Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Burning rubber smells a lot stronger than it usually does as Tim follows Batman out into the cave, hip checking the door closed in favor of letting go of his broken arm that he’s cradling to his chest.

“You disobeyed orders.” Batman growls, and the cowl comes down and it’s still Batman sitting in the hard lines of Bruce’s face.

“I intervened in an escalating situation.” He says calmly, ignores the sweat running down his back. Bruce towers over him, just like he’d towered over the man he’d cornered at the warehouse until Tim had thrown himself into the fray.

“I told you to stay behind. You do not disobey direct orders in the field, that is how you get killed.”

Tim licks his lips, the red in the case in his peripheral all but mocking him. He’s dizzy.

“He was down, Bruce.” He says, thinks he should be averting his eyes in shame but he can’t look away.

A good soldier.

They stare at each other for a few minutes, and Tim tries to see beyond the apathy of a man still grieving. His arm hurts.

“Get Alfred to look at your arm.” Batman says finally, hard edge not softened by anything he sees. “You’re benched until it heals completely.”

Tim finally looks away, finally feels shame course through his veins like the pain he can’t ignore anymore.

“He went to bed before we left." He reminds Bruce. "He’s not feeling well.”

Bruce fixes his arm without another word through the minutes that drag by, and Tim walks back to Drake Manor with the freezing November air burning holes in his resolve.

It’s a friendly gesture that Tim has no real reason to doubt.

They’re better, lately. Jason’s peace with the family exists on a ground made of blind eyes and careful words – no one acknowledges the worst parts of it, and everyone continues to exist in tenuous harmony.

So Tim’s used to Jason on the comms now. Used to his intermittent banter that always follows Bruce or Dick sounding much happier. Used to seeing him in the cave until he quietly flits away, no one daring to acknowledge the movement lest it makes him take it as an excuse to not come back. He’s even been at the dinner table occasionally, careful and quiet but a presence nonetheless.

It’s a new Jason that exists outside of his nightmares, and Tim feels Titans Tower fade into some sort of fever dream as more and more time goes on.

He doesn’t realize they’re alone in the cave. He’s zoned into a case, has been for what has to have been hours, seamlessly tuning out the echo of tools and bats, banter and training and Alfred and dripping water and all the things that make a warm spot in his chest until all of a sudden he’s realizing it’s all quiet and someone’s said his name.

“You listening?” Jason is saying when Tim turns to him, the older man in training clothes and covered in sweat, hovering a good few feet away, looking younger than Tim’s used to without his armor.

“Sorry. Missed it. What?”

“Do you want to spar?” He says, enunciating his words with a smirk, and Tim finds himself smirking back.

“In a bit maybe? I have to finish this.”

“You’ve been working for hours! Come on, no one else is awake anymore and I’m still wired!”

It’s friendly and whiny in a way that reminds him a lot of Dick, so he acquiesces, and they spar, no weapons, until they’re both out of breath.

“You’ve gotten better, kid.”

Tim nods absently, still braced on his knees and catching his breath. It feels good – he’s been neglecting his training, outside the bare minimum, and he’s forgotten how satisfying it is to spar just for fun.

Jason motions with his hands, and Tim rises back into a fighting stance, tastes salt on his tongue. He has one more in him, he thinks.

A jab here, a kick there, Jason moves smoother than he should be able to for a man his size.

“Did Dickiebird ever kick your ass when you started out?”

Tim takes a jab to the side and squirms back – it didn’t hurt but it’s mortifying that he’s still slightly ticklish.

“Sparring?”

“Yeah.”

“Sometimes.” He says casually, trying for a hit to the calf and getting blocked with a grunt, pointedly doesn’t let his mind drift to Bruce and his punishing trainings when he’d first started out.

“Pushing is how we learn our limits.” He says instead in his best impression of Dick, ducking against a fist as Jason chuckles, a sound that makes him smile reflexively.

“A real treasure, that one.”

“If he hears you say that, he’ll cry.”

“On the spot probably.”

Jason ducks a kick that's a hair away from making contact. “Damn, you’ve really gotten better, you little twerp.”

“I’ve always been good.” He shoots back, trying not to preen.

“That right?”

He hits the floor with a whoof of air as Jason manages to get him in a lock, Jason’s hand on his hair as he holds his arm back.

“Not always.”

Tim huffs out a laugh, squirms to try and get out, running the ways he knows how to break the hold with the least damage possible with Jason’s weight on him.

“Fine, not always. But –“

“Dickiebird talks about you like you’re the second coming, but I’ve never seen you beat him either.”

Tim blinks at the tone of Jason’s voice, suddenly tinged with something odd.

“And probably not Bruce. Unless he let you win.”

Tim squirms some more, taps the mat twice, mouth dry as Jason tightens his hold.

“You’ve never beaten me, of course.” Jason continues, oh that something is anger and he doesn’t let go, and Tim’s heart rate picks up in his throat as he taps again.

“Jason –“

“Do you remember tapping out?” The man sneers, hand gripping into his hair and Tim does, he does remember being delirious and the burn of broken bones under his skin and his glove desperately trying to make it stop and he swallows and Jason pulls some more, his breath all but gone at the flare of danger you’re in danger that’s suddenly coursing through his body-

You’ve gotten better, kid.

“Like that would do anything, like it would make me stop wanting to rip your neck for what you took from me.”

The arm across his neck tightens and Tim chokes, body frozen in place as everything he’s ever learnt on self defense and breaking holds leaves his head. He's alone down here, no one is around - 

“Dick kicked my ass the very first time we sparred, baby bird. He slammed me to the ground so hard I couldn’t breathe and laughed.” Tim can’t see Jason’s face, can feel his breath as he leans close to his ear, but he can imagine the green. “Now he wraps you up in cotton and thinks I should do the same.”

“Because we’re brothers. Family. But you know better, don’t you? I see it in your eyes.”

“Jason, don't –“

“If either of you ever interfere in my cases again, I won’t hold back.” Jason snarls in his ear, and Tim has just enough time to remember the deal Dick had asked him to look into just on the fringes of Hood’s territory, the should we be getting involved that had died on his tongue at Dick’s beseeching look, just as Jason moves and Tim’s back arches in a reflexive instinct to get away -

“No, Jason don’t –“ He doesn’t get to finish, the rest of his breathless sentence stolen by the agonized wheeze that leaves his mouth when Jason finally pulls his shoulder out of its socket.

Dick breaks into his apartment the next day and Tim doesn’t get the warning out in time from where he’s on his couch, ice pack on his shoulder under his blanket, and his older brother jumps on him exuberantly and scrabbles back the next second when Tim lurches away with a near scream of pain he couldn’t quite hold back.

“What happened?” Dick is demanding the very next second when Tim is still trying to blink away the stars in his vision, and Tim angrily pushes him away further, the accusation burning at the tip of his tongue and –

He doesn’t know why. Something churns in his gut that feels an awful lot like guilt and shame and the knowledge that he can’t be the one –

He can’t be the one to ruin –

“Tim?” Dick says again, worried, gently putting the ice pack that had gotten dislodged onto his shoulder again, and Tim grits his teeth against the pain and the way he knows deep in his soul that blind eyes will always be the karma he deserves.

“Wrenched it during training.” He says, fake annoyance tinged with fondness bleeding off his tongue with no effort, his brothers shoulders relaxing without an ounce of indignation against his lie. “Can we take flying hugs off the table at some point, Dick?”

“I don’t understand.”

Dick looks back at him from his chair, shoulders tense. It’s some weird amalgamation of Batman and his older brother that he suddenly doesn’t recognize, like the cowl that’s hanging off his brothers neck is some sort of noose that’s ripped off the parts of Dick that made him Dick.

Tim thinks he would be full of compassion, thinks he would mourn and cling and sob the loss right along with Dick if he wasn’t actively getting his entire life ripped away from him.

“Tim, I need to do this. He’s my responsibility now, you know this. He’s going to go right back to killing people if –“

“Robin’s mine.” Tim says, his voice rising in something a lot like hysteria. “I’m Robin. You can’t just –“

“I have to. Tim, I need you to understand –“

“Dick. Please. You can’t – I need Robin, I don’t – I don’t have anything else, I don’t –“

I’ve lost everything already.

“You’ll be fine, Tim. I know you will.” Dick says, gentle, and for a moment he’s just Dick again, protective and kind and wonderful Dick. “You have me, you have all of us, you’re ready to do this. You’ll be okay.”

“I’m not okay, Dick.” He bites out, and suddenly it’s gone, that flash of something like understanding marred by what looks a lot like frustration mixed with regret, like they’re faced with a problem that is so unfixable the universe might implode if they talk about it anymore, and it’s so reminiscent of Bruce that Tim wants to rip that cowl off his brother and set it on fire to see if it fixes anything.

He doesn’t get to, though. Damian walks in wearing the colors that are his, and the betrayal that courses through his blood is about as bitter as the sneer thrown his way, and he punches hard enough to break bone.

Tim doesn’t know what Alfred is saying anymore as he stitches his hand. Damian got a lucky hit in once they started scrabbling over the boy’s recent attempts at taking over parts of his patrol route, and in the absence of anyone else in the hallway and Tim’s exhausted attempts at fighting back because he’s overworked and stretched thin and tired, he had taken the opportunity to slash his hand open.

Alfred had sighed when Tim had walked into the kitchen, the sound resigned and disappointed, like Tim was a child throwing a tantrum once again and now he had to fix the mess.

He’s tired. He sits on the bar stool and listens to Alfred talk about patience and understanding and rough starts in life and all Tim can think about is Damian sneering at him in satisfaction, knife in his hand as Tim’s blood dripped onto the carpet.

“This is my home.” Tim says, hoarse, whispers, because he doesn’t know how else to say it, how to make it into the demand and fact and plea he so desperately needs someone to understand.

“Yes.” Alfred says, firm and gentle all at the same time. “This is, and will always be your home, Master Tim.”

Tim’s eyes blur as he barely breathes, track Alfred cutting off the thread at the end of his neat row of stitches.

Please. Please. He's so tired.

“Just give it time, my dear boy. He will learn, I promise you that.”

Tim blinks and blinks and blinks, and the older man wipes the tears that spill over with gentle fingers and turns away, the lump in his throat suffocating.

Tim leaves that night to look for Bruce, and leaves his belongings behind with the ease of someone who’s never known what home really is.

"You’re my brother, Dick. You’ll always be there for me.”

Dick’s shoulders relax like Tim knew they would, and Tim smiles back at him effortlessly, and wishes he didn’t remember every detail of his life as well as he does.

Jason takes him aside not long after Bruce is back, and apologizes for what he did to him that day in Titans Tower.

Tim nods, long used to the invisible distance that follows him and Jason, sharp and cutting just like the knife Tim keeps hidden in his sock at all times, the one that he unconsciously fidgets to feel whenever he’s alone with the older man.

It’s fine. He’s long used to the fact that Jason is a fixture in the family, and he can’t deny him and everyone else that, and he’s long used to the phantom feelings of his bones breaking and his neck bleeding and his shoulder pulling out of its socket with brute force.

Jason doesn’t mention that night of sparring in the cave. Tim wonders if he even remembers how he'd laughed as Tim had writhed on the ground. He doubts anyone ever figured it out since he'd seen Dick and Jason fooling around on the gymnastics equipment the very next day.

Jason’s smiling in something like relief and Tim smiles back, nails piercing skin where his hands are clenched in his pocket.

Tim thinks he can’t breathe as the table continues it’s cheerful chatter – all he can do is look at Bruce’s smiling face as he shares a laugh with Dick who’s seated next to him. They’re both laughing at what Bruce had just said about being lost in time, casual and cheerful.

“You’re joking about it now?” He snaps, hands slamming against the table so hard all the dishes rattle. The conversation around them dies down as Bruce turns to him, eyebrows raised in surprise, like he can’t fathom what Tim could possibly be talking about.

The scar on his side burns.

“How can you sit there and laugh about it?” He chokes out, his hands shaking. Like it meant nothing?

“Tim.” Dick says somewhat helplessly in the tense and very telling silence that follows. “It was just – it’s just a way to cope, babybird.”

Tim thinks of bleeding out in the desert and waking up in the League and falling through the sky knowing Ra’s would be the last face he ever saw and the last voice he ever heard, and wonders how Dick would cope if he was the one who’d almost died trying to bring back someone who could sit and laugh about the time he orphaned all his children once again.

He leaves without another word, not sure if anyone says anything to stop him past the roaring in his ears. Bruce texts him an apology the next day that he doesn’t respond to, and when they run into WE the day after, both of them pretend nothing had ever happened.

Tim doesn’t go back to the manor until months later for Alfred’s birthday. Nobody comes to find him.

His mom’s been dead for three years now, and Tim thinks –

He thinks he should be a little more used to it by now. He thinks he should have figured out how he feels about her by now. He thinks he should have processed the loss enough that it shouldn’t make him want to weep into the ether every time April rolls around.

He thinks there’s a way to handle loss that despite all the times he’s gone through it, he still hasn’t learnt.

He was just making hot chocolate at the manor. He’d wanted to go find Dick, sit with his brother in silence until he could breathe past the crushing weight in his chest.

He hadn’t expected Damian to walk in, but they were better lately. Their way of moving forward has consisted of ignoring the blood and tears shed between them in favor of apathetic silence and words that only sometimes verged on a knifes edge of cruelty.

He’d forgotten the kid had been fighting with Bruce, hadn’t thought of it as he stood at the stove waiting for the milk to boil with his moms voice swirling in his head and asked if Damian wanted some hot chocolate too.

Five minutes later, his hands tremble at his side as he watches Damian storm out, something in his chest eviscerated by the words he hadn’t been expecting, at least tonight.

Always so dramatic.

He can hear his mother saying it in his ear too, always so dramatic Timothy.

His hot chocolate starts to burn in the stunned silence that follows Damian’s tirade, that Tim now reminds himself he’s supposed to recognize as brotherly banter.

The manor will always be your home, Bruce had said once, when he was getting ready to leave to his Nest one night.

This is my home, Tim repeats in his head, shaking fingers not moving to scrub the tears off his face.

He never does end up finding Dick. He doesn't even bother staying the night. April comes and goes.

It's an exhausted Tim that comes home from another week from hell at WE, from another week of patrols that leave him raw and ruined, to Bruce in his apartment.

The man looks out of place, and Tim doesn't know how long he's been there, but Tim does know he hasn't seen him for months, didn't think he'd even noticed that he hasn't been around the manor for even longer because - 

He's been playing a one sided game of chicken that's gone on so long that Tim's moved from hopeful to indignant to sad to pathetic to devastated down to his bones to -

"I bought your favorite. Dim Sum from the place on 6th?"

The takeout sits innocently on the counter. His domino is sitting on the counter from where he'd forgotten to pick it up, after he'd gotten stabbed on patrol last night and hadn't even thought to press his emergency beacon.

Bruce looks genuinely confused when Tim drops his keys to the floor and bursts into tears, folds him into a hug which makes the slash in his side sting, and Tim can't move as his chest heaves.

There's no point to any of this, he thinks. 

It'll be alright, Bruce says, and Tim wishes he understood what any of it meant.

Chapter Text

Bruce stays for a really long time. He stays way past the point where Tim’s done hiccuping out sobs and caught his breath – he’s been staring sightlessly at the floor since then, Bruce all but holding him up, his face half smushed into the mans arm.

“Tim?” It’s gentle, and he feels his son shift minutely, feels him blink against his arm, the lashes tickling the wet skin.

“Tim, do you want to move? Sit on the couch?”

There’s a pause and then Tim inhales sharply and pulls back, like he’s just remembered where he is. Bruce is too shocked at the abrupt move to even pull him back in, instead just watches slightly helplessly as Tim scrubs his face, movements lethargic.

“I’m –“ He croaks out, clears his throat, turns a very blank gaze up to him. “I have to prepare for tomorrow. Lucius needed a hand with –“

More tears slip out, even though Tim’s face stays blank, and he rubs them away impatiently, like they’re an inconvenience and not the very things making Bruce’s stomach churn.

“Tim. Are you okay? I –“

“I’m fine. Can you go?” Tim says, level, like he’s asking for a cup of coffee. “Please?”

“Tim-“

“Get out, Bruce.” Tim snaps, picks his keys up off the floor and throws them on the counter, glaring at the takeout sitting innocently on the counter before turning red eyes back to him, simmering with hurt and anger. “Next time you decide to remember I exist, call first.”

The protests that come to his lips die before they get there.

“Okay, I’ll leave. I’m sorry I haven’t been around, Tim, I –“

There’s a scoff, and Bruce stops. “Please stop by for dinner sometime?”

Tim nods, jerkily, and then walks straight past Bruce to his bedroom without another word, and Bruce can’t help but feel he’s missed something big.

Tim can’t really breathe. Jason’s fingers are trembling slightly from where they hold his helmet.

It’s not what he’d expected. He wouldn’t have ever guess those would be the words out of Jason’s mouth when the older man had dropped on the roof next to him, interrupting what was a very peaceful patrol.

He feels bile rise in his throat and he’s not sure why – Jason was there. It doesn’t matter if he’s seen the footage that Tim couldn’t bring himself to acknowledge let alone delete, because he was there.

“I don’t remember it. I don’t-“ Jason takes a halting breath and Tim can see the sincerity in his eyes, in the set of his jaw, in the way he’s digging his thumbnail into his finger without even realizing it, but –

If anything, it makes it worse.

“I don’t know what happened, Tim, I swear –“ Jason swallows, and Tim’s throat is dry. “I don’t know if it was the pit, or I got drugged, but I – I didn’t mean to. I wouldn’t.”

He really wants to throw up, eternally glad the cowl hides his eyes but he knows it won’t hide the tremble in his lips that he can never hold back.

“It doesn’t matter.” He says finally.

“What the fuck does that even mean?” Jason snaps after a long beat, and Tim’s immediately shifting to feel the knife in his boot even though he’s well equipped for a fight in his uniform. “What – I thought we were cool, and then I find out I dislocated your fucking shoulder and you didn’t say anything? Is this some kind of fucking – power play or some shit? You know Bruce or Dickie bird would kick my ass for it so you –“

Tim can’t stop the laugh that bubbles out of him, and Jason looks at him, affronted under his domino.

“They’re the ones that decided that it was all good that you slit my throat and used my blood to send a message. And I trusted them, and I trusted you. And you smiled in my face and tore my shoulder out.”

“That was the pit. I – “

“It doesn’t matter.” Tim spits out, knife cool against his ankle.

Jason suddenly looks impossibly sad, and Tim thinks he would feel a lot more sympathy if he didn’t remember the panic that had drenched his very being when sparring had so suddenly turned into fear for his life, and how hard he’d cried when he’d finally gotten back to his apartment and knew he would never feel truly safe again.

“I thought we were good.” Jason says finally, disbelieving and guilty and resigned all at the same time. “All this time – I thought we were good.”

“We are.” Tim says, shrugging, pulls his grapple out. “But I don’t – it doesn’t really matter why you did it. I trusted you once, and I won’t make that mistake again.”

Jason’s eyes follow him off the roof, and Tim hates that even hurt and half out of his mind with fear and shock, he had been right.

Tim is halfway through swabbing for bodily fluids on the floor of the crime scene they’re in, which is just as fun as he thought it would be, when Damian speaks.

“Drake.”

Tim turns to look at him from where he’s crouched on the floor, frowning at how odd Damian sounds. They’ve been working in relative peace and silence for a while now.

“Find something?”

“No.” Damian says, then waves a dismissive hand. “Yes, but – “

There’s silence where Damian frowns at a spot on the floor, and Tim raises an expectant eyebrow.

“What is it?” Tim prompts eventually, and the kid meets his eyes for a second before he shakes his head.

“Nothing.” He says, then points to a spot on the floor. “There’s claw marks on the board there.”

“My dear boy, why wouldn’t you say something?”

Alfred looks really sad. Tim frowns, immediately curses his decision to stop in the kitchen for a quick bite, hoping what he thinks is coming isn’t what he thinks it is.

“Is this about Jason?”

Alfred looks at him in something like astonishment, like he’s not sure why Tim is even confused at all, and something in Tim burns.

He wonders if Alfred saw the footage, feels humiliation stir in his gut like a storm at the notion of the older man watching him pop his own shoulder back in place, biting down the agony all alone. Part of him never wants to know who’s seen it.

“I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“The truth?” Alfred prods, gentle.

Tim stirs his oatmeal some more. “There’s not more than you already probably know. He thinks it was a pit episode or he got drugged with something.”

A shrug. “I was just unlucky. Wrong place, wrong time.”

“That is not what I meant.”

“Then what did you mean?” Tim snaps, tired of this game already, enough that he doesn’t even care that he’s being rude.

“I struggle to understand why you wouldn’t say a word about this, from what I have gathered, to anyone.”

Tim wants to scream, because holy hell he’s serious. “He left me for dead before. This was a paper cut.”

“That does not make it okay, my dear boy. He hurt you.”

Tim lets out a disbelieving laugh because the alternative is letting the tears burning in his eyes tip over, and he’s promised himself he’s never going to give Alfred another tear.

“I’ve been getting hurt in this house from the day I started training.” He says, and Alfred’s face remains blank. “I don’t –“

He gets up and dumps the rest of his oatmeal down the sink, the aftertaste like ash in his mouth. He’s not going to cry.

“It’s never mattered. I don’t get why it does now.”

“It matters to me.“

Tim remembers bleeding on the counter next to him, red on the white marble, letting Alfred stitch his hand with medical thread and empty assurances.

He remembers letting the man ice his bruised skin when Bruce would go just a smidge too far, letting him bring the swelling down with practiced excuses and hollow comfort.

He won’t cry. He lets his spoon clatter in the silence and leaves without a word instead.

“You didn’t know I would catch you, did you?”

Tim just blinks at Dick as he finishes gluing his domino on, tries to not think about the feeling of the ground disappearing from beneath him and glass cutting into his skin.

“Give me more credit than that, Dick.” He bites out, and wonders when their retribution will stop coming at the expense of his worst memories.

Tim’s cried himself sick, and he can feel more bursting through the walls of his resolve, and Bruce just keeps wiping them away.

“I don’t know what you want from me.” He sobs out, fists clenched in the soft shirt Bruce had changed into hours ago, before he’d settled down next to Tim as the toxin burned its way out of his system, refusing to let him go back to his apartment to ride it out alone.

“I want you to be okay. And I want you to be happy.” Bruce returns gently, wiping vomit and snot and tears with a soft cloth, and something about the scrape against his skin and the cold of the cave floor underneath him makes the pain spike and at least he can pretend that’s why he keeps crying.

Tim’s sure his voice is gone from all the screaming and crying, and maybe it’s been hours or days until the toxin’s now finally stopped ravaging his body with pain like he’s never felt, but Bruce is still holding him up, letting him slump against him with a steady arm over his chest.

“Tim?”

“Sssshhh.” He croaks out, pleads, eyes sore and barely open under the dimmed cave lights, the lingering sensitivity making the noise blast against his ears like a knife.

A warm hand pushes his sweaty hair off his forehead, and Tim’s hitching back a sob despite himself, and he doesn’t even know why anymore, his brain completely wrecked.

He clutches at the arm holding him like a child with trembling fingers. He doesn't feel like he exists but he burns with the desire to.

“Don’t leave? Please don't leave, don’t leave me - ”

He doesn’t know if he’s saying it out loud, but steady fingers wipe away the tears streaming past his nose again, and he keeps trying to breathe past the pain.

“Never again, Tim. I’m right here.”

Chapter Text

Tim exists as a ghost in the manor.

Bruce insists Tim stay so he can be monitored, so he does.

Part of him, the part of him born out of necessity and experience, rails at the order.

The other part of him is horrified at how badly the toxin has sapped his strength, how badly his hands keep shaking, how the pain behind his eyes through the back of his skull never seems to truly disappear, how it feels like his blood is simmering angrily under his skin, and –

He’s scared, simply put. His body is working against him, his missing spleen only making it all worse, and while it’s not a new toxin, he already has the antidote, it’s just –

Bruce is the person most equipped to monitor him.

And despite everything, the instinct to run to Bruce when things go this wrong is entrenched in his bones.

So he stays. He sleeps like the dead in his room for days, waking up drenched in sweat and plagued by horrific memories of his nightmares when different people come in to check on him. He’s so out of it that he barely can tell them apart, and most of the time he just quietly submits to their checks until they leave him alone, but sometimes –

Sometimes it all hurts too much and he can’t hold himself from blearily leaning into whatever comfort they offer him until he passes out again.

Eventually he feels well enough that he starts joining in on meals, and he sits quietly as threads of conversation make their way over his head before he can get a handle on any of them, left alone as he tries to make himself eat anything at all. Bruce’s watchful eyes stay on him throughout the whole ordeal.

He finds sitting rooms that are barely entered like he’s a new thirteen year old in the manor again, making himself as small and quiet as possible until it’s time for him to go home.

Except home isn’t Drake manor anymore, he’s legally an adult although he’s never felt like less of one, and in a house full of orphans and traumatized souls, he’s never felt more alone.

You’re still scared of me.” Jason says, mournfully but resigned, like he’d hoped for more but had expected nothing less. Everyone else is out on patrol, and Tim doesn’t know how Jason got the short straw of keeping an eye on him. He’s been sitting on the floor with Tim as he’s thrown up for what’s felt like hours, after he’d forced himself to eat a proper meal after days of barely anything – he’d moved to hand him a tissue when Tim had flinched back horribly.

Tim’s too exhausted to even be humiliated, defensive, guilty, livid or whatever else he thinks he should be, and the silence that follows chokes the air out of the random bathroom he’d stumbled into.

He sees the glimpse of something in Jason’s eyes, the same look he’d had the last time they’d been this close to each other, weeks ago.

“I don’t know how not to be.” Tim rasps out to closed eyelids and the porcelain seat, and the knife in his sock burns like poison.

Jason stays up with him the next night too, and Tim’s so nauseous he can’t stop dry heaving even though he hasn’t eaten all day.

Part of him wants to tell the man to fucking leave because he’s overheated and he can’t stop shaking and everything hurts but –

Jason sits a good three feet away, tucked non threateningly against the wall, pointedly dressed down enough that there’s really nowhere to hide many weapons, holds a glass of water in silence and doesn’t try to touch him.

“Why the fuck are you here?” he croaks out during a brief reprieve, clenching the toilet bowl with fingers that just won’t stop shaking.

Jason doesn’t respond, just holds out the glass very slowly.

“Drink your water.”

He’d been trying to focus on the book in his lap, trying to do something that wouldn’t make his eyes throb but could still stimulate his poor bored brain when Alfred had come in.

He’s sitting on the coffee table in front of him now, very inelegant for the man, but he’s talking softly even though Tim’s ears started ringing halfway through.

I’m sorry for the things I let slide, he says, I’m sorry for the things you’ve endured in silence.

Tim’s still refusing to cry.

“I am especially ashamed –“ Alfred continues, and Tim can hear the sincerity in his voice even though he can’t make himself look him in the eyes. “- of all the times you have come to me for help and I have – I have taken the cowards way out and preached patience and restraint to you, a child who has never been truly protected in this house by the very adults who hold you to standards even we do not meet.”

The waver in the old man’s voice hurts.

“Then why?” Tim chokes out, and he can’t even figure out how to say what he wants to say, how to ask why did you or why did you never figure it out before now or how did you never figure it out before now or what do you expect me to do with this but all that comes out is a very broken “Why me?”

Why me. Why not me?

Alfred doesn’t seem to have an answer. Tim pulls his hands back, eyes glued to the tremors in his fingers.

“Sometimes I wish I’d never walked through that door.” He says, losing the battle to keep his voice steady but that’s okay, he has enough practice in making it sound clear. “And sometimes, I think you wish the same.”

“Tim.” Jason says, easily dodges the bottle of shampoo Tim chucks at him. “Calm down.”

“Why are you fucking here?”  Tim yells, voice barely there, so sick of having to watch his back at his absolute worst, and Jason just refuses to leave, sits there with his stupid sympathetic face, and any fear he still felt disappears in the face of how goddamned tired he is. “Haven’t you done enough? Are you not going to be happy until I’m fucking dead?”

He throws another bottle of something and it barely bounces off Jason’s shoulder, and he’s back to dry heaving the next second, and this time there’s a hand rubbing his back as his throat tears itself from the inside out.

“No one is making you be here.” He croaks out, pleads, when he’s done, edges away from the hand. “Just leave.”

Jason doesn’t say anything for a while, but he doesn’t move, and Tim is half asleep on the toilet by the time the hand returns, and this time he has no energy to move away and just lets it happen.

“Least I can do, kid.” He hears as he fades away.

He wakes in someone’s lap to Alfred putting an IV into his arm, murmuring something gently to him about dehydration, but Tim is warm and the fingers running through his aching head are steady and soothing, so he lets himself drift.

Tim has to try really hard to not let his breathing get away from him.

Again how is this happening again how do I make this stop –  

“I did not mean to.” He hears Damian say, but he can only look at his camera with blurry eyes, the crack in the body of it rendering it as good as dead. He’s had it since he was eight. His head is pounding.

Damian’s still talking, something about Titus and a ball and Tim’s open door and there’s something very different about Damian’s tone of voice and he thinks he would probably be paying attention to it if he could get any air in.

“Drake?”

“Get out.” He grits out, sounds so little like himself, and Damian actually does, closing the door behind him.

Right there on the floor, Tim allows himself one strangled little gasp of a sob, counts to three hundred and thirty seven, and throws the broken piece of his childhood in the trash on his way out.

Bruce is there when he wakes up from a nap he’d taken after dinner, and he has to suck down a groan at the headache drilling away at the base of his skull, the one he always gets when he can’t get his brain to shut down.

The man is holding the broken camera, gently, like it’s not fucking broken, and Tim stares at him blankly.

“Did you want me to try to fix this?” He murmurs gently, hands already reaching to dig into the right spot on his head and Tim buries his face back into his pillow with a sigh. It does hurt a little less.

“There’s no point.”

I’ve lost everything already.

Tim stumbles into Bruce’s room an hour later, barely able to keep from hyperventilating, begging him to fix it.

He’s not sure what he’s asking him to fix, can barely get any words out as his breathing gets away from him and he knows rationally that the surge of panic is exacerbated by the toxin, but it doesn’t seem to matter and he just can’t stop thinking about a tiny eight year old discovering his most treasured possession, the gateway to something that for once had bought him joy, was broken forever.

Another tiny cruel part of his brain keeps reminding him that little Tim would most definitely be scared of the adult he’s grown up to be, fucked up and volatile like his dad, and maybe there’s no way to fix what’s built into his bones.

Bruce seems to get it, sits with Tim as he loses it on the floor, and promises to fix it all. Tim lets himself believe it.

Later, when they’re both pretending Tim is asleep on Bruce’s lap, his dad tearfully confesses he’d finally asked Clark how they’d managed to find him, and that as long as he lives he’ll wish Tim had never walked through the doors of the manor only to save him the pain he’s had to go through for him.

I’d do it again and again and I wish you understood that, Tim wants to say, but they both take the cowardly way out that night.

Tim doesn’t hear from Bruce for the next few days, and he knows he couldn’t find a way to fix his camera. He’s already gotten used to the thought, had known from the start it was unfixable, but the small dash of impossible hope getting dashed still stings.

Damian buys him a new one, a better model – Tim finds it sitting on his desk when he wanders back into his room after a shower.There’s no note, but there’s no one else it could be from. Tim holds it in his hands, raging against the notion that years of childhood memories could be bought and replaced, itching to throw it in the trash, but –

It’s something. Tim doesn’t know what it is.

It’s the absence of volatility, he concludes vaguely, doesn’t let himself think about it, tosses it into the back of his closet and goes to take a nap.

He doesn’t know what sets him off, but he’d been sitting on the kitchen counter while Dick makes them some hot chocolate – his older brother had stopped by unexpectedly while Tim had decided to leave his room and enjoy some sunlight in the kitchen while the house was relatively empty and he would be left alone at the odd time a few hours after lunch, until –

Until Dick had popped in through the door with his duffle bag slung over his shoulder, and had looked both surprised and delighted to see him sitting there, and had immediately blown past any awkwardness by announcing he was in desperate need of a hot drink and how great it was that Tim could join him.

When Dick sets the mug down in front of him, and he breathes in the slight hint of vanilla because Dick knows how much he enjoys vanilla and always adds in extra for him, he falters on his next breath and breaks down sobbing so suddenly he almost chokes.

“Tim?” Dick is saying, and Tim bends over and buries his eyes into his palm and shudders out more sobs, and when he feels Dick in front of him he can’t help but lean forward until he can bury his face in his sweater.

“I’m so sick of being mad at you.” He croaks out, almost pleading, because he just doesn’t want to do this anymore, but he doesn’t know how to stop, he doesn’t know what he wants and he doesn’t know what to ask for to make any of it any better.

Dick makes a wounded sort of noise and crouches down in front of him, and it’s pathetic but Tim can’t help but follow him, can’t help but bury his face in Dick’s hair and clutch his forearms so hard it hurts his own fingers.

“I deserve it.” Dick whispers, gently loosening the death grip Tim has on him, takes one of Tim’s hands in his own and cradles it to his own face. “I wanted to give you time, and I still do Timmy, but I hate seeing you in pain. And I hate that it’s because of me.”

Tim shudders again, knows if he opens his eyes he’ll be back here in this kitchen, getting ripped apart and put back together because of the kid wearing his colors like he had earned them.

“You just took it away, like it – like it meant nothing.” Tim sobs out, like I meant nothing. “I don’t – I wanted to give it to him, I –“

He pulls back and coughs, and Dick pulls back too to look up at him, his face wet and surprised. “I just wanted it until I could – until I could breathe again. And I wanted to do it right, I wanted – I –“

He coughs again, wipes his disgusting face clumsily with his sleeve, puts his palms over his eyes and tries to breathe.

 “I’m still so mad at you, I don’t know if I’ll ever get over it. It doesn’t feel like I ever will.” He rasps out, his throat aching under the sobs he’s so desperately holding back but it’s not really working.

Dick makes another sad sound. “I didn’t – I didn’t know, I – “

“I tried my best, Tim. But I hurt you in the process, and I wish I could tell you how sorry I am.”

“You can be mad at me as long as you need. But I’ll be here, and I’ll be better, I’m not going anywhere, okay? And when you want to talk, I’ll be here.” Dick insists, holds his face and ducks his head until Tim finally meets his eyes, wipes his tears away with his thumbs. “I’m – I’m here, okay? Tell me you believe me. I don’t ever want to lose you, Timmy.”

Tim can’t really do anything but nod, and he means it, because even when Dick was actively ripping his life away, he was only doing it out of love.

Letting Dick pull him into his shoulder again, his tears soaking into his sweater, he wonders what it feels like to be loved when it’s hard.

That night, when his head pounds enough that he can’t even process a full thought let alone close his eyes and attempt to get some sleep without his brain spinning out of control, he crawls into Dick’s bed and his older brother silently holds him like he knew he would, and Tim lies there awake for hours and doesn’t stop thinking about who Dick goes to when the weight of the world becomes too much, and he never works up the courage to ask.

"I never got to give you Robin." Tim is saying, even as he wonders why he's saying it at all. Damian is looking at him, uncharacteristic concern on his face, like he's convinced Tim is losing his mind finally.

Maybe he is. Maybe the toxin is finally eroding his last remaining brain cell and staying in the manor, surrounded by the people he's steadfastly stayed away from for months, is taking care of the rest.

"I was going to leave this letter with it." He finishes, holds up the slightly crumpled piece of paper he'd found at the bottom of a duffle bag. It had been rough to read, but some part of him couldn't just leave it there, because - 

He'd written it with the express hope of giving Damian the mantle, and he'd never gotten the chance to express it - even if it didn't get to happen, it feels slightly wrong that Damian will never hear this side of the story, read the words he'd vomited out in the throes of grief as he'd tried to figure out his next move.

"You were going to give me Robin." Damian says, and it's not really a question, not really a statement, just something in between that makes him sound very uncertain and young. Something squirms inside Tim, and he thinks of the camera sitting discarded in his closet, the errant barely-there footsteps lingering outside his door at all hours of the night that are too small to belong to anyone else, to the way he feels the kids eyes on him all the time, silent and observing.

Tim shakes the paper at him until he takes it, and almost manages a smile before he leaves him to it.

"Consider us even." Damian snaps as he shoves an envelope into Tims hand, and then bolts out of the room.

Tim blinks down at it, barely awake, still in bed and rubbing sleep out of his eyes. He opens it to find a very well done sketch of a robin perched on a branch, complete with a little domino, a small signature at the bottom.

I'm sorry - DW

"Alfred, can I sit in here with you? Please?" He pleads, leaning heavily on the door of Alfred's private quarters, not able to keep the tremble out of his voice. He was doing better, until suddenly he wasn't and he can't stop shaking as his skin sears, and he thinks he'll puke if he can't escape the sheer amount of activity in the manor right now.

A few minutes later, he's apologizing as he does indeed puke in Alfred's private bathroom, and the older man shushes him and keeps talking about the book he's reading to distract him.

"I thought it was over." He sobs out into the bathmat when he's done, clenching his teeth against the pain. "I want it to be over."

"It will not be forever." Alfred soothes, wiping the sweat from his brow and petting his arm, and it reminds him so much of Bruce the first day he'd gotten hit that he cries even harder, and then has to pull himself up to throw up some more.

"I didn't mean it." He slurs out what feels like hours later, body voided of anything he's ever eaten, face buried in Alfreds pant leg - he can't keep a thought straight but he keeps hearing Alfreds voice, sad and sincere and he can't stand the fact that he had made it that way. "'love you Alf."

"You're a good lad." Gentle, reassuring, genuine. "I don't deserve your forgiveness, but I will make sure I earn it."

Maybe he shouldn't, but he believes it this time.

Tim had heard the shouting. He thinks the birds all the way over at Drake manor must have heard it.

Some leftover part Tim shrivels up whenever Bruce and Dick fight, and really fight the way they used to after Jason’s death, when Tim would try his best to blend in the shadows while the both of them threw their grief at each other like bombs.

When Tim finally creeps down after he knows Bruce has gone to bed, he finds Dick sitting in the cave in the ringing silence, shoulders slumped like they physically can't handle the burden on them. The cup of tea next to him means Alfred had finally, mercifully, intervened.

Where do you go, Dick, when it all becomes too much?

Wordlessly, Tim settles down on the floor in front of him, leans his head against his knee like he would as a tiny Robin, with no words to make him feel better but knowing what it felt like to be truly alone and wanting to save his older brother from it if he could.

He still does, and he thinks that’ll never go away. A few minutes later, two hands gently tangle in his hair and a cheek leans on the crown of his head, and Tim’s shoulders unclench and he relaxes back and closes his eyes, banishing memories of burning rubber in the peace that follows.

Jason nods at him when he sees him approaching from where he’s sitting on the rooftop, helmet sitting next to him. He looks slightly wary, and Tim can see the slightly defeated hunch of his shoulders that he’s all too familiar with, that speaks of failed missions and needless casualties.

He’d heard of the case Jason was working on, had heard how wrong it went and can only imagine how it ended, and as he sits down next to Jason and thinks he should be finding words, wants to find words but -

Part of him doesn’t know why he does it, and he knows his face is turning red because he can feel it burn where it’s exposed under his cowl but –

He can’t think of what else to do, so he puts his open palm down next to him, so it sit’s right next to Jason’s where he’s leaning back, both hands on the edge of the roof to make himself as non-threatening as possible.

He can feel the confusion radiating off of the older man, but he really can’t make himself look up at him, but –

Jason Todd is someone who continues to surprise him, sometimes in the worst ways, but he practically feels the man soften next to him and gloved fingers move slowly and tap tap tap on his gloved palm ever so gently and just stay there, and Tim’s reflexively relax until they’re barely curled up against the much larger digits.

Tim has no voice to say anything, and neither does Jason it seems, but he’s pretty sure he understands. Maybe they don't always need words and maybe Tim will regret this but maybe this is as good as it gets for now and that's good enough.

The moonlight makes the black of their gloves gleam, and Tim barely holds back a laugh when he realizes the only thing in his sock tonight is a small pack of beef jerky.

Robin is sitting on a barstool when he stumbles out of his bedroom, disoriented and exhausted and trying to physically rub the nightmare out his eyes.

Tim pauses in his tracks and sighs, and Damian looks at him impassively, clearly unhurt but Tim can see the tension in his posture and the way he’s just barely curling and uncurling his toes in his boots.

Fuck, his feet are so far off the floor. He looks at Tim like he just knows he’s going to get kicked out, and Tim –

Tim moves to the stove, where he’d intended to go in the first place, and starts blearily starts putting together his hot chocolate, wishing he had pulled out his warmer pajamas, the cold air prickling his arms under his t-shirt. It's his first night back after being cleared from his hellish toxin week, and he feels incredibly uneasy away from how full the manor always was, his mothers disjointed voice still ringing in his ears.

He works in silence, without a peep from the boy behind him, and when he pulls the milk out of the fridge and it’s clearly gone bad, he barely holds himself back from throwing it at the wall and watching it explode –  

There’s a small cough from behind him, and when Tim turns, there’s a small bottle of milk on the counter. One of the ones he knows is a gas station brand – just enough for two cups of milk.

Wordlessly, he grabs it and goes back to it, and in ten minutes he’s sliding the gaudiest mug he has full of hot chocolate over to Damian, a silent challenge.

The kid looks at it for a moment, then picks up the hot pink monstrosity that Tim is 90% sure came from Dick, and takes a long sip with the barest of smirks, which turns into a grimace as he immediately burns his tongue.

Tim smiles and takes his own smaller sip, feels unreasonably warm against the cool April night, inhales the scent of vanilla as deep as he can and lets it blink away the final vestiges of his nightmare.

Alfred waits until he’s finished loading the dishwasher before he even bothers looking straight at Tim with an arched eyebrow, finally opens the kitchen window to where he’s been perched for the last twenty minutes.

“Really, you cannot still think you will succeed.”

Tim doesn’t pout, but he kind of does, enjoys the game as much as he hates always losing. “Does that mean I don’t get any of the homemade jam I keep hearing about?”

A small jar is plucked out of a drawer next to the sink and handed over. “This one is strawberry.”

“Yum.”

“Do get off the windowsill before it breaks, Master Tim.”

“It won’t break.” Tim insists, tucks the jar into his jacket pocket. “I am but a young man.”

“Truly.” Alfred says dryly, although Tim can clearly see the fond twitch of his lips that he tries to hide. “Regardless, how about you come in here we can test out the blueberry batch on the scones? They are almost ready.”

Sure enough, the timer on the oven counts down the final minute. Tim doesn’t even ask how, but he grins eagerly and closes the window behind him, settles down happily on the counter and listens to Alfred bustle around the kitchen, the smell of scones and blueberry jam heavy in the air.

Tim hears the barest creak behind him from where he’s perched on his counter, scrolling through an article on his phone in the carefully crafted mood lighting he’d finally installed in his apartment.

He smiles. “You’re late.”

Batman rounds the island, dark and heavy, and then the cowl drops down and it’s his dad, tired and slightly sweaty but smiling, content and fond.

Bruce hops up on the counter and sits crisscross applesauce across from Tim, costume and all.

“Crime never sleeps.” He says gruffly, and sets down the bag full of takeout containers down between them.

“If my food is cold, even Alfred himself won’t be able to save you.” Tim grumbles, opening the first box, shivering slightly as the cold air from the recently closed window reaches him.

“I quake at the thought.” Bruce intones, plastic fork between his teeth as he reaches out to clasp his cape over Tim’s shoulders, and Tim burrows into the warmth with a smile and lets the scent of Kevlar and Dim Sum wash over him.