Tim snaps awake to Dick's heart monitor going crazy.

Bruce is already pulling away from Tim, standing up so he can rush to Dick's side. Damian's scrambling up from one of the chairs on the other side, and Jason's right there next to Bruce. Alfred's puttering around the monitors, a frown pulling his face down.

And then Tim focuses on Dick.

Dick's awake. He's awake and pulling at the oxygen mask strapped to his face, and when his fumbling fingers can't coordinate enough to get it off, he starts scrabbling at Bruce's shirt. Bruce is constantly murmuring in Dick's ear, though Tim can't hear what he's saying. He only shares a wide-eyed glance with Damian before he's up and crowding up by Jason's side.

"—hear screaming," Dick rasps, tears in his eyes.

He's still pulling at Bruce, but it's slightly less desperate, and Bruce helps still his hands. Dick's mouth moves under the oxygen mask again, but he's shaking his head too much for Tim to understand what he's trying to say.

"Hurts," Dick manages to wheeze out.

"You're sick," Bruce tells Dick, lightly squeezing one of Dick's captured hands. "You're alright, Dick. It sucks, but you're going to be alright."

Eventually, after a round of coughing, the words seem to register in Dick's brain, because he slowly starts to relax, his fever bright eyes sliding shut.

Tim's heart is beating halfway out of his chest, and he feels like he's holding his breath as he watches his big brother calm down from what must be a fever dream. Jason had said that Dick had been delusional earlier.

"Shouldn't the antibiotics be working by now?" Tim whispers to nobody in particular.

He's not even sure his words are even audible, that's how quiet they are, but a look at Bruce's watch shows that it's past four in the afternoon, now, and that means Dick's had at least a couple of rounds of antibiotics. Tim doesn't think he should still be this bad off.

Jason twitches, though, so Tim thinks that maybe someone had heard him. Still, there's no answer to his question. Everyone is too preoccupied with watching all of the tension leak out of Dick as he falls asleep again.

Nobody speaks for a moment, and then Alfred says, "I shall start on dinner, then. We'll have it early tonight since the lot of you slept through lunch."

"Thank you," is Bruce's response as he sits back down in his original spot.

Tim, Jason, and Damian chorus Bruce's thanks as the butler leaves the room, and they all sit back down in the spots they were sitting in—sleeping in, in Tim's case—before Dick had woken up. Tim keeps his eyes trained on Dick's face, half afraid Dick will snap awake again, heart monitor beeping rapidly to mimic a wild heartbeat, which then develops into tachycardia, and then—

"Tim's right," Jason murmurs, and Tim's head snaps up to look at him, his train of thought flying out the window. Jason continues, "He shouldn't still be this bad off. At the very least, he should be coherent, right?"

"If he doesn't improve by tonight," Bruce says wearily, "I'll call Leslie."

"And if Doctor Thompkins recommends a hospital?" Damian asks quietly, eyes vivid and fierce as they study Bruce's face.

He looks worn and quiet and small, and it's a weird sight to see, because even though Damian's short, he always seems to build himself up with his own ego, and Tim has a hard time thinking of him as a thirteen year old. The same age Tim had started as Robin. But like this? Like this, it's hard to forget.

"Then Alfred and I will drive him to Gotham General," Bruce says.

They lapse into silence after that, watching Dick breathe as he sleeps. Tim, despite how sleepy he'd been before, finds himself alert and awake. His heart has slowed down to a normal pace, but his still feels wired and tense.

It's a few minutes past five that Bruce finally gets up to call Leslie. And it's a few minutes after he returns that Alfred makes the trek down the stairs and clears his throat.

"Dinner is ready," he announces. He fixes each of them with a Look. "I expect each and every one of you to eat tonight."

Bruce frowns. "Alfred, I'm not—"

"Maybe not all at once," Alfred amends, "but you will eat, Master Bruce." He waits for Bruce to nod, before he speaks again, saying, "Now, as for the rest of you, dinner is waiting to be eaten in the dining room. Come along."

Tim spares Damian and Jason a glance, before sighing and getting up from his chair and following after Alfred. Damian catches up to him, and neither of them says anything to the other as they climb the stairs. Jason doesn't come with them, but Tim kind of expected that.

"I suppose there's only so many battles you can fight," Alfred says when Damian and Tim have settled across the table from each other. They're served their meal, and Alfred hurries out of the room.

They eat in silence, and it's not awkward, per se, since he and Damian don't really talk much anyways, but it is tense. Tenser than usual. Tim's getting really tired of all the tense silences in his life. It seems like it's always one tense situation after the other, though this is probably one of the worst.

Damian is picking at his salad, and he looks so—so young. Younger than thirteen. He looks like a kid—scared, alone, and just plain young. For some reason, Tim decides to open his mouth and say, "He'll be alright."

It's eerily similar to what Jason had said earlier, "It's Dick. Of course he's gonna be alright."

Damian shoots Tim a scathing look. "I don't need empty reassurances, Drake."

"It's not an empty reassurance," Tim says, frowning. He stabs a leaf from his salad with his fork and looks at it contemplatively. "It's what Jason said earlier. Dick's going to be okay."

"Todd is stuck to Richard's side," Damian snaps, slamming his fork onto the table. Tim can't look him in the eye, though, so he keeps staring at his salad like it'll give him life's answers. "Even Father refuses to part with Richard. They're all acting like he's—"

Tim sucks in a deep breath and lets it out slowly. "Like he's dying."

"He's not," Damian says, quietly. "He can't."

"We don't have control over life and death," Tim tells him. "This isn't a surgery, where if the surgery goes well and we take care of the wound, everything will turn out fine. This is an infection in one of Dick's vital organs."

"I thought you said Richard would be fine!" Damian yells, planting his palms on the table and standing up. Tim finally looks up. "You just said that he would be alright!"

"He will be," Tim says, thinking back to the heart monitor going crazy, to Dick's incoherent murmuring, to his fever bright eyes that look like they're a million miles away from them. Away from home. There's something—off about it all.

Tim tenses.

Damian's eyes are boring into his. "What? What is it?"

"I don't know," Tim says honestly. "But there's something about the way he's responding to antibiotics. It's—It's weird."

"The toxicology reports came back clean," Damian argues. "And according to the CBC, his immune system is fighting off an infection. And the doctor said he might not get better right away."

"But it's weird, Damian," Tim insists. "Dick has a strong immune system. But the way this hit him—how quickly he got sick, and how bad it got, and how he's not responding to antibiotics—it doesn't make any sense. If this were any other infection, Dick would be coherent by now. Heck, Bruce said he was up a few days after he was shot in the back of the head."

Damian deflates. "So what now? What else can you go on?"

"Byrne," Tim says. "Liam Byrne. The kid who was there when Dick almost drowned."

"What about him?" Damian asks.

"How much do you know?"

Damian's chin comes up defensively. "Father debriefed me. I'm well-informed."

"He might be the answer to this," Tim says, stabbing another piece of lettuce with his fork. Damian sits down slowly as Tim continues. "I don't know how yet, and I don't even know if I'm right. Maybe it is just a bad infection, and Dick's body is just having a hard time fighting it off, but—but I'd rather follow up on this and be wrong, than not check it out at all and be right."

"You think there may have been more about the arms deal that we don't know about," Damian realizes, his eyes wide.

Tim nods. "And Byrne's the only one we know was there that we can easily get to."

Damian stares at him for a full ten seconds. "We're going tonight then?"

"Yeah," Tim says. "Tonight. I'll sneak you out, so don't worry about that."

Tim stuffs his collected salad into his mouth, and that's that. They eat, and they say nothing more. Tim feels a lot more determined and a lot less unnerved than he has since early this morning when Dick first passed out in the hallway.

Whether he's right or wrong on this, at least he'll be doing something.