I meant for this to be a drabble but it turned much longer than I anticipated. So my first non-Teen Titans fic is a lengthy drabble. Oops. (Don't own, yada yada.)
Prompt: One character gets shot
It was late. It wasn't sunrise quite yet, and the stars were beginning to fade, their light bleeding into the sky until it turned a weak gray. Batman and Robin split up for the night, Batman to retrieve a coffee offered to him by Miss Selina Kyle. (Robin was not fooled for one second by the 'coffee' and he had no desire to get caught in the middle of whatever odd date they had planned.)
Nightwing was adding one of Oracle's bugs to cameras around the police station, Batgirl was out by the warehouses, and Red Robin was uptown. That left most of downtown to Nightstar, which made it perfectly reasonable for Robin to offer to help her at the night's close when she was most likely tired and easily distracted.
Finding her was simple. Robin had her patrol routes memorized by heart. Of course, he memorized each person's patrol route by heart, but he took a special interest in hers. He anticipated her arrival on Park Row, which was her last stop before she threw in the towel for the night.
"What are you doing here?" she asked when she spotted him, bobbing gently in the air. "Batman finally kick you off the team?"
"We finished early, thanks to a certain leather-clad, diamond-clawed woman we all know too well," Robin informed her, crossing his arms to show that he was not amused by this.
"Oh." She landed and shrugged sympathetically before catching him in a quick hug. "Well, good for Batman. He doesn't get enough downtime, you know. It's good for him."
Robin's gloved fingertips brushed at his girlfriend's back. "I suppose. He could have the decency to be more private about it."
The two teenagers were actually the authority on keeping a relationship private. They'd been successfully keeping their own relationship private for months. This was beginning to become problematic. Neither of them expected their relationship to last as long as it had, and at this point keeping the affair secret was bothersome and guilt-inducing.
Robin glanced around and, upon deciding that there was no one near, he tilted Nightstar's chin up to catch her mouth in a quick kiss. Her fingers twisted in the material of his cape as she pulled him closer.
"Hey," she muttered suddenly, ducking her head away. "Hear that?"
Being part-Tamaranean, Nightstar's hearing was better than Robin's. Not nearly as good as Supperman's, but good enough that she had an annoying edge on Robin when it came to being stealthy.
"No," Robin answered sulkily.
"Come on. One last stop on the justice train before we can sleep." Nightstar backed to the ledge of the building and, spreading her arms, let herself fall a few feet through the air before catching herself.
It didn't take Robin very long to see what she was talking about. A woman was clutching her purse tightly as a man in jeans and work boots gripped her arm. As Robin silently shot a grapple gun to an adjacent building, he grabbed her other arm and forced her to come closer to him.
The woman's protests were cut short by a large hand over her mouth, and that was when Nightstar made her presence known. A pink starbolt charred the bricks behind the man, and he released the woman.
As Robin landed just outside the alley, more of the man's mooks crept toward Nightstar, who was most likely aware of the threat but did not turn around. She did this because she knew that Robin would back her up, but also because she wanted to draw all of them out.
"Hey, watch it!" the woman yelled, pointing over Nightstar's shoulder.
Unconcerned, Nightstar performed a neat sweep-kick, tripping the thug closest to her. Robin winced as the man cracked the woman across the cheek, and with that he successfully won Nightstar's attention again.
Robin set to work on the thugs, bolas taking out two of them and old fashioned punches to the weak areas of the body taking out the third.
He was lifting the fourth one that Nightstar had tripped to fasten handcuffs around his wrists when it happened.
The leader had a gun.
He was likely angry that Nightstar had stopped him, and given the situation and the excessive violence he used, he felt emasculated as well.
The gun peeked out from the folds of his jacket, having been hidden until now. Nightstar pushed the woman out of the way and staggered backward, surprised.
It took three shots for Robin to shove the thug he was about to handcuff to the ground, and at least one more went off in the amount of time it took Robin to kick his hand, sending the gun flying. It went off against when it hit the wall, but the bullet landed either in the pavement or the brickwork.
"You're going to be sorry," Robin growled, jerking the man by his collar.
The man's eyes were wide with fear, which would have been more satisfying under different circumstances. To gratify the burning need to physically harm the man who'd just shot the one person who meant more to him than anything else in the world, but also to keep him from getting away, Robin slammed his head into the brick behind him as hard as he could without causing permanent damage.
"Oh god," the woman gasped, and Robin snapped his head to look. The woman caught Nightstar before she hit the ground, and her shirt was covered in blood. Robin's rage, for once, slipped away, and with it his relative calm, and they were replaced by fear which reached its icy fingers into the pit of his stomach and clenched them into a fist, twisting painfully. His blood ran cold.
Damian took a few staggering steps forward and he fell to his knees at Nightstar's side. Blood was pooling on the ground around her, slicking off her waterproof uniform. Clumsily, green gloves found their way to the compartment on his belt that held a miniature first aid kit. He'd been trained, of course, in patching up bullet wounds by both the League and by his father. He couldn't remember anything he'd been taught right now, though, and all he could think of were stupid things, like Mar'i Grayson's favorite color (blue) or the stuffed animal (a strange six-legged alien animal called a dror) that she kept on her bed during the day and curled up with after a hard night on patrol or the way her hair smelled (like cherry blossoms) when it was damp. His fingers shook and ice pumped through his veins.
Anything past that was a layer of static in his brain.
Robin tapped the earpiece he was wearing and he groaned, "Help me."
"Robin? What's wrong?" Batgirl asked, alarmed.
"Nightwing," Robin blurted. "I need Nightwing." Everything was happening too fast and too slow at the same time. The pool of blood was too big, it was growing too fast, like one of those videos of a flower blooming in stop-motion. But he was moving too slow. His tongue was too heavy and his limbs wouldn't go where he told them when he told them to do it.
"What happened?" Nightwing demanded, his voice flooding Robin's head.
"It's her. It's Nightstar." Robin's voice broke, and he was too unfocused to cover it up with a cough. Blood was soaking up the side of his cape, which he quickly yanked away from the dark puddle. "I let her get shot."
"Did the Kevlar—?"
"It went through. I don't know how many—" Robin cut himself off. His hands glanced over her stomach. Two bullets were embedded in the bulletproof fibers of the uniform. "Two of them hit her." As he spoke, a wave of wild fear crashed with full force into his stomach, and sharp spikes of fear clawed their way up his chest. "Help me, please."
"Calm down, Robin," Oracle ordered. "I have it here that you're on Park Row. Take her to Leslie's clinic."
"It's too early for-"
"I'll get Leslie. Robin, you've got to do it before cops show up. Then you have to clean any trace of her blood so they can't try to ID it."
Something in Robin's stomach lurched and he gripped Nightstar's limp fingers. "I can't leave her," he protested.
"Robin, Nightwing's on his way," Batgirl's voice soothed through the earpiece. "I'll come by, too, and get rid of the blood. You take her to the clinic."
The woman who Nightstar had saved, blood spattered on her shirt from catching the teenage vigilante when Robin couldn't, looked wide eyed at him. She couldn't hear the other side of his conversation, but she stayed quiet. Why she didn't leave was a mystery.
"I have a visual," Oracle said, businesslike. "Make sure her back's okay and pick her up. Put a neck brace on just to be sure, Robin, and don't jostle her too much."
It was a good thing he and his father had been using their motorcycles earlier that night. He could call it from any location, but it would come much faster now. He pressed the button on his belt that activated the autopilot, which would send it to his location. Digging his fingers into her uniform, Robin pulled the two bullets out of the cloth.
While he fit the neck brace over Nightstar's shoulders, he said to the woman, "Ever use a pair of handcuffs?"
"Um... Yeah..." she stammered when she realized that Robin was talking to her.
"Take these," he instructed as he paused over the neck brace, "and snap it around his wrists behind his back."
She took the handcuffs Robin held out and she said, "Is she going to be okay?"
"Of course," Robin snapped, his voice tight.
"I have a daughter her age. I... I really hope she'll be okay. It's my fault that she—"
"She'll be fine," Robin insisted.
The woman nodded.
Returning his attention to Nightstar, Robin continued instructing the woman. "Batgirl—you know, blonde, bat symbol on her chest—will be here for cleanup. She'll also take these guys to a station if she gets here before the cops. Wait for her." The headlights from Robin's motorcycle illuminated the whole alley, and he added, "She might take your shirt."
The woman glanced down at herself, realizing that Nightstar's blood decorated her blouse.
Robin pulled Nightstar gingerly to his chest. She was absolutely limp, like a full-sized doll of herself. Her arms hung and her head lolled.
"Careful," Oracle reminded him.
"I am being careful," Robin growled.
"Leslie's on her way. You'll need to break into the clinic, though. I suggest hurrying. It's beginning to get light."
"I'll pick it," Nightwing offered, and Robin could hear a puff of air as he assumedly landed an acrobatic trick. "Just bring her in one piece."
Robin didn't even stop to insist that he was perfectly capable of picking locks. He adjusted Nightstar on his bike and he landed forward so that his mouth was against her hair. "Please be okay," he whispered as though she had any control over the matter.
The amount of blood on his bike when he picked her up again after four city blocks was alarming. Leslie Thompkins's clinic was in front of him and he tried the door first to make sure it was unlocked, so that he could carry Nightstar in without worry.
"Here," Nightwing called as Robin entered the threshold. Nightwing had cleared an area on one of the cots, and Damian gingerly set her on it. The white sheets ran red after a few seconds.
Nigtwing was everything Robin wanted to be. Calm—at least on the outside—functional, serious. He was there for Nightstar when Robin couldn't be.
Nigtwing peeled the Kevlar-Nomex blend away from his daughters skin, sticky with blood, to observe her stomach.
"Come here, Damian," Nightwing instructed.
Damian Wayne was not a stranger to the gruesome details of various types of wounds. He'd caused a good amount of ugly-looking scars and contusions himself, among other things. Training to be an assassin was impossible without actually killing.
But this wasn't like anything he'd experienced before. He felt weak, and each pound of his heart was too loud and thudding. It seemed like everything was happening in fast-motion except Robin, who was stuck in place. His limbs moved too slowly, like they had to push through the air, and they only got heavier when he breathed the heavy air in, sitting like weights in his lungs, swirling to his blood and weighing down his head—
A forceful hand on his shoulder startled him. "Sit down," Dick ordered, and Robin was pushed into a hard plastic chair. Robin hadn't noticed time passing, but it must have because Nightwing had stripped off his gloves and rolled his sleeves up to his elbows. His domino mask was on the sterilized countertop near the sink and thin white gloves, stretched too thin over Dick's hands, were tinged with bright red at the fingertips.
Robin blinked a few times and pulled off his mask, rubbing at his eyes with the back of his hand. As his knuckle grazed his cheek, dampness stung at his skin. Flinching his arm back, Damian realized that his gloves were soaked with Mar'i's blood. He tore them off and threw them in the sink.
Leslie Thompkins, dressed in a lab coat with her hair pulled back, came in the room, greeting Dick and Damian although both of them were too in-shock to acknowledge her. Gently, the aging doctor pushed Dick away from his daughter's side and she pulled an overhead light from the wall into place.
Leslie instructed Dick to do something—sounds were reaching Damian's ears in waves, rolling between too loud and too soft to be intelligible—and Dick exited the room and returned with a bag of blood.
There was so much blood visible—on Mar'i, on Dick, on the cot, on the Robin tunic. It didn't make him dizzy or sick, but he couldn't stop staring at it all.
Dick was standing by Mar'i's side, his fingers gripping at her limp ones. Dr. Thompkins was holding metallic instruments, which glinted in the lamplight.
When Batgirl entered the room, Damian felt air enter his lungs more easily. Aside from being something of an older sister figure to Damian, Batgirl was in medical school. She wasn't anywhere near as qualified as Dr. Thompkins, but she knew Mar'i's unique half-alien physiology better. Stephanie took off her cowl, gloves, and cape and slipped on the same thin white gloves that Dick was wearing. She and Dr. Thompkins stood on either side of the dark haired nineteen year old girl they'd all come to know so well, speaking urgently to each other as Dick stood at the foot of the bed and watched.
Damian didn't know much about removing bullets, especially not now in his frenzied state of mind, but he knew that it took a long time. Much too long.
Tim came at noon with lunch for Dick, Steph, Dr. Thompkins, and Damian. None of them ate much. Bruce stopped by for dinner, when the two women had finally finished and Dick pulled a chair up next to the cot.
Steph pulled Damian out of his chair by the door and took him out of the room. He shook her hand off his arm but allowed her to lead him where she would.
"Are you okay?" she asked without any prelude.
"Of course I am," he answered, trying to be annoyed with her for asking but the venom would not come to his voice.
"You've been zombified all day," Steph pointed out with a poke at his chest. "It's okay to be upset," she added softly.
Damian shook his head. "No. It's not my turn. Let Dick worry about her."
"There's no reason you can't tell him about the two of you now, you know."
"We were going to tell him together," Damian informed her, and the words cut little holes in his stomach, like shards of glass.
Steph frowned, worried, and she reached up and pulled Damian in for a sympathetic hug. Damn her, but that made him open up. It made him weaker. The unfamiliar sting of tears burned at the back of his eyes, so he closed them. "She'll be okay, won't she?" he whispered, unable to keep his voice from shaking.
Stephanie rubbed her hands up and down Damian's back. He didn't like it much, but he acknowledged that she was trying to comfort him and he didn't want her to catch him on the verge of tears, so he allowed her to continue the hug. "I think so, sweetie. Everything's stable and her body temperature is up. All we need to do now is wait for her to wake up."
Damian nodded and took a calming gulp of air before stepping back. "I don't feel well," he admitted, feeling childish. Emotionally drained from his short talk with the latest Batgirl and physically drained from lack of sleep, he slumped where he stood and let his arms hang at his sides.
"Of course you don't. You haven't slept, you haven't eaten, and you've hardly spoken to anyone since this morning."
Realizing how disheveled he must look, Damian lifted a hand to run it through his hair, but he dropped it halfway there due to apathy and lack of energy. "I suppose I've handled this poorly."
Steph shrugged. "You were there when it happened, D. It's going to be hard on you. You were there for her; that's what matters."
He couldn't help but feel as though he wasn't there for her, though. Not in the way that Dick was—attentive, responsive, holding her hand, and certainly not in the way that Stephanie was.
"Here, let me drive you home," she offered, snapping Damian out of his glum thoughts.
"No," he said immediately, as a reflex. Steph's driving was not something for the weak of spirit to endure. He wanted to make sure Mar'i would be okay before he died in a fiery car crash at the hands of his surrogate older sister.
"Oh, come on," Steph complained, annoyed. "It's not that bad."
"Even Drake cannot defend your driving," Damian answered drily.
"We'll take Leslie's car. I'm not asking."
"But what about Dick? And my father—"
"Dick's staying the night. You can't, Damian, there's not enough room and you don't qualify as family."
Damian was unsure whether or not he wanted to argue the point. The fact that he was her father's adoptive younger brother, although they hadn't really grown up together and even after they met they never considered each other relatives, was the main reason they'd been hiding their relationship. Damian chose to remain quiet. If he went home now, he could sleep and for a few hours and patrol. They'd be down at least two members tonight and Damian really needed to punch something.
He let Stephanie drive him back to the Manor, where Alfred met him at the door and drilled him about Mar'i's well-being. He tutted over Damian's hair and the fact that he was still wearing the blood-stained Robin uniform, minus the distinctive tunic, under his clothes. Alfred drew a bath for him—Damian hadn't wanted Alfred to draw him a bath in years, and even now he didn't really want him to, but having something to do likely took the old butler's mind off of things. With that thought, as he entered the bathroom, Damian asked Alfred to change the sheets on his bed. He'd have enough trouble falling asleep as it was, and maybe with the extra comfort of new sheets, he would make it easier on himself.
He fell asleep soon enough after climbing into bed, but his dreams were tinged black and red, and they smelled like cauterization and sterile countertops.
At midnight he got up and pulled on a clean uniform, despite protests from Alfred that he really should go back to bed. It was supposed to be Batgirl's turn to patrol Crime Alley, including the area Mar'i was shot, and Nightwing was supposed to be watching the warehouses. Since both of them were taking the night off, Robin took both, leaving Batman to cover uptown on his own and Red Robin to sniff out some clues of a kidnapping in the suburbs. It was a lot of ground to cover. He hardly had any time to think between bashing heads together and handcuffing second-rate jewel thieves.
Robin was quick, as always, and he dispatched minor criminals with a practiced ease and natural talent. But his defenses were low. By the night's end, he racked up a black eye, among other bruises and cuts to the face, a twisted ankle, a shallow knife wound across his chest, and several bruises across his body. One mugger even swiped him with a knife above his eye, and Robin finished the fight almost blind, as he had blood running into one eye and the other, at that point, was swollen shut. Unfortunately for the mugger, Robin could fight blind. Instead of returning to the Batcave so Alfred could patch him up, Robin wound gauze around his temples and continued.
When he finally returned, Alfred scolded him for several minutes straight. Wounds opened up when Damian peeled his tunic away, and without cover of night or his domino mask, his face looked a lot worse than he thought. Alfred even went so far as to stitch up the wound above his eye.
Speaking around a swollen cheek, Damian said, "Alfred, please let Dr. Thompkins know that I'm going to be joining Dick at the clinic today."
"Master Damian," Alfred sighed as though he was telling a child to eat their vegetables for the seventh night in a row, "respectfully, you need rest, sir."
"I won't be very active at the clinic, will I, Alfred? I'll be fine."
"Miss Mar'i is being moved from the clinic today, sir. She appears to be stable, aside from abnormally high body temperature, and Master Dick was able to convince Dr. Thompkins that should Miss Mar'i wake up soon, the comfort of her home would be better than the clinic for her."
"They're moving her?" Damian demanded, narrowing his eyes. "Is that wise?"
"I believe that Dr. Thompkins is anxious to make use of Miss Mar'i's cot for other patients, Master Damian, and Master Bruce will send our ambulance, disguised of course, for the move."
"We have an ambulance?" Damian asked dully.
"Sir, I believe we own an ice cream truck as well."
For some reason, Damian found himself smiling at that wider than he'd smiled in ages. A new cut in his cheek split open, filling his mouth the metallic tang of blood, but he hardly noticed.
The move was completed without a hitch. Damian watched from the window, feeling too nervous to go down and see. Stephanie carried an IV with drips attached while Dick carried in Mar'i. Bruce the ambulance, which spoke volumes about the secrecy of Mary Grayson's condition as far as the rest of the world was concerned.
He waited before going to her room. He wanted to see her desperately, but he was also afraid. Afraid of how weak she'd seem, and of how Dick might blame him for her condition- Damian blamed himself, after all. Before he finally got up to go to her room, Steph burst into his room, not bothering to knock. He hated it she did that.
"Look at yourself, Damian!" she scolded as she forced him into a standing position. She gripped his jaw, pressing painfully on a new bruise, and made him turn his head. "I can't believe you let this go unstitched," she muttered, gesturing at the cut above his eye. "It's irresponsible."
"Quit mothering me, woman," Damian ground out as he batted her hand away.
"Damian," Stephanie said, and her voice was soft. It made him uncomfortable. "I get that you're upset. But what you're doing? Beating yourself up over it? That's not helping anybody."
"I clearly did not do this to myself," the twenty-one year old snapped.
"Come on, D. You're better than this. I know you are. You know you are, too."
It wasn't his fault. His defenses were poor last night because he was distracted. Surely Stephanie could understand that.
He meant to defend himself by arguing those points. "If she doesn't wake up," he said instead, "it's my fault."
"No, Damian, sweetie, it's not."
"I was right there. If I knew he had a gun—it was stupid, anyway. We're always supposed to assume they have a gun—"
"Damian, look at me," Steph ordered, and she put her hands on his shoulders. "It's not your fault. Mar'i is good. She knows that there's always a risk in any operation. This isn't your fault."
He squeezed his jaw shut to avoid further argument. "How's Dick?" he blurted.
"Tired. He called it of work last night, but he has to go in tonight. We're keeping it secret that she was shot."
Damian nodded.
"You going to see her?" Steph asked gently.
He nodded again.
"Went me to go with you?"
"No," Damian said quickly. "No. I need to do this myself." She gave him a supportive squeeze on the shoulder as he passed her. He was at Mar'i's door before he realized it, and he pushed the door open to reveal Dick, sitting hunched in a chair next to her, possibly asleep.
Damian crept forward silently until he was standing over her. She seemed oddly pale—her skin always held an orange tone and that was mostly gone now. Her hair splayed over pillow, visibly tangled but still shining the way it always did.
He stroked his fingers over her hair softly in order to avoid pulling it, and at a touch all of his fears that she might never wake up came bubbling to the surface so quickly that it almost hurt. The sting of approaching tears distracted him, pulling him into his own fear and hurt, and he was so immersed in himself that when Dick began speaking, it startled him.
"Damian?"
The young Wayne flicked his eyes to his adoptive brother's, blinking away the stinging feeling. "What?"
"I said, how long have you been in here?" Dick repeated. "I must have nodded off."
Damian honestly didn't know. He shrugged. "A while, I guess."
"What happened to your face?" Dick leaned forward and squinted at his younger brother.
"I... had a rough night last night." The burning at his eyes was too much to handle and his voice was shaking. "Dick... There's something I need to tell you."
Quirking an eyebrow, Dick nodded.
"I was there when she got shot. I guess you already knew that. I didn't stop it from—It's my fault she's—"
"Damian," Dick interrupted. "It's not your fault. It's not her fault, either. We can't always stop these things from happening. The only person at fault here is the guy who shot her."
With a start, Damian realized that he hadn't done anything about that. "Who—?"
"Guy named Ricky Jarvis. Since we're keeping this secret, there wasn't enough evidence to hold him in jail. The woman, Anita Jarvis, offered to testify against him. Anita was willing to give Steph information, plus Babs got their faces on camera. Red Robin's keeping an eye on them."
Damian reached his hand down and entwined his fingers with hers. Her skin was almost uncomfortably hot to touch, but he didn't pay much attention to it.
"There's something else I need to tell you," Damian muttered after a few minutes of amiable silence.
"Everything okay?" Dick asked, concerned.
"Yes, nothing like that. It's just that..." He couldn't do it. Not without her help. The words were too big, they meant too much, and he had to fit them through his teeth and it seemed ridiculous, like trying to squeeze a bowling ball into a wine glass. He squeezed Mar'i's limp fingers and forced himself to say, "I love her."
"I know, Damian," Dick said, his voice understanding. "We all do. We'll get through this, buddy."
"N-no. You don't understand." Damian squeezed Mar'i's fingers again. He wished desperately that she could help him do this. Again, tears stung at his eyes. He closed them, but he couldn't stop them from spilling over. He was scared. Scared of what Dick would say, scared of what Mar'i would say, if she knew this was how he decided to tell her father. "I'm in love with her."
Dick sucked in a startled breath. "You... you're what?"
"I'm in love with her." Damian could hardly speak past the lump in his throat, which threatened to choke him. He couldn't swallow it down. What was worse, he was visibly crying now. He ducked his head to hide his tears and he continued. "I didn't—we didn't—mean to keep it from you. We didn't know how much we'd come to mean to each other. You hold the right to be angry with me—in fact I expect you to—"
"Damian," Dick interrupted, his voice coming from much closer than it did before..
He looked up to find Dick standing next to him.
"It's okay," Dick murmured, putting a hand on Damian's shoulder. "I knew about the two of you."
"You... you what?" Damian demanded, baffled. He wiped at his eyes with the back of his hand.
"Please. I was raised by the best detective there is. Give me some credit."
"H-how long did you know?"
"I don't know. A couple of months."
"Why didn't you say anything?"
"I figured you'd tell me when you were ready. I really wish you would have told me before this. And I was upset with you for a while. But you make her happy, Damian." Dick studied his daughter for a few long moments. "I didn't know you were... in love."
Damian winced. "That's because we're not." At the fierce look Dick fixed on him, Damian rushed to add, "That is, we haven't... We never said..."
"Do you love her, Damian?" Dick asked, and Damian hoped he felt as uncomfortable about this as he did.
"I don't know. Imagining another day without her... It's like I'm imagining another day without part of myself. An important part. That's what love is, isn't it?"
The sad smile that graced Dick's features made Damian feel like he'd done something right and he'd done something wrong at the same time. "You're better off talking to her about it when she wakes up."
Damian had to physically bite his tongue to stop himself from correcting Dick's statement to if she woke up. Optimism was Dick's coping mechanism. It wasn't right of Damian to rob him of that.
"Yes. I suppose you're right."
They sat together at Mar'i's bedside, not talking much but enjoying each other's company. Dick had to work—he'd picked up the night shift as a cop in Gotham since his move from Bludhaven—and the way he gripped Damian's shoulder upon leaving and saying, "Watch after her" made him swell with pride and gratitude. Usually, getting Damian to go a night without the Robin uniform was a struggle, but now he would set the uniform aside for good if it meant spending the rest of his nights with Mar'i.
Unfortunately, the young vigilante had gone two days with six hours of sleep. He fell asleep before midnight.
Damian never really fell asleep, however, not when he didn't want to. He was half asleep, still tuned in to the environment around him.
"Daddy?"
The weak whisper jolted him out of his doze and he snapped his eyes open, transitioning immediately to alert wakefulness.
"Mar'i," he murmured, leaning forward and fixing her hair for her. "You're awake."
"Damian," she mumbled, and he laid his fingers gently over hers. "What time is it?"
"Ah…" He glanced at his watch. "Three in the morning."
"Daddy's at work?"
"Yes. He's fine. I'll text him to let him know you're awake."
"Did I get shot?" she asked, confused.
"Yes. Does it hurt?" A thought crossed his mind and he rushed to have it proven wrong. "Can you move your toes?"
"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine." The blanket at the end of the bed fluttered as she proved her well-being to him. "See? All good."
The screen from Damian's phone lit up his face as he texted Dick as quickly as he could.
"X'hal, what happened to your face?"
"I'm fine," Damian assured her, slightly exasperated. "Had a rough patrol last night. You're the one who—" He paused as he received a text from Dick.
"How many days was I out?"
"You were shot Sunday morning. It's now Tuesday."
"Oh, man," Mar'i muttered.
"Are you feeling well enough to talk to your father?"
"Sure."
"Here," Damian said, putting his phone in her hand. "I've dialed it for you."
The phone conversation was short, filled with several "I love you"s and "I'm fine"s. Mar'i handed Damian back his phone and as he took it, he slipped his fingers into her hand and squeezed gently.
"I'm glad you're okay," he murmured.
"I'm fine, really. I know getting shot is a big deal, but I mostly feel tired."
"It doesn't hurt?"
"No it does, but I'm kind of numb, I guess from medicine. So it's like, whatever."
"Go to sleep," Damian urged. "I'll be here when you wake up."
She smiled at him and let her eyes utter closed. Damian drifted to a much more peaceful sleep than he'd been having lately.
"Wake up, D," Stephanie's voice chirped, and he found that she was fiddling with Mar'i's IV. "Since she's up, I'm going to make her more comfortable."
Since he was shooed from the room, he went to find something to eat. Because Stephanie was in the house, Alfred had prepared waffles. Thanking him, Damian stacked a few on a plate and returned to Mar'i's room, knocking before entering and offering Steph a waffle. She sped down the hall to wash her hands before eating.
"Can you eat?" Damian asked, setting the plate down in Mar'i's lap.
"Steph says yes. I'm starving."
Damian was happy to see her without the tube in her nose, although the IV was still attached, probably filled with pain medicine.
He was filled with a warm, comforting peace as he watched her sit up in bed and eat waffles with her hands. It was so normal.
"I love you," he said under his breath to no one in particular.
Mar'i froze, her waffle between the plate and her moth with a single bite taken out of it. "What?" she asked around her mouthful of waffle.
A fierce blush covered Damian's cheeks. He forgot about her enhanced hearing. He couldn't think of anything to say to distract her.
"What did you say?"
"Okay, waffles, come to momma-!"
Damian closed and locked the door at the sound of Steph's impending return.
"Hey!"
"I didn't mean to say that," he said to Mar'i.
She blinked a few times and put her waffle down. "You didn't?"
"I—"
"Did you not mean it or did you not mean to say it?"
"I just said that I didn't mean to say that."
"What are you guys doing in there with my poor waffles?" Stephanie called from the other side of the door, which Damian glared at.
He picked up the plate of waffles from Mar'i's lap and walked over to the door, opening it and thrusting the plate of waffles at Steph.
"Cool!" she chirped, and beamed at the waffles. "Wait, what are you doing in there? Be careful, she's not quite well enough for se—"
"We're not doing that," Damian snapped. "Go downstairs." He shut the door, still locked, and leaned on it uncomfortably.
"So you did mean it?" Mar'i questioned, tilting her head.
"I've been thinking about it." Damian answered slowly.
"Okay, Damian, I want you to think about the possibility that you only think that because I've been sick."
He approached her bed and took her hand, squeezing gently. "I think I have for a while. This only made me realize it. Thinking of you hurt... Really hurt... It made me crazy. It was like some important part of my brain switched off. I did mean it, Mar'i. I love you."
"Damian," she breathed, a small smile on her mouth. "I love you, too."
Damian smiled giddily and raised her hand to his lips. "Get better, okay?"
...
EPILOGUE
...
Over the next week, they spent a lot of time together. They each received a talk from Dick that came several weeks late, although neither of them told him that.
When she was finally fully healed, Dick and Damian wanted her to take it slow. She annoyed both of them by sneaking out of the cave in uniform. Dick sent Damian after her.
That night, Robin and Nightstar patrolled together. She shook his over-protectiveness away impatiently and assured him that she was fine.
Just as the night began fading and the light of the stars began bleeding into the sky, a gunshot went off on Park Row.
Nightstar and Robin paused long enough to glance at each other, but in the amount of time it took Robin to get a secure grapple, they were off.
A young woman was standing, facing a blank wall, with a smoking gun in both hands. Nightstar glanced at Robin, who shrugged, and she called, "Are you okay, miss?"
The woman turned around. "Oh! It's you!"
Robin stood next to Nightstar, looking suspiciously about the woman. There was something familiar about her.
"I'm sorry. Do I know you?" Nightstar asked politely.
"I'm sorry about the gun," the woman said nervously. "I don't usually carry one around."
"Robin? Nightstar?" Oracle's voice called through their earpieces. "I have a visual. Why are you guys palling around with Anita Jarvis?"
Robin crossed an arm in front of Nightstar, narrowing his eyes at the woman. "If you're trying to pull something for your husband—" he snarled as he checked for moving figures in the shadows.
"No! No, Ricky was my husband but we split up that's why he was waiting for me. I answer the phone at the Emergency Room in Gotham General, this is when I get off work. I only shot the gun because I wanted to see you guys."
"Okay, you saw us."
"Robin, stop it," Nightstar scolded as she batted at his arm, which he dropped reluctantly.
"I was there the night you got shot. A girl. Me an' Ricky, we got a kid your age. I been worried about you."
"That's very kind of you, but please don't shoot guns like that."
"Yeah, we'll, I'm fresh outta Batsignals and I don't know how else to get your attention, 'sides getting mugged. You stay safe, okay? Both of you."
"Thank you, Miss Jarvis. You too."
The woman's heels clicked along the sidewalk, and Nightstar turned to Robin suddenly. Tears shone in her bright green eyes. "Can we go home? Please?"
Robin cupped her cheek gently. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine. I just... Haven't been able to remember actually getting shot so well and now, being here, it brings back all those memories that I thought were out of reach."
"You're safe," Robin reminded her lamely, wiping her tears with her thumb.
"No, dummy," she sniffed. "I thought they were shooting at you. I was so scared..."
Robin really didn't know what to say to that. "I'm fine," he reminded her, patting at her hair comfortingly.
"I know that," she said. She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him, twisting her fingers in his hood. "I love you."
"I love you, too," Robin assured her and kissed her forehead. "Now let's go home."
Nightstar extended her hand for him to take and lifted him off the ground with her.
That's the corniest ending I've written in a while. I got to the end, before the epilogue, and I was like… I'm done writing but the story isn't done being told. Forgive me for the corniness.