Archive of Our Own

A hand shook gently at his shoulder, waking him up.

“Nnnnm,” Tim mumbled, or something along those lines. His eyes were still closed. It was October already, and every day it was getting a little colder, the days shorter, but he was firmly wrapped in about four odd blankets, and so the room was just the right amount of warm and toasty.

“Tim,” said a deep voice, one that sounded too awake for Tim's liking, “wake up.”

“What time s’it?” He said, blearily.

“Seven fifteen,” Bruce said.

“”S Saturday” Tim mumbled, turning over and away from offending hand that kept shaking his shoulder, “no school.”

His bed dipped as Bruce sat down on its edge. “I know,” he said, and now he was no longer shaking Tim's shoulder, he was smoothing Tim's hair back from his face, “You need to get a haircut,” he said, and his voice was fond in a way that made Tim feel all the more warm and toasty.

“You need to let me sleep,” Tim groaned, but he blinked open his eyes slowly. “What time s’it?” He said. Wait. He'd already asked that before.

Bruce was already dressed, wearing a shirt and slacks, freshly shaved and showered. He looked more alert than he had any right to, at seven in the morning.

“I have a case,” he said, “and I'd like your help with it.”

Tim sat up quickly.

*

Todd Michelson woke up early. The first thing he did was check his watch. It was seven thirty.

He'd woken up at seven thirty everyday for the last twenty three days.

He got up and went to the bathroom, brushed his teeth. Took a piss. Shaved. He looked at his reflection in the mirror. He looked gaunt. The travelling was starting to take its toll on him.

He sighed. Checked his watch again. Seven thirty eight.

He wondered how many other Hims were waking up and looking at themselves in the mirror right now.

“Twenty two,” he whispered. Every day the number grew higher.

He sighed, and went downstairs to the breakfast buffet.

*

Tim always loved it when Bruce asked for his help on a case. There was something about the world's greatest detective needing– well, not needing, Batman didn't need anyone's help. Wanting, was probably the word for it. There was something about the world's greatest detective wanting Tim's help that made him feel. . . useful. Smart.

He sat at the kitchen table, his fingers tapping on the polished wood impatiently. He was waiting while Bruce made the both of them coffee and breakfast. Bruce would never let Tim help, because Tim was not good at kitchen things. He'd burn water if he could. He actually almost had once, when he'd blown up a kettle after he tried putting it in the microwave instead, thinking it would be quicker than the stove method. How was he supposed to know that metal wasn't supposed to go into microwaves?

Not that Bruce was too hot at kitchen things either, Tim thought as Bruce set down a plate with a single bagel on it, some cream cheese slathered on top. A cup of black coffee beside it. The mug had a NASA logo on it, and Dick had gifted it to him a few months back, for his fourteenth birthday.

Tim drank the coffee gratefully. Bruce sat down across him, his own bagel on a plate in front of him.

“We could’ve had breakfast later, you know,” Tim said, taking a bite out of his bagel, “downstairs. After you told me about the case.”

Bruce frowned. “And have you faint?” He said.

Tim blushed. Ever since that spleen thing, he'd started getting sick a lot, and once he'd fainted during patrol because he hadn't eaten in six hours. Bruce never let him forget that, and now he always carried around those terrible protein bars in his utility belt during Patrol. Tim only liked the chocolate ones, but Bruce very rarely ever had chocolate. It was usually Raisin Delight. Tim hated Raisin Delight, but Bruce made sure Tim ate one at regular intervals, or it was no patrol for him.

Tim kind of liked it, actually. The Bruce-worrying-about-him part, and not the Raisin Delight part. Before, no one had ever been concerned about him enough to feed him cold bagels and Raisin Delight every three hours, for maximum energy optimization.

So Tim ate his breakfast, and even had a yogurt. Blueberry. Once Bruce looked convinced enough that he wasn't going to keel over and die, he said, “Can you tell me about the case now?”

“Hnn,” Bruce said. He got up off the chair, and grabbed his coffee mug. Alfred didn't like it when Bruce took his mug down to the cave, but Bruce always forgot. “Let's go.”

They went down to the cave. Bruce had been working on it before he'd woken Tim up apparently, because there were papers sprawled all around the console and his workstation, and files and diagrams and things.

“The Flash contacted me late last night,” Bruce was saying, stacking the papers together, “with a problem. There were holes in the fabric of the speed force, and he had managed to track it down to a series of different locations in Gotham. A motel in the Narrows, a lab in Newtown, and the reception room in Gotham General hospital.”

“Holes in the fabric of the speed force?” Tim asked.

“Inconsistencies. Repetitions of events, or gaps in people's memories. Several loops. Here,” Bruce said, tapping on the batcave’s central monitor a few times, and pulling up a clip from a local news channel, “see for yourself.”

“Here at Newtown Racecourse, the strangest thing is happening,” a reporter was saying, her face pink with excitement. There was a backdrop of a horse race behind her, and a loud cacophony of excited yelling. She had to yell to be heard over it, “Horse number five, Blackbeard, just won for the eighteenth time in a row,” she said, grinning, “and everyone's getting very, very rich today. Including Brad, our cameraman, who made some very smart bets earlier today.”

There was a whooping sound off camera. Presumably Brad. The reporter lady grinned again.

Bruce switched off the news feed.

“So a horse won a race a couple of times,” Tim said, shrugging, “how's that a big deal?”

“The same horse came first eighteen times in two days,” Bruce said, “do you know what the odds of that happening are?”

“Uh, very little?”

“Very, very little. Almost infinitesimal. And stranger things are happening across Gotham, and to some extent, all of North America. There was an accident in Coast city, yesterday. Two trucks crashed into each other. Two casualties. Tony Ramos and Spencer Atkinson. Mr. Ramos was wearing a red baseball cap and talking to his wife on the phone when he crashed.”

“Okay, so?”

“So early today morning, it happened again. Same two trucks. Same road. Eyewitness reports say that they saw a man in a red baseball cap talking on the phone behind the wheel of one of the trucks.”

Tim frowned, trying to figure it out. “Doubles?”

Bruce shook his head. “Time is starting to loop. Things that happened before are starting to happen again and again. They looked for Mr. Ramos’ body in the morgue, the body that they'd stored there after the first accident, but they couldn't find it. It was like it had never been there at all. His wife had no recollection of any accident happening the previous day.”

“Huh,” Tim said.

“And outside,” Bruce said, “It's starting to rain.”

Tim shrugged. It had been raining for a couple of days now.

“What about it?” he asked.

“You remember yesterday when that tree on the west lawn fell because of the rain? And we had to clear it away?”

“Yeah?”

“I went on a run today. It was up again. And thirty six minutes before I woke you, it fell again, which couldn't be possible, because it had already fallen and consequently been taken away. So I checked the CCTV footage. Two hours and thirty three minutes before it fell, the tree appeared out of thin air, intact on its broken stump. It reappeared in another half an hour.”

Bruce checked his wristwatch. “So according to my calculations, the tree I cleared away for the second time two hours and forty minutes away, should fall again, in another seven minutes, give or take a few seconds.”

They went to the grounds and stood, staring at the stump in the pouring rain. Minutes ticked by. Then, at the seventh minute mark, the tree suddenly fell. Tim blinked.

“Time,” Bruce said, “is repeating itself. Looping. Glitching. Whatever you want to call it. Someone's doing this. Someone's messing around with time.”

Tim looked at the tree. “if we clear it again, will it reappear in another half an hour?”

“Yes. It appears to be running roughly on a three hour cycle of falling and reappearing after I clear it. And all around the world, it's happening with bigger, more important things. Stock market trends are on loop, game shows, lottery ticket numbers, wars, accidents, people are dying and coming back to life, just to die again, reliving terrible experiences and knowing things about the future that they shouldn't know. The people that are dying on loop just keep forgetting that they do. So do their friends and families and eyewitnesses. And no one has figured it out yet, except Barry Allen, and me. They all just think it's an insane coincidence. Although that won’t be the case for very long,” Bruce said, looking at Tim, “someone's bound to figure it out soon enough. And then there's going to be global pandemonium.”

“Okay,” Tim said, trying to sound like this was all casual, like stuff like this happened everyday, “this is kind of a big mess.”

“Yes,” Bruce said. His arms were crossed. “That's why I need your help.”

*

They went to the motel first. The Flash had reported that it was the source of all the inconsistencies in the time stream, and a strange. . . energy was pulsing out of it.

“That's a little vague,” Tim said, while they were in the car. They were both in civvies– it was not like Batman and Robin could just waltz into the motel and ask the receptionist questions without her screaming rather loudly and calling the police.

Bruce was wearing a hoodie though, and glasses. He was sitting a little hunched, and something about the posture made him seem stouter and shorter. More ordinary. Someone you wouldn't think about twice, if you saw them in a crowd.

Tim was in his sneakers and jeans and a sweater. Bruce had made him wear the sweater, even though it was only October.

“Your spleen, Tim,” Bruce had said, and Tim had rolled his eyes.

He was wearing a baseball cap too, but he had a feeling it would be pretty pointless. Bruce was big on not letting paparazzi take pictures of him. It was one of the things he got really mad about.

At the motel, the receptionist smiled at them and asked them if they wanted a room eight times times in five minutes.

“Do you see what I mean?” Bruce said, grimly.

“Yeah,” Tim said, looking at the people at the breakfast buffet, who'd been periodically getting up and sitting down for no reason in particular. And the fish in the fishtank next to the receptionist's desk were swimming in the same patterns over and over again. It looked like a looping video.

“It seems to be the worst here,” Bruce said, quietly. And then to the receptionist, he smiled, saying, “We'd like one room please.”

“Room 203 is free,” the reception said, “otherwise we're all booked out, I'm afraid.”

“That sounds perfect, thanks,” Bruce said, taking the key.

“Of course,” the receptionist said. A few moments later, she smiled again, like she'd seen them for the first time. “Hello,” she said, “welcome to Rainbow Lodge. Would you like a room?”

“Look at your ledger, miss,” Tim said, “you're all booked out.”

The receptionist looked down. Her smile faded. “Oh,” she said, “but I could've sworn–” she paused, smiling at them again. “Hello,” she said, “welcome to Rainbow Lodge. Would you like a room?”

“No, thank you,” Bruce said. To Tim, he said, “come on. Let's go upstairs.”

They went upstairs, taking the stairs, (they got off the elevator after it went up and down three times without opening). Room 203 was an average motel room, with a double bed and an attached bath. A minibar, off to one side of the wall. Tim looked out the window. There was a yellow car going down the road. He checked his watch.

“Does anything seem out of the ordinary to you?” Bruce said.

Tim looked around. He shrugged. “Looks like an normal motel.”

Bruce switched on the TV. The news channels were all on repeat. He switched it off.

“There's someone here,” Bruce said, “someone staying in one of these rooms is causing all of this.”

“What could cause something like this to happen?” Tim asked.

Bruce was silent. He didn't know.

Tim looked out the window again. The yellow car was going down the street again. Same number plates. Same lane. Tim checked his watch.

“Two and a half minutes, give or take a few seconds,” he said.

“What?”

“The frequency of the loop. It's two and a half minutes on the road outside the hotel. Inside, it's much worse. The receptionist was repeating herself almost every half minute. At the manor, the tree's falling every three hours. Coast city was what, one day? How long was the duration between two successive accidents?”

“Twenty two hours,” Bruce said.

“So the frequency of the loop shortens the closer you get to the source of whatever is messing with the stream. So that must mean that there's someplace in the motel where the frequency of the loop is one second. Less than that, even. Somewhere where time is just standing still. That's the point source. If we find that, we've cracked the case.”

Bruce tilted his head. He looked impressed.

“Good work, Tim,” he said.

Tim grinned a little.

They tried walking around the hallways with Tim's watch in hand, seeing how often the second hand would tick forward and then suddenly move back to where it had been originally, but to no luck.

He paused at the hallway, thinking.

“Not everything is looping, then,” Bruce said, slowly. “Not us.”

“Not that we know of,” Tim said. They could have had this conversation fifty times already, and just forgotten about it.

Bruce frowned, shaking his head. “Well, at least not at the same frequency as everyone else in the motel, then. We're noticing that they're on repeat, right? We wouldn't be able to do that if we were synced up to them.”

“So we're not affected by whatever’s happening?” Tim said.

Bruce looked outside, at one of the small windows. “And neither is the rotation of the earth. The sun’s rising overhead at a constant pace. If that was looping too, it would still be early morning, or night, or whenever this phenomena started. And it wouldn't have changed since then.”

Tim looked out the window. Sure enough, it was brighter than it had been when Bruce had first woken him up.

“So how could we know what's repeating and what's not?” Tim said.

Bruce was quiet, for a moment. “It's probably random,” he said, “Inconsistencies don't always follow a pattern. But we do know that things are being affected geographically.”

They went back to the motel room. Bruce took a piece of stationery out of the drawers by the bed, and drew a circle on it. At the centre of the circle, he drew a dot.

“This is the motel,” he said, “the source.”

He drew another dot, a few inches away from the centre, “that's the manor.”

Another dot, almost on the edge of the circle, “that's Coast city.”

“What about those other places Flash mentioned? The lab in Newtown, and Gotham general hospital. How do those fit in?”

Bruce looked at him, his cool gaze thoughtful, “I guess we'll have to go find out,” he said.

*

At the motel, Todd Michelson discovered for the first time that day, that strange things were happening. The people in the breakfast line were repeating themselves, saying the same things over and over again. The woman at the reception desk was repeating herself to some guy and his kid, standing in the lobby. He walked past them.

Then he stopped, and thought for a second. If everyone was repeating themselves, it would look suspicious if he wasn't, too. He walked past the reception desk one more time. And then again, just in case.

The lady at reception didn't even notice. He shrugged.

The woman who usually served him his coffee gave him his cup three different times. Each time when he went to look at his original cup to tell her that he already had one, it was gone. It was in her hands instead.

He looked back up at the waitress. She had a vacant expression on her face.

“Your coffee?” She said.

He stared.

“Thank you,” he said, after a while, taking the cup.

She walked away. He stared at the cup.

Fuck.

*

Tim looked idly around the room as Bruce checked the ledgers in the Gotham general hospital reception room.

People weren't acting out of the ordinary here. Sure, there was this one baby crying non-stop, but Tim didn't think that was a time glitch so much so as just babies being babies. He walked back over to Bruce, who was sitting behind the desk and going through the files.

“How did she even buy it?” Tim whispered. He was talking about the lady at the help desk who'd let Bruce go through all their records.

“How did she believe the fact that I donated to the hospital and wanted to come down and personally check all their files to make sure things were in order?”

“Well. Yeah,” Tim said.

“It's because I did.”

*You did what?”

“Fifteen minutes before we arrived, I wired the hospital a donation.”

“How much?”

“One point five.”

“Million?” Tim shook his head. “You have like, zero business acumen, B.”

Bruce smiled. “Company's still afloat,” he said.

Tim was about to say something, but a fresh round of wailing from that baby distracted him. Tim looked up. He was in this little pram thing, all alone in one corner of the waiting room, bawling his lungs out. Tim frowned.

“Bruce?”

Bruce was still going through the ledgers. “What is it?”

“Where's that baby's mom?”

Bruce looked up. The pram was unattended. Tim went towards it slowly, leaning down to see under the awning. The pram had little letters, embroidered onto the fabric. They spelled out 'Nathan’.

“Hey, little guy,” he whispered.

From the corner of his eye, he could see Bruce had gotten up. He was looking around the room.

The baby wouldn't stop crying. His face was all red and pinched. He was being really loud. People in the room were starting to stare.

Tim hesitated, and then gingerly reached over and picked him up. He was really small, and Tim tried to rock him back and forth in his arms, slowly.

“It's gonna be okay, Nathan,” he whispered, “we're going to find your mom.”

The baby stopped crying slowly, hiccupping and whimpering, and looked at him curiously.

“Ma’am?” He heard Bruce say. He turned around to look.

In the far corner of the room, there was a woman standing at a vending machine, pretty much emptying her purse into the coin slots. There was a small pile of candy bars at her feet. She just kept slotting more coins into the machine. There was an oddly vacant expression on her face. Bruce was shaking her shoulder.

“Ma'am?” Tim heard him say again.

Tim walked over to her, still carrying her baby in his arms.

“Hey, lady, your uh, baby's crying,” he said, holding him out to her.

The lady looked at her baby. She blinked.

“Nate?” She said. Then she looked down at the candy bars at her feet.

“Oh, hell,” she said, an expression of horror on her face.

“You're okay,” Tim said, trying to smile at her, “it's been happening to everyone.”

The lady only looked more horror-struck.

Bruce sighed, putting a hand on Tim's back and steering him away from the pair. “Let's go, Tim.”

The ledgers had nothing special in them. Bruce took a picture of each of the pages carefully, and then they left.

“There wasn’t as much of the looping thing happening in the hospital, was there?” Tim said, as they drove back to the manor.

“No,” Bruce said. He looked like he was thinking about something.

“What is it?” Tim said.

Bruce was quiet for a while. Then,

“What you did back there, with the baby,” he said, finally.

“Yeah?” Tim said, waiting.

More silence. Then Bruce shook his head.

“Robin, when was the last time you ate?” he said.

Tim rolled his eyes. This again. “Breakfast.”

“It's almost lunchtime.”

“I know.”

“I'm just saying, with the problems you have with your immune system–”

“Yeah yeah. Just give me the granola bar.”

“Check the glovebox.”

Tim checked the glovebox. No chocolate. All there was was Raisin Delight. He sighed.

*

After breakfast, he went to a park near the motel he'd woken up in. It was a different motel, every night. He'd made sure of that.

He didn't want to run into any versions of himself.

He sat down and opened his notebooks, looking over the equations he'd written down.

An hour into his work, he was starting to regret picking the park. The sun was shining too fiercely on his face, and it was too hot. He should have just gone to a cafe instead.

There was a place uptown he hadn't sat in yet, but it was near the park where he'd sat on the eighth day.

He sighed. Better to feel hot than run into Todd Michelson number eight.

*

They snuck into the lab a little after lunchtime. They wore their suits, this time.

There weren't a whole lot of excuses Bruce Wayne could make to explain away why he and his adopted son were in a private pathology lab in Newtown in the middle of the day.

“Stay behind me, Robin,” Batman said, his voice quiet. The lab lights were on. Someone was in here.

Robin nodded. Batman moved slowly, his footsteps silent. Watching him move was like watching a panther slowly move through the underbrush of a jungle, its prey a few feet away. He could stand still for what seemed like hours, and then strike all of a sudden, and all there you could see would be a blur of a cape and grapple wire and suddenly there were three criminals strung up on the ceiling beams, screaming for their mothers.

Tim could barely keep up.

“Robin,” Batman said, and Tim shook away his thoughts, scurrying behind Bruce.

They moved through the large lab, and Tim looked around. There were these rows of counters, with microscopes and centrifuges and test tubes and beakers. There were scans on the wall. Medical scans. MRIs and X Rays and brain mapping charts. Tim recognised them from every time he got hurt on patrol and had to go for a checkup to Leslie's clinic.

“Hey, Todd is that y–” Batman had the man pinned against a wall in a split second, one gauntleted hand clamped down on his mouth. The man's eyes were wide.

“Is there anyone else here,” Batman growled, “shake your head yes or no.”

The man nodded.

“How many? More than one?” Batman said, his voice very quiet. His eyes were darting around the room. He was looking for alternate exits.

The man shook his head.

“Alright,” Batman said, “now I'm going to take my hand away from your mouth. And you will not scream, or make a single sound. Am I making myself very clear?”

The man nodded.

Batman slowly took his hand off of the man's mouth.

“Who are you?” Batman said.

“I'm Pete. Peter Caldwell,” Pete said, wide eyed. He was holding his hands up. He was panting, even though he hadn't been running around, “I'm just the lab technician here. Please don't kill me.”

“No one is killing anybody.” Batman said, “who else is in here?”

“Uh, just Doctor Michelson. He's the head of pathology here. Everyone else went out for lunch already but I forgot my car keys so I–”

“What’s his full name,” Batman said.

“Todd. Todd Michelson. I'm not sure what any of this has to do with–”

Tim didn't hear the rest of the sentence, because someone had shoved a fist into his side, and then made a run for it, towards the main exits.

“Robin,” He heard Bruce say, his voice hard and worried, and sat up so the floor wasn't tilting anymore.

“I'm fine, go get him,” Tim said, and Batman ran in the direction of Todd Michelson’s retreating figure.

Tim sat there for a bit, breathing through his mouth. It was like the wind had been knocked out of his lungs.

Pete, the lab technician, was staring warily at him.

“Is he in trouble, or something?” He asked, finally. He was talking about doctor Michelson.

Tim looked at the wildly swinging lab doors that he'd run out of, narrowly followed by Batman.

“He must be,” Tim said, getting to his feet slowly, “or he wouldn't have run.”

“Shit,” Pete said, “Todd?”

Tim shrugged. “Good guys never run,” he said.

*

“What do we do now?” Tim said. They were in the cave. The TV was on in the background, a news channel playing on mute.

Bruce was in front of the console, frowning at something on the screen. He hadn't been able to catch Michelson. They'd come back to the cave instead, to rethink their plan– with all the new information that had come to light.

“As of now, Doctor Michelson is our prime suspect in this investigation,” Bruce said. “He works as a research scientist at Newtown Pathology, and part-time at Gotham general.”

“That might explain the glitching going on there?” Tim said.

“Possibly. Widower. One son, six years old. Has an arrest record.”

“Really?” Tim said. Guy like that, he seemed straight-laced.

“He has a lifetime ban from both Bellagio and Cesar's palace. Couple other places in Vegas. Counting cards.”

“Huh,” Tim said. “Gambling addiction?”

Bruce was still looking at the screen. “Looks like he stopped, around eight years ago. When he met his wife. Kate Michelson, née Watts. She was an experimental physicist at LivTech,” Bruce looked up at Tim, “the parent company of that lab in Newtown.”

“The one where Michelson works? Is that how they met?”

Bruce shrugged. “It's possible. She died two years ago. A rare nervous system disorder. Impossible to cure.”

“Oh,” Tim said.

They sat in silence. Bruce's hands were steepled together, like he was thinking.

It was almost five in the evening. Ten hours since they'd started working on it.

“This case,” Tim said, his shoulders slumping, “none of it makes any sense. What's he doing? What's his motive?”

Bruce came and sat next to Tim, on the benches.

“Maybe we're looking at this the wrong way,” Bruce said, “let's stop looking at Michelson, for a moment. Let's look at the time inconsistencies.”

“What about them?” Tim asked.

“Why would they arise? And why would they arise in such specific locations?”

“Well, we know Michelson is connected to at least two of those places, right? I'm assuming he goes to both the hospital and the lab regularly.”

Bruce nodded. “Alright. And?”

Tim thought. “And. . . I don't know. The only other time there were inconsistencies in the time loop was. . . when Barry Allen went back in time and saved his mom. But that wasn't like this. It was– everything changed. Things aren't really different, are they? They're just repeating.”

Bruce was silent for a while. “Tim,” he said, finally.

“Yeah?”

“It's been three hours. Go eat a protein bar.”

Tim scowled. “Bruce.”

“What?”

“We're solving a case.”

“So? You can't think and eat at the same time?”

Tim frowned again, but he went over to the mini fridge where Alfred kept the glucose powder and the protein bars and took one out.

“You know,” he said, looking at the protein bar, “you only ever buy Raisin Delight.”

“You don't like it?” Bruce said.

“It's not that I don't like it,” Tim said, pausing. He didn't want to sound ungrateful or anything, “it's just kind of. Gross.”

Bruce blinked. “You should have told me you didn't like raisins. I've been buying you those bars for the last eight months.”

Tim squirmed. He didn't want to make Bruce feel bad. “I mean. Does anyone like raisins, Bruce?”

Another blink. “I do,” Bruce said.

“Okay. Well. You're different, okay? I don't mind it or anything, it's just that the taste is kind of–”

“Tim,” Bruce said, and his voice was slightly softer, “if you don't like the Raisin ones you should just tell me. I'll buy you another flavour.”

“Uh, okay,” Tim said. It felt very much like they were talking about something else. Tim wasn't quite sure what. “I like chocolate.”

“Okay,” Bruce said, “I'll buy you chocolate, next time.”

Tim bit into the bar. Right into a raisin too. Gross. He went and sat next to Bruce on the benches again, and Bruce kind of put his hand on Tim's back. It was really large and warm and Tim pretended like it was cool. Everything was cool, and Bruce just put his arm around Tim all the time, like that was totally a casual thing he did, or whatever. Cool.

“Perhaps,” Bruce said, “Michelson wants to keep things normal. That's why nothing is changing.”

“What do you mean?”

Bruce had that look in his eye now, which he always got when he was close to cracking a case. “Barry Allen went back in time and changed something. That's why everything in the future changed. Maybe Michelson is dead set on things not changing. Maybe everything is repeating because he's been repeating his day, and that's leaking over onto the time stream for everyone else.”

Tim frowned. “Wait, so he's living out the same day again and again? Like, some kind of Groundhog Day scenario?”

Bruce was getting up now, and pacing. “It's possible. He goes to the lab everyday. He goes to the hospital everyday. The motel–”

“Maybe he's staying there,” Tim said, chewing his protein bar.

“Maybe.”

“So what? He's a time traveller?”

“It's very likely. But he's doing something wrong, somehow. Normal time travel. . . it doesn't do this,” Bruce said, pointing to the TV. It was still showing the footage of that horse, Blackbeard, winning races over and over again.

Tim put down his protein bar very carefully. “Bruce,” he said, slowly.

“What?”

“If you had a gambling problem, and you were living out the same day over and over again, what's the first thing you'd think of doing?”

Bruce looked at the footage on the TV, of Newtown Racecourse.

“Betting on horses,” he said.

Tim got up. “I know where Todd Michelson is.”

*

Newtown Racecourse was packed full of people. Everybody had come down to see the incredible horse that kept winning races. Money was passing hands like nobody's business.

Todd Michelson frowned. This was not supposed to happen.

Blackbeard was supposed to win two races today. One at five, and the other at seven fifteen. That was it.

He found a man looking avidly through the glass, at the races.

“Hey, excuse me,” he said to the guy, “you got any idea how many races this horse has won so far?”

The man turned, and it was him. It was himself.

Todd backed away. “Shit,” he said. Had he come here at five before? Yes, he remembered. Yes, he had. On the fifteenth day.

Other Todd was staring at him. Todd number fifteen. “You shouldn't be here,” he said.

“I know, I know,” Todd said, scrubbing his face. “God, I just got here because of the horse. I'm going to leave, right away. But– how many times has it won?”

“Twenty six times. Just today,” Other Todd said. He looked a little horrified to be talking to him. “What's your day? Mine’s fifteen, but I can't remember you, so I'm guessing you're further ahead.”

“Twenty three,” Todd said, “Is that allowed?”

Other Todd frowned. “Is what allowed?”

“Making a horse race that many times. He must be getting tired.”

“Is he? It’s not showing, that's for sure. He won't stop running.” Other Todd said.

“Hey, excuse me,” someone said, patting his shoulder, “how many races has that horse won?”

Except Todd already remembered what was going to happen. Because on day number fifteen, he'd had a conversation with a man who'd done this forty eight times.

He turned around and looked at Todd number forty eight.

Then he started to laugh, a little hysterically.

Todd number forty eight didn't say anything. He backed away a little, realization, and then all of a sudden– memory, starting to dawn on him.

Then Todd number twenty three started to run. The other Todds didn't even try to stop him. He went to the far end of the room, and stared at the people and the horses. He sat there for a long time, because he wasn't quite sure what to do.

He had thought for so long he'd been the latest of them. The newest Todd.

Of course there were more than twenty three. There could be a thousand and twenty three, for all he knew. He scrubbed at his face again. This wasn't good. If the horse racing thing was attracting so many of them here, it meant that something different was happening today. That it was happening for the first time, in all of these Todd's timelines.

He took a deep breath, and looked around the room.

It was like someone had drugged these people. They were whooping and screaming and crying every time Blackbeard won another race. There was a woman screaming at someone. People calling up their bosses and quitting. A fight broke out a few yards away from him. Someone got stabbed. Hardly any people even noticed. In the far corner, the two Todds were talking, looking at him curiously.

Todd sat in the midst of the pandemonium, and watched.

“Katie, what do I do,” he whispered.

*

They caught him outside the racecourse, on his way to the parking lot. It was seven thirty in the evening. The sun had mostly set. It was dark.

“Todd Michelson,” Batman growled.

The man walking to his car stopped.

“Yes,” he said, after a long while.

“We need to ask you some questions,” Batman.

Michelson turned slowly. His hand was in his pocket, under his coat.  

“I have to get to the hospital,” Michelson said, his voice barely audible.

“You can go later, Mr. Michelson.”

Michelson shook his head. “You don't understand,” he said. “I really have to go. I'm going to end it today.”

“End what?”

Tim looked at Bruce. Bruce was looking at Michelson's coat pocket.

“Todd,” he said, “take your hand out of your pocket.”

“I have to go to the hospital,” Michelson said again, and he'd taken his hand out of his pocket, and there was a gun in it. He was pointing the gun at Tim.

“I have to go.” he said.

“Mr. Michelson,” Bruce said, and his voice was like steel, “put the gun down right now.”

Michelson shook his head. He was avoiding Tim's eyes. “I–”

“You have to go to the hospital,” Tim said, slowly, holding his hands up, “I get it. That's okay. We all can go together, right Batman?”

Bruce was looking at him, his eyes blank under the cowl’s lenses. Tim could tell that he was freaking out. His jaw was hard.

It's going to be okay, Tim mouthed at him.

“He worries about me,” Tim said, in a louder voice, to Michelson, “because I have a problem with my spleen. I don't have one. That's the problem, actually. So I get sick a lot, and all that. So don't shoot me, or he's going to get mad.”

Michelson's gun was shaking.

“You're head of Pathology at a lab in Newtown. Have you ever even used that gun before?” Tim said.

Michelson swallowed. “No,” he said. He lowered his gun.

There was a silence.

“I have a son too,” he said. “he's very sick. He's in the hospital. Gotham General. Please. I have to go see him before I can end this.”

“End what?” Bruce said, but Tim nodded.

“We'll go see your son, Todd. Okay? We'll all go together. Just give me the gun.”

Bruce was looking at him, but Tim didn't waver.

Michelson handed him the gun.

“We better leave,” he said, “I don't want to run into any other versions of me.”

“What?” Bruce said.

Michelson sighed. “It's– it's very hard to explain.”

They went to the hospital, up to Max Michelson's room.

“I don't come here a lot,” Michelson said, quietly. They were sitting by his son's bed. Max was asleep, his mouth slightly open. He looked six. Maybe seven. “I'm always afraid I'll run into myself.”

“What does that mean,” Bruce said.

Michelson stared at his hands. “He's got the same thing Kate had. The same nervous disorder. Except he got a lot sicker, a lot faster. When she died, she was already thirty eight. The doctors say he might die in a year. Maybe lesser.”

“I'm sorry,” Tim said.

Michelson nodded jerkily. “Yeah,” he said, “I'm sorry too.”

Max mumbled something in his sleep. His father leaned over, smoothing over his hair.

“Before Kate died, she was working on something with the guys at LivTech. They called it Trace Tachyon Collision Regulation, and it was still highly experimental but everyone knew what it meant. Time Travel.”

He paused.

“She helped develop it. And then she died. But she got the machine home, before that, just to show me how it worked. She wasn't supposed to, but she did anyway. Two years later, when Max got diagnosed I– I broke into their facility, and I stole it. I still had her ID card, and I guess they forgot to revoke access. Who worries about a dead person stealing your things, right?” He said, laughing a little, “I'm the head of Pathology in one of the leading labs in the country. They gave me awards last year, for my work in the usage of allogeneic mesenchymal stem cells as an investigative treatment for systemic lupus erythematosus. And when Max got sick I– I thought I could fix it. I could help him. I just needed more time. But he didn't have that much more time.”

“You think you can cure it,” Tim said.

Michelson nodded. He swallowed. “I thought maybe– I could just keep going back in time, for one day, as many times as I had to, and I'd work on the cure. Except everyday that I did that, I left behind one copy of myself. There was the original Todd Michelson, and then there was Todd from the second time he lived through that day, and then Todd from the third time, and so on. And I thought, you know, that it was okay, because I was so close to curing it, and then–”

“You're saying that there's multiple versions of you running around Gotham,” Bruce said.

Michelson nodded.

“How many?”

He sighed. “I thought, stupidly, that I was the latest, I suppose. Today is my twenty-third tenth October.”

“There's twenty three Todd Michelsons in Gotham right now?” Tim said, slowly.

“No,” Michelson said, “there's at least forty eight. I met him today. Number forty eight. At Newtown Racecourse.”

There was a long moment of silence.  

“There's probably many many more than forty eight,” Michelson said, quietly. “There could be hundreds of us.”

“Mr. Michelson, you do see the effects that your interference with time is having on everybody's lives, don't you?” Bruce said, finally.

Michelson scrubbed at his face. “Yeah, I know– I messed up. I didn't really think ahead. This was Katie's field, anyway.” He looked up at them, a determined look on his face. “Look, this is my mess. I'm going to clean it up. I'll just go back to the first time I ever time travelled, and I'll stop myself from doing it. Then I'll destroy the machine.”

“The machine?” Bruce said.

Michelson reached into his briefcase, and took out a metal box the size of a rubix cube. It had buttons on all of its sides, bar one.

“It's a prototype. Not meant for practical application.” Michelson said. He pointed to a screen on one of its surfaces. “You use that to input how far back or ahead you want to go. The keys on the left are for years, months, hours and seconds. You can set it accordingly. It's not very tough to use, actually.” he held it out.

Bruce took it from Michelson, staring at the sides.

“How has no one caught you yet? The people at LivTech?” Tim asked.

Michelson smiled, a little ruefully. “Technically, it's only been a day since I stole it.”

Max stirred in his sleep. He cracked an eye open. “Dad?” He said.

“Hi, Max,” Michelson said. “You doing okay?”

“Yeah,” Max said. Then he stared at Bruce and Tim. “Is that Batman?”

Michelson smiled again, a tight, thin smile. “I'm going to talk to him in the hallway for a second. Is that okay?”

Max nodded.

“I'll stay with him,” Tim said. He smiled at Max. Max blinked at him. It was not everyday you saw Robin in your hospital room.

“Thank you,” Michelson said.

“You changed clothes again,” Max said. “Are you going somewhere?”

Michelson shook his head. “I'm staying right here,” he said, softly. “Now be a good boy for Robin, okay?”

“Okay,” Max said.

Michelson and Batman left the room. Max stared at Tim.

“Is my dad in trouble?” He said.

Tim thought about being honest. Then he decided against it.

“No,” he said, “no, he's not.”

*

After Michelson was done talking to Bruce, Robin went out to the hallway. Batman was sitting on one of the waiting room chairs in the empty hallway. Tim wondered what would happen if one of the doctors or nurses walked in here to check in on a patient.

“Come here,” Batman said.

Tim went and sat next to him.

Bruce didn't say anything for the longest time. When he did, he said, “I spoke to Mr. Michelson. He's going to be staying here for a while. I'm going back with Barry to the hotel room where he first time travelled. Hopefully that should erase all the copies that were made of him from existence. There would only be one Todd Michelson left.”

Tim looked at the closed door of the hospital room. “That means he'd be gone too,” he said. “Number twenty three.”

“Yes,” Bruce said, “he said he wanted to spend his last few hours with his son.”

“Oh,” Tim said.

Bruce was quiet again.

“It’s eight thirty. You ought to go back to the cave and eat dinner. It's been more than two hours since you've eaten.”

Tim nodded. “Yeah,” he said. He got up.

“Robin,” Bruce said.

Tim looked at him. “Yeah?”

Bruce had gotten up too. He put a hand on his shoulder. “It's going to be okay,” he said. “That little boy's going to die,” Tim said. “and LivTech is probably going to make sure his dad gets arrested.”

“You can't always fix everything,” Bruce said. “I wish we could.”

Quieter, Bruce said, “No father should ever have to bury their son.”

Tim was silent.

“Come here,” Bruce said again, and then he put his arms around Tim, right there in the middle of the hallway, in their suits and everything. Tim closed his eyes.

“Everything is going to be okay,” Bruce said again.

“You're just saying that,” Tim said, trying not to sniffle.

Bruce hugged him tighter. “No I'm not. I'll talk to my lawyers. See if we can help Michelson out with the LivTech situation. Okay? Things are doing to be fine.”

“Okay,” Tim said, wiping at his eyes in what he hoped was a discrete way.

“Okay,” Bruce said, pulling away. “Now go back to the cave. I have call Barry, and go avert this entire situation. And take this back and put it in the evidence locker, in the cave.”

Tim looked at what Bruce was handing him. It was the time machine– the prototype Michelson had been using.

What had Michelson said about it?

It was actually pretty easy to use.

Tim swallowed.

“Bruce,” he said, “You still miss him, don't you?”

Bruce exhaled. “This is very different.”

“It's not that different. Would you do something like this? If it was for Jason.”

Bruce hesitated, for a long moment. “No,” he said. “I have to go, Tim. Go home, get something to eat. Put the prototype in the evidence locker.”

“Okay,” Tim said, and Bruce left.

Tim knew he was supposed to get home, to the manor, but he didn't go back. Instead, he sat on one of the chairs outside, in the hallway.

Bruce had been lying.

He'd do anything to get Jason back. It wouldn't be that hard, would it? All he'd have to do would be to go back in time, and hide that birth certificate that Jason had stumbled across. Or stop him from going to Ethiopia. Any number of things.

He stared at the prototype. Easy to use.

He'd had a nightmare once, last year.

He went up to Bruce's room, and opened the door. Just a crack. Went and sat on the edge of the bed.

He hesitated, and then reached over and tugged the edge of Bruce's t-shirt sleeve.

“What is it?” Bruce's voice was heavy with sleep.

“I had a bad dream,” Tim whispered. It sort of occurred to him what he was doing, and he flushed. He wasn't a baby. He was thirteen. Thirteen year olds didn't need to be comforted after nightmares.

He'd never gone up to his dad after a nightmare, anyway.

But Bruce didn't appear to notice. He just pulled the covers back a little, and patted the space next to him.

Relieved, Tim clambered over into the sheets. Bruce put an arm around him.

“What did you dream about?” He mumbled. He was still half asleep.

Tim flushed again. “I can't remember,” he said. He felt shy, all of a sudden. This was Bruce. They solved cases together. They were like colleagues. Partners. He wasn't– he wasn't the kind of person who held your hand and hugged you when you had nightmares.

Except that's what he was doing.

“Okay. Go back to sleep. Nothing's going to happen.” Bruce said. His eyes were closed.

“Okay,” Tim said. He closed his eyes. Then he opened them again, because he was still feeling kind of scared. “Bruce,” he whispered.

“Mmm,” Bruce said.

“Do you sometimes– do you sometimes worry that you're not brave enough?”

Bruce opened his eyes. “Tim,” he said, “you're brave.”

“I don't know,” Tim said, “not more than Dick. Or Jason.”

At the mention of Jason's name, he felt Bruce stiffen.

“Sorry,” Tim whispered.

“Don't be,” Bruce said.

“You miss him, don't you?” Tim said.

There was a silence. So long, that Tim thought that Bruce had fallen back asleep.

“Everyday,” Bruce said, finally. His voice was so quiet.

Tim wasn't sure what to say, so he just said “Sorry,” again.

“That's okay. Come here.”

Tim moved a little closer. Bruce was big and warm. He breathed in.

“You are brave. Just as much as Dick. Just as much as Jason was. I don't want you to forget that.” Bruce said. His arm was still around Tim.

Tim nodded.

He hadn't forgotten. He stared at the prototype now. It was so small, the metal cold in his hands. If he did this, he was going to lose everything. He was going to forget. Bruce would forget him .

He exhaled shakily. He couldn't do that. He wasn't– he just wanted this one thing. Jason could have everything else, but he just wanted Bruce to remember .

Then it occurred to him.

He could do it now, while Bruce and Barry were fixing the time stream. While they were travelling in time. If they were operating outside their current timeline while Tim did it, maybe they'd be exempt from the changes Tim would be making to the past.

Maybe Bruce would still remember him.

The time machine sat in his hand, a small, innocuous looking box.

“I am brave,” he whispered to himself.

*

After it was done, and he'd talked down Michelson from going back a day the very first time, Bruce went to a grocery store.

It was late, almost ten at night, and he'd bid Barry goodnight before he'd gone back to Central City. He'd changed out of the suit and into his civilian clothes, and he stood now, in front of the racks of protein bars, looking for what he wanted.

There. Chocolate Fantasy. He picked up about half a dozen of the protein bars, and he went to the checkout counter.

The cashier gave him a strange look when he realised Bruce Wayne was buying protein bars from the store at ten in the night, but he didn't offer any comment. He handed the protein bars to Bruce in a plastic bag. Bruce paid.

Then he went back home.

Alfred answered the door. “Ah, master Bruce. Late for dinner, as usual. Planning on going for patrol today?”

“I don't know, Alfred,” Bruce said, “Robin had a bit of a hard time with the case today. I think we'll stay in, watch some TV. I know you think that I don't spend enough time with him anyway.”

“Quite right,” Alfred said. “what case?”

Bruce raised his eyebrows. “You know the one I was telling you about at lunch? The time loops.”

“Time loops?” Alfred said.

Bruce was about to answer, except there was the sound of thudding feet coming down the stairs.

“Hey Bruce, you're back. Mind telling me where the heck you–”

Bruce dropped the bag with the protein bars.

Jason looked at him, a little surprised. He looked older. Sixteen. Seventeen. He was almost as tall as Bruce. Bruce stared.

“Woah, Bruce. You okay?”

Bruce closed his eyes. He was dreaming. He was having a lucid dream. That was what this was.

He opened his eyes again.

“Bruce?” Jason said.

Bruce bent down to pick the bag up, very carefully. He picked it up, and he put it down on the table next to the hallway closet.

“Bruce?” Jason said again, “you okay? Alfred, what's wrong with him?”

Bruce steadfastly ignored both of them, and went over and sat down on the sofa. He closed his eyes again.

Twenty seconds later, when he opened them, Jason was still there. Still standing in front of him.

“Okay, Bruce, you're freaking me out,” Jason said, a worried expression on his face, “I'm calling Dick up.”

“Jason,” Bruce said, very slowly. He reached out and touched the side of his son's face. It was real. There was skin and flesh and blood under his hand.

“Yeah?”

“Where's Tim?”

Jason frowned. “Who's Tim?” He said.

Ten minutes later, and he was running through the lawns of Drake mansion, through the hedges and the muck, to the front door.

“Bruce!” Jason was saying, yelling. He was running behind him, breathing hard and trying to keep up. “What the hell's going on?”

Bruce rang the doorbell. No one answered. He rang it again.

Jason caught up to him at the door. He was panting hard.

“Jesus, Bruce, it's the middle of the night. Are you having a psychotic break, or something? Who even lives here? You can't just go ringing people's doorbells at–”

“The Drakes. The Drakes live here. Or they did. Only their son Tim lives here now. I think. I hope,” Bruce said. He was panting too.

“Bruce, this is–”

“I didn't tell you enough,” Bruce said, his voice low, “how much I loved you. How good you were at your work. Our work. I shouldn't have been so hard on you. I think about it everyday. The mistakes I made. What I'd do, to see you in front of me again, so that I'd be able to apologize. I dreamed of it, of seeing you again, just so I could hug you. So I could tell you that I missed you every day. Every hour of every day. But Jason, I wouldn't do this. Not at the cost of my other son.”

Jason stared at him. “What the hell are you talking about?”

The door opened. Tim was standing on the other end, rubbing at his eyes.

“What's going on?” He said.

“Tim?” Bruce said.

Tim looked at him blearily. His gaze was blank and polite, like he was looking at a stranger.

He didn't recognize him at all.

Jason was looking at him warily. “It's late, Bruce. We should probably–”

“Tim, it's me,” Bruce said. There was something wild in his chest. Something wild and cold.

What had Tim done?

Tim frowned. “Do I know you?” He said.