Chapter Text
Tim's parents get him a pair of binoculars for his ninth birthday.
Well, that's not exactly accurate.
They get him a pair of binoculars on September 19th, two months after his birthday, but they did get the date right, even if they mixed up the months a little bit. And they did remember this time, and that's the most important thing, anyway.
The binoculars come in a giftwrap-counter-fancy package, with neat creases and curling gold ribbons, and the card on the outside reads in swirling cursive: Happy birthday, Timothy!
Tim knows the handwriting; it belongs to his mother's administrative assistant, and it's pretty and looping, just like the ribbons. She's clearly taken the time to write it out by hand, and Tim appreciates that. He wonders if she practices calligraphy. It's beautiful handwriting.
He opens the present carefully, trying hard not to rip the paper — it really is lovely, and if he keeps it, it's almost like they've gotten him two things. Almost like they've remembered that they forgot last year, and they're trying to make up for it now.
So Tim folds the paper back up in careful squares and sets it aside, reverentially, the ribbon on top. Then he turns his attention to the actual contents of the box.
Inside he finds the binoculars, gleaming and new.
They're really very nice binoculars. Tim doesn't know much about binocular specs, not the same way he knows about cameras, but they look top-of-the-line to his inexpert eye.
He's not sure why his parents might have picked them, but it's very kind of them to have found him something. He hasn't mentioned his nighttime hobby to them, of course, so any reference to batwatching — or birdwatching, as he calls it in his head when Robin and Nightwing take to the skies to join in the patrol — can't possibly have been misunderstood.
Tim turns them over in his hands, admiring the sleek lines and the finely curved glass of the lenses. He takes out the user manual and reads it all the way through, from front to back, just to make sure he knows how to care for them properly.
It's only as he's starting to try out the distance adjustment controls that he remembers.
It was at an evening soiree some months back, Tim's father and Dr. Ravenswood talking long past midnight about prospective collaborations between the R&D departments of Drake Industries and Ravenswood, LLC.
Dr. Ravenswood's son had been there — a young man named William, with his father's arched brows and easy smile. He had just started birdwatching, Tim recalls. He spent a portion of the evening discussing his new hobby, and his father had encouraged the enthusiasm, peppering the conversation with questions here and there, as though he genuinely wanted to hear the answers.
Tim remembers that night. He remembers the way he'd smiled and nodded in all the right places. He remembers thinking that he would give anything, literally anything, for his parents to show a fraction as much interest in something Tim had to say.
William left well before Tim's father and Dr. Ravenswood reached a deal, and Tim hasn't seen him since. But now he's recalling the conversation, and something about it sticks in Tim's mind, in his chest, in his throat.
He wonders, suddenly, if his parents have misremembered that night. If they have, perhaps, not recalled that it was a different boy with a passion for nuthatches and starlings and wrens.
Something in Tim's chest falters and then quietly withers away. That fond, warm feeling, the giddy breathlessness that his parents have remembered this time, abandons him so suddenly that he's almost dizzy with the loss.
It's understandable, Tim tells himself. That was three months ago, and his parents had both had a little too much champagne that evening.
It only makes sense that the recollection wasn't perfect. It's still a terribly thoughtful gift.
Tim runs his fingers carefully over the sleek lines of the binoculars. He reads the user manual one more time, just to be sure.
He has to be careful with them. He wants to treat them as well as they deserve.
Tim isn't entirely certain what he means to do with them yet, but he's sure he'll find something.
Tim doesn't bring the binoculars birdwatching.
He's a little worried they'll get damaged; with his camera case already on a strap around his neck, there's not really a good spot for them, and he doesn't want them getting squished. He could always put them in a padded case in his satchel, with his granola bars and water bottle, but he's not sure if they're waterproof, and even the thought of them being ruined makes something in his chest turn to ice.
Gotham's weather is unpredictable at the best of times, and even though his satchel is waxed canvas to repel the worst of the sleeting rain, sometimes he'll go to fish out his granola bars and find them a little damp.
And beyond even that, there's always the worst case scenario.
Just last month Tim had misjudged a leap from a fire escape trying to get a better vantage point for a spectacular showdown between Robin and Mad Hatter — only he hadn't quite judged the distance right.
He's gotten much better since he started this, has signed up at a parkour gym to get in extra practice, but Tim still miscalculates, from time to time.
He'd caught the edge of an open windowsill on the way down, but his momentum had kept carrying him forward, smack into a brick wall. It had hurt — left his eyes stinging and driven the breath from him. Worse still, he thinks Robin saw him; with his final backward glance, he'd glimpsed the vigilante peering upward, toward the fire escape.
But more than that, more than any of that, the impact with the wall had split the flimsy plastic of his water bottle straight down the middle, damping the entire front of Tim's shirt.
Nothing important had been damaged, fortunately. Tim had ugly black bruises all down his ribcage that lingered for weeks, but he'd managed to twist enough at the last minute to keep his camera safe.
Looking back, though, if the binoculars had been in his satchel that night, they would have been absolutely drenched. And that's to say nothing of the walk back home; in the chill night air, his wet clothes had sapped his body heat until he shook with it, teeth chattering so hard the bus driver had given him kind of a weird look. Tim's not sure how the binoculars hold up to extreme cold either, so it's better, all around, if he doesn't risk it.
He has to be careful with them.
So instead, Tim sets the binoculars on the desk in his bedroom, where he does his homework. Sometimes, when he finishes up his math assignments — out of the textbook now, and not worksheets, not since he skipped a few grades at the start of the school year and landed as a shiny new ninth grader — he takes them out of their case and points them out the window, doing some for-real bird watching.
He spots a crow that has a nest in a tree a little ways away, which is sort of neat. He wonders if he'll be able to see the babies when the eggs hatch. Once he even catches sight of a real-life robin, its little orange belly warbling as it sings.
He's so delighted by it — so sure it's got to be some sort of good omen — that when it flits around the side of the house, he takes the binoculars and goes to follow, slipping into one of the guest rooms to see if he can catch sight of it again.
Tim leans up against the wall by the hard wood dresser, and he peers eagerly out into the mid-morning light, sweeping for that little flash of color in all the green.
He spots the robin on a tree branch maybe thirty feet away, and Tim, grinning, goes to adjust the settings on the binoculars.
It's exactly then that he realizes what's behind the bird.
Because from here, on the third story and at just this angle, there's no treeline to block his view. Behind the little robin singing on its branch, he can see the Wayne family manor, clear as anything, close enough that it almost feels like he could reach out and touch it. One of the windows on the downstairs floor is open, and it's draped with light curtains that float softly in the breeze. A moment later, a different sort of Robin bounds into view, sans mask, grin wide and bright.
Tim flinches back as though burned.
He lowers the binoculars, guilt already starting to gnaw at his stomach. Even that brief glimpse feels different than watching vigilantes in the street, documenting fights that take place on public property.
It feels personal.
Tim shifts the binoculars from one hand to another and then back again.
He turns away from the window, with both of its robins — walks back into his bedroom and tucks the binoculars into their case on his desk.
He doesn't touch them again for another two months.
It's February in Gotham, and that means even worse weather than the already-bad weather the rest of the year.
The storm that's blown through has dumped eight inches of snow on Bristol, and Tim can't even open the front door anymore. When he pushes it outward, it just kind of sticks. Probably it's from the snow drifts that blew in overnight.
That's okay, though. He can always wriggle out a window, if he needs to, in case of an emergency. His nighttime activities have gotten him very good at taking a fall even from a higher story of a building. He knows exactly how to tuck and roll, thanks to the jiu jitsu classes he's started taking before school on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
So it's not like he's in any danger. He has an exit plan if push comes to shove.
The power's out, sure, but it's more of an annoyance than anything else. It's probably a downed line, and considering the roads still aren't clear, it's going to take them a few days to get it back up and running. Tim's more worried that the last two grocery deliveries haven't come through, but that will get taken care of whenever they clear the roads.
It's not like he blames anyone for not being able to drive in this mess; even Mrs. Mac, who hasn't missed one of her scheduled housekeeping days as far back as Tim can remember, called to let him know she couldn't make it in until the snow plows run.
So it's all understandable, really. Nothing much he can do besides wait.
He just really, really misses the internet.
And his phone. It died a couple of days ago, nowhere to charge it, so now he's just sort of taken to wandering the house like a ghost wrapped in a blanket. He found an old chess set up in the attic — his father's maybe? Tim never knew he played — and did a few rounds solo, handling both sides, but there's only so many ways you can out-trick yourself, and he packs it back away again before too long.
He's just flopped down on his bed again, curling up in his comforter like he's some kind of Tim burrito, when he turns over onto his side and catches sight of the binoculars, there in their case, untouched since that day with the robins.
His mouth goes dry, suddenly.
That same sick, guilty churning takes up shop in his stomach, but there's a sort of an — itch, under that. Something quiet and shivering and needy, buried way down deep.
He hasn't been able to leave the house in two weeks, hasn't been able to talk to the bus driver on his nightly excursions, hasn't been able to hear the lady at the gas station tell him, "That'll be seven bucks fifty, hon," when he stops in to get snacks. (That gas station is a little out of the way, but Tim likes the way she calls him "hon," so he never minds walking a bit extra. Nobody's ever called him "hon" before.)
So, anyway — Tim's a little out of sorts, maybe. Two weeks is a long time.
And the itch is new. Or, well, maybe not new, but it's not usually quite this strong. He can usually ignore it better.
He would be ignoring it better, if he hadn't been stuck inside for this long.
At least, that's what he tells himself when he wriggles out of bed, keeping the blanket wrapped around his shoulders. That's what he tells himself when he picks up the binoculars and drifts down the hall into the guest room.
That's what he tells himself when he bites at his lip, hesitant, and then peeks into that room on the first story of the Wayne family manor.
The Waynes have power, still. The window is glowing against the onset of twilight, casting warm yellow light onto the surrounding snow.
An elderly gentleman walks by — Mr. Pennyworth, Tim knows by reputation, though he's never met the man — carrying a platter with a loaf of French bread and butter. Tim realizes with a jolt that this must be the kitchen. Somehow that knowledge makes it feel even more personal.
This time, though, he doesn't put the binoculars down. This time, they stay trained to that little golden square in the deepening darkness.
He watches Bruce Wayne walk by in a cozy-looking fleece cardigan. Mr. Wayne is smiling, softly, and he doesn't look anything like the somber vigilante who wears the cowl on the rooftops or the flippant partygoer that Tim has met a time or two at galas with his parents.
He wonders if this is what Mr. Wayne is really like. If this is what he's like when there's no one around to put on a show for.
A part of Tim wishes, suddenly, that he could get to know this version of Mr. Wayne, but no sooner has the thought occurred to him than he's embarrassed to have had it.
His cheeks heat, and his ears burn, and he still can't put down the binoculars.
After a few minutes, Mr. Pennyworth comes back the other way, with a steaming pot of something — soup, maybe. They're having soup for dinner.
Something about the thought of it makes Tim feel colder. There's a weird sort of an ache in his chest that doesn't make any sense, but he can't make it go away.
He's trembling a little, and he can't seem to make that go away, either.
Tim bites at his lip, and he lowers the binoculars. He almost wishes —
But that's silly. That's nothing even worth thinking about.
"Don't be childish, Timothy, honestly," says his mother's voice, in his head, and Tim hunches in his shoulders a little bit.
He goes back to his bedroom, and he tucks the binoculars carefully away.
But if, after that, he heads downstairs to the dwindling pantry — if he selects the last can of soup and works it open with the can opener — if he brings it back up to the guest bedroom to eat sitting cross-legged on the floor below the window — well, nobody needs to know but him.
Certainly nobody needs to know that he pretends, just for a little while, that he's somewhere else, and that the soup is warm, and that the golden light all around him reflects on the surrounding snow.