Work Text:
His name is Tim Drake.
Bruce finds the letter while he's searching the attic. It's enclosed in a small white envelope, plain and unassuming. There's nothing about it that should have caught his attention, but it does anyway. He recognizes his handwriting easily, Alfred's calligraphy classes paying off in looping letters; the words, however, are foreign to him. Bruce's — Batman's — memory is near perfect, a storage full of information that can be recalled at any moment, but when he tries to remember anything about the sheet in his hands, he comes up blank.
He should analyze it, run it through one of the available scanners in the Cave if only to ease his mind, instead, he takes a seat in one of the many boxes and unfolds the letter.
His name is Tim Drake.
He came to you on a summer day, small and bright and determined to save you from yourself, even at his own expense. You did not want him then nor do you until many months later. He isn't Dick, and he will never be Jason, and you are reminded of this every time you look at him. So you don't. Look, that is. But when you are older and darker and more broken, when he slips through your fingers like water, like you never had him in the first place, you'll wish you had.
You will hurt him because you think you are right, and he will forgive you every time. Even when you don't deserve it.
You hate him and you love him and you can't bear losing him any more than you do Dick. Than you did Jason. But you are going to lose him. It won't be your fault. Tim has always been independent, too self-reliant for his own good, too prone to ignoring his well-being for the sake of others. It doesn't excuse you, because he is your son and you should know better, should do better, but you weren't there, and you couldn't do a damn thing about it.
You won't realize how lucky you are to have seen him grow up until you are staring him in the face one day and you see a man where a boy used to stand. Tim might not be a child anymore, but he will always be your child, and you'll find out that even after all his growing, he still fits right in your arms.
The letter crinkles in his hand. He realizes, belatedly, that it's damp, tiny spots smeared in the middle of the page.
"Master Bruce." He jerks his head up. Alfred stares at him, brows furrowed in concern.
Bruce has the sudden, childish urge to hide the letter. He doesn't.
"There's a lot of dust here." He answers lamely. Despite how little any of them steps into the attic, the place is as spotless as the rest of the Manor.
"I see. Well, I came to inform you that Master Tim's school called."
"Is he all right? Did something happen?"
Alfred hums. He hasn't stopped looking at Bruce since he walked in a minute ago. "The lad is sick. A stomach bug has been making its way around the student body the last couple of days, it seems."
It's nothing serious. Bruce can wait until Alfred has driven Tim to the Manor, except not because he is already standing up, the message stuffed in the pocket of his suit jacket.
"Sir?"
"I'll pick him up."
"I'll better get started on lunch, then, Master Bruce."
Bruce has to input the school's coordinates in his GPS. It's a nice, expensive boarding school in the outskirts of Gotham. Ideally, Tim would have been staying there, sharing a room with three other obnoxious teens in the throes of puberty. There had been an incident, though. One apparently involving fireworks, three dozen energy drinks, and some smuggled computer parts that had Tim kicked out of the dorms and living in his parents' condo.
Tim is laying down in the nurse's office when Bruce arrives to pick him up. He is shivering, covered in sweat, with a thin blanket wrapped around his body. Bruce's heart clenches at the sight, worry gnawing at him.
"B--?"
"Hey, chum."
"What..." Tim swallows drily. "What are you doing here?"
"Heard you were sick. Alfred is making soup for you."
"Oh." A moment of silence. Bruce runs his fingers through Tim's hair, unsticking the strands from each other. He pretends not to notice the way Tim leans into the touch, he is prickly about it. "Don't need to-- to bother."
"Not a bother."
Bruce might have thought otherwise, initially, when he'd first started mourning and little Tim Drake had shoved himself into his life. It's not something he is proud to admit.
Tim is quiet. Bruce had noticed the boy's blinks getting slower, more lethargic. He would have sighed if it had been Dick or Jason, but it makes Tim tense, wary. Bruce will look into it one day when their relationship isn't so fragile it might snap at the lightest strain.
He lifts Tim up, the boy instantly turning his body towards Bruce.
He fits right in my arms.
"Let's go home, Tim."
Bruce hesitates at the door. The mission with Flash had been fairly short, for once, everything going according to plan. Bruce doesn't know if this is the exact trip where he tucked the letter in the attic, underneath the cover of his mom's favorite book, or if he'd created a whole new different timeline. He just knows that seeing himself with a younger, more hopeful Tim had knocked the air out of his lungs, left him aching and yearning.
Bruce loves all of his sons. He can't imagine how his life would have turned out without Dick's loud laughter, Jason's passionate rants, Damian's selfless spirit. But Tim had come when Bruce was at his worst, desperate and angry and helpless. He'd seen through him with the ease of cutting butter, had taken all his broken parts and held them like they were the most precious things in the world. Bruce only wishes he'd done the same for his son.
"You know you can come in, right?"
Tim doesn't face away from the computer. His room is messy, clothes and case files and plans scattered on every available surface. There's a Superboy-themed shirt hanging from the ceiling fan, four empty Zesti cans on the nightstand.
"Everything all right?"
Tim peers at him, concerned.
My son, he thinks suddenly, urgently. Mine, mine, mine.
He drops a kiss on Tim's head, his child leaning closer to him. The last time Batman saw Red Robin, the younger vigilante had been grappling away to his own base of operations. The last time Bruce Wayne saw Tim Wayne, it had been across the room at a gala seven months ago. They had been too far both times.
Bruce is here now, though, and so is Tim. "It is now."