So because certain persons are demanding this be posted right now, here we go
[Right so this is like, pretty much unedited and so still very raw and in fragments rather than a whole story. HOWEVER, it's like the subject title says, sooo....]
Robin's-
J. J.'s-
Tim's face was buried in Batman's shoulder. He was still giggling, the sound weak and horrible and absolutely devoid of humor, and tears were soaking Bruce's shoulder, right through his cape and his suit. The man gripped the boy, holding onto him more than he was hugging him, trying to pull him back through time until it was a month ago, trying to hold him so tightly that he could have managed to keep from losing him at all.
"Oh Tim," he muttered, and his voice was bleak with a million regrets. Barbara had whispered that it would be all right, and stroked his hair, and hugged him close as she lied. Bruce did none of these things. He simply held onto the boy, this poor, broken child, as though one or both of them would break if he didn't.
They were alone at this point, or alone as they could be. Batman had originally planned to be the one to do... something. He needed to go and take Tim to the Batmobile, he needed to get Leslie, he needed to do something, he needed to fix this, he had to find a way to fix this, to make it so that it never actually happened. Shock, that cool, analytical portion of Bruce's brain had murmured. He couldn't fully grasp the reality of the situation, not yet. Bruce had ignored that voice, because all he had to do was something and somehow he'd be able to make this better, that was what he did. The prevention of situations like this was why he did what he did, and he would find a way to keep this from happening. He had to. He'd pulled himself to his feet, head full of buzzing, and taken a step forward, to take Tim and Barbara as far away from Arkham as the Earth would let them go. Or he'd tried. He'd forgotten about the knife wound completely, so many things were competing for his attention now that the Joker was dead (dead, dead by Tim's hand, shot in front of him, dead and stretched out not ten feet away) that they had pushed the pain of the wound completely away. Unfortunately his leg hadn't forgotten, even if he had, and as soon as he tried to put real weight on it, he'd made a sound that was a cross between a snarl and a groan and had collapsed.
"Bruce!" he heard Barbara yelp, her voice high and tight and sharp as a razor, and Tim's laugh gained a new desperate edge of hysteria. For a moment Barbara had to struggle to hold him, though Bruce wasn't sure where he wanted to run.
"I'm fine," he'd growled, pushing himself up with his hands and putting his weight on his good leg. His cape spilled all around him like the night and cast him in a pool of shadow, obscuring the details, but now that he was paying attention again, he could feel the blood soaking into the hem from the little growing puddle that was spreading slickly across the floor. "It's just my leg. The Joker stabbed it in our fight, and it doesn't seem to want to take weight."
Barbara hadn't seemed to know quite how to react, so she'd done nothing at all, just continued to clutch at Tim. After a moment she had looked away from Bruce. It seemed like she was hiding her face, and the yellow of her gloves and boots and the red of her hair shone all the brighter for being the only color left in her appearance. Tim looked so terribly white, and neither the vivid yellow and red nor the stark black of her bodysuit helped soften the colors.
"I- I should go get Alfred," she'd finally whispered into Tim's hair, and then glanced back up at the shadow on the cement that was Bruce. "We need to get you out of here. Both of you."
"Not Alfred," Bruce said after a moment of focusing to do so. His leg, now that he remembered about it, was screaming at him. Focus through the pain, shove it away, pain was nothing if you knew how to control it- How was it that he'd forgotten so completely just minutes ago, and now he couldn't seem to think about anything else? "He'd only be able to do so much for me, and I doubt he could do anything for Tim. Get Leslie."
"Leslie? She's that doctor, isn't-"
"Dr. Leslie Thompkins, yes. She manages the Thomas Wayne Memorial Clinic. Do you know the address?"
"Yes, I- I think so. I've never been there, but Dad-"
"Go. Take the car, and bring her here. Tell her it's for me."
Barbara had hesitated, a moment of frozen stillness before flight.
"Batgirl."
And with that word she'd come to herself again, and passed Tim over to Bruce, as Batman gathered himself and dragged himself to his knees (when she looked at him over Tim's head, he could see terror shining in her eyes, no matter how she tried to hide it) and then turned and vanished into the night, sprinting for all she was worth. Bruce didn't tell her to slow down.
He'd lost track of how much time it had been now, since he'd heard the Batmobile's engine roar as it pulled away. Somehow it didn't quite seem to matter, perhaps because the reality of the situation was finally beginning to sink in. The boy, the one-time Robin, was here in his arms, and the Joker's body was sprawled behind him, and upstairs was a room full of rolls of film chronicling the methodical torture of a child he was supposed to have protected, and behind a curtain was the equipment that had been used to do so. Bruce could feel himself beginning to shut down. And then somewhere, in the impartial, dispassionate corner of his mind that always simply categorized the situation, he was considering how he would have white greasepaint all over his costume at this rate. He would need to look into having it cleaned, or possibly burned and replaced. Or maybe he would just have it replaced, and preserve this costume as it was, because somehow it seemed appropriate that it should remain forever as it was at that moment, or as close as could reasonably be expected.
Tim's arms tightened around his neck as he shook with tears and laughter, and Bruce held him and waited.
[AND THEN SOME TIME LATER WE GET ANOTHER SCENE BECAUSE I SUCK AT JUST WRITING A THING FROM START TO FINISH, bits of the middle are frequently done before the beginning.]
The conversation had begun civilly enough. "Hey," Dick had said, fingering the mask he'd just removed. "Why don't you have Tim come to Blüdhaven with me?"
Bruce hadn't even glanced up, just answered in the same cool, analytical voice that he always used. "Blüdhaven is the last thing that Tim needs."
Dick had glanced over at the other figure at that, slightly annoyed at the implied slight to his city. "It would give him a new city, a chance to get back on his feet. Learn to be himself again. Somewhere without all of... this hanging over his head. It'd be good for him. Help show him that he's still everything he used to be."
Then Bruce had looked up and over, sharply, his eyes blazing even through he semi-opaque white lenses of his cowl. "Absolutely not." His tone was like a fire that was only just barely under control, but after having lived with him for almost eight years, Dick wasn't quite so easily intimidated. His own temper flared in response.
"I could help-"
"You stay away from him!" Bruce had roared. "He's had enough of our kind of help." There was a peculiar kind of self-loathing in that last statement, particularly in the pointed last word, and that was new enough to be a novelty, but Dick was beyond the point of caring about Bruce's newfound heart.
"Don't you dare compare me to you like that. I am nothing like you. And if you weren't so damn pig headed you would see as much as the rest of us that this is exactly what he needs. The Joker didn't take this away from him, you are, and it's the last damn thing he's got to hold onto-"
"This," had hissed Batman, "is no longer his life. And it never will be again, not as long as I have breath in my body. It's the last thing he needs. It's the last thing any of you needed. I had no right to do as I did, not to any of you. I can't take back the past, but I can start making my amends now, and so help me God, I will not allow him to further damage himself."
"Don't you get it? He'll never be normal. He'll never have a normal life. You may think you screwed him over when you let him sign up, but guess what? You can't change that."
"I just. Have. Now if you can't accept that, get the hell out of my city."
"You have one last chance to help him recover, and you're throwing it away - why? Pride? You think that if you couldn't help him, there's no way that I can? You're not the only one who cares about him, Bruce. And you don't know best. Not this time."
"He's still mine."
"I think that's up to him."
Bruce's glare was about three shades colder than ice, and far blacker. "You had your warning, Dick. Leave Gotham. Now. I want you gone by morning."
"Or you'll what? Tie me up and leave me out for the police?"
Bruce's hands slowly curled into fists at his sides. "Don't test me."
Dick had stood very still for a very long moment, glaring at Bruce just as fiercely, as furiously, as Bruce had ever glared at anything. It seemed an eternity before Dick looked away and slid his mask on (he'd already lost, he always lost against Bruce, it didn't matter what it was), and when he turned back, Bruce had already turned away again. He glared at his back before turning away in disgust, and walked over to the motorcycle he'd ridden in on, which was currently parked neatly next to the Batmobile.
"Fine. Break your toys. That's all of us ever were to you anyway. But don't expect me to stay away from my little brother."
Bruce hadn't responded - of course he hadn't - so Dick had flicked his hair over his shoulder, grabbed his helmet, and roared away on his bike. He'd spent the rest of the ride back home trying to achieve a kind of radio silence in his thoughts, and kept on failing. The one thing that kept on breaking through was that image of Tim, curled up on his oversized bed in the middle of the loneliest place in the world.
Robin's-
J. J.'s-
Tim's face was buried in Batman's shoulder. He was still giggling, the sound weak and horrible and absolutely devoid of humor, and tears were soaking Bruce's shoulder, right through his cape and his suit. The man gripped the boy, holding onto him more than he was hugging him, trying to pull him back through time until it was a month ago, trying to hold him so tightly that he could have managed to keep from losing him at all.
"Oh Tim," he muttered, and his voice was bleak with a million regrets. Barbara had whispered that it would be all right, and stroked his hair, and hugged him close as she lied. Bruce did none of these things. He simply held onto the boy, this poor, broken child, as though one or both of them would break if he didn't.
They were alone at this point, or alone as they could be. Batman had originally planned to be the one to do... something. He needed to go and take Tim to the Batmobile, he needed to get Leslie, he needed to do something, he needed to fix this, he had to find a way to fix this, to make it so that it never actually happened. Shock, that cool, analytical portion of Bruce's brain had murmured. He couldn't fully grasp the reality of the situation, not yet. Bruce had ignored that voice, because all he had to do was something and somehow he'd be able to make this better, that was what he did. The prevention of situations like this was why he did what he did, and he would find a way to keep this from happening. He had to. He'd pulled himself to his feet, head full of buzzing, and taken a step forward, to take Tim and Barbara as far away from Arkham as the Earth would let them go. Or he'd tried. He'd forgotten about the knife wound completely, so many things were competing for his attention now that the Joker was dead (dead, dead by Tim's hand, shot in front of him, dead and stretched out not ten feet away) that they had pushed the pain of the wound completely away. Unfortunately his leg hadn't forgotten, even if he had, and as soon as he tried to put real weight on it, he'd made a sound that was a cross between a snarl and a groan and had collapsed.
"Bruce!" he heard Barbara yelp, her voice high and tight and sharp as a razor, and Tim's laugh gained a new desperate edge of hysteria. For a moment Barbara had to struggle to hold him, though Bruce wasn't sure where he wanted to run.
"I'm fine," he'd growled, pushing himself up with his hands and putting his weight on his good leg. His cape spilled all around him like the night and cast him in a pool of shadow, obscuring the details, but now that he was paying attention again, he could feel the blood soaking into the hem from the little growing puddle that was spreading slickly across the floor. "It's just my leg. The Joker stabbed it in our fight, and it doesn't seem to want to take weight."
Barbara hadn't seemed to know quite how to react, so she'd done nothing at all, just continued to clutch at Tim. After a moment she had looked away from Bruce. It seemed like she was hiding her face, and the yellow of her gloves and boots and the red of her hair shone all the brighter for being the only color left in her appearance. Tim looked so terribly white, and neither the vivid yellow and red nor the stark black of her bodysuit helped soften the colors.
"I- I should go get Alfred," she'd finally whispered into Tim's hair, and then glanced back up at the shadow on the cement that was Bruce. "We need to get you out of here. Both of you."
"Not Alfred," Bruce said after a moment of focusing to do so. His leg, now that he remembered about it, was screaming at him. Focus through the pain, shove it away, pain was nothing if you knew how to control it- How was it that he'd forgotten so completely just minutes ago, and now he couldn't seem to think about anything else? "He'd only be able to do so much for me, and I doubt he could do anything for Tim. Get Leslie."
"Leslie? She's that doctor, isn't-"
"Dr. Leslie Thompkins, yes. She manages the Thomas Wayne Memorial Clinic. Do you know the address?"
"Yes, I- I think so. I've never been there, but Dad-"
"Go. Take the car, and bring her here. Tell her it's for me."
Barbara had hesitated, a moment of frozen stillness before flight.
"Batgirl."
And with that word she'd come to herself again, and passed Tim over to Bruce, as Batman gathered himself and dragged himself to his knees (when she looked at him over Tim's head, he could see terror shining in her eyes, no matter how she tried to hide it) and then turned and vanished into the night, sprinting for all she was worth. Bruce didn't tell her to slow down.
He'd lost track of how much time it had been now, since he'd heard the Batmobile's engine roar as it pulled away. Somehow it didn't quite seem to matter, perhaps because the reality of the situation was finally beginning to sink in. The boy, the one-time Robin, was here in his arms, and the Joker's body was sprawled behind him, and upstairs was a room full of rolls of film chronicling the methodical torture of a child he was supposed to have protected, and behind a curtain was the equipment that had been used to do so. Bruce could feel himself beginning to shut down. And then somewhere, in the impartial, dispassionate corner of his mind that always simply categorized the situation, he was considering how he would have white greasepaint all over his costume at this rate. He would need to look into having it cleaned, or possibly burned and replaced. Or maybe he would just have it replaced, and preserve this costume as it was, because somehow it seemed appropriate that it should remain forever as it was at that moment, or as close as could reasonably be expected.
Tim's arms tightened around his neck as he shook with tears and laughter, and Bruce held him and waited.
[AND THEN SOME TIME LATER WE GET ANOTHER SCENE BECAUSE I SUCK AT JUST WRITING A THING FROM START TO FINISH, bits of the middle are frequently done before the beginning.]
The conversation had begun civilly enough. "Hey," Dick had said, fingering the mask he'd just removed. "Why don't you have Tim come to Blüdhaven with me?"
Bruce hadn't even glanced up, just answered in the same cool, analytical voice that he always used. "Blüdhaven is the last thing that Tim needs."
Dick had glanced over at the other figure at that, slightly annoyed at the implied slight to his city. "It would give him a new city, a chance to get back on his feet. Learn to be himself again. Somewhere without all of... this hanging over his head. It'd be good for him. Help show him that he's still everything he used to be."
Then Bruce had looked up and over, sharply, his eyes blazing even through he semi-opaque white lenses of his cowl. "Absolutely not." His tone was like a fire that was only just barely under control, but after having lived with him for almost eight years, Dick wasn't quite so easily intimidated. His own temper flared in response.
"I could help-"
"You stay away from him!" Bruce had roared. "He's had enough of our kind of help." There was a peculiar kind of self-loathing in that last statement, particularly in the pointed last word, and that was new enough to be a novelty, but Dick was beyond the point of caring about Bruce's newfound heart.
"Don't you dare compare me to you like that. I am nothing like you. And if you weren't so damn pig headed you would see as much as the rest of us that this is exactly what he needs. The Joker didn't take this away from him, you are, and it's the last damn thing he's got to hold onto-"
"This," had hissed Batman, "is no longer his life. And it never will be again, not as long as I have breath in my body. It's the last thing he needs. It's the last thing any of you needed. I had no right to do as I did, not to any of you. I can't take back the past, but I can start making my amends now, and so help me God, I will not allow him to further damage himself."
"Don't you get it? He'll never be normal. He'll never have a normal life. You may think you screwed him over when you let him sign up, but guess what? You can't change that."
"I just. Have. Now if you can't accept that, get the hell out of my city."
"You have one last chance to help him recover, and you're throwing it away - why? Pride? You think that if you couldn't help him, there's no way that I can? You're not the only one who cares about him, Bruce. And you don't know best. Not this time."
"He's still mine."
"I think that's up to him."
Bruce's glare was about three shades colder than ice, and far blacker. "You had your warning, Dick. Leave Gotham. Now. I want you gone by morning."
"Or you'll what? Tie me up and leave me out for the police?"
Bruce's hands slowly curled into fists at his sides. "Don't test me."
Dick had stood very still for a very long moment, glaring at Bruce just as fiercely, as furiously, as Bruce had ever glared at anything. It seemed an eternity before Dick looked away and slid his mask on (he'd already lost, he always lost against Bruce, it didn't matter what it was), and when he turned back, Bruce had already turned away again. He glared at his back before turning away in disgust, and walked over to the motorcycle he'd ridden in on, which was currently parked neatly next to the Batmobile.
"Fine. Break your toys. That's all of us ever were to you anyway. But don't expect me to stay away from my little brother."
Bruce hadn't responded - of course he hadn't - so Dick had flicked his hair over his shoulder, grabbed his helmet, and roared away on his bike. He'd spent the rest of the ride back home trying to achieve a kind of radio silence in his thoughts, and kept on failing. The one thing that kept on breaking through was that image of Tim, curled up on his oversized bed in the middle of the loneliest place in the world.