Rating: PG-13 (one f-bomb)
Story Synopsis: Takes place after “Christmas Eve at Wayne Manor.” Dick has a bad day at college.
A/N: Unbetaed. Warned.
“Doctored Results”
Chapter One
Dinner was served promptly at six-thirty P.M., and all the occupants of the Wayne Manor were expected to attend. Plans were to be made accordingly. Bruce was to leave work by six. Dick never had a class after five-fifteen to pick up Damian, and Jason was expected to be home by six-fifteen after soccer practice.
Which was why it was strange when Dick and Damian came in the door at six-forty-five. The younger brother immediately fled toward the dining room, his face dim and scared, while Dick climbed the stairs to his bedroom.
Bruce came out of the dining room at the slamming of the front door and caught Damian.
“Dick’s sad,” Damian whispered. “Why’s he sad, Daddy?”
Bruce ruffled the boy’s crown. “I’ll find out.”
He stood at the bottom of the Grand Staircase by the time Dick reached the top.
“You’re late,” he said evenly. No need to be angered until there was a need. As far as they knew, the boy could have stopped a robbery on the way home. Since his time as prince of the League of Assassins, Dick could handle a number of situations on his own.
Of course, anger had it place.
“I’m not hungry!” Dick shouted and continued toward his room.
Bruce took a step toward the stairs before a firm hand fell upon his shoulder. “Do not be hard on him,” Alfred advised wisely, looking the way Dick escaped. “Richard is not one to be enraged nor to miss time with family. If he has, then there is a reason.”
Bruce said nothing, only followed Dick up the first set of stairs, up the second set and to the second to the last door on the left. He took two deep breaths—After all, Alfred was right. Dick wasn’t never petulant and never yelled unless on the job and emotional.
No. Something was wrong.
Bruce knocked on the door.
“Dick?”
“Leave me alone!”
Bruce opened the door and took a simple step inside. Dick didn’t turn as he picked off book after book from his shelf, tossing them absently across the room and into the far wall.
“What are you doing?’
Dick whirled, his face flushed, his eyes wild. “Don’t you ever respect boundaries?’
“Not since
“God! That can’t be your answer for everything!” Dick went back to his shelf. “Look. I just had a really bad day at college, okay? Can’t you at least respect that?”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Since when the hell do you want to hear about it?”
“Since
Dick rolled his eyes but kept his back turned. “It’s funny. Until I was kidnapped, you wanted nothing to do with me, ignored me half the time and acted like a drill sergeant the other half.”
“Do you want a violin?”
Dick whirled and narrowed his eyes. “What I want is you out of my room!”
Bruce crossed his arms. His voice sharpened. “Why are you acting like this?”
“I told you. A bad day at college.”
“And that gives you the right to act like a spoiled brat?”
“It gives me the right to a few minutes without an interrogation!” Dick stalked forward. “I don’t know if you get this or not, but you don’t run my life!”
“Dinner is not—”
“Dinner is just one more restraint to
make sure I don’t have my own life! Ever since
Now Bruce narrowed his eyes. “You were gone for three years.”
“It wasn’t my fault, and I continually get punished for it!” Dick struck out, but Bruce caught the boy’s hand easily, though not without having to take a step back and out of the room.
Of course, this was what Dick wanted, and the boy slammed the door shut, locking it.
“Leave me alone!” he screamed once more.
Bruce was about to break down the door when a soft whining caught his attention. Ace beseeched his aid. Bruce almost thought the dog would become the victim of Dick’s anger, but as more and more books clamored against the wall, he unlocked the door and allowed the dog entrance.
Less than a half a minute later, the slamming stopped.
And less than a minute later, Bruce realized all the books the boy threw were his medical reference texts.
*^*^*
“I need to know what to do.”
Leslie sat back in her chair, her light eyes scrutinizing Bruce’s own relaxed stance. “You’re tense. Is it really that bad?”
Of course, Leslie would notice his discomfort. “I haven’t seen him act like this since he came home after his time with Ra’s.”
“That bad?”
“That bad.”
Leslie sighed. “Well, what do you want to do?”
“Honestly?” Bruce thought for a moment. “Take away every damn thing he owns until he tells me what’s wrong.”
A brief knock, soft and lyrical. “Hey, Leslie. I have strep in room—oh, God. What are you doing here?”
Bruce looked back at Dick, seeing the boy in his orderly garb and white shoes. He already was beginning to look like a doctor at the tender age of nineteen, and volunteering at Leslie’s clinic at every free whim was just the first step. His pre-med at GSU was the second.
Bruce kept his face neutral. “I came to talk about you.”
“Why can’t you just leave it alone?”
“When have you ever known me to leave anything alone?”
Dick rolled his eyes and waved. “Leslie, I have to go. I’ll be back next weekend.”
He fled, at which time Leslie leaned forward in her chair. “Do whatever’s necessary.”
Bruce nodded, reassured. Finally, his parental instincts were kicking in.
*^*^*
“Stay close to me,” Nightwing
ordered as he and Robin raced through the canals of the
“That’s not true!” Robin challenged. “Well, yeah, Batman would kill you, but Croc does not eat humans.”
“Uh, yeah, he seriously does.”
“You said the same thing about the bats in the cave.”
Nightwing laughed. “I was lying about the bats.”
“Man, are you evil,” Robin remarked, rounding another bend and seeing a shadow disappear down a corridor. “What’s with you lately? First you’re missing dinners, then just being cranky all the time. And all you keep saying is—”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” they said simultaneously.
Nightwing scowled at his little brother. Why the hell did his family have to be so intuitive? “I don’t want to talk about it, all right? Just let it go.”
“You know it’s driving Batman crazy, and in turn, that drives us all crazy.”
“Let it go, Robin.”
“I’m just saying—”
“Then don’t!” Nightwing snapped and came to a halt in a four-way corridor. “Stay here and make sure Croc doesn’t double back.”
“Oh, great. Now you’re dismissing—”
Nightwing splashed brown water upon the boy’s boots as he took off down the corridor. Following Croc’s path seemed harder to follow than he first thought as he jogged down a fourth canal, seeing no evidence of the criminal. He debated about simply collecting Robin and heading above ground—Oracle might be able to find some trace of the monster with all her sources—when the soft moaning sent a chill up his spine. He dashed the twenty feet to the end of the pipe, finding Croc face down in the slimy water. Nightwing quickly turned the monster over and pressed two fingers against his neck. Sure enough, he was met his heavy thumps.
But his heart thundered in his chest at the note taped to Croc’s forehead.
TWEET.
Nightwing cursed loudly and dashed down the corridor, all the while shouting into his comm. unit, “Robin! Damnit, kid! Answer me!”
As he came around a bend, he slowed to almost a stop at the macabre sight of the boy hanging from a ladder by his torn cape, his face bloody, his body lifeless.
“God, no…” He approached the little brother who looked at him like the center of the universe. The little brother who followed his every move, who listened to him like the sun rose and set on him.
The little brother who couldn’t breathe through the swelling in his throat.
Nightwing grabbed the boy to take him off the ladder when a snort cut through the sloshing of boots.
“Children. He fights a war with children.”
Nightwing didn’t take his trembling eyes off his brother, afraid he might lose the boy forever. “Back off. Now. Or they’ll be less of you left than Croc.”
“The boy’s struggling only lasted a minute. Since you are his second-in-command, yours will be far more.”
South American accent. Couldn’t place exact location. By the sloshing of the stomps, Nightwing knew the man to be big and challenging.
Not now.
The man was less than ten feet away.
“I won’t tell you again,” Nightwing growled as he alleviated the pressure from his brother’s neck and sat him up in the water.
“I do not take orders from children.”
Children? He was nineteen. Damn that dip in the Lazarus Pit. It made him look sixteen at the most.
The man lunged.
Nightwing ducked at the very last moment, pivoted on his back leg, and drove his knee directly into the man’s stomach. As he turned, he saw the masked villain with a tube sticking out of his head and a body builder’s tanktop. And the man—he didn’t fall.
He laughed.
“Please do not tell me that is the best you can do.” The man snatched Nightwing’s arm faster than the teen could evade. “I’d be disappointed.”
When his face met the sewer wall, Nightwing kicked out, this time aiming lower. Damn. Of course the guy would wear a cup.
The hand refused to let go of Nightwing’s arm and twisted it violently. With his free arm, Nightwing whirled and delivered one swift punch to the man’s backside. No matter what, everyone cringed at a kidney punch.
The fighter howled, and the pain was too great for him to keep hold of Nightwing. The teen took out a smoke grenade and broke it against the wall. Right now, a fight wasn’t something he could enjoy with Jason bleeding and unconscious. He had to get the boy to—
A hand
snatched his neck from behind and twisted him into a suffocating headlock. “I
will christen my rule of
Jason—His chest wasn’t moving.
The fighter leaned his mouth so close to Nightwing’s ear the teen could feel his hot, putrid breath.
“I am Bane.”
“NOT MINE!”
Nightwing hit his taser.
An electronic pulse rippled through his suit and into the muscular man, shocking him enough to release Nightwing. This time, the teen hero didn't heed and delivered a roundhouse kick to Bane’s head. He waited just long enough to make sure the man’s nose stayed above the water before throwing his brother over his shoulder and climbing the stairs.
When he placed his brother flat against the concrete ground, he put an ear to the boy’s chest. No, Jason wasn’t breathing. He loosened to the cape and lifted his chin, but still—the swelling.
There was only one thing to do.
His hand as firm as a surgeon’s, Nightwing took his knife and sliced his brother’s flesh.
*^*^*
Bruce’s fury knew no equal as he rushed through the halls of Leslie’s clinic to the private section in the back. He noticed Dick in front of one particular door, his head in his hands, his leg jittering up and down nervously. As he took a massive step forward, the teen’s head shot up, his face colored from what appeared to be a street fight, his teary eyes bloodshot, his face pale from the fear of God.
Bruce swiped a hand, “I don’t want to hear it,” before he entered the room and saw his second eldest for himself.
Jason was ghostly pale upon the bed with a tube in his neck, his eyes gently shut. He laid lifelessly, and the rise and fall of his chest was the only thing that kept Richard Wayne alive at the moment.
A thick bandage puffed up the hospital gown at the boy’s chest.
“He’s strong,” Leslie replied from the boy’s bedside. “He’ll survive.”
And now, so would Bruce’s eldest.
“How is he?” he demanded.
Leslie tapped the edge of her pen against her clipboard. “Left wrist, right leg, and two ribs broken. Swelling in the neck and chest, and a collapsed lung, but he’d be dead if not for Dick. He cut Jason an airhole so fine, the scarring will be minimal. And his patchwork on the boy’s cuts—He’ll be a great surgeon one day.”
“I don’t want him using his brothers as guinea pigs.”
“Bruce,” Leslie soothed, rubbing his forearm. “You know Dick isn’t reckless. He made a mistake.”
“No, I made a mistake, letting this continue.” Bruce marched outside, not shocked to find Dick hadn’t moved from his previous position. “What the hell happened?”
“Jason was ambushed. I know I should have been—”
“What the hell were you thinking?” Bruce exploded. This was worse even he thought. “I told you to keep an eye on him. I told you he wasn’t ready to be left alone.”
“I didn’t think—”
“That’s right. You didn’t think.”
“God!” Dick shot to his feet, and still, he was several inches shorter than the Dark Knight. “You seriously don’t think I wanted him to get hurt, do you?”
“No. Whatever has taken a bite out of your ass has made you careless and irresponsible with your brother’s life.”
“And how many times have I been in that bed because of something you did?”
Bruce snatched the boy’s wrist. “This isn’t about me. This is about you.”
Dick hissed through clenched teeth. “Let me go.”
“What happened, Dick?” Bruce urged, his anger gone and replaced with concern. “This isn’t you. You would never—”
“Maybe you don’t know me as well as you think,” the boy grounded through clenched teeth, his eyes holding firm to his arm.
“No. I know you better than you know yourself, and you would never put your brother’s life second to your—”
“He’s not my brother!” Dick finally shouted and tugged his arm free from Bruce’s clasp. “Neither he nor Damian is. Maybe that’s what you’re missing!”
Silence stole the words from the hallway as father and son stared at each other, disbelief in one’s eyes, anger in the other. Dick put a hand over his mouth but slowly pulled it down. “Dad, I—”
“I hate you!” a new, younger voice shrilled, and Dick turned to see Damian tug away from Alfred and flee the hallway.
Disbelief gave way to anger.
“Of course! Of course he’d be standing right there when I say that, right? I cannot get a break!”
Bruce grabbed Dick’s bicep and wrenched the boy back. “Until you work this out, you’re grounded.”
“You can’t ground me. I’m nineteen!”
“I can take away everything that makes you Nightwing, and that’s good enough.”
“Fuck you!”
The words came out easier than Dick thought and scarred the ever firm Dark Knight enough to lose his grip. Dick pushed down his sleeve that had hiked up and hurried past Alfred, never saying a single word. Bruce simply stood there, hurt masked as anger, before his mind processed what he saw.
The teen’s arms had been covered in bruises.
*^*^*
A soft rap
on
“Early for most bats,” Dick said, his voice strained. He dropped the dog to the floor. “Look, I need a place to crash for a few days. Do you—”
Dick patted Ace’s head. “I had to. Dad trained him to follow me everywhere. And he does. Literarily.”
“All right.”
With a
heavy sigh, Dick collapsed to
“Okay. What’d you do?”
Dick told him.
*^*^*
Breakfast
was rather quiet as
“You’re…silent.”
“I thought you liked all that zen stuff, which happens during silence.”
“I like to meditate. That’s different than you not talking. You’re avoiding.”
“Is this about Checkmate? You still haven’t told Dad yet, have you?”
“Don’t go
there,”
“
“Connor, it’s nothing.”
“
He was halfway through the door. “I’m going for a run, okay?”
“
“Fine!” Roy Harper burst back into the room and fell to his chair again, dropping his head onto the table. “It’s not about me, all right?”
“
Connor blinked, nodded to himself as if taking in all the information before yelling, “DAD!”
Ollie walked into the room, his hands crossed over his workout T-shirt. “Okay, if there’s a beckon, there better be coffee and pancakes associated with it.”
“Tell him,” Connor urged.
“Don’t stall.”
Ollie looked from one son to another. “Tell me what?”
Sighing in
defeat,
To Be Continued…