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Gotham was quiet tonight. A rarity.
Red Robin sat at the top of Wayne Tower, feet dangling off the edge of the building, swinging gently back and forth.
Really the quiet night should have been a relief to him. And really, it was! He was happy there were less people dying or suffering tonight. But at the same time, it left him idle.
The problem was that Tim had never really done well with having nothing to do. His mind was too active. He never really could get it to still. Pondering and puzzling and whatnot on and on in circles. Lately, he hadn’t really liked where it would take him.
Tim hadn’t felt very real lately. Not in a literal sense. He was very much so alive and breathing and affecting the world around him. Unlike some, he was surprisingly not very prone to dying. It's just, well, he hadn’t really felt like much of a person lately. As odd as that might sound.
Though maybe, he’d been feeling like this for a while now.
When he had first started as Robin it had been easy in a way. Robin was a symbol more than a person, something he was attempting to build himself up to. It was an impossible thing, trying to build himself up to such a perfect ideal. But some things were easier about it.
Tim Drake was not Robin, Tim Drake was simply the boy filling in that impossibly important and bright role. Tim Drake and Robin were not the same person, he was simply the structure holding up the symbol.
And that made it easy in some ways. Robin could run off into the night and keep Batman and Gotham alive. Then when he took off the domino he went home, he lived Tim Drake the boy's life.
But of course, nothing as monumental as being a living symbol could ever remain so simple.
Robin bled into Tim Drake. After his training, he couldn’t exactly go about his daily life and not feel a responsibility to act. To solve every strife and right the wrong. Not that he had ever been one to step away from helping. But now he had the skills needed to do so much more. It's just that he didn’t always manage it, and every bit of suffering he witnessed settled as a weight on his shoulders.
He had always had an active mind, churning with patterns and facts and images. After Robin, his mind had started to feel like a separate alive thing. Pacing endlessly, gnawing at its confines, buzzing with undercurrents of anger and writhing with fear and guilt. Never resting its endless need to solve and remember and fix it. Whether it be witnessing some new nightmare or discovering a new set of lives which depended on his ability to figure it out, it felt like some new thing fed the thing his mind had become every night. It left him restless and spacey.
It wasn’t like he could simply stop with Robin either. Tim was the one who had picked up the mantle. Tim was the one who took on the responsibility. He couldn’t just abandon the role when things got hard. There was so much riding on Robin. Robin was much too important to too many people, it was too important to Tim, for him to simply drop it and let it die.
Tim bled into Robin as well. It turns out, if you are involving yourself in enacting vigilante justice and taking the lives of others into your hands, it becomes pretty difficult to adhere unbreakably to the morals of a perfect symbol of light and still feel like you did the best you could.
When he actually started to fight crime, he started to learn how complex doing the right thing reality was. You could ponder as many trolley problems as you’d like, it didn’t quite feel the same as having the switch in your hand. He quickly learned that he needed to make decisions on more than the ideals of the symbol of Robin. It became necessary to consider what Tim Drake thought was right. The more Tim Drake’s morals became Robin’s ideals, the harder it became to take off the domino each night and feel like it wasn’t Robin’s shadow mirroring his every step in the morning.
Now that felt like quite a delicate dance. How much of his own thoughts and moral and emotions could he let bleed into Robin before he tainted it? Everyone who had ever seen him determined knew he could be intense. To a concerning degree. What if in the name of fixing something he crossed a line, and then just kept pushing, and pushing, and pushing that line until there was no going back. If he let himself start he knew how easy it was to think himself into justifying something. He had to be careful not to let too much of Tim Drake bleed into Robin’s morals.
He later learned how right he was to be careful. Learned it while threatening a future version of himself that had pushed too far with a gun held to his own head. Turns out, apparently, if he started to push, he’d be willing to taint the very symbol of Batman himself, never mind Robin.
It had started to rain in Gotham. Not quite pouring, not just spitting either. Red Robin stayed where he sat and let the sound of the rain wash over him.
If he looked carefully, he could see the light of the city interacting with each and every droplet. Subtle and beautiful, enhanced by his position overlooking the whole city.
He looked down and imagined what it might look like to be one of those droplets. To see all of the other droplets seemingly frozen next to him, falling in tandem, as the rest of the world rushed by.
Over time the line between Robin and Tim Drake blurred further and further.
It didn’t help that Tim began to share progressively more and more of his foundation with Robin.
It was just that, Tim Drake kept losing so much. He had switched schools, moved homes, lost his parents, lost his friends, lost his girlfriend. Pretty soon there wasn’t really much left of Tim Drake’s life.
Tim had been determined to keep Robin mostly separate from Tim Drake's when he first started. Robin was a role he was fulfilling. Work life balance was important and all that.
But Robin offered Tim so much. Friends, family, a father, a partner, a purpose, a home. It became pretty hard to avoid Robin seeping into so much of his foundation.
So what if every bit of it was tied to a burden so heavy he sometimes struggled to get up in the morning under the weight of it, body aching with the echoes of past abuse. So what if it cost him the person he used to be. He was Tim Wayne now. Whatever happened to Tim Drake? The little boy with starry eyes staring at his heroes.
Besides he was the one who chose to take on the role knowing full well it killed the boy who held it before him. He couldn’t exactly complain now, when the thing labeled hot burnt him when he touched it. Never mind that he took Robin on because everything was falling apart without it. Robin gave him so much.
By the time he even started to think that it might be okay if he put Robin down, got back to being Tim the boy, he realized that it would cost him everything. He had what he had because he was Robin. What else did he have left?
But what use would he have to the mission, to Bruce, if he wasn’t Robin. He had seen what happened to Dick when he stopped being Robin. The awful angry silence that became Bruce and Dick’s relationship after. Hell, he was the one who dragged them both back together afterwards.
Bruce could be so focused sometimes. So much of the time it seemed like Bruce was more of a mask than Batman. If he gave up Robin, would it be enough to only cling to the part of the man who had become his second father that was barely even real?
Then of course, Robin kept losing everything as well. And god did it hurt. It was just so much. Not only because of the grief of everyone he lost. Bart, Kon, Steph… one after another. But also because of the guilt.
He was capable now. He wasn't just some little boy watching two people fly and then fall and fall, and break. He wasn’t the little boy too small to escape his mothers arms to save the boy who had just lost everything before the shadow broke him too.
Tim was Robin now, he should have been able to save them.
He wasn’t proud of everything he did when he started losing everyone. But he had wanted them back goddammit. Didn’t they understand how much he loved them? How could they leave him behind like that? Why wouldn’t anyone stay? Didn’t the universe know Tim would tear everything apart to get them back? Didn’t it know about the dark thing that lived in his chest? The thing he kept on such a tight leash because he knows it would taint the world if it meant fixing it?
Not that they stayed dead. Not like it hadn’t hurt all the same.
And then Damian. The little brat, scared kid, who sauntered into his life and proclaimed that he had a right to everything Tim had fought and lost and bled for. Who acted like Tim was the intruder. Like Tim had no right to everything he earned at the cost of the boy named Tim Drake. All under the claim of the blood of all things, in a house full of adopted orphans.
Tim finally had a home where he lived with people who loved him and were there for him. Then in walks some brat and he had to spend every moment checking over his shoulder for the next murder attempt.
He should have really seen Bruce’s death coming. It was par for the course after all, for him to just barely taste what it might be like to have a proper parent, only for him to lose them as soon as he was getting used to the comfort of it. Par for the course for him to be left to build himself up around impossible ideals and symbols without a proper guiding hand to let him know that kind of obsession could consume him if it didn’t shatter him first.
Tim was tired. In many ways he was tired. But if there was anything true about Tim it was that he was determined, especially when it came to the people he loved. It didn't matter if he was Tim Drake, Tim Wayne, or Tim the Robin, he didn’t give up on people.
And so when he found a sign, the slightest hope that Bruce was alive, he knew he would give anything to get him back.
He hadn’t considered it would cost him Robin.
Fundamentally, he understands why Dick did it. Dick had a different understanding of what Robin was than Tim did. Robin wasn’t an ideal or a symbol to be lived up to for Dick like it was for Jason or Tim, Robin is Dick. When Dick was Robin, Robin was Batman’s sidekick, and that was a good part of why the two grew apart.
Dick didn’t want Tim as just a sidekick and thought it would do Damian some good to have an ideal to live up to. Dick was under a lot of pressure and trying to handle everything the best he could. Tim understands this.
Dick didn’t know that he was tearing Tim’s foundation right out from under him, and that it shattered his whole world.
Robin was not just a sidekick to Tim. Tim had spent years training and building himself up to be more than that, to be Batman’s partner. Robin was Batman’s other half.
Between solo missions, Young Justice, and the Titans, Tim had probably spent at least half if not more of his career as Robin as a separate entity than Batman.
But Dick saw Robin as a sidekick. It was hard not to take that as a rejection of all the efforts and sacrifices Tim had put into Robin over the years to make it more than that, to keep the symbol and light alive and thriving. To keep it untainted by failings of his own morals. All that effort for what? For Robin to be handed to the bloody hands of a child who couldn’t even yet grasp that literal murder was not a valid way to get something you wanted, who had not yet learned not to lash out violently with his own emotions and insecurities.
Years of effort and self-control to ensure he didn’t mar the memory of a dead boy, of Tim’s light, squandered and spat on. By the person that he thought could trust the most in the world. His idol, his brother.
Dick didn’t mean to hurt Tim, but a knife in the back may have hurt less. Probably would have scarred less too.
It didn’t matter. Not really. Not when Bruce was out there somewhere and there was a chance that Tim could fix it. It didn't matter that no one believed him. That he couldn’t trust anyone. That he was alone in this. Tim wanted his fucking Dad back, and there was nothing that could stop him from getting him.
Red Robin made sense for this. There was no separating Tim from Robin at this point. But there was no way he was going to be the one to taint Robin after all this time. And he knew he was going to be pushing the line with this mission.
At this point, he didn't have anyone to rely on except the persistent little dark thing in his chest. While he would try his best to keep the leash tight, he knew in order to get this done he would have to leave it looser than he ever felt comfortable before. He was going to be tainting himself with this one. It wasn’t exactly easy to pull someone out of literal time on your own.
And so Red Robin made sense, the tainted little bird. It didn’t hurt that he would be taking this one from Jason too, the bastard.
He did it too. He found Bruce. It had just cost him things he didn’t even know he could lose. The bone deep exhaustion he came back with had felt like it hung directly on his soul.
There was blood under his nails, his friends, his enemies, his own. Something about the desperation in which every drop was spilled made it harder to scrub away.
He had brought Bruce back, he had fixed it. Dick could let go of his burden’s. Damian would have his father again. Everything could go back to normal. Hell half of the people who had died in his life had miraculously come back. The world could move forwards now.
Still somehow nothing felt better. He still wasn’t Robin. He was still tainted. He still wasn’t Tim Drake anymore. Sure his dad was back in this plain of existence. Tim could have him back. Same with his friends. But he couldn’t bring himself to properly face any of them. When any of them had died, they had known Tim as Robin, the light. There was no magically bringing that person back. Would they recognize him now? He didn’t recognize himself.
Hey at least he had Red Robin now! … the tainted bloody little bird.
So Tim hadn’t been feeling very real lately, he’s not sure when the last time he felt real was. He wasn’t really sure who he was if he wasn’t Robin. He wasn’t really Tim Drake anymore. There was no ideal to build himself anymore, he certainly didn’t want to become Batman, the paranoid bastard. And he couldn’t bring himself to face anyone who might offer a guiding hand. Plus he didn’t really feel up to fighting Damian for his place in the family back.
He wasn’t anyone’s light.
He wasn’t anyone’s leader.
He wasn’t sure if he was anyone’s son.
He still had duties to fulfill, as Red Robin and the CEO of Wayne Enterprises. He still had a way he could impact the world. But Tim Drake had always been a people person, an extrovert at heart, and didn’t feel like had enough people right now.
His eyes drifted lazily between falling drops of rain, tracing individuals as they fell to the pavement below and out of his sight, before shifting to the next. He had never been one to give up on anyone. It probably wouldn’t be fair if the first person he gave up on was himself.
In the distance, a light lit up the clouds. The familiar silhouette of the bat settled something inside of him.
It wasn’t calling for him specifically, but Tim had always understood what that signal meant. A call for help, for hope, for someone to fix it, and Tim Drake had never been one to give up on anyone.
Shoulders heavy with an impossible weight, Tim Drake took another moment to watch the rain fall, before climbing to his feet and rushing off to answer the call of the light.