Tim wants to be surprised, but he's not.
That evening, Damian is gone.
Bruce checked all over the house, Tim checked the Batcave, Alfred checked the yard. There's not a sign of him.
Finally, Tim winds up reviewing the security footage of the manor, where Damian was during the day. Sometime before Bruce went to the cave, Damian had popped up around the clock entrance. The little demon was sneaking around, breaking into the Batcave! And when he got in the Batcave, he broke into Batman's safe, which should be impossible - Bruce said it was voice-locked. Tim has got to tell Bruce to update security.
Tim shows Bruce the tapes, and Bruce sighs heavily. He doesn't sound surprised, only annoyed. "I should have put a tracker on his weapons," he says. "I think they're a sort of… security blanket."
"It's not funny," Tim says.
"I wasn't joking. Look, Tim, I'm going to go look for Damian - "
"I'll help," Tim says.
Bruce pauses slightly.
Tim can already see his gears turning. "He's ten," Tim says. "It's Gotham; it's nighttime. Even if he has his weapons, we have to find him before someone dangerous does."
Bruce nods. "You're right," he says. "We'll cover more ground if we split up. Are you taking the bike?"
Tim nods. "Only to the city. Once I get there, it'd be too noisy. I'd scare him off."
Bruce orders Tim to stay in contact over comms, and then the two of them are off.
At first, Tim is wondering if his initial assumption that Damian was in Gotham was misplaced. After all, there is 12 miles of suburbs and woods for him to get lost in between here and Gotham. But he was too obsessed with tagging along with Bruce to do that. He's probably already waiting for a Batman patrol.
Unless he doesn't know Gotham is where Batman operates. Dammit.
"Just make yourself visible when you get to Gotham," Tim suggests over comms. "He'll probably come running right to you."
"I'll try," Bruce says, though Tim barely hears the words over the wind whipping past him on his bike.
For a moment, Tim wonders if he seemed as desperate to tag along with Bruce back when he was starting out. Even when Bruce said he wasn't ready yet or it was too dangerous - he'd still wanted to be in the field, being Robin to his Batman.
Tim doesn't like this comparison.
Tim starts his search near downtown Gotham, and the police station. He figures that if he were a ten-year-old looking for Batman, he'd want to be near people who might ask him for help.
Of course when he was actually ten and looking for Batman, he was busy analysing reports of witnesses who'd seen Batman and trying to put together his patrol route. But Damian didn't have the advantage of all of the investigations Tim had done earlier.
Meanwhile, over comms, Bruce says that he's going for places he thinks Talia might have let slip to Damian - places they've been before. And he's intentionally not hiding, trying to draw the kid out.
As he's patrolling downtown, Tim is just thinking that if something bad happens while they're out looking for Damian, they're not going to be able to get there in time. This was Bruce's prime patrol hour. He should have been going around and protecting civilians, instead of trying to follow around an impatient kid.
During his search, Tim sees some teenage vandals spray painting a store, who run off the instant they see a superhero, obviously unwilling to engage in a violent confrontation. That's fine with him. He doesn't want to beat anyone up over paint. He also stops one mugging while looking for Damian, but pretty much everything is quiet as it can be in Gotham, being this close to the police station.
The Batsignal turns on.
"I'm on it," Tim says, because he is right there, and he's not sure they can ignore it - it might be important.
"Found anything yet?" he asks Bruce as he shoots his grappling hook up to the roof of the police station to see what's going on.
"No," Bruce says. His voice is strained over comms. Stressed.
"It'll be okay," Tim says. He knows it sounds fake, because he's not sure how convinced he is himself. But it seems like something you should say.
Bruce grunts noncommittally.
Tim lands on the rooftop and "knocks" on the block of cement he's perched on, to get the attention of whoever turned on the Batsignal. From his silhouette, it looks like Commissioner Gordon - unsurprising. He's normally the one who deals with bat stuff.
"Robin," Commissioner Gordon says. He seems to let out a little sigh of relief as he does.
Tim walks up to him.
"Where's Batman?" he asks. "We've got a hostage situation that might turn ugly. Our guy undercover got spotted - now, they're refusing to deal with any negotiators."
"Who's they?" Tim asks. "Where is this? Who are the hostages?"
The commissioner sighs and quickly relays the information available - some new supervillain - or super villain wannabe - called the Spook has a building full of people hostage. An undercover cop who was posing as one of his minions to find the hostages got his cover blown. He wants Tim to see if he can't stealthily rescue the hostages. They're priority number one, which Tim had already taken as a given.
Tim's about to leave, when he grimaces and pauses. "Um, Commissioner…"
"Yes?"
He sighs. "Have you seen an angry ten-year-old loitering around the precinct?" He figures with Bruce so worried, and Gotham so dangerous, the more people looking for Damian, the better.
"Ten-year-old?" the commissioner asks.
Tim nods. "Kind of olive toned skin, black hair, snobby expression, probably carrying knives."
The commissioner pushes his glasses up on his forehead and pinches the bridge of his nose. "Do I want to know what this is about?"
Tim doesn't answer. "Just turn on the Batsignal if you see him - please."
And before the commissioner can respond, Tim is already shooting his batline off into the distance to start swinging to where the commissioner said the Spook was, because he really can't afford to lose any more time.
By time Tim gets to the hostages, the situation seems to have resolved itself.
People are filing out of an old, abandoned warehouse (what is it with Gotham thugs and using warehouses?), some crying, some holding each other. They're going to a line of Gotham police cars, where the GCPD is helping them to ambulances or taking reports of what happened.
Tim swings down and lands next to the person who seems to be in charge - a cop he doesn't recognize who's directing everyone around. No one pays much attention to him as he lands, though some of the cops give him a nod of recognition, and some of the hostages look relieved.
"What, you want a 'well-done'?" the cop who seems in charge says.
"Uh, what?"
"Witnesses reported a tiny kid beating people up. I thought it was a Robin."
"There's only one Robin," Tim says. And he thinks and it sure as hell isn't Damian.
But still, it could be worse. The kid could have gotten killed. It seems like he's even trying to do some good. Against Bruce's wishes, of course. Bruce just wanted him to stay home.
"Did the witnesses say where the tiny kid went?" Tim asks.
"No," the cop says. "And we haven't even finished clearing the crime scene or arresting the Spook, so please stay clear unless you're going to help."
"I'll get the Spook," Tim says, just because he figures he'd volunteer for the costumed villain. GCPD probably sees enough of them as it is.
Tim sneaks into the warehouse, stopping only once as he gets some of the weird fake ectoplasm the Spook's guys were using on his boots. He wipes it off on the wall. Gross.
"Damian," he says quietly as he approaches the area he thinks the hostages were being kept in. A big empty room with lots of space to manage people, more of Spook's chains and silly ghost stuff hanging from the ceiling, boxes stacked up against the walls, and…
Someone lying down in the middle of the floor.
Tim starts towards them, to see if they're okay, but as the angle he's seeing them changes, it becomes obvious something's wrong with them - they have no head.
Tim stops in his tracks.
"Drake," a voice says behind him. "What are you doing here?"
As Tim turns, Damian steps out of the shadows from behind a stack of boxes. He's got the outfit he'd first arrived here on - the white and black League of Shadows uniform - and a severed head in his hands. He's holding the head down at his side casually, like it's not even a thing.
"What the hell is wrong with you?" Tim asks.
Damian steps forward, seemingly unaware of Tim's anger. "What do you mean 'what is wrong with me'? Father challenged me! He wanted to know if I could fight crime. Well I fought it - and crime lost."
This is insane. There's no way Bruce approved of this - and half of him thinks that there's no way this is Bruce's kid, with how he's almost proud of what he did.
"You killed a man!" Tim says, as if putting it in words will make Damian understand why something's wrong.
"That's generally what happens when you cut off someone's head."
Tim feels his stomach drop. Everything he's done up until now - trying to be nice, thinking of the kid like a meaner version of Cass - just seems like stupid naivete.
"I don't get why you're so upset," Damian says. He sounds almost like a normal kid, genuinely confused about whatever he's being yelled at for, and Tim hates him for it. He hates how he can act like Tim is the one being unreasonable here. "I was doing what Father does."
"No, you weren't!" Tim says. "We don't kill!"
Damian makes some type of sharp clicking noise and shakes his head. Tim has no clue whether Damian believes him about Bruce not killing anyone or not. Part of him is wondering how Bruce couldn't have told him, the other part of him thinks it's completely ridiculous that you should have to tell a ten-year-old not to kill people.
"I think you're just jealous that I did your job better than you ever will," Damian says.
Tim shakes his head. Is Damian trying to turn this into a rivalry thing? When he's got someone's head in his hands?
"If you think murder is acceptable, you're never going to be able to do my job," Tim says. "You'll be lucky if you don't go to jail."
Damian shows his teeth without smiling. He advances on Tim, knees bent and weight evenly distributed between his legs, like a cat getting ready to pounce. That's where this was all leading, right? He announced his intention to replace him the instant they met.
Damian suddenly changes his stance and kicks the severed head at him like a soccer ball. Tim catches it instinctively. He's frozen for half a second - a crucial half a second - by the Spook's dead, wide-open eyes that just look surprised. While he's frozen, Damian rushes in and tries to sweep his legs.
Tim shifts back at the last moment to try to get out of the way, make up for his earlier hesitation, but his front foot is still hooked so he hops back a little awkwardly. Unwilling to just throw the Spook's head on the ground, Tim's handicapped by the fact that his arms are full. As he's still regaining his balance, Damian steps forward, knees Tim in the upper thigh, and elbows at his kidney as he tries to get behind him. Tim rolls forward with the blow so he's far enough away from Damian to set the Spook's head down and turn around to face him.
"Why are you doing this? We don't have to fight!" he asks as there's a bit of space between them, hoping to snap some sense back into the kid - if he ever had any in the first place.
Rather than answering him, Damian leaps at him with an elbow. Tim sidekicks him as he's coming in and the kid sprawls across the room and crashes into some of the boxes, but he doesn't stay down long.
Either way, it gives Tim an idea. For most of his life, he's always been the underdog in a fight - in terms of physical size and strength, at least. But he's at least twice Damian's weight. All he has to do engage in some liberal "cheating" and he's pretty sure he can outmuscle the kid without hurting him or hitting him too hard.
This time, when Damian comes in, Tim dodges a kick to the knee, but steps inward , towards Damian, and grabs him by the upper arm.
Damian makes a noise - in surprise or offense, Tim can't say - and Tim presses his advantage. He steps forward and tries to sweep Damian's leg, to take him to the ground where they can grapple, and Tim's bodyweight and strength will come in handy.
It doesn't work. Damian's too quick. He jerks his leg up as Tim tries to sweep underneath, and while his leg's up, he kicks Tim in the stomach. The kevlar vest absorbed most of it, though.
Tim refuses to let go. He grabs Damian in a bear-hug so he can wrestle him to the ground -
What - ?
Tim stumbles backwards.
Some type of pain rings out from his neck, right above his collar. It almost felt like a punch or a nerve strike, but as his wavers, it twinges again.
He touches a hand to his neck, and it comes back covered in blood.
The knives. Never got the kid's knives… they'd been hidden when the encounter started...
Tim's trying, desperately, to keep his bearings, as Damian comes in at him, not bothering to hide his knife at all now. He must know he has the advantage. Tim's bleeding, badly. It feels like all he can do to stay on his feet.
Damian advances, looking down at Tim coldly. He punches him in the face.
Tim's vision fuzzes out temporarily. It seems to pulse with his own heartbeat. Thinking is getting harder.
Fight turned for the worse… really fast...
"Bruce!" Tim says over comms. He knows it's not the name he's supposed to use. Doesn't care.
Bruce says something in reply, but Tim can't hear it. He can't hear anything other than his own heartbeat echoing around his skull.
Tim finishes stumbling backwards. He hits a box - forcing him to stop his retreat.
Ambulances outside, just have to get to them...
But he can't. Tim falls down to his hands and knees. Damian stands above him, proudly brandishing his knife. His hand isn't shaking even a little, Tim thinks. No hesitation.
Damian kicks Tim in the face, and he's thrown back into the boxes. The top one starts wavering unsteadily.
That's… gonna hurt .
Then his vision goes black, and he doesn't feel anything at all.