind the man in the suit. He didn’t move, and he hadn’t fired yet, and Dick didn’t give himself time to think. Taking out his bo staff, he hit the button that made it extend to its full length and ran, setting up for a swing at the back of the man’s head.
The man sidestepped, pulled out his sword, and smacked the flat of it against Dick’s shin mid-jump. Casually, like swatting a fly, if a move that fast could be called casual. White-hot pain shot up Dick’s leg, and he fell to the rough surface of the concrete roof, landed on his back with his air knocked out of him and the blue sky blazing overhead. Dick wanted to scream, but the boot suddenly stepping down on his neck wouldn’t let him draw in air. Spots in his vision, and Dick scrabbled at the boot first, then groped down towards his utility belt, and then a sharp crack echoed in his ears.
Pressure lifted from Dick’s throat, and he gasped for air. Above him, the man slid his weapon back into his holster because he’d fired it already, and that was the cracking sound, and Dick roiled with shame and fury and disbelief because that meant he’d failed and Marconi was dead. He reached for his belt again—pepper spray, batarang, anything that would buy him time and distance until Bruce got here—but the man simply stooped down and grabbed his hands, and Dick couldn’t do a thing to stop him. Transferring both of Dick’s hands to one huge fist, the man tore his utility belt off of him and threw it away.
Dick’s life didn’t flash before his eyes, exactly, but it ran through his head like something let off the leash. He was twelve years old. He’d been an orphan for three years and Robin for a little over two. And he was going to die here on this rooftop because he hadn’t listened, because he’d made a promise and done his best and his best hadn’t been enough.
A thick length of zip-tie appeared, and the man bound Dick’s wrists easily. In front, so Dick could get out of them without too much trouble if he had to, but not with the man so close and those eyes on him, boring down through the holes in the orange mask. He tilted his head, like a heron about to stab its beak into a frog, like he found Dick mildly interesting.
In an animal panic, Dick tried kicking out with his good leg, but it battered ineffectually against the armor. Tried to get away, but his right leg wouldn’t move when he told it to and throbbed with sickening pain instead, making his stomach roll with nausea and tears prick in his eyes.
“Hey! Stop that,” the man said. “You’re only gonna hurt yourself.”
But Dick barely heard him. His pain and his helplessness and the surreality of how quickly everything had changed transformed the suited man above him into a monster, a monster, and Dick knew he had to move, or he was going to die.
The man grabbed his good leg, and Dick sat up and used his bound hands to smack him across the face. In contrast to the armored suit, the mask turned out to be no more than fabric, and the man hissed in pain and dropped his leg. Seizing the advantage, Dick tried to scoot away, to shove his torso against his wrists and break the tie.
Not fast enough, because the man was on him again, grabbing his wrists. “Jesus kid, hold still,” he said, and then, with the hand that wasn’t holding Dick’s, reached up and pulled his mask back off his face. “Hey!”
You didn’t take off your mask. No one took off their masks. That was one of the first rules Bruce had taught him, to protect his identity above all else, the most valuable thing he had and the most costly to lose. And this man had just...done it. In front of a stranger, out of nowhere. Dick couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything except stare.
He was Bruce’s age, maybe a little older. Not old, despite the white, pigmentless color of his hair and eyebrows and close-cropped beard, his face mostly smooth and free of wrinkles. Thirties, Dick guessed. White, and pale, and with gray-blue eyes like chips of ice. Dick thought he looked like a northern winter, just as harsh, just as cold.
“That’s better,” the man said. “Keep still. I’m going to take a look at your leg.”
Fingertips touched the skin above Dick’s ankle; at some point, the man had removed his gloves. He shivered at the sensation, whimpered as it reached the swollen, reddening part of his shin.
“How does that feel?” he asked.
“I think—” Dick rasped, coughed through his partially-crushed throat. “I think it’s broken.”
The man nodded like confirmation, no surprise on his face, no remorse. “I think you’re right,” he said.
He turned without standing, looking at something behind him. Dick considered escape again, but the sight of his swollen leg told him just how far he’d get. A fresh wave of nausea had him closing his eyes and breathing through it, opening them again at the scrape of the man’s armor against the concrete as he moved.
The bo staff rested in his hands, weighted evenly between each palm. As Dick watched, confused and unsure of whether to be afraid again, the man twisted the two halves apart into escrima sticks, grunted as if satisfied, and set them on either side of Dick’s injured leg.
“I need your cape,” he said.
“What? Why?” Dick asked, but talking made him cough again and the man’s hand was already on his shoulder, pulling him up and detaching the cape from the rest of his suit. Leaning back against the ledge of the roof, Dick hissed in pain as the man lifted his leg and then gently wrapped it in the cape, securing the escrima sticks to either side beneath the fabric.
Finished, he sat crossed-legged on the rooftop and rested his elbows on his knees. “That should keep it stable,” he said, then pulled out a hip flask, twisting off the lid. “Have some water.”
The sheen of moisture around the flask’s opening made Dick’s injured throat swallow reflexively, but not enough to make him reach for it. After a minute, the man sighed and took a swig, then held it out again. Hesitantly, Dick cradled the flask in his bound hands and drank, and it was plain water, or at least tasted like it, a balm to his throat.
Handing it back, Dick wiped his mouth on his arm and said, “Thank you.”
“My, aren’t you polite,” the man said, rich and amused and with the slightest hint of a southern drawl.
“Why—?” Dick licked his lips, tried again. “Why are you doing this?”
The way the man’s eyes raked over Dick then made him feel transparent. “What should I do? Leave an injured, baby bird alone and outside its nest?” the man asked rhetorically. “I might as well kill you myself.”
“But you...You broke my leg,” Dick pointed out.
“You attacked me,” the man replied diffidently. “If you’re old enough to do that, you’re old enough to suffer the consequences. What are you, ten? Nine?”
“I’m twelve!” Dick blurted out bristling—and would’ve slapped a hand over his mouth if they hadn’t been bound. He’d just released information about his secret identity! To the enemy! Bruce would probably take away his Robin suit and lock him up at the manor if he ever found out!
Still, the responding smile on the man’s face looked more entertained at Dick’s outburst than triumphant at his slip-up. “I have a son your age. He broke his leg falling out of a tree last summer,” he said. “A couple months, and he was up and running around again. You’re still growing. You’ll heal fast.”
“Ok,” Dick said slowly, unsure of why the man would tell him that or whether he was just lying. “Now what?”
“Now, we wait for your father to show up,” the man said. “Rumor has it that wherever you are, he’s not far behind.”
“My—” Dick stopped, catching himself, but he couldn’t quite stop the bewildered look on his face as he thought of his father. Glowing with pride as Dick joined his parents in their act, swinging off trapezes beneath the high top.
The short, cut-off scream after the ruined net gave way and before their bodies hit the ground.
“He’s not your father,” the man murmured, the glint in his eyes considering.
Bruce—he’d been talking about Bruce. Of course he’d been talking about Bruce, and Dick’s slow, stupid brain just hadn’t caught up in time, and now he’d given something else away. He bit his tongue against saying anything else and turned his head to look out over the rooftops. They descended like steps towards Marconi’s building, and when Dick located it among the rest, he saw Marconi still in the pool, face-down and floating. A spreading, red cloud around his head. Dick turned to the front again and shuddered.
“Why did you have to kill him?” Dick asked because he thought the man might answer and he very much needed to know.
“I’m a mercenary. I took a contract,” the man said, then held out a hand. “Deathstroke the Terminator.”
It seemed absurd, but the whole thing seemed absurd. So, Dick shook it as well as he could with his hands still zip-tied together and introduced himself in turn. “Robin,” he said.
“Pleasure to meet you, Robin,” Deathstroke the Terminator said. “Next time you’re trying to save the life of a scumbag, work on your stealth. Ah. Here we are.”
The mask slid back over Deathstroke’s face, and the rush of air overhead as a new figure landed explained why. Batman loomed like a shadow, like a slice of nighttime in the middle of the sunlit day.
“Deathstroke,” he spat out, advancing. “You’re going to pay for what you’ve done.”
Rising nimbly to his feet, Deathstroke held up his hands and backed away. “Actually, I’m going to get paid for what I’ve done. That’s how being a mercenary works,” he said with a tone that hinted at a smile beneath the mask. “We can fight about it if you like, but the longer that takes, the longer your boy sits here with a broken leg.” He indicated Dick with a wave. “Your call.”
That stopped Bruce, a fleeting look to where Dick lay, a crack in his iron control before he resumed glaring at Deathstroke. “If I see you in my city again—”
“Yes, obviously,” Deathstroke said before he could finish. “I must say I’m looking forward to it.” Stepping up onto the ledge, he gave Dick a little salute. “Until next time, Robin.”
Anything Dick might’ve said to that vanished right along with Deathstroke as he stepped backwards off the ledge and dropped out of sight. By the stiff line of Bruce’s back and the twitch of his lip when he looked over the side of the building, Dick knew Deathstroke was already gone.
*
“When I tell you to abort mission, that means abort mission,” Bruce said, his hands gripping the steering wheel so hard that Dick imagined his knuckles white beneath the black gloves of his Batsuit. “You know the rules, Dick. If you can’t follow orders, I can’t let you patrol.”
They rode in what Dick thought of as the daytime Batmobile, a black sedan with dark-tinted windows. To other drivers or people passing by on the sidewalk, they’d be no more than shadows through the glass. In the passenger seat, reclined all the way back to keep his broken leg straight, Dick watched the view flashing by through the window. Some trees, the tops of buildings. Mostly sky.
“We swore an oath, Bruce,” Dick reminded him quietly, proud of how steady his voice held. “I can’t just run away and let someone die.”
Bruce sighed through his nose. “Marconi died anyway, and you almost joined him,” he said. “Deathstroke has a confirmed kill count in the triple digits. It’s a miracle he didn’t kill you.”
“He’s a mercenary. He wasn’t paid to kill me,” Dick said, leaving out the breath-stopping moments he’d been so certain of that outcome, how scared he’d been. “And he wasn’t like, the Joker or anything,” he added with a half-shrug. “He was nice.”
A mystified silence answered him. “He broke your leg, Dick,” Bruce said after a few seconds.
“Yeah. But he was nice about it,” Dick said.
Spoken aloud, it sounded stupid, and Dick turned his head to the side so he didn’t have to witness Bruce’s judgement in the lines around his mouth. Just—Deathstroke didn’t have to stop with his leg, and he didn’t have to sit with Dick and give him water and smile at him and make sure he was ok. Even the breaking of his leg, now that he knew Deathstroke hadn’t ever meant to kill him, seemed oddly respectful in a way that made Dick feel grown-up and important. Most of Gotham’s usual suspects couldn’t get through a fight with him without teasing and taunting and playing cat and mouse, Boy Wonderspat out in cloying condescension as if they’d forgotten all the times he’d kicked their asses. Deathstroke had simply clocked him as a threat and dealt with him accordingly.
“I shouldn’t have sent you out on your own,” Bruce said finally in a not-quite apology. “How’s your leg?”
“Hurts,” Dick said. He’d been trying not to think about it, the pain throbbing in time with his heartbeat.
The car gave a little jump in speed. “Hold on. We’ll be at Dr. Thompkins’ soon.”
Dick nodded and stared up and out the window. He kept seeing Deathstroke’s unmasked face in flashes, superimposed over the buildings and slices of sky. By all rights, he should have told Bruce long before now, kept knowing that, kept not doing it. The revelation had become Dick’s own guilty secret, pulling him into its orbit.
“I’m sorry,” Dick said without quite knowing which thing he was apologizing for.
In response, Bruce reached over and patted Dick’s good knee. Dick took his hand and squeezed, and Bruce let it stay like that for the rest of the ride.