Wednesday, 23 December ~*Fairy*~

Robin took a small step to the side, trying to steady himself. Slade rushed forwards, seemingly ready to catch him. The teen grabbed hold of him but didn't collapse.

"I must have just… gotten a scratch… or two," he said, trying to remain calm. The snowy ground where he was standing now had droplets of blood on it, and more kept falling.

"Let's take him down to the car. Slade?" Bruce asked the man, who nodded and lifted Robin up.

The teen hissed. He had been running on adrenaline since the start of the evening, and that had very efficiently masked the worst of the pain. Yes, he had felt the sting of cuts and bruises, but nothing worse than that. Now the pain rolled in, though, with a vengeance. His whole body was burning, but he gritted his teeth and tried to remain as still as possible as Slade held him with one arm and the grapplehook with the other.

The car was, of course, not the Batmobile, but rather a somewhat beaten up and dirty van. If anyone had tried to steal it, however, they would have run into all kinds of difficulties, some of them quite painful. Batman unlocked it from a distance and Selina held the back door open for Slade, as he carried Robin inside. The insides were spotlessly clean and contained all kinds of tech and medical supplies. There, the man placed the teen on the floor and started tearing his clothes off.

"So this is why you're not supposed to follow strangers into vans," Robin tried to quip. Slade was too preoccupied to listen, though.

"Shit," Selina, who was hunkered down next to them while Batman was driving, hissed.

"Is it bad?" Bruce asked from the front seat as he pulled out into the street. He couldn't risk speeding and drawing attention to the car, no matter how much he wanted to.

"Mostly superficial cuts, some deeper. Some are gushers, but no severed major veins or arteries," Slade reported. He then seemed to take a big breath. "He'll be fine. You'll be fine," he added to Robin. Like he just noticed that the teen was there.

"Of course I'll be fine, just help patch me up," the teen snorted, feeling a bit woozy.

"You've still lost a lot of blood and the wounds are filthy. We'll stop the bleeding from the worst ones and start cleaning the small ones." Slade decided.

Robin invented some new curses on the way back, as cleaning the wounds hurt as hell. It was a familiar pain, he had just rarely felt it on this scale and on so many parts of his body at once before. Some gashes stretched almost the whole length of his body and most of them were on his sides and front, as he had been pushing himself backwards and forwards on his stomach. His back hadn't been completely spared, though, but wasn't as bad. Once cleaned, the shallow scratches stopped bleeding almost immediately, and they weren't that bad at all, they just stung and made his skin feel a bit tight. The worst one was a deeper wound that went from the middle of his thigh to the side of his chest, varying in depth, and being the deepest over his ribs. A wound on his upper arm was probably also connected to that, and it had bled quite a bit but now, after being treated, wasn't as bad as it first had looked.

"This might need stitches. Or at least tape," Slade reported. He and Selina were keeping pressure on a few spots of the teen's body.

"I'll tell Alfred to prepare for that," Bruce said and called the man up.

"I have a killer headache," Robin muttered.

"And I'm not even trying to get you into bed," Slade told him. Robin grinned weakly up at him. If Slade was joking, he was really going to be fine. Right now, he wouldn't mind a bit of fast forwarding, however.

"Funny man. I'm breaking up with you," the teen smirked.

"You might want to wait until after I stitch you up. Not that I would make the procedure extra painful in any way," the man threatened with a smirk on his face. "But seriously, I don't blame you for the headache, we'll get some fluids in you soon."

"Hey," Robin mumbled, eyes closed. "I told you I wasn't in the mood." He heard Selina snicker.

"We can treat him for the blood loss, but I don't think there's any cure for his mind being in the gutter," she said.

"Good. I don't want that to be cured," Slade said. The rest of the ride was a bit hazy, but he woke up with a fresh curse when he was being lifted again.

"Sorry," he heard Slade say. "I'm going to try to keep you still."

The movement had aggravated a few of the deeper wounds that started bleeding again, but nothing like before.

"Oh, my, what have you gotten yourself into, Master Richard?" Alfred's voice asked and Robin opened his eyes a bit.

"A vent," he explained simply.

"I'm really sorry, kid, I should have done it," Selina told him as he was placed on a cold surface. Only now did Robin realize that they had driven straight into the Batcave and that he was now in the sick bay on the operating table. The table next to it was stocked with bandages, disinfectant and a few nasty looking needles on a stainless-steel tray.

"No, Selina, you had good reason to keep a distance," Robin told her with a smile. "Besides, you taught me all I needed to know, I owe you for not being stuck in there," he added.

"Still… I feel so guilty," she told him sadly. "And I might not have been… completely honest about my motives."

"What do you mean?" Robin asked softly, afraid of what he would hear.

"I left that life behind, as you know," the woman sighed, "but sometimes… the urge is strong. I've realized that it's a bit of an… addiction. The rush, you know? And I'm trying to get it in other ways, but some days, especially during this pandemic when so many things I would normally do, like the rock climbing center down town, is closed… the temptation has been worse than ever. It wasn't as much a fear of being identified as a fear of falling back into my old ways that stopped me."

Robin smiled. "Don't worry. It makes sense, trust me, been there, done that. I'm in a similar situation, you know."

"Selina, if you want to join forces with me…?" Batman offered.

"Thank you, dear, but if Bruce suddenly has a woman in his life and Batman starts showing up with a female partner, I think most people would connect the dots," she smiled. "And besides, if our plans, what we talked about, is going to come true… well, I don't want the urge to run across roofs all night to be too strong. I'll have more important things to focus on then."

"OW!" Robin exclaimed, because Alfred had just decided to start tending to the patient.

In the end, he didn't need stitches, tape was deemed enough. They had covered them in plastic, Slade had helped him shower and now Robin was sitting in his bed, feeling a bit silly about all the attention. Alfred had brought him a hearty snack, and, after asking permission, the tea of the day, as it was officially the twenty-third after all. Robin was sipping his cherry- and vanilla flavored green sencha tea and putting away sandwiches like he had never seen food before.

"We should leave you to get some rest, Master Richard," Alfred said, more or less telling the people to scram. "I'll have breakfast ready when you wake up. You'll rest tomorrow, well… the rest of today, I assume it actually is, and then I'm sure you'll feel better on Christmas Eve and we'll have a big Christmas dinner. We're having goose this year. The turkey can wait until Christmas Day."

"Looking forwards to it," Robin grinned. When they all turned to leave the room, however, he reached out and caught Slade's wrist. "Stay?" he asked.

Slade hesitated and looked over at the others, almost like he was asking permission, something that was very unlike the mercenary.

Bruce nodded minutely as he put an arm around Selina and continued towards the door.

"I think it might be prudent if someone kept an eye on him, yes," Alfred said. "Make sure he doesn't develop a fever."

Slade nodded and turned back towards Robin. "I'll just shower and change," he told the teen. He was still in uniform.

Robin gave him a smile and nodded.

He had finished eating and was trying to get comfortable when Slade came back and climbed into bed with him. Robin's bed was slightly narrower than the one on the guest bedroom, but they both fit.

"No cuddling tonight, I assume," the man teased him. Robin winced as he was still trying to lie down properly, but chuckled.

"Nope, it seems it's flat on my back or nothing…" he said.

"Not a bad position for you normally," the mercenary drawled.

"Shut up and kiss me good night, at least," the teen snorted. The man did. "And these kinds of adventures, let's not make them into a tradition?" he said.

"Let's not," the man agreed. "And Robin?"

"Hmm? Yes?"

"Thank you."

To be Continued…