Chapter Text
Batman needed a Robin. Batman needed a Robin and Gotham needed Batman, so Gotham needed a Robin but Robin was dead.
Tim watched from the fire escape as Batman’s armored elbow hit the mugger’s face with a horrifying crunch. The man collapsed to the ground, unconscious—Tim hoped he was only unconscious—with blood oozing from his nose and mouth. Tim held his breath as Batman whirled around, searching the alley for more assailants, but there was no one else for him to fight. The mugger had been an opportunist trying to snatch a loosely held backpack. The would-be victim had grabbed his bag and bolted the minute blows started flying. No one wanted to stay in Batman’s presence since Robin had vanished (Gotham needed a Robin). Tim couldn’t blame them. He suppressed a flinch as Batman growled and punched the crumbling bricks of the alley wall before finally—finally—grappling away into the night.
Tim scrambled down into the alley, pulling out his phone to dial 911 as soon as his feet hit the ground. The streetlight at the entrance of the alley was busted, but Gotham at night was illuminated by the glow of light pollution in the smog. The blood on the man’s face looked almost black in the dim light. This close, Tim could hear the wheezing gurgles of his breath (he was still alive). Tim quickly put the call on speaker, dropping his phone with a clatter as he hurried to roll the man onto his side.
“911, what is your emergency?”
The blood bubbled on the man’s lips as he exhaled, dripping slowly onto the street. His breathing eased slightly, losing that horrible gurgling sound.
“Hello, yes, I need an ambulance—there’s a man here who was hit on the head and he’s still breathing but he’s unconscious and there’s a lot of blood.”
The operator asked Tim for his location and Tim automatically rattled off the cross streets and then continued with what he could tell about the man’s condition. This wasn’t the first time Tim had had to call an ambulance for someone Batman had fought (beaten) but that didn’t help the panicky feeling in his chest as he watched the man in front of him breathe shallowly.
“Are you safe right now?” the operator asked.
“Yeah,” Tim said. “I mean yes. Batman—uh Batman is gone.”
There was a muffled reaction on the other end of the line that might have been the operator swearing. “Right, okay, an ambulance is on the way and I’ve notified the GCPD as well.” A pause, and then, “Kid, any chance I could convince you to stick around and give a statement this time?”
Tim startled. He hadn’t realized the operator recognized him. After the first time he had to call, he’d set up his phone to block his number on outgoing calls. It wasn’t fully untraceable, but he’d hoped it wouldn’t be a priority for Gotham’s overworked emergency department. Although he had called them a dozen times in the last month or so, so maybe they just recognized his voice? Or that he was always cleaning up after Batman? He should probably look into getting a voice modulator.
After too long of a pause Tim responded, “No, sorry.”
He picked up his phone off the ground and was about to hang up when the operator said, “Stay safe, okay kid? I don’t want to have to send an ambulance for you too.”
“I’ll try,” Tim said, and ended the call. He stood up from where he was crouched next to the man and breathed in slowly. It was… weird to have a stranger care about his wellbeing. Actually it was weird to have anyone care about his wellbeing. Tim shook his head to dislodge the thought. He needed to get out of here before the police arrived. GCPD response times were erratic at best, but better not to risk it. He climbed back up the fire escape and waited, watching the unconscious man in the alley until he heard sirens in the distance. When the ambulance parked at the mouth of the alley, Tim snapped a quick picture of the man before climbing up and out of sight. He didn’t feel up to tracking down Batman again tonight, so he hopped a couple of roofs over before dropping back to street level to catch a bus home.
Tim watched the streetlights flash by, blurred into stars by the condensation on the window. Gotham needs a Robin, he thought, but Robin is dead. It had been six weeks, six weeks since Robin died, and the thought still hurt. He never knew Robin, not really, but there was a hollow place in Tim’s chest that ached when he thought about him.
He’d tracked down Dick Grayson to try and convince him to come back to Gotham, to be Robin again, but Nightwing had refused. Batgirl had been MIA since before Robin’s death. It was only after that Tim learned Barbara Gordon had been shot by the Joker and it might be years before she could be Batgirl again, if she ever could. Because of the Joker, two of Tim’s heroes would never fly again. The fog on the window seemed to get blurrier and Tim scrubbed angrily at his eyes. Batman had almost killed a man tonight for petty theft but the Joker was safe in Arkham. The Joker was alive and Robin was dead.
Gotham needed a Robin.
Tim had, briefly, after Dick sent him home, considered trying to become Robin himself. He’d been climbing rooftops since he was 9. He’d figured out Batman’s and Robin’s identities from a single quadruple flip. He was sneaky enough to follow Batman for years and never get noticed. That thought had been a brief spark of hope that he’d quickly smothered—he couldn’t be Robin. Robin was magic and joy and hope; a bright spot in Gotham’s darkness. Tim was quiet and sad and lonely; a shadow trailing after his heroes’ light. He couldn’t be what Batman needed. What Gotham needed.
Gotham needed a Robin. But Robin was dead.
That night, Tim couldn’t fall asleep. This wasn’t unusual, especially given his habit of running around the city after dark, but tonight he was thinking about Robin. Robin, who was magic. Robin, who was dead.
Tim had met Robin once. It was the only time his heroes had ever caught him following them. When Robin landed next to him Tim had been so excited he’d barely been able to speak, but somehow he’d convinced Robin to take a picture with him. That had been the best night of his life.
Abruptly giving up on sleep, Tim rolled over and reached under his bed to grab his lockbox of photos. This box was his “safe” box—pictures that wouldn’t risk the Bats’ identities—and so only had two locks and tiny gadget that would send a notification to his phone when it was opened. His “high risk” box contained a trap that would destroy the pictures inside if not disarmed correctly. A necessary precaution, but he didn’t want to risk losing all his pictures if someone triggered the failsafe. (His picture of himself at Haly’s circus with the first Robin was in a picture frame on his desk, with multiple digital backups. It technically wasn’t a threat to Robin’s—now Nightwing’s—identity, and Tim couldn’t risk losing it).
The photo at the top of the stack in the lockbox was his selfie with Robin. He had taken three and this was the only one in focus (he had kept the others too, and hidden copies in a secondary location). Robin had an arm around Tim’s shoulder and a grin on his face. Tim himself was wide-eyed and awestruck with a matching grin. The next photo in the pile is Robin, grapple extended and poised to leap. He had looked over his shoulder to see Tim with his camera raised again and Tim had captured the moment Robin laughed before the grapple caught and he was gone.
That was the only time he had met Robin. And now he would never see Robin again.
Tim awoke the next morning feeling groggy and miserable. He must have forgotten to close the curtains when he got home last night, because bright morning sunshine was stabbing him in the eyes. He groaned and pulled his pillow over his head. The sun had no business being so bright and cheerful. This was Gotham and Robin was dead. The world was awful and Tim was going back to sleep.
The next time Tim woke up he felt slightly less like a zombie. But only slightly. He rolled out of bed and trudged over to the bathroom. As he was washing his hands he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror and grimaced. He even looked like a zombie—his hair was limp and bedraggled, his eyes were bloodshot, and the bags under his eyes stood out like bruises against his pale skin. He splashed some water on his face. It didn’t help.
As Tim absentmindedly brushed his teeth, he wondered if zombies were real. Most of Gotham’s villains used chemistry or biology or various gadgets and machines to cause havoc, but he’d seen news from other cities that had sorcerers or demons—were they actually demons?—as villains. He knew the Justice League had at least two magic users that they worked with, and had definitely fought ghosts at some point.
Wait a second.
Ghosts were real. Ghosts were real and that meant people didn’t stop existing when they died. Ghosts were real and magic was real and maybe he could find Robin’s ghost. Ghosts were real and Robin was magic and maybe he could bring Robin back.
Suddenly full of energy Tim bolted over to his computer and pulled up the search engine. Then he ran back to the bathroom to drop his toothbrush in the cup and rinse out his mouth. Toothpaste-free, he stared at the cursor blinking on his screen. Where to start?
Two hours and several dozen searches later and Tim was ready to tear his hair out in frustration. There was too much information he didn’t need and not enough of the information he was looking for. He wasn’t trying to find out if his house was haunted, he already knew Robin wasn’t here. Turns out most people were looking to banish ghosts, not attract them. He wasn’t looking for information on past lives or reincarnation or even zombies—he wanted Robin alive as himself, not as a baby or a shell of his former self. Immortality was similarly unhelpful—Robin was already dead so it was a bit too late to make him unable to die (he’d put a pin in that idea though). Tim supposed the bit about ouija boards was useful, but then he went down a rabbit hole about the ideomotor effect and how people could accidentally trick themselves into thinking they were talking to a spirit before he gave up on that idea.
How was he supposed to know what information was real and what was fake? Trying to find academic sources on magic had mostly given him analyses of mythology and folklore. He had found someone’s masters’ thesis discussing which publicly known superheroes were likely real magic users with no natural or technological explanation for their powers. He saved that document and made a note of the author’s name in case he needed to ask them about their sources later. He also found what appeared to be several classical studies professors having very academically worded breakdowns about the historical and theological implications of the existence of Wonder Woman and Themyscira, but that didn’t help him at all.
Tim sat back in his desk chair and shook out his wrists. This was not going to be a simple project. Not that he’d expected it to be easy, but diving into this without a plan clearly wasn’t going to work. That was okay though, Tim was good at plans.
Tim opened a new encrypted document and started a list:
- Gather information
- Learn magic
- Find Robin’s ghost/spirit/??
- Bring Robin back to life
Written out in four steps it looked totally doable. Except he’d been on step 1 for the last two hours and it felt like he had more questions than when he started. He needed to add more details.
- Gather information
- Relevant topics:
- Ghosts
- how to find/summon/communicate
- Does everyone who dies become one?
- Resurrection
- Mechanisms/requirements (is ghost needed? Just body? Both? Neither?)
- Costs/Risks
- Zombies (real?)
- How not to make Robin a zombie
- Afterlife (real???)
- How to learn magic
- What to do if I can’t learn magic? (Artifact? Bribe magic user?)
- Ghosts
- Problems:
- Where to find information
- Internet?
- Physical sources??
- Magic people???
- How to tell if information is true
- How not to get cursed/haunted/etc
- Where to find information
- Relevant topics:
Tim frowned at the screen. That was… a lot. And that was only for step one. Well, there wasn’t much point in planning steps two through four until he had more information, so hopefully this was enough of a plan to start with.
Tim slumped in his chair as he felt some of the manic energy drain out of him and yawned so wide his jaw creaked. He definitely hadn’t slept enough last night. Information gathering could wait until he’d had some coffee.