Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

When Tim is feeling self-delusional, he argues that it started when Hatter began dabbling in psychosomatic hypnotherapy. When he really hates himself, he decides that it started when Hatter did a black market deal with a street witch from Fawcett and gave himself a cheat sheet to mesmerism. 

However it started, though, what he most remembers from that Sunday night—no, Monday morning—is knocking Hatter on the concrete and pressing his bo staff down across the older man’s neck. 

He remembers Hatter’s eyes. 

Unnaturally thin pupils, surrounded by a ring of sickly white, and the rest of his eyeballs—seemingly normal but overlaid with hints of neon green and purple. He doesn’t look at them straight, Tim knows better than that; but he remembers how it feels to squint at them sideways.  To catch just a glimpse.

Up close, like this, face to face on the concrete roof of an abandoned library, Hatter’s eyes are swirling. When Tim starts feeling miserable about the fact that statistically at nineteen and in his particular career he’s already passed the halfway mark of his expected lifespan, he remembers Hatter’s eyes, all drugged up on the strongest hypnotic powder that Tetch could get his grubby hands on, and it shocks him out of his downward spiral. The eyes look almost familiar, even if he’s at risk of drowning in them. They’re dangerous, but they’re not reflecting anything back at him that he doesn’t already know. They’ve got the power to make anyone who looks at them do anything Hatter tells them to.

Anything at all.

No, it doesn’t start then. But it’s a tipping point.

He puts Hatter in handcuffs, still thinking about it. The potential of those eyes. It’s not a farflung conclusion, really, what would happen. He’s not being paranoid. This is important.

Hatter doesn’t laugh as he does it, just watches him with those eyes. His hands twitch in the cuffs. Maybe it would be easier if he was laughing. Tim’s been trained for laughter. He’s got flight-or-fight responses beat into his bones.

Hatter just stares.

Tim calls the GCPD direct line.

“Jervis Tetch, corner of 18th and 6th,” he says without preamble, waits long enough to hear a quick breath, then disconnects just as the guy on the other end of the line starts trying to ask a question.

Arkham won’t hold Hatter for long. And if he’s really as obsessed with the hypnotism as half of the Rogues are with their gimmicks, then he’ll succeed sooner or later. Probably sooner. 

And Tim’s capable at his job; he can shut down the market line from Fawcett. It’s almost certainly being run through the Spanish cartel in Gainsly. He puts a mental pin in the thought. He can have them busted in four days, three if he’s lucky; but that’s not the point. They’ll find a way back underground. They always do. 

At some point over the last six and a half long, exhausting years, Tim has learned that preventative measures just aren’t enough. If you’re smart, if you want to survive, you’ll plan for the fallout. Not just the worst case scenario. You have to plan for what comes after.

He makes a mental note to find out which of his allies encounter Hatter the most often. He makes another note to run a risk assessment in direct correlation to the latest psychological evaluations for battlefield compliance. 

He makes a note to stop making notes until he’s somewhere relatively safer and he can think properly.

Tim hops rooftops downtown and almost falls in a dumpster in the alleyway behind the nice Indian takeaway place. He’s having trouble running a mental simulation of a fight between him and Bruce. He has it fine for the first ten minutes or so, but near the end, when he pictures Bruce pulling out a knife, he keeps doing this full-body shiver, and has to start the calculations over.

Could Tim beat the bat in a fight, if it came down to it? Could he win against Nightwing, against Hood, against any of the little birds?

What about all of them together?

He needs to think about this properly. It’ll just pick at him until he sorts it out, every possibility and every threat and every sacrifice he might find himself needing to lean on.

Tim makes a quick decision. He clicks onto the formal comm channel. “O?” he says.

“ This is unlike you, ” she replies. “Normally somebody has to drag you home.” 

She already knows. 

She always knows. Could he beat her, in a fight? If Hatter stole her brain?

“I’m flattered you think so highly of me,” Tim says lightly, filing that thought further down his project queue to panic over later. “B, can you do a quick pass through my territory in a couple of hours? I’m turning in.”

“ Hn. ”

“ It’s barely three AM,” Steph tells him, like he might not have realised. “ Are you sure you’re not actively dying?”

Tim scoffs under his breath. “I’m fine.”

“Don’t roll your eyes at me, Red Rudolph Robin.” He doesn’t bother wondering how Steph can tell. They’ve known each other for so many years that just the tone of voice is enough to tip her off. He can see what kind of expression she’s making, too, clear in his mind’s eye. A kind of worried glee.

“What—” he splutters. “My middle name is not Rudolph.”

“ No names on comms.,” comes a growl.

“B, this is hardly—”

“You can’t seriously—”

“I’m not even gonna touch that,” Oracle tells them all. “ But this is the emergency line. Get onto the other channel if you feel that strongly about Santa’s reindeer.”

Tim hears a faint electric buzz, and then a smack of flesh hitting flesh. Nightwing starts humming on the informal channel. “ There’s Dasher and Dancer, and Prancer and Vixen, ” he croons to them all the way from Bludhaven.

“It’s after New Year’s,” says Steph, horrified. “ I demand you stop this instant.”

“Comet and Cupid and Donner and Blitzen…”

“Singing carols in January should be illegal.”

Tim snorts. “You got one last mugging for me, O?”

“Careful,” she warns him, voice carefully bland. “ That’s how you lose track of time. Just one more, and one more.”

Oracle has the best work-life balance of all of them combined, not that it’s a high bar. She’s just as fucked up as the rest of them, but at least she’s trying. He should probably take her advice.

“I promise this is it.”

“ How long’s it been since you slept properly? None of that power nap shit.”

Tim frowns. “Only Thursday.”

“Lie,” Cass says suddenly, amid the tinkle of shattering glass. “Wednesday.”

“Thanks, Black Bat,” Oracle replies. “You know, R, you don’t have to sugarcoat it.”

Tim bites his lip. “Habit,” he mumbles. It isn’t really, but it might as well be. He just doesn’t like worrying them. Statistically, vigilantes with their minds on friends or colleagues during moments of high tension are more likely to make fatal mistakes. He doesn’t need them obsessing over his vaguely undiagnosed sleep disorder when they could be doing more important things. Like staying alive.

“Some amateur’s robbing the bank on Finger Road,” Oracle said, voice softening. “And R, when you’re done?”

“Yeah?”

“ Go to bed.”

Tim makes a disgruntled sound of agreement. It comes across more genuine than he wants to admit. He is tired, he’s realising. Maybe more than he thought he was. 

He heads off to the Diamond District and Finger Road. Hatter’s eyes are still sticking to him, though. He feels the weight of them, swirling neon, like a promise. 

The criminal gets zip-tied and taped to a street light.

Tim doesn’t go to bed.

***

He writes up a patrol report and showers and gets undressed in the Batcave, puts the pair of pyjamas he keeps downstairs on, then scrounges up a spare suit from the back of the cupboard and an extra domino mask. He takes the rickety stairs up into the manor two at a time. 

Bruce’s study is pitch-black, curtains pressing tight together. The air feels thick. Tim manoeuvres around a leafy pot plant in the corner and maps out a path down the hall and into the servant wing without any floorboards creaking or colliding with any door frames. The air doesn’t lighten. 

He puts his bundle down in the shadowy corner at the bottom of the staircase in the main hall and ducks into the kitchen to say goodnight to Alfred.

“By all technicalities it is morning, Master Tim,” the butler says from where he is polishing cutlery. The kitchen tile is cold on Tim’s bare feet, colder than the wooden flooring in the rest of the manor. It’s better ventilated in here, too. There are parts of the manor that haven’t seen a human presence in decades, and it’s easy to tell from the heavy silence, but the servant’s kitchen is freshly-painted and free of dust and has a window that opens into the vegetable garden.

Tim stuffs his hands in his pyjama pockets and tilts his centre of mass back just enough to give the man the impression that he’s leaning against the door frame. He’ll seem more relaxed that way, right? He’d watched Jason visit the kitchen a couple of months ago, slouching in the doorway so as not to hit his head as he grumbled about scones and omelettes, and Alfred had never looked happier. Tim had seen it in the careful way he’d pressed his fingers against each other under the table.

Tim’s never quite sure what to say to Alfred. He falls back onto pedantics.

“Not in Japan,” Tim rationalises. 

Alfred sighs imperceptibly. It’s all in the tilt of his shoulders, none of it leaking into his voice or his breath. The skin lining his eyes crinkles, just slightly. “It’s still afternoon there, my boy.”

“Alaska, then.”

There’s two mugs on the bench next to the sink. Duke’s curfew is at midnight, not too late to justify drinks before bed, so one of the mugs is his. As for the other one—Damian gets sent home just before three. He has a habit of dawdling in the kitchen, Tim’s seen it. He likes to give Alfred a debrief before he goes to bed. Alfred has a cup beside him too, and a kettle in the corner. Tim could win money betting that it’s still warm to the touch.

Nobody would take that bet, though. They’ve all got their routines.

Alfred puts down the polishing cloth and a shining butter knife that Tim can see his own reflection in. “Would you care to join me for some tea, before you retire?”

Tim smiles. There’s a bundle of clothes waiting for him in the main hall. “Not tonight,” he says softly. Hatter’s eyes are superimposing themselves onto Alfred’s face. He can picture it, hypnosis spreading like a disease. Would it be him to infect Alfred? Or Bruce? Or Damian? If Alfred was the last one left, could he save them?

Alfred nods, as though Tim has given the expected answer, and picks up his cloth again. It’s for the best. Tim can’t risk it. He needs to go somewhere alone and think and plan. 

“Goodnight,” he tries. Bringing the conversation full circle can’t hurt, surely.

Alfred looks up at him, still polishing. “I’m glad to see you taking care of yourself,” he says, and the snark is only barely hidden but the emotion is entirely real. “I know that the concept of resting poses a challenge for you, Master Tim.”

Tim nods. “Here’s to a good eight hours,” he jokes.

Alfred smiles at him with his mouth, wrinkled lips curving up at the edges, lit up white by the electric light in the middle of the ceiling. It’s a sharp smile.

Tim leaves the kitchen feeling somehow like he’s failed.

***

The printer whirs. 

He’d taken the suit upstairs and stuffed it inside the slit in his mattress, slotted it between the springs. The domino mask had been strapped to the inside of his thigh. It’s not suspicious. It’s routine. He needs to be within reach of a suit in all parts of the house. He needs to be prepared. After six and a half long years he knows that anything could happen, anywhere, at any time.

Both of his normal laptops, Wayne Enterprises and personal, and his ‘secret’ laptop, are left untouched. This is important. Babs is a fiend at remote accessing. He normally drafts all the contingency codes on his fourth laptop anyway. The one nobody knows about.

Hatter’s casefiles are spat from the printer’s mouth. It sits like a bloated toad in the bottom of his wardrobe, making threatening clicks every few minutes, but it’s got no room to complain. He feeds it more paper than all of his other printers combined. And he’s reasonably sure it never has to deal with Damian trying to photocopy his cat’s paws, unlike the main machine in the study.

Tim staples the paper, folds it into eighths, and tapes it to the small of his back. He exits the wardrobe with a blanket for his bed. If, by some miracle, the others don’t already know about his printer, he’s not going to signpost it.

He lays in bed for a few minutes, tossing and fiddling with his sheets. His hair is still damp from the shower, so he moves his pillow to the other end of the bed and lays on his stomach. It’s a sufficiently uncomfortable position to ensure that he won’t accidentally fall asleep, but loose-limbed enough that it looks natural. He counts to three hundred with his eyes shut then kicks the sheets off; gets up and paces for a little while, just in case anyone ever reviews the emergency cameras. Eventually, channelling exasperation, he strides over to the desk in the corner and pens a quick note. 

Can’t settle. Gone next door. 

It’s not unfeasible. He was born in Drake Manor, after all, and he’d slept there for most of his life. Familiar environments promote relaxation of their inhabitants. It’s just statistics.

In terms of hard facts, he’s never felt at home next door, but nobody needs to know that. He’s not going there to sleep anyway. Just to throw them off the scent. To give him a few hours, maybe half a day, before anyone expects to see him around. He needs a clear head for this. He needs space.

Tim leaves the suit in his mattress on purpose, his sheets strewn half on the floor, and climbs out of the window. 

The moon’s thoroughly buried behind three layers of clouds, and the smog rolling in from the city centre wipes away the stars. The darkness feels deeper outside, on the empty grounds. It’s child’s play to climb down the drainpipe and fetch his bike from behind the lattice lining the summer garden. Ten minutes of calm cycling and he’s clambering over a fence into Drake property.

No wind tonight. Tim runs his tongue along the front of his teeth and nibbles on his lip. The trees look like mountains in the dark, like looming, whispering shadows. He hasn’t been afraid of them since he was seven. Over a decade ago now.

The house is empty, as usual. Crouching heavy and oppressive on the hill like a grave. A single light is on, upstairs, rigged up to a clock and a generator to deter thieves. Tim’s got it on a timer, setting a different room glowing every night. It’s not like he can’t pay the electricity bill, even with most of his parents’ money tied up in trust funds and finicky conditions. Besides, Jack Drake might be away at the moment, out in town, but he’s stopped notifying Tim when he plans on returning, and he’s never liked coming home to a dark house. Better to be safe than sorry.

The light spills around the edges of the closed curtains and illuminates a narrow strip of the front lawn. Stretches right from the rose bushes up against the living room windows and over to the iron-wrought gates crossing the driveway.

Tim ducks around the light and heads out the back; picks the lock on the garden shed. There’s a trapdoor in the corner he’d found when he was ten. Just enough room hollowed out under the floor to fit a reasonably sized adult.

He isn’t sure exactly what his ancestors had been hiding, but he’s grateful for the space all the same. He doesn’t measure quite up to the national average for height, and besides he’s only nineteen, so he fits himself and another spare suit and two knives and pads of paper and three folders and enough wiggle room to change if he needs it. Not as good as a fully alarmed and vetted safehouse, and not completely free of risk—Jack still employs a gardener. But it’s as secure a spot on Drake property as he can manage.

It’s darkest of all, under the floor, surrounded by concrete and dirt, but he’d done this many times before. It couldn’t scare him.

Red Robin emerges from the shed cloaked in shadow, comm. shut down, emergency beacons in both his boots and elbows. He’s been microchipped by Bruce, he’s almost certain, but those trackers won’t activate unless his vitals drop to life-threatening, so he should be okay. There’s an alert that he can set off in his pinky finger as well by breaking the bone. That’s a strict code red, though, and he doesn’t plan on using it in his life. 

Someday, statistically, he’ll need to. No more dead robins, as Jason says.

Everyone dies eventually.

Tim steals a motorbike from his own garage, something unlicensed and untraceable, and heads back into the city. As the street lamps flash past, he tilts the tiny watch face on the inside of his wrist to the light. 4:07AM. Monday, 3rd of January, 1983.

He clocks it at approximately sixteen days before Hatter gets out of Arkham and tries again. Three hundred and eighty-four hours until they might be forced to fight one of their own, an ally hypnotised and mind-controlled.

Time to plan.

***

Gotham’s streets are brighter than they are beautiful, and having said that they’re also mostly grim and full of gargoyles, but there’s a particular blend of tension that drops from Tim’s shoulders once he gets into Reatton and he starts recognising buildings.  Bristol’s always been too cold for Tim. Too large and empty and remote. A not-insignificant part of him wishes he’d been born in the city proper. Maybe that would explain why he feels more like himself amid the smog and the screams here than he does anywhere else on the planet—or off the planet.

The bat’s going to do a quick patrol of the Red Robin’s territory at the end of his shift, just like he was asked, so there’s a six-minute window in this neighbourhood, and if Tim times it exactly right he’ll be able to duck straight through the boundary to his favourite safehouse. Not the one that everyone thinks is his favourite, ten blocks south, but his actual favourite. It’s a fourth-floor apartment in the building where he took his first in-focus photograph of Jason’s Robin.

He parks the motorbike in a side alley two blocks away, just for a moment, then gets an oversized hoodie and a baggy pair of jeans out of the storage space under the seat and shucks the mask. The safehouse is being rented out by Alvin Draper, a twenty-two year-old car thief who’s being blackmailed by one of the local gangs. Alvin struggles with the rent sometimes, but he’s the same approximate age as the landlord’s dead son, so the man goes easy on him.

And isn’t that the story of Tim’s life? He’s good at playing the part of a cuckoo by now.

Tim wheels the bike into a fake dumpster he installed in the alley for precisely that purpose, and shuffles around the block to circle back into the apartment from the west side. There’s no such thing as being too careful.

If Tim is being honest with himself—which rarely happens these days—he can admit that Hatter’s spooked him tonight. He’s still catching glimpses of that swirling neon purple and green out of the corners of his eyes. In the stairwell, he forces himself to slouch and drag his feet, the way Alvin does, but he’s unsettled. He wants to bolt. Every scrape of his boots on the linoleum has him tensing.

In the apartment, he deadlocks the door and puts the chain in. It takes three thorough sweeps for Tim to admit that he’s alone.

He cracks open the safe in the bedroom, full of Alvin’s stolen cash, and opens the second, smaller safe hidden behind a false backing in the larger one. It’s just paper that he keeps in there. Safest place he can find. 

And until Oracle heads to bed in about twelve, thirteen hours, he daren’t risk getting out his laptop. Better to write his initial notes on paper.

Tim gets out a pen.

Jervis Tetch, Mad Hatter, 3/1/83: hypnosis spread via optic nerve when chemically induced— because Bruce refuses to accept ‘magic’ as an explanation, and having researched the substance the witch provided, Tim agrees— caused by powder taken 2-3 min before visible effects [purple and green swirls in iris], known symptoms of attempted hypnosis include nausea and eye strain, potential subsidiary visual hallucinations—

He lets himself sink down to the floor with his back against the wall, and scribbles every hypothesis he can think of.

—feelings of paranoia? Unsure if related. Heightened anxiety—unsure whether correlated to an attempted hypnotic emotional manipulation. Unsure whether full hypnotism is achieved via persuasive or force. Exposure too limited to estimate. Suggest “confidence boosting” workshops and “family bonding” for the former and obtaining mental blockers for the latter. Look into mental blockers. 

Cures and antidotes: unknown. Possible emotional attachments. Possible logic and reasoning. Potential anti-curse—look into anti-curses. Ask whether the identity of the magic user providing the hypnosis relates to the cure needed. Possible infection of hypnotised subjects? 

Tim bites his lip. He peels the tape off his back, wincing as it refuses to stop sticking to his skin, and spreads a shorthand summary of Hatter’s cases out of the floor. Counting. Cross-referencing.

At-risk, most to least: [sorted by frequency and threat level of encounters] Nightwing, Batman, Spoiler, Red Hood, Red Robin, Black Bat, Oracle, Robin, Signal, Agent A.

At-risk, most to least: [sorted by mental vulnerability, history of brainwashing, etc.] Nightwing, Robin, Black Bat, Red Hood, Spoiler, Red Robin, Batman, Agent A, Oracle, Signal.

Dick has notes in his file on his history with Deathstroke, of course, and Damian has been raised by the League, which brings along with it a delayed timeline on emotional and social developmental milestones. Cass’s problem isn’t so much mental vulnerability as it is her entire juvenile upbringing as a child soldier and assassin.

Tim taps the end of his pen against his chin and wonders whether Bruce should go higher on the second list. He’s aware—had been flatly informed by Steph when they were dating—that he tends to have blinkers on when it comes to Bruce’s invulnerability. On one hand, it is admittedly fairly easy to emotionally manipulate the man in a safe environment. Tim watches Jason do it every couple of months when he asks for Bruce’s least favourite meal for family dinner and tacks on an uncharacteristically soft look and a gruff acknowledgement of their relation, then doesn’t even bother to show up anyway, because he's an asshole like that. And it works every time.

That fact doesn’t carry through to the streets, though. Bruce compartmentalises. In the cowl, persuasive-based hypnotism is more likely to end in the bat’s anger than submission.

Tim leaves Bruce where he is.

Conclusive risk assessment, highest to lowest: Nightwing, Red Hood, Spoiler, Black Bat, Batman, Robin, Red Robin, Oracle, Agent A, Signal.

Dick is in the lead by 6 points of risk out of a maximum 20. Taking into account how often he makes appearances in Gotham, there is a 9.09% higher chance that he will fall under Hatter’s influence first, 3% more than any other bat. Tim estimates a 0.82% chance that Dick will be successfully hypnotised by Hatter before February, give or take a standard deviation of 0.02%. 

As someone who knows that risks over 1.00% probability need to be logged in the monthly protocols before Oracle calculates the next roster of patrol routes, this is not ideal.

Tim starts pacing, hands sweaty. He clicks the pen against his thigh, feeling the comforting thickness of the Red Robin suit through Alvin Draper's worn jeans.

Could he take down Nightwing? Nightwing, sole protector of Bludhaven? Nightwing, who has been going steady in this line of work since he was eight years old?

Tim knows Nightwing’s weaknesses. He has access to the medical files. They patrol together. He’d been at the man’s latest doctor’s appointment, for crying out loud. Dick had wanted someone as backup to tell Leslie he didn’t need surgery on the bullet wound in his calf, just stitches. Tim had failed in this role and Dick had been hustled away mournfully to the operating theatre. 

Tim knows that Dick has a shoulder that needs surgery, too, because he dislocates it every other fight, but he’s refusing to get the procedure done because the recovery period is estimated in months and not days or weeks.

Maybe with all that he could —

No. Nightwing knows all of his weaknesses, too. Dick knows that he doesn’t have a spleen. He knows that Tim cracked an ankle two years ago and still feels a twinge when he lands on it funny sometimes. Dick knows that Tim will feint before he’ll dodge. They’ve sparred together too many times.

A fight between them wouldn’t be a challenge. Fighting Nightwing would be a massacre, and Tim has no disillusions he would come out of it unharmed. It’s just statistics: age and experience and training. Tim is better than good; Tim is great, Tim can wipe the floor with pretty much anyone who is thrown at him. But Nightwing fights like he breathes. And it is spectacular to watch, but not so much to have turned against him.

He snatches up another sheet of paper.

Find out whether Hatter’s brand of hypnotism pirates cognitive awareness and fighting ability, or just muscle memory—whether it clouds the subject’s judgement/understanding, or whether it takes control and leaves a husk?

He shivers, slightly, and looks around. Spins in a circle, suddenly on edge. It’s 5:49 AM. Dick should be asleep, now, in the Haven. Miles and miles away. And Hatter is in Arkham. Or the police station. Somewhere secure. He isn’t here.

He isn’t here. He isn’t—

Tim takes a shaky breath and jots down; hypnotism contingency draft 1.0: suggested quarantine, potential implementation of Code A-02—ensure identities—does Hatter see through the victim’s eyes? Will our safehouses be at risk as well? Will Hatter be able to rifle through the victim’s memories?

What’s the cure?

His hand creeps up to the back of his neck and he grasps at the hairs there, standing on end. He is fine. The safehouse is empty, apart from himself—Hatter could have slipped police custody, but the odds of him finding this place are low, right? There’s no way he could know—the random probability is higher than Tim likes, but still admittedly quite low—

Hatter can’t have had a second supplier, can he? Tim had checked before moving in to confront him, and he was pretty sure Hatter had just had the one bag which he ingested, but that is suspicious, though, isn’t it? Who only buys one dosage of a promising, rare, black-market product?

Tim is an idiot, Tim is stupid, he should’ve checked more thoroughly, he should’ve known—

Hatter’s probably laughing it off out there and Tim’s left the field and Steph and Bruce are both in bed by now and it’s only Cass on the streets with Babs in her ear, Alfred downstairs waiting in the kitchen and Jason off god knows where—

And Cass is fourth on the list, too, at-risk, and she isn’t prepared because Tim’s holed up in his safehouse running the data—

He goes to write down a frantic implement codeword? and realises his hand is so shaky that the phrase is illegible. His lungs are full of bubbles. He can’t get his hand to stop shaking. He needs—

He needs to—

He doesn’t know, but he needs to do something . Fix the world, somehow.

He needs to know that everyone is still alive.

Tim drops the piece of paper and the pen and scrambles for the cloaked communications unit he’d programmed for this specific purpose. With Oracle online, he can’t risk tuning in to their emergency channel for more than thirty seconds, or she’ll catch him doing it, but it’s usually long enough to gauge the approximate status of the players involved. It’s Cass and Babs alone, so they’re probably playing a game of some sort. Babs tends to loosen up a little when Bruce and Dick and Damian are out of the picture. 

He clicks it on, anxiety rising in his gut.

For an agonising moment, silence. Then—

“I spy with my little eye,” Barbara says.

He turns it off. Hatter hasn’t got them. Or Hatter hasn’t got them yet —

Tim takes a deep breath. It turns into a sigh. He sits down cross-legged on the floor of Alvin Draper’s shitty living room and leans back on his palms and stares at a patch of water damage on the ceiling until the adrenaline fades away a little.

Maybe he needs to sleep. Maybe he can fix this after a sleep.

He’s been running on power naps since Wednesday, and it’s Monday now. A nap is starting to sound appealing. He’s thinking that maybe he’s exhausted himself enough to be able to sleep more than fifteen minutes strung together, which is usually his main problem. 

He thinks about coffee, and then Hatter, and wants to cry.

Tim clears the floor of papers and hides most of them back in his safe. The really sensitive ones get taped to the small of his back again. The skin there is red and slightly irritated, and it’s not a permanent solution, he knows. He’s researched it. He’ll get skin damage if he keeps this up.

He just keeps running out of secure places to put things where he can’t imagine someone breaking into them. 

He sweeps the apartment again, and then twice more for luck. There’s still nobody there. He doesn’t know why he keeps feeling the need to check.

Tim lays flat on his back on the floor and flicks the comm. on again. 

“ — the bat signal doesn’t start with ‘S’, it should be filed under ‘B’ for bat. Who are we, Superman?”

“Two words,” Cass says back. “Bat. Signal.”

“Only one of them is the bat signal. The other one is your newest brother.”

“B. S.”

“...Do you mean bat signal or bullshit?”

Cass hums non-committedly. Tim smiles and turns off the comm.

He can have a short nap, right? They’ve got it under control. Duke wakes up to start the day shift in an hour. Hatter is either in Arkham or maybe he’s not, but Tim can trust Cass. He can. There will be time to come up with a brilliant idea to take down Nightwing later. 

There’s nobody in his safehouse. He can sleep now. He’s safe.

He is.

Chapter Text

Nightwing is grinning at him with teeth that catch the light. Tim’s heart is wobbling in his throat. His fingers twitch. 

The bird leaps forward.

Tim weaves between the attacks like the songbird he mimics. He ducks under a punch that was headed to his throat and skips over Nightwing’s outstretched foot. It’s not enough, though. Tim is just a cuckoo. A little socialite pretending to be free. 

Nightwing was the first of the birds. He’s the real deal.

Try as Tim might, the first touch lands not fifteen seconds into the fight. Tim feels Nightwing’s fist smack into his shoulder blade and yelps. The second touch to match it falls between his sternum and his stomach. Tim smothers the need to bend over wheezing and twitches away from the next hit.

Nightwing is still grinning at him.

“N—” Tim tries. “N—can you hear me? It’s me,” and his own name dies in his throat. He can’t make himself break the mask. Not even for this. “It’s R—can you hear me? Do you know who I—”

“I know who you are,” Nightwing says easily. He pinches the back of Tim’s knee, and when Tim staggers, kicks him in the ribs. It lands like a bolt of lightning, or a building landing on top of his chest. He gasps. Taking a breath suddenly becomes an immense challenge.

“Then why—”

“—oh, Hatter illuminated me,” Nightwing tells Tim. The grin is stretching his cheeks out grotesquely, and if anybody knows the true terror of a smile, it’s a Gothamite. Tim has always been entertained by the way Dick’s Robin cackled gleefully on the streets, but it feels different turned on him. His skin is crawling.

Dick looks overjoyed. Tim shivers.

“You’ve been hypnotised,” he tries. 

“I know,” Nightwing smiles. He grabs Tim round the chest and pulls him up. Tim kicks and squirms. He needs to put on more muscle. He’s too light. 

He digs an elbow into Dick’s ribs and bucks both his legs up in a gymnastics move he learned from the man currently holding him immobile. It doesn’t work. Nightwing, completely unbothered, just presses him flat against his own body, too tight and close to escape, feet dangling, and pulls out a wing ding. Tim’s pretty sure he’s about to die but god. What a stupid name for the weapon that kills him.

Tim has pressed his panic button already. Oracle’s in bed. Alfred said that Batmant’s ETA was seven minutes and he said that four minutes ago, when Tim first saw Nightwing on the rooftop, and Tim doesn’t have three more minutes, he’s about to die now . Tim’s about to die at the hands of his brother.

Third time lucky, he guesses.

Nightwing casually flips the wing ding up in the air. It comes down glittering in the dark like a knife. Tim’s pulse throbs in his throat. 

“I’m not going to kill you, baby bird,” Nightwing says, digging the sharp edge of the blade into the hollow of Tim’s neck and holding it there like a promise.

It doesn’t sound as reassuring as Tim would like.

“Hatter and I are going to catch all the bats and birds in one go.”

“You’re—you’re brainwashed,” Tim manages, around the arm that presses like an iron bar across his throat.

Dick chuckles then, low in his throat. “Am I?”

He is. But for a second he sounds so much himself that Tim wants to cry.

“Here’s what’s going to happen,” Nightwing continues. Tim can hear the smile on his breath. “You’ve gotten into a nasty scrape. Couple of thugs. They’re going to break your leg. That’s why you pressed the panic button. You got that?”

“Yes,” Tim whispers hurriedly, and lets a whimper slip out of him to sell his acquiescence. A broken leg is better than—it’s better than—it’s not permanent. As long as it’s not permanent, then Tim gets a chance to plan. A chance to fix this before Hatter gets to them all.

The wing ding presses a little harder on Tim’s skin. He takes a shallow breath and whimpers again. He doesn’t need his dignity. He needs that fucking blade far away from his carteroid artery. He needs to get out. He needs Dick to let go of him. He needs to stop shaking.

Dick laughs at the noises Tim’s making, but the pressure on his neck lessens slightly.

“I’m going to break your leg,” Nightwing promises, “and then you’re going to wipe the mask feeds before Oracle wakes up.”

“Okay,” Tim says.

“It was unfortunate,” Nightwing tells him gently, a concession; “that you were so on edge. The plan was to infiltrate the bats slowly. Set a trap for them.”

He tilts the wing ding upwards until the tip of it is poking the underside of Tim’s chin. “But you’re going to walk into the trap too, baby bird. I’ll kill you if you don’t.”

Tim would be ashamed of the broken noise that came out of him at those words, but he’s too busy trying to breathe through his panic.

“And you’re not going to tell anyone, either. No communicating. I’ll be watching you.”

“Aren’t you—” Tim gasps out. “Aren’t you worried that I’ll just take you down myself?”

Nightwing lets him go at that, and Tim stumbles backwards and crashes onto his knees on the concrete from the shock. He reaches for a batarang instinctively, but Nightwing knocks it out of his hands, and the next one, and pushes him onto his back with a boot. 

Tim grunts. That’s Dick’s grin, right there, on Nightwing’s hypnotised face. It’s the one he pulls out when Jason admits he still cares. It’s the one Tim sees at family dinners, on the rare occasions when nobody is threatening each other with bodily harm across the dining table. It’s the one Dick wore when he said Tim, you’re part of this family, too, that one time on patrol after Bruce came back, and Tim knows that Dick’s lost in his own mind and it’s Hatter, really, making him do this, but it still hurts.

Nightwing looks down at Tim, sprawled on the concrete, Nightwing’s boot planted firmly on his chest. If Tim was desperate he might try to catch him round the ankles and trip him up, or nail him with another batarang. He’s not desperate, though. Nightwing said it was just going to be a broken leg.

Tim can deal with a broken leg. 

It’s not like he can beat Nightwing in a fight, anyway.

So Tim just lies there, twitching under the boot on his chest. Waiting. He thinks he might throw up soon. His breath hitches. He wonders how bad the break will be. The bone will probably come out of his skin, if Dick—no, it’s Hatter. It’s definitely Hatter—wants to put him out of action for a while.

“You? Take me down yourself?” Nightwing laughs. “I’d like to see you try.”

Tim scowls.

“Sure,” Nightwing says airily. “You could fight me. Beat me. It’s possible. You could lock me up.”

He leans closer, putting the pressure on Tim’s chest. He’s still holding one of the escrima sticks, casually, and the tip of it crackles with electricity.

“But then, baby bird,” Nightwing says gently, with Dick’s voice and Dick’s face and Dick’s smile, “what would you do? Nobody would believe you. Not in time to stop all of Hatter’s plans from falling into place.”

Tim swallows a sob. Nightwing cocks his head at him and steps back, grabs Tim’s right leg. Tim closes his eyes and breathes—he can deal with a broken leg. It won’t be his first. He can—

Nightwing squeezes Tim’s calf and lifts his escrima and brings it down hard—

Tim wakes up screaming.

He’s swimming in sweat, curled up on the floor of Alvin Draper’s shitty living room. He cuts himself off with a hand over his mouth and staggers to his hands and knees. He feels flushed. His heart is racing. 

He makes it halfway across the bathroom before he doubles over and throws up in the bathtub.

Tim groans, and gives up. He sinks to the floor and puts his cheek on the side of the tub, wrapping both hands around his stomach. The porcelain is chilly on his skin, in sharp contrast to the sticky, stifling feeling of his skintight Red Robin suit underneath the jeans and hoodie.

He goes through Bruce’s breathing exercises eleven times before he feels calm enough to think about what just happened. 

It was just a nightmare.

But Tim thinks about Dick saying I’ll kill you, baby bird and can’t keep yesterday’s dinner down. Or lunch.

The bathtub is gross. Tim has never used it, never cleaned it, and never planned to. It’s going to be an absolute pain in the ass to get rid of the vomit. Tim’s not even sure if Alvin pays his water bills.

Tim lays there and closes his eyes and runs through a list of facts.

It’s still Monday. I was only asleep for a couple of hours.

Hatter is in Arkham, or police custody, or loose in Gotham. I confiscated his hypnotic equipment. 

Dick is in Bludhaven. 

Oracle is still awake. 

He feels like he’s trying to convince himself.

Tim curls up in the smallest ball he can manage and cries until his head stops spinning. Then he cries until he almost falls asleep again and jerks back to consciousness, eyes raw and aching. He scrubs his face furiously. The sleeve of his hoodie is wet.

He’s getting a crick in his back from leaning against the bathtub, and eventually he doesn’t feel like throwing up again, so Tim stumbles out of the bathroom and sweeps Alvin Draper’s apartment six times.

He’s alone.

It doesn’t make him feel any better.

Tim checks the time, and paces. 11:32 AM. His legs are shaky. Neither of them are broken, but Tim can picture himself laying on the cold concrete while Dick grabs his leg and raises an escrima stick, and—

It felt like his dream-self didn’t even care, in some respects. He was just—lying there. Waiting for it.

Nobody would believe you, Dick told him.

Tim panics.

The problem is, he’s right. And in terms of Tim saving himself—well. He’s capable. He could subdue Nightwing, maybe, if he got lucky. Lock him up. But the rest of the bats are going to find problems with that. If Tim can’t make them see that Nightwing isn’t in his right mind—

If it was Jason, it’d be easier. Tim could probably divert all calls and texts from Jason’s phone to his own and successfully raise zero suspicions for about a month, if he custom-fit a decent voice modifier. Probably three months, maybe five, if he really tried his best. 

But Dick? Faking Dick? His voice has a brightness that would be really hard to pull off successfully.

Tim is suddenly certain that Dick’s personality is as exuberant and genuine as it is to make it much harder for him to be impersonated. 

Maybe he needs to re-evaluate Dick’s entire profile. What else could he have missed?

Tim paces. This isn’t something he can smother with a quick visit into Alvin Draper’s life. He feels like he’s going insane. Nightwing is most likely to be hypnotised. Nightwing is uniquely suited to be difficult for Tim to take down without anybody noticing. Nightwing threatened to break his leg—no, he didn't. That was the dream.

Nightwing just nearly ki —that was the dream.

Tim works himself up pacing until he’s flinching at every car horn and voice from the street. 

Then he gives in, and leaves the safehouse.

***

Tim sprints through the streets like a bat out of hell. When he was a child and scared of the dark, he used to brace himself before turning off the dining room lamps, then scurry down the hall all in a rush to his bedroom. If he was fast, maybe whatever lived in the dark couldn’t catch him.

If he’s fast, maybe he can outrun his fears.

Tim feels like he’s five years old again.

***

Tim picks the window lock on number 198C, Freeman Rd, in the Westend, and disarms the alarm that ticks under it with ease. Then he pulls the glass up and slips in.

The kitchen is empty. Tim shivers despite himself. He’s running on adrenaline. He feels lost. He also feels like he’s about to collapse. 

He shuts the window tight behind him and resets the alarm. 

He sneaks out of the kitchen and onto the couch in the adjacent living room. It’s much nicer than Alvin Draper’s—no water damage on the ceiling, and the room is properly furnished, too. Tim collects five different blankets and builds himself a nest in the corner, rocking a little to settle his nerves as he waits. It won’t be long.

He’s right. It’s less than forty seconds later when Jason bursts into the room waving a meat cleaver.

“I was asleep,” the man roars. He’s got a ridiculous case of bedhead that proves his statement.

Tim huddles back in his pile of blankets and stares.

“Replacement?” Jason asks. “What the hell are you doing in my—hang on, how the fuck did you know about this safehouse?”

Tim shrugs. It’s been just over three years since Jason beat him up at Titans Tower. He’s fairly confident that Jason’s no longer actively trying to kill him.

It’s more than he can say for the rest of his family right now. Jason’s second on the list he made about Hatter, but Tim’s not having nightmares about him anymore.

“Why do you look like a wet raccoon,” Jason asks him bluntly, and sticks the meat cleaver in the waistband of his pants.

Tim frowns. 

“Have you been crying, Replacement?” 

“That meat cleaver’s gonna slip down and cut your toes off,” Tim says sullenly.

Jason laughs, disbelieving. “I’m going back to bed. I’m not dealing with crying birds breaking into my house at the ass crack of dawn.”

“It’s after eleven.”

“ Ass crack of dawn, ” Jason emphasises. “Don’t you know I’m nocturnal? Perks of being legally dead.”

Tim turns his head into the blanket and sighs.

Suddenly, so does Jason. All the fight drains out of him. “Spill.”

“What,” Tim says darkly.

“Tell me who hurt you,” Jason tells him flatly. It’s probably the nicest thing he’s said to Tim, ever. “Look. Kid. I’m not gonna be able to sleep with you sulking in a corner of my apartment. Tell me who hurt you, and I’ll promise to kill them slowly on my next patrol, and you can scamper off, alright? Manipulation succeeded. Your hands are clean. Batsy will never know you wanted those guys dead.”

“I’m not trying to manipulate you,” Tim frowns. It does sound like something he’d do, though. “And killing the person who made me upset might be a little difficult seeing as it’s our fucking older brother.”

Jason lets out a startled bark of laughter. “Of course.” He catches the meat cleaver from where it’s about to tip out of his waistband and spear his feet to the floor, and flicks it across the room. It lodges with a heavy thunk in the coffee table.

“Thought you told O you were going to sleep?” Jason says casually. He walks into the kitchen and starts filling the kettle up with water.

Tim scowls at his back. He always finds himself forgetting that Jason piggybacks off their comms. The man is more stealthy than his reputation would have it. “I did go to sleep.”

“Nightmare?”

Tim makes a small sound that falls halfway between Batman’s affirmative grunt and his dream-self’s whimper. Jason gives him the dignity of not calling direct attention to it, but Tim can hear the mocking laughter in his voice when he says, “That bad, huh?”

“Hatter’s freaked me out,” Tim admits. Jason returns from the kitchen and shoves a piping hot mug in his hands. Tim cups it reluctantly. It’s probably not poison. “You know N’s chance of getting hypnotised in the next month is double all of the rest of us combined?”

Jason makes a fake-interested noise and sips from his own mug, skin creased around his eyes and hair mussed-up from a pillow. He really does look like he wants nothing more than to go straight back to bed. 

“And I realised—our protocols for mind control are just not good enough, there’s too many variables—I’d have to try to catch him myself, or he’d find the cave and all of our identities. And I’d have to be able to do it without letting any of you know. Or you’d think I was turning evil and come after me instead. And—”

“Drink your goddamn tea,” Jason says.

Tim takes a wary sip. “—and then how am I going to do that? I can’t fake—him. He’s so bubbly , you know.”

Jason makes a vague sound of agreement. Or possibly disgust. Tim isn’t sure.

“And like—I could fake you easily. You’re an asshole. Easy. I can be an asshole. And I could fake Cass. She texts in nothing but emojis and doesn’t like phone calls. And Steph. I’ve known her for too long. But Dick? ”

“Glad to know you’re planning on impersonating us in your spare time, baby bird.”

“Fuck off,” Tim says to mask the way he shivers at the nickname. I'll kill you, baby bird, Dick had said. “It’s a contingency. Dick’s too moody to fake. And that just plays into it—what if he tries to spread the hypnosis to me? What if I don’t even notice he’s not himself because he’s so unpredictable anyway?”

Jason doesn’t say anything. It looks like he’s trying to fall asleep with his eyes open.

“Hood, what if I don’t even fucking realise he’s trying to kill me until it’s too late?”

At least in his dream he’d known from the beginning. He hadn’t had to deal with the gut punch that was getting betrayed.

Tim takes another sip of tea and grips a blanket with a white-knuckled hand and rants while Jason grumbles intermittently about sleep.

“I’m going to die before I can legally drink,” he tells his brother mid-sentence, dead-certain, and Jason just lets out that sharp bark of laughter again and tells him that it’s an unoriginal idea. Try harder, Tim.

That’s the thing about Jason. He’s smart—Batman’s protégé’s have to be—but he’s also more clever than he lets on. He gets like a dog with a bone when he wants something, but he also doesn’t fuck around with death any more than he has to, and when he wants to kill Tim he lets it show. The first time Tim broke into one of his safehouses Jason came at him with a knife—but when he had Tim good and pinned up against the wall, he let go, and just swore grumpily at him instead of the expected maiming and killing. 

If I wanted you dead, you’d know about it, Jason had scowled, after Tim expressed his disbelief—and that was true, wasn’t it? Jason had never hid his murder attempts like Damian. He had wanted Tim dead years ago, and Tim had very distinctly known about it.

And Jason hasn’t hurt him since then.

Tim trusts him, in that regard. Trusts that if Jason wanted him dead, he’d know. It’s more than Tim can expect from the rest of the family most days, and it’s comforting, in its own way. The bluntness of it all.

When he finally rants himself out, Jason rights himself mid-snore, jerks upright and says thickly, “you done, Timmy? Talked yourself back down to reality?”

“Damn, you’re still alive. I was wishing you would drown in your tea,” Tim says, because he can, and because Jason finds it amusing rather than getting mad. He unpeels himself from the blankets. 

He feels like he’s going to be alright, now. Dick’s in Bludhaven and Hatter’s locked up and both of these facts feel a lot more solid now that he’s said them out loud to somebody else who hasn’t refuted them. He’s going to have a hellish time cleaning up the sick from Alvin Draper’s bathtub, but that’s a problem for another day. Maybe he can bribe Steph into picking up some bleach for him from the store. Nobody would question that; Steph has domestic disasters all the damn time.

He gets off the couch and is surprised to find his legs are no longer shaky, although there’s a bit of sleep deprivation still weighing down his chest. He puts down his mug and freezes suddenly as Jason gets up and wraps Tim into a hug.

Tim bites back a surprised noise and slowly lifts his arms up to hug Jason back. He’s done this before a couple of times, but Jason offers hugs only rarely. It’s enough for him to know, though, the places not to touch. Everyone’s got them. Dick gets twitchy when people hug him from behind. Steph gets uncomfortable with anyone trapping her arms. Cass gets frustrated when people squeeze her too hard.

Tim can’t deal with anybody holding his wrists, and Jason doesn’t like hands on the back of his neck.

Tim holds him round the middle instead, cheek squished into his brother’s chest. Jason walked out of the pit as a giant of a man. Tim barely reaches his shoulders. He stands still and closes his eyes and breathes. He feels grounded, oddly. Safe. 

Which is stupid, because Jason is the most dangerous thing in the room by a long shot. But Tim’s heartbeat settles and his breathing slows and his eyes start to get that familiar heavy feeling that means he might collapse of exhaustion soon.

“It was only a dream,” says Jason in his ear, softer and sleepier than Tim can ever remember hearing before. “Dickwing loves you, little shit. Though I’m not exactly sure why.”

It’s a good hug.

When Jason lets go, it takes Tim’s arms a few seconds to get the memo. Then by the time he’s worked out how to detach, Jason has apparently decided to tug him by the elbow into the bedroom.

“The hell is this,” Tim asks muzzily, extremely confused. He feels like his brain leaked out of his ears with the hug. Moving his limbs is suddenly taking five times the amount of effort.

“I need sleep,” Jason says, and tugs back the covers only to shove Tim into the bed. The room is dim and warm. Sunlight peaks out from behind the curtains. 

“Whassat,” Tim tries, but is interrupted by a yawn. “Whassat gotta do w’me?” He’s pretty sure this mattress is the softest thing he’s ever felt. His legs have completely gone limp already. He’s having trouble opening his eyes. 

Jason tucks him in like he’s five years old and scared of the dark, exactly the way his parents never did. It’d be endearing if this wasn’t his murderous older brother.

“I refuse to get woken up a second time today,” Jason says. “If you fuck off somewhere, have another nightmare, and come back, I’m going to riot.”

Tim laughs sleepily.

“I mean it, Timberlina, I will gut you with a fish hook,” Jason says, but he sounds half-asleep, and all the menacing voices in the world can’t take away from the fact that he’s gotten into bed beside Tim and immediately wrapped an arm around Tim’s chest like an overgrown sloth.

“What if I wake you up here, though,” Tim slurs after two minutes of intense effort on behalf of his brain. He feels Jason snort from behind him. Suddenly the arm curls up and tugs Tim backwards until he’s leaning flush against Jason’s chest. 

Tim tries to wiggle a bit to test the hold, but either Jason’s arms are made of steel, or he’s suddenly lost all the energy he ever had, because he doesn’t make it past a half-hearted hey before his body suddenly realises he’s being cuddled again and goes completely slack.

“Nah,” Jason says, “now shut the fuck up. I’m tryna nap.”

Tim chuckles drunkenly at him. “I don’t nap,” he says confidingly. “I power nap.”

“You work yourself to the point of nervous breakdowns, you mean,” Jason replies, and really, Tim can’t argue with that one. 

“I don’t always have a nervous breakdown.”

“Sssh, Timmy,” Jason groans, and pats blindly at his hair. “Whadda I have to do to make you calm down? Turn your goddamn brain off and take a sleep for once in your miserable life.”

Tim sighs as Jason runs a hand along his scalp, calluses catching on the knots. More tension sinks out of him. He didn’t even know he could be this relaxed.

“And you better not fucking fart in my bed,” Jason growls suddenly. “Last one of you little shits farted in my goddamn bed and it stunk the whole room up.”

Tim doesn’t even have the energy to laugh. He can’t figure out how Jason is still talking. The hand in his hair is putting him further and further under.

“Wassit Steph,” he mumbles. He knows Steph is on good terms with Jason. And it sounds like something she’d do.

Jason makes a long-suffering sound. “Yeah. Just crawled in ’cause she said she was cold and then farted .”

Tim pictures it and starts to tremble with silent laughter. Jason huffs. “Yeah, yeah,” he grumbles. “Super funny.”

But he doesn’t stop running his hands through Tim’s hair, and within the minute Tim drops off into the deepest sleep he’s had in weeks.

It occurs to him later that maybe Jason had been saying stupid things on purpose, because instead of Nightwing’s chilling smile, Tim dreams of chasing Steph over Gotham rooftops all night long, and being wrapped up in the warmth of a hug from someone he maybe feels safe around after all. The memory of Hatter’s eyes all green and purple gets washed over, painted blank.

However it started, it ends like this. Asleep and safe and warm.