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There was a bar in Bristol which served a drink called Burdock Delight. The bar was named Sheep’s Helm and the elites he’d overheard called it the Pub, in some strange desire to cosplay as British now that they had ticked off rich.
The drink was a lurid pink-magenta that would be called natural less soon than pigs began to fly, and its color did no service to its taste, which still made you feel as though you had licked the muddy ground during rain-time.
It had intrigued Tim nonetheless. He had nothing other than time on his hands, all those years ago, when his parents were alive and that somehow meant it was easier to go unsupervised.
He had gone home and searched up, ‘What’s a burdock?’
Tim is sure he had only searched it up once. He had a good memory. He hadn’t felt the need to search it up again.
The answer was satisfactory, interesting, even.
“Like Velcro straps,” he had thought aloud. Then sardonically,“Or hook and loop fasteners, so the brand doesn’t get upset.”
Years later, he was sitting in the stairwell after the initial lunch rush had passed, drawing up apple juice through a fickle straw from a tiny carton, when he thought of burdocks again. Ives was there too.
“What are you getting for Christmas?” he asked.
Tim blinked and looked at him like he was tuning back in from another frequency. “What?”
Ives gave him a wry look and repeated, “For Christmas. What are your parents getting you? That new Sony camera?”
‘That new Sony camera is a rather vague description,’ he thought. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
Ives had given him a surprised look. He doesn’t remember how each feature on the boy’s face rested, which eyebrow slanted which way, whether his glasses were snug to his face or halfway down his nose, whether his lips were parted or pressed shut. Tim is good at remembering information. Emotions though- expressions- sometimes go over his head.
“You don’t know?” his friend said jokingly, “Tim Drake leaving a mystery alone? I was sure you would have inspected every gift under the tree by now.”
Tim stared at the top-most step, which had a chipped ridge that had tripped exactly six people in his sightline within the last half an hour.
“We don’t have a tree this year.”
When he turned back to Ives his face was twisted in that particular way that Tim knew exactly what was coming next, regardless of what emotion it was meant to be.
“Your parents aren’t home, are they?”
Tim shrugged. “They’ll be here for Christmas,” he parroted, the words sour in his mouth.
“Christmas is in two days,” Ives said quietly.
“They’ll be here for New Year’s,” Tim amended, even quieter.
Ives had given a resigned sigh and Tim had been thinking of burdocks.
In the end, he gets that new Sony camera, with its hook and loop fasteners on the edge of the camera bag, and its multiple lenses and its high resolution.
The thing with burdocks and burrs, he muses, as he pulls open the flap and lets it fall closed- open, closed, open- is that they keep trying to stick to you. Stubborn little seeds.
But eventually they fall off anyway.
The date for the will reading comes in the same drop of mail as the parcel for the lens cleaner.
The next time the image, pink and spiky green comes up, the wait isn’t anything as long as years.
He’s resting in a hospital bed, bones sore and stiff. Tongue raw and throat aching in that delicate, scary way where he kind of longed for a green ribbon to tie around it, so he could alleviate some of the worry that it might just disconnect.
“You’ll be safe here,” Dick says, eyes all glittery hopeful and evergreen guilt.
His hand is wrapped around Tim’s and Tim is kind of watching it, has been for a while, and he’s thinking it might be getting awkward now when Dick finally lets go. He knows he must have a strange expression on his face, because Dick purses his lips, but maybe Dick can’t parse expressions all that well either- emotions, not intentions, God knew he could read those well enough- because he leaves with a reassuring smile.
And Tim is still wondering whether it would be cool if his hand had little hooks, like the burdock, or if that would just be creepy.
Creepy, probably.
Tim had thought long and hard about the things he had done and the things he deserved that day. He had looked out a rainspecked window in a room where the light was scarce, like it was budgeting for something more important than him, and wondered what he would do next. It was a hard question, to most people, he assumed. Life rarely came with a manual attached. But Tim thought of pink flowers and stubborn seeds and he already knew.
He was staying.
When the pink flowers reappear- that particular magenta, neon shade- his vision is kind of blurry and the ceiling of the Batcave is swirling and he’s seeing pink, but he’s also seeing white and red and yellow and black.
And green. It should be two shades of green, one for the dinosaur and the other for- something.
So he’s not quite sure if he had managed to conjure an image of the burdock, or if the color was just there, part of his descent into unconsciousness. He definitely remembers thinking, ‘Maybe he’s right. Maybe I should go.’
Except, the best Velcro straps last up to 2000 cycles, did you know?
So Tim stays.
Even smaller is the gap before the burdock resurfaces. This time he can’t conjure pink because all he can see is red. Running down his arm, dripping onto carpet.
Alfred won’t like that, he can’t help but think. He sits and the bed bends beneath his weight and the ripped poster atop the bed-sheet gives an annoying sort of crackle. It's not any less annoying than the caved in wardrobe or upturned desk or shattered mirror. Tim sees another drop splash downward and reconsiders.
He’d seen a burdock in the Manor grounds once. Multiple actually. They were right by the clearing a young Jason Todd had decided would accommodate his treehouse, so anytime someone wanted to get to it, they’d have to brush past a dozen or so. Tim had gone once. Before his hospital visit. Trying to see the world from someone else’s perch. The burdocks there hadn’t been flowering, so there was no splash of pink. His leg had caught a few of the burrs when he was trying to maneuver a bush out of his path and Tim had given a rueful apology to the buds that wouldn’t have the chance to flower at all.
Alfred had tutted when he saw the burrs and Tim spent a few minutes upon entering the kitchen teasing them all out from his clothes. So he thinks maybe Alfred wouldn’t mind after all, getting rid of a burr.
He sees Dick in the media room as he’s leaving and he keeps his head down, thinking of hooks and loops on a hand and realising it wouldn’t matter anyway.
Like he’d already known- eventually, the burrs always fell off.
The last time he thinks of burdocks he’s standing there in front of something he’d thought had been super-glued down. Constant. Fact. The Sun goes up. Bruce Wayne is alive.
In the end he’s right. In the end everyone comes back, Cass from Hong Kong and Steph from the afterlife and Jason from wherever he’d been and Damian and Dick where they’d stayed and everyone is where they’re meant to be, fitting together- adhesive and messy and steadfast. Steel-reinforced epoxy. Permanent.
They probably don’t count the cycles, he thinks, when they’re in bed at night, wondering how many are left.
But 2000- 2000 is a good number.
Tim thinks he’ll stay until it’s up.