Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

—-

Bruce is an asshole.

This is something that’s crossed Tim’s mind countless times afterhe became comfortable with his place in the man’s life and nightlife, and even once or twice before he was comfortable wearing the Robin suit. It’s really nothing he didn’t know, even on a singularly fundamental level, but sometimes it hits him like a brick to the face, that Bruce is in fact a complete asshole.

Case in point; on Tim’s sixteenth birthday, Bruce’s ‘gift’ was to move him up a rank in training by learning to ‘question everything’. Questioning everything seemed to be code for ‘realising that everyone he knew and trusted could become the next threat to the city’ and ‘trust no one.’ Then he had the gall to act surprised when Tim threw his cape in his face in outrage.

Of course, the thing about that particular time was that the only ones who had any knowledge about his little ‘rite of passage’ were himself, Batman, Alfred and Steph. Oracle probably knew, too—in the omniscient way she usually knew things, and Steph might’ve—

This point is, through whatever frustrating thing Bruce pushed him through, his training; his mistakes were kept, to a degree, private.

The incident with Harkness was the lead up to a lot of bad choices on his part, but he’d made the right call. It was a scant two months since that incident, and Bruce—well. Bruce had yet to talk to him about it with words, rather than glares and barked orders.

He was getting a lot more of those barked orders lately. Though, honestly, everyone was.

Two weeks ago, there had been a number of breaches in the security systems in Blackgate Prison, nothing dramatic or noteworthy. Then, lights and alarms bells started going off at the Asylum as well. No one from the network of vigilantes in Gotham was quick enough to quell the sudden breakout, and that had been eating away at all of them. Oracle had just enough time to warn them before every criminal housed at Blackgate started rioting and tearing the place apart. The Asylum had a whole side-wall blown down. Blackgate had swarms of criminals clamouring together to run, and disappearing into the smog that was Gotham.

Every major criminal from Batman’s Rogue’s Gallery were currently skipping about the streets of Gotham and paving the roads with their own unique brand of fire and brimstone.

Bruce had a kind of ‘safety net’, should something like this happen. There were a set number of villains assigned to each of his wards, and anyone else willing to lend a hand.

Steph had called it ‘Supervillain Bingo’.

Due to these circumstances, Tim’s painstakingly precise planning for his Hit List was null and void momentarily. Over half of the lesser criminals were safely behind bars, meaning they hadn’t had to worry about Condiment King or Tweedledee and Tweedledum, but most of Gotham’s elite rogues were still missing in action, preparing to cause havoc.

Damian had chosen Zsasz for himself, much to Bruce and Dick’s chagrin, and Joker and Two-Face were out-of-bounds to anyone but Batman.

But back to why Bruce is an asshole.

Mostly, Bruce not-talking to him hasn’t been a problem. He’s pretty used to being not-talked to, because Bruce mostly likes to talk in other ways. ‘Glaring-at-you-from-afar’ ways. Or just plain ‘glaring-at-you’…ways.

Or maybe it was just different for Robins, and, by extension, former-Robins.

Like now, addressing all those ‘privileged’ enough to know the location of the Batcave who were currently in Gotham, and those who were allies of the Bat not ensconced within the cave via Oracle’s mainframe and the various screens on the Batcomputer, Bruce is all business, even through his frustration is so palpable that even Dick’s taken a backseat in the order of things, because Dick values his life, thank you very much.

Rather offhandedly, and for all his current allies to hear, Batman announces that Red Robin must stay away from Captain Boomerang.

The second the words are uttered, Tim feels his jaw clench and tries not to make an obvious show of it. He feels Dick tense imperceptibly beside him, and catches a glimpse of Steph glancing at him uncertainly. She hadn’t known about—that. Damian, of course, doesn’t do anything but radiate smugness.

So, Bruce is an asshole, and Tim really hopes it’s not just his paranoia talking, and that Bruce had, in fact publicly told him off (at least, what was considered publicly by Bat-standards) and—

He hadn’t said a word about Zsasz to Damian, and hadn’t the brat sliced him open once?

After the meeting concludes, and the monitors are off, the tension doesn’t fade. Tim feels eyes on him, blatant and periphery.

Tim counts down from ten as he vaults over the edge of the raised platform they’re seated at. Perhaps unnecessarily showy, but hey, fuck Bruce.

As he mounts his ducati, he hears Dick. “Can’t you just give him a break, Bruce? He made the right call-“

“No, he’s right, Dick,” Tim cuts him off. He squashes down the bone-deep urge to just apologise because—he did the right thing. He hates that he has to keep reminding himself of that. His smile feels sharp and his words are bitter. “I might kill him or something, after all.”

He revs up the bike to smother the shocked silence of the cave, and speeds off without another word.

It doesn’t make him feel better.

—-

Tim thinks he’s far too used to the bluish glow and faint humming of the computers he keeps in his base below. Of course, until his knuckles jut out from his skin and, his skin is tinged a permanent sort of grey, he isn’t going to admit that. Nor will he admit that someone could successfully sneak up on him when he’s working.

Of course, that hasn’t happened yet.

Nor will it, as long as he can feel that eerie stillness in the shadows that usually indicates another of their brood. Tim narrows his eyes. “Dick, if that’s you, I swear to god-”

“Not-”

He tosses a batarang in the general direction of where he heard the voice. The quiet, feminine, not-Dick…voice.

It clangs against a wall.

 “…Dick.” the voice says from behind him. He swerves, ready to retract his staff, because that voice is familiar and one that Tim associates with martial arts, killing, teaching, his bo-staff-

She wore the bat. It wasn’t Lady Shiva.

The sound of tabi sliding along the floor is more of a courtesy than an accident. She’d…played the same trick he had on her in Hong Kong. “Cass? what-”

“So have you gotten slower, have I gotten faster,” she smiles a little. “Or did I throw my voice?”

Tim blinks, mentally berating himself because, regardless of how eerily similar they were Cass was not Shiva. He lets out a relieved breath and retracts his bo. He’d forgotten what it was like, since lately, not a lot of people were able to sneak up on him, intentionally or not. He tucks the staff away, and pulls his cowl away from his face.

“What are you doing here?” he asks.

“Scaring you?” Cass sounds amused. And then he remembers that Cass can see his issues like they were tangible, even though she’s never said anything, to his- his something. He isn’t sure if the weird flush down his front is relief or dread.

She taps her foot. Once. Tim knows that gesture. He spent most of the nights he worked with Batgirl memorising that particular gesture. She used it for various reasons, in plenty of different contexts. That minute foot-tap also has a Cass-specific meaning. ‘Go on.’

“It’s good to see you.” He smiles. Her hair’s gotten long since he’d last seen her. If she lets it loose, it’ll fall into her face and impair her vision. “But I thought you weren’t coming back ‘til next month?”

She stills, and it’s a particularly brief kind of still that means—he isn’t certain. “I know. I lost Cricket.”

Tim’s hand hovers over his console before he realises it, and he pulls up the files he’s started on the Cricket of Hong Kong. There isn’t a lot beyond the obvious. The computer hums and Cass stares— considers—then clips off her mask. It’s made of a different material from the Robin masks, not one that peels. Not one that gets tucked away easily either. “I had a tracker on him for a while. I got close, but—it—”

Cass’ databanks come up, multidimensional maps of the areas where the Cricket was last seen and—

“He disappeared near your billboard.” Cass says, leaning against the seat in front of his console. “No trace of him. Not a thing.”

The computer keys clack almost soundlessly beneath his fingers, safe, even if this entire situation—isn’t.

The red line leads from building to building. It stops dead behind the billboard with Tim Wayne’s face plastered upon it. Tim bites his lip. He pulls up any and all camera feeds surrounding the place. He may have not been much help to Batman at the moment, but he could help Cass.

“There’s no way to enter the building from the roof.” Cass says. “This was three months ago.”

“Any patterns?”

“None. Couldn’t—Couldn’t figure out how he worked.” She hisses ‘he’ like she means ‘it’. “I tried to contact you. Batman picked up.” And she says ‘Batman’ like she means ‘Bruce’. “Said to give him all the information. That you were—busy. That you would get back to me.”

Tim’s laugh sounds bitter and just awful to his own ears. “I’ll fucking bet—sorry.” He adds. “I didn’t mean- we haven’t been on the best terms lately.”

“I know what you meant.”

Tim pointedly doesn’t look at Cass. The lull in the conversation is brief.

“Tell me what happened.” No inflection in her voice to give her away, though Tim is fairly certain if he turned around and looked, he wouldn’t be able to read her. Even without her (cowl) mask.

The line of tension in his back has given him away, and really there’s no point in lying when Cass asks him something direct.

“I nearly killed Captain Boomerang.”

Cass pauses a beat. Tim isn’t certain it’s a good thing. “But you didn’t. You…almost did?” That sounds like a question. Fabric shifts and Cass touches the back of his arm. Briefly. “You wanted to. But you didn’t.”

Tim has never been good with handling directness. Curving the conversation to suit him was something that came naturally. He was used to dictating things on his terms, and it even took Bruce a while to realise it was happening when he got started. Dick has yet to realise this happens. Steph told him he was just diplomatic.

Cass…probably sees it. She couldn’t stop it for a while before, but now that she has words to spare-

He sighs. “No. I didn’t.” He takes a breath. “So, we have nothing on Cricket’s whereabouts for the last three months?”

She nods curtly, stepping back. “Not a thing. I spent the last three months tying up loose ends.”

“Does Bruce know you’re back?”

When Cass says nothing, Tim turns around to look at her. She stares at him in what could be apprehension. “He…hasn’t given me a…scheduled patrol.”

Meaning he probably knew, but, for whatever reason, hadn’t made it a point to include her in his meeting earlier. “Oracle patched me through to the…” she hisses in a foreign tongue, then shakes her head. “Meeting. I know the situation.” ‘Oracle’. Not Babs. She looks at him, arching an eyebrow expectantly. Almost playfully.

He smiles. “Batgirl and Robin?”

Cass grins back. “Gotham’s dynamic duo.”

—

The thing about leather is that it’s terrible to be wearing it during a fire. The thing about vigilantism is that, regardless of what your uniform consists of, when innocents are involved you dive straight into the fire.

Sometimes- mostly literally.

The fire department were already on their way, but the smoke wasn’t exactly billowing out. According to a very distraught man in the crowds, a pregnant woman hadn’t been accounted for. Crashing in through the windows probably was safer than entering in from the roof, however.

Blackbat catches something in her sights, signals for him to wait here and darted through the smoke.

It may have been Firebug. He hadn’t been high on anyone hit list, but he had been among the many who had escaped from Blackgate. Blackbat emerges from the smoke, a mask held firm over a stumbling, heavily-pregnant woman. Her eyes are red with smoke-induced tears as Blackbat half-carries, half-drags her to the windows. She—struggles. Cries out.

She reaches into the smoke, flailing her arms, then pointing. Blackbat looks to him. There’s someone left in the building. Tim signals go on. She hesitates, but shoots.

Tim’s lenses let him see in the smoke to an extent, but when it’s this thick-

Flapping his cape will do no good. If anything, the flames rapidly spreading up the sides of the stairwell may finding the flapping endearing at attempt to grab hold of the garb, and that was certainly something he was going to avoid.

The fire is undoubtedly rising, and if Tim doesn’t find whoever still stuck here soon—

There.

Movement in the fog, a flicker of something that isn’t fire.

Tim pulls out a spare mask he keeps on him—

A bed. The covers shift. Tim wrenches them up and away.

It’s a child. A child no older than five or maybe six. A child who’d been so afraid of the fire and the confusion that she had crawled back under the covers. Tim—hears a crash and the girl wails.

He presses the masks to her face and picks her up. Her cheeks are stained with tears. Another crash. Some crackling. He needs to get out of here before the building collapses.

The window Cass had escaped from was currently a furnace going supernova, but there wasn’t another option really.

Tim sets the girl on the floor, tugs off his cape and—pauses. The girl is shaking, holding the too-big mask to her face. He takes his own mask off of his mouth and smiles. He knows that, with the cowl on, his smile is more disturbing than helpful. “I need you to hold on to me, understand?”

She—nods, still trembling. He wraps her in his cape and launches the grapple. He briefly feels the familiar sensation of flames licking his sides and promises himself for the millionth time to avoid any and all fire-related crime scenes.

—

In the end, the girl doesn’t give up his cape. Firebug had been apprehended within the hour. The woman who was pregnant had been looking after the little girl while her parents were away. No one had died. No one had even been seriously injured.

Tim allows himself a breath of relief. Comparatively, this was a great start to the night. From where she standing, Blackbat can probably feel the energy humming off of him.

“It’s gotten—more,” She hisses in- Cantonese?-, looking for her words. “Exciting…is not the word.”

Tim smiles. “I get you. Come on, I need a new cape. The closest bunker here is about five minutes away.”

Blackbat hums. Sirens start whining from nearby. They swing.

—

“Who was on your list before?” Cass asks. She’s examining the case he keeps for his old costume. The one that shed the green and the life that came with the green. She’d seen it before, just…not while she was in her right mind. He wonders how well she remembers that, then stops wondering, because Cass would turn any second and see right through him.

He readjusts his cowl and tugs his cape back on around his shoulders. “Doesn’t just monitoring tonight. There are these two cops- ex-cops I’m trying to find. Their release was, unfortunately, pending. I want to at least get them locked up and rattle the cage a little. There isn’t much to tell where they’ve gone.”

There is Lynx and the Dragons to deal with. On top of the smaller gangs that seem to have been forged between inmates in prison shackles, and the established Rogue’s Gallery in Gotham-

“Where are we starting?”

That implies intent. Cass intends to join Tim for the duration. He knows his body speaks volumes in her eyes, but he can’t help but need to reaffirm.

“Are you sure you want to work with me?”

“You want to know why I came to you.” Cass clarifies for him.

“As opposed to Steph, or Dick, or even Bruce, yes.”

Cass casts an eye over the messy workbench that Tim still hasn’t gotten around to cleaning, to the irritatingly small monitor on what was supposed to be a temporary console, to the red Robin suit he keeps in a case. He’d moved it after he abandoned the first hideout Batman discovered. “How did you feel when Damian became Robin?”

Tim tenses and swallows back the stale jealousy. He’d spent enough time wrestling with his misplaced feelings of betrayal in the past year, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there, coiling and trashing inside his heart and his head. Thank God Cass isn’t looking at him. “Mostly terrible. But, in my defence, he did try to kill me.”

Cass makes an amused sound. “Funny. And now?”

Tim purses his lips. No one had really asked him how he felt. But Cass isn’t asking that either. “Bitter. I wouldn’t change anything though.”

Cass looks back at him, a rueful sort of smile on her face. “Bitter.” She says. “I think that’s what I’m feeling.”

Oh. Oh. Tim didn’t really know what kind of agreement she and Bruce had come to in regards to Steph becoming Batgirl. So, it’s…jealousy? Cass is jealous of Steph?

His attention is diverted to Cass tapping her nails on the flat of the console. “Not jealous.” She scowls a little. “Just—how did you feel when Steph was Robin?”

“Happy.” Tim pauses. “Proud, I think. But also resentful.”

“Unlike with Damian.”

“Hey, he wasn’t my friend before he-”

“Exactly,” Cass cuts him off with a vague hand gesture. She sighs, leans her arm against the console and smiles. “She was my friend before she was my-“ more annoyed muttering. “My successor. So happy, but also resentful.”

Tim wants to say something like ‘you’re family’, and ‘Steph misses you’ and ‘you’ll always have a place here’. But it’s nothing he hasn’t said before. He settles for a light squeeze on her shoulder, one that Bruce—

She presses her hand on top of his. “I know.” She says. “That’s why I came to you.”

“Cass, I-”

“You have messages.” Cass pats the console.

So he had. From Lonnie, Bard, Ives and Officer Harper. Wonderful. He files Ives’ e-mail away for later before attending to the rest.

He checks out Bard’s first, something small on Cavallo and Wise’s whereabouts and last known locations and—mostly the tidbits he picked up were useless. But it had taken far too long to take them down. Tim had planned everything to a T. It was beyond frustrating when-

They were last seen wandering into the abandoned parts of Amusement Mile. The place had already been thoroughly combed over by both Batmans for potential threats. No signs of the Joker or his henchmen. No sign of anything.

Still, no matter how bad the terms were between him and Bruce, there was no way he’d recklessly slide headfirst into the Joker’s lair on a bad bet. Especially if it’s for Cavallo and Wise.

Harper is next. Her message is significantly more promising, and it doesn’t take long before Tim is smirking a little.

Red,

Upturned truck. Supposedly explosives, no sign of them. Driver’s dead.

Got here first, off-radio. Move fast.

-Harper

Officer Jamie Harper has been Tim’s ally since he was Robin, and held him in some sort of confidence throughout; even after the regretful incident with Anarky and his siblings. One thing he likes about Harper is that she gets when he needs to blow off steam. He wonders if every member of the GCPD that associates themselves with a bat, a bird or any vigilante working for or with Batman can tell when said vigilante is being—difficult.

Lastly, he checks Lonnie, while tugging his spare cape around his shoulders. Mostly just what’s being maintained on the Unternet, and nothing new on Anarky’s whereabouts.

He’s not far from Harper’s location. He types quickly.

ETA:15.

He glances at Cass, who’s staring at his glass case with—consideration? Intent?

—

“Cass-” Tim tosses her a helmet and gets his own on. “Officer Harper says the truck toppled off the mountain and into the park. If we hurry we can…uh, Cass?”

Blackbat stares at the helmet in her hands and lick her lips. “I can’t-I don’t know how to, uh-“

“It’s okay.” Tim cuts her off. “I only have my Duc here, anyway. I left my car at the cave, and we really can’t afford to waste time.” God forbid Batman gets there first.

Maybe it’s because Cass could snap every bone in his body without even trying, but it’s oddly thrilling that there is something he could do that she couldn’t. Or couldn’t yet.

He tries not to broadcast his…smugness too much, but her helmet’s already on, and whatever expression she has on underneath, he can’t see. She slides onto the duc behind him.

—

Somehow he’s the first vigilante to arrive at such a location, which is surprising because Tim could clearly see the damage from two kilometres away. The truck had skid and fallen, flattening and crushing many trees in the process.

The police had already set up a perimeter around the area before they’d gotten there. At most, it must have been twenty minutes.

Harper is waiting by the yellow tapes, and indicates for the others to clear the way for them.

Cass gets off of the bike as soon they stop, and for a minute, Tim fears she’s going to stumble. She pointedly doesn’t. She does look a little relieved to be on solid ground though.

“Just in time.” Harper says. “Heard from the Commissioner that the Bat was on his way.”

Red Robin nods. He jerks his head in Cass’ direction. “This is Blackbat.”

Harper glowers faintly, how she usually does when something seems suspicious to her. “Is she new?”

“Not even remotely.”

“We’re partners,” Blackbat says, paying absolutely no mind to the way the policewoman’s glare hardens. There’s a brief silence where Red Robin is certain that he will need to break before it leads to a bigger sudden rift. He’s still rebuilding bridges from when he left for a year. “Fill us in?” Cass asks, and makes it a request rather than an order.

The chill in the air has less to do with the crime scene and the police lines than the open suspicion with which Harper eyes Blackbat. It settles, then becomes another piece of the background; something Tim is aware of at only a very requisite level.

There’s blood around the body, but the spatters on the ground are the results of the impact. Tim glances up to where the break in the trees are, calculates the trajectory of the fallen vehicle and how soon the driver would have had to been struggling with the car door before it gave, and spares another regretful millisecond to picture what his face might have looked when he realised he was too late, and that the ground was coming faster than he anticipated- then circles around the chalk-traced body to where Blackbat examines the face.

And the unnaturally wide grin, bone-white skin and bloodshot eyes. Tim had assumed the blood had pooled away from the skin, leading to the paleness in flesh. He’d assumed the police had arrived a half-hour before they’d gotten there.

Apparently Harper wasn’t kidding when she’d said she’d got here first.

Blackbat says, rising to his height. When she turns her face and sighs, Tim can feel her breath on his skin. “What do you think?”

She glances behind Tim. “Unlucky.” She says. “I’ll check the truck.”

Tim nods. “I’ll take the roads up top.”

She grips his elbow before he can turn completely. “I’m sure I don’t have to tell you to be careful?” she doesn’t bother keeping her voice down. Tim hesitates, glances at Harper arching a brow at the display, then nods.

It’s been a while since someone’s been concerned for him.

—

When he reaches the road above the scene of destruction below them, the few cops waiting above pretend to get back to work. He’s never seen them before, they’re new. The area’s completely clean, save for the tire tracks and broken barriers.

“Who’s in charge?” he asks.

The three flounder a little. Red Robin cuts them off with a sharp gesture. “Did you find anything?”

“Nothing but the tire-marks on the ground.” One says.

“How far have you covered?”

“Just the vicinity.”

“Approximately.”

They hesitate, shuffling on their feet a little. “Just about ten metres.” One supplies.

“Not enough.” He gets back on his bike. “At least another half a mile.”

He knows they won’t heed his words. Not until they realise just how much faith the police department actually have in their vigilantes. There was a sign amongst the trees, one welcoming the unfortunate to Gotham. It’s littered with trash and cans and syringes.

It wouldn’t hurt to check it out after scoping the area briefly.

—

As it turns out, his hunch is right on the money. A single gas canister, one still sticky with clear substance, lies among the syringes and cracked bottles. Odd, considering the Joker’s usual brand of noxious gas is tinged green in colour. A new formula?

He seals the canister meticulously in a bag. Harper should know about this. The other cops can scoop through the garbage. They’ll learn.

—

Blackbat is waiting with Harper when he gets back. Harper doesn’t seem anymore at ease than when he left, and Blackbat doesn’t look any closer to cutting her a break. He watches her excuse herself and approach him.

“They were explosives.” She says. “The Driver didn’t know. In his schedule it said he was making a delivery cross-country. We found gunpowder. Evidence of C4. It was the Joker.”

“I think there might be a new chemical agent in his serum.” Red Robin says. Harper stares hard at them, obviously waiting. “I found a canister. I think it might have been odourless.”

“You’re going to give it to her?”

Red Robin glances from her to Harper. “I need her to trust me, Blackbat.” He says. “I owe her that much.”

Blackbat doesn’t sigh. “Ask if you can analyse it first, at least.”

Harper has had enough of being left out of the loop, it seems. He calls out, stalking forward towards them. “Find anything?”

“The three officers you have surveying above?”

“Rookies. They’re new. They just came in from-”

“They need work.” Red Robin takes out the sealed bag. “I found this. I’m taking it to run tests.”

Harper exhales, placing her hands on her hips. “That’s all we have to work with?”

“The Joker is mostly Batman’s jurisdiction, Officer. We have protocols to follow.” Even if Batman is currently being an ass-

Harper doesn’t look happy. She rubs her forehead, then presses her lips together in a line. “Okay.” She says, “I trust you.” She pointedly doesn’t look at Blackbat.

—

Once they’re within city limits, Tim slows down to a reasonable (by bat standards) speed, and Cass is able to release her grip a little. She doesn’t like the bike. He stops by a bunker near the Solomon Wayne Courthouse, and stashes the bike there. Cass leans against an available wall while Tim takes a sample from the canister and runs it through the computer systems. Once Cass has her legs back, she transfers to the bunk in the corner of the room.

Tim peels back his cowl and tries a smile. “So you and Harper got along well.”

Cass scoffs. “She’s hostile.”

“You didn’t make it any easier for her, Cass. In the public eye, the second Batgirl died.” The Batgirl they saw after that—the angry, erratic Batgirl that gave her costume to Steph-was a seldom-talked about urban legend. A ghost. Barely there to warn them, to comfort-

Cass slouches, pressing her palm against her cheek, then lifts her head in a smirk. “The only reason your Officer Harper doesn’t like me is-”

They both jerk their heads at the sound of steps in the corner. Tim hopes it’s Dick, but he doesn’t have that kind of luck.

Bruce pauses in the doorway, and Tim concentrates on the loading screen on the slightly cracked monitor. It wasn’t that long ago this place had been sealed off, as it had been found by group of teenagers, who accidently set off intruder alarms and tried to break their way out. It had been resurrected after the breakouts, with additional security. It’s the only one in the area, and completely necessary, for the time bring.

Tim hears the cowl come off. “Cassandra.”

He hears Cass bound up to him, and doesn’t watch their reunion.

“I thought you’d be with Batgirl?” Right. Because who’d actually want to patrol with Tim?

The second that thought resurfaces, Tim shoves it back down. It would be problematic if Cass mistook his petty anger as some sort of fierce, boiling rage, and—it wasn’t. That.

Not really.

“We have projects to finish.” She says, and, by the way her voice echoes, he knows she facing him, or at least turning her head. “And I thought it might be best to ease into Gotham.”

That’s weird. Cass never needed easing. Unless—oh. Gotham needed to be eased into Blackbat’s care. Cass didn’t have connections yet. Tim isn’t sure exactly how strained her relationship is with Barbara at the moment. He isn’t sure what happened to begin with, what prompted Cass to choose Tim instead-

Bruce hums, and the pause that follows is unsettling. He’s painfully aware of how petulant it looks to stare blankly at the keyboard when your mentor is clearly expecting words from you. Because the Mission-

“Do you have something for me, Tim?”

…comes first. Right. “Yeah, actually.” Bruce hovers closer, body still inclined towards Cass. Tim spares him a glance before stepping aside from the console. “The truck that toppled over near the city limits was looted by the Joker. There’s an unknown agent in his serum that causes the gas to be odourless, possibly colourless and virtually undetectable. I’m running tests to make sure there isn’t anything else.”

Bruce’s grunt is all Batman, and the silence stifles the room. The bar is loaded at eighty-eight percent, when Tim sucks in a deep breath and moves to leave.

“Tim-”

“It’s your case, Batman.” He calls out before he shuts the doors behind him.

He’s halfway about to straddle his duc again when Blackbat calls out to him. He steps off his bike and feels his face heat. He doesn’t bother hiding his embarrassed smile; she’s already seen it. “Sorry, Cass.” He says softly.

You would think that, with a mask instead of her full-face cowl, Cass’ lips might twitch at the corners, or her nostrils might flare, or she might tighten her jaw, or at least in some indicate—something Tim could react on.

But the cowl certainly wasn’t there because Cass couldn’t hold a poker-face. “What have you planned for the night?”

“Standard patrol. This is the ‘calm before the storm’, I suspect.” Tim says. The sky is a dark blue, not dark enough to be night by Gotham standards. But, hey, some thugs like to start early. He offers an apologetic smile. “Patrol with me?”

“Leave the bike?” Cass says quietly. “We can swing.”

It wasn’t like he needed the bike to get home or even around the city for that matter. And the bunker was secure enough. “Sure, BB.”

Cass cracks a smile.

—

The sun’s starting to rise, and, somehow, in addition to Red Robin’s standard patrol, they’ve covered over a third of the city. Over the comlinks, they’ve been hearing cheers from Batgirl over on the other side of the city, and laughter from the birds, and the Batman Tim isn’t currently not-talking to. Blackbat graciously takes all the welcome-backs and her smile gets wider and wider as the night goes on. The good humour is contagious. Everyone’s spirits seem lifted with the return of one of Gotham’s finest. Tim feels better than he has in a while.

They’re in sync when they move. Cass can probably do that with everyone, but Tim’s been solo for- for a damn long time.

As their legs dangle off the roof of the Ace Chemicals building, Red Robin realises they haven’t taken a break all night, and while he splits an energy bar with her, he also realises how tired he actually is. And how soon the sun rises in June. He remembers a time where, despite his protests, Dick had ordered a pizza while on patrol. He was Nightwing then.

He stretches his back and stands. “Call it a night, BB?”

She rubs the crumbs off her hands and stands to join him. “Not yet.” She says.

Red Robin has just enough time to be wary as she slowly starts to circle him before she shoves his side and calls, “Tag!”

—

Tim’s breathless by the time they reach home on Park Row. Tag had gone on for another hour after sunrise, and had only stopped when Bruce’s voice had broken through the coms, imploring them to get off the streets ‘before they woke all of Gotham up’. Blackbat had a victorious kind of aura about her when Red Robin couldn’t quite suppress his smile when Bruce retired the coms for the night, grumbling something about ‘ridiculous’ this and ‘six in the morning’ that.

He peels off his cowl and drapes his cape on one of the available chairs in the dining room. Cass has already taken off her boots, gloves and cape, and left them lying haphazard on the floor. Her mask is set on the table, and she’s rummaging through Tim’s cupboards.

She makes a face when he reveals he has no tea, and the circles under her eyes are a tell-tale sign of fatigue. She does an odd waving gesture when Tim gears up to ask if she’s okay.

“Tired, same as you,” she says. “Can I stay the night?”

“I figured that was a given, Cass.” Tim smiles, then pulls up his sleeve to flick the switch at the bottom of his fish tank. “I just need to check my messages.”

“I’ll come.”

Tim doesn’t protest, he’s too tired to. Plus, Cass is the only one who’s seen his base.

—

He’s alarmed when his screen blares yellow with two warning alerts, and then an SOS. He’d just checked up on Prudence. She was in Brazil about a week ago.

These SOS’s were coming from the Middle East.

“Shit.” Tim mutters under his breath, then berates himself for cursing. Pru’s tracer is gone, virtually wiped off the surface of the world. She had checked in about twenty minutes after that first warning.

She left a voicemail.

“Council of Spiders?” Cass asks.

“Let’s find out.” He presses play, waits for the waves to appear on screen and listens.

It’s mostly static. Garbled words. Gunshots. Something that sounds like Pru hissing ‘fuck’ over and over again. Then a completely unambiguous ‘help me’, and another sound that makes Cass shoot forward.

“Play that last part again.” She urges.

It feels like his fingers aren’t hitting the keys fast enough. He separates the last third of the audio, from Prudence’s plea for help onwards. The sound, after he separates and shaves off the static, is a chirp.

“Cricket.” Cass hisses.

—

The first thing Tim notices when he wakes up, he’s naked.

Like, completely stark-naked. His uniform is nowhere to be found, and neither is his bo, his belt, or any means of communication with the cave or anyone in Gotham. The second thing he notes is that he’s in a bed. A comfortable one, even.

Tim pulls himself up. The room has stone walls, and it’s daytime. There are no curtains, or glass, just a square hole that serves as a window. Below him and all around him, he sees trees and vines. There’s a courtyard sprawled right in front of him. Where the hell is he?

He tries to remember—

Cass insisted on joining him when he commandeered a batplane to answer Pru’s SOS. It had taken them a few fours to get there, and by the time they’d arrived—

They hadn’t seen anything but the dusty landscape. They stopped the plane off somewhere secluded and far-removed, and had continued on foot.

The signal had led them straight to the cave that Tim had found the batsymbol in, carved into the wall. He wondered if it had been a set-up—and then there was a sound, an echo.

A chirp.

That was the last thing he saw before blacking out.

This didn’t look anything like Iraq. At least, not the area he and Cass had landed in. Cass—

Where did—

He sees figures outside the makeshift window, dark ones in the courtyard. Ninja? What are ninja doing-

And that spot of green is most certainly Ra’s al Ghul. Great. He’d suspected Prudence was a double-agent, but she seemed intent on finding the cult that killed her teammates. Everything else was unnecessary for the time being.

He watches the figure in green turn and stare unabashedly at him.

There was a forty foot drop to the ground below him. No way he could make it down there without his grapnel and line. When he looks back up, another figure has sashayed into the clearing. Slighter than Ra’s, dressed in red. Talia?

No. Tim doubts the Demon’s estranged daughter would willingly approach her father at this point. Besides, she didn’t move like a wraith, or a deadly python. That was Shiva.

What the hell is Shiva doing in Iraq? Didn’t she mastermind the escapes and break-ins that plagued Gotham for the past few weeks? Was she working for Ra’s?

Questions can wait. Right now, he has to get away from two deadly fighters, both with reason and means to kill him. As he backs away from the window, he bumps into something solid.

A chair? That—that hadn’t been there before.

A chair draped in clothes—and Tim was suddenly very aware of his own nakedness and how vulnerable that left him. He’s in a league camp, by the looks of it—one he didn’t know about before. He isn’t sure how far he’ll have to run to escape—

How far the damn league-assassin-designed tabi will get him—

There are ninja outside-

This isn’t going to be easy.

—

Tim’s limbs ache. He isn’t sure how long he’s been fighting-

It’s significantly harder without his bo.

There are spiders everywhere-

Mostly, he runs. These tabi are sturdy, he’ll give Ra’s that. That was a hit to the rib-

That was Tim’s fist crashing into that ninja’s jaw-

He has yet to run into Ra’s. He hopes he doesn’t run into Shiva-

It’s funny, he muses while striking for the kidney of some unfortunate assassin, he hasn’t had to rely on solely himself for so long-

Odd that they haven’t brought put their weapons yet.

He’d escaped out the garrison from the back, away from where the terrorist and the terror had congregated with their servants and allies-

Decidedly away from any major threats-

But he’s got a wonderful array of bruises all over him, and he’s lost track of how far he’s run, how many ninja he’s rendered unconscious and how long it’s been since he started. He can feel himself slipping, unable to keep up with fresh ninja shooting up from the grass. He’s taking on at least five at a time, then their numbers dwindle into fours, then threes.

Tim then has time to calculate. The strikes and performance of his attackers are slowing, meeting with his dropping standards. Their stances change. They have no weapons. They aren’t aiming for vitals anymore. They haven’t even drawn blood. They aren’t looking to kill him.

What does Ra’s want with him?

The assassins stop suddenly, drawing back into the hidden patches in the woods. Once he’s certain he there are no watchers in the dark, Tim’s legs give out from underneath him. Maybe Ra’s wants to kill him himself? Or weaken him enough so that killing him won’t be an effort? Or maybe this is some form of torture? Tim doesn’t have anything substantial to give anymore. He’s given all he had to this life.

As he spots something red in the overgrowth, he realises he may have just forfeited his life as well.

He draws up and only to backpedal when he sees Shiva’s sharp smile in his face.

“Hello again, little bird.” Her voice drips like honey, like poison.

Tim’s going to die here.

She makes a show of flicking and her wrists, raising her hand in a chop that Tim knows is deadly-

Tim feels a gust of air. The chop doesn’t land.

Cass, clad in full assassin gear, bows in front of him, meeting Shiva’s chop with an arm. She shoves her forwards and Tim scrambles up. Cass’ clothing has taken more hits that his has. No blood, no broken bones, but Cass doesn’t let injuries get in her way anyway—

“Red, split up.” She says, watching Shiva rise. “First one that escapes gets help.”

Tim knows when he’s out of his league.

He runs—

—

He’s tried to escape over four times now. Every time, he’s been knocked out, stripped of his clothes, and shoved back into his ‘room’.

He refuses to eat the food they leave him. He drinks the water sparingly. He’s convinced that, if he could just get his hands on his bo, he has a shot at getting free. Once or twice, he’s run into dead ends and almost been bitten by spiders—

He isn’t completely uncertain that a spider-bite might be an easier way to go, but well, Tim has always valued his physical life. If you’re dead, there really isn’t much you can do. Cass has escaped, or so he assumes. He hasn’t seen her or Shiva since—

He’s lost track of days. This is getting to be a habit, one he isn’t keen on keeping.

He lies in his bed today, still suffering from aches and bruises. Somehow, dull pains hurt worse than sharp ones. He knows that they’re not in Iraq anymore. He wonders how Cass escaped, if she isn’t searching for the batplane they left behind, and suddenly realises that their captors had switched countries.

Because those spiders—Wandering spiders- were Brazilian.

Though that revelation only spawned more questions—like was Ra’s working with the Council of Spiders, and if so, why would he attack his own assassins—and Tim needed to conserve his energy for the aid he hoped was coming. He’s getting really sick of looking out that damned hole in the wall.

He jolts up when someone approaches his bed.

The White Ghost, scowl ever-present, looms over him. “Before you attempt yet another futile escape,” he snarls. “The Master would like for you to join him for a meal.”

Oh, hell-

The second he leaves, Tim throws on his clothes. The blasted tabi still feel too comfortable on his feet. It takes him a moment to rise after he’s bent over to secure the shoes. If he doesn’t get some sort of nourishment soon, he’s going to collapse. As it is, he stumbles at first, but he can walk.

Once he crosses the threshold of his room, and into the hallways of the garrison, draped in red carpets, he realises all the ninja lined up against the walls in militarial stance have sharp, mostly blade-like weapons at their sides, Tim decides that sharp pains are a lot worse that dull ones.

He knows he can’t fight them off. He hasn’t seen inside the room the White Ghost is leading him to. He feels himself shake. He knows it’s from malnutrition, but the others don’t. He steels himself. He doesn’t want them to think he’s afraid.

At the risk of sounding petty, Tim was expecting a banquet table. Not something that looked like it could belong in a small apartment. The Demon’s Head was standing in front of a grand window, the only source of light in the room. There were books littering the shelves.

Tim hears the doors close behind him, and can’t help but think of mausoleums. He slams the breaks on his doubts. If Ra’s wanted him dead, he’d be dead. He could always jump out the window, he supposes. At least then, it would be the fall that kills him.

Ra’s turns. “Do sit, Detective.”

The seat is there and Tim is almost unconscious on his feet, but-

“Preferably before you collapse.”

Tim sits.

At least the silver platter and expensive wine fit in with the whole evil megalomaniac image. The knives are too dull to stab with. He could probably get him in the eye, only no, because his limbs move too slowly, and his mouth feels like wool. And the smell is both familiar and distracting.

He looks at Ra’s, who nods his head in the direction of the dish.

Tim lifts it, and it makes much more effort than it should.

Thai curry. Tim doesn’t even know what kind and his mouth is watering. He glares at it.

“I can assure you that it is not poisoned.” Ra’s says.

Tim is—really hungry. His stomach kindly makes certain that the evil demon bad guy who somehow doesn’t want to kill him knows it. There’s naan in a basket next to curry. The orange substance in the glass is lassi. If Tim’s going to die, he’s not dying on an empty stomach.

He tries to ignore how Ra’s intently watches him eat. It suddenly hits him that he really hasn’t eaten in days. Literally.

Tim wipes his face. He’s still weak. A side-effect of near starvation.

Ra’s hasn’t moved from his spot.

He hasn’t smirked either, though he doesn’t seemed angry. Irritated perhaps, like perhaps Tim was an unnecessary disturbance, only he isn’t looking at Tim anymore. He seems preoccupied. Tim wants to demand a thousand things at once. He doesn’t.

“What do you want?” Tim asks. “From me.”

Ra’s looks at him, brow dipped low. There is a pregnant pause, as it seems the Demon’s Head is searching for the right words. “I would like to extend to you an invitation.”

Tim pales. “There’s no way in hell-”

“Not to join my League, Detective,” He sneers. “Though you would be most welcome. I mean to give you training. Extensive training.”

“I don’t ne-“

“My men were laughing at you, Detective.” Ra’s says, descending from his place by the window. “You have very little without your weapons. You would not be alive had they not refrained from injuring you.”

Tim scowls.

“Your partner escaped. You did not. Your partner had League training. You did not.”

“Cass will be back.” Tim protests, rising from his seat. “You’re not going to win, Ra’s.”

He smirks. “Shiva is in pursuit. And even then, if the One Who Is All does manage to flag down assistance,” He arches a brow. “You have days. Perhaps weeks. Let me help you. Are you not tired of being the weakest of your brood?”

Tim is weak. He’s weary; he’s covered in bruises and stopped himself from eating. He shakes, but it’s still not fear. “And if I refuse?”

Ra’s pulls back, velvet cape almost gleaming in the sun. “You have days.” He repeats.

—

So far, the room is bare. The walls are grey, the floor is hard where there aren’t mats. Tim waits.

He wasn’t allowed to start training until he started eating regularly, and properly. Ra’s had servants watch over him as he ate. Tim hadn’t agreed explicitly to whatever training the Demon’s Head and his ninja had to offer, but he’d consented once he’d recognised the opportunity. Before, when he worked with Z, Owens and Pru, he had to keep turning down their offers to train him, show him a couple of things that were clearly deadly, no matter how much they tried to protest it—

It had been fun for a while. Like he had a team at his beck and call. Of course, reality had hit. They were ninja, they were the enemy. But he couldn’t help but wonder if these ninja had such a dynamic. They didn’t stay in each others’ presence for very long, never mind speak-

A door slides open, and a single ninja steps to the middle of the mats, in front of Tim. He is unarmed, and falls into deliberate stance. Tim blinks. Is this it? Is this the training he’s being subjected to? A single ninja, without weapons?

He doesn’t see the sharp jab for his side coming and almost sprawls. He gets a knee in the stomach once he hits the ground and barely manages to avoid a kick to his teeth.

This ninja isn’t going to hold back, and Tim has no weapon-

-

He’s managed to get a good few hits in, and they’ve come to a standstill. He is much worse for the wear than the ninja is. He’s spitting blood, and he’s fairly certain one of his ribs is dangerously close to puncturing a lung-

Mostly, he’s avoiding hits. It’s not working well, and he knows he isn’t going to last for much longer when the ninja delivers a swift kick to his chest and he struggles to breathe—

Then he hears it. A light sound, barely there against the fabric keeping his mouth hidden. That tiny whisper of amusement. The ninja was laughing at him—

Before Tim could think to stop himself, he’d flicked up his wrist and jabbed upwards, effectively smashing the ninja’s nose underneath his mask, then punched his stomach, resulting in a distressed grunt from the ninja, and let him collapse to the ground. He kicked him sharply in the stomach before realising the ninja was whimpering in pain and backing away in shock. Tim presses back against the wall, horrified that he’d lost his composure like that.

He’d heard his ribs crack—

He’d broken his nose—

Another door opens, and another pair lift the ninja up and drag him away. Tim doesn’t follow them, because he might have—

—

There’s a spring near his room, a hot spring that supplies him with a place to ease his bruised body, also because Tim absolutely refuses to go see whatever physician Ra’s had employed. He—hurts pretty damn badly. Worse than after the failed escape attempts. He strips off his clothes, and steps out of the infuriatingly comfortable tabi and sinks himself carefully into the water.

How could he have been so stupid? He’d let his anger get the better of him. He’d promised himself he wouldn’t-

He takes a cleansing breath, like he was taught. And tries to meditate.

“You are more focused when angered.” Ra’s’ voice is like a bucket of ice and Tim feels himself shiver, and hates himself for it.

“Are you satisfied?” He asks, not bothering to turn his head.

There’s movement, shuffling, then Ra’s sounds closer. “You will learn to channel that anger while you’re here, Timothy.”

“I don’t want your help.” Great. Now Tim sounds like he’s whining.

“If you channel your anger rather than keep it at bay with your meditation, you will be a better fighter. You have the potential to be deadly.”

Tim says nothing. More shuffling. Ra’s is kneeling, it seems, and he’s never-

He presses a hand to his shoulder. Pale grey, fragile-looking knuckles with a strength that is clearly otherworldly. “You know the techniques, Detective. Use them.”

—

Hours later, after he has soaked in enough water that his fingers are wrinkled, another masked face awaits Tim at his door. At first Tim thinks he’s someone Ra’s has sent to make sure he eats, and then almost recoils at the thought of eating because of how ruthlessly he’d taken out the other ninja, when he’d beckoned down the halls.

There was an infirmary that Tim hadn’t known about, attached to the garrison but separate from it. He’s led through a group of ninja, to a bedside-

He pales when he realised the man lying in the bed, mask still present, is the ninja he almost killed earlier. He stills, unsure of what to do or say, when the ninja—the man turns his head, as if just noticing Tim there. He sits up, and it must have really hurt—but ninja seem to ignore pain just as much as Cass does. He lifts a hand in Tim’s general directions, and then clenches his fist. Tim is completely thrown for a loop when the ninja lifts his thumb.

It’s like a damn breaking after that, the training grounds are hardly ever empty. Most of the ninja speak Arabic, and, while Tim can hold conversations, he keeps back, too wary to do anything but listen.

—

It’s like a test, and Tim can live with that. His escape attempts are fewer and further in between. There doesn’t seem to be a scrap of paper in the entirety of the garrison that he has access to. No instruments to make marks either. Tim can count in his head, but the days are slipping and blurring from his fingers. He feels helpless when he thinks of time and hopes Bruce can come soon.

There are still a variety of escape attempts he has yet to try, but the last three have been half-hearted to say the least.

The ‘sessions’ with the assassins is probably the only real highlight to the day, even though more often than not, he ends up having his ass handed to him. For the first few tries, maybe. He hasn’t been given a bo, or a weapon of any kind. He isn’t pliant, however.

Every time he feels his control slip, every time he can sense his angry and frustration start to eat away at him, he reverts back to a defensive stance. Of course, he knows there’s a problem when he hadn’t realised exactly when he’d taken an engaging one.

Sometimes his body is so battered and bruised that he can’t help just retreating to his room and lying perfectly still for an hour or so. To anyone observing, it might have seemed like deep meditation, but Tim hasn’t been able to meditate for the past year.  Someone does enter, however, and present him with food. Once or twice, they’ve beckoned him to join them in their quarters, to share a meal.  As if he was a sulking child, or a particularly wayward classmate.

And after being subjected to several bruises and laughter at his expense, Tim isn’t in any hurry to join them. Especially not after one of them chipped one of his teeth.

—

 In between the fighting, the soaking in the waters and the monitored meals, whenever he feels like he’s becoming comfortable, he has to remind himself that this isn’t his family. Ra’s is not an ally, much less a figure of authority for him. Tim isn’t a ninja. He isn’t league. He isn’t one of Ra’s’ minions.

Tim panics when he realises he’s losing days again. His entire body is changing. The food he eats is different.

This isn’t an alliance, he tells himself firmly. This isn’t an alliance, and this sure as hell isn’t permanent.

—

During the day, he loses himself in his training, because help is coming, even if it’s taking a while. He spars and feels himself shift and grow and change, and lets it happen. He’s taught new techniques, and they’re surprisingly careful about teaching him moves that hinder and hurt rather than maim and kill.

Once night falls, he feels the dread bubble up in his throat and in his stomach. He’s working with Ra’s and his ninja, and this time he has no reason to, and no excuses. Because Bruce is coming to get him, once he’s figured out where he is. Once Cass has found a way home.

He feels guilty because he knows that what he’s doing in wrong, that there will be repercussions, because there always are, but a tiny part of himself, the part that still resents Dick, still resents Damian, that still resents Steph and Bruce, and his parents, and everyone-

If he pulls himself together, maybe he can forget that gaping wound that makes him feel heavy and useless. He knows he can be better. He’s been thinking it since day one.

He hears the silent scuff that marks an assassin, and looks behind his shoulder, to where the moonlight is spilling in from the goddamn hole in the wall—

It’s not a ninja. It’s their master.

Ra’s al Ghul lifts his hand and beckons him in silence.

It’s getting weird seeing him as often as he does, governing his ninja and speaking to them in hushed tones. Tim’s tried to translate, in case he can uncover something about where he is, why he’s doing this, and what Ra’s’ plans for him are, but-

Tim’s never been particularly good at Arabic, though he’s picked up more since he got here.

He follows Ra’s, and hesitates a bit when he is led them to his room, the one he had been in before, with the big window and the single table (where on earth did Ra’s sleep?)

“I’d like to teach you something, Detective.” Ra’s beckons to an embroidered mat on the ground.

Tim wonders if being led into a false sense of security feels like this. He sits. He can feel his entire body tense when Ra’s sits down in front of him, inches away. The Demon’s Head cracks a smile for the first time Tim’s set foot in his compound.

“There was a monk your mentor knew,” He says, quiet, almost grave. “Who taught him to close off certain parts of his mind when under a particular brand of strain.”

Tim thinks of Brucie, of Hugo Strange in a Batman suit. He thinks of Dick reciting some magic words or other to bring Bruce back-

“It sets apart certain memories and areas; the parts that keep him sane and safe. The parts that have stopped him from succumbing to the bat in mind and soul. It replaces those parts, however, with everything that Batman can become.”

Tim blinks and feels the blood rush from his face.  Is Ra’s referring to that time Bruce went mad? When he took advice from a figment of his imagination? When he paraded around in reds and yellows and purples?

When he was a vicious as Batman could be?

He shivers, and it has nothing to do with the open windows and night time air. It may not be as sinister as that…time. He hopes it’s not. He hopes—

He is aware that he’s shaking his head. “How do you know about that?” he asks, not referring to either time in specificity.

Ra’s’ lip curls into a sneer. “I know more than it seems, Detective. Your mentor knows this.”

Tim fights the urge to curl his toe. He’s pretty sure that it would crease the carpets slightly, and draw attention to the fact that he is indeed very nervous. He’d already shivered, but it’s chilly. He could pass it off as—

“How do I know you’re not going to brainwash me?” he asks. “Close off the parts that make me me. Turn me into- into one of your servants?”

The sneer turns into a full-blown grin, one with sharp teeth that resemble sharks attacking and demon cats leading good children astray. “You don’t.” He says simply. “Are you ready?”

Tim grits his teeth, looks into those unnatural green eyes and prays his family finds him soon.

**

He goes to bed aching physically, only to be hauled awake in the middle of the night so he can return after a few hours aching mentally, pain so severe behind his eyes that it buzzed dully in his head during the day. He could feel himself getting less and less technical when he sparring with the ninja. He was succumbing to urges to maim, to strike out without thinking—he’d nearly hit one of them with a strike that could maim, but froze completely.

They never hit his face, or his lower arms and legs. Anywhere that skin might show casually.

How is this helping? How is waking up to getting his ass handed to him on top of being mentally exhausted helping him become a better fighter? Even Ra’s is starting to lose patience.

Tim could see it within the first lessons-

(“How long has it been since you last meditated?”

“Yesterday.”

“Do not lie to me, Detective.”)

He had said that meditation was the key, that leaving your body was the whole basis for this back-up persona to function. Meditation forces you to travel inside yourself. Tim hasn’t meditated in over a year.

He’s cluttered, no matter how much he tries to convince himself he’s not. No matter how many lists he’s made, how many schedules he’s kept and revised, his journals from when he was Robin, it wouldn’t change the fact that useless clutter was useless clutter.

“Clear your mind,” he kept saying through the haze. He also kept saying “Don’t fall asleep.”

It’s hard for Tim to let go of things when he’s conscious. The obvious next step is sleep, right? Only when he wakes up, the cog start turning and grinding again.

—

“I can’t do this.” Tim groans, scrubbing down his face with his hands. The smell of incense was the opposite of soothing right now. He was pretty sure that the vague, hazy light flooding the room was the sunrise. He doesn’t need to look up to see Ra’s is frowning at him. He hears his teacher blow out the candle they had been using. The light streaming in was ample, and Tim wanted nothing more than to pass out in his bed in the room with the damned hole-in-the-wall.

“You are fighting it too much, Timothy.” Ra’s says. “You need to let your walls down.”

“I don’t trust you.” Tim is aware of how petulant his tone is. He rubs his temples and moves to stand. “How do you expect me to let myself relax when you’re holding me hostage?”

“I asked to make you stronger, and you agreed.” Ra’s raises his voice. “This will not work without mutual effort.”

“I don’t need to be stronger!” Tim snaps, glaring at the man seated on the embroidered carpets in front of him. “I’m not weak. I—I was in a bad place when you found me. I wasn’t thinking clearly when—after Bruce died, and I’m not-“ better.

Tim draws his mouth into a thin line and tries to keep his breathing normal. “I’m going to sleep. And I’m done with your training.” He turns to leave when, quick as a whip, Ra’s hand is pressed against the back of his neck.

Tim stills all over, and when his body doesn’t shiver or protest in any way, he wonders why the touch isn’t threatening.  The fingers twitch, and start to massage hard circles into his skin.  From a safe distance away, Ra’s mutters quietly. “I only want you to become the best that you can be, Timothy.”

He doesn’t move, mildly soothed by the ministrations, until the brain registers what Ra’s had said. He reluctantly pulls away and hesitates at the door.

“We’ll try again tomorrow?” he hates how tired his voice sounds.

“As long as it takes, Timothy.”

Tim considers, and then pushes the door open, but not before adding, “I still don’t trust you.”

—

He’s starting to drag himself to the training rooms instead of being escorted there, and the ninja were surprised at first, but after a while, they started greeting him with hand gestures and simple words, in English and Arabic and various other languages. He tried not to acknowledge them, mostly because they were ninja, and Ra’s’ henchmen and also evil, but also because he didn’t really feel like conversing with the men and women who’d easily kick his ass in the next couple of hours.

He’s trying not lose his temper, because he’s terrified that Ra’s is right. He’s really afraid that he’ll end up hurting someone again. He doesn’t want this training to attack; he knows he has nothing to prove to anyone. Right?

He’s only doing this because he wants to be better. Better at defending himself and making the risks he sometimes took less likely to kill him. He couldn’t count on Dick to save him all the time. Right?

He’s not doing this for Bruce either; he’s doing this for himself. 

…Right?

He hopes he’s found soon. Preferably before Ra’s brainwashes him into thinking being one of his minions wouldn’t be that bad.

—

“This isn’t working.” Tim states the obvious. “And the incense is distracting.”

Ra’s groans, actually groans at his complaining, and Tim’s been doing a rather lot of it. The elder presses the bridge of his nose and stares at Tim for a moment. This is becoming a usual occurrence, where they both get frustrated with Tim’s inability to relax enough to meditate, even shallowly. Usually, it leads to a few more failed attempts, then either one of them would call it a night, or a morning, whatever.

“Did you really used to meditate, Timothy, or was that another lie?”

Another—“What the hell do you know?” Tim starts to snarl, but catches himself. He needs to stop falling into these traps-

“You have not told anyone about your splenectomy?”

Tim grits his teeth. “They didn’t need to know.”

“Of your failures? Are you afraid it would become another misgiving towards you?”

Tim pointedly doesn’t squirm. Doesn’t speak either. He schools his face into something blank.

Ra’s makes a show of considering him while setting his chin on his steepled fingers. “Does he know about the burns?”

And his carefully blank expression falters and Tim knows it falters because he can see Ra’s hide his smile behind his hands and it’s infuriating. “No he doesn’t, as a matter of fact, and how do you even know about those?”

Ra’s arches a brow. Tim blinks. Oh. Right. He had touched the back of his neck and the change in skin texture was—is rather hard to miss.  “I do find it strange that he has yet to notice,” He pauses, and looks contemplative. He raises a hand in his general direction, beckons him closer.

Tim doesn’t move straight away, but he’s been passing out from exhaustion and not resting enough anyway, and Bruce is nowhere to be found. His attempts at escaping have been cut short mostly by the growing spider population, and Ra’s really needs to get someone on that. He gets up, turns around and makes an active effort not to lean back.

Ra’s presses the knot that seems to consistently set up camp at the base of his neck. He shuts his eyes, and sighs a little. Where the hell is Bruce? Where the hell is anybody?

He doesn’t feel his shoulders sag until Ra’s starts speaking. “How difficult is it keeping these secrets from the World’s Greatest Detective?”

Tim thinks about leaving the question unanswered. “Not particularly. He trusts me enough to…to tell him. When things are wrong.” Maybe Ra’s fingers are making him pliable. He scowls a little at the thought.

“It seems to me that he knows you would do anything for him.” Tim feels a great sense of suspicion at those words. Clearly a bomb was about to be dropped. Ra’s thumb presses against the top of his spine. “You did leave your family for him.”

He doesn’t know if he means the Drakes, or the Wayne family in the public eye. “It doesn’t matter, I’m still his son.” He’s a little proud of how that came out. Confident, like he’s certain of his place in the family.

“Of course.” There’s nothing comforting about that voice. It speaks of shrewdness, like Ra’s knows something that he doesn’t. Tim doesn’t rise to his bait. “Your anger isn’t letting you relax.”

“That really isn’t any of your business.”

“If you would just let yourself be vicious in battle, you would have an outlet for that anger.”

“It’s not anger-“

“Shiva mentioned of a time in Paris where you were so overwhelmed by your feelings that you were in tears-“

“I’m not-”

“It’s holding you back, Timothy. And I need you at your best.”

Tim swipes at the hand on the back of his neck and cups the top of his spine with both hands, shielding it from the demon’s fingers. He doesn’t know why he agreed to this, he doesn’t feel like he’s getting any better, at hand-to-hand combat, or otherwise.

At most, he’s realised and accepted that he’s the- he winces a little at the world—weakest of Bruce’s wards. There’s nothing he can really do about that. He’s isn’t going to Batman. He can help in other ways.

“You still don’t understand,” He hears Ra’s mutter. The fall of fabric is muffled when he stands, and Tim, uncomfortable with the height advantage that his abductor has over him, scrambles up to his feet and faces him.

“What don’t I understand? Because from what I remember, Prudence called me for help, Cricket was somehow involved, and now I’m at some foreign location, being trained to be a ninja. It’s pretty clear what you want.” Tim purses his lip. “And I won’t be your puppet.”

Ra’s sighs through his nose, and it’s an infuriating look. A long-suffering, condescending look. One that he often got from his mother, and even Bruce on occasion. It annoys Tim even more once he realises he’s linked this man to his mentor. He places his hands firm on Tim’s shoulders, even as Tim tries to squirm out of his hold.

“Timothy,” he says. “You are going to be Batman someday.”

—

He gets caught before he makes it even remotely out of the garrison. Probably because he’s panicking, and there was no contingency he had planned for actually becoming Batman.

—

“I still don’t understand what you want from me!”

It’s late-early, and Tim is starting to lose it. He’d long since given up hope of being found anytime soon. He knows in his head that Bruce wouldn’t abandon him on purpose, but Gotham’s rogue’s gallery was probably running rampant by now. Batman’s priority is his city. And Tim hasn’t been making their dealings easy lately. It would be prudent to assume that maybe Bruce figured Tim needed a break from him. He’d be upset and more than a little vexed that Tim was shirking his duties in order to take a break from Bruce—

Of course, that is, if Cass hasn’t gotten there, and told them-

Dick wouldn’t leave him here, like this—not if he knew where he was.

A thousand thoughts and concerns flood his mind and bleed into his body in the form of stiff muscles and tension. Earlier today, he’d lost his temper momentarily during that god-awful daily sparring session. He had let his passive mind take over, thoughts he buried a long time ago, techniques he swore he’d never use. He’d flipped someone unconscious, and broken someone’s hand. He had to actively stop himself from shattering a kneecap-

It did nothing for his state of mind. Tim is still frustrated hours later. The incense is making his nostrils flare, and hadn’t he told Ra’s to get rid of that—

“You did much better today, you utilised what you know—“

“I shouldn’t have used those techniques! They’re-“

“Shiva’s?”

“Deadly.” Tim hisses through gritted teeth.

“But the knowledge is there. And you stopped yourself before you permanently maimed your opponent.”

It’s getting harder and harder to think of them as just being ninja. Especially when Tim hears them talk about the families they left behind. The brothers left behind in Rawalpindi or sisters getting married in Minsk, grandfathers with gambling problems in Donegal, kids going off to college in Toronto-

“No, I’d never…” he trails off, takes a deep breath and braces himself. He raises his chin and looks Ra’s dead in the eye. It’s easier to do now. “What makes you think I’m going to be Batman?” He’s been waiting to ask this since their last meeting.

“Did you never assume?”

Tim remembers his time as Batman; in a world he was so alone that he cloned his dead friends. He still fears that that future might happen someday. Ra’s’ silence isn’t so much a question as it is broadcasted patience. Tim bites the inside of his cheek. He doesn’t let go of Ra’s eyes. “I’ve been to a future where I was Batman. It was less than optimal.”

Ra’s makes a soft sound, like he’s mulling it over. He doesn’t leave Tim’s eyes, either. “A future.” He says. “Not the future. Personally, I would be quite happy in a world where Batman is ‘less-than-optimal.’”

Tim fights back a smile. What the hell is wrong with him? He shouldn’t be feeling anything even relatively akin to companionship for a known terrorist and nemesis of his boss. Not just Bruce’s nemesis, his nemesis. Still, it’s the most attention he’s gotten in a long while. “Of course you wouldn’t mind.” Tim shakes his head. “I don’t want to be Batman. I thought that Dick-” He stops himself there. He’s told this man too much already. “You know I’m emancipated. Bruce isn’t my father.”

“How odd that you don’t protest the Wayne name, but go out of your way to enforce your emancipation. It’s almost as if you must keep reminding yourself you have no family.”

“The name itself has its own perks.” Tim says coolly, ignoring the last part of Ra’s’ sentence.

The demon’s head sneers. “And that is why you are my favourite. Regardless, this is a lesson you must learn. I am proud of how you fared in your training today.” He adds, and Tim almost feels like smiling for that. He beats it back mercilessly, regardless to how detrimental it would be to his current lesson.

He has to remember that he’s taking advantage of being kidnapped by skilled ninja, and nothing else.

—

Tim comes back to himself staring at the ceiling. His room with the hole-in-the-wall. He doesn’t remember actually leaving Ra’s study at all. And his eyes are sore as all hell. He rubs at them while padding across the room to the clean clothes he knows are resting on the chair in the corner and goes to investigate. The brief thought of another escape attempt crosses his mind, but he dismisses it. The tabi are still comfortable, and, judging by the sun’s height in the sky, he’ll be due in for his sparring sessions soon. He considers breakfast, but it’s probably mealtime already, and he isn’t about to sit with the ninja. They’d stopped monitoring his meals at least.

He thinks about it, and his stomach, and the place they don’t call the ‘mess hall’-

—

It’s almost terrifying when he steps into view of what feels like the entire army of league grunts, and the room falls into a dead silence, and even more terrifying when the silence turns into quiet cheers and laughter, and it’s most terrifying when Tim can’t keep the smile off his face as a handful of ninja drag and pull him away from the doorway and to a table. There’s chatting and food, and languages that sound more like songs.

—

He exits the room, and checks the sun again. Another 40 or so minutes, and he’ll need to be present for his sparring. He doesn’t know how he feels about what just transpired. On the surface, there’s relief. Underneath that, he feels like he lost something. Betrayed someone. He smiles bitterly. He feels guilty for enjoying being kidnapped.

“Timothy.” That isn’t Ra’s’ voice, and most of the ninja refer to him as Red Robin or ‘the American’. He turns, and the White Ghost is glowering at him. “The Master wishes to see you.”

Weird. “Okay.” Tim says and makes his way to the study with a White-Ghost-shaped shadow following him. He’d called him ‘Timothy’, and Tim isn’t sure what that means for them right now. At least he hasn’t been trying to kill him lately.

“One moment.” He grumbles, before Tim has a chance to open the door. He gets a half-disgusted look on his face and clears his throat. “My…name is Dusan.” He leaves before Tim has a chance to reply or do much besides narrow his eyes warily.

Tim pushes the doors open. Sunlight spills all around the room, but the room always seems dimmer than the rest of the garrison. Odd, considering it had been dubbed a ‘Study’. Ra’s sneers at him, and Tim has spent enough time around the man to realise that it was actually just the way he smiled.

“Good afternoon, Timothy.” He says. “And congratulations.”

“On what?” This just seems to be getting stranger and stranger.

“On your success.”

Tim frowns. “What did I do?” He doesn’t remember-

“You have unlocked a fall-back persona of your own.”

-returning to his room last night. The blood rushes from his face. “What happened? Did I hurt someone?”

“What makes you think yours would be violent?”

And that’s…a fair point. He thinks of Brucie, and not of the Batman of Zurr-En-Arr at all-

“I don’t remember anything.”

“I did say you wouldn’t.”

Tim groans. “Are you going to tell me what I became?”

Ra’s’ sneer-smile melts into something far less assured. “Usually, there are keywords. To lift someone from that state.” Tim thinks of Brucie again, but Bruce had actually remembered what happened to him after he’d ‘woken up’. “You do not have keywords. Your persona can, however, break when someone presses against the back of your neck.”

Tim stares. “You-you fucking conditioned me—”

“I did what I had to, Detective.”  Oh so, he’s back to ‘Detective’ now. Wonderful. Tim starts to grind his teeth, and feels the familiar set in his back. Ra’s arches a brow.  “You really think trying to attack me in your current state is wise?”

The sun is just about in the right place in the sky. “I have to. Spar.” He says, keeping his voice even. He leaves the study. Ra’s wants him to channel his anger? He can damn well channel his anger.

—

He goes into the session with no concern for safety this time. And they ninja are taken-aback at first, and hurting them feels infinitely better than seething in silence over a long period of time. He shoves back feelings of how it’s wrong to hurt people maliciously and how he’s completely giving in to what Ra’s wants, by thinking of how easily he was lured under the demon’s spell and his own stupidity.

The session feels like it ends faster than usual. No one comes to wake him up in the middle of the night. He doesn’t take meals in the mess hall with the ninja, and tells himself that he’d never let his anger get the better of him again.

—

It doesn’t last. After another few session, Tim can feel his musculature change. He expands on his anger, and it’s mostly accidental. Spur of the moment thoughts he shouldn’t have, like Robin being taken away from him, like Bruce’s reaction to the Captain Boomerang debacle, like how he’d made Steph go behind his back. Like how that one ninja laughed at him-

 He’s surprised to find himself relatively unscathed, and what’s ineffably insane is that they seem to encourage him to break their bones and draw blood.

At times, Tim can feel himself slip up, and actually break a finger, a rib, a hand, an arm, a leg—

He’s started fighting dirty—well. More than before.

It’s starting to scare him, because it’s very easy to make a mistake. To take a life. Maybe that’s what Ra’s wants from him? Other than the key to his so-called back-up persona. Though he’s an idiot if he thinks Tim is too upset with Bruce to not tell him about this.

They give him back his bo staff, and Tim thinks about staging another escape attempt. Soon.

—

The training room is empty. Tim frowns at the new development, until he feels the unsettling sensation of a body behind him.

“So did he press the back of your neck, or the base of your spine?” Shiva smiles, flanked by a small group of ninja.

Tim glares. “You went after Cass.”

“I did, not-so-little bird.” Her smile grows broader. “And now I’m here to teach you.”

“I don’t want any training from you.” He says, and wonders where Cass is. If she escaped Shiva, she must have found a way home by now. What if she didn’t? What if she’s lying somewhere injured, or crippled or dead-

“Just one technique. One that you would favour. Very much.” Why was she being so cordial? Their last meeting ended with him poisoning her. He’s surprised he’s still standing. “There are bigger things than you right now. Watch this,”

She beckons a ninja forward, and proceeds to strike, with two fingers, his forehead. He topples over, then falls completely still on the floor. No twitching, no movement. Tim would have assumed him dead if not for the rise and fall of his chest. He blinks.

“A full-body nerve strike.” He says.

She grins. “You’re interested.” It’s not a question. “I’ll teach you. No mind games,”

She knows about that, too? Tim knows she can see everything in his body, but there are the other ninjas to consider. “You broke into Blackgate.”

“I didn’t orchestrate the entire break out. That was luck, mostly. Come, bird.” She says. “You’ll be leaving here soon, so I don’t have a lot of time.” She holds out a hand.

Tim hesitates. Does she know that Batman’s coming for them? Does she know how soon he’ll arrive? Does she want the same thing Ra’s wants from him? “What are you and Ra’s planning?” he asks finally.

“Different things. Separate things.” She beckons with her hand. “Come along. I already know your decision.”

—

The rest of the evening consists of Shiva holding a ninja in a headlock, while pointing out the appropriate place to strike. (“Where the skull isn’t fused, between the eyes. Be sharp, be fast.”) She stops him, countless times, when he aims wrong. She doesn’t tell him why, just that he ‘doesn’t want to do that’, and when Tim starts to get it right, they switch on to moving targets.

Shiva calls the impromptu lesson to a halt, and tells Tim to retreat to his bedroom.

—

Tim doesn’t know what to expect when he wanders up the garrison steps and sees ninja at the opening that acts as his door. What he doesn’t expect, however, is Cass flat on her back on his bed, being looked after by two ninja-turned-medics. Tim snaps at them to leave.

“Cass,” he says, kneeling down to shake her gently. “Cass, Cassie. Are you okay?”

She whimpers, and cuts it off. “Don’t. I—hurts.” She grits out.

“Cass, what happened?” He doesn’t see any bruises on her face. “Is anything broken?”

“No,” She says, chest heaving. “Bruises, I—Shiva and- and Cricket and,” she swallows, and it looks painful.  “Couldn’t get away—hurts.” She whimpers again.

Tim strokes her hair, trying to shake off his panic, and feels relieved. As least he knows where she is now, instead of speculating aimlessly. At least he’s not alone. “Let me take a look?” he says softly.

He doesn’t need to expose her stomach the entire way to see the purplish bruises littering her skin. He touches one, and feels her jump. “Don’t!”

Tim gives the rest of her uniform a glance over, the same as his, but worn, torn and dirty. “Cass, how long were you out there?” he asks quietly.

Cass’ eyes roll up and she squeezes them shut before trying to meet his. “Since. Since the beginning.”

The beginning was however long ago they’d been separated since the capture. Cass had been fighting non-stop since the beginning, since Tim was eating thai curry, palling around with ninja, lying in that little pool of steaming water to loosen his muscles and meditating with Ra’s—

He breathes and tries to relax, and feels the tension knot up in the back of his neck, and watches Cass furrow her brow.

“Stay put right here.” He says quietly. “Just-try to rest?”

“Where-where are you-“

“I need to take care of something,” he says hastily. “I promise I’ll be right back.”

—

He forces the doors to Ra’s’ study open, and they creak like a crypt, like a mausoleum.

The demon’s head himself looks almost surprised, at his balcony. “Something the matter, Detective?”

A small, annoying part of Tim wants him to go back to calling him ‘Timothy’, but the majority is outraged. He unclenches his fists at his sides. “What do you and Shiva want from us?”

Ra’s arches a brow. “She brought the One-Who-Is-All back here?”

“She’s unconscious. And beaten all to hell. What are you planning?” he demands. “I came here answering Pru’s SOS. Blackbat came because you somehow convinced Cricket to join you. I haven’t seen either of them.”

“We haven’t had contact with Prudence for the past month. I was under the impression that she had abandoned the league in favour of you and your vigilante lifestyle.” The elder man snarls. “As for this ‘Cricket’, we haven’t seen him since we found you and the One-Who-Is-All unconscious in a cave in Iraq.”

“That’s another thing.” Tim says. “Why did you move us to Brazil?”

Ra’s blinks, and his brow creases in apprehension.  “I never moved us to Brazil. We are still in Iraq.”

Then the spiders—oh. Tim feels a chill crawl down his spine. “The Council of Spiders is here.”

Just as the realisation is catching up with them, the doors to the Study burst open, cause loose papers to flit about the room.

“Master,” Dusan says. “The Garrison is breached.”

Ra’s blows an irritated breath out of his nose. “I am beginning to tire of this council and its arrogance.”

—

Cass is missing when he goes back to check on her. He doesn’t have time to worry.

—

It’s a weird sort of thrilling to have Ra’s fighting at his side. He’s long since abandoned his velvet cape, and he can’t believe he’s never noticed how ninja give themselves so completely in battle. With his bo in his hand, Tim’s arm feels complete once more.

Ra’s and his ninja have yet to kill. Tim’s strikes are more debilitating than ever before.

The Wanderer is one of the few that hasn’t been caught yet. It’s safe to say she’s the commander, and Ra’s is the target since he had eluded her last year. She’s still nowhere to be found, but those spiders are hers, without a doubt.

He sees Shiva join the fray, and take on Goliath. He can’t help a smile; the giant has no idea what he’s in for. She winks at him, and takes on a defensive stance.

He see Ra’s saunter fearlessly up to the Widower, deflect his swords and fling them away with his talwar.

Funnel attacks him, and Tim slides back and brings his bo up for a swift blow to the stomach. He’d underestimated the force he’d mustered, however, and ends up flinging her away to his right. When he looks again, Ra’s has Widower lifted by the throat. With physician’s eyes, he presses the blade against his torso and stabs in, exactly where his spleen would be.

Tim’s too busy with Sac to intervene. He gets a decent distraction when Goliath falls, and Tim smashes his nose, and presses a foot to his chest, and uses his bo to break both his hands. Tim hears gunshots. Is Wolf here, too?  Funnel screams, and Tim rushes forwards. Wolf wouldn’t shoot one of their own. She’s-

She’s alive, she’s breathing. The bullets are rubber. Someone calls his name, his codename.

Prudence is a sight for sore eyes. She has a black eye and looks worse for wear, but she’s alive. She opens her mouth to call out, but it’s cut off. A hand creeps up her neck. Tim watches in horror as her eyes roll up into her skull and her mouth starts foaming. She falls, twitching, and the Wanderer steps over her.

Tim doesn’t think, doesn’t assume his defensive stance. He shoots  forward, meeting the Wanderer’s hand with his staff, and deflects her strike with his wrist, and drops the staff to lift two fingers, and strikes, hard and fast—

It doesn’t feel like it did when he was practicing with Shiva-

He hits, he slips-

He feels the fracture—hears a sickeningly wet crack-

The Wanderer falls to her knees, and Tim has blood on his glove.

—

Tim wakes up between familiar sheets, clean and aching. He forces himself up and greets off-white walls, blue bed sheets and real windows.

Everything comes back to him in a rush, and Tim feels dizzy and shaky. He gets out of bed, and it feels like a lifetime since his feet touched polished wood. He needs to bandage his feet, too. The skin is raw.

He wanders into his kitchen, looking for a clock, a calendar, something to tell him if this is real. It’s afternoon, after four, according to the hanging on the wall. His digital calendar underneath tells him—

He was gone for over two months. It’s September 2^st tomorrow.

Tim swallows. That really happened. Of course it did, he berates himself. His arms are corded muscle, his legs are leaner, his feet are raw and his nails are dirty. He scrubs a hand down his face, and—

Sees something hanging on his front door. He hesitates, then approaches it. His glove is pinned against the wood, next to a piece of hastily torn paper. The fingers have dried blood on them.

Tim pales and props himself up against his wall to keep his balance. His feet knock against something. There are tabi on the floor. New tabi. He laughs, and it sounds almost hysterical to him, and he thinks about sobbing. Hot tears prickle against the back of his eyelids.

He’d killed the Wanderer. He slides down onto the floor, shaking his head helplessly. He needs to tell Bruce-

The crumpled up piece of paper slips from where it’s hung, and drifts onto the wooden floors. Still shaking, Tim turns it over.

Your training isn’t finished.

—

It takes a frightening amount of nerve to stop circling the manor and actually pull up his cycle and go inside.

After spending a considerable amount of time in his shower, trying to scrub off anything that could link him to the middle east, the garrison, to Ra’s, he’d waited numbly for the evening to start rolling in before actually getting up and out of his apartment.

He swallows back the panic and reflexively thinks of how he was acting before he left. How he was behaving with the rest of the family. He had to remember he was upset with them. With Bruce primarily, but prickly with the others, still.

Or-or would they have expected him to have cooled off since he’d been away for so long? He hasn’t missed his cowl this much in ages.

Tim swallows back the lump in his throat and tries hard to get in character, to school his features to not betray anything—

Dick answers the door, and looks surprised, then grins, genuine and honest-to-god pleased to see him. It takes Tim all the effort he has to not break down right there and then.. He shakes a little, as his brother ushers him in.

“Chilly out, huh?” he says amiably, hand on the small of his back. “It’s good to see you, little brother,”

“You too, Dick.” He fights to keep his voice neutral. How could he have ever been angry at him? This is his brother, his family when no one else was left. Dick cared. Tim starts feeling nauseous with the amount of guilt, dread and love in the pit of his stomach and chest and throat.

Dick’s hands’ squeezing his arms brings him back out of his stupor. “Whoa, are you okay?”

Tim swallows, because the goddamn lump in his throat isn’t going away, and he’s being far too suspicious. “Yeah. Just…jet lag?” he tries to smile sheepishly, but judging by the frown on Dick’s face, he doesn’t succeed very much.

“Okay. Well, now that you’re here, I gotta take you down to the cave,” Dick’s smile is morose. “Sorry, kiddo. We’ve been struggling lately, and we could really use all the help we can get.” He doesn’t let go of Tim’s arms. He frowns a little, rubbing at the biceps curiously, but doesn’t say anything else.

Tim nods because he’s afraid he’ll vomit if he tries to speak.

—

Tim listens blankly as Dick recounts everything that he missed. It’s not that he isn’t listening, later he could easily recite Dick’s words perfectly, only right now there’s a heavy pounding in his head, and something equally heavy pressing down on his shoulders and pressing hard against his chest.

It gets easier to manage when Dick sits him down in front of the console, and Tim sees the skin on his hands, the raw, newly calloused skin, turn blue in the lights of the monitor.

“We’ll need you tonight, Red.” Dick says, from behind him. “Since Damian’s been barred from going out this week.”

Tim blinks, and it takes a moment to register. “Why’s that?”

“Bruce is sending him to school. He actually asked for it himself, you know.”

“Oh.” Tim says faintly, then clears his throat. “Where do you need me?”

Dick gives him coordinates and various locations of suspect activity, how the territories were divided, and what Tim’s snitches and allies in the GCPD had been up to. As it turns out, Dick has personally screened his calls.

“So are you staying for dinner? Bruce said he’d be home tonight, just sorting out a leave of absence thing with the JLA, and since you’ve been gone all summer, we can catch up.”

Tim pales, and the heavy feeling is back. “N-no, Dick, I’m kind of—tired.” He gets up from the console seat and stops himself from swaying.

“Come on, little brother. Cass already said no-”

Tim braces himself against the console and scrabbles up to stand straight. Dick looms over him, concerned. “Hey, whoa, what’s wrong? You’re—are you sick? You look-” he frowns. “Did something happen, Tim?”

“No.” Tim says. “Did—did Cass say where she was?”

“She said she was going to Barbara.” Dick squeezes his shoulder again. “Tim, you can talk to me-“

“Did she say anything else?”

“…No.” Dick narrows his eyes. “Just…that she wanted to see Barbara, and she’d talk to us later.”

—

“Tim, are you sure you’re okay?” Dick calls after him, running up the stairs.

I killed someone. “Dick, I’m fine.” Tim asserts, louder than he intended. “I just need some sleep.”

“So stay the night.”

I fucked-up. Badly. “I have my own place, Dick.” Tim starts towards the foyer, the front door and his escape.

“Tim—Tim, wait!” Dick grabs his elbow and Tim freezes, lets himself get turned around. He doesn’t deserve the way Dick looks at him, concerned and brotherly, and how could he have taken something like that for granted?

“You’d tell me if something was wrong, right?” Dick’s hand wavers in between them, as if seeking permission to touch.

“Yeah.” It comes out choked and upset. “I gotta go.” That doesn’t sound any better.

Tim starts his engine as soon as he’s got his helmet on to drown out the sound of his brother’s concern.

—

It’s not exactly dark when he finally returns home, and manages to retch a little once he takes off his helmet. The city still smells like it should, like exhaust smoke, heavy, lingering cold, and contempt, and it’s refreshing. It smells like him.

Once he gets a grip on himself, he gets off his cycle, fumbles with his keys and opens his door. He has to get back to work with Jamie, and call Ives, and call a meeting with Tam and the board. He has to get ready to patrol tonight, and work twice as hard to make sure he doesn’t use what he’d learned in the past months. Dick felt the change in the musculature of his arm, he’s sure of it.

Bruce would know. He’d know the second he sees him.

He walks into his kitchen, and stops dead.

Cass stands, leaning against the kitchen island. Her shoes are thrown haphazardly against the wall, and she has her hands stuffed deep into the pockets of her hoodie. There’s a suitcase beside her, propped up against the island. Her hair is shorter. It’s been cut since—

Since—

He drops his keys on the kitchen counter, and doesn’t know what to say. Cass stares at him, completely blank.

Tim killed the Wanderer, and he has to tell Bruce. Tim killed someone, Tim broke the one rule he’d stuck by his entire life, the one rule he’d sore he wouldn’t break when he was sinking deeper and deeper from the light. When he was seeing more and more shades of grey.

Cass had been there, had been taken like he had been. Trained? Made better? Cass was already the best weapon in Bruce’s arsenal. She’s good. She doesn’t have the capacity to be malicious, much less a conscious murderer. And she’s still looking at him, seeing him, and there must have been something in his body because Cass gets an upset look on her face.

“Talk.” She says.

Tim swallows. “I killed the Wanderer.” He says quietly. He feels the bile build up and forces it back down. His body chills and his legs feel weak. He can feel himself start to shake—

“I killed David Cain.” Cass says softly. Her eyes glower miserably, and her bottom lip starts to quiver. “When you found me—it was after. I was fighting Shiva and Cricket. And I- I didn’t mean to.” She breathes out. “I didn’t—I didn’t.” She hisses furiously in another language, and rubs her arms, hugging herself.

Tim stays rooted firmly on the spot. He takes a breath, and it’s—easier. “I-Shiva taught me a technique. I meant to paralyse her. It—I didn’t do it right. Prudence is dead.”

His words hang in silence for the longest time, and he feels apart from everything, like he’s floating above and around the room. He isn’t all there, and even the setting sun seems almost gray. Cass shifts in place, then toes at the suitcase beside her. “Can I stay?” she asks finally.

Tim nods.

Cass digs into her pockets and pulls something out. She drags the suitcase along behind her and approaches him. There are dark circles underneath her eyes, speaking of fatigue that he knows she can push past. She presses something into his hand.

It’s a microchip. Barely the size of his thumb.

“What’s this?” he asks, and his voice is near dreadfully calm.

“Cricket.” Cass says. “What was left after Shiva and I—” she scowls. “I thought she—No. Doesn’t matter.” She grits her teeth.

Tim knows how that kind of betrayal feels, too. Part of him wants to confess everything and apologise to Bruce. Another part is terrified to do so. Cass drags her bag behind her, and her posture is off. She still hurts from the bruises. She’ll work past that, too.

“I’m…going to bed.” She says. “Wake me up for patrol?” She drags herself upstairs, to one of the unoccupied rooms, and shut the door behind her.

“Okay.” Tim says quietly, to an empty room. His hands and legs still feel numb. He plays with the chip between his fingers. He’s not going to be able to sleep. According to his watch, it’s nearly 8.

He has to sort out dinner. And restock the pantry, if Alfred hasn’t already done it. He has to get ready for patrol at 10. He has to…busy himself. Shove away this mistake for as long as he can. ‘Your training isn’t finished.’ He shivers.

Tim lifts the chip in his hand into the light to examine it closely.

Maybe this is where to start.

—-

tbc