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“How do I look mama?” Tim asked, barely eight, tripping in red-bottomed heels fished out of his mother’s hopeless tangled stack of heels of years bygone, glittery green eyeshadow smudged from eyelid to eyebrow, a scrap of Venetian lace flouncing around his shoulder.
Janet turned around, bent over her laptop and heap of maps, a mix of dusty and glossy both, a soft smile gracing her face.
Tim thought she was the most elegant person alive.
On a normal day, she would have cooed, brushed a strand of brown hair from his eyes, kissed the top of his head, and gone back to her work.
Today, she got up from her leather chair, and crouched in front of him, a small smile on her lips. She reached out, untangled some of the white lace, petting it flat against the delicate sweeping of his shoulders.
“Green is bold, my dear, but with your blue eyes…” She looked into his eyes, her eyes, she took those from her, after all, “Let’s try gold next time, huh? I was just going to throw out my old Guerlain palette,” she continued.
“Would black work?” He asked, tilting his head.
“Oh a smoky eye– see, I always knew you took after me more than your father,” she teased, picking a piece of lint off his shirt.
“Like Batman!”
“What?” She asked, a look of confusion smeared across her eyes, but Tim was already rambling on.
“Batman wears black, and you said the other night that everything goes good with black–”
“ – except for navy blue –” The son and mother said in unison, but Tim continued with his babbling. Janet watched him, eyes lit up, no need for the glitter around them to bring out the sparkle in his eyes. He was obsessed, though perhaps this was the usual path for little boys in gilded castles, stuck watching the late night TV news with no parents to click away from the channel. She’d have to talk to Jack about setting up parental controls.
Janet got up from her crouch, wincing at the slight creaking in her back. Tim was lost in his own mind– thoughts jumbled, talking at lightning speed, tongue tripping over his own words. She was vaguely aware of his babbling– something something Robin something Batmobile something something Joker and something something GPD found drugs –
“Shit,” she muttered, turning quickly towards the purse laying discarded on the other side of the table full of maps and odd paperweights.
She rifled through the Celine bag’s contents, pulling out random receipts, her throwaway pair of sunglasses worth more than her first car, sticky notes, and there, nestled at the bottom, her fingers found a small orange bottle.
She popped open the small white cap, her back turned towards her son who was still going on about the latest bust on one of Joker’s makeshift facilities, and she shook the bottle’s contents into her palm. Pink and white capsules fell neatly, picture perfect little pills, and only enough to last her the next two weeks. Shit, hadn’t she set a note on her phone to call her pharmacist? This next dig was out in Morocco, and she and Jack had been told last night to be there ASAP– the plane was booked for just a couple hours from now, and she didn’t have the time to get a refill.
She’d be gone for five weeks. The pills would last her not even half of that.
She gingerly placed all the pills back in, mentally calculating if she had a spare dosage somewhere. Surely it wouldn’t be a problem, and she knew Jack would be upset if she didn’t finish the geography work by the time they boarded the private jet. But what was the point of money if not having her psychiatrist on-call for all her needs, accommodating her jet-setting lifestyle?
“Timmy, I’ve gotta take a call. Be a good boy and play nicely in your room,” she said, shoving the medical bottle back into her bag.
Tim was mid-monologue, and knew this cue well. His parents would come up to his room when they were two minutes out from leaving.
“I’ll be quiet, I promise! They won’t even know I’m here!”
“Don’t argue with your mother,” she snapped back, her voice glacial. Tim slumped, feeling suddenly a bit less fabulous, a bit less special, his mother’s quick spotlight spinning from him to her phone, her fingers nimbly flying across the screen.
Tim went to take a step, and in his stillness, forgot about his mother’s heels, three times his size– it took one movement and his face went smashing into the Persian rug below.
The thud shook the floor, and in her startlement, his mother dropped the bag she had pulled forward, its contents spilling over the ground.
“Tim, be careful,” she hushed, squatting on the ground, swiftly grabbing the fallen goods, phone trilling, lodged between her ear and raised shoulder.
Tim caught a small orange bottle that rolled towards his face– he felt fine, only his pride bruised– and he reached for it, reading the sharp words on the label.
In a startling snatch, his mother’s manicured hand plucked the small bottle from his grasp, and she held it firmly in her hand. Tim watched her, and she waved him off, eyes piercing.
Tim knew better to ask, taking off the shoes and scampering away just as he heard his mother answer the phone, introducing herself, turning away from him, not bothering to spare a glance his way.
Red-bottomed, worn out shoes in hand, Tim trudged along, but his mind was no longer whirring, thinking of Batman and Robin flying through the inky Gotham night.
No, his mind was fixated on the few words he could sneak into his brain, vexing and new:
Drake, Janet
600 mg Lithium
Take 1 tablet orally twice a day
Tim was pacing– he never paced like this, Dick thought to himself.
Robin wasn’t yet in costume, instead he was in old sweats and a t-shirt that, if Dick had to guess, had been clinging to his body for the past 48 hours.
He had gone on patrol with Bruce last night– just the two of them, for old time’s sake, he managed to convince his old man– and Tim was uncharacteristically happy to let the two of them swing around the city.
Dick didn’t think much of it, but here, in the Batcave, watching Tim pace and pace and pace and babble his plans out loud to himself, he felt his own blood pressure rise. He swore he could feel the steam from Tim’s brain clearly working overtime from halfway across the room.
He knew from Alfred’s chiding that Tim hadn’t eaten all day, despite the young vigilante’s typical overly methodical nature, and he knew that Tim had an excel sheet counting his macros, much to Alfred’s horror, and Bruce’s nonchalance.
But two days straight, running on fumes, and Tim hadn’t even gone out the night prior?
Dick sighed, and put down the tablet reviewing the footage from last night that CCTV caught. It’s not like he had been able to focus on it properly for the past two hours that he’d been down here anyways.
“What do you say we go for a jog, you and I, huh? You think that’d help?” Dick suggested, rolling back his shoulders.
“Can’t, this riddle still isn’t done, and I think that even if I could get it, well, it’s like the Riddler’s trying to use 15th century alchemical symbols to then point us in the direction of–”
“Tim, breath,” Dick tried, but Tim kept pressing the topic, going on about how he had been able to find some rare manuscript digitized by Cambridge that could align with the new riddle he left up with a supposed countdown.
Dick walked over, placed a hand on Tim’s shoulder, but the boy just jerked back and kept pacing. Pacing. Pacing. Talking. Pacing. Running his mouth at such speeds that it was like his every word had been bottled up for years, pressurized, and only just now did someone rip the seal off.
Typical wound-up teenager things. Dick knew he hadn’t been any better as a kid, getting on Bruce’s every last, already-fried nerve. Though when he looked at Tim, at Tim’s bright blue eyes, he couldn’t quite connect to the mind that was sitting right behind them.
Dick stepped back, and let Tim pace, pace, pace. Even at the deep, light steps of Bruce coming up behind them, he couldn’t peel his eyes off of Tim.
“Come on, let’s get started. Dick, the CCTV footage from last night, any luck?”
Tim stalled, but bounced on the back of his heels, though Bruce turned to face his eldest. Dick nodded, and walked over to where he left his tablet abandoned.
He was just overthinking things. Tim was probably just a bit stressed, was all.
Steph pounded on Tim’s door, for the fourth time. “Come on, I know you still have my jacket and I need it for the weekend.”
After being met with silence, not even the sound of shuffling feet coming to open the bedroom door, she huffed, and shoved the door knob open.
It creaked open.
Damn, why hadn’t she tried that first?
She slowly opened up, and Tim’s room was dark, a cavern lit only by sticky, glow-in-the-dark stars she was pretty sure was a gift, and a 90s-esque lava lamp bouncing lethargically on his desk.
And a lump, in the far distance, coiled on the bed where the blinds were mostly shut, minus a sliver of light from the bottom.
She tiptoed in, careful not to wake him from his slumber. He could sleep intensely at times, but 4pm?
“I can hear you,” she heard, muffled from the pile of blankets.
“Christ, then answer the door next time so I don’t have to break in. Where’s my puffer jacket? And don’t you ever keep a light on in here?” She huffed, flicking on the small lamp on his desk, to which she heard a grumble in response.
“In my closet,” he responded, but barely with a stir. She went over to the wooden closet, threw it open, and wrinkled her nose at how pristine it was. Tim would have a heart attack if he ever saw hers– the disarray of clothes, with her makeup in her pouches, and laundry always sitting for three days after she took it out of the dryer before it got folded.
She spotted her glittery purple jacket easily amidst his clothes.
“We have got to get you some style bro, like what is this? Do you live decades past purposefully, or did you just raid Bruce’s teen closet?” She asked, taking out a Hawaiian shirt with a wrinkled nose.
“Dwunt you hv bttr things tdo?”
“What?”
Tim peeked his head out slightly, “Don’t you have better things to do?”
“Not now that I’m rethinking my wardrobe,” she said, rifling through more of his shirts– color-coded, of course. What must it be like in the boy genius’ mind, where everything was so exact and organized, and solvable, everything, down to style, up to a science?
She fingered through his hangers, the basket of scarves kept up above, flipped through his jackets, one of which she recognized as Kon-El’s, and filed that blackmail away for letter, but the glitter of the experience quickly wore off.
Tim didn’t stir, didn’t seem to care about Steph barging in to begin with and demanding her jacket back, going through his closet, touching everything, likely ruining his perfect pattern.
“You were really silent on patrol last night,” she tried, for lack of a better conversation starter.
No response.
“We got in early, just under 3am. Are you feeling okay?”
Nada.
“Tim, work with me here,” she said, throwing her hands up, but she swore he only buried himself deeper in his mountainous duvet.
“Suit yourself,” she said, and kicked herself at her own pun. Though it wasn’t as fun without Tim pointing it out himself.
Whatever, she had better things to do anyways than bother him.
“Drag your ass out of bed before I sic Damian on you,” she half-threatened, but even that didn’t get so much of a snide comment out of him.
She lingered at his doorway, and closed the door gently behind her. She stared at the sparkly purple jacket, and absurdly bright Hawaiian shirt she stole from him, and the thrill of it felt less like a high as it should have been.
It wasn’t like him to sleep so late, especially since they didn’t take much of a beating. It had been such a boring night, as far as their typical crime-fighting nights went.
Before she could contemplate going to Alfred and asking him to check in on Tim later, her phone buzzed with a text from Bruce. She rolled her eyes at the dryness of his text, and started her way down to meet him in his study.
The stakeout itched under Cass’ skin. She didn’t mind the quiet of the nights, the steadiness of having to focus, the ability to let her mind linger some while concentrating on some place.
Her mind couldn’t wander far, though. Tim was next to her, drumming his fingers so rapidly and steadily she was half-surprised he hadn’t worn down his fingertips.
She watched him, almost as much as the stakeout itself. It was her priority, yes, but Tim was perched like a gargoyle and hadn’t so much had a muscle twitch in the past two hours.
“You’ve been on edge all week,” she said, eyes still trained on the stakeout– a back exit to a seedy dive bar, and potential hideout for an associate of Harvey’s.
“I’ve been fine,” Tim quickly responded. A tad too fast, even.
“No, you haven’t been. You’ve been rude, and snappy,” she responded.
“Fucking sorry we can’t so poised as you all the time,” he shot back, and she saw him instantly recoil at the statement. She said nothing, just turned her head to face him.
“That was uncalled for,” she said, and he just lowered his head, and muttered a pitiful apology.
They spent the next half hour in a terse silence, watching a gaggle of drunk college kids collide into one another as they went bar-hopping, a bouncer opened the back door for a scraggly kid, not their target by any means, and a few cars drift past.
Cass snuck a glance at Tim, who had, fortunately, shifted his stance slightly. His face was screwed tightly in contemplation– his mind was far away from the street below them, she could tell. Something else was on his mind.
Not like he’d tell her anyways, given his attitude. But she thought back to Barbara, telling her to have some grace– for herself, she knew it was intended mostly for her, but for others too. Not everyone had her standards, her Olympus-high expectations.
“You’re thinking,” she said, and he gave a mild shrug in response.
“Not much else to do on these stakeouts.”
“You taught me blackjack last time,” she countered, “And then lost. Severely.”
“I should have known better,” he said, voice flat.
“I’m good at keeping secrets,” she offered, and he sighed.
“It’s fine, I’m just…”
The rest of the sentence never came. His voice trailed, and he didn’t circle back, didn’t offer anything up. Well, Cass thought, she at least tried.
A few minutes passed, and still nothing of note. She itched to dive down, to swoop into the shadows of the misty Gotham night, but the night was still young.
“Besides, who would you tell your secrets to?” Tim said, out of the blue.
“What?”
“You said you were good at keeping secrets,” Tim elaborated.
“I have people, of course. Batman, Agent A, Spoiler, Oracle–” Cass started to rattle off, but Tim sighed, rubbing his eyes, muttering something under his breath. ‘Sorry I asked,’ she knew, though she didn’t respond to that comment.
“You can at least try to play nice. You’re not the only person with bad days,” she said, though didn't mean it much. Usually she was patient, but Tim was being weird, and she never liked weird. Weird meant she didn’t know the cause. Yet.
Cass paused, redirecting herself towards intel gathering, “If you want to go back to the Manor, I’m sure Robin could take your shift. Are you feeling well?”
“I’m fine,” Tim reiterated, the hard edge back. Truly, if he thought that would be enough to throw Cass off, he had no clue who he was messing with.
“Have you been sleeping well?” Cass asked, and Tim’s reluctance to answer was another strike against him. She pressed her luck further, “Get some sleep. Someone can cover. It’s been slow, the probability that within the next ten minutes–”
“There,” Tim said, hunched forward, and Cass chided herself for being a fraction late in noticing someone knocking in a rhythmic pattern on the back door, looking around, frightened. Tall, reddish hair peaking out beneath a beanie, the tattoo sleeve he sported matching the description– that was their guy all right.
Before she could react, Red Robin was already swooping down, talking into the comms. She followed, slotting their conversation away for another time. It could wait.
Bruce watched Tim dizzying himself, a hurricane unleashed in the Cave. Tim was surrounded by scattered photographs, a large arc spanning around his body, an impressive stack of empty mugs by his side, eyes flailing wildly as he explained his next theory to the kidnapping they were investigating.
Bruce was grateful for the background noise, truly, as Tim sorted it out. Sometimes the kid was silent (they were all his kids, he knew, despite the teen reaching the upper edges of adolescence), but for the past few days, he had been on fire.
He had predicted with his intelligence model the next move of Killer Croc, had been on top of security at Arkham Asylum, had even sent updated files to the Justice League that Bruce himself had been neglecting. He was animated, earning laughs from even Damian– everyone except for Cass, Bruce realized.
Regardless, he brought his attention back to his search. The kidnapping was at some pharmaceutical conference being held in Gotham, and some top attendants had been taken by the Joker– likely being forced to create some new fear toxin, he suspected.
Bruce was methodically investigating the disappeared parties, name after name. He finished with Dr. Bridgit Cherise, and started on Dr. Gabriel Everstone, a local psychiatrist, whose medical clientele was a who’s-who of the glittering Gotham elite. Bruce scoffed, wondering at his annual gala, how many attendees were on the very Valium or Xanax all prescribed to them by Dr. Everstone.
Was it a HIPPA violation? Yeah, but a Joker kidnapping was a carte-blanche to bypass all sorts of eyebrow-raising activities.
Bruce scanned down the list of recent clients, and fell upon a name that caught him by surprise.
Janet Drake.
He stared, and stared, and stared. Bruce was as paranoid as it got– he had extensive medical files on all of his Robins, all of his associates, including family history. Aside from Jack’s side of the family having a history of cardiac arrest, nothing came up for Tim’s family.
Bruce looked over, warily, at Tim, who was locked in on the images, mumbling to himself, distracted.
Bruce clicked on the name.
Janet Drake’s image popped up, a flattering photo of her, along with a call log, appointment list, list of medication history–
Ah, Bruce thought, why hadn’t Tim mentioned that sooner? He pulled up Tim’s virtual medical charts, and indeed, nothing was jotted down in family history or mental health history. Odd.
Bruce switched back to Janet’s tab. He knew if he peeked, he wouldn’t be able to go back, and surely Tim, given his technological sorcerer, would have written it down if it were important.
But knowing, even under such suspicious circumstances, was better than being in the dark, putting his blind trust into Tim over something this important.
He clicked ‘medication history’ and saw the list of current medications and refills pop up, stretching down and down, nearly as deep as the pit brewing in his stomach.
Lithium. Years and years of it, being tweaked, large refills likely frowned upon in the medical world coinciding with the Drake’s months-long expeditions, from what Tim had told him about. And lithium was used to treat primarily one condition, one condition highly susceptible to being genetically passed down.
Bipolar. But surely Tim knew.
“Hey Bruce–”
Bruce shot up, placing the screen face down, and tightly smiled as Tim came up, waving a few photographs, “I think I’ve got something!”
The wind on Tim’s face was a cool caress, one he wished could wipe the salty tears coating his cheeks. The breeze was soft, softer than any Gotham wind typically was, as soft as Venetian lace being patted down on his shoulder, as calming as his mother’s tender voice.
But she was dead, and had been for a while now.
He could imagine though, play pretend in his mind where his family were the dolls he controlled. That his father and mother had been more present in his life.
He knew they tried. His mother had once called his jiu jitsu instructor to arrange for a private formal recital since they were off to Bolivia the night of the official parent showcase– not that he was ever meant to know about that.
His father had a hard time looking him in the eyes now– though he knew, absurd as it sounded, that it wasn’t because the band-aid had been ripped off, that his father knew his dirty little vigilante secret. That his son had been Robin and Red Robin all these years, under his roof, all those years without any hint to lead his parents astray.
He knew he looked too much like his mother for his father. That he had his mother’s eyes, his mother’s face, her slight nose and delicate features, her lithe fingers and dexterity.
In the doll’s house of his head, his mother could hold him one more time, dance with him like he was a child again, dressed up in her old shoes maybe, or some jazz vinyl they collected from a recent trip playing on in the background.
Bruce has been so cold to him. On and off. Replacing Jason at first, and then coming back from the time stream, and now, now… Now he was directly part of his mother’s death and father’s coma and he could barely look Tim in the eye, just like his own father.
At least his father had Dana to keep him company. Bruce had Dick, his prodigal son Jason, even Damian, his own blood. Cass was his right-hand, Steph a constant in the house, around Gotham.
Tim had a paper house and paper dolls in his mind. He was the paperweight, crushing them, he thought, nonsensical and illegal as the thought was, but it made sense to him. He felt so heavy– but he felt so light, as if he too could fly away.
“Tim?”
A voice severed from his mind. Tim didn’t notice, didn’t respond. He thought about being as weightless as paper too, perfect to fold and tear, but perfect to draw in, to design to people’s exact wants and whims. He could be perfect, too.
“Tim?!”
Weightless. Free from burden. Free from Drake Industries, free from Gotham, from Batman, and the Red Robin mantle, free from Wayne Enterprises, free from the grief of his mother, free from being unable to look his father in his eyes, free from his pain, his aching body despite being so young, free from a mind hellbent on torturing him, driving him up a wall, sending him into irritated bouts and panic and restlessness so unsettling he cried himself too sleep every night, just to plunge him into the cold grasp of depression, its claws raking through his lethargic body, his tired mind, fighting off hours of sleep and nausea and irritability, like ants crawling inside his mind.
“Tim!”
Weightless.
“Timothy Drake–”
Tim hadn’t even realized he had been moving, until a strong, calloused grip ripped him back.
The world settled around him, as if he was just now perceiving the world around him.
He was on top of an old building in the Gotham ports, a spot he frequented for its lovely and quiet views of the waters, and yet high enough he could see Gotham alight, freckles of light creating an urban constellation he always found beautiful.
“Tim,” the shaky voice settled, and he recognized it, finally his senses clicking into place, booting up.
He was being hugged. Why was he being hugged?
“Don’t scare me like that again,” a muffled voice said, the face pressed into his shoulder, wrapping in a beefy hug. Bruce’s hug.
Tim’s arms were limp by his side. They weren’t in his Red Robin uniform. In fact, he was in his mother’s old sweatshirt, the one from her college days he stole from her, unnoticed, years ago.
Was Bruce cold? It wasn’t cold out– why was the older man shivering?
Tim craned his neck, looking back at the speckled band of the Gotham nightscape, in all its beauty.
“You need anything, anything, Timothy, you come to me, do you understand? I don’t care, just don’t come here. Don’t think those thoughts.”
Bruce was babbling– the roles reversed, for once. Tim couldn’t even appreciate the brevity of his own thoughts.
It felt good, whatever this was.
His mother would have loved a peaceful night like this.
“I’m sorry I’ve failed you, son.”
He had his mother’s eyes.
“I should have checked in on you, should have pushed you more to let me in.”
He would never feel his mother’s hands on him, petting his hair, cradling his cheek, her always-coiffed nails scratching oh so gently against him, lulling him to serene sleep.
“You can always come to me, you know that?”
He’d never taste her hot cocoa again, the kind his mother despites for all of its artificially sweet marshmallows. It had been her childhood favorite too, a twist on it, at least, so she said.
“Tim, do you hear me?”
He had Batman’s wit too. His bravery and guts too, he had to believe.
“Tim, it’s okay, you’re okay.”
But he didn’t have Batman’s mind. Oh no, his sharpness, his initiative, his boldness, his quick thinking and decisiveness, that was all his mother’s.
“Tim, I’ve got you.”
And the bipolar. He knew that too.
“Say something, will you?”
He was pulled back, seeing Bruce crouch in front of him, one heavy hand placed upon a shoulder, comforting, the other reaching out, as if searching for permission in Tim’s eyes.
Tim just nodded, barely noticeable, but Bruce reached up, tenderly cupping Tim’s cheeks. It was Bruce, even in the kevlar, and it hit Tim– Bruce was in the suit, but not in the mask.
“Can we go home?” Tim asked, voice breaking halfway, and, god damn it, he didn’t care that tears were welling in his eyes again for the millionth time that night.
“We can go anywhere you’d like, son,” Bruce replied, getting up, and scooping Tim close to his side, his cape like a weighted blanket being shared across Tim’s shoulders.
“Can we go home?” Tim whispered, and Bruce knew he didn’t mean Drake Manor.
The soft wind danced in Tim’s hair, and if he closed his eyes, he could feel the fingers carding through his hair gently, those lithe fingers he inherited.
“Of course, anywhere you want,” Bruce replied, soft as day, an arm linking Tim closer to his side as they started their slow path off the rooftop.