Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

One day, one very sweet and relaxing day in the future, she is going to learn to forget and ignore the burning sting of rejection and disappointment that comes with being Batman’s Robin. One day, oh can’t that day come soon enough. And on that day, she will not have to manage the mine field that is Bruce’s fucking emotional state and she will be able to relax by a pool somewhere with Conner handing her a nice cold drink while they watch the rest of the Team chill out without their mentors breathing down their necks all the damned time.

Okay, she does know logically that she is probably expecting too much from the emotionally damaged and depressed man that she all but strong armed into becoming her mentor but it has been nearly three years since she had become Robin and honestly, Tim just wanted to have one, just one, ‘good job’ without it being followed by a half an hour lecture about what she did wrong or what she had not done right by Batman’s impossible standards.

Tim was currently sitting in one of her lesser used safehouses patching herself because really? Going back to the Manor and dealing with B’s silent treatment and the over protectiveness that Dick gets whenever she is injured is just too much for her right now. She had to take care of her own mental health and shit and lick her own wounds in peace without with big Bat looming over her and making her feel fucking guilty for nothing.

That’s Batman’s real secret power; he makes you feel like shit, even when you have done the right thing and have saved the fucking day.

Other capes might say that Bruce was just worried about her and that she needed to be more careful and blah blah blah all that bullshit, but really, she knows that Bruce hates the fact that she is not Jason. Is not Dick. Is someone who is not natural out on the streets and who is not his son. She knows that Bruce doesn’t see her as a partner, that in his mind she is still the twelve-year-old girl who could barely throw a proper punch. Three years it has been and he still hasn’t notice that she has grown up already.

And Dick’s over protectiveness and big brotherness comes from his guilt of not being there for Jason. Which you know, is actually fucking sad and heartbreaking and so very gut wrenching disappointing because she knows full well there are times when the older man looks at her and sees the dead boy Jason once was. Not to say she doesn’t love Dick, he is the closest thing she has ever had to a brother but fuck, Tim would like for once to hang out with the older man and not have to wonder if he was genuinely interested in what she had to say or if he was you know; trying to do things he thought he should have done for Jason but didn’t and now can’t do because Jason won’t give him the time of day anymore.

If she honestly wasn’t touch starved and in desperate need of attention she would have just walked away from this bullshit after the first month.

Well, that isn’t exactly true. She would have stayed. Because she wanted to be a hero and all the shit and look where it got her? Sitting in a shitting abandoned building stitching herself up in a bathroom with a light that was flickering because she did not want to deal with an emotionally distant man and an over excitable puppy projecting his guilt onto her.

It wasn’t a very nice assessment of the two men she trusted and cared for but it was the most accurate one. Maybe it was just the blood loss talking but she was done. So fucking done. How much more should she put up with?

Welp, it is not like anyone would ask her for her opinion or how she was. She was the replacement Robin. Jason had really hit that mark home last time he beat the living shit out of her. It was almost laughable how she had woken up from being knocked unconscious after being so badly beaten by the older man only to find that Bruce had somehow ‘convinced’ him to come back to the family.

Actually, yeah no, it wasn’t almost laughable; it was fucking predictable.

Bruce wouldn’t let anyone, not even himself, kill the Joker for what he did to Jason and despite the numerous times she has been attacked, had her line cut mid air or you know, beaten to the point where she couldn’t go to school because hey! Pretty white girl coming to school with bruises would lead to an investigation; Bruce had done nothing to stand up for her other than a very weak scolding. Like seriously, she has had worst scolding’s from Bruce when she tripped on her own cape.

But hey! At least the lost son now comes home every other day! Such a wonderful thing it is, yes good Sir. He is all safe and well now. He eats such nice food, has a wonderfully soft bed and he gets to beat and sneer at his replacement to his heart’s content!

What bullshit. Yeah, yeah, she gets it. ‘We have to walk a fine line to bring Jason home for good, Timothea. We need to make him feel welcome and safe. He doesn’t mean those things! He was just trying to get a raise out of you! Just ignore the physical and emotional abuse! You will be fine!’

Blah blah blah.

At least she still has her cape. And her Team. Man, without her Team, Tim was pretty sure she would have given up the whole hero thing and would have just gone supervillain like.

Cause really? She’d make the best supervillain. She knows all of the heroes and weaknesses and could easily take over the world for the better and you know, fix the health care system, put an end to global warming, give the homeless homes and stuff like that.

But if she did that she would be buried in paperwork and she doesn’t want that. Paperwork is terrible. Nope, nope nopey nope, nope. She is not dealing with that.

Still, she would have a reason to laugh manically if she was a supervillain.

Stitching one’s hip after being almost stabbed is irritating. Mainly because it is such an odd angle and is hard to do when you know; blood loss.

Urgh, she probably should have just gone back to the Manor but she did want to deal with everything that came with that and oh, she has a test in the morning and she has not studied at all and does that matter? She will either pass enough that it will be fine or she will fail and her teacher will call her dad and step mum again and there will be a very awkward conversation at the dinner table once again about how ‘you need to start preparing for the future! We don’t have the money anymore to send you to college! You need to get yourself a scholarship!’

It’s not like she is actually going to go to college. Like what’s the point with the odd hours she has and you know, whole superhero thing. If Tim lives past her eighteenth birthday it would be a miracle and a half.

And that isn’t because she is bad at being a hero or whatever. It is mainly because you know. The Red Hood is still trying to off her off whenever he can get away with it. And the numerous villains she managed to piss off over the years. And the fact that she is a squishy human with no meta powers running around in bright green tights at night.

Yeah. Eighteen is a bit far away and probably a never.

All well. Whatever.

Get the last stitch in and fucking done. She has to say, while they aren’t as neat as Alfred’s or you know, an actual doctor, Tim has done some pretty nice-looking stiches there. The area looks like a toddler threw the tomato sauce on the white walls but hey! At least they were in and she wasn’t bleeding anywhere anymore!

Yippy for that.

Tim doesn’t bother with a shower. Doesn’t bother cleaning herself up. She would shower when she got back home and if anyone (re: Dad) asks about the blood? Well, she is a teenaged girl you know. There goes that line of questioning all together.

It is easy and quick to clean up the blood left on the sink and titles, seeing as she chose this safe house because of the little drain on the floor and the extendable showerhead. Once the blood is gone and everything is done it is time to head home. Back to Dad and Dana and there all so cheerful attempts to forget that Janet had not been dead for a year before Dad got together with Dana and that Tim always came home covered in bruises that she would never say where she got them and oh! Let’s not forget the awkward and stilled attempts that her father keeps making to you know; try and be a ‘proper father’.

It is sweet how her Dad is trying to connect with her. What isn’t sweet is him forgetting that they made plans while he went off with Dana on one of their date nights. Cause you know, being forgotten is such a lovely and family feeling.

Urgh. It didn’t matter. Three more years and she could legally move out. You know if she was still alive. It was morbid to think about her death and all that but honestly? She wondered what Bruce would tell her Dad and Dana.

Would he show up in his suit going ‘She was a good solider and kind young girl and I am so sorry this was my fault for not making her stop putting on the suit I personally had tailored for her and I am so sorry for giving her the weapons and skills she needed to go out on the streets these last couple of years.’

Or would it be Commissioner Gordon who knocks on the front door to say that ‘your daughter has been identified as Robin no. 3. Please accept my condolences and please take care of the funeral arrangements while I go and yell at a man in an expensive furry suit.’

Yep. Those were some cheerful thoughts right there. If it didn’t cost an arm and leg (she actually checked the prices the other week and it is more likely to cost both eyes and her tongue) to go see a therapist she would. Except you know, with the whole Robin thing it probably wouldn’t work out.

She could go and see one of the League therapists but they would talk to Batman about things she talked about because Mentors have the right to know what their sidekicks are talking about in a private session and really? There were some things she didn’t want to talk about with Bruce. Like at all.

Blah. At least Bruce did make an effort to you know, sneakily know things about her and be there like a silent giant ass spider on the wall. Like he is there and you don’t want to hit it because it isn’t dangerous and it isn’t in the way but it is just letting you know it is there before disappearing back into your closest so you don’t open it for nearly a week until you are almost out of underwear and have to do so.

Okay… Blood loss leads to some interesting and strange thoughts. Quick shower and then bed. And maybe some orange juice. That would be good too. Because, yeah. Wow. She was so done with everything including her own thoughts and yep, you may as well take her out of the oven because she is Done.

Urgh, hopefully she could get at least three hours of sleep in before she had to get ready for school. Three hours she could survive on. Two and half was pushing it. Two hours of sleep and she would climb up into the vents and fucking nap during lunch and no one can stop her because she is too small for them to get out without a broom.

One more block and then she is home. One more block and she is done. Just one more block.

Chapter Text

It builds and it boils down in his chest. Slowly but surely it rises and gains momentum within him until there is nothing but the acid green rage veiling his eyes and his mind for the hours upon hours that he blacks out and forgets, only to come back to his senses with blood on his knuckles and the sinking feeling in his belly he had hurt someone again.

It was endless. A void greater than space. He can’t fight it or control it and Jason was more than terrified of what he would do, of what he has done, when the Pit roars up within him and takes control.

Bruce doesn’t understand. How could he? Perfect and always in control Bruce just ain’t gonna get it at all. Why would he? He doesn’t know nothing about how the Pit works or how the world even works. Pretty rich white boy with all his money can do whatever the fuck he wants and can get away with it.

Jason though? He is stuck with all the consequences of fucking everything. And he damned well should be. All the shit he does when the Pit takes control is all on him. ‘Cause the Pit only ever acts on his fears and angers and desires and whatever else is on his mind at the time. And that’s what scares him the most. Because he doesn’t really wanna hurt his Replacement all the time. Hell, the kid was kinda alright.

But fuck, looking at her sometimes all he could see was a black haired, blue eyed kid in his suit and that just pushes the Pit to go Boom in his fuckin’ head. And the kid doesn’t deserve that. She doesn’t deserve Jason cutting her lines or beating her or any of the other shit he does. But when the Pit wells up he ain’t got no way to stop it and poor little Timmy keeps getting hurt by his hands and it makes him sick at how satisfying it fucking is to see her down on the ground bleeding.

It feels like he has won something. That he has proved that he is better and smarter and all that bullshit and he knows Bruce ain’t gonna do much about it because he’s too scared that Jason will take off. The Big Bad Bat is gonna try and play fucking Switzerland because he doesn’t know how to tell Jason ‘no’ or to tell him to stop because Bruce ain’t got no idea on how to actually take care of fucked up kids.

If Timmy weren’t such a fucking trigger for the Pit, if she weren’t likely to cause him to forget who he fucking was and black out from the Pit rage that is still bubbling away in his chest like some demented version of heart-burn, he would be up there helping Bruce calm her down. He would be there next to Dick and Alfred and he would be there for her.

Because finding the murdered corpses of your Dad and Step-Mum ain’t something you just shake off. From what he overheard it was something to do with Boomerang and Timmy had found them both dead. B had arrived shortly after Timmy did and managed to get her out of her Robin uniform before the GCPD come knocking.

Judging by the death screeching coming from upstairs, it sounded like the reality of what had happen to her family had just hit the Replacement hard. Man does he know the feeling.

Coming home after spending most of the day out pick-pocketing so they could make that months rent to find his Mum OD on the ground had been shit. And it didn’t hit him till several weeks after he had been in foster care. His carers thought he had been hit with fear gas he screamed that loud.

Yeah, remember that. Remembered that too fucking well. The Pit brings clarity to all your bad memories and all but distorts your good ones.

Fuck. He needed to get out of the Manor and away from the screaming and grief. He wasn’t gonna be wanted here when Timmy finally settled the fuck down from her mental breakdown and there was never gonna be a guarantee that he wouldn’t go Pit mad if he saw her all depressed and shit.

Nah, needed to be gone and away. Safer and better for everyone that way.

Getting out of the Manor though is a bitch and a half when everyone is on high alert. Everyone and their fucking cat seemed to be in the Manor and ain’t that just a blast. Tiny Timmers has got all the love and she ain’t even in her right mind to acknowledge it.

Still he ain’t gonna let anyone stop him from leaving. He doesn’t want to be here for the fall out of this shit. He doesn’t want to watch his Replacement deal with her grief or pull a fucking Bruce and not deal with that shit at all. Jason would be better off taking to the streets as Red Hood and finding out what the fuck happened tonight rather than sitting in the shadows of the house and making things worse ‘cause the Pit took his mind again.

Timmy don’t need his shit right now. She needs Dickie’s big brother act and Bruce’s awkward hugs. Not him attacking her or causing her more stress. Nah, he is gone. And he will stay gone. For a while. Until things are calmer. More settled and he knows that he ain’t going to break the broken bird.

There is so many ways out of the Manor when you know how to look. Each one of them has their own flaws and advantages and only a Bat or Cat truly knows how to utilise them properly. That being said, going out the front door is usually the easiest and he really didn’t feel like pulling something fancy just to leave. His bike was still near the water fountain where he left it the other day and he has enough things in his safe houses around the city that he doesn’t need to go up to his room to grab anything.

He ain’t very surprised that Dickie was there by his bike though when he came out. Pretty bird was always trying to get the family to stay together and to make Jason get used to being near Timmy, despite the fact that his exposure therapy bullshit doesn’t work and Timmers ends up under his fists more often than not. Still, that don’t stop the Original Boy Wonder. No sir, it doesn’t.

Once that bastard has a thought or idea in his head, he doesn’t stop at all. Too stubborn and too much like Bruce to ever just fucking give up already. Jason knows he is a lost cause and ain’t likely to get over the Pit anytime soon. Maybe in a few years he will be but not now.

“Leaving?” Dickiebird is the only one he knows other than Alfie who could make that word into some guilt-tripping bullshit and man does it make him wanna bare his teeth at the golden boy. He doesn’t need that shit right now.

“Yeah. Gonna find out what went down. Figured I’d stay away from Baby Bird for a while, ya know?” Jason hates that he feels a constant need to explain himself to the older man, that there still some part of him that the Pit didn’t destroy that desperately wants Dickie’s attention and love and all that other bullshit his fifteen-year-old self longed for before he got brained by a fucking crowbar and got blown to shit.

Dickiebird just nods like Jason told him that he was going out to get some milk or something and he definitely ain’t sure that pisses him off or not. On one hand it was such a relief not to have to fight the older man over leaving this time but on the other hand he would have thought that Dickie would have forced Jason to stay and do the whole ‘family is there for you’ bullshit now more than ever.

“Don’t take out Boomerang without any of us.” Dickie was saying in his Nightwing voice, the one that was all serious and stern like he was your parole officer or that one teacher that caught you smoking again after you promised you weren’t gonna do it anymore. “And don’t be gone more than three days. We need everyone here for Tim.”

He can’t help but snort at Dickie’s words. “Timmers don’t need me around her. She needs you and ya ‘hugs not drugs’ shit. I’m gonna stay away. She don’t need me going all Pit rage at her right now. I’ll check in with ya in three days with whatever I have but I ain’t going near her. Tell Alfie to give her some of that honey tea when she’s done screamin’, it will help ease the rawness in ta mornin’.”

He ain’t sure why he bothered to say the last part but he hoped that it would help her. He didn’t hate his Replacement. He didn’t. If it weren’t for the Pit clawing away at his mind all the time he would have liked to have been a big brother to her. He wanted to be a big brother to her.

But that don’t matter right now. Right now, he’s got a Rogue to find and a case to solve. Dickie just sighs at him and mumbles a ‘be safe, Jaybird. Keep the Comms on okay?’ and lets him go ‘cause Dickie knows there ain’t no stopping him when he really wants to leave. Just ‘cause he don’t stop trying to make him stay doesn’t mean he doesn’t let Jason leave when he needs to.

He will head to his safe house, the one in Crime Alley by the Indian place that gives him free food whenever he drops by ‘cause he saved the owners son from some gang bangers looking for some easy cash. He can suit up there and go talk to the Commish about what happened. The old detective still don’t like him, still remembers well the duffle bag of heads from his early days out on the streets as the Red Hood but the old bastard will give him the info if he says he is running it for Bat’s ‘cause Robin is down and out for the night.

It ain’t much of a plan but it would do for the time being. He has three days before Dickie will let himself and the other Bat’s come out and play, so he has time enough to get a proper plan into motion and gather all the intel he can on the case.

Baby Bird ain’t likely be to be allowed out to fly for a while, if she even wants to but that don’t matter. She is locked safe away in the castle with the big bad dragon there to protect her from herself and others. B will handle everything for her at his end and Jason will find Boomerang and make him fucking talk about why he killed the Drake’s.

B said that he would ‘greatly prefer’ if Jason didn’t kill but there were so many other ways to make someone pay without ending their lives and if there was one thing Talia was good for, other than bring him back to life, it was hiring the best teachers who taught him how to make people suffer without killing them. He doesn’t even need to kill to do a whole lotta damage to someone.

And Boomerang was going to suffer for making Timmers scream like that. For making her grieve and feel the horrid guilt and grief of finding one’s parent dead on the ground in your home. He is going to regret ever going after the Drake’s when Jason is through with him.

He ain’t a good brother. Not to Dickie, not to Timmy, not to anyone. But he is good at hurting people and he is more than happy to use his skills to make anyone who hurts the fucked-up group of people he calls family scream.

Chapter Text

Unresponsive. Broken like a marionette puppet without her strings. Timmy looked like she has watched a world implode and she could have done nothing to save it while she sat in a space shuttle, safely away from the blast zone.

He should have been there, seeing Timmy home after they had been on patrol together with B. He should have made sure she was safe and well and that she had not been alone, especially after Bruce gave her that lecture and half about safety and not taking risks.

But he had left her. Gone and followed Bruce’s Orders once again and now he was looking down at the broken and exhausted face of the girl who was his baby sister. It wasn’t hard to imagine her on the ground, head twisted in an unnatural angle with blood around her head like a fucked-up halo.

He let her fall. He didn’t catch her. He wasn’t there to catch her. He had gone back to the cave like a good little Robin because he was Ordered to and now…

Dick felt lost as to what to do. He had failed another sibling. He was a terrible big brother. First Jason and now Timothea. She hasn’t spoken a word since she finished screaming and was she would only drink the tea that Dick had Alfred make, the one that Jason suggested before he took off on his bike, when Dick placed the cup against her lips. He wished he could be there alongside Jason. Away from the Manor and away from the biting feeling in the back of his throat that this was his fault for not being there with Timmy when she had finished patrol.

Timmy wasn’t doing anything much now that she stopped screaming her lungs out. Just breathing little choked and wet sobs under her breath. No more tears. She was still shaking and giving full body shudders as if she was in a snowstorm or the biting rain that Gotham has in winter time. Shock, most likely. Or the grief. Timmy wasn’t that close to her Dad or Step Mum but Dick knew she loved them. Seeing them dead like that… no child should ever see their parents like that. It is mentally scaring and destroying.

He should know. He still hasn’t gotten over his parents. Neither has Bruce or anyone else he knows who have found or saw their parents get killed. The Superhero community is full of heroes who have lost their parents or watched them get murdered. They even had made different clubs so that people could go and talk about their trauma and shit.

Not that any of the other Bats have ever gone to one of those clubs. Bruce is too fucking scared to admit his trauma of seeing his parents get shot when he was eight and is always high-key terrified that someone is going to turn on him because his Post-Traumatic Hypervigilance makes him to paranoid to trust anyone with his feelings. Jason was still on the outs with pretty much everyone. No one was sure how to approach the former dead Robin and he wasn’t inclined to go to any of the clubs anyway. Jay never had been in his first life and the sentiment was the same in this one too.

Dick had gone once, when he was still Robin. He didn’t go back again for another meeting. He never wanted to talk about what happened with his parents and looking back he probably should have tried. Really, he blames Bruce for his lack of healthy coping skills because all he ever learned really while living in the Manor was that unless it was all about to explode and end up with him hurting himself or someone else than Bruce was going to avoid the hell out everything and pretend that it was all normal.

And Timmy, poor little Timmy never qualified for any of them before now. She was as normal as one could possibly get before all this. She was just an average kid who wanted to do some good and she did. But at what cost? She lost all three of her parents, has been shot, stabbed and has nearly been murdered so many times in the past three years and Dick wanted nothing more than to go back in time and to tell the small girl who had come up to him with hopeful eyes that she should get lost and forget everything. That it wasn’t worth it at all.

But he couldn’t do that. He couldn’t. Besides all of the time related bullshit that would go with changing the timeline, Dick was selfish enough to say that he did not want to let the young girl go at all. He wanted her to stay. He wanted her and Jason to get along and for them to both be siblings without having to fear that Jason’s Pit Madness or whatever it was didn’t flare up and he wanted for Bruce to be surrounded by everyone who cares for him.

If wishes were fishes Dick would be able to open his fish market and make a lot of money, that was for sure.

Running a wet, warm cloth over Timmy’s face only got him a blink or two. She wasn’t reacting to anyone now. She just sat there, in the blood-stained clothes Bruce all but wrangled her into before the cops arrived at her house. She needed to change. To get out of the bloody mess and into something clean.

“Okay Tiny-Tim. Let’s get you out of these clothes and into the shower.” He doesn’t speak loudly, not wanting to startle the young girl out of whatever shock she was in.

The lights are on but no one is currently home in Timmy’s mind right now. Looks like they are just going to have to call back later it seems. She wasn’t reacting or moving on her own. With the help of Bruce and Alfred, Dick was able to strip her out of her clothes and get her into the shower. There were wounds, fresh and painfully wounds all over her pale body. Some must have been from patrol because the stitches on her hips looked fresh and painful. And broken. He would need to fix that.

He knew that Tim’s team was downstairs and that Oracle had called them all as soon as the call came through that all the Drakes were dead. He knew that they were all there and were all waiting desperately to see Timmy. But Dick didn’t want them near her. She was fragile and needed to be handled with care. He knew that they all just wanted to help her and that was good. The overwhelming need to comfort a friend in need is what makes them all good people. Makes them the caring and thoughtful heroes they are.

But Timmy didn’t need any of them right now. She didn’t need them crowding her or being in her space. She needed family. She needed Dick and Bruce and Alfred and Jason when he has calmed down and maybe Cass and Steph because they were all family and that was all Timmy needed.

He knows he should not be thinking like that. Possessiveness was a terrible trait that he needs to let go of but it is hard, so very hard not to kick everyone out of the Manor and keep Timmy safe and isolated away from anything that could harm her. He shouldn’t be having these thoughts and he knows, he really does know, that these thoughts only happen because he lost Jay and he doesn’t know how to deal with that guilt even now that Jay was alive and here with them and-

And he needed to calm down. He needed to stop and think and act like Nightwing, the leader and big brother. He cannot afford to act like Dick Grayson here. Dick Grayson was a human disaster and won’t be able to help his sister right now if he starts acting like a self-centred idiot.

Still, looking down at her all but hanging loosely in his arms as he dried her off and sat her down on the large tub so that Alfred could redo those broken stitches, Dick just couldn’t help those feelings of possessiveness overwhelm him. And by the look on Bruce’s face, he was feeling it too.

Timmy was their Baby Bird. The one the adored and wanted to protect all the time because she was just so weak and small and Dick knew in his head that she was a force to be reckoned with these days and that she was well on her way to becoming an A list hero.

But in his heart, he still saw her as the baby faced little twelve-year-old girl who he taught how to throw a decent punch. She was the little sister he had always wanted when he was younger and still with the circus. He adored her and loved her completely.

And he did know that some of that love came from guilt. Guilt that he hadn’t been the best big brother he could have been to Jason because he had been angry at Bruce at the time. He had been so angry that Bruce had taken his Mother’s name for him and had given it to Jason without his permission that he had taken it out on Jason, rather than Bruce. And after their first and terrible meeting, Dick had known that he had forever fucked up his and Jay’s relationship.

If he had not have died, Dick believes that they may have eventually gotten along properly. That they would have worked something out. But Jason died and then he had a small, excited child who looked up to him and he couldn’t, wouldn’t let himself fuck it up like he did with Jason.

So, Nightwing became the always the cool, calm guy who is everyone’s big brother. At least to the younger generation that is. To his own team and friends, he was allowed to be a normal person with normal emotional outbursts. But since taking on being the younger teams ‘den mother’ and all-round mentor and big brother to Timmy, he has forced himself to be this person that doesn’t get angry easily.

Which is you know, absolute bullshit. Everyone calls Jason the Angry Robin but anyone with half a brain knows that Dick is the Angry Robin. The Robin that rages and explodes and leaves a trail of destruction in his wake. At least Jay has a reason for his anger. The Pit fucks with people’s minds and the trauma he went through with dying really did give Jaybrid a reason to lash out. Dick just gets angry and fucks shit up before someone calms him down.

He knew that Timmy didn’t feel like they loved her, especially since taking Jason back in. But they did love her. They love how she stumbled down in the morning after a long case or patrol and would look at them sleepily before stealing Bruce’s coffee. They loved how she would get excited about small little things and would ramble on and on until she blushes and stops because she realises that she is still talking. They love her enthusiasm and joy and how brilliant she is.

They love her. All of them do.

And watching her sit numbly on the edge of the bath, barely twitching or moving as the stiches go through her skin, broke their hearts.

One of them would have go downstairs soon and tell Timmy’s team to go home for the night and come back tomorrow evening. They needed to get some clothes for Timmy for the next few days, seeing as she only had over night clothes in the Manor. Bruce needed to send a few messages to his lawyers about getting custody of Tim.

There was so, so much that needed to be done. And Dick didn’t want to leave Tim’s side at all. His Baby Bird was hurt and needed help and the guilt was just eating him inside, telling him that it was his fault that she had to face this alone when he could have been there with her but he had not and-

And he would not be any help his sister, father, brother or grandfather if he let himself fall apart right now. There was work to be done and the quicker he gets it done, the easier it would be on all of them.

He may have given Jay three days to go and find out what he could but Dick would be damned if he doesn’t go out and help the younger man search. With the rage and guilt rising like bile in the back of his throat, Dick could say honestly that he was looking forward to beating some heads in. And to leaving the oppressive atmosphere of grief and pain that was seeping into the Manor’s walls.

But that will wait. Right now, there are jobs to be done. The jobs won’t ease the guilt or rage like a good ass kicking would, but they were necessary and needed. Alfred and Bruce can look after Timmy for a few hours or so while he does these few jobs.

He isn’t running away.

(He isn’t.)