Thirty Days (A Birdflash Fanfiction)

Day 22: In battle, side-by-side

"You know," the Flash said, looking down at his husband sitting on the ground, "most people would stop fighting once they got stabbed in the leg."

Nightwing finished bandaging his thigh. "Once we've re-established contact with the League, I'll consider it." Something was jamming communications, probably Luthor trying to stop the League from organising. "Until then, pass me my escrima and help me up. There's a big guy with a knife out there who needs a punch in the face."

"I don't remember you being this violent as Batman." The Flash helped him up anyway. Nightwing elbowed him on the way out of the cleaning closet that had formed their hiding place. The Flash had run him to safety for long enough to treat his injuries, but the guard who caused them, and his friends, wouldn't be far away. He'd been hurt worse before, of course. He was just offended that some random goon of Lex Luthor's got the better of him, and it was time to rectify that.

"The hell kind of security guard carries around a knife anyway?" Nightwing muttered.

"The guy works for a super-criminal and you're trying to impose logic in him?"

The Flash followed Nightwing closely down the hallway, where they quickly ran into the man in question.

"Miss me?" Nightwing said, and punched him in the nose. The man went down in a burst of blood, and Nightwing stepped over his now unconscious form to fight the other guards. The Flash let him handle them; it was the easiest way to keep him happy until he could take pain medication and a nap.

Nightwing shook blood off his escrima when he was finished. His shoulders were looser, his breaths freer despite his injury and the fight. A loud crash in the distance seemed a fairly accurate indicator of where the hell the rest of the League had ended up, and so the pair headed towards it, dispatching more guards along the way.

Superman was getting shot by lasers from a collection of giant robots that barely fit under the roof. The rest of the League was taking advantage of their focus on him to get behind them and take them out. Nightwing watched Batman taser one to great effect, and pulled out his own.

"Get me on one of their shoulders," he said to the Flash. He undoubtedly could do it himself with a grappling hook under normal circumstances, but the knife wound complicated matters. The Flash scooped him up and ran up the side of the nearest robot. Nightwing discharged his taser in a vulnerable-looking plug on the back of its neck, and the Flash ran them back down as it started to fall.

They took down two more that way, and the League handled the rest. Superman floated to the floor, singed and smoking a little. He patted down his chest, and the smoke dissipated a bit.

"Good work," he said. "Where'd you two get to?"

"We tried to chase down some guards before they could sound the alarm," Nightwing replied.

"And then Nightwing got stabbed and punched a guy so hard his nose practically exploded, which was fun," the Flash added.

Batman drew level with Superman, holding a piece of circuit board he had been examining. "The mission is finished. Go home. Get patched up. We'll handle the cleanup."

Of course, in that moment another set of guards burst into the room, already shooting. Nightwing flinched as a bullet grazed his arm and threw a wing-ding at the man responsible. The League surged forward to take out the rest. The Flash barrelled through a full line of them, knocking them down like bowling pins. He paused to pull a bullet out of his shoulder—ouch—before heading over to check on Nightwing.

"I'm fine," Nightwing told him, pressing an adhesive bandage to the scrape left behind. "Just a flesh wound."

"Sorry. I should've gotten you out of the way."