Dick stared at Damian, a mixture of shockelationdisbeliefrage warring for his attention. He cast his eyes around the room, lingering on Bruce, who was putting down Talons left and right with clinical precision, Tim, who had just used one Talon's shoulders to vault himself across the room, and finally looked back down to Robin. He opened his mouth to say-something, but what came out was a strangled, "What the fuck?"
He cleared his throat and tried again.
"I mean, what are you alldoing here?"
Damian looked at him haughtily. Well, Dick couldn't really tell what his eyes were doing behind the mask, but he'd spent enough time around this particular gremlin to know what the defensive slant of his shoulders meant. Robin drew himself up to his impressive height of five-foot-zero and said with the authority of a thousand kings, "Obviously, we're rescuing you. And Hood, apparently, but if we get out of here fast enough, we may be able to leave him behind."
The last part, while still snarky, was added in a somewhat hopeful tone. Dick's head was still reeling. Part of his mind was singing – they came for you! – while part of him was burning with rage – Bruce brought Damian into the Court's lair he's like twelve what does he think he's doing also the Court and my useless grandfather are trying to hurt my REAL family- also while he was trying to figure out how they had even found him in the first place. It took him a minute to realize Damian had even spoken.
"What? No, we can't leave Jason! How- what- when- Bruce!"
This last part was said mostly because a Talon, by the courtesy of Bruce's fist, had just gone sailing over Dicks head and into the wall behind him leaving a somewhat-human shaped dent in the moldering cement. Oh, yes. This was a life-or-death situation, and there was currently a fight happening around him.
Dick turned back to the Talon, which was in considerably worse shape than he was before he had made contact with the wall. As he watched, the assassin popped his shoulder back into place with an unnerving crunch! His spine followed quickly, vertebrae righting themselves and causing the Talon to jerk about like a puppet on strings.
Dick also happened to notice that this wasn't any old Talon. No, Bruce had managed to fling William Cobb directly at Dick's head. Just his luck.
Cobb straightened up and got to his feet, the final tremors of his violent reanimation leaving his frame wracked and shaking like a sapling in a tornado. Dick shuddered as well, but the disgust did nothing to quell his rising determination. Cobb would never touch him, or anyone he cared about, ever again.
That was certain.
Cobb eyed him as he moved closer, and Dick could tell that he was smiling under the mask. Anger sat in his stomach like a ball of molten lead, hot and heavy and poisonous. He flung himself at his grandfather, no longer willing to hold anything back.
He thrust his hand into the Talon's solar plexus and was rewarded with a soft grunt of pain. But then the assassin twisted his body sharply to the side and wrapped the crook of his elbow around Dick's throat. He felt a brief flash of panic as his airway constricted, before remembering that he didn't actually need to breathe anymore.
He let himself go limp, and felt Cobb's suffocating grip relax, just a little. 'Just a little' was more than enough. Dick jerked himself out of the chokehold and kicked his grandfather roundly in the chest, feeling several ribs collapse under the weight of the strike. Cobb exhaled sharply, then winced as the movement jostled his ruined rib cage.
Dick watched in horror and fascination as the outline of several ribs begin to writhe and knit themselves back together underneath the smooth black of Cobb's suit. He shook himself out of it, then resumed his attack.
He leapt after him, fist flying towards his nose. Cobb reacted accordingly, catching him by the throat and flinging him to the ground. The back of his skull hit the rock-hard ground and bounced. There was a wetness under his hairline and a ringing in his ears.
He climbed back up to his feet, blinking bright white spots from his eyes. Whatever damage had been done would be gone in a few minutes anyway.
Cobb snarled, a sound that should not have been possible for the human throat and vocal cords, and rushed at him. Dick ducked under the first swipe, blocked the second, and then went in for one of his own.
He crashed into Cobb's nose with the heel of his palm, angling his wrist to get as much force into the strike as possible. He felt, more than heard, cartilage splintering under his hand and shards of bone grinding together and forcing their way into his grandfather's brain.
Cobb dropped like a rock. Dick knew it would take a little bit of time to heal from damage this delicate and looked around for something to restrain him with.
"Nightwing!"
Secret identities were pretty much useless at this point, but he turned his head. Tim was waving at him with something in his hand. When he saw that he had successfully gotten Dick's attention, he tossed him the whatever-it-was.
Dick caught it easily and then held it up to his face to examine it. The object in question seemed to be a pellet about the same size and shape as a nerf bullet, filled with purple goop. He looked at Tim questioningly.
"if you break the capsule, the contents inside begin to grow and harden. We've been using it to restrain any Talons we capture because they can get out of handcuffs too easily."
He flashed Tim a thumbs up and emptied the contents of the pellet onto Cobb. Cobb had not fallen into the most graceful of positions. His butt was in the air and his cheek was smashed into the dirty floor. His sightless goggles seemed to glare at Dick, as if to say you will suffer for this indignity!
It gave Dick great pleasure that he would be stuck in this position until Batman decided to pry him off the floor.
The purple goop did its job, swelling until only Cobb's face remained visible to the outside. The rest of him had been encased inside of the purple blob.
Dick looked around to see how everyone else was doing. Amy had four Talons on the floor around her, each encased in a purple nightmare. Bruce was taking down the last mobile Talon, and Jason was trying to stick an unconscious one to the ceiling with the purple stuff.
Tim was filming him, and when Bruce looked at him disapprovingly, he simply shrugged and said: "What? It's for science." Damian huffed.
Dick looked back down at Cobb, who was still healing. A heavy gloved hand landed on his shoulder and he flinched, ready to spring back into action, but it was just Bruce.
"Dick," he said in a low rumble. "It's over. You can relax."
Dick felt himself sag at the verbal confirmation. Cobb was at his feet, entangled in a purple lump. The rest of the Talons were sharing his current fate, eerily silent and watching but still caught like mice in a glue trap. It really was over.
Cobb, of course chose this moment to wake up. He jolted back to reality, or tried to, since he was still restrained. This meant that his neck jerked back, and then slammed his face into the floor. He glared up at Dick hatefully with as much dignity he could muster.
"Well grandson," he began. His voice was slightly muffled, due to the fact that his face was currently being mashed into the ground.
"I'm sorry," Dick cut in, "but could you speak up? I'm having a little trouble understanding you at the moment." If possible, the expression on Cobb's face grew even more murderous. The light in his eyes could have made marble statues turn and run, sort of like a reverse Medusa.
Dick met his gaze unflinching, yellow eyes on yellow.
Amy ruined the moment, by stomping up to them and kicking Cobb soundly in the teeth. The hateful gleam faded from his eyes as several teeth scattered across the floor. They sounded like marbles.
"I hear you can regrow those," she spat. "So, I can do that as many times as I want. That one was for Cortez." Then, as promised, she kicked him in the face again, angrily wiped tears out of her eyes, and stormed away again.
Cobbs mouth worked like he wanted to say something but was shocked into muteness.
Jason was the first one to break the silence. "Wow. So can we like, keep her?"
The fury on Amy's face could have melted glaciers.
"I'll take that as a 'no' then," said Jason.
"Bruce," said Dick, once they were back at the Manor, "How did you know where to find us? There's absolutely no way you could have known where I was, unless you were tracki-"
Bruce winced, a distinctly un-Batmanlike gesture. "Well-"
'Oh my god," said Dick. "You were totally tracking me."
"Actually-"
"No, don't 'actually' me Bruce! I am an adult! I don't need you hovering me anymore. Were you using satellite or drone tech? God, you bring helicopter parenting to a whole new level."
"Dick, listen,-"
"No! I told you specifically that I wanted to cut ties with Gotham, not the people in it, but you're making me rethink that last statement!"
"Dick would you stop talking and listen for once? Alfred put the tracker on you, not me. I didn't even know about it, not until it went dark and he got worried."
"ALFRED?!"
Bruce nodded.
"Alfred put a tracer on me?"
"Yes, we've established that."
"Oh my god. That's where you get it from. But if it went dark, how did you figure out where I was? It would have been discarded before they took me to the Court."
"Tim and Damian kidnapped a Talon."
"Together? As in they willingly worked together? To get me back?" He waited for Bruce to affirm this. "That might be the sweetest thing I've ever heard."
Suddenly a loud crash sounded from outside the parlor. Tim came sprinting in, covered in bits of drywall and wallpaper. Jason followed, looking forcibly unconcerned.
"So," he said, sticking his hands in his pockets in a display of overt casualness, "Do you want the good news or the bad news?"
Dick looked at Bruce, apprehension written across his face. "Good news," they said together.
Jason grinned sheepishly. "I won't do it again."
Bruce blanched and Dick let himself smile.
It was good to be back.
Hey! So it turns out I'm not dead! The past few years have been pretty insane, so I haven't really had time to work on IITWW, if anyone is still out there reading this lmao. Long story short, I found out I have ADHD and depression, joined drama, started having migraines, and learned a lot about myself. I started this when I was 13, and I turned 16 last year, so hopefully there will be a noticeable uptick in quality.
If you want to talk to me, please PM me or review, or message me on my tumblr, the-cyberpunk-samurai. I don't post much on there except drawings, but I'm always down to talk!