TW: SERIOUS INJURY

It was supposed to be his night off but he was never one for a quiet night in. Damian called him around midnight asking if he could cover his shift since something came up. That something, as Dick found out through Bruce, was his cat getting sick. He said yes even with that added information since he knew the boy wouldn't be in the game if he was forced to be out at work. Besides, he had nothing to do. So, on his night off, Dick donned his Nightwing suit and flipped about Gotham. He was supposed to stop at around three in the morning so there went his hope for a decent night's sleep but maybe Damian could be called in for a favour in the future. He'd gotten through the night with little to show for it. It seemed that everyone heard Nightwing was in town and decided they'd have themselves the night off to plot or whatever criminals did when they weren't committing crimes. He was heading back home, filing the night away as a bust, but was halted by the glowing of a fire. A building block had been set ablaze and firemen were ducking in and out to save people. Ever the hero, he jumped into action.

"Evening folks, where do you want me?" he asked one of the free firefighters.

"Oh thank God, there are people trapped on the top floors. Think you can get up there?" He smirked and nodded, already shooting his grappling hook up to get up there. His suit was flame resistant to an extent. He couldn't chill in a fire for four hours but he could dip in and out to save families so he didn't see the job as anything more dangerous than a mugging. It took some manoeuvring around fires bursting out of windows but Nightwing finally managed to get inside the building and got to work finding people. He was wary at the fire licking the walls and eating away at their materials but he still didn't regard the fire on the same level as his more dangerous antics. It was just a building fire probably started from someone frying chicken a little recklessly or sleeping with their candles lit. This was all in a day's work in his opinion. How bad could it get?

Batman heard about the fire over the radio. He didn't think much of it at first since firefighters were already on scene and chose a robbery at Wayne Labs over it. He felt some guilt as he turned away from the fire but then he heard Nightwing was on scene and decided it would be well handled. The firefighters plus his protege? Everything would be okay. He trusted Nightwing to be on his game and he'd funnelled enough money into the city fire service over the years. They were trained well enough, weren't they? They'd be fine. Yet, there was this feeling that kept digging into him as he drove to Wayne Labs. One that told him something was off but he couldn't put his finger on what so he kept dipping into the channel for the fire every now and then for some reassurance. There were updates on civilians being helped out of the building by Nightwing and each of them had a few injuries here and there. He eventually turned off the report to deal with the robbers.

There was an almighty creak above his head as the fire ravaged the building much faster than previously expected. He felt terrible for pushing people out of the window when they were clearly terrified of leaping at such a great height but he needed to keep funnelling the civilians out before the whole place collapsed. Below they'd be captured by the firemen so he couldn't feel too bad when he heard them screech in fear. It didn't make him feel much better though. Luckily, the building was short compared to the apartment blocks surrounding it and he could see why. This place would never get clearance for such a thing when it was made out of pure fire fuel. He dreaded to think about the possibilities of what would happen had it been taller. Nightwing reached the top floor after helping someone else out of the window and he began to yell out for anyone and everyone left behind. His lungs and nose were starting to burn from the black smoke consuming the air and he was sweating buckets from the pure heat of the fire slowly cooking him alive. He felt like a lobster being boiled and he was sure he looked like it too. The last civilian had commented on his flushed cheeks and told him to get the fuck out of dodge but he was never one for self-preservation. "Hello? Anyone here?" he yelled but there came no reply. The fire had gotten to the top floor now and he knew that he should get out now but what if someone was unconscious in their flat and couldn't hear his calls? He couldn't damn them to burn. 

Coughing and spluttering, he kicked open doors to each of the apartments before running around them for a quick scan of the area the repeating the process. The air was becoming thick and breathing much harder but he had to keep going just in case. There was another creak at the fire reached the roof but when he heard a crack he looked up instead of down. Had he looked down, he would've noted that the cracks were actually coming from the floors being weakened by the fires. His search for non-existent cracks then had him caught off guard when he fell through the flooring. A scream ripped out of him as he went tumbling through and landed on the ground below. He was sprawled out for just a moment but it was a moment long enough that more flooring from above could break off and slam down on his left arm, pinning it beneath the rubble. Another scream was torn out of him but he doubted anyone heard. He was the only one in the building. The rubble was boiling hot from the fire and he felt it burn his skin and suit into some sort of congealed mess due to it being pressed down with such pressure. Sobs of agony greeted him as he tried desperately to pull his arm away and somehow move it from under the debris. There was no use to it because whichever way he moved, it wouldn't move. He was trapped. His mind was swimming from the pain and heat, dots beginning to appear in his vision along with tears. Despite his fight to escape, he couldn't fight back his body's mercy of making him unconscious for his bitter end. "Help!" he screamed into the night only for no one to hear. "Help!" Was he screaming it in expectancy of a response or was it just for fighting to keep himself awake? "Help!" Noticeably weaker this time. The fire was drawing closer. He heard that when you were burned to death, you didn't feel it once your skin was gone. Guess he'd find out. Blackness drew in and he couldn't help but run to it for comfort. No one was coming. He may as well take the small mercy whilst it was still being offered up to him. With a whine of defeat, he let his eyes slip closed. 

When Batman re-entered the Batmobile, he turned on the radio and could've jumped had he been not so well trained by the loud frantic voices. It took a minute to translate the noise into words but when he did, he slammed his foot on the pedal. Nightwing was in the building and hadn't left before it began collapsing. The firefighters were asking if anyone had seen him yet there was a general sense of them knowing if he wasn't out of there already, there was nothing they could do. Batman was sure he broke the speed limit five times over to get to the burning building. That dark swirling feeling in his stomach told him that he needed to get there fast. They had close calls all the time and he wouldn't usually think this was an issue but that feeling was there. He'd felt it before. He felt it whenever he felt like his kid was in trouble and they couldn't get out of it without help. The feeling had never failed him before in warning him so he wasn't going to ignore it now. Faster wasn't fast enough. Times like these made him wish he had superpowers that allowed him to teleport, run faster than light or fly faster than a speeding bullet. Then he heard yelling about screaming. Nightwing was indeed still in the building that was collapsing more and more by the minute and he was screaming for help. He must know that no one would help so he must be desperate for some kind of miracle. Batman felt his heart leap to his throat and the whole car journey went by in a blur until suddenly he found himself running up to the flaming apartments. There was no more screaming but he knew better than to take that as a reason to give up. There was always a chance. They'd danced with the devil enough times to come close to the end, some of them even meeting it, but they always got back up. He wasn't going to believe his boy was gone until he saw it with his own eyes. He ran past the firefighters and studied the building for a split second before he found his in. "He's above the seventh floor!" one of the civilians shouted. He nodded to himself and shot his grappling hook at a neighbouring complex. His mind was screaming at him to go faster as he pulled himself up and crashed through a seventh-floor window. 

Looking around the fire consumed floor, there was no body to be found so he continued up the stairs to the eighth-floor hallway where he found his protege. "Nightwing!" he shouted as he dashed over. Horrible looking blisters had appeared on his skin from the heat and his face was beet red but that's not what worried Batman. Blood was pouring out from where his arm was crushed by debris and he got a sinking feeling when he saw how the little part of it showing was covered in an intense burn. A deep cut was oozing blood and Batman swore he could see the bone. The culprit appeared to be a sharp piece of fake marble flooring. It took his breath away in all the worst ways but he knew he couldn't stop to take it all in. The fire was crawling ever closer to them and they didn't have much time before it all collapsed. A rush of adrenaline ran through him as he attempted to push off the burning debris off his former protege's arm and, had the robbery been more intense to handle or had he been in a fight with a bigger villain, he wouldn't have had the strength needed to push it a few precious inches away. Dread swept through him when he was greeted with the truly mangled remains of Nightwing's arm. It was broken in almost every way he could imagine and through the rips of his suit, he noticed that his skin was discoloured. It was dead. Shaking his head, Batman knelt down and swept him up into his arms before getting the fuck out of dodge. Pieces of the floor above and the floor Batman was currently standing on was breaking apart and soon enough there would be no floor to stand on and no ceiling to stand beneath. He felt a brief surge of panic run through him but he shoved it back down before it could try to consume him. Through the flames, he found that had the least fire around it and he took it as his shining beacon of hope. He ran towards it with Nightwing cradled close to his chest and prepared himself for the pain as he crashed through the window, shielding the injured hero as he did. The brief free fall was halted when he shot another grappling hook line to an opposing building and swung himself down to the street level where an ambulance had been on standby from when the fire began. The paramedics were by his side with a stretcher and he felt numb as he told them to head to Leslie's facility. They yelled to and over one another as they rushed Nightwing to the ambulance. At one point, he heard the word amputation which made his knees weak and stole his breath. It wouldn't end Nightwing's career if he had one, he could tell you that for nothing, but it was something irreversible. They couldn't give him the old arm back. He'd have to learn a new way. It was a testament to how close this had been. He'd nearly lost his son the night he wasn't even supposed to be working.

Soft steady beeps replaced the roar of the fire Dick had passed out to. He'd woken up in enough hospitals to recognise it as a heart monitor. Slowly, he began to do a check of his body. It was something he started doing to stop himself from panicking but soon became a mundane task. The first thing he noticed was the painful throb of his burns but other than that he didn't think there was anything for him to worry about. Certainly, nothing that warranted a heart monitor. Perhaps he'd breathed in too much smoke by the time he was saved. His throat did burn but he didn't feel like it was bad enough. It took him a good while to open his eyes and when he did, he hissed at the feeling of burned skin being moved. He wondered if his domino mask had melted onto his skin. The pain was mostly on his left side so he could just turn to the other side when people took photos. His right side was always his best side anyway. Not too bad considering he was stuck in a burning building so he couldn't be too unhappy with it. That was until he turned to his left side and found he didn't have a hand or a forearm resting against the white sheets. His eyes widened and he sucked in a breath as he realised there was really nothing there and he wasn't just seeing things weird. His arm wasn't there. Even after blinking a few times, it wasn't there. It was gone. He breathed shakily as he let his eyes go up further where he found that his arm was missing for the most part. It had been amputated just above his elbow. Dick found himself just staring at the empty space where it should be as though it would somehow magically appear. His heartbeat was faster as it sunk in that his arm was gone. That this time his dance with fire had left him burned in more ways than one. Tears began to well in his eyes and he let them fall but he couldn't scream out like his heart begged him to. A piece of him was missing but he couldn't shout or yell about it. He could only stare and cry silently. Shakily, he brought his right hand over and felt the bandaged stump to just make sure it really wasn't there. "Fuck," he whispered to himself. What else was there to say? Dick had spent the best of his life throwing himself into danger so he couldn't be surprised when he lost something. He withdrew his hand and laid it limply against the white bedsheets. Wow. His left arm was gone. Sure it wasn't his best arm but it was his arm. He liked that arm. Now he was left with only part of it. Could be worse he supposed. He could be dead. He could still give one-armed hugs. He was definitely strong enough to keep doing his pull-ups and some sort of trapeze work although he'd have to get used to the new balance. This was fine, wasn't it? He could adapt. One-handed push-ups for life and everyone thought those were cool. Upon carefully moving what was left of his left arm, he let out a shocked shout at the jolt of pain it sent through him when he did.

Suddenly the door to the hospital room burst open and his family poured in only for him to smile awkwardly at them. "When I was asked to lend a hand tonight, I didn't think you meant literally," he greeted in hopes of lightening the mood. It would crush him otherwise. They were staring at him and he could see they were worried not just for now. In their eyes, this was going to be the hit that kept him down but he wouldn't allow it. They'd work this out, he would find a way. He wouldn't let them continue to look at him as though this would be the thing that stopped him from helping people. When you defied death one too many times, you find a way to make anything less than your heart-stopping work for you. He'd hoped for a laugh with his line but the most he got was a sigh from Jason. The burns probably made it all look much worse than it was or maybe he'd been out for a long time so they couldn't count out some horrible one in a million complications that would finally off him. "Tough crowd. Cost me an arm for that joke but I've heard some people are paying a leg too." That got the same reaction as they all funnelled into the room and found their spots. He noticed that they were all staying on his right side which wasn't too surprising. "Am I giving Two-Face a run for his money?"

"Don't worry pretty boy, you've still got your looks," Barbara assured him with a small smirk. At least she was trying to volley with him, unlike the others. Should he be more like them? Maybe but he didn't want to be. He made it out alive after all and he knew he could still be Nightwing. It would take a lot of work but nothing had to change. He'd be okay.

"I'm so sorry chum," Bruce told him.  "I couldn't get there in time. Your arm couldn't be saved."

"It's alright, we'll work something out," Dick replied, remaining optimistic.

"We can work on a prosthetic arm," Tim jumped in to say. "It'll be just as good, if not better. Barbara and I can have the schematics by the end of the day. Cyborg could help too." Barbara was quick to nod encouragingly to that idea. 

 "At least it was the left arm. Never really used it. Can my new one have lights?"

"Whatever you want," Tim responded with a laugh. 

"So, no left arm," the acrobat found himself saying after a beat of silence. "Did I at least get everyone out?"

"You did. They would've died without you. You did good," Bruce informed him. He nodded to himself and let out a tired sigh. "Go back to sleep chum."

"One more thing. Can the lights be blue? I have an aesthetic to maintain."