Chapter Text
A long time ago, Timothy Jackson Drake watched Mary and John Grayson fall from a trapeze.
He remembered feeling bad, at three years old, that Dick Grayson would have to live without parents. Dick was too nice to live without parents, to be on the streets like other kids Tim saw. His parents kept him away from the bad parts of Gotham, usually, but he still caught sight of the too dirty, too skinny children who looked at Tim with a special kind of hatred.
It made Tim afraid of his parents dying, and leaving Tim all alone.
He’d bother his parents about taking care of themselves, but they didn’t take him seriously. Thought he was adorable. Told everyone at galas how thoughtful and sweet he was.
In the end, he lost them to a plane crash; none of his doting mattered anyway. Nothing mattered.
He still ended up all alone.
“Good morning, Master Bruce.” Tim said warmly, placing a cup of coffee in front of the man. He pushed the previous thoughts from his mind and focused on doing his job instead. “Alfred went early to shop for groceries, so I’ll be taking care of you by myself for now.”
Bruce Wayne, half asleep and barely listening to Tim, nodded along and downed half his coffee. Tim’s eyebrow twitched.
“Sir, Master Jason should be downstairs by now. You will have to drive him to school due to Alfred’s absence.”
Bruce blinked up at Tim, processing the words, before catching on and cursing. “Jason!” He shouted, hurrying off to the stairs, clumsy with sleep.
“Honestly…” Tim muttered to himself, setting a plate out for Jason as well. He ended up late to school, after all.
He stared at himself in a mirror in the hallway. He needed to cut his hair, soon. Admittedly, he liked the length it was currently at. Just a little too long, where he could keep it in a small ponytail or half up. But it didn’t look proper.
And as Alfred had drilled into him in the early days, voice so similar to Tim’s parents, he had to look proper. Professional. Always at his best. As much as he liked the style, his hair was just a little too scruffy to look neat.
“Timothy.” Jason addressed gruffly that afternoon, pulling him from his thoughts.. Nobody called him Tim. He made sure of that.
“Yes, Master Jason?”
His mouth twitches uncomfortably, like it always did when Tim addressed him, but he had long since stopped trying to convince Tim to call him otherwise. He looked slightly embarrassed, actually. “Will you help me get the blood stain out of my Robin uniform? I don't want B or Alfred to freak out about it.”
Tim raised an eyebrow, but nodded. It really wasn’t any of his business what Jason hid from the family. Tim wasn’t family. He had no obligation to go tattle like a four year old. His job was to do what the Wayne family needed. And this is what Jason needed.
He helped Jason get the stain out of the green of the uniform, then went back to cleaning and whatever else he had to get done for the day. He went undisturbed for the most part, which wasn’t unusual. He was no Alfred, overall.
But it didn’t bother him. He knew his place. He was here because he forced himself in, desperate for a place to belong. Not that he belonged here either. It was just better than foster care.
At twelve years old, Timothy Jackson Drake's parents died when their plane went down. He had nowhere to go, no other family, nothing. The foster system was his only option. Gotham’s messed up, unreliable foster system. If he didn’t end up in a trafficking ring, he’d end up in an abusive house. Or on the streets.
But there was another option, when Tim really thought about it. A bit messed up, sure, but he had to think about his own survival here. What was a bit of blackmail when it came to his life?
He collected all the evidence he had, and knocked on the door of Bruce Wayne. Revealed he knew his identity with the proof, and told Batman he’d keep his mouth shut for the low price of being taken in as Alfred Pennyworth’s ward.
Bruce was…perplexed, to say the least. But by some miracle, he agreed. So did Alfred. It took less than a week to get the paperwork signed and Tim’s few possessions moved into his new room.
Everything having to do with Drake manor was out of his reach until the day he turned eighteen.
Everyone in the Wayne residence questioned his motivation. Bruce, Jason, Alfred, even Dick. Every time, he gave the same answer.
“I have nowhere else to go.”
He offered no more explanation. Didn’t budge under Batman’s stare or Alfred’s raised eyebrow or Dick’s aggressive politeness. So they stopped asking. Tim wasn’t naive enough to think they weren’t still trying to figure it out, of course. But he didn’t care. They weren’t asking him; out of sight out of mind.
If only Tim’s brain worked that way.
Nothing was out of his mind. Every moment of every day, he was thinking about too much. For more reasons than one. He wanted to make sure he did a good job, he wasn’t risking his place in Wayne Manor. If he got kicked out he had no idea what he’d do. Not that he was too worried about that, knowing everyone’s secret identities and all, but it was still something that took up a lot of his mind.
Plus, the busier his mind was, the less he thought about his dead parents. The life he used to have. Living without anxiety about his place in the world.
He envied everyone else in the household. The people who were family, the people who argued freely without fear that the rug could be pulled out from under their feet, leaving them with nothing.
So maybe Tim had a slight case of abandonment issues.
They were easy to ignore–it wasn’t like there was really anyone to abandon him anymore. He wasn’t close to the Wayne’s. Them telling him to leave wouldn’t be abandonment. It would honestly be reasonable. Tim wasn’t something to be kept around.
Unless he could prove that he was useful. And he could do that. He could.
He had to.