Chapter Text
The thing is. The thing is, the smile – the one he’ll wear forever, the one that makes people flinch, stare at him out of the corners of their eyes and wonder how? why? – it shouldn’t still exist. The Pit washes away all sins indiscriminately. When Tim emerged from it, glowing and new, his skin was pure, unmarked. Like a kid again, before he ever got caught up in Batman’s crusade. Just a child.
It was a lie, it was such a fucking lie, that Tim – prince of lies, master of lies, king of oh, I’m fine; I’m used to it; I don’t mind anymore – can’t stand to look at himself in the mirror. He pockets a knife from a training session with one of Ra’s assassins one night. That makes it so much easier, the night Prudence comes to his room and finds him splitting his cheeks open into a terrible grin and choking on the laughter and the blood that spills out of his mouth. But the truth is, he would have done anything, sliced himself with a butter knife over and over until it finally sank in, just so he wouldn’t have to look at that stupid, fucking perfect skin anymore.
He dreams about it, that night, all the time. Sometimes it feels like he never left – he’s still there, with Joker and Harley and their grotesque pantomime of a family, Jack and Janet Drake’s bodies rotting in the section of dirt marked out for Harley’s garden. Your parents are dead, kid; long live your parents. Mommy’s going to be so pleased with her flowers this year.
It was supposed to be over. People don’t – even Ra’s, who likes to think he knows everything, they don’t understand that the explosion that destroyed that warehouse wasn’t the Joker’s last fuck you. Oh, he wired the place, had it all ready just in case, but he was dead by the time everything went up in flames, his mouth still frozen on his last words – that wasn’t funny. No. It wasn’t him. It was Tim who set it off, cleansed the world of the Joker and Harley and their broken, fake house in their broken, fake world and their broken, fake son. That was supposed to be the end.
But no, he had an encore to perform. His death was just an intermission before the curtains went up again and the next act began with Timothy Jackson Drake (rest in peace) crawling his way out of the grave. He learns new roles from the League of Assassins, tries on new masks. He hasn’t decided yet which one fits when Ra’s shows him pictures of the new Robin. Ra’s expects something, maybe anger or a final break that splinters Tim from the Bats forever, but Robin was always a hereditary name. Tim wasn’t the first; he isn’t the last. There are many things Tim has to be mad about, livid about, burning through the cracks of his mind like lava, but this is not one of them. He looks at them quietly, memorizes the face behind the domino, and feels the tug of home. Go west, young man. So he gathers up his things and says goodbye; not thank you, because Ra’s would rather be owed a debt than given gratitude, and Tim knows his time with the League was never for his benefit.
He’s barely been back a few weeks before the circus comes to town. Tim used to love it, because one of the few things his parents did with him was taking him to see the circus. Tonight, he’s there to investigate some links between Haly’s Circus and some of the more ruthless criminal elements of Gotham, but he chooses the wrong night, the night the Flying Graysons spread their wings that one last time and plummet to their deaths. It’s too late, stupid fucking useless. The best Tim can do is make sure their child doesn’t go down with them.
Dick’s so lost in shock and grief that he barely even questions being taken away. It’s for the best, really. Tim’s not even sure what he’s doing. He can’t take care of a child; Tim may be crazy, but he’s not delusional. What would he know about being family to a kid? All he ever had were the occasional phone call when his parents remembered him and the laughter that still echoes in his head. So he takes Dick to the closest thing to a family he knows of.
By the time he gets to Wayne Manor, Dick’s exhausted and half-asleep, having cried himself out. Tim has to carry him out of the Redbird and to the door. He hesitates before ringing the doorbell – his fingers flinch away, but he laughs at himself (what are you afraid of, Junior?) and uses his free hand to peel off the mask that obscures his features, the one he used to attend the performance that night unnoticed. He’ll do this as himself or not at all. Let them see what became of their bird. Go big or go the fuck home.
When the door opens, he almost laughs again. The way the old man’s face goes from polite interest to shock in an instant, the pale tint to his skin that almost matches the one Tim had before the Pit washed it away. It’s funny, isn’t it? In an awful way.
“Oh my word – Master Tim?”
Tim smiles his grotesque smile. “Hey, Alfred. Long time, no see.” He shifts his hold on Dick a little, turns the sleeping kid so the butler can see him – his young face mashed up against Tim’s chest, tear streaks still visible on his cheeks. “I brought you a present.”