Chapter Text
It really hadn’t been hard to find Dick.
No. Tim knows that’s wrong. Ric. It hadn’t been hard to find Ric.
What Tim doesn’t know is why he had felt so compelled to run to Bludhaven of all places. But after tonight, after what had…after what Bruce…he doesn’t understand it. There’s nothing for him in Bludhaven. Not anymore.But still, here he is. Cold, wrung out and jaw aching like it would never stop. He can’t stop the hand that rises up to tenderly rest at his lower jaw. It was such a shameful reminder of what had happened.
Every single person on that rooftop had offered to help. Barbara. Cass. Damian. And wasn’t that sad? Even Damian, the little demon spawn who hated his guts, had extended a hand and offered to let him stay with the Teen Titans for a few days if he wanted to, like he was one of Damian’s stray animals that just needed someone to take care of him until he could be released back into the wild. Tim couldn’t stomach any of it. The sympathy, the offers of help, the sad eyes looking at him from behind the masks. They were trying to help, he knew that, but the only thing they did was remind him of how utterly pathetic he was.
He hadn’t taken the offers, not any of them. He’d shrugged off the sympathy, the whole damn thing, like it was no big deal that his guardian, his dad, had just…had just…. He did what he always did, what he was good at. He dusted himself off, put on a smile and told everybody hey, it’s no big deal! He’s had way worse on patrol! Who hasn’t, right? And then he’d left, telling them all it was just a scratch and that it was probably best if he just went back to Young Justice and laid low for a while. He’d said he’d be fine. He’d said to call him if there was an emergency even. He’d said he was going home.
But he hadn’t gone home. He’d thought about it but ultimately, he couldn’t go back and face the questions about what had happened in Gotham or why half his face looked like someone had struck him with a shovel. Kon would ask for sure. Bart wouldn’t stop asking until he had an answer. He’d have to tell them. Then they too would look at him with sad, angry eyes. Eyes that said they wanted to protect him from the evils of Batman, that implied he couldn’t protect himself from his own father. They would want to talk about it, all of it, and he just…couldn’t.
Home was out of the question. For now. Still, there was a million and one places he could have gone. Jason’s. Steph’s. Clark’s even, if he’d asked. But against all better judgement, he’d gone to Bludhaven.
The city was still the dumpster fire he remembered it as. A complete mess of dark, gloomy streets lit up by a thousand colourful neon lights. The waterfront always looked murky, more like oil and mud than sea water, though one could pretty much always smell the twinge of salt in the air amidst the unburned fuel and fast food restaurants. It had never felt this unfriendly before tonight, somehow. It wasn’t a nice place, it never had been. Tim knows just as well as any local that anyone in Bludhaven who seemed friendly almost always had an ulterior motive. He can’t think of a time he’d ever come here where he hasn’t been propositioned by a hooker or a drug dealer. Sometimes both. Sometimes worse. But…had it always been this cold? This twisted and debauched? Had it always been this lonely? Had he been looking at Bludhaven with rose-coloured glasses before or had it really changed?
Tim pulls his hood a little further over his face as Dick’s...as Ric’s cab turns a corner onto the street he’s been camping out on. Every driver in Bludhaven has a route they’re expected to follow. Tim had memorized it when he and Dick used to patrol together more regularly. It seems like that had all happened a lifetime ago now. He and Dick kept saying they were gonna patrol together again soon. Just like the old days, they would say. Just the two of them.
But they hadn’t. They were always too busy. There was always a mission or a crisis or some sort of personal problem to contend with. Things like reminiscing and having fun were simply pushed to the backburner to be dealt with once all the other, more important fires were put out. It all seems so petty now. So unimportant now that it was too late.
Tim holds an arm out, hails the cab without much thought. He can hear the squeal of brakes as it comes to a stop in front of him. The cab clearly needs a brake job, front pads at least, in addition to about a hundred other things that have probably been neglected over the months and years. He can’t believe this is where Dick lives now. Some old, barely functional cab. He hadn’t believed it when Barbara had told them. He’d laughed. Dick? Homeless? With all the friends he had? But Barbara’s face remained sad and stoic. It hadn’t been funny after that.
Tim slinks into the cab, hood still drawn up high over his face, backpack full of Robin suit tightly slung over a shoulder. He probably doesn’t look different than any other Bludhaven runaway right now and honestly, that’s exactly what he was going for. But his whole body’s on edge. Tense as he’s ever been. Tight as the piano wire in the baby grand that lived in the manor’s ballroom, even.
He doesn’t know why he came here of all places. Dick…Ric won’t know him, and won’t care even if he does tell him they’re brothers. Bruce had told them all not to come here. Said to leave Dick be, let him have a shot at life without them. A normal life, he’d said, whatever that means. Tim hasn’t seen Dick in months, not since the hospital. He isn’t sure what it is that makes him unable to look at the man now. What makes his heart race and his blood course through his veins like a dam had just burst.
“Kinda late for a kid to be out alone on the streets, don’t you think?” Dick’s voice rings out playfully from the driver’s seat. It’s not Dick’s voice anymore though, Tim reminds himself. It’s Ric’s voice. But it sounds almost the same as he remembers. Just hearing it makes his chest tighten painfully. Tim watches as Dick’s bright blue eyes meet his own in the rear view mirror. Kind, familiar, but with no recognition.
“Maybe a little,” Tim admits, not knowing how much he can say, or do, before Dick…Ric starts to suspect something is up. He smirks playfully back in the rear view mirror. It reminds Tim of before, of the smirk Dick always gave him when he would tease him about some new geeky hobby he’d taken up or right before reminding him that he’d taken out more bad guys than Robin had on patrol that night. But it isn’t the same. It just feels different. Dick turns full on to Tim with a slight but distinct bounce in his movements that had become less common as Dick had aged. Bruce had told him on a couple occasions that Dick moved like that all the time when he was a child.
“So where are you--,” Dick stops mid-sentence, his whole face falling in an instant, eyes filling with shock and worry. Tim purses his lips tightly and instinctively turns away a little, pulling his hood up just a bit more as he clears his throat. The action causes an ache in his jaw that radiates down his neck. He’s had worse, he reminds himself. Right now he needs to change the subject before it becomes a thing.
“Jesus, what happened to your face?” Dick, Ric, asks before Tim can even attempt to answer the first question. Too slow. Dick was always the fast one in the family. And the caring one, Tim thinks as crestfallen blue eyes bore into him so hard he wouldn’t be surprised to find burn marks on the leather behind him.
“Nothing, really,” Tim says immediately. He laughs softly, though it doesn’t sound convincing even to himself, “I guess I was talking when I should have been listening,” he adds with a shrug. It’s such a lame line, something he’d heard Roy Harper say once while they were all hanging out at Dick’s apartment one time. Tim didn’t even think it sounded cool then.
God. Dick didn’t even know that he was dead. He and Roy had been friends forever. And Wally…Dick would be crushed if he ever found out what he had been through, what he had done. But it’s not like Tim could tell him now. What would he even say? ‘Hey, so there were these guys you totally used to be best friends with. You were like really, really close. Almost family. Anyway one’s dead and the other kinda killed him. Everyone’s sad and you should be too’?
“I’m just heading to the bus station,” Tim says instead, his eyes falling to the floor mats.
“Mission Street?” D…Ric asks him as he turns back to the wheel, back to business. He seems unsettled in a way Tim hadn’t expected.
“No, 164th and Bailer,” Tim corrects him.
“You sure? That’s across town. The Mission Street station is much closer,” Ric informs him with a single quirked eyebrow.
“Yeah I’m sure,” Tim says. It’s not like he doesn’t know it’s farther. Mission Street’s only ten minutes away. He could have walked if he’d wanted to. He doesn’t really need to go to a bus station at all, in actual fact. He has options. The transporters, the bat plane, any of his fast or flying friends. Hell, Steph could have driven him back. She’s in Gotham right now, dealing with her dad again.
But he didn’t ask her. He loved Steph, maybe more than anybody, but it was just…he just couldn’t talk to her about stuff like this sometimes. She didn’t get it. She didn’t get Bruce. He’d have spent the whole car ride listening to her rant about how much of an asshole Bruce was and that Tim deserved better and Cass deserved better and by the way? Did you hear that Bruce was a self-righteous asshole? Tim just…couldn’t right now, no more so than he could with Kon and Bart and Cassie. She didn’t understand. None of them did. Bruce was going through a hard time right now. He didn’t mean it, he…he couldn’t have meant it. Bruce was his family even if…even if he…
Tim is pulled from his thoughts, thankfully, as the cab pulls out in to traffic. They don’t talk at first, which is weird. Dick was always such a talker, even with strangers. The radio drones on quietly as they drive, some sort of classic rock station that doesn’t seem fitting. Maybe it goes over better with the customers or something? Maybe Ric just likes it?
Tim finds himself unexpectedly disappointed with the silence. He has no idea what he was hoping for. Maybe it’s better this way anyhow. Dick should have died on that rooftop, but he’d lived. He’s different, but he’s alive. Here. Now. Maybe just being near him is enough, maybe Tim should be thankful for that and not want anything more.
But…it doesn’t feel like enough. Not right now. Maybe it never will be.
Tim bites the inside of his cheek softly and turns his attention to the window on his right, anything to keep his mind off of the dark thoughts swirling around inside his skull. He concentrates on the simple things. Like now it looks like they’d gotten into the cab just in time, because those are definitely raindrops on the glass. Looking beyond that just reveals the usual late night bar crowd roaming the streets, rowdy and belligerent as ever, but otherwise pretty uninteresting. Tim nearly jumps when Dick…when Ric finally does decide the silence is too much.
“You know, there are places you can go if you’re running from something. Bludhaven is a big place, you don’t have to hop a bus and leave forever,” He says kindly, like he’s speaking as Tim’s big brother again and not just some concerned stranger. For some reason that thought, that concern, hurts almost as much as his jaw. Tears well up in his eyes against his will, though he refuses to let them spill over. Not here and not now. Not in front of Ric. But holding back also leaves his throat too tight to say anything, so he says nothing in response, lets the silence drag endlessly until he sees Ric shift in his seat. “What’s your name?” Ric asks gently.
“Tim. Timothy,” He corrects himself. Maybe he gives too much away just then, because when he looks in the rear view mirror there is a small spark in his brother’s vibrant blue eyes. But it’s gone just as fast as it appears. Tim thinks it’s a stupid idea even before he asks his next question, knows he won’t hear the answer he wants, but he still finds himself foolishly asking, “What’s yours?”
“It doesn’t really matter. I have a few apparently,” Ric replies with a bit of a laugh, though Tim thinks it’s anything but funny, “Most people around here just call me Ric,” he says finally. Tim’s heart sinks a little further into his chest, so deep that for a short moment he finds it hard to breath. That look in Dick’s eyes just a second ago…he knew the answer, but it still hurts to hear it.
“Hi Ric,” Tim says tightly, helplessly, looking down into his lap. He probably should have just gone to see Jason instead, in hindsight. Though Jason would likely have just turned him away. It’s not like he’d want anything to do with them after what Bruce had done during the whole Penguin fiasco.
It really should have been a clue in hindsight. If Bruce was willing to do that to Jason, to beat him that badly and then banish him from Gotham because he slipped up in a fit of anger, or abandon Dick in his hour of need, or let Damian do whatever it was Damian was doing these days without any supervision or restraints…why had Tim thought for even a second that he’d be spared? What made him so special? Clearly it had been nothing all along. How had he not seen this coming?
“Hey, listen. I know you have places to be and all, and I won’t try and stop you or anything, but bus trips can be pretty long from what I hear and, well, I know a place that you could get a hot meal before you go,” Dick, no, not Dick, Ric tells him. Tim knows he should argue. Decline the offer. He really should. The longer he spends here the more chance he has of blowing his cover, of saying something or doing something that would be so obvious that even Ric couldn’t miss it. Barbara told them how nasty he’d been to her, how downright hostile he was toward any reminder of his old life. He was Ric now, he’d told her, and that was all he wanted to be.
But he’d been Dick once, Tim’s older brother, and Tim can’t just forget that. No matter how hard he tries, he can’t forget all those nights they’d spent swinging from rooftops or all the days they’d spent talking about nothing and everything all at the same time. He’ll never forget the day he’d finally confronted Dick Grayson and asked him to be Robin again, because Batman needed a Robin, only to have Dick turn around and help make him Robin instead. Because Batman did need a Robin, and because Dick believed in him like nobody ever had before. That alone had meant so much to him, it still does, and Tim had never even told him.
“I…you probably have places you need to be…” Tim says weakly. He’s sure he’s setting himself up for failure, just like he had a few hours ago on that rooftop with Bruce. But what did it matter anymore? It’s not like this wasn’t already the worst case scenario.
“You’re my last fare of the night. And if I’m being honest, I was probably gonna stop there after I dropped you off anyway. You’d just be tagging along. It’s no trouble. Really,” he says. So kind and convincing, and for just a brief moment, it feels like things are how they used to be. Before Spyral, before Mr. Oz, before the bullet that took away his brother but didn’t. Just him, Dick and a night full of new adventures.
“Yeah, okay. Dinner sounds good,” Tim says, as if he could have ever refused.