Chapter Text
The vials are as big around as Tim's index finger, each containing half a fluid ounce.
They're surprisingly vibrant, a rainbow array that gleams in candy colors up at him from behind glass.
He supposes the colors must have some purpose. Perhaps they're a chemical reaction caused by the initial experimentation. Perhaps Bruce has introduced some additional component, as a safety measure, to make telling them apart easier.
If that's the case, he needn't have bothered.
The labels are more than sufficient. They're neatly printed, the font even and perfectly legible, affixed to the label exactly halfway down the glass of the vial.
There are a whole row of them: fear toxin: general; fear toxin: buried alive; fear toxin: consumed by insects; pollen: pain; pollen: touch deprivation; Joker venom: laughing gas.
In theory, the dose in each vial is the proper amount to inoculate against each of the strains.
Bruce has established a regimen for himself, to ensure that he builds up a tolerance before he has to encounter the substances in the field. It's similar to Mithridatism for poisons, or a vaccine for viruses. If you introduce a small amount, the body learns to defend itself so that the result is markedly less debilitating in the event of a larger exposure.
It's perfectly sensible plan. They're completely reasonable precautions.
The last thing they need is to be blindsided in the field, taken out by the effects of some toxin while facing off against combatants out for their blood.
And it only stands to reason that if both of them are dosed, Bruce shouldn't be the only one able to handle himself. Tim put on the mantle to serve as Robin because Batman needs him. He's here for a purpose. If he's a liability when a worst case scenario arrives, he isn't really doing his job, is he?
So in the end, it isn't much of a decision. Tim waits until Bruce tells him to go home after patrol one evening and helps himself to a full round of the current strains.
There are enough stockpiled that they won't be noticed missing for some time; he took them from the very back row, slated for use eleven months out. By the time Bruce notices that they're gone, Tim's inoculation regimen will be well underway, any objections rendered obsolete by the fact that he'll have already faced the initial discomfort and overcome it.
Tim will need to determine his own schedule, of course.
He isn't sure whether Bruce takes them together or separately — he's never allowed Tim to be present while he does it — but Tim is nothing if not cautious. He'll start with one at a time, to prevent potentially unintended consequences.
Tim isn't entirely certain how long the effects will last, so he'll keep them for the nights they end patrol early, or for the nights he has no patrol at all. That way, he should have time to administer them while he's safely in his room. Even if they hit a little harder than he expects, his parents aren't going to be back for another two months.
If he screams, no one will hear him. It's a built-in failsafe, really.
And if Tim's heart rate ticks up a little, when he thinks of some of those labels — if his breathing comes a bit too fast — well.
No it doesn't.
Tim's Robin, after all.
And Robin has to be prepared.
Tim takes his first dose on a Wednesday night.
It's only 11:30, and Bruce is already back in the manor, filling out his nightly report. When Tim settles himself down on the floor, cross-legged, to start on research for the slate of jewelry robberies that have been ongoing in Bristol — his algorithm to predict the next location is 75% complete — Bruce turns to look down at him, expression flat and unreadable, and declares, "Go home, Tim."
"We should really get started on those robberies," says Tim. "So far no one's been hurt, but witnesses in at least three instances have reported the presence of a gun."
"It's a school night," says Bruce, level and even.
"I don't have any tests tomorrow," Tim tells him. "But the total value of stolen goods have already topped three million. If the thief has a chance to —"
"Go home, Tim," says Bruce, in the sort of voice that means he doesn't want an argument.
Some days, Tim argues with him anyway.
He's learned, by now, when he can push his luck and when he should cut his losses. When he needs to push his luck, to keep Bruce from taking things too far, or putting himself in danger, or spiraling the way he did after Jason died.
This isn't one of those times, though, so Tim just says, "You're still working," in a tone that's pointedly dry.
But he packs up his laptop and goes back to his parents' house, all the same.
It's easy as breathing to wish Bruce and Alfred a good night, smile cultivated and bland, the one his mother has insisted he perfect for glamorous society events. It's second nature to see himself out. It's habit, by now, to slip through well-groomed manor grounds, from a house with lighted windows to one that stands dark and vacant.
Tim's used to letting himself back into an empty house, no light but the moonlight streaming through the window, no sound but the quiet hum of the refrigerator from the kitchen.
It's fine.
He can work on his algorithm here, anyway.
And besides, tonight he has another way to make himself useful.
He brings his laptop back up to his room and sets it up on his desk. He creates a spreadsheet titled "Effects of Toxin Inoculation Over Time," with columns for check-ins every thirty minutes. He sets an alarm to go off at the appropriate intervals, so that he can work on his algorithm without risking a missed data entry point.
Then he retrieves a sterile syringe from the bathroom — part of the first aid goods he ordered last months from a medical supplies store online, delivered to an anonymously rented post office box — and fetches the vials from his closet, where he's purchased a mini-fridge to keep them chilled to the appropriate temperature.
It's tucked far back into the corner, so that Mrs. Mac doesn't see it when she comes by for her twice-weekly cleaning; it's padlocked, just in case. If she happens to catch a glimpse of it, she'll just think he's hoarding snacks.
The time last year when his parents forgot to make arrangements for grocery deliveries and Tim had needed to ask for Mrs. Mac's phone so that he could place a call his father would actually pick up is turning out to be useful, after all. It will provide him the perfect cover.
When Tim has everything he needs, he considers which of the vials to address first. Two of the three fear toxins sound, frankly, awful. He doesn't want to risk jumping in with the worst of them — needs to be able to gauge what to expect, in case he has to consider restraints or gags for the next time. The Joker venom shouldn't be enough to constrict his breathing too much, with such a small dose, but he isn't entirely certain how hard these are likely to hit. It might be better to wait on that one to make sure he doesn't need some sort of extra safety precaution in place.
Touch deprivation, on the other end of the spectrum, sounds almost benign. Tim can count the number of times he's been touched in the past six months on one hand — hoards the moments in his memory the way some children collect action figures.
October 21st, Dick tousled his hair and told him he'd done well on a stakeout. December 13th, Alfred had set a hand on his shoulder when he asked whether Tim wanted tea. January 2nd, Dick had reached over to hand him a tablet, and their fingers had brushed. January 15th, Bruce had knocked him flat during training, planting an elbow in his chest. And February 23rd, Dick had hugged him — a real hug, with both arms wrapped tight around him, and Tim had been too slow to respond, not quite sure what to do with his own arms, so it had been over entirely too soon.
So touch deprivation — touch deprivation, Tim thinks, won't be any challenge at all. That's not some strange effect; that's just how the world works, when you're Timothy Jackson Drake.
He doesn't want to start with that one either, though; it's going to be the easiest, so he wants to save it for last. After all the rest, it will be hardly any challenge at all.
So he's down to fear toxin: general and pollen: pain.
Challenge-wise, he expects that they'll rate around the same level.
General fear toxin is probably less frightening than the specific scenarios in the other vials. He imagines that it instills generic fears, like spiders or heights or supervillains. Ordinary fears are things that Tim deals with on a weekly basis, though, so it probably won't affect him as much as some of the others.
Pain is something Tim's fairly used to, as well. He's trained with Lady Shiva, and all that entails; he hits the streets five nights a week, taking on Gotham's worst of the worst, a whole array of criminal underworld roughs who want nothing more than to see Tim bleed. It's rare that he doesn't have some kind of healing bruise or scrape; just last week, he dislocated his shoulder.
So pain — pain he'll be able to handle.
He could, he reflects, take both at once. It would save him some time, and then he would have two crossed off his list instead of just one.
But, no. For the first dose, at least, he wants to be able to observe the effects objectively. He can always combine a pair for a later round. For now he'll be careful with it.
Tim considers for a long moment — so long, in fact, that he realizes he's stalling, huffs a breath, and makes himself choose.
He puts the other vials away, closes and locks the refrigerator, and loads pollen: pain into the syringe.
He sits in his desk chair, and he takes a few slow, deep breaths, counting up to five for the inhale, and then down from six on the exhale.
This is stupid. He's procrastinating, and he knows it.
Objectively, it will help him be a better partner in the field.
That's what finally spurs him to motion. He sets the needle to his arm and deploys the plunger — puts the syringe carefully away again when he finishes, in its original hard plastic container. He double-wraps it in a few plastic bags, just to be safe — puts it away in the trash can — washes and rinses the vial and returns it to its spot with the others.
Then he settles himself in front of his laptop and gets to work on the algorithm.
For perhaps ten minutes, he feels nothing at all.
He wonders, idly, if he was foolish to even be worried. The doses are meant to be low, by design; they might have so little effect that he won't even feel them.
After minute fifteen, Tim discovers that he is absolutely going to feel it.
It starts as an odd tingle, in both of his feet and up the backs of his calves. Soon he feels it in his palms and his forearms, and at the base of his spine.
It's an uncomfortable sensation — pins and needles, the way a limb gets just before it falls asleep.
It doesn't stay that way.
At the twenty-five minute mark, that tingling shifts to burning. It feels like he's pressed his palm to a hot stove — to a hot frying pan — but not just his hand. It's in his arms and his legs and his back, so hot that he can practically feel the skin blistering.
Tim sucks in a startled gasp; he shoves back from the computer chair, shaking, but rocketing up to his feet doesn't help.
That burning only grows in intensity.
It feels like he's on fire; there's a sound leaving his mouth now, a low and frantic whining like an animal in distress.
Tim bites down on his lip, hard, but he can't seem to stop, no matter how much he tells himself that he's Robin, and being Robin comes with responsibilities, and he has to be mature about this. Bruce has been doing this for years, and he never whimpers about it like a little kid.
But Tim can't seem to shut himself up.
He bites down harder still, and he tastes blood, but the pain hardly registers next to all of the rest of the pain screaming through him.
Tim sucks in a raspy breath and then another. He staggers toward the bathroom on shaky legs, clawing at his own shirt to get it off. All he can think of is that maybe the cold water will soothe the burning, just a little.
He can't seem to get the shirt to come free, though — can't seem to make his fingers listen to him enough to undo the buttons.
He doesn't care. He doesn't care, he doesn't care, he doesn't care — he stumbles into the shower fully clothed and twists the cold water on full blast, huddling on the shower floor beneath the spray.
The water drips from his hair and from his face. He's shaking with it before long, but it doesn't help. However cold it is, he's still burning, and it doesn't help.
At some point, those frantic whines just aren't enough anymore.
At some point, Tim starts to scream.
Distantly, he has the presence of mind to think that it really is a good thing there's no one in the house to hear him.
It turns out he needed that failsafe, after all.
Bruce is watching him, out of the corner of one eye.
Tim thinks that if he wasn’t quite so alert to adults observing him — judging him — he might not even have noticed. It's pretty subtle.
He adjusts his posture anyway, from straight to social-event-perfect, and he carries on typing at his laptop.
Bruce doesn't say anything for so long that Tim thinks he isn't going to, after all.
Then, finally, the question comes. "Late night?"
Tim resists the urge to reach up and press his fingers to the places under his eyes where the dark circles are a perpetual hallmark of sleepless nights. He'd applied concealer this morning, but he hadn't reapplied it before patrol. Sometimes it doesn't hold up very well under the domino, if it isn't fresh when they hit the streets.
"I had a report due in history," Tim lies, and he keeps typing.
Bruce makes a noncommital sort of grunt.
The silence stretches so long that Tim thinks the conversation is over.
"Say something, next time." Bruce has turned around in the chair to look at Tim head on, and he feels the attention like a sheet of lead weighing him down. "We could have come back in sooner."
Tim hears what he doesn't add.
He hears his mother's voice, saying, "Honestly, Timothy, there isn't any excuse for not keeping your grades up."
Tim carefully resists the urge to ruin his posture by hunching in his shoulders. "I'm getting straight A's," he points out levelly.
Bruce has him fixed with a look that Tim isn't entirely sure how to parse.
"Still," says Bruce.
"It was a good report," says Tim. "I covered the way Lithuanian authors used to use metaphorical imagery to criticize the USSR government. It was how they got around censorship restrictions."
Tim may not have written the report, but he did read an article or two on the subject, just recently; he may have fallen down a rabbithole about it last week. It was a fascinating look at codes and double meanings. He'd had the Riddler in mind, while he was paging through.
"Not the point, Tim," says Bruce, and turns back around to face the computer.
He doesn't say anything other than that, even when Tim waits for him to elaborate.
After several long moments of sitting there, staring at the back of Bruce's chair, Tim shrugs and gets back to his research.
He'll just have to remember to re-up his concealer after inoculation nights from now on. That's all.