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Tim wasn't a nostalgic person.
He wasn't. For all that his parents brought home relics of the past and digital photographs from far away, he didn't care for the trinkets and post cards that they amassed for him. He didn't care about much more than film photos, if he was being honest. All the important ones he'd ever seen were on film.
The picture of Batman—Bruce—standing beside Batgirl—Babs—on top of the WE building maybe a week before the Joker destroyed her. The photo of Robin—Dick—in the middle of the flip that made 8-year-old Tim realize who he was. The shot of Robin—Jason—mid-fight with Scarecrow, smirk showing through his cracked rebreather.
The picture of his mother holding him as a baby, looking down at him with a softer look on her face than Tim could ever recall seeing himself. The picture of his father playing with him, taken as he giggled halfway suspended in the air, Jack clearly in position to catch him. The picture from the circus, the only picture he has of both of them where they both look like they genuinely want to be where they are. It's the only one he has where they're both there, and they're both smiling, and he is, too.
None of that stayed the same, of course. That was the worst night of Dick's life, and it was the start of something impossible. Despite himself, Tim was happy he had been there, if only because he was able to bring Dick a kinder relic of that night than suffocating grief and a father who didn't know how to do anything other than try.
Tim hadn't thought he was particularly open about his love of photographs. The Bats knew he liked photography, of course, knew that he got rather good at it in his years tailing them, but he tried to keep it framed as a method of evidence collection instead of joy. He didn't keep most of the pictures he took; if he even bothered to develop them (which he didn't, these days, unless they were for a case) he'd send them out to competitions and collections under a fake name created with a different algorithm than his case-related names or under no name at all. Not that it had mattered recently; even before he left the manor, it had been a long time he had touched his camera. It was faster to just use his mask.
He knew he wasn't obvious about his passions. After one too many instances of his mother yelling at him for so much as bouncing his leg—god forbid anything else—he learned to keep them close to his chest. He didn't talk about them. He didn't engage in them. If he didn't do anything he enjoyed, he couldn't embarass himself or the Drake name with how he interacted with things.
That was why the box with the polaroid on his bed was so terrifying.
Tim knew Ra's had connections he couldn't understand. Tim knew he could hack better than Oracle and had people who were better than him. Tim knew that the League was everywhere and could figure out anything that Ra's wanted to know. He knew that.
But the last time he had let himself so much as smile about his photography was seven years ago in the comfort of his own room.
So how—how—could Ra's have known?
With shaking fingers, Tim opened the box. There was no note. He didn't expect one. They were in a League base. The offer was still new. Tim knew an attempt at bribery—or maybe blackmail—when he saw one. He wasn't stupid. Though, these days, that seemed to be the whole problem.
The polaroid itself was red. That was fine. Tim knew he was associated with red. Robin tended to garner that association; Dick had thrown it out for blue when he grew up and away from his parents, but Jason had embraced it. Tim guessed it could be argued he was embracing it, too, with his whole Red Robin shtick. That was never his intention, though it was never his intention to be Robin, either.
What even was his favorite color? Maybe it should have bothered him that he didn't have an immediate answer. All that meant to him was that Ra's couldn't get it right.
He lifted the polaroid out of the box. It was heavy, good quality for a polaroid, not that Tim would expect anything else from a gift from Ra's. He put it to the side. He had a feeling that wasn't what Ra's wanted him to see.
He peered into the box.
He was right.
The bottom of the box was littered with pictures. Tim grit his teeth as he looked at them; he got a flash of Dick's toothy grin, of Cass' lithe form snaking around Damian. He closed his eyes, gathered himself, and grabbed the pictures.
There were… a lot of them. Dating back to Damian's arrival, maybe earlier. Jason picking Dick up by the back of his shirt while Alfred looked on with a raised eyebrow. Steph and Bruce hunched over a chess board, matching expressions of frustrated thought on their faces. Cass hanging upside-down from the back of Babs' wheelchair, trying and failing to hide a small smile. Dick and Damian by the Bat computer in matching positions, dominos off to the side.
They were all scenes Tim had thought about. Things he had itched to take a picture of, at the time. The angles and filters and aperature were all wrong, all of it clearly taken from Cave and Manor surveillance, but they were all scenes that had meant something to him. Positions he looked back on and thought that maybe this was family.
He fought to keep his breathing under control. This was still a League base; he was not Tim Drake, he was Red Robin. He was the Demon Head's beloved Detective. He had a job to do.
Then there were other pictures. More recent, maybe, because they reflected changes that he didn't recognize. Steph wasn't in them anymore; Cass only showed up in one. Jason standing with his helmet on staring at Batman—Dick—and Robin—Damian—a hand on his gun. Babs sitting alone in the clock tower, a picture of her and the Batgirls under her monitor with the glare blocking Babs' face out. Alfred looking forlornly at the grandfather clock, a rag in his hand and a furrow to his brow. Dick and Damian hugging, Damian hiding his face and Dick clearly trying to hide that he's crying. Wally and Roy dragging Dick through the Manor while he struggled to get out of their grasp, Damian smirking behind them. Kori sitting on Jason while Kara lounged across Dick, clearly trying to get the brothers to talk something out.
The unifying factor was that he wasn't in any of them. He knew what Ra's message no doubt was; all these important moments, all these ways of bonding, all these pictures from before and after in equal measure. Tim knew there weren't many pictures of him in the Manor; Bruce wasn't really up for the whole Dad side of Batman when Tim started out, and he had always known that. His job was to keep Bruce safe and whole.
His job hadn't changed, even if his methods—and alliances—had.
Tim put the pictures down with shaking hands, breathing slowly and forcing his heart to regulate itself.
He knew what Ra's wanted from him. He knew he was supposed to be hurt, or angry, or upset.
All he felt was guilty.