Archive of Our Own

|§| The work Tim did at Wayne Enterprises was not, in itself, particularly difficult. It held his attention well enough, and there were enough moving parts that he never felt like putting his fist through the screen, but it was the performance — being Tim Drake-Wayne — that tripped him up.

He’d learned, of course, how to be a weapon, at his mother’s hems, and then her knee, and then her side, before she died. She hadn’t been around often, but she’d always either implicitly or explicitly given him problems to solve, puzzles to do, lessons to learn. Drake Industries had been a young company in the dubiously-competent hands of Jack Drake, driven to succeed by his much more ambitious wife, and Tim had always known it would be his duty to transform it into something people could call a legacy — Little Boss, he’d been called by the senior staff, every time he’d accompanied Janet anywhere with his notebook and grown-up coffee thermos full of grape juice. He knew how to do his job and he did it well. But the -Wayne part of Drake-Wayne was very different to the Drake part of Drake-Wayne, and that was a social problem. Tim was not particularly good at social problems.

The Drakes had been what other rich people called new money. First-generation wealth. As a child, Tim hadn’t been able to see the difference; didn’t they attend the same parties? Didn’t they have the same jobs? Didn’t they do the same activities and send their kids to the same schools? Never mind that Janet sucked on her vowels when she got a little too angry or excited, never mind that Tim’s first residence had been a (fairly nice) condo in Midtown, courtesy of Jack’s parents.

As an adult, he could see the understated differences, glaring neon signs for those ‘in-the-know.’ Old money didn’t need to signal wealth. Old money had private tailors, inherited estates, practical cars that didn’t catch everyone’s attention. Janet Drake had taken her keen archaeologist’s eye for detail and applied it ruthlessly, intertwining the Drakes with the Bristol elite as soon as they moved from their comfortable condo when Tim was two, but there were still…differences.

Jewelry, a little too flashy. Party clothing, purchased from outlet stores — expensive ones, yes, but still accessible. You could get away with a Down-Bristol accent if you were new money, it wasn’t like people from the suburbs couldn’t make lucky investments, but there was a particular type of diction favored by the moneyed crowd, the real upper Bristol accent, that you couldn’t put on if they didn’t know you already. Tim liked cars that made jaws drop. He wore expensive suits and custom leathers and didn’t care who knew it. He had no patience for the inane babbling of Mr. So-and-so who could provide no value to the company. He didn’t like champagne, and hadn’t mastered the art of pretending to. 

He was better than Jack at holding onto money. Whether that was because he was better at commanding loyalty or better at staying out of comas was anyone’s guess. The Janet in him, Tim assumed, was the real reason he was more Drake than Wayne.

Well. He wasn’t really much of a Drake, either. The city had raised him. As an often-unsupervised child wandering the streets like an idiot, he’d been roughed up a couple of times, but he’d also learned Spanish and Cantonese, how to play hopscotch, and how to mend clothing. He’d learned love was more than the right series of yeses, a whole system of values and actions and choices he could (but didn’t have to) make. He was, in fact, more comfortable in jeans, on a skateboard — or in a vigilante uniform, on a rooftop — than anything else. But when it came to playing CEO, he could only manage Janet Drake. He’d never be Thomas Wayne, or even Lucius Fox.

(The less said about Brucie, the better.)

Still, Janet Drake wasn’t a bad ghost to have in the passenger seat. He liked to think she’d have approved of the outreach programs that he’d started over the past several years, despite hiding her origins even from her husband. Her original accent — trained out carefully and quickly so as to fit in with the moneyed social class — sounded a little like Brooklyn, if you didn’t know any Brooklyn natives. A New Yorker could’ve got a full-ride scholarship to Gotham U just as easily as a girl from the Narrows.

Today, he had only one meeting scheduled, with Lettie Briggs from the youth shelter program, but he also had six contracts to peruse and notate before sending them back over to WE’s attorney for further negotiation, and he had an ongoing fight with R&D — yes, they were going to get a new cheap phone onto the market, and no, they weren’t going to skimp on the hardware, if the company had to eat a little bit of initial cost it would still be better for their overall goals.

He was going to tear his hair out. He didn’t want to tear his hair out. He liked his hair.

It was just after noon when Tim was elbows-deep in another contract and a text got through his DND. Very few people were allowed through his DND. He turned his phone over and saw, to his surprise, a text from Damian Wayne:

Will you please come pick me up?

Tim looked at the text, blinking, for a few seconds. Damian hadn’t exactly been a terror — at least, not toward Tim — in a while, but he wouldn’t have called them close, either. If Damian was asking him for a favor, things were dire.

sure. where r u?

The answer came immediately: 

Home.

…Huh. Maybe more than dire. 

b there n a bit. no acounting 4 traffic. if the worlds ending lock urself n my room.

If nothing else, Tim would have the opportunity to avoid Mr. Whoever, the one who kept making weird comments about Tim’s hair. He couldn’t tell if the point was that Tim was too scruffy or he was being hit on, and it was starting to get obnoxious. 

Tim parked the Audi and moved his work satchel to the Cadillac, since this was a rescue mission, if the lowest-stakes rescue mission he’d ever been on. If there wasn’t some kind of catastrophe, he’d just take Damian out for tea and then bring him back. He looked at his texts to see if he’d missed anything huge, only to almost throw his phone at another message from Damian:

*accounting

Little shit. At least this was normal little brother stuff, though. He’d have done the same at that age, assuming he noticed. Tim had never been great at spelling, his brain often soaring beyond any speed his hands could keep up with. English and history had therefore always been his academic weaknesses, due to the essays.

He hurried through the front door, pushing up his sunglasses as he did so, and visited the kitchen first. Damian was unlikely to be there, but it was a start.

As expected, the kid wasn’t there, and neither was anybody else, so as soon as he entered the hallway, Tim called, “Damian?”

No answer, but he could hear the telltale signs of an argument from upstairs. Oh, boy. Damian was at that age. This could be anything from an argument about cleaning up after himself to a knock-down, drag-out fight where Damian threatened to move to Chicago. Or worse, some cottage in rural Vermont. Either way, Tim was determined to be the support system he’d secretly wished for at Damian’s age. Taking the stairs two at a time, work-approved wool overcoat brushing against his knees, he made his way toward the bedrooms — the sound was coming out of Tim’s room, so presumably, Damian had tried to hole up in there, but hadn’t managed to lock Bruce out. Or Bruce had simply let himself in, since Tim’s door wasn’t really locked to Batman, not anymore.

“-don’t care,” Damian was saying, not quite shouting, but definitely not in his normal measured cadence either. 

“I do care, deeply, but it’s not that simple! There were other factors at play-”

“I suppose, then, if other factors matter so much, we should forgive anything. Close the case files on Harley Quinn. Hide the evidence of Todd’s multiple rampages. They’re different now.”

Tim blanched. Whatever was going on, it was bigger than a normal father-son fight, and he wasn’t sure he should get involved, but he’d implicitly told Damian he would. So he stepped through the door as Bruce retorted, “You are being unreasonable. Is this how Robin acts?”

“Pretty sure it’s a rite of passage,” Tim interjected, drawing both parties’ attention. He waved at Damian, who was buried in his school jacket and a pair of slacks that were almost casual. “Did you choose my room for the acoustics, or what?” 

Damian threw himself at Tim and wrapped his arms tightly around Tim’s shoulders, shaking in a way Tim wasn’t entirely sure was faked. They were about the same height now, but Damian — for all the maturity he wanted to project — was still just 15. Just a kid.

“Hey,” he said softly, hugging back. This was weird, but he’d roll with it. He’d rolled with weirder and worse than a hug. “Sorry I’m late. I didn’t forget, just got caught up in something. Traffic was brutal too.”

Damian didn’t say anything to contradict the half-lie. He didn’t say anything at all.

To Bruce, Tim said, “We were supposed to get lunch today. I didn’t know I’d be walking into a war zone.”

“I thought you were working,” Bruce replied, very careful to keep his tone even.

“I’m always working. I’m never too busy for my little brother.” Tim let that hang, for both of them, and then asked, “Should I come back later after you’re done shouting at him, or are we good to go?”

Bruce took a deep breath, eyes closed, hand over his face. Then, he said, “It’s probably best you two keep your appointment.”

“Good.” Tim squeezed Damian a little and let him go. “Go and get your shoes, then meet me by the gray Cadillac. Don’t want to draw a crowd.”

Damian didn’t bother to say goodbye to Bruce. He was either really angry or really hurt, or both. For his part, Bruce didn’t look angry so much as confused, and something else more subtle that Tim couldn’t parse. Bruce tended to get loud when he got emotional; they all did, except Cass. It was a bad habit nobody had ever really bothered to break. 

It wasn’t that Tim didn’t trust Bruce Wayne. He’d seen how much love Bruce had for all of his kids. But he’d also been on the receiving end of the worst Batman had to offer, and he’d also been in the trenches when the lines blurred between Bruce and Batman. Bruce would never coldclock his own child, but Batman would do it to Robin — or at least, historically that was true — and Damian was Robin, and there was some piece of Tim that would probably never get over that, no matter how much he loved Bruce. He wanted to; he believed things would change, had changed. He just…couldn’t fix his own head, for whatever reason.

It was complicated for him. It shouldn’t ever have to be, for Damian. Regardless of how complicated Tim’s own relationship with Damian was, he’d always stand by that.

“I need to say something,” he blurted.

“What is it,” Bruce asked. He sounded like a father, not like a boss, and Tim felt like a jerk. He didn’t know what the right thing was.

He could’ve backed out. Maybe he should have. Tim’s room was supposed to be safe, and maybe saying this here would ruin that, too. But the thought of Damian looking at his own father with distrust, with fear, made Tim feel sick.

“Bruce, you’ve been a good father to him,” he said quietly, stepping close, mostly to diminish the chances of anyone listening in. Bruce’s face was inscrutable as always, but Tim didn’t care about that. He shoved his hands into his coat pockets so Bruce wouldn’t see how his nails dug into his palms. “But that’s the thing. You were a good father to Jason, too. And Dick, if his stories are true. You’re a good father, until something gets in the way, and then you’re Batman. You have no idea how it is, to be — you’re the safest person in the world when Batman’s your dad, until Batman comes after you. I didn’t see the beginning of that, I only saw the end. I don’t care what Damian did or didn’t do, but he’s not wearing his uniform right now. You can Bruce Wayne him all you want, it’s not my place to tell you how to parent, but I will always put myself between my brother and Batman.”

He stepped back. His heart pounded in his ears, in his throat, even in his spine and hips. His legs felt a little unstable and he could feel the tips of his fingers begin to go numb inside his pockets. This wasn’t something he’d ever planned to say. If he had planned to, he wouldn’t have done it out in the open, where anyone might hear it. He’d always looked up to Bruce, even when Bruce had betrayed his trust, even when he’d been terrified, even when he’d been absolutely certain he would never be seen as family. He didn’t feel good about it. There was no catharsis in it either.

Is this how Robin acts?

He had to feel good about it. Bruce Wayne shouldn’t care how Robin acts. Damian was only Robin in uniform. The rest of the time, he was just a kid.

“You should keep your appointment,” Bruce said, far more gently. He studied Tim in a way that was strange and different. Tim wasn’t used to being looked at the same way Bruce looked at Damian when Damian wasn’t looking back. He wasn’t sure he liked it.

“Yeah.” He hoped there wasn’t a tremble in his voice. “I’ll have him back safe.”

“I know you will,” Bruce told him as he fled the room, but he couldn’t look back.

He ran into Damian on the stairs, and neither of them mentioned the possibility — the likelihood — that instead of immediately getting his shoes, Damian had stood outside in the hall, listening in. It only mattered to Tim in that it was embarrassing for Bruce to be undermined, but maybe Damian needed the reassurance that someone would stand up for him. 

Is this how Robin acts?

Things had been good for years. Bruce had been trying, really trying, since he’d come back from being lost to time. Tim hadn’t been lying when he told Bruce he’d been a good father, especially to Damian. When Dick came around, everybody got along. Cass and Steph had reconciled and when Cass was in town, they spent plenty of time interacting peacefully with everyone. Duke knew that he was always welcome, despite no longer being a foster. Jason…well, he didn’t come around much at all, but he and Tim had their own thing going, and nobody had much to say about that. And maybe Tim didn’t come around much either, but that was just happenstance. Probably. His issues were with the bats, and his head was just messed up at the moment. Half the time, he had to set alarms just to remember to feed himself, his routine at WE and in his night life the only reason he ever managed to peel himself off the couch.

Had Tim screwed something up by intervening? He didn’t want to be the one to upset the balance any more than he already had. 

He ushered Damian out the door, handing an extra pair of sunglasses to him. It wouldn’t be enough to disguise him from the likes of Vicki Vale, but it would be enough to keep the sun out of his eyes and stave off one of those photic headaches he pretended he didn’t get.

There were a lot of things they didn’t talk about, like the filters Tim had designed for Damian’s domino lenses, or the meditation Damian had happened to demonstrate when Tim had the worst of his…silly little anxiety issues. Maybe one day they would talk about those things.

Once they were both safely buckled into the car, Tim asked, “You wanna talk about it?”

“I need to be quiet first,” Damian told him, and, well, Tim could understand that.

The Grotto was a coffee shop in the Kubrick District, a nice, low-lit place hidden in a strip that contained a couple of high-end clothing shops, a Polish market, and a secondhand bookstore. The strip itself was located next to a paid parking structure, so Tim didn’t worry too much about the car getting stolen, although he made sure to bring his work satchel inside with him.

Mostly, Tim had chosen the Grotto for their private room. The door could shut tight, but the windows were wide with curtains that could be tied back, allowing for varying levels of privacy. If they left the curtains slightly open, they’d be able to watch the outside door, but they’d also be able to discuss anything that Damian needed to, including vigilante business.

After sweeping for mics and cameras and figuring out the best way to seat himself and Damian to keep a wide view of the Grotto, all the standard things you did before relaxing in public, Tim settled in on one side of the short table with an espresso spritzer, something he knew Jason would give him shit for but he nevertheless enjoyed. So he liked carbonation, whatever. On the other side of the table, Damian clutched his jasmine tea — gross — between two tense hands.

Fair. Tim could still feel tingles in his own fingertips even after the drive over. Fighting with Bruce was harder than fighting any of the masks in Gotham.

“I’m not gonna force you,” he told the kid, thinking about all the times he’d felt forced to say something because he wanted to please Dick, or his father, or even just one of his teammates, “but if you feel like saying what’s on your mind, I’m willing to listen. Or you can tell me what’s going on with you in general, at school or whatever. Or we can sit here in silence. It’s up to you.”

Damian nodded slowly and said nothing. Tim watched him for a little while. He’d grown taller and broader, and would likely end up as tall as Bruce. Adorably, under his smart jacket, he was wearing one of Tim’s old band shirts — Tim now recognized it as one he’d left behind because he had two near-identical copies, one gifted to him by a friend from school and one gifted to him by Dick, but the one from Ives hadn’t fit properly. It looked like Damian had finally begun developing the urge to spend time in other people’s clothes. It was a nice way to stave off the urge to invade their space in other ways that tended to make them uncomfortable.

They sat quietly a little longer. Tim savored his drink, which he never made for himself, while Damian mostly inhaled the scent of his own. Finally, Damian lifted his head and said, “I don’t fight with Father. When we disagree, we work it out quietly.”

Tim nodded. “It must’ve been upsetting to actually go there, then.”

“Are you condescending to me?”

Biting down on his cheek, Tim swallowed a laugh. Damian was difficult to talk to, prickly, always assumed his conversation partner thought the worst of him. Once you understood his position, he was less of a brat. “I’m not. I remember the first fight I had with my dad. I thought I was gonna throw up.”

“I’m not so weak as that. It was…unsettling. I hadn’t intended to argue with him at all. I texted you and hoped to wait in my room, but Father wanted to have a discussion.” Damian made an irritated sound through his teeth. “I lost control. I don’t care for it.”

“Yeah, that part always sucks,” Tim agreed, “but that’s part of fighting. It’s always full of that feelings crap. Of course family knows us best, so we can get under each other’s skin easier than anyone else.”

“I should be better,” Damian stressed. He sat back, arms crossed across the band logo on his chest, looking like a smaller Bruce trying not to say something mean. “And so should he.”

Tim took another sip. He wasn’t the best person to confide in. He preferred to feel his feelings for only a few moments and then put them away. He’d learned quickly, even before his work as Robin, that it would be rare for him to have any kind of emotional support, and if he wanted to be the perfect son (or the perfect Robin, eventually), he needed to be able to compartmentalize and prioritize others. It made him very good at triage and victim protocols, and terrible at simply listening. He itched to fix things. Regardless, Tim was the person Damian had asked for, and Tim was here. Damian didn’t need a hero, he needed a brother. Tim would have to try his best.

“Do you want to tell me what you fought about? Or is it private?”

“It’s not private. It’s confusing. I thought I knew what we started arguing about, but the more we fought, the less control I had. I don’t understand how it happened.”

“That’s normal,” Tim told him, gesturing aimlessly. He shifted in his seat. This wasn’t comfortable. He felt eyes on his back, for some reason; the room wasn’t bugged, so there was no reason for him to feel so watched. He wanted to move and sit with his back in the corner, so he could see all the windows and without anyone seeing him. Instead, he forced himself to sit still and continued, “You learn tricks to keep arguments on-track as you get older. You and your dad could eventually talk circles around each other, but he’s got decades on you.”

And he was at that age where hormones were the worst, but Tim wasn’t going to bring that up.

“Why didn’t Father keep the conversation on-track,” Damian asked shortly.

“Maybe he drove it exactly where he wanted it to go — it just wasn’t what you wanted to talk about.”

“I didn’t want to speak to him at all.” Damian clutched his styrofoam cup again. Tim worried, vaguely, that the tea would spill out or the top would pop off, but neither happened. “Then, when he confronted me on…the initial issue, I assumed it would be simple. You have cut arguments short by apologizing, even when you were not wrong. I tried that. Father saw through it, or his initial confrontation was just an opening gambit.”

Tim shrugged. The chair was rough against his back. “It might’ve been both. I can’t help you with the specifics unless I know them, but I can tell you it does matter how you apologize. And when. There’s an art to it.”

“I don’t believe I owe him an apology for accessing old files on the computer downstairs,” Damian explained mulishly, “especially if they contain pertinent training information for the Robin position. Am I not still Robin? Why should I apologize for gathering information? Is that not my responsibility?”

“It…is, yeah.” Tim frowned. Why would Bruce be upset about Damian looking at training files? Moreover, why would he let that spill over into the civilian side of things? “Did he say why he was upset about it, or did he just yell at you?”

Depending on the answer, maybe Tim might need to make a guest room. And maybe spend some time in his actual home instead of the apartment he was using for his current undercover op. And let Jason know, so he wouldn’t be surprised if Red Robin had to collaborate with Robin instead of Hood for a night or two. Tim didn’t think he had the energy or will to be responsible for a whole teenager, but he could at least let Damian have some space if he needed it.

“The files I accessed were off-limits to everyone. He saw me looking at them, and I left the Cave before he could speak to me. I believe the lecture should have begun and ended with privacy, but it didn’t.”

“You apologized, but you weren’t sorry, and he saw through it. So he pushed, and you fell for it, because that’s how it always goes,” Tim surmised. That wasn’t even a Bruce thing, in his experience. It was just a dad thing. “You’re not the first and you won’t be the last, I promise. It didn’t get too nasty, did it? I noticed you did end up in my room.”

“I left my room and tried to go to yours, after I realized we were going in circles, but he followed me. I should have told him I wanted space to breathe.”

“Maybe.”

Tim tried not to wriggle his shoulders to get rid of the discomfort.

“The discussion might have been about privacy at the start, but we fought about you,” Damian admitted. He looked anywhere but Tim, which meant he looked around for an amount of time most people would probably find uncomfortable. As much as he hated feeling so vulnerable out in the open, relatively speaking, Tim didn’t mind the silence; Damian would talk, or he wouldn’t. Eventually, he continued, “I have taken more of an interest in computers recently. I tested my skills against an encrypted partition and opened some old files I thought would be, at worst, cases with gruesome details that Father didn’t want me to see. I found instead detailed plans and reports on your sixteenth birthday, among other retired trainings. It was…”

“I was volatile,” Tim said, careful of his tone and unsure of where this was going. He was a little impressed, though. It would have taken skill and patience to find and access anything Bruce actively wanted covered up.

“It was marked as a failure,” Damian said sourly, “but I didn’t understand why. After Father refused to let the subject go, I requested an explanation, and found it lacking. I…may have asked if I would be tested that way. It was an accusation, not a question.”

Ah. Yeah. He could see why that might have egged on a fight. Bruce hated to be put in no-win situations. Damian still associated Robin with family, so to imply that Bruce had done something bad would be to imply Bruce had been a bad father. Bruce couldn’t tell Damian he was planning to be a bad father. At the same time, if he said no, he’d be admitting to favoritism in some way: either he favored Tim, by being hard on him no matter what, or he favored Damian to the point of hypocrisy, which Damian would not appreciate. 

Either that, or Bruce was just irritated that Damian had found out about that kind of testing before he was ready for it, and would now be on his guard. Tim didn’t think this was the case, but everyone could backslide.

If Tim was honest with himself, he still didn’t understand why he’d been considered a failure either, especially in light of the circumstances surrounding Bruce’s disappearance a year later. But unlike Damian, Tim had always considered Robin to be a job. An important one, yes, and one he’d essentially forced his way into, but a job all the same. His problem with the birthday test hadn’t been the surprise, or the stress, or even the impossibility of it — he would’ve failed no matter what — but the fact that Batman, his boss, had humiliated him for failing to get a promotion he hadn’t asked for. On his birthday. Which should’ve been celebrated with friends, like the one who’d hurt him.

It didn’t matter anymore. Tim didn’t have any particular feelings about it, other than the occasional burning curiosity that would never be sated anyway. What mattered, at this point, was whether the kid was safe. “Did he say he would?”

“He told me that I was his son, and he loved me. He said he wouldn’t hurt me. But how can I trust it? You were his son first, and he hurt you. And then he locked away the evidence, as though hiding it should mean it doesn’t exist. Removing a scar does not mean the injury never happened.”

Tim considered his next words carefully. This wasn’t just about bat training. Damian had grown up in a death cult whose members could theoretically wash away fatal injuries, and Tim knew very well that the test Tim had been given was absolutely the kind of brutal mindscrew the League would pull on their favored. Damian was supposed to be safe from that in Gotham. It wasn’t enough to explain that Tim hadn’t really been family then, hadn’t earned it yet, because that would probably make Damian question his own place. It wasn’t enough to explain that it wasn’t bat-standard, either, because Damian would then want to know why things had changed with Tim. What could he say, exactly?

“You’re right. It happened, whether we talk about it or not,” he decided on, hoping it wouldn’t backfire. “Your dad and I were in a weird place at the time, and he didn’t know how to care about me the way I needed to be cared about. He…I think he thought that it would make me happy. Solving a huge case with so many crazy twists. I was always a little physically underdeveloped, especially after I got sick, and I knew I’d always be at a disadvantage there, so I wanted to surpass him as a detective instead of just improving my fighting skills.”

Damian looked unconvinced, which was reasonable. Tim had more or less pulled that out of his ass — and it was a story that could be true, but it wasn’t the truth. Batman had not cared about making Tim happy on his birthday. Batman had cared about making sure Tim could function as a detective and fighter beyond his established stress limits. Tim had failed to conclude the case in the way it should have been concluded, and he’d failed to accept the truth of that gracefully. Then again, had he not been pushed beyond his limits, he probably wouldn’t have been able to successfully go off around the world alone when Bruce was lost to time, so that hurt was good for something.

“I don’t want him to make me happy,” Damian told him, “if it means setting me up to fail.”

“He wouldn’t,” Tim said sharply, because if nothing else, that was true.

“Wouldn’t he?”

“Damian, he loves you. He’s your dad.”

“He’s yours, too!”

And there wasn’t anything else for it, was there? Someone had to say it eventually. Tim just hoped this wouldn’t mess up anything for the family. “I wasn’t, not back then. I…you know, when you got here, the reason I was hurt by all the stuff you said — about me not being his real son — it was because you were right. For a long time, I wasn’t. That was fine; I had parents already, even if…anyway, I was Robin, but that didn’t mean he had to love me. He adopted me eventually, but for a long time, I assumed that was so he could keep Robin around, not because he cared about me as a person.”

Damian’s face screwed up in some unpleasant expression, so Tim assured him, “That’s at least half on me. I had a weird relationship with my own parents, and I didn’t know how to be cared for in that way. Bruce tried to let me keep the independence I was used to, except for when he didn’t. He wasn’t a bad father, I was bad at being a son. I’ve always been at odds with authority. You should see my academic record — I managed excellent grades, but I always ended up kicked out of schools for behavioral issues.”

That last time, before settling on a local boarding school, Jack had threatened to send him out of state to a facility for troubled teens, where they’d straighten out his behavior and his increasingly-obvious queerness all in one swoop. The cost had been prohibitive, though, and Tim had promised to expose every dirty little secret as soon as he got free. After all, Drake Industries was practically dead in the water; what was one more nail in the coffin of Jack Drake’s reputation?

Thank goodness for Dana’s mitigating presence, that last stretch of time, even if he’d felt weird about Jack dating someone closer to his son’s age than his own. She’d managed to get Jack to attend a PFLAG meeting, at least, and Tim had appreciated the text thread full of memes and food pics. He wished Dana hadn’t been in Blüdhaven when it, well, exploded. Maybe her ethics had been a little shoddy, but that only meant she was Gotham born and raised, and she had a little bit in common with the remaining Drakes.

Damian still looked skeptical. He took a sip of his jasmine tea and made a face, setting it on the table again. Tim refrained from saying duh, because that wouldn’t be helpful, but he certainly thought it. 

“It made me think of my training when I was a child,” said Damian. His tone was light, but Tim wasn’t an idiot. “I may have overreacted. Father thinks so. But I am not only upset at the training itself. It made me homesick. It was unexpected, and unwanted. I believe that was why I pushed back so hard against what I found. I have no desire to go back, so why…?”

“That’s where you came from, Damian. It shaped you. There were people who cared for you, and you cared for them. That’s a big deal,” Tim answered, frowning a little. This wasn’t a difficult concept, was it?

“But it’s wrong! I was raised by murderers,” Damian retorted.

“Yes. True. But they still raised you. Did someone tell you that you have to be ashamed of that?”

The common sentiment was I will kill them for hurting my kid brother, but considering the tangled history between Tim and Damian, other attempts on his life, and grappling with his own morality, it was probably a bad joke. Whoever had been giving Damian trouble, though, he’d certainly give them a smackdown. He wouldn’t tolerate anyone making Damian feel like he had to be ashamed of his origins. You couldn’t control where you came from. He’d had to tolerate enough garbage from Damian himself to sort through his own sticky feelings about being inferior by nature, and he knew exactly where he stood on that subject. Now that Damian was older and getting wiser, Tim wouldn’t allow anybody to make him feel less-than just because he’d been brought up in a death cult.

Damian traced shapes on the table with a finger. “I don’t know. So much of my childhood coddling was to ensure I wouldn’t return to them. If I never see most of my minders again, I won’t be sad about it. But I think there is an expectation that I have no good memories. I have many fond memories, and things to be proud of. The test Father gave you could have been a modified exercise for older trainees. I didn’t like the reminder at all. But I remember my nurse’s kind smile. I remember fragrant teas and flavorful foods. I remember the trainer who taught me I could use my size to my advantage, even if it meant breaking away from standard. I remember my mother trying for me. Those are memories I can’t help but treasure.”

“There’s nothing wrong with being proud of where you came from,” Tim said gently, “even if you can look back and say it wasn’t perfect. Or even good.”

He could tell immediately that he must’ve said something wrong, or maybe he’d just said it in the wrong tone, even if he wasn’t sure how or why. Damian’s face shuttered and he scoffed, “And I suppose you know about that.”

Tim nodded politely, making a toasting motion with the coffee cup. It wasn’t as though he’d ever spoken to Damian about his own family, and he doubted anyone else had. Why would they? “Yeah, I do know a little something about that. It was nothing as dramatic as growing up in the League, though.”

“Brown mentioned that your parents were wealthy and permissive. She knew you as a happy child.”

Tim rolled his eyes. “Steph barely knew me at all back then. She saw what I wanted her to see — everyone did, including your dad. My parents weren’t permissive, they were absent. Do you know what happens to a person when they’re left completely alone with no stimulation for weeks on end?”

“It wasn’t the most commonplace of methods, with the League, but I am aware, yes.” Damian put his cup up to his lips, frowned, and returned it to the table without drinking. “I myself was often left alone, but never without something new to occupy my mind.”

“My parents…loved me very much,” Tim told Damian, “and you won’t catch me telling another human being this, and I’ll deny saying it if you tell someone, but…they shouldn’t have been parents.” 

Damian made some kind of noise. Tim didn’t know what it meant, and Damian didn’t actually say anything. He’d always been a very straightforward person, so Tim assumed if he wanted to get a message across, he’d do more than grunt, or whatever that had been.

“It is what it is,” he continued lightly. “The first time they left me alone for months, it was the summer after second grade. I was seven. Before then, they’d hired nannies and sitters for me if they had to leave the country, but we made a decision as a family that I was grown-up enough to take care of myself for a summer. They hired someone to bring groceries and tidy up twice a week, but she was supposed to stay out of sight so I could practice being an adult. Functionally, I was alone. The internet was turned off, so I wouldn’t get into trouble, and by the end of the first week, there was nothing new in the house. Do you see what I’m telling you?”

As Tim had spoken, Damian’s face had grown progressively stormier over the rim of his cup. In answer to Tim’s question, Damian said, “You are telling me that your parents tortured you.”

Tim faltered. That wasn’t what he’d meant at all. Why didn’t anybody understand? “No, that — they didn’t — hang on, what you just said was weird. Did Jason put you up to that?”

“Todd? I don’t spend time with the likes of him.” Damian gave him a suspicious look. “Do you? Oh, no, you do! You-”

“Anyway, all I’m telling you is that sometimes, someone can love you and show it in ways that hurt you.” Better to cut off that line of questioning before it could begin, since Tim had been wrong about it. “My parents didn’t mean for me to — they meant for me to feel like they trusted me. I asked to be left alone. We pretended it was my business trip, too. It was inadvisable, yeah, obviously, they shouldn’t have said yes to me, I was seven. It wasn’t torture, it was bad parenting from people who had other priorities. What I’m telling you is that I’m still proud of where I came from. I still love my parents. I’ve always said I’m still Tim Drake when I look in the mirror; I look back and it hurts sometimes that I was never as important as their work, but they were important to me. You’re allowed to still love your family, all right? Love is a big deal, even if it’s complicated. It’s part of what gives us that oomph we need to be part of something.”

“My grandfather would disagree,” said Damian. He sounded kind of bitter.

“Your grandfather tried to steal your body,” Tim riposted, amused, “so I’m not sure we should care what he thinks about anything. You’re a good kid. You’re allowed to care and be discerning.”

That had been a risk. Historically, even Tim’s casual snark was not appreciated in doses larger than zero around the kid, but the alternative was being a little more honest than he was willing to be. The truth was, Tim figured he would probably be bitter, too, if someone had tried to have this conversation with him earlier. His childhood isolation had driven him to hear voices and see shadows in the corners of his eyes within a month. It was what had inspired him to take the bus into the city as a child, wandering around to escape the oppressive silence. It had been such a wonderful adventure, except for all the times he’d buried himself in his covers, watching the shadows move, listening to the trees whisper, unable to sleep for paranoia. He had even slept outside, later on that summer, because it felt safer. 

Tim loved his parents. He would always love his parents, and he would always be Tim Drake, for better or for worse, even if he always kept -Wayne tacked on at the end. The Drakes had helped shape him and even when he didn’t like himself, he was proud of everything he had survived and accomplished. 

Hesitantly, Damian asked, “You think I’m a ‘good kid?’”

Tim hadn’t even noticed that he’d said it. Did he think Damian was a good kid? He wasn’t a bad kid anymore. He was a little shit, but the normal kind, not the kind Tim felt the need to watch his food and drink around, and that only meant he was a Wayne. Bruce had a trollish sense of humor, too. Tim had trouble trusting, period. Whatever residual issue he had with Damian wasn’t the kid’s fault, it was just Tim’s general paranoia rearing its head. Anyone older than toddlerhood could be a threat, and even toddlers could bite.

“Yeah,” he decided, smiling across the table. “You turned out pretty great.”

Damian ducked his head, embarrassed. “You stood up to Father for me.”

“You heard that, huh?”

“You stood up to Batman for me,” Damian pressed.

“Well,” Tim explained, also embarrassed now, “you’re my brother, okay? Don’t make it weird.”

“Weird…? You’re the weird one! You’ve forgiven things I can’t imagine forgiving. You…are not blood, but you are my father’s heir. You could cut me out like a tumor, at any time. Instead, you defended me, called me brother, and helped me, because I asked. You were working today and you did it anyway. Why?” Damian’s shoulders hiked up to his ears. “I have never thought to apologize for trying to murder you.”

Tim shook his head, trying not to smile. He wasn’t sure he managed it. “I wouldn’t accept it anyway. We both know how easy it is to lie. It honestly wasn’t the murder attempts, or the digs at my appearance or my performance, or anything else you did or said, that bothered me — nothing you did or said was new. The reason it hurt was that you were always my brother in my head. I loved you as soon as I laid eyes on you, and you hated me. That’s what hurt. I don’t care about apologies. The only thing I want from you is for you to be my brother. If you don’t want that, it’s fine, but let’s get clear about it now.”

“Timothy,” Damian said gravely, giving him a concerned look, “this is worse than I thought. I have already claimed you as a brother. Now, I wonder if I should appoint myself your personal security detail.”

“What,” Tim said, suddenly on the back foot.

“I already told you: you are far too forgiving. Torture, murder attempts, abuses against your person, absolutely awful tea-” Damian gave the barista a covert glare through the glass. Tim hoped she didn’t notice. “You may be competent in your workplaces, but you clearly need a minder in your personal life. Father did request that I find a way to involve myself more in civilian affairs now that I’m getting older. I’ll have your executive assistant forward your contact list and vet them myself.”

“Wait,” Tim tried. How had this happened so quickly? What was going on? He’d miscalculated somewhere. Was this how people felt when he started to steamroll them?

…Not that he’d stop, but he had a new appreciation for how frustrating it probably was.

“For what? Another villain to worm his way into your good graces? No. This will be good for us. I can help you in this way, and you can — when Father—”

And Tim understood. It wasn’t entirely about either of them, and it wasn’t entirely about their relationship. Bruce Wayne was a powerhouse, and Tim Drake had managed to keep his own identity despite that. He hadn’t had any sort of safety net when he’d carved out that space for himself, but he could be there for the kid. “Thanks, Damian. Maybe we’ll pitch it to him as an internship in my office, though. You’ll show me the good things you remember about being an al Ghul, I’ll show you the good things I remember about being a Drake, and by this time next year, Wayne Enterprises won’t know what hit them.”

“I would like that,” Damian agreed. “To work with my brother, without any masks in the way.”

Tim wasn’t completely sure, especially since Damian apparently saw him as a cross between a shark and a kicked puppy. But he’d always wanted family, and he hadn’t been lying about wanting Damian as a brother from the moment they met. Damian was Batman’s heir, but Tim was Bruce Wayne’s, and if this was how they could meet in the middle, he was willing to try.

Even if it meant being stalked a little bit. After all, that was the easiest and best way to protect the people you loved.