Chapter Thirty Eight

The five of them capable of moving looked at the table again, as Slade strolled over and tugged out a small section of the grate near to it, large enough for one of them to have clear line of fire through at a time. It also had the effect of apparently ending the comms block, as Batman’s voice spoke down the line.

“Nightwing. Time of effect on the muscle relaxant Hood has been dosed with?”

And he immediately was growling out demands, of course. Go figure. Dick restrained an eye roll. “He’s got another half hour, minimum, like that. Pit madness might burn it out quicker, but he won’t be shooting.”

“Hmph.” Batman grunted, silent for several moments. “The platform is magnetised, grappling won’t work. Deadshot’s targeting me as well, I think. I have my suit’s defib recalibrating to counter the magnet. You have to play along for now.”

The younger bats exchanged looks between themselves for a moment. The most they had touched firearms was to disarm, for most of them. Damian’s League training reflected their disdain for guns as an inferior tool for the unskilled, and Cassandra’s youth training was similar, not to mention her naturally slender frame had only grown enough to support the recoil of shooting in the past few years, after she had become a part of the Batclan.

Slade’s voice cut into their silent uncertainty, calm but demanding. “Shoot. Now.”

Dick waited for one of the others to step forward. If they could do this, all the better. But more importantly, he needed an opportunity to pin down Deadshot’s position more clearly. And… a cold touch of anxious fear, drilled into him by years of hiding, protested the idea of shooting in front of these people he’d called his family. Once he did that, they’d have questions. Questions he couldn’t answer. They all knew he’d never fired his service weapon when he was a cop, it was on his file, basically the only cop in Bludhaven’s history without a record of shooting. There was no reason he could give, no excuse to hide it, once they saw.

Robin huffed loudly, tsking at the indecisiveness of the others, snapping “I shall begin, I am least likely to succeed, as a result of my smaller stature. Organise yourselves with the time I offer.”
He walked to the table, snatching up a small handgun. It was clumsy in his small hands, the grip designed for an adult, not a child masking their unfamiliarity. When he stepped to the hole in the grate, it was barely low enough to allow him to aim clearly. He kept control of himself, but Dick knew Damian, better than Damian knew himself. There was a faint tremor in his legs, and his brow was tight in the way that meant he was afraid, and pushing through it.

Dick was nearest to him, and before he could think twice about it, he softly murmured, “Deep breaths, Robin. Exhale with the shot.”

His frame went stiff for a split second, before inhaling deeply, relaxing, bracing, and exhaling in time with the trigger. The shot was loud, in the chamber, and went wide from it’s intended target, pinging off of concrete with a crack. So did the next six, before the magazine clicked empty.

Robin frowned at the unhit targets and the empty gun, then tsked and moved away, purposefully not looking in Nightwing’s direction. Across the room, the chains rattled loudly as they fed through, the platform beginning to wobble and lower.

Dick lifted his eyes from the discarded gun to Slade, silently searching for confirmation. The merc’s one eye met his, unblinking, before the faintest shifting of muscle hinted a smile, only seen by someone that can read the barely-there expressions of the legendary assassin.

Cass went next, silently striding to the opening and table, before drawing a blade from within her suit and throwing it. With pinpoint accuracy, it landed, striking the exact centre of the distant small target, and bouncing off harmlessly with a loud clang.

Slade chuckled over the sound of the dragging chains, and said, “Impressive, but the task was to shoot, not throw.”

Black Bat twitched, and reached to get a gun, then missed her shots as well, leaving pockmarks in the metal of the machine she had aimed at. Close, but not enough. Not trained for it.

Lawton leaned to avoid a ricochet, rifle reflecting light for a moment, showing his prone outline.

Slade’s imperceptible smile grew as he watched Nightwing.

Nightwing watched Steph and Tim step closer to the table, both clearly uncertain, both uncomfortable with the idea of using the firearms. Dick watched his little brother that he’d failed before, and his little sister he’d lied to, build up their false confidence. He cursed under his breath, “Goddamnit Slade.”

Jason shifted behind him, lifting his torso enough to look, function clearly returning faster than expected but still slowly. “Whaddya shay?”

Dick’s shoulders rolled back, his spine straightening. He silently moved past Tim and Steph, cutting them off and forcing them to step back. Without hesitation, he reached for the familiar handgun nestled amidst the others on the table, the only one with a second etching on it, a sharp-edged and jagged R, so different to Robin’s. The only one that felt as familiar in his hand as his escrisma sticks.

He carried it loosely at his waist, where a holster should sit, as he walked to the opening. Just the right height for him, of course. He stood, staring, still and silent.

—

Tim was used to seeing strange things. It was a part of their line of work, to run into the weird and wild, the broken and mad, the frightening and fucked up. But genuinely, there was no fucking way he could have ever expected this, right?

Dick had just walked over, wordlessly forcing him and Spoiler to step back from the table, then he'd grabbed a gun as if he knew exactly which he wanted. No hesitation, no pause, no deliberating. Simply picked one up, and turned to the hole in the grate.

Tim watched as Dick's shoulders rose with a breath. Then time seemed to slow for a moment as the young detective’s mind processed, dissected, stumbled over what he was seeing.

It was as if Nightwing just…left.

One moment, Nightwing was stood there, staring through the grate with gun in hand. The next, it was as if someone else had swapped places with him, or possessed him. Usually, Nightwing was fluid. His shoulders lax, his joints limber and seemingly nonexistent, a grin on his face. He was always moving somehow, flipping, spinning, tapping, bouncing, full of an energy that filled the air around him, a huge and friendly presence you could always feel. Even recently, when he’d been more…subdued, it was all still there.

It was what made him Robin. What made him Nightwing. It was just how Dick was.

But in that moment, it changed. His shoulders lifted, and settled differently. They were wider than Tim remembered, broad and bulky, and positioned…strangely. Throughout his body, it was reflected. Joints locked or braced, muscle heavy and clear, his stance firmly set rather than swaying and shifting. His expression dropped entirely, features blank and oddly harsh, and his whole body had gone still. Quiet. Empty. It was the first time Tim noticed how his memory of Dick clashed with reality. He’d never taken the time to actually look at him since he’d returned, just seeing the surface similarities that matched his memory and letting that be enough. But now? Now he saw the hollows in his cheeks, highlighted by the void expression. He saw the muscle that strained at the Nightwing suit in the wrong places, too heavy and inflexible for how he moved. He saw the give in the suit in other places, over the ribs and stomach, where muscle and the slight amount of fat Dick had carried should have sat.
And where his infectious positive energy usually sat… felt cold. Sharp. Dangerous. Something in his stance amplified it, a pulse of anxiety in Tim’s chest, a klaxon blaring at him to work it out, to recognise it, to remember-

The pieces slid together.

Tim’s eyes slid from Dick to the man that stood in almost an identical stance, one he’d fought and almost died against as a Titan.

Time marched on, and it felt as if it was faster, to make up for that slowed moment. He knew it wasn’t, but the speed at which Dick acted cast doubt.

In a smooth motion, as if effortless and thoughtless, Nightwing’s hand tightened around the gun held at his waist- held as if in a holster, Tim’s mind pointed out -and lifted it. There was no pause to aim. The gun was raised, pointed, and fired. Seven times, mere moments between each shot. One after another, the bullets struck their targets, the machines clamping down on the chains of the platform. Objectively, it was a stunning display of skill. Subjectively, it was one of the more horrifying things Tim had seen in recent months.

The sixth shot rang out, and Nightwing’s body shifted. Knees gave way, torso twisted, arms raised, and the gunshot rang out a seventh time, the last shot flying into the darkness above, and loudly ricocheting with a metallic clang and a spray of sparks that illuminated the recoiling figure of Deadshot losing the rifle he held, the gun ripped from his grip by the last shot.

The rifle clattered to the ground in the distance, visibly damaged. The platform stilled. Deadshot swore and shuffled, his fleeing footsteps loud in the following quiet.

Nightwing calmly ejected the empty magazine, and slid the gun into a nonexistent holster at his waist again. Voice devoid of inflection, he spoke to Deathstroke, “You have roughly twenty seconds before the Bat frees himself.”

Then he simply turns on his heel, so sickeningly similar to the one-eyed mercenary, and walks out of the room through the other door, the red light indicating that it’s sealed now green.

“Offer stands, Grayson.” Wilson calls out, even as he settles his helmet onto his head and begins walking to an exit of his own.

“I know.” Dick paused at the exit, watching Deathstroke stride out of the room, his exit door magnetically sealing behind him with a loud buzzer noise. Then, he turned his head to take in the group of bats on his side of the metal grate, and raised an eyebrow. “Aren’t we leaving now? Deadshot needs picking up soon, and Deathstroke was never going to let himself be caught after this anyway. He’ll be topside and in the wind by the time we get out of the tunnels.”

--

Nightwing turned, and left them to follow. It was rude, he knew, but he also found himself a mix of oddly numb and simply uncaring, the dissociation burying his more brotherly side that he typically pulled forwards for them all.

They’d caught up to him shortly after, but there had been no mention of what happened in the firing chamber. Dick was foolish enough to hope they might actually have just dropped the matter entirely, but alas, no.

The group emerged onto the streets of Gotham at the same time Batman did across the drainage channel, and all of them prepared to shoot off lines to the rooftops. Nightwing knew from past habit that the others were all heading back to the manor now to debrief and get clean, so thanks to new habit, he turned and prepared to go the other direction, back towards his bike and Bludhaven.

“Nightwing, debrief at the cave.” Batman’s voice gravelled out.

Dick’s teeth clenched at the bite of order. He stilled, not turning or lowering his grapple. There was a long pause in which he felt their eyes on his back, burning and scornful. Until eventually Stephanie stepped into view, features altogether too easy to read for a Bat in their careful tenderness.

“Shouldn’t take too long, B- Wing. C’mon, you can ride with me.”