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The warehouse sat heavy on the waterfront, blending in as another box of steel and grime in Crime Alley. Rusted siding, cracked windows, too many entrances that couldn’t all be covered at once. He’d mapped the layout in his head: office block to the left, storage bay stretching long and narrow, catwalks running parallel with poor lines of sight.
Superman stood a step back to his right, Diana mirroring him on the left. Her sword was down as they waited, patient but tense. On the ground, Red Hood and Nightwing were positioned at the front. Jason moved like a brawler even in stealth, shoulders tight, fingers just off the triggers of his pistols. Dick kept pace beside him, calmer, a little more practiced with team work.
Bruce crouched low at the skylight, scanning the floor below. Crates stacked too neatly, cover for Scarecrow’s men. Half a dozen armed, visible, more likely hidden. And somewhere, Crane himself.
At his signal, Jason and Dick would breach the front. Bruce and the League would drop through the skylight, fast and brutal, clear the nest before Crane could react. Clean. Precise. Controlled.
“Go.” Bruce said into his comm.
Below, Nightwing’s escrima stick shattered the lock on the front entrance. Jason followed with a smoke bomb that filled the warehouse with a hazy grey before entering with a series of gunshots to the ceiling.
“Now.” He ordered before jumping through the newly shattered skylight, cape flaring. He hit the ground moments before Diana and Clark.
The first guard didn’t have time to raise his weapon before Bruce slammed him to the floor, he moved to the next with a batarang. He could see Wonder Woman a few feet away, holding a guy in a headlock while kicking another in the chest. Superman was somewhere above them, taking out guards on the upper level.
Oracle’s voice rang through his ear. “Two more on the catwalk, moving west.”
“Robin.”
“Already on it.” Damian’s voice was muffled as he swung from his grapple and landed between the two. The sound of steel clashing against firearms followed.
The fight continued on, dodging, striking, redirecting. Jason’s gunshots, nonlethal, echoed to his left. The crackling of Dick’s electric escrima sounded from his right. Diana was behind him, Clark above with Damian. Oracle gave directions to them all, who was a guard, who was on their side.
It was working. For once, it was a clean fight.
Then he saw it, movement at the far end of the room. Not one of theirs. Crane.
The canister in Scarecrow’s hands gleamed under the harsh warehouse light. Too big to be a smoke grenade. Fear toxin, wide spray radius. He was aiming for a throw.
“Tim. Who’s the target?”
Red Robin’s voice paused the commentary over the comms for just a moment. Calculating angles, the arc of the throw. “Superman. I think he’s aiming for Superman. He’s on the ground, six feet behind you. He’d do the most damage if hit with fear toxin.”
Crane threw the canister.
Bruce didn’t think. He jumped, cape snapping behind him, and caught it mid-arc before it could detonate in front of Clark. He intended to pivot, to throw it back at Crane. A quick solution, one that would keep everyone safe.
The casting fractured on impact with his gauntlet. A hiss sounded as it cracked more under the building pressure.
He covered the top, tried to twist it together, but the device went early. The burst hit point blank, instantly overwhelming his respirator. Fear toxin forced its way into his mask.
Bruce staggered, vision burning. He hurled the canister skyward, the last of its payload spreading harmlessly into the rafters. His lungs burned, his eyes watered, his hands shook uncontrollably.
“Bruce!” Oracle and Red Robin shouted over the coms.
“Batman!” From Clark.
He heard none of them. The ground tilted under him, his cape too heavy on his shoulders. The world dimmed, then twisted, then split.
Smoke stung his throat. Heat pressed against his faceplate, waves of it rolling off collapsing walls. He staggered forward, boots crunching over broken glass and concrete. Then he saw him.
Robin.
Crushed beneath twisted metal, suit torn and burned, chest barely moving.
Bruce dropped to his knees. He shoved the debris aside with raw strength, hands bleeding, gauntlets slipping. He dragged the boy free and gathered him close, heart pounding so loud it drowned out everything else.
“Robin,” he rasped, voice breaking through the tears. “Stay with me. Stay with me, I’ve got you.”
The boy’s head tipped against his chest, blood smearing the yellow of his cape. Lips moved, soundless, too weak for words.
“Jason.” The name tore free, unguarded, desperate. He pressed a hand against the wound in his chest. Too shallow, too late. “No. No, no, no, you’re okay. You’ll be okay. I promise. You’ll be okay, I promise.”
Jason’s hand twitched once, then stilled. His body went limp.
Bruce’s breath caught, fractured. He clutched him tighter, rocking him like a little child. “I’m sorry.” He whispered into blood-mattered hair. “I’m so sorry Jay-lad.”
Jason’s body sagged against him, limp and cooling, when the sound came, sharp, familiar. A rope snapping.
Bruce’s head jerked up.
Above him, a broken grapple swung empty, frayed ends dangling. Below it, sprawled across the scorched floor in the blue and black of Nightwing, lay Dick.
Not moving.
His arms bent wrong, head tilted, chest dark with spreading blood. Just like his parents, just like the fall Bruce had sworn no child of his would ever suffer from again.
“No.” Bruce’s voice cracked. He whipped at his face, tears catching on his cowl. “Not you too.”
He dragged Jason tighter against his chest, the weight pressing him down as he walked to his other son's body. His hands shook as he reached towards Dick, too far, too late, his voice breaking as he stopped breathing.
“Dick!”
The only response was from the rafters, creaking, mocking.
***
“Superman,” Tim’s voice cut sharp over the comms. Filling the moments between gunshots. Nonleathal ones, Bruce had instigated a rule of working with them. “I think he’s aiming for Superman. He’s on the ground, six feet behind you. He’d do the most damage if hit with fear of toxins.”
Right again Timmy.
Jason swung around in time to see it play out. The canister leaves Crane’s hand, Bruce jumping. He caught it midair, cape flaring, thin it burst in his grip. A cloud swallowed his cowl, hissing as it burned through the respirator.
Jason swore.
Batman staggered, hurled the remains upward, but the damage was done. HIs knees buckled and for a second Jason thought he’d go face-first into the concrete.
“Bruce!” rang through the comms and he was thankful only the bats were connected. That would’ve been hard to explain to Superman and Wonder Woman.
A shot ricocheted right next to his face and he spun around back into the fight. Three more guards broke from cover and came at him fast. He fired a pair of rounds into their shoulders, pivoted, caught the third with the butt of his pistol. He couldn’t afford to take his eyes off of the fight, not unless he wanted a knife to the ribs.
But he could hear. And that was worse.
Bruce’s voice came through the comm, cracked open, not the calm baritone of orders and strategy. It was something Jason had never heard before.
“Robin.”
Ah yes, Bruce’s fear would be for Damian. That made sense.
“Stay with me, stay with me. I’ve got you.”
“Jason.” Bruce was sobbing, “No. No, no, no, you’re okay. You’ll be okay. I promise.”
Jason froze, gun halfway up, almost taking a hit before muscle memory saved him. He slammed his attacker down hard, chest heaving, ears full of words that didn’t belong to the man he never said them.
Another grunt, another whisper. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Jay-lad.”
Jason blinked sweat out of his eyes, throat tight. Jason lowered his gun as the last guard went down, mind swirling around the nickname he hadn’t heard in years.
“Crane’s gone.” Daiman’s voice flickered in between Bruce’s muttered words. “I lost him.”
“It’s fine.” Nightwing’s voice cut through. “We’ll get him later. We need to get Batman out of here.”
“Not you too.” Bruce’s voice sounded shattered, and Jason ran back toward the center of the warehouse. He jumped over unconscious guards and ran between stacked crates.
“Dick!”
He turned the last corner to see Batman on his knees, clawing at empty air. The shadows flickered across his cowl, his cape dragging in the dust as he reached for something that wasn’t there.
Jason slowed, chest pounding as Batman started muttering about Tim.
“Tim. It’s okay, Tim. It’s okay.”
Jason’s boots scuffed against the floor as he took another step, but Bruce didn’t look at him. Didn’t look at any of them. His gaze locked on some nightmare only he could see.
Nightwing got to him first, slipping under Bruce’s arm and lifting.
“A little help, Hood.” he muttered, and Jason ran the rest of the way, grabbing Batman’s arm to pull him up.
Bruce sagged between them, his weight heavy, his voice low and broken. “Jason…” His gauntlet twitched against Jason’s jacket, not quite gripping, just hovering. His head tipped forward, shadow swallowing half his face. “I’m sorry. For not killing him. It cost me you.”
Jason froze, for a second he thought he imagined it. Thought that maybe the toxin twisted his own head, not Bruce’s. But the way the words scraped out of him, raw, hoarse, and true, made Jason’s chest cave in.
“I forgive you, Dad.”
***
Diana had seen men fall in battle, had heard the last words of kings and soldiers alike. But she had never imagined the fall of Batman to go like this.
Red Hood’s whisper still clung to the air, fragile. ‘I forgive you, Dad.’
Then the Dark Knight, the unshakable, unyielding shadow that even gods respected, went utterly still. Tears slipping past the edges of his cowl.
Nightwing tightened his grip under one arm, Red Hood braced the other. Robin hovered close, face pale beneath the domino mask. They moved around him like orbiting stars, instinctively holding the center that had collapsed.
“They’re his,” Diana said quietly, the realization striking like an arrow. “His children.”
Superman swallowed, his voice unsteady. “Is he… going to be okay?”
No answer came. Not from Nightwing, who ducked his head and adjusted his hold. Not from Red Hood, who kept whispering ‘I’m here, I’m fine, you didn’t lose me’. Not from the smallest Robin, who stared at the ground like it might swallow him whole.
They could still hear Batman’s broken sobs echoing in the warehouse.
For the first time since she had met him, Diana realized: Batman wasn’t unbreakable.