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An ordinary night in Gotham looked like hotdog vendors open for late night orders, sounded like laughter and jeers along bustling sidewalks, felt like the passing rumble of cranked bass through car windows.
That night was not ordinary. That night, it seemed even Gotham itself knew to hold its breath. That night, the hotdog vendors packed up as the sun set, the pedestrians wisely headed indoors, the cars pulled off the roads for the night.
That night, Gotham looked like the Batmobile flying down unusually cleared roads, sounded like heavy boots pounding against concrete, felt like the moment of hushed horror before a life-changing tragedy.
The tip was vague and called in anonymously. Just, “Found that Wayne kid. You better hurry,” and a rattled off address. Bruce would listen to it to the point of obsession, but not that night. That night was reserved for action, for pushing 120 miles per hour down roads barely maintained enough for max 50, for flying toward the building with single-minded ferocity.
Nearly a full week, Tim had been gone. Six days and twelve hours.
Six days and twelve hours of frantic search; of anxiety, of dread. Six days and twelve hours of horror roiling in his gut, of the careful boxes sorting his emotions cracking and breaking and spewing their contents for the world to see and judge: of Bruce falling apart.
Before the Batmobile fully stopped, Bruce threw open the door and leapt from his seat. The structure was dark and unassuming from the outside, but that did not mean it was abandoned. Protocol dictated Bruce case the perimeter, find a quiet entrance, slip inside for proper reconnaissance, and develop a plan based upon his findings. Protocol suggested Batman wait for backup if possible—not for the GCPD cars on their way, but for Nightwing. Superman. Anyone.
Six days, twelve hours; too long. Bruce would not wait a moment longer. He burst into the warehouse without a thought to the consequences, to the possibility of an ambush or a trap. Nothing mattered beyond those six days and twelve hours, beyond the need to keep any more time from passing, beyond getting to his son.
Kidnapping attempts were not uncommon in Bruce’s family. Both as Wayne’s and Bats, they were desirable targets.
While wearing the cape, they could fight back. While wearing the cape, they had access to the trackers and communication devices woven into their suits, could often buy enough time to undo their own restraints.
The true challenge was posed outside of their capes, but Bruce had each of his children trained to handle such emergencies in their civilian identities as well. They carried panic buttons, knew the right placating words to say, had access to a separate account for the ones more violent and impatient than the norm.
So, when Tim disappeared as Timothy Wayne, the initial reaction was worry but not outright panic. Tim was trained for it, had his panic button and his negotiation training and access to enough money to set a desperate man up for life. There were protocols and plans in place. They would handle it, as they handled everything.
It wasn’t until his panic button turned up, until hours passed without word or ransom that Bruce truly began to fret.
Maybe Tim is handling it on his own, Bruce thought. But the ransom account stayed full. The phone stayed silent. Tim stayed gone.
The worst week of Dick’s life culminated in a brief call through the comm line:
Batman’s bass, barking an address. Bruce’s baritone, stressed, emphasizing, “Hurry.”
Dick didn’t need any more information to understand what he was heading toward. His heart was already in his throat, his fingers tight around the grapnel-gun as he changed direction and propelled himself faster into the unusually quiet night.
Fifteen minutes to reach the dark building; it would have taken Batman seven. Eight minutes that Bruce had been inside without a secondary call. Eight minutes of Dick struggling through an internal panic response, of Dick fearing the worst. But what were eight minutes, when Dick had been panicking and fearing for nearly a full week already?
Perhaps they were the worst eight minutes of Dick’s life. Perhaps the next eight would be even worse. As Dick burst into the warehouse eight minutes after his father, he couldn’t know what he was walking into, couldn’t know which eight minutes would be the ones that would haunt him most.
The night Tim was taken, they’d had plans. Meet up at their favorite Mexican place, catch a late showing of the movie Tim had been looking forward to, and turn Dick’s living room into a fort for the proper sleepover experience. Tim had been so excited about it; he’d texted Dick a reminder nearly every day that week.
Seeing him so excited made Dick excited too; he’d even joked that they should have made T-shirts to immortalize the occasion. When Tim laughed and said, “Too far,” Dick put in a rush order on two just to be contrary.
The shirts were eyesores: red with yellow font, comic sans, pixelated emojis—the whole shebang. Terrible, and so perfect. Dick & Tim’s Ultimate Hangout Night, they read. Dick wrapped Tim’s like a birthday present and brought it with him to the restaurant. He’d been wearing his own, under a jacket for the surprise factor.
But then Tim hadn’t shown, and Dick had called Bruce, and then the police, and it wasn’t until he was changing for an anxious patrol that he finally unzipped his jacket and saw the shirt and nearly broke down.
By then it had already been hours. By then, Dick was already beside himself, panicked and fearful like he would be all week.
That night, he wore the stupid shirt underneath his suit. It would still be funny, Dick thought, if he were wearing it when they rescued Tim.
Jason got the call late, because of course he did. After everything that happened between him and Bruce, between him and the family, him and Tim, of course he wouldn’t be on speed-dial when the kid went missing.
As it happened, Jason got the call hours after he heard the news on TV: Bruce Wayne’s newest adoptee, missing.
As it happened, Red Hood was already out and looking when Nightwing’s voice appeared on his comm; anxious, stressed, pleading, “We need you, Jay.”
It was almost enough to make Jason admit he was already searching. Almost.
Instead, he grunted, “Fine,” and pretended he wasn’t just as eager to find the kid in one piece.
It was easy to pretend he didn’t care about his family—when they were screaming at each other, when the issue of morality was brought up, when masks hid the sincerity in their eyes away. It was easy to pretend that Tim was still just Pretender, Replacement, Placeholder; that Jason had no desire nor intention to play big brother.
But sometimes, Jason was taken back by the knowledge that it was pretending. That he did care. That he did sort of want to be some kid’s older brother. And not just any kid’s, but Tim Drake’s.
That knowledge hit hardest as he was racing to that fucking warehouse, Batman’s voice still ringing in his ear but his following silence somehow louder. That knowledge strangled, burned, as Jason tore through empty streets, racing against a clock that sounded suspiciously like the ticking timer of a bomb set to blow.
The warehouse was unassuming from the outside, just like every other warehouse Jason had ever been in. Like the ones filled with laced drugs and a cache of stolen weapons and shivering trafficked victims. Like the one he’d died in.
Every warehouse was unassuming from the outside. It was once you walked inside that you caught a glimpse of humanity at its worst, that the bigger picture started to unfold.
As unassuming as it was on the outside, Jason barely needed to rush through the open door to get that first glimpse. Drips and streaks of dried blood on the floor, a cart of tools off to one side, a toppled chair with snapped ropes strewn over top.
A dark figure hunched over a form prone on the ground.
For a moment, Jason wasn’t sure what he was seeing. The warehouse was dark, but mostly empty, mostly silent. It was only when the faint sound of counting finally reached his ear that Jason snapped to awareness; only the counting that put understanding to the image of Batman performing chest compressions on a figure just the right size to be their missing Robin.
The counting stopped. Batman leaned in to deliver oxygen. The counting resumed.
“Bruce,” Dick’s voice said, and Jason startled slightly as he finally noticed the figure of Nightwing, somehow already in his field of vision. The name was spoken like a sob; Bruce, not Batman. Dick was normally good about names in the field.
Batman ignored him, continued his compressions.
“Bruce, stop, he’s—”
“No.” That was Batman’s snarl. It felt wrong to hear from him, with his shoulders trembling like that. “No.”
Jason stepped forward, unusually hesitant and unsure. The warehouse felt cold, just like it had been in Ethiopia. Jason imaged the chill of concrete against bare feet, the bite of crowbar against broken skin, the stench of gasoline in a burning nose.
The body was lost beyond Batman’s bulk. Was it Tim’s, or Jason’s?
Dick’s head whipped up at the movement. The mask was still pressed against his eyes, but it couldn’t hide the sincerity of his emotion any longer. Not with his mouth so twisted, his brow so furrowed, the liquid trailing so far down his cheeks that the edges of blue domino lifted.
“Tim?” Jason’s voice sounded wrong. Far away. Echoing from somewhere else. Perhaps from the form of the boy, prone on the floor.
Dick pressed a hand over his mouth as if he could physically contain his next sob.
Invisible strings drew Jason closer, toward the horror hidden beyond his father’s back. Each step felt punctuated by another click of the clock’s timer, still steadily ticking down; by Batman’s voice, counting in time.
No… by pleading.
“Tim, please,” Bruce’s voice wavered slightly, as his locked hands pressed down against a still chest. Each pump sounded like the timer. Like Four. Three. Two.
“Stay with me,” Bruce begged, with more emotion than Jason remembered ever hearing from him.
But it was clear to Jason, as he numbly stepped around Dick’s reaching hands and finally caught a glimpse of the body that had once been his only little brother, Tim had already left.
One.
And the timer stopped.