Something was beeping. Something very important. Dick frowned into his pillow and started reaching towards whatever it was that was making the noise. Usually he woke up quickly, years of living with Bruce and his sudden needs to run off into the night, but he was exhausted and incredibly sore – side effect of fighting mobsters every night for a week.
"Hey?" he muttered, as he pulled his phone to his ear and started pushing himself out of the blankets. As they slipped off his back he shivered. He needed to start sleeping in a shirt. It had just seemed like so much effort to put one on over his carefully bandaged shoulder.
"Dick you awake?" Barbara said urgently on the other end of the phone.
"Getting there," he said, feeling adrenaline starting to drive his sleepiness away and loosen up his tense muscles. He was sitting in the middle of his bed now with his heart beating very fast. "What's happened?"
"It's Bruce," she said. "He's hurt really bad Dick."
"How bad?" he asked, as his stomach dropped down to his knees really fast and really hard.
"Pretty bad," she said and just for that second Dick heard how afraid she was. He rolled out of bed and started to run to his costume. "I need you to get over to the Manor as quickly as you can and wreck one of his cars. The Porsche would be best."
"Babs what the hell?" he asked. He dropped his suit and reached instead for a pair of jeans. He pulled them over his boxers without thinking about it. His hands were shaking, his legs were shaking too, he had to sit down on the bed just to get the pants on. "Is he going to be okay?"
"Yeah," she said. "You know. It's Bruce. He's too stubborn to die. But he needs brain surgery and we need an excuse to get a really good surgeon."
"I know, I know," Dick repeated. Finally the pants and the belt were done. He just needed a shirt. Oh that was going to hurt but the pain didn't really register as he pulled a blue t-shirt that was lying on the floor."I'm on my way."
"Okay," Babs said. "I've got to go now. I have to talk to Tim. Where are you going to crash the car?"
"On the road into Gotham along the coast," he said. "It's bendy. Not hard to believe someone could seriously hurt themselves on it. Babs, I need to know, what happened? Bruce takes beatings all the time, why this one?"
"I don't know," she said. "Once I get in touch with Tim and Helena I'm going over to the Manor. I'll meet you there later and we'll talk. I'll send Tim out to get you all right?"
"Huntress is involved in this?" he asked a little more angrily than he meant it to. Bruce didn't trust her and that mantel seemed to fall on his shoulders whenever Bruce was out of commission.
"Details later, crash car now," Barbara insisted.
"Fine," he agreed. "I'll be there as fast as possible."
"See you later."
Dick hadn't even been close to the legal driving age when Bruce had started instructing him in the art of getting places incredibly quickly, ignoring the rules of the road, taking corners recklessly and still making it to the destination in one piece. He used every trick he'd ever learned to get the Manor.
Tim was waiting for him by the Porsche. Kid looked tired and pretty shaken but alert. He was sitting on the hood of the car with a kind of spaced out expression, like he was thinking about something really important. Dick assumed he was.
"Hey," he said as soon as his helmet was off. "You okay?"
"Yeah," he answered, although he did look like he was convincing himself, let alone Dick. "Bring your helmet."
"Right," Dick agreed, grabbing it off the bike and throwing a hand onto Tim's shoulder. The kid had his jaw set just like Bruce did when he was so pissed off he could barely think but Dick wasn't sure that Tim was pissed off so much as scared.
"Look," he said pulling out a surprisingly good drawing of a car hitting a tree. The angles were marked and everything. "If you collide with a solid object at 60 miles an hour at about a seventy three degree angle, while wearing your helmet and dropping below the dash it will look like the kind of crash that can shatter a skull but you should be okay."
"Should be?" Dick said. "That's comforting." Tim shrugged.
"I'll follow you," he said.
Dick nodded. This seemed like the kind of moment where it would be profound and appropriate to say something to Tim, but nothing was coming to mind. He wondered what Bruce would say if he was here. Probably nothing. Maybe he'd grunt or mutter something monosyllabic and then brood even harder. Maybe if Dick hadn't spent so much time with Bruce he'd have some idea about how to comfort Tim.
"See you there," he said. He opened the door to the car. "Tim, why is there a pillow in the front seat?" he asked, pulling his head back out.
"Oh, I knew I forgot something," Tim said. "You're going to want to put that between your torso and the steering wheel before you impact."
"A pillow?" Dick asked. "That's what standing between me and internal bleeding?"
Tim shrugged. "If you follow my directions right, you should be fine. It's just," he paused and smiled a little, a sort of tired smile that his heart wasn't really in, "backup," he finished. "We gotta hurry."
"Yup," Dick agreed. "See you shortly. I hope."
For the second time that night Dick made use of Bruce's meticulous driving lessons. He accelerated recklessly around every bend and turn on the road. He knew the stretch pretty well, he'd even picked a tree to slam the car into, so driving stupidly fast wasn't that risky. He was a little worried about how much it was going to hurt when he slammed the car into a stationary object at over sixty clicks but there was something just a little exhilarating about driving a nice car too fast.
After about five minutes in the car Dick reached for his helmet, steering with his knees for the few seconds it took to get it on, then grabbed the pillow off of the passengers seat. "Tim," he muttered as he set it in his lap. "You better be right about this."
The big old tree came into view. He almost felt guilty about killing it. It had been growing there since Bruce was a child. But somethings just had to be done. He accelerated straight at it, took a deep breath, dragged the wheel to the left to get that angle that Tim had calculated for him, ducked below the dashboard and relaxed, just the way he would when he was about to take a long fall.