Two hours later he was striding across the grass towards where Robin sat with his back against the force field and a petulant sneer on his face. Flash kept pace easily, but Batman wasn't pleased by that. While he planned to try and follow the younger man's advice in dealing with his son, he didn't particularly want an audience in the event that he failed. "Go off to the side there and get to work," he ordered.
"...I thought you wanted to see, though?"
"I'll be able to see what I need to see. I have other business to attend to. Go get started, we're wasting time."
The redhead shrugged and peeled off without further argument, but his expression just before he turned said everything that his tongue did not. He doesn't think I can do this, the cowled figure grimaced as he closed the gap to his partner. He doesn't think I can control myself. Well, Wally, if you think me incapable of overcoming my emotions after all the years you've known me then I have overestimated your intelligence.
He drew to a halt before the seated child and crossed his arms. "Explain yourself," he requested, his voice terse but not threatening.
"Are you sure you have time now?" a contemptuous reply came. "You don't have anything more important to do?"
Do I have time now? What kind of a question was that?He frowned. Is that what the problem has been between us of late? A sense of...of a lack of attention? It was true that he hadn't spent many hours bonding with the boy, especially in the civilian world, but to be fair Damian had never seemed to want to bond. With Dick, yes, but...not with him. Something pricked in his chest at that thought, and he pushed it away. Not now. This wasn't relationship resolution time, it was action time.
Still, listening closely now might make up for his failure to do so earlier while also getting him the information he needed. With that in mind he tried to keep his tone from becoming icy as he explained. "I was in the middle of a crucial radio transmission. I couldn't interrupt that to talk to you."
The boy's snarl didn't so much as flicker. "I guess it must have been important, since you opted to ignore an update on the primary objective in order to attend to it."
He drew a deep breath, about to launch into a lecture about how the call from Superman had been about the primary objective, and then paused. Robin had overheard enough the day before to know that the entire planet was at risk, but it seemed as if that wasn't what he was referring to. There was only one other possibility, but how could he have news about Dick and Tim? There's no way, he blinked in consternation. There's just...there's just no way... "What are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about the fact that they were right here when I called you." He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. "Right here, Batman, and you missed them." His sneer morphed without warning into a fragile half-pout. "You missed them. You could have stopped them, you're the only one who could have stopped them, but you were so busy with your precious call that you fucking missed them!"
There was a watery edge to Damian's accusation, but Batman was too overwhelmed by the meaning of his words to register the emotion behind them just then. "They were here?" he repeated distantly, struggling to keep his voice from shaking. "When you called, they were...they were here?"
"Right there!" Leaping to his feet, the boy pointed at a slightly trampled section of dirt on the far side of the barrier. "They stood there, both of them, and you missed it."
"...Why didn't you tell me?!" he spluttered. Dick. Tim. Right...right there. A few feet away. You were here, you're alive and you were here, and I...I missed it.
"I tried!"
He had tried, that was the kicker. He'd tried twice, and both times Batman had shut him down. It dawned on the man suddenly that if he had been less angry, or had shown more than a passing interest in what the short jaunt in the Batplane had been about, he would have known hours ago that his children were alive and functional. And I could have stopped them, he thought numbly, his brain reiterating what his youngest had said. A second later his brow furrowed. Wait...stopped them from what? "Robin...where are they? Where have they gone?"
"Where do you think?! They're going after whoever's doing this!"
He boggled at the boy, confusion and fear tightening around his bowels in a death grip. "How do they know there's someone to go after, let alone where to go to find them?"
"Because..." Robin turned his face away, and in that instant Batman knew what he was about to say. "...Because I told them."
They'll be killed, a certainty rang in his head. There was no telling who or what was causing the force field and the earthquakes, let alone how much back-up they might have; the only thing he knew was that two no doubt injured civilians couldn't possibly win the day against he, she, or it. Even if Dick and Tim had gone under the dome as Nightwing and Red Robin he would have been doubtful about their odds against this unknown adversary. Why? Why would you tell them that? Why? "Robin," he prepared to tirade, speaking so low that his throat ached after a mere two syllables. ...What have you done? What have I done? If I have answered...if I had listened...oh, god... He nearly doubled over in agonized shock. What have I done?!
"Batman."
Flash's cautioning murmur restrained him before he could pour his self-loathing out on his son. Using every ounce of self-control that he possessed, Batman reeled himself back in. "...Robin," he repeated, sounding stressed but far less murderous than before, "why did-"
"I couldn't help it, don't you understand?!" the boy burst out. "Nothing can get through this thing! You tried a ton of stuff, Superman did his things...even rockets don't make a dent! Someone...someone has to stop this, and they're the only ones inside. I had to...to tell them..." He trailed off, sniffling.
A few tears had slipped past Damian's mask and now lay glimmering on his cheeks. Batman wasn't sure if they were the result of his obvious anger or of something else, and he had more pressing questions than that to ask just now, but the sight of those fat drops did force his jaw to unclench slightly. "Robin...did you say rockets don't get through?"
"Y-yes." Another sniffle sounded. "I tried here and at...at the middle of the dome. See?" He gestured to where shrapnel lay scattered in the grass a dozen yards away. "It didn't do anything."
Batman closed his eyes. "You fired live rockets at a force field that you knew your brothers were underneath of?" he verified, his disbelief growing anew.
"We didn't try ordinance the first time. I thought-"
"No, Robin, you didn't think," he cut him off. "If you had thought, you would have realized how reckless and foolhardy you were being. What if the rockets had ricocheted right back at you and hit the plane? You might have been killed. What if one had gotten through? You had no idea where they were at that point, correct?"
"...No. I didn't. But-"
"But nothing." He stared at him for a second, his heart heavy with disappointment and worry, before going on. "If a rocket had gotten through, it might have hit them. It might have destroyed their path and left them stranded. It might have started a fire inside that could have trapped or suffocated them. The only thing that those rockets were unlikely to do, Robin, was to destroy the force field enough to let us in!"
"I was aiming at the tower that's holding it up! It might have worked, it just didn't. And I did think of the risk of a forest fire, but...well...I had to try, didn't I? I had to try something."
He felt like dropping to his knees and screaming at the sky. Dick and Tim had been here, and he'd missed it. They'd gone after whatever cruel mind was threatening to tear the world apart from behind an impenetrable shield, and he might have stopped them. On top of it all, Damian was crying, not even missiles could hurt the barricade, and now there was a mysterious tower taunting him, too. "...Flash," he muttered. Help me. I'm losing it.
To his credit, the speedster had stood by silently during the familial argument. "Yeah?" he answered now.
"Give me good news, Flash." Tell me something you did worked. Anything.
But the other man just shuffled his feet. "...I've got nothing, Batman. I don't think I've ever vibrated like that before in my life, and it didn't do a damn thing. I...I've never encountered anything like this. It's so dense. If I didn't know any better I'd say that there's next to no space between the atoms making it up, but...I don't know how that's possible."
"...Neither do I." Damn it. Damn it! There were still a couple of ideas from the task force meeting that they could try, but if the force field was constructed as Flash had said there was no chance of them succeeding. "Why didn't they wait?" he asked Robin in something very near to his civilian voice. A note of helplessness crept in as he echoed himself. "...Why didn't they just wait for me?"
"They didn't...they didn't have any water," the child reported miserably. "They were thirsty, Batman. They couldn't wait two and a half hours without water just to see you, especially when you wouldn't be able to get through to them. They're already hurt, and...and they needed water." He raised a gloved hand to swipe at his face. "So I found them some. They were going to go there and then...and then go after the person who's in there with them. That was their plan."
Hurt and dehydrated, Batman moaned to himself. Oh, boys...I'm sorry. I'm so sorry...
"That's why you moved the plane after I told you not to?"
"Yes. I had to find them water."
And I almost stopped you. Jesus. He glanced at the other man, who wore a sympathetic look rather than the chastising one that Batman felt he deserved. If I hadn't listened to you, Flash, they might already be as good as dead. As awful as it was to know that his sons had left here mere hours earlier, it would have been far worse to arrive only to watch their bodies slowly fail from lack of moisture. "Well...I suppose you had to disobey on that count, then," he allowed.
"Yes. I did."
"And you found them water, right?"
"Of course."
"Good." He took a long, slow breath and measured the Gordian knot that his emotions had wrapped themselves into during the past ten minutes. Unlike the great Alexander of legend, he had no bold action open to him with which he might defeat the tangle; all he had was a league's worth of useless heroes and a mounting sense of despair. "...Get in the Batplane, Robin," he finally bade the boy.
"You're not sending me home."
It was a statement, not a question. Rather than correcting the child's presumption, though, he just gave a weary shake of his head. "No. I'm not. You're going to show me this tower you mentioned, and you're going to show me the water you sent them to."
He could have just reversed the plane's flight path and found both locations that way, but Flash's warning was lurking at the back of his mind. Besides, there was little else that the youth could do to put himself in danger now that they were at an apparent stalemate. Short of them being on the ground in the event of another major quake or their adversary launching a direct attack on them, there was no risk of physical injury to any of them. That being the case there was no longer any advantage to keeping him away from the epicenter, so he wouldn't try. "Get in the plane. I'll be right behind you."
"...Fine."
Batman watched his son mount the stairs and disappear inside the larger aircraft. "...Are you staying with us?" he directed at the speedster.
"Yes. I know I could be more useful in the cities, but..." He turned his head to look at the faint marks of passage their missing fellows had left. "...My best friend is out there somewhere, about to fight something we know nothing about. I wouldn't be much of a bro if I didn't stick around in case there was some way I could help."
"Very well. Go ahead inside, then. And Wally?" he stopped him as he made to do as he'd been told.
"Yeah, Batman?"
He grimaced, but he managed two words. "...Thank you."
"Sure. Any time. And you know...you didn't do too bad, considering what's going on and that you're...well...you. This probably doesn't mean much of anything, but...I was impressed. I think Dick will be, too, when he hears about it."
When...if...no, he banished the second word. Not if. When. "Mm."
Flash gave a tiny smirk. "Thought you might say that." He turned away. "See you inside, Batman."
When he was alone, he stepped up to the transparent wall and rested one hand on it. For an instant he could picture Dick standing on the other side, bare millimeters away. His son smiled in that special way that was reserved only for him, then pressed his palm against the inside of the barrier. Even though he knew it wasn't real, he could almost feel heat building up between them. So close, and yet so goddamn far. Dicky...
His eyes reached flood stage just as his vision of his eldest faded. He blinked until the waters receded, then raised his second hand in the vague hope that it might let him imagine Tim. There was a glimmer of a cautious but warm glance, and then he went the way of his brother and disappeared. No...please...Tim...
Come back, he begged, his fingers curling into fists. They bounced pointlessly off of the smooth barricade, and a choked cry escaped his lips. My brave boys...come back to me...please...just come back to me...