Chapter Text
“All secrets are deep. All secrets become dark. That’s in the nature of secrets.” -Cory Doctorow.
Two months after this case was opened, two months of missing child after missing child, a month and a half of cold lead after cold lead, two weeks of working late and no sleep, the BPD had finally made a breakthrough, and tracked down the kidnappers’ base of operation. They were able to take it down in a single night, saving most of the missing children. Out of the seventeen kids taken, four of them were missing and four of them were dead. With the files recovered from the kidnappers base of operations the BPD had tracked the four missing kids to one of three other bases. They had sent the information over to the FBI, as it was in a different part of the state.
~
Richard Grayson arrived home at 02:48. He closed and locked the front door behind him and slid down to the floor utterly exhausted. After finishing taking down the kidnapping ring around 07:00 that morning one of the kids, a boy the most injured and looked to be the oldest though no older than Tim (who also looked suspiciously a lot like Tim), wouldn't let go of him. So he ended up riding to the hospital with the nine kids in the back of the ambulance, as when they tried to separate the kids to fit them more comfortably in one or two more ambulance's they all started hysterically crying. By the end of the ride the boy (that was not Tim) wasn't the only one attached to him. All the kids (who looked a lot like his siblings…maybe? He wasn't sure, his sleep deprivation and minor concussion making his memory fuzzy) didn't want him to leave and got really anxious if he was too far away. Which meant several hours at the hospital until their families arrived before he could get his own check up then retire to the office to write up his report.
He was really tired. Just ready to lay down on his bed and sleep for a month. Which he planned to do as his boss had given him and a few others time off to catch up on the sleep, not to mention the hospital put him on rest due to the minor concussion obtained; which, yay. But also, he couldn’t care less.
He sat there a little longer preparing himself for his long journey. Sighing, he dragged himself to his room, kicked off his shoes, belt and holster and fell into bed not caring he was covered in blood, dirt, and sweat. He fell asleep immediately.
~
When he woke up, it was to his phone ringing, not his civilian phone but his “Bat-phone”. As he rolled over to pick it up, the call ended. He sighed before picking up his civilian phone to check the time. The home screen read 15:08, so he had gotten about twelve hours of sleep, good, and he had so many messages. A hundred twenty six unread text messages from his family along with forty missed calls, twelve from Tim, nine from Steph, one for Cass, three from Bruce, four from Jason, two from Damian, one from Alfred, two from Kate, two from Kathren, seven from Babs and four from Duke.
He was surprised that with this many failed attempts to reach him (there was probably more on the Bat-phone) that his door hadn't been torn off its hinges by his family. Then he remembered that they probably tracked his trackers and saw all of his beacons at his apartment. He should probably call them though, before they break his door down demanding answers before dragging him off somewhere.
He sighed and called Bruce. It rang once before Bruce answered. Dick could hear the chatter in the background go silent when Bruce spoke his name. “Dick.”
“Hey Bruce, sorry I haven't answered any calls, I-, I fell asleep.” There was a beat of silence before there was abrupt yelling, mostly of his name and curses, some called out for Bruce to put him on speaker. He heard his Father try to shush them before he heard Alfred’s commanding voice ring for silence.
Dick was pretty sure he was put on speaker by the shuffling he heard on the other end of the phone.
“Are you okay?” Bruce asked, in his worried father voice, though no one would be able to tell unless you had lived with him for a long time, which Dick had. “ I- we haven't heard from you in a while.”
“Yeah, I'm fine,” he yawned as he rubbed his face again “just work. Wacha need?”
“Well, it's Sunday and as I said, none of us had heard from you and you weren't at family dinner last night-”
“What?” Dick was confused, it was Tuesday the 20th, family dinner wasn't for another week and a half. “It's not-” he looked down at his phone, it read ‘Sunday September 1st’. Dick shot up, dizziness over taking him, making him stumble into his nightstand knocking off a glass and a bottle of pain meds. “Ah! What! I'm-” he was cut off by the bottle hitting the floor spilling everywhere and the glass shattering.
“Dick?!?” he heard Bruce say, as well as several intakes of breath and chairs being shoved across the floor.
“I'm okay, sorry, I stood up too fast.”
“No need to apologize as long as you're okay.”
“I'll be on my way within the hour. Should get there by dinner.” Dick rubbed his head, trying to keep the headache and dizziness from getting worse. “Don't wait for me if I'm late.” He added before he hung up.