The Mime of Gotham City

Galas were always a shitshow. From suffering through watching socialites interact with Bruce’s ‘Brucie Wayne’ persona - often met with drunken flirting and spilled wine on expensive dresses - to watching Damian try and not stab anyone… well, it sucked. Dick Grayson wouldn’t wish it on anyone. 

Except maybe Jason. It was always funny to watch the guy pretend to be some distant cousin of theirs, still stuck with his true identity tied to a gravestone. 

Dick had barely made it in time for Bruce’s usual slurred speech. He’d been stationed near him, eyes flittering the tipsy crowds as he navigated the tempts tango of Gotham’s elite and overprivileged. Tim had lingered far enough away to stay irrelevant, though he’d not helped Duke with the same techniques - their newest Wayne stuck in a one-sided chat with some rich second-wife as she patted his head like a puppy. 

There were no real assignments that night, no real dangers to look for. 

Perhaps that was why they hadn’t seen it coming. 

Hadn’t seen him coming. 

When a strange teenager sauntered towards Jason and Damian, Dick had caught it just a fraction too late. The boy’s back faced him, leaving Dick blindly clocking dark curls and an ill-fitting jacket but not much more. He’d spied his brothers’ glances - first to each other, then down at the boy’s feet - but he’d barely had the time to form an opinion before the kid’s knees buckled and Jason was swooping to catch his limp form. Only then, as he rushed towards them, did he see the bloodied footprints that led the boy’s way. 

Dick barely registered Damian sending quick signals to security, nor Bruce subtly cutting the event short with swiftly muttered words to the right people. The gala merely burned away like remnants of an old letter, as Jason lifted the boy in his arms and pushed through the ornate doors of the grand hall. 

There was an urgency that he so rarely spied in his brothers. They were rushing with this kid - storming through the halls, up to Bruce’s study - with a focus only found in life-or-death situations. As Dick caught up with them, as he saw the blood that now stained Jason’s crumpled shirt… well, he quickly saw how right that assumption would be. 

The cool air of the Batcave felt like a slap of reality, a pausing of time itself as Jason laid this boy on the medbay table. Only then did Dick spy his face. His shin was pale, his cheeks hollow, but it was the scars that froze him in place at the foot of the table. Twin curves down his cheeks, almost a mocking inverse of those that haunted Tim’s own smile. 

“You don’t get to die again, kid,” Jason spoke with grit, firm and unrelenting. “Don’t let that fucker be the way you die.” 

It was almost comedic, how the kid’s eyes flew open. They were glassy and tear-lined, flashing through the room with unfocused urgency. But soon as they’d opened, did they lock onto the small tray beside where he lay as the boy forced himself to sit upright. His hand lunged for a scalpel, clutching the blade with white knuckles as he forced it across the back of his neck. Jason’s jump forwards was immediate, his fingers darting to clutch the blade, just a fraction to slow to catch the boy’s hand. 

“Get it out of me.” He pleaded, fingers bloodied as the teen tried to scratch at his neck. “Get it out of me.” He repeated. 

“Get what out of you?” Jason growled in confusion, though the teen merely continued his clawing gesture. 

“There’s a bomb in my neck,” he spoke through gritted teeth, “and I would hate to get my brains all over this lovely white room.” 

It was as though those words sparked a jolt up everyone’s spines. It was immediate, how everyone rushed to debate their next actions - how Bruce’s silent presence in the doorframe shifted to a looming command. 

“We need to sedate him.” Bruce claimed, voice commanding as ever as he reached for the cabinet. 

“Dammit, Bruce!” Jason growled, slamming his hand against the drawer and forcing it shut. “You don’t get to stand here and spout orders. Not when you left this kid to fucking die!”

“I was looking out for you!” Bruce snapped back.

“By what?” Tim scoffed, stepping almost shoulder-to-shoulder with Jason. “By leaving another kid to be cannibalised by Joker’s insanity? Have you changed your mind about helping kids, huh? Or have you decided that this Manor has enough wayward children and figured you’d leave the next one to burn?”

“What the fuck?” Dick muttered, more to himself than the others. Then, louder, he spoke again. “We can’t risk sedating the kid. One wrong move and it might kill him. You of all people should know that, Mr Med-school-dropout.” 

“The fuck do we do, Dick?” His first brother asked, turning as though he’d barely remembered that Dick had followed. 

And Dick… well, he didn’t know how to help. No one had told him about this situation, no one had bothered to let him know that there was a child caught in Joker’s grasp. 

But in a decisive arc, hand shoving into a drawer before spinning back to the kid, Tim swept through the room - straight towards the lab bench that the boy was bracing himself against. His fingers curled around a large gun-like device and he turned to face him with a set jaw. 

“It’ll hurt.” He whispered. 

“Better pain than death by his hand. That’s my choice to make, right?” The boy replied - the ghost of a grin upon his sweaty face as his eyes darted to meet Jason’s. They were that same shade of unnatural green - the very same toxic hue that lit up in Jason’s irises. 

He hardly seemed to register as Tim slid behind him, as the teen pressed the device to the back of his neck and clicked it to start working. No, he stayed focused on Jason. 

And God, he looked just like him. Far paler than Dick’s brother, but just as broken. Matching eyes, matching curls, matching quirk to his lips - a faint scar from his cupid’s bow to his nostril, like the one from Jason’s stitched cleft lip. For a moment, it was like Dick was looking at his brother from the time before they lost him. There was that same sorrowful glint, that same dour teenaged melancholy that had possessed his brother in those months before his demise. 

With a shiver, the kid ripped his eyes from Jason’s to spy the bloodied bomb in Tim's bloodied hand, fingers shaking as he blinked down at the device. He seemed paralysed, just briefly, disbelieving as he blinked down at the bomb. 

And all Dick could think of was how scared this child must be. How frightening has life must be, to be trapped as an unwitting sidekick, all due to a bomb that Joker controlled - one set to blow his brains like one of Waller’s trapped rogues. 

“Thank you.” He nodded, fist tightening around the scalpel. There was a steel to his words, a set to his jaw as his eyes fixed upon Tim’s. “I’m so sorry. I wish I could be a hero, too.” 

With such speed that none surrounding could react until the act was done, the boy raised the scalpel and stabbed it through the side of his throat. 

The act was met by gasps of horror, hands clutching at him.

“Why?” Jason breathed, clutching at the kid’s neck with his bare hands - blood pooling between his fingers. “Why the hell would you do that?” 

Jason clutched the kid against him, his grip so tight that Dick thought he might be trying to physically hold him together. Tim stood with a ramrod spine, the device still in his blood-slicked hands, his face ghostly pale. By the doorway, Damian had half-unsheathed his dagger, as if ready to fight something to keep this from happening. 

And Bruce… he didn’t move, didn’t speak, but Dick knew what was happening behind his carefully blank expression. Guilt coated those familiar blue eyes, stained them just as it stained all of their palms with this teenager’s blood. 

“Goddamit, kid.” Jason’s voice cracked. “Why’d you say that?” 

But the boy could not answer. There were no words that tumbled through his blueish lips. Just the sound of ragged breathing, the dull thrum of medical machinery, and the overwhelming echo of his family’s failure that seemed to swallow them like a shadow. 

The air in the Batcave felt heavier than usual, thick with the scent of blood and antiseptic. Dick had been through his fair share of nightmares, but the scene before him was something else. This boy - this goddamn child that no one had told him about yet all seemed to know - lay still, the scalpel buried deep in his throat. His blood was stark against the sterile white of the medbay.

Jason was the loudest. He always was. His voice echoed through the chamber, raw with fury and something dangerously close to grief. Green eyes fixed onto blue - a desperation as he looked to his father. Bruce was stood there so utterly still, caught in a rare moment of frozen disbelief. 

“Damn it, Bruce! You don’t get to write him off like he’s nothing. You don’t get to act like he doesn’t fucking matter!” Jason roared, turning to his father with glistening eyes. 

Bruce didn’t respond immediately. His jaw was tight, his shoulders stiff, but his eyes held something barely contained beneath the surface. Something that Jason did not know him well enough to truly describe, not anymore. Was it regret? Guilt? It was hard to say. Bruce Wayne had made his choice a long time ago regarding the boy who had become more speculation than reality among them. A lost cause, he had called him. A shadow too deep in Gotham to pull out.

Tim was silent, but his hands weren’t. Steady despite the tremor in his breathing, he rushed to Jason’s side to frantically to stop the bleeding. The drill still sat discarded beside him, smeared with the blood of his success - removing a bomb buried beneath a brain - just seconds before that same blood became meaningless.

Duke stood just beyond Tim’s reach, hovering like he wanted to help but knowing there was little he could do. He had never fought Mime directly, but he knew enough. Knew how Tim had fought tooth and nail to get a viable DNA sample, how Jason had been the only one who outright rejected the idea that the kid was beyond saving.

“The fuck is this?” Dick spoke, eyes darting between his family with a blend of confusion and blind horror. 

Jason’s hand had been pulled from the boy’s throat as Tim yanked the blade free - palms braced against the table, head bowed as if trying to force down the anger shaking his frame. 

“You don’t even know him, Dick.” His voice was sharp.” You didn’t have to fight him, to see the way he… he’s just a fucking kid. A kid like all those goddamn heroes you’ve run off to train.”

Dick swallowed thickly, his gaze flickering back to the broken figure on the table. He thought of Jason, thought of the way Bruce had failed him once before. And in his gut, there was this sickening feeling that history had just repeated itself.

Damian stood rigid at the far end of the room, fists clenched at his sides. He had said nothing since the kid had collapsed. Even now, his silence spoke volumes. The heir to the Demon’s Head, the boy raised in the League, had seen death more times than he could count. But this? This was different. This was one of their own—an enemy, maybe, but an enemy they had let slip through their fingers. One they had decided was not worth saving until it was too late.

Bruce finally exhaled, the sound barely audible over the cacophony of the medbay. 

"He’s not gone yet." The words were quiet, but they cut through the noise, silencing even Jason’s simmering rage. 

Tim had already been working on it, his fingers stained red, his expression unreadable. Jason pushed off the table with a growl, running a hand through his hair before grabbing the necessary tools with barely restrained frustration. Duke moved to assist, his hesitation melting away as he focused on the task at hand. Dick swallowed down the knot in his throat and joined them.

“Why the fuck would he do that?” Jason growled, shoving pads against the boy’s neck, soaking blood. “He was out! He was fucking out!”

“Because he clearly never counted on surviving this in the first place.” Tim’s voice was tight, forced through gritted teeth as he applied pressure to Peter’s neck. His hands were soaked in blood, his own shaking slightly. “He chose this outcome before he ever stepped foot in the Cave.”

Bruce stood still, watching but not moving, his eyes unreadable. It pissed Jason off more than anything else.

“Don’t just stand there like you don’t care,” Jason snapped, whirling on him. “This is what you wanted, right? Proof that he was a lost cause? That he didn’t need our help? Fucking say it, Bruce!”

“Jason.” Dick’s voice cut in, sharp with warning. It wasn’t fair, not really, but he couldn’t let this turn into another screaming match. Not when there was still a chance.

Duke was already moving, handing Tim the supplies he needed, murmuring something under his breath. Damian had moved to the head of the table, his face eerily blank as he took over stabilising Peter’s airway.

“What do we do?” Duke asked, eyes darting between them. “Do we put him under? Keep him restrained?”

“He needs surgery,” Tim muttered. “Now. Otherwise, we’re going to lose him."

Bruce finally moved, stepping forward with an air of finality. “Then we do whatever it takes to keep him alive.”

Jason let out a bitter laugh. “Now you care?”

Bruce didn’t answer, only rolled up his sleeves and took a place beside Tim. Duke rushed to clutch his mobile - almost pleading as he tumbled to call their family doctor, begging her to rush over. It was frantic, terrified, yet there was something calming about it. Leslie was coming and Tim had his hands pressed against the wound, yelling out that the kid still had a pulse. 

Uncertain of his place, still clueless as to how his entire family knew of this child that collapsed at one of their galas, Dick Grayson took it upon himself to watch over Damian. He pulled his brother to his side, heart thumping at how the teenaged assassin simply let himself be led from the room. Dick’s hand stayed on Damian’s shoulder as they stood behind the glass. 

They waited. 

Duke thrust another pad of gauze in Tim’s hand, Bruce stuck a monitor on the kid’s arm. 

They waited. 

Jason grabbed a pair of scissors, cutting the jacket off the boy. His hand somehow found itself clutching that of the kid, holding on as though his strength might seep through that touch. 

In a flurry of movement - both Dick and Damian’s head snapping to spy the arrival - Alfred led Dr Thompkins through the dark of the cave. Leslie clearly hadn’t wasted a second, her medical bag in hand, already snapping on gloves before she even slid through the door and reached the table.

“Move,” she ordered, voice cutting enough to slice through the tension. “If you want him to live, I need space.”

For a breath, Jason hesitated - almost unwilling to let go. It took Tim’s withdrawal from clutching at the kid, his bloodied fingers gently prying Jason away. His hands hovered near Mime’s body like he could physically will him to stay together. Duke was already grabbing more supplies before Leslie even took the time to bark more orders, his body working on autopilot.

Leslie barely spared the rest of them a glance before assessing the damage. “How long since the wound?” she asked, already pressing gauze against Mime’s throat, applying pressure.

“Less than ten minutes.” Tim’s voice was sharp and winded, face flushed from the effort of the night. 

Leslie nodded sharply. 

“And no one thought to mention the three gunshot wounds?”

That made everyone freeze.

“What?” Jason spoke dangerously.

Leslie barely looked up as she peeled away the black of the kid’s blood-soaked shirt. Hidden beneath layers of fabric, smeared with fresh and drying blood, were three bullet wounds. Two in his side, one higher near his ribs. Ones no one had noticed in the chaos.

“Jesus Christ,” Duke muttered.

“I forgot.” Jason whispered, staring at the wounds like they had betrayed him. “He… he had blood dripping down his shoes.” 

“Of course he did,” Leslie muttered under her breath, already moving to press fresh gauze to the wounds on his chest. “Because apparently, this kid has a death wish.”

For the next several minutes, the Cave was filled with nothing but the sound of sharp demands, shuffled footsteps, and the steady beeps of machines. Tim worked beside Leslie, handing her instruments before she even asked, while Duke lingered just close enough to watch. Bruce stepped in to assist where needed, silent and focused.

Jason didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Just watched. As did Dick and Damon, the pair haunting the doorway as they observed the bloodied scene - white surfaces now stained crimson. 

The sun was surely rising as Leslie sat back, a huff of an exhale as she wiped sweat from her forehead. Her white coat was pinked, her hands clean as she threw her gloves into the bin by the door. 

“He’s stable. For now.” She yawned, utterly exhausted by the night. 

The exhaustion in her voice made Dick’s stomach twist. He could hear as Jason swallowed. 

“He’s gonna make it?”

Leslie’s lips pressed into a thin line. “I’ve done everything I can. Now it’s up to him.”

With that, the family was ushered out of the medbay, left to stand behind the glass, watching the slow, shallow rise and fall of Mime’s chest.

Dick swallowed past the lump in his throat and looked down at the kid on the table. He was pale past the blood, emaciated and so utterly still. And just staring at the kid… at this boy he didn’t know but his family apparently knew well enough to be fighting over. This child who had been bleeding out in front of them. The kid had tried. He had fought his way there, fought through bullet wounds and begged for help.

His hands curled into fists.

“What the fuck is going on?” he asked, voice rough. “What the fuck has been happening since I left?”