Chapter Text
When Dick had suddenly decided that Bruce and Sam were going to Nanda Parbat, Tim didn’t really know what to think of it. What if that bodyguard was indeed Sam’s friend and Jason? What would become of Tim if Jason took back his mantle as Robin? Was Jason, his biggest hero, coming back to the manor?
After Tim had disabled the alarms of the tower’s upper stories, they entered through the stairwell at the rooftop and down to the uppermost level of the building.
“Hey, Robbie,” Dick nudged him. “We’re here.”
“Well yeah, no shit. I brought us in.”
“Yeah, thanks. I meant…this is our first mission together, just me and you. It’s weird, I was too petty to ever go on missions with the last robin.”
“If Jason really was here, then he could have his title back and you guys could hang out again,” Tim sighed. He peeked into the only room of the hallway, aside from the elevator and stairwell. The room was filled with all sorts of swords and knives—a training room.
“Is there something going on that you want to talk about?”
“Nightwing, I never really wanted this job to begin with, but you know, with the state dad was in, I couldn’t just leave him like that. And over time, I got used to this lifestyle…I kind of like it. I don’t want to let it go.”
“Oh Robin…,” Dick wrapped his arms around Tim, “...we’ll figure this out together. Whether or not we find him, you’re still my little bro,” he patted the top of Tim’s head. “Hey, how ‘bout this: we go out for some ice cream after this, just the two of us.”
Tim nodded. He wasn’t too keen on ice cream but any moment with Dick was a reward in itself.
Once they arrived at the elevator, a list of directories indicated which floors were more important. They needed to find Sam’s friend and Jason before Ra’s Al Ghul or Talia caught onto something—since the training room had been empty, they could be either in the resting quarters for soldiers, cafeteria, or the library. Jason always loved literature, Tim recalled Alfred saying. A look into the surveillance room was a good start to determine where their targets were or where Dick and Tim should avoid.
After they knocked out the two guards in the surveillance room, they were surprised to see the number of screens that monitored every corner of each room and hall in the building: even the toilets were visible within the restrooms.
“Kay, I’m not seeing anything out of the ordinary, at least for a weird ass place like this,” Dick scanned each screen up and down from left to right, “...god, if I had a dollar for every camera in this tower,” he mumbled.
After Tim connected to the computer responsible for the surveillance, he looked for the camera feed that watched the training gym at the uppermost floor. Recent footage showed the bodyguard with the black suit he met at the cruise, plus a woman—Talia. “Oh my god,” he muttered. He fast-forwarded to see the two walk up towards the elevator. The next camera feed showed them going upwards, so Tim pulled out the helicopter feed.
Dick got to the comms before Tim did: “Bruce, Talia and supposedly-Sam’s friend left via helicopter.”
Tim quickly scrubbed backwards on the rooftop’s feed, “...looks like the other bodyguard went along with them, the one in the red coat.”
“Got it,” Bruce responded. “We took the Batplane and are on our way to Nanda Parbat. ETA 2 more hours. Figure out where Talia might have gone.”
“Alrighty,” Tim responded.
“Damn, you’re good at all this computer mumbo-jumbo. Where’d you learn all this?” Dick hovered over him.
Tim stuttered: “Uh…just a lot of time on my hands.”
“Trying to impress the old man, eh?” Dick gently pushed Tim’s shoulder as he flushed red. “Can I be honest?”
Tim nodded.
“I was there too—always trying to be the perfect robin, whatever B wanted me to be. One day, I try too hard and BAM! Shot in the shoulder, as you know. He took the title from me—said it was too dangerous. I never got to say a word about it. What I’m trying to say is, Robin may be your entire life right now, but one word from B and it’s all over.”
“You think…I should do what you did and go solo?”
“I mean, you don’t have to decide now. I just wanted to let you know that you’re not alone in all of this.”
Tim hugged Dick tightly: “Thank you.”
“You’re gonna make me cry,” Dick sniffled and returned the hug.
With newly profound motivation, not with the desire to impress Bruce but to learn enough so that he could become independent, Tim snuck through the tower alongside Dick to find Ra’s Al Ghul and Talia’s files on the two bodyguards. Surprisingly, the security was not as tight as Tim thought a tower controlled by the Al Ghuls would be: perhaps technology was growing too fast for them, or this tower wasn't as important as they thought.
When they found Talia’s office, Tim quickly went to search through her computer while Dick rummaged through the papers in the drawers.
“Did ya find anything good, Robin?” Dick continued to flip through each file.
“No, not really.”
“Well, guess it’s my turn to be the hero,” Dick presented two folders—one marked “JASON” and another marked “J”.
“If this document shows how they dug up our Jaybird from the grave and tried to revive him, I’m beating their asses. Sibling tax,” Dick tossed the folder labelled “J” to Tim while he skimmed through the other one.
“There are so many photos of this guy,” Tim flipped through the pages attached to the document, “...he’s got that metal arm Sam was talking about.” He went to the first page in the folder, and there it was—a photo of the bistro and the broken glass. “They know he’s from another dimension. He’s pretty proficient in combat and they think he’s got trauma of some sorts. Good potential as a weapon, blah blah blah…”
Dick was awfully silent for a while, so Tim looked over to see what he was up to.
He was not expecting the man to be on his knees over the file as droplets fell from his face.
“Nightwing…?”
Dick looked up: his face trembled as he crumpled the wetted files in his grip.
The silence told Tim all he needed to know.
~~~
“You’re really just going to land on their property? Not scared of them shooting us down?” Sam held tightly to the dashboard of the fanciest jet he has ever been on. Hell, there was a whole bar inside it, right next to the medical stuff: it made sense the more he thought about it.
The bat-looking man only replied with his signature “hnn” as he landed on the building that stood on a skinny-ass-but-tall rock. Batman could just shoot down the neck of it and get this entire thing over with if he wanted to. Maybe there was something special inside the rock, like an even more special rock. There was a helicopter right next to the jet, which hinted at the presence of more people.
“Comms are jammed. We’re going to have to go through this alone—stay close,” Batman ordered.
Sam started to wonder if the charming and sophisticated Bruce Wayne was the same as the grumpy guy dressed in a bat suit. “I take it you know this place inside out,” he whispered.
Batman nodded: “I had trained under the leader of this place, Ra’s Al Ghul, but our values failed to align, thus the separation. They wanted to use me to destroy the very home I wanted to protect, which made us mortal enemies.” He kneeled between a potted bush and a brick wall, then waved Sam to come.
“Wow. That’s kind of dramatic,” Sam replied as he summoned Redwing.
“Not my intention,” Batman looked at Redwing with slight awe (at least that was what Sam believed), “...is your drone capable of determining any hidden agents?”
“Sure can. Looks like there are a lot of people coming out from the center of the building. Sounds like we’re gonna have to pass through them.”
“How many?”
“A few dozen…looks to be decreasing. Oh, there’s a big fella—I am not prepared to fight an alternate dimension Hulk right now.”
Batman grunted: “His name is Ubu: a loyal follower of Ra’s Al Ghul and a challenging fighter. Let’s go around the main pathway to spare our energy.”
Sam followed Batman as they passed through numerous corridors and the occasional frightened housekeeper, and he made sure to avoid guards with the help of Redwing. The building itself was beautifully designed, with a right mixture of middle-eastern and east-asian that made this place feel more like a home than a battle ground. He would feel terrible if he had to scratch up any of the art that was built straight into the walls and ceilings.
As they got closer to the huddle of people that Redwing had found, Sam noticed that their heat signatures were higher than resting temperature, which suggested that people were fighting. “Hold on.”
Batman turned around and pressed his lips in a flat line, “...what.”
“It’s just the two of us and like, two dozen men with sharp ass swords, I assume. Are you ready for this?”
“This isn’t my first fight with them. If you want to sit back on this you may,” the silhouette of Batman continued down a corridor.
“Ey, no one is going to tell me to back out of a fight,” Sam quickly caught up.
The walls of the building turned from beautifully designed brick walls to stone ones that look like it was sweating some green substance. Whatever it was, Sam made sure to keep well away from it. Batman continued right into the room Sam believed there were too many people in, and the noise jumped from basically nothing to what seemed like a million united voices after someone.
When he turned a corner, he was introduced to the numerous guards that Redwing had warned about. Some were already on the floor around the vicinity of Batman while he fought with three guards at the same time. Sam’s presence was noticed not long after and he flew upwards as he shot at the men’s feet. He bumped onto the ceiling and fought with the chandelier that lit up the room for a moment, before he yanked it off and threw it downwards.
“Batman,” an old man in green robes shouted then engaged with said man. “You dare come back here with your toys!”
“Where is he,” Batman yelled back as he struck the old man, “...where is my son!”
“He will return to his grave as soon as I’m done with you,” the old man struck back.
Sam decided that he had to spread the men out: the limits of the room were not to his advantage, so he ran out the room and up the stairwell, where a dozen men followed along. When he got to the top of the stairwell, he held his wings and shield together to form a massive cocoon and rammed the group of men backwards. This gave him some time to go back to Batman, but he had to go another way.
Sam bursted through the glass doors and onto a patio. The men had not caught up to him yet, so he ran to the railings of the patio to see if there was an opening one floor down. Before he could get a visual on Batman, a crash from two floors down alerted him first.
A kid in red and gold had jumped out of the window and was headed towards the raging waters beneath them.
“I’m coming kid!” Sam jumped over the railings and straightened his wings as he flew head-first towards the kid.
The waters were crashing and his brain was yelling at him to pull up, pull up, but Sam kept going, because no kid was going to die while he had a whole ass pair of highly advanced wings and a vibranium shield on him.
The kid had reached up with what initially appeared to be a red glove and Sam finally grabbed a hold of the kid’s arm, just a second away from the water.
They hovered above the waters for a moment so Sam wouldn’t rip the kid’s arm any more than he probably did: that was when he noticed the glove was actually a bloodied hand, and the kid was more of a young adult.
“Holy shit,” Sam really hoped that was someone else’s blood.
When they got to a rock surface at the other side of the ravine that bordered the tower, Sam placed the bloodied kid down and collapsed from pure exhaustion. “Kid…what the fuck was that for?”
The kid yelled some gibberish in between breaths and moments of screaming at the top of his lungs. He then covered the sides of his head as he curled inwards and began to cry.
“I’m so sorry…I didn’t mean to, I-,” the kid looked straight at Sam, “...you have to save him.”
“What? Batman?”
“No-, augh,” the kid held his head again and more tears fell, “I don’t know how to explain to you, but he kept me from falling into the wrong hands,” his hands painted his face with blood, “...please, just leave me here and save him, I’ll be fine, he’s going to die…”
“Who?”
“His name…He’s got a mechanical arm,” the kid cried.
Before everything fully clicked, Sam’s legs began to run off the platform and back into the air.
“Batman,” Sam alerts the man through Redwing, “...stop whatever you’re doing because your kid’s here. Follow the drone.”
There was no response, but Batman’s silhouette went from punches and kicks to a full on sprint towards the jet.
Without Redwing, Sam had to rely on his own eyes to find where Bucky was. Time was ticking while he flew around the tower and looked for clues as to where Bucky might be.
Then there it was, a clue: the room where the kid had jumped off of had a floor that was painted in blood: the kid’s hands were full of it.
Before he decided to break a bigger hole into the windows, Sam was stopped by the man in the green robe as he stood right before the window, eyes downwards and disappointed.
Sam aimed his gun at the old man: “Tell me where Bucky is before I shoot.”
The old man looked up with a pout. “I’m afraid you’re too late.”
“What do you mean, I’m too late.”
The old man turned around and walked away without another word.
“Fuck, there’s no time for this!” Sam darted his eyes around the tower, but the thought of that blood being Bucky’s sickened him to the core.
The blood. Sam looked at the pool of blood and where it dripped…
The river.
There, a spot of red.
Sam dived.
~~~
Jet and trees be damned, Bruce marked the jet to follow the red drone Sam had told him to follow, and he arrived at the other side of the ravine.
No one was there when he jumped out of the jet. The drone flew for a moment then hovered at a spot where there were bloodied handprints.
“Jason!”
Only the echoes of crows and the flap of wings.
“Jason…please…” Bruce kneeled at the handprints. The drone continued to hover there, as if to offer some emotional support: Bruce wanted to smash that thing into pieces.
Then a quiet rustle of the bushes.
“...Dad?” A voice, one that he thought would never hear again, the voice of the child he mourned and drank and cried and wanted to forget all about, had called out.
His clothes and hands bathed in darkened blood and there was a streak of white hair where his little curls should’ve been, but it was him.
“Jason,” Bruce barely said aloud before he ran.
The embrace was warm and solid. Bruce’s eyes blurred as he laughed and cried, the memories of his dying child slowly began to be replaced by the life his child had once again.
“Jason, I’m so sorry, I was too late to save you. Please, never ever leave my side again,” Bruce cried, and for once he felt something other than guilt and anger. He then grabbed Jason’s head and moved away the white streak of hair to take a good look at him. His eyes were blue but now had a smidge of green, which pained Bruce once again. The Lazarus Pit.
Bruce hugged Jason even tighter, more than he thought possible, and promised himself to never let go again.
~~~
Communication was jammed. Sam had hardly considered the consequences of diving into deep waters in the middle of winter, but hoped Tim’s GPS had placed that into consideration. Tech be damned, his friend was here, dragged out of the current and onto some rock-sand combination. A moment of consideration and Sam decided to leave the jacket on. Bucky’s torso felt more like a semi-frozen bag of water with bones scattered inside. Hands placed on Bucky’s chest, Sam began compressions.
“One…Two…Three…” Water came out of Bucky’s mouth, but that didn’t stop Sam. He prayed with each sickeningly easy compression that help was on the way, because he too could feel the cold seep through his clothes and fatigue begin to settle in.
“Eighty-six, eighty-seven,” Sam’s back seared and begged him to stop but Sam had to keep going, had to keep pushing on for his friend.
The waves crashed and washed away the pool of blood that began seeping into the sand—like the tap was running and he’d squeeze the remaining soap out of a sponge.
Finally, a voice crackled to life by his ear: “Falcon?”
Sam relented his left arm to answer the call: “Hurry, please…”
“...we’ve tracked your location, help is on the way,” Tim replied.
Sam could not speak, let alone rip the distracting headpiece out of his ear when the man he sought to save was right here, on the grasp of death in another goddamn dimension.
Upon what felt like two hours of CPR, Sam felt the slightest resistance as he heard a series of the most violent and joyous coughs from mankind. He relented his lockhold on Bucky’s chest and collapsed at the man’s side, the stars and city lights swirling as the pain from exhaustion seared from inside out.
“Buck, I’m gonna kill you when this is all over,” he muttered.
~~~
His limbs could barely move. Heart rate is slow. Initiation delayed by 46 seconds. His mind was blank but the routine is the same.
“"Я готов отвечать." Tightness in the left chest. Check in with the nearest medical supervisor.
The handler placed his hands on the assets shoulders. Inappropriate action; new handler? Vision is at 30% functionality but he could discern two shapes spread from the handler’s back. Wings. Is he finally dead?
“Bucky. Stop messing around. It’s me,” the handler’s grip could not be shaken off. “Buck. Please.”
Vision at optimal functionality. He looked up.
Oh.
“Sam,” Bucky laughed with all the smile he could give.