All right, just gonna get it out of the way with the obligatory apology for writing a fight scene into the story when I suck at writing fight scenes. Does anyone actually know how to write fight scenes, or are we all just making it up as we go?

Content warnings can be found at the end of this chapter.

Tim coughed, wiping the dust out of his eyes, and stood up with help from a nearby boulder only to duck down again when a red spell came zooming towards him.

"Hey!" he heard Shazam shout, dust swirling up as he zoomed over and shoved the Death Eater back several feet. "How about you pick on someone your own size!"

The Death Eater's jaw dropped, probably because Shazam was floating five feet above the ground and his fists were crackling with electricity. All around Tim, people were emerging from the rubble, only to have to take cover again from the barrage of spells that came at them. Noticing that Bill was trapped behind a particularly stubborn chunk of rock, Tim hurried over, ducking under a spell and yanking Bill out of the way before a curse could hit him.

"Thanks," Bill coughed, his left arm a little scarred but otherwise working properly.

One particular Death Eater whom Tim recognized from the news, Bellatrix Lestrange, let out a high-pitched laugh when she caught sight of Tim. "Itty bitty thinks he's ready to fight?"

Tim's response was to throw a Batarang at her which grazed her cheek and disappeared into the rubble. Bellatrix's eyes widened, and she slowly lifted up a hand to her face, tracing with her fingers the cut Tim had just given her. But then she pulled her hand away and licked her bloody fingers one by one, like she had just finished a basket of French fries.

Oh, so she's crazy, Tim realized, and he readied his wand.

They were good. They were really good. The Death Eaters, that is. Tim was currently facing off against two of them and barely holding his own. Curses were flying in every which direction, and it took everything Tim had to dodge them while simultaneously trying to take down two experienced wizards who could Apparate at will. It didn't help that everyone's magic was dialed up to eleven, people's spells lasting longer and affecting a wider range. Disarming one another was useless, as a wandless Summoning Spell was easy enough to cast on one's own wand.

Given that Neville and Aruna, two novice wizards, were able to hold off nearly a hundred assassins with little injury, Tim should have anticipated how quickly all the non-magical people would be down for the count within the first ten minutes of the fight.

Now it was just wizard versus wizard, save for Ra's, who was holding up quite well against two Death Eaters, dodging and weaving through attacks like he'd been doing this for centuries, which he had.

One of the Death Eaters fighting Tim, whom Tim was pretty sure was named Macnair, shot a Stunner at Tim, who deftly avoided the blast and threw a Batarang at the man's wrist. It would have hit had his partner not blasted it to pieces. The Death Eaters had shown up shrouded in hoods, but at some point they all had been blasted or singed off, which helped Tim deduce at least half of their identities. For example, the scraggly-haired man who had just blasted Tim's Batarang and was aiming his wand in Tim's direction was Rodolphus Lestrange, husband of Bellatrix Lestrange and fellow Azkaban escapee.

Tim couldn't spare a glance in Shazam's direction, but he knew the man had his hands full with three Death Eaters attacking him separately, one being Bellatrix herself, who distinguished herself by keeping a running commentary during the battle.

There was also the added challenge of not actually killing anyone, which seemed to be an unspoken rule amongst the Order as well as having been a part of Tim and Shazam's careers since the beginning. Ra's and his assassins, however, had zero qualms with ending their opponents' lives, and Tim had already seen the impaled body of Thorfinn Rowle, one of the ten Azkaban escapees, in the main hall of this base's tower.

Speaking of towers, Macnair and Rodolphus had somehow managed to take their fight out onto the slanted roofs of the League of Assassins base, which was proving particularly difficult for Tim, as a snowstorm was blowing through. Macnair and Rodolphus were frequently Apparating, so much so that Tim was really having trouble tracking them.

"Can we—" Tim dodged what looked to be an Unforgiveable Curse "—take this back inside—?" he gasped, barely catching himself after slipping on the inclined wood slats.

"Getting tired, boy?" Rodolphus sneered, Apparating out of the way of Tim's spell and reappearing right behind him. Tim immediately whipped around, managing to throw an elbow into the man's gut. He stumbled back and Apparated away again. Tim growled in frustration. Even amidst the power of the Lazarus Pit, he himself still hadn't managed to Apparate once, despite his diligent practice back at Hogwarts for weeks. Not that Tim had actually tried today, not being willing to risk the chance of splinching during combat.

Tim had just avoided a streak of green light when Macnair Apparated right up to him and shoved him backwards. Tim took a step back, only to find that there was no foothold for him. He gasped as he slipped off the roof, gloved hands scrambling to grab the edge of the roof so he wouldn't fall hundreds of feet down the crags. He started pulling himself up when a sharp pain shot through the tips of his fingers, causing him to drop back down and hang helplessly from the roof. He tilted his head up and bit back a curse.

Rodolphus was standing on both of Tim's hands, black boots crunching Tim's fingers so hard Tim thought they would break. He stepped back, and Tim's hands trembled, not up to the task of holding his body up anymore.

"You must be new, boy," Rodolphus shouted over the raging winds. "What's your name?"

Tim winced, trying to tighten his grip on the roof.

"Do you know who I am?"

Great, now he's monologuing. Tim tried again to pull himself up, only to find that his hands were not willing to support that much pressure.

"I'll give you a hint." He pointed his wand at Tim, a crocodile's grin stretched across his face. "Crucio!"

There was a meditation technique Bruce had drilled into Tim for when he was in pain. It wasn't too complicated, just deep breathing, focusing on something he could pick up with one of his senses, and a mantra telling himself that pain was simply the body's way of telling him he was in crisis. Human beings had an incredible ability to convince themselves that what they were seeing or hearing or feeling wasn't what it seemed, and it was this concept that worked to the Bats' advantage when they were being tortured. Just like a hypnotist could convince a woman in the blazing sun that she was freezing cold, or like how people could recover from injuries even when they knew they were taking a placebo, so too could pain be ignored. It was a dangerous technique. After all, pain existed so that you would have the knowledge to know what was wrong with your body and the incentive to want to stop said problem from continuing to occur. If one ignored pain all the time, they would be dead the moment they held their breath too long. So, sometimes pain was good, but if one could recognize it as the neurological phenomenon that it was, it could be tuned out like white noise.

None of this could have prepared Tim for the Cruciatus Curse.

Instead of there being a physical injury sending signals to Tim's brain that he just had to ignore, there were just the signals, but they were all about twenty times louder than normal. It was like every couple of seconds, Tim's nervous system decided that Tim could handle worse (he couldn't) and would switch over to a new kind of pain. It was the equivalent of sound torture—when the sounds changed sporadically, it was nearly impossible to block it out.

Tim was certain, somewhere in the back of his mind, that Bruce would have been able to block out the Cruciatus Curse, or maybe Jason. But Tim wasn't either of them. In fact, Tim would wager to say that he had the lowest pain tolerance in his family.

Iron spikes being driven into his skull. Hands being pressed against burning metal. Skin being peeled off layer by layer. Weights crushing his ribs. Bones being shattered over and over and over and over—

Tim screamed and let go of the roof.

Amidst the utter agony that was Tim's entire nervous system, he had a miraculous moment of clarity during his freefall as he saw the giant, snowy boulders rapidly approaching. Tim must have been out of Rodolphus's range, for all that pain suddenly ceased, giving Tim a moment to think, At least this won't hurt as much as that curse just did, before he crashed into the cliff.

Or, rather, he crashed onto one of the tatami mats in the entrance hall of the base. It was a spot that had been firmly fixed in Tim's mind as he was falling to certain doom, and then he'd shut his eyes and landed here.

He'd had a place in mind. He'd certainly had the motivation to get to said place. And then he'd just…done it.

"Destination, Determination, Deliberation."

Holy shit.

"We should get back inside," Macnair told his partner after the two turned away from the edge of the roof. "It's drafty as shit out here, and I think your wife might need some help taking down that giant—"

Neither of them knew what hit them. One moment, they were discussing battle plans, the next, they were both unconscious, and Tim tied them up and deposited them in a side room where he wouldn't have to worry about them for at least ten minutes if the Stunner had worked as expected.

Apparating, Tim had decided, was the single most useful thing he had learned in wizarding school. It was one of those things that, once you learned, you wondered how there ever could have been a time you didn't know how to do it, like whistling or riding a bike. With a crack, Tim appeared at Ra's side, throwing up a Shield Charm to block an incoming spell.

"It's about time you figured that out," Ra's smirked, raising an eyebrow at Tim.

Tim rolled his eyes and shot a Leg-Locker Curse at one of Ra's opponents.

"You know we're going to have to destroy this Pit to stop them from coming back," Tim told him, ducking down.

"Yes, I came to that conclusion as well," Ra's growled, sounding none too pleased at the idea of letting go of one of his precious Lazarus Pits. "It will require an incredible amount of force."

Luckily, there was an incredible amount of force down in the caves below currently fighting off three dark wizards. Tim nodded at Ra's and teleported down where Shazam had just thrown one of his opponents into a wall.

"Shazam!" Tim shouted from his perch behind a chunk of fallen rock. The superhero immediately zoomed over to where Tim was crouched, giving him a once-over.

"Red Rob—I mean, Tim! Are you okay? Are you hurt? How did you get down here?"

Tim nodded hurriedly. "Yes, a little, and I can teleport now."

"Cool, cool." Shazam looked over his shoulder. The Death Eaters had split up and started running around the caves trying to find where exactly Shazam had flown off to.

"Okay," Tim said before the man could get distracted by the battle around him, "so I need you to blow up the Lazarus Pit."

Shazam stared at Tim for a full three seconds before saying, "What?"

"Yeah, it needs to be destroyed. Throw some magic lightning at it or whatever."

Shazam nodded slowly. "And Ra's al Ghul is okay with this?"

He'll learn to live with it. "Yeah."

"So when do you—?"

"Right now."

There was a loud crack, and a voice whispered in Tim's ear, "Look who I found!" Tim whipped out his hand to punch her, but Bellatrix hopped out of the way of his attack, only to stumble back when a bolt of lightning came crashing down in front of her.

Tim turned to Shazam, who had his arms outstretched. "Go," he told the man, pointing towards the entrance to the pit. "I'll hold them off."

Shazam looked in between Tim and his attackers worriedly, but a harsh glare from Tim was enough to convince him to go.

Bellatrix was good, Tim could admit. She recovered surprisingly quickly from the lighting, whipping out her wand and casting spells rapid-fire at Tim, who cast a Shield Charm in response and ducked back into the shadows.

Bellatrix seemed to be having trouble finding Tim, as he was silently flitting about the room in the shadows. "Come out, come out, little birdy," she cooed, eyes wide and manic. Tim wasn't sure why that had suddenly become his nickname, but it suited him far mor than she'd ever know.

"Stupefy!" Tim whispered, pointing at Bellatrix, but she had a Shield Spell readied before it could make contact, and then Tim was dodging her spells again, as he'd just revealed his location to her.

"Crucio!" she shrieked, pointing at where Tim was a second ago. He rolled on the ground, avoiding a rock that another wizard who had been fighting Shazam had thrown in his direction. The cave's lighting was dim, but Tim could easily see the resemblance between this Death Eater and Malfoy's friend Vincent Crabbe. This Crabbe shot another Stunning Spell at Tim, who barely managed to dodge it, seeing as he already had his hands quite full with Bellatrix. And that was before the third wizard, Rabastan Lestrange, another one of the Azkaban escapees, got into the mix, clearly having lost track of Shazam. On the one hand, Tim was glad that Shazam potentially had a window to destroy the Lazarus Pit. On the other hand, it was now him versus three more Death Eaters. Being able to Apparate was the only thing keeping Tim alive—that and his years of combat training that told him when to duck and where to attack.

Another stalagmite exploded next to Tim, and he rolled away, choking on the dust.

"Aww, is little birdy getting tired?" Bellatrix simpered, nearly hitting Tim with what he was pretty sure was the Killing Curse.

"You wish," he coughed, dodging a spell coming at him from behind. He glanced back at Crabbe briefly before Apparating behind him and kicking him in the back of his knees, sending him tumbling to the ground, but this move gave Bellatrix the opportunity to hit Tim with his second Cruciatus Curse of the day.

Tim had read (in the Restricted Section, obviously) that the greater the caster's desire was to do genuine harm to their opponent, the stronger the Cruciatus Curse would be. Bellatrix must have been feeling extra sadistic today, then, because Tim couldn't help but wonder why he'd thought Rodolphus's curse had been bad, because that one was about as bad as stubbing one's toe when compared to this.

Tim dropped his wand, collapsing to the ground, feeling for all intents and purposes like his limbs were being filleted while simultaneously being electrocuted at a voltage far too high for any mortal to withstand.

He started screaming, but Bellatrix's shrill laughter rang in his head like his eardrums had burst.

But both the pain and the laughter cut off abruptly, leaving Tim to try to catch his breath, still curled up in the fetal position, body still spasming like he was having a seizure. A strong pair of hands grabbed him by the shoulders and hauled him into a sitting position.

"Tim, are you okay?" Shazam asked, couched down on one knee. Tim tried to nod, but he kept on flinching over and over again.

"K-k-kinda," Tim stuttered. Fuck, that woman knows how to Cruciate. "H-how's the pit?"

"I flooded it with a couple million volts of magical lightning," Shazam told him, looking him over for any visible signs of injury, "so it should be blowing up—"

The caverns shook violently as a loud snapping noise came from nearby.

"—right about now," Shazam finished, glancing over his shoulder. "I made a barrier around the pit to contain the explosion, but it's still gonna cause some serious structural damage to the mountain, so we need to start evacuating people."

Tim nodded, the ringing in his ears finally lessening enough for him not to feel like he could throw up at any second.

"I'll take care of the crazy lady," Shazam told him. "You go let Ra's al Ghul know about the pit and pass the message along. If you're up for teleporting, that is. Which, let me tell you, is super cool, by the way. I'm, like, totally jealous. Even though I can kind of already do it, you know?"

Tim chuckled, letting Shazam help him to his feet. "I'll be good in a minute, I just need—"

"Look out!"

"Avada Kedavra!"

Several things happened at once. Tim was shoved to the ground just as a streak of blue-white lightning left Shazam's fingers. At the same time, a green streak of light came out of nowhere and hit Shazam directly in his chest. Tim rolled up and out of his fall just in time to see Bellatrix and Shazam collapse to the ground in tandem.

Tim's brain took a moment to catch up, but then the meaning of the spell came to him, and he rushed to Shazam's side, looking for a pulse.

"Lots of spells just bounce off me," he'd told them before. Not all spells. Lots of them.

Come on, come on, Tim thought to himself, his hand trembling as it searched the superhero's neck for a pulse. Come on, please don't die, please don't die—

Where's the pulse?

—please don't die, god, don't die, Billy, I can't—I can't—

Tim tried in vain to roll Shazam onto his back, but he wasn't nearly strong enough to move the giant of a man. All the while, Tim searched for that pulse. He searched and searched and searched and—

"Crucio!"

Tim instinctively ducked his head, and he felt the hot path of the spell fly just over him into the cavern walls.

Rabastan sneered, evidently disappointed that his spell had missed, but he didn't have time to do much else because Tim teleported right up to him and knocked him out with a blow to the head.

"Stupe—" Crabbe didn't even get the chance to finish his spell because he had the unfortunate pleasure of attacking Tim when Tim was spiraling, and that was the last kind of Tim one wanted to be faced off against in a battle, because that was when he was at his deadliest. These people had taken out Tim's friend who was, last time Tim checked, still without a pulse, so the obvious solution was to take out everyone himself. Tim could probably manage. He quickly Apparated to where he and Ra's had last been fighting and where three wizards lay unconscious amidst a multitude of dead or unconscious assassins. However, upon closer examination, it became clear that one of the wizards had been stabbed multiple times in some key areas and was likely already deceased. Tim wasn't sure why he felt nothing at this revelation. Probably because Shazam was still laying downstairs by himself, also—

Also likely deceased… Tim's brain supplied helpfully. But Tim didn't have time to deal with that. He had a duty to the living.

Tim had never been to this League of Assassins base before, but it was structured similarly to Nanda Parbat, likely due to the fact that they were both built out of the sides of mountains, so he alternated between running and Apparating into rooms and hallways, warning the members of the Order to Apparate somewhere safe as soon as possible. A couple people, like Bill and Emmeline, had already taken down their fair share of Death Eaters and travelled with Tim to go help others, like Tonks and Remus, take down the last remaining dark wizards. Five on one wasn't exactly a fair fight, but Tim hadn't stayed alive this long by playing things 'fair.' The only real shock to the system came when Tim encountered Mad-Eye, towering over the mangled body of a Death Eater and slamming his staff repeatedly into the man's chest. Bill opened his mouth as if to protest such pointless cruelty, but Remus ended up being the one to shake his head and point to the lifeless body of Hestia Jones just a couple feet off to the side.

For some reason, there was a difference in Tim's mind between the deaths of Ra's assassins and the deaths of Hestia and Shazam. One was a nameless entity, and the other were, dare he say, like the death of a family member. Only one of these kinds of deaths was going to haunt Tim for the next couple of months, longer for someone like Shazam. He hated that his brain immediately went to the half-destroyed Lazarus Pit, like it would be of any use to him now, and he was ashamed that his main reason for rejecting its usage was because it was already crumbling down.

Oh, God. What was he going to tell Billy's family? How was he going to face them knowing that he was the intended target of that Killing Curse, not Billy?

They were all now gathered in the entrance hall, Mad-Eye levitating Hestia's corpse next to him, clearly intending to give her a proper burial as soon as possible.

"Where's the Wizard's Champion?" Ra's asked, probably noticing Tim's clear discomfort.

Tim bit his lip. "He—I—he didn't make it…"

Ra's' eyes widened considerably. "One of Tom's petty lackeys managed to take out Earth's Mightiest Mortal?"

Tim swallowed back something in his throat. Now that he had to acknowledge the fact, he was finally coming to terms with what had happened. "It was the Killing Curse," Tim choked out, biting back a sob.

This did not elicit the reaction Tim expected from Ra's. Instead of looking sympathetic or (more likely) indifferent, the man looked ever-so-slightly amused.

"And you think that it actually worked?"

"He wasn't breathing," Tim told him sharply, "and he didn't have a pulse. I know the signs, Ra's."

"Nonsense," Ra's smirked. "Bring the body to me."

A couple minutes later, Tonks emerged from the basement with Shazam's body levitating next to her. She looked deeply uncomfortable carrying his corpse and lowered him to the ground as soon as possible. The building shook, and a wooden support beam came crashing down across the hall.

Ra's took one look at the body and said, "He's not dead. He just needs to revert back to his original form."

"That's impossible," Tim immediately argued. "It would take an incredible amount of magical electricity to—"

"Oh, come now, Timothy," Ra's drawled. "We're in a room full of wizards, just get one of them to cast a spell on him."

"It won't be strong enough," Tim countered. "The Lazarus Pit is in the middle of collapsing, can't you feel the magic in here weakening?"

"Humor me, Timothy, I promise it's worth your while."

Promises from Ra's al Ghul were like pencil lead: fragile, hard to find, and subject to disappear under pressure, but if it was a chance to save a friend that did not involve dropping them into the Lazarus Pit, who was Tim to deny Billy that chance?

The building rumbled again, and another rafter came down.

"Let's do this somewhere else," Remus advised. "Somewhere that isn't collapsing all around us."

"Outside, too, 'nless we wanna blow the roof out with this spell," Mad-Eye added. It was agreed upon, so, like their way here, they Apparated in small bursts, although they had more literally-dead weight to carry this time around, which made it a little more difficult, but eventually, they reached the bottom of a valley, and they all settled on the bank of a river that was suitably removed from civilization.

Ra's placed Shazam's body down with a surprising amount of care, and it almost made Tim forgive him for being such an all-around creep. Almost.

"All right, then," Ra's said, steepling his hands in front of him. "Now, all that's left is for you all to cast some lightning spell on him."

"A Tempest Jinx should do the trick," Tonks suggested, pulling out her wand. "How many of you know that one?" Mad-Eye, Bill, and Remus raised their wands in the air. "Well then, might as well get to it then. Count of three?"

"And you're certain this won't just fry the corpse?" Bill asked, eyeing the body with concern on his face.

"Yes, yes, now get it over with so we can all go home," Ra's sneered, idly tapping on his now very bloodied rapier at his hip. Tonks nodded, and she and the others made a diamond around the body.

"'Kay, on my count," Tonks announced.

"Three…"

Please let this work.

"Two…"

He's too young to die.

"One…"

—please please please please please—

"Fulminus!" they shouted in unison, and Tim shut his eyes as the blinding light came crashing down with a resounding crack.

There was a small sizzling noise, and Tim tentatively opened one eye and then the other, taking in the much smaller form that lay on the ground whose chest was rising and falling.

He's breathing.

He's alive.

Tim almost started crying then and there, but Mad-Eye cut him off with a "What the fuck?"

Y'all didn't think I'd really kill off best boy, did you?

CW: descriptions of various forms of torture