Chapter Text
Dick hadn’t lost Damian. Damian had lost Dick.
And all Tim could do was hope that he wasn’t right for once.
The demon spawn was…fine. He’d grown up in a death cult. Tim wasn’t holding his breath on Damian turning out to be a well-adjusted, functioning member of society. But hey! Bruce certainly wasn’t well-adjusted either, and for all that Dick tried to pretend, he was clinging to the image of sanity with a white-knuckled grip. Hell, Tim could acknowledge that he also wasn’t doing great. Wandering around Gotham at night with a camera to photograph crime at the grand old age of nine wasn’t exactly a societally approved activity. Once the kid got over the culture shock and became an actual person, not just an amalgamation of all the traits he thought Bruce would like best, Tim was pretty confident he could even be friends with Damian.
There was just one thing that was bothering him about the whole situation: after so many years, why now? If Talia had thought Bruce was the safest option, why hadn't she given him Damian when he had been a baby? And while Damian claimed that he’d run away, he was ten. Tim didn't think the literal kid had escaped the League of Assassins on his own.
So why now?
Why had Damian been sent to Bruce now of all times?
No, something wasn’t adding up about this whole situation. And he was going to find out what was going on and deal with it before it became a problem.
Tim had been waiting and watching for that something which was the only reason he hadn’t fought more about having to traipse all over Gotham with Dick and Damian. And when Dick had frantically called him to tell him that Damian was missing, Tim made an immediate beeline for the main entrance of the library. It seemed like the most likely location for a quick chat.
If not, hopefully, whatever clandestine meeting was going on would last long enough for him to stumble across. Then he could snap a few pictures of the asshole messing with a kid to get at Batman and start building his case to catch them. That was where he saw something that completely shook him in the checkout area.
Damian was willingly hugging someone.
What the hell did that mean? Because Damian didn’t hug. Damian didn’t even do shoulder pats or the occasional nudge. Damian, as a matter of fact, had stabbed Dick when he had tried to hug Damian from behind.
(Which, to be fair, was on Dick. Damian hadn’t even been at the house for two weeks and had barely started warming up to the concept that no one would try to kill him.)
Tim automatically took out his phone and started taking photos — unfortunately, the hugger had his back to him, so Tim couldn’t see his face — while his mind raced to come up with a scenario where this made sense. Then they broke apart, and Damian disappeared. Tim debated following the kid, but he didn’t want to spook Damian. So he trailed after the mysterious figure, debating whether or not he wanted to be caught by him. While he didn’t want to get Damian in trouble, Tim needed answers immediately.
Chasing after an unknown with no backup as a civilian was a terrible idea. No one else needed to know about this whole situation, though, and this was his one and only lead. Tim hurried through the crowds and made no effort to stay hidden. After a couple of blocks, the figure stopped and wrapped a scarf across the bottom half of his face. A sudden gust of wind blew, and Tim shivered; he wished he’d brought a scarf. It was freezing, especially for mid-September.
He took a deep breath and walked up to the figure — Sketchy, he decided on, because the guy needed a name, and between the beanie pulled down low, the glasses, and the scarf, he looked ready to rob a bank. Before he could say anything, Sketchy grabbed him by the shoulder and steered him none too gently into a nearby cafe.
“Brat, mind tell me what the fuck you’re doing following me?” Sketchy hissed.
Well, rude. Tim shrugged off the hand. “Dick couldn’t find Damian, so he called me. And now I need to know what exactly I’m going to tell him.”
He stepped into line, eyeing the menu. Was it too late for caffeine? Unfortunately, probably yes. Bruce had insisted that they all needed to have better habits around Damian. He had good money riding on Dick being the first to screw things up. Steph, the traitor, had bet on him. They were both going to lose because Cass had picked Bruce, and she’d do anything to rig the betting pool; at the very least, though, Tim wouldn’t be the first to pull two all-nighters in a row or mess up his sleep schedule with misplaced caffeine.
“I’m going to tell you what you’re going to tell Dickface,” Sketchy said. “Fucking nothing.”
“Really?” Tim asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Trust me,” Sketchy said. It was almost a growl worthy of Batman. ”You don’t want to piss me off, Robin.”
Tim resisted the urge to sigh. They were going straight to the secret identities already?
"Are you going to say more? Or leave it at vague death threats? And if you thought that knowing about my nighttime activities would startle me, you should know that Bruce tells an awful lot of people for someone so obsessed with the concept of a secret identity. Talia, Catwoman, this really weird guy called Ghost-Maker who keeps popping up…Point is, there are a lot of them."
Enough that every time Bruce started making some noise about people being too cavalier about their secret identities, he pulledup a PowerPoint. It had a table of contents now. They had had a jeopardy night where one of the columns had in fact been 'People Bruce Blabbed His Secret Identity To.'
Sketchy took a deep breath and clenched his fists. He seemed to be really angry for no reason. Well, apart from Tim following him. But he'd met up with Damian. What other outcome had he expected?
"I am a very patient person. I can take months to kill someone, brat. But you're already on my last fucking nerve."
Tim thought it over for a moment, then decided to do the very mature and responsible thing: see just how mad he could make Sketchy. They were in a public place. What was the worst he could do?
"That was very convincing. It needed a little more venom at the end, though."
Sketchy sighed. "What the fuck do you want to know?"
"Why did Damian let you hug him?" Tim said. That had been the craziest thing he’d seen all year, and he’d seen the Harley-Joker break up in person. He still couldn’t think of a reason why Damian would allow anyone to hug him outside of maybe family, but Talia didn’t seem like the hugging type. So who was Sketchy?
The guy eyed him skeptically.
"That's all,” Tim said. They stepped forward to the counter. "I'll take a cranberry-orange scone to go. And you? On me, of course."
“London Fog and a blueberry muffin,” Sketchy said. “Also to go.”
"Name?" the barista asked.
"Tim," he said.
He paid and stepped out of line to the waiting area. His phone buzzed; Dick was wondering where he was. A snack-run was technically the truth. He pocketed the phone and turned his attention back to Sketchy.
"So, how do you know Damian so well? Dick tried hugging him once, and the demon spawn stabbed him."
Sketchy elbowed him hard in the side. "Don't call him demon spawn,"
He casually stepped a little further away from Sketchy. "So you guys must be quite close."
"How the fuck do you think Damian got to America?" Sketchy said. "With the entire League of Assassins hunting him down? Thought you were supposed to be the smart one of the bunch."
So Sketchy was playing a game of deflection, then: half-truths, cover stories, and just enough answers to lead Tim down a rabbit-hole. He probably had accompanied Damian at some point, but there was no way that was the whole truth. But Tim could work with half-truths.
"So why did Talia trust you with her son?" he asked.
"Let's be clear," Sketchy said. "Talia doesn't trust anyone. But she didn't have a choice. Yeah, Damian's a competent motherfucker, but he's a fucking ten-year-old. She found a handful of fucked up killers and repentant mercs tryna turn their lives around and paid us well to keep him safe. I got stuck with the Demon Brat for the last leg of the journey."
And didn’t that just raise so many different questions? "So what did Talia pay you with? Why are you hanging around Gotham still?"
Sketchy sounded like he was barely keeping his temper in check. Tim surreptitiously sidled a little further away.
"A life. An iron-clad identity and a chance to start over. And before you say that ain't enough, try living as a human weapon for a couple of years. Let me tell you. Gets real fucking old real quick."
Okay, Tim — despite opinions to the contrary — knew when to shut up. Thankfully, the barista called his name before the silence grew too heavy. They hurried to grab their items and leave.
"Oh, and Timothy?" Sketchy said as they left. "Try digging up my past. Try grilling Damian. Try fucking anything. And you'll find out exactly how brutal I can be."
Tim had no intention of being so obvious ever again. He glanced at him. “Huh. I’ll admit. That one did have some bite to it. You’re getting better.”
"Do we have a fucking deal or not?" Sketchy asked. His hand was clenched so tightly around the drink that it was bubbling over.
"I'll tell Dick that Damian found someone with a service dog in training and stopped to ask them questions," Tim said. "But I'll be watching you. As long as you don't step out of line, I won't intervene."
"Fair enough," Sketchy agreed. "But if I catch you following me again, I will toss you into a dumpster. It was pathetically easy to spot you today."
Tim laughed. "The only reason you saw me today was that I let you."
He headed back into the crowd, mind racing to connect the dots. What had just happened?
When he got back from the library, he was no closer to figuring things out. So he excused himself from board game night, citing some homework he wanted to get ahead on, and grabbed a corkboard along with several other supplies from the craftroom. He didn’t know why they had it. It had been half-hidden in the back, dusty from disuse, for as long as Tim had been living at the manor. No one would notice it missing, and as much as Tim hated it, this was the type of project that needed to be done offline. He couldn’t risk the chance that Bruce or someone else would stumble across it.
When he got back to his room, he dumped flashcards and cardstock on his desk — the printer already printing the photos from the day — and stared at the blank pages. Where could he even start? He grabbed a fine-tip Sharpie from his Elementary Sherlock Holmes mug. Well, where every great detective started: with the facts.
Tim carefully noted down the events of the day, summarizing everything on the flash card. Then he pinned the cardstock to the board with the flash card on top. He pinned the five photos to the board, too, and connected everything with red yarn. Then he stared at it for a couple of minutes. The sole flashcard and pile of paper surrounded by a halo of photos looked ridiculous, which just meant he needed to get more information, but from where? He wasn't about to pressure a ten-year-old to give up all his secrets.
But he would figure it out. He always figured it out. At nine years old, he discovered Batman’s secret identity; this would be a piece of cake. He was the Robin that had solved the most cold cases out of the three of them. He’d even constructed the case tying Joker to Jason Todd’s death without risking any of Batman's secrets. How much trouble could one sketchy-looking dude with anger issues be?
(Tim ignored that tiny voice at the back of his mind that whispered, "A lot.")