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It is well past midnight when Tim and Bart get in from their patrol that night. It is the first time that the latter was going out officially as Kid Flash. He had worn the uniform on the last off-planet mission they had been sent on but this had been the first time he had worn it on patrol.
The aim had been to be out no later than midnight — they both had class early in the morning — and they had been so close to achieving that goal but just as they were heading back Gotham decided to fuck with them. In the form of a string of muggings, a burglary, and Ivy. The first two were dealt with relatively quickly but it took over an hour to get Ivy contained.
Wasn’t she supposed to still be in Arkham?
She had been. Tim had checked who was still locked away when Babs had alerted the whole Colony that Penguin had escaped not even a week ago.
The two enter the apartment through the window, their boots hitting the wooden floorboards. One is much softer, so much so that barely a sound is made. They are both covered head-to-toe in purple-coloured pollen.
Ivy had managed to hit both of them with it while they had been fighting her. But it didn’t seem to have any effects, at all. Aside from getting everywhere .
“It’s even gotten in my suit !” Bart complains as he pulls off his goggles from his face. “It shouldn’t be able to do that,”
Tim agrees with him, he can feel the ghost of the pollen down the length of his back. Rubbing against the skin as it’s trapped between the kevlar of his uniform and his back.
They split up. Bart goes off to take a shower while Tim gets started on the report he still has to write as they had a run-in with a Rogue.
When they have both showered and changed into civvies (which, for them, is sweatpants and hoodies), they both migrate to the sofa. Tim has his laptop balanced on his knees as he continues to chip away at the report. Bart, on the other hand, alternates between scrolling on his phone, peering over Tim’s shoulder and watching the world outside the window start to wake up for the day. And at one point, in the kitchen making tea.
“I don’t know if I like it,” Bart says suddenly, shattering the peaceful silence that had formed between the two.
He’s looking away from Tim, his phone on his knee flipped upside down so that his obnoxiously bright neon case is exposed to the world.
“What do you mean ‘you don’t know if you like it’?” Tim questions, looking up at the redhead from his laptop screen. Not quite sure what ‘it’ was.
Bart gestures, in a way that Tim takes to mean a vague ‘this’.
“I don’t know if I like being Kid Flash,” he elaborates. The speedster shrugs and finally meets the vigilante’s eyes. “I never really wanted to be Kid Flash,” he says.
“Impulse was mine , I made it from scratch,” The ‘because I had to’ goes unsaid but heard all the same. “I am — was able to be me when I went out in that uniform, but when I go out as Kid Flash it’s different. People expect KF to act and handle things and be a certain way,” Bart rambles. “Every time I put that suit on, I feel like I have to pretend to be someone else,” he says, quieter.
Tim opens his mouth and goes to refute that. But then he stops. Pauses. Reconsiders.
Bart keeps talking.
Tim feels that. He feels that on a very deep level. Especially the pretender bit. Because it’s the same for him, isn’t it? And it always has been, even now. All of his vigilante personas have been someone else’s before they were his.
But unlike Bart, he’s never had the luxury of having the experience of knowing what working under his own persona feels like. Because he’s never had one that didn’t belong to someone else first.
Well, okay, that’s a lie.
He’s had Drake. That had been his and only his. But it hadn’t been a proper hero persona. He had only worn it for a month and a half, tops. He’d worn Robin for more than three years and Red Robin for close to two now. Drake was born out of necessity, not because he had desired it to. It hadn’t existed much more than just a moniker, the uniform had been thrown together quickly (if he had the time and was able to put more effort into the uniform’s design — he wouldn’t choose that much brown again). Who is he, in the hero world, if he’s not Robin or Red Robin or Drake? Who is he, as a hero, when he isn’t being defined by someone else?
Oh —
Tim slumps forward, knocking his laptop off of his legs so that it falls safely onto the sofa cushions. He rests his elbows where it had been and buries his face in his hands.
“There was a kind of…freedom as Impulse that I can never have as Kid Flash—” Bart says. “Tim? Tim, you good?” he asks, noticing much slower than he should have that the other had stopped working on his report.
The third Robin doesn’t seem to hear him at all.
“Yeah,” he says into his hands after a long while. “No — maybe? I don’t know. But I think I’ve worked out what the effect of that pollen is,” Tim tells him. “You know, the only identity I’ve ever had was Drake . That one existed because I wasn’t able to be Red Robin nor Robin, and I couldn’t just go traipsing across the multiverse as plain Tim Drake ,” he says. “Even Red Robin was—“
“—Tim, the pollen,” Bart interrupts him. “What does it do?” he asks.
“Oh. Right, it’s a truth serum, or a diluted version, at least,” he says. “And one designed to have a delayed effect or be triggered by something like strong emotion, that’s why we didn’t feel anything until now,”
“Like when I mentioned not liking being Kid Flash?”
“Yeah, exactly. Everything you said after that, about how Impulse was yours and how putting the Kid Flash uniform on felt like being an imposter, is true, isn’t it?” Tim questions. “No truth serum can make you say anything that isn’t true or make you feel anything you don’t already feel,” he explains.
“So without the pollen, I wouldn’t have said all of that?” Bart says, looking away. “Yeah, that’s right actually,” he adds, a moment later. “But we both got hit with it at the same time, so why didn’t it affect you until just now?” he asks, looking back sharply.
“No, it did. I just didn’t say any of it,”
“So, what do we do? Just wait for it to wear off? Or…”
“‘Wait for it to wear off’ is our best option right now, it doesn’t seem to have any other side effects,” Tim agrees. “But we also don’t know what would happen if we sleep so we shouldn’t sleep, not until we’re sure it’s gone — so not for the next twelve hours,”
Well, that wasn’t great. Given that Tim is supposed to be at a Stats class at eight am. Less than six and a half hours from now. And he’s already been up for over twenty-four. He had been planning on sleeping tonight! This pollen situation has screwed up his entire schedule for the next week, if not the next month!
They wait. Tim finishes up his report and saves it in the folder dedicated to the reports on Rogue attacks and/or Rogue escapes from Arkham.
But waiting does nothing to combat the feelings enhanced and voiced by the pollen, and so in the next twelve hours, they end up talking more. And more.
And then Tim makes a big decision. A decision to leave Red Robin behind. For good this time. And to make and use his own persona.
But moving on from Robin or Red Robin, who would he be?
“Cardinal!” Bart suggests, eyes lighting up. “You know, to keep with the bird theme and it’s red, so you don’t make another terrible fashion choice like making your whole uniform brown ,”
Tim cringes. Yeah, that was a bad choice. But Bart’s just given him a very good suggestion…
The next night, Red Robin is seen going into a condemned apartment building to disable a bomb planted inside and doesn’t come out of the wreckage. Less than a week after that, Cardinal makes his debut on the Gotham streets. All crimson with black highlights and domino mask, and not a speck of gold to be seen anywhere.