Chapter Text
Tim had worked his way through a long, boring night of reports from Wayne Enterprises. He’d gone through each itemized list and signed where he needed to and made up new presentations for the Board. He’d only had—two before midnight, one at the start of the expense report, a couple for his Powerpoint—like, six cups of coffee, max. It didn’t explain—this.
He stared from where he was seeing triple, and moved his gaze to the last dredges in his cup.
“Maybe I’ve had a bit too much caffeine,” he finally admitted, dragging the words out. He really couldn’t handle his coffee privileges being taken away again, but maybe this time it was necessary. He looked back at the sofa. Okay. Fine. Caffeine—revoked. Or at least monitored? Okay, he could do that.
He’d see about setting up an app for it, later.
Jason snorted, from where he was leaning against a nearby wall, arms crossed and expression somewhere between tense and amused. He was also staring at the sofa, something like regret tugging his lips tight. “That’s definitely true,” the resident zombie agreed with an edge to his words, “but you’re not seeing things. We ran into a magian of some sort—yellow residue. Their spell did this to Dickie-boy.”
Tim nodded slowly. “Okay,” he drew out the first syllable until Jason’s eyebrow twitched. “This isn’t even the weirdest thing I’ve seen this week. I could have sworn that the magic users usually target you, though, Jason.” It was true. Jason was catnip to any type of magic user with a grudge. Maybe it was because he’d died? Tim would have to look into that later, actually. Maybe his spirit was attached with dark magic (and spite), and it acted as a beacon? Raven would probably know—wait.
Jason had been suspiciously quiet. Tim slowly turned to look at his sort-of brother, who tensed even further. He could be made out of stone, he was so still. Tim’s eyes narrowed. “Magicians normally target you,” he repeated pointedly.
Jason groaned, throwing his arms in the air (anybody who said Dick was the most dramatic member of their family had never met Jason. Or Bruce, for that matter. They were more alike than either would admit to. A man who decided the best way to fight crime was to dress up in a furry suit, and a man who thought a duffle bag full of heads was a good idea. Cut from the same cloth, those two). “Okay! Yes! I admit it! Dick might have pushed me out of the way!”
Damian tsked at him. “Of course you proved yourself so utterly incompetent that Richard was forced to save you again, Todd.” There was another one whose dramatics were obviously inherited. Dick had done a good job with him, considering how he’d started. He was still a little shit, but at least he was no longer a murderous little shit. Dick was a miracle worker, honestly. Jason cut the little brat a glare that would make a lesser man cry. As it was, Damian just turned his little pug nose up at him and tsked again.
Bruce swooped back into the room (see? Only a theatre kid would do that sort of thing. Tim’s brain broke a little bit. Bruce as a theatre kid made more sense than he’d like to admit to—okay, shutting that thought down, hard). “Enough.” The man intoned. Jason just rolled his eyes, and Damian raised a single eyebrow (Tim wasn’t jealous. Not even a little bit).
On the sofa, three very different Dick Graysons had three very different reactions. The youngest (in appearance, anyway) of the three jolted ramrod straight from where he’d been leaning on the arm. His eyes all sparkled, and a smile that was brighter than Tim had seen from him in some time stretched across his face, showing off his very cute dimples. Dick was the cutest child to have ever existed, honestly.
The other Dicks (they needed a new name, immediately) appeared to be the same age—or they were at least close enough that it was honestly hard to tell. The one sitting in the middle—didn’t really react beyond a slow blink. His shoulders were slumped, and he had curled into himself to the point that he barely seemed to take up any space at all.
The final Dick stayed sprawled out against the opposite arm from Baby Dick, and he—well. He stared at Bruce with a cold expression that Tim had never seen on his oldest brother before. A slow smile curled one side of his lips, if it could even be called a smile. It looked more like the edge of a knife. He stayed lounging, partially raising a hand in lazy acknowledgement. Tim felt a cold chill run the length of his spine. This Dick reminded him of nothing more than a jaguar he’d seen in a zoo once, when he was younger. It had been lounging on a branch, limbs hanging loosely, tail twitching idly. It had opened its eyes for a moment only, burnt orange fires that cared for nothing but its prey.
At first glance (okay, second or third, but he thought he’d been hallucinating for a minute there!), Tim thought that it was Dick at different stages of his life, but he couldn’t remember Dick ever acting like Sharp Dick or Quiet Dick.
“I’ve contacted Zatanna,” Bruce began. There was a pull at the corner of his eyes that suggested he was very unhappy that he’d had to ask for help. “She will meet us at Justice League Tower V, to check on Dick. Suit up if you haven’t already.” Tim felt distinctly called out, since he was the only one who hadn’t been on patrol last night.
They nodded their agreement, but—“How will we get there without arousing suspicion?” Tim pointed out. JLTV was inhabited, after all.
“Dick One will—” Bruce began, before being cut off by a scoff.
“Which of us is Dick One?” Sharp Dick drawled with a smirk that cut across his face. The expression matched Tim’s nickname for him.
“Yeah! That’s mean, B!” Baby Dick pouted, eyes getting wider and shinier and impossibly bluer, lips jutting out into a sweet pout and—fuck. That expression should be counted as its own weapon, really. Bruce—actually paused, staring at Baby Dick with a look in his eyes that could almost be counted as starstruck.
“What should we call you then?”
Tim almost dropped his (mostly empty) coffee. Had Bruce really just capitulated? That easily? And the tone of his voice could actually be considered soft. Dick really was a Wayne-whisperer.
(Tim carefully ignored that since his adoption, he was also a Wayne. He didn’t count, and Dick didn’t have that effect on him. Right? Right.)
As Tim had a mini breakdown, the three Dicks glanced at each other, wordlessly communicating.
“Nightwing,” Sharp Dick stated with a fierceness that really wasn’t necessary. “Or in the presence of civilians, Grayson.”
“Richard,” was all quiet D mumbled, gaze down, arms wrapped tightly around himself.
“Robin!” Baby Dick chirped like his namesake, smile brighter than a thousand stars. “Or Dickie!” His dimples could start wars. Or level entire countries. Nothing should be allowed to be that cute, especially tiny versions of his older brother.
“I am Robin!” Damian interrupted harshly, hackles raised and his entire being bristling with disproportionately more rage than his tiny body should be able to handle. Like a kitten, actually.
Robin—Dickie beamed at him, winked, and skipped over to grab his arm. Tim was fairly sure the only reason Dickie wasn’t immediately eviscerated was because he was an incarnation of Dick. The flush high on Damian’s cheeks certainly suggested such.
“So I passed on Robin to you? I gave you mama’s name and the Flying Grayson colors? I must love you a lot! That makes you family! It’s nice to meet you! To re-meet you, I guess, because you’re definitely familiar! Looking at you makes me warm! If I gave you Robin, you must be really good!” Dickie chattered on as Damian had the exact same poleaxed look on his face as his dad did earlier. His eyes were just as starstruck, wide with wonder, and his jaw was more relaxed than Tim had ever seen it—just a step away from slack.
Tim was—overwhelmed was the nicest word for the dazed feeling. Why had Dick never mentioned—dread stole over Tim, taking his breath. He slowly turned his gaze to Jason. Jason, who was pale and tinged with green.
Fuck.
This was—
No.
Tim wished he had never learned this. He could feel a scowl forming on his face. Normally he had better control, but he couldn’t get his features to relax. Instead, he did the next most logical thing. He turned his scowl toward Bruce, who was refusing to look at any of them. The coward.
So. Bruce had gifted what was seeming more and more like a stolen name—hence Dick’s original distance from his replacement—to Jason. And then Tim had all but demanded it. Lovely.
“We’ll split into three teams,” Bruce spoke into the awkward silence (excluding Dickie’s sphere of influence, who was still chittering at Damian). “Myself and Robin, Red Hood, and Red Robin.” He narrowed his eyes at Time, who—still hadn’t changed. Oops? He ran to do so, setting his mug onto the Batcomputer’s desk next to all of his other mugs from that night (there were nine. Maybe this was all a caffeine hallucination, after all). He strained to hear as he threw himself into costume.
“Each of us will take a Dick.” There was sudden, vivid silence. Tim was immensely grateful that he hadn’t suggested changing the name earlier, not when this moment would be immortalized in the cave footage. Jason snorted. And then Dickie giggled. And suddenly, the entire cave was filled with the type of laughter that could only occur in the wake of a dick joke. Even Damian’s shoulders were shaking. Tim had messed up zipping his costume, and had to redo it with shaking hands as he snickered.
He stumbled out of the changing area, and saw that Bruce (and it was definitely Bruce, even though he’d pulled the cowl over his face since Tim had gone to change) looked utterly exasperated, lips pulled tight, hand covering his mask’s eyes. That made it even better, somehow. The laughter eventually died down, but Jason had a shit-eating grin that was much better than the sickly guilt from earlier. Damian was trying to appear dignified, but it was a lost cause with Dickie leaning into him, still trying to stifle his giggles.
“I call—I call Dami and B!” Dickie managed to gasp out. When had he learned Damian’s name? Then, he did say the other Robin was familiar…
Dickie half-danced over to Batman, holding Damian’s hand and pulling the other boy along. His feet barely touched the ground, like tales of fairies of old. It was less surprising, seeing him like this, that the entirety of Gotham accepted Robin as some sort of immortal creature in the shape of a boy. Time turned his attention back to the older versions of this changeling.
Nightwing…it was hard to describe. He uncurled, lazy and unhurried, the jaguar stretching its limbs after a long nap in the sun. He slowly stalked their direction. Tim unconsciously fell into a stance that would let him jump away or fight back.
Richard stood up. Time eyed him warily. Something about him was incredibly off. Tim knew his brother was dangerous, even if he’d never seen it as blatantly as in this Nightwing, and he knew he was cheerful and otherworldly, even if Dickie turned it up a few notches, but Richard…Tim had never even seen a hint of Richard in Dick.
“I’ll take this asshole,” Jason announced, breaking what could have been a breakthrough on Tim’s part. Probably not, but he’d definitely been going somewhere with that thought. Jason was eyeing Nightwing with a sharpness to his scowl that he usually only got when he was disabling particularly tricky bombs. Nightwing gave him a slow smirk, but followed without complaining.
Richard stepped toward Tim without a word, the silent assent somehow so much worse coming from somebody with his brother’s face. Dick never just went along with anything. Tim hummed, and tossed covers at all three of them. Dickie looked delighted at having one of Damian’s spare capes (which was too large for him, despite he and the demon brat being roughly the same age. Apparently Dick had always been on the smaller side). Nightwing rolled his eyes at Jason’s spare hoodie—not ‘hood’ (which Jason grumbled at, but didn’t actually say no to, so Tim assumed he agreed). There. Some anonymity, considering both Red Hood and Red Robin drove motorcycles.
Richard was not what Tim had expected from any incarnation of his brother, as he silently got on behind Red Robin. He was quiet and barely responsive and far too willing to let others take the lead (Dick was the control freak to end all control freaks—his only rival was the Bat himself). Red Hood took off, flying through the cave’s hidden exit. Richard held on—but just barely, hold tentative. Without Dick’s usual chatter, the ride seemed to take far longer than was normal. It gave Tim the time to wonder, Why didn't we take the Batplane? Or Batcopter?