“We can start up,” Tim says, casually, the way he has for the past five rolls with Bruce. The mats are slick under his feet, but he tries not to think about it too much. He wipes his sweaty hands on his gi pants. They’re Dick’s, actually, pulled as tight as the string allows and yet still slipping and revealing the wide band of his compression shorts every time he tries to do literally anything. He lost them completely two rolls ago trying to crawl out of Bruce’s side mount, which was truly mortifying, and then made worse while Bruce watched him put them on backwards.
He ties them extra tight now (front ways) and then slides into a ready position, the gi pants’ cord cutting into his stomach with every breath.
Bruce is already flipping onto his back, arm already half-raised in expectation of Tim’s hold. “We should work on your mount. You need better control.”
Tim doesn’t move towards him. “I’m not heavy enough to pin you,” he argues.
“Ground fighting isn’t about your weight, Tim,” Bruce sighs, a little long-suffering. It’s been a continuous argument of theirs since Bruce first started training him. Tim can’t find any pity for him. It’s easy for Bruce to say, when he’s about three times Tim’s size.
“Well, I’m not going to be starting any fights on the ground,” Tim pushes. “And no one’s just going to wait for me to attack there. If I get anywhere near the ground, Bane will, like, immediately crush me.”
“You’re not fighting Bane anytime soon,” Bruce says, a bit too fast and a bit too roughly, so the rest of Tim’s argument turns to paste in his dry mouth.
He lowers himself resignedly to his knees. “Well, Bane will never let me take front mount in a hundred years. Can we at least start from here?”
Bruce looks at him calculatingly, but after a moment, heaves himself in a mirror position. There’s a big blotch of sweat where his back was. Tim’s not looking at it. He can’t afford squeamishness; Bruce will sit him out, and Tim’s tired of sitting on the bench. So far he’s just been the Batcomputer’s butt warmer. It’s been three months since Tim first walked into the Cave, and every night Bruce still patrols alone while Tim microwaves frozen lasagna and finishes his algebra II homework at home. He’s not allowed out on patrol until Bruce deems him ready, which just seems to involve a lot of Bruce looking at him like he wants to take a scalpel and have a heyday in Tim’s brain. If it were Tim training Tim, he’d be teaching himself how to use a grapple gun, how to run silently across rooftops, how to do a back handspring, how to be Robin.
“Attack me,” Bruce orders now.
But it’s not up to Tim. Because Tim can’t train himself to be a black belt in judo.
Tim startles at Bruce’s voice, and though Bruce’s face is impassive, he knows that doesn’t mean he hasn’t noticed (Tim is constantly under the microscope). Bruce has taught him a few throws, but there’s nothing Tim knows that will work from the knees. Can he hook behind—no, that will leave him open for a —and he’s tried that before—
“Don’t think about it,” Bruce instructs.
Tim tries not to. Judo throws all require getting the opponent off balance. He just needs to figure out the best angle from the knees…after another moment’s hesitation, he reaches for Bruce’s arm.
Bruce immediately puts a hand at the back of Tim’s neck, which Tim takes as a sign that he’s made the right choice, but he’s hardly pushed forward when Bruce says, “Stop. Fix your grip. Grab the back of the elbow—” he lets go of the back of Tim’s neck to put Tim’s hand in the right place— “or at the bicep, if you can. Now try.”
Tim tightens his new grip and looks to Bruce in silent affirmation. Bruce nods at him.
Tim jerks him forwards, and when he barely budges, makes the split-second decision to push one of Bruce’s knees away with the flat of his foot. Bruce topples forward, and Tim locks him in guard.
Bruce grunts. “You should never put yourself in a position like this.”
Tim lets go of his grips. “But I’m on the offensive from here!”
“That doesn’t mean it’s a smart move,” Bruce explains patiently. “Only use it when you absolutely need to. My reach is longer than yours.” He throws his fist at Tim’s face, and Tim just sucks in a breath and braces himself —
Bruce’s knuckles knock lightly against his chin. “If someone wants to hit you, they will. And you’ve lost your grips, Tim. If you have my arm, don’t let it go. Let’s start again.” He smiles wryly. “This time, no guard.”
Tim smiles back, like it’s a joke they share. So far Bruce has been so patient with him. So, infuriatingly patient with him. He’s been teaching Tim how to fight—judo, karate, jujitsu, boxing, krav maga, Shaolin kung fu, baguazhang, and other, stranger, more nameless arts. Tim’s not good at some of them. A lot of them. Any of them, really. He’s never been in a real fight in his life, but he’s learning.
He thinks. It’s hard to tell when Bruce pauses every fight to adjust his grip or offer advice.
“No guard,” Tim says. “Got it. But. Bruce?”
Bruce raises an eyebrow at him.
“I know I’m slow at getting this. But I think it might be better if I got some things wrong.” He smiles again, more genuine this time, if a little sheepish. Sheepishness, always a good touch. “I’ll never learn from my mistakes if you never let me make any of them, you know?”
Bruce says nothing for a moment. His mouth flattens in the way it does when he’s thinking about something someone else. Tim gets back to his knees and waits. He’s been waiting for three months. He’s good at waiting.
“Maybe you’re right,” Bruce says consideringly. A sort-of-maybe smile flickers at the corner of his mouth. “I’ll keep quiet this round. Come at me again.”
Tim does. He pushes instead of pulls this time, and Bruce goes to his back slowly but easily with no strength on Tim’s part. Tim bites his tongue, blocking Bruce’s knee with one hand. Bruce reaches for the back of his neck and he rears away at the same time Bruce lunges forward, pulling him into a tight roll. Tim fights to get his knees and elbows between them, but Bruce is heavier, Bruce is stronger. Tim struggles and Bruce only shifts, trapping Tim’s head in the crook of one arm and leaning forward over the other, rolling the blade into the soft part of Tim’s throat.
It’s not all of his weight, but Tim’s breath goes wheezy from the pressure. He tries to twist his head, but that just makes it worse, Bruce’s shoulder suddenly shoved against the side of his neck. Blackness blinks at the edge of his vision, and as soon as he recognizes what it means he wriggles his arm out from under Bruce and slaps the mat.
Bruce jerks backwards like he’s been burned, searching him for injury. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Tim coughs. “I just didn’t want to black out on you.” He rubs his throat. “I’m ready to go again.”
“You shouldn’t hold on so long,” Bruce says briskly, in a tone that Tim’s realized isn’t really angry so much as spooked. He never imagined Batman was ever spooked. But he does. He gets nervous. He gets scared. Just covers it up in a multimillion dollar kevlar batsuit. “Take a break.”
“I’m fine,” Tim repeats. “And I can’t just tap out of a real fight. I don’t need a break. Let’s go again.”
Bruce levels him with a look. Tim sighs and walks over to the bench he’d left a sports drink on. He takes two sips and then bounds back onto the mats.
“You know, Tim,” Bruce says, drawing himself up into a sitting position, one leg out, one arm over his knee. Always anticipating attack. “Maybe that’s enough for today.”
“I can go longer,” Tim promises.
“You don’t need to,” Bruce says back.
“Let’s start up,” Tim replies, ignoring him, but Bruce only lets out a grudging sigh before getting back to his knees. Compromise is as bitter as the salt that drips from Tim’s hair into his mouth.
They don’t go on much longer. Time becomes an annoying thing in the back of Tim’s mind that takes away from his focus. He’s tired, and frustrated, and it makes him sloppy. Eventually Bruce gets him in a simple mount, and Tim bucks against his weight, pushes against his knees, and tries to wriggle in vain out from under him before he lays there, limp as a noodle on the mats, breathing so hard he can feel the inflate-deflate of his lungs in his head.
“I think that’s enough for today,” Bruce repeats, and this time Tim can only nod. Bruce helps him up, claps him on the back. It’d mean more if they’d gotten anywhere at all.
He’s annoyed Bruce won’t fight him hand to hand. He’s annoyed he can’t last long at ground fighting. He’s annoyed that he can’t quit thinking about the sweat on the mats and the sweat that mats his hair. His shirt sticks to his back he doesn’t know if the saltiness in his mouth is his or Bruce’s. He doesn’t like ground fighting.
He wonders if Jason was trained like this and quickly shuts the thought down.
Bruce gets ready to patrol. Tim showers, running the water as hot as he can until it literally scalds his scalp. He shampoos his hair twice, prods at a bruise on his chin.
Maybe, he thinks, staring at the gray shower wall, I’m not meant to do this.
But then he reenters the Cave and sees the glass case with the uniform no one will ever wear again. And he reminds himself that he’s not doing this to be Robin. He’s doing this for Robin. (And he’s only kind of lying).
Bruce leaves for patrol. Tim goes home.
“Hi, B,” Dick says, on the stairs leading down to the Cave’s entrance from Bruce’s office. It’s close to noon, but he looks a little bit like he just rolled out of bed, in shapeless gray sweats and a white t-shirt with a small coffee stain on it that’s not noteworthy but it’s shaped like one of those psychiatric ink splots and Tim can’t take his eyes off it. Dick has a coffee carrier in his hand, and he sets it down on the Batcomputer before sitting heavily in one of the chairs so that it swivels with his weight.
“Dick,” Bruce acknowledges. “I thought you were taking Tim later this afternoon.”
It’s Saturday, and Tim trains with Bruce early. Dick normally shows up while he’s showering and whisks him off to Steak and Shake for milkshakes while his hair is still dripping wet. It’s their “tradition”, he thinks. Dick’s nice and always buys him a milkshake, even though their conversations are sometimes stilted, and sometimes they can’t talk about anything except how Tim is doing in school. But Dick’s trying and Tim understands that it’s definitely awkward to suddenly have a fourteen year old stranger stalk you and then willingly plunge himself into the deepest, longest-held secret of your life.
“I thought I’d come early,” Dick says now, and Tim doesn’t miss the way Bruce’s mouth turns up, satisfied. Dick takes a long sip of coffee and then yawns so loud his jaw cracks. He lifts a paper carrier. “And I brought donuts.”
“Donettes hardly count as real donuts, chum,” Bruce replies amusedly. “Don’t let Alfred see them.”
“Don’t worry,” Dick says, opening up the bag. He draws one out and bites into half of it, waving the other half around for emphasis. Powdered sugar drifts onto the floor. “I don’t plan on leaving any evidence.” He winks at Tim. Tim grins back.
“I got you coffee, too,” Dick adds to Bruce, digging back into the bag for a second donut. “Well, I got Tim a coffee. I got you your gross iced chai.”
“What kind?” Bruce asks.
“Vanilla.”
“Good.” Bruce nods appreciatively. “Alright, Tim. One more roll and then you can be free.”
“Up?” Tim says, and Bruce shakes his head.
“I want you to escape front mount,” he explains, and Tim purses his lips but obediently goes flat on his back. Bruce crushes him. He tries to do it gentle, but he’s 210 pounds of muscle and Tim is an uncooked spaghetti noodle.
“Alright?” Bruce asks.
“Dandy,” Tim wheezes, and flashes a thumbs up for emphasis. Bruce’s mouth twitches a little at that, and when he sits back, Tim can literally feel all his organs flatten under his weight. He braces himself against Bruce’s left knee and tries to kick out from under him.
“Shoulder walk, Tim,” Bruce says from over top of him.
“I am trying,” Tim gasps out.
“Don’t let me sit here all day.”
“Believe me, I don’t want you to,” Tim mutters.
“Remember the new escape I taught you; you have to get your arm under my leg and then—”
Tim huffs while Bruce tries to guide his arm in the right position.
“ —you have to shift your weight,” Bruce finishes. He frowns down at Tim. “You’re just laying there. You have to use your—”
“ Hips,” Tim grits out. “I know what I’m doing, Bruce, promise. Just. Just give me a minute.”
Bruce’s frown deepens. “Death often doesn’t take minutes. All it needs is a second, Tim. One moment, one mistake, and it’s all over.”
Tim shifts further under Bruce and glares up at him.
“Your best weapon is your whole body,” Bruce supplies, and it’s about as helpful as the first gazillion times he’s said it. He’s leaning slightly forwards, and it gives Tim a probably bad idea. He draws his feet inwards. Bruce wants him to roll over? Fine. It doesn’t have to be in the direction Bruce wants.
Bruce has him in a high mount, trapping Tim’s arms up to their elbows and making Tim sympathize with the Tyrannosaurus Rex. But the rest of his body is behind Bruce. He kicks upwards and over, his heels finding purchase in Bruce’s sternum.
“What are you doing,” Bruce says.
“I don’t know,” Tim says honestly, locked in some bastard form of guard and legs straining against Bruce’s weight. His stomach already hurts from crunching.
Bruce’s eyebrows furrow. “What can you do from here?”
“I don’t know,” Tim repeats. He digs his heels into Bruce’s shoulders and with another kick flattens him to the mats. Air rushes back into his lungs, and he scrambles out of Bruce’s reach, heady on oxygen and victory. “I guess that.”
Bruce is still frowning, but Dick laughs and claps. “Look, he’s already come up with his own move. You’re a natural, Tim!”
It’s not true, Tim knows it’s not true, but the thought makes him preen more than it should. “Really?”
“Really,” Dick affirms. “I’m even jealous. Bruce didn’t think I was ready for ground fights until I was fourteen.”
Tim wipes his sweaty hands on his pants. It doesn’t help. “I’m already fourteen.”
“Yeah, but you just started training. Bruce had me on karate since I was eleven. He almost didn’t let me start jujitsu until I was a brown belt.” He winks conspiratorially. “I negotiated it down to orange.”
“You laid on the floor and cried until I showed you the rear naked choke,” Bruce says.
“Negotiating,” Dick surmises with a half shrug. He finishes the other half of his Donette and dusts his hands of powdered sugar. He pushes off the Batcomputer and starts for the mats. “Alright, TJ Drake, let’s see what else you’ve got.”
“Please, never, ever, ever call me that again,” Tim says. “You make me sound like a DJ from Wooster, Ohio that only makes electro-remixes of perfectly good 2000s songs for high school proms.”
“Weirdly specific, but okay,” Dick laughs. “If you win one round against me, I promise I’ll never call you a DJ-from-Ohio name again.”
“Dick,” Bruce says exasperatedly. “You just ate donuts.”
“It was literally one. And if I puke on Tim, then he wins. So it’s fine, right, TJ?”
“Stop,” Tim moans, though hope wells inside him. He’s never fought against Dick. He risks a glance back at Bruce and barely manages to withhold a sigh from what he sees.
“I don’t know if this is such a good idea,” Bruce says, forehead furrowed and arms crossed. “Tim is just a beginner.”
“So? The best way to learn is from someone more experienced. You always told me that,” Dick argues. He looks Tim up and down. “Do you know all the basic positions?”
Tim nods quickly.
Dick opens his hands, palms up, to Bruce. “See? What more does anyone need?”
“Years of experience,” Bruce replies flatly. “A clear head. Bodily strength. An intimate knowledge of one’s limits.”
Dick waves him off. “That all comes with practice. And there’s no one better to learn from than me.” He jerks a thumb to his own chest and grins. “Admit it. I’m way better than you.”
Bruce grunts like he doesn’t quite agree, but steps back from the mats and lets Dick take his place. “You will go easy and you will go slow. No ankle locks or knee locks. Understand?” He looks from Dick to Tim and back again.
“Understood,” Tim says.
Dick just rolls his eyes and makes a blabbing motion with his hand as if Bruce can’t see him.
“Richard John.”
“Gee, yeah, yeah, what else do you want me to do, put on bubble wrap gloves?” Dick steps into a ready position, hands curled but loose in front of his face. “Now hurry and get me, Tim, before he actually decides he wants me to do that.”
Tim tries to copy Dick’s position.
“No,” Bruce says. “Start down.”
“Bruce,” Tim and Dick groan at the same time.
“You start down or you don’t spar at all,” Bruce states firmly. “I’m not satisfied with Tim’s breakfalls yet. He shouldn’t be thrown.”
“I’m not going to just toss him across the room,” Dick assures him. “What is Tim going to learn starting down? No one ever starts a fight from the knees.”
“Down,” Bruce repeats.
A flash of annoyance flickers across Dick’s face, and Tim rushes to stomp the ember out before it catches fire. Dick and Bruce tolerate each other on good days, but every conversation is a tiptoe over something bigger. And Tim is achingly aware that it only takes one misstep for the avalanche to come down.
“It’s okay,” he lies. “I’m not super comfortable with my stand-up work.” He looks not quite at Dick and rocks back on his heels. Showing vulnerability is always a good distraction; shame refocuses the attention. “I don’t want you to see it until I’m actually decent.”
“Everyone starts somewhere,” Bruce says wisely. “You’re advancing farther than you think, Tim.”
Tim smiles. He and Bruce, they’re both exceptional liars.
“Alright,” Dick huffs after a beat, still sounding unhappy. “We’ll start down.” He only gets to one knee and focuses on Tim, ignoring Bruce’s scowl. “Ready?”
“Ready,” Tim says, getting down opposite to him. Dick holds out his hand like they’re about to arm wrestle instead, and after a beat Tim slaps it awkwardly. Dick grins. Tim understands why it struck fear into the darkest hearts of Gotham; Dick’s smile is a wicked, wicked, thing.
They roll.
To Tim, ground fighting is a tangle. To Dick, it’s obviously a dance.
Bruce is strong and heavy. Tim was expecting better of Dick, but he realizes—almost instantaneously—that it was too much to ask for. He rocks onto his back and tries to pull Dick into guard with immediate regret, because how could he forget that Dick is a gymnast? It makes him heavier than he looks, and worse, impossible to catch. Dick has already slipped out from under his knees before Tim can even get close to him. Tim gets quickly back to a crouch just as Dick grabs the back of his neck.
At this point, Bruce would pause and tell Tim the ten things he did wrong in the past two seconds; Dick does not. He doesn’t even give him time to execute a defense. Instead of taking Tim to the floor, he rolls over his shoulder and takes Tim with him. By the time he stops, he has a hold of both Tim’s neck and elbow, though he’s the one with his back on the mats.
“Oh, no,” Tim mutters. It’s supposed to be to himself, but Dick laughs, coffee breath in Tim’s face. He locks Tim in guard, and his legs are like a vice-grip. Tim’s ribs move up three places.
“Escape like I showed you,” Bruce instructs from behind them. “Remember your hips, Tim.”
Tim tries to shove his way backwards, but Dick’s deathtrap thighs only tighten against Tim’s ribcage. He holds his arms out in front of him in an effort to make himself smaller.
“Thanks,” Dick says, grabbing his other arm.
“Consider it an early Christmas gift,” Tim replies bitterly, thoroughly trapped. In a last ditch effort, he attempts to break Dick’s guard by shoring up his weight against Dick’s right knee. He’s more likely to break a concrete wall with a Gotham Knights foam finger..
“Tell me, dear Timothy,” Dick says in a playful tone that only promises danger. “Do you have a fear of flying?”
This should be good, Tim thinks to himself, as Dick retracts his guard to first lodge first his knees under Tim’s chest, then dig his socked feet above Tim’s hips. He lifts Tim into the air, balancing him easily on the pads of his feet, and has the audacity to make airplane noises before kicking Tim up and away. Tim hits the mats with an oof.
Dick’s already grinning and standing over him by the time he gets his breath back. He clasps Tim’s hand and pulls him up easily, patting his back. “You and the Batplane could be twins.”
Tim pushes him. “Is that even an actual move?”
Dick scoffs. “There are no actual moves when you’re in a fight. You’ve got what works and what doesn’t. And airplanes—” he nods, pinches his fingers together in perfection. “Airplanes work. I’m practically an aeronautical engineer.”
“Well, you crashed your plane,” Tim replies. “So I don’t want to get on any other planes you build.”
“What are you talking about? I piloted you like a pro!”
“You crashed me.”
“To win. What, was I not supposed to win?”
Tim snorts, grabbing his water bottle from the bench and uncapping it, pouring it over his hair and wiping his face on his sleeve. “I should have known you’d—”
“What,” Bruce starts, voice deep and ringing against the cold stone of the Batcave, “was that.”
Tim drops his arm, smile frozen on his face. Dick goes still, hand slipping off Tim’s shoulder.
“Answer me.”
Tim’s throat has gone dry. He looks at Bruce’s chest and can’t look any higher. What did he do? He’s heard the Batman voice a hundred times before, but never directed at him. His stomach feels like it’s got a hole in it, and his heart is teetering over the edge. He replays his roll with Dick. He shouldn’t have gone into guard, he shouldn’t have let Dick keep his grips, he shouldn’t have justt proffered his arm like that…there are a dozen major mistakes he knows he’s made, and probably hundreds more he hasn’t even considered. Bruce has never been angry at him for it. But maybe now he’s fed up. Tim didn’t escape Dick’s guard the way Bruce wanted. Maybe he’s mad about that. Tim had teased Dick. Maybe that was bad. Maybe Bruce thinks they’re actually fighting? But they were smiling. Dick had helped him up. But Tim’s done something. Tim’s done something and Bruce doesn’t like it which means it’s bad—
His thoughts fray and unravel into something meaningless, just the rapid rabbit-pulse of his heart echoing in his head. The need for air suddenly startles him, he sucks in a breath of the Cave’s stale air at the same time Dick speaks.
“You’re going to have to be more specific,” he says, with a false sort of lightness.
Bruce doesn’t reply right away, and Tim makes himself take another breath. It doesn’t get rid of the blood drumming in his ears.
“Your words, Bruce,” Dick presses archly.
Bruce shifts his stance. There’s a muscle standing high on his neck.
“You threw him,” he finally forces out. “I told you he can’t breakfall, and you deliberately disobeyed me—”
“I didn’t disobey you,” Dick replies hotly. “I don’t know what you’re so angry about. Tim’s fine.”
“Yeah,” Tim starts tenuously. “Dick didn’t throw me, Bruce. He just kicked me away— I mean —”
“I knew I shouldn’t have trusted you,” Bruce continues, glaring over Tim’s head at Dick.
Dick waves both hands in front of him. “I’m sorry, what?”
“You stopped listening to me when you were seventeen—”
“I never stopped listening to you,” Dick says. “I just realized you’re sometimes an overbearing ass who thinks he’s always right—”
“You think you know any better?” Bruce interjects. “Everything you know, you know because of me. So I find it extremely —”
Dick scoffs. “I owe you for a lot, Bruce, but hardly everything. You’re a narcissist. You’re obsessed with yourself. You never think about anyone else. Everything is about you and what you think. If you would just —”
Tim backs up. Dick immediately throws an arm back at him.
“You’re not even teaching him how to take a fall!” he exclaims. “Bruce, I get that you’re taking it slow, but come on—”
“I don’t need your opinion on how I train Tim,” Bruce snaps back. “It has to be different this time. He has to be ready.”
“He’s never going to be ready,” Dick argues, and he doesn’t look back at Tim, so he doesn’t see him flinch. “You can only get experience out in the field. At least let him shadow you on patrol. He’s put on the suit before. He saved us from Two-Face. He’s already got potential, but you’re taking it from him.”
“He never would have put on that suit if not for—” Bruce snarls, and Tim retreats faster, ears ringing with the absence of a name. His heel hits the back of the stairs and he falls on his butt, elbow knocking against a cold concrete step. His water bottle thumps to the floor and rolls to a stop near Bruce’s feet.
Bruce steps over it to start towards him. “Tim. Are you alright? What did you do?” His eyes rove over Tim, still stricken and dumb and on his ass on the Batcave’s steps. “Tim?”
“I…” Tim starts. The anger hasn’t melted from Dick’s face yet. It’s cold and stony like the Batcave steps under Tim’s bum. He’s glaring at Bruce’s back. “I didn’t mean…” Tim’s tailbone aches. Robin doesn’t trip. Robin shouldn’t make Batman and Nightwing fight. Robin laughs and his voice never, ever catches.
Tim is not Robin.
Bruce pulls Tim back to his feet, fully ignoring Dick in favor of examining Tim for injury. Tim is no stranger to anxiety, but he’s good at pushing it back and back and back. This particular anxiety can’t be hidden away any longer. He feels it like a rock in his chest, sharp and heavy.
Bruce is not training Tim to be Robin. Bruce is training Tim to not be Jason Todd.
“I forgot. I have math homework,” he says, recalling an etiquette lesson from his mother. Composure is your greatest strength. Let them believe they’ve only taken a chink of you, and not your entire wall. His voice stays even. That’s good. Rally, Tim, rally. He’s in dangerous territory now; he’ll need a meticulously orchestrated escape. “I missed a step and tripped, sorry.”
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Bruce says, hand hovering over Tim’s elbow like he expects Tim to topple over any second.
“Fine,” Tim says tightly, backing up the stairs and indeed almost tripping again. He catches himself against the wall, jerking his elbow out of Bruce’s reach. “All good. I’ll just—yeah. Later, Bruce. See you, Dick.”
“Tim, wait,” Bruce says, but Tim turns and races up the stairs. Alfred is dusting off a framed photo and startles when Tim bursts into Bruce’s office.
“Dear me,” he starts, hand over his heart. “Mr. Drake, is everything—”
“Gotta go,” Tim says. “Math homework. Really important. Sorry.”
“But you don’t have your—”
Tim skids down the hall and takes the red-draped stairs three at a time into the wider atrium. So many stairs. Why do there have to be so many stairs? He slides into the foyer and throws open the door. He closes it with a little too much force, and the old glass panes rattle.
He cuts through the Wayne’s front yard, the grass soggy and wet and cold, and too late he realizes he’s forgotten his shoes. He leaps onto the wrought iron fence and swings himself over, mud-splattered but safe on Drake property. He doesn’t stop running until he reaches his house, and he immediately locks the door behind him and stumbles up the stairs to his room. He already has two missed calls from Bruce and one text message from Dick that just reads, sorry. see you maybe next week.
He throws his phone on his bed and shuts himself in his bathroom, turning the shower on as hot as he can stand while he plays Dick and Bruce’s argument over and over in his head. He wishes he didn’t remember the heat in Dick’s voice, the softness in Bruce’s face in such great detail.
Tim squeezes his eyes shut, but he’s not even safe there.
Behind his eyelids explode fireworks of red, green, and yellow.
It’s March, and winter never leaves Gotham without a fight. It’s a cold, freezing rain that drenches Tim within two minutes of being outside. He curls his fingers into the sleeves of his hoodie and jogs down the long cobble walkway from his house down to the shining black street. The rain runoff flows freely, soaking his Vans. When they start to squelch, he feels his first pang of regret and almost turns around right there.
He could go back to his house. Leave his shoes to fruitlessly dry in the laundry room. Peel off all his wet clothes. Put on dry ones, crawl into bed, watch Silver Spoon until his eyes hurt and he has no choice but to sleep off today’s disappointment. Bruce and Dick fight all the time, and really, Tim doesn’t have to be Robin. Tim just wants to help Batman. He’ll be whatever he’s needed to be.
(But he wants and he wants and he wants. )
He looks backwards at his house, at the streaky yellow lights of Wayne Manor in the distance, then forces himself to press onward, trudging the two miles up Mountain Drive to the Bristol bus stop. It’s a forty-five minute bus ride to get to downtown Gotham. If Robin were patrolling with Batman, he’d already be in the city. In three minutes.
When the bus comes, Tim finds a spot in the back and tries not to fall asleep in the sudden warmth. He leans his head against the window. His breath fogs up the glass, and he spends the whole ride drawing the Bat Signal (all it takes is a breath, and it’s erased).
He gets off the bus on Park Row.
It’s where Batman was born. It’s where Robin was reborn.
It’s where Robin gets reborn again.
Tim’s been in Crime Alley before, though rarely on the street. The last few years, he’s mostly only seen Gotham from the rooftops while he snapped pictures of Batman’s retreating cape. Despite the blue-tinted streetlamps, Park Row seems darker when Tim’s on the ground. The smell of sewer water permeates the air.
Tim’s hands ache with the cold, and he resists stuffing them in the pocket of his hoodie. (Alfred told him, when he first started training, that he should never have his hands far from his face, or trust anybody who has their hands in their pockets. It only asks for trouble.)
He walks and curls his fingers into his sweatshirt sleeves to keep warm. Crime Alley is quiet, save for the hard pattering of rain. There are a few restaurants leaking a dull orange light; shops are boarded up by cheap plywood or rusted metal shutters. A man sits on the curb wearing three sodden, patchy coats and asks Tim what he’s selling, and when Tim speeds up, he yells something about bastards and god and the government.
He arrives at his goal, a dilapidated basketball court. Only one goal still has a bent hoop with threadbare netting, but no one’s playing basketball, anyway. Past eight, the only sport anyone’s interested in is streetfighting.
Tim’s seen the rings spring up from when he used to spend his nights on rooftops. They sprout as spontaneously as spring flowers, starting with a bloody one-on-one fight and before long organizing itself into an actual ring. From what Tim has observed over the years, there’s betting, sometimes in money, sometimes in favors, sometimes in clothes and sneakers and cans of potato chips. He’s seen a few fight rings start up at the basketball court, and chose this one carefully. He walks around the back of the circle and just finds kids here, most of them a few years older than Tim or a few years younger. It lets him blend in when he sidles up to the circle’s edge like he belongs.
There are two boys in the ring now, punching each other’s lights out.
Blood is pouring out one’s nose, and the other is grimacing with bloody teeth. Tim can’t tell if they’ve been at it a while or not. It’s ruthless, but they’re equals, trading blow for blow. They move back and forth, never breaking apart for more than two seconds before one of them lunges. The circle contracts and expands with them, so the fight becomes a living, breathing thing, complete with blood.
Another older girl stalks a safe distance around the inner edge of the ring, collecting money and what Tim thinks are rolls of cherry Lifesavers. He’s watching her when the crowd’s volume rises into animalistic fervor, and he turns just in time to see one boy crumple cold to the asphalt. The other holds a bleeding fist into the air.
Tim watches three more fights before pushing his way towards the front. The girl stops in front of him, hand out. “Bray or Yadiel?”
“I want to fight,” Tim says.
The girl looks him up and down, but nothing in her face changes. She looks fifteen or sixteen, a MiniMart nametag that reads MIRANDA still pinned to her uniform polo, and there’s fresh blood welling above her eyebrow and dripping into her eye like she was in the ring herself earlier. She wipes the blood away on her uniform sleeve like it’s nothing.
“You got a fighting fee?” she asks finally, blowing a gum bubble.
Tim takes a crumpled ten dollar bill from his pocket and places it in the girl’s hand. She puts it in her bag without looking at, snapping her gum before jerking her head into the ring. “You get one fight. Better make it count.” Louder, she shouts, “Marty! You’re on if Bray ever beats the sh*t outta Yadiel!”
Bray does, apparently, beat the sh*t out of Yadiel, because it takes the girl ten minutes to distribute winnings to the shouting and shoving betting pool. Afterwards, she snaps her fingers at someone in the crowd and then beckons to Tim.
“Okay, Red, you gotta name?” she asks.
Tim shakes his head.
The girl just shrugs and moves on to the middle of the ring. She claps her hands together and whistles loudly. “Alright, make your bets! We’ve got Red and Marty, next!”
Tim waits to come forward until another boy goes first. He’s taller than Tim, but not that much bigger. Tim will have to watch the longer reach, but the weight he can work with, he thinks. Somebody yells, “I love you Martinez!” and the boy winks and blows a kiss to the crowd. He must have been doing this for a while if he’s got people cheering for him. Experienced, then.
“No killing each other,” the girl orders when Tim meets them in the middle of the ring. “We go home and kiss our mamas goodnight, you hear? We don’t need the cops sniffing us all over.” She looks between the two of them, and seeing something that satisfies her, nods and steps back. “Have at it.”
And then it’s on. It’s as easy as flicking a light switch.
The first punch lands like a shock. The boy’s fist leaps forward and collides with Tim’s nose; it’s a testing shot, not hard, but with enough force to make Tim’s eyes water. Martinez circles him, hopping inwards and outwards like a video game character, head jerking from side to side like a cobra’s, though Tim hasn’t thrown any punches yet.
He needs time to analyze. Martinez has been fighting a lot longer than he has; he has strength, speed, and skill on his side. Tim’s only weapon will have to be a surprise. He throws a weak jab, but doesn’t punch far enough to even be a threat.
Martinez still answers.
His knuckles ram into the soft skin of Tim’s mouth, a bone-deep pain blossoming in his jawbone. His lip splits almost instantly, warmth spilling down his chin. He cups the blood in his hand, watches it drip black and hot into his palm.
When he looks up, the boy is not sneering at him. He does not laugh or jaunt or jeer. If he feels any sort of victory, he doesn’t show it, his eyes boring into Tim. He just keeps circling. His feet never cross over each other, but slide at a constant length apart. Tim drops the hand under his chin and turns with him. He gets a fist to his cheekbone for it, and when Tim raises his hands he gets knuckles cut in his ribs. He hunches over, breath suddenly thin and short. Martinez shoves him, and Tim catches himself on his elbows hard enough that he can feel the impact through both his arms. Cold rainwater soaks his pants and shirt. But it’s fine. Bruce taught him how to fight from here. Tim’s better on the ground.
“Are you done?” Martinez asks, though his hands are still in front of his face, like he expects Tim to explode upwards with an uppercut any second.
“No,” Tim pants. “I can go longer.”
“Then get up,” Martinez says. “I’m not getting on the ground.” He pauses in moving, just for a second, barely a blink. He lowers his voice. “Look, I can tell you’re just a beginner. So I’m gonna help you a little bit: you get on the ground, you’re gonna be in the ground, you understand? That’s how you get dead.”
Tim just stares, uncomprehending.
“You better get up in the next three seconds, or you forfeit,” he adds louder, and Tim pushes himself up, returning to a ready stance.
“Thanks,” he says. “For the advice.”
“You’re welcome,” the boy replies, and punches Tim in the eye.
The fight doesn’t last much longer. Tim never throws a real punch. Martinez, in rapid-fire succession, gets him in the nose, his ribs, and finishes with a right hook to his jaw that causes Tim’s vision to blur and spiral. When the world stops turning, he’s on his back again, and Martinez is walking away from him, taking the small fighting ring with him.
“See you around,” Miranda says, spitting out her gum near Tim’s ear and crouching down to pat his shoulder before stepping over him.
Tim rolls over to his hands and knees, rain streaming from his hair and trickling down his neck. He coughs, feels about twelve muscles seize in his torso, and spits blood out from between his teeth. He gets to his feet slowly. His nose feels like it’s about to start running, and when he sniffs, drawing his sweatshirt hood up, warm blood gushes forth like a geyser down his face and front.
For a moment, he just stands there, pain lighting up in different places in his body, unsure of whether he’s happy or defeated, and then he decides and he sighs and he tilts his face up to the sky, eyes closed. Even the rain hurts, but at least it’s cold.
“You’re not supposed to do that,” someone says, and Tim startles, jerking around.
A man leans against the nearest flickering streetlamp. He’s wearing a leather jacket and utility pants, and carries from two leather-gloved fingers one of those generic plastic convenience store bags that just reads THANKYOUTHANKYOUTHANKYOU over and over. A bag of spicy sweet chili Doritos sticks out of it.
“Tilting your head back like that,” the man clarifies, his voice strangely flat and deep. “You’ll end up swallowing your own blood and vomit it all up. Blood’s bad for you. I don’t know why.”
Tim doesn’t move. He thinks he should. He doesn’t know. His heart rate spikes.
Underneath the man’s leather jacket is an overt kevlar vest thickened by a ballistic plate. At least three knife hilts of varying sizes are visible from his trouser pockets. The man’s face is concealed by a red helmet. (It’s not a bike helmet. Gothamites don’t wear bike helmets; no one’s out riding a bike when Firefly could take you out the next building over.) The man has on a welder’s helmet, but instead of a flat screen there are only small rectangles cut out for the eyes and a straight, thin mouth.
“And that was a sh*t fight,” he says. “Marty was just playing whack-a-mole with you.”
Tim’s still breathing hard, blood dripping from his nose. He wipes it with his arm, feeling like a four year old with a cold. The blood doesn’t stop. It’s warm in his nostrils. “So?” he sneers, locking down his thoughts before they fragment into panic. It’s fine. He’s just talking. Talking isn’t dangerous. “I was going easy.”
“No, you didn’t know what you were doing,” Helmet Guy says. “You weren’t throwing any punches. You never followed any of Marty’s back. And he kept pushing you over because you kept getting your feet all crossed up.”
Tim bares his teeth in a way he hopes is threatening, though it’s hard to tell when his bottom lip is swollen past his gums. “I don’t need your advice.”
Helmet Guy shrugs. “Not unless you want a pair of dentures by the time you’re thirteen.”
“I’m fourteen,” Tim fires back smugly, and then wants to punch himself in the face. Yeah, Tim, give sketchy strangers personal info about yourself. That’ll throw them off!
“Fourteen, huh? Hell, what took you so long to start streetfighting?” The man laughs, and then mutters low enough Tim thinks he’s not supposed to hear, “Man, I am hilarious.”
“Who says I just started?” Tim replies, narrowing his eyes and wiping his nose again. Sheepishness will get him nothing. Shame is a soft part. Bluster, then. Confidence, despite being so difficult to attain, is almost too easy to imitate.
“You told everyone,” the man scoffs. “Your crappy form gives everyone in a ten foot radius a preview of what you’re going to do. Look at the sternum and don’t look anywhere else, unless you’re about to fake something, got it?”
“I’m doing fine,” Tim says, though he files away the advice.
“No, you were lucky,” the man says, and then continues ominously, “But luck isn’t structurally sound, especially around here.” His helmet barely moves, but Tim has the eerie feeling he’s being looked up and down.
It’s time to get out.
He doesn’t even try to come up with anything else, just starts walking. Horror rises like poison in his throat when the man falls into step behind him, plastic bag crinkling as he walks.
“I’ve never seen you around before,” he says casually. “You just move or something?”
Tim ignores him. Regret washes over him like the rain, and it feels like every soft, squishy place he can get stabbed. But he can do this. He’s navigated Crime Alley plenty of times before. He’ll do it this time. He’ll go home with its iron gates and security cameras and its 127 locking doors and he’ll put up with Bruce coddling him until he’s so soft he’ll never be able to fit in the Robin mold again.
“I can tell you aren’t from here,” the man goes on. “By the way, it’s offensive to copy a lower-class accent. You only get that if you were born in squander. It comes with a certificate and everything.”
Tim passes what’s supposed to be his bus stop. Lights. He needs to find someplace with lights, with people. A convenience store. Where had the man come from? He can’t walk unhurriedly anymore. Hopefully Helmet Guy will just think he wants out of the rain. If Tim gets far away enough, he’ll call Bruce. Or Dick. Or Alfred or the police or anybody.
“Granted, not everyone’s got an accent,” the man continues. “But if you were born in Park Row, you are born with a sense of self-preservation. You’ve got to have one, with the supervillians and gang violence and rampant crime and all that. Crime Alley is an ever-evolving organism. You adapt and live, or you get dead fast.” He lets a meaningful silence pass before adding, “You’re gonna go the latter if you keep your back turned towards an enemy.”
“Leave me alone,” Tim replies, turning. He’s tried to cover the fear in his voice with a hard edge of anger, and just hopes he doesn’t sound desperate. “I’ll fight you if I have to.”
Helmet Guy just looks down at him, rain dripping off the smooth curve of his helmet. Lightning strikes overhead, turning the top silver.
It’d be a bad idea to fight him. Bad, bad, bad. He’d bigger and he has protection and Tim’s left eye is already swelling into a sliver. Still, he curls his fingers into fists, feet shifting to face the threat.
Those black lenses bore into him. Helmet Guy crosses his arms, and Tim jumps backwards, the crescendo of get out get out get out in his every pulse point bursting into spontaneous percussion.
“First of all,” the man says, unfolding one arm to lift his hand instructively. “You never wait for an opponent to make the first move.” He flicks out another finger. “And second of all, you never, ever give him ground. You’ve just told me you’re afraid of me. Fight’s over before it’s begun.”
“I mean it,” Tim gasps. “I’ll fight you. I’ll kill you.”
“No,” the man says, taking another step towards Tim. “I don’t think you will.”
Which is how Tim ends up at a twenty-four hour diner with two cheese coneys piled high with orange plasticky cheese. Helmet Guy bought them for him, but Tim hasn’t touched them. His heart rate hasn’t come down yet. He wishes, for the twenty-seventh time, that he’d brought his phone. But he left it on his bed, worried it’d get stolen or broken. As if his family isn’t rich and he doesn’t get shipped weekly boxed meal kits with organic produce from Costa Rica.
Moneyed dumbass.
“So,” the man says, leaning back against the cracking blue cushion of the booth. “You gonna tell me what you were doing out there?”
Trying to be Robin. Tim keeps his mouth shut.
A minute passes before the man just shrugs. “I guess I wouldn’t wanna talk to strangers, either. Look.” He leans forward; Tim leans backward. “You need a place to stay? There’s a shelter on 8th that’s good about not asking questions.”
“Thanks,” Tim says tightly. He fights the shame that burns his cheeks. He doesn’t look that down on his luck, does he? He tries to see his reflection in the window glass, but the rain makes it too hard to focus.
The man must take his looking away as bitterness, because he adds, “And if you don’t like shelters, there’s an abandoned church near the wharf. It’s not going to be the warmest place, but warm enough. Just be careful of anybody else squatting in there, and be ready to spring. You never know who’s gonna walk in on you, you know?”
Tim huffs. “I don’t need your help. Thanks, anyway.” He starts to slide out of the booth, but Helmet Guy reaches across the table and blocks his way.
“I’ll let you go in a second,” he says. “I just want to make sure you’re okay.”
“Well, a crazy guy is holding me hostage in a chili parlor, so things could be better,” Tim replies hotly. Inside, he’s just tired. He wishes he’d never walked out of his house tonight. All he wants to do is crawl under seven blankets and not come out. He’s supposed to train with Bruce early tomorrow morning again, too, and it’s getting late. Really late.
The man laughs, and the sound comes out garbled and awful through his helmet. “Well, I guess I deserve that. But do you know what I really am?”
Tim eyes him warily. “No, I don’t think I care.”
“Spoken like a true Gothamite.” Helmet Guy taps the side of his helmet. “But I’m a vigilante. A good one.”
In the moment Helmet Guy gives him to process, Tim takes the opportunity to shove his panic into a very small box with eight spinning locks in the darkest corner of his stomach.
Tonight doesn’t have to be a loss.
Maybe...he can still help Bruce. He might not be Robin, but Tim is good at getting information. He has the skills to help Batman, and getting the details on a new vigilante would be just the way to show it.
He can’t tell if it’s a bad idea or brilliant, but decides on the latter.
“Yeah?” Tim bites, turning to face Helmet Guy fully. “Where’s your resume?”
“You don’t even flinch,” the man says. “Really a Gothamite, born and bred, huh? But to answer you question, I’m—” he twirls his finger in the air, searching for the words. As if that’s not suspicious— “new in town. But believe me, you’ll hear about me, soon. I’m going to take care of things.”
Tim raises an eyebrow. “In an Arkham way, or a Batman way?”
“Neither,” the man snarls, with such sudden viciousness that Tim actually flinches, a whole body jerk that nearly makes him pass out as electric fear sparks at the base of his neck.
“Neither,” the man repeats, not in a softer tone, but less threateningly. “Batman doesn’t do sh*t in this city. Just stands up all his enemies to fight them all over again.”
Tim says nothing. His heart rate is messed up all over again. You’re helping Batman. You’re helping Batman. You’re helping Batman.
“But that’s my problem, not yours,” the man adds, suddenly sounding awkward and young through his helmet. “Anyway. What I’m trying to say is, if you’ve got a problem, you’ve got a problem. I might be able to help you somehow.”
“I don’t need help,” Tim repeats reflexively.
“So you’ve said. But you still haven’t explained why you’ve started the totally safe, totally normal hobby of midnight streetfighting.”
Tim shrugs, makes a show of tracing the dingy rubber edge of the plastic countertop. He goes for downcast, pitches his voice low. “I don’t think you can do anything.”
“Try me.”
Tim bites the inside of his mouth. Picks a piece of stray cheese from the table and flicks it to the floor. There’s dried blood at the hem of his shirt. He scratches at it.
“It’s my…my father,” he lies, debating on how to explain Bruce. He feels traitorous to his real dad, on a business trip in China, but vigilante I bullied into training me to be his partner doesn’t exactly scream safe or sane. “He’s protective of me. Overprotective. He’s been overworking himself and I’ve been trying to help him. But he won’t let me.” He sounds whiny, so he tacks on, “He’s not normally so overprotective. There was an accident.” His voice drops further. “At work. A really, really bad accident. It. Um. Killed my brother.”
The rubber side of the countertop comes off with the worrying of his nail. He toys with it a few times before risking a glance at the man.
“Okay,” the man says after a while. He sounds suddenly unsure of himself. “That’s…” He trails off, and then a sigh echoes strangely inside the helmet. “Look. I’m going to say something you won’t want to hear, but I’m going to say it anyway. I’m sorry about your brother. It’s hard when someone leaves you, whether it’s unwillingly or by choice. But your dad just sounds worried about you.”
“I know,” Tim says. “That’s the problem.” He curls his hand into a fist, ignoring the burn from his bleeding knuckles. “But he doesn’t need to worry about me. I can hold my own. If he’d just let me help him, if he’d just give me a chance to prove myself—”
“Kid,” the man says. “I know I said you wouldn’t like it, but it is the best advice I can give you. Running around Crime Alley at night and getting into fights is not going to help you or your father. Does he even know that you’re not in bed?” Before Tim can answer, he adds, “He sounds scared. Can you imagine how he’d be if you never came home one night, and found you the next day after calling all the hospitals? What if he never finds you at all?”
Tim closes his eyes. Struggles to keep his mouth in a straight line. “I know,” he says, and he doesn’t have to force his voice small. “But I’m.” Tired of watching from the sidelines? Hurt Bruce doesn’t trust me?
Not Jason Todd springs unwillingly into his brain.
“I thought my dad was overprotective, too,” the man says, while Tim battles with being angry and horrified at his thoughts. “We argued a lot. Eventually I got myself into such a bind and he wasn’t there to save me.” His voice lifts as he claps Tim on the shoulder. “So, lesson is, listen to your elders. Always onions on your coney. Wash behind your ears.”
Tim brushes his hand off him and starts sliding out the booth again. He doesn’t have to fake the disappointment, either. “Yeah. Whatever. Thanks.”
“Hey, kid,” the man says as Tim stands. “Go home. Hug your dad. Let him save you for a while, even if you don’t need saving. You never know how much you need him until he isn’t there.”
Tim smiles thinly. “Is that why you started the totally safe, totally sane hobby of vigilantism?”
“Something like that,” Helmet Guy replies, and then looks around him before holding out his grocery bag of Doritos. “Here, take these if you’re not going to eat the coneys.”
“I don’t need them,” Tim says. “Honestly. I’ve got a home somewhere.”
“Take them anyway,” Helmet Guy says. “They’re sealed, since you’re obviously worried I’m going to poison you or something. Consider them a souvenir. Share ‘em with your dad.”
Tim stares at the proffered bag another moment, then takes the bag hesitantly.
“And I mean this in the nicest way possible,” Helmet Guy calls to him once Tim’s almost at the door. “But I hope I never see you around here again!”
Tim goes home. He stays awake a long time. He hasn’t showered or changed, but lies flat on his bed, staring at the ceiling with no thoughts while Silver Spoon plays on his laptop on his stomach. He reaches mindlessly for Doritos at regular intervals. The sweet chili flavor is actually revolting. He keeps eating them until his fingers scrabble at just powder and crumbs at the bottom of the bag.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” he says finally, and the ceiling echoes the sentiment back down to him.
He doesn’t remember falling asleep. Well, no one remembers falling asleep, but Tim doesn’t remember wanting to fall asleep, so it’s a nasty surprise when he suddenly doesn’t want to wake up. The alarm on his phone cheerily plays The Jetsons theme song, and it’s already on Elroy, which means it’s been blaring for at least 30 seconds. Tim blearily reaches for his nightstand, knocking over an empty water bottle from three weeks ago in the process, then feels around the bed and on the floor before his fingers slide over the cool glass screen. He fumbles to slide the alarm away and tosses his phone on the floor, rolling over in his comforter.
He jerks awake two seconds later with the nightmare that it’s 7:25. He throws off his comforter and kicks off his sheets to retrieve his phone, and. Yep. 7:25. Nope, wait, now it’s 7:26.
So it’s not even his first alarm. It’s his third, which is what normally goes off while he’s going out the door, since it’s his 5 min warning get out alarm before he’s supposed to be at Bruce’s. Ha, ha, ha, your life is the divine f*cking comedy, Timothy.
He hates himself with a burning passion for leaving his clothes in haphazard heaps on the floor, because it takes an eternity to find two dirty socks and he just has to settle on one black, one gray, and they’re not even the same length. He manages to put his shirt on backwards, twice, which should be a violation of the four dimensions, and digs out sweatshorts in the back of his drawer that are from the troubled, tumultuous time in sixth grade he decided to play basketball. There is a Gotham Little Squires logo on the right thigh and Tim already wants to die, but he can’t find his shoes. Where are his shoes. His Vans from last night are soaking and wet and he ends up destroying the heels of his very expensive vintage Air Force 1s trying to shove his foot inside them. He launches himself over his bed to make it to his connecting bathroom. He pushes toothpaste on his toothbrush and shoves it in his mouth and—
sh*t.
He looks like he lost a fight, which is exactly what happened, but it looks like he lost a fight with not a human being but with a pack of rabid Greek harpies and maybe a demonically possessed dump truck. His face is all sorts of lopsided and mottled blue and black. His jaw actually feels like someone poured cement in the joint. His eye is swollen, his nose is swollen, his cheek is swollen, his tongue might even be swollen. He takes the toothbrush out of his mouth and the bristles catch onto his lip. The tender skin splits, and blood bursts down his chin and shirt.
Me: Can’t make it today. Woke up sick. 7:34 am
Mr. Wayne: … 7:36 am
Mr. Wayne: … 7:37 am
Mr. Wayne: …7:40 am
Mr. Wayne: ok 7:41 am
Mr. Wayne: let me know if you need anything. 8:40 am
Tim stays home from school Monday, too, and shoots another text to Bruce about a cold. He thinks he’ll make it back Thursday. Surely the swelling will be down by then, and he’ll be able to cover whatever’s left with makeup. He spends Monday by watching all three Kung Fu Panda movies (for research) and a frog-shaped kid’s ice pack on his face, half of Tuesday hiding from the once-a-week housekeeper Mrs. Mac, and Wednesday he looks up makeup tutorials. He’s in the middle of rummaging around for green concealer (who knew there were different colors?) when the doorbell rings. In a normal house, this wouldn’t be a particularly big deal, but Tim lives in Bristol, and the doorbells are as loud as the houses are large. So he shuts his mother’s makeup drawer on his hand with a yelp.
The doorbell rings again as he jogs down the stairs, shaking out his hand. Then the knocking starts, hard and urgent, and Tim realizes it’s not the mailman come to deliver his Costa Rican produce.
“Tim?” Dick’s voice sounds from the other side of the heavy door. “Are you in there?”
Aha, ahahahaha, haha HA Tim’s brain goes. Look what you got yourself into now, you foolish fool!
He flattens his back against the door and checks his reflection in his phone screen. He looks possibly worse than he did Sunday morning. The swelling in his eye has gone down, sure, but in its place is a dark midnight purple that stretches down into the hollow of his cheekbone. He hasn’t spoken to anyone in the past 72 hours, and he’s worried if he starts now, the precarious scab on his lip will split and he’ll ruin his third t-shirt in as many days. Maybe Dick will go away.
“Tim, let me in.”
No! Tim is not home! He unlocks his phone and texts Dick.
Me: hey i keep getting a front door notification on my phone, i’m at school, what’s up? 2:23 pm
Dick rings the doorbell over again. There is a brief respite in the knocking, and Tim’s phone buzzes in his hand.
Dick: You’re not at school. 2:23 pm
Me: um??? yes i am. i get out at 3, ttyl 2:24pm
Tim gets another notification on his phone. It’s from the home security app. There’s seven PERSON DETECTED AT FRONT DOOR alerts, and a new video recording of Dick’s face as he says, “ Don’t ttyl me.”
“Just let me in, Tim,” he adds as Tim slides his phone back into his Transformers sweatpants with a sigh.
“Did you download a tracker in my phone?” Tim yells back.
“No!”
“Did Bruce?”
Dick releases another flurry of knocks instead of answering. “Will you let me in? Please?”
Tim kicks the door. “What are you even doing here?”
“Making sure you’re okay,” Dick replies, and his voice is strained enough that Tim leans his forehead against the door as his fingers turn the locks. He stays pressed up against the door as Dick comes in.
“Alfred made you soup,” Dick says.
“You can set it on the floor,” Tim says. He waves in what he thinks is Dick’s direction. “Thanks. Don’t want to get you sick. Bye.”
“You don’t sound sick,” Dick says, not leaving. He pauses, and asks lowly, “Are you actually playing… hooky?”
“My fever broke yesterday?” Tim says in a way that is of course super unconvincing. He can normally lie with a straight face, but it’s hard to do it to Dick. Why do nice people have to be nice?
“Okay,” Dick says, equally unconvincing. “And why are you hiding behind the door?”
“I’m not hiding behind the door.”
“Tim, I’m literally talking to the back of your head.”
“I’m using the door as support.”
“Do you feel weak?” Dick asks concernedly.
“Moral support,” Tim corrects quickly. He doesn’t lift his head from the door, but he does twist so Dick can see a little of his face.
Dick says nothing for a really long time. Instead of the sweatshirt and joggers Tim’s used to, he’s in a short padded jacket and large black boots, like he’s just driven over from the Blüdhaven police station. He’s holding a crockpot that smells decidedly not like microwave tamales, which means it smells like it was seasoned with angel spit. The fingers curled around the handles of the crockpot are white.
Tim lifts his head fully. “This is the Hallmark moment where you tell me I’ll always be beautiful on the inside.”
“You look like someone kicked the crap out of you,” Dick says.
“Nah. Just punches, no kicking. Kicking would have hurt a lot worse.”
“Tim,” Dick says, like someone’s stabbed him in the lung and all his air is hissing out. He lowers the crockpot to the floor and takes a step closer. “What happened to you?”
“It’s nothing,” Tim says, but Dick still takes his face in his hands. He looks to the side. “Don’t tell Bruce.”
Dick laughs sharply. “You think I’m going to keep this from him?”
“Yes,” Tim says. “Stepping through my door is practically a nondisclosure agreement. Fine print’s a bitch.”
Dick turns his head gently back to face him. “No jokes, Tim. You have to tell me what happened. We need to make sure you’re safe.”
“I am safe,” Tim says. Except at certain hours when I choose not to be.
“Were you attacked?” Dick presses. “Are you hurt anywhere else? God, Tim, do you have a concussion?”
“No. I’m fine, seriously.”
But Dick’s already fishing in his pocket for his keys, and before Tim can jerk away, Dick clicks a tiny flashlight in his face and shines the light in his eyes.
Tim grabs onto Dick’s wrists. “Hey—”
“Shh.”
“But—”
“Stop struggling.”
Tim tightens his grip on Dick’s wrists. “Dick. Ease up. You’re hurting me.”
The flashlight clicks off, and Tim blinks colored blotches from his eyes. Dick frowns from behind them.
“Lift your arms.”
“Dick—”
“Timothy Jackson,” Dick snaps. “Lift. Your. Arms.”
Tim’s organs feel like melted ice cream. They pool into his stomach, and it makes him all shaky inside. He lifts his arms. Dick throws his gloves to the floor and gently prods Tim’s stomach, then hikes his shirt up and feels along his ribs. He prods at where a bruise is just starting to fade, and Tim flinches.
“Does that hurt?”
“No,” Tim says smally.
Dick eyes him like he’s not sure whether to believe him, but when Tim doesn’t add anything else, he lets go of Tim’s shirt. Tim lowers his arms gingerly and crosses them over himself.
Dick runs a hand through his hair, eyes closed, and he kind of looks like Bruce. “You’re okay,” he affirms.
“I’m okay,” Tim agrees softly.
Dick blows out a sigh, opening his eyes.
Tim opens a hand apologetically. “Sorry. I was trying not to scare you. I got into a fight Saturday.” He touches the tender skin above his eyebrow. “It didn’t go so well.”
“Yeah,” Dick says without humor. “I can see that.”
“I thought it’d look better after a couple of days. That’s why I’ve been home.”
Dick nods.
“Are you…mad at me?”
“No,” Dick says. “Yes. I don’t know. Where were you? Who was it?” He puts his hands on Tim’s shoulders, like he’s steadying himself. “Why didn’t you tell someone?”
Tim shrugs. Dick’s fingers tighten minutely on his shoulders.
“Because Bruce wouldn’t have liked it,” Tim says.
“Call me, Tim,” Dick says. “Wherever you are, whatever you’ve done, call me. I’ll pick you up. I’ll take you anywhere you need to go—I’ll help you. Just. Please. Ask.”
“You wouldn’t have liked it either,” Tim replies. “I did something stupid and paid for it, but at least I know now what I did wrong.”
You get on the ground, you’re gonna be in the ground, you understand? That’s how you get dead.
You kept getting your feet all crossed up.
You never wait for an opponent to make the first move. And you never, ever give him ground.
“You aren’t going to tell me what you did wrong, are you?” Dick says resignedly.
Tim shakes his head and smiles weakly. It cracks open the little scab on his lip, and blood dribbles down his chin.
“Damn it all,” he mutters angrily, covering his mouth with his hand. “Does it ever stop?”
Tim mines a chunk of Oreo from his milkshake and licks it off his spoon. It hurts to use a straw, so he’s rushing to finish before it turns to soup.
“Are you sure you don’t want to talk about—” Dick gestures to Tim’s entire top half.
“Nah, I’m good,” Tim says. “It was really, really stupid. And spectacularly embarrassingly. I’d live my life a lot more comfortably if you didn’t know.”
Dick looks like he disagrees, but he does drop the cherry of his strawberry milkshake into Tim’s. Tim eats it immediately, then flicks the stem back at him.
“But you got yourself looked at, right?”
Tim lets go his spoon and leans back into the hard dairy bar chair with a huff. “I can take care of myself.”
Dick’s eyebrows draw in. “This is different than staying home on your own. Your eye, for example, looks particularly nasty.”
“Thanks.”
Dick leans a little farther over the table between them. “I’m serious. How long do you think it’ll take to heal? Completely, I mean.”
Tim doesn’t look at him. “A couple of days? I’ve been putting ice in it. And frozen corn.”
“A black eye can take a couple of weeks to heal, not just a couple of days,” Dick explains. “You might be able to cover up some of the bruising with make up, but your eye will be janky and believe me, it’s hard not to notice.”
Tim scowls. It only half works, because his right eye only has two modes right now, crusty sliver and closed. “Would it help if I told you I won’t let it happen again?”
“Yes,” Dick says patiently. “But I’m not particularly worried about you doing something stupid, Tim. You’re a smart kid. That’s why I just don’t understand why you didn’t tell anybody you were hurt.”
Tim stirs his milkshake. “I told you. It was because I did something stupid. I didn’t want anyone to know.”
“That’s not an excuse,” Dick says edgedly. “If you were out in the field, if you got kicked in the ribs and it hurts and you don’t tell somebody, you could die. And it…I…Bruce…” His mouth twists.
“Yeah,” Tim says ashamedly. “I get it. I’m sorry.”
Dick nods. Tim looks at the table. It’s got the rubber edging like the chili parlor he thought he was going to get shanked at. Tim scratches his initials in it with his pinky nail.
“But,” he starts, voice suddenly thick. He clears it quickly. “It’s not like I’m ever going out in the field.”
“I’m not the one you should be talking to about this,” Dick deflects.
“It doesn’t matter. I realized it Saturday.” He glances upwards. “Bruce isn’t training me like he trained you, is he?”
“It’s different,” Dick says. “I…I think he’s scared he’ll train you wrong.” He looks into his milkshake. “After…”
“I know,” Tim says. “I keep telling myself I know. But—” he cuts himself off, spins his milkshake cup and takes another spoonful. It’s gone to soup already doesn’t really taste like anything at this point. Maybe there’s still blood clogged in his nose.
“I wanted to be able to help you,” he finishes softly. “I can learn how to fight. I might not be a fast learner, but I can learn. I just need someone to teach me.”
“Bruce is teaching you,” Dick says gently. “You’ll just have to be patient with him. He’s…he’s learning, too. It’s only been three months. That’s not even a school semester.”
“But I could be helping now.”
“You are helping now,” Dick promises. “Remember? You helped Bruce track down that drug shipment just last week. He told me all about it. He was really impressed.”
“You don’t get it,” Tim blurts. “I watched you. For years. And I thought. I—” he breaks off, looks up at the ceiling when his vision first starts to blur.
“I’ll try talking to Bruce,” Dick says. “Maybe we can get you on comms with Oracle. I mean, I can’t promise anything. We. Ah. Aren’t on the best of terms these days, as I’m sure you’ve already noticed. It’d probably be better if you talked to him. He’s an emotionally stunted anal genius, but.” He lifts one shoulder. “He’s still Bruce. He’d do almost anything for anybody. He just…sometimes needs help finding the line where Bruce starts and Batman ends.”
“Yeah,” Tim says, trying to nonchalantly wipe his eyes on his sleeve and failing miserably. “I guess you’re right.”
“And cover up your eye a little bit before you talk to him,” Dick suggests. “Actually, maybe wear a bag over your head.”
Tim manages a laugh. “You’re an ass. I don’t look that bad.”
Dick raises an eyebrow at him. “You’re beautiful on the inside?”
“There’s something wrong with your eye,” Bruce remarks when Tim enters the cave on Thursday night. Tim’s barely made it down the stairs, and sets his water bottle on the bench with a sigh, dropping himself on the mats to stretch with a sigh.
“That’s not very polite, Bruce.”
“You’re tight,” Bruce says. “You normally have more flexibility than that.”
“Bruce.”
“Is it your trapezius?”
“My trapeze-what? No. Bruce. I—”
“We should develop your back strength,” Bruce says decidedly. “And your arm muscles. Posture is more important than you think. What if we—”
“Bruce, I get it. I’m a stiff spaghetti noodle. I’m trying to have an adult conversation with you. I lied about being sick the past couple of days.”
Bruce falls silent. He tilts his head a little, like he hasn’t quite heard.
“I got into a fight and I shouldn’t have and I didn’t want you to know,” Tim continues. “I was mad about Saturday.”
“Saturday,” Bruce repeats, as if he doesn’t have a photographic memory.
“Yeah. Saturday,” Tim repeats. He waits for Bruce to pick up the conversation. Bruce doesn’t. “Like, when Dick and I were sparring and you got mad at him for no reason?”
“Dick disobeyed me,” Bruce says darkly.
“No, he didn’t, and you blew up in his face about it. He airplaned me to the mats. I skateboard. I’ve literally sailed over two flights of concrete stairs in a public park. I can stand to be thrown. I was excited to roll with Dick because I thought maybe he’d actually spar with me. Sometimes you make me feel like a piece of glass, and I don’t like that.”
Bruce sits down on the mats. There’s a scar above his eyebrow that pulls while he’s thinking.
“You should apologize to Dick,” Tim says. “You overreacted. And I want you to go harder on me.”
The scar softens. “Your eagerness is admirable, Tim. But you’re unlearned. You don’t know how little it takes to lose a lot.”
“Because you never let me make a mistake,” Tim stresses. “I get that you’re—you’re scared. I understand where you’re coming from. That’s why I’m here in the first place. But I’m.” He swallows, throat suddenly dry. “I’m not him, Bruce.”
The silence that results is one of the loudest things Tim has ever heard. The Cave seems to drop a few degrees. Bruce has stiffened, face blank as a statue.
“I got into a fight,” Tim adds. “And I got out of it. I can be in the field, Bruce. Let me at least shadow you, like Dick said. I’ve been following you for years, and not even you knew it. I—”
“Did you win?”
Tim shuts his mouth.
Bruce’s face is still expressionless, though he prompts Tim with a lifted hand.
“No,” Tim says, feeling the tightness in his face stretch. “But—”
“If you lose a fight in the field, there’s a very good chance it means you’re losing your life, Tim,” Bruce says sharply. “I don’t want that for you. Is that so wrong?”
“No. But Bruce. It was—”
“Impatience is a poison.”
“You’re not—”
“Let’s focus on your movement, today. I don’t want to ground fight if you’re injured.”
“I’m not—”
“Why don’t I teach you tai chi?”
Bruce gets back to his feet. He looks down at Tim and holds out a hand expectantly.
Tim takes a steadying breath, lets Bruce pull him up. “Yeah. Sounds good.”
Bruce won’t spar with him while his face is still black and blue, and instead of two hours of continuous tai chi, on Friday he takes Tim through one karate kata at least fifty times. There’s always something wrong with Tim’s hips, his feet, his fists. Some minute detail that Tim can’t ever seem to get control of. It’s a relief when Bruce releases him. He swings a towel over his shoulder and starts quickly for the stairs. He’s on the first step when Bruce clears his throat.
Tim half turns.
“I’m proud,” Bruce says roughly, like someone is cutting the words from his throat. “Of you.”
His arms are at his sides. His fists are tight. But he’s looking Tim right in his black eye.
Oh. Tim should probably say something back.
“Thanks,” he says awkwardly. “I…needed to hear that.”
The corner of Bruce’s mouth pokes upwards. Tim jogs up the stairs, salutes to Alfred, doesn’t cut across the manicured lawn but walks the long way down the street up to his house. He goes up the long gravel walkway, drops his duffel bag on the front porch.
Your dad just sounds worried about you.
He shuts his phone in the mailbox and looks up the street where the Bristol bus stop lies at the top of the hill.
Tim’s trying and failing to pick himself up from his hands and knees when Helmet Guy extends a gloved hand. “You know, you can’t just punch your way through your problems.”
“You kept saying that the last time, too,” Tim says. “ You know, you know, you know. I don’t know. That’s kind of the entire reason why I’m out here.”
He gets up without Helmet Guy’s help. He got kicked across the thighs and rubs them with annoyance. He didn’t think a kick to the thighs would be that painful, but apparently thighs must have a bunch of nerves in them, because his ache like a bitch.
“You could have blocked that with your knee,” Helmet Guy observes.
“Shut up,” Tim says. “I don’t trust you. Go away.”
“Your stance is still terrible. You need to get lower. Your hips are your center of gravity.”
“Whatever. You sound just like—” Tim fumbles— “my dad.”
“And how does your dad feel about you being out here?”
“Don’t you have some vigilante job?”
“I’m on break.” Helmet Guy throws something as he walks off, and Tim catches it because instincts are going to get him killed one day. He drops it immediately, hands up, but it’s only a chocolate bar that melts all over his fingers when he rides the bus back to Bristol.
Search Reddit: how to get rid of black eye one day
Reddituser101: u r f*ckED dude lol
He shows up to the Cave ten minutes late Saturday morning with one yellow-green eye and one freshly black one. Bruce won’t even speak to him. He braces himself against the Batcomputer’s console, head down, while Alfred presses his thumb over Tim’s browbone. Tim swings his legs over the cot.
“It was a left hook,” Tim says. “They faked a jab and I fell for it. I’d like to learn how to slip.”
“You aren’t ready for stand up,” Bruce growls.
“I can’t help but agree. You shouldn’t be getting in fights,” Alfred says, pressing a cold pack to Tim’s left eye. Low enough for only Tim to hear, he adds, “Keep your shoulders up, but your feet loose.” He guides Tim’s hand to hold the ice pack, but doesn’t let go right away. “You aren’t being harassed, are you, Mr. Drake?”
Tim shakes his head.
Alfred lets out a little sigh. “You’re causing the master great distress.”
“I know,” Tim whispers. “And I’m sorry. But I’ve got to do it, Alfred. This is for him.”
Alfred takes the hand not holding the icepack, presses his thumb firmly against the bones in TIm’s hand. “He doesn’t want your blood, Timothy.”
Tim looks him in the eyes. “That doesn’t mean he doesn’t need it. I’m willing to give.”
Alfred holds his gaze for another second, then smooths Tim’s hair back.
“God knows you are,” he says wearily, and gives Tim’s cheek a warm pat. “And it’s going to cause hell for the rest of us.”
When Dick arrives, he doesn’t spar with Tim. He leads Tim away from Alfred and Bruce into where the Cave dips into another underground passage and there are old metal lockers. He takes both of Tim’s wrists and begs to know what happened. He sounds so upset that Tim almost tells him about the rings in Crime Alley and the Helmet Guy.
But behind Dick’s shoulder, he sees the glass case that holds a ghost and holds fast.
“You told me it wouldn’t happen again,” Dick says.
“I asked if it would help if I said it’d never happen again,” Tim corrects. “It’s all in the fine print, remember?”
“Tim.”
“Don’t look at me like that,” Tim says. “I’m being safe. I came to the Cave. And I’m not doing anything you wouldn’t do.”
“I would not get attacked and not tell somebody,” Dick says tightly.
“I wasn’t attacked. I wasn’t harassed. I wasn’t dragged into a dark alley and patted down for money. You’re not around enough to train me, and Bruce isn’t brave enough, so I have to go out on my own.”
“Where?” Dick asks. “Just tell me where you go and who you’re with. If something happened to you…”
“It honestly depends on the night,” Tim answers. “But you’re the detective. I trust you, Dick. Do me a solid and trust me, too.”
Dick searches him. He has light blue eyes that reporters call charming. They aren’t steely blue gray like Bruce’s or dark like Tim’s, but a striking ice blue that cuts straight through and shreds the soul as easily as a fork in crockpot chicken. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”
“I do,” Tim promises, because sometimes lies are better than the truth. He goes to step away, but Dick pulls his wrists back, and before he can register what’s happening, 95% of his body is enveloped by Dick Grayson.
“Call me whenever,” Dick says. His voice is loud next to Tim’s ear and echoes strangely in his bones.
“Yeah,” Tim says awkwardly, trapped against Dick’s shoulder. His cheek is smushed against the top of Dick’s collarbone. There’s a bruise there, and it hurts. “I will.”
But it’s also warm and feels pretty nice.
“You know,” Helmet Guy says, blank red mask staring down at Tim while he lies on the cold asphalt, clutching his stomach and trying to remember the basic mechanics of respiration. “People don’t normally smile when they get sucker punched.”
“Smiling releases dopamine and endorphins,” Tim gasps. “I’m trying to biologically motivate myself to like getting the sh*t beat out of me.”
“You’re repeating Pavlov’s experiment as the dog? ”
“Yep.”
Helmet Guy crosses his arms. “Is it working?”
“I don’t know. I think it takes some time.” Tim gets up with a grunt, and ducks too late when the man throws something dense but soft right in Tim’s pulsing face. It’s a gas station snack cake.
“You wouldn’t get punched in the face so much if you remembered to keep your hands up,” Helmet Guy offers. “And commit, kid. You keep letting loose these half-ass daisy shots. I don’t think you’d fool a gnat. If you wanna go for something, really go for it. What are you afraid of, getting hit? You’ve been hit plenty of times. So who cares if you miss and get a little roughed up?”
Tim fights again, and lets one fist loose. It barely hits the girl he’s fighting in the nose, but it does graze her. He’s so happy about it he doesn’t realize when she knocks him out.
Unconsciousness isn’t so much of a feeling as much as it is a frequency. A high whine in Tim’s head that vibrates in his teeth.
“Your problem is not that you’re a sh*t fighter,” Helmet Guy says. “The problem is that you think you’re a sh*t fighter. I mean it. That’s all it takes. One bad thought and you can lose before you’ve even started.”
“Did you creepily know I was awake, or were you just repeating that over and over so it’d seem that way?” Tim mumbles. His mouth tastes like battery acid, and there’s something pinching his gums. He feels around for it with his tongue, and then rolls to his hands and knees and spits something small and hard into his palm.
Helmet Guy whistles appreciatively. “Lookee there. Maybe the tooth fairy will come and visit you and give you a quarter. And a lecture about keeping your hands up. ”
Tim feels the bloody hollow where his first bottom molar should be, and drags his hands down his face. It sends sparks of pain running through his jaw. “Oh, god. I am gonna need dentures.”
“Yeah, but maybe collect enough of the old ones and the dentist will give you a trade-in deal. Like at the phone store? Ha, ha, I’m just kidding. Don’t do that. That’d be gross.”
Tim pinches his tooth, studies it with a frown as the root pricks his thumb. “Do you think I can put it back in my mouth?”
Helmet Guy’s modulated laugh echoes tinnily in the night. “Yeah, that’d be something. No, wait, don’t actually do that—”
Tim rotates his bloody tooth what he thinks is the right way up, and just as he puts his hand in his mouth Helmet Guy slaps it away. The tooth drops, weightless, on Tim’s tongue, and without ceremony tumbles down his throat.
“What the f*ck?” he snaps, coughing.
Helmet Guy puts both hands on his helmet. “Oh, god, did you eat it? That’s so nasty.”
“You made me swallow it!”
“You were putting it in your mouth! I was trying to get you to drop it!”
“You can reimplant teeth you idiot!”
“You’ll get it back in 24 to 48 hours? I can’t believe you ate it. That was so nasty. Oh, god. It had all the little flesh tidbits at the end of it, didn’t it? Oh, god.” Helmet Guy makes a noise that sounds like a a metal cat hacking up a wired hairball. He puts his back to Tim and leans with his forearms against a brick wall, hands above his head.
“Yeah, I felt all the fleshy tidbits, no thanks to you,” Tim says irritably. He spits out another glob of blood and stands up. “Are you seriously gagging right now?”
The man waves a finger at him without looking up. “Don’t talk to me,” he says.
“It was a tooth.”
“Don’t make me throw up.”
Tim scoffs. “I thought you were supposed to be this big bad vigilante.”
Helmet Guy raises his hand concedingly. “Well, I don’t swallow my own teeth. That’s metal as hell.”
“This wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t slapped me.”
“No, this wouldn’t have happened if you remembered to keep your hands up. Teeth-muncher.”
The next three weeks blur into a rhythm. Tim gets decent at covering up his black eyes and goes to school, and if he keeps his head buried in his geography book and pretends that the Corn Belt is the most interesting thing in the entire world, no one notices that his eyes are still swollen and squinty, and if they do, they just assume he’s high. (Ah, the sweet, undeserved blessings of secondary education.)
He trains with Bruce in the evenings, and Bruce only communicates with him with clipped sentences and long disappointed silences. Dick texts him constantly—when Tim knows he’s at work—if he wants to go to McDonalds/Wendy’s/Sonic/Hardee’s, and Tim doesn’t even know what a Hardee’s is until he looks it up and finds they aren’t even in New Jersey. The closest one is in Delaware.
And once Tim’s home, he leaves his phone in his room and takes the bus to Gotham. He fights once if he gets knocked out, twice if his ears start ringing, and three times if he’s doing decent. He buys a mouthguard after the tooth fiasco, and Helmet Guy has introduced him to corn nuts and they smack pretty hard. Except when they get stuck in Tim’s tooth graveyard. Then they’re the devil’s corn.
He’s dropping them one by one into his mouth while he waits for the bus to take him from school to Bristol. A smooth black car pulls up in front of him, and Tim’s busy licking the salt from his fingers when he hears Bruce call his name.
Tim stands up immediately, corn nuts spilling all down his front. “Bruce?”
“Yes,” Bruce says from the wheel, and nothing else.
Tim crumples the corn nuts bag and stuffs it into the side of his backpack, walking up to the passenger side door. “What are you doing here?”
“You need a ride,” Bruce answers bluntly. He’s wearing slick black sunglasses with polarized lenses that make Tim feel like he’s speaking to the void.
“I ride the bus,” Tim says.
“I know. There was an incident at the bus station.”
Tim groans. “What was it this time?”
“The Riddler.”
“Great. That’s a two hour delay.”
“He supposedly left a bomb on a bus, and the riddle was to figure out which one.”
“Oh, even better.”
“It’s being handled. Gordon has gotten very good at riddles. He does crosswords. Are you going to get in?”
“Uh. Yeah. I mean, if you don’t mind.” Tim slides his backpack to one shoulder and hugs it to his chest, pulling the car door open sliding into the passenger seat. “Thanks.”
The car is electric and makes nearly no noise, but still more than Bruce. Tim’s fingers start tapping the top of his backpack, and when he notices he quickly clasps his hands together and focuses on the city passing outside.
“You can turn up the volume,” Bruce says. “I only turned it down to talk to you.” He leans over and turns the volume knob before Tim can.
“Is this The Clash?” Tim asks incredulously, leaning farther forward to put his ear to the speakers.
“‘I Fought the Law,’” Bruce says by way of answer. “1977.”
Tim leans his head back against the car seat as a red light turns green. “Huh.”
“I Fought the Law” turns into the hip hop bass of “The Magnificent Seven”. Tim watches with no small amount of fascination as Bruce’s head bobs with the beat.
They get to the part about a businessman in a chicken suit when Bruce’s eyebrows raise above his glasses. “Is it right to say that your silence sounds surprised?”
“Do you actually like The Clash?” Tim blurts, shaking his head in disbelief.
Bruce lets out a short laugh. “Yes.”
“Wild. I like them too.”
“The Magnificent Seven” finishes. Bruce starts mimicking the harmonica of “Train in Vain”. It’s absolutely terrible, but Tim joins in after a while, until they can’t even hear the song end and they’re just do-do-dooing like a pair of thoroughly confused pterodactyls. Tim stops first when he can’t hold back his laugh.
“How did I not know about this?” he gasps, wiping his eyes.
“Alfred doesn’t let me play The Clash in the house. He says they’re an absolute travesty.”
“Alfred!” Tim gaps, splaying his hand on his chest with mock affront, and then laughs again. Bruce is smiling, and Tim’s heart lifts. He doesn’t want to get out when Bruce pulls up in front of his house.
Apparently, Bruce isn’t ready for him to leave yet, either, because he asks suddenly, “What are you doing for spring break?”
Tim’s fingers still on the door handle. He was planning on going out to Crime Alley to scrounge up what he could about Helmet Guy’s vigilante career, but he’s almost 110% sure Bruce would not want to hear that. “I guess just…hang around. Catch up on Netflix. Go on a date with my Xbox.” He squints at Bruce. “Do you know my school schedule?”
“I might make it my business,” Bruce says, though his smile drops a fraction. “I pay close attention to your training. Physically and academically.”
“Oh.”
“You’re progressing, Tim,” he continues. “Maybe slower than you want, slower than you can see, but you are getting better. I’m not—I’m not training you for nothing.” He looks right at where Tim smeared foundation over a discolored bruise on his cheek. “I wish you wouldn’t feel you need outside help.” He says the words darkly, like it’s a crime. Which. Disorderly conduct might be. But who cares? It’s New Jersey. Gotham, New Jersey. Commissioner Gordon might give him a talking to while an officer gives him a gold star.
“I want to help you, Bruce,” Tim says. “You won’t let me.”
Bruce runs a hand through the patch of silver in his hair. “Dick’s told me the same thing. Over and over.”
“You’ve been talking to Dick?”
“Yes. And I apologized about a few Saturdays ago. And I want to apologize to you, too. It wasn’t fair for us to fight about you.” His mouth forms a rueful twist. “Especially right in front of you.”
“It kind of sucked,” Tim admits.
“Yes. Well. I’d like to make it up to you.” He reaches into his suit pocket and passes Tim a hard black case. “Here.”
Tim takes the case, suspicious. It’s smooth and cold. He flips it over to look for writing, but finds none. He looks up at Bruce.
Bruce’s mouth twitches. “Open it.”
Tim does. Slowly, like an animal is about to escape from inside.
(It’s not an animal).
Tim stares down at the black domino nestled in the case’s cup. Its two white lenses stare back at him.
“If you can reschedule your date with your Xbox,” Bruce rumbles amusedly, “I’d like to take you to a work meeting.”
Tim inhales sharply.
“Think you can come?”
For a moment, Tim can’t answer. His soul has left his body. “Are you…you’re sure?”
“If you are,” Bruce says. “Pack light. I think you might have some welcome gifts; Diana goes a little overboard.”
“Did you change into a sweater vest?” Bruce asks when he returns to the car.
“Yes,” Tim says, pulling at a red thread, and then pauses, looking up quickly. “Should I not have? What do I wear? I was going for snappy casual.”
“You’re fine. I can almost guarantee Hal will obliterate you, but snappy casual works.”
Tim sticks out his tongue, then goes back to fixing his collar. “I want to make a good impression.”
“I have no doubt that you will,” Bruce says, starting the car, and it fills Tim with warmth. He tightens his grip on the domino case.
Alfred is waiting at the Manor’s front door with a curt “Sirs”, and then leads them wordlessly to Bruce’s office, stopping before the grandfather clock. “Can I expect you back for dinner?”
Bruce pats him on the shoulder. “Probably not, Alf. But we’ll be back in a few.”
“You always say that,” Alfred grumbles, but returns Bruce’s shoulder pat and kisses Bruce on the cheek. “Is it a few hours? Few days? Few weeks? You could at least be specific.” He releases Bruce and looks down at Tim. “You’ll make sure he doesn’t get kidnapped by aliens, won’t you, Mr. Drake?”
Tim salutes him. “Sir, yes, sir!”
Bruce rolls his eyes. “That only happened twice, and I already have to hear about it from Clark.”
“I know. We talk on the phone sometimes when we need a good laugh.” Alfred squeezes Tim’s shoulder before moving past him. “Say hello to everyone from me.”
“We will,” Bruce replies warmly, and pulls Tim close to him. “Ready to go?”
“Ready,” Tim says, and Bruce is already spinning the clock hands. He lets go of him on the steps, but Tim can still feel the phantom of his hand on his back.
He follows Bruce almost warily into the Cave, afraid it’s all a dream. He drops his backpack on the bench and just shoulders his duffel while Bruce dons the cowl.
“This isn’t like the Floo Network in Harry Potter, is it?” he asks, studying the raised platform of the two teleportation tubes at the back of the Cave.
“Nothing like the Floo Network,” Bruce affirms. “You don’t need any powder.”
“But this could totally take me to Mars.”
Bruce snorts. “I won’t let it take you to Mars, Tim.”
“But what if it glitches?”
“It won’t glitch.”
“Yeah, and Samsung didn’t program the Note 7 to explode, but look what happened there.”
Bruce laughs softly, coming up behind him. He doesn’t lay his hand on Tim, but he gives off a steady force Tim can’t gravitate away from. “It’s okay to be scared of it.”
Tim doesn’t tear his gaze away from the tubes. “I’m not scared of it. I’m just planning for disaster, so if something does go wrong, I’ll have already expected it.”
“That’s good thinking,” Bruce remarks. “And if you do somehow end up on Mars, please bring back Martian candy. And try the wibble-wobbles. They’re delicious.”
“I can’t tell if you’re kidding or not.”
“Do I sound like I’m kidding?” He turns Tim around, cowl loose around his neck, and holds out his hand. He’s smiling. Tim hasn’t seen him smile this much maybe ever. “May I?”
Tim opens the case, looking down at the domino inside, before holding it out for Bruce. Bruce picks it up carefully. Neither of them speak as Bruce smooths the mask over the top half of his face. It’s harder than he thought, but still flexible, made of some stiff interlocking fabric that latches easily into his skin as if it’s been longing for Tim as much as he’s been longing for it. It itches a little, but doesn’t hurt.
When Bruce steps away, Tim runs his fingers curiously over the part that goes across his nose. He can see the black edge of it from the corners of his eyes. He flicks his eyes up to Bruce, and there’s a light pressure on his corneas as the lenses blur and then clear.
He smiles faintly. “How do I look?”
“Let’s ask the Zeta,” Bruce replies evasively, pulling the cowl up, and gestures to the tubes. Tim steps up onto the platform, looks back again at Bruce. Bruce waves him on and follows him up, sweeping his cape fully into the second tube.
“Hall of Justice,” he says, voice low and deep as he assumes the Batman. A wavery blue light erupts around him.
“ 02. Batman,” the tube announces.
“Hall of Justice,” Tim says, praying the tube won’t send him to Mars, and squeezes his eyes shut as the light surrounds him. His heartbeat actually sounds like a bomb about to go off.
“ B-20,” the tube accepts. “Robin.”
Tim’s breath releases at once. “I have a code,” he gasps.
“You’ve had a code,” Bruce corrects, and Tim’s whole body tickles, and then he’s soaring, and it’s not just his atoms being rearranged in a teleportation tube.
“Any side trips to Mars?” Bruce asks as the spots in Tim’s eyes fade.
“I think I might throw up.”
“Hmm. Don’t throw up in the Hall of Justice.”
Tim reaches up to rub his eyes, but his hands meet the hard lenses of the domino and he drops them at his side, speechless.
Because he is, in fact, slightly nauseous and off-kilter, in the Hall of Justice.
They’ve materialized in an atrium covered in shimmering panes of glass and cream marble. Tim walks in the middle of the room, craning his neck upwards to gape at the gigantic dome above him. It pictures a blindfolded woman leaning on a lion, sword unsheathed and pointing to a reclining god. There are six other women around her wearing laurel wreaths and holding balance scales.
“Themis,” Bruce explains. “And her daughters. Advisors of Zeus, keepers of divine order. She once helped me turn Wonder Woman back from a pig. Do you know your Greek mythology?”
Tim is about to shake his head and ask a lot of questions when he hears a series of clacking coming from one of the offset halls. He throws a wary glance at Bruce as the clacking comes faster and faster.
“Don’t struggle,” Bruce says helpfully.
Wonder Woman bursts into the atrium in a flash of gold and silver. She charges forward, hair streaming, and collides into Tim in what is actually a bone-crunching hug.
“Hello, young warrior!” she cries, swinging him above the ground. “I have been waiting for you. I am very excited to make your acquaintance!”
“Robin,” Bruce introduces, “Meet Wonder Woman. Wonder Woman, please don’t suffocate Robin.”
“I’m good,” Tim wheezes, though Wonder Woman sets him down and puts him at an arms-length from her.
“I have prepared a welcoming committee,” she says seriously. “There will be feasting and friends. Might you join me in the break room?”
“I…” Tim looks at Bruce and mouths, there’s a breakroom? Bruce shrugs imperceptibly. “...Would be honored?”
“Wonderful!” Wonder Woman cries, and spins him around again, so fast that if she hadn’t taken Tim’s hand at the end he would have fallen over. He has to run to keep up with her as she tugs him down a hall. He skids around corners and almost slams into a wall before Wonder Woman pulls him to a jerking stop and he stumbles forward.
A large hand catches him before he trips. “Oh. Hi. Is this Bat’s new anklebiter?”
Tim looks upwards into the blank lenses of Green Arrow’s domino. His pale blond eyebrows are raised, and he kind of looks like an overgrown Robin Hood. Not that Tim would ever tell that to his face. Unless that’s what he’s going for? He has the little jaunty hat. Maybe that’s what he’s going for.
“This is the new Robin,” Wonder Woman says brightly. “New Robin, meet Green Arrow. Green Arrow, meet New Robin.”
Green Arrow snorts. “He looks like Batman snapped him up from boarding school. How old are you, kid? Twelve?” He holds out a hand for Tim to shake.
“Green Arrow!” Wonder Woman exclaims.
“Aw, I’m just playin’ with him. Kids love to play. Put ‘em there, tiger.” He holds out a green-gloved hand, fingers waggling.
“Green Arrow,” Bruce rumbles, catching up. “Always a pleasant experience.” His voice is steady and reveals nothing, which Tim is pretty sure means “Sic ‘em, Robin.”
Tim smiles beatifically and takes Green Arrow’s hand graciously. “Of course. A pleasure, Mr. Queen.”
Green Arrow brings their hands up and down before he stops mid-shake. His smile freezes. “Sorry, what?”
“Sorry, what?” Tim mimics, and then Wonder Woman propels him forward. Tim feels instantly underdressed in just his khakis and sweater vest. There are two others in what is, in fact, a breakroom, with a tiny kitchenette and a refrigerator with the message eat my chinese one more time flash in permanent marker down its front. Seated at what is no less a round plastic fold out table is Superman, who looks like a chastised four year old hunched as he is trying to fit in a tiny chair, and the Flash, who looks like a taken seconds from disaster meme tipping forward and back in his chair with his bare feet up on the table. He’s throwing cheese puffs into his mouth.
“Hi, New Robin,” he says. “I’d shake your hand, but—” he holds up his orange-fingered hand in a shameless wave. Tim waves awkwardly back.
“Your heart is beating really fast,” Superman says, who does reach across the table to shake Tim’s hand. He has a trace of a Midwest accent. It pleasantly squeezes his long vowels and rounds the short ones.
“I know,” Tim says. “I think I might die.”
“No dying in the Hall of Justice,” Bruce says.
“Not before feasting!” Wonder Woman cries. She lifts what looks like a giant, ancient ancestor of the modern slow cooker, complete with vintage blue and white floral decals, off the kitchenette counter. “We have—Superman, what is this traditional meal of sharing called?”
“Um. Ma’s tater tot casserole,” Superman mumbles.
“Ma’s tater tot casserole!” Wonder Woman exclaims, and sets the slow cooker down on the table with such a flourish the table shakes and Superman winces. “Eat and let this food strengthen our bonds as well as our bodies! Where is the pink lemonade?”
Wonder Woman leads him through the Hall of Justice again, and they pass other heroes that she introduces him to. Tim shakes a lot of hands and has to keep telling himself that he’s here! He’s Robin!
“Yes, you are Robin,” Martian Manhunter hums amusedly when he’s finished shaking Tim’s hand. “Did you think you were someone else?”
(Tim wonders if this is what walking in zero-grav feels like.)
“It is getting late. Do you weary, young warrior?” Wonder Woman asks him finally.
Tim shakes his head fervently, then after a moment’s consideration, lifts the strap of his duffel. “Well, it might be nice to set this down somewhere.”
“Of course! I will show you to your quarters. I have had them specially prepared for you.” She takes them to an elevator (the Hall of Justice has elevators! And Tim’s riding on one with Wonder Woman! ) to an upper floor. The doors come with biometric locks, and Tim’s steps slow as he tries to figure out what might be behind them.
“Batman does not normally stay here,” she says. “And when he does, he likes his privacy. We have managed to place you in the same wing, though he is much farther down the hall. I am afraid you do not get your own permanent quarters until you are a full fledged hero. Do you get it?”
“Get what?”
“Full-fledged,” she repeats, and laughs. “It is a play on words. Because you are a bird?”
“Oh, yeah. Full-fledged.” Tim looks down at himself. “I guess I’d need a costume before I’m anywhere close to that.”
Wonder Woman hums. “I do not like that word. Costume. Being a hero is not a role you play.” She taps the guards around her wrists. “It’s something that you are, all the time.”
Tim blushes. “Right. Sorry. I just meant a suit.”
Wonder Woman pauses, looking behind at him. “You do not have a suit?”
Tim shakes his head. “I’ve worn an old one once, to save Batman and Nightwing. But Batman hasn’t even let me on patrol since. We’ve only been training.”
“Then you must have reached the next level,” Wonder Woman says, “if he’s brought you here.”
“Yeah.” Tim brushes the edge of his domino. “Yeah, I guess I have.”
“So you will have permanent quarters in no time!” she exclaims, and opens a door with a wave of her hand. It doesn’t slide away fast enough, and she shoves it the rest of the way open. “For now, welcome to your temporary home!”
Tim ducks under her arm and steps inside, dazed and thoroughly dazzled. It’s a common sleeping area, clearly meant for visitors with a few bunks that slide into and out of the wall. Only the bottom bed is currently pulled out, and it’s laden by a mountain Justice League merchandise.
“Is that a cardboard cutout Batman looking over my bed?”
“Yes,” Wonder Woman says proudly. “That was Flash’s idea. He said it’d make you feel more at home.” Her head co*cks. “I do not like the idea of someone watching me while I am in a vulnerable state of unconsciousness, though I do find some joy in watching others rest. It is peaceful and comforting, and I draw protective runes on their faces.”
Tim risks a glance back at her.
“I am kidding, of course,” she says, swinging her hands behind her. “I draw mustaches.”
Tim shifts through the items on his bed. There is a licensed Wonder Woman blanket, Flash socks, a Green Arrow hoodie, an Aquaman toothbrush, a Green Lantern candy ring, a Superman sheets set, and an entire basket of Justice League-themed snacks. “Are these from all of you?”
“Are they to your liking? Batman said not to overwhelm you. This is subtle, right?”
“This is too much. But it’s wonderful. Thank you.” Tim sets his duffel bag down and falls back on the bed, feeling the thin mattress bend under his weight. “I…never thought I’d be here.”
“Really? Batman been discussing bringing you here for the last month.”
Tim straightens up immediately. “Batman talks to people? About me?”
Wonder Woman laughs. “He does not do so very often, but these past few months he has been…’ She co*cks her head. “Different.”
“Good different, or bad different?”
“Good different. Very good different.” She lays a gentle hand on Tim’s shoulder and lowers her voice. “Between you and me, I was very worried about him, after the fall of your predecessor.”
“Yeah,” Tim says quietly. “Me, too. He wasn’t—Gotham needed—I mean.” He blows out a heavy breath. “I…figured out who he was a long time ago. I confronted him. And.” He scratches the front of his hair. “I thought maybe I’d forced him into it. That he didn’t really want to train me, but felt he had no choice.”
Wonder Woman squeezes his hand and lets go. “I don’t think Batman does anything he doesn’t want to. Goodnight, Robin.”
“Goodnight, Wonder Woman,” he says, but it’s a beat too late and he says it to his steel door. Tim lays back on the bed, his head cushioned by the Superman sheets set, his arm cradling his basket of snacks, and can’t stop smiling.
He doesn’t know how long he lies there, grinning up like an idiot at the ceiling, when his door beeps erratically before it whooshes open. Whereas Wonder Woman took up most of the height of the doorway, Bruce in the suit takes up most of its width.
“I thought you’d be asleep,” he says. The lenses in the cowl flick to his cardboard twin looming against the wall and back to Tim. “I’m sorry I lost you earlier,” he says. “I wanted to check in on you.”
“I can’t sleep,” Tim says. “I’m legitimately worried I’m on acid and I’ll wake up and this will have all been a dream.”
“And if I promise you it’s not?”
“I…” Tim’s smile twists. He looks into his lap and shakes his head. He waits until the door whooshes shut. “I want to apologize, Br—Batman. Batman .” He wrings his hands and forces himself to look back up at Bruce. “About the last few weeks. I know I’ve been upsetting you.”
Bruce surprises him by coming closer.
“I’m sorry, too,” he says. “I know you’ve been feeling frustrated, and I didn’t mean to make you feel I didn’t trust you.”
“I knew you trusted me!” Tim blurts. “I mean. I knew you must trust me a little, otherwise you would have built a Forget-o-matic or something instead of letting the neighbor kid run around knowing your greatest secret. I just thought…you know.” His shoulders hike. “Maybe you didn’t think I could do it.”
Batman shakes his head.
“I’ve never doubted you, Robin,” he says. “Not ever.”
Tim falls asleep. It takes a long time, because he replays every moment someone’s called him Robin until the memories color in sepia-rose like Polaroid film.
The following day passes in similar bliss.
He wakes up to the erratic beeping of someone entering his room, and he squints at the blurry black figure in his doorway.
“Batman?” he mumbles, then sits up with a jolt. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing’s going on,” Bruce says. “I’m just here to pick you up.”
“Pick me up…for what?”
“You didn’t think I brought you here to sleep in, did you?” Bruce replies, and Tim launches himself from his cot and into the common bathroom with his new Aquaman toothbrush. “Wait.”
Tim already has the toothbrush shoved in his mouth when Bruce tosses him something blue and soft, and he just narrowly manages not to drip toothpaste on it. He shakes it out and shamelessly dribbles all over himself smiling.
“A gift from Nightwing. He’s sorry he couldn’t make it.” Bruce says. “Be out here in ten minutes.”
Tim brushes his teeth in one and showers in three. His hair is a mess, but it’s a sacrifice he’s willing to make. He shadows Bruce the rest of the day, following doggedly at his heels. Green Arrow snaps more than a few pictures of him in his new Nightwing T-shirt, and Tim makes Vs with his fingers across his domino and sticks out his tongue.
The third day, it’s not Bruce that wakes him up, but Wonder Woman with a thunderous “Good morning, young warrior!”
“Good morning, Wonder Woman,” Tim hurries, standing up and feeling immediately self-conscious in his Gotham Knights pajama pants. He tries to peer behind her into the hall. “Where’s Batman?”
“He left last night,” she says. “He told me he needed to go to Blüdhaven.”
“Blüdhaven?” Tim repeats, something falling in his chest. “Why? Is Nightwing okay?” He’s gone without me?
But Wonder Woman holds up a hand. “He did not look worried, though he excused himself for leaving without warning. He promises to be back this evening. But in the meantime.” She claps her hands. “He’s left you with me.”
“You’re serious,” Tim says, not for the first time, as he watches Wonder Woman clip a heavy bag to the ceiling.
“Yes,” she says patiently, and gives the bag a solid pat. “Don’t you have any experience?”
“I used to do karate after school,” he admits. “But then Batman started training me, and I realized I don’t actually know that much at all.”
“You can wrap your hands,” Wonder Woman says appraisingly. “So you at least look like you know what you’re doing.” She holds the bag from the back. “Come on. Have at it.”
She’s taken him to a training room that’s obviously meant for superheroes much larger and stronger than Tim. The punching bag looks like a potato chip bag among everything else, and it still looks like it would crush him.
“And Batman put you up to this,” he says. “Batman.” He makes pointy ears with his fingers. “Like. This guy?”
“Yes, that guy,” Wonder Woman says amusedly. “He told me you wanted to work on your hand-to-hand. Was he wrong?”
“No,” Tim says quickly. “I absolutely do. He just doesn’t normally let me do stand up. He’s been really focused on ground fighting.”
Wonder Woman’s eyebrows hike. “We can work on ground fighting, if you like.”
“No!” Tim says quickly, and then doesn’t know if that was rude, and repeats at a more reasonable tone, “No. Thank you. Stand up is good. Stand up is great.” He throws his first jab at the bag, then a right hand and looks at Wonder Woman for affirmation.
“Keep going,” is all she says.
Tim left hooks, fakes a slip, rises with a right uppercut, pauses.
“Come on,” Wonder Woman says. “Don’t stop until I tell you to. And be creative with your combinations. Make me move. ”
“I think making you move would require divine intervention,” Tim mumbles. “Literally.”
“Well, attempt anyway,” Wonder Woman laughs. “Who knows? The gods may be in your favor.”
The gods are not in Tim’s favor. The gods are laughing at Tim like he’s their favorite after-dinner sitcom. Wonder Woman starts calling out combinations for him, and it’s like Twister, but Tim’s playing against himself. He fumbles to throw faster when she tells him to, slips in the wrong direction multiple times, and he drops his hands enough that she makes him do ten squats every time he doesn’t pull his hands back fast enough or his knuckles leave the vicinity of his chin. Tim does a lot of squats.
He spends the rest of the day with her, with a few breaks for water and food and a rest from trying not to choke on air. He’s ready to fall asleep by dinner, but forces himself to shower and manages not to collapse face first into his katsudon (It’s Japanese Night, for real. The Flash can get world cuisine anytime he wants. He gave Tim about fifteen different flavors of Japanese KitKats.) He does, in fact, doze off while Superman talks extensively about Wisconsin cheese and Flash starts arguing about kefir. He’s roused gently by Woman Woman leaning in.
“Should you like to return to your room?” she asks.
Tim shakes his head. “I’m waiting for Batman,” he mumbles.
Her mouth quirks. “Don’t wait too long. You might have an early morning with me again tomorrow.”
“Don’t worry,” Tim assures her sleepily. “I’m really good at waiting.”
“No sleeping at the table in the Hall of Justice,” Bruce says by way of greeting.
Tim peels his eyes open and lifts his head. He’s still in the breakroom, but it’s dark and quiet save for the humming of the refrigerator. Batman is near invisible in the doorway.
“I was waiting for you,” Tim says accusingly. “You were gone all day. Without warning me.”
“I know. I’m sorry. But it was important.” When he enters the room, the lights come on with his motion, blinding Tim. He squints as Bruce pulls up a chair beside him. “Nightwing’s been planning a drug bust for months. It was supposed to go down a week from now.” He frowns from under the cowl.
“But now I’m guessing it’s not,” Tim says.
“Everything’s gone,” Bruce explains. “Drugs and dealers both. It’s like an entire network has just disappeared off the Blüdhaven grid.”
Tim huffs, but satisfied with Bruce’s answer, asks,“So Nightwing’s okay?”
“Nightwing’s fine. A bit annoyed, and he’ll live. He just won’t sleep for a week.” Bruce lowers his voice conspiratorially. “He’s a bit of a perfectionist.”
Tim lowers his voice to match. “I wonder who he learned it from.”
Bruce nudges him. Tim nudges him back, then yawns and lays his head back on the table. He’s just close enough that Bruce’s gauntlets brush the back of his hair.
“I’m guessing you had a good time with Wonder Woman?” Bruce quests.
“She’s a drill sergeant,” he mutters, then turns his head to face Bruce. “But she’s awesome. Thank you.”
“Good. Think you can take her another day, or should I get the Flash to help you PR in mile splits?”
“Do you think Green Arrow would shoot me in the thigh if I asked nicely?” Tim quips back, but raises his head again. “Are you really going to be gone another day?”
“I might be in and out the next few days,” Bruce replies.
“Tying up Nightwing’s case?”
“Yes.”
Tim flattens his mouth.
“I’m sorry. I wanted this week for us,” Bruce says. “But this is one of the first times Nightwing has asked me for help since he moved to Blüdhaven. And I…” he trails off. Bruce hardly ever trails off. Tim watches something work in his throat.
“I get it,” he says, brushing off his disappointment. “I don’t know much about Blüdhaven, or any of Nightwing’s cases. But I do know that Nightwing probably needs a lot of help. Did I tell you I had to visit his apartment when I was looking for him?”
Bruce shakes his head, already smiling.
“It was before I found him at Haly’s Circus. His apartment smells like moldy enchiladas. Alfred would quit on the spot.”
“That bad, huh?” Bruce says. He shifts a little, the lenses in the cowl flickering as he narrows his eyes. “Wait a second. How’d you get in his apartment if he wasn’t there?”
Tim grins sunnily. “Lockpick set from Amazon.”
Bruce grunts. He lays a hand on Tim’s head. “You know what I think about sometimes, Robin?”
Tim closes his eyes. “What?”
“God help us if you weren’t on our side.”
Tim laughs. Bruce’s hand isn’t warm through his glove, but he still shivers when Bruce retracts it to lead him back to his bed.
“Please shoot me in the thigh.”
Green Arrow laughs nervously. “Kid. I’m not going to shoot you in the thigh.”
“Flash is coming over here. Shoot me in the thigh.”
“I am not going to shoot you in the thigh! What are you, crazy?”
“I’m doing mile splits with the Flash. Please. I’ve already done three of them. He’s going to make me do two more.”
“I’m still not going to shoot you in the thigh.”
“I only have fifteen seconds left of my recovery. I will eviscerate you and your company in less.”
“Yeah, and so would Batman, so I’m kind of in a Catch-22 here, aren’t I? Tell you what. How about a spontaneous archery lesson? Okay, take my bow. We’re doing this together. Put your hand here. Yep. Lift your elbow, draw it all the way to your cheek—I’ll help you aim, and—” thwwm — “Wonder Woman! Batman’s kid tased the Flash!”
The next few days find their own. Chaotic. Routine. Tim is woken up every morning by Wonder Woman, who puts him on the bags and then drops his carcass off to Flash, Green Arrow, or whoever else is available and willing to put Tim through the ringer. Martian Manhunter makes him play some Martian version of chess and Tim actually felt his braincells clutch their little chests and implode. He has no idea what Superman is going to put him through, but the seriousness on the man’s face spells no good.
“Okay,” Tim sighs, hands up. “What’s the damage?”
“Plenty of damage,” Superman says, nodding. “I’m going to teach you something none of the others have. Think you can handle it?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“No. Here, take this blanket.”
“Okay.”
“Here, take this pillow.”
“Alright.”
“Now lay down on the couch.”
“Is this…are you putting me down for a nap?”
“Don’t you want to take one? You’re small. You need at least eight to twelve hours of sleep a day to maintain your vertical progress—”
“Superman. I don’t need a power nap.”
“It’s a super nap.”
“Can’t you teach me to shoot lasers from my eyes or something?”
“Shh. Shh.”
“Don’t put on rain sounds.”
“I can add some thunder, too. Or ocean waves. Or whale noises. Do you want whale noises?”
“I’m going to find the Flash and make him make me do 200 repeats until I’m ground into atomic dust.”
“No! Don’t get up! They’ll never let you come back! I can turn off the whale noises!”
He showers. He eats dinner. He waits for Bruce. Sometimes Tim falls asleep before Bruce arrives. Sometimes Bruce shakes him and walks with him back to his room. Other times, Tim wakes up on his bunk just as the door is sliding past a blue-black cape.
The last night, Tim is showered with hair ruffles and playful ribbing and even more Justice League merchandise. He’s woken hours later the morning he’s supposed to leave to Superman at his door. Tim thinks Batman has left for Blüdhaven again and he’s about to be picked up for another day of trying to survive Superman’s Midwest dad urges, but then Superman shoves no less than three gallon bags of oatmeal cookies into his arms and then runs down the hall with his cape flapping after him.
“Thanks?” Tim mumbles confusedly, and then proceeds to eat three and a half cookies for breakfast while he packs. He’s eating the other half of his fourth as he makes his way down the hall to Batman’s quarters. They’d have been hard to find, had someone not stuck a HELLO, MY NAME IS sticker on the door and written VENGEANCE in emerald sharpie. There’s a long chain of sticky notes near the biometric lock. The top one reads GREEN LANTERN RULES. Tim reads the others as he knocks on Bruce’s door. The succeeding notes have Green Lantern crossed out and replaced by Green Arrow Wonder Woman Superman Aquaman Green Arrow Shazam!!! Flash Green Arrow Black Canary Green Arrow Black Canary Green Arrow. There’s even a Nightwing one in Dick’s tell-tale curly handwriting, written very small on Superman’s note. Tim’s squinting at it when Bruce’s door slides open.
“You can come in,” he says from inside.
Tim hesitates.
“Before the door closes on you,” Bruce adds, and Tim steps hurriedly in, because it’s Batman’s room in the Hall of Freaking Justice, and the chance is just too good to pass up.
He doesn’t know what he’s expecting. An entire wall of TVs from secret security cameras, yes. A coffin? Maybe. A red-thread bulletin board? Definitely.
But Bruce’s room isn’t anything like that. It looks barely lived in, clandestine, which Tim guesses makes sense. There’s a cot not unlike Tim’s that slides into and out of the wall. There’s a desk with three monitors. The floor has been covered with black chalkboard paint, judging by the broken nubs of chalk near Tim’s feet. There are half-swept smears of diagrams and lists, question marks and Xs. Bruce is finishing erasing something. Tim reads April 6th, 7:58pm, before Bruce shoves an eraser over it.
“What happened yesterday at 7:58?” he asks, stopping Bruce’s hand with his foot.
“Murder,” Bruce answers without looking up. “I have reason to believe it’s connected to Nightwing’s case. Lift your foot.”
“I can’t believe this is your room,” Tim says, but moves obediently out of the way. “Wouldn’t it be easier to…I don’t know…use the computer on your desk? Chalk seems kind of antiquated.”
Bruce hrmms, which means he thinks he’s explaining something that shouldn’t have to be explained. “Chalk can be erased. Data is much more difficult to destroy, and infinitely easier to steal.”
“Yeah, but. Isn't it hard to remember everything?”
“I have been trained in extensive memory techniques.”
“But like. Anybody could draw a ballsack on your floor.”
Bruce looks up. “Please refrain from drawing genitalia on my floor.”
“I’m not saying I would,” Tim says innocently. “But someone less mature might.”
Bruce shakes his head and mumbles something along the lines of, I forgot you were fourteen that Tim graciously ignores in favor of investigating Bruce’s room more. His eyes snag on the wall behind Bruce.
Bruce has pictures taped above his desk.
Honest photos with the shiny paper and stuck to the wall with Scotch tape. One is of Bruce, trying but failing to look very unamused while holding a young Robin that is obviously Dick upside down by the ankles. Another of Dick, older, asleep with sharpie scribbled across his face. A postcard of Gotham’s old town clock, with Alfred’s looping script. An obvious selfie ambush with Bruce frowning between a grinning Superman and Wonder Woman. One inexplicable photo of a pig in the Batmobile’s backseat and Bruce’s hand reaching back as if to pet it.
There’s Robin again, holding both his fists up and grinning like he’s about to play fisticuffs with the camera. There are freckles leaking out from under the domino. Dick doesn’t have freckles.
“See anything?” Bruce asks, and Tim jerks like he’s been burned. But Bruce is gesturing to the newly cleaned floor.
“Like it was never there,” Tim says, recovering.
Bruce hums appreciatively. “And that’s the way we like it.” He turns his head towards where Tim’s gaze lingers on his wall. “Oh. You saw it.”
Tim swallows. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to look. I—”
“Wonder Woman told me my room was ‘too Spartan’,” Bruce grumbles. He sighs. “Which I suppose is saying something when it’s coming from an Amazon.” His fingers cover the photo of Jason while he carefully peels the picture directly beneath it from the wall. He extends it to Tim. “Did you want a better look?”
It’s not a photo of either Jason or Dick. It’s one Tim glanced over, assuming it was one of them, but now he realizes this boy isn’t in the Robin costume. This Robin is only wearing the domino with a Nightwing T-shirt and basketball shorts. He’s making the peace sign near his whited-out eyes. Batman is half turned behind him, and the camera has caught just the shadow of a smile under the cowl.
“That’s me,” Tim whispers. “With you.”
“Really?” Bruce says, taking the photo back and holding it up to the overhead light. “Huh. I thought it was just me.”
Tim elbows him.
“Alright, alright, I was only joking,” Bruce laughs, taping the photo back to the wall. “Are you ready?”
Tim looks down at his half-zipped duffel and then over his shoulder at his new overflowing Justice League backpack before facing Bruce again. “If I say no, will you let me stay?”
“Hmm. I think that involves truancy.”
“Batman, the dark knight of justice and ruthless killer of fun.”
“I can neither confirm nor deny,” Bruce remarks, and guides Tim forward. “For now, I have no intention of becoming your truant officer. You can stay longer in the summer.”
“That’s forever,” Tim moans, walking out with him. He glances backwards at the photo of Jason, then the photo of himself just as the doors close behind him.
“What’s the matter?” Bruce asks. “Did you forget something?”
“Almost. One sec.” Tim sets his backpack down sets his backpack down and rustles through the front pocket. He pulls out his new set of Justice League pens and breaks out the Batman one. Bruce says nothing when Tim scratches out Green Arrow’s name on the outside of his door and replaces it with ROBIN in fat straight letters.
Tim clicks the pen. “You’re welcome.”
“Thank you,” Bruce says, deadpan, and Tim grins, zipping up his backpack and jogging back to Bruce’s side.
Wonder Woman is there to wish them goodbye. She kisses Bruce on the cheek before hugging Tim, lifting him from the ground. “It was very nice to meet you, new Robin. I look forward to the day you are a fully-fledged bird.”
Her dark curls tickle his nose as Tim hugs her back. “I’ll need you for that.”
“Maybe,” she agrees, setting him down with a wink. “But Batman needs his Robin.”
Tim hugs her again around the middle before hopping onto the Zeta besides Bruce. “Did you hear that, old man?”
Bruce crosses his arms. “What?”
Tim lifts his fist with a smile. The first blue beams erupt around them when he says, “You’re stuck with me.”
“Dick,” Tim hears Bruce say as they materialize in the cool dampness of the Cave, and for a moment Tim is totally offended before the light fades and it’s actually Dick, sitting on a cot with his suit stripped to his waist.
“Oh, yeah. Hey, Bruce,” Dick greets, raising one arm in a wave. “Hiya, Tim. How’s it going?”
Tim drops his duffel at his feet. “Uh. How’s it going for you?”
“Fine, fine.” Dick says, and shrugs with one shoulder. “Just thought I’d pop in for a visit.”
“Keep moving,” Alfred says stiffly, “And I will duct tape you to this bed.”
Dick puts his hand back in his lap. “Yep. Noted.”
“Your shoulder is out of its socket,” Bruce says, throwing off his cowl and striding forward.
“Uh huh. Yep. It kind of is, would you look at that—Actually, no, let’s not look at that because I think I’ll throw up. Alfie, come on. Can’t you just shove it back in place?”
“If you would like nerve damage, sir.”
Bruce pushes Dick flat on the cot. “I thought I told you to wait for me.”
“There was another killing. Three dealers.” A hiss of pain. “A fourth left alive. Fingers all broken. Tongue cut out. On Monarch. About two hours after you left— ow gaddamit—”
“Alfred,” Bruce says.
“Counter traction if you would, sir, keep him still. We’re going to go nice and slow, Master Dick.”
“Oh, good, the fun part,” Dick mutters. “Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. f*ck f*ck f*ck.”
“Just a muscle spasm, chum. That should be nothing to you.”
“You have the literal worst bedside manner, B. Absolute worst.”
“You haven’t told me how you managed this.”
“Was picking up the survivor.” Dick inhales sharply. “Ambushed. Sniper or something. I did a handspring to avoid it, but then there was another shot and I couldn’t stick the landing. I always stick the landing.” His breath shudders. “I…I think they knew me, Bruce. They knew where I was going to land.”
“It was probably just a lucky shot.”
“There’s no such thing.”
“Dick—”
“They knew me. They could know you.” He laughs, but it’s not really a laugh, just a loud noise to cover a silence up. “Truth is, I’m scared, really and truly. Here we go.” He hisses, one foot kicking outwards, then sighs. Alfred sets down his arm gently and steps away.
“Promise me you won’t go out alone,” Dick says, his other hand latched in Bruce’s cape. “If something happens to you, I’ll never forgive you.”
“Dick,” Bruce murmurs, brushing a hand through his sweaty hair. “Calm down.”
“Promise me, Bruce.”
“You know I can’t do that. I can’t have you with me for the next couple of weeks; your shoulder is still unstable.”
“But what if—”
“I won’t. You can stay on the comms, and I’ll do whatever you tell me to. With both you and Oracle, I’ll have more than enough eyes and ears.”
Dick closes his eyes. Bruce rubs a thumb over his forehead. It’s quiet, and still, and Tim’s footsteps echo like gunshots when he steps off the platform and onto the floor of the Cave. He slides his backpack off his shoulders and lets it drop it behind him. It lands with the same finality as a bomb.
“You didn’t bring me to the Hall to meet the Justice League,” he accuses, jutting a finger at Bruce. “You brought me there to keep me out of the way of a case, didn’t you?”
Dick lifts himself on his good elbow, eyes wide. “Tim—”
“What are you talking about?” Bruce asks.
“I’ve never doubted you, Robin. Not ever,” Tim mimics, then runs his hand through his hair, shaking his head. “What a load of hot, stinking crap.”
“Mr. Drake,” Alfred starts. “Maybe we move upstairs—”
“No,” Tim says, fierce enough that he feels the syllable fill up his chest and tear through his throat. His fingers scrabble at the edge of his domino.
“Don’t just rip it off,” Dick says hurriedly. “Tim. Hey. Hold on, buddy. There’s a serum for that. Tim!”
Tim yanks off the domino like a bandaid, only it hurts a lot worse as it pulls at the skin near his eyes and at something from inside his chest. He throws the mask at Bruce and misses miserably.
“You haven’t been leaving for Blüdhaven,” he says, and his throat hurts from trying to keep his voice steady. His face and eyes sting. He and Bruce, they’re both such exceptional, exceptional liars. “You and Nightwing have been here, in Gotham. While the Justice League babysat me.”
No one says a word. The thirty seconds of abject silence tell Tim all he needs to know.
“I can’t believe you.” He laughs, quick and sharp. “I can’t believe me.”
“Tim,” Bruce sighs, and it’s the worst thing he could have done.
“You think you can—you can distract me from helping you?” Tim waves a hand over his face. “That you can dress me up and get me to play pretend?” He scoffs, and then he’s crying. He doesn’t remember when he started. Angry tears slide down his cheeks hot and fast. He tries to laugh. It doesn’t work, and his voice shatters like a bullet casing. “I can’t f*cking believe you.”
“Tim,” Dick starts gently. Bruce holds out a hand to stop him.
“It’s an extremely sensitive case,” he explains. “There’s a new, violent vigilante that’s popped up in Crime Alley, and we know you’ve been going out. I couldn’t work the case if I was worrying about you.”
“You wouldn’t have to worry about me if you just let me help you,” Tim snaps back. “Batman needs a Robin, remember? No matter what he thinks or wants.”
Bruce moves in front of Dick. “You’re being unreasonable,” he tells Tim, voice hardening.
“Bruce,” Dick pleads.
“Don’t you understand what I’m trying to do?” Bruce continues, ignoring him. “I am trying to be different. I am trying to keep you alive.”
“Funny,” Tim snarls, and stalks for the stairs. “I’m doing the same thing for you.”
“Where do you think you’re going?” Bruce asks, raising his voice. It rings around the Cave, and Tim’s footsteps slow only a second before he recovers. “Don’t walk away from me. Come back here. We’re settling this right now. Don’t ignore me. Jason Peter!”
Tim spins on his heel, fists clenched. He makes sure not to let his voice go sharp. A knife might cut the deepest, but sometimes a blunt weapon is all you need. “My name is Tim. And I am not your son.”
He walks up the stairs, each step echoing again like gunshots.
Dick calls his name weakly. Bruce doesn’t call after him at all. And no one comes after him.
Tim takes his gunshot steps out of Wayne Manor and back home. School starts back tomorrow. He has an English assignment to finish.
Tim lays on his side. The alarm clock reads 1:00am in beady red light. Blue moonlight makes the looming shadow in his window all that much darker. Tim doesn’t turn toward it. He knows how these things go.
Alfred picks him up after school. Bruce sits in the front seat. Tim doesn’t argue, but slides silently in the back.
4 new notifications. PERSON DETECTED AT FRONT DOOR.
Video Message
“Tim. Are you there? I’m sorry. Come on. Let’s talk about this.” The doorbell rings, over and over. “I’m sorry. We thought—”
Are you sure you want to delete this message?
This message has been deleted.
“We start down,” Bruce says.
Tim slides into a ready position, fists up. “Getting on the ground gets you in the ground. And I’m tired of being on my knees.”
“Ground fighting is important. If you don’t want to do it, then there’s no training today.”
“Then I guess you’re not training me today,” Tim says succinctly. He walks to the lockers and pulls on a pair of heavy gloves.
“You’re normally so level-headed, Tim,” Bruce says. “I liked that about you. And now…”
Tim throws a knee into a sandbag. “Yeah. Well. Now you know how everyone feels when they deal with you.”
He’s biked over today. But Bruce has Alfred drive him back home with a frown.
Bruce keeps such a close eye on him, Tim doesn’t try heading for Gotham until a week later. He’s sure someone’s monitoring him, like he’s some kind of wild animal about to go rabid at any moment. And sure enough, he’s not halfway up the street after leaving his house when a familiar shiny black car pulls up alongside him. Its headlights bleed yellow light onto the street.
“You let me go to him once before,” Tim says without looking. “What’s different now?”
“Because now I realize what you are, Mr. Drake,” Alfred says coolly. It’s 1am. He’s in striped silk pajamas. He waits for Tim to ask what he is, but Tim doesn’t.
“Self-destructive,” Alfred finishes curtly.
“Maybe,” Tim admits. “But I’m certainly not the only one.”
They have, what Tim shamefully admits, is a stare-off. Alfred shifts, hand disappearing from the wheel to behind the door. Tim hears its soft click as it unlocks. A silent invitation, but an unmistakable order.
“This is getting old,” Tim mutters, but rounds the front of the car to drop himself in the passenger seat. Alfred hums, unfazed, as he shifts the car back into drive. Tim expects him to take him to the Cave to be babysat until Bruce comes back to berate him, but the car rumbles calmly up the gravel drive and before coming to a gentle stop in the parking circle.
Alfred turns to Tim, face stony. “Have you ever seen a dead person, Mr. Drake?”
Tim opens his mouth. Alfred pushes his car door open and gets out before he can find the words to answer.
He swallows, but follows Alfred silently to the front door. He falters on the steps to the Manor’s second floor, feet growing heavier and heavier. It is a very long walk down the hardwood hall. His throat is dry, all the words he hasn’t said all turned to dust.
“The dead do not speak,” Alfred says, and turns the knob of a plain cherry door. It squeals on its hinges as it drifts open, the doorway yawning and dark. “But you see them everywhere.” He pushes the old button light, and the ancient bulbs of a ceiling fan fizzle from not having been on in so long.
It reveals a room, painted buttercream yellow. The bed is unmade and rumpled.
“Especially if you can’t help but look close,” Alfred adds, and gestures for Tim to go inside.
A Wonder Woman pillow lies on the floor. On the desk beneath the window is a laptop with Justice League stickers on it. A Superman alarm clock is still in standard time, running one hour and six minutes behind.
Some books are shelved neatly, but these seem to be the exception, not the rule. Most are set in precarious stacks on every flat surface. The Art of War, Le Morte d’Arthur, and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire on the dresser. Captain Courageous, Fahrenheit 451, The Things They Carried, Slaughterhouse-Five, and The Hardy Boys on top of the bookshelf. Brave New World, Wuthering Heights, Ender’s Game, and The Invention of Hugo Cabret on the nightstand. Wizard of Oz, Coraline, and The Importance of Being Earnest under the bed. Catch-22 is splayed open, page down, on the sheets. Tim approaches it. It has scuffed corners. There’s dust collecting on the cover. He flips it over carefully, half expecting it to disintegrate in his hands.
‘“There are some relatives here to see you. Oh, don’t worry,” he added with a laugh. “Not your relatives. It’s the mother, father and brother of that chap who died. They’ve traveled all the way from New York to see a dying soldier, and you’re the handiest one we’ve got.”
“What are you talking about?” Yossarian asked suspiciously. “I’m not dying.”
“Of course you’re dying. We’re all dying. Where the devil else do you think you’re heading?”’
“Sometimes it’s in a book,” Alfred admits. “In something someone says or the angle the sun slants before it sets. Sometimes, the dead come in the form of a fourteen year old boy with two black eyes and a busted lip.” His voice grows softer, but steelier. “The dead haunt the living, and there is no cure, Mr. Drake. Once they are gone, they are gone and you’ll be remembering the ghosts of them the rest of your life.”
Tim sets the book down in the same spot he found it and looks over his shoulder. Alfred is a thin figure silhouetted in the doorway, the light from the hallway reaching around his feet to Tim’s.
“Your loyalty is admirable, Mr. Drake,” Alfred says. “But I know more than anybody what it can do to a man. How the ties that bind you can also break you.” He gestures for Tim to step out and puts a warm, calloused hand on the back of Tim’s neck as he eases Jason’s door closed. He guides Tim back towards the stairs, spins him around on the landing with both hands on his shoulders, squeezes once. “I do not wish that fate for you. Go home and be glad this was your first dead person. I myself am tired of seeing ghosts.”
“What are you talking about?” Yossarian asked suspiciously, and Tim whispers to his ceiling, “I’m not dying.”
Tim’s luck comes in the form of another murder.
Police dispatch has been a steady drone in the Cave for the last week, and Tim barely notices it anymore until Bruce suddenly releases him from a guillotine choke.
“I haven’t even tapped yet,” Tim says irritably, rubbing the bruise sure to form on the underside of his chin. He’d been trying to turn out of Bruce’s hold, and only succeeded to turn more into it.
“A shipping container just blew up on the wharf,” Bruce says flatly. The Batcomputer rings, and the screen flashes with incoming messages from Oracle. Tim watches footage of something exploding on the Gotham docks in a plume of curling orange flames, wood and metal splintering as they’re shot into the air. Bruce tugs on his gauntlets, watching too. Without looking back at Tim, he orders, “Go upstairs and have Alfred drive you home. We can pick back up tomorrow.”
It’s barely eight-thirty. Tim shoves his hoodie back on and grabs his water bottle, heading for the steps.
“And I’ll be checking in with Alfred,” Bruce reminds him.
“Whatever,” Tim mutters, and makes sure to stomp up the stairs. He stops near the top, pressing himself against one of the stone walls. He hears the thrum as the Batmobile starts, the woeful creak as one of the tunnel doors to Gotham opens.
It will take Batman three minutes to get to Gotham. It would take Tim three hours on foot.
And only about thirty minutes on his bike, which has been confiscated for the past three days and sits leaning against the wall near the lockers.
(Tim is very good at waiting.)
“You came back,” Martinez says. “We haven’t seen you around for a while. Thought maybe you kicked the bucket or something.”
They circle each other. Tim’s sure not to get his feet crossed up.
“Nah,” he says casually. “What actually happened was—”
He doesn’t finish, but throws his first jab, and doesn’t need Wonder Woman to call out the right hand and hook that comes next. His fist makes contact with flesh and then something harder, more unforgiving. He feels bone and cartilage shift in Martinez’ nose, and something’s shifting in Tim’s chest, something’s breaking open, breaking free, and he doesn’t remember much after that. It’s good.
“You’re a maniac,” Miranda tells him. “You look like you’re having fun. Want to have a rematch?”
He’s already gone against her once. He bit his tongue when she clipped him in the chin, and now he smiles with all his bloody teeth.
He gets kicked in the solar plexus. The heel digs into his stomach, forces out his air, leaves him hollow and empty. He hunches over and heaves up nothing but spittle.
“Done?” the boy asks, and Tim wipes his arm across his mouth and shakes his head.
The blade of a foot slides effortlessly in the space above his floating rib. Tim gasps a surprised laugh but follows it back with a front kick, uses it to lunge forward with an uppercut. His knuckles bite into someone’s chin, his knee finds a home in the cavity of someone’s chest.
Time slows and blurs, fades to a pink film from the blood streaming from the split skin at Tim’s brow.
The street is cold under his legs. He’s leaning against something hard and rough that catches the back of his sweatshirt when he shifts. A strong hand presses his collarbone gently. He peels one eye open, sees the brown blotch of a leather glove.
“He lives!” Helmet Guy exclaims, and it kind of feels like being drilled in the head. He must make a noise, because Helmet Guy continues, softer, “You want the good news or the bad news first?”
Tim shrugs. The muscles in the back of his shoulders pull uncomfortably.
“Okay,” Helmet Guy says. “So, the good news is, you went limp, you’re not as hurt as you could be. If you had tried to catch yourself, you’d probably have dislocated your shoulder or broken your arm or some dumb sh*t like that. So you actually did yourself a favor when you passed out.”
Tim tries to sit up straighter, sees stars.
“The bad news is, I think you’ve earned your concussion badge. Hip hip hooray.”
Tim closes his eyes with a sigh. “f*ck.”
“Language.” Fingers snap near his nose. “Stay awake now, Sleeping Beauty. You were out for three minutes. That’s all the beauty sleep you’ll be getting for the next couple of hours.”
Tim goes to hold his very heavy head in his hands, but finds his left hand is misshapen and rapidly swelling. He can’t move his little finger without shooting pains down the side of his arm. He cradles it to his chest.
“And you probably fractured your hand,” Helmet Guy says. “I keep telling you to close your fists tight.”
“Ow,” Tim mumbles.
“Yeah, ow,” Helmet Guy affirms. He shifts in front of Tim, hands up and open. “Look. Kid. I’m worried about you making it home alright. Is there anyone you can call?”
“Yeah.”
“Alright. You gotta phone?”
It takes Tim an embarrassingly long time to think about it. “No.”
“Either I take you to a payphone, or I’m going to have to drop you off somewhere. Does anyone know where you are?”
“Depends on whether I ate a tracker.”
“Sounds delicious,” Helmet Guy says without missing a beat. “But you’re going to have to focus for me. Who can you call?”
“My brother is out of town,” Tim says, and then puts his head down on his knees, even though it feels like his skull is about to break. “He says he’ll come get me.”
“We’ll go to the payphone then. There’s one about two blocks from here. I’ll go with you.”
Tim nods minutely.
“You’re going to have to get up,” Helmet Guy prompts.
“Are you going to shank me?”
The man’s arm retracts fast. “ Shank you?” he sputters. “Shank you? Where did you get that idea?”
“You cut off drug dealers’ hands.”
Helmet Guy falls silent.
“Are you going to shank me?” Tim repeats. “Because I’m gonna need a tetanus shot, if you do.”
“Kid, listen,” Helmet Guy says. “I’m a vigilante. I’m not going to hurt you.”
“You cut out that one guy’s tongue. I heard about it.”
Helmet Guy sighs. “And I’m not going to deny that.” He wags a finger at Tim. “But in my defense, he deserved it and I was sending a message.”
“So you did a bad thing for a good reason,” Tim says.
“If it’s for a good reason, is it ever really a bad thing?” Helmet Guy replies, and when Tim winces, adds quickly, “You can think that through later. If you’re afraid of me, I’ll leave. But let me get you home, first, or at least somewhere safe.”
Tim squints at him. Helmet Guy still has his hands up and open. Tim makes a sloppy grab for one, realizes belatedly that it’s with his f*cked up left and curses. Helmet Guy takes hold of his right and lifts him to his feet.
“You bought my trust,” Tim says, as Helmet Guy loops a steadying arm around him. “Four weeks ago.”
Helmet Guy laughs. It still sounds weird through the helmet, but it reverberates in Helmet Guy’s chest and then in Tim’s, which makes it real. “Yeah? With what?”
“A donut.”
Helmet Guy snorts. “That’s all it took?”
“It was a really good donut.”
Helmet Guy walks very slow so Tim doesn’t stumble. Tim stumbles anyway. He’s tired. His head hurts.
“You know,” Helmet Guy says as he adjusts Tim’s weight, “I only hurt bad guys. I won’t hurt you.”
Tim rests his head against the man’s shoulder. Dimly he realizes there should be alarm bells going off, that this is a very bad, no good idea. But he’s tired and his head hurts. The man’s leather jacket is cool on his temple. “I know. Then you’d owe me two donuts.”
“What kind?”
“Don’t make me think about it. Chocolate. I lied. Blueberry.”
“You can choose two.”
“The twisty tiny ones. Fancy. French. French—”
“Crullers.”
“Yeah. And powdered sugar. And pink frosted.”
“That’s more than two, now.”
Tim keeps listing donuts all the way down the street. He’s tired and his head hurts. He’s pretty sure he repeats a few flavors, but Helmet Guy just nods along like maple creme twist versus circle is absolutely pertinent information. He only shushes Tim when he starts talking about donut surface area.
“Does your brain know how to play the quiet game?” Helmet Guy asks.
Tim huffs in annoyance. They’ve arrived at a rusty payphone covered in peeling pizza parlour stickers, satanic symbols, and Eric + Gina were here!. He digs in his pocket for a few coins and finds his night’s winnings, a roll of cherry Lifesavers and a ten dollar bill.
“I’ve got it,” Helmet Guy says, and flicks two quarters between his fingers. He inserts them and then steps away with a flourish, like the phone booth is a private theatre box. Tim steps forward, leaning heavily against the metal frame, and picks up the phone. He holds it for a long time.
“Don’t tell me you can’t remember his number,” Helmet Guy jokes.
Tim’s finger trembles above the 6, then curls inwards. He must look pretty wretched, because Helmet Guy says gently, “No, no, it’s okay. I—I get it. Probably just put numbers in your phone and forget about them, huh? Don’t worry about it.”
“I remember the number,” Tim says. His fingers are white around the phone, his knuckles bloody and torn. He stares at the little flaps of skin, watches new blood well up and seep into the divots of his fingers. “But I also remember I’m mad at my brother.”
“Oh,” Helmet Guy says after a second. “Well, uh, how mad?”
“Really mad. I haven’t talked to him all week. He keeps trying to but I won’t let him.” A tremor runs through him. “So he’s probably mad at me, too.”
“Is there anyone else you can call? What about your dad?”
Tim leans his head against the phone box. “My dad just wants me out of his way.”
Helmet Guy says nothing for a long, long time. With his head against the phone box, Tim can only see his big leather boots and the stiff line of his right leg.
“You can leave if you want,” Tim says finally. “I can find my own way home. I left my bike somewhere around here.”
“You’re not biking anywhere,” Helmet Guy says harshly, and when Tim flinches, continues, softer, “Does your brother want you out of the way?”
Tim loops the phone cord around his finger. He shrugs once.
“If he loves you, then it doesn’t matter if you’re mad at him or he’s mad at you. Let’s call him and see what happens, alright?”
Tim punches in Gotham’s area code and then pauses and looks back at Helmet Guy. “But what if he doesn’t pick up?”
“Then I’ll take you to this free clinic. Thomas Wayne Memorial. It’s a far walk, but they’ll take care of you, no questions asked. My dad used to bring me there.”
“And after that?”
Helmet Guy puts a light hand on his shoulder and nods at the keypad. “Let’s cross this bridge, first.”
Tim presses his mouth into a fine, then bites the inside of his lip instead. He puts in the rest of Dick’s number and lifts the phone to his ear. It rings, and rings, and rings, and Tim can feel the world grow wider and wider beneath him until he’s pretty sure the only thing keeping him from sinking into the earth is Helmet Guy’s hand on the back of his shoulder.
The phone finally cuts off mid-ring, and Tim feels sick, sick, sick. He’s tired and his head hurts. He takes the phone a fraction from his ear when Dick’s voice echoes thinly, “Hello?”
Tim clasps the phone tightly. He searches frantically for words to say, and settles on a quiet, “Hey.”
“Tim?” Dick replies, and it’s sharp enough through the phone that Tim winces. Helmet Guy’s grip tightens.
“Yeah,” Tim says, swallowing past a suddenly thick throat. “Um. Can you come pick me up?”
He hears something akin to brakes squealing. Dick’s voice comes through gentle but hard. “Tell me where you are.”
“You sound like you’re doing something. I don’t want you to come if you’re doing something.”
“I’m picking you up, that’s what I’m doing,” Dick says. “Where are you, Tim?”
“A payphone. In Park Row.”
“Park Row —god, Tim. Hold on.” A car horn. “What street?”
Tim leans his head back against the cold metal of the phone box. “I…I can’t remember. I walked a couple of blocks to get here. Um. Lake Avenue?”
“Monarch,” Helmet Guy hisses.
“Monarch,” Tim repeats dutifully.
“I’m coming,” Dick says. “Stay on the phone, okay?”
“It’s a payphone. I don’t have that much time left.”
“ Then call me back when this call runs out. Stay where you are, and don’t move unless you absolutely have to.”
“I don’t have any change,” Tim says fearfully.
A high keening, like sirens.
“I’ll be right there, Tim,” Dick promises over them. “Hold on. I’m coming.”
He’s getting on the expressway when the call runs out. Tim hangs onto the phone like if he squeezes hard enough a few more minutes will come out of it.
“Well?” Helmet Guy prompts. “Is he coming?”
Tim puts the phone back and nods against the box.
“That’s good, right?”
Tim nods again.
“How long will it take him to get here?”
Tim shrugs.
“Are you gonna be alright?”
Tim shrugs again.
Helmet Guy turns him around so that Tim has nowhere to stare but at the little eye slits in his red mask. “You can be honest with me. Just say the word, and I’ll take you someplace safe.”
“I’m safe with Dick,” Tim mumbles, and Helmet Guy freezes, hand lifting a little from Tim’s shoulder as if Tim has shocked him.
His voice is thin and kind of tinny through the helmet. His feet shift backwards. “What’s your brother’s name?”
“Rick,” Tim says. He spots the sputtering lights of a laundromat behind Helmet Guy’s shoulder. “Uh. Rick Draper. He lives all the way out in Bludhaven. He’s a cop.”
The line of Helmet Guy’s shoulders relaxes a little, but not completely. “A cop, huh?” he says. He makes a tsk noise with his tongue. “Then I guess it’s about time I scram.”
Tim grabs onto his jacket before he realizes what he’s doing. “You’re going to leave?” he says, in a tone that makes him hate himself.
Helmet Guy looks down at his hand, and then back up to Tim. Tim lets go of him, fast.
“Look. Uh. The police and I aren’t on great terms,” Helmet Guy explains. “But I’ll tell you what. I won’t go far. You won’t see me, but I’ll be around.” He punches Tim lightly on the shoulder. “I promise, alright?”
Tim nods jerkily.
“You did pretty good tonight,” Helmet Guy admits, and then steps away and runs into the dark.
“Hey,” Tim calls after him, and he halts, turns, half in shadow, half in the light.
“Thanks,” Tim says.
“Just keep your nose clean, kid,” Helmet Guy replies. A streetlamp turns the top of his helmet gold. “Or, if you can’t, at least remember to keep your damn hands up.”
Blüdhaven is supposed to be thirty minutes away, but only ten minutes later, blue and white lights spin as a cop car streaks onto Monarch. Its brakes screech to a halt just a few paces past Tim, and he’s about to run from the police like an idiot when Dick slams the car door. He’s in full uniform, and Tim can even hear a radio droning on his belt when he rushes at Tim. He stops just before collision, breathing hard.
“Are any of your ribs broken?” he asks.
“I don’t think so,” Tim says, and doesn’t get the chance to ask why before Dick hugs him, fists clenching tight in Tim’s sweatshirt. He keeps repeating whatwereyoudoing whatwereyoudoingwhatwereyou doing in varying tones of voice, like he can’t decide if he’s upset or mad or both.
Tim doesn’t know what to do, so he just says. “But I think I maybe have a concussion.”
Dick brings his face away but doesn’t let go. “Right. Okay.” His thumb brushes near where Tim’s brow is split and seems to shake himself. “Right. Come on, let’s get in my car.”
He walks Tim over, as if afraid to let go of him, and opens the passenger side door. There’s a half-eaten bag of chocolate Donettes in the passenger and an empty can of a rainbow unicorn energy drink that he shoves to the car floor.
“Am I going to get you fired?” Tim asks, staring at the bag of Donettes.
“Just get in.”
“I got you fired, didn’t I? You stole a cop car.” Tim wants to laugh, but the pressure builds up in his brain, and he says instead, “I f*cked up.”
“f*cked up and got f*cked up,” Dick agrees.
“You should go back to work,” Tim says.
“Tim,” Dick says. “I work in Blüdhaven. If anything, deserting my post will probably earn me a few claps on the back. Now get in the car before I put you in there myself.”
Tim gets in. He lets Dick buckle his seatbelt.
“I think I broke my hand,” he announces.
Dick mutters something unintelligible.
“Are you mad at me?” he asks quietly.
Dick sighs heavily and closes the door. He gets in on the other side. “Later I will be, yes. And I’ll want you to tell me exactly what you thought you were doing. But right now.” He sticks his keys in the ignition. “I’m just scared.”
Tim leans his head against the car seat.“I’m not that hurt, Dick, promise.”
And for some strange reason, Dick’s face pinches like he’s going to cry.
“There’s a clinic run by the Wayne Foundation around here,” he says tightly, pulling off the street. “You’re going to get to meet Leslie tonight.”
Tim nods, though Dick hasn’t asked him a question. The glare of the streetlights stab him in the eyes, and he looks at his feet instead. They ride in silence.
“Are you mad at me?” Tim asks again, so quiet he doesn’t think Dick hears him. The car rolls to a slow stop. Dick gets out.
Tim’s shaking. He doesn’t realize how bad until he goes to follow Dick out of the car and finds his legs won’t move.
“Because I called, like you said,” he tells Dick when he opens up Tim’s car door. “You said to call and I called and now you can’t be mad at me.”
The lights all hurt him. It’s Dick that makes Tim squeeze his eyes shut.
“Hey, buddy,” Dick says, gathering him up. Tim throws his arms around his neck.
“You can’t be mad,” he says, shaking his head into Dick’s shirt. “You can’t be mad; you can’t be mad.”
Dick shushes him, lifts him, holds on tight.
Tim wakes up to whiteness.
For a minute, he just blinks, eyelashes brushing against something soft and warm, before he raises himself on his elbows and finds a pillow beneath him. Silk sheets and a quilt slide over his spine and pool around his waist when he raises himself taller. He’s in a dim room that smells a little like lavender and mothballs. The curtains are all drawn, but a strip of sunlight still manages to leak across the floor. The room is mostly bare, save for the bed and Tim. There’s a bookshelf on one wall, but it’s all empty, and the nightstand next to the bed has only an old lamp.
He swings his legs over the side of the bed and immediately regrets it when it feels like his brain does a somersault in his skull. He lies flat on the bed and breathes through his teeth, cataloging the bruise on his jaw, the aches in his knees, the dull pulsing in his left arm. He lifts his left hand and finds it in a black splint, his last two fingers held together. He squints, and his eyebrow itches with the movement. He reaches up and feels three stitches in his right eyebrow.
Remembering back to the night before seems like a momentous effort, and conjures up only brief flashes of his fights and then Helmet Guy at the payphone. He remembers more blearily being at the clinic with Dick, a woman with white spiky hair trying shining a flashlight in his eyes while he kept trying to bury his face into Dick’s shoulder. He cringes at that.
He gets up from the bed in stages, then pads heavily to a door he thinks is the bathroom. He splashes water on his face and swishes out his sticky mouth. His face looks like abstract artwork of angry red marks and purpling blotches. There’s dried blood and sweat crusted in his hairline.
He tries to smile at himself, but with his lip busted it comes out a grimace. It doesn’t even look threatening; he’s in a shirt about three sizes too big for him and his llama boxer shorts.
“Master Tim.”
Tim turns. Alfred stands in the doorway, mouth turned down in a small frown.
“I was just checking in on you,” he says.
“Oh,” Tim says stupidly. He stretches out his borrowed t-shirt, smooths it. It’s old, the GOTHAM U printed on its front cracked and almost faded through. “Um. Was I asleep for very long?”
Alfred looks him up and down. If Tim is lacking something in his borrowed shirt and llama boxers, he doesn’t show it. “Twelve hours.”
Tim laughs awkwardly. It’s too loud and sharp in the bathroom. “That’s…more than I usually get?”
Alfred’s mouth turns up, but somehow, Tim doesn’t think he finds him funny. “I had thought you would stay asleep longer, considering your…late night.” He beckons Tim closer, and Tim complies, head down. Alfred’s hands are calloused but careful when they cup his jaw. “And how are you?”
“Fine. I guess.”
“You guess,” Alfred says knowingly. He tilts Tim’s chin so he has no choice but to look Alfred in the eye. “I do not believe I asked for a hypothesis, Master Tim.”
Alfred’s hands are also warm, and Tim sags into them. “And if I said I don’t feel like giving a full report right now?”
“Then I’d ask for the SparkNotes, sir.”
Tim smiles between Alfred’s palms. It only wobbles a little. “I feel…crunchy.”
“Crunchy. I see. And would a shower solve this?”
Tim nods.
“Right we are, then. I’ll bring you some fresh clothes. Do you require anything else?”
Tim shakes his head. “That’s alright, Alfred, really.”
Alfred’s gaze lingers on him for another few seconds before he remarks, “Very good, sir,” and releases him. “There are towels in the bathroom closet.”
When Tim gets out of the shower, ten minutes later, a clean pair of blue plaid boxers waits for him. They’re obviously an old pair of Dick’s but still managing to look like basketball shorts on Tim. The shirt, too, is obviously another one of Dick’s, with a Tony the Tiger growling They’re grrrreat! across the front.
“You look better,” Alfred still tells him when he returns to the bedroom. He hands Tim two Tylenol tablets and a glass of water. “I thought you might want these.”
Tim laughs softly, accepting them. He sits heavily on the bed afterwards, spinning the glass between his fingers. “So. Where’s Bruce?”
“He’s been in his office most of the day. Working from home.” Alfred coaxes the empty glass from Tim’s hands. “I can fetch him, if you like?”
“That’s okay.” Tim snorts. “Guess he’s finally getting around to building that Forget-o-matic, huh?”
Alfred stiffens. “Master Tim.”
“You don’t have to tell me. I knew it from the start. I didn’t just walk in your life, I barged into it, no doorstops or anything.” He laughs again, but it quickly breaks down, and he hides his face in his hands. “I just couldn’t…”
“It will work itself out, my boy,” Alfred reassures him, sitting down beside him and sliding his hand soothingly up and down the back of Tim’s neck. “Don’t think so hard. You’ll worry yourself sick.”
“I can’t stop thinking,” Tim says, leaning into him. He smiles, sniffs. “Is there a Tylenol for that?”
“I’m afraid not,” Alfred replies. He smooths Tim’s hair, careful to avoid the stitches in his forehead. “Though you might try sleeping.”
Tim does.
He dreams of acrobats falling, their bodies twisting, tumbling, over and over forever. Batman leans over a nearby ledge.
He pads out of the room sometime in the middle of the night. He’s on the second floor, and only walks a few steps before he knows instantly what wing he’s in.
He guides himself in the dark with a hand on the wall, until his fingers stumble over the woodwork of a cherry door and his fingers curl around the old glass knob.
Jason’s room blooms with buttercream light. Still and unchanged.
Tim steps over the tangled sheets and the Wonder Woman pillow to pick up Catch-22 from the bed. He runs his finger down the now-damaged spine, memorizes the place Jason left off, and puts it under his arm.
In his own borrowed room, he turns on the lamp and protects himself from its light by reading underneath the quilt. He can only manage a few minutes at a time, but it works. When he sleeps, he just sleeps.
And when he wakes, he readies himself for war.
Dick visits the next day. Tim gives him his front door code, and he arrives at Wayne Manor with half of Tim’s dresser in his arms.
“I needed, like, two pairs of sweatpants,” Tim says.
“I didn’t know which ones you wanted,” Dick replies, muffled by the mound of clothes in front of his face. He drops them unceremoniously on Tim’s bed, smiles, hands Tim his phone. “How are you?”
“I’m okay.” He taps his skull. “Sucks to not be able to do anything.”
“Yeah. I’ve had three. I always get nauseous. Alfred makes me peppermint tea and forcefeeds me white bread.”
“I must be getting the special treatment, then. I had Tylenol for breakfast and a cucumber sandwich for brunch.”
“If you need emergency McDonalds, you know who to call.”
Dick smiles. Tim smiles back.
They fall into a long, stretching silence, where Dick is standing and Tim is sitting but neither of them say a thing. There’s a lot of words Tim wants to say. Most of them are variations of the word thanks and I’m sorry and McDonalds sounds really good right now.
Instead he says, steeling himself, “Do you really remember that picture you took with me? At the circus, when I was really young?”
Dick’s fingers twitch at his sides. He rocks back on his heels, crosses his arms, uncrosses them, crosses them again. “Yeah.” He clears his throat. “You were on my knee and.” He looks away, voice growing thin. “Your parents said it was your first time at the circus. I…I promised to do my act for you.”
His eyes flutter shut, playing another memory.
“I’ve wanted to be you ever since then,” Tim says. “I knew about Robin when I was nine. But I’ve loved you since I was three.”
Dick’s gone white-faced. He looks like Tim’s gutted him and spilled all his entrails on the floor.
“Anyway,” Tim continues. “I’m sorry. About two days ago. And the two weeks before that. I thought this might be my chance to do something for you. But.” He touches the stitches in his eyebrow. “This isn’t the way to do it. And I’m sorry for dragging you into it. And thanks. For picking me up. Not just at the payphone.”
Dick’s eyelids press tighter. He nods, then says tightly, “I thought I was going to have to shake you—concussion free, of course—to find some crumb of emotional reasoning. But you continue to amaze me.” His smile is a flash, there and then gone. “Streetfighting, Tim. Really?”
“It wasn’t one of my brightest ideas. But it was the only one I thought I had.”
“You couldn’t have joined…I don’t know…a karate dojo? An MMA gym?”
Tim shrugs.
Dick deflates, rubbing one side of his face. “Look. When Jason was here, I was so angry. And then he died, and I didn’t. We never.” He swallows. “I don’t want to fight with you, Tim. But you’re acting just like him. It’s like he—he—possessed you, or something.”
“I know. I’m sorry. That wasn’t fair to you.” The hard part. “Or Bruce.”
Dick lets out a shuddery breath, then crouches in front of Tim. “Have you talked to him?”
Tim shakes his head. “I haven’t even seen him.”
Dick’s mouth flattens, but he reaches forward to hug Tim. “Give him some time. You scared him—you scared all of us.” He kisses the top of Tim’s head. No one’s kissed the top of Tim’s head since he was three. “He’ll come around. He always does.”
“I think he’ll try to get me to quit,” Tim says into his shoulder.
“Do you want to quit?” Dick asks, pulling back.
“No.”
Dick shrugs, smiles. “Then don’t quit. Robin was never a mantle for Bruce to give, anyway. It’s mine.” He smiles, he smiles, and Tim is three again. “And it can be yours, as long as you want it.”
He stands before the great oak door that leads to Bruce’s office.
“He’s in there,” Alfred says beside him. “But are you quite sure about this, Master Tim? This is a conversation that can surely wait until you don’t have stitches in your face.”
Tim smiles at the door. “You started calling me that. Master Tim.”
Alfred hums shortly. “Pardon me. I did not realize.”
“I like it,” Tim says. “It reminds me of what I’m trying to do. What I’ve got to do.” He turns his grin onto Alfred, fingers tightening over the doorknob. “This has to happen. I’m good and tired of waiting.”
Alfred raises his eyebrows, but Tim still catches the beginning of a smile before he opens the door and slips inside.
Bruce’s office is warm and cinnamon-smelling. There are blue walls and cherry bookshelves and the grandfather clock on the left wall. Bruce is bent over the mahogany desk. He’s so still, he might as well be another piece of furniture.
The door clicks softly behind Tim. It’s not unlike a gun being switched off safety.
Bruce shuffles his papers. He doesn’t acknowledge Tim even as he walks all the way up to the desk. Tim sees one page that marginally has to do with Wayne Enterprises and no less than twenty sudokus.
“Hey,” Tim says.
Bruce glances up at him, returns to tapping his pen against a sparse 3x3 grid. “Hello.”
“You’re mad at me.”
“I am not mad at you. I have not spoken to you. I have been doing sudoku.”
“Angrily. Angrily doing sudoku. You can put an 8 there.”
Bruce grunts, but reluctantly loops an 8 before meeting Tim’s eyes. “What do you need, Tim?”
Tim lays his good hand flat on the desk. “For you to listen to me.”
Bruce inhales like he’s about to launch into some emotionally stunted three syllable response, and Tim says over him, “I was reckless and irresponsible. I did six fights that only ended when there was a winner, and I should have ended it at five. And I’m not even sorry I’m not sorry.”
Bruce’s mouth turns down like he’s eaten a lemon. He sets his pen down without looking away from Tim. “Is this an apology, an argument, or an accusation?”
“All of the above,” Tim says. “It’s called a combo move.”
Bruce leans back in his chair, arms crossed. For a minute, he just studies Tim. For a minute, Tim lets him.
Eventually Tim sighs, lifting his splinted hand. “I’m sorry I let it get this far. You’re not my father and you shouldn’t have to worry about me.” He lowers his hand, lets it curl in a half-formed fist in front of Bruce. “But we’re partners, and you said you trusted me when you obviously don’t. And that sucked. So if I pick up midnight streetfighting, I feel like I’m just living up to who you want me to be.”
“I have only ever had high expectations for you, Tim,” Bruce replies coldly. “So I don’t understand where this whole self-destructive streak—” he gestures to Tim’s whole body— “is coming from.”
“I’m fourteen,” Tim says. “The sinking gut feeling of hopeless underperformance is, like, the world’s worst birthday present. And you might have accepted me as Robin, but it’s still obvious you don’t want me.”
Bruce’s face darkens. “You don’t know—”
“But I do,” Tim says. “You don’t want me; you want Jason Todd.”
Bruce goes very, very quiet, falling into a bone-deep silence that stiffens his shoulders like a corpse’s.
“But I’m not a do-over.” Tim continues, softer. “What happened to Jason was an accident, not a mistake. And I’m sorry. For what happened. I’m sorry that I’m here because he’s not. But Robin is not a legend I was going to let die, and it’s definitely not something I’m going to watch slowly disintegrate in my hands. You’re trying to save me when I don’t need to be saved. But it’s the other way around, this time, Bruce. I’m here for you.”
“What do you aim to do from this?” Bruce asks.
“I want to be Robin.” Honesty is sour in his mouth. “I need more than just ground fighting. But since you’re afraid I can’t handle it, I’ve been training myself.”
“So all this, because you think disobeying my direct orders will prove yourself to me?” Bruce says, then sighs and rubs his face, like just looking at Tim is tiring. “You’ve put me in a real Catch-22 here, Tim.”
“A what?”
“Catch-22,” Bruce repeats wearily, and clasps his hands on his desk. “Nevermind. It’s from a book. It just means a paradox.”
“I know what it is,” Tim says. “But you’re the one who created it, not me. I want to be Robin, Bruce. I know I’m not what you wanted. But you need someone, and I’m here. I’ll give you everything I have.”
“I don’t want everything you have,” Bruce stresses, shaking his head. “One Robin has already given his lifeblood. I’m not going to let that happen to another.”
“You won’t have to,” Tim corrects. “Teach me how to fight, and I’ll stay by your side forever. I won’t leave you, Bruce; I promise.”
A muscle stands in Bruce’s throat when he closes his eyes. “You don’t choose when you die, Tim.”
Tim leans over the desk, fingers splayed inches from Bruce’s.“Remember, when you were explaining Themis to me in the Hall? You said you met her. A bunch of Greek mythology is real or based off something real, isn’t it? So you must believe in the Fates?”
“You’re changing the subject.”
Tim pounds the flat of his hand against Bruce’s desk. “No, I’m not. Just answer me.”
Bruce sighs, crosses his arms. “I have met the god of Justice. The Fates don’t seem so far-fetched.”
“So life must be a spool, right? Going on and on and on. Such a thin, fragile thread. It could snag on anything. But we’re a rope, you and me.” Tim crosses his fingers together. He tries to smile. “I’m not going anywhere without you.”
“Tim—”
“You’re right,” Tim adds quickly. “We don’t choose when we die. But we might as well give the Fates a run for their money.”
“You are young,” Bruce replies, tendons in his hands raised as he struggles to keep them flat. “You don’t understand what death means yet. It’s not a metaphor. It’s a real, tangible thing you can hold in your arms, and you don’t want know how light it is.”
He looks at Tim the way he first looked at Tim, the way he’s always looked at Tim, like a ghost he hasn’t yet met.
“That’s my entire point,” Tim replies. “I’ve seen a dead person, Bruce. I know what ghosts they leave behind, and I’m not going to just sit back and watch you become one of them. I can’t.”
Bruce leans back, face to the ceiling. He waves Tim out.
Tim doesn’t go out.
“I won’t leave you, Bruce,” he repeats. “If you won’t train me to be Robin, then I’ll train to be something else.”
Bruce’s head snaps forward, shoulders rising into a hard line. He’s neither Bruce Wayne nor Batman, but some maskless mix with steel blue eyes and a firework shrapnel scar in his cheek and he is a man and he is a shadow and he is a nightmare leaning on a ledge.
“Is that a threat?” he says, the first searching jab.
“It’s the truth,” Tim promises, the right hand that follows back.
A bitter March has turned into a sobbing April loath to turn over to a damp May. The rain pours down in torrents, gushing down the insides of street curbs before gurgling into the sewer drains. Tim’s shoes are thoroughly soaked, and his now splint-free hand aches inside of his sweatshirt sleeve. He waits at the payphone on Monarch, a convenience store’s smiley face plastic bag hanging from two fingers. There’s a box of Hostess CupCakes sticking out of it. He waits fifteen minutes before opening up the box, and less than fifteen seconds after unwrapping a cake from the plastic before Helmet Guy appears like a red spectre in the corner of his eye. Tim puts the cake in his mouth and throws another to him.
“f*ck, I love these things,” Helmet Guy says, sidling up beside him. He leans against the metal phone box, back to the left of Tim. They eat in a comfortable silence. Well, Tim does. Helmet Guy just tosses the cupcake between his hands. Tim licks all of the creme inside of his.
“So,” Helmet Guy finally starts, while Tim is crumpling his wrapper and stuffing it in the plastic bag. “Haven’t seen you in a while.”
Tim wipes chocolate crumbs on his pants. “You were right. About the concussion. And the hand. It wasn’t as bad as it could have been, but my dad wasn’t happy about it. I got to stop wearing my splint like, two days ago, and it’s like I’m a baby who’s just learned to walk.” He snorts. “He’s watching me all the time. I think he even got a baby monitor. I’m tempted to just roll over and fart, just to see what he does.”
Helmet Guy laughs. “That’s why I like you.” He jerks his head back in Tim’s direction. “So how’d you get out tonight?”
“Hopefully he doesn’t baby monitor the bathroom,” Tim says, with a one-shoulder shrug. “Climbed out the window.”
“Classic,” Helmet Guy remarks appreciatively.
“Yeah. He probably knew I was gone before I even got on the bus here, but I figure I’ve got an hour or so before he hunts me down.”
“That’s quite a bit of time.”
“I left a few false trails,” Tim says proudly, thinking of the shoes he’s tied up and tossed on the electric lines on the way here, the trackers Tim’s found in their tongues blinking furiously. “If he wants me microchipped, I might as well make it hard for him.”
“Sneaky little bastard,” Helmet Guy says, nudging his shoulder. “So what’re you gonna do while you’re free, jailbird? Ready to get back in another fight?”
Tim sighs, draws himself up. “No. That last one took it out of me.”
“Really?” Helmet Guy asks, surprised. He laughs, puts a hand on Tim’s head. “So you’re going to stop coming around here, is that right? I was wondering how many hits to the head it would take to knock a brain cell loose.”
“I’m out of the game for now,” Tim restates, “because I can’t risk breaking my hand when the end-of-term is in, like, three weeks. Doing homework with a splint is a bitch.”
Helmet Guy twists his head to look back at him. Tim opens his hand in a what did you expect? gesture.
“I’m learning out here,” he explains.
“Maybe. But your brother’s a cop.” Helmet Guy mimes a punch. “Why don’t you get him to teach you a few moves? Might be easier to do with all the apparent baby monitoring.”
“My brother’s a cop, but he doesn’t live in Gotham,” Tim replies. “He’s got an entire other life in Blüdhaven. He only visits once a week, and he and my dad…they don’t always get along.”
Helmet Guy drops his arms. His helmet tilts, and though it’s the same blank face, Tim gets the sense he’s being sized up.
“You know,” Helmet Guy says. “You talk about your dad a lot.”
Tim’s mouth twitches. “We’ve been having problems.”
“Yeah, I’m no stranger to daddy issues.” Helmet Guy fully turns to face him. “You’ve told me he’s overprotective. But what else is he like?”
Tim shrugs.
“I’m just saying,” the man continues. “You obviously have some things to work out with him, and now you just told me your brother does, too. And I’m starting to think that maybe these issues are maybe just issue, singular. And that the issue is. You know.” He rolls his hands over one another. “Your actual dad.”
“I mean,” Tim begins, “he’s a big part of it. But not all of it.”
“Okay,” Helmet Guy says. “Okay, then, but answer me honestly. Does your dad treat you well?”
Tim says nothing. He stares at Helmet Guy, words gone.
“I don’t want to bring up anything difficult,” Helmet Guy says slowly. “But you originally told me you were out here to help him.” He raises his hands. “Beats me how moonlight streetfights are the way to do that, but I’m the last person to question it.” He lowers one hand, doesn’t touch Tim but lets his jacket brush his arm. “It just sounds like you’d tear yourself apart to help your dad. But from what you’re telling me now, I’m not so sure he’d do the same for you.”
Tim shakes himself. “I—I don’t—”
“You told me you have a home somewhere. Somewhere safe?”
“Yes,” Tim finally blurts. “Yes.” Two of them, actually, since he’s been staying in Wayne Manor for the last four weeks.
Helmet Guy crosses his arms. “You took some time to answer.”
“Yeah, because I was surprised .” Tim scoffs, shakes his head. “You—you don’t know him. My dad. The things he would do for the people he loves. The things he’s already done….he would lay down his life for this city.”
“But would he lay down his life for you?” Helmet Guy presses.
“That’s—”
“Don’t defend him,” Helmet Guy cuts in fiercely. “You’re always on the defensive, and that’s your problem. Let somebody else take the hit.”
Tim clenches his fists. “It’s different.”
“Different how?”
Because Bruce was chosen. Dick and Jason were chosen. And Tim’s chosen himself, just because he knows who they all really are.
“I’m not saying I’m not worth it,” he says stiffly. “But that crap about him laying down his life for me? I would never let it get there.”
“That doesn’t matter,” Helmet Guy says. “The enemy is anybody who’s going to get you killed, no matter which side he is on.”
Something sparks in the back of Tim’s mind. It’s fuzzy and electric, like Helmet Guy has given him a static shock.
“What’d you say?” he asks.
Helmet Guy wags a finger at him, and instead of repeating himself, continues with, “ And don’t you forget that, because the longer you remember it, the longer you might live. It’s just a quote. From a book. But you should keep it in mind. If you decide you’ve had enough of your dad, you know where to find me. Alright?”
“Alright,” Tim agrees, because he doesn’t come up with another answer to satisfy him with. “But my dad’s fine, really. He’s had a hard time of it. He’s just difficult sometimes.”
“Yeah, well, we all have hard times,” Helmet Guy huffs, but doesn’t push any farther. “So I’m still going to find you out here, aren’t I? Playing Pavlov’s dog?”
“Hey,” Tim jokes. “Some of us work through our problems getting punched in the face. Others of us become lazy vigilantes that criticize people who get punched in the face.”
Helmet Guy laughs, and some of the seriousness from before lifts. “Point taken. Alright, kid, fine. I’ll let you run around my streets—”
“Your streets?”
“Yes, my streets, but I’m not going to let you through that sh*t right hook anymore.” He holds his fists up to his face, mimes a game of fisticuffs.
The fuzziness in Tim’s head reaches a higher frequency, like he’s turning the knob of the radio and the static’s about to turn to song.
“I’m going to teach you how to hold your own,” Helmet Guy says.
Tim scoffs, rolling his eyes. “Yeah, no thanks, condom head. You could be a creep.”
“What, would it help if I unmasked myself? Should I unmask my secret vigilante identity to a random little twerp just because he asked?”
“I didn’t ask,” Tim says. “But. Yeah. Let’s see the face. I bet it’s super ugly.”
“I’ll have you know I’m devilishly handsome under here.”
“I wouldn’t know. Because you always have the helmet on your head, like a helmet-wearing weirdo.”
“You know what? Fine. I’ll prove it to you.” And Tim doesn’t even have the time to move before Helmet Guy slides off his helmet.
The static shock turns into a live wire. The song bursts forth.
Tim sees the pale underside of a throat first, then a square chin. There are faded freckles over a crooked line of a twice-broken nose, a jagged white nick in the right eyebrow matching the new angry red one in Tim’s…and suddenly, despite the white streak in his dark hair, there’s a young man’s face grinning down at him. He looks only a few years younger than Dick.
“You can call me Hood,” he says, and his voice is different without the helmet distorting it. Younger. Lighter. When Tim stares wide-eyed at him, he cooes, “Aw, did you think I wouldn’t be wearing a second mask?” He taps the side of the domino across his eyes. “Sorry, kid. That’s vigilante sh*t 101. But at least now you can see.” He unwraps the cupcake Tim threw him and takes an obnoxiously large bite, mumbles around it, “Obviously, this is the face of heaven’s favorite angel.”
Yeah, Tim thinks dumbly. Because you’re supposed to be dead.
Helmet Guy’s— Hood’s— face is one Tim has photographed countless times over the years, a face Tim has mostly ever seen in the wide geometric strip of the domino. Tim has snapped that flicker of white lenses over and over as Robin looks at Batman, leaps from a rooftop, lunges from the shadows. This is the face that hangs up on Bruce’s blank white walls in the Hall of Justice. This is the face of Gotham’s unspeakable ghost.
“Jason,” he breathes.
Hood rears back. “What?”
This face also belongs to the vigilante Bruce and Dick are actively chasing. The face that cut the hands off no less than six drug dealers, disappeared Tim doesn’t know however many more. This is a face that, for some reason, doesn’t want to be seen.
Tim shuts his eyes fast. He sees red, yellow, and green among the lingering imprint of Hood’s white domino lenses.
Don’t think, he tells himself. In a fight, he’s not supposed to think. He’s just supposed to know.
“Jason,” he repeats, his voice a little high. He opens his eyes, stares into the faint shadows of Hood’s behind the domino. He takes a deep breath, holds out his hand the way others draw a weapon. “I mean—my name.
“It’s Jason.”
