Chapter Text
The memory ended.
Reality returned that felt entirely wrong. Too bright, too loud, too small. So Tim tried to do any sane person would ever do in memory-warping-realith would ever do: he stumbled into the nearest bathroom before he even realized he'd left the Batcomputer.
The door slammed shut.
His knees struck the cold marble floor. He tried to breathe. His lungs disagreed, as if something felt lodged beneath his ribs, felt like something inside him was trying to claw its way out.
His throat closed. His vision blurred.
The sink. He needed—The sink.
Tim crawled the last few feet. His forehead collided hard against the edge of the bathtub instead. Cold porcelain. Good. Cold.
He pressed harder. As though enough pressure might keep the memories from spilling back out: Rain, Bruce's voice.
I'm sorry.
Blood. Jason. Richard. The Witch laughing—her warmth blood seeping beneath his skin—Bruce crying.
No.
No.
No.
"I..."
Nothing. His voice refused to exist. His lungs had apparently resigned. Every breath caught halfway. His fingers curled so tightly against the tile his knuckles hurt.
Something wet struck the floor. Another drop. Then another. So he blinked it away but more drops fell on the floor.
Tears.
"...Seriously?"
His body had decided to cry without consulting management.
Rude.
Somewhere beyond the door—Someone shouted—Tim at least registered that into his mind.
"Tim!"
Footsteps.
Fast.
Then faster.
The bathroom door burst open hard enough to rattle the hinges. Tim flinched. Black boots. Cape. Armor.
Batman.
For one impossible second—The cave became a castle. The cape became a cloak. The cowl became a knight's helm.
Bruce/Batman/Knight. They all felt entirely like a different person but at the same time also not. Tim instinctly scrambled backward on instinct. His shoulder hit porcelain. Nowhere left to retreat.
Batman was already kneeling. "Tim."
His voice seemed steady.
But Tim couldn't answer. His lungs locked. Every breath came out broken. His fingers had gone numb. He stared at Bruce's gauntlets. For one terrible heartbeat, they weren't black. They were red; drenched in his own blood—
Bruce reached toward him. Tim jerked violently. Bruce stopped immediately. His hand remained suspended between them.
"Tim." Again. "Look at me."
Tim couldn't. "I—"
Nothing.
Bruce watched him for another second. Then made a decision. Carefully, he closed the distance. One arm around Tim's shoulders.
The other behind his head. Holding. Not restraining.
Tim froze in the soft embrace. He knows that he didn't feel any force or whatever but his brain still screamed.
His body didn't.
Bruce rested his chin lightly against Tim's hair. "You're here." A quiet voice. "Gotham. The Batcave. The year is two thousand twenty-six." Tim's trembling fingers clenched weakly against the armor. "You are safe."
Safe.
Bruce breathed slowly.
In.
Out.
Again.
Giving Tim a rhythm instead of an order. Somewhere inside the panic, Tim found it too.
In.
Out.
In.
Out.
His own breathing remained ugly—messy. Too fast and too shallow. Making his chest burned, and his throat ached.
Tears soaked into Bruce's cape.
Fantastic.
He was crying on Batman. That somehow felt illegal. Bruce never loosened his hold. "I know, baby. I know"
Tim's hands had somehow become trapped against Bruce's chest. Curled into the cape. Holding on without permission from the rest of him.
"It's over." Bruce's voice stayed impossibly calm. "You came back. Just—just focus on my breathing."
Tim squeezed his eyes shut. "I—" His voice cracked. He really tried to say something, anything. "You..."
So Bruce waited.
"I remember."
Silence. Bruce didn't say anything. May be tried to give Tim the chance to sah the rest of he meant by 'remember', but Tim didn't continue. Instead, his forehead pressed harder into the armor.
Bruce slowly let out a breath of his own. "I'm going to tell the others you're alright." Tim only nodded weakly.
"They're worried."
"...Mm."
"I'll be right outside."
"...Okay."
Bruce rose carefully. Making sure Tim stayed sitting upright before stepping toward the hallway. At the doorway, he paused. "You don't have to be alone. I'm here. The kids also."
Tim forced a tired smile. "That's suspiciously healthy advice coming from Batman."
Bruce's mouth almost twitched. "I've been practicing."
Then he disappeared into the hallway.
Tim listened. Bruce's voice carried faintly through the open door. "He's breathing." A pause. "Don't crowd him." Another. "No, Jason."
Another. "I said don't—"
Jason's muffled reply was too distant to make out. Tim let his head fall back against the bathtub.
"..."
He should stay. Bruce had done nothing wrong. Bruce had held him together when he'd fallen apart. Bruce had come running—
Bruce had looked—
Terrified.
Tim squeezed his eyes shut. That was the problem. The new acquired memory had changed—everything. For months, Tim had been terrified of Bruce.
But now he remembered Bruce crying. Remembered his shaking hands desperately trying to stop blood that would never stop. Remembered a man apologizing over and over to someone who couldn't answer anymore.
And suddenly, now Tim feels everything was wrong because he wasn't the only one carrying that death anymore. Because Bruce just didn't know he was carrying it too.
The guilt settled like a stone inside Tim's chest. "...Great."
All of this wasn't fair. Tim knew thag the memories were all in the past. Hell, no one cared anymore because hey! Guess what? Tim's the only one remembered them! And he vividly remembered telling Bruce that the guy has tried to kill him once.
So yes, it wasn't fair to Bruce. It wasn't fair to him. It wasn't fair to anyone.
And if Tim stayed, Bruce would keep looking at him like that. Trying to fix a wound he couldn't even see. Tim couldn't let him—
He stood. His legs immediately objected. The room tilted.
He waited. Breathed once. Twice. Good enough.
Tim cracked the bathroom door open. Bruce stood halfway down the corridor with his back turned, speaking quietly into the comm. "Nightwing, stay where you are." A pause. "He's stable."
Another. "No, Red Hood."
Another. "I mean it."
Tim looked the opposite direction. One hallway. Front staircase. West entrance: no one.
"...Sorry."
He slipped out.Years of accidentally terrifying people by existing quietly finally paid off. And Bruce never noticed.
Tim crossed the hallway. Down the staircase. Past the grandfather clock. Past the portraits.
The front doors loomed ahead. Huge. Ridiculously dramatic. Because apparently Wayne Manor believed every entrance should resemble the gates of destiny.
Tim grabbed the handle. Paused.
"...This is stupid." Absolutely. Bruce had helped him. Dick would worry. Jason would absolutely lose his mind. Alfred would probably make soup. Damian would call him an idiot in three different languages.
He knew all of that.
He opened the door anyway. Cold rain hit his face instantly. "...Yeah." He stepped into it. "Still doing it."
The doors closed quietly behind him.
One fun fact Tim knew about rain was that it can erase footprints. Convenient, really. Tim appreciated convenient things. Especially when he was making objectively terrible decisions.
He pulled the hood of his sweatshirt farther over his head. It achieved absolutely nothing. Within thirty seconds, Gotham's rain had soaked through every layer of clothing he owned. "Cool."
He sniffed. "I wasn't planning on being dry anyway."
He didn't know where he was going.
That was a lie.
He knew exactly where he was going. He just wished he didn't. His feet chose the route without consulting the rest of him.
Left. Across two intersections. Past the old pharmacy. Across Robinson Bridge. Another twenty minutes through steadily worsening rain.
Eventually, the houses grew larger. Quieter. Lonelier.
Tim slowed. There it was. The Drake estate. Or—what remained of it. The "For Sale" sign leaned sideways in the overgrown front yard.
The lettering had faded. Someone had scribbled haunted across the bottom in black marker. "Accurate." Tim commented to himself to lighten the mood.
Spoiler, it did not.
Because no one had bought the estate. Not after Jack and Janet died. Not after the legal investigations. Not after the papers. People said it's too expensive and too isolated, and also full of memories that weren't theirs.
Tim knew they were all lies created by rich people so they could avoid all the troubled in getting involved with poor-orphan-Timmy—
This is pathetic.
Tim climbed over the rusting front gate. Mostly because the latch had stopped working years ago. The weeds reached almost to his knees. Vines wrapped around the stone fence. More climbed the walls of the mansion itself. Nature had apparently looked at the Drake estate and decided,
Mine now.
Tim couldn't exactly blame it. The front steps groaned beneath his weight. Rainwater dripped steadily from the cracked roof. One upstairs window still bore the spiderweb fracture from—actually, he couldn't remember.
"Neat." His memories apparently had priorities. Ancient medieval trauma? Crystal clear. Why the upstairs window broke six years ago? Absolutely impossible.
Fantastic.
He fished an old key from his wallet. Bruce had offered to keep it safe a few days ago when hearing the news that Drake's estate was still standing still with poor life choices.
Tim had lied with full conscious. He'd said he'd lost it.
The key slid into the lock. "Please work." Click. "Still got it."
The front door opened with a long, aching creak. Dust greeted him immediately.
The faint smell of damp plaster: Home, kind of. Tim stepped inside. The door shut behind him. Silence swallowed the storm. The entrance hall looked... Frozen. Furniture remained exactly where it had always been. White sheets covered most of it now. Ghosts pretending to be sofas now.
Tim walked farther in. His footsteps echoed.
"Okay." He rubbed his arms. "This feels like poor decision-making."
Tim walked past the kitchen, it remained untouched. His mother's favorite mug still sat upside down beside the sink.
One cabinet door refused to close properly. Still.
Tim smiled faintly. "...Guess you never fixed that."
The smile disappeared almost immediately. He continued walking. The living room. Still there. The piano, covered in dust.
He dragged one finger across the keys. One lonely note rang out: out of tune.
"Sorry." He apologized to the piano. Because apparently tonight everyone deserved apologies.
Upstairs. The wooden staircase complained loudly with every step. "I know." Tim muttered. "I'm trespassing in my own house." The hallway seemed narrower than he remembered. Or maybe... He'd simply grown.
His bedroom door stood slightly open. He pushed it wider. The room looked almost untouched.
His desk, his shelves. Boxes stacked neatly against one wall. An old fencing trophy sat crooked beside the window. Second place, it has stated.
Regional Championship.
Tim picked it up. "Damn." He smiled tiredly. "I peaked at seventeen."
Another trophy stood beside it. National Junior Champion.
Then—nothing. No International trophy. Because there hadn't been one. Only a polite letter informing Timothy Drake that unsportsmanlike conduct resulted in immediate disqualification.
"To be fair." He pointed accusingly at the trophy. "He started it." The trophy remained unconvinced.
Tim sighed. "...Traitor."
He set it back down. Rain tapped softly against the bedroom window. The house creaked.
Tim decided to sit on the edge of his old bed. The mattress groaned. Dust floated lazily through the dim light. Everything looked smaller.
His room.
His desk.
His bed.
Funny.
As a kid, he'd thought this room was huge. Now, it barely fit him.
Tim leaned forward. Elbows on his knees. Hands hanging loosely. The silence here felt different from the Manor.
The Manor's silence, somehow felt alive.
Someone always laughed eventually, walked through the hallway, made tea.
Someone existed nearby.
Tim looked around slowly again. He knew this was stupid, coming here out of all places because of what? Guilt?
Yeah okay. He could have chose his dorm over this haunted place but then, the Wayne would find him easily. So really, being haunted or meeting ghosts over being found out by everyone about his little freaked out moment was better.
Tim stayed silence for another seconds before looked at his bed. Then at the floor.
"...Floor."
The bed held memories. The floor asked fewer questions. So, he kicked an old sheet aside with his foot on the floor. Dust burst upward immediately.
Tim coughed into his sleeve. "I've been assaulted."
No apology came from the century-old floorboards. Typical.
He lowered himself onto the wood anyway. It was cold. The kind of uncomfortable that eventually stopped being uncomfortable because your body simply gave up arguing. He folded both hands over his stomach and stared at the ceiling.
His phone vibrated beside his head. Once. Twice. Again. The sound echoed strangely through the empty room. Tim rolled his head just enough to look.
Bruce Calling...
The screen glowed for a while before fading back to black. Five seconds later, it lit up again.
Dick Calling...
"...Persistent." He didn't reach for it. Another vibration.
Jason Calling...
Another. A message. Another call. The phone practically shuffled itself across the dusty floor.
"...You're all dramatic."
Another vibration.
Damian Wayne
Tim blinked. "...You too?" The demon brat was calling.
That...
Actually made him snort. Somewhere in Gotham, Damian had apparently decided social interaction was preferable to letting Drake disappear.
The world truly was ending.
The phone stopped.
Silence.
Then started vibrating again. Tim sighed. Eventually he reached for it.
To make it stop.
Thirty-nine missed calls. His eyebrows climbed. "...Guys."
Bruce. Dick. Jason. Bruce. Dick. Alfred. Jason again. Damian. Bruce. Dick. Bruce.
Tim's thumb hovered over Bruce's name. Just... One tap and Bruce would answer before the first ring finished. He knew that with terrifying certainty.
Instead, his thumb drifted lower.
Past Jason.
Past Dick.
Past Alfred.
Past conversations that still continued.
Until—
Mom ❤️
He stopped breathing for a moment. The little heart beside her name, he'd forgotten he put that there. It was ridiculous. Janet Drake had insisted every contact should have an emoji.
"It makes people easier to find," she'd said.
Tim had argued for twenty minutes. Then secretly given her a heart anyway.
He opened the chat. The last actual text she'd ever sent sat there quietly.
Don't stay up too late. We'll call when we land. Love you. ❤️
Delivered. Read. Never answered.
Tim swallowed.
"Sorry."
His thumb shook as it hovered over one of the voice messages. Three years old. He pressed play. A burst of static. Then—"Timothy?"
His mother's voice filled the empty room. Warm. "You're ignoring my calls again." A laugh. "I know you're listening to this. Don't make that face. Mothers just know."
Tim's lips trembled.
"Your father says to tell you he's very disappointed in your life choices." A muffled voice in the background. "Janet, I did not say..." "Yes, you did."
"I absolutely..."
"Shh, I'm talking to our son."
Tim laughed. A tiny sound. Barely there.
He'd forgotten how they sounded together.
"Anyway..." Janet lowered her voice conspiratorially. "I made lasagna before we left." A pause. "Don't eat the entire tray in one sitting." Another pause. "That instruction was specifically for you."
Tim shut his eyes. The recording continued."Heat it properly this time. Last month you somehow managed to burn frozen food. I'm still impressed."
Tim immediately had to wipe his eyes. The message ended with a cheerful, "Love you, sweetheart. See you in a few days." Click.
The room became unbearably quiet. Tim immediately pressed another one. He couldn't help it— "Hi, sweetheart." This one sounded later. Tired. Airport announcements echoed faintly behind her. "We're waiting to board.Your father is pretending he doesn't need coffee." Jack protested somewhere nearby."I heard that."
"Good." Janet laughed. "Anyway.... How did your tournament go? You probably forgot to text me. Again. Honestly, if your future employer ever depends on you remembering to send emails..." Another laugh. "They're doomed."
Another pause from the recording. Then softer...
"Listen... I know you get frustrated when you don't win. I know you think second place means you weren't good enough. It doesn't. I know we sometimes said that we had high expectations on you but—Your father and I..."
Her voice gentled."We don't care whether you're first. Or second. Or last. Come home anyway."
The message clicked off. For several seconds, Tim didn't move.
He covered his eyes with one arm. A soft sob escaped his mouth. Tim startled when his phone vibrated again.
Bruce. Calling.
Tim looked at the screen. Then back at the old conversation. He pressed another voice message. This one was shorter.
"Timothy?" She sounded amused."It's raining today. Drive carefully on your bicycle. Or don't ride it in the rain at all. Actually... you'll ignore that advice." She sighed dramatically.
Three little words followed. Words she'd probably spoken a thousand times. Without ever imagining one day they'd become irreplaceable.
"Come home safe."
The recording ended.
Tim broke. One hand covering his mouth as his shoulders folded inward. The phone slipped from his fingers onto his chest, still clutched against his hoodie like something precious enough to stop him falling apart.