Work Text:
Tim’s hero worship of Jason started long before he ever wore the colors.
It started on a quiet street, in the middle of an afternoon that should have been ordinary.
Tim had been walking home from school.
His parents had forgotten to ask the butler to pick him up (again) and Tim had stood on the steps for a while, waiting longer than he needed to, just in case someone remembered. No one had. Eventually, he’d adjusted his backpack, accepted that yes, this had happened, and started the walk himself, already mapping the fastest route in his head, already calculating how long it would take before anyone noticed he was late.
He’d been small then. (He still was).
Skinny. (He still was).
An easy target.
The man who grabbed him must have thought so too.
Tim remembers the hand on his arm. The sharp tug. The way his breath had caught, not quite a scream, not quite silence. He remembers the smell, sweat and something sour, and the immediate, instinctive understanding that this was bad.
Very bad.
Except then Robin dropped out of the sky.
It wasn’t graceful like Dick's Robin once was.
It wasn’t theatrical like Dick's Robin once was.
It was sudden. Violent. Precise. It was Jason's Robin.
Jason hit the man like a bullet, all sharp edges and efficient moves, taking him down in seconds. Tim barely had time to process what was happening before it was over, before the danger had dissolved as quickly as it had appeared.
And then Robin was turning to him.
“Hey,” Jason had said, voice softer now, soothing. “You okay?”
Tim had nodded.
He doesn’t remember deciding to trust him.
He just… did. Because it was Robin. Who couldn't trust Robin?
Jason walked him home.
Didn’t have to.
Did anyway.
Kept a careful distance, not too close, not too far, but close enough that Tim could feel it.
The warmth.
The quiet hum of something instinctive and steady.
Omega.
Tim didn’t have the words for it back then, not really, but he felt it. Something comforting. Something grounding. Something that made his chest loosen in a way it never did at home.
At his front gate, Tim had asked for a picture.
He’d expected to be told no.
Instead, Jason had huffed something that might have been a laugh and crouched down beside him, close enough that their shoulders brushed.
Close enough that, for just a second, Jason’s scent wrapped around him, scenting him.
Not strong.
Not obvious.
Nothing that would give anything away because of course Robin wouldn't want the world to know that he is an omega.
But there.
Soft.
Warm.
Safe.
Tim carried it with him for days.
Maybe longer.
That was the beginning.
After that, Tim watched.
From rooftops.
From crowds.
From behind screens and newspapers and whatever scraps of information he could gather.
Robin wasn’t like the others.
Not like Batman.
Not like Nightwing.
Jason was sharper. Louder. Brighter in a way that felt almost dangerous, like he burned too hot and too fast and didn’t care who saw it.
Tim loved him for it.
Hero worship came easy after that.
It settled into his bones like something inevitable.
He learned everything he could.
Tracked patterns. Studied movements. Memorized habits. Built theories and refined them until they felt like truth.
He wanted—
Not to be him.
Never that.
But to know him.
To be close.
To matter.
To maybe, someday, be someone Jason would recognize and not just save.
(A friend?)
And then Jason died.
Just like that.
Gone.
The news hit like something physical, something that cracked through Tim’s ribs and lodged itself somewhere deep and immovable, cracking some part of him when Tim realized how long it had been since he saw Robin, since he realized what Batman's sudden violence must mean.
Robin was dead.
Jason was dead.
The omega who had smiled at him, who had walked him home, who had smelled like safety and something achingly soft—
Dead.
Tim didn’t believe it at first.
He couldn’t.
So he dug.
Of course he did.
Tim always digs even when it hurts and he is digging up an old wound and Tim stop, this won't help, can't help but Batman is killing himself.
He found the reports.
The details.
The things no one else was supposed to see.
The autopsy.
He shouldn’t have read it.
He did anyway.
And afterwards he didn’t sleep.
Not for days.
Every time he closed his eyes, he saw it.
Broken pieces his mind filled in whether he wanted it to or not.
The crowbar and the bruises and all the injuries, a thousand mortal wounds that piled up into a mountain of agony.
Jason alone.
Jason hurt.
Jason—
Tim swallows hard, even years later, even now.
How scared he must have been.
How much it must have hurt.
How long he must have waited for someone, anyone, to come.
No pack.
No help.
No one.
Jason Todd, that sweet, pretty, brave omega had died, beaten and alone.
By the time Tim becomes Robin, the hero worship has changed.
Not gone.
Never gone because Jason was his Robin, was magic.
But… different.
Quieter, heavier, almost?
There are edges to it now. Questions. Doubts. Things he couldn’t see when he was younger, when everything had been simpler, cleaner, easier to believe in.
Because once he’s inside—
Once he’s in the Cave, in the Manor, in the spaces Jason used to occupy and Tim is older and smarter and can now see the pressure—
Tim starts to understand.
Jason had been alone.
Not completely.
Not in the way Tim had been alone.
But in a way that matters more.
In a way that hurts more.
The stress.
The expectations.
The way everything seemed to have rested on his shoulders with no room to bend, no space to fail.
Tim sees it in the gaps. In the things no one says. In the way Bruce’s voice tightens when Jason’s name almost comes up. In the way Dick goes quiet, sharp and distant, like he’s somewhere else entirely, his scent thick with regret.
And then—
There’s Tim.
Standing in a place that was never meant to be his.
Wearing colors that belonged to someone else.
Being welcomed.
Folded in.
Claimed.
Dick and Bruce had made a point of including him. They scented him, wove him into the pack until the bonds were unbreakable, strong as steel, thick and rooted like a tree. They gave him something solid, something real.
A family.
A pack.
Everything his parents had never given him.
Unbreakable.
Pack.
Family.
Everything Tim never had before.
And he takes it.
Of course he does.
How could he not?
When it’s offered so freely.
When it fills every empty space he didn’t even realize he was carrying.
But Tim isn’t stupid.
He sees the pattern.
Feels it.
Understands it in a way no one ever says out loud.
They didn’t do this with Jason.
Not like this. Not fully. Not right.
What they give Tim now, it isn’t just love.
It’s correction. It’s regret. It’s everything they didn’t give Jason, reshaped and handed to someone else in the hope that it will be enough this time.
Sometimes, when Bruce looks at him, there’s something else there.
Not instead of Tim because Tim knows Bruce sees him, loved him too.
But layered over him.
A ghost.
Tim doesn’t mind.
He tells himself he doesn’t.
Because what he gets in return—
It’s everything.
Family.
Pack.
Safety.
A place.
Jason is cold in the ground.
And Tim is standing there with full hands, overflowing with things Jason had never had, holding it cupped carefully.
How could he possibly be jealous?
He can’t.
He won’t.
He isn't.
He could never be jealous of Jason.
Instead, he found himself jealous of Dick and Bruce.
Because they had known him.
Because they had him.
They had Jason.
Three years.
Three years to know him, to understand him, to fight with him, to laugh with him, to love him in ways Tim never got the chance to.
They get to grieve a person.
A real, complicated, imperfect person.
Tim only ever had the idea of him.
The memory.
The myth.
The flashy Robin that was Tim's safety net.
The omega who smelled like safety and smiled at him once and that was enough for Tim to stalk him and Bruce and take a thousand photos.
It’s not the same.
It will never be the same.
The others feel it too.
Steph. Cass. Even Damian, in his own sharp, bristling way.
They all orbit the absence.
They all feel the shape of it, even if they never touched it directly.
They had all inherited the absence of someone they’d never been allowed to know.
They ask, sometimes.
Carefully and gently. (So very carefully)
About Jason. About what he was like. And the answers—well, they don't always get answers.
The answers are rare. Painfully rare. Bruce doesn’t talk about it. Not unless something cracks and then the words spill out of him, a dam with a growing leak.
Dick talks more, but only under very specific conditions. After nightmares. After too much alcohol. After something inside him loosens just enough that the words slip out before he can stop them.
They all end up close.
Pressed together on couches or the floor, shoulders touching, knees bumping, a loose, tangled pile of bodies, clustered and all over each other and they would talk and talk for hours and it always ended in Dick and Bruce crying.
These moments were rare, so incredibly rare and treasured and it made them all so sad that sometimes Tim doubted that it was truly worth asking just to get tiny fragments of his brother.
Would Jason mind Tim calling him brother? Tim didn't think so, hoped he wouldn't but they would never know, would they?
That’s how Tim learns.
Dick never spent a heat with Jason.
Not once.
Tim stills when he hears it, something sharp and disbelieving slicing through him. They were pack, were supposed to be pack and yet Dick never spent a heat with Jason?
Bruce had almost always been the only one there.
Except once.
Once, when Bruce had been off-world.
Jason had gone through heat alone.
While Dick was still on the planet, the city over.
Tim’s hands curl into fists.
His first instinct is to snap.
To demand.
To yell.
How could you?
How could you let that happen?
Omegas aren’t meant to go through that alone, not when they’re young, not when they have a pack, especially not when they have a pack.
They’re supposed to be surrounded and supported and held and anchored.
By everyone.
Not just one person.
Tim inhales sharply, ready to yell and kick up a fuss about this.
Stops himself.
Because the air shifts.
Because suddenly the room smells wrong and he catches the scent. As a beta he can't always smell very well, not as well as alphas but he can smell this.
Dick's scent of.
Regret.
Self-hatred.
Grief so thick it clings to the back of Tim’s throat and makes it hard to breathe.
Oh.
Tim’s anger falters.
Breaks.
Because Dick knows everything Tim was about to yell.
Of course he knows.
That’s the worst part.
There’s nothing Tim could say that Dick hasn’t already said to himself a thousand times over.
So instead Tim shifts closer.
Leans into him, quiet and steady, offering what he could without words.
He collapses into Dick’s side, letting their shoulders press together, offering what little he can without making a show of it, and for a while they all sit there quietly, a ghost sitting with them.
Confession time: sometimes Tim sneaks into Jason’s bedroom.
There’s no rule against it. No one has ever said the door is off-limits. But everyone avoids it like the plague, like stepping inside would crack something open that they’ve barely managed to keep contained. It’s too painful to keep, too impossible to get rid of.
So the room stays.
Untouched by time. Unclaimed.
And sometimes, quietly, Tim goes in.
He’s careful about it. Always careful. He makes sure no one is around, listens for footsteps in the hall, waits until the manor settles into that deep, heavy silence. Then he slips inside and closes the door softly behind him, like even the sound might be too much.
He doesn’t touch anything.
Not the bed, not the desk, not the scattered remnants of a life that ended too soon. He leaves it all exactly as it is, like preservation might mean something.
Instead, he sits on the carpet, dusty now, faintly stale because Alfred hasn't cleaned it since Jason's last birthday when Alfred had lasted for three minutes in this room before walking out and taking the rest of the day off, and breathes in.
The scent is still there.
Faded, but unmistakable.
Omega.
Warmth and comfort, something soft and steady that wraps around him if he lets it. It smells like something that was once bright, like happiness, like hope, like Robin, and Tim has to close his eyes for a moment every time, just to steady himself.
And then he talks.
Sometimes for hours.
He fills the silence with updates, about patrols, about school, about the others. About Dick, about Bruce. About the way things have changed, and the ways they haven’t. He tells Jason things he thinks he would’ve cared about, things he wishes he could have shared.
Sometimes the words come easy.
Sometimes they don’t.
Sometimes all Tim can do is apologize.
The words feel inadequate, every time. Thin and useless against something so big, so permanent. He doesn’t even know what he’s apologizing for exactly, taking the mantle, maybe. Taking the place. Existing in a space that should have still been Jason’s.
Sometimes he just… cries.
Quietly. Shoulders shaking, face pressed into his sleeve so the sound doesn’t carry. It feels stupid, most of the time. Grieving this hard for someone he never really knew. Mourning a person built out of fragments and secondhand stories and a single, shining memory.
But it doesn’t make it hurt any less.
So he comes back.
Again and again, always careful. Always quiet. Slipping in and out like something that doesn’t belong there.
He makes sure no one ever sees him.
He doesn’t know how Dick or Bruce would react if they did. The thought alone is enough to twist something tight in his chest. They had been so angry, furious, even, when Tim forced his way into the role of Robin. When he made them see what Gotham needed.
Would this be worse?
Would they see it as an intrusion? As disrespect? As Tim stepping into something that was never his, disturbing the remnants of their omega, their grief?
The thought sits heavy in his chest every time his hand touches the doorknob.
Tim doesn’t want to find out.