Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Tim- Tim as Robin, he still couldn’t get over that!- jerked on his grapple and jumped, letting the retraction yank him above the next explosion just in time. Seriously? What kind of dumbasses throw grenades in a warehouse filled with millions of dollars of their own cocaine? If it were Tim’s cocaine he wouldn’t blow things up next to it. 

If it were Tim’s cocaine he would find a much more secure place than a random warehouse on the docks, like his basement. It had always struck him as a good place to hide illegal activities because it was dark and empty and nobody ever went down there. It was perfect and already protected by high security! Then, once he’d secured the goods, he’d tap into the high society scene. His parents wouldn’t be around to notice him running drug deals out of their house and social calls between the elite in Bristol wouldn’t be suspicious. It was a huge market and there was a real shortage of dealers that the upper class trusted not to rat them out, so- 

Oh. Oops. That’s illegal, Tim, he reminded himself. 

Good news though: thought crime didn’t count and Tim didn’t have any real cocaine (yet), so it was all cool for now. He didn’t even have to put it in his ‘illegal urges’ folder! 

Tim hit the ground as the explosion subsided and stumbled into a run to let off momentum. It took three tries to tug his grapple off the catwalk railing because he couldn’t get the release button to click. He chucked a batarang at a shape in the smoke, the one that was raising another grenade, and smiled a little when he heard the target scream. (He was thinking of rebranding them ‘bird-a-rangs’, was that dumb?) 

“Nightwing?” Tim asked, activating his coms. (Not dumber than Dick calling them wing-dings, right?). The shape stumbled out of the smoke, clutching his shoulder, and Tim had all of three seconds to latch his grapple again before the floor went up in flames. 

(Definitely not as dumb as throwing grenades next to your merchandise! Seriously, only Maroni’s men would be this stupid.) 

Tim hung from his line a dozen feet from the floor, a little shell shocked, but he saw the grenade-thrower go down. 

“Robin?” Nightwing asked. 

Tim blew out a relieved breath. “Sorry, I-” 

Tim heard the click of an automatic rifle above him and jerked his head up. (At least 87% less dumb than Tim just hanging in the middle of an active battlezone.) The woman pulled the trigger again, then shouted in frustration.

Oh, she was out of bullets.  

“Robin?” Dick asked. 

Tim concentrated, pumping his legs and body to gain momentum before releasing his grapple and flipping up onto the catwalk, landing on the railing in a crouch with only a little wobble. He looked up just in time for her gun (empty, not useless, stupid Tim) to meet his face. Tim shouted and scrambled for a grip on the railing, swinging off the side and heaving himself back over the railing and onto his back a foot to the right. 

Tim rolled to his feet, pushing himself upright in a way that was almost violent, too quick and too hard to anticipate. He ducked under her next swing and delivered a sharp elbow to her diaphragm before hooking an ankle around her knee and sweeping her off her feet and over the railing. 

Okay, so the last part was kind of an accident, but he wasn’t used to fighting in such a narrow space! And he was pretty sure she landed on one of the pallets of drugs anyway, which would make at least a semi-cushy landing, so he didn’t worry about it. 

“Robin!” 

Tim steadied himself on the railing, breathing heavily as he surveyed the fiery scene below. “Here, sorry. I was just saying that I think I got the guy with the fire bombs.” He grabbed his grapple, giving it a cursory check. 

“Nice work.” A flash of blue electricity lit up the smoke with two shadows, one of which toppled over. “Maroni doesn’t seem to be on site, the back office is empty. I think we’re almost done here, O. Can you contact the police?” 

“Way ahead of you, N,” Oracle said. 

Finished catching his breath, Tim leapt over the railing, his cape carving a wake in the smoke. 

“Let’s regroup in the middle. What do you say to post-op ice cream, kiddo?” 

“Me?” Tim asked, incredulous, popping out of his roll.  

Dick laughed. “Yeah, you.”

A giddy thrill zinged through Tim’s stomach. First, he got to go on an operation with Nightwing, now they were gonna go get ice cream together? Just like Batman and Robin did on the slower nights, when patrol finished early and Tim tailed them to a 24-hour diner just before the last bus left Gotham! The pictures he took then always felt so intimate, and Tim almost felt weird enough to delete them. But Batman and Robin had different ice cream orders than Bruce Wayne and Jason Todd, so that made the pictures okay to keep, right? 

“That would be awesome!” Tim snapped out his bo staff and flipped at a shadow in the smoke, but maybe he shouldn’t have spoken so loudly because they dodged and grabbed his forearm like really tight. Tim was well-trained, but he was also thirteen and kind of scrawny, and that meant they had kept his training to the honorable art of staying very far away from adults who could pin him without breaking a sweat. That being said, Tim’s boots were steel-toed, so he kicked the man’s shin and yanked his arm away, stumbling back- right into someone else. 

They wrapped their arms around his chest and lifted him off the ground, knocking his staff away. “Bitch!” Tim cursed, which wasn’t really how you were supposed to use that swear, but it was worth less than ‘fuck’ in Alfred’s swear jar and brought him a similar joy, and his parents had always taught him to be smart with his money. 

Nightwing was immediately in his ears, suddenly sounding really really stressed for some reason. “Robin?!” 

Tim smashed his head back into the man’s nose, who shouted and dropped him. He landed on his knees, his bo rolling between the man’s feet and out of reach and Tim made the executive (read: panicked) decision to scramble away before he could get grabbed again. 

“Fuck!” shouted the one with blood streaming down his face and over his hands, nose crooked. 

“That’s four dollars!” Tim shouted as he scrambled to his feet, his mind still on the swear jar for some stupid reason. 

“What the fuck, kid?” the other said, limping out of the smoke. 

Tim eyed his bo, which was lying on the other side of the pair. 

“Robin!” Nightwing shouted again. 

“I fucking hate the kids,” Broken Nose leered. “I thought after what happened to the last one the Bat wouldn’t bother.” 

Oh, Tim didn’t like where this was going at all.  

The first one cracked his knuckles. “Maybe we need to show him another lesson.” 

Tim wanted to bolt right into the smoke, but the thugs were between him and Nightwing, and the only exit on this side was completely blocked by crates of drugs. 

Besides, Jason wouldn’t have run. He would’ve kicked one guy in the dick and punched the other in the throat and proudly paid the fifty bucks to Alfred’s swear jar afterwards. Jason wouldn’t have run and Tim had stolen his colors right off his corpse, so the least he could do was stand his ground. A small voice in the back of his head pointed out that basing his life and death decisions on a kid who was decidedly dead wasn’t the best idea he’d ever had, but it definitely wasn’t the worst (four words: poptart mac n’ cheese sandwich). 

‘Birdarang’ was less dumb than the way he squared his stance and pulled one from his belt, one sharp end protruding from his fist. 

Far away, probably across the warehouse, Tim heard Nightwing curse as his coms crackled to life. “Robin, get somewhere I can see you right now!” 

“I’m kind of in the middle of something,” Tim said back, willing himself not to back away from the two goons, looking for an opening, scanning the ceiling for grapple spots. 

“Now,” Nightwing growled. “Get above the smoke right now, the whole place is rigged to blow.” 

Tim’s entire world stopped and restarted. ‘ What kind of dumbasses-’ he’d asked. 

Him. He was the dumbass.

“What?” Oracle asked, surprised. “That doesn’t make any sense, the drugs-” 

“Are fakes. Robin, now!” 

Smart enough to notice the grenades thrown willy-nilly, too dumb to realize what that meant.

The goon with the busted nose lunged for Tim and he stabbed the birdarang into his shoulder with his whole fist, ducking under outstretched arms and kneeing the next one in the stomach before scooping up his bo and running. 

“Robin!” Nightwing bit out.

Tim heaved himself into the bed of a truck stacked high with crates of ‘cocaine’, using the straps to clamber on top of them. “I’m above the smoke, Nightwing, middle of the room, I-” 

Dick didn’t so much grab him as crash into him, catching his hips with the arm that wasn’t on his grapple and twisting to protect him as he went feet first through the far window. Tim had a moment, just one, to blink before the warehouse blew, warmth stinging his cheeks. 

And then with a hard jolt they were on the ground and Tim had a very clear view of Dick Grayson’s sweaty, muscled neck, seeing as he really had no choice but to cling to it. 

Dick dropped his grapple in order to wrap his other arm under Tim, holding him tightly like a toddler against his hip. A piece of debris clanged onto the street behind them, and Tim looked at the warehouse that was up in flames, feeling a bit stupid as he struggled to process. 

All the fake cocaine was probably very real ash now. Salvatore Maroni was a dramatic bitch if the whole thing was a set up. Commissioner Gordon wasn’t going to be happy. Bruce wasn’t going to be happy. 

Oh and also, Dick Grayson was holding him. Dick Grayson was holding him like a toddler. Like, as easy as counting to three, saying the ABC’s, or starting a drug ring out of Tim’s basement. 

Tim felt his face heat up in a way entirely unrelated to the explosion. 

“Oh my god, oh my god.” Somehow Dick found an extra hand to push back Tim’s sweaty bangs in an effort to look at his eyes made futile by the lenses of his domino. “Ti- Robin, Robin talk to me. Are you okay?” 

“I-” Tim said, his brain working very very hard to comprehend the situation he found himself in. “I’m fine. Really, I’m okay.” He tried to struggle out of Dick’s hold, but Dick just dropped to his knees and held him tighter. 

“Oh my god,” he gasped again.

“Take a breath, Ni- Dick,” Oracle said, controlled panic running like a taut string through her voice. “Take a breath, Dick. It’s okay. Tim’s vital signs are reading normal for a post-battle rush. You were there this time, he’s fine. You are both okay.” 

Tim froze, blinking. Was- was Dick having a panic attack? Oh, oh no. This was not good. Was it Tim’s fault? He’d probably ruined post-op ice cream too, goddamnit!

Sirens became audible in the background, forcing Tim back to the present. He squirmed until Dick caught on and let him go, sliding backwards off Dick’s knees and landing on his butt on the concrete, his palm rolling on his bo when he tried to catch himself. 

“Sorry,” Dick mumbled. “Sorry, sorry, sorry.” He put his palms on the ground and leaned forward, breath coming too quick. 

“Nightwing?” Tim asked as he got his knees properly under him, hand flinching forward to touch his arm. “Are you okay? I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to- whatever I did I’m sorry. I promise I’m okay, really! The blood isn’t mine, okay? I’m sorry!” 

“What blood?” Dick gasped out, even more miserable, and Tim winced. 

“I just stabbed a guy is all. I’m fine! Please don’t be upset.” 

Dick sniffled and choked on tears which had Tim’s heart leaping because he didn’t know how to fix this and he’d only made things worse! But then Dick grabbed Tim’s cape and in one sharp tug yanked him back to his chest, wrapping both arms around him in a desperate hug. 

Tim was being hugged by Dick Grayson, by Robin I! 

“Tim, it’s not your fault, okay? Understand that it’s not your fault,” Oracle said. “The police just arrived, you and Nightwing just stick around back there for a minute, I’ll tell them what they need to know.” 

Tim didn’t question Babs’ methods, he whispered an affirmative and slowly returned Dick’s hold. Through two layers of spandex and body armor, Tim felt their heartbeats thump wildly against each other. 

“I… I’m right here, Dick,” Tim whispered, because he would let Bruce dust off the old ‘no names on patrol’ jar if it meant that Dick would be okay right now, if he could just fix this. Bruce hadn’t had to use it with Tim, because Tim followed his rules to the letter unless they were stupid. If Bruce fired him then he wouldn’t have a Robin and Batman would die, which would just be so much the opposite of what he wanted, so Tim made sure he never had a reason to send him away. ‘Stupid’ rules were even clearly defined between him and Alfred as ‘rules that might make Bruce (or Master Tim) die’. 

Tim wondered if Bruce would even give him a chance to cough up twenty dollars if he heard, or if he would kick him out on the spot. 

But Dick was still shaking and breathing all wrong so he mentally expanded the definition to include ‘Dick being okay’ and gathered up the courage to squeeze him tighter. 

Long minutes passed as emergency responders began to pour into the flaming building, until Tim felt Dick’s tension slowly unravel. His body became soft again, much nicer to hug, (although the past seven minutes had already been the second best hug of Tim’s life, almost as good as his first). Tim pulled back, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to meet Dick’s eyes, face still pink and a little hot. 

“Sorry,” Dick said hoarsely. “Lost my head there for a minute. You did really great tonight.” 

Tim tried not to let his eyebrows skyrocket up but he was pretty sure he failed. He didn’t know what he expected, but it wasn’t this. “Thanks?” 

Dick squeezed his shoulder. “Is ice cream still good?” 

Tim’s head jerked up, unable to stop the awed smile that split his face. “Is…? Yeah, it’s still- obviously!”  

Dick laughed, a little choked up but very real. “Right, of course. I forgot you’re a teenage boy.” 

Tim bounced to his feet and practically dragged Dick to his when he held out his hand for help. 

“I’m coming, I’m coming!” Dick laughed. “Don’t blow a fuse, baby bird.” 

“Baby bird?” Tim repeated, screwing up his face as he grabbed his grapple, checking the cord for integrity as Nightwing did the same. 

“Yeah. Cause you’re Robin, and you’re a baby. Baby bird.” 

“Am not!"

“Are too,” Dick shot back. “You can fit in my arms.” 

“That doesn’t make someone a baby!” 

“It makes someone a baby to me,” Dick said, finishing his inspection and hitting the retract button. “Let’s go, baby bird.” 

“Did you call Jason that too?” Tim asked. He slapped a hand over his mouth, regretting everything but mostly being born. 

Dick’s smile wavered. “No.” 

“Sorry,” Tim blurted. “I didn’t mean to-” 

Dick put a hand on his shoulder and smiled. “Hey, no. It’s… well.” Dick took a deep shuddering breath and when he opened his eyes again, Tim could see the pain there, unfiltered and unhidden. “I called him Little Wing. Back when… when Robin was too fresh. But… Tim, you know Jason and I, we weren’t… we weren’t exactly close.” 

“Cause B took Robin away and gave it to him.” Tim knew. 

Dick nodded. “But that wasn’t Jason’s fault, so…” Dick shut his eyes. “Look Tim, it doesn’t really matter. I just want you to know that I’ll be there for you, okay? You’re… you’re still little, and that makes nothing that happens between B and I your fault.” 

Tim nodded and Dick turned to grapple away, but thought better of it. “And Tim?” He caught Tim’s eye. “I want you to know: B didn’t give away Robin this time. I did.” 

Tim looked up at Dick, heart swelling. 

He’d gone into this knowing he was taking Robin from the hands of a dead kid because he wasn’t there to hold the world together anymore. That didn’t mean that being a thief and a usurper didn’t hurt. 

“It’s all yours, kiddo. B can’t take it away from you. Make us proud.” 

In that moment, Tim had never felt fuller, suddenly certain he’d graduated from grave robber to successor. Certain that ‘us’ included the same Robin featured in the photos he had hidden in his closet. 

Several years later, Tim would hear the unspoken words in that conversation, words neither of them had known were there at all. ‘B can’t take it away from you,’ Dick had said. ‘But I can.’ And really, that wasn’t any more fair, because if Tim Drake wasn’t a grave robber then Dick Grayson’s claim to the name was still buried with Jason Todd, the Robin he hadn’t blessed until it was too late. 

Chapter Text

Tim threw an arm up to fend off the tipsy girl who tripped into him, droplets of her pink and undoubtedly alcoholic drink now drying sticky on his face. God, the hallway was so crowded it counted as a fire hazard. Houses should have capacity signs like pools, and also maybe a lifeguard before Tim drowned in people, roaring music, and the stress of knowing that the night would end in potentially fatal alcohol poisoning for at least one unlucky kid. 

Another kid stumbled and breathed right in his face, and Tim swiftly upgraded the safety warning from ‘fire hazard’ to ‘chemical warzone’. He mentally added ‘stupid teenage house parties’ to his ever-lengthening ‘To-Deal With’ list, slotting it in just below Ivy’s new pollen strain but above whatever Eddie was up to these days. The ‘To-Deal With’ list had recently undergone a major upheaval due to every-fucking-thing in his life, so the order actually wasn’t important at all any more and the whole thing was a fucking joke. Tim staunchly ignored that fact for the sake of a witty internal monologue and let himself continue his rant as he shoved his way down the hall. 

Because really, this kind of ridiculousness could all be avoided if alcohol was restricted based on morality and maturity instead of age. A state mandated ethics test and intelligence screening process could easily weed out those irresponsible and immoral enough to not be trusted with it, thus eliminating these teenagers’ suppliers and forcing all the dumb WE stockholders to find personalities that made them good company without the dulling effects of alcohol. Two birds with one stone! He could easily implement such a law in Gotham with just a few well placed bribes and- 

A laughing boy younger than Tim sloshed a full cup of beer down Tim’s front, freezing him in shock. He pulled up his other, still intact list, the one lovingly titled ‘Not Until Your Villain Arc’, and put yet another star by ‘bribery’ before adding ‘assault’. After another second, he underlined ‘dystopian level fascism’ twice and left it at that. 

Bases covered, Tim took a deep breath, reminded himself why the prohibition failed, and walked right past the boy who was now offering up apologies through his laughter. He needed to get out.  

But if the hallway was crowded, the stairwell was a goddamn riot. Tim took one look at it, ignored the sound of retching downstairs, and took a sharp left towards the nearest door. He only needed one tool and a few seconds to pop the cheap lock and he quickly ducked in, shutting it behind him. 

The sudden stillness, the dim-dark, muffled noise, and neutral scents were a bright contrast to everything on the other side of the door, and the relative silence caused his witty internal monologue to stutter and fail. 

It had only been one drink. 

Tim slid down against the door, head in his hands, trying not to cry or throw up. His beer-soaked shirt stuck uncomfortably to his skin so he tore that off first.

Behind him, the door vibrated with the music. A yellow street lamp fell through the window, cutting a triangle across the neatly made bed and brushing his sneaker. Suddenly he realized how much his head hurt. 

It had only been one drink.  

He was so fucking dumb, so fucking dumb. Poptart mac n’ cheese sandwich step aside, this one took the cake. One drink shouldn’t have been enough to get him to- to do that, and he’d come completely sober, sitting passenger in a car that wasn’t his. 

And maybe that was the dumbest part. Tim had access to a car and two motorcycles, and could independently purchase a dozen more before he even hit his credit limit, and yet he’d gotten a ride here from the same guy that he’d made out with in the guest room. 

Tim let out a watery laugh, resting his forehead on his twisted-up hands. What a way to deal with grief, huh? Making out with your best friends. Because that’s what was happening, he realized it now, he was grieving over this. Cassie would be offended it wasn’t her. If Steph was in an ex-boyfriend tolerating mood, she would congratulate him on the game he didn’t actually have, because Bernard had invited him to the party and Bernard had handed him the drink and Bernard had pressed him up against the wall and kissed him so nicely that Tim had forgotten that it should never have happened at all, that they were both boys, that Bernard was one of the only friends he had left, and that Bruce was- was-

Not dead, but gone. 

And most importantly, only three days ago, that the demon-brat was wearing his colors with his brother and he wasn’t even dead enough for Tim to rob. 

Tim sucked in a breath. 

He didn’t want Damian dead. Or if he did it was the kind of urge he put on his Villain-Arc list and did his best to forget about. He didn’t want him dead, he just wanted him gone like his dad.  

Gone and out of his fucking life. 

So yeah. To-Deal With List, meet upheaval. 

But despite all that, Tim had not expected ‘sexuality crisis’ to be the next thing added to his mess of a list. In fact, he wasn’t gonna put it down at all, to preserve whatever little sanctity the list had left. 

He just felt sick. 

He wished it was Cassie, or even Steph again, or- or just, not a boy. Mostly he wished that he hadn’t liked it so damn much. 

His phone buzzed and he wiggled it out of his pocket, wiping his eyes enough to see the screen. He had eleven missed calls from Lucius because he hadn’t shown up since seeing Damian in the suit and he ignored them expertly, instead focusing on the text that had just come through. For a moment, the J in the contact name wavered into a B, and Tim had to bite back a scream because his life was so littered with loss he was reduced to calling on his would-be murderer. 

Tim stumbled over to the window and planted his hands on the sill, the glass cold against his aching forehead. Sure enough, Jason was on his bike, idling on the curb in civvies just like Tim had asked.

Bart wouldn’t have needed a bike, he could have piggy-backed Tim out of here and to the tower in a few minutes flat, pizza pit-stop included. Kon wouldn’t have needed a text, which is why the J didn't waver into a K. Tim could’ve whispered his name and waited at the window until he came, squishing his face against the other side to make Tim laugh. 

But Jason needed a bike, and Jason needed a text, and Tim needed to know exactly what fifteen-minutes-ago Tim had been thinking when he'd texted Jason as he shook and shuddered in the bathroom down the hall, the phantom feeling of Bernard’s lips against his making him equal parts ecstatic and panicked. Tim had walked home to Bristol from all the way downtown before, Gotham Heights would’ve been a piece of cake, and yet for some reason he’d texted Jason’s sorry ass to pick him up. Like seriously, Tim wasn’t the only one hurting right now, Jason didn’t need this. 

Tim’s phone buzzed again, in a way that felt distinctly impatient, but maybe that had more to do with the fact that below him, (idling on the curb in civvies just like Tim had asked), Jason had removed one of his motorcycle gloves to type, the glare of his phone screen making the visor of his helmet opaque. 

Tim watched him, waited for him to get fed up and go. Jason took off his helmet and Tim’s phone buzzed with a call that he didn’t answer. For a moment he felt like some sort of psycho, watching from above. But he’d crossed the villainy line for stalking this particular guy before he’d even had a Villain-Arc list to document it on, so he let the feeling go like the photos still hidden in the back of his closet at Drake Manor. 

Tim watched Jason growl and put his phone away, felt his own phone stop buzzing in his pocket, and could practically hear the cut-off beginning of the far too professional-sounding voicemail Lucius had forced him to set up. 

But instead of leaving, Jason stood up and started walking towards the house. 

Which was just a fine and dandy fuck no, so Tim yanked open the dresser and grabbed the first t-shirt he could find. He wished he had a reason to not leave his own shirt on the floor, but he hadn’t worn any clothes that mattered since their owners and gifters had died. The shirt on the floor said nothing about him except that he didn’t mind the color red.  

Tim pried open the window and leaned out, trying to gauge the distance to the ground. No fucking way was he going back into that public health violation of a hallway. 

The floors were short, Tim reasoned. There were bushes at the bottom. 

So without another thought he slipped out the window and hung from the ledge by his fingertips before dropping, but apparently that drink was still fucking with him because somehow, despite being Robin (ex, whatever) and even better at judging distance than picking locks, he ended up flat on his back, staring up at the sky in a daze. 

Tim thought about that sky for fifteen whole seconds before registering the thudding, frantic footsteps and the face above his, completely blocking his view of the smog-filled navy blue and the two and a half stars that were visible from Gotham Heights (which was more than the one star and the satellite that you could see from downtown). 

“What the fuck, Replacement? What kinda dumbass jumps out a second story window if the building’s not on fire?!” 

“You came,” Tim said, blinking up at him, and it was then that Tim realized what fifteen-minutes-ago Tim had been thinking. He couldn’t call Dick and he couldn’t call Bruce and he couldn’t call his dead friends. Calling Jason was a test, a test to see if he had anyone left to rely on before he skipped Bristol entirely and walked from Gotham Heights to the penthouse. Before he started planning for the reality that he was alone again. Alone like he was as a kid, except this time he had a number of large empty houses, and instead of fruitless, tired hope there were ghosts and murderers and empty spaces that could never be filled, not even with a late birthday phone call from Guam or a two-day layover in Gotham half-spent yelling. 

Jason, to him, was an indicator of how hopeless he should feel. And Jason had come. And Tim had waited at the window. 

He wondered if there would be a moment to laugh. That might be asking for a lot. He’d settle for pizza. 

Jason was oblivious to Tim’s settled crisis as he crouched down, slipping a hand under Tim’s arm. “You texted me 911 and an address, yeah I fucking came. Is anything broken?” 

Me, Tim thought, but that was a little melodramatic even for him so he settled on wiggling his fingers and toes. 

Jason stilled. “You smell like alcohol.” 

“No shit,” Tim snarked, slowly sitting up even though that set the world spinning. “No, they just enjoy that music sober.” He nodded towards the house, which was still pouring out some truly awful dance remixes. 

“I don’t think you’re in a good position to be a smartass right now, Timmy,” Jason said, grabbing his arm. “How many drinks?” 

“Just one.” 

Jason scowled at him. “You’re fucking swaying. What was it?” 

Tim shrugged. Probably something strong. It hadn’t tasted all that great. 

“Dumbass,” Jason growled. 

“Thought I was a smartass?” 

Jason’s nostrils flared. “I’ll kill you.” 

“Nuh-uh,” Tim taunted. Because he knew that now. He totally knew that now. It only took the worst night of his life to figure it out. 

“Yuh-huh Timbit, don’t test me. What the fuck are you doing here?” 

“I dunno,” Tim said, burying his head in his hands. “What are you supposed to do at parties?” 

“Drink until you don’t care how fucking disgusting the place gets.” 

“Ew.”  

“Exactly. Now what do I gotta tell Dickiebird about how long to ground you for?” 

“I’m emancipated.” 

“Sorry- Alfred,” Jason corrected, and Tim flipped him off. “Come off it, you wouldn’t have called me if you didn’t care whether they knew.” 

“Says who?” Tim fired back. 

“Says me, the guy who’s tried to kill you before.” 

“You had a redemption arc.” 

“No, not really, actually,” Jason said. “Antipsychotics are not a redemption arc.” 

Tim wobbled his hand in a so-so gesture, chest feeling tight at the constant questioning, hot secrets prickling beneath his skin. 

“Why do you have so much fucking faith in me?” Jason snapped. 

“If I say it’s because Robin gives you magic will you dropkick me off the freeway?” 

Jason growled. “Answer the question.” 

“I didn’t exactly have much of a choice!” Tim shouted, suddenly feeling broken and bare. Tim shut himself up with a harsh bite of his lip, tears welling in his eyes, which was so not what he wanted to happen right now. He took a deep breath and fiddled with the grass by his feet, his next words coming quiet and a little wet. “Dick gave Damian Robin.” 

Jason sucked in a breath. “Kid… ” 

Tim studied the pattern of the bricks behind the nearest hydrangea and swallowed. He plucked out a strand of grass and turned a sharp eye and a sharper tongue Jason’s way. “So, guy who’s tried to kill me before, why do you think I have faith in you?”

Jason wasn’t Tim’s first choice, he was literally his last, his damn false negative. 

“You got replaced, so what? It happens to everyone. Drinking your sorrows away doesn’t help any. I mean shit, get a damn hold of yourself, kid!” 

Tim pushed onto his knees, his tone a shade away from shrieking. “You tried to kill me when I replaced you! You don’t get to talk! A drink is nothing! I’m doing leagues better than you!”  

Jason’s eye’s took on a distinctly turquoise tint. “Yeah, just like always, huh- just like-” Jason cut himself off and shut his eyes, fingers digging into the soft grass hard enough that they turned white. When he opened his eyes again they were back to normal. “I don’t want to hate you.” 

Tim laughed and flopped back onto the grass, the dew sticking to his arms. “No, of course not,” he said sarcastically. 

Jason sat down next to Tim, looking out at the street. “Redemption arc, remember?” 

Tim snorted. 

The silence between them was odd, sacred, almost, because even though Jason’s bike was humming on the curb, key forgotten in the ignition, neither of them moved towards it. 

If it was sacred, then Jason broke it sacrilegiously: with a change of subject in a tone too casual for the topic. “Dickie says you think the old man’s alive?” 

Tim ripped a layer of skin off his lip with his front teeth, the bloom of blood on his tongue making him nauseous. “Do you believe me?” 

The silence stretched long enough for Tim to shatter. “Of course not,” he muttered, bitter enough to make someone gag. 

Jason sighed. “Maybe not. But I do believe that you’re a crazy motherfucker who often does things I think are impossible.” 

The music from the house muffled the long quiet that they sat through together, endless and contemplative. 

“I’m sorry about Robin,” Jason said quietly. 

Tim licked his lips in order to unstick them and took a silent breath. “Thank you,” he whispered.  

If Tim ignored the music, he could hear crickets instead. 

“And me too,” he added. 

It wasn’t a lot, but something between them eased. All it took was the worst night of Tim’s life. He just had to fall from grace to sit alongside the demon with wings that also used to be red, green, yellow. 

Tim wondered why he’d never noticed Dick’s broken halo either. 

Jason apparently got fed up with silences quickly, because he broke this one too. “Okay, mushy stuff over, time for you to spill. Why do you need a ride again, Mr. Net-Worth-of-a-Billion? I thought you owned like, seven cars.” 

The question shattered the flimsy wall that Tim had managed to construct between himself and whatever the fuck had happened inside that guest bedroom. “Just one. Two bikes,” he said, and sniffled once in the dark. The next thing he knew he was shaking, sudden tears dripping off his temple and into the grass. And shit, he didn’t want to do this, but right now his body was outside of his own jurisdiction. 

“The hell did you drink- straight vodka?” Jason asked, incredulous. 

And oh, that would make sense, that the tears were courtesy of the alcohol, because Tim himself did not know what the fuck was going on right now. He dropped an arm over his eyes. “Dunno, someone else gave it to me.” 

Jason stilled. “Who gave it to you?” 

Tim’s head was swimming and light. “Bernard.” 

Jason grabbed his arm and pulled it away from his face. “Tim, you fucking idiot, who’s Bernard?” 

“A-a friend,” Tim said, startled by the sudden aggression. “He kissed me.” And shit, Tim hadn’t meant to say that, he hadn’t meant to say that at all. 

Jason’s grip became bruising. “Tim, I need you to listen to me very carefully. Did you get roofied?” 

That got the fog to clear a little bit. “No! I kissed him back, I think, I- I think I liked it and I- I don’t know what to do… I-” Tim gasped. “Don’t tell anyone, please. Don’t tell anyone that I liked it.” 

“Oh,” Jason said, releasing his arm. His voice was suddenly quiet, as if a lot of things were becoming clear to him. There was that silence again, this time decorated with the humming motorcycle, the muffled music, the crickets, and Tim’s quiet sobs. 

Jason’s next words held no heat. “You’re a real lightweight, you know that, kid?” 

Tim stared at the two and a half stars while Jason studied the pattern of the bricks behind the nearest Hydrangea. 

“You know, Tim,” Jason started, uncertain and quiet. “It’s okay that you liked it.” 

Tim didn’t reply, just wiped away a handful of tears. He felt disgusting for wanting it to be true. 

Jason let him have this silence just a little while longer, and Tim wasn't sure whether to hate him for it or not.  

He slapped the ground and straightened up. “What do you say we get out of here?” 

“Please,” Tim sniffled. “I wanna be gone before the ambulance gets here. Someone’s gonna need their stomach pumped tonight.” 

“Empathetic as always, Timothy,” Jason said, and then he was turning around, getting on one knee and presenting his back. “Get on.” 

“I don’t need to be carried,” Tim protested, brushing his hands away. 

“Wrong!” Jason announced. “Don’t you know it’s illegal to drink and fly, babybird?” 

Tim stilled, heart suddenly made of stone. “Only Dick calls me that.” 

“Dick can fucking suck it,” Jason said, manhandling Tim onto his back. He stood up without warning, forcing Tim to grab his neck for stability. “Don’t throw up on me.” 

But Jason didn’t understand, didn’t understand what that name meant to Dick, to Tim, what he was saying when he called him that. Heck, at the beginning of tonight he was still calling him ‘Replacement’! “No, you don’t get it,” Tim snapped. “He called me that for Robin.” 

Jason stilled, his boots slowly sinking into the soft grass. 

‘Little Wing’, he’d been called. Not after Dick’s home, but after his rebellion. Tim had a passing thought about self-fulfilling prophecies before focusing back on the present, half-prepared for Jason to drop him on the ground and leave. 

Distantly, Tim realized that Jason’s knees hadn’t even creaked when he stood up. That if Jason let go of his legs right now then his feet wouldn’t even brush the ground. That his Robin, the same one featured in the photos hidden in the back of Tim’s closet, at fifteen only a few inches taller than Tim at nine, was lifting him effortlessly. 

Jason shook off the freeze and started towards his bike. “What, would you prefer 'ex-babybird'?” he asked. “It doesn’t roll off the tongue the same.” 

Tim’s chest burned and then released, and he slumped into his brother’s hold, grave robber no more, his tenure as Robin blessed too late but blessed nonetheless. Grave robber no more, though soon to be again as Bruce’s life lingered on the event horizon, in between moments, both a long time ago and someday soon. 

Perhaps necromancer would be a better title, Tim thought. A raiser of the dead instead of a robber. Afterall, Tim Drake excelled at giving people reasons to live, even if at first it was only to make sure he died. Hadn’t the Red Tornado said as much, when Tim, Kon, and Bart annoyed him so much he felt human again?

“Can we stop for pizza?” Tim asked. 

“Do I look like a delivery driver to you?” 

Tim hid his grin in Jason’s shoulder. “Slap a logo onto your t-shirt and you’d be a paragon.” 

“Big vocabulary for a science nerd,” Jason said, dropping him on the seat. 

“Big talk for someone who kept their blackberry until 2017.” 

“It was reliable!” Jason protested. 

The banter kept Tim awake long enough to readjust the helmet Jason slipped over his head. But when he woke up the next morning, even the leftover pizza in Jason’s fridge wasn’t enough to keep him from ducking out the window with nobody waiting, the To-Deal With list already reorganizing itself in his aching head. 

Unremarkable, ‘Sexuality Crisis’ lingered somewhere in the middle. 

Beyond important, ‘Find Bruce’ marked the top. 

Crossed off, no longer an issue, ‘Meet Robin’ lay completed, an item as old as the list itself. 

Chapter Text

--. --- --- -..

The first time Cass saw Tim, he was standing between layers of smoke a few months after the quake, set-jawed, tight-fisted, tense-shouldered as Cass listened to the last of the sirens die. 

And it was there, written in the set of his shoulders and the clench of his fists, that she first saw the meaning of red-yellow-green. 

Tim wasn’t supposed to be there that day; Babs said Gotham wasn’t much good for people anymore. Babs confused Cass when she said that, because she talked like she’d given up but acted like there was still hope, sending Cass out on secret errands that were supposed to stop all these people from hurting and dying and make Gotham good for people again. 

Cass had met Tim on a day he had refused to give up. 

Cass fiddled with the ways she could end that sentence- on other people, on doing the good thing- but both seemed to fit. Because people were good: Babs was good, Bruce was good, Tim was good, Cass was good- except Tim was not good in the way Cass and Bruce were good. 

Cass was good because being bad made her feel sick. 

Tim was good because he wanted to be. 

-... .- -..

The first week Tim was back in Gotham after the quake, he saw a senior citizen brain her neighbor for getting too close. He saw two of the last three distribution centers get looted by one of the new crime rings that dealt less in cocaine and more in things that actually mattered in No Man’s Land. He saw a historical site in Old Gotham stripped for firewood by an angry mob Tim couldn't even justify stopping. 

The first week Tim was back in Gotham after the quake, he shivered, tugged his gloves up to better cover the space between them and his sleeves, and almost regretted not staying in Keystone. 

The first week Tim was back in Gotham after the quake, he considered burning the whole city down just to feel something warm, and then starting over from the ashes. 

He couldn’t put that in his ‘Illegal Urges’ folder, since it technically wasn’t illegal anymore; it’s not like Gotham was called ‘No Arson Land’. But it was still wrong, to burn down the city just because the people inside were victims to a cycle that created broken people, so that was the day Tim started the precursor to his ‘Not Until Your Villain-Arc’ list, before he needed the hope of the ‘not until’ to sustain him. 

--. --- --- -..

Cass held her little, brown box close, like a baby or a loaded gun. People held them the same in this city: fearfully. 

But Cass thought her little box was more like a baby, the kind of fear she would soothe by touching someone’s forehead, not the kind she would kick away with the steel-toed boots Babs had given her. 

Inside her little box was a camera, and inside the camera was a mess of wires. It was the same mess of wires Babs had been making two hours before, while Cass patiently sat on a bigger box and swung her legs. Babs had been upset, and she’d been using a lot of words Cass had never heard before. Usually Babs liked it when Cass tried new words, but when she’d repeated those ones Babs had just dropped her head onto her desk and groaned, almost stabbing her forehead with one of her tools. 

Cass frowned and leapt over the next gap between rooftops, slipping into the shadows of one of the shorter walls. What made a word ‘bad’ anyway? Cass understood what made people bad. People were bad when they hurt other people. So were words bad when they hurt other people? ‘Motherfucker’ didn’t seem like a word that could hurt. Mothers were just women with babies they held close, like important boxes and loaded guns. Spoken language was dumb. No, wait! Spoken language was motherfucker! She’d have to ask Babs if she’d used that right.

Cass muttered the word under her breath, practicing the way it felt in her mouth as she emerged from behind the short wall, and suddenly all her words went into a scramble as a boy screamed and whirled around, slipping on the snow. 

Important baby falling towards a motherfucker with a loaded gun. 

Except it was an unloaded gun now, the bullet whizzing past Cass’ ear as she grabbed the boy’s hand so he wouldn’t fall right off the roof. 

And then it was a bit like time froze, as Cass took in the red-yellow-green below her, whited-out lenses wide with fear. Cass thought she was supposed to recognize those colors but couldn’t remember how or why. 

Cass dropped her little box and grabbed the boy with both hands, yanking him back from the edge. She didn’t even have time to be sad about the crunch as the box skipped and tumbled over the edge of the roof, because the man with the gun was aiming it again. 

Cass pushed the boy behind her. The boy did not seem to like this very much, for some reason, but the man in the alley was holding his gun like a baby (fearfully), so Cass just tore one of Barbara’s flash-bangs off her belt and chucked it down. 

The lights were so pretty they hurt her eyes, but by the time they were over the man was gone, scared off.

Cass turned around and crouched in front of the boy. He was flushed red, spluttering, and flat on his butt behind her. 

“I spooked you,” she stated, half an attempt at a ‘sorry’, proud of herself for remembering the word. Babs had taught it to her yesterday when she’d jumped out of the rafters behind her work table.

The boy scowled, dragging himself to his feet. “Whatever.” 

Cass grinned. “Did,” she taunted. 

“You scared off my suspect,” he grumbled, jumping onto the first landing of the fire escape. 

Cass frowned. “All suspects,” she said, sparing a glance at his city on fire as she followed him down.

“Yeah, but we can’t cull the whole city,” he said, something close to bitter, getting his feet firmly on the ground beneath the fire escape. “There aren't enough flammables left inside, I did the math.” 

Cass didn’t know what ‘cull’ meant, but it didn’t feel good. 

The boy looked up. “I never said that.” 

Cass just nodded at him, eyes wide.

-... .- -..

Tim had never questioned Bruce’s No Kill rule. Honestly, he’d never really had a reason to, until now. 

The whole philosophy was really very Jewish of him, Tim realized. Sanctity of life, Pikuach Nefesh and all that. 

Tim hadn't been feeling very Jewish lately.

--. --- --- -..

Cass stopped short in front of her little box, which was not really shaped like a box anymore. “I am not a very good mother,” she said sadly, frowning down at it. 

Behind her, the boy’s footsteps stopped. “What?” 

Cass looked up at him and pointed at the box. “It’s broken.” Babs would have to make a new one and Cass didn’t want her to have to. She’d hurt it for nothing. 

The boy looked down at it with her, his expression going all puzzly as he put his hands on his hips. Cass wondered what he was doing here at all, he’d seemed anxious to go after the man with the gun. After a moment he looked up, almost knocking his forehead on her own. “What is it?” 

“Camera.” 

Cass saw the sudden spark in the boy’s posture even if he tried to dull it. “If you let me, maybe I can…” he faded off, frowning down at the box. Quickly, almost violently, he scooped it off the ground, holding it close to his chest. “Where’d you get this?” he snapped, and Cass stepped back, surprised. 

“Friend,” Cass said. “O-” She stumbled on the pronunciation. It was dumb that Babs had two names when Cass barely had one. “Oracle.” 

“Yeah, I fucking know that, it has her symbol on it. But why’d she give it to you?”  

Cass licked her lips. “To… to help Gotham. People…” With this boy’s attention on her, Cass’ brain was freaking out. She wasn’t very good at words in the first place. “Help. Um.” Cass made the sign for ‘bat’, crossing her arms over her chest with her pointer fingers sticking out. 

The boy gaped at her for so long that Cass got worried. Then he threw his hands up and turned away from her, kicking one of the snow drifts. “No one tells me anything! It’s all ‘Robin, Gotham’s too dangerous, go stay with your dad’, ‘Robin, let the adults handle it, it’s gonna be okay’, ‘Robin, I’m still traumatized from the death of redacted so I’ll never trust you!’. Just once I’d like it to be ‘Robin, we value your input and want to keep you up to date, so fyi we picked up another kid while you were in motherfucking Keystone!’”

There was that word again. Cass gathered that people only used it when they were upset. Maybe that was why it was bad.

The boy (Robin?) turned to her again. “Your name’s not Robin, is it?” 

Cass shook her head, then pointed to herself, glad there was finally a question she knew how to answer. “Cass.” 

Robin scoffed. “Good, cause that would be a new fucking low. I mean, I’m not even dead.” 

Cass briefly wondered if the boy was speaking English at all. She’d never heard anyone speak like this before. It was hard to understand. She pointed at the box in his hand. “Camera?” she asked weakly. 

“Oh. Yeah, of course. Let’s see what we’ve got.” 

-... .- -..

The line that Tim walked had always been a fine one, his choices hovering loosely in the silence like a noose around a neck that had yet to be snapped. He’d edged into gray, tripped over the line once or twice, but he was proud that at the end of the day, he’d managed to stay in the light. Because for him, it took active effort not to slip and fall into the dark.  

Except sometimes, at night when it was too dark for anyone to tell which side of the line he was on anyway, Tim would run his fingers over the red fabric of his new suit and consider all the terrible things he would do to Superboy Prime if given the chance.

For fuck’s sake, he’d orchestrated the death of Captain Boomerang, the murderer of his abusive and neglectful father. The bar was on the floor. Tim kept track of his villainous tendencies because he knew a single moment of lapsed judgment could send him spiraling, addicted to the thrill of power with vigilante justice as his gateway drug. 

--. --- --- -..

“There you go, all hooked up,” Robin said, pulling himself back on the rooftop, but not before sticking his middle finger in front of the camera lens. Cass didn’t get that at all. 

Far away, near the huge white building across one of the bridges, something exploded, and they both whipped their heads towards it. Cass watched Robin’s shoulders slowly slump as he realized they were too far away, too thinly stretched to do a thing.  

“All hours,” Cass started, aiming for a question of her own. “People are scared and angry here.” 

Robin took a long moment of silence to stare at his hands, which wove together nervously. “They don’t know how to be anything else,” he said softly. 

Cass studied him for a moment, the way he looked at the skyline, so sad, like grief. “Babs talks like that.” 

“Like what?” 

“Like she’s given up.” 

Robin looked back at her. “I haven’t given up.”

Cass nodded, accepting it, because Babs hadn’t either. Sometimes words were just not good enough for the way you felt. She understood that. “Why?” 

Robin snorted, looking back at the Gotham skyline. “I’m not the US Government, condemning millions to die. I won’t leave Gotham when she needs Robin the most.” 

Cass thought that was a little self-centered. He must have seen it in her face because he sighed. “My name is Tim. The mask, the cape, that’s Robin, and he hasn’t always been me.” 

-... .- -..

When Dick first created the name, he was one unsupervised second away from snapping and killing Tony Zucco in cold blood. 

When Jason first took the name, kindness was foreign to him but dishing out throat punches was not. Secretly, Tim thought he made the best Robin. The one who’s anger blew out like a candle the moment he realized it wouldn’t help anyone, who instead turned that energy into protecting others. 

When Tim first took the name, the only thing stopping him from starting a drug ring out of his basement was lack of interest. He had the makings of a criminal but none of the motive. He could buy as many pop tarts as he wanted, had unlimited access to the internet, and already set his own bedtime. What else could a kid want? Certainly not a murder charge. 

But by the time Dick took the name- from Tim, that is- Robin had given him something- someones- to lose.

And he had. 

Suddenly a murder charge wasn’t looking so bad. 

--. --- --- -..

“Robin stands for hope,” Tim told Cass. “He stands for… for doing the right thing, every time, even when you’re angry or sad or scared.” Tim’s eyes flashed dark for a moment. “Even when you don’t feel like it.” 

The wind picked up and Cass shivered. Tim tugged his cape over Cass’ shoulders and that made her grin. She leaned her head on his shoulder. “Gotham is a big, sad place. Hard to help.” 

“I’m not doing it alone,” Tim said, smiling softly. “There are good people here.” 

-... .- -..

One thing was becoming increasingly clear to Tim: the world was a fucking terrible place.

--. --- --- -..

Cass looked at Tim, at the way he looked out at his city and saw people worth helping. 

“You are good,” Cass said, touching his shoulder briefly.

Tim looked at her, eyebrows raised. 

She couldn’t find the words for it, wanted to stop trying. “On… on purpose. That’s strong.” 

Tim considered her for a second, then looked back at the skyline, thinking. “Yeah. Thanks, Cass.” 

-... .- -..

The beaded lamp-pull on the bedside table had twelve blue beads and six white beads. The bible by the base was bookmarked somewhere in the middle- Tim was going to call it Matthew because he didn’t know the name of anything else after ‘Deuteronomy’. Not that he was really expected to, he was Jewish. Or atleast, his mom had been Jewish.

Tim wasn’t really sure what he was. As had recently become very clear, God had never been a discernible force in his life. He didn’t want to think of Bruce’s hand on his shoulder as they lit the Menorah last December, so he didn’t, and instead stared at the lamp and the bible and bled into the cheap hotel mattress, in one word: lax. 

He thought his bandages might have bled through, but he couldn’t bring himself to check. Cass had been careful when she’d struck, but it had to be convincing for Ra’s’ cronies. It didn’t really matter, Tim was an old pro at being stabbed, his half-healed splenectomy scar attested to that. 

Tomorrow they would probably head to Hong Kong to deal with Cass’ bug problem, but today they were in a cheap hotel in Paris, with a bible and a lamp. Tim couldn’t wait to leave. 

Full offense, everything personal, but Paris was just altogether a stupid place. The whole city smelled awful, and French people were fucking rude to non-native speakers, and the catacombs hid creepy League of Assassins ladies who wanted Tim’s like, actual seed to make more Damians, and this world did not need more Damians. 

Paris was also only 782.6 kilometers from Germany. 

Tim almost mustered the will to tear his eyes away from the christian bible on the nightstand before his thoughts went to darker places that he should let them, but the world was bad enough already that him spiraling in private wouldn’t make a difference. Nothing he did ever made a fucking difference. He didn’t even bother with his Villain-Arc list. He wasn’t sure it was worth it anymore. 

Tim would admit it, he had been one of those teenage white boys with an American-centric World War II obsession, and because he was himself, he knew the timeline of the Battle of France by heart. The YouTube histories Tim watched liked to make fun of France for surrendering, like it was all some big joke. But what Tim remembered the most from those videos was the way the twenty year-old white guys who made them spoke of Germany with something only a little short of admiration in their voice. 

They called Germany efficient. That’s what won them France, and Luxembourg, and Belgium, and the Netherlands. Germany was efficient. The furor was inspired by napoleonic strategy- quick, brutal, light- and used Germany’s superior technology to his advantage. 

Tim knew it was wrong. That what happened was wrong. Sometimes he would remember that, when he stumbled into the less glorified side of YouTube, the more accurate and more compassionate storytellers of the time. 

He knew it was wrong, but he also knew it was efficient.

And when Ra’s al Ghul spoke of his plans for the world, the way he wanted to shape it into something he liked better, abandoning legality and morality in the pursuit of a net positive result, Tim was torn between two thoughts: wrong and efficient. 

Tim was not sure which made him feel more disgusted. 

He knew Ra’s’ ideology was not the fantasized, exaggerated kind in YA novels, dystopian to the point that people couldn’t remember anything else but control. It was the very real, very dangerous kind that brought Germany to a fighting head on September 1st, 1939. 

It was the kind that led to Stars of David on lapels. 

Tim had once tried to ask his mom about it all, trying to connect ‘wrong’ and ‘efficient’ to the ancestors who must have survived both. She said she couldn’t remember right then, but promised to find the mementos they had stored away, the journals and photographs, but the next morning she’d had an emergency flight to Japan, so Tim had never gotten them and sometime between then and her next trip to Gotham, Janet Drake drank her very last glass of wine, ever, and came home in a box. 

So in the absence of ancestors to be angry for, Tim imagined a Star of David and a pink triangle on his own lapel. 

He expected to feel something visceral- he had wanted to, even, to prove that he still could. But his chest remained empty and unlit as he tried to muster up something, something like disgust, something like anger. 

Intellectually, he knew it was cruel. Intellectually, he felt as though he should be angry. It was an injustice to be sure, but a distant one. 

He imagined a number tattooed on his arm. Head shaved clean. His stomach too empty. The trains too full. Anything and everything up to and including the Star of David and the pink triangle on his lapel, doubly condemned and doubly hated and sent doubly quick to die. 

Sent efficiently to die, together with a dozen others. Impersonal, like a sweater knitted by a factory machine. As if the point was to design a way for corpses to be mass produced.

And it had worked. There were still less of them in the world than there had been before. There were still those that remembered it with nothing but fear. Through violence, they shaped the world into what they wanted it to be. 

Tim began thinking of faces instead. Faces that made him angry. The faces of all the people who, if assassinated, would immediately improve Tim’s quality of life. The ones on Ra's’ list. The ones on Tim’s. All the people the world would be better off without. They were not the faces of jews. They were not the faces of innocents. Ra’s. Superboy Prime. Captain Boomerang. The Joker. He imagined them all. 

And then he imagined them with pink triangles and six-pointed stars on their lapels. 

Intellectually, he knew it was cruel. Intellectually, he knew it was wrong. But for a moment, just a moment, he thought it rather effici- 

A slender hand reached down and tugged on the beaded lamp-pull, and Tim blinked. 

While he’d been staring the room had darkened so slowly it was imperceptible, and the yellow glow of the lamp got rid of the shadows on the tabs of the bible, revealing that it really had been bookmarked in Matthew. 

“Pills,” Cass said, holding them out. 

He let himself keep staring at the nightstand, not so much as twitching. 

He couldn’t muster up the energy to move. She would know if he was lying, and this dead expression, this immovable body molded into the hotel mattress, was the honest to god truth at the moment. 

A moment which stretched longer and longer, as above him, Cass deflated. 

“You’re sad,” she said quietly, sounding unhappy herself. 

Except Tim hadn’t been until she’d said that, and now his cheeks were wet. 

The glass of water and the handful of pills found their place in front of the bible. “Why?” 

Tim shrugged, wincing at the pull in his abdomen, splenectomy scar and recent stab wound twinging in opposite directions. 

“The naked villain lady?” Cass tried, she always tried, and Tim wanted to tell her it was enough, that she didn’t need to pull words from an unwilling throat if she didn’t want to, not for him. 

Tim shook his head, because that would be too simple, wouldn’t it? That would make too much sense. 

“This is grief,” Cass realized. “You’re… grieving.” 

That was news but not a surprise, grieving was pretty much all that Tim did these days. All he needed now was someone to make out with. Maybe he could call Connor, pretend that everything was fine between them and the world hadn’t been torn inside out while he was dead, and come out to him in the city of love that smelled like piss, so they could have an incredibly romantic sensory overload together on the Eiffel Tower. There was even a window for Tim to wait at. 

Tim’s bitter laugh was not a pretty thing. It was so unpretty that Cass flinched back at whatever she saw in the way his body held itself. “Just go away, Cass.”

“No.” 

Tim turned his face into the pillow. “Go away!” 

“No!” Cass crouched down, forcing Tim to see her face. “What is it? What are you grieving?” 

“I said go!” 

“I said no! What are you grieving?!” 

Tim whipped back up to look at her. “Nothing! Everything! I don’t know!” 

And then things were still, and he didn’t say anything more, and didn’t wipe away the tears traveling across the bridge of his nose. 

What wasn’t there to grieve? The world was a fucking terrible place. People died everyday. There was tuberculosis and the Taliban and Nestle chocolate, and the holocaust wasn’t even the last genocide that humans undertook. The whole place was just filled with people who were trying to make the world be the way they wanted it to be no matter the cost, and not only was Tim helpless to stop them, but he was one of them. 

“You’re scared,” Cass whispered. “Of me?” 

Tim shook his head so quickly he almost knocked it into the nightstand, almost spilled the glass of water in a sort of baptism over his head. 

“Then of what?” 

Me, came the answer, and Tim shoved it down so hard he choked. 

Without warning, Cass slipped her arms under Tim’s torso and pulled him into her lap. 

Tim didn’t resist, but he didn’t exactly feel worthy of her embrace. 

But he did find the strength to shut his eyes against the christian bible on the nightstand. 

“The world is just a terrible place, Cass,” Tim whispered, because he needed her to know. 

Cass carded her fingers in between the greasy locks of Tim’s hair, taking a long time to think on her answer. “Yes,” she finally said, and touched a gentle finger to his chest. “But you are good.” 

Tim felt like he’d been struck. “No, I’m not.” 

Cass looked at him like he’d just said something very, very stupid. “Yes, you are.” 

“You are good, Cass. I just like to pretend.” 

“Bad people don’t care, little brother.” 

“Then I don’t want to be good,” Tim said, and if he felt listless before, he now felt empty, gutted. 

“Yes, you do,” Cass said to him. “You are good, Tim.” Tim had never noticed how beautiful his sister was when she meant something, smiling softly like she trusted you to believe her. 

Tim felt like the ultimate traitor as he cried himself to sleep. 

--. --- --- -..

For Cass, not killing was easy. 

Not killing was like breathing. Not killing made her muscles relax and her brain happy. 

“No,” Cass said, eyes going wide, her mind stumbling over her brother’s many names until she landed on the simplest word she could manage. 

The corner of Tim’s mouth tilted down even as he spread his arms wide, trying to appear vulnerable, honest. “Come on, Cass, it’s the only plan we’ve got. Who even cares if Cricket makes it out?”

For Cass, not killing was easy.

Since when had it become so hard for her little brother?

Her stomach rolled and flipped over, something tangling around her heart like a grapple line from hell. If she had to translate the feeling to English she would call it horror, if not she would simply point to whatever dark thing was flitting behind Tim’s eyes. How long had it been there? She hadn’t seen it before, how hadn’t she seen it before?

“No killing,” Cass said, trying to make her voice as sharp as the feeling in her chest. 

Tim spun his chair back to his computer, looking away. “This isn’t even really killing, Cass. Circumstantial, not even provable in court. Sabotaging the power plant while Cricket just so happens to be on his way-” 

“Not ‘so happens’,” Cass said, frozen and too hot, her heart pounding loudly. “Is.”  

“It’s not like we’re pulling the trigger or anything!” Tim protested. “I mean, he might even live, as long as he’s incapacitated-” 

Cass crumpled to her knees and grabbed the arms of his chair, spinning him to face her. “Wrong,” she choked out. “It’s wrong.” 

Tim looked down at her, and the tilt on the corner of his mouth was a few steps up from disgust, something more like distaste: Tim didn’t like it when Cass felt like this. “He’s killed people, Cass.” 

“He’s him.” Cass jabbed her finger into Tim’s chest. He was just wearing red now, yellow-green abandoned. “You’re better.” She wobbled on the last word, uncertain, because wasn’t he? Wasn’t he better? He’d always been better.  

Tim scrunched up his mouth and looked at the ceiling. 

He’d given up on the right thing, but Cass knew he’d never give up on people. Everything he’d ever done was for people. He didn’t give up on people, except, apparently, on Cricket. 

“I won’t,” Cass said, making each word hard. 

Tim straightened up and turned back to his computer. “I’ll figure something else out.” 

Tim was good because being bad made Cass feel sick. 

But he was still good.  

-... .- -..

The keyboard didn’t bear enough resemblance to a trigger for Tim to feel guilty. 

It was easy for him, the way it was easier to kill with a gas chamber than a gun, and easier still with a gun than a knife. 

There was literally no blood on his hands. 

Except that there was, over two hundred people’s worth, and because it had never been there in the first place he’d never be able to wash it off. 

--. --- --- -..

Angry never came without sad. That was something Cass had learned from watching people over the years, the way they moved and held themselves. But also, grief never came without love, and she had never seen someone who grieved as much as her little brother. He grieved for everything, for everyone, for things he couldn’t prevent like he could’ve prevented them. And grief never came without love, which meant that she also must’ve never seen someone who loved as much as Tim did. 

Cass wondered, one night, if she would rather that love destroy him or the other way around. 

She thought of a world without Tim and knew her answer. 

-... .- -..

When Dick caught Tim falling from the tower he fought back deja vu, and then he fought back disappointment. Wanting to die so badly did not make him a very good Jew, but that pursuit had died with the assassins in the bases that Tim had blown up a few days ago. 

Tim clung to his brother’s neck and pretended he wasn’t scared as hell that he had to live with all this guilt and shame and pain now, in a terrible world he could never make safer unless he became the enemy to fight back against. He imagined the alternative: a world with Ra’s al Ghul controlling everything from the shadows, an enemy no one even knew to defeat. He imagined Dick with a brown triangle on his lapel, and Bruce with a Star of David, and Cass with a black triangle that marked her for death just because her words came slow. 

Tim sobbed into his brother’s shoulder and didn’t regret a thing except surviving. 

--. --- --- -..

Tim was already sobbing out apologies when Cass answered his facetime, and she saw in his posture that at some point along the way, the No Kill rule had crumbled into dust. 

“Little brother,” she cut him off and he stopped, miserable and exhausted and sweaty with stress and sitting in the cave’s medbay. “Safe?” 

Tim nodded, still waiting wide-eyed for her judgment. 

Cass nodded back, and suddenly her eyes were teary too. “Good. Need you.”

“God no, Cass.”  

“God yes,” Cass rebutted. She pointed at him through her phone screen. “Good on purpose.” 

“Bad on purpose too.” 

“Forgive you,” Cass said. “Always. That’s the point. Don’t give up on people, including you.” 

Tim began to sob. 

“Love you, little brother.” 

“Love you,” Tim gasped out, and Cass began booking tickets home. 

Chapter Text

Tim adjusted his rebreather and wondered, not for the first time, why they didn’t just blow up every warehouse in Gotham. That alone would probably cut the crime rate in half! What kind of criminal didn’t need a good, abandoned warehouse to store all their illegal things, like drugs and trafficked children and drugs and weapons and- get this, drugs. Because that was the one that currently had him breathing through this stupid mask that made his mouth taste like burnt plastic. Tim needed to find a new manufacturer for these things as soon as he got home. 

Crane pulled another canister of fear gas from his belt and pulled the tab. Tim shivered involuntarily at the open hiss and the metallic thunk and roll as it hit the concrete floor. “I know you’re there,” he said, turning around with gangly steps that just screamed crazy, gun dangling loosely in his other hand like the gas made him fucking invulnerable or something. Gas or no, Tim could still punch him. 

Dumbass. 

Tim’s com buzzed. “Heard you could use some backup from the dayshift, Red,” Duke said. Somehow, despite it being well past his bedtime, he sounded wide awake and ready to snark Tim to his heart’s content. “I’m two minutes out.” 

Tim chose to be the bigger brother and ignored the jab, sending a silent acknowledgement on his wrist com and keeping to the shadows, eyeing Crane. He hadn’t expected to need backup, but he also hadn’t expected Crane to have gas already. The Arkham breakout was barely three hours old and somehow he’d already gotten his hands on some, which brought Tim back to the warehouse problem- the Bats and the police had tried to clean him out the last time he’d been caught, but apparently some dumb abandoned warehouse had been hiding another stash. Hence his desire to blow them up.

Tim started doing the mental math on the amount of C4 he would need to do the entire waterfront before he caught himself. That would be illegal. Jason would support him, but Tim didn’t want to deal with B’s lecture, so there was probably another way to do this. Namely, the Wayne fortune. Tim made a mental note to buy up all the abandoned properties immediately. He could hide the expenses in the Neon Knights budget to avoid suspicion- which, come to think of it, wouldn’t actually be a bad acquisition for the company. The warehouses with the best locale could easily be turned into shelters and community centers. Tim couldn’t believe he’d never thought to put a skate park inside one of these things. That would be perfect, a skate park. He was actually genuinely upset about the fact that he hadn’t already built a skatepark! 

A bullet whizzed through a rotting crate to Tim’s left and he about jumped out of his skin. Right, charity skate parks later, crazy rogue now. 

“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” Crane said, in a singsong twisted with anger, the kind of voice that reminds you that crazy can be dangerous, can be purposeful. 

“Blink,” Duke told him over the coms, and Tim felt Gotham herself reach up out of the warehouse floor and into his bones, offering him a 3D vision in gold, if he would take it. He accepted it with a blink and watched the window behind Crane shatter into shards of spectral light. Reacting to the window, Crane’s golden doppelganger turned his back to Tim, presenting an opportunity.

Tim gasped in a filtered breath as the window snapped back to normal, disoriented. “I fucking hate when you do that,” he muttered, and on their shared mental count of six he sprung out of his hiding place, the window shattering right on time as Duke made his preordained entrance. 

Tim sprinted forward and slammed his bo staff into Crane’s neck, sending him stumbling across the floor. The hit would’ve taken any normal man out, but Crane was high on his own shit, the adrenaline in his veins forming an unnatural sort of shield against physical violence. In a way, the gas did make him the slightest bit invulnerable. 

Tim hated this logic.

Duke followed up with a solid punch, sidestepping the reactionary and blind bullet before Crane even shot it. 

“Would it kill you to use your words?” Tim asked, back hand springing out of the way of another bullet as Crane stumbled back, yanking another canister out of his belt and dropping it at their feet. You know, just in case the existing cloud thicker than Jason’s skull wasn’t good enough already. 

“Who knows?” Duke said, faux innocence dripping off his words like neurotoxins off the goddamn walls. “There’s just still so much I don’t know about my powers-”

“Can it, Flashlight,” Tim said, rolling his eyes, but unlike the exploding bird-a-rang he threw over Crane’s head, his words didn’t hold any heat. 

Duke was lunging before the projectile had even left Tim’s hand, using it as a distraction to grab Crane’s gun hand and twist it towards the ceiling. Tim was right behind him, reaching for his cuffs. 

Duke suddenly stiffened. “Watch-” 

Crane kicked the still hissing canister of fear gas right under Tim’s feet, and the following chain reaction of misfortunes likely exceeded Duke’s precognitive bandwidth. 

Tim tripped forward and flailed, instinctively reaching out for something to slow his fall, and somehow found Crane’s neck, dragging all three of them to the ground with a number of yelps. An elbow found the fragile apparatus of Tim’s rebreather as the tangled trio came in for a bruising landing on the warehouse floor, and the crunch and hiss of escaping air made Tim freeze. 

It was everything he could do not to gasp in a lungful of contaminated air. 

However, everything was not enough when something slipped and a gunshot sounded, a death knell in the prior silence and a searing, sudden heat on the side of Tim’s thigh. 

Tim gasped. 

“Fuck,” he breathed out instead of holding it in, which meant that a second breath of fear gas was just plain mandatory before he managed to get his brain back online and shut down Operation Lungs for the foreseeable future. He could hold his breath for approximately six minutes if his training held out. Considering his current heart rate and activity level, he’d be lucky if he got three.

“Cardinal,” Duke grunted, worried, and as if the world had a lightswitch, the space around them went dark. 

Ignoring how fucked he was, Tim rolled on top of Crane and yanked his arms over his head as Signal swiped the cuffs from the floor and slammed them around his wrists. 

Duke released the shadows and Tim willed himself not to breathe in again, noting between the wavering edges of his vision that Duke had secured the cuffs around a metal support pole. Oxygen-Deprived-Tim was apparently too dumb to move, because Duke grabbed his elbow and pulled him to his feet, yanking him towards the warehouse doors. 

Problem #who’s-even-counting-anymore: Both Tim and Scarecrow had entered through a window. The doors were still chained shut from the outside. 

Duke rammed them with his shoulder- they shuddered but didn’t break. Tim joined him the second time, lungs burning, his head starting to feel fuzzy. The acrobatics needed to get to the nearest window were not gonna be doable right now. The third time they hit the doors Tim couldn’t find the strength to straighten back up. 

“Fuck it,” Tim gasped, coughing a few times for good measure. 

“Wild question, is fear gas flammable?” 

“No,” Tim wheezed. 

“Fantastic. Get back.”

Tim scrambled away from the doors and covered his ears. One exploding batarang later and Duke was bodily shoving him into the fresh Gotham air, or at least as fresh as Gotham air got. 

Tim managed seven steps before he stumbled onto his knees and out of Duke’s grasp, ripping off his broken rebreather. 

The asphalt burned his palms and goosebumps erupted on his skin, spreading down from his exposed neck. It was late spring and warming up, but by now the sun had been gone for so long it was almost back, and dawn carries a sort of unbeatable, bone deep chill. He tried to focus on that chill, that first lungful of fear gas burning in his veins as the world began to wobble like a desert behind lines of wavering heat. 

Behind him, Crane’s frustrated screams harmonized with the sirens. 

Tim’s breath hitched and he fumbled with his belt, blinking back the image of Drake Manor’s enormous living room, devoid of any human presence. 

Fuck. This strain wasn’t wasting a second. Tim’s trembling fingers slipped off the zipper of his antidote pouch and his chest seized. He needed, he needed someone to- But he was alone , he-  

“I’ve got one,” Duke said, appearing sans helmet above Tim’s head, injector in hand. “What part of your suit am I peeling off?” 

“There’s a panel on my left arm,” Tim managed, focusing his energy on holding still as Duke disengaged the security latches and ripped open the panel, pressing the pen to his arm. 

“Three,” Duke said, a shorter courtesy than a countdown, and Tim flinched against the click of the needle. He took a breath, all of his natural panic melting away. He’d be okay. The antidote was in him, and probably before the three minute mark too. The effects would be short and- Well. Not sweet. But bearable.

“You’re okay,” Duke said, dropping the injector pen and grabbing Tim’s arms instead. “You’re okay, just breathe.” 

Tim followed his instructions, dropping his forehead against Duke’s chest armor, which was cool to the touch. 

Duke squeezed his arms tighter and whispered something to Oracle. Tim tuned them out, shutting his eyes and trying to breathe through the aftershocks, his heart jumping into the stratosphere every few seconds. 

Fuck, he really didn’t want to deal with this tonight. His dreams were gonna be fucking whack. Maybe Jason and Duke had the right idea with the helmets, even if Jason practically owned a home in Uncanny Valley. Would incorporating the beak design from his current Cardinal mask be just as horrible as Jason's nose helmets? 

“No helmet could hide your shame,” Duke’s voice spat, and Tim jerked his head up so fast it gave him whiplash. 

Duke looked down at him, openly concerned. “You okay, dude?” 

Just a hallucination, then.

Man, fuck Arkham. The place had been prone to biannual jailbreaks since he was four, and in sixteen years nothing had changed. Tim needed to revisit his price estimates for a panopticon. It would probably solve everything. Contact with other inmates and the outside world was exactly what allowed for breakouts to be arranged. 24/7 isolation and constant observation would fix that, and might even give the bats an opportunity to stomp out the various gangs and loyalists that remained as long as they thought their boss would take another illegal sabbatical soon. And not that he agreed with Jason about anything, but the Joker should have been executed seventeen mass murders ago, insanity defense be damned. 

Tim was just so tired-

“Signal, Cardinal, status report,” Batman grunted over the coms.  

Tim squeezed Duke’s wrists and took a deep breath for every human rights violation he’d just proposed. 

“We’re okay,” Duke said, his voice echoing double over the coms. “Scarecrow’s incapacitated, O’s sending the police to pick him up. Cardinal’s okay, just give him a second.” 

Something needed to change, but it couldn’t be like that. He didn’t even want it to be like that. Tim buried his head in his hands, breathing hard.

Because fuck, Harley and Ivy were getting married next month, and their new apartment by the park was rent-controlled. The revenue from Eddie’s YouTube channel was going to be enough for him to open an escape room on 17th next year, and just last week Damian had spent all of patrol raving about Silena’s new cat sanctuary in the Narrows. 

Rehabilitation works, Tim reminded himself. People can change. 

And he knew that, he knew that was true, because in a world without that philosophy, Tim would be the one in 24/7 isolation or six feet under. 

People can change.  

As if agreeing, two pairs of murderous green eyes flashed in front of him, boring into him under five broken halos- red, yellow, and green feathers drifting past Tim’s hands. 

People can change- Tim blinked, and noticed that the asphalt under his hands was uncracked and barely faded: it had been poured after the quake. 

Tim heard Cass telling him she forgave him, and his next breath came hallucination free. 

“Cardinal,” Bruce snapped, but Tim knew by now that he was just worried, not angry, even if his heartbeat still jumped at the sound.

“You’re okay, you’re okay, just let him hear your voice for a second,” Duke said, his undercurrent of worry making Tim feel incredibly guilty. “Can you give us a status report?” 

Tim nodded, taking a deep breath. “Minimal fear gas exposure, antidote administered within the last two minutes. We need to figure out where he got the gas. I know we cleaned out all his stockpiles last time, so it has to be older than that. He got it somewhere between Blinker Street and Dock Nine. O, can we check all activity older than a year-?”

“Cardinal,” Bruce said, more gently now, and Duke laughed a little under his breath, a tinge of relief to both that made Tim pause and think for a moment, about how deeply you could know someone, to the point that the reassurance of ‘I’m okay’ didn’t need to contain either word. 

Tim cleared his throat. “Sorry. GSW to my right thigh, just a graze, I thi- Shit, Sig,” Tim hissed as Duke began checking out his leg. 

“It’ll need stitches and a good cleaning, but it was only a graze,” he confirmed, working on a quick field dressing. 

“Anything else?” Bruce sighed.

Tim smirked at the asphalt. “Minor Villain-Tim scare, but I handled it.” 

“Proud of little brother for resisting,” Cass said solemnly, but Tim could tell she was grinning. 

Tim could sense that somewhere in the city, Damian was sighing in deadpan irritation. Tim regretted ever teaching him about sarcasm. “Ah yes, because god forbid that Cardinal experience a single moment of illicit thinking.”

“All it takes is one lapse of judgment and then you have Gun Batman for an older brother,” Tim reminded him cheerily. 

(Sidenote: Tim hated dimension hopping.)

“I already have Gun Batman for an older brother,” Damian muttered. 

Tim heard Jason open his comline and start to protest, but B headed off that argument before it could even start. “Signal, take Cardinal back to the cave for medical attention.” 

Tim bristled. “B, we still have four rogues at large and half the city’s on fire, I’m fine.” 

“You know the protocol for fear gas,” Batman said, in a tone that allowed for no arguments.

“Go on, Red, we’ve got this,” Dick piped up. “We can’t have Villain-Tim on the streets right now, we only just got Ivy to settle down. Do you really want to up the rogue count again?”  

“Nightwing,” Bruce warned.

“Batman,” Nightwing said in the same tone. 

“Batman,” Cass imitated, and Bruce just gave a world-weary sigh. 

“Signal, Cardinal, Agent A will be expecting you,” he said, and the com clicked off. 

Tim sighed. Twenty years old and still getting bossed around by his dad. Why did he ever decide to go into the family business? 

Duke chose not to comment, simply helping Tim to his feet. “My bike is down the next alley.” 

“Wait,” Tim said, pushing away from his hold and limping back towards the warehouse. 

Duke hurried after him. “Red, my guy, what the fuck?” he said, all in the same sing-songy tone. 

“Bring the bike around, I’ll be right back.” Tim fished out his back-up rebreather and slipped through the busted, singed doors. A few feet from Scarecrow, one of the gas canisters was still hissing. Tim threw up a middle finger and did not go for that one, instead taking a few extra, painful steps to grab the already empty one. He shut the valve just to be safe and it actually resisted, rust crumbling onto his fingers before he got it closed. It really must be old then, or it had been stored really close to the docks. He headed for the exit, turning it over in his hands, looking for any obvious marks that would indicate which batch it was from. 

It was a dull green, though the valve assembly was unfamiliar to him. In the shadows he could make out the number eighty-nine printed on the side, which either meant that there were at least eighty-seven more of these, or it was some sort of marker about the nature of the contents. 

“You put that in an evidence bag right now,” Duke said, spotting the canister as Tim exited the warehouse, taking off his rebreather. 

Tim flashed him a grin. “You’ll warn me if it’s going to explode, right?” 

Duke did not look amused. Tim put it in an evidence bag. 

“How’s the antidote working?” Duke asked as they got on the bike. “Feeling any symptoms?” 

Tim shivered a bit as they started up, fishtailing at Bat-only speeds out of the dockyard. “Just aftershocks, I think. Must’ve been a wild strain.” 

Tim was sure he lost time to unconsciousness at some point, trembling lightly against Duke’s back, the chatter of familiar voices on the coms his lullaby, even though the odd explosion and his own racing heart would jolt him awake every few moments. 

“We’re here,” Duke said as he pulled into the vehicle bay, and Tim barely gave himself a second to process before he was swinging his leg off the humming bike, using the seat to steady himself. The fact that he nearly ate concrete woke him up enough to take him off autopilot, Duke’s shoulder firmly under his. 

“Easy there, Timbo.”

Tim blinked against the fluorescent lights of the cave. Even in his platformed Cardinal boots, Duke was tall enough that his shoulder under Tim’s made him wobble on his tip-toes. Like many things in his life, Tim tried very hard not to think about that. 

The pain relief of the adrenaline was definitely wearing off, though Tim still felt on edge. He didn’t like leaving his family out there during a breakout. He reached up to increase the volume on his com again, letting Steph’s quick jabs and status reports as she and Damian worked through Eddie’s puzzles calm him down. Rehabilitation may work, but it doesn’t make crazy people any less fucking weird. Tim wished the guy would just give them straight answers, but if solving his benevolent puzzles got them leads before the escaped rogues went underground, then they couldn’t pass up the opportunity. Plus, it probably helped him feel useful.

“Careful,” Duke repeated, as Tim tried to start forward. 

“Tis but a scratch,” Tim said, fighting back annoyance. He was fine, he was a perfectly normal height and also capable of walking without assistance. He was just letting Duke feel useful.

Duke huffed out a laugh. “Let’s just get you to the medbay,” he said, and they began their awkward shuffle further into the cave. And oh, fuck not thinking about it, Tim’s life was truly a misery, because his little brother was only 5’10 and still taller than him, and had forty pounds on him besides!

His thigh throbbed with every ill-gotten step, and Tim resigned himself to his fate. 

Over the coms, Steph’s status reports had slid from informative into bitching about something with Eddie and Damian, so Bruce tiredly asked her to switch to a private line. Tim debated following them, but instead switched to the all-call emergency line, letting the buzzing silence reassure him that nothing was wrong. 

“Hey, Alf,” Tim sighed as he came into view. Even Alfie was taller than him! Weren’t Europeans supposed to be shorter? Weren’t old people supposed to shrink? 

“Greetings, Master Tim,” Alfred said, never taking his eyes off the Batcomputer, headset firmly in place as he helped Babs direct the chaos. After over a decade of operating in Gotham, The Oracle was bordering on omniscient at this point, but even she couldn’t do everything during an Arkham breakout. “I hear you’ve had a run-in with the Scarecrow. I’ll be with you once I get a spare moment.” 

“Yeah, something like that. Thanks, Alf.” 

They reached the foot-high curb that separated the vehicle bay from the rest of the cave and Duke stopped short, glancing at Tim’s leg. 

“Really?” Tim sighed, already stepping towards the curb. “I can- holy shit!”  

Suddenly, Duke had one arm under his knees and another around his back, easily hefting Tim into the air. He grabbed at Duke’s neck for stability, heart pounding in his throat. 

“Dude!” 

Duke’s eyes were bright with mischief, he knew exactly what he’d done, what he was doing, but he layered his voice with put-upon innocence and continued walking. The fucker. “What? Relax, man, I’ve got you.” 

“Oh this is just too much,” Tim spat. “First you’re taller than me, then you get absolutely ripped when I’m not looking, now you can pick me up?” 

“Tim, you’re one skipped meal away from dust. Alfred could pick you up.”

“Of course I could, Master Duke.” 

An unfair exaggeration, but one that had almost been true when Duke had first met him, so Tim resisted the urge to channel Damian or Cass and punch him in the throat, instead treating him with the indignation he deserved. “Check your math there, kiddo.” The effect of his glare was mostly ruined by the fact that he was still clinging to Duke's neck, craning to look up at his face. 

“Up we go,” Duke said, setting Tim on a medical cot and patting his knee with a shit-eating grin. 

“Just stay little,” Tim whined, mostly giving up on saving his dignity. “I’m gonna have to reverse engineer that de-aging gun from my Young Justice days for you and Damian.” He disabled the security on his suit and leaned back on his hands, feeling the adrenaline crash in earnest now, the blood loss making his head feel fuzzy. 

Duke, the freakishly tall angel sent from hell that he was, noticed this and kept talking as he gathered supplies, trying to distract him. “I’d like to see you try,” he dared, a glint in his eye. Tim narrowed his eyes, remembering what kinds of things Duke and Damian had been able to do together. 

“I could do it,” Tim decided with a huff, shutting his eyes. He felt a steadying hand on his chin as Duke pressed a cloth soaked in mask solvent to the corner of his domino. Tim blinked open his eyes as Duke peeled it away, taking in his brother’s unfiltered face as he carefully wiped leftover glue off his forehead. Tim blinked to adjust to the light and cocked his head. “They got Bruce, I could get the two of you.”

“They got Bruce? ” Duke half-laughed, and without warning pressed a large swath of gauze over his wound.

Tim swallowed back the sudden, intense wave of nausea at the pain, and even though he could feel the weariness in his bones his heart was racing. “I have pictures,” he managed. “I’ll show you later.”

Both hands pressed firmly over the gauze, Duke looked up at him, expression dead serious. “I’ll hold you to that.”

That startled a laugh out of Tim, short and a shade away from bitter as his heart rate spiked again, sudden nerves shooting from his heart through his veins. 

Duke cracked a grin and lifted up the gauze to check the wound. “Well, you’re right about it being shallow, only an inch or so deep, maybe two inches long. It’ll still need stitches though. Let’s get you out of your suit.” 

Tim nodded and prepared to help Duke play a speed round of ‘peel the kevlar off your brother before he loses enough blood to pass out’. Cutting away his suit, while possible, was a hassle and a timesuck, and usually not worth it. 

Duke unzipped the back of the suit and dropped the gauze, and by the time Tim was left in just his compression shorts and long sleeve shirt he only felt a little fainter than before. But faint in the wrong way? Wasn’t your blood pressure supposed to drop after blood loss? He reached for his com, flicking through the channels, trying to figure out what was wrong, because something was wrong.  

“Keep pressure on this while I snag a blood sample for the toxin,” Duke said, and Tim did, swallowing back the sick feeling to lean one forearm on his thigh while Duke drew some blood and slid it into the analyzer, letting Alfred know what he’d done before starting on the wound.

“Found your missing croc, Dickhead,” Jason announced over the comline, barely audible over what must be his own gunshots and the screams of the people around him. The line cut off with an explosion and Tim flinched. 

“Tim,” Duke said, looking up from cleaning the wound. He narrowed his eyes, noting Tim’s twisting hands. Without any warning, Duke reached down and took the com out of his ear, reducing Tim’s world to sudden silence. 

“That’s not for us right now, dude.” 

“Yeah, I know, I just-”

“Not for us,” Duke repeated, throwing the com onto a medical tray. 

Without the coms to distract him, Tim curled his fingers into the sheets, trying not to panic. Panic was a strong word, because why on earth would he be having a panic attack over something that happened more often than his birthday? He hadn’t been kidding about Arkham breakouts being biannual.

“Keep me updated?” Tim asked quietly, voice a little rough, as Duke sat to start the stitches, unable to tear his eyes away from the lidocaine injection. 

“You got it,” Duke agreed, his own com still firmly in place. He kept talking after that, mostly about things unrelated to the current goings-on of Gotham. He seemed to know Tim needed it. Tim sat frozen, heart pounding incessantly in his chest, staring at his brother’s downturned, concentrated face instead of the needle weaving in and out of his leg. 

A single second and a million years later, Duke was tying off the last stitch and standing to grab a new dressing. Tim’s heart leapt, and before he could think his hand shot out, grabbing Duke’s arm. 

“What is it?” 

Tim’s breath hitched when he tried to answer, turning shaky. Actually, his whole body was shaking. Very suddenly. “I-” Tim flicked his gaze around the med bay, trying to find the source of his fear, his paranoia, and failing. His eyes slid over the evidence bag with the army green fear gas canister sitting haphazardly on a med cart.

“Tim,” Duke said slowly, prying Tim’s fingers off his wrist and holding them instead. He studied his face, and suddenly frowned. “Okay, call me paranoid, but-” 

Tim’s next breath was hyperventilation, starting off a chain reaction of uselessly quick breaths that made his chest ache with their speed. His heart felt like a hummingbird and the world blurred like its wings. 

Duke grabbed Tim’s shoulder and held his hand tighter. “Hey, hey Tim, you’re- woah!”

Tim pitched backwards, would have tumbled off the cot if Duke hadn’t grabbed him. His weight pulled the whole thing off balance and Duke scooped him back into his arms just before it toppled with a resounding, metallic crash. 

Tim scrabbled for purchase, ending up with his fingers hooked over Duke’s chestplate.

Something dinged at the Batcomputer and Alfred, who had made it to the med bay in record time, glanced back at the screen. “He’s positive for fear toxin,” Alfred said. “Although I believe that realization may be a little late.” 

“You think?” Duke asked, shifting Tim’s weight to get a better hold. Tim’s head was spinning, like a dreidel, like- 

Duke took a step back to balance Tim’s sudden jerk and they knocked into another cart. The evidence bag with the canister rolled across the floor, in and out of the shadows, but more importantly, in and out of the fluorescent medbay lights. 

“Tim, you’re okay, dude. Just-” 

“Nineteen eighty-nine,” Tim realized, watching the faded numbers come to a rest against Alfred’s loafer. “Fuck.”

“What? Hold on, man, just-"

Tim hadn’t been dosed with fear gas since he’d been to Nanda Parbat. He expected to see a keyboard. He expected to hear screams. He expected to feel blood on his hands that wasn’t really there, and he expected to try and wipe it off on a lapel with a black triangle: Cass’ lapel. He expected there to be nothing worse than what he’d already done. He’d lived through the death- fake or otherwise, of almost every brother he had. He’d spent a year in nothing with Mister Oz. He thought he’d had everything pretty much figured the fuck out. 

Tim did not see a keyboard in Nanda Parbat. 

Tim saw a mirror. 

In the mirror, Tim did not see a broken halo. 

Oh god, how he wished he saw a broken halo.

He wiped experimentally at the red around his lips, seeing if it would come off, but it was permanently stained there. 

(Sidenote: Tim hated dimension hopping.)

He assumed the body in Dick’s arms was Damian. He had to assume because it was just so broken- beaten and blown up. But the remains of the suit matched, and Dick was crying like he only did for his little brothers. Part of him found it funny, and that made his next decision very, very easy for the other part.

Tim heard the click of a gun and instead of turning around he closed his eyes, letting Jason blow his brains out. 

It seemed there was a level below fallen angel that no one but Tim had found. 

When he opened his eyes he was in Cass’ arms. She dropped him like he’d burned her, eyes haunted and looking physically sick. 

Tim withered. 

“No killing,” she whispered, hoarse. “No killing.” 

Tim wanted to say ‘I’m sorry’ but when he tried he realized that he really wasn’t, and Cass’ presence was a truth serum, reading and dissecting his lies before he even said them. 

“I can’t stand you,” Cass said, and Tim almost threw up. 

“Bye, Tim,” she whispered, and Tim heard the lost and empty echo of ‘little brother’ behind his name as the dream fell away into a new one.

“Tim,” Bruce said, wielding his name like a weapon. “Tim, what were you thinking?”  

Tim’s mouth was stuck shut. The concrete floor of the batcave made his feet ache. 

“I didn’t train you to act this way,” Bruce bit out. “You were always the good one, Tim, I expected so much better from you!” 

Tim blinked. 

A golden glitch appeared beside Bruce, a contrite doppelganger. 

“And to continue operating in this city, my city-” Bruce shoved Tim’s chest, right over the bat, the signal that Tim had responded to under a flag of peace and returned from under a shroud of death. 

“I’m sorry,” Golden Bruce said. 

“You are no longer worthy of this symbol,” Bruce spat. 

“You are my son,” Golden Bruce said. 

“You are no longer worthy of Gotham.” Bruce stabbed a finger into Tim’s chest, but Tim wasn’t looking at him anymore.

“I love you, and I want you to be happy,” Golden Bruce said, and Tim almost took a step towards him.

“You are no longer worthy of my name.” Tim stumbled back and landed in the Batchair. “Are you even listening to me?!” Bruce shouted. 

“I wasn’t there for you, and I hate myself for that.” Golden Bruce crouched and held Tim’s forearms.

Tim pried his lips apart. “It’s not your fault, B.” 

“Of course not!” Bruce screamed. 

“It’s not yours, either,” Golden Bruce said. “I want you to come home.” 

“Coming home,” Cass said, her golden smile lighting up Tim’s phone screen. 

“Come home,” Tim begged with golden lips, the doormat of Dick’s New York apartment soft under his feet, and the vision changed. 

“I’m ashamed of you,” Damian spat. “I fought tooth and nail to be rid of my grandfather’s influence, enduring your taunts all the while, and now you fall to him willingly? You are a dishonorable cow, Drake.”  

A second Damian appeared in the doorway of Tim’s room, looking at the ground. “Drake, I…” 

“Are you even going to defend yourself?!” 

Golden Damian deflated. “I’m sorry, for what I said. I know how manipulative he can be.” He looked up. 

“I’m disappointed,” Damian snarled. “I thought you at least had that much in you.” 

“I was disappointed,” Golden Damian said. “Grayson and Father speak so highly of you. I looked up to you. Seeing you in a moment of weakness made me feel… even weaker.” 

“I’m sorry,” Tim whispered, his eyes only for the Damian in the doorway, and the dream changed.

“Another round on me,” Jason said, holding up two golden fingers to the bartender.

“I didn’t start using rubber bullets for fun and games, Replacement,” leered someone in the doorway. 

“Virgin for the kid, he’s a fuckin’ lightweight,” Jason sent him a teasing grin, and Tim made a responding face without thinking. 

“I had to work to be accepted into the family again, and you just get to hide it all?” 

Tim ignored the Jason in the doorway and reached for the one at the bar with him. Despite the fact that he was a golden specter, Tim made contact, fingers hitting the leather on his brother’s shoulder. Jason looked at him. “You good, Timbit?” 

Tim blinked and found himself somewhere empty, large, vaulted, and alone.  

It felt final. Tim didn’t mind being alone so much as he minded being alone in a space that was clearly meant for more than one. 

And this space yawned. 

But as much as fear wanted to grip onto his heart, as much as it felt final- it felt like a final attempt. Less like a death knell and more like a last ditch effort by the toxin in his veins. 

He took a step forward, and his foot landed on a golden line. He took a second and a third, ad nauseum until it crossed with another, and he realized that he was standing on a massive Star of David. 

“You’re okay, you’re okay, Tim.” 

Tim blinked up at Duke’s face, warm and soft and not golden. His arms were a solid brace around him. They were pressed up against a wall in the medbay, a blood pressure cuff stretching to wrap securely around Tim’s arm. Alfred was crouched in front of them, a spent syringe in hand. 

Tim looked back at Duke, who had relief pouring off him in droves. “How’d you do that?”

“Who knows?” Duke asked, echoing something he’d said earlier that night. “There’s still so much I don’t know about my powers…” 

Tim laughed, a hoarse, ugly thing. 

Chapter Text

Tim’s eyes were burning, but the kind that tells you it’ll only hurt worse if you blink, so he kept them open and made a conscious effort not to lose steam as he typed up his report on the latest Gotham drug ring. He hoped he could stop saying that one day, ‘latest Gotham drug ring’, but as far as he could tell, Gotham’s drug trade was truly unkillable. Maybe if he worked around them, shut down suppliers, systematically took out leaders an- Tim shut down his fascist intrusive thoughts before he made this dimension one of the ones with a Villain-Tim and forced himself to blink. 

True to his predictions, his eyes stung and started watering. He took a second to wipe them and grabbed his coffee, draining the last of it. 

He couldn’t think of any real solutions to this problem. Retiring while his whole family was still in the business sounded even more stressful to be honest. Guess it was a lifetime of writing reports about drug rings for him. God, he hated drug rings. With them came trafficking and child endangerment and gang wars. And more often than not he ended up in the harbor after fights on the docks. 

Tim stared intently at his coffee dregs, experimenting with the swirls he could make. The lights to the batcave flickered on and Tim started, his brain sluggish. 

“Timothy?” Damian said, and Tim would never get over hearing fondness in his brother’s voice, much less directed at him, much less colored with surprise instead of reluctance. 

“Hey, Dames,” Tim said with a sigh, setting down his coffee mug and turning back to the report. Babs said his hyperlink shortcut was broken, which meant he’d have to go through this whole thing again if he wanted it to meet standard. He should’ve been keeping up on maintenance while he was out of town. 

Damian came up behind Tim’s chair and rested a hand on the back. Despite the fact that he was a fucking giant now, his footsteps were still imperceptibly light without trying, and Tim detested it. It was one thing for a little thirteen year-old to sneak up on him. It was quite another for a 6’1 teen to just appear above him at any given moment. He was almost as bad as Cass, but at least Tim was still taller than Cass. 

“I thought you were going back to San Francisco.” 

Tim sighed and pulled up another set of CCTVs to get their reference for the file. “We had to postpone. Bart had something come up with the speed force, so if you feel like everything isn’t quite the same anymore, you’re probably right. Fuckin’ speedsters and their timeline bullshit.” 

Damian hummed. “Interesting. I am going to pretend you didn’t say that.”  

“Probably smart,” Tim agreed. Being friends with a speedster had given him a certain reluctant comfort with existential impermanence, but Tim supposed Damian hadn’t been exposed to the West-Allen bunch very much. Were the twins in Damian’s age group? He could never remember. 

“Are you going to stay for the weekend now?” 

“No, my plane leaves at five. Figured I could check on the WE stuff over there while Bart did his thing.” 

“Oh.” 

There was a stretch of silence, and Tim expected Damian to sigh and stalk off to the training mats, but he didn’t move. Weird. “You need something, Dames?” 

“Would you like to spar with me?” Damian asked, quick and small. 

Tim glanced at him. Something was… off about his demeanor. Had he been weird like this last night? Tim couldn’t remember. Patrol was getting kind of understaffed in Gotham as their family spread out, so they’d been pretty focused.  

Right. Focus. “Maybe in a little. I’ve gotta finish this report before I leave town, let alone go to space. Jason’s freaking out about these guys. New drug runners.” 

“Todd is in Turkey,” Damian huffed. 

“Exactly.” 

Damian let out a little sigh, which made Tim actually turn away from the computer. Damian did not sound okay. He normally detested sounding that small. “What’s wrong?” 

“Nothing!” 

Tim narrowed his eyes. Big brother senses and all that. He actually didn’t have them and was pretty sure Dick was lying about them. The only big brother senses he had were his overwhelming feelings to terrorize. Personally, he subscribed to the Jason Todd theory of big-siblingship.

Regardless, Tim wasn’t Bruce. He knew when something was wrong.

He just, didn’t know what.

Damian, however, didn’t let him continue his interrogation. “Have you been here since patrol?” he asked, probably noticing that Tim was still in the bottom half of his suit. 

“I told you, I’ve gotta finish this before I skip town.” 

“Timothy, it’s nine am.” 

Tim glanced at the time on the batcomputer. “Huh, I guess it is. It is way too easy to lose track of time in here. No windows.” 

“It’s nine am,” Damian repeated. “Why haven’t you returned to your Nest?” And gone to bed, went unsaid, but Tim heard it in his tone. 

“Babs said my code was broken and I can’t mess with the mainframe from the Nest. I’ll be done in an hour or so, okay?” Tim assured him, pulling up another window to display said code, cross referencing it with his work. “Then we’ll spar or something.” That way Tim could figure out if something was wrong and still make his flight at five. Easy stuff. Dick would be proud. 

Maybe Damian was just bored. He was hovering in that weird ‘legally an adult but technically still a teen’ phase, and even though he had a couple months of highschool left, he seemed pretty much over it. Tim had heard senioritis hits hard, but he wouldn’t know. He’d succumbed to it as a junior and dropped out. 

“I believe it is time for you to be done now,” Damian countered. 

Tim sighed. “Don’t be like this, Damian. I get enough of it from Alfred and Dick.” And Jason and Bruce and Cass and Kon and Cassie and Bart, and pretty much everyone else, so it would be great if he kept at least one person in his life who didn’t take one look at him and immediately ask the number of hours since he’d last slept. “Come on, leave me alone for a bit and then we can go do something- I’ll take you to that movie Bruce said you couldn’t see.” Not that Damian couldn’t just go on his own, but rule-breaking was always more fun with a co-conspirator. 

Damian turned the chair a quarter, pulling Tim’s hands away from the keyboard. Tim sighed. “Dami- Damian!”

Tim very suddenly found himself being scooped out of the chair and over his brother’s shoulder. His little brother’s shoulder. This was- it was a fucking injustice is what it was!

“Heavens, Timothy,” Damian said. “Did you even shower yet?” 

Tim made a grab for the back of the batchair but missed. “Put me down!” he shrieked, shocked. 

There was the biggest fucking smirk in Damian’s voice when he replied, “Make me.” 

Tim struggled as Damian moved towards the elevator, but the world had already been fuzzy and spinning before he was hanging upside down, so it was mostly in vain. God, staying up had been a bad idea. The mother of bad ideas. Worse than ill-advised food combos. Worse than 'bird-a-rang'. Worse than drinking underage. Of course, Tim had this thought every time he pulled an all-nighter, and he was only just starting to cut back on them. “Did Jason put you up to this? Damian!” 

Damian pressed the elevator button with his foot, which was actually kind of impressive if Tim was being honest. “I’m insulted you think I would need Todd to point out my superior physical strength and stature,” he said, imitating the way he spoke when he was younger, but his voice still had a shitty smile in it. 

“I’m a goddamn adult!” Tim grabbed onto the edge of the elevator as Damian stepped inside but Damian simply turned around, successfully pulling Tim’s fingers off the doorway. 

“Are you?” Damian asked, amusement clear. “You seem to need me to put you to bed like a toddler.” 

Tim gasped. “You can’t- Damian Thomas Al-Ghul-Wayne!”  

“Oh, a full-naming? From a 5’8 coffee addict with chronic sleep deprivation? I’m quaking in my boots.” 

No matter how old he got, Damian was still ruthless. The difference was that with eight years of socialization, he now had sarcasm at his disposal. Why had Tim ever taught him that? 

The elevator opened. 

“Hello, Father,” Damian said, clearly still smiling pleasantly. 

There was a moment of drawn out silence. 

“Hello,” Bruce said, and Tim could practically hear the way his eyebrows were raised, an amused smile on his face as he tried to comprehend the scene: Damian with a self-satisfied smirk and Tim kicking weakly at his chest. 

Tim grabbed Damian’s shoulder and did his best to twist and face their father, but that just made his head rush and he flopped back against Damian’s unfairly broad back. “Bruce- Bruce help me!” 

There was another moment of silence, and Tim assumed Bruce had looked at Damian for an explanation because he spoke up. “Timothy has exhausted himself and simply required assistance to his room.” 

“That’s not true! He just picked me up, B- this isn’t fair! He’s supposed to be tiny! Make him tiny again! And make him put me down!” 

Bruce stepped into the elevator as Damian stepped out, putting his tablet under his arm so he could pat Tim’s head without dropping his coffee. “Sorry Tim,” he said, and the worst part was he actually did sound sorry. “If you’re too tired to get away yourself, then I think your brothers get their way with you. It’s only fair.” 

“Bruce!” Tim shouted, betrayed.  

Bruce patted his cheek and stepped back, pressing the elevator button. “Sleep well. I’ll finish the report.”

“No, my code’s broken- Don’t touch my code, Bruce!” Tim shouted, but Damian had already opened the study door and started down the hall. “Dami,” he whined. 

Damian swerved towards the kitchen. It smelled like banana bread, which made Tim’s stomach churn, upset by sleep deprivation and caffeine. If Tim craned his head he could see Alfred making tea, a bit frailer than he used to be, but eyes no less bright. “Good morning, Alfred.”

“Greetings, Master Damian, Master Tim,” Alfred said. “I would usually remind you that there are no suits allowed upstairs, but I see that this is an exception.” 

“It’s a kidnapping!” Tim protested, too tired to struggle any more. He needed to save his energy to run when Damian put him down. “Alfie, please.” 

“I don’t think he’s eaten since the half a Bat Burger milkshake on patrol last night,” Damian confided seriously. 

“Well, that just won’t do,” Alfred said, and Tim suddenly understood where Damian had gotten that stupid half-smile from. “Master Jason brought banana bread yesterday.” 

“I don’t like banana bread,” Tim said. 

“Yes you do,” Damian said, and Tim suddenly found himself being flung right side up again and settled on a bar stool. 

Tim wasted no time punching his little brother in the arm. Damian retaliated by swatting the back of Tim’s head, something he’d picked up now that he was taller, which he knew Tim hated. They were both careful that Alfred didn’t directly see, though he surely knew. 

Damian ignored Tim’s hiss and grabbed a plate for the banana bread, placing a gentle hand around Alfred’s back to alert him of it. Alfred’s ‘thank you’ came in the form of a soft smile as he took it, and Damian smiled back, their language of wordless touches and expressions something Tim knew well. Alfred had always been much better at it than Bruce. 

Damian turned to the fridge and Tim slipped off his barstool, quietly making for the door. It wasn’t even that he minded the situation, fixing his code would be boring as shit, it was just the principle of the matter! He’d been manhandled! 

Alfred didn’t even turn around, his voice sharp and clear. “Master Tim, I advise you to stay put.” 

See, the thing with Alfred was that ‘I advise you’ actually meant ‘exceedingly polite hellfire shall rain down on you if you don’t’, because no one was better at being passive aggressive than Alfred Pennyworth. 

So Tim sat back down. 

Damian poured a glass of milk and slid it over to Tim along with the plate of banana bread Alfred handed him. “Eat.” 

Tim couldn’t help the absurd chuckle. Damian would always be precocious at heart. Was this how Dick felt about him, when he’d been making five-step plans for reconciliation and encouraging him to make up with Bruce before someone got killed? “Damian, you’re being ridiculous.” 

“I am not,” Damian protested. “I’m simply ensuring your wellbeing.”  

“Since when do you care about my wellbeing?”  

Damian almost launched himself across the counter, but Alfred turned around to grab the jam at just the wrong moment, forcing Damian to freeze in the perfect picture of ‘act natural’. Alfred surely saw through him, but he didn’t let on beyond a raised eyebrow. 

“I thought you were forcing me to bed,” Tim pointed out, shaking his head.  

“You would not be able to sleep.” 

Tim sighed, knowing he was right. Sleeping soundly at nine am would require some careful manipulation of his circadian rhythm, including food. A hot shower and some sort of sleep aid too. Which was exactly why he just turned late nights into all-nighters when it was past five am, it just worked better to stay awake until it was time to sleep again! He could’ve sworn he’d taught Damian that at some point, why had the sarcasm stuck instead?

“Yeah, yeah.” Tim choked down a bite of the bread, which really did taste good. He felt it in his stomach after he swallowed anyway, a little nauseous from lack of sleep. He pulled out his phone to distract himself, going through his emails as he took another bite. 

“Can anyone remember the time zone difference for California?” Tim asked. “The on-site engineer for the San Fran factory wants to meet for dinner.” 

“No phone,” Damian scolded, poking Tim’s hand. Tim flicked his forehead.

“Three hours back,” Alfred answered. 

Tim blocked Damian’s incoming pinch and sighed. “Maybe there’s an earlier flight.”

Instead of trying to pinch him again, Damian’s smile slipped and he turned away to hide it. 

Tim froze. What he’d just seen meant that as a big brother he was supposed to immediately take action, but he and Damian had never been the most traditional of siblings. Plus, by now Damian was technically bigger than him. 

Lame excuse, Tim, he told himself, and bit the bullet. 

“Damian?” 

“Talking is not eating, Tim,” Damian said, twisting back on the lids of the jam jars Alfred had just finished using for his toast. Alfred touched his elbow and sent another ‘thank you’ smile before picking up his plate and tea and shuffling over to the breakfast nook, sitting so he could still see the two of them. 

Something about that felt final, and Tim tried to figure out what the hell he’d said. He decided to put dinner plans on hold and slid his phone away. Damian grabbed his own piece of banana bread and silently took a seat next to Tim. 

Tim took another bite and sipped on his milk slowly, trying to make his stomach stop rebelling. “Anything interesting going on with school?” he asked, prepared to go fishing for whatever was bothering him. Tim could play this game, if that’s what Damian wanted. 

Damian shrugged. “Festival season is over,” he said, referring to his orchestra class. “My fencing season ended and all my term finals are finished. I have very little left to go for.” 

“You haven’t taken your AP tests yet,” Tim pointed out. 

“No,” Damian acquiesced. “But I could do those in my sleep. We’re just reviewing now.” 

Tim rolled his eyes, because of course he could. “So what about after, then? Have you decided where you want to go to college?” 

“Who said I’m going to college?” Tim choked on his milk before realizing that Damian was just joking. And now he was grinning at him, delighted by the reaction. “Why so surprised? What if I just wanted to take after my older brother?” 

Tim scowled at him. “Sorry brat, I’m banning nepotism from now on.” 

Damian shrugged, taking another bite of banana bread with a fork, because he unfortunately took after Bruce when it came to eating habits. “I don’t want to work at WE. Too many insufferably dumb people.” 

Tim snorted. “You can say that again.” He took a bite of banana bread. “If you have to take after one of us, make it Jason.”

“He died before he graduated highschool,” Damian said dryly.

“And yet, he’s still the only one of us with a college degree,” Tim pointed out. “Bruce will be devastated if he raises another drop out.” 

“Duke-” 

“Taking a gap year to fight crime overseas is a rite of passage at this point, but we still don’t know if he’ll get a degree,” Tim said. 

“Steph-“ 

“Bruce cannot take credit for Steph.” 

Damian sighed, defeated. 

“Screw Bruce though, it’s your life,” Tim told him. “College is overrated anyway.” 

“Master Tim,” Alfred said.

“I’m not wrong.” 

“College is necessary,” Damian disagreed.

“Oh?” Tim asked, eyebrows shooting up. “Have something in mind?” 

Damian cleared his throat. “A veterinarian, possibly. Or… well, Richard says I should pursue art.” 

“You should!” Tim didn’t know why he felt so excited about that prospect, but he did. “You’d be good at that, and it would probably be less stressful too. Would you move away for it?” 

Damian frowned. “I…I wouldn’t know where to. Though I suppose I’m not opposed to it. Maybe into the city, or to Metropolis. Or… California?” 

Tim thought about those answers. Damian wouldn’t be the first of them to move into the city to follow the tug of independence in their bones, and Metropolis was clearly for Jon. Damian had a few Titan friends who frequented California, but not that many, and they all had access to zetas if they wanted… Really, these days, it was probably Tim who spent the most time there. 

That was… something, for sure. Tim had pieces, he just couldn’t figure out how they fit together. 

Damian pushed his empty plate away and stood up, collecting Tim’s as well and heading to the sink, pulling open the dishwasher. “Do I need to carry you upstairs too?” 

Tim scowled. “Never again, brat. I’m carrying a taser from now on.” 

“Spine,” Damian reminded.

Alfred stood up as well, joining Damian at the sink, waiting for his turn. “Yes, please do refrain from frying Master Damian’s central nervous system.”

Instead of stepping aside, Damian took Alfred’s plate himself, rinsing it and putting it in the dishwasher, and then wordlessly began hand washing his teacup. Tim enjoyed watching them, the domesticity he missed because these days he really only visited the manor for dinners and holidays and Arkham breakouts.

Tim wondered if Damian found it a little lonely these days, with just him and Alfred and Bruce, when he’d grown up in a manor full of siblings. Tim found that funny, compared to his experience and Dick’s experience. To him, the manor’s normal state was just Alfred and Bruce and perhaps one other who had yet to be pushed away. It was the years of full halls and reconciliation and in and out siblings that were the anomaly. 

Although he guessed that now, the emptiness not only had names, but the potential to be full again next Sunday. 

Tim looked at Damian, remembered the way he’d wilted when Tim had suggested moving up his flight. Remembered that Duke had been out of the country for almost a year now, remembered that after a while Alfred and Bruce were very boring company for a little kid. (Not that Damian was all that little anymore, Tim remembered with a wince.)

Would you like to spar with me? Damian had asked. Not demanded, asked. Nervous, as if worried Tim was going to say-

Oh, Tim realized, that’s it . Because he was no Cass, but Damian, as prickly as he could be, had clearly gotten used to having siblings ducking in more than out, and now…

Things were changing. Things had changed. Existential impermanence. 

Damian was lonely. And Damian missed Tim. Which was a fucking wild thought. 

Tim deliberated for less than two seconds before he gave in, pulling out his phone and opening up his flight details. 

Because Tim got it. He didn’t understand why it applied to him, but he got how big the house was, he understood how missing someone echoed in the halls better than anything else. It was a very good house for grieving, and for Alfred and Bruce it was a home, but for everyone else it was a stepping stone. A solid place to stand when surrounded by waves, but oddly silent once things were no longer awful and raging. Tim didn’t understand exactly when he had become someone Damian missed, but he remembered how Dick coming home for the weekend was the best thing that could ever happen to him when he was Robin. 

Tim was halfway through canceling his flight when he realized the other implication of this development. The far more alarming one: Bruce was about to become an empty nester. Tim needed to get him another dog or else he might find a kid somewhere. He looked up. “Alfred, you can’t let Bruce adopt another kid.” 

Alfred turned around and blinked at him, slightly amused. “I wasn’t planning on it, love. Any particular reason I should be worried?” 

“He’s about to be an empty nester.”

Alfred’s eyes got a bit distant, his gaze flicking to Damian as he dried the teacup and shut the dishwasher. “Yes, I suppose he is.” 

“Alfie…” Tim said warningly, suddenly worried. 

Alfred shrugged, straightening up with a brisk rub of Damian’s shoulders. “The manor will be rather quiet without a child around.” 

Tim slid off his barstool. “Alfie, I’ll come back every weekend. I’ll bring Damian! I’ll track down Duke in West Africa and make him come home! I’ll- I’ll trash Jason’s apartment so he and Lian and Roy have to stay with you for awhile! Just- please no more kids.” 

Alfred didn’t look convinced. “It’s such a big house, I think it is rather suited to some more permanent residents, don’t you think?” 

Damian’s eyes were big and round. “Alfred, how could you even entertain such an idea?” 

“Damian will go to college at Gotham U and live at home!” 

“Don’t make promises for me,” Damian snapped. 

“This is life or death, Dami!” 

Alfred rolled his eyes. “Hardly.”

“You’re supposed to be the sensible one, Al!” Tim cried. 

“Why, Master Tim, it would do you well to remember who was the first person to adopt an orphan in this house.” 

Things got silent then, as both Tim and Damian could do nothing but let the horrifying realization wash over them. 

“I suppose… I suppose it was you,” Damian whispered. 

“You’re nothing but an enabler, Alf,” Tim accused. “I can’t believe you.” 

Alfred snorted, a sound that rarely came out of the man. “Youngsters,” he muttered. “I jest. I’m far too old to be caring for another child, as is your father.” 

“God, Alf,” Tim said, relief washing over him. 

“Not funny,” Damian said. “You know Father is highly vulnerable to such things.” 

“Yes, yes,” Alfred sighed. “I doubt either of us would say no to grandchildren. You can pass that along to Master Dick.” 

“Don’t get your hopes up any time soon. For most of us, anyway.” 

“Yes, I shudder to think about Timothy having children.” 

Tim lunged without thinking and found himself fixed with an Alfred glare, Damian half in a headlock. Slowly, he released him. “Sorry.” 

Alfred sighed. “I have errands to run. Don’t break anything, and Master Tim, you best be out of your suit by the time I get back.” 

“Yes, Alfred,” they chorused. 

Alfred left. Tim finished dealing with his flight and looked up at his little brother. Damian was dressed in workout clothes, and Tim didn’t feel like going to bed at all. The food had helped him hit his second wind, and the April morning sun was warm enough with jackets. “Grab Titus and your sketchbook,” he told Damian, heading for the stairs. 

“You’re supposed to sleep!” Damian protested. 

“I’ll sleep on the plane. I rescheduled for later tonight, after patrol.” 

Damian didn’t say anything else, frozen at the bottom of the staircase, but Tim got the feeling that for once, he’d done something right. 

Tim ran up to his old room and quickly realized he didn’t have very many clothes here anymore.  The thought made him a little sad, but he forgot about it once he snuck into Dick’s room and stole a sweatshirt. The man truly had too many, if he still had three here. He grabbed an extra for Damian, splashed a bunch of water on his face, snagged his camera, and pounded down the stairs to the backdoor. 

“Slow,” Damian taunted. Tim shoved him far harder than necessary, dropped the sweatshirt on his face, and took off through the gardens. Titus barked and followed. 

When Tim was a kid, he’d found walking for the sake of walking to be a decidedly old-people-only pastime, one he’d suffered through for Alfred’s sake. But confirming his theory that Damian was an old man at heart, it had been one of the first activities they’d been able to do without trying to kill each other. If they could quietly engage in their own thing, then there was no pressure to actually get along. 

In the chilly, sunny morning, Tim did his best not to trip over Titus and framed the world through his viewfinder, laying on the grass to get the dewspots. He glanced over at his brother, sitting by the apple tree that Alfred had planted a few years ago, tongue between his teeth as he passed lead over paper. 

Not bad, Tim thought with a click, smiling at the way the angle made Damian look like even more of a giant. He might even go so far as to say that the world was a fucking beautiful place. Sometimes. Oftentimes, even, when he surrounded himself with the right people. 

Later, he and Dami would see that movie, and patrol together again, and Tim would sleep like the dead on his flight, making up for all the life he was trying to breathe into Damian, making the halls of the manor warm for just a little longer. Like he was a necromancer. Hah. Truly, if there were anyone in his life who he’d annoyed into continued existence and vice versa, it was Damian.

Tim capped his camera and decided it was his time for some revenge. This was a two-way street: he could pick up Damian too. He was like, seventy-five percent sure of it. He could pick up Bernard, and Damian was tall but lithe, like his mom. 

“Timothy!” Damian shrieked, scaring away the birds. 

Tim cackled, heaving Damian into the air, and thought that the villain-arc list wouldn’t need to be consulted for this, at least. Dimension-hopping and speedster bullshit aside, Tim was not gonna let anything ruin what he had going here. Damian’s shrieks were far too beautiful to ruin with Gun Batman. Or Joker Junior. Or Ra’s 2.0. Or like, being dead. The list went on, never to be realized. Forget the world, Tim didn’t need to terrorize anyone but his little (because he would always be little to Tim) brother.