#jason dick duke bruce and barbara also make brief appearances but I'll refrain from tagging them

[weekend-conspiracy-theorist]

(an entry in the tim&steph role swap au)

When Tim's phone rang the first time, he swiped it away as soon as he saw Stephanie's caller ID on the screen. She was his Robin; his best friend; his platonic soulmate; the piece of himself that had become bigger and brighter and more by growing outside of him. But that didn't change the fact that Tim had a job, and unfortunately he couldn't drop everything to listen to his better half rant about her analytical chemistry professor's draconian late work policies.

(It was 10 AM on a Thursday, which was the end of Professor Morgan's office hours. Tim got this phone call nearly every week.)

"Sorry, please continue," he said, crossing one leg over the other as he turned his attention back to his client. (Potential client. One he was pretty sure was trying to use him to dig up dirt for the express purpose of blackmailing one of his employees.)

"Right," Jack Curry said. His smile didn't reach his eyes. He'd been unimpressed ever since Tim informed him that, sorry, but Alvin Draper wouldn't be available any time in the next week. "Like I was saying--"

Tim's phone started buzzing again. A spark of annoyance shot through him, followed near immediately by a wash of worry that left him furrowing his brow. Stephanie didn't usually try to call him again if he ignored her; she launched herself straight into paragraph long text rants and strings of nonsensical emojis. Contrary to what he liked to accuse her of, she was fully aware that his life did not revolve around her.

"Sorry," Tim repeated, tuning Curry's huff of annoyance out as he dismissed the call again. This time he also shot off a text, letting Stephanie know he was with a client and could call her back in twenty minutes or so.

His phone started ringing before the text had even finished sending.

"Excuse me; this must be an emergency," Tim said distractedly, standing and pressing his phone to his ear as he disappeared into his shoebox of an office. Curry seemed pissed, but Tim wasn't sure he cared; he'd already pretty much decided against taking the case, although he'd intended to wait the full conversation out to see if Curry managed to pull himself back out of the skeezeball hole he'd been digging.

"The world isn't ending or anything, is it?" he asked, kicking the door shut behind himself.

It wasn't that he expected Stephanie to call him as if there anything Tim could do to help--the apocalypse was lightyears above his pay grade--but he had gotten a distressing handful of "Hey, just in case, I wanted to tell you I love you and that your hair is stupid" phone calls over the last seven years.

"Oh!" a deep, male voice said. "Uh, no?"

"Wait--Dick?" Tim said, bewildered. He pulled his phone far enough away from his face to double check that it was Stephanie's caller ID that had popped up. So why the hell was it Dick Grayson on the other end of the line? "What's going on?"

"Well, it's a good news, bad news situation, I suppose. Good news, things are less catastrophic than what your mind apparently immediately jumped to, and we'll have to circle back to unpack that at some point, bud. Bad news..." Dick uncharacteristically hesitated. "First and foremost, Tim, she's going to be fine."

Ice ran down his spine.

"What's going on?" he repeated, his voice flattening. He'd never been the type to respond to panic by getting loud or frantic; he'd always been the type to shut down. To grow still and silent.

Dick didn't mince words this time, sensing Tim needed him not to. "Steph's in the hospital."

Not, "Steph's injured," a statement that could include anything from a sprained ankle to a straightforward fracture that Alfred had been able to set himself in the Cave. Not, "Steph's at the clinic," a statement that could include anything requiring simple surgery.

"Steph's in the hospital."

That meant something bad enough Leslie Thompkins thought it required specialized care, or something urgent enough that they'd needed to get Stephanie to the closest hospital, risks to their secret identities be damned. He tried to convince his heart to slow its racing. Dick had said she was fine. No--he had said that she was going to be fine.

There was a world of difference.

"Have you already called Crystal?" Tim asked, remarkably calmly considering his vision was swimming. He'd never before been grateful that his office was so tiny that his desk was within arm's reach no matter where you stood. His grip on its edge was white knuckled.

"She just got here." There was a note of guilt in Dick's voice. "She asked if you were on your way."

Tim could forgive them the lapse in judgement. Steph and Tim were... important to each other, the kind of important that words could not possibly express, but the Bats hadn't known that for very long in the grand scheme of things. And Stephanie had been so used to hiding their friendship from them that she probably still did so at times, out of habit; Tim doubted she'd thought to add him to her list of emergency contacts.

(She was the only one on his.)

Except, he'd still always been notified when she was injured in the past.

Tim forced himself to breathe. "How badly is Cass hurt?"

The only sign of Dick's surprise was a split-second of hesitation. "She's just a little banged up. Currently sleeping it off. I'm sure she, uh, would have called as soon as she woke up."

"Okay," Tim rasped. Oh, right, breathing was an ongoing thing. He was having trouble focusing. "Why--why are you calling from Steph's phone?"

"Figured you were more likely to pick up," Dick told him, his tone aiming for levity.

Tim could understand the thought process, but... "I would have assumed it was an emergency immediately if you'd called from your own number."

It's not like they'd ever talked on the phone before this.

"I didn't realize you even had it," Dick told him honestly. "I guess I should have figured Steph gave it to you."

She hadn't. All of their numbers had just showed up in his phone the day after Bruce Wayne first decided that he wanted to give Tim additional training; he was pretty sure it was Oracle's doing. Not that that was important at the moment.

"Has anyone emailed Steph's professors?"

Bewildered, Dick said, "Uh, I don't--"

"I'll take care of it," Tim said, automatically, and dropped heavily into his desk chair, fingers clattering across the keyboard as he logged into his account and then, further, into Stephanie's school email. Of course there was a bitchy email from Professor Morgan, chiding her for missing their appointment. Tim took vindictive pleasure in informing him that--he paused. "What's the official cover story? Car accident last night?"

"Mugging."

Tim's typing faltered. That probably meant GSWs, or something else they couldn't easily explain away. "Which hospital?"

"Gotham General."

The closest of Gotham's major hospitals to Red Bird's offices; there were small mercies in life. Tim copied and pasted his draft email into four other windows, adjusting the salutation to address each of Stephanie's professors, and then sent them off. "I can be there in ten minutes."

Tim stood, and his vision tunneled as his heart did something funny in his chest. "Dick," he said, his voice suddenly small, and then found he had no other words.

"She's going to be okay, Tim," Dick promised again, his voice softening.

"And how is she right now?" he asked. His hands were shaking. The trembling had reached his voice as well.

(Tim had had this recurring nightmare for years now. He was sixteen years old and his best friend was hanging limply from heavy shackles. There was a pool of blood on the floor below her. He pressed his fingers to her neck and he didn't find a pulse.

He was sixteen years old, sneakers catching at each creaking metal step as he carried his best friend out of the basement she'd been tortured in, and she died in his arms.

He was sixteen years old, hanging tight to his best friend's hand as she lay in a hospital bed, looking impossibly tiny for a girl who had always been so much larger than life. Robin, the Girl Wonder. He hadn't realized that he'd still thought of her as something more than human, until the machine flatlined and his brain just refused to compute that Dr. Thompkins couldn't bring her back.)

"She's hurt pretty badly," Dick admitted quietly. "But she's a fighter, Tim. You know that."

"Yeah," he rasped. "Yeah, I do. I'll--ten minutes."

"Breathe, Tim. We'll see you in ten."

***

Tim paused in the doorway to his office, staring blankly at the man on his couch. "You're still here?"

"Excuse me?!" Curry snapped. "You--"

"Have a family emergency," Tim said flatly. "And I wasn't going to take your case anyway. You can get out."

***

Stephanie's hands were tanned a honeyed brown. They were callused, strong, warm. Well--they were usually warm. They weren't, today. Tim had one of her hands folded between both of his, giving her back what warmth he could.

He couldn't help being relieved that she didn't look small, even lying there so still and so silent, an IV line trailing from her opposite arm and a cannula in her nose. She was terrifyingly pale and cold, but--she wasn't small, and it had been a long time since he'd thought of her as anything but oh-so-joyously human. That made this all a little easier to stomach than it had been when they were kids.

(He'd say it had been a while since his hero worship had worn off, but that would be a lie. Stephanie Brown would always be his hero, as Robin, as Batgirl, as herself.)

Damian was curled up in a chair in the corner of the room, his arms crossed over his chest and his knees pulled up, his pointy chin touching his chest as he snored. He'd been awake when Tim had gotten there, greeting him quietly and without his usual spit and vinegar. Batgirl and Black Bat, Dick had already told him quietly, had gotten hurt while rescuing Robin. Damian wasn't taking it especially well.

For once, it was easy to remember he was fourteen years old.

Tim had ducked out a couple hours earlier to run by his apartment; he'd called Bernard and had the breakdown he'd so narrowly avoided while on the phone with Dick. He'd pulled himself back together and let his neighbor Kerry know that he was going to be gone for a couple days, if she'd be willing to swing by to feed the goldfish that Cassandra had given him as an early birthday present. (Their apartments shared the landing of the fire escape, and he always left the window unlocked. He didn't even need to give her a key.) He packed clothes and toiletries; his laptop; a Scrabble board, coloring book, and set of colored pencils that he'd already handed off to Dick, Duke, and Jason where they were hanging out in the waiting room.

(The younger Waynes were all just unrecognizable enough to escape scrutiny. Bruce had also come by, face hidden behind sunglasses and a hat, but there was no explaining why Bruce Wayne would be concerned for a random college student when Stephanie had no official connection to their family, and so he didn't stay long enough to get caught. Tim thought there was a very obvious solution to this dilemma, which would be hiring Stephanie as a math tutor for Damian, but what the hell did he know?

Better, she'd be good at it, and from what he heard, the kid actually needed it.)

But most importantly, Tim had also brought blankets: a massive, fluffy one with a print of Stephanie's own face on it--his Hanukkah present from the year before--and a quilt that his great-grandmother had made back in Germany. It had made it to Gotham in a steamer trunk, wrapped around picture frames and the family menorah, and throughout Tim's childhood, Jack had used to keep it folded on the couch in his study. Tim had added the quilt to Stephanie's hospital bed (her hands were so cold) as soon as he returned.

He stood, now, and draped the fluffy one around Damian. It was a mark of the kid's exhaustion that he barely twitched, even when Tim awkwardly leaned down to prod it down into the space between Damian and the chair to tuck him in. The Waynes had been here since 4 AM the night before. It was well into the afternoon, now.

Tim straightened and pressed his hands over his face, forcing himself to breathe in and out, slowly and calmly.

The door clicked open, and he dropped his hands, blinking, as Crystal Brown slipped into the room, juggling a tray of coffee cups and a bag of bagel sandwiches. "I'm back," she said unnecessarily, her voice kept low in deference to the sleeping birds.

There was a side table next to Stephanie's bed, just large enough for all the food Crystal had brought. She handed him one of the coffees--and his credit card, a quirk of amusement on her lips. "Dabbling in reverse pick pocketing now, I see. It was a nice try," she told him dryly. "But I didn't use it."

Tim sighed, but he folded it back into his wallet without an argument. "Thank you, Crystal."

"Have a sandwich," she ordered, and she squeezed his shoulder as she ducked around him to take the seat he'd vacated. "Hey, sweetheart," she said softly, reaching out to brush a strand of Stephanie's beautiful blonde hair back behind her ear. She kept talking, her voice low and sweet, and Tim fiddled with his phone as he politely tuned her out.

He snapped a picture of Damian and texted it to Dick. He snapped a picture of his bagel and texted it to Bernard as proof that he was eating. He thought about it for a moment, and then he texted both of them to Stephanie, too.

His phone buzzed a moment later as Dick added him to a groupchat with all of his siblings, Stephanie, Harper, Wendy, Barbara, and Alfred; he'd shared the picture of Damian with the rest of them with approximately a hundred hearteye and sobbing emojis appended to it. There was a cascade of responses, mostly amused--

Then Cassandra called him.

Tim flashed the screen at Crystal, tipping his head towards the door, and slipped out as she nodded and waved him off. "Hey," he said, sandwiching the phone between his ear and his shoulder. "How are you feeling?"

"Come break me out?" She sounded exhausted. "I have a concussion. Alfred and Bruce won't let me leave."

"Come break you out of... Wayne Manor?"

Cassandra hummed a negative. "Batcave."

Tim took a thoughtful bite of his sandwich. It was cream cheese and lox, because why mess with the classics? "Shouldn't you be calling Jason for this?"

Cassandra snorted.

Yeah, okay. Just because she'd used one of Batman's offworld Justice League missions to spend three months lovingly beating the shit out of her brother and tearing his criminal empire apart until he got over himself and stopped purposefully antagonizing his family members by brutally murdering criminals, didn't mean the two of them didn't still have some significant differences of opinion. They were friendly, usually, and siblings, always, but Tim could see why she wasn't interested in going to him for help when she was hurting and vulnerable.

(In the interest of full transparency, Tim could understand why anyone, ever, in any situation, wouldn't want to ask Jason Todd for help. Stephanie would be laughing at him if she were awake.)

"All right, sure," he said, shrugging. "Give me thirty minutes."

***

For Timothy Jackson Drake, breaking into the most secure location on earth was as simple as walking up to the hidden door and punching in a passcode.

He couldn't even take credit for it. See, six years ago, Batman's most innovative Robin had run into a dilemma: in case of an emergency, she wanted Tim to be able to remove her utility belt, drive her motorcycle, or even access the Batcave, but it was all locked with biometrics and/or finger print scanners. She couldn't just add his information to the system; Batman would have noticed that immediately, and if he hadn't, then Oracle certainly would have.

That's when she had one of her moments of brilliance--because there was a default profile with basic administrative access that Batman used as a template when he added new users to the system. It was originally constructed as a clone of Batman's own user profile, and so had biometric and fingerprint information associated with it, not that anyone ever opened those files. Because why would they?

He texted Cassandra that he'd arrived, leaving Stephanie's shitty impala parked just out of sight of the cameras (accessing the Cave with a viable passcode and matching biometrics meant that no alarms would be activated, but that didn't mean Bruce or Alfred couldn't glance at the cameras and spot the car), and tucked his hands in his pockets as he waited for her to confirm that the Cave was clear.

Recording Tim's fingerprints and a copy of his biometric scan would have been harder before the Mount Justice base was handed over to Steph's team, but afterwards, it was the work of moments to replace the data associated with the Batcomputer's default user profile. The next time Bruce pushed a system update to all of their interfaces: bam.

All Tim had to do was memorize the twelve-digit default passcode that Stephanie had copied down for him.

His phone pinged a moment later, and he descended the long, narrow passageway into the earth. Cool air washed over him, leaving him hunching his shoulders towards his ears and tucking his elbows even closer to his body. Water clung to the walls, and it glistened dimly in the orange glow of the thin tracks of emergency lighting.

For all that he'd theoretically had access to it for over six years now, Tim had never been to the Batcave before. He'd never encountered an emergency that drastic.

He had been training "with Batman" for months now, but in reality, he'd been training with Batgirl and Black Bat at the secondary Cave that took up the entire floor below Cassandra's apartment. He suspected that Bruce was easing him into things, probably in large part because of the overwhelming paranoia that had driven his lifestyle since before Tim had been born, but Tim was, in all honesty, quite grateful for the reprieve. He may have been best friends with Robin since he was a freshman in high school, but he was pretty sure that if Batman had just taken him down to the Batcave and tossed a bo staff to him, his brain may have imploded.

Today, he fully expected to be too tired to have any kind of fanboy freak out. And he was... mostly. He'd heard a lot about it, even seen a few pictures over the years, but the Cave still brought him up short when he cleared the final corner.

The line of costumes on the far side of the room was tempting. But he forced himself towards the soft white light of the mock-medbay on his left; they only had maybe ten minutes to make their getaway before Crystal couldn't keep Bruce on the phone any longer or Alfred finished signing for the flower delivery that Tim had arranged for.

(He didn't get tricky with it. They were addressed from him to Cassandra as a get well soon.)

"I have some questions," he said, crouched at Cassandra's side as he helped her unhook herself from the IV line.

Her eyes crinkled in a tired smile, and she guided him to turn around so she could climb, koala-like, onto his back. (She didn't need him to carry her; but she was exhausted and hurting and worried, and Tim was a warm, steady presence.) Her bony chin dug into his shoulder as he hooked his hands under her knees and pushed himself to his feet.

"I don't know why there's a dinosaur, either," she told him.

"Makes me feel better," he admitted. He waved at the nearest camera, knowing that Alfred and Bruce would be reviewing the footage as soon as they noticed Cassandra was gone (and her motorcycle wasn't), and Cassandra echoed the motion with a huff of laughter.

"You should ask Dick," she told him. "It was before the rest of our time."

"Even Barbara?" Tim kept his steps smooth as they entered the rougher floor of the tunnel, remembering that the world's deadliest limpet on his back was nursing a mild concussion.

Cassandra hummed thoughtfully. "I don't know. But I don't think she spent much time around the Batcave back then anyway. Batgirl was... different when it was hers. The mantle is still a partner and not a subordinate, but... we work more as a team now, all of us, and Batman does a lot of the coordinating for the team. When Barbara was Batgirl, she didn't take any orders from Batman."

"Still doesn't," Tim said, with a wisp of a grin.

"Damn straight," Cassandra agreed.

"Damn straight," Oracle echoed, and Tim flinched, spinning to peer towards the speaker on the ceiling of the tunnel. "Relax, I'm not going to sell you out. But Alfred's on his way down, so you better put some pep in your step, Timmy."

"Right," he said weakly, and he started walking as quickly as he could without jostling Cassandra.

"And Tim?"

"Yes, ma'am?"

"I can see Steph's fingerprints all over this. As soon as she's awake, you two are going to tell me how the hell you got in here."

"Busted," Cassandra snickered.

***

"You're cheating."

"How could I possibly be cheating, Jason?"

"I don't fucking know, Duke, but I know you're--"

"A7."

"Fuck off!"

Duke cupped a hand around his ear, leaning toward Jason across the coffee table they'd commandeered. "Sorry, what was that? Did you mean to say that I sunk--"

"You sunk my battleship," Jason grit out. "Quit fucking cheating."

"You started it," Duke said calmly, as he stuck another red pin in his map.

"How dare you. I would never cheat at something as holy as Battleship." Jason stretched. "J4."

"Miss."

"Stop fucking cheating!"

"It was a miss!"

"It was not!"

"Oh, my god, you're both complete shit at this," Tim said exhaustedly, as he traded out his yellow colored pencil for a purple one. "Jason's using the mirror behind your shoulder to look at your map, Duke, and Dick's been using morse code to tell Duke what moves to make, Jason. Get some class and bend your aircraft carrier into an L like the rest of us."

If he hadn't already been certain that Bruce Wayne was a few eggs short of a carton, he'd have known as soon as the man capitulated to his children's requests for further board games by bringing Battleship. At least it wasn't Uno, he supposed.

(And at least Bruce hadn't tried to get Cassandra to go back to the Manor with him when he left again, because Tim was pretty sure it would have turned into Bat v. Bat brawl in the middle of the hospital waiting room. Bruce also hadn't asked how Tim had gotten into the Batcave, although he'd pulled Dick aside and had a quiet conversation that had left Dick glancing thoughtfully at Tim and Cassandra for an hour afterward.)

"Who asked you for your opinion, Encyclopedia Brown?" Jason shot back, as Duke spun in his seat to squint at the curved mirror that the nurses' station used to observe the door from their seats behind the desk.

"Behave," Cassandra ordered. She was tucked into Tim's side, doodling abstract designs into the corner of his coloring book while he shaded in the cartoon butterfly at the center of the page.

"Yeah, Jay, behave," Dick said, laughing, and Jason turned around to sock him, hard, in the shoulder.

"I'll show you--"

Crystal cleared her throat, and every head in their corner of the waiting room snapped up to look at her. She didn't leave them in suspense:

"Steph's awake." She held up a hand, stilling the scramble before it could begin. "A couple of you at a time, please. Let's not overwhelm her."

Tim lifted his arm, letting Cassandra crawl out from underneath it, and then oofed with surprise as she grabbed his hand in a vice grip and dragged him up after her. "Dibs," she declared, and flicked Jason in the forehead as they passed.

Tim hopped the leg sweep that Jason fired off in retaliation and shifted his hand inside of Cass's so that he could interlock their fingers. "I could've waited," he murmured, bumping his shoulder gently with hers. This was the first time he'd even been able to be at the hospital when Stephanie was injured; he was used to waiting until the Bats were done fawning over her before he got the chance to.

"She'd be sad," Cassandra told him confidently.

"Well, we can't have that," Tim drawled.

The door to Stephanie's room was cracked, and Cassandra held a finger up to her lips as they approached, her head tilting to the side as she slowed Tim to a stop.

"--unacceptable risk." Damian's voice drifted out of the room, stiff and quiet. "You never think through the consequences before throwing yourself into--"

"Damo," Steph cut him off, her voice rough and distant from the pain meds. "I love you, too. Shut up and cuddle me."

"You are not listening--"

"I will never apologize for getting hurt instead of you," Stephanie said flatly. "Okay?" Her voice dropped, a whisper that barely reached Tim's ears where he stood, the toes of his Converse just out of sight of the open door. "It's Batgirl's job, kiddo. Do you know how many fires Cass pulled my ass out of when I was Robin?"

Cassandra squeezed Tim's hand and slipped past him into the room then, and he crossed his arms and propped his hip against the wall. There was more whispering, even quieter than before, and the hitched breath of a child fighting tears. Tim closed his eyes, waiting until the whispering and the rustling of blankets and creaking of ancient bedsprings abated before he knocked, lightly, and poked his head into the room.

Cassandra had pulled a chair even closer to Stephanie's bedside than Tim had, her legs folded like a lotus underneath herself and the trailing edge of Tim's quilt pulled across her lap as she held Stephanie's hand. Damian had crawled up onto the hospital bed at Stephanie's side, his hoodie pulled up and its cords yanked tight so that all that poked out from underneath it was his reddened nose.

Stephanie's dark blue eyes met Tim's... and her entire face lit up.

"Boyfriend," she said, a little breathless, and he sank into a crouch next to her bedside, opposite from Cassandra. He pressed his forehead against the cool metal railing, fumbling to find her hand beneath all of the blankets--the one with her face on it had joined the stack when Damian did--and clung to it desperately.

"Girlfriend," he rasped.

"You're here."

"Another advantage to coming clean to Batman." Tim rose back up on shaky legs, cradling Steph's face between his hand as he pressed a dry kiss to her forehead. "Of course I'm here. You're my best friend."

"That's reductive," she teased sleepily, raising her hand to squeeze the nape of his neck, and Tim huffed a watery laugh.

"Yeah, well, platonic soulmates would be reductive, and people would get the wrong idea if I went around calling you my other half."

The old joke made her smile, just like it always did. She stroked the fine hairs at the back of his neck, her eyes hazy with pain meds. "I'm sorry you had to see me like this," she told him, her voice wobbling in a way that made Damian peer out from beneath his hoodie, a frown etched between his heavy eyebrows. "I know that it makes you think about..."

Tim's eyes flickered shut, and he pressed his forehead against hers. "I'll get over it," he said thickly. "You just focus on getting better, Stephie."

She snorted. "On it, boss."

"Yeah, yeah." He pulled away, swiping tears off of his face as he straightened and stepped back. "We need witsec, by the way," he told her, as he pulled over a chair to drop heavily into it. "I busted Cass out of the Batcave today, and Oracle's going to kill us when she finds out what you did. I think it worked even better than you expected it to; I'm not sure it logged an entry into the system at all."

Stephanie hummed her amusement, pulling the fluffy blanket up to her chin as she wiggled down into her pillows. "Really? You finally saw it? What'd you think?"

"Bruce Wayne should be on Hoarders," Tim said, immediately, and Stephanie started laughing so hard it sounded painful.

"You're the fucking worst," she wheezed. "I have bullet holes in me, Timothy; you're not allowed to say shit like that."

"That sounds like a personal problem."

"I literally hate you."

"I'm literally your favorite person in the entire world."

"Ugh, stop projecting."

Tim squeezed her hand. As soon as her laughter faded, her exhaustion had begun to creep back in. "You want me to go trade out with one of the morons in the waiting room before you fall asleep again?"

"Nah," she mumbled, twining her fingers with his. "They'll get their chance later. Just... just stay, Boyfriend."

"Whatever you want, Girlfriend," he promised softly. "I'll stay as long as you want me to."