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Tim didn’t know how this had happened to him or his brothers, it had been what felt like hours now and he still was struggling to wrap his head around what had happened. One minute, he and his brothers were hanging out in the manor playing Mario Kart, the next they were in some other dimension with weird eyeball creatures staring down at him.
A being with blue skin and a long purple cloak had floated in front of them. He had explained the situation at hand and had said that the five brothers were the perfect choices for what he needed to do. So now, here they were locked in some strange room with a giant control board, each of them given an emotion that they represented.
Dick, of course, was Joy. He was the sunshine boy incarnate and that wasn’t changing any time soon. But the fact that now they had made him the embodiment of joy was just a little too nauseating for Tim to stomach.
The next emotion was anger. And if Tim had been a betting man he would have won a lot of money because of course the ghost had made Jason the embodiment of anger.
The ghost, Clockwork, he said his name was, had told them that what they were doing was the most important task they would ever do in their life. Tim was suspicious but he and his brothers hadn’t really gotten a choice in the matter. They had only been told that they would be controlling the emotions of a teenage half ghost half human was named Danny Phantom. It was difficult for him to investigate, though, considering the emotion he had been assigned had done nothing but make him sit in a corner and cry.
It was miserable.
For some reason, this Clockwork being made him Sadness of all things. Which was ridiculous, he wasn’t sad . He was perfectly fine, not sad at all.
The rest of them, their emotions suited them.
Duke was fear or well, anxiety really, which made sense. Duke was an amazing hero, he saved so many lives but his younger brother struggled with anxiety quite a bit, and still struggled with his confidence in himself at times.
And of course, surprising absolutely no one, Damian was disgust.
The only one whose emotion didn’t make sense was Tim’s. It just didn’t suit him. Why couldn’t he get analytical? Or smart? Or confident? Why was he labeled with sad? Everyone else had emotions that suited them, suited things that they struggled with or were known for.
Like Dick? He was known for always being ridiculously happy, known for plastering a smile on his face at even the most difficult of circumstances. He was known for burying his emotions and being fake happy instead.
Jason was always overtaken with anger. The pit rage had done nothing but make him violent and mean and just angry all the time. To the point that Tim still hadn’t been able to get himself to be close to him since his return just a year before.
And Damian? He had that holy holier-than-thou bullshit personality where he thought he was better than everyone else. He was ten years old and thought he knew better than all of the other bats and birds combined. It was irritating beyond belief.
Tim wiped a tear off of his cheek and sniffed to himself, pulling his knees up to his chest and swallowing down a sob.
“Okay, so basically from what I’m getting at in these books, Danny became King of the Infinite Realms today but he is also in his freshmen year of college and can’t miss any classes,” Dick said with his brow furrowed on the other side of the room as he read through a giant book.
“What the fuck does that have to do with us being his emotions?” Jason snarled out, pacing back and forth in the room.
“Well,” Duke said, picking up where their eldest brother left off. “Putting on the crown of fire on practically shuts his mind off where he can’t barely react to anything, he’s pretty much on autopilot, just barely existing. We-we uh, we have to basically have to control his emotions and make him look like a normal human until his brain comes back to control,” he said through a few stammers.
“Danny’s parents don’t know he’s what the Infinite Realms calls a halfa, and if they suspect anything it could result in his full death,” Dick said, bouncing on his heels. “So we just have to make sure he can keep going the next few days without his ghost-hunter parents suspecting anything. Sounds pretty easy!”
Before TIm could stop himself, a loud, sobbing, wail escaped from his mouth. They were going to kill this poor kid and never go home.
“Something’s wrong with Tim,” Duke whispered, looking at his other brothers. “It’s like the emotion he was assigned is actually affecting him.”
Dick glanced over at where their brother lay, a blanket wrapped around his shoulders as he tried to keep his tears at bay. Dick didn’t think he had ever seen his brother so depressed in all his time knowing him.
“Maybe it is? I mean for the rest of us, the emotions that Clockwork gave us are things that we feel constantly, but Tim keeps a tight reign on his emotions at all times,” Dick said with a frown. “He’s very in control of himself when it comes to how he’s feeling. He’s a little neurotic, yeah, but we never see him get emotional over anything.”
“He’s that sad, though?” Jason asked, stepping up to his other brothers, Damian following with a sneer.
“I do not understand, I don’t feel any different,” Damian said, looking between Tim and the rest of his siblings who were all acting rather normal except maybe leaning just a bit more into the assigned emotions. “I’m slightly more disgusted than usual,” he admitted after a moment. “But I am not overwhelmed with a ridiculous amount of disgust. Now the way he seems to be overwhelmed with sadness.”
“I think Tim might have been depressed and we just never realized it,” Dick said softly. “Why else would Clockwork assign him as sadness?”
“It was the only other major emotion left?” Jason asked with a shrug.
Duke shook his head. “No, Dick’s right. I think Tim’s depressed. He hasn’t been the same ever since Bruce got back from the timeline thing. Not only that, but Tim has had it probably worse than most of us since joining the team.”
Jason bristled at that. “I fucking died, what do you mean he’s had it worse?” He demanded before Dick shushed him. “What do you mean he had it worse, I was murdered,” Jason hissed quietly as they all glanced at Tim who barely moved.
“I don’t know Todd, maybe it has something to do with the fact that the Robin he looked up to the most tried to kill him,” Damian hissed back, disgust rolling off of him.
“You tried to kill him too you little twerp, you’ve tried to kill him a shit ton of times,” Jason snarled at him.
“Yes but he didn’t look up to me,” Damian said before the lights suddenly got brighter in the room.
“Danny’s waking up,” Dick said with a sigh and took to the controls. “Clockwork said we don’t have to do much, just control how he reacts to things and what his tone sounds like. Easy enough, right?”
Danny felt, well, he wasn’t really sure how he felt if he was being honest with himself. When he had first put the crown on, he had blacked out. Clockwork and Frostbite had assured him that it was normal upon putting on the crown as his mind would be so overwhelmed with information that it would just be too much for his human half.
Frostbite had also warned Danny that his mind would be broken for a few days even after he had woken up but that Clockwork had taken care of it. Danny wasn’t sure what that meant, but he had a feeling that maybe it was why he didn’t exactly feel like he was in control of his feelings at the moment.
He wasn’t really feeling anything. He was just existing. And he knew that he didn’t like this feeling, that was for sure. He let out a huff and slowly got out of bed and automatically went about getting ready for the day. He was supposed to move to his dorms in Gotham tomorrow and today was a day full of packing and preparing for his move.
A sense of dread slowly filled his body at the thought, proving that whatever Clockwork had done to make sure he had emotions worked. But they weren’t right. He didn’t know why he was suddenly dreading moving to college, for the last three months, he had been beyond excited, for the move. Especially since he had managed to earn a full-ride scholarship to Gotham University from the Wayne Foundation.
Gotham had just enough ambient ectoplasm that he would have enough to create portals whenever he needed and not feel weak from doing so.
So why was he suddenly feeling like he was going to have a panic attack?
“Why are you making him anxious? He’s supposed to be excited about college,” Jason stressed, watching as Duke manned the controls.
“He’s moving to Gotham!” Duke exclaimed. “He should be anxious, that place is insanely unsafe and he’s moving there willingly.”
“You act like that’s a bad thing,” Dick whined. “I like Gotham, and if he moves there, maybe we can be friends with Danny after all this is over! He’s the same age as Timmy! I bet they’d get along so well,” he said and they all looked over to where Tim was still lying in a puddle of his own tears.
“Go talk to him for fuck’s sake,” Jason snarled out as Damian shoved Duke out of his spot in control of the emotions board only for Jason to drag him away. “And you, you are not needed. There’s not reason for you to be taking control right now.”
“Daniel should be disgusted by his environment. Look at his bedroom, there are clothes everywhere and he just picked up a shirt from the ground to sniff it and see if it was clean. I must take over,” the ten-year-old said with a sigh. “He’s hopeless.”
“Don’t push me out of the way! Dick has to talk to Tim and he can’t be angry or disgusted for no reason so he can be anxious instead!” Duke exclaimed, pushing his way back to the control center and pressing a button to get Danny to focus on how he was going to present himself while eating breakfast with his family.
Dick just sighed and shook his head at his brothers before he walked over to where Tim was sitting and sat crisscross in front of him. “Hey Tim,” he said softly.
“What do you want?” Tim grumbled, not lifting his face from where they were buried in his arms.
“I’m just checking on you, kiddo. You seem upset.”
“I am,” Tim said with a sigh and finally looked over at his brother. “You wouldn’t get it.”
The eldest brother frowned and pulled Tim up so they were sitting across from one another. “Talk to me. What wouldn’t I understand.”
“You wouldn’t understand because you were wanted in this family,” he said quietly, not meeting Dick’s confused gaze. “And you wouldn’t get it because the emotion you were given isn’t something you’ve been actively trying to suppress. You’re genuinely just a happy guy, and Jason learned how to embrace his anger, and Duke uses his anxiety as a tool to be cautious. Hell, even Damian is aware of his disgust and embraces it. But me? I’ve been sad for a really fucking long time and I didn’t want any of you to know about it,” he said, feeling raw and empty and not at all wanting to have this conversation with his brother.
But it was like as soon as the sadness hit him, it was like someone turned on a faucet and it was all just pouring out of him without letting him stop it or control it.
Tim was fucking sad and he was tired of acting like he wasn’t.
“Tim, I don’t think I understand,” Dick said quietly.
“Of course you don’t!” Tim shouted, grabbing the attention of his other three brothers who looked over in concern. “You were wanted . Bruce wanted you, he went out of his way to adopt you, he went out of his way to adopt all of you except Damian but he doesn’t because that’s his biological kid! You know who he didn’t want?” Tim shouted, his face growing red as tears streamed down his face. “Me! No one has ever wanted me. Not my parents, not Bruce, not you, not Jason. I’ve never been wanted in my life. You want to know why I’ve been sitting here crying this entire time? It’s because this stupid agreement with the ghosts is forcing me to feel all the things I’ve never wanted to feel.”
Something in Dick’s heart broke at that. He knew he hadn’t been there when Tim had first become Robin. Knew that he had hidden behind his title as Nightwing and fell into a spiral of grief for how Jason had died but he hadn’t realized that he had made Tim feel so unwelcome.
“Two of my supposed brothers have tried to kill me. Multiple times. Jason calls me the Replacement, Bruce hasn’t been able to even look at me since he got back from the timestream thing, which if you’ll remember I was the one who tried to save him because no one believed me! Damian took Robin from me when I needed Robin most and no one asked me how I felt about it. I was never supposed to be a part of this family and every single person makes that abundantly clear. No one has wanted me here,” Tim said before a sob wracked out of him, his shoulders shook with the weight of the sobs that poured out of him, tears blinded him as he buried his face in his knees once again.
“No one in this family has ever even said I love you, to me,” he said quietly. “Bruce only even adopted me because he felt obligated to. He blamed himself for my parents' deaths. None of you even want me around most of the time.”
“Tim, that’s not true,” Dick said quietly, taking Tim’s hand in his and squeezing it tight. “You’re my brother, I know we don’t say it a lot but I do. I do love you, and I’m so glad you’re in our family.”
“Yeah man, you’re the only normal one in this family,” Duke said with a soft laugh, coming over to sit on the other side of Tim. “I mean you’re the one I’ve relied on the most since Bruce adopted me. You’re my friend and I look up to you a lot. I love you, Tim.”
“I can’t speak for Jason, Damian, or Bruce,” Dick said quietly. “But I’m happy you’re a part of this family. You kept Bruce from falling apart when no one else could, you were probably the best Robin out of all of us. You’ve never given up on any of us, ever. Even when you should have.”
“I fucked up,” Jason told him, leaving Damian at the helm, which maybe was a mistake for Danny but it was needed. He squatted down in front of his little brother. “I let Talia fill my head with all of these thoughts and feelings that weren’t true. And then I let that push into the rage I was already feeling. And then I lost my shit and I took that out on you and I shouldn’t have. There’s no excuse for it. And I’ve been struggling to figure out how to talk to you about it but I haven’t known how. How do you apologize to someone you tried to kill? Not only that but that someone be a person that looked up to you?”
Jason let out a breath of air as he looked at Tim. “It was never your fault and I took it out on you, and I'm sorry I hurt you so badly. I’m sorry that I have made you feel so unwelcome and that you were just a replacement. Dick’s right, without you, Bruce would have killed himself ten times over. You’ve done more to keep this family together than even Dick has.”
Tim rubbed at his eyes, sniffling as he did. “I don’t know if I can just forgive you,” he said quietly. “You were my Robin and you’ve made it so clear that you hate me.”
The crime lord’s shoulders slumped and he sighed. “I know,” he said quietly. “But if you give me the chance, I’ll be better and I’ll prove it to you.”
The younger brother nodded and wiped at his eyes.
“We’ll all be better,” Dick said quietly. “I can’t say it’ll be perfect, I mean we have the king of emotional constipation as our father but we can try to be better. We’ll need you to call us out when we’re being dumbasses, though. And for Damian? He’s just a brainwashed little brat who has no clue what he’s doing. He’ll grow up and realize what he’s been doing is wrong, it just takes time, okay?"
Tim nodded once again and rubbed at his eyes. “Okay,” he whispered softly, running his fingers through his hair and out of his face. Dick smiled and pulled him in for a hug before Duke and Jason tackled them as well.
“Uh, guys,” Tim finally said after a few moments. “Who’s controlling Danny’s emotions right now?”
“I just don’t understand what’s going on with you, young man,” Maddie said in dismay as Danny leaned back in his seat, his arms crossed over his chest. “You’re just being so mean!”
“And you’re just being ridiculous. This house is hideous and disgusting and so are you,” Danny said with a sniff. “Thank god I’ll be moving out tomorrow so I won’t be stuck with seeing the monstrosity that is this supposed house.”