Young Justice Oneshots

Sleeping Birdy pt. 1

AN: This is actually a comicverse Teen Titans/Batfam semi-AU instead of Young Justice just cause I thought the characters fit better but Dick, Wally, and Tim are still there so it's probably sort of worth reading. See if you can name the other fandom here.

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A loud crash sounded and the three Robins turned the corner, running full blast to find hiding spots before Alfred caught them. Breaking a vase was a serious crime in the Wayne household.

They didn't have time for this. Bruce was going to give his speech in a few minutes and Tim really wanted to be downstairs for it. Unfortunately, in the boys' most recent fight, Jason had broken Alfred's Favorite Vase of the Upper Western Hallway and was about to be murdered by the elderly butler. Tim couldn't believe his brothers sometimes. Damien looked like he was enjoying Tim's pain.

Tim jumped into the nearest cupboard and tried to calm his breathing as quickly as possible. Alfred was probably only a short ways down the hall by then, Tim was sure.

Then, without warning, the sound of an explosion filled the air. The three boys forgot all about their plight and ran down to the Main Ballroom.

They were too late.

Everyone in the room was frozen. Not in the Mr Freeze type of way, but more in the paused TV type of way that looks normal at first until you realise that no one is speaking a word, but they're all there and trying to scream.

"What happened?" Jason asked quietly, and Tim saw why. Bruce and Dick were sitting side by side at the front of the hall, Bruce about to introduce his oldest son and congratulate him for becoming an adult and Dick looking extremely nervous.

"The Joker happened," Damien muttered from behind Tim, making the older boys turn around.

The kid was right. There was a huge cake sitting in the centre of the room, and the outside was entirely decorated as a circus.

"Grayson must have been pissed when they wheeled this thing out," Damien said. Tim wheeled on him.

"Well, you obviously didn't know Dick very well! He always told me that his years at the circus were the best of his life."

"Not that, dimwit," Jason said. "This." He was pointing to the front of the third layer, and Tim almost fell backward when he saw it. There was a tiny trapeze on the front with a little boy standing, waiting on one of the poles for his parents to finish the routine. The parents were bloody on the "ground."

"There's a Joker card in the back," Damien added, then quickly said "it's not a bomb. I checked."

"Well," Jason said, "we have a motive at least."

"We do?" Tim asked.

"Yes, we do." Damien and Jason didn't seem to care that they had spoken at the same time, they were just dumbfounded that Tim hadn't seen what was going on yet. At Tim's continued confusion, Damien sighed and filled the older boy in. "It's all about Dick's birthday. He wanted to freak out the Families. If you attack the second Son of Gotham's coming of age bash, they'll be scared shitless even if you fail."

"Makes sense," Tim said, "but how do we fix it?"

Jason and Damien looked at each other. "No idea."

Tim sighed. "Great. Well, we can't call the Commissioner cause he and Barbara are already here, along with half the upper management of the police force. This calls for extreme action."

Jason and Damien admitted it was a good idea and the three boys made their way back down into the Batcave. What they found was little less than shocking.

The power was out.

"How could this happen?" Damien raged.  "Father has three back up generators!"

"Whatever the Joker used must have killed everything on the estate," Tim reasoned. "I hate to say this, but I think we need to call in the League."

"We can't," Damien lamented, falling on the floor. "They're all off planet. Jordan needed them to fight some creature. And the phones are all connected to the estate generators."

Tim sat down on the nearest chair and sighed. He wasn't prepared for this. Dick had always been the leader of the four of them, and not just because he was the first. He just kind of commanded respect, but Tim didn't think he realized it. Jason and Damien didn't like him, much less trust him to do something as important as this. Rescue both Bruce and Dick, and Gotham's richest shmoozers? Without backup? Tim was only fifteen, he couldn't handle all this pressure.

Tim looked up to find both other Robins staring at him. He looked around and realized that he had accidentally sat in Bruce's Big Chair. But the looks on the boy's faces weren't of anger or shock, they were of grudging respect and sadness. Tim realized that they wanted him to take charge. They were letting him.

"Okay," Tim said, "first thing's first. We need to find some backup. What we really should be doing is figuring out what this is, but none of us have the scientific knowledge to do that without the Bat Computer. If the League is gone..." Tim stood up and looked to his Red Robin costume in its case. "Let's get the next best thing."