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It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. He’s not supposed to be back here, in the same room he remembers from his childhood. Looking at the same posters of his mom and dad on the wall. Going insane from the memorabilia stacked on the brand new bookshelf. Various gadgets lay on a desk he’s never used, yet is stained from years of use regardless.
Tim draws his knees to his chest, sitting on a bed he could remember picking out the sheets for, yet has never actually spent a night in. He hates this room. He hates what it stands for. He hates how it brings back all the memories he did his best to forget. He’s been getting better , and all his progress is going to be gone.
A small laugh bubbles up out of his chest, spilling from his lips like some sort of sick damnation. It’s soft, stress pulling it from his chest against his will. He reaches up, grabbing the green roots of his hair and he tugs. The sharp pain is enough to keep him grounded, but for how long? He doesn’t know.
He could leave. He’s a trained hero. A trained villain. His parents shouldn’t be hard to beat. But there’s training, conditioning, it’s been programmed into him and he can do nothing to stop it. Even if he wanted to leave, which he does, he can’t. He can’t do anything. He’s helpless here, in a room that’s more akin to a prison. Tim has to wait for someone to come rescue him and who knows how long that’ll take.
Who knows if his real family will even know where he is? It’s not like Tim doesn’t have a long list of enemies who’d be dying to drag him off the streets. It’s an impressive and extensive list, spanning from the likes of his dad all the way to Lex Luthor. He’s pissed them all off in one way or another. He laughs again and the ridiculousness of the situation and his time he doesn’t stop laughing.
It keeps going, dragging on forever and stealing the air from his chest. He coughs, still laughing despite the way his cheeks hurt from smiling, despite the way that his stomach started to seize, he keeps laughing.
He doesn’t stop, even when the door to his room opens. He wants to stop laughing. He hits his head over and over until the fit finally ceases. That’s not who he is anymore. He's not that person anymore. He’s not. He's not. He’s not.
Tim, above all, wants to go home. He wants to go back to Wayne manor and curl up in his room. The one that he decorated. But he can remember putting the glow in the dark stickers on the ceiling of this one, his dad holding him up to do it. But those memories aren’t real. He can’t let himself believe that they’re real. They’re implanted in his mind, they drive him crazy as he lays awake at night trying to figure out which memories are tinged with green and which ones happened.
“I see you’re awake,” his dad says. It’s like nails on a chalkboard, making his ears bleed with the small chuckle that follows it.
Tim refuses to meet his eyes, staring out the fake window to the fake sky outside. He takes a deep breath, “Go away,” he says. But it’s hollow, quiet – it’s scared . Because he doesn’t know what to do. Because Tim doesn’t know what will happen if he’s left here with him for too long.
He does know. Tim Drake will die in this room if no one comes to save him.
He balls his shaking hands into fists, refusing to let his weakness show. But here he is, one of the strongest people in Gotham, one of the most cunning and resourceful, and he’s shaking like a petulant child.
To him Tim is nothing more than a petulant child.
“That’s no way to talk to your father,” he says.
Names have power. Tim refuses to give this monster a name. The monster that ruined his fucking life, that took away everything good that he had going for him. Years. Tim has spent years working through everything that happened to him, and now there’s nothing he can do to stop all that going away.
Tim shakes his head, “You’re not my dad. Jack is my dad. Batman is sometimes my dad. You’re not my dad.”
“Is this the teenaged angst that parenting books warned me about?” There’s a low hum, considering something. It shakes Tim to his core to know that he’s being watched , that every slight movement of his body is being analyzed. He’s used to doing this to others, it’s a lot less fun when you’re on the receiving end. “I think some time in isolation could fix that.”
His heart hammers in his chest, so loud that Tim could hear it in his chest. “No!” He whips his head around, meeting the eyes of his dad The Joker. The Joker laughs under his breath, getting some sort of kick out of seeing Tim panic, the rapid rise and fall of his chest as he struggles to get oxygen to his lungs.
It’s like his hands are around Tim’s neck, wringing him until he’s dead. “That’s what I thought, Junior .” The Joker smiles, it’s all wrong and soft and filled with false affections. The Joker doesn’t like Tim, he likes Joker Junior, the perfect son he crafted through torture and nothing else.
“That’s not my name,” Tim manages to get out through gritted teeth. He’s not Joker Junior anymore. He’s not.
“You still wear my colors.”
He takes a deep breath. Tim has long since distanced himself from the mantle of Robin, feeling as though the name didn’t fit him anymore. Hearing people refer to him as such makes his skin crawl, it’s like he’s stealing something – it’s like he’s corrupting the very essence of Robin. He distanced himself from the name and from the colors. He might not… he might not be Joker Junior anymore, but that’ll forever scar him.
He’s not the same as he was.
He grabs the snowglobe, the one of Gotham that sits on the worn bedside table – water stained wood panging weird feelings that Tim is not going to think about. “Get out of my room.” It’s not his room. It’s not. He…
“Why would-” The snowglobe shatters against the wall next to Joker’s head. Tim wishes he could see a monster, instead when he sees Joker he sees a fucking dad. He sees his dad. He hates how his stomach churns seeing the sadness on Joker’s face at the violent act.
In a quieter voice, with less conviction, Tim adds, “I said get out of my room”
Joker smiles, “Whatever you want, Junior. I’ll leave you… alone.” He closes the door. There’s the small click of a lock sliding into place. The locks on the outside of the door.
Fuck. Tim scrambles to his feet, running to the door. He tugs on the door, jiggling the doorknob. It doesn’t budge. He’s stuck. Fuck he’s stuck. He bangs on the door. “Don’t do this to me!” Open palmed he hits the door with all of his might, panic seizing his lungs. “COME BACK!” All he hears is the distant laughter. “DAD!”
He stumbles backwards, shards of glass crunching under his shoe. Tears stream down his face. He doesn’t. He doesn’t know who he is. He swallows back thick saliva, trying to ignore his fear as he shakes out his hands. This is fine. Everything will be okay. As long as he stays in control.
Tim starts laughing, still crying as he falls to his knees. He grabs one of the shards of glass, gripping it into his palm and loving the sting – the grounding feeling of pain. It’s hot, makes the tears worse, but the laughing stops.
His name is junior Tim Drake. He is the hero Temperance. He presses his back against the frame of his bed. His name is Tim Drake, son of Jack Drake and Janet Drake. He’s a hero. He’s Batman’s sidekick. But given a gun? Tim would aim it for Joker’s head and he wouldn’t hesitate to shoot.
______________
Tim hasn’t eaten. It’s been a few days if Joker’s been giving Tim three meals a day. His memories tell him that Joker would never starve him, that they used to cook burgers in the backyard. But there is no backyard, and that never happened. The problem is that it’s taking everything in Tim not to lean into those warm memories for comfort. It’s easier to believe that he’s home than in the hands of a madman.
Perhaps everyone is a bit crazy.
He sighs as the door opens again. Dried blood clings to his palms, his feet are littered with scrapes and scratches. His neck has scabbed over from where he itched it until his skin peeled. Joker has looked at the food he’s made Tim, all of what his memories tell him should be his favorites, and Joker shook his head when he notices that Tim hasn’t eaten a bite.
Tim refuses to be drugged. Even a small part of his brain tells him that it’s better, that it’d be nicer to just… not think. Joker is offering Tim the easy way out, they both know that if Tim isn’t rescued soon then he’ll be strapped back to the table and forced to take the doses rather than willingly ingesting them.
If Tim Drake is to die then he’s going down kicking and screaming.
But when the door opens it’s not Joker standing there. Oh this might actually be worse. Y’know, maybe being Joker Junior again is preferable, a better fate. Tim groans, taking his pillow and slamming it over his face.
“Go away,” he cries out – though muffled by the pillow.
There’s a deep sigh in reply. “While I could do that, I think Bruce would break his no kill rule, now up and out.”
Here’s the part that he hates. He doesn’t want to leave. Because things are so simple when he’s Joker Junior. He doesn’t even really think and sometimes that’s so much easier. He knows that’s not his actual thinking, that the green memories are becoming clearer and that the longer he sits in his bedroom the worse it’s going to get.
Being Junior means following orders. He can do that. He’s good at it a lot of the time too. “Just go away, Jason!” There’s a raw feeling, a stone sinks to the bottom of his stomach. Something tells him to kill Jason, hold a knife and finish the job his dad started.
He doesn’t want to do that. He doesn’t kill. But the allure is there, the strong pull of command deeply seeded in his head. It's a bloodlust that he hates to admit, but that he's missed. It's the feeling of craving blood under his nails, near manic in the way he wants to hurt the rest of the Batfamily.
“Now’s not the time to temper tantrum-” Jason ducks. The knife that Tim threw sticking into the wall where his head used to be. Tim laughs, it hurts, but it's a pain that feels so good, that makes him feel well and truly alive . His lungs are desperate for breath and he doesn't comply, tempting death in a familiar dance. “Shit. Anti-venom, right ummm,” Jason pats down his uniform. “Shit.”
This isn’t him. And though it terrifies Tim to know that the way he walks, staggering and almost mechanical in nature, isn’t him. It’s exhilarating, to only have one purpose. To only want one thing. But that’s the thing isn’t it? He doesn’t. He can still think, still feel. What’s actually happening in front of him, his movements as he aims to kill makes him sick.
He wants to throw up, his insides are torn apart by butterflies with wings of knives, and the worst part is he doesn’t hate it. But he does. And it makes his head hurt knowing that both of those things exist inside of him.
Tim once thought that he had come to terms with this, that he had found a balance between what he is, what he was, and what he could be. He thought that he could be more than what anyone else wanted him to be. There’s no way in hell he’d ever be the perfect hero. It’s just not possible, not with all the blood that is on his hands, not with the way that when he sees an injustice his head tells him to aim for elimination. He is Temperance, a mix of it all. The good, the bad, as morally gray as any cape will get.
When he swings another knife at Jason, ready to plunge it into Jason’s throat, it’s Joker Junior. The perfect son and heir to a twisted kingdom. Tears run down his face as he laughs. He wants to cry out for help. He wants to stick a knife into Jason’s back and twist until all that’s left is a crumpled up body on the floor.
Jason catches one of Tim’s wrists. Tim’s breathing becomes labored. His maniacal laughter turned into pants that wrack his whole body. Everything hurts, he just wants to go home. “Please,” he gasps. Even to his own ears he sounds weak and frail. “Please help me.”
Normally whenever he gets too worked up they stab him with an antivenom like it’s an epipen. But they can’t do that here. When Tim meets Jason's eyes they share an understanding. One of them is going to die. Tim is going to either kill Jason, or he’s going to run out of steam. That split second of time is enough for his body to start laughing again. His throat grows hoarse with every passing second.
His movements are sloppy, Jason easily blocks each punch, each swing, each attempt to throw him off guard. If he were in right of mind and they were sparring, Jason would totally gloat. But they’re not sparring, they’re fighting. And Tim’s flipping between desperate pleas and manic laughter that fills the long empty hallway of whatever building Joker’s co-opted as his ‘house’.
Jason doesn’t go on the offensive, though he very much could, and probably should. He keeps dancing just out of the way. It frustrates Tim to no end, yet he’s grateful for it all the same. In any other situation he’d be egging Jason on trying to get Jason to hit him back. It always works, Jason can have a real nasty temper.
God, he’s so dramatic, all the time. Tim knows that he’s got a flair for theatrics - puns sneak their way into his speech and he finds himself making extravagant (often time redundant) plans. The rest of his team tend to groan whenever he comes up with them, but they all work. There’s just a few unnecessary parts.
“Alright, buddy, we gotta get you some anti-venom,” Jason mutters under his breath.
Tim doesn’t know about Jason, but he feels fucking great .
Jason sweeps his legs out from under him, way after having taken a few dozen hits, bleeding from a few dozen wounds. Tim doesn’t bother to get up, he doesn’t know if he can. His limbs all ache. “I’ll kill you next time, Todd.”
“That’s what you always say,” he nudges Tim with the toe of his boot. Tim stares up at the ceiling, a laugh bubbling in his chest. “Sometimes… I really wanna fucking kill Joker.” Jason sighs.
“Why? Hate seeing me like this?”
Jason kicks him a bit harder. “I should have slit your throat when I had the chance. That graveyard was a missed opportunity.” There’s no love lost between the two of them, though technically (legally) brothers. They would sooner see each other dead, but not because they were forced too through weird head fuckery.
“Do it now, put me out of my misery,” Though Tim means it as a bit of a joke, it comes out desperate – his voice cracking with emotion. How pathetic. Relying on Jason Todd for help. He’d rather die, rather have the oxygen depleted by laughter than rely on Jason fucking Todd. But here he is, presented with no other options. He takes a deep breath.
“The problem is, I care a lot more about pissing people off than killing you, so you’re stuck with me.”
“If I get up it’s all going to start again.” Even as he speaks Tim can feel that familiar bloodlust on the edges of his mind, the exhaustion only just managing to push it away. It’s a bandaid over a bullet hole. “I don’t like being Junior.”
Jason pauses before speaking again. “I know you don’t. You’re a fucking hero, Tim.”
“I don’t always feel like I am…” He feels like sometimes it’d be better to abandon trying to fight against what’s been programmed to be his nature. Sometimes it’s easier to give into the urge to kill the people who wrong him, sometimes it’s easier to not be good. Every day it’s a struggle and he’s exhausted.
“Tough shit. I’ll get Bruce to throw you into therapy again or something. Joker’s going to be back soon and I know-”
A laugh echoes through the hallway and it’s not Tim’s. It’s deeper. It’s Joker. Tim closes his eyes, squeezing them shut. He can’t do this. He wants to go back to bed, crawling into the covers that he only remembers picking out. Tears start pouring down his face. He’s not aware of what’s happening but he does know that Joker and Jason start fighting.
His fingers twitch. He needs to be a part of that. He needs to participate. There’s nothing else that he’d rather do. He opens his eyes as a gun slides to a stop right next to his hand. He reaches out, fingers curling around the handle.
Slowly, as if in a trance, Tim stands up. He blinks again, looking at Jason and Joker as they fight it out. Joker’s good at taunting people, he’s not good at fighting, not better than Jason – though Tim’s loath to admit it. Tim aims the gun up at the ceiling and shoots.
“Bang,” he whispers as the attention is drawn to him.
Joker claps. “Good job, Junior-” it takes everything in Tim’s power not to melt at the praise from his dad Joker. With his free hand, he comes through his hair, able to see the natural green color start to creep down the length of his hair.
He knows he’s way pale, that he needs near constant sun exposure to actually look normal. He knows he’s not a good person. Maybe once upon a time he was a good person, who didn’t need to think twice about what to do with a gun in his hand.
“Now shoot the nasty bat for your dear old dad,” Joker says. Jason doesn’t say anything. He stands there, utterly relaxed. He side-eyes Joker, but nothing else. He doesn’t speak. Doesn’t move.
At the end of the day. Tim does what he has to in order to do what’s right. Sometimes? That means killing a miserable man, and sometimes that means killing a monster. Tim takes aim. “I heard a really good joke the other day, wanna hear it?” He doesn’t wait for a response. “What’s green and white,” he laughs, “and red all over?” He shoots. Joker doesn’t scream. He falls down.
Tim cries, tears streaming down his face as Jason says the punchline for him. “A dead Joker.” That’s… Joker is his dad, even if he wasn’t ever actually, Tim still remembers him being a good dad. The same way he remembers Jack and Bruce as his dads. He can’t. He just. He falls to his knees, a mixture of laughter and sobs rack his body.
Jason pats his back. Tim grabs onto Jason’s pants, trying to find his voice. Trying to calm down in order to speak. “Please-” he gasps out. It all hurts. His brain is hurt. Nothing makes sense and his memories are all covered in green. He betrayed his dad. He- “Please knock me out. Please.”
“I’ll get you the anti-venom as fast as possible,” Jason promises. There’s pressure on his neck. He doesn’t bother fighting the sweet, nothing, bliss that’s presented to him.
When he wakes up he’ll be hugged by his parents, by Bruce, by everyone who cares about him. When asked he and Jason will exchange a look and say that Joker finally slipped up, finally got himself killed in a stupid accident. When Tim sees Jason he’ll try to stab him in the back. There’s going to be another long road to be even slightly stable again, but he has people.
Tim is not Joker Junior, but there will always be a part of him that is. He’s going to spend the rest of his life fighting what feels like second nature. He’s going to spend his whole life proving to everyone that he can be just as good of a tactician and hero as they are. He’s going to have to fight.
But it’s nice to know that he’ll never have to fight alone. Because despite his little bouts with the rest of the family - they trust him, and he trusts them.