Summary: Dick shows up for a fellow bird.

Dick expected something. It was hard not to when he woke up to a dozen alerts blasting across every communication device relevant to his night life, subtlety having been taken out back and apparently shot dead. Those barebones status updates blazed across the inside of his eyelids whenever he blinked during his frantic suit-up and then call to Bruce, demanding details. Crashing after covering Gotham and Blüdhaven couldn't have come at a worse time.

Robin down. Joker deceased. Harley Quinn deceased.

Dick knew better than to hope that those weren't cause and effect. He'd been holding down the fort across two cities while Bruce and Barbara also burned their candles at both ends trying to find Tim. He'd avoided cracking in front of them—which was how he thought of begging to keep in the loop—but there was no denying that the thought of Tim going missing drove fear into his gut like a railroad spike. It held him together, narrowing the world to that single point of guilt and near-terror. He'd made it fifty hours before, between Alfred and Barbara, the night shift was yanked out of his hands and the inevitability of human weakness dragged him to sleep.

And now, after a handful of restless hours interrupted by ambiguous hope, Dick stepped onto the Watchtower with every urge to vibrate out of his skin carefully held back. Wally might be around and try to help reassure him or distract him, but Dick didn't want that. Right now, Dick mostly wanted to stomp on the Joker's corpse until it was completely unrecognizable.

Though, going by the way Barbara's and Bruce's preliminary reports notably lacked attached photos, maybe he was late to the party.

So, Dick skipped the potential distractions. He barely nodded to Steel when the man signaled it was safe to leave the teleporter platform, then stalked out of the embarkation zone and past the cafeteria and would-be lobby without talking to anyone. Centrally located, the Watchtower's infirmary was one of the most secure locations on the planet. Reaching it via elevator and then walking gave Dick the most time to settle his self-control over the pressure cooker of his emotions, so he did that.

And still, Dick thought if there was a door to Tim's recovery room, he might've slammed it open. As it was? Between the curtain and spotting Tim lying in that hospital bed, Dick was glad he couldn't follow through on that impulse. Barbara might've leapt up from her post at his bedside and tased him, and she wouldn't have been wrong.

Tim looked awful. The bed was built for people Clark's size (or maybe Metamorpho's if he was half-melting into it), so between that and the bulky machines monitoring Tim's vitals, he seemed almost doll-like lying there. They'd stripped most of his costume off, leaving a hospital gown and an array of bandages, emergency blankets, and wires, all sticking to him here and there. Dick didn't have to look close to see the traces of burns still visible from the door.

A quick glance at the monitors confirmed that Tim was asleep, even with his mask on, and Dick crept silently toward Barbara with one hand raised in belated greeting.

"Hey," Dick said in his lowest tone. Whispers could actually catch a Bat's attention even better than quiet talking, because all of them wanted in on secrets people tried to keep. It was a bad habit they'd learned from one of the most hyper-prepared men they'd ever met.

"Hey," Barbara repeated, then sighed. She patted the guest chair next to her—clearly stolen from the cafeteria—and said, "Thanks for coming."

"From the sounds of it, I couldn't have picked a worse time to clock out. The investigation hit a breakthrough right after— No?"

Barbara was already shaking her head before Dick finished his sentence. "There wasn't a breakthrough. A call came in to the police half past midnight and tripped three kinds of alarms." Her gaze was drawn, inevitably, back to the kid in the bed, even as she dug into her belt and handed him a tape recorder. "None of us were even close."

Dick took the tape and the headphones Barbara handed up, tucking one beadlike end into his ear. He let the other one dangle. "This is the call?"

Barbara nodded.

Dick hit the playback button.

(—"Gotham City 911 Emergency, do you need police, fire, or medical?"

"Yeah, uh, there's been a murder?" —)

"That call was made on Harley's cellphone," Barbara said as Dick listened and felt his blood pressure climb by the time he hit the end. "The caller was still guarding Robin when we arrived."

"She killed the Joker and Harley?" Dick asked, since the recording dodged the question. Not well, but the caller seemed so short on most other information that it didn't especially stand out.

"She admitted it pretty much immediately." Barbara's whole body twitched when they heard Tim shift in the bed, but both of them unfroze when he settled again. A little unnerved, still, she went on, "All signs point to a magician randomly running across a crime in progress."

"No motive, then." Barbara must have spoken to her extensively by now, even if it didn't take place in a police interrogation room. Dick trusted her judgment enough—after being nearly punched in the head once—to back away from acting like a controlling jerk about it.

"It's more that she had the means, and the motive manifested on the spot."

Dick let her lead him to a chair as he processed that, and they sat down together with nothing to say for a long, heavy moment.

Dick didn't want to think about what state Tim had to be in to convince a magician to jump in. The burns he could see were bad enough, and a look at his chart might yet provide terrible insight. He'd chased the Joker around Gotham enough times to memorize the chemical formulas the clown preferred, and every single option was a bad one. While Tim seemed stable for now, most magic-users with power like Zatanna's favored staying out of the world's conflicts unless the problem spilled into their sphere.

People like Doctor Fate defended reality against incursions of weird monsters from beyond time or sealed gods. Even Captain Marvel was mostly pitted against foes who fought with his general methodology…and a super-scientist or two for variety. Somewhere, there was a telepathic caterpillar involved, and at that point Dick had stopped listening. Problems like that usually avoided Gotham, of only because the heroes they fixated on had their own stomping grounds.

"Has he woken up at all?" Dick asked, to change the topic before he spiraled.

"He was awake when we got here, and during the exam. Right now, the doctors say it's safe to let him rest," Barbara answered. She stared into the depths of the coffee cup she'd kept on the bedside table, looking exhausted. Given the time, she and Bruce would have both been on their fever-pitch version of patrolling for trouble combined with scouring the city for any trace of Tim.

And in the end, they found him alive. Now, he was safe.

It was a better ending than Dick would have dared hope for, once the initial recovery window passed. He'd suspected one of the Rogues was involved, but Gotham (and Blüdhaven) weren't safe even if their data was removed. Rogues also tended to demand attention from the authorities immediately, because some part of them craved the spotlight. There were hundreds of places in each and every city for a kid to disappear, and it was their job as detectives to search for every single lead.

And with the Joker involved—and with his pattern changing—

Dick wanted to know. But he also knew damn well that there was no unlearning once he did. Tim needed their support now more than he needed any curiosity. He wouldn't ask yet.

Beep, beep, beep… went the heart monitor, steady in sleep.

"Are you okay?" Dick asked, after tearing his gaze away from Tim with difficulty and nudging Barbara with one elbow.

Barbara nodded, jaw held tight for a moment as she allowed a harsh breath out through her nose. "I will be. He's back."

Dick couldn't argue with that.

Silence fell between them. It wasn't too awkward, for them, but only because the threshold was so high. They'd said a lot over the years that couldn't be taken back.

"Are you and the old man trading off shifts?" Dick asked, after a while. He still felt jitters running up and down his limbs, but it was manageable for now. Despite how Tim's heart rate monitor couldn't count as a lullaby—too sharp, too cold—Dick kept himself in his seat by trying to match it with his heartbeat. Slow, calm, stable. "I thought I'd have to pry him away with a crowbar."

"So far, it's still my turn." Barbara took a futile sip of her coffee, which was gone, then sighed. "He's back in Gotham, but Supergirl said she saw her cousin rush off to the teleporter a bit ago. I'm hopeful Superman is more effective than anything we could pull off."

Dick snorted, but it sounded a lot like they had this in hand. "I can stay here if you need a moment."

Gratitude was hard to see on Barbara's face, solely because of her cowl, but her shoulders slumped in a winning combination of exhaustion and relief. She reached over and squeezed his offered hand hard enough to hurt. "Thank you. I was—I'll be right back. With more coffee."

"You got it."

Dick rubbed at his temples past his mask after Barbara hustled out of the room. After a few seconds where he was tempted to start jittering his leg, he knew it was going to be one of those nights. The nights when nothing went right—besides the bloodied miracle lying unconscious in the hospital bed—and he had to run out his nerves by running.

But there was nowhere to run. Dick had nowhere more urgent to be. Just a seething anger held tight in his core, useless and clawing its way around his insides with nothing to vent itself on. If he turned and walked away now, there was no coming back. Even if Tim understood when the trauma was less raw, Dick wouldn't forgive himself.

How could they miss this? How could anyone—

Tim shifted with a heartbreaking little whine.

Jolting upward, Dick approached Tim's hospital bed. It took him a little to find the kid's hand, wrists bruised and in one case attached to a wire, but Dick took off one glove and wrapped his fingers loosely around Tim's. The warmth seemed to give the kid an anchor, even in circumstances as dire as this.

Not that he wanted to wake the kid up, but if the nightmare roused him—or the pain—at least he was avoiding some secret brain bleed. Every monitor here would wail its electric heart out first, giving Dick and all the doctors plenty of warning to get the interventions lined up. Given what they were paid, the medical staff here were as well-practiced as racing pit crews. They'd kick him out of the way to access their patients, no questions asked.

Dick carefully pushed Tim's faltering spikes back with his free hand, as much to comfort him as to check the split at his eyebrow. It sat right at the mask line. Some doctor had placed two butterfly stitches over the cut. Now, the adhesive looked loosened by sweat and stress.

Tim leaned into his touch. And ordinarily he wouldn't have, because even after two years off the streets, the kid still had the hair trigger necessary to keep him alive. If that meant he sometimes turned around and snapped at Dick when his personal boundaries were a little too close, then fine. Dick could live with that. Better a kid with rules than one too beaten down to keep them. He could count the number of times Tim specifically sought comfort from him on one hand, but damn if the kid didn't deserve looking after, especially now.

In hindsight, maybe a lot of that standoffishness was Dick's fault. Accepting Tim's middle school too-cool-for-this attitude didn't have to be something Dick settled for. Just like how Tim didn't—and had never—put up with Dick's poor moods whenever his problems with Bruce reared their pointy-eared heads.

"You're safe," Dick murmured, trying for reassuring and not sure if he missed the mark. He leaned against one of the rails, trying to make sure it didn't drop out from under him. He didn't remember where the mechanism was on this model, built to accommodate a dozen morphologies on a bad day.

"…N?" Tim croaked. He turned his head in Dick's direction. The mask made it hard to tell if the lights were too much for the kid's concussion to tolerate. They were dim, but not off.

"I'm here, Robin," Dick replied, tightening his grip a little. Not enough to hurt, but enough that Tim could feel the difference. "Batgirl just left to grab something. She'll be right back."

"…Okay."

"Do you need—water, meds? Anything?" A glance at the medical chart at the foot of the bed might have told Dick if Tim's IV lines included anti-nausea medication anywhere, but water was definitely included in the mix. Some part of him hadn't been prepared to handle a miserable kid alone. "Or we could adjust your pain meds…"

And though he was talking, Tim slid his hand further into Dick's grip and tugged.

Which was how Dick ended up lying on the infirmary bed with his adopted kid brother slash fellow Robin, avoiding the wires and injuries so he could curl around Tim like he was a five-foot-three puppy. For all that Tim had that huge mattress basically to himself, it seemed like the one he wanted hummed on demand and answered to "Grayson" on weekdays. Even if Tim had to flex a little to do it, he managed to get his ear against Dick's chest, where a heartbeat might be most audible even through the Nightwing costume's thin layer of armor.

"Stay," Tim mumbled, already drooping again.

"All right."

Barbara didn't come back for what felt like a long time, allowing both of them to slip into a doze. Despite that, it felt like every nerve in Dick's body was primed for a fight. Even sleep was like standing at the edge of a cliff, toeing closer to the drop before leaning back. He kept jolting awake while forced to keep his body still to avoid scaring Tim. There was no point in telling himself that nobody could reach them on the Watchtower. It wasn't a time for rationality.

He was half upright and reaching for a weapon by the time he heard deliberate footsteps outside the door.

"You two look cozy." Barbara's teasing tone fell flat as she held the curtain partition open for a nurse making his rounds. As the man passed her to check the chart—and charitably didn't say anything about the second costumed hero in the bed—Barbara set two cups of coffee down on the bedside table.

"Thanks," Dick said, but didn't reach for it just yet. While he'd gotten his glove back on, he didn't feel like moving. Also, Tim seemed to be asleep again, and he was loath to interrupt that. "Where'd you go?"

"Zatanna wanted a last-minute consult about our new friend. It ran long." Barbara glanced from the bed to the chair in a thoughtful way that they all trained out of for field work, in case it gave something away in a tense situation, then chose the chair. "By now, Genbu's probably in better shape than we are. Doctor Mid-Nite says 'I heal fast' was underselling it."

Well, at least someone had good news coming their way. "He had a chance to examine her?"

"No, but Zatanna's spell was pretty clear." And with that, Dick was certain that nobody—Barbara and Zatanna included—had told Genbu that the monitoring spell didn't just give the League her exact location. It was probably safer that way until they knew more about her. Barbara went on, "She'll be physically fine by this time tomorrow, from what I've been told. Magically…" Barbara wobbled a hand in the air. "Who knows?"

Ah, superpowers. Making things more complicated since the dawn of time.

"Did Tim ask after her?" Barbara, correctly deducing that Dick wasn't playing a mattress just because he felt like it.

"He didn't say much," Dick replied, pausing at the end of the sentence to check that their voices didn't wake him. He needed as much rest as he could get. The rest of them could go without. "Honestly, I think he just wants at least one of us here. I've already seen one nightmare."

Barbara's grip around her cup tightened. "I hate that it makes sense."

"Do we even know why—" Dick cut himself off and fingerspelled J-O-K-E-R when Tim shifted, outside of his field of view. This conversation wasn't going to happen here in any useful way. After waiting for the teenager to quiet down again, Dick continued signing, "—why that happened?"

"Not yet," Barbara replied, also in sign. She briefly bit her lower lip as she stared at Tim, debating what to say and perhaps waiting to be sure he was still asleep. Then: "Batman has the evidence and should be going over it now. I've asked Genbu for her story already, but she wouldn't know details from three days before she got involved. And what she does remember is…uncertain."

"Matched concussions, then." Dick watched the nurse leave, then added, "Probably."

"We haven't ruled out magic," Barbara offered. "It's just that we can't figure out who'd strip her memory other than the thing possessing her. That's what…caused the mess."

Oh, great. More complicating factors. Closing his eyes for a moment, Dick dug through his mental case file until— Ah. "How much like Etrigan are we talking?"

"Zatanna said it was more of an ocean spirit," was the uncertain answer. Barbara took a long sip of her coffee. "J'onn might get more for us to work with."

"And probably a headache to dwarf the rest of us." Dick spent a moment trying to hold back his sigh. He failed. "How long were you gone?"

"About ninety-six minutes." Some consult. That might have been a whole REM cycle if not for…almost everything surrounding that fact like lurking sharks. Barbara shifted a little closer. "Do you need me to take over?"

"No, it's fine." The idea of letting go of Tim right now made the anxiety hiding in the back of Dick's brain start screaming. He was also sure that if Tim woke up and Dick was in the process of leaving, that figurative screaming would become very literal. "I'm good."

"Let me know when that changes." Even as she said it, Barbara turned a look that was half-sympathy, half-pity on them both. Then sipped her coffee again.

Dick didn't know why he rated that much; unlike Barbara, Dick didn't even see Tim regularly because spending the bulk of his time as Blüdhaven's main defender kept him well out of Gotham. If anyone could be called the kid's closest confidant, it was probably Alfred or Barbara. Dick didn't even know if Bruce, stoic mountain of a man and second-most paranoid member of the Justice League, qualified. Even if he was legally Bruce's son, and Dick wasn't. Even if that time Bruce was captured by the Thanagarians, Alfred sent Tim and Barbara to ground in Blüdhaven and told them he'd hold down the fort alone, and everyone went for a guerilla warfare that had the occupiers' patrols go missing in darkened streets—

Then Tim clutched at Dick's hand to the point of pain, distracting him. And Barbara, come to that, because Dick's surprise set her off just as strongly.

"Another nightmare," Dick muttered to Barbara's unasked question and pressing concern. Then he turned his attention entirely away from her. "I'm still here, Timmy. You're safe. You're gonna be okay."

Tim didn't settle until Dick ran his fingers through Tim's hair. Slowly, while avoiding the trouble zone that was the back of Tim's poor head. It wasn't something the kid would've let him do normally, and not something Dick might've dared attempt when it put his hand in biting range, but now? So many of the rules had been thrown out the window in the last three days that Dick wouldn't deny Tim this much.

God. This poor kid.

Tim didn't deserve any of this.

"How are you holding up?" Dick asked, once Tim was once again quiet in his arms. "Batgirl?"

"I'm fine."

Dick got the distinct impression there'd be a lot of that specific lie and monosyllabic grunts for the foreseeable future. With the faintest amusement to his tone, he muttered, "If you're fine, and I'm fine, then who's flying the plane?"

"Not the time, Dick," Barbara grumbled back, too low to be heard clearly by anyone potentially lurking outside of the room.

It likely never would be, and especially not with Tim's say-so.

Dick curled a little tighter around Tim and held him like a child, as though they all hadn't attended the same skateboarding-themed party for his fifteenth birthday. They'd come so, so close to never seeing his sixteenth. To never buying Tim his first car that Bruce would hate, or—

Tim squirmed against the bear hug. His spikes brushed against Dick's chin as he got out of the way. Then, "Ow…"

"Sorry, sorry," Dick tried to soothe him, a little too late. "I didn't mean to…" To what? Crush him out of retroactive, futile terror? Grasping for another topic, Dick uncoiled a fraction and said, "Batgirl's back, safe and sound. Told you she would be."

Tim obligingly looked over, reaching for Barbara with an unsteady hand. "I…I thought…"

Barbara jolted forward to catch it before Tim's strength could fail. "I'm right here," she said. "It—" The sentence died a quick death as she bit it back.

"It wasn't real" was what she clearly wanted to say, but they had no way of knowing if that was the case. With Tim up to his eyeballs in trauma, drugs and counteragents, and the aftereffects of imprisonment and torture, and with Genbu either unwilling or unable to supply her side of the story, there was no truth for that statement to stand on.

"Where's…?" Tim's brow furrowed and his mouth made a grimace. "She said—Genbu…?"

Already, Tim sounded better than before, if by the smallest margin. The roughness in his voice was clearly from overuse—not that Dick wanted to think about where that came from, though he had to—but it was a sign of clearer thoughts. He hadn't been awake to ask for anything before?

"She's asleep in another room." Given that Dick hadn't seen the mysterious woman on his trip here, Barbara meant one of the holding cells. While individual Justice League members did maintain their own spaces on the Watchtower, there wasn't so much room for guests. "Do you want one of us to go get her?"

"Shouldn't…" Tim's head drooped a little in apparent shame. "Can't get B…"

"Hey, no, it's about what you need right now. Not convenience," Dick assured him. "I bet Genbu will snap awake in a second if she hears you need her." Though given Bruce was a couple hundred miles below, probably getting his head pried out of his ass by Clark and a witheringly patient Alfred, that one was a taller order.

"He's right." Barbara injected as much certainty as she could into her voice. "We can wait together."

"Wait, I—" Tim's face scrunched as he shifted in the hospital bed and tried to stretch. Dick even shifted off the bed to give him more space. Unfortunately, the flexibility of a Robin and the constraints of a hospital stay weren't remotely compatible, so Tim gave up after getting a couple of optimistic pops out of his shoulders that left him wincing. "Ow."

"Yeah, I figured." Dick stooped to pick up the half-filled cup of water and its straw from the bedside table and hold it in Tim's reach. "Here. Take it easy."

Tim flinched. Away from the cup, away from Dick, and Barbara, and even from the wires and plastic tubes still attached.

In the instant he realized what had just happened and what it meant, Dick was so unspeakably jealous of Genbu—of her still-unseen slaughter of the Joker and his accomplices, of that unfiltered wrath—that it was all he could do to lower the cup and not smash it into the table. Or vent his killing rage somewhere else. Instead, he tucked it deep inside his ribs and held it at bay to destroy a training dummy later. All that escaped was a breath, a wince of his own, and a too-cautious hand handing the offending item to Barbara.

Because that? That was a trauma reaction Dick hadn't even known to look for until it happened.

"…Sorry," was all Tim could say. All the energy was gone, leaving a shivering kid looking miserable amid too much empty space. "I didn't know— It just f-felt wrong, like I was…back th-there again…"

Nobody with sense took food or water from the Joker. Or from Harley while she was around him. They tampered with everything they touched, down to the food for the hyenas half the time. If someone couldn't be fooled, then they went with "force" next. They'd had Tim for three days and there was nothing besides a mind-wipe that could make that go away. Maybe not even that.

Dick wouldn't have blamed Tim if he slapped the cup out of his hand and halfway across the room. His gut couldn't pick a side between guilt and anger. One was irrational, the other useless.

"Don't be," Barbara said, because Dick was still wrestling his temper back under control and didn't trust his voice. "Nightwing will go find Genbu for us." And out of Tim's line of sight, she signed the letter and number designation of one of the holding cells two levels down.

"Mission accepted." Dick managed a rough salute and turned to go. He needed a moment to center himself again. A walk through the Watchtower wasn't remotely comparable to flying through his city's rooftops, but he'd take what he could get.

The walk didn't cool him down completely. There was still this white-hot ember, settling just under his heart. But its presence burned away the remaining sleep in his system just in time.

For what, he wasn't sure. He arrived at the relevant cell in minutes and didn't quite know what to say for a few seconds longer, freezing his hand before he could press the intercom or knock. That was longer than he'd like, but luckily, the figure on the cot seemed too distracted to complain about it.

Given the availability of jail cells down on Earth and the Justice League's exalted reputation from taking down multiple alien invasion forces, they didn't need to contain prisoners for long. If these rooms were occupied for more than a few hours, it was only because they hadn't figured out where the problems were going next. Out of sight, out of mind—with some exceptions.

While Dick hadn't gotten his hands on a case file or read a description of Genbu so far, the name was a hint. A Japanese mage, ragged and swamped by borrowed clothes due to bloodstains ruining what she already wore. Curled up in a ball, with two different superhero blankets wrapped around her like a shell, she didn't look like someone who could handle any more stress.

But maybe that was the possession thing acting up. Better check. "Hey, is this a bad time?"

Genbu jerked to attention. The force of that startle reaction sent the Superman and Wonder Woman blanket flying, and the latter fluttered sadly to the ground while she stared at him in mortified surprise. Probably. Barbara had given her a domino mask, but it wasn't hiding everything.

"Good…morning? I think." Genbu's good arm twitched toward the fallen blanket, but she didn't complete the motion while observed. "Hi, Nightwing."

Dick put on his best smile. It was, fortunately, something he could slip on as easily as breathing. "It's only three, but that's time zones for you."

Genbu seemed puzzled by the response, but she slipped the Superman blanket around her shoulders before trying to come up with anything. "Hang on, I should just…" Then she padded across the floor to retrieve the other one and folded it roughly into a neat shape with her right hand alone.

Dick grimaced a bit at her progress. Though some of the stiffness in those movements was feigned, given her advertised recovery rate, he still said, "No, no, don't get up. You're hurt."

"I can walk. I did before." True to her word, Genbu padded all the way to the door and laid her hand against the reinforced super-plexiglass. Dick could see the ridges of her palm print through the transparent door. And the first question out of her mouth was a worried, "How's Robin doing?"

The best he can be, was the thought Dick didn't say aloud. With a sigh, Dick said, "We've got him stable."

Genbu bowed her head as she sighed in blatant relief. Her bangs hid her expression but not her tone as she whispered, "Good." She pulled her free hand back to press the heel of it against her sternum, as though to calm her racing heart. "Good to know."

That was genuine. And a lever.

"When he wakes up, is there something you want to tell him?" Dick added up the mental points in all columns and took a calculated risk by admitting, "He asked after you the last time. Anything might help."

Some part of his brain was looking for an excuse to snap at somebody, knowing that Tim was suffering and that there were limits to what anyone could do now. If Dick could go back and take Tim's place, he'd do it in a heartbeat. But now it was over—for a given value of the term—and there was nothing to do but cope with the aftermath.

Another part—bigger than the first—wanted to collapse in gratitude that this person, this stranger with enough firepower to put the clown in the ground, had brought Tim back to them alive. Maybe a deep bow would be appropriate. Maybe some kind of fey promise. Maybe—

Then Genbu let herself be led here and there, bundled into a cell with bare-bones furnishings and then left alone for hours. Even when hosting an ocean spirit in her head, whatever that did to someone's psyche and soul. And yet, that docility felt…true, even contrasted with the bloodshed. It took a lot to rattle Barbara after years as Batgirl, but she'd been disturbed by the violence even as she offered the facts of the case so far. With the firm understanding that the name was driving the comparison, it kind of reminded Dick of seeing an alligator snapping turtle for the first time. They were slow and reactive ambush hunters, but those jaws could still bite through human fingers like carrots. Maybe Genbu just…conserved energy until it was time to shift gears.

Focus, Dick scolded himself.

And a distant, observant bit tallied up Genbu's physical features like it was important compared to everything else. Definitely Japanese, between the accent and the face, but almost as tall as he was, with messy black hair hacked until it fell mostly short of her jawline. Two pierced ears with silver studs, and a mole under her eye. A scar split her face, diagonal down from right brow to left cheek, ragged like it had started smooth and gotten infected or reopened. The rest of her disappeared under the shapeless borrowed clothes. He couldn't be entirely certain of her age, based either on appearance or attitude, but guesstimated around twenty-something. Genbu looked worn-down under that fleece blanket cape, not like someone for whom throwing cars was a viable strategy.

Or maybe the wonky read was due to the ocean spirit, taking a peek at the quippy mortal with the pair of stun batons and trying to figure out if he was edible.

"Um, I think…" Genbu curled her fist against her mouth. It was a nervous gesture at home on a civilian caught up in chaos, not on a battlemage who went for the self-enchantment option and shredded a normal person like paper. "Maybe just tell Robin that I'm okay? He doesn't need to worry about me."

Definitely an exposed weak point. A chink in her armor as real as that sling.

"Too late for that," Dick replied, already envisioning how badly that could go. No, Tim was going to see Genbu in person sooner rather than later. Dick didn't care if he had to turn the Watchtower upside-down to get the kid what he needed. But that didn't meant he couldn't take precautions.

"I know. He's too nice." Genbu lifted her chin, trying to meet Dick's gaze though they both wore masks. "But I also know I heal fast, and I'm—" She considered the situation again, touching her bad shoulder with the air of someone poking a known bruise. Then that hand dropped to her stomach and she said, "Well, I guess I'm hungry. I don't have any other complaints, though."

That felt like a lie, or at least a fudging of the truth. Clearly, Genbu knew better than to ask to be let out of the cell, given that she'd willingly walked into it and knew her own threat level backward and forward. And looking sad and asking only for small things was a tactic. For what end, Dick wasn't sure. While the entire Justice League hadn't turned their attention her way, enough key players had that the secrets involved were mostly a matter of time and patience.

Not that he thought Genbu was the kind of person who might require a punch from a Kryptonian, but…

Ugh, no. Thinking like that was how someone ended up like Bruce.

"Noted." Dick watched Genbu start to fidget out of the corner of his eye as he took his time. "Do you have any food problems I should know about?" he finally asked, throwing her a bone. "Restrictions, allergies…?"

Genbu shook her head.

"Then, any requests?"

"…Maybe a sandwich?" Immediately, a wince followed. Almost fast enough to trip over herself, Genbu added, "I'd be okay with an apple. D-Don't go to too much trouble. Really."

"Gotcha. We'll send someone down in a bit. Once you've eaten something, then—well, like I said, Robin's asked for you." And hopefully Genbu's presence would help him at least a little. "Hey, Genbu. Since I doubt the old man would ever say anything like this: thank you for rescuing Robin. I don't know a lot of people outside of the superhero world who'd have the courage to try."

Genbu went silent for a long moment, staring at him.

"Genbu?"

She fidgeted with a loose thread in her borrowed sweats as she mumbled, "I didn't do it to make anybody thank me. I'm not even sure I did it on purpose."

That was ominous, especially for the interview J'onn needed to conduct with her. Due to the fraught circumstances of the night (and the three before then), they'd put off pieces of the more regular guest intake procedure. Like background checks. J'onn was the senior-most member of the Justice League currently present and the strongest telepath, so the next part would be his job. He'd be able to tell if Genbu was as awkward as she acted, or if this was a ruse.

Dick was about ninety percent sure of his observations, but the last sliver of certainty never hurt. "Then what do you think made the choice for you?"

Genbu frowned, shrinking into herself by hunching her shoulders. She scratched uneasily at her bound arm, like the sling was more a reminder than a medical device. "I-I…remember hearing Robin. Screaming."

Dick closed his eyes behind his mask. He'd asked. Time to listen.

"And…" Genbu's voice fell to a wary hush. She'd ducked her head again. "Being objective, some of the things I've done are…pretty bad."

"Killing the Joker and Harley Quinn" didn't rate, he guessed. There was a lot they didn't know about Genbu's past up until this point. They had ideas, notions, and assumptions, but any of them could lead them down the wrong path. Dick bit the inside of his cheek to keep from interrupting.

"And it goes for both of us." Genbu paused to steel herself, then looked up to meet Dick's gaze as squarely as they could, mask to mask. Her hand rested over her sternum again. Something golden gleamed at the edges of her mask, like sunlight through water. "But we weren't going to leave a kid to…whatever someone like the Joker came up with." The hand formed a fist. "There's monsters, and then there's that."

And now, biting the bullet, Dick asked, "What do you think he was going to do?"

There was a much longer pause this time. Long enough that Dick worried that he'd triggered two people inside of half an hour. It wouldn't be the first time he stuck his foot in his mouth, but one of the worse times for the habit to rear its ugly head.

Genbu shook her head.

"You don't know."

"I'm not sure," Genbu corrected, though still sounding like J'onn would need to take a look and jog her memory. And looking miserable. "I…have an idea. It could be wrong. I almost—I hope I'm wrong. What was already happening was bad enough."

Not for the first time, Dick cursed his imagination for offering options. Each was worse than the last. The Joker's motives almost always came down to "screw with Batman," "systematically ruin someone's life (preferably also Batman's)," or "beat a joke to death, while left the only one laughing." But he tended to act fast once he thought he had all the pieces in place. What the fuck could have possibly been the punchline?

Unfortunately, it looked like his answers were not forthcoming. Genbu knew something, and that "theory" set her off like a landmine, killing two horrible people. For some things, there was no going back.

And yet, the timeline didn't make sense. If Genbu's memory was as wrecked by her concussion as Barbara thought, then how was she putting together some idea worse than anything that had already happened so far? She shouldn't have had enough information to put an even worse puzzle together. Maybe it was just her overactive imagination matching Dick's for speed and that vicious Gotham flavor. Hell, maybe she was making up some of it post-incident to give herself more scraps of justification.

Someone else would have to try and assess its shape to see the damage. Dick had other priorities. One of them was lying in a hospital bed two floors above them, traumatized to hell and back. Genbu's secrets didn't make the cut.

So, Dick cleared his throat and said, "You saved Robin based on a suspicion and—well, let's call it basic human decency. I won't criticize that. I wasn't there." Because if I was, I probably would have done the same thing. Dick held up a hand when Genbu looked like she might protest. "Robin's asking for you to be there for him. Put aside the guilt and the doubt. Do you want to?"

And hesitantly, Genbu nodded.

Just as expected. That burgeoning codependency apparently worked both ways.

"Good." For Tim's sake, it was enough to know that this particular magician was likely content to play teddy bear. So he said, "I'll tell Robin what you said. And I'll get you out of this cell and into a real room soon. It's just a lot of procedural crap."

"…I'm fine. It's not a big deal."

"Isn't it?" It was definitely a scant consideration for someone who'd saved Robin's life. Rather than continue the talk, Dick tapped the door of the cell once. He was sick of hearing those courtesy lies. "Just rest, Genbu. Knowing how these things go, you won't have the time for it later."

"Okay." Genbu watched him for a little while, suspicious, then just bowed.

Dick smiled back. It almost felt real on his face. None of the inner questions and conflicts showed. "See you soon."

Politeness concluded, Genbu slunk back to her bed and started tucking her blankets back into cocoon mode. The tablet disappeared off the bedside table and under the blankets. Apparently, this turtle was heading back into winter hibernation.

Dick didn't know if he felt better, overall. But now there was a to-do list, and he was good at those. First, he needed to find J'onn.

Notes:

Despite being in the title card for the retool into The New Batman Adventures, Dick-as-Nightwing only present in about a quarter of the episodes. All he gets is a couple of cameos in Justice League (Unlimited). But I am not beholden to the Bat-Embargo.

Dick, Tim, and Barbara were not depicted during the Thanagarian invasion, despite being active according to the official timeline. My interpretation is that Alfred told them to get the hell out of Dodge, and they did.

The joke Dick makes is a mangled quote from the 1980 disaster movie satire Airplane! The best-known exchange from the film is as follows:
Ted Striker: Surely you can't be serious!
Rumack: I am serious... and don't call me Shirley.