Chapter Text
For a detective, it takes Tim an embarrassingly long time to realize what’s happened. He misses clue after clue after clue. The first time he taps into comms to call for help and no one comes, he assumes they’re all busy. Then, when he runs into the Red Hood in an alleyway and Jason fires straight at him without pausing to so much as tell him to get out, he assumes that Jason is mad at him or at everyone for some new reason, makes a mental note to look into it, and then feels too tired and pissed-off to do anything about it. When he texts Dick about a case and his message is left unread, he assumes that Dick just isn’t checking his phone. When his login details for WE stop working and his emails to Tam bounce back and he checks the website and finds that Bruce Wayne is suddenly CEO again, he figures that Damian finally got his way about that and Bruce was too much of a coward to call Tim and tell him what he was going to do. It’s whatever, he thinks. Let them ignore him. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t care.
He’s so busy telling himself not to care that he only realizes that this is something — that something is actually, for real, wrong — weeks later, when he goes to the gala for the new hospital and Dick looks straight through him. Dick. Dick Grayson just blanks Tim, completely. It’s like getting shot through the heart. He stops, staring, and it’s a minute later that Dick’s blue gaze catches on his face and pauses there this time. His eyebrows go up and he strolls up to Tim.
“Hi?” He looks at Tim inquiringly. “Are you okay?”
He’s making the helpful encouraging face that he would make if any random weirdo needed his help. And Dick — this isn’t a game Dick would ever, ever play. Dick isn’t cruel. Even as a joke, even for five minutes, even after everything, he would never pretend that he doesn’t recognize Tim.
“I,” Tim says, his voice catching in his throat. The frown of concern deepens between Dick’s eyebrows. “I’m fine. Thanks. I thought you were someone else.”
Dick grins.
“Yeah? Not someone you were that happy to see, I’m guessing.”
Tim laughs. He doesn’t know what else to do. The laugh comes out shaky and too loud and Dick’s eyes narrow a little. He’s still concerned about this crazy skinny stranger in his expensive tuxedo, who’s been staring at him like he knows him. He’s assessing Tim carefully, under his casual smile, for signs of being a victim or a danger.
Dick, Tim wants to say. Dick, please. It’s me. Help me. It’s what he would have said if this had happened any time in the last five years, any time before the last year. Dick would have believed him, at least enough to investigate. Dick would still believe him, probably. He knows that. He knows asking for Dick’s help, right now, is the simplest thing to do. He doesn’t do it. He just stands there, staring, champagne glass in hand, and then Damian is next to Dick and looking at Tim with cold green eyes. He doesn’t look hateful, the way he normally does, like he’s mad at Tim for existing. This is the wary look that strangers who may or may not be a threat get.
“I’m Tim,” Tim says dumbly, because he has to say something. “Tim Drake.”
“Of Drake Industries?” Dick says politely. “Nice to meet you. I’m Dick Grayson and this is my little brother, Damian. Damian Wayne.”
“Hello,” Damian says and Tim smiles at him, his automatic gala smile.
“Is your dad here?” he asks but he already knows the answer. He saw Bruce a few minutes ago and Bruce didn’t see him but that’s not — unusual. Bruce sometimes doesn’t see him, not until Tim comes right up to him. It’s not evidence that whatever’s affecting Damian and Dick has affected Bruce. But this feels like a nightmare — the pit of it in his stomach, the way his breath is starting to tremble in his chest, the way his vision is starting to darken around the edges — and the logic of nightmare applies, so he’s not surprised at all when Dick calls Bruce over and Bruce smiles down at him and shakes his hand and there’s nothing at all in his eyes. A blank. Brucie.
“It’s an honor to meet you,” Tim hears himself say and Bruce smiles. His smile is dismissive, his eyes grazing over Tim’s face without much interest. Then he puts his hand on Damian’s shoulder and Tim’s throat closes up completely. His face is hot. He can’t breathe.
“Hey,” Dick says, a little urgently. “Are you okay? You look kind of —”
“Fine,” Tim says quickly. He doesn’t know why he says it. “I’m fine. Just — it’s hot in here. I might get some air. Nice to meet you all.”
He smiles at them, standing there in their little group — the Waynes — and turns away. He can feel them watching him so he keeps his gait steady and his shoulders straight until he finds his way to the nearest balcony and gulps in the cool air there.
His face is burning and his breathing is erratic but he’s alone on the balcony and it doesn’t matter. No one is watching him. No one knows him well enough to follow him out here and interrogate him. He has a grapple in his pocket and he shouldn’t — it’s reckless — Tim Drake arrived at this gala and Tim Drake should be seen leaving — but he can’t stop himself. He slaps on his domino and gets out of there and he can only breathe again when he gets back to his Nest and finds that his desk and devices and bed and skateboard and photos are all there.
After that, he investigates. He checks his email and his messages and realizes that literally no one he knows — not Kon, not Cassie, not Bart, not the Bats — has contacted him for exactly one month. He checks public records and discovers that Tim Drake exists and his parents died and he was once adopted by Bruce Wayne and then emancipated himself. He was once CEO of WE and then he wasn’t. Those records exist, even though the facts contained in them have been forgotten.
So. Amnesia, not an alternative universe. Everyone has forgotten him. Literally. Everyone. He goes to the cafe next to WE and the barista doesn’t know him and needs to be told his order. He tracks Cass down and follows her and she spins on her heel and knocks him down and tries to interrogate him before he gets away. He leaves some clues to his whereabouts in the remnants of the computer system of the League of Assassins and no one follows up on the clue. His place in literally everyone’s memory has simply vanished. He doesn’t know who Bruce thinks Robin III was — who Jason thinks he beat up in the Tower — how they all think Bruce got home — but the story they’re telling themselves has nothing to do with him. Tim Drake doesn’t exist in anyone’s memory. He exists on paper but that’s all.
It takes him one night to figure this out and to pinpoint the date that it happened, exactly one month ago, that day he bust up that operation in the Bowery and something flashed at him out of the dark and left him dizzy and cost him an unknown amount of time before he woke up and found himself tucked into a neat ball in a shipping container with no memory of how he got there. Whatever happened to him — to other people’s memory of him — happened that night. He could probably track down those people, that tech, and figure out what happened and undo it. He just. He’s not sure he wants to.