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         The chill bit into Tim's cheeks as he landed on the roof, the thick snow crunching under his feet and in seconds, the wind carried enough snow to cover his feet up to the ankles. It was always a good idea to wear boots in Gotham, but right now, it was an idea that went over particularly well. He spotted the soft burst of light of a young wizard in an alley between apartment buildings, just before their sibling popped open a door and tugged them back inside. The more experienced wizards would throw bright handfuls of light that would burst into the sky, curling against the grayish snow sleeting down against them. December had just started, but the excitement for the Winter Solstice was rising faster than the snow on the streets. He tapped softly on a door, dropping a space heater on the front of the doorstep. “Got 3 left,” Cass rasped over comms, the winter weather had been tough on her voice and vocal chords.

“Four,” Tim reported.

“None,” Jason replied smugly. 

“I have been empty handed for the past 10 minutes, Todd,” Damian said, “You aren’t as quick as you think.”

“Oldest win, I passed mine out twenty minutes ago,” Dick cut in.

“I understand the fucking stick being slow, but why is Miss Spook not finished,” Jason snarked.

“Oh no, I hope your helmet doesn’t electrocute you,” Tim droned.

“I…stay. And watch them, through the windows. I like seeing them, their happiness. Excitement. It’s nice,” Cass explained, “Also, eldritch blast.”

Dick wheezed, “Wait, where’d you hear that?”

“Anita,” Cass said.

“Who the fuck is Anita,” Jason asked.

Tim huffed, “She’s my friend, I've talked about her before. Also, stop forgetting her. You know, she killed you in an alternate universe.”
Tim grinned at the sheer confusion in Jason’s, “Wait, she fucking what ?”

“Bats,” Babs greeted as she synced into all their comms, “My birds are a bit busy, so I thought I’d hand off the reports of a rogue wizard on to you. Going crazy in the Diamond District, have fun.”

“Exact coordinates,” Batman grunted.

“Say please,” Babs said.

“Hmnn…please,” Batman relented.

“Good job, remind me to tell Alfred,” Babs commented, “Anyways, he’s moving up northwest on 8th and Finger towards Huntsman Avenue.”

Cass sighed, darting off to meld down with the shadows to deliver her space heaters fast. Tim dropped his off at the nearest three doors with a quick knock and made a roundabout to swing his way to the Diamond District. The streets were mostly empty, black ice and the heavy snow layering too heavily on the roads to even consider walking if anybody could help it. He spotted a thin woman wrapped in a blanket and silently dropped down, a card in his palm. He slid it into the folds of her blanket and zipped off just as she was turning around, her palm wrapping around the card. She should hopefully be able to make it to the shelter two streets down, if she needed it. The winds stung at his jaw and mouth, but his head, nose, and his eyes were covered by the cowl. Good thing he decided to wear it out tonight instead of just the domino. He thumbed a snowflake off his right lense. “Wizard spotted,” Dick announced, “I’m going to say very early teens, 13-14, Caucasian, gender is unidentifiable but they’ve got bright pink hair.”

At the last bit, Tim resisted the urge to say, ‘God, I wish that were me’. Because while he knew exactly where that was from, that was a very strange thing to say without given context and he did not believe anybody present would know where that was from, besides Cass. Thanks for the online literacy lessons, Babs. “Spotted,” Batman grumbled.

Tim wiped his lenses again, following the bright bursts of light that lit up the dark skyline. Arbour had mentioned something about ‘wizard puberty’ once, where their magic, which had previously been easy to control in childhood, spiked with all the nasty mix of hormones and growth spurts that typically hit around the ages of 12-14. Witches, or at least the type of witch that Arbor was which was very different from Anita’s voudon magic, did not seem to go through the same thing. Savannah had grimaced and said werewolves have to deal with the same thing and it sucked. Cecilia had bemoaned her voice cracks and her scale loss. Tim, being the only baseline human, just stuffed his mouth with marshmallows. Tim would take the wild guess that the ‘rogue wizard’ is just some poor kid going through wizard puberty, which is just puberty with confetti on it. Confetti sucks. “Heading east now,” Dick called, his voice cracking against the howl of the wind.

Tim’s feet skittered against the snowy rooftop as he veered off to make his way east. The snow was picking up, his lips cracking bad enough for Tim to taste a little blood as the wind and snow tore at the thin flesh. He prowled on the rooftop as he spotted Batman’s huge, looming dark figure slowly approaching the young teen. Bright pink hair was right, which was good for visibility. “Winds changed and hit us with some heavy snow in the area,” Dick reported, “Robin and I are bogged down for at least the next 15 minutes. Hood?”

“Nobody told me which fucking street n’ my wheels are jammed,” Hood snapped.

“I’m on scene,” Tim reported, “BB?”

“Little girl. Taking her home,” Cass croaked.

“She needs you more,” Batman muttered, “Get her home, Black Bat.”

“Don’t get him killed, Red Robin,” Robin sneered, although the mic screeched on ‘him’ so it kinda just sounded funny.

Tim dropped from his rooftop, keeping at the edges so the young wizard wouldn’t feel too trapped. The snow was getting too heavy to see without the special lenses in the cowls and masks, and even then it was a bit touch and go. “Calm down,” Batman ordered.

“Don’t you think I could if I would,” the wizard spat with all the rage of a 14 year old (quite a large amount if Tim remembers correctly), “What the fuck are you supposed to be? Catwoman’s shitty sidekick?”

Tim doesn’t think Bruce has ever been called a sidekick…to his face, at least. “I’m Batman,” Batman grunts.

“And I’m the head bitch of England,” the wizard snapped.

Tim paced closer, still keeping out of visibility range. “Take a deep breath,” Batman rumbled, “Calm your heart rate. Your…powers. They’re…growing.”

“Yeah, no shit,” the kid shrieked, “Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you. Don’t tell me to calm down! I can’t calm down! My hands are going to shit, they’re glowing like the White House on Christmas!” 

Tim circled closer, whispering, “Anybody nearby?”

“On foot,” Red Hood snarled, “Expect me in 20 fucking hours, shrimp.”

“Winds are still going strong on us,” Dick audibly grimaced.

“Five,” Cass coughed, her vocal chords sounding shredded.

Okay, five minutes. “Tell me your name,” Batman quietly grumbled.

“Tell me your name,” the wizard retorted, “I bet it’s something stupid like Edward or Preston. You look like you’d be a goddamn Preston Chadwick Hardy. Yeah, I full named you, you big ugly bitch.”

Tim was trying so hard not to laugh and give himself away. “Not my name,” Batman mumbled, “Let me help you put your hands down.”

Bruce moved slowly, and the wind shifted just as his foot came down. The winds were strong in Gotham, strong enough that even a huge man like Bruce could be jerked around just enough to make his movement slightly too jagged, too forceful. Batman lurched, too fast, and the young wizard panicked.

         Tim remembers having to jump on Batman when he would patrol with him in the beginning. Not because Tim was to be supervised, but because Batman was to be supervised. Tim needed to keep watch for a trigger, a slight sign that Batman needed to be grounded back into his own head. Tim got good at moving, clinging on or knocking Bruce off trajectory just enough with his insubstantial weight. Like he was living in a flashback, Tim leapt. He moved just fast enough to push Bruce’s head down, move his shoulders towards the ground, and feel the cold flush of something unearthly, unnatural to his body, crawling across his skin through pounds of kevlar, nomex, and padding. They hit the ground, Tim’s body half curled over Bruce’s head and shoulders, his arm colliding with the thick slush of snow under him. “Fuck,” he heard the wizard kid cry, then the sound of footsteps crunching, getting further and further till the wind swallowed up the sound.

His bones hurt inside his body, like they were warping and snapping underneath his flesh. Tim’s head felt foggy. God, what year was it? It was…um…he was…16? No, no, that wasn’t right. How old was Tim? Tim was…Tim was 13 years old. And it was cold. He was tired. And 13 year olds could still take naps, right? Yeah, he could take a nap. He’d wake up when Bruce returned, then he could drag Bruce out of the Batcave’s chair for a shower. Alfred probably wanted help with the dishes, or something. Tim would help. That’s what he was there for, after all.

         Cass’s greatest mistake is thinking that she can always be enough. Usually, she is. Usually, Cass can…be strong enough. Cass can be decisive enough. Weaponized enough, just to the degree that she balances on her precipice of weaponhood and personhood. But, there are occasions, instances of Cass not being able to be enough. When her presence isn’t frightening enough to ward off a threat. When her body isn’t fast enough to move to where she must be. When she is not afraid enough to consider that maybe she won’t be enough. All she can do right now is catalog, process and interpret whatever language their prone bodies are giving away in the low visibility of the heavy snowfall. Whatever she could see of Tim’s face was twitching, glittering with a thin layer of something that wasn’t snow; instead it was faintly reddish-pink, like blood when it gets watered down and swirls down the drain in the shower. The same thin film was painted across Bruce’s face, shimmering and making his lips thin out. Discomfort, for sure, not quite pain, but whatever sensations were taking place weren’t comfortable. Cass quickly assessed them; unconscious, but breathing, twitching, making small, minute actions that didn’t display any deep pain that would come from a wound. It was too cold out to continue to remain outside. “Need pick up from the Batmobile,” Cass croaked, the sharp, dry coldness of the weather fatiguing her vocal cords.

“Wait, what happened,” Nightwing barked, the wind whipping with a whistle through the comms.

“Wizard,” Cass answered shortly, already hauling Tim up to sling him across her back, his ice cube nose pressing into the side of her neck.

“Where’s the wizard,” Nightwing asked.

“Gone, already,” Cass replied, easily hauling up Batman with one arm and supporting the back of Tim’s thighs with her other arm, his light weight draped against her back more a comfort than a bother.

“Red Robin let the wizard escape,” Robin hissed, the crunch of snow echoing loudly.

“No,” Cass grunted, “Positions? I’d say…jumped on Batman. Protective dive. Got caught in blast effect. Both affected, unconscious. Call the Batmobile.”

“Injury report,” Nightwing grimly asked.

Cass muttered, “None. Batmobile?”

“It’s en route, Lady Cassandra,” Alfred reassured over comms, “It should arrive at your location in ten minutes.”

“Can it make a pit stop,” Jason grumbled, “I’m stuck in a snow draft. Wheels are busted for good, hope some brat out there can scrap it for some good cash.”

“Gonna bait some kid into coming home with the Red Hood a la Batman,” Nightwing teased, despite the sound of stress in his voice.

“Oh, absolutely the fuck not,” Hood spat.

Cass shouldered her little brother easily, frowning. His suit seems looser , the cowl sagging off him slightly. That was odd. The cowl, if nothing else on the Red Robin suit, fits like a second layer of skin, with padding to protect his nose and skull, as well as the back of his neck. It shouldn’t have any room to slip off on accident. She squinted past the flurry beating down from the darkened skies overhead. Tim’s jaw looked thinner than normal, his face just a bit squishier underneath the cowl, not very round but just enough that Cass remembered that this is what Timmy’s face used to be shaped like when she met him- pointy but soft, rounded out where he was now sharp edges. She checked Bruce. He didn’t look too different but there was an odd, sagging drag to his jaw, which was grizzled with dark, unkempt bristles. There was a deep exhaustion that was beginning to settle into his slumped form that Cass didn’t fully recognize. Bruce was tired often, in ways buried deep into his skeleton. But there was a determination that was burned into his flesh so deep that Cass couldn’t even imagine Batman without it. It was fading out, and Cass didn’t understand. “Black Bat,” Nightwing greeted as he landed noiselessly against the thick coating of snow that was growing tall around her calves, blanketing all three of their capes. 

Robin had a pile of snow building on top of his head, and Cass couldn’t help the minute smile when she saw the snow creasing in the folds of his hooded cape. “I’ll take this one,” Nightwing offered as he hauled Batman up to drape over his shoulders.

Robin clicked his tongue. The snow couldn’t blur her sight enough to not read him; upset that he wasn’t there, angry that Batman was possibly injured despite having back up, the tiniest twitch of fear that something was wrong with their Father. It was a searing swirl of feelings that Cass saw burning against Damian’s gloved palms, buried into the downturn of his mouth, the tightness of his shoulders underneath the hooded cape betrayed it all to her. Bright headlights burned against the thick sheet of snow dropping down, the deep rumble of an engine overtaking the sounds of the winds screaming. “Pick up’s here,” Nightwing commented, planting his feet into the gray-white slush under his feet and pushing.

Nightwing carried Batman with an ease that Cass understood; despite being more willowy, lankier and less broad than Hood or Batman, Nightwing was like Cass- layers and layers of sinew built over itself, muscle and flexing tendons, some kind of awful machine that couldn’t stop. Cass’s feet dug right into place, planting down, and her legs flexed, the machinations of her framework rolling as they’d been taught to do in any weather. Cool puffs of air rustled against the back of her neck. Tim was feeling lighter, almost insubstantial to her. What was wrong? She shuffled her little brother into the backseat, the one closest to the window, and pressed herself against his side tightly. The suit seemed even bulkier now, too, like the arms and legs and torso of it all were slowly, steadily becoming too long for his limbs to fit into. “Buckle the fuck up,” Hood grouches from the driver’s seat, “Or don’t. If one of you catapults through the front window, I’m not gonna stop the car.”

Jason doesn’t drive half as fast as Tim does. He even follows the laws of the road and doesn’t drive on the pavement. Bruce slumps in the passenger seat, mostly because Dick can squish into the backseat but if Bruce tipped over, he’d crush Damian and Tim. Not Cass, who acts like a barrier with Dick between Tim and Damian. Cass doesn’t really do the ‘getting crushed’ thing. But Damian and Tim do, despite what either of them might try and believe. So, even though Jason’s shoulders are hiked up to his ears and his knuckles have gone pale while his grip makes the steering wheel creak faintly, Bruce is crunched into the passenger seat. They make it there fast enough, and Cass watches as shadows creep up Bruce’s jaw, and feels Tim’s limbs almost shrink against her side as they pull right into the Cave. Jason puts the car in full park instead of just swinging the door open while still having the engine running and wheels just barely coming to a stop before he hurls himself out of the car like Bruce tends to do. He’s a very funny driver. Alfred is opening her side of the car and Tim flops out, but Cass snags his now-too big suit by the back of the cowl, which slips off his face far too easy. Tim’s face looks different in the pale light of the Cave, the curve of his cheeks softer than she has seen in quite a long time, and his nose didn’t look like it had been broken yet, even though Leslie did a good job of properly setting noses so that there wasn’t too much of a visible crookedness. Tim was always careful about that sort of thing, never wanting to have to come up with an explanation for an old injury when he already had so many more lies to tell about so many other things. Cass rarely told anyone lies, if only because she’d taken to the habit of staring people down if they got nosey, making them visibly and deeply uncomfortable so they’d leave her alone. It worked very well for her. Tim’s hair was short, and it curled slightly like it was made out of baby birds' down feathers.Tim looked…young. Younger than she had ever seen him, and Cass had met Tim when he was younger than he usually was. “Ah, I do believe I can guess what this wizard’s magic may have done,” Alfred stated as he stared down at Tim’s slightly round, very soft face, “I think this was a magic that may have brought them back to about the age when Timothy first came to us, and seeing as Master Bruce received the same blast, he must be within the same age range he was when we met our dearest Timothy.”

Dick had peeled the mask off his face and was hauling Bruce out of the front seat. His suit looked a bit bulky on him, and there was the shadow of facial hair trailing messily around his jaw. His skin had a faint gray tint to it and his body twitched, screaming out misery . Alfred grimaced, “It seems I was correct. An unfortunate instance, in this case.”

Dick winced, “Think he’ll have a coronary if he sees us?”

Alfred’s lips press together thinly. He is anxious , a rare emotion to be betrayed on the man. “I think it’d be in everyone’s best interests if we hid any evidence that there is…more of us now than there used to be.”

Damian’s chest pushes forward as his shoulders hike up. Incensed would be a better word than angry to use for him. Offended as well. “Why should he not know I exist,” Damian snaps.

Dick tells him, old memories of buried emotions resurfacing on his jaw and his cheekbones, “You wouldn’t have wanted to meet him like this, Damian.”

        Tim keeps shrinking till he’s smaller than Damian. He’s about 4 feet and 10.5-11 inches tall, while Damian is 5 feet and 2.5 inches. To Cassandra, it all just means that Timmy is very, very small. She’s the quickest to hide her things in the Cave, and Alfred is busy pulling the Red Robin (She’s not sure about that name. Tim always has that hesitation when his code name is spoken, like he’s waiting for a different ending. Tim is fine with the ‘Red’ but it’s the ‘Robin’ tacked on to the end that always gives Tim an odd pause and Cass can see it clear as a Smallville day) suit off and stowing it away somewhere. Timmy’s just in his too loose, too big compression shorts and tank top underneath it, and Cass takes up the task of getting to the attic to retrieve some of Timmy’s old clothes that Alfred had yet to throw out, just folding and storing old clothes none of them fit into in chests in the attic. She sees two large paintings leaned against the chest of Tim’s old clothes.

They’re both of women, the paintings, the frames in gilded wood, thorn shapes deeply pressed into the frames, and in the paintings, with the way both women had their hands folded, she could see a silver ring, a sapphire-eyed snake consuming its own tail. Tim’s ring, Cass notices, and peers closer. The artist had been talented, like Damian, with how deeply Cass can read into the women just through these paintings. The first woman is older, the date carved into the bottom of the framer dated much older than the other, and her hair is a deep shade of black, intensely silvery-white streaks threading through her hair from her hairline into the long pool of hair around her shoulders. Each detail is familiar to Cass, from the pointedness of the woman’s chin and slimness of her jaw, from the bow shape of the woman’s lips and the high cheekbones. She knows this woman, both women, as their faces are so similar that it’s nearly the same painting, if not for the dark blonde, almost fawn brown curls of the younger woman, and the older woman has wrinkles draping across her forehead and cheeks, lined underneath her large, striking blue eyes colored like a cold, cold sky. Both women have those eyes, and those are the same eyes that Cass sees in her little brother, just as they share the same face as Tim, from the curves of their faces to the angularity of their brows. Lady Malinda Drake is the name carefully etched into the bottom of the oldest woman’s painting, and the younger woman has been labeled Miss Janet Drake. His grandmother, Cass remembers, and his mother. Their poses are the same, but there is a striking darkness in the portrait of Malinda Drake’s eyes, something cold and clever and distinctly disdainful. And in the painting of Janet Drake, her eyes are…well, the cleverness is the same, brilliant and intense, but there is the depth of something so very, very sad. Cass took a sheet, gray with dust and age, and draped it over the paintings. If not for paranoia, then simply so Cass would not have to read more of the immeasurable sadness in the eyes of the mother of her brother. 

Cass is quick to return with Timmy’s pajamas, slipping his cold little ring that curiously still fits his finger into her pocket, and hides away one last training sword of Damian’s before Alfred pries open a side of the Cave, revealing a dim tunnel. Cass knows this tunnel. It leads up into the Manor, a secret tunnel that was built in after the Cave got destroyed during the big earthquake that had turned Gotham into a No Man’s Land. Cass had been allowed to ask Harold to input a new tunnel or two, and he had obliged. It was a cleverly hidden thing, and they could travel around the Cave quietly, unseen. It was meant to be used in an ambush, in case Batman needed backup to remain unseen, unheard, unknown. Cass preferred to use it to get to the stairs first for tea time. She liked the shortbread cookies a lot. “- my father,” Damian grumbled as Alfred escorted them into the tunnel.

“I suspect that Master Bruce is not in the condition to meet you,” Alfred replied, “This was not long after he lost…”

Alfred trailed off but his eyes were settled on Jason, who shuffled and set his jaw tightly. Alfred continued on, “Yes, Master Bruce would not be in the position to welcome anyone into his home.”

Cass noticed the small incision in the door. She could see into the Cave, and she suspected that the Cave’s natural echo would let her hear everything that was said. “Then why is Drake here,” Damian grumbled.

Alfred pursed his lips in thought. There was an answer, but not one Alfred could explain. “I believe they should both wake up soon. It’s best to…to just see, Master Damian. Watch them both.”

Bruce was the one to slink out of the medical area first. He was still in the suit, cowl off, and slumped over. Defeated, bruised, in pain. The sad kind of pain, not the kind you could treat with a heating pack for strained muscles or cool rags for a fever or even pills for head pain. The dark bruises underneath his eyes, the shadows along the hollows of his cheeks, and the careless grizzle along his jaw were as telling as the blankness she could see carved out in his eyes. Cass could read it all, down to the weight that pulled down at every inch of their father. Slowly, he slumped towards the Bat Computer, sinking heavily into the chair. An odd, suspicious look flashed across his face, like he knew there was something he wasn’t used to. The chair had been made to support his back, Tim had said, it’d been built by Howard at Leslie’s request. Howard was long, long gone now. Tim had been sad about that. But Bruce settled into his chair anyway, the flash of emotion gone. “Master Bruce,” Alfred greeted, his voice echoing in the Cave, “Is there any possibility I may tempt you into changing out of your evening wear and actually indulging in the human requirement of showering and possibly eating food?”

Bruce grunted tonelessly, tapping away at the keyboard. Barbara had quickly set up a false interface so Bruce wouldn’t interact with anything he was currently working on. There were tiny, barely-there footsteps that tapped on the floor, muffled by the squeak of the bats overhead. “Is he sitting in his suit again,” Timmy asked, half his hair sticking up where he’d crushed it against his pillow briefly.

Relief fell on Alfred’s brow. “And generating a stench again? Yes,” Alfred huffed.

Timmy frowned, his little upper lip curling and pulling back so one of his awkward, sharp little cuspids showed. “I’ll get him upstairs,” Tim promised, “I’ll take care of it.”

         Jason doesn’t really know what he’s seeing, much less understand. His comprehension power has plummeted to net zero. The old Bat-stard looks torn up to shit, for starters. Like he hasn’t slept in centuries, or done anything in the way of self-care in as long either. God damn , he looks like he got snow plowed face first into Hell and then dragged back out by a manure truck. Alfred strode up the stairs, all business, leaving him, Little Miss Spook, Golden Boy, and Demon Spawn to watch whatever the fuck kinda trainwreck was happening. Extra Bitty Tim whirled around on the heels of his too big socks, turning right towards Bruce. There’s no way that Extra Bitty Tim was gonna be able to take care of shit, not when he looked like he weighed less than Jason’s left leg. Extra Bitty Tim shuffled forward, rolling up the overly long cuffs of his pajama shirt. “So,” Fun Size Deluxe Tim started, “What was it this time?”

Bruce ‘hrmm’d. “Okay, I can guess,” Super Undersized Tim, “It’s like training, right? Okay, so, hmm.”

Mini Tim sat cross legged on the floor by Bruce, staring at him so relentlessly that Jason was starting to feel disconcerted. He had no clue that Tim’s no blinking, bug eyed staring routine was worse as a…fuck, how old was this kid? If Jason saw him on the street, he’d wonder who let their fucking 11 year old wander around alone. And 11 was a generous estimate. “I thought he was 10, but I guessed 12 just to be polite,” Dickolas whispered, “He’s 13. Just turned 13 when he got to us.”

Jason didn’t actually know how Tim wriggled his way into the Robin costume. Damian nodded to himself and muttered, “I am taller.”

The Demon Spawn sounded pleased with himself that he was bigger than an apparently 13 year old Tim. Talia was tall, and so was Bruce, not to mention his goddamn shitty grandpa. Fuck, if Damian ever gets taller than Jason, Jason’s burying him neckdeep in sand. Jason tuned back into Tim’s one-sided conversation. “So, I’m gonna guess it’s…a murder investigation. More than one murder, so I’d guess serial. Serial murder, right?”

Bruce’s head lolled to the side incomprehensibly. Tim frowned deeper. “Well, excuse me, I can’t read your mind. And it was…young teens. Ages 14 to 16?”

Bruce’s fingers gripped his arm rests till his fingers whitened down to his knuckles. Tim sighed, “I thought so.”

Tim unfolded his legs out from under him and stood back up. He looked into a locker, luckily not one that they’d crammed all their shit into, and pulled out a water bottle. It looked yellow-ish. Was there piss in there? “Bruce, this water bottle is full of lemonade,” Tim announced, “I know you don’t like the lemonade bottle so I’ll give you two choices: you get lemonade-d in the eyes till you get up or you get up and take off your costume, shower, and go upstairs.”

There was lemonade in there? “He can’t threaten Father like that,” Damian protested.

“Damian,” Dick said, “I wasn’t really around at the time, but when I started coming around more, Bruce was…less like this. Just…trust the process. I never really saw Tim put up with Bruce the way he is right now, but it…look, it worked the first time around.”

Dick pushed his hands through his hair, dragging it back off his forehead. Damian scowled, but he scowled just like Talia and Jason knew what Talia scowled like, so he knew this wasn’t his regular old ‘fire and brimstone’ scowl but a ‘I have been thoroughly confused by these ridiculous circumstances’ scowl. Bruce heaved, his shoulders pulled over into a hunch and slowly, he pushed himself back and turned his chair to the side. “Okay,” Tim accepted, “This is good. Push from the legs, right?”

Jason watched with a staggering disbelief as Tim scurried around behind the chair and planted his palms against the back of the chair. There were a number of things that Jason could compare this situation to, like Sisyphean futility, the fruitlessness of being so weak and trying to move something so unwilling and impossible. And yet, Tim, who had fingers like toothpicks and wrists like a small bundle of pencils, arms thin as broomstick handles and was so insubstantial if he were to go outside, the wind would carry him away in a single gust, pushed anyways, socks sliding against the floor. Bruce didn’t do much, just sit in the chair, morose and blank. His body sagged against the back of the chair with a dull acceptance for whatever was happening. Tim pushed and shoved the rolling chair to the showers. Tim stopped in the entrance to the showers. “You better do it yourself,” Tim told Bruce sternly, all squeaky and childish, “Or I’ll ask Alfred to bring out the Bat Hose and I’ll hose you down in the middle of the Cave.”

Bruce stayed in the chair for a moment until he managed to pull himself out of it, slumping through the doorway. The sounds of water rushing through pipes reverberated through the Cave and Tim sighed loudly, slumping face first into the back of the chair for barely a second before he started pushing the chair back in front of the monitor, methodically logging out and shutting down the computer. It was rehearsed, but not natural, like he’d had to read off a how-to step-by-step list of directions and practice it. Tim’s head turned towards the ‘good soldier’ case and, barely audible if not for the echo of the cave, whispered, “He’ll get better. He just…misses you a lot.”

Something ugly burned hot in Jason’s throat, sealing it up like a wax seal on a letter. The pipes shuddered loudly to a stop and Tim snapped his gaze away. Bruce had evidently changed into some loose and old clothes, and now, instead of looking completely dead, he just looked a little run over. “We’ll take a break,” Tim suggested, “Put some distance between us and the case. It’ll be good for us to get a little degree of separation, y’know? I’ve always read that in accounts from some returned soldiers. Did you know that therapists will publish papers about some of their patients? They’ll give them names like ‘Patient A’ or ‘Subject B’ or ‘Case Study X’ and sometimes they’ll just call them John Doe. I’ve been reading about them during break time at school.”

There’s a certain eeriness reflected in this, Jason notices, in the way Bruce blankly sways in place, while Tim, certainly not breaking the 5 foot mark, wheedles and directs, chattering distractingly so that he can guide Bruce towards the stairs that lead up to the exit. It…it makes Jason think of the way he’d beckon and coo at his momma when she would wander out of the apartment on the days she was able to get up, when the sickness that was sucking the life out of her wasn’t so bad but all the drugs flooding her system weren’t the medical kind and they’d get cut with stuff it shouldn’t have, so his momma’s brain would be all crossed and she’d sometimes get out of the apartment if his dad wasn’t home to catch her or if Jason was busy with whatever homework printouts he managed to snag from the ragged local library and keep so he could practice his numbers and his words. The glaze made icy fingers claw and rake at the inside of Jason’s ribcage. He doesn’t know who this man is.

Cass drags them all upstairs, and Jason wonders what else has changed. He didn’t know these tunnels existed. “They didn’t,” Dickiebird tells him, “Howard had them built in after the earthquake collapsed most of Gotham and even managed to hit Bristol. Tim, Cass, Babs, Alfred, and I got to put in a bunch of tunnels like this in the Manor’s rebuild, and the Cave’s reconstruction, but the Manor was 99% restored exactly the same way for historical preservation purposes.”

Jason didn’t know what earthquake Dick was talking about. He didn’t know who Harold was. Jason, apparently, didn’t know a lot of things. He feels like a ghost in the wrong place, like someone built a house on his grave and he doesn’t know the layout for it but he’s trapped inside, doomed to wander. They walk in the walls, narrow wooden passages that have Jason turning to the side in order to squeeze through. There’s thin crevices that they can peer through, decoratively hidden on the outside, Jason assumes. They follow Bruce’s slow shamble forwards, guided by Itty Bitty Tim. “Do you want to try to eat first,” Tim asks Bruce, earning a morose grunt. 

Tim plants himself in front of Bruce with crossed arms. “Words, Bruce,” Tim reprimands, “I’ll take one word answers but I won’t learn Neanderthal. So, food or sleep?”

It should be funny, everything about this, extra tiny Tim and Bruce being more or less useless, but, really, there’s nothing that Jason could name a comedy in this situation. “Jason doesn’t eat till he does his homework for math,” Bruce muttered blankly.

Tim patted Bruce’s arm, even as Jason’s heart seized suddenly in his chest. “Then lay down on the couch,” Tim insisted, “I’ll tell Alfred to put off making anything till you’ve slept for a bit. How…how was it out there?”

Bruce frowned deeper, trying to scrape together a memory of a patrol that didn’t happen. “Same,” Bruce mumbled.

Tim’s shoulders relaxed. “Nobody’s in the hospital then,” Tim concluded.

Dickiebird winced quietly. Cass tilted her head, and Jason was distinctly reminded of TIm’s own little movement quirks. He wonders briefly if she was copying him, or if he was copying her. ‘Why the hospital,’ she asked, eyes equal measures curious and accusing, condemning (or maybe that was Jason’s imagination, what Jason was feeling because this had to be condemnation for something Jason did).

“I only ever saw pictures Tim had,” Dick said, “The pictures Tim got and some newspaper clippings he collected to convince me to go back and try and work with B again. It was…a really shitty time. Bruce was…not dealing with anything well. We fought. A lot. And I stopped talking to him for months till Tim came along and even then I didn’t actually start working with B again till Gotham got hit with the Clench.”

Jason didn’t know what the Clench was. Dick gestured towards Tim prodding Bruce forward towards a couch. “I just knew that Tim was hanging around B and B was getting better and I was still pissed at him for being an asshole, as per usual, so I just…never asked about what Tim was doing to pull him back.”

“Back from what,” Jason finally spoke up, because he had to know, he had to know what Bruce was doing (did he mourn Jason? Did he care? Did Jason dying mean something more than what Jason had thought? Did Jason die and had Bruce loved him?)

Dick’s face was unusually grim when he answered, “I don’t really know, honestly.”

          Alfred looks right at their hiding spot when he appears in the room, right as Bruce manages to drift off into a restless nap, Tim perched on his back like a little bird while he recited something he’d apparently read during lunch hours at his fancy little boarding school that seemingly couldn’t keep track of Tim for the life of them since. “-the benefits of therapy animals on grief- oh. He’s asleep,” Tim commented, “The central pressure worked.”

Jason was pretty sure that it was the chattering. Tim fell silent as he slid off Bruce’s back, wandering over to Alfred and tapping his shoulder. Alfred leaned down obligingly. Jason thinks if those enormous, wide eyes had been set on him , unblinking, unwavering, unflinching as they observed and dissected, staring intensely with that pale, cold color in them, shuttered closed to keep others out but searching to understand and know others, Jason would’ve turned away. But Alfred dutifully did not back away from a tiny face with too-big eyes. “You look tired,” Tim observed, “It makes you seem…older.”
Jason caught the flicker of movement as Alfred the cat, Damian’s goddamn feline, lurked in the corner. Oh, shit . They forgot to grab Damian’s fucking cat, dammit. “I feel the urge to point out that after a certain age, it seems all ages following just appear old ,” Alfred remarked dryly. 

“But you look… extra tired,” Tim persisted, raising his hands to casually brush his fingers against the wrinkled line of Alfred’s cheeks and jaw.

Alfred caught sight of his feline counterpart stalking along the shadows underneath the chairs and sighed, “I… suppose that Master Bruce’s current condition has left me feeling…strained. It’s compounded around this time, would be my best guess. It’s both near the anniversary of his parents’ death, which is coincidentally the same day he met Master Jason.”

Alfred, for all his stiff-lipped composure, looked heavy with the weight of it all- all the grief and the exhaustion that seemed to saturate the wooden panels of the floor and the sconces of the walls. Tim nodded, eyes sliding towards the wall, pinned on something only he could see. “Are you sad,” Tim asked, completely frank, fixated on his spot beyond the rest of their eyes.

“Why would you think that,” Alfred reflected primly.

Tim, however, was like a cat with a laser pointer; uncaring of what he knocked down in pursuit of his objective. “Because you loved him too,” Tim replied, as if it were obvious and undoubtedly true, a thing sure as the clouds over Gotham, “So, you’re sad because you also miss him. You just don’t beat people up over it.”

There was silence residing in the tunnels where Jason stood among the hidden Bats, and there was silence weighing down in an oppressive force beyond the tunnels, where Bruce slept fitfully, where Alfred stood stirring cream into a cup of black coffee, where Tim sat, his head turning slowly, disjointedly, towards a window and whatever his eyes could see, permanently wide-eyed, piecing together whatever he could so he could…do something, though Jason was unsure of what he would or could do.

“Did Jason like pretty things,” Tim spoke after a long, long silence.

“Art,” Alfred said, “He had a great appreciation for romantic pieces of literature, Renaissance art, those sorts of things.”

“So they made him happy. Would something that made him happy make Bruce happy,” Tim continued, fingers steepling together slowly as he pulled his legs upwards so his knees were tucked close to his chest, "Would that make you happy?"

“I…possibly,” Alfred considered.

“Would Jason have liked photography,” Tim questioned, a spark flashing across his eyes like the burn of a fire on a wick before the dynamite was ignited.

Alfred arched a stern brow. “I do hope you’re not considering going anywhere in this ghastly weather,” he remarked, almost suspicious.

Tim shook his head. “I won’t leave the Manor, Alfred. Not until my school opens again. They let us out early because of the storm, right?”

“Naturally,” Alfred lied artfully, “Will you be needing me to fetch your spare camera? It is in the kitchen.”

“No,” Tim said, “But would you help me? My music teacher wants us all to do parts of, um, Ave Maria, and I’ve been on piano this semester so I’d really appreciate it if you listened?”

And so they all followed. They followed Alfred and Tim to the music room, where Alfred sat on an armchair that was so very close to the one Jason remembered, but the curl on the legs of the chair were off, and the color of the cushions was not faded out enough, and it was just slightly too plush to be as old as the ones Jason had sat upon. “This is a waste of time,” Damian mumbled, “We could be tracking that wizard and making them reverse the spell on Father.”

“What about Tim,” Dick pointed out, although he looked at Tim the way a cat lady might look at a kitten in need of a home.

“I’m taller like this,” Damian huffed.

The piano was tuned differently, like everything inside the Manor, it seemed, but it played smoothly, as smoothly as they could be played under Tim’s fingers, which were formed from awkward, spidery motions, dancing across the ivories with all the dexterity of a newborn fawn. Maybe Tim, in his couple years older form, had managed to outgrow the clumsiness in his fine motor skills, or perhaps he’d just learned to adapt himself just enough that he managed to have some shade of grace and posture, enough to hide the odd stumble of his legs when his feet did not move to where they were supposed to, enough to hide the trip of his hands against his bo when his fingers did not cooperate with the directions from his brain. But it was enough that Alfred’s shoulders reclined against the back of the arm chair. And, like the thief Hermes playing for the ever-watchful Argus with one hundred eyes, Alfred’s lids slowly slid to a fluttering close. Yet, unlike Hermes, Tim did not slay Alfred where he slept. Instead, the song dwindled to a gentle end. Then, slowly, silently, Tim raised himself from the piano bench and on light feet, made his way towards the door. It opened without a creak or whine of the hinges, and, quickly, still silently, Tim ran. 

“I’ll stay here,” Jason offered, “Go see what the fuck he’s gonna do.”

They were all cursed with a terminal case of Severe Nosey Bitch disease. Even Demon Spawn couldn’t resist. So off they ran, two pairs of faint, light footsteps and one soundless shadow tearing down the hall. Meanwhile, Jason sat in the tunnel he did not know, staring into a room he was no longer familiar with, and felt something like grief for someone he once knew drown the air around him. And he was all alone.

          Damian was curious. He was, unfortunately, also confused. He did not like the sensation of not knowing, and not understanding what was happening. Well, of course he knew that a spell from an errant, irresponsible wizard had been cast, and Drake had not acted in time to mitigate the effects of said spell upon Batman, getting the both of them caught in the effects. And he knew, logically, that the spell had taken away memories of both Batman’ and Red Robin’s current memories, as well as regressing their actual ages and bodies. Drake had shrunk , down to the size of one of the children that Colin would open the door for to talk to at Saint Agatha’s, not even Colin-sized and outside of his Abuse form, Colin was hardly what would be deemed ‘tall’. But beyond that, Damian did not understand. He knew Todd died. He knew that there was, within the year, a new Robin. But he did not really…comprehend why his father was acting the way he was. Damian stopped quickly to coax Alfred (his cat, not Pennyworth, if that were not obvious) into the tunnel through a portrait, and really, a portrait door? What genius had thought that one up? But that was not the focus of the pursuit. Damian settled his pet in his arms and continued the long, winding jog through the tunnels and passages that wound through the walls of the Manor, catching glimpses of the outside through one-sided glass installed and small peepholes hidden in the designs of decorations. Drake stopped momentarily to check on Father, like a…nanny would for their charge. Father was still resting, though it did not look peaceful. Drake would not loom in the doorway, not with him being so miniscule, but he lurked, for lack of a better word. He lurked and crept forward, pressing the back of his hand to Father’s forehead and pressed the back of his other hand against his own. “No fever,” Drake mumbled, “That’s good. I’ll leave you some water for when you wake up. You didn’t have any after patrol so you’ll have a dehydration headache. Crackers, too, for the salt. I’ll be back soon.”

Father did not do… coddling , it was not in his nature as much as it was not in Damian’s (and yet, Damian supposes that there could be something of that nature in his own hands, like it’d been in his mother’s hands when she wrapped them around his fingers while he pressed the hilt of a sword in his hands, and then when she rubbed soft cloths of disinfectant over the slivers cut into his palms from training, and in the press of her lips against the back of his knuckles, if Damian ever wished to have that nature be nurtured in his palms, then he would, if it were not for the scars and calluses that gave Damian his strength), so there was none of this babying in his relationship with Father. Father was more along the lines of someone, if he wished to be in their company, he’d simply fill in a space in the same area and coexist as peacefully as a man with his sort of mission bearing down on his shoulders could. He did not expect Father to be overbearing and doting with any of them, even such a diminutive creature as Drake had turned out to be at an age older than Damian still. Yet he was not expecting this sort of relationship. The way Drake prodded and, in a phrase, bullied his Father. It’d be demeaning, pathetic, if Father were in the right mind. Because Father was not. He was in the sort of mind where he was letting a speck of a child like Drake push him and coddle him and for what? For grief? For the sake of loss? It was not something Damian knew. He had never mourned the people he killed. “What’re we doing here,” Richard wondered, half amused, as their sprint came to a pause.

Damian peered out one of the peepholes hidden in the walls. The kitchen, Damian noticed. Drake stared upwards at the cupboards. “Why would he put it all the way up there,” Drake muttered, staring at the body of a heavy, shiny black camera, a large thing with a gray strap that seemed to have black bats hand drawn onto the coarse fabric. 

‘Backup camera’, Cain noted, ‘ His regular one is at home .’

Damian vaguely recalled Drake’s camera, a large, old beast of a tool. Richard makes an awful, punctured sound as Drake, in his barbaric ways, hauls himself up on top of the kitchen counters and plants his foot in the cupboard, stretching his arm for the strap of the camera. If he were to fall, Damian thinks, it’d be a terrible mess to clean up, what with the blood and the cracked skull and the broken china shattered across the floor. But Drake does not fall, slinging the camera strap round his neck in a practiced move, and resting his feet firmly against the counter again, picking up a glass and a small plate from the cupboards before clambering down with as much grace as one of the drunkards on the street Damian’s seen. Drake, audacious as ever, goes rummaging around the pantry for a sleeve of those dreadful Saltine crackers that taste worse than cardboard, and then sticks himself in the fridge, only to emerge with a pitcher of water. A handful of crackers are scattered on the plate and a cup of water is poured, Drake clumsily sloshing the water out the sides of the cup. His hands are terribly uncoordinated, like his fine motor skills have been delayed by at least several years. Drake takes the cup and plate and wanders his way back up the stairs. “Well, let’s keep going,” Richard declares, his eyes inundated with something deeply warm that’s almost like the way he looks at Damian when he thinks Damian can not see him, but it’s not the same and Damian doesn’t understand that either, all the more for frustration.

Drake moves rather slowly now that he is tightly clutching both the cup and plate in his hands, as if he were to hold them any looser, they’d fall from his fingers. Rather than the fast paced sprint, all of them were reduced to an ambling pace that left Damian stroking Alfred the cat between the ears languidly as he trailed behind Cain. Regardless of whatever Damian’s said of her, Cain is the only one at hand who seems to be more keenly aware of navigation. Richard did not spend quite so much time in the tunnels, though he seemed to know them well enough. Drake meandered back to the couch where Father rested, quietly setting the plate and cup down on the coffee table, creeping backwards, freezing in place when Father made too loud a sound. He had fully backed out of the room when he turned on the heels of his socks, which, like the rest of his outfit, did not actually fit, and sprinted. Cain led the pursuit, outpacing Drake at one point, then flagging, despite her physical prowess exceeding Drake’s at any given age, nevermind in the form he’d currently taken. But Cain held back her speed, her steps falling silently in line with Drake’s perfectly. Drake was cradling his camera with one hand as up, up, up he ran, till he reached the door that would open to the stairwell that’d bring them up to the attic. There was a smaller hatch in the tunnels, one with a ladder that folded downwards. Drake inspected his pajama pants before producing a singular key. “Sorry, Mr. Pennyworth,” Drake whispered to himself.

He seems to have pickpocketed Pennyworth, although Damian wasn’t quite sure when. Perhaps when the man had fallen asleep. “Oh, so he’ll just pick the lock on my apartment but he’ll use the actual key for a dusty attic,” Richard griped without much- if any- resentment.

‘Just break into his place back,’ Cain suggested.

“Honestly, that’s a thing specific to you two,” Richard said, “I’ve never broken into my siblings’ homes.”

‘ Liar ,’ Cain stated, waving her hand in front of Richard’s face, mashing his nose against her palm lightly.

The click of the old door echoed out and Drake slipped up into the stairwell, much like a small serpent invading the crevices of an old home, looking for a dark, warm place to nest. Cain had propped open the hatch and the ladder unfolded, and she’d already ascended. Richard climbed after, and hardly let Damian finish the rungs before hauling him up after, despite the fact that Damian had climbed mountains . Drake did not stop by any chest or heirloom that were scattered through the room. In a move of remarkable stupidity that came from the same person who’d manufactured a skateboard that reached over 144 kilometers, he undid the latch on the circular window, the hinges squealing from the rust and disuse. The bitter sting of ice heavy wind burned through the room, but, with a complete and blatant disregard, Drake pried the window open further, just enough for him to lift one leg through the opening, the rest of him, the window shuddering closed with a harsh snapping noise. “Why,” Richard mumbled mostly to himself, “Why is he like this?”

At any given age, it seemed, Drake was a moron . Cain sighed, and reached above her head, climbing up on Richard’s back to reach the ceiling. A tug and a twist, and a small wooden hatch overhead rattled open, the freezing, malicious chill biting down upon them. Damian set Alfred the cat down, who seemed content to curl up in a corner and hide from the weather boring down from the opening and blustering into the tunnel. “Stay, Alfred,” Damain instructed, and made for the ladder.

Instead of climbing, Cain instead leapt from atop Richard, disappearing into the dark skies overhead, and though it was near what was known as sunrise, there was no known indicator of the day returning. Just the blank, empty vastness of the dark, dark skies, and the stinging snow, burying everything beneath its weight and cold. There was something nearly condemning about the cold of his Father’s city. His mother had traveled around with him to warm places when he was with her, when he was young, places where he’d felt warmed stone walls under his young palms, and played with hot blood spilt upon the floors, sunlight burnishing patterns into the ground. There’d been times when she’d taken him to places of trecherous cold. Grandfather favored warm locations, and, sometimes, his mother would disappear into the cold places with him, evading the man, disappearing with Damian, not only so he could continue his training, but to keep Damian far, far from the man who wanted to supplant Damian’s soul with his own. But those coldest places never seemed to sink their teeth into his flesh the way Gotham did. His consolation was that Richard, who was more Gotham than he wasn’t, seemed to feel the effects as well. Cain…well, he never expected her to show it. He saw a small, white face appear. Drake was clumsier in the thick layers of slush than inside, making a mad scramble over the ledges, feet sliding across the tiles of the roof, a hand gripping the camera and the other aiding him in pulling himself along the roof. Had anyone at the time, when he was truly this age, taken note of what an immense idiot he was? Because Damian generally assumes this was not a random idea that suddenly occured to Drake, no, no, he wouldn’t put it past the fool to tempt death the way he seems so deeply fond of doing. Drake crawled along- literally. The daft fool was close to being blown off the roof every time he so much as breathed, and had surrendered whatever little dignity he had to crawling through the slush in pajamas and socks, the camera round his neck swinging along as Drake made his way to some invisible destination. Finally settling in one area, Drake wriggled till he was kneeling, hunched over the camera, fiddling around with it. And, unfortunately, despite the cold, despite the dark, despite the dissimilarities between Drake and Damian, Damian knew what he was doing. Where Damian painted, drew, and sketched, Drake took aim like Todd with a gun, and instead of firing bullets, he hunted for shots with his camera. Determined to find something worthwhile in the Hellscape surrounding them, Damian almost wished the conditions would tolerate a sketchpad and charcoal, although the winds and the snow beating down would not give the tolerance. Drake stared at whatever he had taken pictures of, grimacing to himself, “That’s no good.”

Drake raised his camera again, and the barest ‘whir-click-snap’ could be heard over the howl of the wind, faint as breathing, but over and over. ‘Whir-click-snap.’ A strong wind blew, knocking Drake over, skittering him through the snow till he slowly, slowly reached the edge of the roof. A foot dug into the snow. And, despite the peril, Drake laughed. He laughed a child’s laugh, one that Damian did not possess, even though Drake was still older at 13 in this body, and Damian was 11, Drake laughed a child’s laugh, and Damian would never do so. Damian was far too grown up, and he’d only grow older, and he’d age and age and age, till he was a century old soul inside his far too young body. Drake rolled on to his back, turning the camera towards the sky, and ‘whir-click-snap’. It was only a minute before Drake let the camera rest against his chest, closing his eyes and letting the snow fall down on his face. If Drake were to sleep, he would never wake up, frozen as an undersized 13 year old forever, pale face turned up to the sky, thin limbs pressed into the frame the snow had created for him, an immortal child, sleeping till he was nothing more than dust. He’d heard cold was never a peaceful way, and he knew so as well. Yet, it’d always be kinder, if a word could be used, than fire. Still, Drake’s chest moved up and down, breathing deeply, purposefully. Snow began to cover his fingers and his face. Eyelids snapped open, and, in the odd, off way Drake moved, he sat up, a sudden movement that showed no transition from one position to the next. Through the darkness, something bright, something of a violet-pink color cut across the black sky. And as fast as it had appeared, the flash of brightness disappeared. There was a heavy thump, muffled by the thick layers of snow. Damian crouched, pulling himself low to the roof, legs primed to attack. A jingling bell rang into the air and a large, feline shadow bounded across the rooftop, past Damian, Richard and Cain towards Drake, a bell jingling brightly over the low roar of the winds. It was Drake’s absurdly large cat. “How did Dexter get here ,” Richard whispered, sounding strangled.

‘Climbed, probably,’ Cain answered serenely. 

Dexter gracefully planted himself in Drake’s lap, and the enormousness of the cat seemed all the more preposterous in comparison with Drake’s miniscule body. Drake, however, paid Damian’s observation no mind as he blinked down at the cat. “Well, hello, kitty,” Drake greeted happily, “You’re so big. And fluffy.”

The loudness of the winds appeared to be no match for the truly impossibly loud purr that rattled out of Dexter.

Drake gathered the abnormally large cat against his chest. “You have a collar,” Drake observed, “Your name’s Dexter? Well, how’d you get here, Mister Kitty? You’re very far from home.”

Dexter meowed, batting a paw against Drake’s collarbone. “Mr. Pennyworth might let me keep you inside until the storm blows over. Then, I’ll take you home.”

There was a certain intelligence about the cat, in the way his whiskers twitched and his eyes shifted, as though he were assessing his surroundings, the people in the area. Although, that could be a random conjecture; it was hardly as though cats were lacking in intelligence anyhow. Dexter rolled, exposing his expansive fluff that lined his stomach. “Are you cold,” Drake asked, and Damian could only be glad that Drake wasn’t one of those infernal human beings that baby-talked to their animal companions, rather preferring to hold a standard cadence of conversation. 

Dexter meowed once more, sounding surprisingly piteous for a creature of such regal heft. Damian is sure that Drake, being an infernal being as he was, would’ve stayed languishing on the snow coated roof, condemning Damian to freezing, had it not been for the sudden appearance of his cat.

Damian would always wonder how the cat appeared, though.

        Damian’s feet were cold and wet, the snow having melted and soaked through his socks. Alfred the cat his at his toes from his place in Damian's arms. He did not understand how Drake allowed himself to wander about in his wet pajamas, although perhaps his clothes would have to fit him in the first place to begin to stick to his skin. But the confounded creature that was Drake had plopped his cat upon the floor and began making his way down the winding steps, from the attic to the main stairways, to the hidden door of the Cave. At some point, they’d stopped in the same music room that Pennyworth had been left to slumber in, which he was no longer doing. “Would Masters Dick, Jason, and Damian happen to be there with Lady Cassandra,” Pennyworth asked the wall.

“Hi,” Richard said, “So…Ave Maria?”

Pennyworth’s mouth twitched, his slim moustache following along the motion. “I will have you know I do, in fact, need rest on occasion, at my age,” Pennyworth informed, “I presume the Manor is not burning down?”

“Nope,” Richard replied, “But Timmy’s on his way down to the Cave with his camera.”

“I see,” Pennyworth hummed, “Well, I shall fetch our dearest Tim. You may follow along as you please.”
Cain was already gone once again. She sloughs off snow in the winding corridors of the passages, and yet, it’s no indicator of where she runs. The piles of slush are simply that; Damian bites his tongue and almost wishes Cain would teach him to be as untrackable as that. Though, perhaps, it’s not a skill he could learn. In some ways, Damian thinks, Cain is still a wild thing, one of those that belong in the vast forests, in the unexcavated caverns and caves, in the insurmountable peaks of mountains. What an obnoxious thing to think, that a skill could be out of his reach. He’d adapt, of course. To simply lay down and accept something as impossible was not in Damian’s nature. Pennyworth moved fast enough for someone of the ambiguous but elderly age he possessed, and Cain was lurking ahead, head tilting to the side. Todd’s gaze was fixated on whatever lay beyond their hidden corridors. 

Father had, apparently, woken from his sleep and made his way to the Cave while they’d been hunkered down on the roof of the Manor, observing Drake’s uncanny behavior. Drake had, somehow, sensed that and had gallivanted down to the Cave, his feline companion poised by his feet.

"Hello, Alfred,” Drake greeted, his gaze still pinned on Father’s hunched form, “I found this kitty. His name’s Dexter. He was getting really cold, and once the storm blows over, I’ll take him back to his home, I swear. But we can’t just throw Dexter outside in the blizzard, right?”

Pennyworth raised his brows at Dexter, the former Red Lantern, a monstrous size for his species, stretched out across one of Drake’s still wet-socked feet and displaying what could be anthropomorphically described as an extraordinarily smug face as he engaged in washing a front paw. “I do see your point,” Pennyworth, “Is Master Bruce ready to spare his time for breakfast?”

Father did not answer. Drake did. “Of course. We’ll be right up, Alfred. Just give me a minute with him, please? I’ll take care of it.”

Pennyworth did not so much as hesitate as he did give a long pause before he glided his way up the stairs. And then, in a move that mimicked what he had done earlier, Drake turned on Father, chin raised and eyes burning. Alfred the Cat meowed quietly, and Damian tightened his grip briefly. “Bruce,” Drake bit out, “Is it safe to assume you haven’t had any water? Or the crackers?”

“Later,” Father murmured, shoulders hunched downwards as he typed away at the keyboard in front of him as he had earlier, and Damian thought that, had the suit not been under sanitization, Father would once again be back in it.

Drake’s deeply unimpressed expression narrowed in on Father’s form. “I thought we agreed we’d be taking a break.”

Father’s teeth flashed when his lips pulled back briefly from his gums. Drake’s cat made a deep, guttural ‘myrrrr’ in his chest, tail slashing through the air in irritation. “The case requires more focus,” Father grumbled.

Drake shoved the keyboard away. “How will you focus when you get migraines from not drinking anything or low electrolytes or staring at the screen without blinking for ten hours? How will you help anyone when you can’t help yourself?”

Father’s teeth flashed again, the way a dog’s might when it was about to bite. “I don’t need-”

“Yes, you do,” Drake interrupted, “Bruce, you’re human . You actually do need to do human things, like brush your teeth and drink water and eat at least a sandwich. How will you save anyone when you can’t fly because you get light headed from vitamin deficiency? You’re not saving anyone like this .”

Even for Drake, it was almost startlingly cruel. For the longest moment, Father looked reviled, at the damp, frozen air of the Cave and the passages that Damian, Cain, Richard, and Todd stood ensconced in seared viciously. Damian waited. He waited and waited and waited. Then, simply, his Father crumpled once more. Drake sighed, and Damian, surprising to himself, sighed as well. Simply watching Father in this state was…exhausting, and if Damian were to consider it further, it was also disheartening. Damian wonders if he’d have put up with this or if he, in his disappointment at the pathetic display, would have let his Father wallow and waste. To try and care for this man, this shell of Batman, would’ve sent Damian to his grandfather, and, then, well, it wouldn’t be Damian’s soul resting in his body. Damian’s teeth gnashed together. “This is pathetic,” he declared, “As soon as they leave, I am returning to my gear. I will go wizard hunting.”

Damian closed out the sounds of Drake coaxing Father up the stairs, voice no longer sharp and tearing. Damian closed out the sounds of Father slowly stumbling his way up the stairs, murmuring ‘Jason, Jason, Jason.’ Damian didn’t want to hear more. Damian turned away, Alfred purring softly in his arms. He didn’t want to see anymore. Damian just wanted this spell to end.

         Dick remembers what Bruce had been like. He’d called Dick ‘Robin’ several times, at least. They’d yelled at each other, spit flying in their faces. Dick had avoided Gotham altogether for months, and would’ve carried on if not for a child only as tall as his waist, with enormous pale eyes pleading, insisting, refusing to tell Dick his name and only persisting with what he believed to be the truth that Bruce needed Dick to return, needed Dick to be Robin. Tim had been right that Bruce needed a Robin, but it wasn’t Dick that he needed. And Dick had stayed away from Gotham following his brief visit that landed Tim the R, up until all the crises building upon each other required Nightwing’s assistance. He didn’t know how Bruce was training Tim, or how Tim was helping Bruce, but it’d worked. It’d fucking worked , this random child’s tenacity. Bruce was better , again, he was actually fucking functioning and Dick didn’t know what kind of magic Tim had worked, but it had worked and Dick only knew that Bruce was about as recovered as he’d get.

The details were, honestly, lost on him. It was barely an overnight change to Dick, but he’d gone months and months without seeing Bruce. So, from one appearance to the next, Bruce had changed, and the tension eased ever so slightly, rising and sinking over the years as Cass joined, Jason returned from the dead, Damian appeared. Except now, affected by the spell, it was like nothing for neither B nor Timmy had changed. This was them, before tiny Robin Tim took flight but after Bruce had allowed Tim the chance to enter a probation period. Dick could see Jason’s face, outlined by the faint light coming in through the peepholes. Jay was never all that good at stoicism, not to Dick, at least. Dick could see it all, the confusion, the anger, the sadness…the relief. Jason didn’t know about that latter emotion’s existence, but Dick did and, well, it was there. Dick turned to Cass, check on her and see how she was doing. She kept tilting her head, side to side, slowly. He didn’t really know what that met but she was also probably trying to configure this particular Batman-Bruce with the Batman-Bruce she’d known. Damian was…he was coping about as well as Jason. That is to say, he was kind of fucked up about this. “We should contact Zatanna, or if she’s not available, see if we can ring up Constantine,” Dick said, rubbing his temples.

“Or we can do what the Demon Spawn suggested and go get that wizard to fix their mess,” Jason grumbled, “Whatever that is, I don’t wanna deal with it.”

“None of us in this tunnel are dealing with that ,” Dick argued, “ That is being handled by a 13 year old who is not actually 13 and I don’t know if the juvenile wizard can actually fix them properly so let’s call people who’ve had more than ten years experience with stupid magic and let them actually fix this without fucking up.”

Dick was being somewhat uncharitable towards the wizard kid who’d gotten Tim and Bruce with the spell but the hem of Dick’s pants were wet from melted snow, his little brother was 13 again and the size of a cupcake and Dick couldn’t even go out and hug him, his mentor-dad-partner was sucked back into the pits of grief again, and it was generally a very overwhelming experience, okay? Damian rolled his eyes, fingers twisted up in his jacket angrily, and Dick felt a headache bloom from the front of his skull, thread through his sinuses, and attach itself to his temples. Get him some Tylenol, for the love of God. Tim outside managed to get Bruce climbing the stairs again, talking quietly and indiscernible. “Look, we’ll contact whatever magic professional we know once those two get out of the Cave and we can take it from there. Maybe we can get some sleep, or whatever. Just leave the wizard hunting idea behind,” Dick told them.

‘Can’t go wizard hunting when the roads are covered in snow. All the snow is too much to drive,’ Cass added, eyes following Tim and Bruce’s silhouettes ascending the stairs to the Cave.

“Excellent point,” Dick agreed, “I’m sure nobody wants to walk from Bristol to the city. Do you guys wanna walk from Bristol to the city?”

A loud meow startled them. Dexter had planted himself in front of the hidden entrance to the secret tunnel and his big amber eyes gleamed like lamplights in the slight dimness of the Cave. Cass clicked her tongue at Dexter, who let out a deep, rumbling purr. Dexter finally slunk away, and Dick sagged in relief. “Let’s go, I don’t know how much time we have,” Dick said, already pushing open the hidden entrance that blended seamlessly to the craggy walls of the Cave.

Dick was quick to close out of the false browser page Babs set up to make sure neither Bruce nor Tim found something that wouldn’t match up with their memories. He typed up an urgent email to Zatanna, who’d surely receive it from the BatNet and not miss it. Dick considered emailing Constantine as well, but chances were he wouldn’t receive it even on the BatNet. Hopefully the storm wouldn’t keep her out of Gotham and she could resolve this mess. He heard a ‘fwap’ as Cass smacked the back of her hand against Jason’s and Damian’s necks. ‘You won’t leave,’ she insisted, ‘I can’t leave, neither will you.’

Damian bared his teeth at Cass, his hands around the tunic of his uniform. She stared at him, and cuffed him round the neck again, unimpressed. Dick fiddled with the earrings in his pocket that he’d unclasped from Tim’s ears before the piercings had disappeared. He suddenly felt very, very tired and Dick remembered he hasn’t had at least a nap since the other day. “I’m going to my room, locking the door, and I swear to God if any of you leave, I’m tracking you down, dragging you back by the ear, and getting Timmy’s lemonade bottle and pouring it down your ear canals,” Dick announced.

‘I’ll let him,’ Cass told them plainly. 

Jason aimed a smack towards the back of Dick’s head and Dick slapped his fingers down. Damian punched Jason in the middle of the back and Cass pinched all three of them on the ears. Dick could hear Timmy’s soft chatter, talking about the several dozen lollipops he had stashed under his dorm room bed and his plot to get his boarding school’s sports teams to start buying their candy from Tim and not some kid named William because William had put dead worms in his friend Jessica’s backpack and Tim decided he was feuding with William and apparently, Tim’s diabolical plan boiled down to ‘leave William bereft of business because he sucks and I’m gonna plan a worm funeral with Jessica’. Dick smiled to himself as they all slipped into their rooms, locking the doors. Dick flopped on his bed, which he hadn’t used since he moved back into his old apartment when Bruce came back, and passed out.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t for long. Dick woke up only three hours later, feeling gross from cold sweat beading the back of his neck and his hairline. His mouth felt like it’d been stuffed with cotton wool. It was no lighter outside than it had been earlier, dim, faint light crawling between the crack in the drapery, not even light enough to throw shadows. Dick can’t sleep any more, so he stretches all the way on to his toes, and pries open a panel in his room. Damian and Jason don’t have these in their rooms. Dick wanders down the tunnels aimlessly. If Timmy’s not in the kitchen, he could probably grab a snack really quick. Cass probably has a snack cache in her room but Dick knows better than to try and get to it just for proximity’s sake. Dick’s been kicked out a window by his sister before, and he was lucky it was on the first story. Dick considers his path. It’s true he hadn’t spent quite so much time personally in the tunnels between the walls that wound from the very top of the attic to the depths of the Cave, but that didn’t mean he didn’t memorize the entire series of paths. He’d rather have had Cass take the lead earlier though; Dick didn’t intimidate Jason the way Cass did but if Dick were to follow along with her, Damian would be more likely to comply. Now, he was free of siblings to go about his way. He checked the kitchens- no tiny Timmy. Cookie time. Five chocolate chips, two peanut butter, and three snickerdoodles went in a bowl. Hey, don’t judge Dick, he earned all 10 cookies and it was easier to carry them in a bowl than on a plate. He snacked while he walked, continuing his stroll. He stopped by Bruce’s room. Bruce was in his bed instead of on the couch, and he seemed to be sleeping much deeper than earlier. He spotted a small bottle of Zolpidem left on the bedside table.

Well, Bruce should be down for the count for a while. Dick kept on going. He found himself in the library, his vision mostly obscured by the towering bookshelves. They were partially the antique bookshelves, which were so sturdy that Bruce had been able to salvage them from the cataclysmic earthquake a couple years ago, and had paid truly a disgustingly exorbitant amount of money to a family of local carpenters to repair the shelves with new wood as well as the old antique frame. Last he heard, the family had opened a shop in a second location and had sent their three daughters off to college. MIT, Cornell, and Harvard, Dick believes, no student loans or debt afterwards. Good for them. Dick peers between the bookshelves, finding Tim’s favorite corner of the library. There was one particularly large armchair that he’d always been able to fit in comfortably, a fatly stuffed chair with a soft exterior. Curled up tiny, so very, very tiny in the armchair, with a book (‘Foreigner’, Dick thinks, the C.J. Cherryh book from a ridiculously long series that Tim tried to get Dick to read and one that Dick never actually got to reading past the first page) slipping loosely from between limp fingers, sleeping peacefully under an almost hilarious amount of blankets, is Timmy.

         There’s a plate on the table by him of what might’ve been pizza judging by the leftover half a crust and slight smear of pizza sauce on a crumpled napkin. Alfred must’ve managed to coax Tim into eating something, even relenting to making pizza, if only because Tim’s pizza choice was artichoke hearts, onion, and Canadian bacon, which was moderately healthy if not a completely out of this world combination that Dick had never heard of existing before knowing Tim. With Bruce knocked out, Tim must’ve been convinced to wind down, right in the little corner of the library away from the main entrance, by the tall windows that climbed up towards the ceiling, with frosted silhouettes of barren tree branches stretching from the top to bottom of the windows etched into the glass. His baby bird down-curls were squished up on the side where his head was pressed against the cushion, a tiny toe, finally freed of snow-dampened socks, poking out from the blankets. Dick slipped the book out of Tim’s hand and stuck a bookmark between the pages before setting it beside the plate. It was hard to believe that this kid was 13. To Dick, he looked no bigger than a piece of candy corn. Dick also put down his empty bowl of cookies and brushed the crumbs off his fingers. He adjusted the blankets- all 9 of them which was quite frankly a ridiculous amount of blankets for a kid who hadn’t broken 5 feet yet and wouldn’t till he was 14- and scooped Timmy up in his arms. He weighed almost nothing to Dick, but Dick didn’t mind. Tim shifted in Dick’s arms briefly, but settled, sleeping deeply against Dick’s shoulder. God, Dick loved his little brother so fucking much. There was nobody he loved quite like Tim. It wasn’t that Dick loved few people, or that he loved the people that he did less. He loved Bruce (unfortunately) differently than he loved his parents, he loved the Jason he had to relearn differently than he loved the Jason that used to be. He loved Damian a bit differently than he loved a little brother- a harrowing mixture of emotions that Dick wasn’t quite sure how to handle, and it hadn’t exactly been easy. And he loved Tim like he loved Tim- who’d seen Dick at some of his best, some of his worst, lots of the worse than the worst. He’d witnessed at least a dozen blowouts between Bruce and Dick and they’d argued over their own things and Dick couldn’t even begin to truly quantify how much he loved Tim. Dick didn’t want to put Tim down or let him go. He’d rather stay in the limbo of the darkened hallways, the drapes on the windows in the main parts of the Manor drawn shut, while everyone slept. He’d rather stay there for as long as he could, if forever was impossible. But Dick slowly made his way down the halls, where Tim’s first room had been, rocking his arms slightly and trying to not let the lump burn too hot in his throat or the ache behind his eyes escape. He slowly opened the door, keeping it open with his foot. Dick pulled back the thick sheets on the bed so he could set his bundle of Timmy down on top of the mattress, adding another layer of blanket over him, despite his personal opinion that more than 5 blankets was completely excessive. Tim rolled over, disappearing into his cocoon. Dick allowed himself a minute in the solitude, filled only by the soft puffing sound of Tim’s breath,the dark, shadowless shapes of the room, the slight chill. Then, Dick had to move on.

Dick is going to commit fratricide. He’s earned it, he really has. Dick isn’t sure who he’s the most mad at; himself for not putting away the specialized snow tires for the motorcycles or Jason and Damian for busting out when everyone was sleeping. He’s hoping that Jason went along if only to keep an eye on Damian (and Colin, who might be out and about trying to find people stuck in the snow as Abuse. A name which still boggled Dick’s mind every time he thought about the toothy little redhead that smacked the back of Damian’s head willingly when Damian tried to exercise superiority over him). Cass checked the BatNet for any replies from Zatanna. Nothing as of yet, and Dick was seriously hoping he wouldn’t have to either actually track the wizard kid down or contact Constantine. Or there was always Tim’s demonologist friend, Jason Blood. He wasn’t sure how much a demonologist would know about adolescent wizard magic. But if it really came down to it, well, it’s not like Dick hadn’t been friends with half-demons and other such people before. Besides, none of Tim’s friends could weird Dick out like Bart Allen, unless Tim had, like, kicked in with assassins somehow. Even then, could Dick of all people actually judge? "Anything yet from Zatanna,” Dick inquired as he suited up in his extra-thermal Nightwing suit- this one had a fun little jacket. 

Cass grimaced and sipped a travel mug of honey-lemon tea for her cold-scraped vocal chords. ‘No. Nothing yet. The trackers on Jason and Damian are up.’

She wrapped her dark cloak closer to her throat and swapped out the wheels on her motorcycle with an efficiency that spoke of a past competition. Tim must’ve helped her learn by making a game- and competition- of tire changing or something. “Why did you stay behind,” Dick wondered, “I’d have thought you’d be out there trying to get Timmy and B back to normal.”

Cass thrummed her fingers against the seat of her motorcycle as she stood up once the wheels were changed and secured. ‘If Bruce needed to be…helped when Timmy was asleep or too tired or too small…I’d handle it. He wouldn’t notice me yet. But I’d handle it for him, ’ Cass replied honestly, ‘I also…I wanted to think about them. This. I wanted to think.’

Dick sighed. “Yeah. Me too. Lots to think about, huh?”

Cass nodded. ‘Lots. They’re thinking about a lot of this too. Still, I’m going to show them ‘s’. Lots.’

Cass demonstrated the s sign for Dick, her thumb tucked over her fist. Dick barked out a laugh. “Yeah, I might too.”

The nearly-Arctic tempered day may as well be night for all the light that was provided. The entire cityscape of Gotham had been ransacked by the freezing air that turned his breath to nearly solid puffs of ice as he breathed out, driving as quickly as he could on the black ice laden roads, Cass at his side while they followed the GPS to Damian and Jason’s locations. The two dots separated, and Cass went after Jason. Dick kept after Damian’s dot, and when the snow got too thick and the ice got too slippery even for the specialized Bat tires, Dick swerved into one of the many alleys and took to the skies. Ex-assassin Damian may be, but Dick’s been flying longer than Damian’s been alive. “So,” Dick started, “Remember what I said about the lemonade bottle?”

A fluffy little red head pokes out of a way too big trenchcoat. “Hi, Nightwing,” Colin chirps, “What lemonade bottle?”

“Sorry, Colin, we’ve been having a…bit of a crisis at home,” Dick apologized, “The lemonade bottle is relevant. For reasons. Are you cold? Did you guys get the extra heaters?”

“Of course they got the heaters, that’s what I was supposed to do,” Damian defended, “Colin’s just an idiot who can’t stay home.”
Colin grinned. “Pot, kettle.”

Damian scrunched his forehead as he squinted behind his domino. “There’s no pots or kettles here. I’m looking for a wizard , stupid.”

“Don’t call me stupid.”

“Then don’t sound stupid.”

“I don’t sound stupid, you sound stupid.”

Dick cut in, “Stop saying stupid, both of you. Colin, Damian shouldn’t be out here and neither should you. Go home, keep the windows and doors shut, and get all the blankets you can find. Stay warm, ‘kay?”

Damian scowled and leaned over to mutter something too low for Dick to hear over the rising howl of the winds. Colin brightened up. “Gotcha. See you later, Nightwing!”

Dick turned away as Colin shifted into his Abuse form. It was painful to even watch, even with the roaring wind covering up the grotesque sound of Colin’s bones cracking and creaking, groaning and shifting underneath his skin. It wouldn’t disturb Dick half so much if Colin wasn’t 10, only a handful of months younger than Damian. As it was, watching tiny little Colin grow so drastically served to remind Dick of all the horrors that escaped their notice, that they were too late to help. He heard the far off thump of giant feet landing muffled on a roof, the echo fading out further and further till it disappeared. Dick grabbed the back of Damian’s cloak and turned him to face Dick, squatting down till their eye lenses matched heights. Damian’s scowl deepened, his mask pinching deeply at the bridge of his nose. “I’m going to find the wizard,” Damian declared.

“Damian, the wizard’s just a kid,” Dick reminded him, “They most likely have no clue what they’d do to fix B and Timmy. They probably don’t even know what they did in the first place.”

Damian still reared up defensively. God, Damian must be so freaked out right now. Bruce was- he was just so different and Damian didn’t know how to even begin to understand it. He was just an 11 year old who wanted things to go back to the way they were before and for everything to be fixed, and he couldn’t fix it. So he had to wait. “It’s hard isn’t it,” Dick tried to sympathize, “You just want everything to be fixed, don’t you?”

Damian’s lip curled. He spat, “This whole situation is ridiculous! Why didn’t the wizard just stay home? Why’d they have to come out? Why’d they have to go and turn Father into- into that ? And Drake is coddling him and Father’s useless! It’s the wizard’s fault, and they need to pay !”

Dick squeezed Damian’s shoulders. “Hey,” he softly spoke over the wind, “We can handle it. We can make sure B is okay till we can get a professional to help. And we do want professional help, right?”

Damian’s lip uncurled as he grumbled, “Of course.”

“Good. It’s cold out here, Damian. If we go back right now, I’ll spend all day making those cookie things you like.”

Damian, for all his claims of not being a child, was easily motivated by the comfort of a familiar favored food. “And you won’t cut out the spices, right,” Damian muttered in suspicion, “Like Pennyworth does?”

Dick nodded, promising, “I’ll add spices. I don’t make British food, D.”

Damian acquesiced, bounding back to his own mini motorcycle over the roofs, and Dick was a good person so he ignored Damian’s boots sliding against packed ice, except to make sure Damian didn’t plow face first into a snowbank. He, however, was not above laughing at Jason when Jason and Cass arrived at the Cave, Cass grabbing Jason and hauling him over her shoulder, sending him flying into the stacked mats. There was the soft noise of the door creaking open. “Alfred,” little Timmy’s voice called, “Alfred, are you down here? Are you okay?”

Dick picked up Damian and hauled his cookies into the secret passage. Damian writhed like a cat in a bathtub, but kept quiet. Cass scaled the wall and Jason wedged himself under the Bat computer, the fake browser pulled up again. Tiny Timmy wandered down, all fluffy looking and sleepy. Dick wanted to scrunch him into his pocket so bad. Timmy frowned at the knocked over mats and started to haul them back into place, fingers sliding on the slippery material. The BatNet alert chimed. Oh shit. Tim started poking at the Batcomputer and stopped. He stood straighter, walked away, and they all sighed in relief. Then, Tim came back with a fucking shotgun. “He wouldn’t,” Dick whispered. 

Tiny Timmy’s shotgun had to be one of Alfred’s, seeing as it was longer than one of his legs. “I technically don’t know how to use this, but I think it doesn’t matter when it’s aimed at your head,” Tim announced and stuck the muzzle under the desk. “...Do it,” Damian muttered.

Dick tweaked Damian’s spiky hair. “Don’t,” he warned.

Jason slowly crawled out from under the desk, unfolding to his full height. Dick could see Timmy’s hands shake, although he kept a firm grip on the shotgun. “I’ll scream,” Tim warned, “And my friend Alfred is upstairs and he’s a really good shot. So you stay right there.”

Jason sighed, then moved. Tim screamed, but he hardly had time to move before Jason had hauled little Timmy up and wrenched the gun from his hands. Tim bit and gnawed at Jason’s hand. “Ew, fuck, don’t you have rabies,” Jason complained.

“That’s a bad word, don’t say that,” Timmy screeched, “And you wish I had rabies! I have rich kid cooties! I’ll turn you pompous and a venture capitalist with my saliva and there’s no cure! You’re gonna wanna be a landlord!”

Jason rolled his eyes, wiped the spit off on Tim’s head, and then moved to a pressure point. Tim went limp, his eyes shut. Cass dropped from the ceiling as Dick and Damian left their hiding spot. “Wait, he was vaccinated, right,” Jason double checked, “Right?”

Dick shrugged, toeing the shotgun away. Safety was on, it wasn’t even loaded. Timmy had no clue what he was doing. Dick felt that ring true for the entirety of Tim’s pre-Robin hood, and even the majority of Tim’s tenure as Robin. He closed out the fake browser as Cass socked Jason in the gut so she could get Tim on her back. Dick breathed a sigh of relief. He turned to the rest of his siblings. “Zatanna will be here,” he announced, “In seven hours, they’ll be right back to normal.”

       Bruce’s back hurt. Normal. There was a glass of water and a pile of Saltines on a small plate by his bedside table. They seem to have been slightly crushed. Not…quite normal. He usually doesn’t eat Saltines unless he’s extremely injured. When his back had been broken, Saltines with thin broth was all Bruce found he could stomach in the wake of his crushing defeat. He squinted. Bruce…remembered, sort of, a point where he would often wake up to Saltines on a small plate with a glass of water. Bruce looked up, and had he not been Batman, he’d have been visibly shocked. On the foot of his bed was the enormous shape of Dexter, Tim’s cat. But Tim…never brought his cat over. Lamplight eyes fixated on Bruce’s face, and the animal prowled closer. Closer, closer still. “Oh, Dex,” Tim said as he poked his head in, “Here he is. He wanted to wake you up, I guess.”

Bruce thinks Dexter wanted to put Bruce in a permanent sleep. The massive feline puddled in Tim’s arms, wider in breadth than Tim’s shoulders and torso, yet seemed to become nothing more than a kitten in Tim’s hold. “He’s very good,” Tim praised, “Right, Dex? I think you’re a very good kitty.”

Dexter purred, yet it was such an ominous promise. “What’s he doing here,” Bruce rumbled.

Tim sighed, “We both were affected by the wizard kid’s spell. Zatanna reversed the effects after Dick emailed her but she just barely got out of here when the news alert hit.”

Bruce’s phone displayed the alert Tim mentioned: all individuals were required to stay inside as the temperatures plummeted below zero, and a massive blizzard fully hit Gotham with all the force of a hurricane. The roads were shut down, covered in over six feet of snow. “It’ll be at least a week before the blizzard ends,” Tim said, “So everyone’s stuck here.”

Bruce blanched. “Everyone?”

Tim nodded solemnly. “Everyone.”

Well, this couldn’t be…too bad.

      Eli shuffled down the streets for a shelter. One of those swanky Wayne shelters could keep them warm and safe. The past couple days had been fucking freaky. Waking up with glowing hands and their foster parents losing their shit. Eli had fucked off with the clothes on their back and the fifty lucky bucks they had. That was enough for a bus outta the Hell Hole right? Or maybe not. Maybe that Wayne kid had set up a charity that Eli could do to get some more cash? They weren’t above charity, they weren’t above much. Chances were chances, and Eli knew better than to waste a chance for something as stupid as pride. Pride wasn’t gonna keep them in trail mix and cup noodles.

Their hands hadn’t glowed since blasting that freaky demon-bat person thingy. Eli had no clue if they were now a murderer but as far as they were concerned, they didn’t do jack shit. Some freak in bat ears just died in the cold, and that’s all Eli could say. Eli shivered, walking faster. The shelter was just a street away. “Little wizard child,” a voice cooed, “All alone. Nobody’ll miss you.”

Eli never made it to the shelter.