After his little show in the warehouse, Dick was absolutely sure of about three things.

One: he didn't feel better at all.

If anything, he actually felt worse.

Not because of guilt, but more because now that it was said and done, Jason was still dead and even though the Joker wouldn't be laughing for a few weeks, Jason was still gone and in an unmarked grave, and now Dick had no other purpose, no other plan beyond hurting the joker. The Joker was hurt, so now what?

No, he felt lost, not guilty.

He had no qualms about what he did to Joker, and was already making plans to return to Gotham once a year with a new and improved bullet, just in honor of his brother, to whom he knew would have killed Joker immediately if it'd been him or Tim to get killed.

Dick briefly wondered where this break of conscience came from, but he decided he really didn't care. He wouldn't kill the Joker, out of some old long lost faith in his father and the nagging feeling in the back of his brain that told him killing Batman's arch enemy might not be the best thing for the Bat's mental health, and therefore the city's survival, combined with the small hope that he hadn't completely obliterated his and his father's relationship by going "rouge" like he was.

He recognized that it should probably bother him more that, if not for those reasons, he would have killed the Joker five minutes ago, instead of just drugging the hell out of him.

If Dick believed that turning around and shooting Joker with a real gun this time would make the aching pain in his chest feel at all better, he probably would. Perhaps for his own heart, perhaps a bit for the tortured rage in Tim's eye as he asked his big brother to go through with this.

But he didn't believe it would make a difference, and he didn't want to destroy the one chance he had at ever going home again just for that madman.

Still, he didn't feel any better than he had before he'd shot the Joker. He still felt like just sitting down on some random roof and crying himself senseless, he still felt like screaming at nothing and punching the nearest wall or bad guy half to death. He still felt like his world was slowly being ripped apart around him, he still felt lost and scared and angry and pained…

He still missed his brother.

Dick shook those feelings off, knowing he only had so much time to get out of Gotham and far, far away.

Because another thing he knew was the exact same thing the other criminals knew: that Batman would be coming for the Joker first.

It was a long shot, trying to get to the Joker before Batman did, because Dick knew the very second the security systems "failed" in Arkam, the Batcomputer would get an alert and Batman would be on-scene in four minutes flat. Dick knew this because he designed the security system himself, and in the rash acts of doing this while the dirt of Jason's grave wasn't even settled yet, Dick hadn't had the time to find a way to hack around it.

Dick had half expected for the Bat to appear out of the shadows while he was confronting the villains, was preparing to have to shoot his target fast and run from his father, possibly having to fight him in order to escape…

But Batman never showed.

Scanning the police network as he ran across rooftops, Dick realized the police were positively freaking out because Batman wasn't answering their calls.

The only way to block a security alarm from the Batcomputer was to be at the Batcomputer itself and running a mock-program to give the appearance that nothing was wrong. It would work at first glance, but take Batman none-too-long to figure it out.

And Batman sure as hell wasn't running that program… but it was obviously being run because here they were, a full 26 minutes after the first alarm went off in Arkam, and still no sign of Batman.

And the only person close enough and skilled enough with that computer was…

Oh god, Tim…

Dick froze.

Tim was running the program to give Dick a head start, to give him this chance to get to the Joker. Tim was going to get himself killed when Batman realized his son was trying to keep things from him, and then he was going to die again when Batman realized what Tim was keeping from him.

Dick's instincts told him to turn around and be in that room when that argument went down, because Tim wouldn't stand a chance, and he had screwed up massively this time—at least in Batman's eyes. Dick was the oldest brother, the one who took the fall and covered for his little brothers, who was the only one, save Alfred, who could hope to handle his father when he got that angry, and he nearly turned around and went to go beg that Bruce blame him, not Tim for this.

But going back would mean that Tim's sacrifice meant nothing, and would probably do more harm than good.

The only thing Dick could to was run, fast, and get far away from Gotham before Tim's time ran out and Batman caught on, which wouldn't be long at all.

It was a tribute to how well he'd trained his sons that the goddamned Batman could be fooled for up to half an hour.

So Dick ran, and he fled the city he'd called home, the same city who'd called him the Prince of Gotham by day, the Boy Wonder by night. The city didn't know they were losing one of the pillars that'd kept it up these past eight years, since a little seven year old showed up in a circus tent and stayed to protect it from the evil so deeply sown into its base.

The city didn't know that tonight, not only were they losing a Boy Wonder, they were losing two.