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1
Jason steps down from the Batscale.
"112 lbs and 5'2"," Alfred says with surprised satisfaction. "Master Jason, you shot up 5 inches in one year. Congratulations."
Jason pumps his fist up. "Yes! Thanks to sunlight, water, and fertilizer!"
Alfred playfully quips, "Or uninterrupted sleep and my nutritious food." But he puffs up with pride from nurturing a boy, nevertheless.
If Jason thinks back, he does grow taller. He doesn't have to tilt up so much when speaking with Alfie anymore.
"I think you'll get even taller than Dick at the same age." Bruce gently ruffles his head. Well, Bruce is the final boss. He still has to bend his head at a steep angle to talk to Bruce, but so does the majority 90% of the world. What a fucking giant.
Jason swats Bruce's hand away. "And I'll be forever taller than he is now soon. And you eventually... I think." He taps down to mumble, "Willis is fucking gigantic. Guess he at least left one good thing for me."
It's complicated, inheriting DNA from the very man you hate.
Bruce makes an awkward one-arm hug on Jason. "Now, it's your turn, Tim," Bruce says.
"Okay!" Tim excitedly skips to the scale. "Let's see the exponential rate of my growth!"
Tim is excited, as kids are generally excited about their increasing height. His endearing, bite-sized, itty-bitsy baby brother.
Huh...?
Jason pauses. Bite-sized? Come to think of it, he feels like Tim is shrinking.
Tim jumps onto the Batscale. (Don't do this to the hospital scale!)
The Batscale beeps. Alfred peers at the display.
"...58 lbs, and 4'1"."
Silence.
"It's 4 feet and 1.2 inches actually!" Tim says in excitement. "Almost two inches taller from last year!"
Bruce goes to confirm the reading himself. "Tim, you dropped from the 40th percentile to the 10th percentile."
"I'm still taller! I grow one inch every year!" he insists proudly. "Still a healthy range from the WHO growth chart."
"Are the Drakes short?" Jason tries to find the excuse for Tim's... smallness.
"No," Bruce answers. "Jack's side is on average Caucasian height. Janet herself is tall."
"It must be from eating instant noodles with Batnuggets," Jason says.
Alfred glares at Jason. "After living here for a year, I think my highly nutritious and delicious meals have flushed that ultra-processed food out of his system."
Bruce is deep in thought. "Tim, do you skip meals?"
"No. Alfred will kill me if I do that," Tim says.
"Master Tim, due to his size, is occasionally unable to finish some heartier meals, but I do supply him with, again, nutritional and delicious snacks. Cheese, roasted nuts and almonds, various dairy products. I diligently watch the young masters, sirs," Alfred huffs.
"Thank you, Alfred," Bruce says. "Since he has shown no sign of other genetic disease or serious disease, the matter of his growth stunt—"
"I. Am. Taller!" Tim insists.
"—less than desirable height projection," Bruce changes to more clinical words, "is caused by a lack of factors that promote growth in a normal child. Which isn't food..."
"Absolutely," Alfred supports.
"Stop pondering!" Tim shouts. "It's 9 pm now! When will you patrol?"
"...so it is a lack of sleep," Bruce finishes.
All three of them look at Tim.
"Tim. Go to bed," Jason says.
At the words sleep and bed, Tim, his cute baby brother, turns into a wet gremlin. "No," he hisses.
"You want to be a 5-foot man when you grow up!?" Jason shouts. Sorry to all the 5-foot people around the world, you all are awesome, but Jason knows being small has its own struggles.
"I won't. I'll be tall. I still grow." He clutches the supposed camera bag to his chest.
"Your growth accelerates like a bike with empty fuel, which is slower than a walk."
Tim scoffs. "Nonsense. Jason, you also go to bed late."
"I go out as Robin only on Friday and Saturday. And I still sleep ten hours every day, kiddo. I bet on weekdays you do sneak out to take pictures of Batman!"
Tim shrugs. "So what."
"You need sleep to grow!"
Tim eyes them like they are his worst enemies. "I'll sleep when I'm dead."
"Master Tim. Do not say things like that," Alfred reprimands him firmly. "Until you catch at least the 25th percentile height, you will go to bed at 8 pm every day, and no coffee."
Tim gasps. Alfred crosses his arms.
Then, Tim summons Janet Drake in him and says in a cold, calculated voice, "One pot and midnight bedtime."
"Morning cuppa tea and 8:30 pm."
At the word tea, Tim flinches like he's got splashed with holy water. "Three cups of coffee and 11 pm."
"One cup of coffee and 9:00 pm. I cannot give you a later bedtime than this, young master."
"Why can't it reach two digits!?" Tim hisses. "Fine, but three cups of coffee."
"If only you consume it before noon. Or I will change all the coffee in this house to decaf."
Bruce now flinches, too.
Tim grits his teeth. "Deal."
However, Tim, that night, goes out to take photos of Batman and Robin anyway.
All coffee in the house turns to decaf.
Bruce now becomes a sluggish zombie every morning, while Tim becomes even more feral from decaffeination.
Thus, the Epic Battle of Putting Tim to Bed has begun.
2
Jason, the new Robin, is holding Tim like a baby monkey.
A feral, rabid monkey. At this rate, he is soon going to build an army of disgruntled nine-year-olds and rebel against humanity.
"Tim, you need to go to bed! It's 10 pm!"
"No!" Tim screams. And bites. Ouch. "The flip you just did earlier is super cool!"
"Thanks, but go to sleep. I hereby forfeit no one can be Robin until he reaches 5 feet!"
"Dick is 4'5" when he was the first Robin!" Tim shouts.
"How can you know—never mind, of course you know. Dick at eight is fucking one palm taller than you are right now! And he was eight!"
Tim, his first brother, the one Jason takes under his wing before anyone takes them in, slips out of his hold and kicks him in the nuts. Jason's original signature move.
Jason falls down on the rooftop like Caesar was backstabbed by Brutus. "T—traitor."
"The traitor is you," Tim hisses back. "No one can separate me from night-sky Gotham. I AM THE NIGHT!"
3
"No patrol." Bruce uses the final measure. "No one will patrol. No Robin. No Batgirl. No Batman."
Tim looks like someone says no Christmas. "But Bruce! Gotham! What about Gotham!"
"I have put the Batdrone and Batcamera to detect any unusual activity. It'll alarm us if anything serious happens. The Batdrone can temporarily handle light crime."
"Batdrone...?" Tim says. "B, did you steal my idea of using the drone army as a bringer of peace and rule—I mean, protect Gotham?"
Bruce averts his eyes from Tim. "...No. This drone doesn't have mind-control subsonic voice, or hallucinating arrows. And it's black, not red."
"Does it have the 360 3D-freeform rotatable eyes that I designed?" Tim counters.
Bruce decides not to answer that. That camera system is extraordinary.
"Bruce."
"Anyway, there's no Bat and Bird for you to do your night-watching, Tim. Go to bed."
Tim stares at him. "I'll do the crime by myself."
Bruce does the Bat-smirk. "Tim, even if you act like you're Lucifer incarnate, I know you are a good kid at heart. You won't intentionally cause havoc that harms anyone."
Tim stomps to his room.
That night, while Bruce himself savors the circadian-appropriate sleep he never has for a decade, his phone rings. It's Dick.
"Bruce, the internet has gone crazy. What's happening?" Dick says from the phone.
"What?"
"There's a live, Bruce. Somebody is doing a live Q&A with the Riddler in Arkham. Uh, the channel is called RR_IMBORED, on all platforms."
Bruce quickly searches for the channel.
It's a live of someone talking with the Riddler, who is in patient gowns in his cell. From the angle, the cameraman—well, cameraboy—is upside down, probably hanging from a vent.
"But, Mister Nygma, what do you think about AI's role in puzzles and quizzes, since AI generally contains the written thoughts of modern humans?"
The Riddler taps his temple. "You see, kid on the ceiling, the AI contains only expected human thoughts, not the unexpected. It may excel in solving mediocre puzzles, but to truly create a genuine puzzle, the element of surprise and outside-the-box thinking is required. In this day and age, the one who can stray from the social standard that can be compressed in that puny chip will be the victor. Like me, or you, kid. What do you think about me and you, joining forces—"
Bruce and Jason get to Arkham in record time.
Later, Tim, after satisfying his curiosity today, shrugs. "Well, I didn't break anyone out. I was breaking in." He examines the photos inside the institute he has taken. "And I'm bored. My mind runs a mile a minute at night."
4
"You should correct his circadian rhythm first before you force him to bed," Leslie suggested to them.
First, Alfred begins with a dinner that is relatively light, with salmon and potato soup, rich in magnesium.
Then, they move to the entertainment room. Today, Jason chooses to play the only game that you can fall asleep while playing: Animal Crossing.
"Not playing Doom today?" Tim asks.
"No, baby bird, I need to find the golden stag," Jason says.
Alfred sneakily brings a snack. Warm milk and banana. Natural melatonin. Tim absentmindedly munches the banana.
At 8 pm in the entertainment room, Bruce starts to dim the light of the room. The game is synced with real-time. The pretty digital island slowly goes darker.
The screen's getting dimmer and dimmer. When Timmy starts to yawn, Jason closes the game. Tim doesn't object, staring at the dark screen absently.
"Let's read," Jason says.
"I don't wanna," Tim mumbles.
"It's okay, Tim. I'll read aloud," Bruce says. He opens the book. "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit..." Bruce’s voice, when he doesn't infuse it with growls and grunts, is a deep, soothing voice.
Ace, their good dog, quietly jumps to snuggle with Tim. Tim's hand slowly pets the dog.
And soon after, even before the first dwarf appears, like magic, Tim falls asleep, loosely hugging Ace.
Bruce and Jason look at each other in disbelief and absolute quiet.
'It works,' Jason mouths.
Bruce looks at the tiny child. Face lax, breathing evenly in small puffs.
'Maybe there has never been anyone to read a book to him before, or even be with him before sleep,' Bruce whispers back.
And he uses the absolute deftness of Batman to slowly lift Tim up, holding the boy to his chest, and brings him to the bed in the boy's room. Tim does not stir even once. He sleeps like an angel, with Ace guarding the kid at the footboard.
"Goodnight," Jason waves at Tim. And they silently close the door at exactly 9 pm.
…Aaaaaaaaaand just after midnight, they now hunt the tiny hellion, energized by power napping.
"I've never felt this fresh!" Tim, light enough to ride Ace the giant Great Dane, zips through the Gotham streets. "Is this the power of sleep? Then I will, and the Gotham night will be mine! Muhahahahahaha!"
Oh god. They just unlock a new power for a rising baby villain in the making.
"Ten. Hours. Of sleep!" Jason shouts after them.
"Napoleon only needed three hours of sleep! This is my destiny!"
"Napoleon is short!"
5
On the weekend, Dick returns to the manor. He gets a good laugh from hearing about all the sleepless Timmy shenanigans. "That baby is untamable."
Bruce grunts, "He's almost as bad as you."
Jason perks up. "Wait, B. That time Dick probably resisted the bedtime schedule, right? So, what did you do?"
Bruce pauses his hand that is clacking on the keyboard. Dick laughs even louder.
"He did nothing, Little Wing," Dick grins.
"What?" Jason blurts.
"I admit I was... inexperienced in raising a child."
"I told him the acrobat figure needs to be compact to execute moves, and he believed me." Dick points at Bruce with his thumb. "'Bruce, this is the Grayson legacy sleep schedule that was passed down for five generations. You want me to break my dead family tradition?'"
Jason looks at Dick in disbelief. "You manipulative little shit."
Dick grins again, bright and evil.
"Anyway, you're still quite tall for an acrobat." Jason looks at Dick from head to toe. 5'9". Bit smaller in the hero community, but the exact average height for men in the states.
"Yep, even taller than Tati. If I'm not me, I wouldn't be able to do those flips and spins anymore," he boasts. Ugh. Then Dick touches his chin, thinking. "I did shoot up when I fully reached my teens, mostly because I... hmm... during my teens..."
"Dick, you're still a teenager," Bruce reminds him.
"Shaddap. I'm in the final stage of being a teenager. Let's continue. During my teens, I did so much of everything like a hyper-train, and then sleep came to me naturally. I studied. I was a school athlete. I did my homework. I patrolled. I Titan’d. So many things, which means I went to sleep as soon as I had a chance, and I usually can sleep for ten or twelve hours easily." Dick tilts his head. "Yeah, let me try that."
So, Dick brings the little guy to the Titans on Sunday.
"Everyone! This is my brother, Tim, I've been gushing about!" Dick introduces Tim to his friends. Tim is vibrating in excitement.
"Hello, young Earthian," Starfire greets Tim. "You're such a huggable size, more than him. What adventure will we do today?"
"I borrowed some artifacts from Diana," Donna says. "We can try some."
Gar turns into a green panther and jumps around Tim in a motion of "let's play."
And there's Wally. "Hey, kid—"
"How fast are you?" Tim suddenly counters.
"Um?"
Tim lifts his Waynepad up. "Dick says you're faster than Barry if pushed. But how? You both are infinitely fast, but how does infinity outbeat infinity?"
"Uhhhhh... it's kind of a Speed Force thing? Since no timer is functional in the Speed Force," Wally tries to explain.
"What about a biological timer? Your heart still beats. Your mitochondria still process glucose to energy. Can I chip you? If I put a timer chip in you, can it measure time inside a timeless zone? If I record your ECG and calculate the effect energy done to the electrical conduction within you—"
Dick quickly pulls Tim off Wally. "Aaaand time out! Don't dissect my friend, Baby Bird."
Wally has used the Speed Force to step back twenty feet away.
But that day, the Titans bring little Timmy on many adventures that only teens and young adults can do (with Dick's supervision to make it ESRB rated E for Everyone).
First, they bring Timmy to space. They find a large space rock in another star system's belt that the Titans just saved. Tim has a chance to explode that rock, checking off his bucket list of exploding a planet.
Then they come back to Earth. Raven, Gar, and Dick bring Tim to fight demon armies in Tahiti. Tim is riding Gar the Bengal Tiger and laughing in glee while throwing the wing-ding at the target (and Dick's butt, once).
After that, Tim has fun doing relatively safe science with Donna, measuring her power in various (again, safe) conditions. ("Can you punch a diamond? If you press a coal, can it become a diamond? What is the origin of your power? Do you know of all the heroes I've spied—I mean, watched—you have the most confusing origin story? By the way, does your hardness score beat diamond?")
Wally withdraws from the Tim-sitting plan in fear of being experimented on.
Then, at night, Dick prepares for Tim to try a hack-a-thon against Cyborg (not on Victor, on security systems designed by Barbara). He's setting up the computer while Tim is flying around in Kori's arms and playing with Roy's gadgets.
The sky outside is dark. The sun has set. What time is it? Dick glances at the clock: 8:12 pm. Wow, time flies so fast. Today he has done a lot of things with his baby bird. Fun.
Dick yawns. Victor says he's going to arrive soon after his maintenance in the S.T.A.R. Labs.
Tim, Kori, and Roy are laughing in joy behind him. Hmm. He likes this kind of atmosphere.
Today is a good day. He has done many things...
When Tim, Kori, and Roy turn around, their leader is sleeping in front of the computer he intended to set for the hackathon.
"Dick?" Tim says, curious.
"Ha, he dropped dead again," Roy laughs.
Starfire gently puts him down, then moves to lift Dick up like he's a baby. "Dick is usually like this. He can sleep so easily, anywhere, anyplace, especially on long days like this. He will suddenly awake when he senses any danger, but with us, he feels safe and sleeps anywhere." She chuckles. "Sweet dreams, my stars."
+1
Dick brings Tim back the next day, chagrined. "I slept before him," he confesses with a face full of Tim's drawings by Sharpie.
Bruce, Jason, and Alfred sigh.
"You always sleep easily," Bruce says.
"What do we expect? He's a paragon of health. Healthy people usually have easy sleep." Jason lightly punches Dick’s arm.
However, that day, something miraculous happens. Suddenly in the cave at 9 pm, Tim rises from his mini-chair.
"Timbo?" Jason asks.
"I'm going to bed. From my survey, I don't think there's a big fish for you to fight. I need my scheduled sleep to grow," he declares, and just like that, the little gremlin runs back to his room.
Batman, Nightwing, and Robin look at each other, mouths gaping.
Bruce clicks the manor corridor’s CCTV. Tim does go into his room.
That night, when they patrol (it is quite quiet as Tim has predicted), Dick and Jason occasionally come back to lurk in front of Tim's window.
The kid is sleeping—really sleeping—with Ace curling near the foothold protectively.
"He's here all this time?" Jason mouths to the dog. The dog looks back like, dude, I'm a dog.
What the fuck happened?
Yesterday
Tim was drawing on Dick's face when the zeta chimed, and a man walked out.
It was Victor Stone, Cyborg.
The man was gigantic. Tim had to tilt his neck almost 180 degrees. But he had a kind (one) eye.
That was not important. What was important was that his body was half-robot, or actually 72.7% robot, which was super cool when you saw it in real life.
"You're really half-robot," Tim breathed. "Awesome!"
Victor lifted his (one) eyebrow. "You're Dick's little brother, right? I'm Victor, his friend." Then Victor saw Dick sleeping under the blanket on the sofa and made a small laugh. "And he's asleep. That guy. Did he finish setting up the computer yet? We can—"
"Forgetthecom! Youareawesome! CanIseehowitworks!?" Tim shouted (or rapped).
Cyborg looked back at Tim. Please, please Robot Man, please don't think Tim is weird or noisy or annoying like his parents said. You see, Robin is a Gotham kid's dream, but a robot is the utmost cool thing every boy can dream of, comparable with Godzilla and rockets.
Victor shrugged. "Sure, it has been opened inside out several times."
His. Favorite. Half-human. Ever.
"This is the laser beam." Cyborg changed his arm into a Mega Man-like buster.
"Coooooool!" Tim shouted. "Can you do a rocket punch arm?"
Victor changed his arm to a rocket punch style. Tim thought he might faint from the coolness of a real-life robot man.
"You integrate so beautifully with the technology," he breathed. "How could this happen?"
Victor thought. "Well, my inorganic parts are a mix of S.T.A.R. Lab tech and alien tech. But from various simulations, the chance of a cyborg like me happening again is pretty slim. You see, I got into an accident, and only the tech in my father's hands could save my life. But in reverse, it's because I was strong enough to tolerate the fusion also."
"Strong?"
"Well, to put it frankly, my body frame had to be large enough to carry all these parts in the beginning until my cells accepted them. If you're small, you won't have enough space to carry all these bionics, kid."
Tim looked at the man. He was massive, taller than Bruce, than Clark Kent. "How tall are you?"
"6'6"."
"One inch taller in one month." Alfred jots down the data. Tim, on the Batscale, puffs with pride.
"Wow, the mecha power," Dick says in astonishment. "And sleep power."
Alfred nods. "I will put coffee back in the pantry."
Bruce sighs with relief. "Thank God."
Jason quickly whispers to Bruce, "Have you done your contingency plan yet?"
"Yes, I have done Bat-secure, Krypton-secure, and Barbara-secure on the Motherbox technology that is used in creating Victor Stone," Bruce whispers back. "There are signs of Tim trying to hack S.T.A.R. Labs several times, though, before and after. We have to keep close eyes on him."
Or else giant Tim will attempt to recreate the incident to turn himself into a half-robot.
Jason nods and turns to his elated baby brother. "Congrats, squirt." He ruffles Tim's hair and raises his fist, which Tim bumps back proudly.
"Jason," Tim grins, "I'm gonna catch you. I'll be the tallest, and Dick the tiniest!"
Dick shrugs. "I really don't care as long as I'm lean enough to fly and my dick is still—" Alfred uses a tea towel to wipe at his mouth harshly.
Jason laughs, but secretly that's terrifying. He imagines being shorter than his baby brother. Imagine giant Tim, ruffling his hair, doing a headlock on Jason, the tiny big bro. No, he has dignity, he has shame, unlike that Dickhead.
Wait.
A boy's major growth spurt is between ages 12 to 15, three years from now—an age appropriate for being Robin. Tim is obsessed with vigilante life. He will absolutely forget his beauty sleep schedule plan if he's Robin.
Well, it's three years from now. He hopes Tim starts developing some common sense before Jason passes the mantle, or the world may burn at the feet of unhinged Robin Tim. But if he has to decide between letting the world burn or being the tallest brother, Jason knows what he would choose.
Jason grins. You can't beat your big bro, Timmy.