Work Text:
Tim has to count the past month as one of the worst ones he’s had in a while.
He’s been on edge the entire time, sleeping in fits, with a gun tucked under his pillow and a knife hidden underneath his mattress. He’s always looking over his shoulder, always expecting someone to jump out of the deep shadows in the streets and in his ratty apartment.
The last time he caught his reflection in the mirror, his hair was messy and knotted, his cheeks sunken and deep shadows from countless sleepless nights under his eyes.
He looks like a goddamn specter.
He’s been avoiding mirrors lately.
In other words, the past month has been absolute hell.
Really, his only relief comes in the form of Jason's tall frame he bumps into once a week. Jason always slips his hand into Tim’s left jacket pocket for the empty cigarette pack that Tim always stuffs with folded pieces of paper containing everything he’s learned and seen in as much detail as his cramped handwriting will allow on the scrap of paper.
It’s truly proof that Tim needs three days of uninterrupted sleep if he considers seeing Jason the highlight of his week.
Tim well and truly despises undercover assignments.
When Tim opens his eyes on Monday-- six days until the shipment arrived and his mission would finally end-- he already knows it’s not gonna be a good day.
Call it a gut feeling, whatever. Tim is on edge. Something bad’s going to happen.
He scrubs the dregs of sleep from his eyes and reaches for the Tylenol.
He’s taken to keeping a bottle beside his bed now since he’s been getting headaches frequently from lack of sleep. He doesn’t dare get any of his usual sleeping pills to help him sleep better. Too many risks he’s not willing to take.
The clock reads five thirty-seven in the morning.
Tim isn’t expected until eight.
He sighs, runs a hand over his face, and decides to take a shower.
The water doesn’t go past lukewarm and the jet is weak, but he got used to it a while ago.
Tim takes his time in the shower and only gets out when the water turns cold. He feels a bit more human when he drags himself into his tiny kitchenette and pulls out a frying pan.
Tim isn’t hungry, but doesn’t dare skip meals unless he has to. The mission is draining, but he’s of no help if he passes out from malnourishment. He was specifically told to not attract attention to himself, to simply stay out of the way and observe and gather as much intel as he can.
Tim goes through the motions mechanically, like a robot. Make breakfast, eat breakfast, wash pan and plate, leave shitty apartment to go to work, rinse and repeat.
He doesn’t expect today to be a good day.
On his way to The Shop, he almost gets mugged. Almost, because he stabs the guy with his pocket knife and leaves him to bleed out in the alley. Of course, Jonah Costello feels no remorse for the man. It’s Timothy Drake who sends a quick text to Todd Peters about the guy in the alley with a pretty severe stab wound.
So, when Tim-- Jonah Costello-- shows up at the warehouse ten minutes late as usual, he’s immediately on high alert when Derek Gates-- 24, started working here five days after Tim-- tells him they caught something good. Tim doesn’t like the way his shadowed eyes glint at the words. Whoever they caught, he’s not going to like it.
He follows Gates through the building and Tim’s nerves only get worse the further they walk. There’s no one in the building.
Sure, the operation is fairly small compared to Gotham’s other smuggling rings, but even then. There’s always at least a dozen people on this floor with weapons concealed in jackets or in the back of pants. They’re here to keep anyone from breaking in and finding the boxes full of smuggled opiates. Tim once saw a woman get shot in the head by the second in command because she was an hour late for her shift and had a friend drop her off. Tim learned that her friend was also shot in the head. That’s how seriously this job is taken.
No one being here means that Tim’s day is definitely on track to go from bad to worse.
“Where’s everyone else?” Tim asks, voice raspy.
“It’s not every day we get to catch a little bird,” Gates replies, his grin as devilish and off-putting as the way his dark eyes light up.
Tim squints at him, frowning. “The fuck’s that supposed to mean?”
Surely, surely they wouldn’t be dumb enough--
Gates opens the door leading into one of the empty conference rooms and Tim freezes on the spot. Yes, in fact, his little brother is dumb enough to get caught by these idiots. And yes, these idiots are dumb enough to capture fucking Robin.
Tim can feel a tension headache forming.
“What. The fuck,” he says, because he can’t say anything else without breaking character.
He is going to murder Damian.
Who is currently tied to an office chair with bright orange nylon rope, a rag covered in grease stains shoved into his mouth.
To Tim’s honest surprise, he manages to get his shock and sudden rage under control before he can do something to compromise his mission.
“We got Robin!” one of his coworkers pipes up very cheerfully.
Tim blinks, then looks around the room. He licks his lips and tries his very best not to panic.
“Right,” he mutters. “Uh. Does the boss know?”
Simon waves a dismissive hand. “Nah. none of us could get in touch with ‘em for hours. We’ve been keepin’ this one here ‘til we can get in touch with ‘em and decide what to do.”
Tim forces himself to relax as he approaches Robin. Not too relaxed-- Jonah Costello is born and raised in Crime Alley and got his fair share of vigilantes his whole life. Relaxed enough to keep up appearances, of course.
He stops in front of Damian and doesn’t even have to force the sneer.
“Where the fuck d’you even find him?” he asks.
He studies Damian’s face. The kid is still wearing his domino mask and his face is carefully blank. Has been since Tim walked into the room. His left cheek is scratched, like he scraped it against a rough surface. The right is vividly bruised from his temple down to his jaw. His uniform, slightly torn and dirty, hides any other injury.
“Alley behind The Shop,” Lia says from behind Tim. “Little shit was trying to climb into one of the storage rooms.”
Tim straightens his back and sniffs in distaste. “Glad you caught him, but don’t you think this is bad? Do you think--” Tim lowers his voice slightly when he says the name “-- the Bat could know about this?”
Simon laughs and claps him on the back hard enough that Tim loses his balance and stumbles. “Of course we thought of that, kid. Who d’you take us for? Idiots?”
Yes, Tim thinks. Absolutely. One hundred percent.
“Sorry,” Jonah Costello replies, casting a nervous glance at Robin. “It’s just… where he goes the Bat always follows.”
“If the Bat knows about us,” Lia says, tone saccharine, “then I doubt he’d wait this long to pick up his little bird.”
She stands in front of him and grabs his face in her hand, her thumb digging into his bruised cheek. Tim presses his lips together and takes a few steps back to avoid getting in her way. His hands-- shoved into the pockets of his jacket-- twist into fists.
If Tim does anything right now, they’ll both be killed. There are too many people in this room for Tim to handle while trying to get Damian free. No, he’d have to wait until the room emptied out. Most of the people here are from the night shift and would be returning home soon, anyway, cutting the numbers down to about half as many.
Still too much for Tim alone to handle.
Maybe create a distraction? Or enlist Todd Peters’s help in this.
A muffled grunt makes him snap right back to reality. Damian, for the briefest moment, meets his eyes. They flicker away almost immediately, right before Lia yanks his head back by pulling at his hair.
“Now, kid,” she purrs in a honeyed tone, “let’s try again.”
With cruelly gentle hands, she pulls the gag out of Damian’s mouth.
“Why were you trying to get in here?” she asks. “Did someone tell you about us?”
Damian, infuriating little demon he is, smiles and says nothing. This earns him a slap on his bruised side. Tim, despite himself, winces.
He can’t leave-- he knows he can’t leave. Not without putting the carefully-crafted persona of Jonah Costello at risk. Tim has to stand right there and watch them.
Instead, he goes for another tactic. A bit of a desperate one, but no one can blame him; he came here expecting to stand around and do nothing, not find Robin tied to a fucking office chair, half his face bruised a horrible purple.
“That ain’t gonna do anything,” he tells Lia, feigning disinterest. “He’s Robin. The little fucker won’t talk.”
Her face twitches and she tilts her head to the side. “No? Well, in that case, I can just do this for fun.”
With that, her sweet smile drops and she shoves the gag back in Damian’s mouth. Tim presses his lips in a thin line. This had the absolute opposite effect of what he wanted.
He breathes through the next hit, and the next. And the one that breaks Damian’s nose and sends blood gushing down his nose. With the gag still in place, it’s obvious that Damian will struggle to get air in without choking on blood. Lia doesn’t seem to care. No one in the conference room does, either.
They probably wouldn’t mind another dead Robin.
The most horrible part, he thinks, is that he knows Damian can take it.
Lia stops hitting Damian when he loses consciousness, going limp in his bindings. This, of course, sends a jolt of terror down Tim’s spine and he desperately forces himself to stand still.
He grins when Simon appears by his side again and guides them out of the room.
“The boss will probably do the same thing to us if they find us slacking,” he says with a laugh, like they’re talking about the fucking weather.
Others are leaving too; the sun filters through the gaps in the blinds and the night shift crew is still all here.
Tim knows all their names. It’s been a long month.
He takes up his usual position by the stairs leading up to the second floor and keeps an eye on the conference room, waiting and planning.
The only opening Tim finds comes along in the form of his lunch break.
That he usually spends at whatever fast food place he can find. He made sure to frequent at least one to avoid raising suspicion.
But not today.
He spots Lia leaving the conference room and locking it behind her and finally finds the opening he’s been waiting for.
He leaves the building alone, making sure to avoid anyone who might suggest they eat together, walks down the street, and then heads into the first side street he finds.
It’s narrow, dirty, and smells of rotting food and vomit. Still, it opens into an even narrower alley that connects to the small street Damian must’ve been trying to enter the building from.
It doesn’t matter what side Damian was trying to enter from. What matters is that one of the windows in the conference room overlooks this street.
Tim crosses the one-way road, hoping that no one is looking out of any window at this particular moment, and presses himself against the wall. He takes a few seconds to send a text to Todd Peters to inform him about a bird flying into one of his conference rooms and that it’s a pain in the ass trying to get him out.
Not the most subtle, but Tim’s working under pressure and in a time crunch.
In fact, his watch cheerfully indicates that he’s got just over twenty minutes to get this done.
Tim crouches and crawls under one of the windows. Very carefully, he peers inside the room.
Damian is facing Tim, sitting all the way across the room. This vantage point gives Tim visual access to the door.
Lia is also on her lunch break, but Tim knows he can count on her to cut it a bit shorter to return to torturing Damian. Lia herself is a very friendly woman, but a bit too sadistic for Tim to fully stop feeling uncomfortable around her.
Damian peers through the blinds again, this time zeroing in on Damian. He can see what Lia did to him in the few hours since he last saw him and he can feel the fury and the panic rising.
There’s blood crusting on his lips and chin from the broken nose, and Tim can see more blood barely congealing on his face from various new cuts. The one on his forehead is still bleeding heavily.
The blinds in the way and the distance make it a challenge for Tim to assess Damian’s injuries and he gives up before he can lose more time.
As inconspicuously as he can, Tim creeps around the sides of the building until he’s behind Damian.
The good thing about going undercover in Gotham is that most missions are deep within Crime Alley, or at the very least in a district where buildings aren’t up to code most of the time. In this case, rusty window locks that are too easy to break into.
Tim knows, from spending shifts outside and using that time to scope out the outside of the building, that none of the windows have special locks or a motion sensor that triggers when they get opened. He thinks that they probably think the cameras are enough.
They aren’t. Tim hacked them on his first day. Right now, the cameras should be playing the same ten seconds on loop and will be until his lunch break is over.
The window hinges are, unfortunately, also rusty and make the worst wincing noise Tim’s ever heard in his fucking life.
Tim makes sure to be extra silent and cautious of any creaking floorboard to try to make up for the horrifying noise of the window.
“Don’t move,” Tim hisses to Damian, crouching behind his chair.
To his credit, the kid hasn’t moved an inch. Anyone else would assume he’s unconscious, with the way his head hangs, chin resting on his chest. Tim notices the tense hunch of his shoulders and how carefully measured his breathing is.
He pulls out his pocket knife and starts sawing at the ropes.
“When this is over,” Tim hisses, eyes flicking over to the closed door, “you’ll have to explain just why you decided to break in here. I still have six days ‘til the shipment comes, you couldn’t wait until then to be an idiot? Is it too hard for you to not be a pain in my ass?”
Maybe Tim should be nicer, since Damian’s breathing is far too shallow and irregular. But maybe Tim isn’t very happy that he’s currently compromising himself to rescue Damian who knows he shouldn’t be here.
He half remembers that the kid has a gag shoved down his throat. He pulls it out and Damian works his jaw a bit before speaking.
“They knew,” he croaks out. “About you. I came to warn you.”
At that, Tim falters and goes cold. And then he’s angry all over again.
“And you couldn’t tell Jason this, why?”
Actually, Tim doesn’t think he’s ever been this angry.
“They were watching him, too,” Damian whispers hoarsely. “So, I came to tell you.”
“By getting caught,” Tim practically growls, sawing furiously and ignoring the way his hand is cramping. “And then tortured. Because you have to put yourself in fucking danger to-- to warn me? You couldn’t have done quite literally anything else? I get that you hate me but compromising my fucking mission is a whole new--”
He cuts himself off, too choked up with fury to continue. Damian doesn’t speak. Tim saws and swears under his breath when he nicks his palm with the blade.
Even this action isn’t a relief for the anger. The going is slow and the blade is small and too blunt to be of maximum efficiency. He should’ve brought a goddamn switchblade. At this rate, Lia will be back before Tim can even start untying Damian’s wrists.
“Contrary to what you may believe, Drake, I do not hate you,” Damian says, filling the silence.
“Contrary to what I--” Tim huffs a disbelieving laugh and doesn’t know why he feels like crying. “No fucking way. This isn’t my fucking opinion Damian, it’s the fucking murder attempts.”
Silence again. Blissful silence festering with Tim’s boiling anger, forcing a wider chasm between him and Damian. There’s also what he can vaguely identify as worry and refuses to even try to unpack that one.
“Father and I found out last that Robert Doyle knew you were an undercover agent,” Damian says, breaking the silence. “We stumbled upon them during patrol and overheard them talk about you. Jonah Costello. They did not know who you were working for.”
Tim makes no sound of acknowledgment. He has three ropes left to cut through. His hands are red and cramping up badly from rubbing against the rope.
“Father said he would send you a message. I believe he meant to send you a text or a call, but-- from the sounds of it, Doyle was planning on interrogating you today. I hate to admit it, Drake, but even I can see that Father needs you.”
The kid is starting to stumble over his words, like he’s trying to find the right ones. Tim, as much as his mind is swirling and as much as he wants to sort through everything he just learned, keeps cutting the blade back and forth. With reinforced vigor this time, because if Doyle wants to interrogate him today, then it won’t be long until he’s here. Or until he decides to pop by and see Robin.
This was so not what was supposed to happen.
“And so your brilliant fucking plan was to put yourself in danger so I would rescue you and end my mission?” Tim asks.
Damian is quiet. Tim absolutely isn’t worried. This kid is fucking fourteen he reminds himself. Even Tim was barely Robin at that age.
“Yes,” Damian says, all quiet like he’s ashamed to admit it. “No one knows where your apartment is. All we knew was the location of the base of operation and the warehouse where the shipments are delivered.”
Tim’s mouth twists in a deep frown.
“Was it worth it?” he bites out, still angry and not sure who it’s directed at.
Damian doesn’t get to answer. The door of the conference room slams open, effectively forcing all conversation to a grinding halt.
Tim looks up and meets the gray eyes of a very surprised Robert Doyle. Right behind him stands his second in command, Jacob Schneider, and behind him is Lia, looking both furious and shocked. Doyle must’ve told them, then.
“Well, fuck,” is all Tim says.
And then the last rope falls away and Tim is pulling Damian out of the chair and out the window. His arms are still tied behind his back, but his legs are free. He silently thanks whoever tied up Damian and didn’t bother with the ankles.
Gunshots and angry shouts follow them, and footsteps follow after them, but they keep running.
Or, they do until Damian grunts in pain and stumbles into Tim. Thinking on his feet and, frankly, in a blind panic, he hoists Damian back up on his feet and forces him to keep running.
Reaching blindly, Tim finds the gunshot and presses his hand against it. He can feel the blood seeping through the fabric of Damian’s uniform and through Tim’s fingers. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t have the time to care. They’re still running and they won’t stop until they lose them.
In the end, they don’t run until they lose them.
They run until Damian passes out from blood loss.
Tim, exhausting, sweating, and lightheaded, forces them into a side street, then into an alley, and up a fire escape. When they hit the roof, he drops Damian and collapses on his knees, exhausted.
“Fuck,” he pants harshly in between gasps. “Never doing that again.”
When he catches his breath, he crawls back over to Damian to inspect him. The kid is pale and there’s a growing pool of blood beneath him.
“Shit,” Tim mumbles. “Shit, shit.”
Shaking fingers reach into his jean pocket for the emergency button Bruce gave him. Never in his life has he been more thankful for Bruce’s paranoia.
He drops the button when he’s activated it, blinking and red, and focuses back on Damian. Tim feels lightheaded from the severe lack of sleep and food and he can feel the adrenaline running its last course, leaving him shaky and unsteady. Damian’s breathing is labored and Tim knows he’s not putting enough pressure on the gunshot wound.
Blood is seeping between his fingers, red and red and Tim is so tired.
“Don’t you dare fucking die on me, you asshole,” he spits out. “This argument isn’t over okay? I still have to yell at you for willingly letting yourself be captured, because that’s such a fucking idiot move. I swear to God, Damian, don’t you even think about dying.”
Tim could be crying. He’s not sure of anything anymore, not with his head spinning this wildly.
He’s sure of warm hands against his and flinches back, afraid they’ve been found.
“It’s okay, chum, I’ve got it,” Bruce’s warm voice says and Tim’s never been more relieved to hear it.
“I’m sorry,” he babbles. “The mission’s gone wrong, and Damian’s dying, and I’m--”
“You’ll both be fine, Tim,” Bruce says, wrapping his arms around him.
He’s warm and it’s such a relief to be hugged after the month he’s had that he can’t find it in himself to struggle. He closes his eyes and believes Bruce.