"Batman, what the frak."

Red Hood could practically hear Batman's teeth grinding from across the grimy, blood-soaked warehouse. The Bat didn't even turn to acknowledge his words, preferring to keep systematically beating the thugs, one punch and one kick at a time. Even though they were already down on the ground. "Take care of him."

Red Hood's hands were shaking. It should be him over there beating the bad guys to a pulp. That was what Red Hood did. He did the dirty work while Batman pretended to still have clean hands, just because he didn't take that final last step of putting those who deserved to die beneath the ground. Not today, though. Batman was going berserk and leaving Red Hood to take care of the injured civilian.

The injured civilian. Timothy Jackson Drake-Wayne. Not Red Robin. Tim.

Red Hood turned to the kid. Batman had already let him down from the chains that had been holding him strung from the ceiling, a torn and bloody messy. Tim was slumped on the floor now, unable to hold himself up. Even over the sounds of Batman's fists hitting flesh and the thugs' cries of pain, Red Hood could hear Tim's ragged, desperate breathing. There was something terribly wrong with him. There was something terribly wrong with his hands.

Red Hood took a shaky breath, then put his gun away. He stepped toward the crumpled ball of Timothy Drake, his hands spread open. Tim didn't seem to notice, his forehead pressed to the dirty concrete, eyes closed and body limp. "Tim. Timmy."

Tim shook his head as much as he could manage. Tried to squeeze his eyes shut even harder. Trying to pretend that Red Hood wasn't there, that this wasn't really happening, it wasn't real. Red Hood didn't blame him, but he also couldn't let it continue.

"Tim, I'm here. We're here. B's on the other side of the room beating those bastards unconscious as we speak. You're safe now."

Red Hood knelt down beside him, his hands hovering. He was afraid to touch him, afraid to cause more harm. Tim's clothes hung on him in tatters, what used to be a graphic tee and a decent set of jeans. He was barefoot, shivering like a lamb in a snowstorm. And his entire body was covered with the marks of torture. Bruises, cuts, welts, burns. His face was swollen, both eyes blackened, lips split. The cartilage of one ear was torn. And his hands...

Now that Red Hood was close enough, he could see that Tim's hands had been mangled. They weren't the right shape. Someone had taken a hammer to them. Smashed them. Over and over. Again and again and again, until every bone was shattered.

He had to swallow vomit. "Timmy." His voice cracked. "You're safe now." He didn't believe his own words.

Tim shook his head against the floor. He cracked one eye open and looked up at him. Red Hood had never seen such agony, not on a face this young. Not on the face of one of his brothers, chosen or not.

God, this was going to destroy Dick. Alfred, too. None of the others were going to take it well, either, not even Damian. In an instant, Red Hood flipped from being horrified that he was the one witnessing this to glad that it was him. Better that he bear this sight, the robin who had already been broken and ruined, rather than any of the others.

Tim let his eye fall shut and huffed out a breath against the concrete. Red Hood couldn't sit there and look at him anymore, couldn't watch him shiver and shake on the floor. He reached under him, got an arm around Tim's torso and lifted him up. He did his best to make the motion as smooth and controlled as possible so as not to jar him too much.

Tim still whimpered at the touch, at the movement, but he made no effort to resist. Red Hood pulled him into his lap, trying to shield him from the cold ground as much as he could. He arranged the limp boy carefully on his chest and wrapped his arms loosely around him to offer some modicum of warmth. Tim's head lolled against his neck, breaths puffing in pained and uneven chunks.

"Timmy." He couldn't seem to stop saying his name, now. It was like a reflex, the only word in his head. He raised a gloved hand and rested it on the side of Tim's face and slowly, carefully rocked him in his arms. "You're safe now. It's gonna be okay."

The noise of fighting, if it could be called that, had stopped. Batman must be satisfied that the thugs were down and staying down. He'd probably given them all very nasty concussions. If not, Red Hood would do so later. For now, though, he listened to Batman tying up the bodies for later delivery to the police, and he held his little brother in his arms.

Tim shivered and seemed to come back to himself, just enough to know where he was, who he was with. He shifted in Jason's arms, choking back a whimper, then fell limp on his chest again. His mangled hands rested in his lap, unmoving. "Red Hood."

His voice was slurred, mushy, probably because of his bruised lips and swollen cheeks. Jason blinked back tears. "It's Jason. The bad guys are out. We don't have to use code names right now."

Bruce would disagree. They were still in the open. Anyone could be listening. Jason didn't care. He didn't want to be Red Hood right now. He wanted to be Tim Drake's brother. He let go of Tim long enough to reach up and rip off the hood. It didn't matter now.

"What are you doing here?" Tim asked.

It was almost unbelievable. Jason almost laughed. He didn't have much space in his body for humor right now, though. "B told me what was going on. We swooped in to save you."

Half an hour ago, Jason had been riding his bike, just keeping an eye out for a mugging to foil or a potential rapist to knee in the crotch. He hadn't even known that Tim Drake was missing, kidnapped. It must have been on the news. He was taken in his civilian clothes. The city would have noticed and cared that the young CEO of Wayne Enterprises was gone. But Jason hadn't.

Then came the call from Bruce. A mission. It was unusual for Batman to call on Red Hood, and he started to tease him. It was on his lips, something caustic and cruel, before the desperate edge in Batman's voice stopped him. It had to be Red Hood, no one else. Nightwing was in Bludhaven, Black Bat was international, and Batman was not going to bring his little desert Robin on this particular job. Even after all Damian had seen, it wasn't right to let him see this, too.

Now, Jason was both furious and grateful that Batman had called on him, after all. It was a storm in his head, driving him just that little bit more crazy than he already was. He wanted to jump to his feet and put a bullet in the head of every person who had ever laid a hand on Tim Drake. He wanted to grab Batman by the collar and scream in his face, demand why it had taken him so long to find his third son when Tim had obviously been suffering the worst kind of torture for hours, maybe days.

More than either of those things, though, he wanted to sit on the floor and hold Tim in his arms and do his best to protect him, even a little bit, even for just a little while. So that was what he did.

"No." Tim shifted again, uncomfortable and unable to ease it. Jason held him a touch closer. "I mean… Why did you bother? If you'd just waited a little while longer, you would have been rid of me for good. I thought that was what you wanted."

Jason's heart froze in horror. His arms froze where they were, too, holding Tim pinned in place. He couldn't breathe for about ten seconds. It was like the air had been punched out of him.

He found his breath again. It hurt sucking in, blowing out, but he forced it to move. "Tim." His voice sounded high and hysterical to his own ears. "Are you saying we should have left you to die? To be tortured to death?"

There was a shadow to his right. A presence. Jason looked up and saw Batman standing there. Looming, like he always did. But he was frozen, too. Tim seemed unaware of his presence. He curled up into Jason's arms as much as he could, instinctively seeking warmth.

"No," he muttered against Jason's neck. His voice was dreamy and vague. He wasn't really himself. Then again, maybe this was the truest Tim Jason had ever been allowed to see. "I just thought that was what you wanted."

"Timmy, that was one time. I only tried to kill you once, and I was pretty damn insane at the time. It's not how I feel anymore, okay? It's not."

Jason heard the desperation in his voice, and he wasn't sure why it was there. He just really, really wanted Tim to believe him. He gave Batman a wild glance, begging for help. But the Bat just stood there, unmoving, unspeaking. Unhelpful, like usual when there was no physical threat to vanquish. No bad guys left to beat, no ticking bomb to dismantle. Just a kid, wounded and tortured and half-dead and saying things that made those around him want to rip off their own ears.

"Why not?" Tim asked. "It's true. Everyone would be better off if I wasn't around."

"Tim." Desperation gave way to seething fury, hissing through Jason's teeth. "That is not even remotely true. Who's been telling you that? I'll kill them. I swear I will. They're dead."

"No one's been saying that." The words were still in that dreamy, loopy tone that was so unlike the Tim Jason thought he knew. "I just know it, that's all. It's pretty easy to figure out. I'm really smart, you know."

"Yeah? Well sometimes you're pretty damn stupid, too. No one would be better off if you were dead, Timothy Drake-Wayne. Everyone in the city is better off for you being here. Everyone in the world."

Tim had the pure audacity to laugh against his neck. Jason felt a warm, sticky spatter and smelled something metallic, and he knew it was blood. "Hyperbole. You're always so full of hyperbole, Red Hood."

"it's Jason," he spat. "And you're full of hyperbole, too. Saying everyone would be better off if you weren't around. What a load of horse manure."

Tim drew another breath, probably to say something else horrifying and earth-shattering. But Bruce chose that moment to step in. He knelt down next to where Jason sat on the floor. He'd pulled back the cowl, revealing his face. Grim mouth, haunted eyes. He reached out to Tim with open hands, drawing his attention with almost no effort.

"Tim." His voice was soft, almost inaudible. Still, the entire world seemed suddenly silent, and that one word echoed and resonated in the empty space like the chime of a bell. Tim shut his mouth and stared at him, shattered and wordless.

"Partner." Bruce laid a hand on his head, gloved fingers carefully brushing over his bloody, matted hair. "We've got to get you to a hospital. Please let us help you."

"Hospital," Jason echoed, almost as shocked by this as everything else that had happened in the last half hour. "Not the cave? Not Alfred?"

Bruce shook his head, the movement jerky and unwilling. He gestured at Tim's hands, mangled in his lap. "We can't… This needs more help than we can provide. We have to…"

So strange to hear Bruce without words. To hear Batman struggling to express himself. Another thing that wasn't right, another revelation to add to the long, awful list.

"Timmy." Bruce petted the kid's head again, looking him in the eyes with the kind of steadiness that Jason shrank from. "I'm so sorry, but we can't handle this at the cave. You're going to need specialist help. It's going to take a long, long time. You're in for a rough road, partner. But we're going to be with you every step of the way, I promise. I'm going to be with you. I'm not going to leave you alone, not again."

Jason could tell by the way Tim shivered in his arms that he didn't believe this. Not a word of it. But he nodded and closed his eyes, going limp. Surrendering.

Bruce looked at Jason, too. Right in his eyes. "Please let me take him."

Not a demand. A simple request. Jason nodded wordlessly. Bruce leaned forward and lifted Tim out of Jason's arms and into his own. It was slow, ginger. Achingly gentle. Bruce took great care to arrange Tim's limbs in such a way as to hurt him as little as possible. To move his hands only barely, letting them rest against his stomach. Tim's lips still tightened in pain, his head rocking as he bit back a moan, but Bruce succeeded in picking him up without causing him undue pain much better than Jason had earlier.

It made Jason want to cry again. Some more. Made him wish he'd been awake and aware when Bruce dug him out of that rubble, back then, because maybe it would have been like this. Maybe he wouldn't have gone so crazy and run so far if he'd known how much Bruce cared about him. About all of his sons.

Bruce finally stood up with his wounded child cradled his arms. He stood with his back straight, his face forward. And he strode to the door, where the Batmobile was already waiting. He didn't look back.

A/N: I'm back at it again with my nonsense. I keep having to write the stories I want to read, because I just can't find them in pre-existing fanworks, and here it is happening again.

I'm more nervous about posting this story than I've ever been about a posting a story before, though. Because listen, I was obsessed with Batfam stories, like, twenty years ago. I read all of them I could get my hands on. Tim Drake was my favorite from the moment he was introduced, and he still is.

So imagine how shocked I was when I started tentatively tipping my toes back into comics fandom and discovering just how thoroughly my Timmy has been emotionally destroyed by comics canon. It's awful and amazing. I started reading fics, mostly because I wanted to see him getting the comfort he so richly deserves. I wanted to read something long, and involved, and gen, that mostly focused on Tim being loved and told that he's wanted. I found some good ones, but never quite what I was looking for.

Then one night I had a dream that was basically a fic. I wrote it about it on my tumblra few weeks ago. It was a typical hurt/comfort story, where the woobie gets kidnapped and tortured and then rescued and comforted, but I woke up before the comfort really got started, and I was really mad. So I started writing it.

The problem is that I still haven't caught up on comics canon from the twenty years I've missed. I've started reading furiously, but there's a lot, and I'm starting back with the stories I loved lo these many years ago to refresh myself on why I loved them in the first place. So I don't know how off my characterization is going to be, and I hate that. Characterization is VERY important to me.

Basically I'm writing the Bruce and Dick I loved in the nineties, and the Timmy I've seen from recent canon who is a bit bitter and depressed and almost always tired and has been through way too much pain and heartache in way too short a time. The Bruce I remember was a loving father, if a bit distant and bad at communication. The Dick I remember was an amazing big brother who played and laughed with Tim and wanted to be involved in his life.

I don't know if that's true of the current canon. But it's what I'm writing.

So anyway. Sorry for the super long author's note. All this to say, that if my characterization doesn't quite mesh with how you see the characters, please forgive me and enjoy the story for what it is and what it's meant to be. Which is just Tim Drake getting a lot of love. That's all. That's the only point.

He does get hurt REALLY bad, though.

I've written five chapters of this so far. I don't know how many there will be in the end. I never do when I start writing one of these epic hurt/comfort fics, which I've done in like five fandoms now. Because I'm a fandom grandma.

There will be no slash and no shipping, and even canon romantic relationships will be de-emphasized. It's just how I roll. I'm aro/ace myself, and I do not find romance and sex interesting. What I DO find interesting is friends and family who love each other a whole, whole lot, and sometimes show that in very intense ways, so that's what I write.

Thank you. Enjoy.