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Since that fire. 3 months, 18 days, 7 hours, and 29 seconds had passed.
Timothy Drake had not deliberately counted.
From the moment Damian was buried in the fire, time itself had become a punishment that could not be stopped. Ever since that Robin vanished into the flames, Tim had fallen into a deeper self-doubt than any he had ever experienced before, and into an even more stubborn refusal.
If he was smart enough, why had he failed to see through Damian’s plan in advance?
If he understood Damian well enough, why had he failed to stop him at the final moment?
If he truly was the best profiler, why could he not even find the person he wanted most to find?
These questions gnawed at him day after day. And the only thing he could do was refuse to close his eyes, refuse to mourn, refuse to accept the ending everyone else had already begun to accept.
Timothy Drake had never considered himself an upright gentleman.
Rather, in order to obtain the best result, in order to achieve the most efficient goal, he often did not mind placing himself inside the game. He did not even mind using himself, using others, using intelligence, using emotions, using everything that could be mobilized, and pushing everyone into a chessboard he had arranged in advance.
As the saying went, relying on heaven or earth was never as reliable as relying on oneself.
Ever since he entered the rehabilitation facility at eight years old, Tim’s Hue had never left wine-red.
After that, his parents vanished without a trace and never tried to contact him again. So he learned to be independent very early. The only way to save himself was to make himself valuable enough.
Then, as he wished, become one of Bruce Wayne’s core members.
From the child trapped in a white room to the most dangerous and precise profiler in Investigation Division One, Tim proved himself step by step, with both feet firmly on the ground.
And facts proved that Bruce was worth following.
He not only brought Tim into the Batcave, but also kept him by his side, raised him, trained him, and taught him how to properly use his profiling abilities. How to trace and deduce. How to enter another person’s mental world while ensuring his own consciousness was not swallowed by someone else’s pain and madness.
Because of that, even though the others were just as extraordinarily gifted, Tim still felt he was the one most like Bruce.
He understood Bruce’s conflict. Understood his pursuit. Understood his guardedness.
Just as Bruce had contingency files for every member of the Justice League, Tim had psychological files on everyone around him.
Hobbies. Weaknesses. Triggers. Mental anchors. Patterns of Hue fluctuation. And the choices they were most likely to make under extreme circumstances. Otherwise, he would not have been capable of taking Damian’s blood and hair for DNA testing on their very first day of meeting.
The moon waxed and waned. People were the same.
No matter how well Tim got along with others, the moment his radar faced Damian Wayne, it seemed to fail completely. They seemed naturally incapable of maintaining a good relationship. Or perhaps it was only because their first meeting had been so terrible.
Because the first time Tim officially appeared, he shattered the rookie Inspector’s pride. Or perhaps it was because, after that, he repeatedly showed up uninvited in the hibiscus paradise.
If one had to make a comparison, Tim was practically dancing on Damian’s land mines.
Damian’s hostility toward latent criminals was too obvious. And that hostility provoked Tim’s rebellious psychology.
Something like—
Precisely because you think yourself so noble.
Precisely because you have such a clear Hue.
Precisely because you stand in the light acknowledged by the Sybil System.
Therefore, I must deny your pursuit and legitimacy of so-called justice. I must drag this Robin who follows a false god down from the path of martyrdom.
Make him fall into the human world. Make him see the gray beyond black and white. Make him face the pain of others.
Make him see those anomalies whom Sybil refuses to acknowledge, yet who still wholeheartedly try to do good.
Unlike the cheerful and mature Dick. Unlike the delicate and straightforward Jason. And unlike the silent yet careful Cassandra. Damian, in every sense, was an extreme variable. He was proud and untamed, possessing the arrogance of a newborn calf unafraid of tigers. On top of that, he had perfectly inherited Bruce’s extraordinary willpower.
He was confident. Resilient. Proud. With an almost obsessive sense of responsibility.
Who else would have the nerve to shoot directly at a hostage on their first day of work?
And who else, afterward, could shoulder everything without hesitation, carry the burden forward alone, and still maintain a perfectly clear Hue?
Across countless psychological dives, Tim had seen all kinds of worlds.
Dark abysses. Broken circuses. Prisons of criminals. Pitiful childhoods. Twisted desires. Inner ruins repeatedly polluted by guilt, fear, hatred, and trauma. Precisely because he had seen so much chaos and rot, the hibiscus garden appeared even more brilliant and mesmerizing.
It was truly an exclusive sanctuary of cultivation. A hymn written jointly by nature and self-will.
The lake was clear, hibiscus bloomed, animals passed through freely. When wind moved through the branches and leaves, it was like some gentle, ancient comfort.
That garden healed a part of Tim’s exhaustion that even he did not want to admit.
It made people feel at peace.
When Damian was still there, they often clashed. That feeling of meeting a worthy opponent was extremely addictive.
Likewise, Tim quite enjoyed the pleasure of possessing secrets.
From the beginning, he had known Damian’s true identity, and he had always been in the front row, watching this clumsy yet heart-softening one-man show. Watching the other party’s long, difficult road of recognizing his father, full of relentless effort and frequent self-defeating mistakes.
But just as all things had cause and effect, without realizing it, Tim instead began hoping the father and son would recognize each other sooner.
Spring came, autumn went. Day after day. The people involved were not anxious. The bystander, however, was so anxious he wanted to flip the table.
So whether it was the Riddler’s tower that time, or the several incidents after that, he worked hard to create opportunities for the two to spend time alone together. But Bruce and Damian, normally both so eloquent, suddenly became mute at every critical moment.
On top of that, ever since the new Inspector arrived, there were surprises everywhere. Every day brought new trouble, new clues, new explosions, and new collapses of worldview. At the time, Tim still somewhat innocently believed that this was the cause and effect between the two of them.
Cause: Damian came to Investigation Division One.
Effect: after father and son recognized each other, the Batfam would gain another fierce general.
But he was completely wrong.
During deeper investigation, Tim discovered more special points. Including, but not limited to: traces of Lazarus, Damian’s abnormally stable Mental Index, and his martyr-like tendency toward self-sacrifice.
Whether toward order, justice, his father, or the world that had never truly given him a safe childhood, Damian displayed an extreme pursuit and fascination. And over these months together, Tim discovered that Damian had countless threads of cause and effect tying him to every member of Team One.
He was the child who had participated in Jason’s surgery all those years ago. He was Cassandra’s LOA schoolmate. He was the one who made Dick truly experience, for the first time, the responsibility of being a mentor and guide.
And he was Bruce’s son by blood.
If one had to say it, Tim felt he was the outsider. The one who did not fit into that web of cause and effect.
But that was not entirely correct either.
Just like Damian’s initial dislike of him, Tim had been interested in Damian, but had not accepted him very quickly.
After all, seeking quick success was not intelligence, and hot tofu could not be eaten in haste.
With a mentality of watching the show, he began actively adjusting, desensitizing, and repeatedly entering the mental garden uninvited to test things.
Those were all surface-level attempts. Attempts to establish a causal relationship with the other party. And attempts to explore the true way for them to get along.
What was tragic, and also suddenly enlightening, was that after a long deduction, he ultimately clarified the matter in the cruelest way.
The cause was indeed Damian coming to Investigation Division One.
But the effect was actually Damian becoming a silver bullet fired at Sybil.
Just as Dick had feared, Damian burned himself. What he won was not victory among any of the options. Not Sybil’s complete destruction. Not Lazarus’s complete integration. Not the Joker’s death. And not world peace from then on.
Robin used his own life to shatter god’s crown in that great fire, then flew freely into the distance alone.
But this was not the ending. At least, Tim did not accept that this was the ending.
So he found everyone else’s grief unreasonable.
Since there were no remains at the scene except Damian’s burned left arm, on what basis did they decide he was dead?
Since there was no body, no complete DNA chain, no final evidence confirming death, where did this so-called “fallen in the line of duty” come from?
And instead of sinking into grief and mourning, why not pull themselves together and investigate Damian’s clues with him?
The Sybil building was so large. The situation had been so chaotic. Someone as smart as Damian could not possibly have left himself no fallback. At the time, multiple forces had intervened one after another.
Poison Ivy. The Joker gang. Lazarus remnants. The Justice League. The Special Police. The League of Assassins.
Any one of those sides could have taken away something, someone, or some secret that should not have been discovered amid the chaos.
Why not consider this possibility? Why rush instead to arrange funerals and mourning?
Even when attending the funeral, Timothy Drake was completely different from everyone else present. He watched Dick and Stephanie unable to stop their tears. Watched Bruce’s reddened eyes. Watched Jason’s tense profile, so tight it seemed about to shatter. Watched Cassandra stand silently to the side, holding an electronic projection of a ginkgo leaf.
Tim did not shed a single tear, nor did he look away the entire time.
He stared directly at the coffin without a body inside.
Across countless sleepless nights, Tim lurked like a spider in the depths of the network, searching for every trace. When work was done and night arrived, he would dive down again in dreams, trying to return to the hibiscus paradise.
Day after day, he searched for that mirror-flower, water-moon scene, that old dream that had long lost all response.
Of course, the poor genius profiler might not have expected this.
For a long time, Damian, sunk in deep sleep, simply could not respond.
And after he healed, Damian directly found work as a midnight DJ, living with reversed days and nights, his sleep schedule completely opposite from before.
He perfectly missed the open time window.
Even as the others gradually stepped out of grief, or at least began learning how to breathe inside grief, Tim was still refusing.
He could not believe, and could not accept, that Damian would be buried in fire.
Four months, eleven days, thirteen hours, and twenty-nine seconds.
Still no word from him.
Today, Dick was still nowhere to be found, and Jason had once again driven away the third newcomer Commissioner Amanda tried to shove onto them.
Bruce was still trying to contact those supernatural forces that did not truly exist, attempting to resurrect a son he refused to admit he had lost.
Cass was very quiet.
Stephanie was also very quiet.
And Tim sat in the office, looking at Investigation Division One scattered like loose sand, and only felt absurdity.
All things under heaven, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide.
Of course he understood the principle.
But watching it happen with his own eyes was still pitiful.
Not to mention, while Timothy Drake fought alone, everyone else, whether grieving, furious, depressed, or silent, had in some sense accepted the conclusion that Damian was dead.
They were unwilling to gamble on that illusory possibility again, because that would intensify the pain.
If in the end it was all drawing water with a bamboo basket, that would only make people more desperate.
But Tim did not think that way.
Helplessness and anger eroded him.
That only made him fight harder, and made him carry out his plan to find Damian with even greater determination.
On the fifth month, first day, ninth hour, and third minute, Tim finally found some traces.
On the Gotham border, someone had seen a mysterious patient who had briefly stayed at a remote clinic.
That clue was very thin. So thin it was like a spider thread about to snap. But for Tim, that was enough.
At the time, Bruce was too collapsed to bear a search that might come up empty.
So Tim bypassed everyone and directly applied for a special investigation.
And because of post-disaster manpower shortages, there was no problem with the procedure at all.
The higher-ups quickly approved this two-day, one-night field assignment.
Tim set off that very day.
The remote little clinic was located beside the border highway.
The person who opened the door was a blonde doctor, Harley Quinn.
She looked like a dutiful doctor.
Her tone was gentle, her smile sweet, and she was holding a cup of coffee that had already gone cold.
But after Tim circled around with her for several hours, she did not reveal even the slightest information about her previous patient.
Instead, she became increasingly wary of the Enforcer before her, almost causing Tim to steal the chicken only to lose the rice.
Since the doctor would not speak, he could only ask the people nearby.
He went door to door.
When he knocked on the eighteenth door, a little girl finally gave him a clue.
She said that one night several months ago, when she went to visit her sick grandfather, she had seen an extremely handsome young man.
But it had only been once.
After that, because his condition was serious, he was quickly transferred away.
When Tim heard the first clue, he was almost ecstatic.
He immediately took a photograph from the pocket of his suit jacket.
This picture had been taken when Dick said the rookie needed to sit on the bench, and everyone saved Damian’s expression — stunned but still forcing himself to maintain dignity — as a reaction image.
Tim handed the photo over.
“Was it this man?”
The little girl looked carefully for a very long time.
Then she said doubtfully, “Maybe? Maybe not.”
Tim felt as if something had lightly gripped his heart.
“Why?”
The little girl tried hard to remember.
“Because he wasn’t this complete. I remember he had lots of burns… and he didn’t have his left arm.”
At that, Tim’s breathing almost stopped.
Not from disappointment.
From hope even more intense.
Because that sounded exactly like the answer he wanted to hear.
Most likely, it was Damian, alive after the fire.
Tim asked, “Then do you know where he went afterward?”
This time, the little girl shook her head.
“I don’t know. Sorry, big brother.”
But a nearly mad light had already lit in Tim’s eyes.
At last, he had caught wind and shadow, climbed across ten thousand miles, and obtained the first message in this remote town.
Since the doctor would not speak, and the patient suspected to be Damian had been transferred, there were only three larger hospitals nearby.
Blüdhaven Central Hospital.
Metropolis Public Hospital.
And Star City Central Hospital.
On the road north in the car, Tim laughed mockingly at himself and muttered, “I always say you get luxury three-choice questions, but am I any different?”
By then, it was already dusk.
On both sides of the rural highway were yellowed fields.
In the distance, road signs leaned crookedly in the wind.
The sky was low and heavy. The clouds outside the window were burned rust-red by the sunset.
He had not truly slept for several days.
Caffeine made his heart beat too fast.
Fatigue climbed upward from his spine like tidewater.
And it was at that moment that a phantom appeared in the passenger seat.
Or rather, it was an illusion constructed by Tim’s brain based on his understanding and memories of Damian.
That Damian sat in the passenger seat, wearing a black uniform, his brows and eyes cold, familiar mockery in his green eyes.
Just like on countless past missions, when Tim sat in the passenger seat scrolling on his phone and Damian sat beside him, unable to endure it any longer, telling him to focus.
Now, their positions were exchanged.
“Tt.”
The phantom spoke.
“You know I am already dead, right, Drake?”
Like the real Damian, even on a road trip, he still had a sharp mouth, and every word stabbed straight into the heart.
“Shut up.”
Tim looked straight ahead.
“I’m already driving tired. Don’t force me to drag my hallucination into a traffic accident too.”
As he spoke, he picked up the canned coffee beside him and drank half of it in one breath.
The phantom Damian frowned.
“You really are an idiot. The caffeine you have consumed over the past few days has already far exceeded the normal value. If this continues, what flows in your blood will no longer be red blood cells, but coffee.”
Tim sneered.
“Was your biology taught by a gym teacher?”
Damian answered, “Then you are seeking an early death from myocardial infarction.”
Tim laughed in anger for a moment, unexpectedly unable to think of a retort.
So he changed the subject.
“Which hospital were you sent to? Can you give me a hint?”
The ghost in the passenger seat only sneered.
“How many times do I have to say it? Do not waste time on the dead.”
Tim ignored him and directly implemented cold violence against the hallucination.
Several minutes later, a voice sounded beside him again.
“Father and Grayson need you more than I do. You should stay beside your family, not waste time tracing a wandering ghost.”
This time, Tim did not continue staying silent.
He turned the wheel sharply and stopped the car beside the rural highway heading toward Blüdhaven.
The sound of brakes was shrill.
The inside of the car fell into dead silence.
Bloodshot veins filled Timothy’s eyes.
Those normally deep-blue eyes were now filled with endless exhaustion and anger.
“Damian, the people who gave up early are not worth this much concern from you… and even less worth you missing them.”
Tim rested his forehead against the steering wheel, both hands folded at the edge of it, his voice lowering little by little.
“You should be more selfish… You should not always think of them.”
“You should think of yourself too.”
As he spoke, sleepiness and exhaustion finally climbed up his spine and stabbed deep into his consciousness.
“You’re not dead at all… In the end, you’re only my hallucination.”
“So… stop ordering me around.”
As he spoke, Tim unknowingly sank into sleep, swallowed by waves from the deep sea.
The ghost in the passenger seat quieted.
The phantom Damian looked at the driver who had finally fallen asleep and sighed softly.
His green eyes gazed at him.
“Timothy… why are you condemning yourself?”
After Damian left, Tim had not truly slept either.
There had only been endless tracking, analysis, deduction, failure, analysis again, deduction again, failure again.
This was the first time.
Even if only for a short moment, he finally entered sleep.
At the same time, as a midnight DJ, Damian usually slept between six in the morning and one in the afternoon.
And so, in this rare mismatch and overlap of frequencies, he met a half-dead Drake inside the hibiscus paradise.
Beside the lake, there was a man with half his body soaked in the water and the other half sprawled on the shore.
He wore a dark red shirt, as if someone had fished him out of the deep sea and casually thrown him onto the bank.
After the great fire, this person had never come to his garden again.
Damian had originally thought the other party had accepted his death and adjusted his mindset to move forward.
Rather, when they had been in the same team, the two of them were like fire and water, often arguing until Grayson had a headache.
So Damian had not expected to see such an exhausted Timothy.
That black hair was somewhat messy.
The wrinkles on his shirt looked as if they had not been straightened in a very long time.
The dark circles and bruised shadows under his eyes were obvious.
He had not even properly managed his stubble.
His entire body looked absurdly unhealthy, and carried a rich smell of coffee.
Damian frowned.
In the end, he still dragged him away from the lake and let him lie down somewhere the sunlight could reach.
The surrounding deer, squirrels, birds, dogs, and cats all gathered, worriedly nudging Damian with their noses, then rubbing against the sleeping Timothy.
Damian made a shushing gesture to them.
“Do not make noise. Let him sleep.”
And so, those animals quieted, as they always did.
Nature wrapped around them gently.
Sunlight fell.
Lake water swayed softly.
Hibiscus petals floated in the wind.
The two spent a comfortable afternoon beneath the tree.
After waking, even without any memory, Tim still felt he had received a long-awaited and sufficient rest.
Outside the car window, the sky was already bright.
The ghost in the passenger seat was boredly looking out the window, as if waiting for him to continue driving.
Timothy returned to that rural highway, racing through yellow earth and wind toward Blüdhaven Hospital.
One person and one ghost set out again.
Of course, fate was sometimes very skilled at jokes.
By the time he finally reached the hospital in Star City that night, the two-day, one-night assignment time had already ended.
Tim, who had not returned for too long, was ultimately persuaded back by Dick, who had come to get him.
The two of them had an intense argument because of it.
Tim insisted that he had already found a clue and could not stop at a time like this.
Dick believed he had gone too long without rest, and if this continued, he would collapse before finding Damian.
In the end, perhaps out of consideration for Dick’s grief, or perhaps because he remembered the effect his own solo departure had once had on the team, Tim ultimately returned to Gotham with Dick.
He did not have time to go to Metropolis Public Hospital.
He perfectly missed the correct answer.
But even so, life still continued.
Before anyone realized it, winter had already left.
Spring quietly arrived.
Cherry blossom projections lit up again on the streets of Gotham.
Pale pink-white petals fell from branches, spreading across roads under repair, landing beside half-dismantled jellyfish scanner bases, and also landing on the steps outside the Investigation Division One building.
After circling around and around—
Red Robin had flown across wilderness, clinics, border highways, and missed hospitals.
After countless wrong deductions, wrong choices, and mismatched times, he finally returned beneath the first branch.
That day, when the knock sounded outside the door, Tim was holding coffee.
He originally did not raise his head.
Until that voice rang out.
“Damian al Ghul Wayne. Reporting to you, Captain Bruce.”
The coffee slipped from his fingers.
Scalding liquid spilled across the floor.
Tim raised his head.
He saw a young man in a black uniform standing in the doorway.
Burned skin.
A silver-gray mechanical left arm.
Green eyes so familiar they made his heart stop.
This was not a hallucination.
Not a ghost inside the mental garden.
And not self-comfort constructed by his brain while driving exhausted.
This was Damian.
The Robin who had flown away in the fire had finally flown back to the branch.
And Red Robin froze in place.
In that instant, all his obsession, all his insomnia, his reasoning so calm it bordered on cruelty, and countless moments of stubbornness that others had seen as “refusing to accept reality,” finally received their answer.
He was right. He had been right all along.
Damian al Ghul Wayne was not dead at all.
And for a very long time after this, Timothy Drake would use this matter to mock, with perfect confidence, everyone who had held a funeral early, prepared relics, and accepted the ending by default.
Of course, before that, he first had to admit one other thing.
His first impression had indeed been correct.
Damian al Ghul Wayne really was a terrible, scheming bastard with a vicious personality, extremely skilled at making everyone worry themselves half to death over him.
Because that victorious look on his face had already exposed everything.
No explanation was necessary.
Everything was understood without words.