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Tim's room looked the same as it always did – like a tiny tornado had touched down in the center of it – but the photos scattered across the desk were new.
Judging by the piled-up cardboard boxes nearby, he had gotten them out of storage somewhere. Some of them were clearly candid shots taken by Tim himself – a wide shot of Jack Drake and his second wife sitting together on a bench, leaning into one another; a redheaded boy peering intently over a painted figurine; one of Dick himself asleep in the Manor kitchen – but others were posed or formal photographs. There was a tiny Tim in his best suit, holding up some kind of award; a gap-toothed Tim posing for what looked like a school photo; a Tim in a party hat blowing out some birthday candles. Toddler Tim at the beach, tugging at the arm of a sandy-haired woman who had to be his mother.
Dick stared at that last one for a while. It was a crooked, exuberant shot: Tim's mom laughing, wisps of hair flying around her face, Tim's pudgy fingers reaching out towards the camera, and it had to have been taken by Jack Drake, even though nothing Dick knew about Jack Drake indicated that he was capable of taking such a photo.
Maybe he had been different once. Or maybe people were complicated, and Dick was being unfairly judgmental about a dead man he'd never even known.
(He knew Tim, though. He'd known Tim for six years. Just saying.)
There was a soft sound – footsteps, in the hallway. Dick glanced over, and there was Tim, leaning against the doorframe, arms wrapped around yet another cardboard box. "Geez," he said, with a sideways grin. "And they call me the nosy one."
He was clearly not actually mad, so Dick just returned the smile. "I hear it runs in the family or something." Though Tim had been nosy long before he’d become Robin. "You were a cute kid, by the way," he added, mostly to see Tim make a face.
Tim made a face. "Pretty sure you've seen me as a kid," he muttered, as if one night at the circus and a photograph was the same thing. Tim had not been wearing a homemade Blue Beetle costume at the circus.
"You were a cute kid!" Dick repeated blithely, and reached out to ruffle Tim's hair – Tim ducked out of the way, making a displeased noise.
"You didn't actually come here to snoop around in my room," he observed, and as tempted as Dick was to get him in a headlock and continue interrogating his trick-or-treating ensemble (what else were brothers for?), Tim was right, so he inclined his head and let Tim change the subject.
"Heard you were back in town. Wanted to catch up with you," he said.
Tim and Bruce's return from the multiverse had unfortunately coincided with the Blockbuster mess coming to a head, so he was making up for lost time: Dick tried to keep half an eye on his siblings when he could. Particularly when – well, Tim had seemed upset the last time they'd spoken.
Today he was calmer, almost cheerful – the part where Bruce was no longer missing-presumed-dead had probably helped – as if it was any other Saturday afternoon. But it had also not escaped Dick's notice that Tim had gone on a universe-hopping trip to rescue Bruce, and one of the first things he'd done upon returning was, apparently, unbox a lot of photos of his dead parents.
"Well, here I am," Tim said. He was watching Dick narrowly – watching Dick watch Tim. The petulant-little-brother expression had faded into something like pensiveness. "All my appendages intact and everything."
"How was the multiverse?" Dick asked.
"Weird. Multiversal." Tim set down the box he was carrying, which was labeled across the top – 'papers & personal, 2' – in large, loopy handwriting that was definitely not his. "Not as many evil Batmen as I expected, which was a relief." He ran a thumb idly down the middle of the packing tape, but made no move to actually open it.
Dick waited. If Tim wanted to talk about whatever was on his mind, he would.
"I, uh." Tim was still carefully studying the packing tape. "I – when I was looking for Bruce. I saw my mom."
"… ah."
Tim had turned his face away from Dick to say it, not that Dick needed to see his expression to imagine how he must be feeling right now. Because if it had been Dick – if he'd been hurtling through the multiverse and come face-to-face with one of his parents, alive and vivid and there –
(The clink of teacups and slanting late-afternoon light and Meili Lin, watching him with a wistful expression on her lined face. You have her mouth, I think, she had said. Just a little bit. When you smile.
Dick – Dick had set the cup he was holding back down in its saucer. Carefully. Not spilling.
Her eyes flicked downwards. No one's told you that before?
... No. Never.)
Half on instinct, he crouched down, taking a seat next to Tim. Putting the two of them on the same level.
"I just – I guess I'd been thinking about her a lot, lately, and it came out in the Bleed or something." Fingers, curling over the flap of the box, as if to snatch something back. "... it'll be six years, this Christmas."
Dick remembered a little kid glad-handing mourners on Christmas Eve, shivering faintly in the snow. He hadn't even known Tim then, not really, and it had still seemed – wrong. Like something they should have fixed somehow.
Of course, if Dick knew how to fix that – if Bruce knew how to fix that – he and Tim might never have crossed paths in the first place.
"I was thinking," Tim said, almost to himself. "That – you never met her. Aside from, you know – " That night at the circus. The photo Dick kept in his desk drawer: two families (one family), beaming up at the camera. Two sets of doomed parents. But Tim was still talking. "Bruce did, a couple times, but – Steph never met her. Cass never met her. Kon." A pause. "... Bernard."
How many times had he thought the same thing to himself? Thought, they would have loved this girl – or hated her – they would have been so disappointed in him for leaving the circus – dropping out of college – for all of his failures and stupid mistakes? Thought, if they could see me now, would they even recognize me?
Thought to himself, you did this. You made those choices. You turned yourself into someone who would be a stranger to them.
"You think you called her up," he said, softly. "By thinking about her."
"Maybe. I don't really know how it works. I –" Tim broke off again. "I forgot so much stuff," he said.
You always did. It was a slow but inexorable process, like waves wearing away at stone. Like water, spilling out from between your cupped hands.
It's not your fault, he wanted to say, but he knew Tim wouldn't have believed him. (He wouldn't have believed himself, in Tim's place.) She'd be proud of you, he wanted to say, but Tim was right: he'd never met Janet Drake, not really. She should be proud of her son – but he didn't know if she actually would be.
(The light coming in through the window had turned golden, and then orange. There were dregs of tea clinging to the bottom of the cup.
Dick hadn't left yet. He didn't – no, he did know why.
Meili Lin peered into the bottom of her teacup. Smiled sadly. Looked at him. Did you want to hear about them? I don't mind.
He felt suddenly guilty. I didn't come here to interrogate you, he said, even though he had, ostensibly, come here to interrogate her about her daughter.
She looked at him like she knew it, too, but she only shook her head slightly. You’d be doing me a favor.
He believed her, he realized – whatever game her daughter might be playing, he believed she was exactly who she said she was. It was the look in her eyes. You couldn’t fake that look. It was the look of someone who had been sold across an ocean, who had lived under the thumb of an abusive boyfriend and fled him. Who had come back, finally, to the place where she’d been happy, only to find her past had taken its price out on the very people who’d helped her break free of it.
It was the look of knowing you had lost something you could never get back. Something that, day by day, would only ever grow more distant from you.
It helps, I find, Meili Lin said, years of grief putting gravel in her voice, to talk about it. To remember.)
"Tell me about her?" he said instead. "If you want."
Dick had wanted it to be true. Looking at Tim on the floor, surrounded by memories of his laughing mother, he wanted it to be true more than ever.