Chapter Text
Tim grins as he leans over the edge of Wayne Enterprises, the tallest building in Gotham. From up here, the entire city stretches beneath him like a living circuit board, glowing and flickering endlessly against the dark. The Narrows burn sickly yellow through layers of factory smoke whilst Downtown pulses with sharp white lights and glowing neon signs. Far below, headlights smear across rain-slick streets in ribbons of red and orange and somewhere in the distance a train rattles loudly across elevated tracks.
The sun has set and Gotham finally breathes.
Tim thinks the city looks wrong during the day. The sunlight softens too much, blurring the sharp edges of the city and hiding what Gotham really is beneath something warmer and far more forgiving than it deserves. The cracks disappear beneath golden light and people convince themselves things aren’t quite as broken as they really are.
Night, however, is when Gotham becomes honest.
If Tim squints hard enough, he can make out a group of teenagers several floors below, hanging off the side of Wayne Enterprises. They’ve somehow managed to climb onto one of the lower maintenance platforms and are spray-painting EAT THE RICH across the polished stone wall in massive dripping red letters. One of them is nearly doubled over laughing whilst another keeps lookout for security guards who probably stopped caring an hour ago.
Tim admires the commitment. Wayne Enterprises is one of the hardest buildings in Gotham to vandalise without getting caught, mostly because Bruce Wayne spends an absurd amount of money on security systems. Probably something to do with the constant Arkham breakouts and the fact that he’s an easy target.
Personally, Tim tries not to take the message to heart, considering he is rich himself. Still, he understands the sentiment. Gotham gives people plenty of reasons to hate anyone born with money. Entire neighborhoods rot whilst families like the Elliotts and the Chadwicks host masquerade galas where champagne costs more than most people’s monthly rent.
That being said, Tim can’t help but find it a little ironic that they chose to vandalise the building of the only rich man in Gotham who actually seems to be trying to help it. It would have made more sense if they’d tagged one of the Cobblepot shipping warehouses down by the docks, or the Chadwick Financial building in Bristol.
Tim knows both families play a heavy role in Gotham’s crime rate. Everybody in the upper circles does. Gotham’s elite like to pretend corruption is confined to mobsters and crooked cops, but the truth is crime in Gotham is institutional. It drinks imported whiskey and donates to charity drives whilst laundering money through shell corporations.
Last year, when Tim attended the Chadwicks’ annual charity gala with his parents, he’d overheard hushed whispers behind one of the velvet curtains near the ballroom. Something about embezzlement and tax loopholes being disguised as humanitarian donations. Tim remembers the orchestra playing softly in the background whilst two men casually discussed ruining hundreds of lives over lobster hors d'oeuvres.
Still, those teenagers down there probably don’t know the ins and outs of Gotham’s elite. To them, rich is rich, and he can’t really blame them for that.
Tim rests his chin against his palm, staring down at the fresh graffiti staining the side of Wayne Enterprises. By sunrise it will already have been scrubbed clean if the rain does not wash it away first.
A cold wind cuts across the rooftop and his attention drifts towards the black skyline beyond Robinson Park. Tim straightens instantly.
Two figures swing between buildings several blocks away, flying faster than gravity should reasonably allow. One larger, cape spread wide against the sky like a pair of enormous wings. The other smaller and brighter, moving in sharp bursts of green and yellow beneath Gotham’s neon haze.
Batman and Robin.
Most people in Gotham think Batman is just a rumour invented by the police to scare criminals into cooperating. A few claim they’ve seen him, though their stories usually sound like drunken ghost sightings told around a campfire at three in the morning.
Most people, however, aren’t Tim Drake and don’t spend their nights climbing fire escapes and crouching on rooftops in torrential rain just to map out Batman’s patrol routes.
Quickly, Tim snatches the camera hanging around his neck and twists the lens into focus. It’s expensive enough to capture details at impossible distances if he uses the right settings. His father bought it for him last February as a birthday present after Tim spent an entire month obsessively talking about Gotham’s downtown architecture.
Tim still remembers the conversation almost word for word.
"Well, if you're going to keep sneaking out to stare at buildings, you might as well do it properly." His father had laughed, clapping him on the back a little too hard. "I think ten years is old enough to explore the city alone, don't you? What's another three years going to change anyway, sport?"
Tim had still been seven at the time.
He’d actually turned eight three weeks ago.
Not that his parents had noticed.
They seemed to possess a collective blind spot for things like birthdays, holidays and inconvenient parent-teacher conferences. Trying to explain to his English teacher that the housemaid would be attending in their place was humiliating enough. Convincing the housemaid to actually show up afterwards had somehow been worse.
Last year his mother had accidentally scheduled an archaeology dig in Cairo over Christmas break after promising they would stay in Gotham for once. She’d mailed him a postcard apologising for the change of plans. It arrived nearly a month late with sand somehow still trapped inside the envelope.
His father had compensated by giving Tim a firm handshake and a forty-five minute lecture about the importance of maintaining the Drake family reputation.
Still, they somehow always noticed when his grades slipped from an A to an A-minus.
Tim braces himself against the rooftop ledge and peers through the viewfinder.
Click.
Batman lands atop a church spire with impossible precision, cape snapping violently behind him in the breeze.
Click.
Robin rebounds off the railing of a water tower before launching himself into another swing.
Click.
Tim tracks them carefully across the skyline, adjusting the lens as they move east. Probably another gang bust near the Bowery or the Diamond District. Crime spikes around this time on most nights. Gotham practically runs on a schedule if you watch long enough.
Robin hits the edge of a rooftop and suddenly flips forward.
Not once.
Not twice.
Four times.
The movement is absurd. Tim nearly jerks the camera away from his face as he watches Robin twist through the air in a flawless chain of rotations before catching the grappling line again without losing even a fraction of momentum.
Tim’s finger freezes over the shutter button.
He knows that move.
A quadruple somersault isn’t something you improvise. To complete one successfully, the flyer has to generate enormous rotational momentum whilst maintaining near perfect body control. At peak velocity, the human body rotates fast enough to blur under stage lights and the timing window for a safe catch is less than a tenth of a second. Too early and the momentum collapses. Too late and you hit the ground hard enough to die.
Tim knows this because years ago he became completely obsessed with the Flying Graysons. Haly’s Circus had come through Gotham for three weeks when he was younger. Tim remembers sitting cross-legged in the front row whilst the crowd roared around him and spotlights swept across the ceiling like stars.
High above the audience a boy flew through the air effortlessly. Flipping between trapeze bars whilst his parents soared beside him.
Dick Grayson.
Afterwards, Tim had spent weeks replaying recordings of the performance frame by frame on his computer. The quadruple somersault had been the Graysons’ signature move and it was nearly impossible to execute unless you’d trained your entire life for it.
Tim slowly lifts the camera again, hands suddenly unsteady.
Robin lands in a crouch beside Batman atop another rooftop several blocks away.
Tim looks closely at his dark hair and lean acrobatic build.
"Oh my god," he whispers.
Dick Grayson is Robin.
Robin is Dick Grayson.
Tim’s thoughts spiral violently forward from there because if Dick Grayson is Robin, then-
Batman took him in after the circus.
After his parents died.
Bruce Wayne adopted Dick Grayson.
Bruce Wayne, who mysteriously vanishes every time Batman appears.
Bruce Wayne, built like a heavyweight fighter underneath tailored suits and tabloid smiles.
Bruce Wayne, whose company prototypes military-grade technology suspiciously similar to Batman’s equipment.
Bruce Wayne, with unlimited money, resources, training-
Tim lowers the camera and his heart pounds so hard it almost hurts, yet he’s never felt more alive.
“No fucking way,” he breathes.
Batman fires another grappling line and Robin launches after him in perfect sync, cape fluttering sharply behind him as they disappear into Gotham’s darkness together.
Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson, Gotham’s Dynamic Duo.
⊹₊｡ꕤ˚₊⊹
Tim is sitting with his legs dangling over the edge of Gotham General Hospital with a half-eaten bag of gas station gummy worms resting loosely in his lap. In his hands, a police scanner hums with faint, distant static, its plastic casing already warm from how long he’s been holding it.
Ten years old, and this is still somehow the best and most exciting part of his life.
Steam curls from sewer grates far below whilst ambulance sirens wail somewhere near Crime Alley, the sound drifting up in broken threads through the city’s constant noise.
Unfortunately, Robin is very obviously not Dick Grayson anymore.
Tim figured that out months ago.
It’s hard not to notice when someone you’ve been observing for years stops moving like themselves and starts acting like an entirely different person. Though what mostly gave it away to Tim was Robin dropping a solid few inches in height.
Gotham also seems to be doing better than it has in years. Crime rates have dropped to levels people once thought were impossible, and for the first time in a long while there’s a kind of cautious hope settling into the air, like the city is testing whether it’s finally allowed to breathe again.
Everyone knows of Batman’s existence now, and newspapers keep calling him a “symbol of Gotham’s recovery,” which Tim personally finds funny, considering Batman still spends most nights hanging criminals upside down from gargoyles.
Still.
Things are changing.
The new Robin is none other than Bruce Wayne’s newest adopted son, Jason Todd. Secret identities are a lot like dominoes, Tim’s realised. Once the first one tips, the rest don’t really fall so much as they become obvious. Bruce Wayne is Batman. Dick Grayson was Robin. Which means Jason Todd becoming Bruce Wayne’s newest kid practically answers the question before Tim even has to ask it.
Jason is different from Dick in almost every conceivable way. He still carries the essence of what Robin is supposed to be and throws himself headfirst into danger beside Batman without hesitation. But where Dick’s fighting style had looked almost effortless, Jason’s feels scrappier in comparison, stripped of the performance that once defined it.
He's determined too, more so than when Dick was Robin in Tim’s opinion, though Tim suspects it's partly driven by a need to prove himself to Bruce, and mostly by the weight of trying to live up to Dick’s pixie-boot-shaped legacy.
Not that Dick had things easy, but he had been the blueprint, the original. Robin wasn’t a legacy when he wore the suit, so there wasn’t the added burden of trying to live up to a predecessor. Instead, Dick created the legacy and became an icon because of it. The first kid sidekick people actually took seriously. Founder and leader of the Teen Titans.
And now every kid hero who comes after him gets measured against a standard Dick Grayson never even set out to establish.
Another thing Tim has noticed is that Jason understands Gotham’s criminals differently than Batman does. Batman understands people, sure, but there is still a distance there, an unspoken buffer between him and the world he's trying to fix. Bruce Wayne, for all his tragedy, still grew up in a mansion. Even his worst memories came with a level of comfort most people in Gotham will never have.
Jason never had that buffer. He grew up in the ugliest parts of the city, the kind that offered no safety at all.
Tim has seen Robin hesitate before taking down petty thieves in a way Batman never does. Once, he is fairly certain he saw Robin quietly slip money into the coat pocket of a man being escorted into a police car while no one was paying attention.
And whilst Tim misses Dick Grayson, at least he is not completely out of the picture either.
He lives in Blüdhaven now and has apparently decided to become Nightwing, which Tim thinks is possibly the coolest superhero name ever invented, even if he still isn’t entirely sure what it’s supposed to mean.
The suit, however, looks like it crawled straight out of a seventies disco club.
Bright blue and yellow, complete with an absurdly oversized collar flaring outward around his neck. The neckline dips far lower than what Tim considers remotely appropriate attire for patrolling the streets of Blüdhaven, and the whole thing is finished off with those strange finger stripes that make absolutely no sense to him whatsoever.
It is objectively ridiculous.
Tim is completely obsessed with it.
The police scanner crackles to life and Tim immediately sits upright, jerking hard enough that the gummy worms spill from his lap and scatter across the rooftop.
“-multiple armed suspects near Burnley shipping yard - officers requesting immediate backup-”
Burnley is only six blocks away, which means Batman will be there in approximately thirty seconds. Right on schedule.
Sure enough, a massive black silhouette drops from a rooftop gargoyle before firing a grappling line across the street below.
Batman.
Robin follows almost immediately and Nightwing trails behind.
Robin crashes feet-first through a glowing billboard advertisement with a grin visible even from this distance. The entire sign explodes into sparks as he tears straight through it without slowing down.
Tim scrambles for his camera.
Click.
Batman lands directly on top of a smuggler hard enough to flatten him against the pavement.
Click.
Nightwing spins his escrima stick and sends another criminal flying clean through a stack of shipping crates.
Click.
Robin vaults over a railing before using the momentum to swing around behind somebody twice his size and knock their legs out from underneath them.
Tim grins.
Jason’s fighting style is messy sometimes, but creative in a way Batman’s never is.
The fight wraps up quickly.
Within minutes, the smugglers are zip-tied and slumped unconscious across the docks, whilst distant sirens grow steadily louder.
Nightwing lands beside Batman and even from several rooftops away Tim can see the familiarity in the way they stand together.
Robin joins them a moment later.
Batman says something Tim cannot hear and Robin immediately throws both hands up in exaggerated protest.
Dick doubles over laughing. Robin shoves him in retaliation, hard enough to knock him slightly off balance before he is already moving again, firing another grappling line into the dark.
Nightwing scowls playfully before taking a running leap and launching after him.
Batman follows after a brief pause, and for a split second, caught in the flicker of distant siren lights, Tim swears he sees Bruce Wayne smile.
Click.
⊹₊｡ꕤ˚₊⊹
Tim is twelve years old and Jason Todd is dead.
The thought still doesn’t feel real no matter how many times he repeats it inside his head. Jason Todd is dead. Robin is dead. Snuffed out somewhere overseas by a homicidal maniac and now the entire city feels wrong because of it.
Gotham has gone completely to shit in the months since Jason died. Crime rates have skyrocketed so violently that newspapers have started comparing current statistics to the years before Batman first appeared, back when Gotham belonged almost entirely to mob families and corrupt officials. Because really, who was there to stop the criminals back then? Certainly not the GCPD. Half of them were working for the people they were supposed to be arresting.
Gotham before Batman wasn’t a city with crime problems. Crime was the city.
Batman changed that.
Or at least he used to.
Now the rogues are getting bold again because for the first time in years Batman looks vulnerable.
Gotham’s underworld can smell weakness like blood in water. Word spreads fast when Batman starts making mistakes. When he arrives too late to stop a robbery. When gang deals slip through his fingers because he was too busy brutalising one idiot in an alleyway. Criminals whisper about it now. About how the Bat’s losing control. About how Robin dying finally broke him.
Tim hates that they’re right.
Gotham has become Batman’s personal punching bag.
Then again, maybe Batman has become Gotham’s.
He doesn’t even seem to care what happens to him anymore. The hesitation that used to exist before certain jumps is gone completely now. Batman throws himself off buildings without properly checking the landing first and when he hits the ground wrong, which happens more often than it used to, he just keeps moving anyway like pain has stopped meaning anything to him at all.
He's treating his body like something disposable.
A few weeks ago, Tim watched Batman dislocate his shoulder during a fight near the docks. The impact knocked him sideways hard enough that Tim heard the joint pop even from the rooftop above. Batman staggered once, braced himself against a wall, then slammed the shoulder back into place with a sickening crack before turning around and continuing the fight like nothing had happened.
That was the moment Tim realised this wasn’t sustainable anymore.
As far as Tim is concerned, Batman’s desire for justice disappeared alongside Jason Todd, and whatever exists now feels colder, like there is a hollow space inside Bruce Wayne where Robin used to be. Instead of healing around it, the emptiness just keeps spreading.
The more Tim watches him, the more terrifyingly obvious something becomes.
Batman cannot exist without a Robin.
Robin had never just been backup. He had been proof that Gotham could still produce something bright and hopeful despite how bleak everything else was.
Without Robin, Batman has no restraint.
Jason never would have allowed this.
Muggers would not be dragged away in ambulances with shattered kneecaps and fractured jaws. Car thieves would not end up permanently crippled because Batman decided to make an example out of them.
Fear alone is not going to save this city.
Batman was never supposed to just terrify people. The fear only ever worked because Robin existed beside him to prove Gotham had not completely drowned in its own darkness yet.
Fear without hope doesn't fix a city.
Tim’s chest tightens as another siren echoes somewhere below the rooftop.
He already knows what he has to do.
He needs to help.
He needs to become Robin.
⊹₊｡ꕤ˚₊⊹
Tim is freaking out. No, he’s terrified. He paces back and forth across the rooftop, stopping every few seconds to catch his breath before immediately turning and starting the cycle all over again. The movement feels compulsive at this point, like if he stops for too long his thoughts will finally catch up to him and he’ll either throw up or launch himself directly off the building from sheer anxiety.
The longer Tim waits, the more anxious he becomes and, since the time he’s been here, the rain has escalated from a light drizzle into a full-blown thunderstorm. Water splashes beneath his sneakers every time he pivots too sharply and a steadily growing puddle has begun seeping through to his socks. Tim kicks at it irritably, sending water skidding across the concrete.
He checks his watch for what has to be the twentieth time in the last three minutes before looking back up at the batsignal illuminating the clouds overhead.
It’s been about five minutes since he switched the light on and he’s starting to doubt the likelihood of Batman actually showing up. It’s been months since the signal was last activated, though Tim doesn’t know if that’s because Batman finally went completely rogue and cut off all ties with the GCPD, leaving a weary Commissioner Gordon to eventually give up trying, or if Gordon has simply seen Batman’s newer and significantly harsher intimidation tactics, otherwise known as beating criminals senseless, and decided that isn’t somebody the police force wants to publicly associate with anymore.
Batman, at the end of the day, is technically a criminal himself. His vigilantism was acceptable when he was actually helping, so Gotham collectively gave him a free pass. But now, Tim isn’t entirely sure what Batman’s doing is still excusable.
Hopefully, though, things are about to change for the better because Tim has a plan.
Batman needs a Robin.
That much is obvious and Tim has spent far too long watching Batman spiral into deterioration to believe otherwise. The only way to stop Batman’s inevitable death, which, to be clear, is absolutely where this is heading if something doesn’t change, is for a new Robin to hit the streets. Ideally, that person wouldn’t be Tim, but unfortunately nobody else seems willing to step up and do what needs to be done, so yes, Robin is begrudgingly going to be Tim.
Of course, sacrifices will have to be made for this arrangement to work. Mainly the fact that Tim will lose his one and only hobby of Batwatching. He can’t exactly photograph Robin from two rooftops over if he’s the one wearing the mask.
Still, it’ll be worth it if it means saving Batman from himself. Tim assumes he can always find a replacement hobby later. Maybe skateboarding. Though, statistically speaking, that actually seems more dangerous than vigilantism.
Now, Tim’s not completely stupid. He knows that whilst Robin is the solution, the role itself comes with one very serious flaw. There’s a pattern of failure there, even if nobody else seems willing to acknowledge it out loud.
Take Dick Grayson, for example, the original Robin and, in Tim’s opinion, still the best one. Back then things were genuinely good. Crime rates dropped, organised gangs started collapsing and Gotham actually seemed to be improving for once. The Dynamic Duo were untouchable together, perfectly balanced in a way Gotham had never really seen before. Newspapers practically worshipped them. Headlines claimed Gotham had finally received a miracle. People were actually moving into the city instead of fleeing from it, which was so statistically improbable it probably qualified as supernatural.
Then something happened between Batman and Robin. An argument maybe. Tim doesn’t know.
Whatever it was, it sent Dick Grayson running for the hills and straight into the glorified landfill otherwise known as Blüdhaven, where Nightwing was born.
It was a wonderful day for Blüdhaven.
For Gotham, not so much.
The second Batman and Robin became just Batman again, Gotham started suffering for it. Bruce became reckless, angry and noticeably sloppier without someone watching his back and since word spreads fast in Gotham, criminals noticed almost immediately. Crime rates started climbing again. Whilst things never got quite as bad as the pre-Batman days, they definitely weren’t good anymore either.
Then, a few stolen Batmobile tires and several questionable life choices later, Jason Todd became Robin, and balance was restored all over again.
Batman was happier. Gotham was thriving. Even Nightwing dropping back into the city occasionally seemed to stabilise things further. For a while, Gotham almost felt normal. People smiled more often and, for once, it wasn’t because the Joker had poisoned the water supply with laughing gas again. Tim checked.
But, eventually, everything fell apart.
Jason Todd died and Gotham collapsed with him.
Hope vanished from the city almost overnight and, alongside it, so did Batman’s apparent will to live.
Two Robins. Two sons.
That’s the common denominator. They weren’t just partners, they were Bruce Wayne’s children and that was the real problem. Batman can survive losing a partner. Gotham can survive losing Robin. But Batman cannot survive losing another son and Gotham certainly cannot survive losing Batman.
Robin may be replaceable.
Batman isn’t.
So when Tim becomes Robin, things will be different. He won’t get attached and Batman won’t get attached to him either. If something happens to Tim, it’ll be easier that way. Losing a coworker is survivable. Losing family clearly isn’t.
Besides, Tim already technically has parents, which means he is at maximum capacity for emotionally unavailable authority figures. Having somebody constantly supervising him would seriously interfere with his carefully curated teenage rockstar lifestyle of staying awake until four in the morning and surviving almost exclusively on energy drinks and instant noodles.
Tim exhales slowly and tries to let the cold sting of the wind ground him. It’s now been fifteen minutes and still nothing. Unless Batman is currently incapacitated, which, admittedly, is entirely possible though Tim doubts even that would stop him, he should’ve been here by now.
Not even the police have shown up and Tim did break into the Commissioner’s office to steal a copy of the Bat-Signal key.
He still isn’t sure whether the complete lack of response from the GCPD is reassuring or deeply concerning. On one hand, he isn’t in handcuffs. On the other, the fact it was incredibly easy to break into police headquarters and leave completely unnoticed does not inspire confidence in Gotham’s law enforcement capabilities.
Anyways, to ensure their future relationship remains strictly professional and therefore dramatically improve the success rate of Tim’s plan, Bruce cannot know his identity. That part is non-negotiable.
If Batman doesn’t know who he is, there’s nothing to emotionally latch onto. Tim will just be another tool in the utility belt, useful, replaceable and temporary.
So, in an attempt to conceal his identity, Tim is dressed entirely in black with the hood of his sweatshirt pulled all the way up and a pair of tinted sunglasses covering half his face despite the complete lack of sunlight.
Admittedly, this is not helping him look normal.
From an outside perspective he probably resembles a deeply confused member of witness protection.
By the time he finally feels a dark presence settle behind him, the rain has long since soaked through his clothes, leaving the fabric cold and heavy against his skin.
Tim freezes.
From years of Batwatching, Tim has developed a fairly accurate understanding of how interactions with Batman usually go. Everything from this point forward is critical. Even the slightest mistake could ruin the entire plan and, by extension, Gotham itself.
Tim knows he has approximately forty-five seconds of Batman’s patience before Bruce decides this conversation is no longer worth entertaining.
Maybe a minute, if he’s in an unusually forgiving mood, which statistically seems unlikely given the general trajectory of everything lately.
First, Batman will ask if Tim’s in danger because what other reason would a thirteen-year-old have for summoning Batman in the middle of the night in one of the most crime-ridden cities in the country?
Then, when Tim says no, Batman will tell him to go home.
If Tim refuses, Batman will escalate. He’ll grab Tim by the shoulders, maybe harder than he intends to, and physically remove him from the rooftop like he’s just another obstacle standing in the way of whatever self-destructive crusade Bruce is currently on.
Which means Tim has to cut directly to the point.
Tim straightens his posture and squares his shoulders in an attempt to look at least slightly intimidating, or at the very least less pathetic than he currently feels. Then he slowly turns to face Batman and tilts his head up to meet the blank white eyes of the cowl.
Tim can’t actually see Bruce’s expression beneath the mask but he imagines Batman is looking at him like he’s a particularly irritating insect trapped underneath his boot.
“I’m not here to waste your time,” Tim says, forcing enough faux confidence into his voice to sound somewhat sure of himself.
“I’m here because you need a Robin.”
Tim can tell he has caught him off guard because Bruce goes completely still for half a second before visibly tensing, every muscle in his body locking at once. He looks about two seconds away from either having a stress-induced aneurysm or physically throwing Tim off the rooftop for even suggesting something so catastrophically insane.
When the brief twitch near Bruce’s eye finally stops and he appears to recover from whatever psychological damage that sentence just inflicted on him, he looks back at Tim.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Batman grits out, carefully sidestepping what Tim actually said. “Go home.”
“Wait, just listen,” Tim says, swallowing nervously. “I know you probably think having another Robin is the last thing you need right now, but you’re wrong-”
“You don’t know what I need.”
Tim’s jaw tightens. “Then correct me.”
Before Batman can respond, Tim yanks his rucksack off one shoulder and drops it onto the rooftop hard enough to splash rainwater across the concrete. His hands are shaking slightly as he unzips it and pulls out a thick black binder stuffed with papers, photographs and newspaper clippings bent soft from overuse.
Batman’s gaze drops to it instinctively, eyeing it with immediate suspicion.
Tim flips the binder open with damp fingers until he reaches the first page. A colour photograph stares back at them both: a man grinning tiredly at the camera whilst holding a little girl on his hip. Beside him stands a young boy missing his two front teeth.
Tim points directly at the man.
“Do you know who this is?”
Batman’s brow furrows almost imperceptibly beneath the cowl. “I don’t see how this is relevant.”
“Richard Stevens,” Tim says sharply. “Thirty-six years old. Single father.” He taps the corner of the photograph. “This picture was taken three months ago.”
He flips the page.
The next photograph is grainy and badly lit, clearly taken in a hospital room through partially open blinds. The man lies unconscious in a bed, both legs suspended in traction. One side of his face is swollen purple-black beneath heavy bruising and a breathing tube disappears down his throat.
Rainwater drips from Tim’s sleeve onto the plastic covering the page.
“This one was taken a week later,” Tim says. “Aside from the obvious injuries, he also slipped into a coma.”
Batman’s expression hardens. “You don’t know the full story.”
“Oh, I do actually.” Tim laughs once, humourless. “Richard tried to rob a pharmacy because he couldn’t afford his daughter's medication anymore after he lost his job.” His fingers tighten around the binder hard enough to crease the paper.
Batman’s jaw clenches.
Tim keeps going before he can interrupt.
“You remember the kids from the first picture, right?” His voice sharpens. “Because after their father was hospitalised, there was no one left to take care of them.” He stares directly at Batman as rain slides down the dark lenses of his sunglasses. “The little girl died from pneumonia three weeks later, and her brother was shot in Crime Alley two months after.”
A flash of lightning tears across the sky and for half a second the entire city is swallowed in a blinding white light. Batman’s silhouette becomes something almost monstrous in the glare.
Then the light vanishes just as quickly as it came and Gotham sinks back into shadow.
An uncomfortable silence settles between them afterwards, stretched thin by the sound of rain hammering against the rooftop. Neither of them speaks.
Water runs steadily from the edge of Batman’s cape, gathering around his boots before spilling over the ledge six stories down.
Tim’s grip tightens unconsciously around the soaked binder in his hands. The pages inside are beginning to curl from the rain.
He flips violently through the binder for the next photograph.
“Michael Jones,” Tim says, jabbing a finger against the page. “Twenty years old. Car thief. You fractured his spine badly enough that I had to call the ambulance myself because he stopped breathing.”
Another page.
“Sarah Williams. Mugger. Compound fracture to the jaw.”
Another.
“Mary Taylor. Drug addict. Permanent nerve damage in her left arm.”
Another.
“David Miller-"
“Stop.”
Batman almost yells it. The word comes out strained, like it has to claw its way past something heavy lodged deep in his throat.
Tim’s fingers freeze over the binder and for the first time since this conversation started, he sees it clearly.
Guilt.
For a moment Batman doesn’t look angry or intimidating or even particularly in control. He just looks tired.
Somewhere below the rooftop, a car horn blares angrily before being swallowed by the distant hum of Gotham traffic.
Tim waits another half second before continuing. If he stops now he’s not sure he’ll be able to force himself to start again.
“This isn’t justice,” Tim says, running a hand through his soaking hair. “Gotham isn’t better off if everyone is terrified of you.”
The binder nearly slips from Tim’s wet hands as he abruptly shoves it against Batman’s chest. The movement comes out clumsier than intended now that the adrenaline is beginning to wear off. Batman catches it automatically, but there’s a strange hesitation to the motion, like for a second he considered letting it hit the ground rather than touch it at all.
For a moment he just stares down at it.
Then, slowly, Batman opens the binder himself.
Tim watches Bruce’s eyes move across the photographs and medical reports one by one. He notices the slight crease that forms between Bruce’s brows as he reaches the older entries and realises just how far back the dates go.
A police siren screams somewhere in the distance.
Finally, Batman lifts his head from the binder.
He just looks at Tim, a pained expression settling across his face. The photographs remain clutched tightly in one gloved hand as he struggles to accept the reality of what he’s done.
Batman hesitates, searching for the right words and clearly not finding them. “You’ve been watching me for a while,” he finally lands on, though he winces slightly as soon as it leaves his mouth.
Tim lets out a short, incredulous laugh. “Obviously.”
Batman grimaces at the thought of a kid following him alone at night, without protection, and somehow doing it without him ever noticing. “For how long?”
Tim folds his arms across himself instinctively, fingers digging into the sleeves of his hoodie.
“Long enough."
Bruce pinches the bridge of his nose, looking like he is about to start lecturing him, so Tim cuts in before he can.
“Gotham doesn’t need another violent maniac in a mask beating people half to death. We already have enough of those.”
Bruce’s lips tighten. He studies another photograph in silence before closing the binder with more care than Tim expects, like he’s trying not to disturb what’s inside.
“Batman needs a Robin,” Tim simply declares because it’s the only thing he’s ever truly been sure of. “Someone to pull him back before he disappears completely into all of…” He hesitates, then gestures vaguely toward Bruce. “This.”
“Without Robin, Batman falls apart. And if Batman falls apart, Gotham goes with him.”
Tim holds his breath.
“And you think Robin is the only solution,” Bruce says. It's not a question.
Tim nods, almost too quickly. “Yes.”
He looks away, eyes drifting over the city for a long moment.
When Bruce turns back, something stricken lingers on his face.
“If I let you do this,” Batman says slowly, each word drawn out with careful restraint to ensure Tim understands exactly what he’s agreeing to, “you do it my way. No freelancing. No ignoring instructions. And you do not decide you know better in the middle of an operation.”
“I won’t,” Tim says immediately.
Batman watches him closely, searching for any sign of a lie. Finding none, he continues, “You leave when I say you leave.”
“I understand.”
A pause.
Then finally:
“You’re on probation.”
A crack of thunder rolls across Gotham, splitting the sky open. A moment later, the power dies citywide. Everything folds into darkness all at once with windows, streetlights and neon signs vanishing in a single breath. Even the Bat-signal shuts down, leaving only a faint afterimage of light hanging in the storm.
Tim swallows hard. If that isn’t a sign. “Okay,” he says.
Then the city comes back to life.
Lights surge across Gotham in uneven waves, buildings and streets flickering back into existence as backup systems kick in. Generators roar awake with a low mechanical groan that settles into a steady, uneasy hum. Overhead, the Bat-signal sputters, whirs, then stabilises into a solid beam once more, cutting cleanly through the clouds as if nothing ever happened.
Neither of them can quite bring themselves to look away from the bat symbol in the sky.
It hangs above them as a warning.
Tim stares at it for a moment longer than necessary before turning away. His fate is already sealed, there’s no going back now.
Batman steps back toward the rooftop edge, eyes flicking once over Tim’s soaked clothes, shaking hands and the ridiculous sunglasses still perched on his face.
“Go home before you get hypothermia,” he says.
Tim gives a mock salute. “Yes, sir.”