Chapter Text
Dick doesn’t know what to do.
Tim’s in the med bed, hot with fever, delirious with the heat cooking his brain from the inside out. Dick shouldn’t trust a word he says, simply because he is not in his right mind.
Yet, with the evidence sitting right in front of him, it’s impossible to deny the truth.
At first, it was a simple cold, as far as they all knew. He had a fever and a headache, nothing too severe. Tim worked through it like he always does, going to Wayne Industries, working on cases, hell, even patrolling. No one ever thought to confirm Tim’s health, because Tim knows himself best. Tim is always fine; he always manages to bounce back.
On day three of Tim’s illness, Tim didn’t wake up in the morning.
After noon came and went, Alfred finally went upstairs to wake him up, assuming that Tim was catching up on much needed sleep. He knocked on Tim’s door, informing Tim it was time to wake up. The normal routine that Alfred has done since Dick can remember.
When Tim doesn’t respond or even shift, Alfred opens the door just a crack, calling into the room. Tim is generally a light sleeper, so Alfred never needs to actually open the door to wake Tim up. Yet when Tim still doesn’t move or answer, Alfred heads towards the bed, intent on lightly shaking him awake.
Alfred had to physically remove his hand from Tim’s shoulder at the heat, shocked by the intensity. According to Alfred, his fever was nearly 40 degrees Celsius, easily enough to cook Tim’s brain into mush. Literally.
Tim was rushed down to the Batcave medbay as quickly as possible. Dick was still at the manor because he planned on taking Damian out to the museum, meaning he was informed first of Tim’s situation. Between the two of them, they managed to transport Tim to the medbay and hook him up to monitors, while Alfred instructed Damian to call Leslie.
Alfred moved through the medbay with possessed purpose, every single one of his movements measured out and planned. He never had to double back for something else; he went through all of the cabinets in the room in order, taking everything to Tim’s bedside. Once he had everything, he did not move from Tim’s side as he worked to lower Tim’s fever.
Once the medication was on board, Alfred ordered Dick to prepare wet washcloths and place it over Tim’s forehead, neck, and wrists. While Dick went to prepare them, he watched out of the corner of his eye as Alfred cut Tim’s clothes off with a pair of medical scissors.
At first, he thinks nothing of the small sound he hears behind him, simply because he is busy. In retrospect, any audible or visual sign of Alfred’s surprise is a very bad fucking sign.
Dick comes dashing back, narrowly avoiding Damian as he hovers in one of the corners of the room. He reaches over Alfred to place the washcloths. Alfred is currently busy removing the sleeves on Tim’s sweatshirt, hyperfocused on the task. It’s only when Dick finishes applying the damp cloths that he sees what Alfred was startled at.
Along Tim’s left side, just under his nipple, is a deep, warped scar, obviously hypertrophic and rough. It’s long, wide, and layered, like two cuts were made one after the other. If Dick remembers his medical training accurately, it’s right over Tim’s stomach.
Any scar that large would not go without consequences, but Tim has shown no change in digestive problems or eating habits. He eats inconsistently, sure, but Tim has always had problems with planning when to eat.
Dick looks over the Alfred, somewhat helpless, looking for any form of answer. Alfred’s face is tight with his lips pursed. He’s readjusting the washcloth so it doesn’t sit over Tim’s new IV catheter.
“Alfred, when did he get that scar?” Dick’s voice is tense. He knows he sounds desperate, but he could care less about it right now.
Alfred is silent for a long moment as he continues adjusting Tim’s body for optimal heat loss. It’s only when he switches to adjusting the monitors that he replies.
“I do not know.” The soft admission genuinely stuns Dick, because Alfred knows everything. He’s half convinced that the man is a meta of some sort, because it takes borderline telepathy to understand Bruce, let alone be able to manage an entire house of emotionally repressed vigilantes.
“Tt. It is his spleen, is it not?” Damian speaks up for the first time since he hung up the phone. Dick turns to him, trying to suffocate the unease and anxiety from his facial expressions. He doubts that it works.
Alfred looks over at Damian. Whatever he’s been working on must no longer be emergent, otherwise he wouldn’t waste time looking at Damian. “Considering the location and his current infection, yes.”
Dick is not an expert. He’s barely useful when it comes to emergency first aid. He’s not even 100% sure what the spleen even does, but he’s pretty sure that all organs are important.
“Tim’s missing an organ?” He sounds a little shrill. He can’t keep his volume down, he’s too distraught for that.
Damian doesn’t look at Dick. He’s still staring at Tim’s chest. His words come out unusually soft and hesitant. “…a wound of that size would not go without consequences.”
Dick wants to scream. He opts for running his hands through his hair. He’s a little damp with sweat from stress. Tim has been here at the manor for a couple of months, but the scar is clearly older than that. It couldn’t have been longer than two years ago, because Dick knows they would have noticed Tim getting run through with a weapon.
Which leaves Tim getting mortally wounded sometime in the year that he was missing.
Fuck.
Dick’s responsible for Tim, has been ever since Bruce died. Sure, that changed when Bruce came back, but during the time he was dead (missing, not dead, missing), Dick was the sole caregiver and guardian.
Tim was mortally wounded halfway across the world, and Dick didn’t even know it. Tim could have died, and Dick wouldn’t have known it until his corpse was discovered.
Worse, Tim’s body might have never been found at all, leaving Dick to wonder if his baby brother disappeared on purpose. Running away, never to be found again.
Alfred interrupts Dick’s guilty self-spiral by suddenly moving, leaving Tim’s side. “Master Damian, please call Master Bruce. He should be notified of Master Tim’s state.”
Dick follows behind Alfred, still unsure what to do. “Do you think he got it while he was missing?”
Alfred keeps walking towards the stairs, slowing a little to allow Dick to catch up. They’re halfway up the stairs to Bruce’s secret office entrance before Alfred speaks.
“Judging by the state of healing, yes, Master Dick.”
Dick tugs at his hair, feeling the little sparks of pain in his scalp. It’s grounding. “I should have known; I should have stopped him. He could have died and we wouldn’t even had known-“
Alfred cuts him off before he can get much further. “Master Dick, the burden of guilt does not lie on you alone. We could have all done something, yet we did not.”
Dick makes a small, wounded sound. The entire last year was something of a nightmare for everyone. It was the worst year of Dick’s life, including his spiral after Jason’s death. He could barely take care of himself, and he knows that Alfred struggled too. Dick was raising an abused former child assassin while grieving his father figure. Dick regrets not caring for Tim as much as he should have. Tim was always fine, always independent, and Dick took that for granted.
Even when Tim started sharing his suspicions about Bruce being alive, Dick ignored it as much as he could. His first instinct was to get Tim help elsewhere, because he couldn’t help Tim alone. There was too much on his plate as is; there was no way he could care for a potentially psychotic grieving teenager with all of his other responsibilities. Whether or not it was the right instinct can be argued until his death.
Dick doesn’t regret focusing on Damian’s rehabilitation, because if he did not, Damian would have gone back to the League of Shadows. He would have lost Damian forever, and Dick couldn’t stand losing another family member. Certainly not one who was suffering so much.
But he does regret not helping Tim either. He can’t say he would have fully trusted and agreed with Tim’s insistence that Bruce was alive, but he could have helped Tim or at least listened.
Alfred heads towards Tim’s room, opening the door and selecting a few choice items. A little sudoku puzzle that Jason got Tim for his birthday, a stupid Superboy plush that Kon and Bart got him as a joke; things of sentimental or useful nature. Dick notices that Alfred does not grab any of Tim’s work items, such as his laptop, paperwork, or case files. Not that Tim is in any state to work, but Dick knows that it would be Tim’s first priority when he becomes conscious again.
Dick offers up his hands to take some of the items from Alfred’s hands. Normally, he would insist on carrying them himself, but it’s a sign of Alfred’s concern that he lets Dick carry them at all.
By the time they make it back down to the Batcave, Bruce is downstairs as well, standing next to Damian’s side. They’re as close to each other as possible without touching, silently absorbing each other’s presence. They’re clearly trying to comfort themselves and others, in their own emotionally constipated ways.
The moment Alfred enters the room, Bruce’s face tightens. He waits for Alfred to place the objects on Tim’s medbed before motioning for Alfred to meet him outside the medroom, likely to give a report on Tim’s current state.
“Master Dick, please wipe down everything with isopropyl alcohol before resting them on Master Tim’s body. We must avoid all sources of contamination if he is immunocompromised.”
Dick nods and grbs the bottle and sterile cloth, working to wipe down the outside of the sudoku book and other items. He waits for the outside to dry before placing them on Tim’s bedside table or in his arms. The drying process of IPA is necessary to actually killing off pathogens.
Damian takes up Dick’s side silently, wiping down the items with a second bottle and cloth. With a gentleness that Dick rarely sees, he places the Superboy plush in Tim’s arms, tucked between his shoulder and chest.
The next several hours Dick spends at Tim’s bedside, refusing to leave. He knows that Babs, Steph, and Cass have been informed, but each have been unable to arrive yet because of their circumstances. Cass is stuck in Hong Kong until she can get to a Zeta Tube or book a flight, whatever is first. Steph is three hours away, finishing her midterm nursing exam. She’s already driving here. She finished her exam as quickly as possible, but she is still a good while away. Babs, of course, is rarely able to make it to the manor due to her driving situation. There’s no train line to Bristol and her father cannot drive her until later at night, and she still refuses Bruce’s offer of getting her a customized car for paraplegic drivers.
Alfred, though he would never say it, is too fraught with anxiety to truly leave Tim alone, considering he is the only one with intensive medical training. While Alfred would go pick up Babs if he was directly asked, no one has the heart to force Alfred from Tim’s side.
Dick is impatiently swiping through his emails on his phone when Tim wakes up. He’s clearly half delirious, but cognizant enough to understand his surroundings.
Dick jumps when Tim first speaks. “Ew.”
He turns his head quickly to face Tim, alert and, admittedly, freaked out. “Tim!”
Tim groans at the volume of Dick’s voice, and Dick immediately lowers his voice. “Tim, are you okay? Do you need anything?”
Tim smacks his lips and Dick hops up to get him water. He should have brought it over immediately, but he didn’t think of it before. He hesitates for a moment, debating the odds of infection between tap water and bottled water, before deciding it’s worth the extra time to get the safer bottled water.
He darts back into the room quickly after retrieving the bottled water, offering it to Tim carefully. He hovers over Tim as his hands tremble, giving him small sips so Tim doesn’t choke.
Tim pushes his hands away when he’s done drinking, looking at Dick with hazy eyes. “Feel icky.”
Dick huffs a small laugh, still trying to be quiet. “I’m sure you do buddy. You’re pretty sick.”
Tim’s face curls into a frown, childish. It would be adorable if not for the situation. “Aw man. ‘Dat’s bad.”
It’s an understatement. Tim’s fever is somewhat controlled now, but he’s still in dangerous waters. Alfred said that Tim is immunocompromised. Even the slightest flare up of his infection can cause him to go septic.
Septic shock has a 50% mortality rate. Dick cannot handle the thought.
He has to ask Tim about his scar. He needs to know everything about Tim’s current health, because if Damian’s suspicion is right, then Tim is missing a major organ. Tim is missing a major organ, almost died, and didn’t tell anyone. Not even after he recovered.
It makes him sick to his stomach.
“Hey buddy.” Dick wants to run his fingers through Tim’s hair but restrains himself at the last second. He can’t introduce any more bacteria to Tim’s body. He’s too fragile right now; any risk is too much. Even if it’s just small contact to comfort him. “Do you know where you got that scar?”
He motions to Tim’s chest. Tim looks down where he’s pointing, struggling to see it due to the way he’s lying flat on his back. His hazy eyes look confused for a second before he understands. “Oh. My splenectomy scar.” He says it off-handedly, like he’s seen a squirrel in a tree that someone pointed out.
Dick wants to laugh. Or cry hysterically. He swallows the urge. “Baby bird, what happened?”
Tim flops his head to the side slightly, wincing. He clearly still has a headache, if the small movement is enough to hurt. Still, he rests his head like that, looking at Dick with lidded eyes. “Ra’s took my spleen. Keeps it in a jar.”
Dick takes it back; he wants to scream. How the hell did Tim run into Ra’s Al Ghul? The freaking demon head of the League of Shadows? “How did that happen, baby bird?”
Tim squints his eyes like he’s thinking particularly hard about a math problem. “Wants me to be his heir. Or wife. Somethin’ like that. Kept touching me.”
Dick swears cold water was dumped down his back. He can’t tell if he shivered, because he’s too distracted by the roar of blood in his ears and the disconnected feeling in his skull.
Fucking Ra’s Al Ghul touched his brother. Ra’s Al Ghul probably raped his little brother, his baby bird (fuck, he was 17 at the time, just a baby), and Dick was too busy guarding Gotham to even know about it.
Tim flops his head to the other side, his gaze still looking fuzzy and lidded. “He keeps sendin’ me flowers and stuff. Pretty sure he poisoned wine so I’d do mithridatism or whatever.”
Fucking Ra’s al Ghul is sending his little brother flowers like he’s courting Tim. He’s sending him wine and gifts and whatever else he wants to Tim, because he’s a fucking deranged pedophile praying on someone literally a tenth of his age.
Dick is past rage. He’s past anger and fury. He’s so furious that he’s circled back around to calm. His blood is both burning fire and cold ice, freezing him from the inside out.
He’s going to kill him.
Dick’s going to kill him and make it slow and painful. Fuck Bruce and his no-killing rule, Ra’s touched his little brother and he’s made it personal. He’s made Damian’s life hell, killed countless dozens, and Dick’s going to kill him because he touched his brother.
Tim’s gaze is focused on something in the distance, like he’s staring at the walls. “My head h’rts.”
Dick purses his lips. He gets up to get Alfred, but before he does so, he leans over to kiss Tim on his hairline. He can’t bring himself to regret it afterwards, even with the risk of infection. His brother deserves some comfort.
“Don’t worry, Tim. I’ll take care of you.”
He has some phone calls to make.