Family Ties : A Batfamily Story

Chapter 57

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POV Tim

The sun comes to earlier this morning, cutting throw my nightmares and day dreams alike as I realize I'm not waking up in my bed at all. My bed is buried ten feet under the rumble of my home. It's not the best thought to wake up to.

Babs gives me a sympathetic look as we drive through the waking city and into the rolling hills of Gotham county. She takes my hand as we step out of the car doors and onto the morning dew of the earth, the only still untouched it seems. Her breath stills as we take in the sight. The wreckage is clearer now in the daylight, the skeleton of the front entrance standing like a lone survive atop the broken bodies of staircases and crippled stone arches. Even Damian stops to stare before Dick ushers us forward.

He looks paler now than yesterday. His cough remains resistant like a smoker's wheeze, drawing in a long breath only to let out a short one. Babs tried to convince him to stay at the penthouse but he is stubborn as ever. We all are, I guess.

I watch him carefully as we make our way through the wreckage in an attempt to find any entrance to the Batcave still usable. Out of all of us, I thought he would be the most broken by this. However, he seems more numb than the usually emotional mourning Dick Grayson that I'm used to. It reminds me too much of how he became when Robyn "died". I decide not to think on it.

"Over here!" Babs calls as she pushes over a half broken door. "I think I found something,"

"What is it?"

She kicks aside the surrounding rubble as we crowd around like crows. It's a chimney sized hole, lined with stainless steel about a half foot thick, the grade Bruce used. The tube spirals down into the black of the Cave, almost untouched besides a few cracks across the lining. Damian gives it a "Tt," before deciding that it isn't interesting enough to look at anymore. Meanwhile Dick often it a small smirk before passing it on the Babs.

"We should have brought a rope."

She laughs for a beat, "I have a different idea, but you aren't gonna like it."

Dick cocks a brow.

"I asked Kori to help us,"

Immediately, he opens his mouth to argue, but Babs cuts him off with a look only Dick can read. He lets his lip close into a purse and looks away.

"Fine,"

She smiles, "Thank you,"

With little more words and a lot of shimming down steel walls, we land on a semi-stable platform of what must be the upper level of the Bat Cave. It's pitch black, the only light coming from the echo of sunlight through the hole in beams of pale light. Kori has since joined us with Roy. They said that Jason and Robyn were busing in a training session. I think they just didn't want to add another conflict to the list. Even now I see Dick squirm in Kori's present, his eye glued to the ground in fake focus. Kori acts more relaxed, though I can see the anxious glances she sends to Roy every time the former couples' eyes accidentally meet. Everyone tried to ignore it.

I am grateful though. I can deal with Kori; I like to think she always liked me back when Dick would bring her to the manor for family dinners and galas. I'm not quite sure now, but by the small, "Hello, Tim," I got upon her arrive, I think she still considers me a friendly. It's Jason I'm worried about. Before all this shit happened last night, I asked him to stay with me. Nothing happened really. He just held me, like I asked, till I my head was quiet enough to close my eyes. But still, I let him get close to me again.