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Ra's offered to put the League at her disposal. She could have used that against him, taken the opportunity to memorize his strongholds and bring him down. Maybe she should have; it would have given some point to this useless search she got herself into, looking for evidence that Bruce was alive. But she had Tamara Fox to think about, and, if she's being honest, she doesn't trust her own judgement right now.

(She was so sure. A part of her wants to just keep looking for the evidence she thought she could find, but - it doesn't exist. If it had, she would have found it. Her father's dead, again, and she can't bring Bruce back any more than she could have resurrected Jack.)

Instead, she bargains off what she knows to buy herself and Tam out of the entire mess. Tam can go back to her father and tell him that she brought back Timothea Drake-Wayne, and Tim... she goes home. Well. Assuming she can force herself to make the last few steps towards the Manor's entrance. It's more of a struggle than she'd like to admit to not turn around and go to a safe house to just lie low for a while, lick her proverbial wounds, but she supposes she's done enough running already.

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Maybe not busy, but - it is something. She guesses she'll have to figure out what to tell her school about her unexplained absence, too. Add that to the list.

Staying home where he can keep an eye on her isn't that far off from what she expected (although when he says home, she assumes he means the city, not the actual manor). Still. She sighs. "I'll be fine, Dick."

"You're right," he agrees, and there's that moment where it might actually seem like he's going to be more lenient, but then it goes away "You'll be absolutely fine, as long as you do everything the doctor told you to do. No leaving the house until you're recovered. Except school I guess, but not right away."

She was smart, she could get by without the school time. She had been sick and there was a bereavement in the family, he was sure he could come up with some suitably vague explanation to give the school, and if not... well, he'd do what Bruce always did, and make donations until they stopped asking.

Well. At least as long as he's demanding she stay in the house, she doesn't have to worry about him bringing up the therapist in Metropolis again. She could stick it out for a week or two. "As long as you keep Damian away from me."

Because. The Demon Child would not help her recover, and she is 100% certain of that.

"Deal. Damian will leave you alone." Privately, he was amused by the way they bickered, they probably didn't realise it but there was something particularly sibling-y about their dislike for each other. Still, at least in this they were in total agreement, Damian getting her riled up was definitely not going to help her recovery.

"The house is big enough for the both of you."

She's not convinced he's going to be able to keep Damian away from her, but at least she'll have an ally. More or less. Still.

She makes a face. "Tell him that."

"Don't worry, I will." Dick assures her firmly. They were a family, and with Bruce gone it seemed more important than ever to pull together, and however ironic it was, if he had to keep Damian and Tim apart to ensure they didn't kill each other, that's what it would take so that's what he would do.

It does work. Sort of. It's hard to keep a League-trained assassin away from anything he wants to do, but she has Alfred and Dick on her side now to keep him largely out of her sight. It helps that she's mostly keeping to her room for the moment.

Still. She can't hide away forever. Especially not when she still has things to take care of, like arranging to meet Cassie and apologize for scaring the shit out of her and making her think she was losing it (again) over the death of family. True to her word, she waits until she's at least had the stitches from her surgery removed before calling up Cassie for a meeting at one of her safe houses in the city. It's not one of the more elaborate or nicely-furnished ones, but it's more than enough for a talk. Now she just has to wait.

There's a knock at the door to her safe house, but it's not going to be who she expects. Dick realised she was missing when he went to go and see if she could help him with some research, conscious that she was getting itchy feet and wanting to keep her distracted - apparently it had come just a little too late.

It took him a little while and some investigation to figure out where she'd gone, but as soon as he'd figured it out he headed straight over. He supposes he shouldn't be surprised, none of them are very good at staying put, but he had hoped that he had enough authority for her to listen to him.

It's not. Tim takes a minute to gather a little calm before going to the door to face Cassie. She has zero illusions that this is going to be an easy conversation, but Tim owes it to her.

...except it's not Cassie at all, and the look on her face goes from carefully neutral to genuinely confuses. "Dick...?"

While he's waiting, he's trying to decide exactly how to handle this, he can't exactly pull off the stern, angry parent thing, but he knows he has to lay down the law.

"Funny," he says with forced casualness when the door opens "this doesn't look like home..."

He's... here to complain about the relative hominess of her safe house? Tim stares at him blankly. "...I wouldn't raise a family here, but that's not really the point."

"Not what I meant Timmy, this isn't the manor , which is exactly where i told you to stay until you were healed."

Oh, hey, he's getting the hang of the dad voice, mostly it's just to cover up the fact that he was worried, for her to have disappeared again, still injured, after everything she had told him... he had, initially, panicked.

It's not a bad dad voice, all things considered, but the fact that it's (a) coming from him and (b) not at all what she expected is diminishing its effectiveness somewhat.

"I'm okay to go out. I'm not doing anything strenuous, I just wanted to talk to Cassie."

"Well maybe if you'd asked me, we could have talked about it, instead of just disappearing. I had no idea where you were, i had to track you down - do you have any idea how worried i was until i found out where you were?" He's getting in the swing of it now, he feels like Damian's given him some practice, but mostly this is just big brother mode in overdrive.

"I wasn't aware I had to ask you to go out somewhere," she says. Which is maybe not the best plan given that this trip was about apologizing to someone for running off and scaring them, but - it's not like she's a kid. "You know where I am now."

"You do when i've told you to stay home! You didn't think i'd want to know where you were after everything that happened?" He demands. When she points out he knows where she is now, he frowns deeper "that's not the point, young lady."

He did it, he said the words, he was in full dad territory now. He didn't totally mean to set himself up as a father to the rest of them in Bruce's absence, but he was struggling to find a balance between brother and dad, because the kids in this family had lost enough parental figures.

"'Young lady'," she repeats with a distinct sense of disbelief. Because what the hell. When did Dick even start using that phrase? "What is the point then?

Ok, yes, he had probably got a bit carried away with that one, but he couldn't exactly go back on it now.

"The point is that i was worried about you, i told you to stay in the manor and you didn't. Look what happened last time you went off on your own!" It was probably a bad idea to bring that up, but he was on a roll of bad ideas right now.

Oh. Oh, that was a very bad idea. Her eyes narrow at him. "The last time I went off on my own, you'd fired me. Or did you forget that part."

"Well maybe if you actually listened to me i wouldn't have had to!" He half-yells back, before realising how far he was going and catches himself, the wind coming out of his sails almost immediately. He sighs, running an awkward hand through his hair.

"Shit, no, wait, i didn't..."

Oh.

Okay. Sure. That's... that's fine. It's not like it's news to her, that he had reasons for deciding to give Robin to Damian. It stings a little to wonder what the hell she did so wrong that Damian seemed like the better choice, but that's okay. There's barely a flicker of hurt in her eyes before her face smooths out into blankness again.

Quietly: "Anything else you want to get off your chest while you're at it?"

"No.. no Timmy, I'm sorry, I didn't mean that," he's completely deflated now and he just feels like the worst brother in existance. He's struggling with this, but he shouldn't be taking it out on anybody else. "Listen, you're my little sister and i love you, i'm just trying... i was just worried about you, i overreacted, i'm sorry."

She shuts her eyes for a second. "Look. You have a new Robin. You don't need me in the family anymore. Damian's hard enough to deal with on his own. You could go back to the Manor and concentrate on him and not feel obligated to try to be responsible for me, too."

"That's not how family works, Tim." Dick tells her seriously, gently "you don't stop being family even if you're not Robin... and I'm sorry about that, I shouldn't have ever said that stuff to you."

Trying to make her smile, he added "Do we need to all watch Lilo and Stitch again? Ohana, Timmy, nobody gets left behind."

Yeah. That's nice, Dick, but family means getting left behind a lot. Sometimes on purpose, sometimes not. Saying otherwise is an admittedly well-intentioned lie. "I don't take relationship advice from cartoon aliens."