Chapter 2

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Dick flinched at the cold compress that was placed on his forehead. "It's ok, honey, it's just me," Leslie said in a soothing voice. He fought through his murky consciousness and opened his eyes to find Bruce, Alfred and Leslie looking down at him.

"What...." he began to ask before Alfred patted him on the arm. "It appears you've had a bit of heat exhaustion, Master Dick."

Dick frowned as he tried to piece together the scattered bits of information from that evening. The steady beeping of a nearby heart monitor brought it back to him all at once. "Tim!" Dick exclaimed and bolted upright in the bed. "I've gotta--" he stopped as he felt the blood drain from his head the same time his stomach lurched. Leslie gently guided him over the side of the bed in time, as he vomited into a bowl which Leslie held ready. She spoke softly and rubbed his back as he emptied the contents of his stomach.

Dick closed his eyes as a strong pair of hands laid him back down, "You've got to lay still while you get some fluids in you, is what you've 'gotta' do." Bruce countered, "Then you can take a lukewarm shower. Then you can see Tim. His status hasn't changed. You didn't miss anything."

Dick sighed and closed his eyes.

"You rest some, hon. I'll be back in a minute to check on you," Leslie said and patted his arm.

When he was sure everyone had left, he turned his head to the side and looked at his brother who lay in the bed next to him. Dick squeezed his eyes shut in an effort to block out the vivid flashbacks from earlier that night.

After making sure the coast was clear, he slowly sat up and turned off the IV valve that brought fluids to his dehydrated body then carefully removed the needle from his arm. Laying there wasn't doing anything for him except making him feel useless, so he peeled back the light blanket he'd been covered with and slid off the bed.

Ten minutes and a shower later, he exited the changing room wearing a pair of faded Levi's jeans, a dark blue T-shirt and a pair of Nike's. Slowly Dick made his way over to the infirmary and leaned against the door frame watching his brother sleep.

'Sleep? Is that all he's doing?' Dick thought to himself, as he recalled pieces of his conversation with Leslie. 'Might need to relearn how to do some things....' seemed like that was the only part he could get a solid grasp on. It hit him with the force of a wrecking ball to his gut. Dick shook his head and pushed himself off the doorway.

"What am I going to do with you, little bro?" Dick said with a sigh and rested his arms on the bed rail. "Hey, Tim. It's time to get up." Dick swallowed hard and tried again. "Come on, lazy butt... I wouldn't want to be you the next time you see Zoanne. From what you said, she was pretty fired up the last time you didn't call." Dick closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose for a minute. "Awww hell, Timmy. You're 17. You should have been out at the movies or hanging around the mall or arcade with some friends... things a teenage boy does. Not running around in a damn cape playing the hero."

Dick gave Tim's hand a firm but gentle squeeze and placed his hand on his brother's head. "It's ok. Rest. I'll be right here, ok? I'm not going anywhere. I promise. Just get better. Ok?" Dick ran his thumb across Tim's forehead a couple times before bringing a chair next to the bed and sat down.

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".... Yowch! What the-?"

"Stay. Still," a deep voice ordered as a hand grabbed his shoulder.

"I swear, you boys make me age by ten years every time I come to fix you up. No one listens to Leslie's orders... oh noooo... just forget the fact that she IS the doctor." Leslie grumbled as she finished inserting a new IV into the back of Dick's hand.

"If you insist on refusing to stay in bed, then you'll just sit here until this bag is empty. You're dehydrated and if you want to do anything for Tim, you'll have to get your body back to square one first."

"Yeah, all right," Dick answered. Truths be told, he was very comfortable in the large chair he'd plopped down in and hadn't even realized he had fallen asleep. "Geeeze, Les.... is Alfred keeping the saline in the freezer these days? I feel like Mr. Freeze is shooting his ray up my arm."

"Oh, stop your complaining," Leslie scolded and walked off.

"Drink this," Bruce said and handed him a sports drink. "Your electrolytes are down."

Dick nodded and cracked the bottle's cap. "So, what are your thoughts?"

"My thoughts?" Bruce asked as he pulled another chair over and sat down. "My thoughts are, Tim's a very strong and healthy young man." He paused and leaned forward, placing his arms on his knees. "He's got a much better shot of making a full recovery than most, under the same circumstances."

Dick didn't reply, just scooted down in his chair and propped his feet up on the frame of Tim's bed.

"What happened out there tonight, Dick?" Bruce asked after a moment, breaking their mutual silence.

Dick finished swallowing and leaned his head back on the chair. "It was a relatively quiet night. We stopped a few muggers, busted up a gang fight." Dick stopped and smiled with a quiet laugh as he picked at the label on his drink bottle. "Most exciting thing all night was this car jacking slash robbery attempt. These two scumbags picked out an elderly couple and ran up on their vehicle at a stop light. Creep chased them out of their car with a gun and his partner came out from the side of a building when they got to the sidewalk and snatched the old lady's purse."

"Nice," Bruce snorted and shook his head.

"Well, Tim took off after the car and I nabbed the other guy, tied him up and returned the purse to the woman." Dick paused to take another drink. "That's the best part of it all, you know? When I came back and returned her purse... her- her smile and... I don't know, just that someone took the time to help them out. They couldn't stop thanking me."

Bruce looked over with a smirk. "Did she give you a hug?"

"You know better than that. When have you ever helped an old lady out and *not* have gotten a hug?"

"Point taken," Bruce said as he sat back in his chair.

"But the best part," he giggled, "was when Tim came back with their car." Dick shook his head and laughed out loud. "He pulls the car up and gets out, right? Well, apparently, the woman, she has very poor eyesight. So, Tim gets out of the car and walks over to the couple to hand the man back his keys.... heh, heh... and the woman, she... she starts clobbering him over the head with her purse, yelling something about `making an honest living and back in her day people *worked* for and *earned* their possessions." Dick held his sides as he laughed for a moment before he could stop enough to finish. "It took both her husband and me to stop the full frontal assault and explain the situation."

"What'd she do then?" Bruce asked, wearing an all too infrequent genuine smile.

"She just looked at him and said in the most endearing grand motherly voice, "Well, why didn't you say something, deary?"

"And I bet he got his hug then, eh?"

Dick nodded, "And three wet kisses." He giggled and wiped away a couple of tears.

Bruce let the light atmosphere linger for a while before asking Dick to go on. "What time did all that happen?"

"About 1:30."

"Then?"

Dick sighed, "Then... Tim wanted to call it an early evening. He asked if I'd go over some study material for an exam he has." Dick stopped and cleared his throat. "Had, today in his French class. Like I said earlier, it was a quiet night so we decided to split the city for one final patrol." Dick stood up and stretched then tossed his empty bottle in the recycle bin.

"About 20 minutes later a call came through for a bank alarm set off at Bludhaven First National. Tim's side of town."

"He checked it out?"

"Yeah. Radioed back saying two suspects were visible behind the cashiers counter. He said he checked it out with the infrared lenses and didn't anticipate anyone else to be present."

"Ok. Then what?" pressed Bruce.

"He said he was going in. About ten minutes later he radioed back, saying the perps were apprehended and BPD was on the scene." Dick stopped pacing and looked at Tim for a second before continuing. "He... uh ... was talking about finishing up his side of town when he was cut off. He said something but it was muffled. I could hear a struggle, then nothing. When he didn't respond, I raced to his location. His link was still open and I could hear bits and pieces of conversation. Something about `stupid wannabees' and how they sent in the first two guys as decoys and would go in after the cops split. I guess Timmy here put a kink in their plans. The last thing I heard was something about `how long a bird can last in a cage without windows."

Dick stopped pacing suddenly with a hiss when he'd walked too far and yanked his IV line.

"What time was it then?" Bruce asked.

"Around 2:20," Dick answered as he sat back down. "It took me seven minutes to get there. Could have made it in four, but the No. 3 and 9 trains don't pass each other on Thursdays."

"Rooftop express?" Bruce raised an eyebrow.

"Only way to travel," Dick replied with a smile that vanished as suddenly as it appeared.

"I kept trying to reach him the whole way. Oracle didn't have any luck either, but she was able to modify and filter out a sound clip from the last three seconds of his transmission. A series of clicks then a heavy metal on metal thud."

"Vault door." Bruce knew he was stating the obvious but said it anyway.

"Yeah. That and Cluemaster's shout just as it closed. I got there as the cops were finishing up and was fortunate enough that these guys weren't too proud to team up with Tim and me from time to time. I told them about Robin and Cluemaster being in the vault. They got the manager down there but the combination wouldn't work. They got the makers of the vault door on the horn and within ten minutes a repairman showed up and ran all the possible combinations for that model, then tried the model before and after the current one. Nothing worked. An hour and a half later and we were no closer. It infuriated me! I've battled against everything between a two-foot-high wooden dummy to an evil Superman robot, but I couldn't get a frickin' door open? Tim was fourteen feet from me and I couldn't do a damn thing to help him." Dick jumped up in frustration and paced back and forth a couple times then stood next to his brother and stuck his thumbs in his pockets.

"True." Bruce nodded. "But three and a half of those fourteen feet were solid titanium steel, Dick."

"Yeah, well... finally, they got a welding smith in there with a plasma cutter, and the rest you already know."

"You're not to blame for this, but I know you and you won't allow yourself to believe that," Bruce said.

"I shouldn't have agreed to split up that final patrol."

"Tim's more than capable to go solo. He does it all the time. Hell, he was solo, although be it not by choice, in his second year when Jean Paul was out of control."

"I know, Bruce - but he was in my city, my responsibility," Dick stressed then ran a hand through his hair.

"You know, the advice I'm about to give to you will make me into a hypocrite, but what the hell, I'll say it anyway," Bruce said as he got up and gathered a couple items from one of the cabinets. "Sit down, Dick," Bruce ordered as he pushed a stool over and sat in front of Dick as he began to remove his IV.

"If it were I that was there tonight instead of you, you'd say the same thing that you've told me, probably more than a thousand times before." Bruce paused to swipe the back of Dick's hand with an antibacterial swab then folded a small piece of gauze under a band-aid to make a small pressure bandage.

"That you're just one man. The super powers you possess have been those you've sculpted yourself through years of rigorous training, exercise and self discipline. You don't have heat vision, you don't have a ring whose power is limited only by the creativity of your imagination and you can't materialize through solid walls. You did all you could, with the resources available to you. And sometimes, Dick, they're not enough, and that's damn hard to swallow, but those are the facts. And you cannot dispute the facts."

Bruce got up and threw away the wrappers, used IV and saline bag in the appropriate bins, then bent over and placed a hand on his son's shoulder. "You've given me this advice more times than I can count. I've rarely allowed myself to believe it. Now that I have given it back to you and expect you to believe it, that makes me a hypocrite. But. If you refuse to at least try to apply, your own advise to yourself, well then, Dick, that makes you a hypocrite, also."

Bruce gave Dick's shoulder a pat then walked out to leave him with his own words.

To be continued

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