He didn't loose consciousness from the impact but it did stun him. For a minute or two he just lay across the front seats, his ears buzzing and his nose twitching at the burning smell. Oh that wasn't a good thing, that burning smell but try as he might he couldn't seem to get his arms working, or his eyes to focus. "Dick! Dick!" someone was shouting and six painful heartbeats later the door opened and Tim grabbed onto his shoulders and started dragging him forward. "Wanna help me out here?" Tim demanded.

"Yeah, sorry," he muttered, groaning and shaking his head a little. "Right."

He started to crawl out of the car, although his chest wasn't really feeling it. Once he got to the door and felt the colder outside air he started to wake up. He realized that Tim had pulled off his helmet and was trying to roll him over onto his back.

"I'm okay," he managed to mutter, looking up at Tim's concerned face. "You did good. We gotta get back to the Manor. My head," he muttered as he sat up. "Thank God you did those calculations or we'd have two cracked skulls to deal with."

"You sure you're all right?" Tim asked scrambling to his feet so Dick could half climb him. Once he was standing, still kind of leaning on Tim, he shook his head, trying to clear the buzzing and took a few stumbling steps towards the other car.

"Yes," he agreed. "Well, close enough. Come on, let's go home."

"Babs?" Tim asked into the com as he ran around the car. "It's done," he said. "Yeah, I think so but he seems a little dazed. I will. See you shortly." He dove into the car as Dick continued his slow, slightly unsteady way towards his door. Tim opened the door for him from inside.

"How very gentlemanly of you," he muttered as he crawled into the seat. He rested his elbows on his knees and then closed his eyes and pushed his face into his hands. "Are you even old enough to drive?" he mumbled as Tim started to car.

"Do you think you should be driving?" he shot back. Dick laughed, a sort of snort laugh, short and a little painful on his very bruised ribs but a laugh. "Anyway, how old were you when Bruce started teaching you to drive?"

"Fair point," he agreed.

"And yes," Tim added. "I'm sixteen. Technically as long as I have a conscious, sober adult in the seat next to me, yes it's legal for me to be driving."

"So I can't have a nap then?" Dick said, lifting his head up and looking around as Tim pulled a hard left turn to drag the other car back onto the road. Tim shrugged.

Now that Dick's vision wasn't pulsing so much he got a good look at Tim. He kid was pale, his lips pressed tightly together, so tight they were almost colourless and his grip on the wheel had Dick worried he'd need a batarang to pry Tim's fingers off of it when they got back to the Manor.

"You all right?" he said at last.

"Fine," Tim said, exhaling nervously, his breath kind of catching in his chest loud enough that Dick heard it. "You?"

"Not so much," Dick answered honestly. He wasn't like Bruce. He was brave and he could turn off his feelings, just like the Batman could, but he needed to keep his mind busy, his body busy, he needed to keep the adrenaline flowing. Now that he was sitting still, relatively safe his heart started to beat too fast again and his mind raced so fast he almost wanted to puke.

Or maybe that was the fact that a stick shift had recently been driven into his belly.

"Do you know how badly he's hurt?" Dick asked, even though he was only fifty percent sure he wanted to know the answer to that question.

"No," Tim said. "I saw Huntress bring him in through. Dick it looked really bad. His skull was all cracked and Alfred, I've never seem him look so hopeless." His voice was shaking too. "I know what Barbara said is right. I know he's too stubborn to die but what if," and Tim stopped to swallow. "What if he's already dead and his body's only holding on because he refuses to give up."

Dick nodded. There should have been something comforting to say but everything that Tim had just said was on his mind too. He took a deep breath. "I don't know," he said at last. Tim nodded and bit the inside of his lip, just a little bit. He'd known that was the answer but he hadn't want to hear it. Dick managed to keep himself from sighing loudly. "But I think Babs is right Tim," he said, as a half assed attempt at comfort. "If Bruce didn't die when it happened, he sure as hell not going to die recovering from it. It's just not going to happen."

"You think?" Tim asked. Dick wondered if he was lying to Tim, who was still a kid, whether he was about to promise him something he couldn't follow through on.

"Yup," he said. "Mind if I borrow that so I can talk to Babs for a minute?" Silently Tim pulled the ear bud out and handed it over to Dick.

"Babs?" he said, tapping it once and leaning back into the seat. His head wasn't thumping along with his heart any more but he wasn't feeling a hundred percent either. It felt nice just to close his eyes.

"Dick, how're you doing?" she asked. She sounded breathless, like she was in the middle of something important.

"I'll survive," he muttered. "How's Bruce?"

"In the hospital. We're flying in an old friend of his who's a brain surgeon. He's supposed to be the best there is."

"Great," Dick said enthusiastically, mostly to keep Tim's spirits up. "And in the meantime?" he asked. Babs knew him, she knew him better than anyone in some ways. He mentally begged her to understand what he was actually asking was "will Bruce survive long enough to get seen by this doctor?"

"He's holding on," she said firmly. "Alfred said it was up to him. You know what that means." Dick laughed a little. Sometimes he couldn't sleep thinking about her, thinking about how they could have played it differently.

"Nothing to worry about then," he said. "We'll be back at the Manor in seven or eight minutes. I'll suit up and we can work this out." He looked over at Tim, who was still staring intently at the road but Dick was pretty sure he'd relaxed just a little. God, he was a kid. Maybe it was relative – he'd been younger when he'd started worry about Bruce being dead. It was almost a reflex now.

"Actually, I've got another plan for you," Barbara said. "Don't hate me."

"What?" he said suspiciously. Tim shot him a sideways glance at him and he smiled a little reassuringly.

"I need you to go to the hospital," she said. "Take Tim and get there, be there when Bruce comes out of surgery."

"Babs, no," he said. "We need to find out what the hell happened to Bruce."

"I know what happened," she said. "His line broke."

"Bruce's lines don't break," Dick said angrily.

"I know," she snapped. "So someone probably cut it. I've got the Birds on it, and we'll figure everything out but the information we need most Bruce has and we're not getting it for a while. So you can run around and punch some people's face until you get somewhere or you could listen to me."

"Fine," he said begrudgingly. "What's your plan?"

"Take Tim and go to the hospital." Dick had heard lots of bad plans. He'd even come up with his fair share of really bad plans. This was worse than that time he'd thought it was a good plan to use his head to break a window on a three story fall just to take out the thug who was pointing a gun at Batman.

"No."

"Dick listen, I know you'd rather have Nightwing working on this but we've just gone to a ton of effort to make sure that Bruce's cover is solid. His sons should be there at the hospital waiting for him to wake up. And," she said like she could see him opening his mouth to object, "I'm worried about him." That shut Dick's mouth quickly. "Don't tell Tim okay but that kind of injury. It could be pretty serious. I'm worried that when he wakes up he might not be himself right away. If he wakes up in the hospital without knowing how he get got there or what happened I'm afraid he might say something that could compromise himself, or us. I want you there."

"This is Bruce we're talking about," Dick said. "He'd never."

"You didn't see him Dick," she said and there was definitely fear there, the same kind that he'd seen in Tim's eyes all night. He'd been worried before. Now he was terrified.

"Alfred," he started.

"Just heard from him. The hospital is being ridiculous about visitors. They're insisting that it's only family. Last time I checked, that was pretty limited to you and Tim. So just go okay? I'll let you know the minute we learn anything that might be useful all right?"

"Fine," Dick muttered. "Talk to you later"

He hung up.

It pissed him off but Babs was probably right. It did occur to him that most people wouldn't be desperate for a fight when their adopted father/hero/best friend was potentially dying in a hospital bed. Going to the hospital seemed like a much more normal thing to do.

"Turn around Tim," he said softly.

"Why?" Tim asked as he expertly pulled a u-turn at an alarming forty miles an hour.

"We're going to the hospital."

Suddenly they weren't going any miles and hour and Dick was slamming hard again his seat belt. He grunted as the shoulder strap rebruised the bruises on his chest and the throbbing in his head pounded briefly. "What the hell?" he growled.

He looked over at Tim. The kid was shaking, his whole body and for a second Dick was worried that he wasn't breathing at all. Then he gasped enormously, taking in a huge mouthful of air and kind of choking on it.

"Hey," Dick said quickly, undoing his seat belt and climbing up on the seat so he could put his hand on Tim's back. "What's going on?"

"He's going to die isn't he?" Tim whispered.

"Oh God no," Dick said, mentally kicking himself for being so stupid just tossing that out there without any explanation at all. "Tim listen to me," he said in that firm, no nonsense,breaking-through-to-you-no-matter-what-the-trauma kind of voice that Bruce had, "they won't let Alfred into his room right now, only family. That's us right? And you know Bruce. If he wakes up with a headache in a place he doesn't recognize he'll be incredibly grumpy. We're going to help back up his cover story and to make sure he doesn't injure the nurses all right? That's all. I promise."

Tim looked over a him and Dick was surprised. Ever since he'd known Tim, he'd always seemed smart, weirdly smart, never vulnerable. Never like this. Dick grabbed the back of his head in one hand and pulled Tim's face closer to his own. He didn't look away, he didn't blink.

"Is he going to be okay?" Tim asked.

"I promise," Dick said. "I'm going to drive the rest of the way okay?" Tim nodded and reached around for his seat belt with hands that shook. Dick let go of him and reached of for his own.

Tim was just opening the door in the time it took Dick to get around the car. Instinctively he grabbed Tim's arm and helped him out of the car. Tim glared at him, but Dick just smiled back. He wasn't always that good at being an older brother, but he was not going to screw it up this time. He pulled Tim to his feet and held his arm, just a minute before he let go.