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Tim stops eating the year he turns nine. It’s July, Mrs Mac is on vacation and his parents don’t call. He went out at night, taking pictures of his greatest inspiration. And now it’s 3:14 pm, he’s just woken up and the fridge is empty. The next grocery delivery is the day after tomorrow and he’s left with nearly no food. He was always a small child, quite and light. But he’d been eating, mostly snacks and easy ready-made dinners for the last few days without watching the stocks.
He shrugs, closes the fridge and decides it’s fine. He doesn’t want food right now, anyway. He makes himself a black coffee instead. This will be fine.
The groceries arrive, he unloads them and stares blankly. Tim is barely nine, he hasn’t been taught how to cook and the automated delivery didn’t offer a lot of food he felt comfortable making. He didn’t want to imagine what his parents would say if he damaged the kitchen. Maybe this is a challenge from his parents, to see if he can stick to the rules and not call when they’re busy. Maybe they just think he’s a big boy now and doesn’t need help. His stomach cramps painfully. He wants to make them proud. He decides he can live with a protein bar. It tastes like ash in his mouth.
That summer, Mrs Mac’s hours are reduced to two afternoons a week. It’s fine. Tim is a big boy, he can make it work.
Eventually, it turns into a game, of sort. How long can he go without eating? How much can he accomplish with a rumbling stomach? How long will it take someone to notice?
He’s vaguely aware of something called eating disorders, had seen the daughter of an important politician barf the buffet-food out an hour after dinner. Had seen the way she was considerably paler when she left the bathroom. Nobody talked about it. Besides, he’s pretty sure only girls can have eating disorders. And he doesn’t care about his looks, he’s not doing this out of vanity. Sometimes he’s not even sure what he’s doing at all.
The housekeeper never says anything, just throws out the wasted groceries until Tim asks her to reduce the amount they order. He starts drinking more coffee to keep himself going. He sneaks his lunches into the bin at school, not that anyone watched.
His parents visit thrice that year. They don’t call on his birthday. His mom looks at him precisely twice and both times she’s probably not actually looking at him at all.
His father pats him on the back and frowns slightly when he can feel the bumps of his spine. He’s distracted by a phone call and never follows up.
Tim coins it the hunger game two days after his tenth birthday. It’s perhaps cheesy and definitely a cry for attention. It never comes up. Tim doesn’t really stop eating, not fully. That’s a common misconception, he learns later, that people with eating disorders don’t eat. It’s far less dramatic than that. He’d be dead within a few months. He’s not suicidal. Not yet. It’s more like a challenge, of sorts. How low can your intake go before its too little? He eats when Mrs Mac brings meals and he never lets them back out. He’s too scared of what would happen to his teeth. Stomach acid is dangerous like that. He eats a protein bar before he goes out at night, too paranoid that he might faint out there.
Tim is a small child, a sickly pale looking child, a child with sunken eyes. The nurse tuts when he comes for a routine check up. She tells him he should eat more meat and drink lots of milk to grow big. Tim nods faithfully and does nothing of the sort.
The hunger game continues well past when it should have stopped. Even after he becomes Robin, after he takes up the care of a grieving father, he doesn’t stop playing. He does up his intake because Batman will only feasibly allow him out with a certain amount of muscle. He makes a meal plan and Tim does everything on it to a T. At least until he’s cleared for duty. Then he slowly regresses, never as low as before, but lower than Batman would’ve liked. But Batman has his own troubles, his own toxic habits and he doesn’t have the emotional capacity to watch Tim so closely. That’s what Tim tells himself anyway, after he finishes half the plate Alfred makes and leaves.
Tim eat’s enough protein at least. Enough that his muscle’s don’t regress, so that he can fight. He cuts sweets out entirely. The boys at school call him shredded. Tim just sees his own bitter victory.
Once, an ambulance comes to school to take away a girl that had fainted during P.E., rumor has it she’d been underweight, had been starving herself. Tim feels a certain sort of kinship with her. She never returns to school.
Dick tuts over him sometimes, clearly a misguided attempt to channel his inner big brother, goes out with him for shakes after patrol. Tim’s a substitute for a boy that’s no longer alive.
The bat’s keep telling him he’s due for a growth spurt, Tim has other suspicions. Over the years he’s come to accept that maybe this is less of a game than he thought. Because then he wouldn’t try to hide it. The goal had been for someone to say something. Logically, that should mean he would want it to be obvious. He doesn’t. He’d researched it, the starvation, long term effects of malnourishment. He knows he’s stunted his growth. He knows his immune system is shit. He knows he probably has brain fatigue. He’s still smarter than the crooks of Gotham, so it doesn’t matter.
It calms him sometimes, to grab his bony wrist and see the space left between his fingers. He tabs out morse code on his hip bone when he’s nervous. He drowns in his uniform.
His parents aren’t happy with him, tell him he should do something about his physique, that a Drake-heir shouldn’t look small. Tim smiles painfully until they too, are gone, never to be heard of again. Maybe that should have been a sign to stop the game, since the people Tim had originally started to play with would never notice again. He’d won. He hadn’t.
He doesn’t stop the game. It’s nice, to have something to control. Something that’s secret even from his new family. Tim has been playing this game for years, he knows how to not be detected, how far he can push himself. And it’s not dangerous, he tells himself, not really. He’s almost painfully aware of his intake, of his caloric baseline and of how much was needed to sustain his muscle. He never wavers from there.
Sometimes, he thinks B’ shoots him concerned looks but Tim just chugs his coffee like the elixir to life and barrels on. His hands only have a slight tremor. It’s self destructive and punishing but it could be worse. He knows, he’s seen the articles, has been on certain forums late at night. He’s not that bad in comparison. He’s just not very good either.
Sometimes he’s out in the city and see’s someone else. It’s never the same person but their eyes meet and there’s recognition. Tim develops a feel for people like him, people that play.
And then Bruce is dead and gone and Tim can barely stand living in the same house as Dick and Damian. It’s too much. The whole year has been too much. All his anchor posts are dead, his friends his dad twice over. Tim feels like he regresses to that summer when he was nine. When it all had started. And suddenly, everything is more important than food. He’s distracted and maybe slightly manic and even with the best intentions, he slips over the edge of his carefully planned out routine, dives back into habits he had nearly forgotten. He’s been cold for years but he starts shivering even in sweaters. He’s insomniac and has to reduce his time as Robin with a lame excuse because he’s genuinely afraid he might faint in a fight.
He never cuts but he doesn’t need to because his body hurts anyway, most nights.
He finds the portrait and his world turns on its axis. It’s a clue, it’s something. He embarks on a journey all on his own, late at night after overhearing Dick worrying, thinking about arranging something to help Tim. Betrayal is slick and grimy on his tongue. Now he wants to help? Tim has been suffering in silence for years and has given up the pretense of control. And Dick doesn’t even see it. He wants Tim gone for an entirely separate issue.
Giving up Robin is the hardest and easiest thing in his life. Becoming Red Robin is somehow more painful.
At least, he ponders, sometime in Paris, now nobody will see him self-destruct. Without Alfred’s helpfully placed sandwiches and the watchful eyes of a colony of bats, food is the least pressing issue on his mind. Maybe, you could argue that the game should have stopped then because he’s finally completely alone. No one will see him play. He doesn’t stop. The game goes on.
In a cave in Iraq he comes to the quiet realization that he always assumed someone would notice before his death. Or, at the very least, that the game would be his death. It’s not.
He wakes up, sometime later and is almost disappointed to be alive. His spleen is gone and he doesn’t trust Ra’s for a second. The older man’s gaze is entirely too hungry for someone that lives on the feeling. He doesn’t trust the food the ninja’s give him and he’s trained himself to starve, so it’s not too bad. Ra’s is concerned. He says so one night. Tells him that starvation is an unkind death. Tim wants to laugh. Starvation has been his mistress since childhood. It’s the only stability he has left.
He loses weight, weight that he desperately needed, in the desert. His skin pulls painfully over ribs and his spine curls outward when he bows. He looks like a ghost. Maybe he is.
Bruce’s return overshadows any worry the others might have felt for him. He’s not insane, he’s proven that, he’s just not well, either.
It takes a decade for someone to actually say something, and Tim would’ve never guessed who it ends up being.
Jason Todd had been emaciated when he came into Bruce Wayne’s care, had taken years to fully recover. After his resurrection he’s massive, towering above all the bat’s but Tim most of all. He never did get that growth spurt Bruce had promised.
They’ve been building up a better relationship for about a year now, have helped each other and the bat’s on cases, but have also carefully carved their own niches. Tim’s is the diamond district, adjacent to the fashion one. His territory boarders on the bowery. They sit on a building at the outmost part of Jason’s claim, eating chili-dogs. Tim’s stomach twists uncomfortably, but he eats anyway. It’s fine, they swing so much the hot dog will be burned in an hour.
Tim has pulled up his cowl and Jason isn’t wearing his helmet. He’s looking at Tim, and he doesn’t appreciate the attention.
“What?“, he asks, eyebrows raised in challenge.
“Has anyone ever told you that you eat like a goddamn baby bird?“
Tim tilts his head back and laughs. “Not really, no. What makes you say that?“
Jason isn’t laughing with him. “You’ve been eating tiny bites of that chili-dog for the past 30 minutes and I’m almost done with my second.“
He shrugs his shoulders, hunching in a little. He’s never really had to explain himself to anyone.
“Guess I’m just not that hungry“
Jason huffs.
“I call bullshit, we’ve been out here for four hours, no way you’re not hungry. What would Batman say?“
Tim bristles, and perhaps there’s a tinge too much resigned annoyance in his words.
“Nothing. B’ would say absolutely nothing“
He shoots him a sharp look. Tim has probably said too much. All if them are good detectives, after all.
“Speaking from experience-?“, Jason pokes. Well, in for a penny-
“You could say that.“
Jason doesn’t say anything, but Tim can feel his gaze linger on him when he leaves.
—
Jason breaks into the apartment above the nest two weeks later. He’s armed with a bag of groceries. Tim doesn’t even pull out his staff. He figured something like this would be inevitable.
The expression when Jason opens the fridge to see it filled entirely with pre-made salads make’s the confrontation almost worth it. Asplenia means he shouldn’t be eating most processed meats, only fish and sometimes chicken. No foods high in grease or very sweet. He also, technically shouldn’t be consuming coffee or energy drinks.
He makes exceptions to the grease rule sometimes, and fully ignores the warning against caffeine. Otherwise, he mostly subsists of leafy greens and nuts. It’s a good thing he cut sugar years ago.
Jason stands in his kitchen and judges him.
“Shit, who fucked you up birdie?“
Tim laughs. “You want the list alphabetized or by severity?“ He shoots back. Jason barks out another laughter.
“Did B’ really never notice? I wondered how you even got clearance for field duty, back then.“
Jason says and Tim’s not even sure what exactly he thinks Tim’s affliction is. Or how naive Jason is, how different their experience with Bruce probably was.
“Jason, man, Bruce didn’t even call me by my name for the first six months. He had better things to do than watch what I eat“, he doesn’t mean for it to sound so bitter. He is anyway.
“That’s fucked up“
Tim shrugs, he’s accepted it.
Jason starts cooking and Tim doesn’t dare ask what he’s making. The situation is slightly surreal. Half an hour later, Jason pushes a bowl with stir fry into his hand. Tim stares at it and starts eating mechanically.
Jason watches him like a hawk until Tim puts the bowl down half-way through.
“You need to eat more“, it’s such an absurd statement Tim doesn’t know how to react. Logically, it’s correct, of course. Already, he likely has long term effects that are gonna make themselves known in the next few years. It’s just- no one ever put it in words.
“Hate to break it to you, but that’s all I can stomach.“, He’s systematically shrunk his stomach over the years, he feels full. Jason doesn’t look like he beliefs him.
“You being for real? Shit man, I didn’t think you took baby bird literally.“
“It started the year I turned nine-“, Tim says apropos of nothing, because he feels like he needs to tell someone. He’s won the game, no one ever said anything and he just wants to hear someone say that that was wrong.
“I called it the hunger game, which looking back is very angsty-preteen of me. I couldn’t cook and I was starved for attention. I made it a challenge. I won but it doesn’t feel like it.“
He continues. Jason’s just that side of concerned but he doesn’t interrupt him and he listens and all the while Tim can feel a weight being lifted of his shoulders.
He doesn’t expect the hug, he knows he doesn’t feel very comforting to hug. His shoulders are too bony and the rest of his stomach is hard with muscle. Jason doesn’t seem bothered.
“We’re gonna work on this“, he promises. Tim doesn’t exactly know what that’s supposed to mean.
(Jason starts teaching him how to cook the week after. He never saw the need to learn before. Bruce never says a word. Tim doesn’t need him to, the first time he stands up without a black mass threatening to envelop him whole.)