A/N: Extra special thanks to Erin Meier, who beta-ed this puppy for me! Thanks again!
“Five Rules”
“And this is Summer Gleason
reporting from
Dick stood
before the TV, his cold pizza with pineapple half-eaten in his hand, his blue
eyes never wavering from their position. He’d been up for almost an hour now,
watching in shock and disbelief as the Justice League of
“What the—?”
The only
reason Dick hadn’t dashed into action was because of the boy, who would venture
out into the fighting—or lack of it in
“I’ve lost my appetite.”
“What’s happening?” Tim demanded as he dashed to the window to see the marching soldiers, who looked almost no different than the Earthlings other than the freakishly large heads, taller and broader frames, and black jumpsuits with red slashes. Oh, and the gnarly laser guns strapped to their bodies.
Tim didn’t need an answer. Instead, he simply whirled. “So, are we ready to hit the rooftop express and see what we can do?”
Dick shook
his head. “There’s nothing we can do. Not here. They’ve infiltrated the entire
planet, taking
“So?” He once more disappeared into the bedroom and called out, “Why didn’t you wake me? We should be there!”
“The JLA banned the Teen Titans from going, though I think I saw Rose on the screen.”
“Hey, where’s my communicator?”
Dick took a moment to smile to himself. He’d done one thing right this morning. “Missed it on the bottom of the toilet bowl, huh?” When Tim emerged from the room, buttoning his jeans and pulling down his T-shirt, Dick shrugged. “It slipped.”
“You’re trying to cut me out of this, aren’t you? But the world—”
“Tim, there’s only one way to get the world back.”
“And it’s too dangerous for me, right?” the boy accused, crossing his arms over his chest and attempting to channel the death glare. He almost succeeded.
And besides, Dick had grown immune to its effects by the time he turned eighteen six years ago. “Look, kiddo, it’s not that easy.” He ruffled the boy’s hair as he walked passed and went into his room. “These guys—they’ve even taken the Watchtower—or satellite or whatever it is now. They’ve got control of teleportation and everything. The only way to stop them is—well…”
He hated the thought, but he knew when Bruce called him this morning what his adopted father wanted. Dick said all the right things, assured the older man what he wanted would be done—i.e. lied through his teeth—but it was necessary. The world was on the brink of annihilation, and the only way to save it was to infiltrate.
Dick flipped through his jeans,
making sure to take out the one most broken in to give him the most flexibility
and then took out his Gotham Knights shirt. If he was going down, then he might
as well go out with his home team—and with a message toward Bruce. Even though
he told the Dark Knight differently about it and Bludhaven,
Tim leaned against the doorframe and raked a hand through his hair. “So, what you’re saying is, you’re going on a suicide mission—without your Nightwing dregs.”
Dick looked back at his uniform bunched in the corner and intermingled with Robin’s. They’d fought Deathstroke yesterday and barely escaped with both uniforms not bloodied, let alone intact.
Sighing, Dick pulled on his sneakers and avoided eye contact as he entered the kitchen. He knew the unfathomable sadness that glistened in them. First his father, then this best friend, after them his girlfriend—now his older brother, too.
“You can’t do this,” Tim gave chase. “You remember rule number one. Any life taken is unacceptable.”
The knives had dulled since he first brought them, but they’d work as decent batarangs. “Ask Superman that. Or Ollie or Donna or even—”
He wanted to slap himself. He should never had even alluded toward—
“You stopped before you said ‘Kon.’ ”
Dick looked away. If he even glanced into the boy’s eyes, he wouldn’t be able to leave. “Tim, I—”
Forks clanged from the draw’s holder. No, oh, hell no. Dick whirled around and snatched Tim’s hand, squeezing it until the boy dropped the makeshift weapons. “No way.”
Tim slapped away his hand. “Yes, way. Look, how far do you really plan on getting with a watchtower full of alien commandos? Answer—not out of the teleportation tube. You’ll need someone for back-up, someone who just might be able to hack into the mother womb and get the teleporter and the aliens off of our planet.”
“And you really think I’d let a seventeen year old accompany me on a suicide mission?”
Tim smirked and crossed his arms. “You have to.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Yes, you do,” Tim affirmed, his voice edging into the tone of the Bat. “I’m done losing people in my life, Dick. I’m not going to lose my big brother, too.”
“And I’m not losing another little brother.” Dick placed a hand on the boy’s shoulder and naturally drew him into a tight embrace.
Tim savored the hug more than he would have under normal circumstances, Dick realized, and he clung to the boy just as tightly as the boy clung to him to secure his brother. Only after his shoulder was saturated and the shaking in the boy’s shoulders had faded did Tim pull away.
“Then, I guess we’re in agreement.”
Though it broke his heart, Dick still put down the proverbial foot. “Kiddo, you can’t—”
“Then let me put it to you this way,” Tim bargained with a knowing smile. “What do you think is going to happen if you die? We both remember what it was like with Jason. If you went, Bruce wouldn’t be able to recover. Would you really leave me with him like that?”
That did it. As much as Dick had believed otherwise at times in his life, he knew how Bruce felt about him. Bruce would immediately blame himself, and even Tim wouldn’t be enough to bring him back from death’s grip—or Cassie or Barbara or Alfred or…
Dick looked away, at war with the emotions tearing at his heart. If he brought the kid and they succeeded, they would still be chewed out. But if he brought the kid and he died—well, he’d be dead, too, and then…
He didn’t want to deal with that either.
“Okay, okay, you made your point,” Dick conceded and pointed a shaking finger at the boy. “Here’s the deal. If you come—”
“Yes!” Tim cheered, but Dick put an end to that with an open-handed slap to the boy’s forehead.
“I said if! Now, if you come, you have to abide by five rules, okay?”
Still smarting and rubbing his forehead, Tim struggled to whimper, “What rules?”
*^*^*
“Ready, little bro?”
Tim nodded and sent Dick a shaky smile. “I wasn’t born ready, but Bruce’s training made me so.”
“Ditto. See you on the other side.”
“Hopefully, ‘Dad’ won’t beat us there.”
“If so, I’m using you as a human shield.” Dick clenched the sharpest knife in his hand, then said into his comm. unit, “Teleportation access code: Omega 22-M-Z-4.”
Having only teleported a few times in his life, he’d never gotten over the tingling feeling on his skin. He hoped it wouldn’t hamper Tim’s movement too much, and to the kid’s credit, it didn’t. As soon as they appeared in the watchtower and the aliens pivoted to greet them with the weapons bearing, Tim flung a fork into the first alien’s hand, causing him to lose his grip on his weapon, and Dick delivered the knockout kick.
And thus, the battle began.
He hated all-out war situations, even though he usually excelled in them. They were chaotic, unpredictable. As much as Bruce said the same thing about the Joker, the clown always looked for the punch line—to kill as many as he could. The same could not be said about war. Sure, most people were out to kill, but Dick never knew if they simply wanted to kill him and his team or to capture them. What happens when one just snapped?
And this time, it wasn’t his team. His little brother was fighting alongside him, and Dick made sure he kept tabs on the boy at all time. And it didn’t help that neither of them wore their suits. No Kevlar protection this time could save them, though to be honest, Dick wasn’t sure how much they would have helped against the laser blasts.
Elbowing a man in the face, Dick pivoted to see Tim kick an alien in the groin and pistol-whip him with his own gun. The teen then dropped the weapon and fell to the floor to kick out the legs of another fighter. A punch to the face took him down for the time being, leaving only a few hundred or so more to go.
Luckily, only ten lined the hallway, and as Dick ducked a shot by a soldier, the blast smacked into the other’s stomach, leaving him writhing in pain. By the time he stood, Tim had already taken out the shooter. Dick noticed the cut on the boy’s cheek, most likely from a tag of the laser and nodded once.
“I see you got hurt during a sparing match. Sorry about getting too close with the escrima sticks.”
Tim shrugged, though a wide smile brightened his features. “It happens.”
Boot steps clapped in the hallway, and Dick headed down the opposite direction. “So, getting in, check. Next, saving the world.”
“Then we get Gray’s hotdogs,” Tim offered.
Dick returned the smile. “Nice alibi.”
It faded, however, as they reached the monitor womb without incident. Dick motioned for Tim to position himself on one side, while he took the other, his escrima sticks out, Tim’s boa staff ready. Putting up three fingers, Dick dropped one by one until there was none left, then slammed open the door—to find no one.
“I thought you said this place would be crawling with aliens?” Tim said.
Dick nodded. “Yeah, it should be unless….”
“Unless? I don’t like unless. Unless what?”
Dick wanted to smack himself, and he did so on the forehead. Of course! There weren’t as many men positioned at the front as there should have been. No one stopped them from getting to the monitor womb. And they hadn’t used the teleporter to get anywhere on Earth yet.
“They don’t know how to use it,” Dick muttered before turning on his heel. “They want us to use it—to teach them…”
Tim’s eyes grew, and together they turned toward the exit, only for the door to be blasted off its hinges. He jumped at Tim as the heavy metal reverberated against the ground and the tall aliens encircled them, each pointing their blaster at the pair.
Dick growled and scrunched the to-do list in a mental ball when the circle parted to allow a taller and broader man inside, his uniform top red with golden weave.
“Welcome
members of Earth’s hero core. Your presence was wished, and here you are.” His
voice mimicked that of a lord of
Dick strained his back to stand, though his hand never left Tim’s back. “We always like to please.”
“Well, then, perhaps you would like to tell us how to run the teleporter. It will definitely make your planet’s suffering less.”
“Like pulling a band-aid off really fast, huh?” Dick laughed and shook his head. “Sorry, kid, but I feel like we’re having a rebellious streak.”
“A pity.” The man shrugged aloofly and nodded to the man to his right. “You must understand. I really detest torture, but under the circumstances, I feel I have no choice.”
Dick instantly put himself between the alien and Tim, but in a circle, another alien easily grabbed the boy and pulled his hair back to reveal more of his vulnerable neck and better accustom the laser blaster.
“I’m sorry…” Tim winced with the alien jerked him back a little further. “…about forcing you to bring me along.”
“Hey, it’s no problem, kid. They kill you, the teleporter doesn’t work. It’s their loss, too.” Dick shrugged effortlessly and smirked at the leader. “I don’t know how to use it. He’s the smarter of the two of us.”
The leader growled and motioned with his hand. Dick knew the gun would be slamming into the back of his head before it did, knew the floor would be as hard and as cold as ice, and his knees protested when he landed upon it. He also knew the threat by now.
“Do what we want, or your older brother will join your mentors in this fight.”
Considering Bruce wasn’t dead and they probably really didn’t know who their mentor was, Dick wasn’t worried. Instead, he simply raised his piercing blue eyes to console Tim.
“It’s okay, kiddo. Do what they tell you to do.”
Tim hesitated, looking between the man who righted Dick while hamming a gun into his older brother’s neck like an executioner and his older brother. “But—But—”
“They want to know how to use the teleporter. Show them, huh? Then, Dad will take care of the rest.”
As if they shared one brain, the thought clicked into place, a smile shimmering in the younger boy’s eyes. He allowed the alien to thrust him against the console and began to work, tapping the keys in a rhythmic motion.
Dick readied himself, holding his hands up in front of him. No doubt he would need to act fast once everything fell into place. They couldn’t teleport the aliens out of the watchtower in side the tube, so dicey it would become.
But Dick could do dicey, and so could Tim.
“Okay, once you put in the coordinates, all you have to do is hit this button,” Tim informed the alien behind him.
“This button?” the alien confirmed.
Tim nodded. “Yepper.”
Just for practice, the alien depressed it—and glimmers as bright as stars sparkled from Earth as a million aliens were teleported off the planet at once.
“What just happened?” the leader demanded, striding past Dick toward Tim, but Dick was already on the move.
“What does it look like?”
He reached behind his shoulder, grabbing hold of the gun’s hilt and slamming his elbow into the man’s face. Whirling his leg, he snatched the leader by both knee caps before launching himself at another.
“My incredibly brilliant little brother just teleported away your million goons.”
Glimpsing at the console, Dick watched as Tim slammed an alien’s head against it and rolled on the ground below the laser blasts to come to Dick’s side.
“You forgot, ‘Dashingly handsome.’ ”
Dick smiled. “So sue me.”
“Please. Then it would be your dad’s lawyers against my dad’s lawyers, and that would just not be pretty.”
“Man, are we rich pampered boys.” Dick forced down Tim’s head and delivered a roundhouse kick as Tim did the same in the opposite direction. Tim reclaimed his boa, hitting a few in the head and watching them fall.
Dick finished off his aliens and turned to the side to see Tim leaning against his staff. “So, is this what the Justice League does? I always figured they just hung around and drank beer.”
“Nah. That’s what we do at Titans’ BBQs. Have I taught you nothing?” Dick took in a few ragged breathes before heading to the console and looking out at Earth. “So, you teleported them all off?”
Tim shrugged with a smile. “Ah, what can I say? I’m a genius.”
“Well, then, ‘genius,’ you get to wrap up these goons while I go make sure the others are taken care of.”
“Can’t we just lock these guys in here and check out the rest together?”
Dick channeled the Bat Glare but ruffled the boy’s hair. “What was rule number one, Tim?”
“Yours or Batman’s?”
“Mine! When you’re with me, it’s mine!”
The door opened with a swoosh, and Dick slammed his hand into Tim’s chest, forcing the boy to the ground before jumping to engage. “Call the JLA. Tell them to get their asses back here! Pronto!”
As he turned to deliver a roundhouse kick, a flash of black hair flew past him and collided with his target.
“Tim!” Dick yelled, lunging forward. “Get back—”
Dick cursed—loudly. A loud bang, a wet, crimson arm, followed by a cringe and a gasp, and Dick Grayson didn’t hold back.
*^*^*
“—wrong with you? You had five rules. Five rules! That’s it! And you broke four of them.”
Dick tore open another sterile gauze to wet with antiseptic, then lifted it up to Tim’s arm. Sitting on the bed with his legs dangling, his younger had his shirt off while his older brother worked on his seemingly flesh wound, tape, gauze, and dirtied tissues littering the bed.
“You only gave me three rules,” Tim disputed.
“No, there were five.”
“No, it was just: one—” Tim raised a finger for every point. “—to listen to you; two, to stay close to you; and three, not to get hurt.”
Dick lifted the other two as he spoke, “And not to get hurt, and not to get hurt.”
“So, three out of those five rules are the same.”
“Because they are that important!” Dick pressed his hand flat against the wound to stem the bleeding and sighed. “Look, you have to realize something. You’ve never really seen the Bat Glare.”
Tim snorted. “Oh, come on. I’ve been on the receiving end more times than—”
“No, you really haven’t,” Dick warned, “and what you see from the side when he’s grilling a perp isn’t really the Bat Glare. Look, what happens when you get in trouble? I mean, real trouble, like Bruce-isn’t-talking-to-you trouble.”
Tim cringed but not from the pain. “I…uh, call you.”
Dick snapped. “Exactly. I drop
everything to rush to
“Oh, come on—”
Dick placed on a new gauze and
began to wrap the injury. “I’m serious, kid. It’s freakin’ scary, even after
all these years, and I spare you from that. I take all his heat and crap, and
then bring you back to
Tim’s apologetic expression furled an eyebrow. “You’re going to get the Bat Glare.”
“Exactly. All because you didn’t listen to me.”
“But…you’re usually not this concerned, Dick. I don’t remember you ever bugging like this before.”
*^*^*
Batman cursed—loudly. As he stepped out of the teleporter, the aliens before him had not been beaten. They appeared to have been mutilated. They were still alive, he knew that by the raising of their chests, but blood and contusions covered their gray bodies. Whoever had done this was angry, and there would only be one reason he would be.
“Computer—location of Nightwing and Robin.”
“You think Dick and the kid did all this?” Flash asked as he raced to Batman’s side.
Batman ignored him and waited only to hear, “The infirmary.”
Batman chose to ignore his instantaneous arrival and Superman’s arm about his waist. Wonder Woman stood behind him, along with Green Lantern and Black Lightning. The rest had gone home to see their families or didn’t know Bruce’s secret.
“I already did a ring scan,” Hal interjected. “The aliens have been restrained. All we have to do is send them home.”
“Hold the leader,” Batman demanded. “I’ll want to make sure he’ll never come back.”
Hal nodded, and he and John left to deal with the remaining invaders.
Batman, on the other hand, let out a shaky breath, bracing himself for what he would find beyond the door. Then, knowing he might be needed, he placed his hand on the detector and was ambushed by his younger son’s voice.
“I mean, seriously. Why are you all Batman-overprotective? It’s totally embarrassing and so not you.”
Bruce let out the breath he didn’t know he had been holding as he saw his two sons. Wonder Woman seemed not to keep a straight face, while Superman smiled and clasped Bruce on the arm before leaving. He wanted to make sure his nephews were fine, and by the tone in the boy’s voice, he knew they were.
Tim leaned forward to add, “And by the way, Batman’s here.”
“I know Batman’s here. The question is: Who’s with him?” Dick replied equally as low.
“Wonder Woman and Flash.”
“Ugh, Princess can snap me like a twig, and Flash doesn’t make a good human shield.”
Flash crossed his arms and grinned. “Perk of being faster than Superman—can’t be held if I don’t want to be.”
“Don’t I know it, Fleet Feet.” Dick ripped open a package and pressed down the gauze to begin to tape it. He hit up Tim’s chin with his elbow, so the boy looked at him. “Look, uh, you weren’t the only one who was given five rules.”
Tim gasped, and a wick smile breached his features. “You broke rules? You?”
“And unlike you, I broke all five.” Dick raised a finger with each point as he spoke, “ ‘Don’t go to the watchtower. Don’t go to the watchtower. Don’t go to the watchtower. Don’t go to the watchtower, and if you disobey me and go the watchtower, don’t bring Tim.’ ”
Tim couldn’t hold in his bursting laughter. “So, pretty much, you’re dead.”
“But I wouldn’t be if someone wouldn’t have broken four of the five rules I’d given him, and we’d be eating hotdogs right now.” Dick ruffled the boy’s hair and glanced over his shoulder at Wally. “I think I need saving.”
Batman only crossed his arms and glared at Flash. “Don’t if you want to live.”
A horrified breath fled from Flash’s mouth, and a chilling shiver shook the younger man’s frame. “Uh, Dick? Sorry, but you’re on your own.” He dashed out of the room before the doors even opened.
Wonder Woman clasped Batman on the shoulder. “I know what is like dealing with Cassie and Donna. I’ll give you some privacy.”
Dick gulped as the doors shut, leaving him, Tim, and Bruce alone. Finally, he sighed, cursing his conscience, and patted Tim on his good shoulder. “Why don’t you go? No reason both of us need to be scarred.”
“Tim, stay,” Bruce commanded, and all Dick could do to shield the boy was to step in front of him.
The End
There we go! Thanks for reading!