calumma - cassiopeia721 - Batman (2024)

Chapter 1: A Day in the Life

Chapter Text

Tim stares out of the bus window. His view is hazy, the glass in front of him smeared with a thick layer of grease and grime that evidently even last night’s hard, pounding rain hadn’t been able cut through. Beyond it, the streets roll past, the buildings swaddled in a thick cloak of fog and pollution. The sun might be up, but most of the city isn’t. Tim wouldn’t be either if it was up to him.

He doesn’t understand why this board meeting is so goddamn early. You would think that board members, with all of their wealth and status, would be the sort of people who wake up at eleven o’clock at the earliest, begin their day with a leisurely cup of good black coffee and a newspaper, take all of their meetings in the afternoon, and then head back home again in time for a late lunch at three.

Then again, Tim supposes, it isn’t like these board members are doing so well. Kierny Tech is on its last legs, and everyone knows it—from the big investment firms that have pulled out one by one, to the retail investors currently gleefully cashing in on their shorts, to the receptionist at the front desk, who Tim saw job hunting on Indeed during his last visit.

So yeah. It isn’t really that much of a surprise that the board decided to hold this emergency meeting at nine o’clock on a Monday morning. But that doesn’t mean Tim is happy about it. Especially because unlike the board members, who mostly live in the Diamond District, his commute involves crossing the entire city and switching bus lines three times. He had to leave Drake Manor at six, and he slept past his alarm, so he hasn’t even had his coffee yet. It’s all enough that Tim is feeling maybe just a little more vindictive than usual about how all of this is going to end for Kierny Tech.

The bus shudders to a halt, rusted hinges groaning as the doors slide open. Tim shoves himself out of his seat, slinging his backpack over one shoulder. As it is, the doors almost close on the hem of his jeans. Bus drivers in Gotham are always so impatient. Tim resists the urge to flip the driver the bird, knowing they won’t notice it anyways.

Tim hitches his backpack further onto his shoulder and turns his collar up against the damp drizzle that’s slipping down around him. At least Kierny Tech isn’t far from the bus stop. He weaves his way between temp workers in wrinkled suits trying to make it to work on time, resisting the urge to duck into the Starbucks just across the street. Mom will want to hear about every little detail of the meeting, every last desperate flail of Kierny Tech’s death throes, and that means he can’t be late.

Tim stops a block away and pulls out his phone. Shielding it with his jacket as best he can, he activates the coding he set up the night before. The camera feed will be looped for the next five minutes. He tucks his phone away and pulls the door open.

Samantha, the receptionist, glances up at the sound of the door closing, but then her eyes slide smoothly over Tim, and after a moment, she returns to typing away at her laptop. The black leather couches across the room from her are covered with a thin layer of dust, and the monstera settled in the corner looks like it’s about to die of thirst. After a moment, she rolls her swivel chair back from her desk, stretches, and pulls out a pack of gum, even though Tim knows she’s been reprimanded for that before.

Tim snags a piece as he waits. Cherry. Samantha has good taste. Tim will miss her, even though he barely knows her, and she doesn’t know him at all. Seeing her before all of these meetings has been almost like having a coworker.

Some people are observant enough that they notice Tim opening doors or using elevators—but even when they do, they never notice Tim. Still, Mom always tells him to be cautious, so Tim waits until one of the board members arrives and then follows them up and in. He has to walk close on their heels to avoid getting whacked in the face by the door as they shut it behind them.

The board members all settle into their chairs, faces dour as they arrange their papers and straighten the cuffs of their suits. Tim sits down on the floor in the corner, tucks his legs comfortably under him, and pulls out his laptop. He’s just opened a new document when the meeting begins.

Tim’s fingers race across the keyboard. Even using shorthand, it’s hard to capture all of the little details his mom will want—like the way Fitzclarence flinches when Bohun mentions the government contract Drake Industries recently won, or how Weiss’ fingers twitch like he wants to strangle Spencer when she suggests they continue on with their product launch even though Drake Industries just undercut them by announcing their own, competing product a few days ago.

By the time the board meeting finally limps to a close, Tim’s hands are cramped and aching, and several of the board members are looking like they’re considering taking up drinking. Two high blotches of color stain the apples of Spencer’s cheeks—Weiss got pretty harsh with her after her third stupid suggestion, his patience for Kierny Tech’s local nepotism hire quickly running out now that they’re getting down to the wire—and Fitzclarence’s flopped back in his chair, one hand covering his eyes.

“I don’t know how Drake does it,” he groans. “Every move we like, it’s like he’s already there to counter it.”

Tim smiles. I’m how she does it, he thinks.

Eventually the board members shuffle out, heads bent and shoulders slumped. Tim strides cheerfully along beside them. He’s in a much better mood now the meeting is over and his coffee’s nearly within reach. In fact, he’s so cheerful he would whistle if not for Fitzclarence’s unusually good ear.

Once, back when Tim was trailing Fitzclarence in order to try to see if he could find anything to use as blackmail, he took a fall nasty enough to make him cry out in pain. Fitzclarence turned and looked right at him, their eyes locked, a full-frontal gaze that up to that point, Tim had only gotten from his mom and one other person. Some strange combination of exhilaration and sheer panic tightened Tim’s chest, and his mouth opened like he was about to speak—and then Fitzclarence glanced away and rubbed the side of his head like he had a headache and muttered something about being confused, and that was it.

Still, it’s enough—especially combined with the fact that Fitzclarence didn’t have any dirt for Tim to dig up—that Tim feels a bit bad about the destruction of Kierny Tech. Not bad enough to stop it, though. Not when it’s what his mom has asked of him.

Tim follows Fitzclarence and Weiss out of the elevator. From this angle, it’s incredibly obvious that Samantha is scrolling through postings on Indeed on her laptop. She moves to jolt to attention, but then visibly decides halfway through that she doesn’t care after all. Fitzclarence opens his mouth, then equally visibly decides he doesn’t care either. Tim muffles a soft breath of a laugh into his sleeve.

He lingers in the waiting room for a little while even after the board members leave, happy to stay out of the rain while he places his coffee order. The advent of online ordering has been a huge boon for him. Tim shudders to remember the days of people cutting him in line by sheer virtue of not noticing him, of finally elbowing his way up to the counter only to have to keep snapping his fingers in the barista’s face just to make them notice he was there, of his order slipping out of the barista’s head before it was even all the way out of his mouth. Sometimes his powers are a boon, but equally as often they are just plain annoying.

By the time Tim gets to Starbucks, his order’s already there waiting for him on the counter. Humming cheerily to himself, he elbows his way back out through the throngs of under caffeinated, sleep-deprived office workers and onto the street.

His whole day stretches out ahead of him, astoundingly empty. He’s been laboring over the Kierny project for a while now, ever since a Kierny Tech researcher hit on a new basal cell cancer treatment that had them gaining just a little bit too much of the medical industry’s market cap. The project’s taken months and months of careful, subtle work—making it look like the best employees are embezzling money or cutting corners and getting the employees who actually are embezzlers or slackers promoted while their better peers are fired or scolded, fudging the results of their drug trials, even slipping shellfish into the CEO’s meal so he’d miss an important meeting with the Department of Defense.

Now, all that hard work is paying off—he’s laid out the dominos, and all that is left is to watch them fall. Vicki Vale will be releasing her exposé on Bohun’s affair with his secretary in a few days, and another batch of disgruntled soon-to-be-former employees are planning on handing in their resignations later this very morning. As soon as Kierny Tech declares bankruptcy, Drake Industries will swoop in and buy up the rights to that revolutionary new basal cell cancer treatment of theirs, and DI’s near-monopoly over the medical industry will once again reign supreme.

A monopoly, that is, with one big exception. Whenever the press asks Jack about it, Janet has him say that Drake Industries and Wayne Enterprises are pursuing different markets—Drake Industries producing experimental, cutting edge treatments for the desperate yet wildly rich, Wayne Enterprises furnishing the lower classes with their vaccines and insulin and fear toxin antidotes. Whenever Jack asks Janet about it, Janet says it’s good to not dominate the market too much, otherwise the Antitrust Division might start sniffing around. Only Tim knows the truth—that Wayne Enterprises stands untouched because Janet understands that Tim is unwilling to oppose the Waynes, and so doesn’t ask it of him.

It’s one of the reasons Tim loves his mother so much.

Tim follows a man in a puke-stained suit onto a bus headed north; he wants to celebrate Drake Industries’ new triumph over Kierny Tech, and his favorite pizzeria is in the Bowery. He’ll need to send Mom his briefing on the Kierny board meeting soon, since it’s already around 9 pm in Iran, but the bus ride’s long enough that it shouldn’t be a problem.

Tim unfolds his laptop and gets to work fleshing out his shorthand notes, taking quick sips of coffee in between paragraphs. One of the many little perks of his powers is that drivers never scold him for eating or drinking on the bus. Of course, half the time they close the door on him when he’s trying to get off at his stop, but, well. You win some, you lose some, right?

Tim signs off with a quick, “with love, your son Tim”. Before he sends the email off, he skims back over it, smiling a little to himself as he imagines the way his mom’s lips will twitch upwards in that private little smile of hers. She’ll probably be home soon—Mom likes to revel in her victories, and DI’s acquisition of the new basal cell cancer treatment will play better to the press if they can charm the reporters in person.

Tim’s fingers tremble a little against his laptop as he imagines sitting in his mother’s room, watching her choose what earrings best match her dress as he tells her the secrets of everyone she might brush elbows with. The smell of her lily perfume thick on her wrist as she runs her long nails through his hair.

Tim bites his lips, gives himself a little shake. He knows indulging in his anticipation too much will just set himself up for potential disappointment—it’s better to view the future neutrally and take what comes as it comes.

Outside, Gotham’s ever-present fog gathers until it’s so thick it forms little beads on the window. Tim absently tracks one droplet’s progress as it rolls down the glass, then gives the bus string a firm tug.

He manages to avoid getting caught in the doors this time, but it’s a near thing. The bus speeds off, the driver eager to return to a less dodgy area; Tim tugs his hood over his head and starts to walk.

Burnley’s not the worst neighborhood in Gotham, but it’s not the best, either. Most of it is controlled by Falcone, who’s greedy, but not sad*stic; he might be ruthless, but it’s in the pursuit of money, which means he’s interested in preserving order if not law. Families can scratch out a pretty good life here, once they learn to sleep through the occasional sound of shots and avoid doing anything that might interfere with Falcone’s operations.

The further northeast you go, the worse it gets. Falcone’s control frays; it isn’t worth it to him to stamp out the gangs that spring up in Newtown and the Bowery like mushrooms in the rain. None of them are ever big enough to truly threaten him and his operations, and there’s little there worth fighting over.

And, of course, Crime Alley is a total black hole.

Tim’s favorite pizzeria is a tiny little building tucked away in the shadow of a crumbling apartment complex that was condemned years ago. It doesn’t look like much, but damn is the food there good.

As Tim approaches, at first all he can see through the fog is the faint red glow of the neon “Alanzo’s Pizzeria” sign. Then he gets a little closer; golden light spills out of the grease-stained windows, the warm smell of baking pizza dough fills the area, and the sweet feeling of arriving at his home-away-from-home fills his chest. As Tim pulls the door open, the bell jingles overhead; a gruff voice calls, “I’ll be there in a moment!”

The restaurant's smaller than many rooms in Drake Manor, just big enough for a few scratched wooden tables with red leather barstools clustered around them. Stains and pockmarks dot the black-and-white linoleum tile floor. Tim slides onto his usual stool and kicks off from the floor, indulging himself in a moment of childish swivel-chair-glee.

Tim’s been going here for years, ever since he stumbled upon it in a hungry daze after a long night following Batman and Robin. Were he anyone else, he would be considered a real regular, the sort of person whose name and order the servers have memorized; the sort of person who’s given a free milkshake on their birthday, and who gets asked where they were when they don’t show up for a month or two.

Tim imagines how he would answer if Alanzo did ask. “I’ve been busy with a project for my mom,” he’d say. “It’s been keeping me downtown most days. Haven’t even been able to stop back at the Manor much; the commute takes too long, I can’t waste the time. So I’ve been crashing at work. Napping on couches and office chairs, you know.” He’d smile wryly and add, “been subsisting on mostly coffee and pastries, too. Gonna be real nice to have some real food again.”

Alanzo would clear his throat gruffly, flattered by the compliment but too stone-faced to show it outright. “You’ve been takin’ breaks, though, right? Haven’t just been working all the time?”

Tim would shrug modestly. “You know, some. When I can. I like to swing by the Iceberg Lounge, eat some of their hors d’oeuvres.” Listen to their gossip, too, although of course Tim wouldn’t be able to say that. Most of it is useless drivel, but occasionally he learns about something interesting—a socialite helping her son cheat in school, the new curator at Gotham Museum planning wildly insufficient security for the new cat-themed exhibit and no one notifying him because seeing him crash and burn will be funny, a new fad diet pill that Tim suspects uses one of Poison Ivy’s pollens.

Speaking of which, he needs to remember to do something about that. His best bet will probably be to get his hands on some and leave it in Robinson Park—he doesn’t think Ivy exactly approved this particular use of her work.

Anyway. Back to the theoretical conversation with Alanzo.

He would grumble disapprovingly about Tim spending time in the Iceberg Lounge since Tim’s underage, and Tim would have to reassure him that “no, I haven’t been drinking, I promise.” And then, just to lighten the mood and alleviate Alanzo’s worry, Tim would indulge in a bit of complaining.

“It hasn’t been so bad, really. The only thing is that there was an emergency meeting at work this morning at nine. If I’d known there was going to be a meeting, I wouldn’t have been in Bristol at all; I would have just stayed downtown and avoided the commute. But no,” Tim would sigh, shaking his head, “they had to make this decision at eleven pm the night before. They’re lucky I was awake to read their email.”

Awake combing through Weiss’ emails, more like. But again, Tim would never be able to share that.

Any further imaginary conversation is cut off by the door to the back room swinging open. Tim lifts his head, expecting to see Alanzo, but instead there’s someone completely unfamiliar—a skinny, gangly girl of maybe thirteen or fourteen, with muddy greenish eyes and box-dyed red hair. Tim stares, mouth hanging open. He knows he’s been gone a while, but Alanzo’s never had a server, not as long as Tim’s been eating here. Barely anyone ever buys pizza here, and anyways Alanzo prefers working alone. So why—

The teen clicks her tongue against her teeth and spins on her heel, heading back into the kitchen. Tim shoots to his feet, calling out at the last moment. “Hey, wait!” Even as he calls, he knows it’s a coin toss if the words will even register.

She must be one of the more observant sort, because she turns back around, her eyes skimming over the room. Tim scrambles out of his seat and hurries to the counter. “Hey—over here—I’d like to order two slices with Canadian bacon, onion, and artichoke hearts.”

By the way her brow furrows, she registers on some level that someone’s said something, but she keeps surveying the room, never glancing to where Tim stands right in front of her.

“Hey.” It’s useless. Talking to a brick wall would be easier and more productive. Tim sighs and watches as she rolls her eyes and returns to the kitchen. Once the door swings shut behind her, Tim clears his throat and yells as loudly as he can, “HEY, CAN I GET SOME PIZZA?”

His voice cracks halfway through. It’s a good thing no one will notice.

The next time the door swings open, it’s Alanzo. Thank f*ck.

His eyes skim over the room just as blindly as the teen’s had, but when Tim loudly clears his throat, his gaze settles somewhere at least vaguely in Tim’s vicinity.

“What do you want?”

“Two slices with Canadian bacon, onions, and artichoke hearts.”

Alanzo’s lips twist in a subtle grimace of disgust, but he nods. “Fine. That’ll be twenty bucks.”

Tim’s well aware that’s a pretty outrageous upcharge from the price Alanzo asks other customers, but it’s not like he can’t spare the money. He hands the cash over.

“You’re lucky I have the ingredients on hand,” Alanzo tells him over one shoulder, and then he returns to the kitchen.

Tim grins. It’s not luck. Coming up with increasingly convoluted schemes to make sure Alanzo’s is always stocked with Canadian bacon, onions, and artichoke hearts is one of his favorite stress relievers.

Tim sits back down on his stool and returns to spinning. In any other restaurant, he’d be tempted to head back into the kitchen to make sure they’re actually making his food right—his orders have a tendency to slip right out of people’s heads even as they’re speaking to him—but that’s never a problem at Alanzo’s.

That’s the main reason Alanzo’s is his favorite pizzeria. Alanzo is one of the most observant people he knows—a talent probably furthered by his long and checkered history with the mob. Alanzo doesn’t notice Tim if he’s quiet, his face never registers no matter what Tim does, and he’s pretty sure his object permanence in Alanzo’s memory has an expiration date of about thirty or forty minutes, but it’s enough that Alanzo can keep track of his order long enough to make it and has good enough awareness of his presence to consistently speak in his general direction.

And, of course, he makes delicious pizza. The whole place is a front—Alanzo has some sort of arrangement with Falcone where he can maintain relative independence in exchange for doing a little money-laundering on the side—which means he can shell out as much money as he wants on expensive ingredients. Plus, Alanzo has some real skill in pizza-making.

Most people in the neighborhood avoid such an obvious front. Not Tim. Considering the nature of his hobbies, mob connections are more a bonus than a deterrent.

The teen with the box-dyed hair from earlier exits the kitchen, two slices of pizza in hand. She shoots a cursory glance around the room and then turns for the door. As she strides back out, she calls, “Are you f*cking with me, old man? Is this some sort of hazing ritual? You remember that you were the one who offered me a job, right?”

“I don’t know how you’re missing him.” Alanzo emerges, balancing the plate with the pizza slices on one hand. Tim clears his throat quietly, and Alanzo slides the plate onto the table in front of him. “He’s right here.”

“Is this pizza place f*cking haunted?” the teen shouts from the kitchen.

“It’s not haunted. The only thing out of the ordinary is how bad your situational awareness is,” Alanzo returns dryly.

Tim stifles a laugh by taking a big bite of pizza.

The teen storms out of the kitchen, one hand fisted in heat-fried hair. “Then where is he?”

“Right here,” Tim says, right as Alanzo waves vaguely in his general direction.

The teen visibly does a double take. Her eyes latch onto a spot about four inches to the left of Tim’s face. “Uh… sorry, dude, I didn’t see you there.”

“I get that a lot,” Tim replies, but the teen’s gaze is already sliding away.

Tim’s about to ask Alanzo when he hired her when the bell jingles. They all turn to see a trio of musclebound men dressed in wifebeaters and cheap canvas jackets stepping inside, each of them moving like they’re trying to seem bigger than they are. One of them has a splintering baseball bat slung over his shoulder; another isn’t even trying to hide that he’s packing heat.

“Gianna,” Alanzo says lowly, “get back in the kitchen.”

Face sheet-white, Gianna scurries off obediently.

Tim takes another big bite of pizza and swivels around so he can survey the scene more easily. Alanzo seems to have forgotten about his presence; even when people manage to notice Tim, he tends to slip their mind as soon as there’s any sort of shock or distraction. And, of course, the would-be thugs haven’t realized he’s here at all.

All of which means that Tim can watch this confrontation up close, instead of having to eavesdrop from behind the kitchen door like Gianna is almost certainly doing.

“Alright, then,” Alanzo says, shifting on his feet in a way that Tim knows means he’s settling his weight so he’s more prepared for a fight. “What is it?”

The trio shuffles in a way that might be called awkward if they weren’t so hulking. Having Alanzo speak first has clearly messed with whatever little mental script they had for this interaction. Still, the one with the baseball bat squares his shoulders and pipes up.

“This neighborhood’s dangerous. Full of people who’d hold you up, steal your money, smash your windows.” He taps his baseball bat against one of the aforementioned windows meaningfully. “For a small fee, Mr. Ibanescu is willing to provide your business protection against all of that.” He smirks, revealing a gold tooth that gleams in the light like a winking star. “We’ll make sure none of that happens to you.”

The Ibanescus? Tim snorts into his pizza. They’re really getting too big for their britches. Last time he’d checked, they were still one of the dozen small time gangs scrambling to survive in the chaos of Crime Alley. And now they somehow think they’re prepared to expand outside it? Maybe Tim should take another look into Gotham’s drug trade, because clearly Dragos Ibanescu is smoking something interesting.

“Right,” Alanzo says. “Well, tell Mr. Ibanescu I’m not too worried about any of that. Falcone has a vested interest in keeping my pizzeria safe and sound. Any thugs who’d—how did you put it? Hold me up, steal my money, smash my windows?—would find themselves facing him and his.”

One of the men—the most intelligent of the trio, Tim figures—gulps, shifting uncomfortably on his feet. Unfortunately, being both the boldest and least intelligent of the group, Baseball Bat is undeterred. If anything, he seems to puff up even further.

“You’ll regret this,” he says. “Yeah, you’ll pay a price for your arrogance, pizdă. Soon you’ll be wishing you’d taken our offer while you still could.”

And with those words, he strides out, slamming the door behind him. The other two follow after him.

For a moment, Alanzo just watches them leave, looking very old and world-weary. And then he lets out a long sigh that seems to come from the very depths of his belly and goes back into the kitchen.

Tim watches him go, something uncomfortable churning in his own belly. Honestly, the Ibanescus’ enforcers hadn’t struck him as any real threat until now. He hadn’t felt worried looking at them because of how handily he’s seen Alanzo handle all of the various upstarts who’ve tried to shake him down for cash over the years, but… if Alanzo’s worried, maybe he should be, too.

Tim’s just trying to figure out why Alanzo is worried when his watch lets out a little chirp. Shoving the remains of his pizza aside, Tim wipes his hands off on his pants and digs out his laptop. His mom’s generally pretty busy when she’s abroad—if she’s replying tonight and not waiting for tomorrow, it’s almost certainly because something time sensitive came up.

When Tim pulls up the email, the first thing he’s greeted by is her ticket confirmation. She and Jack are catching the first red eye flight they could get their hands on; they should be touching down in Archie Goodwin International Airport by Thursday six am.

Happiness bubbles up in Tim’s chest like champagne. He knew Mom would be flying in soon, but he hadn’t realized it would be this soon. Thursday! He’ll be seeing Mom Thursday!

Grinning, Tim scrolls to read the rest of the email. Mom says they’re going to be going to the Saturday night opening of the “Ancient Cat Lovers: Artistic Representations of Cats During the Song Dynasty” exhibit at the Gotham Museum of Antiquities; arriving two days early should allow them to recover from jet lag in time to be their best for the actual event. And, of course, Tim will need that time to make sure they have everything they need to make sure their return to Gotham’s social scene goes well.

Mom closes the email with some commentary on the more humorous aspects of the Kierny Tech board members’ responses to their impending doom, and a quick reminder to make sure that the Manor is ready for them.

Two days isn’t very long to gather information, let alone manage all the minutia of readying the Manor, but Tim can’t be upset, not when he’s going to get to see his mom so soon. Nibbling absently on the leftover crusts of his pizza, Tim starts drafting emails to the Drakes’ usual cleaners, landscapers, and personal shoppers. It’s going to be so good to see Mom!

Chapter 2: Errands & Visits

Chapter Text

One of the many little things that makes Tim’s work so interesting is all of the homes he visits.

Tim sees a lot of Gotham. He explores parts of the city that most people don’t even realize exist, spending his time in the auxiliary extensions of Gotham that, like the churning gears hidden under a watch face, are what ensures all of the visible bits actually function. The back rooms in cafés and stores and restaurants, the roofs of every building from the Clock Tower to the Cathedral, the inside vaults of Gotham’s biggest banks and the deepest bowels of City Hall, the cafeterias and board rooms and janitor’s closets of every company in Gotham worth a damn—Tim’s seen them all. And yet, he somehow still finds homes uniquely fascinating.

He thinks it’s because people’s homes serve as extensions of themselves. Most of the other places he visits—the back rooms and janitor’s closets and inside vaults—are, if not public spaces, still places that are built to cater to a fairly broad group of people. They’re generic, engineered more to serve a purpose than an individual; not any specific janitor but rather the role of a janitor, whose only real requirement for the space is that it be somewhere they can store cleaning supplies.

Totally different from people’s homes, which are as far from generic as you can get; their personalities seem to imbue the very walls. Even homes which don’t look lived in tell Tim something; the very absence of distinguishing marks is a mark in and of itself.

Sometimes when Tim is trying to understand someone, he’ll visit their living space just to look around—not even to rifle through their things for a hidden diary or a box of love letters or whatever, but rather to simply glance about and see, simply from the state of their home, who they are.

For instance, take the apartment Tim is currently breaking into. It’s in one of Diamond District’s newest high rise buildings, a hulking monstrosity of glass and steel that the Gotham Gazette called an “insult to our architectural history.” It’s close to the top but not quite there; instead it sits unhappily on the second highest floor, low enough that it’s not a penthouse, but also high enough that it’s clear the owner cares quite a bit about that sort of thing.

The interior is just as replete with glass and steel as the exterior of the building is. The kitchen counters are snow white marble; there’s no dust to be seen anywhere in the apartment. A spattering of carefully arranged plants dot the living room, and a reproduction of Piet Mondrian’s “Composition II in Red, Blue, and Yellow” hangs on the east wall. It’s perfectly centered, but upside down.

See? Tim doesn’t need to read through her diary to know that Celine Grieves is a status-seeking socialite who desperately tries, and fails, to maintain an aura of perfection. It’s practically written on the walls of her home.

He skirts his way around the Persian rug that Mom would be able to identify as a well-made dupe at a hundred feet and heads into Grieves’ vanity. He gropes around for the tiny knot on the inside of the top left drawer until the false bottom slides free; lifting the little black moleskine from within, Tim flips to the most recent page and begins skimming.

The gossip he’s gleaned just by listening in at the Iceberg Lounge is a good start, but most of it is pretty surface-level. Grieves doesn’t spread her net as widely as Tim might like, but in the areas she does pay attention to, she tends to dig up juicy little details that no one else seems to notice.

Of course, if Tim wanted really dirty secrets, he’d go straight to Penguin himself. But Penguin tends to use most of his information as leverage, so he’s very motivated to eliminate anyone using that same blackmail. As tough as Mom is, Tim doesn’t want to pit her against a full-blown Rogue. Besides, using the sort of blackmail Penguin has on hand in petty inter-socialite sparring seems a bit like bringing a fire hose to a water gun fight.

Tim is about to replace Grieves’ journal and head out when he spots something else lurking in the depths of the drawer—a plastic baggy containing a handful of pale pink ovular pills. Recognition pings in Tim’s mind. That looks a lot like the new diet pill he overheard a few women talking about in the Iceberg Lounge, the one that he suspects contains one of Ivy’s pollens.

He didn’t think to bring plastic bags of his own, but luckily, Grieves’ cupboards are well-stocked. Tim grabs a single pill and bags it, then tucks it away. After taking one last look around to make sure he’s left everything as it was when he arrived, he heads out.

It’s raining outside, a pissing drizzle that creeps under Tim’s collar and settles clammily against his skin. Grimacing, Tim sets his teeth and braces for a long, miserable walk. Most of the people in this area are rich enough to use taxis, not public transit, so the nearest bus stop is way too far from here.

If it weren’t for Tim’s f*cking powers, he could just use a taxis, too. But no, taxi drivers don’t notice him and are completely deaf to all of his attempts to hail them, because the universe hates him.

By the time he reaches the actual bus stop, Tim’s supposedly waterproof shoes are soaked through and he feels thoroughly disgruntled. At least the bus stop provides some cover—although it doesn’t count for much when he’s already spent as much time out in the rain as he has.

Watching one of the busses roll past him by without stopping, Tim seriously considers supervillainy. It’s not like any of the authorities would be able to thwart him and his evil plans, not when none of them can f*cking notice him. From the rookies to the detectives to the veterans to even the Police Commissioner himself, none of them can see him. No one to stop him, no one who could rein him in. How can you enforce the law on someone you can’t perceive?

Except…

The smell of popcorn thick in the air. Mom’s hand in his own. His shoulders still tingling with the phantom squeeze of Dick Grayson’s hug. Tim’s head swims with blurry, delirious delight; this is the best day ever.

They settle into their seats, Mom and Dad softly chattering as they wait for the show to start. Tim tries to interject with a question, but Dad talks right over him. Mom glances over at Tim, lifts her eyebrows a little. She wants Tim to speak up again, to try to assert himself; she says that as their heir, he needs to stand out instead of blend in. But it sometimes feels like blending in is the only thing Tim can do, whether he wants to or not. No matter how loud he speaks or how straight he stands, everyone seems to overlook him.

Tim turns back towards the stage, trying to ignore Mom’s frown. The show is about to start, and he doesn’t want to miss a moment of it.

Like a dream sliding into a nightmare, everything is glittering and glorious until it’s not. The lines snap and although Mom grabs his shoulders and cradles his head against her chest, Tim can’t tear his eyes away. The Flying Graysons lay crumpled in a bloody heap on the stage, limbs askew; a lone form kneels beside them, tears rolling down his cheeks, mouth hanging open in unvoiced devastation.

And then a dark form sweeps down from above, cape whipping around it. The crowd gasps and falls silent; and yet above it all there is the high, thready scream of a child. Tim has to put his fingers against his throat to feel the vibration and know it’s him.

No one looks his way. No one sees him, even when he’s screaming like this.

Except—the dark form is turning, head unerring following the sound until those inhuman white eyes lock with Tim’s.

Someone is seeing him after all.

Tim’s borderline-cheerful grumbling misery deflates from him like helium from a popped balloon, replaced by a more settled, actual discontent. He doesn’t want to think about Batman. These days, he circles around thoughts of the Bats like cautious fingers skirting around a bruise.

Instead, he digs through his backpack for the cassette player he keeps on him for times like this. He isn’t willing to subject his laptop to rain, but cassette players are cheap enough it’s not a big deal if this one gets damaged.

Plus, he figured out a while ago that Gotham U has a lot of interesting cassette tapes just lying around, utterly unused. They’ve entertained him through many long, boring hours.

Shoving any lingering thoughts of Batman aside, Tim pops a “Learn Cantonese” cassette tape from the 1970s into his player and settles in to listen.

Robinson Park isn’t exactly easy to enter. Even before Poison Ivy took up residence, a thick iron fence with fierce iron spikes was built to separate the park from the neighborhoods it was supposedly meant to revitalize. Now, that same fence is covered in a dense layer of threatening-looking greenery; as a city kid, Tim can only recognize wild roses, poison oak, and stinging nettles, but he’s sure there are even worse plants buried in the mess of thorns and leaves.

Luckily, Tim doesn’t need to enter Robinson Park. Tim’s powers bend human senses around him, redirecting them around him; plants have their own senses, ones calibrated towards detecting the things most important to them. Senses that Tim’s powers don’t bend.

Tim flicks his lighter on and holds it right next to one of the leaves dangling off the fence. He’s careful not to actually burn it, even as he makes sure the plant will definitely register the heat. Once he’s counted to thirty, he flicks the lighter off again and gently balances the little baggy with the diet pill right on top of the leaf.

Pulling his hoodie a little farther down over his forehead, Tim slides the lighter back into his pocket and leaves at a brisk walk. He’s never checked if Poison Ivy’s connection to the Green allows her to register his presence the way her plants can, and frankly he doesn’t want to find out.

Out of all of the homes Tim visits, Selina Kyle’s apartment is one of his favorites.

It’s a cozy space, close but not cramped. Although Selina doesn’t keep any candles, numerous lamps light her space with a soft, golden glow. Her huge, cushy couch is covered in a variety of blankets, pillows, and quilts; a humidifier tucked away in the corner imbues the air with the soft scent of roses. Unsurprisingly, there’s a strong feline presence in the decor: cat-themed art hangs on the walls, several cat trees are scattered around the apartment, and the gauzy curtains that frame her windows have tiny paw-prints embroidered on their hem.

Her apartment is also (even more unsurprisingly) full of actual cats.

Practically as soon as Tim’s feet touch the floor, Otto bounds up to him and meows demandingly. Chuckling, Tim crouches down and obligingly starts to pet him. Just like plants are able to sense him even when humans can’t, animals are a lot better at perceiving him than people are—and cats seem to be even better than average.

Scooping Otto up and cradling his purring body against his chest, Tim toes off his shoes—no need to track dirt on Selina’s nice rug—and begins padding his way through the apartment. As he does, Julio walks over and starts sniffing Tim’s shoes, his ears twitching a little as he investigates where Tim’s been since he last visited.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the room, Hecate balances on the back of Selina’s couch, his little body curled in a perfect circle. As Tim approaches, he lifts his head from behind his tail, looks at Tim for a moment, and then blinks slowly and returns to his nap.

Tim can feel an involuntary smile pulling up the corners of his lips. God, he loves Selina’s cats. He would probably keep a few cats himself, but it really wouldn’t be fair to them—he spends way too much time out-and-about to look after even the most solitary pet, and anyways Drake Manor is too big to ever be entirely cat-proofed.

He sits down on the couch—making sure to maintain a respectful distance from Hecate, who likes his personal space—and settles Otto more comfortably on his lap. Otto stretches his paws out across Tim’s thighs, his entire being vibrating as he lets out a long, purring sigh of contentment. Once he’s sufficiently stretched out, he nudges his head under Tim’s fingers in a clear demand for more attention.

“You act like Selina never pets you,” Tim murmurs as he obediently starts stroking.

He’s surprised by how hoarse his voice sounds. He supposes he might have strained it yesterday, yelling for Gianna like that. Sometimes he’ll go days or even weeks without speaking; it stands to reason that suddenly shouting could be rough on his vocal cords.

Otto tips his head back; his eyes slip close as Tim scritches the soft fur under his chin. His purring is loud, unstuttering, completely smooth. Well-practiced, the purr of a cat who despite his complaints gets plenty of attention.

“I can’t stay long,” Tim tells him regretfully. “Selina’s Wednesday evening grocery trips only last so long.” Still, it’s hard not to savor Otto’s warm, precious weight where it rests again him. Something about it soothes the odd, burning tingles that seem to live underneath his skin, leaving him itchy and aching and weirdly restless.

As Tim rubs one of Otto’s silky ears, he finds himself thinking of his mom’s fingers combing through his hair, the smell of her lily perfume. A fine tremor runs through him.

Tim counts to 120, and then, in light of Otto’s clinginess, 150. Once he reaches 160, he gently lifts Otto from his lap and sets him back down on the couch. Shaking his hands to try to get some of the cat hair off his gloves, Tim heads over to Selina’s desk. Otto follows close behind; Tim has to walk carefully to avoid tripping over his twining body.

Like the rest of her apartment, Selina’s desk is a little cluttered, but still fairly tidy and clean. A half-drunk macchiato in a cream-colored ceramic tea cup sits atop a battered paperback with a broken spine; a silk scarf hangs over the back of her chair. Tim idly examines the pair of black pointe shoes, ribbons halfway sewn on, that sit under her drafting lamp; they must be for her upcoming role as the Black Swan. Tim’s heart squeezes as he notices that she’s carefully trapped the dangling needle under a glass cup so none of her cats can get at it.

More importantly, there’s a stack of papers spread out across the desk. Tim snaps a quick picture so he can make sure to put them back in their initial orientation, then starts sifting through them. Most of them are copies of the floorplan of the Gotham Museum of Antiquities; Selina’s spiky cursive fills the margins, detailing camera locations and shift changes and hidden tripwires.

There’s something kind of ironic about how Celine Grieves hides her petty gossip better than Catwoman hides her literal plans to rob a museum. Then again, Tim supposes Selina generally assumes people won’t be able to get past all of the protections she’d added to her apartment.

The corner of Tim’s lips twitch in a smug little smile. That most be true for most people, but not him.

Tim takes another series of photos, this time capturing all of the details of Catwoman’s plans. Even with the photos, anyone else would have trouble understanding the plan; Catwoman has her own shorthand, her own turns of phrase that makes sense to her and her alone. Tim, however, has years of experience understanding her; this is not the first time he’s done this, nor will it be his last.

Once he’s recorded everything, Tim goes back to his first photo and uses that as a reference so he can carefully return each sheet to exactly where it was before he got here.

A quick glance at the time shows that it’ll still be a while before Selina returns. Tim sits back down on the couch, patting the seat next to him so Otto will join him. This time, as Otto settles against his stomach, it’s Tim who lets out a happy little sigh.

He’ll need to leave soon, but for now, it’s just so nice to be touched, to be acknowledged. To be seen.

Even now, on a bus miles from Otto and heading even further away, Tim is still picking cat hair off of his clothes. He’ll have to put this outfit through the wash, and probably go over it with a hair roller too just to be safe; it’s better to err on the side of overly meticulous considering how much Mom hates cat hair.

Speaking of which. He needs to head back up to Bristol tonight; the Drakes may have people to do their cleaning, landscaping, and shopping, but they don’t always do it quite right. Tim needs to be there to make sure they bought Mom the right brand of hemp milk, to see that all of the windows got closed after the cleaners finished airing the Manor out, to double-check that the grass has been cut to the correct length.

(No Coca Cola this time, he reminds himself. Mom doesn’t like how much sugar Jack’s been consuming.)

…Tim would never actually say this to her face, but sometimes he wishes Mom would just hire a personal assistant to keep track of these sorts of things.

Shaking that ungrateful thought aside, Tim turns his thoughts back to his to-do list. More important than any of his other little tasks, Tim needs to collect all of the information he gathered today and organize it into an intuitive report that will allow Mom to be properly prepared to navigate the museum opening Saturday. He usually relays this sort of information to her verbally, but she’s expressed that it’s also helpful if there’s some sort of condensed visual component she can reference back to—maybe a spreadsheet or printout?

If Tim decides on a printout, he’ll need to pick up ink—and check if the Manor printer is even still working. If he needs to print something, he usually uses one of the printers at Gotham U, or makes a detour into the nearest office to borrow theirs; he has no idea what kind of state the Manor printer is in.

Tim groans, letting his head tip forward to rest against the cool glass of the bus window. He doesn’t want to think about this, doesn’t want to dwell on all ten thousand of the tiny moving pieces he needs to keep track of. He’s had a long day; he’s hungry and tired and even after petting Otto his skin is still begging for more warmth and weight.

One more little indulgence, one more night free to do whatever he likes. Tomorrow he’ll buckle down and fully dedicate himself to all of the work he needs to do for Mom—but tonight, he’s headed to Alanzo’s to get some Canadian bacon, onion, and artichoke pizza and learn more about Gianna.

The bus rolls to a stop; Tim slips out just before the doors close.

People often say that Gotham is a city that never sleeps. Tim finds that assessment to be a bit reductive. There are definitely parts of Gotham that are eternally wakeful—the nights in Diamond District are as full as glittering parties as the days are full of leisurely brunches and performative Pilates classes—but for the most part, it’s more that different parts of the city are busy at wildly different times.

For example, the nicer residential areas in Gotham tend to be pretty quiet at night; everyone hunkers down in their homes just in case a fight with a Rogue somehow spills over into their little slice of paradise and destroys their carefully tended peace and quiet. Meanwhile, the rougher neighborhoods have boisterous nights, but quiet days; even Gotham’s wildest hoodlums need time to sleep off their hangovers.

The Bowery is definitely the second sort of place. The sun hasn’t been down long, but the air is already tinged with the earthy, bitter smell of weed, and Tim can hear laughter echoing down a distant alley. As he walks, he passes a teen in a hoodie, overly-chewed cigarette dangling from his lips as he shakes his spray can and eyes a nearby wall thoughtfully; a handful of muscle cars speed past with their engines revving, presumably headed to a side show somewhere deeper in the East End.

As he walks, Tim imagines the life update he would give Alanzo if he really were a regular.

“So it turns out my mom’s gonna be back in town soon,” he’d say. “That’s why I left so abruptly yesterday.”

(Tim would have to add that last sentence because Alanzo would’ve noticed Tim leaving yesterday, and felt worried about it.)

“I mean,” Tim would continue, “I love my mom, right? It’s really great that I’m going to be able to see her again so soon. She hasn’t been in Gotham for what feels like ages, and I’d been hoping she’d come home, but now that she is, I’ve been weirdly… sort of annoyed? I keep on thinking about all of the things I have to do to make sure things are prepared for her and Jack and going, ‘why couldn’t you just hire a personal assistant to do this instead of me?’ And then I feel so ungrateful, because this is really the least I can do for her, but I still end up annoyed again a few hours later when I run into the next thing I have to do.”

“Sounds like you’re just being a normal teen,” Alanzo would respond. “Everyone gets annoyed with their parents sometimes. It’s understandable, especially considering you’re just coming off of a project that took you so long. Give it a few weeks; once you have more free time, you’ll feel a lot better.”

Tim would nod, thank him, and the serious atmosphere would disperse. Alanzo’s lips would tug up into a little smirk, and he would say, “Now when I was your age…” and launch into some wild story of his own teenage exploits.

God, Tim wishes they could actually talk.

Mouth watering a little at the thought of the pizza he’ll soon be eating, he rounds the last corner. But—there’s no neon red glow spilling through the smog, no smell of pizza dough baking, no golden light spilling out the front windows. Instead, a hastily constructed sign reading “CLOSED” in blocky Sharpie letters hangs on the inside of the door.

Tim’s gut churns. In the entire time he’s been coming here, Alanzo’s has never been closed. Something is definitely wrong.

Hand shooting into his backpack, Tim gropes around for his lockpicks. His hand’s just closed around them when he hears a familiar voice raised in frustration. Circling around the building, he sees that the back door’s open; Alanzo stands in the doorway, cigarette in one hand and phone clutched in the other.

Tim settles against the wall around the corner from Alanzo; he’s never actively tried to escape Alanzo’s notice, so he’s not sure how much Alanzo will perceive if he just walks right up. Honestly, even he probably wouldn’t notice Tim without him actively trying to stand out, but it’s better safe than sorry.

“—telling you that she’s not just dodging work,” Alanzo says, his voice strained. He sounds like he’s just barely biting back the urge to shout. “She’s a good kid. Diligent. She wouldn’t just skip out on work without saying something. And, need I remind you, we got hassled by some punks last night. Seems pretty clear whatever happened is their fault. They probably took my refusal out on her.”

The tinny voice on the other end of the line says something Tim can’t make out. Even though he can’t distinguish the words, the tone of condescension is clearly audible.

“Hey,” Alanzo cuts in, voice sharp. “Don’t give me that f*ckin’ runaround. You’re on my payroll, and I’m not talking about taxes. Falcone’s been paying you off, hasn’t he? He and I have an arrangement. That means you work for me, too.”

The person on the other end raises their voice enough that Tim can actually make out what they’re saying. “—not the deal! Whatever arrangement you and Falcone have, I never agreed to work for you. And I definitely didn’t sign up to waste police resources looking for some hooker who ran back to her pimp.”

Alanzo’s fist clenches so hard Tim can hear the cheap plastic of his phone case warping. “What, so you’ll look the other way when it’s the mob, but searching for a missing girl is too much work? A waste? Do you even hear yourself? I know Gotham’s cops are all dirty, but this a new low.”

“Don’t be such a hypocrite,” the cop scoffs. “You’re a part of the mob yourself. And you don’t know what it’s like being a cop here.”

“No, but I know you have a job you’re failing to do,” Alanzo snarls. “A teenage girl is missing, might be dead, and you’re just sitting on your ass. Here’s to hoping you grow a pair sometime soon.”

Alanzo hangs up, the movement vicious. For a moment, his face is frozen, twisted in a grimace of true rage—but then, inch by inch, he seems to collapse into himself, the anger sloughing off of him until all Tim can see is a tired old man, his face lined with fear and a deep despair.

A lump gathers thick in Tim’s throat. He’d barely had a chance to meet Gianna, but—she deserves better. Better than to be dismissed as just a hooker running back to her pimp, better than to be ignored and brushed aside by a dirty cop. She deserves to be looked for, and more than that, to be found.

Tim watches as Alanzo slowly sinks down onto the doorstep. His cigarette is burning down to nothing, but he doesn’t seem to notice. His gaze is distant, his eyes glassy. He looks like he’s already grieving, like he’s already given Gianna up for dead, and—Tim realizes with a terrible clench of his chest—it’s probably because he has.

What can Alanzo do, really? Tim’s always thought of him as being so tough, an impenetrable fortress of strength and self-reliance, but… he’s just a man. He’s strong, yes, but he’s also old—Tim’s heard him grumbling about his bad knee—and even setting that aside, he’s just one person. It’s not like he can fight all of the Ibanescus on his own, storm in and save Gianna all by himself.

In truth, most of his ability to survive in the Bowery so far can probably be chalked up to his relationship with Falcone, and whatever arrangement he has probably only covers his own protection and that of his pizzeria, otherwise he’d have just contacted Falcone directly. Or—or maybe he did, and Falcone refused to take action, too. That thought makes Tim’s fists clench. He knows Falcone’s a mob boss, that he only cares about making money, but—but, damn it all, can’t there be some justice in this f*cked-up world? Damn it, shouldn’t someone care?

Shouldn’t someone at least try to find her?

Chapter 3: Reunion

Chapter Text

Tim sees his mom and it’s as if his entire body squeezes in a perfect spasm of love and longing and something both greater and worse than joy.

He forces himself to hang back, drinking in all of her little details—the perfect coil of pale hair tucked elegantly into the nape of her neck, the soft clicking of her heels, the tasteful makeup that brings a hint of color to her milky face. Even straight from the airport, she’s as elegant as ever—pristine as untouched snow.

Jack is a different story. He looks exhausted to the point of almost appearing hungover—hair mussed, dark circles making the skin of his face sag unflatteringly, a hint of dried drool clinging to the corner of his mouth. Nor is his mood much better.

“—cannot believe what a mess the baggage claim was,” he’s currently grumbling. “I mean, seriously outrageous.” He opens the fridge, bending to peer inside. “They forgot the Coca Cola. The f*cking Coca Cola. Not even something hard to source, literally the Coca Cola. How hard is it to get competent help, really?”

“Now dear,” Mom says, “maybe it’s for the best. You wanted to cut back on your sugar, remember?”

“Right.” Jack pulls the bottle of vodka from where Tim stashed it at the bottom of the fridge and gives it a sardonic little wave. “Here you go; no sugar.” He pours himself a few fingers, throws them all in one swift gulp. “How’s that for a nightcap?”

He doesn’t bother putting the glass away when he leaves. Tim slips forward and tucks it into the dishwasher. There’s a ring of condensation on the marble; he wipes that away, too.

“Look at you. Always so responsible.” Mom sighs, shaking her head. “You definitely didn’t get that from Jack. I told him to sleep on the plane, but…” she clicks her tongue against her teeth. “Enough about him. Come, darling. I want to hear all about what I’ve missed.”

“I told you everything in my emails,” Tim says as they begin to climb the stairs together. It’s the beginning refrain of his favorite little call-and-response, the opening steps of one of the many dances he and his mom play out together.

“It’s different hearing it right from you,” Mom replies. “You of all people would know that. So much is conveyed by the tone of voice, the places where a speaker hesitates, the nuances of their body language…”

“I guess in that case there’s been a lot I’ve been missing out on, just reading your emails. You’d better tell me everything all over again, too.”

“I suppose I must,” Mom agrees.

There’s a moment of companionable silence. To someone else, to someone who doesn’t know her, Mom would look as coolly neutral as always—but Tim can see the warmth in her expression. He can see her love.

“I’ve missed you,” Mom says at last. “You know no one understands me like you do. No one sees who I really am, except you.” She runs the back of one knuckle along Tim’s cheek, a touch so gentle it feels as though it might just be a breeze. Tim sways into it, his very blood aching for that warmth. “It serves me well, of course. If people watched me the same way they watch Jack, how would I ever get any of the real work done? And yet…”

Jack’s in his room, probably already passed out, and even if he wasn’t, there’s no way he would stoop to listen to this quiet, softly worded conversation. It belongs to a world not his own, one that exists beneath his, that serves as the scaffolding which holds up the loud, bright facade that so dazzles and distracts him. And yet Mom still leans close to whisper in Tim’s ear, because even between the two of them their way is silence, is subtlety.

“Sometimes I wish they knew,” she tells him, words carried on what is little more than an exhaled breath. “Sometimes I wish that the name on their lips when they cursed whoever brought such ruin upon them was mine.” The corners of Mom’s lips curve up slightly, a smile as elusive as the Mona Lisa’s. “It’s natural to want a little recognition, isn’t it?”

Tim nods. He knows exactly what she means. Terrifying yet seductive, being seen is a prospect that he fears so deeply it shivers within him like an echo—and yet, he also desires it with an equally desperate hunger. Sometimes it feels as though he carries in his chest a great magnet that tries to pull at everyone around him, begging them to look at me, look at me, look at me—

Of course, none of them do. None of them but Mom.

“We’re chameleons, you and I,” Mom says, drawing back a little. Her voice is low and smooth and strong. “That is our gift and our curse.”

“Yes,” Tim says, more for the pleasure of speaking and knowing someone will hear him than because the words are really necessary. “It is.” His voice is thready and dry, a mere shadow compared to his mom’s. She listens anyways.

The corners of Mom’s eyes crinkle ever so slightly. She presses the back of her knuckles to Tim’s cheek once more, a gesture that in another person might have been a kiss.

And then she pulls back. “Enough of this,” she says. “We have work to do.”

The room they use for full, proper briefings is a small, unassuming space that holds little more than a table and a television screen. The walls are some bland shade of grayish-white—eggshell, maybe. Even the wooden floor is a dull hue. Probably the brightest, most colorful thing in the room in the room is the little couch, which is still just white.

Mom folds one leg over the other and neatly laces her fingers around her knee. Her eyes latch onto him, calm and expectant.

Tim gives himself a single moment to just breathe, to savor the weight of her gaze, and then he turns on the TV and hands Mom the printout he prepared for her.

“This presentation will be divided into three parts: general happenings which have occurred in the time since you lasted visited Gotham, specific information relevant to the exhibit opening at Gotham Museum, and further updates on the takedown of Kierny Tech.” Tim begins.

He uses his clicker to navigate to the first slide and begins to run down all of the major events of the last few months. Tim doesn’t have as much about what the Rogues, gangs, and capes have been up to as he would like; considering how busy he was with Kierny Tech up until recently, and the limited time he had before this presentation, he had to prioritize white collar dealings within Gotham. He makes sure to tell Mom as much, adding that he plans to dive fully back into Rogue reconnaissance once he finishes tying up the last few loose ends on the Kierny project.

It feels a little strange to talk so much, but Mom’s warm attention makes it easier, and Tim lets himself stop to drink water as soon as his throat starts to get scratchy.

Once he knows Mom has the lay of the land, Tim moves onto the section that makes up the bulk of the presentation: Gotham Museum’s new exhibit. He begins by giving a rundown of all of the new gossip he’s been able to glean regarding notable museum-goers, and then transitions into the really interesting part of the presentation.

“Now,” Tim says, the corners of his lips lifting, “this may be shocking, but Catwoman is planning to burgle this cat-themed exhibit.”

“Certainly a surprise to me,” Mom quips back.

“The security for this exhibit is pretty abysmal,” Tim continues. He taps the clicker, pulling up a photo of one of the floorplans Selina Kyle had annotated. “In fact, I’m not sure it would keep out a toddler hunting for candy. Most of the people involved with the museum are aware of this, but are neglecting to tell the new curator because, well, he’s an out-of-towner.”

Mom laughs softly, a single exhaled breath between faintly curved lips that no one except Tim would even recognize as a laugh.

“If you really want to display your knowledge, here are some specific vulnerabilities that any reasonably observant person could notice on their own.” He taps a couple of points on the screen. “There are cameras here, here, and here, but they’re cheap, low quality; there was a recently a scandal regarding this brand’s security, but I suppose the curator either didn’t hear, or doesn’t think it’s worth shelling out the money to replace them. Additionally, none of their fields of view cover this—” he taps the clicker, pulling up the relevant blueprints, “—skylight, or even these clerestory windows, presumably because the curator believes them to be too small and difficult to access to be of any relevance.”

“Those were the clerestory windows Catwoman used to enter the museum two heists ago, yes?” Mom asks.

Tim nods. “Yup. Like I said, an out-of-towner.” He waits a moment to see if she has any more questions, then continues. “Putting the issues with the windows and cameras aside, there’s more broadly just a certain… lack in the security. It’s clear the curator is more concerned with keeping costs down than actually thinking through how someone might try to burgle the museum. One of the most visible manifestations of this is the limited number of security guards that will be on duty. The curator also elected to turn off the Tutamen system the museum bought last year because,” his lips twitch, “it’s too expensive to operate.”

Mom laughs again, cants her head a little to one side as she eyes him thoughtfully. “So,” she asks, “what do you think? Is it still a heist worth watching?”

Tim smiles back at her. “It’s always a pleasure to see Catwoman at work, no matter how easy her task.”

“Alright then,” Mom tells him. “Have fun, and be careful; don’t let the abysmal security make you complacent.”

Tim nods. It’s a needless reminder; even when he’s just visiting apartments, he almost always wears gloves and a beanie. Besides, even if he did leave behind some fingerprint or strand of hair, it wouldn’t really matter; Tim’s not on any records. Back when he and Mom first settled on this arrangement of theirs, one of Tim’s earliest projects was stealing his own birth certificate from the New Jersey Office of Vital Records.

Tim doesn’t mind, though. It’s kind of sweet to have his mom worrying about him like this.

With the other parts of the presentation out of the way, Tim can get into the fun part: rehashing all of the highlights of Kierny Tech’s long fall. Mom’s heard all of this before—or rather, read it in Tim’s email updates—but she’s happy to relive it again.

Once he reaches the end of the presentation, Tim puts the clicker back where it belongs and settles down on the couch next to Mom. She lets him curl into her as she tells her own stories, long nails gently brushing through his hair as she recounts all of the artifacts she and Jack were able to first unbury and then finesse out of the country. Tim’s eyes slowly drift shut, lulled to sleep by the cadence of her voice.

“Sleep well, my chameleon,” Mom tells him softly. “You’ve earned it.”

They get ready together, Mom shimmying into a sleek designer gown made of thousands of overlapping scale-shaped panels while Tim checks the contents of his backpack.

They ride to the museum together, too. Mom chatters with Jack, laughing the high, empty laugh she uses on everyone except Tim as Jack speculates about future digs they might go on. Tim watches the window and savors the syrupy-smoothness of the limo’s suspension; after months of riding on Gotham’s buses, it’s like being ferried around in a carriage drawn by angels.

Mom asks for a brief stop a few blocks away, claiming she needs to touch up her makeup. While she reapplies already impeccable eyeliner, Tim cracks the door open and slips out. Mom’s eyes crinkle in a subtle smile; she waves goodbye with a little flick of her fingers, hand angled down behind her Hermès bag so that Jack can’t see it.

Tim smiles back, dipping his head in a slight nod.

The rain strokes his face with cool, questing fingers. He takes in a big gulp of the damp air. It’s a relief not to have to endure Jack’s bragging any longer; he doesn’t know how Mom puts up with it.

Right now, at the museum entrance, elegant socialites will be unfolding themselves from expensive black cars with lines as sleek as the seams on a custom suit. The camera lights will flash, haloing them in the glow of Gotham’s focused attention. They’ll all look sharp and glossy and clean, not a single hair out of place. And yet even in that glittering moment, there will be the shadow of darkness.

The fibers of the red carpet will crumple under the crushing press of stiletto heels and grow progressively more and more grimey with rainwater. Beyond the camera’s glare, Gotham’s mob bosses will slink in, pockets full of bloody money waiting to be washed clean in the holy radiance of high culture. And behind every perfect photo, there will be a hidden scandal, carefully kept off the yellow pages by the judicious application of money and influence.

Tim doesn’t need to be there to see it to know it’s happening. Later, he’ll piece together the most important events of the night from a combination of his mom’s reporting and the gossip he gathers from the usual sources—but ultimately, none of it will be surprising. Corruption beats in Gotham’s black blood, the heartbeat that keeps this filthy little city running.

Even now, Mom will be starting her work—exchanging little quips with the reporters circling her, smiling at the other society wives, reading the mood of the room around her like an open book.

As Mom starts her work, so Tim starts his.

It takes some scrambling, but he manages to get onto the top of the museum’s roof without too many scrapes. Catwoman’s already there, delicately picking the lock of the skylight. Tim settles just behind her right shoulder, crouching silently on his heels as he watches the deft movement of her hands.

It’s funny; Tim’s never been able to talk to anyone except his mom about his powers, but he assumes that if he did, they would assume that in this sort of situation, even his unique abilities wouldn’t be able to hide him. After all, this is one of the times Catwoman’s senses are at their most attuned for anything out of the ordinary, right?

The truth is, the chance of Catwoman noticing his presence here is so negligible as to be nonexistent. Catwoman’s senses being so tightly wound actually makes her less likely to notice Tim—she’ll be picking up on every stray leaf blowing across the roof, every strange settling of the building beneath her, every little detail that might actually be a sign of oncoming danger. In this endless parade of false positives, even more obvious indications of Tim’s presence will easily slip beneath her radar.

No, it’s the times when Tim’s visiting someone’s home that he’s most in danger of being noticed. People know their homes intimately—every little noise the floorboards and walls make, where each object should be, the very taste of the air. That’s why Tim is careful to only ever visit people’s homes when they’re out and about—it’s too much of a risk otherwise.

The way he figures, his powers allow him to blend into mental texture. All of the little details of the world that the mind picks up on—they’re the camouflage he hides behind. When there’s a lot of texture, it’s easier for him to blend in. But when the texture is familiar, it’s easier to pick him out. It’s like the difference between noticing a minor imperfection in the wallpaper of a hotel room you’re visiting, as opposed to picking up on a new scratch in the paint of your childhood bedroom.

Of course, none of this explains why some people can notice Tim more than others. If more mental texture makes Tim harder to see, then why does the observant nature of people like Alanzo and Fitzclarence allow them to notice Tim more? Shouldn’t all the details they pick up on overwhelm them, like it does Catwoman?

And what about his mom, who’s always been able to notice him even as his dad is seemingly unable to grasp his very existence? What makes her so different from every other person he encounters?

The truth is, despite all of Tim’s theorizing—or maybe because of all of his theorizing—he has no idea how his powers actually work. In fact, sometimes it feels like the more he tries to understand them, the less sense they make.

Maybe that’s why Batman hates metas in Gotham.

Anyway, the important thing is that Catwoman’s never noticed Tim joining her on a heist and she never will. Once when Tim was younger he got grazed by a ricocheting bullet while following her and she didn’t even blink at his started yelp of pain. There’s absolutely no way the noise of his footfalls or the scruff of his sneakers against the tiles will reveal him.

Catwoman grapples gracefully down through the now-open skylight. Tim follows her far more clumsily a moment later.

Catwoman pads silently across the museum floor. She’s already hacked all of the cameras, and the security guards, stretched thin due to understaffing, are currently patrolling elsewhere. There’s no one here to stop her.

Except—there’s a figure separating itself from the shadows.

A graceful, dark silhouette, the only details visible the points of its long upright ears, the white lenses of its eyes, the—the golden bat spread across its chest.

Tim’s heart thuds unevenly against his ribcage.

Has the figure already seen Tim? Maybe if he stays very, very still, he’ll be able to pass unnoticed.

Maybe.

The gold outline on the figure’s chest gleams mockingly back at him.

“I thought I might see you here,” Catwoman says, voice low and smooth and amused. “I’ve been waiting to meet you. I like to welcome other women to the scene, when I can.”

The figure doesn’t respond; she’s unmoving, no expression visible beneath her full-face mask. Implacable. Can she sense Tim? Is she standing so still because even now her senses are straining to grasp onto his presence, to reveal him? Despite his best efforts, Tim shudders.

He distantly recognizes that the fact that he didn’t know about this new Bat before now, even though she’s apparently been around long enough for Catwoman to be waiting to meet her, is deeply worrying. At the same time though, that worry is locked up deep within him, behind the much more immediate and consuming terror that she’s going to see him, oh god what if she’s looking at him right now, she’s going to see him because the Bats can always see him and oh god how did he let this happen—

Catwoman’s winding down whatever it was that she was saying—Tim couldn’t make out a word, all in of it went in one ear and out the other—and she turns to the figure, clearly waiting for some sort of response. Maybe—maybe if the figure hasn’t noticed Tim, this can be the moment that he escapes. She’ll be distracted answering, so maybe—maybe—if he can just make himself move—

The figure tilts her chin in Tim’s direction in clear question, as if to say, what’s he doing here?

Catwoman turns—Tim can feel his pulse picking up, which is stupid because it doesn’t matter if Catwoman can see him or not, not when the figure already can—and skims the space with a glance, gaze sliding over Tim as easily as if he was just a blank stretch of wall. “What?”

The figure hesitates, seeming uncertain—yes, it was just your imagination, forget that you even noticed anything amiss at all, there’s nothing here to see, only a blank wall and the empty air in front of it—but Catwoman gently encourages her, and then—

The figure turns her head and points directly at Tim. Her eyes, turned into blank white expanses by the lenses of her suit, bore into him. He doesn’t have to see the pupils to know she’s staring, seeing him, seeing him—

His legs abruptly unlock and suddenly he’s running, hurdling through the dimly lit halls of the dusty museum storage, not sure where he’s going but it doesn’t matter because he needs to get away, away somewhere safe where no one can find him, no one can notice him, no one can see him—

He bursts into the brightly light, glittering world of the museum proper, momentum sending him skidding into the sea of Givenchy and Armani and Dior before he can stop himself. It’s all he can do to try to draw into himself as much as he can, to duck his head and plead powers that have never listened to him a day in his life, don’t fail me again, don’t let them see me, let me get through this without being caught—

There. Standing near one of the windows, angled so that the light will catch her hair just right, so that it turns to palest silver in her audience’s eyes. Mom. There has never been a more welcome sight.

Tim plunges toward her like a drowning man floundering his way towards the shore. Mom will make it better. Mom will know what to do. Mom will—

Frantically wave her hand behind her back, sharp flicks of her wrist that command, get away.

Right. How stupid. Tim can’t just come up to her like this—Mom’s in public. No one knows that the Drakes have a son; even though the people around Mom won’t notice Tim, they would notice her talking to thin air. Presumably being thought insane is detrimental in high society. Tim wouldn’t really know.

And—a jolt of real fear shoots through his chest, followed by a nasty sticky guilt that settles deep in his belly like tar—if the figure from earlier, the new vigilante, manages to follow Tim, and he leads her right to Mom… Tim would never forgive himself.

He turns on his heel, lets the crowd close back around like water closing over a swimmer’s head. The guests move smoothly around him, instinctively avoiding him even as their eyes slip right over him—planets whose orbits are shifted by the unknown gravity of a distant satellite. It soothes him. This is how things should be, this is how his powers are supposed to work. Protecting him, hiding him, not revealing him at the very moment when he needs them most.

Tim knows the layout of the museum like the back of his hand; he could find his way to the men’s restroom in his sleep. Once inside, he tucks himself in one of the stalls, locks the door behind him, and pulls out his phone.

Somehow, staring down at his messages trying to figure out how to explain what just happened to his mom makes it all feel so much more real. She—she saw him. That’s such a big, unbelievable thing that—that for a moment he just stands there, mind as much an empty expanse as the vigilante’s white lenses had been.

And then, slowly other realizations begin to hit like second and third waves of bombs during an air raid. She didn’t just see him, she spotted him following Catwoman—he wasn’t quite caught red handed, but only just. And—she was there to see how Catwoman didn’t see him.

Which means there’s a new Bat-affiliated vigilante who knows that Tim’s running around following Catwoman on her heists, unable to be seen by her.

Give it two weeks and Batman will be on the hunt for invisible thieves, he’s sure of it.

And the worst f*cking thing is that he might actually catch Tim.

f*ck. f*ck.

Well. It’s not like there’s anything Tim can do about any of that right now. Right now, all he can do is update his mom, and hope to God she’ll be able to figure out some way out of this.

It takes a long time for Tim to compose a message, and even longer to make himself send it. Once he does, he leans his head against the door of the stall, trying to fix his uneven, shallow breathing. Mom will come up with something, he’s sure of it. Maybe she’ll have him leave the country. Take him along with her on one of her trips, have him dig up blackmail on stubborn customs officials and investigate the headquarters of foreign companies.

It’s a nice thought.

Tim’s phone chimes quietly. His fingers shake as he unlocks it.

Go home. Take an indirect route.

She doesn’t have to add “we’ll talk later”. There’s no need to state the obvious.

Tim lets out a long, slow breath. Having a task settles him a little. There’s no room for panic, not when he needs to figure out a way to get out of here as subtly and unnoticeably as possible and then come up with a series of maneuvers that would be able to shake even a Bat.

And yet, even as Tim slips out the door, there’s still a part of him that’s thinking about the figure’s stark white gaze.

Chapter 4: The Choice

Chapter Text

Gotham University burbles with beginning-of-the-year jitters. The first semester’s only just starting now, so the students are mostly just settling in, reading the syllabi their professors have emailed them and buying their books and trying to figure out where all of their classes will be. It’s early enough in the year that their optimism and excitement hasn’t been crushed by the weight of their workload yet; they’re still trying to dress nicely, to look cool so that their classmates will want to befriend them. By finals week, even the most popular students will be slouching around in day-old sweatpants with their hair pulled back in greasy buns. And that’s if there isn’t a Rogue attack before then.

Tim weaves easily through the clumps of slow-moving students, following a cluster of girls into the campus bookstore. Once inside, he pulls a crumpled list out of his back pocket and starts picking his way through the shelves. He’s not on any of the mailing lists, but it wasn’t too hard to be a bit of hacking and figure out what books he needs for the classes he’s interested in.

Some of these prices are genuinely outrageous. Tim’s glad he doesn’t have to pay; one more little perk of his powers.

He leaves with a huge stack of books in hand. Psychology, biology, chemistry, as well as upper level Russian, Italian, and Mandarin—and that’s not even counting the programming or principles of photography classes he’s got his eye on too, neither of which require textbooks.

It would be an outrageous course load for any student, some 25 credits worth of work. The kind of course load that leads to a Professor Crane-style breakdown.

But it’s not like that for Tim. He’s not enrolled, so technically he’s taking zero credits. He can skip classes as much as he like; he doesn’t have to turn in any assignments; in fact, he can simply stop bothering with any class that no longer interests him. He actually plans to circle around, heading to the lecture of whichever of the classes seems most appealing on any given day. Not necessarily the most efficient or comprehensive way to learn, but it’s not like Tim is taking finals, either.

He’ll probably end up skipping a lot of the lectures for his language classes, honestly. Mom always insists that he take some—something about the importance of immersion-based learning—which would be understandable, except, well. Tim gets plenty of language immersion, from actual native speakers, when he’s following them around in his downtime.

Sure, a class is good for helping build foundational knowledge, but he has that foundational knowledge, and has had it for years. Gotham U lectures aren’t going to help him understand the exact definitions of the various slang, expletives, and threats used by Gotham’s mobsters, goons, and gangs. Tim’s had more success with his own method of on-the-job notetaking followed by judicious Googling.

Anyway, half the language options offered at Gotham U don’t line up with what’s actually spoken in Gotham. They teach Mandarin, even though Cantonese is much more common in Chinatown. They teach Russian even though the Russian mob actually has a relatively minimal foothold compared to the much more successful Odessa Mob. And even though they teach Spanish, it’s the type of Spanish spoken in Spain, not Latin American Spanish.

Plus, that’s not even considering the languages they simply don’t teach at all—like Romanian.

Tim hadn’t really bothered with Romanian in the past—the Ibanescus are known for their dogfighting rings more than anything, so it’d never seemed worth it, but…

Inch by inch, Alanzo seems to collapse into himself, the anger sloughing off of him until all Tim can see is a tired old man, his face lined with fear and a deep despair.

It’s stupid. It’s really, really f*cking stupid.

Tim tries not to get directly involved in happenings in Gotham—despite his powers, he doesn’t have any real training, just what he could scrape together from following people who actually know what they’re doing around and lurking in Gotham’s various gyms and dojos. He knows all too well that when it comes to martial arts, there’s no real substitute for proper, hands-on teaching—hands-on teaching that Tim will never be able to get.

Besides, even if he was trained, that’d be no guarantee of success. Alanzo is actually properly trained, has literal years of experience, and even he recognizes the futility of fighting the Ibanescus on this. Tim may have been able to stay in one piece so far—but a lot of that has been down to his powers, and his powers rely on him staying out of the way and giving them the space to do their job.

Anyways, even with his powers, Tim’s been injured before for sticking his nose too deep in others people’s business—there was the bullet that grazed him while he was following Catwoman, and the time he got clipped by a stray batarang and had to bite down on his own lips so hard he broke skin to avoid crying out, and even that terrible night he caught a dose of fear dose… nothing that motivates you to always make sure you have a rebreather and a few spares in your backpack like treading through all of your worst nightmares, alone, with no one able to hear your screams.

And, on top of all of that, if there was any time that, more than ever, Tim should not be doing stupid, risky sh*t, it’s right now.

There is an actual f*cking vigilante on his ass. Tim could get busted for corporate espionage and stalking and who knows what else at any given time. Plus, that’s not even touching on the whole "being a metahuman in Gotham" side of things.

Mom told him to keep his head down. She told him to focus on polishing up his skills, to take advantage of this opportunity to really buckle down and learn from all of the classes he’d usually be too busy to actually go to. She told him to not go anywhere an ordinary person wouldn’t be able to until this all blows over. She told him that because he isn’t on any records, all he has to do is just be patient, and the Bats will forget about him eventually.

She told him all of that, and hasn’t spoken to him since.

Tim tells himself that it doesn’t bother him. Tells himself that it’s just because she’s busy. Tells himself that he doesn’t need her attention anyways.

Mom isn’t looking at him. He’s standing right by her but she isn’t looking at him—doesn’t seem to have noticed him at all. A cold spear of fear lodges itself in his belly. What if she can’t notice him anymore? He has no idea how his powers work—who’s to say that everything will stay constant? That he won’t just wake up one day to find his mom’s eyes slipping over him like everyone else’s?

No. Tim forces himself to take a deep, slow breath. He has to trust that she can see him, she’s just choosing not to.

After all, he reminds himself, she’s done it before.

Tim just needs to do as Mom says, and she’ll look at him again. She will.

To do anything else would be just plain stupidity.

“This class will be primarily composed of discussion,” the professor says in Italian. “Throughout the semester, we’ll be reading and discussing various notable Italian texts, as well as watching several Italian films. There will be a few written assignments, but not too many.” He smiles. “You can think of this class as a sort of book club in Italian.”

The students smile back, relieved that at least one class of theirs will be comparatively easy. Tim just cushions his face in his hands and groans.

“This is a difficult class, one where any mistakes you make can have serious consequences.” The chemistry professor sets his mouth in a grim line. “That bit in the syllabus about working together is not just for show. It’s not because I want you all to hold hands and sing Kumbaya, or because I hope you take advantage of this opportunity to socialize and make friends. It’s because in this class, you need to be double checking each other’s work, making sure you’re all doing everything correctly. Do you understand?”

“Yes, professor,” the class choruses back.

“People think of photography as being objective, but that is by no means true.” The photography professor paces the room, his keen eyes sweeping over them with a sharp, discerning gaze. Discerning of everyone but Tim, that is.

“Every time you pick up your camera, you’re making decisions—decisions that impact the way the viewers will perceive your subject. The negative space, the balance, the interplay of light and shadows… all of that influences the viewer.”

He turns crisply on his heel and begins another circle of the room. “And, of course, more than that, the very act of what you choose to photograph is subjective. After all, you decide who is worthy of being recorded. Who gets to be seen? Who is invisible?”

While waiting for his Mandarin professor to arrive, Tim pulls up the Gotham missing persons database. Not because he’s going back on his promise to Mom; he’s just curious, that’s all.

Gianna’s not in it. But that’s not such a surprise, is it?

It’s the end of the day. Campus is nearly empty; at this point, even the last stragglers are starting to clear out and head back to dorms or apartments. And yet Tim lingers.

He doesn’t want to go home. Not when he knows Mom won’t be looking his way, not when no amount of logic and reasoning will prevent his stomach from twisting with the fear that she’ll never see him again.

So he just won’t. It’s not like there’s anything from the Manor he particularly needs; he carries his basic necessities around with him in his backpack. He can just pick one of the tons of abandoned little nooks and crannies in Gotham U and hole up there for a while. There’s plenty of food in the cafeteria, and he can use the showers in the dorms or by the locker rooms to keep clean. Anything else he needs, he’ll easily be able to buy from one of the local convenience stores—or, if worst comes to worst, grab from the Manor when Mom’s out.

Tim should go get on that—should start deciding on the most convenient place to hole up, should start scouting out blankets and pillows to make a little nest with, should start doing all of the things that help with settling in for a proper stay somewhere. But instead he just sits, staring out the foggy window and watching one last student trudge towards the bus station, head bent over their glowing phone.

The world seems distant, far away. Tim feels frigid, so cold he’s shivering, even as his skin is clammy with sweat. His limbs feel like they have lead weights tied to them, although his head is so light that it’s as if it’s a balloon on a too-long string, bobbing and blowing in the breeze.

Tim tries to turn his face into his pillow so that he’ll feel less dizzy, but the motion just makes the swaying of the room that much worse. Nausea rises in his throat, and he has to swallow several times to avoid throwing up. It hurts: his mouth is so dry that his lips are cracking and bleeding.

He really needs to get some water, but the thought of getting up makes him want to cry. He should have brought a whole jug over, back when he was feeling well enough that he could do things other than just lay in his bed and suffer.

Tim squeezes his eyes shut, hoping that not being able to see the room swimming around him will make him feel a bit better. But it just makes the way his head is wobbling like a bobblehead doll that much more noticeable.

Tim’s gorge rises, and he’s vomiting before he can stop himself, stomach contracting like a snake squeezing itself around prey, acid burning his throat and sinking, stinging, into the cracked chasms of his lips.

He pries his aching eyes open. That’s not even vomit staining his bedsheets, just bile. Pure bile, thick enough that it’s like syrup—even his vomit is dehydrated. He hasn’t eaten anything in… in who even knows how long, and he can’t remember when it was that he drank the last of the water in the cup on his bedside table.

A distant alarm bell rings in his mind. People can die from dehydration, a soft voice reminds him. Vomiting dehydrates the body, and dehydration makes you dizzy, and dizziness just made him vomit…

I might actually die from this.

I might die from this, and no one will even notice.

Mom is off in… on one of her trips, somewhere. There’s no one else here, and even if there was, they wouldn’t notice him. Tim could scream at the top of his lungs and absolutely no one would come. If he does die, how long will it take for someone to even find him? Will his powers remain in death, obscure the smell and hide his body? Or will they unravel like the rest of him, finally letting him be seen, if only in death?

His eyes prick hotly but no tears come. There isn’t the water in his body for tears.

Tim gives himself a minute to draw in a long, bracing breath, and then he forces himself to roll off his bed. He’s too exhausted to catch himself properly, so he just has to grimace as his elbows and shins bang painfully against the hardwood. The world is spinning around him so quickly he can hardly see; he focuses on breathing, on not throwing up, until it slows to a more reasonable whirl.

Everything hurts. He’s so tired. He just wants his mom.

Tim makes himself start crawling.

There’s a couple standing in front of the book Tim wants to check out. Faces bent together, eyes lit up with each other’s light.

“I could look at you forever,” one of them tells the other.

Tim’s grabbing lunch from the cafeteria when he catches a flash of crimson in the corner of his eye. Even knowing it’s not Gianna, he still turns.

“The Looking Glass Self is a concept coined by sociologist Charles Hortoon Cooley,” the professor tells them. “Essentially, it refers to the phenomenon by which individuals base their self perception around others’ reactions or presumed reactions to them. The ‘Looking Glass’ in this case refers to the people around them—according to Cooley, people use those around them as ‘mirrors’ through which to perceive themselves.”

And what happens when no one reacts to you? Tim wonders. What happens when you look in the mirror and all you see is empty air?

There aren’t any Romanian classes at Gotham U, but there are books on learning Romanian.

It’s a week into the semester and Tim’s already skipping classes, failing to do the readings or even take a stab at any of the assignments. He hasn’t been to a lecture in days.

It’s fine. It’s not like anyone will notice.

When Tim was really little, Mom would try to teach him to stand out. She wanted him to be like Jack—visible, noticeable, the kind of person that eyes catch on. In fact, she wanted him to be more than that—to be someone who could wield their presence like a knife, deftly manipulating how they’re perceived, bending everyone around them to their will with the gravitational force of their sheer being.

Eventually, she gave up. No amount of coaching could make Tim the sort of person that other people notice, not when his powers were fighting back every step of the way.

So she stopped paying so much attention to him. She began to ignore him except when she needed him to do something—whether that was clean his room or make her some tea or watch the Manor while she and Jack were off on a trip.

And then one day she found his photos of Batman and Robin.

How would Alanzo react, if he knew that Tim had these powers and was choosing not to use them to help Gianna?

His lips would curl in disgust, the same way they curled when he was talking to that cop.

“What,” he’d say, “you have these powers and you just use them to make an already-rich company even richer?”

“It’s my mom’s company,” Tim would protest. “Of course I’m going to help out my mom!”

“Yeah, yeah,” Alanzo would reply. “We all have obligations to our families. But why can’t you help out your mom and Gianna?”

“Because my mom told me not to! There’s a—there’s a vigilante who saw me, and if I start making big waves, they’ll find me. They’ll find me, and—I’m breaking the law here, to help my mom, and both of us would get in trouble, and—Batman hates metahumans in Gotham, he only tolerates the ones who don’t use their powers, and I definitely don’t fit into that category—”

“They’d find you,” Alanzo would snort, “even with your superpowers that make you impossible to find? The superpowers that mean I, who you’ve been seeing something like two or three times a month for what, the last four or five years, don’t know that you even f*cking exist most of the time? Those powers?”

Tim would falter, abruptly uncertain. “I—”

“Look, kid,” Alanzo would press on relentlessly. “Wanting to help your mom is understandable. Your mom not wanting you to take risks is understandable—no good parent would want you to place yourself in danger unnecessarily. But you have the power here to help Gianna. No one cares about her except us—she’s invisible to the rest of ‘em. Are you really gonna leave her out to dry just because you’re a little scared? When you don’t even have to take any big risks, not if you’re clever and careful?”

Tim would swallow as Alanzo’s harsh, yet true, words slowly sank in. And then he’d slowly nod, heart pounding rapidly in his chest even as determination filled him. “Yeah,” he’d say. “Yeah, you’re right.”

“After all, you decide who is worthy of being recorded. Who gets to be seen? Who is invisible?”

Tim slips out into the night, backpack slung over one shoulder.

Chapter 5: Stakeout

Chapter Text

Tim still isn’t planning on trying to rescue Gianna himself. Even if he could justify taking that kind of risk, he simply doesn’t have the skill to be able to actually pull it off successfully.

No, he’s thinking of a different scheme entirely, a nuclear option he’s had in his back pocket for years but never deployed: leaking information to the police.

Tim’s leaked information to a number of parties over the years. Honestly, the sheer volume of material he’s given to various journalists is such that it could populate a good year or two’s worth of weekly newspapers in its own right; at this point, he should honestly be on the Gotham Gazette’s payroll. Plus, he’s brought more than a few environmental issues to Poison Ivy’s attention, especially when it was one of Drake Industries’ rivals behind the crime. He’s even set Penguin up with a couple of dribs and drabs of gossip once or twice when it suited his whims.

So why not the cops? He’s leaked information to so many people, why not them too? After all, surely they’d be able and willing to help people in the way most of the people he leaks information to aren’t.

That’s what Tim used to think, too—back when he was a naïve little kid.

He’d call from the nearest payphone, speaking rapidly to try to hold the dispatcher’s attention long enough to get whoever’d been mugged or beaten or even raped some help. But time after time, the dispatcher’s attention would waver, or they’d take so long getting the little details down that the person Tim was trying to help would bleed out right there while he was on the phone, or maybe they’d say they were sending someone and no one would arrive. Once Tim was really lucky and a cop did arrive but all they did was scold the victim, who’d just gotten the sh*t beaten out of him, for panhandling.

So Tim realized it was pointless to try to contact cops—at least ordinary ones. Everyone in Gotham knew the GCPD was full of corruption; the only person you could be sure about the Commissioner, and, well…

He worked with Batman. If Commissioner Gordon started getting suspicious tips, he’d mention it to his good friend the terrifying vigilante, and Batman would decide to investigate for his good friend the commissioner’s safety, and one thing would lead to another, and little Timmy would be in a cell in the Batcave wondering how his mother was going to know what all of the socialites were planning to wear to the next gala.

And thus: no police.

That’s been Tim’s modus operandi for years. Even when it’s made his work significantly more difficult, he’s carefully maneuvered things around so he could go about his business without coming into contact with either Commissioner Gordon or any vigilantes. After all, doing so has kept him and his mom safe, and that’s worth any added burden.

This is different, though. As far as Tim can tell, there is no other way to save Gianna except through either the Commissioner or Batman. There are no strings Tim can pull here to make any of the other big players intervene on Gianna’s behalf; Gianna isn’t affiliated with any gangs who might act in her best interest, and she doesn’t check any of the boxes that can swing Gotham’s more anti-heroic Rogues towards the “heroic” side of the pendulum. She’s just another one of the thousands of children that Gotham swallows up, just another wax face melting away under this city’s harsh fire.

That’s where Tim comes in. It’s his job to make rescuing her look easy, like a feel-good milk run that a do-gooder should snap up quick just for the sheer sake of being able to check another life saved off the to-do list. In a city where there are too many people in need for even the most dedicated vigilantes to save them all, he’s here to be the one who’ll make sure she’s one of the lucky few.

The first step in that process is figuring out exactly where she’s being held.

Gotham city is huge, full of abandoned warehouses and crumbling tunnels and all manner of other boltholes; you could search the whole thing every night for years and still only uncover a fraction of its secrets. Luckily, Tim has a better strategy than that for figuring out where Gianna is.

“I have to confess that I always thought of your condition as a problem to be solved more than anything,” Mom tells him. “But…” she taps a photograph, tracing one long, almond-shaped nail along the flowing lines of Robin’s cape. “This proves me wrong.”

She lifts one hand to cradle Tim’s cheek; he shudders into the touch. “Your abilities may have their downsides, but this proves that if you are clever and careful and resourceful, their benefits far outweigh their costs. If you are able to leverage them correctly, well… I think you will be able to achieve things that no one else can.”

There’s a drunk man lingering at the bus stop, stinking of whiskey and stale sweat. The smell may be unpleasant, but Tim is still glad to see him; catching a bus would be near-impossible without him.

A bus pulls up and the man stumbles on, Tim following closely on his heels. There’s just time to take a seat before it peels off.

The line ends in Burnley; the drivers’ union categorically refuses to venture any further into the East End than that. The bus pulls into the last stop. Tim gets out and starts walking.

He’s not sure exactly where the Ibanescus’ home base is, but he has a pretty good idea of the general area it’s located in. He may have technically never surveilled them, but that’s more due to lack of interest than anything else. After all, they’re universally regarded as small fry.

It’s depressing to think about how even “small fry” can ruin a young girl’s life.

Out here, it’s just another typical East End night. A couple of streetwalkers linger at the corner of an intersection with only one working light; as Tim watches, one bends her head to light her cigarette with her coworker’s light. Music is playing somewhere close. He skirts around a puddle of blood so fresh it hasn’t even started to dry yet.

The deeper Tim goes into the East End, the more run-down everything gets. More and more of the buildings he passes have broken or boarded over windows. Trash piles up in huge, rotting clumps, and the very sidewalk starts to crack under his feet; the city authorities have long since given up trying to maintain anything around here. Tags cover the crumbling walls in overlapping layers, proof of all of the gangs that have tried and failed to rule Crime Alley.

There’s a smoke shop right on the next corner—a surprisingly nice looking place, with dark purple tiled walling and a big neon sign advertising their wares. Of course, the sign is flickering like it’s on its last legs, most of the purple tiles are cratered with bullet holes, and there are metal bars in the windows, but Tim would expect nothing less of any business operating in this area.

He ducks inside, the bell jingling overhead. That’s another ubiquitous feature of any business in the East End, let alone Crime Alley; no one around here wants to be caught unawares. Too bad no amount of bells can negate his powers.

There are few functioning businesses in Crime Alley, and none of them have connections to Falcone allowing them to stay independent. All of them must be paying protection money to some group or another; if Tim’s got his territories straight, this one is forking over cash to the Ibanescus. All he needs to do is tug on that thread, and the whole knot will unravel; he’ll be able to track Gianna or her body down in no time.

…the problem, Tim realizes as he hovers uncertainly by the door, is he has no idea how to tug on that thread. It’s not like he can just ask the owners of the smoke shop if they pay protection money to the Ibanescus, and where they’re headquartered at if so—even if he could make them pay attention enough to hear his questions, there’s no way they’d answer.

Sometimes he really wishes his powers were based around reading minds instead of stealth. Then he’d have pretty much all of the same benefits, and none of the problems.

The Ibanescus are supposed to be providing protection, so possibly if Tim made it look like there was some sort of threat to the smoke shop, they’d send someone out—if only to protect their revenue stream. How would he do that, though—act like he was trying to rob the store? That could end up being pretty dangerous, even with his powers.

Theoretically he could pay one of Crime Alley’s many street kids to take on the risk for him, but that seems a little unethical even to him.

He glances around the store, hoping something will inspire him. Behind their protective bulletproof glass cases, neon-packaged vape cartridges, mint green menthol cigarette packages, and bags of THC gummies stare up at him. He’d bet good money meth, heroin, and other harder fare is available as well with a quick word to the cashier—who’s clearly assuming the person who rang the bell already left, considering the way he’s slouched back in his cheap swivel chair. Or maybe his ease has something to do with the flimsy printer paper sign warning, “CASHIER IS ARMED”.

They’re clearly new to Crime Alley if they think that needs to be stated. Although, of course, the very fact that they’re trying to operate a smoke shop in Crime Alley is already a pretty good indication that they’re an outsider. Natives know that the most successful dealers sell on street corners—it’s harder to get robbed when you’re always on the move.

Seeing the sign does give him an idea, though.

Tim walks up to the counter. He doesn’t bother to try to make his steps louder; it wouldn’t make a difference. He just knocks on the glass with his fist and clears his throat.

The cashier flinches, gaze skittering around wildly as they try to pin down the source of the noise. Tim graciously clears his throat again, and, when the cashier still doesn’t notice him, says, “Hey.”

The cashier blinks and turns his gaze on a spot about a foot and half above Tim’s head. “What?”

“I want protection—a guard dog, specifically. Do you know where I could buy one?”

The cashier scrubs one hand across the stumble on his chin. “I guess I do,” he says at last. “Yeah, I can think of somewhere you might be able to get one… if they’re selling.” He stretches out one palm, wiggles his fingers. Tim slaps a fiver into his hand. When he wiggles his fingers again, Tim gives him another ten bucks.

“Three blocks east and two blocks south, past the strip club with the hot pink lights, there’s an abandoned school. This one group that runs dogfights keeps their merchandise there.”

Tim nods. “Thanks.”

An abandoned school, he thinks as he heads out, the bell jingling above him. The Ibanescus really are moving up in the world.

The school may be abandoned, but the old chain link fence is still there—in fact, the Ibanescus have beefed it up with a roll of barbed wire unspooled along the top. Tim just circles around until he finds a spot where the dirt’s eroded enough that he can wriggle under.

The basketball court he crawls up onto is in nasty shape. The crumbling blacktop is more gray than black and covered in used syringes. There’s only one basket, and it’s missing the hoop, backboard, and net—in other words, everything that makes a basket a basket. It’s hard to see the school this place used to be in the ruins that remain.

The door’s locked, of course, but Tim never goes anywhere without his trusty lockpicks.

The lights are on; they glare down on the exact same cheap laminate flooring Gotham U uses. It makes Tim pause a split second, disconcerted, but he shakes it off and keeps moving, following the sound of distant voices.

The Ibanescus have refurbished one hallway’s lockers, turning them into a series of slipshod, painfully small kennels. Tim’s throat tightens, and he swallows as he tries to avoid looking at the dogs. If you can get the Bats to bust the Ibanescus for whatever they did to Gianna, they’ll take care of this, too, he tells himself.

He forces himself to walk a little further into the hallway. There’s a man standing in the corner, head bent over his phone and cigarette hanging from his mouth. As Tim watches, he lifts his gaze from his phone to take a cursory glance around the room, and—that’s one of the thugs from Alanzo’s. Baseball Bat. A wave of heat washes over Tim, blood pumping fast and hard under his skin and setting his hands to shaking.

Hurting him wouldn’t do anything, he reminds himself. Finding Gianna is the goal.

One of the doors opens, a woman stepping out, and for a moment Tim almost thinks—but no, her hair is long and dark and perfectly healthy instead of short and bright red and frizzy, her eyes hard brown where Gianna’s were—are—a murky hazel.

Snapping on a pair of cheap plastic gloves, she starts examining the dogs, movements as clinical as a foreman evaluating the product produced by the factory under their rule.

Swallowing back another bout of nausea, Tim slides down against the wall and settles in, cross-legged, to wait.

“I—I don’t know if my powers can do that. I don’t really know how my powers work at all,” Tim confesses quietly. “Maybe if I had some sort of—some sort of coaching, or someone who has experience with this sort of thing, who could help me out…”

Mom shakes her head. “It’s too dangerous. Your powers make you a prime target for exploitation; the likelihood that whoever we told about your abilities would try to leverage them for their own ends is too great.”

Tim hesitates, uncertain.

“Think about all of the corruption in Gotham’s foster system,” Mom tells him in a low, compelling voice. “All of the human trafficking, the child labor, the abuse and mistreatment in the service of a few more dollars in someone’s pocket. In the absence of meaningful protection, vulnerable children are exploited for every last bit of value that can be wrung out of them. And that’s just what happens to the ordinary ones.”

She leans forward, bending her neck so she can look Tim directly in his eyes. “Now imagine how much worse it is for children who are just as vulnerable, just as unprotected—arguably even more so, because the government that’s supposed to protect them views them as a threat more than anything—but with so much more to exploit.”

Tim swallows. “Alright,” he says softly. “I see your point.”

“Good.” Mom leans back again, rests her elbows on the arms of her chair. “I don’t mean to scare you, darling, or to pressure you. If you don’t think this is within your capabilities, just tell me, and I can work with that. I would rather fail to reach some of our goals than potentially put you in danger of being exploited.”

Warmth blossoms in Tim’s chest, spreading through his blood like ink in water. “No,” he says. “I can do it.”

Eventually, the hard-eyed woman leaves. Tim follows her as she walks through the scruffy remains of the football field to where she’s parked her nondescript little car. He waits until she’s unlocked and partially opened the door, then throws a stone so it lands loudly in a shrub behind her; that’s enough of a distraction that he can hurriedly wriggle into the backseat. The nice thing about paranoid people is when they hear something out of place, they’re often willing to stand still for a long time, listening intently and trying to figure out if they’re in danger. It makes his life a lot easier.

Hard Eyes eventually gives it up—probably deciding it was just some stray animal—and slides into the driver’s seat. Tim sits quietly as she drives, watching all of the street signs so he can follow this route again by foot.

The stone-throwing maneuver is a lot harder to manage from inside a car, so Tim waits until Hard Eyes leaves and then unlocks the car door from inside.

…they’re in front of an apartment complex. As Tim watches, Hard Eyes fiddles with her keys until she finds the right one; when she finally unlocks her door, she lets out a long, low, tired sigh and kicks off her shoes. She’s clearly done for the day; it’s visible in her posture, the slump of her shoulders, the sheer depths of that sigh.

He supposes he shouldn’t be surprised; it is—he checks the time—nearly five in the morning.

Letting out his own sigh, Tim follows her in. He’ll crash on her couch for the night; hopefully following her in the morning will yield better results.

Hard Eyes goes to an office front where she makes coffee that tastes like motor oil—it’s only sheer force of will that prevents Tim from detouring to pick up some proper coffee from an actual coffee shop—and lists stolen bicycles on eBay. Night falls and she buys some cheap meat from a butcher in Burnley, then visits the kennels at the abandoned school again.

The next day, she does about the same thing, with an added stop to buy ramen and booze at a convenience store. The day after that is the same, but this time she stops by a strip club, where she stares listlessly at the dancers and then passes out on one of the sticky couches.

Watching Hard Eyes drooling into the red vinyl, it occurs to Tim that he probably would have had more luck following Baseball Bat.

Luckily, Baseball Bat is on duty guarding the kennels the next night. Tim peels off of Hard Eyes and starts following him around instead.

Baseball Bat’s life is slightly less mind-numbing boring, but not by much. He stands there scrolling on his phone and smoking until his shift’s over, then heads out to a side show a few blocks west where he gets roaringly drunk and tries to fight a car for almost running him over. The next morning, after sleeping off his hangover, he downs a truly disgusting protein shake and heads for a grubby, sweat-soaked gym where he pumps iron and quite literally beats the stuffing out of a punching bag.

With every day that passes, Gianna’s chances of survival dip lower and lower.

Of course, they were already low to begin with. Tim may not be a detective, but he knows a bit about investigating, and he’s all too aware that when it comes to missing person’s cases, the first hour is critical. Every passing hour after that diminishes the victim’s chances of survival, and after 72 hours, they’re so slim as to be nearly nonexistent.

Tim only started looking some week and a half after Gianna’s disappearance. He was—his fists clench, nails digging into the soft flesh of his palm—too caught up in his own stupid, petty f*cking issues. Paralyzed by the fear of experiencing some tiny fraction of the same danger Gianna is mired in, like that matters when she’s probably dead somewhere and no one knows or cares.

He watches, eyes burning, as Baseball Bat slams a brutal left hook into the punching bag. Did he hit Gianna like that, too? Tim wants to grab him by the collar, to shake him around and demand he confess. To make him feel just a bit of the pain he inflicts.

Baseball Bat slams a right cross into the upper portion of the bag, right where someone’s face would be. Tim imagines teeth flying, blood spurting, the awful wet meaty thump of impact.

He has to admit the truth to himself.

At this point, there’s no way Gianna is still alive. But that’s not really why he’s looking. He’s looking because even though it’s futile, and he knows it’s futile, it’s still worth it to try—and because maybe if he figures out how this gang works, he can make sure no other invisible, ignored girls share her same sad fate.

Baseball Bat’s phone rings. He throws a towel over one shoulder and answers the call. “Yeah, yeah, I’ll be ready in like ten minutes. See you then.”

He tosses his phone to the side before shambling over to the showers. Tim closes his eyes, trying to focus on the soothing sound of the spray hitting the concrete instead of the sick twisting of his stomach.

Baseball Bat and his buddies move with absolute confidence, swaggering like they’re the immortal kings of Crime Alley’s grubby streets. Not so long ago, Tim would have seen that confidence as arrogance, foolishness—but now he finds him uneasily wondering if it’s a little justified, seeing as they seem to be getting away with everything.

Baseball Bat bumps shoulders with the guy to his left, then angles his head towards a clump of working girls leaned up against a smoke-smeared wall ahead of them. “See the one in the cheetah print?”

The other guy hums in acknowledgment. “Looks sharp enough,” he agrees.

“We’ll split them up,” Baseball Bat decides. “She’s small; I can handle her myself.”

Bile rises in the back of Tim’s throat. Should he intervene? Can he intervene? Baseball Bat’s right cross, the imagined lost teeth and spurting blood and meaty thump, flies through his head again. He himself is only a bit bigger than the petite girl they’ve decided to target.

Ultimately he only watches, frozen, as the men divide the streetwalkers like predators cutting apart a herd. Once his chosen victim is alone, Baseball Bat grabs her by the neck and covers her nose with a filthy, liquid-soaked rag from the pocket of his jeans. She sways, dips, collapses. Baseball Bat throws her over one shoulder and strides off.

For a moment, Tim just stares numbly—but then he startles, life returning, and jogs after them. He catches up just in time to see Baseball Bat stuffing her into the backseat of the car.

Tim casts about frantically for a stone. An empty beer bottle is the closest thing he can find; when he throws it against a wall, it shatters satisfyingly. While Baseball Bat scans the area, hand lingering on his gun, Tim scrambles to join Cheetah Print in the backseat.

Baseball Bat eventually gives up and gets into the driver’s seat. As he turns the car on, Tim takes the opportunity to take Cheetah Print’s pulse; she’s still alive, just unconscious.

Now that he thinks about it, one of the other goons had said something about her looking “sharp”. He’d initially assumed that it was a comment on her appearance, but people usually use “sharp” to mean well-dressed, and he doesn’t think this sort of guy actually cares about that sort of thing. So maybe… maybe it’s that they meant she looked like she had a good head on her shoulders, that she could do whatever work they need to get done?

In Gotham, human trafficking is a thriving trade. People are trafficked into Gotham, of course; according to some estimates, human trafficking makes up for the majority of arrivals into the city. And they’re obviously trafficked out of Gotham—tempted with promises of a better life somewhere where the water isn’t toxic and there aren’t more supervillains per capita than anywhere else in North America—only to find themselves in a new, different hell instead. But there’s also a lot of human trafficking within Gotham; foster kids ending up packing meat instead of taking classes, kidnapping victims being found months or years later running drugs for one of the the gangs, missing children getting their organs harvested or plasma involuntarily “donated” to one of the underworld doctors’ supplies.

Tim hadn't been sure if that was what was going on with Gianna at first, since it also seemed like it could have definitely been just revenge. But... if the Ibanescus are trafficking other women, then that makes it just that much more likely Gianna experienced the same thing.

His heart beats faster with new hope. Please, he thinks. Please. Let her be alive. Let her be okay.

“Little Wing,” Nightwing says, his voice soft yet strong in that way that means he’s going to impart some nugget of meaningful advice. Tim shifts against the wall he’s hiding behind, trying to get closer without making any noise.

“You have to keep up hope. I don’t mean that you should be unrealistic, but you have to remain open to the possibility that those kids are still alive, because if you close yourself off to it and you’re wrong, you might miss important signs that would have allowed you to save them.”

From this angle, Tim can’t see Nightwing and Robin, but he imagines that Nightwing gives Robin’s shoulder a firm squeeze. “C’mon. Let’s get back out there.”

Cheetah Print ends up as a waitress at the Iceberg Lounge, no Gianna in sight. Tim refuses to give up hope, though. He keeps following Baseball Bat around, doggedly shadowing his every step day after day, determined to find, if not Gianna, than at least the truth of what happened to her.

He sees people kidnapped and sold to sweatshops, packed away onto ships heading who knows where, given over to work for other gangs. He watches Baseball Bat threaten business owners, brawl with random people, even once drunkenly beat a dog. The things he sees are so awful that sometimes, he wants nothing more than to turn away. He feels so powerless—he can’t stop any of this, can’t force the great grinding gears of Gotham’s underworld to stop churning. Even if he does manage to save Gianna—which is honestly a pipe dream, he sees that now—what about everyone else who he can’t? What about all of the other people, the ones where he just watched as their awful fates opened up gaping maws and swallowed them whole, never to be seen again?

After all, you decide who is worthy of being recorded. Who gets to be seen? Who is invisible?

Tim doesn’t let himself turn away. Even when he can’t save them, this burden, this duty of knowing, of seeing their fates—that’s all he can give them, and don’t they deserve at least that?

So he keeps on, day after day taking more of the awful poison of Gotham into himself, filling up his memories with the records of those who everyone else fails to see.

And then—

One day, he succeeds at long last. He finds where they’ve been keeping her.

It’s an ugly little warehouse, rundown and battered, the sort of place that features as the blurry background of a thousand Gothamites’ nightmares. There’s nothing in particular to distinguish it from any other rundown, battered warehouse—except the contents.

People. More than a dozen people, all of them chained to the cheap tables.

Every available surface is covered with laboratory equipment—beakers and pipettes and microscopes. Whiteboards scrawled with chemical formulas hang from the walls; yellowed textbooks sit on the stained ground in huge stacks. And at the very front of the room, standing in front of yet another whiteboard with his hands gesturing like a twisted mockery of a college professor, is Scarecrow.

Baseball Bat lingers by the door, shifting awkwardly on his feet as he adjusts his grip on the unconscious girl he’s half-carrying. He’s clearly waiting for Scarecrow to notice him. The awkward expression on his face might be funny if Tim didn’t feel so sick.

In one sudden sharp jerk, Scarecrow’s head turns in Baseball Bat’s direction. “So this is the new recruit,” he says, shambling over on unsteady legs. “Hello, newbie.” Just visible through a jagged slit in the bag he uses as a mask, his lips twitch back in an abrupt, bare-toothed grin. Baseball Bat flinches back, his face paling.

Scarecrow’s lips curl back again, this time in a slow, rolling smirk. “You’re afraid, aren’t you big guy? That’s good,” he purrs. “Fear… is how we know we’re alive.” He keeps talking, but Tim does his best to tune him out. He’s pretty sure Scarecrow’s just monologuing, and not saying anything important.

Swallowing back at the pulsing nausea sitting thick on his throat, Tim starts scanning the room. All of the workers have their heads bent, presumably trying to avoid Scarecrow’s attention, and many of them have covered themselves with handkerchiefs, scarves, random scraps of cloth—anything that provide even the most marginal protection from the chemicals they’re in danger of getting on their skin. Would Tim even recognize Gianna if he saw her?

But then—a head lifts. He sees a gleam of muddy brown-green eyes, and there, escaping out from under her handkerchief—a strand of heat-frazzled crimson hair, the roots growing out black.

For a moment Tim can’t believe it, but he keeps watching and she’s still there, still hazel-eyed, still with that strand of box-dyed red hair. The old energy starts to rise in his chest, hope rushing back in as his mind bustles with all of the half-forgotten plans he’d made earlier.

He smiles. “Just you wait, Gianna,” he whispers. “Everything’s going to be okay now.”

Chapter 6: Revelation

Chapter Text

Tim heads back to Gotham U to borrow their printers; even though he doesn’t have a handwriting sample on record anywhere, he figures it’s still better to leave his tip in typed form.

It feels weird to be back on campus. Tim never deluded himself into thinking that he was really one of the students, but now they seem even more foreign than usual. It’s far enough along into the term that people have given up on things like color-coordinated outfits and careful hairstyles and fancy makeup—and yet they still look glossy and clean, almost plastic-shiny, in comparison to the people Tim’s gotten used to seeing. They have light in their eyes, fat in their cheeks, an ease in their movements that comes with enough food and sufficient sleep.

Which reminds Tim. He isn’t sure how long it’s been since he last slept or ate—he eats when he can, sleeps when Baseball Bat sleeps, takes things as they come and goes without if they don’t—so he should probably take a proper break once he’s gotten this tip in. And… Tim grimaces as he takes a quick sniff under one arm. Yeesh. He really needs a shower. It’s not such a big deal as it would be for someone else, because it’s not like anyone around him can notice his hygiene habits (or lack thereof), but still. Gross.

Tim types up and prints out a quick rundown of the warehouse’s location, of what’s going inside it, of the layout and everything else that would be necessary to ensure a bust goes smoothly. And then he seals it away in an envelope—being sure to wet his finger with a bit of water from his bottle instead of licking it closed—and moves to address it when he realizes that, right, he wanted to avoid writing anything by hand.

Luckily, there’s an abandoned newspaper lying on a nearby table, and there’s almost always some interview or another with Commissioner Gordon about the newest disaster or crime spree or Rogue attack somewhere in it. Tim flicks through, finds a headline with his name in it, cuts it out. Pastes it onto the envelope and hopes it doesn’t look too serial killer-y.

And then he heads out, tip in hand.

Tim doesn’t visit GCPD headquarters very often. Their databases and writeups can be helpful, but the thought of being somewhere where Batman has such a high likelihood of showing up without warning majorly skeeves him out. Ideally he’d just be able to hack in and thus have his cake and eat it too, but, well. The sheer level of security surrounding their files suggests Barbara Gordon decided to give her dad a little help; Tim may know his way around a terminal, but he’s nowhere near being in Oracle’s league.

His heart pounds the entire commute, and by the time he gets off the bus, he actually feels like he might vomit. Each step he takes forward is propelled by sheer willpower—he wants nothing more than to stop walking, to turn around and head back the other direction.

Tim actually feels a little guilty for feeling so upset—he’s seen so many awful things in the process of looking for Gianna, so why is it that none of them have left him so badly off as the thought of potentially running into Batman? Shouldn’t things like Baseball Bat kidnapping a woman, or Scarecrow holding an entire warehouse of people hostage, or that awful dull look in Gianna’s eyes, scare him more than Batman, who everyone knows doesn’t kill?

Except that none of those other things can really touch him. They might be awful but there’s a certain separation between him and them—his powers will always keep him safe from Baseball Bat and being trafficked and Scarecrow. But they can’t protect him from Batman.

Tim pauses on the street outside GCPD Headquarters, takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly. You’re doing this for her. You’re doing this for all of the other invisible people who don’t have your luck.

He steels himself and heads in.

Like much of Gotham, GCPD Headquarters is unpleasantly damp and cramped. Cops perpetually track dirt and rainwater onto the floors, and the janitors who’re supposed to sweep the mess up keep on being fired for colluding with Rogues. The structure itself is considered a historic building, so any attempts to expand or otherwise renovate it inevitably end up snared in red tape. As such, the space is utterly lacking in any sort of proper insulation, and rumor has it that before the Commissioner cracked down on the practice, cops used to quite literally fight each other for the privilege of using one of the few private offices.

Tim weaves his way through the narrow halls, dodging detectives carrying stuffed evidence boxes, grim-faced officers escorting offenders towards the holding cells, and lost civilians trying to find someone they can tell about the newest horrible thing happening in Gotham. When he finally reaches the Commissioner’s office, he knocks, waits a few minutes, and then knocks again. That doesn’t get a response, either, so Tim draws in a deep, steadying, breath, and forces himself to spin the doorknob and step inside.

It’s empty, just as he’d hoped. Commissioner Gordon is known for being a hands-on sort, so Tim knew there was a good chance he’d be out and about, but it was still hard to banish the worry that today would be the day Gordon would decide to buckle down and catch up on the paperwork piled in loose stacks on that big desk of his.

Speaking of which… Tim can’t help but linger hesitantly, uncertain where to put his tip. The desk is so covered, he’s not sure where he could leave it such that it would be visible. What if it ends up just disappearing into the heaps of paper, unread and unseen?

And… it’s irrational, but a persistent worry burbles in the back of his mind. He’s never understood how his powers work, and with them recently failing to protect him from the new Bat, they seem more capricious than ever. Tim’s powers have historically only shielded objects that he’s holding or that are otherwise on his person from others’ view, but what if that somehow changes? He imagines his powers clinging to the envelope like some mist or vapor, a subtle taint that turns every eye and hand away.

Tim shakes himself. That’s not going to happen. Commissioner Gordon is going to notice right away, and he’ll get the Bats involved, and Gianna will be fine. Hand shaking just the slightest bit, he makes himself lay the envelope down right in the center of the desk, shuffling the paperwork around so it’ll be as visible as possible.

He lingers a moment longer, that same clinging worry from earlier staying his step—what if—before finally leaving.

It’s going to be fine. It is.

Tim’s found Gianna, and even left a tip that’ll get her the help he needs, so he doesn’t have an excuse to flout his mom’s instructions any further than he already has. And yet, it’s harder than ever to motivate himself to go to class. Even when he does go, the words seem to flow right over him in a meaningless wash of noise. Instead, his thoughts circle around Gianna, around the hard-eyed woman and the dogs in the abandoned school, around Alanzo. He keeps on imagining the tip in its envelope, trailing greenish vapor like a cartoon movie portrayal of witch’s magic, cursed by its proximity to him and his powers.

Days pass in a blur. He spends a lot of time sleeping, trying to catch up on all of the hours he missed while trailing Hard Eyes and then Baseball Bat. Even though his targets both slept plenty, Tim never knew when they’d wake up and head out, so in order to avoid losing them he’d been forced to stick to taking little catnaps, and it had worn on him.

There are other things to appreciate, too—like being able to shower and eat whenever he likes. Of course, the showers in question are the gross, perpetually Axe-stained ones in Gotham U’s locker rooms, and the food he’s eating is the usual college cafeteria slop, but still.

As time passes, Tim starts to get increasingly antsy. He starts skimming the news first thing every morning for any hint that the Bats are becoming involved in Gianna’s case, even though he knows there’s a good chance that the news wouldn’t be able to pick up on anything either way. He also has to continually restrain himself from just going and checking on Gianna himself—although it does help to remind himself that now that he’s left a tip with Commissioner Gordon, he might run into one of the Bats at the warehouse if he’s not careful.

In between compulsively checking the news, he repeatedly scours vigilante fan forums on the internet, searching for any hint of information about the new Bat—but no matter how deeply he searches, he can’t find so much as a whisper. It’s like she’s just as invisible as he is.

Eventually, he bites the bullet and googles “Bruce Wayne”.

It’s been two years, and yet some part of Tim is still surprised to see that the headlines are no longer smeared with all of the lurid details of Bruce Wayne’s terrible grief.

He skims through headlines about Wayne Enterprises’ newest charitable donations, predictions for their stock performance, gossip about the latest fabricated fling. It’s like nothing’s changed at all.

There’s no word about a new adoption—although Tim supposes they didn’t formally adopt Stephanie Brown either.

He closes his laptop. An old aimless nausea swims in his belly.

The days keep on passing. It gets to the point that Tim’s struggling to sleep—which is a real tragedy considering that that’d been one of the aforementioned benefits of not being on the “following two-bit Romanian mobsters” beat anymore.

As a way to try to alleviate his anxious energy while also avoiding anything too risky, he decides to visit Alanzo’s.

Usually, he’ll spend the bus ride into the East End imagining the conversations he and Alanzo might carry on, if not for his powers—but it’s hard to do that now, when he knows how torn up Alanzo is about Gianna. His whole perception of Alanzo was based around Alanzo the strong, confident badass, who didn’t take any sh*t, Alanzo who had everything under control and was perpetually unworried no matter what punk tried to step up to him—but now when Tim thinks of Alanzo he keeps on remembering the way he collapsed into himself, the despair that lined his face.

Still. Tim at least hopes that Alanzo would be proud of him, that he would be glad that Tim finally got up off his ass and did something to try to help Gianna—even if it’s not yet clear that it’ll actually bear any fruit.

“At least it’s something,” he might say, and then, scoffing darkly, “more’n that cop did.”

It’s only after Tim gets off the bus that it occurs to him that the pizzeria might not be open right now—considering how badly off Alanzo seemed to be, it wouldn’t be surprising. But Tim’s no more than had the thought before he’s rounding the corner and seeing the neon glow, the golden light, the red leather stools just visible through the grimey windows.

That’s probably a good sign. No matter how hard Gianna’s disappearance was on him, at least Alanzo’s been able to keep up his normal routines—that has to count for something, right?

When Tim steps inside the pizzeria, it seems somehow stiller, quieter, more subdued—the lights less golden, the air colder, the stools less welcoming. Alanzo doesn’t come out right away at the sound of the bell, and for a moment Tim wonders if the place is abandoned after all.

When he finally does emerge, his eyes slide right over Tim even after he clears his throat.

Maybe I just wasn’t loud enough, Tim thinks. He tries to hold back the irrational fear that’s washed over him and set his heart to pounding as he clears his throat again.

Alanzo’s eyes narrow slightly, like he’s aware he’s missing something, but he still doesn’t look anywhere near Tim.

“Hey!” Tim calls. Alanzo finally turns, and Tim lets out a slow sigh of relief. It’s probably just that Alanzo’s out of it because of what happened to Gianna; his powers are working fine, it’s not that his mom’s forgotten about him, it’s just that she’s choosing to ignore him, and the only reason that new vigilante from earlier could see him was because she’s a Bat. There’s nothing wrong and Tim needs to stop freaking out.

“What?”

“Can I get two slices with Canadian bacon, onions, and artichoke hearts?”

Alanzo grimaces vaguely in his direction. “Sorry, we don’t have those ingredients.”

Right, Tim’s been so busy with trying to find Gianna he hasn’t been keeping Alanzo’s in stock. The last batch he left probably went off sometime while he was grubbing it with Baseball Bat.

Alanzo adds in a low voice, “not sure why I even kept them as long as I did.”

Tim freezes, an awful thought hitting him like a slap. He’d long assumed his powers didn’t effect items once he stopped touching them, but—have his powers been keeping Alanzo from throwing out the useless ingredients he sneaks in this entire time? Does that mean—the envelope?

“I’ve gotta go,” Tim garbles out, and then he’s scrambling off the stool and running out the door.

Tim dashes through the dim halls of GCPD headquarters, passerby dodging out of his way without noticing his passage. This time, he doesn’t bother to knock—it’s not like Commissioner Gordon would notice him anyways—just slams the door open and strides inside.

The envelope isn’t immediately visible on the Commissioner’s desk, and for a moment Tim hopes—but no, another quick sweep of the room shows that it’s fallen onto the floor just behind the Commissioner’s chair.

Maybe that’s why no one’s started work on Tim’s tip. Nothing to do with meta powers, just a simple case of an envelope being dropped, a tip slipping through the cracks.

There’s only one way to be sure.

Tim picks up the envelope and puts it back on the desk, once more shoving the other paperwork back so it’s clearly visible. And then he heads back down through the winding corridors of the building.

Between the judicious use of his lockpicks, a bit of climbing, and the precise application of his elbow to a sticky door, Tim’s soon found his way onto the roof of the building right next to GCPD headquarters. From there, he can see right into the Commissioner’s office.

It’s not a very pleasant location for a stake out—the roof tiles are grimey and weirdly sharp-edged, Tim hasn’t gotten around to replenishing his stash of backpack snacks yet, and it’s just started to rain—but none of that matters, not when Tim’s so close to finally receiving a bit of clarity. Even as the hours inch by, he keeps on watching the Commissioner’s window with an eagle eye, no thought of pulling out his cassette player for a bit of language practice like he’s done on so many other stakeouts.

Finally, the doorknob turns and the Commissioner steps inside. His hair’s been flattened practically to his forehead by the rain, and he looks exhausted. As Tim watches, he shrugs off his trench coat, lets out a long sigh, and turns to the desk.

Tim bites his lips, half-coherent prayers running through his head (pleasepleaseplease) even as another part of him runs a continuing spiel of pessimism (he’s not going to notice, your powers are broken, you were a fool to think you could ever help her—)

Gordon sweeps right past the envelope. He doesn’t even seem to see it, instead picking a sheaf of paperwork up and starting to flip through it.

Tim’s stomach twists, even as it drops like the battle’s already lost.

Please, he thinks. Please.

No one answers his prayers. Commissioner Gordon moves around the office, picking up and rearranging papers without ever touching the envelope, and Tim watches, ice spreading through his belly.

Numbly, he turns away. What was the point of any of this? Was he doomed from the start—was all of his work meaningless, just a waste of time, an unnecessary risk with no real potential reward?

His limbs are heavy as he begins his descent. There’s grime smeared all over his clothes, and he’s soaked to the bone, but Tim can’t even feel sorry for himself in peace, not when he knows Gianna is suffering so much worse than him, and he’s failing to prevent it.

What would Alanzo think, he asks himself as he steps out onto the wet street. What would he say? Just how disappointed would he be?

And yet when Tim envisions Alanzo, he finds himself picturing the man’s thick, gnarled eyebrows folding together in concern, his calloused hand rising to rest on Tim’s shoulder.

“You’ve come a long way, and worked hard,” he might say. “You haven’t failed yet. There’s still a way you can save Gianna.”

Meaning the Bats, of course. Even if Tim’s powers are somehow making the Commissioner miss the envelope, no amount of meta-f*ckery would be enough to trick them. The very thought of involving them makes Tim shudder, apprehension twisting his stomach into tight knots, but if it’s the only option… maybe there’s some way he can make it work…

“You don’t have to think about it right now,” Alanzo would tell him. “You should sleep on it, yeah? Maybe change those clothes, too.” He’d lighten the mood by exaggeratedly wrinkling his nose, maybe pinching the nostrils closed like he was disgusted. “How long has it been since you’ve done a proper load of laundry?”

Tim nods to himself. Yes, it’d be good to stop back at the Manor… just looking around might help inspire him, and it’ll be nice to sleep in his own bed, switch out his clothes, experience all of the little luxuries of home… the very thought seems to rejuvenate him, giving him a little burst of energy.

Besides, who knows. Maybe Mom will be feeling merciful.

Tim turns his collar up against the rain and heads off towards the nearest bus stop.

The idle thought Tim had about his Mom being merciful was just that: an idle thought. Firstly because his mom is many things, including the only person who he truly loves, but never merciful. Secondly because he didn’t really expect her to be home.

Even when she’s in Gotham, Mom keeps her schedule full. Seminars and meetings, brunches and dinners, galas and casual clubs, it all melds together into one long blur of busy-busy-busy. When Tim does see her, it’s because she’s arranged it that way, their meetings another block in her carefully segmented day. It’s rare that they just… run into each other, especially with Drake Manor being as big as it is, and Tim himself being out and about as much as he is.

And yet when Tim comes trudging up the drive, his mom is standing in front of the door, back turned towards him as she fumbles with the knob.

“Mom?”

Mom whirls. Her low ponytail moves with her, fanning out into feathers of icy blonde. Blue eyes lock onto him with an iron grip. “Timothy! Just the person I needed to see most!”

For a moment, Tim wants to snap back, wants to tell her that whatever it is, he can’t help her, that he’s busy with something more important than finding socialite gossip for her, that his powers don’t seem to be working right and he doesn’t know what to do about it and he doesn’t need this—

And then it hits him. The low ponytail, the creases in her makeup, the manic brightness to her eyes and the trembling tightness to her mouth. Subtle signs, the kind of thing that wouldn’t stand out to anyone else. But to Tim, they’re glaring red flags. Mom’s perfect facade is cracking. Who did this to her?

Tim strides over, opens the door and ushers her inside. Usually he wouldn’t be so pushy but he knows that if Mom were in her right mind, she wouldn’t want to be caught lingering outside like this while so out of sorts.

“Why don’t I make you some tea?” he suggests. That away she’ll have a bit of time to gather herself—Mom hates showing weakness, even to him.

She huffs out a laugh. “You know me so well. Yes, darling, that sounds perfect. I’ll see you again soon.” And with that, she heads up the stairs, hand trembling ever so slightly on the banister.

Tim pulls Mom’s enamel tea box from its shelf and begins doling out the premium silver needle loose leaf held within. He’s never liked the taste of tea, but there’s something very soothing about the process of making it—the ritualistic nature of all of the little steps, so delicate and finicky that the mind can’t hold any other worries or concerns. And, of course, he loves the smell.

He pours the finished tea into his mom’s favorite cup and heads upstairs, moving carefully so he won’t spill any of the hot liquid. When he presses it into Mom’s hands, she lets out a low little sigh, and some of the creases in her face unfurl.

“Thank you, darling.” She takes a few sips, visibly savoring the taste, then puts the cup down and turns to Tim, her eyes once again calm and sharp. “Jack has been cheating on me.”

Tim’s glad he didn’t have any tea of his own, because he would have almost certainly spat it out. “W—what?”

“Yes.” Mom’s lips curl in disgust. “Apparently, he has been… cavorting with some little secretary at Drake Industries. At my company. Because…” Faintly, Tim can hear his mother’s teeth grinding together. “Because I am too cold. Because she is warm, and friendly, and, Jack tells me, that was enough for him to abandon everything we built together.”

She sniffs, takes another sip of tea. “As if it was not my ‘coldness’ which gave him everything he benefits from now. As if it was not my ‘coldness’ that allowed him to have the means with which to even impress such a foolish girl.” Mom casts a sly glance over at Tim. “Did I ever tell you, darling, that Drake Industries was on the verge of bankruptcy when I married Jack? Everything he has, everything he so arrogantly takes credit for, comes from me.”

The smile fades from her face, and she grows serious once more. “In truth, darling, I don’t care that he loves her; our relationship was never about love. I care that he lied, because our relationship was supposed to be a partnership. If only he did as I asked, I would have given him all of the power and glory he could have ever wanted. That was the deal. But he broke our deal. He betrayed me.”

The smooth skin of her knuckles turns white where she grips the handle of her teacup. “And the worst part of all is that he wasn’t even competent enough to hide it. I found out because he got caught—he was forced to tell me because he and his… paramour realized they were being photographed while… consorting.”

Tim’s stomach drops. Photographs… that really could ruin everything.

“Timothy…” Mom swallows. “I know that I told you to keep your head down, and that this must seem terribly hypocritical considering that, but—”

“Mom.” Tim reaches out and gives his mom’s hand a squeeze. “I agreed to keep my head down because I didn’t want you to be in danger. Now you’re facing a different kind of danger, one that requires something else of me. There’s no contradiction.” He looks her right in the eyes. “Of course I’m going to help you.”

Mom smiles; the corners of her eyes crinkle. “Thank you.”

They just sit there for a moment, Tim holding his mom’s hand, and then she pulls back. Tim stands. “Another cup?” She nods; Tim leaves.

Chapter 7: Flight

Chapter Text

When Tim told Mom he was going to find the person who took those photographs, he meant it. And yet, as he now sets about his task, he realizes it simply may not be possible.

It didn’t seem like it should be a difficult task at first. According to Jack, the incident occurred at Drake Industries HQ, and Drake Industries has excellent security—in fact, Tim designed much of it himself. He even tests it twice a year to learn about any vulnerabilities that may have developed over time.

The issue is that none of that security is worth anything when the people who it’s meant to protect are actively seeking to undermine it.

According to Tim’s master plan, there should be security cameras strategically located throughout the building, including in the room where Jack and his mistress were… associating. Jack, however, disabled them ahead of time to avoid detection.

Tim also arranged for the cleaning crews to move through the building in loose rotations that, while by no means the equivalent of actual guard shifts, do mean that each area has someone passing through it on a reassuringly frequent basis. Jack messed with those too, of course; he couldn’t exactly have a janitor walking in on him cheating on his wife.

Tim even added subtle panic buttons near each doorway so if someone did get in, or if there was some other form of trouble, employees could discretely notify the security team. Jack didn’t press his, though. After all, if he did, the security team might see that he’d been f*cking his secretary.

Every careful protection he laid out over the course of years, every contingency, every bit of strategizing. All of it ignored by Jack in favor of blindly, recklessly, pursuing his most base instincts. It’s so blindly idiotic that Tim almost has to wonder if Jack wanted to get caught. Maybe he was caught up in some strange desire to self-destruct, or—more likely—he somehow got off on the sick rush of danger. Either way, this end result feels a bit like karma. He f*cked around, and now he’s finding out.

The only problem being that he isn’t the only one suffering the consequences.

Either way, it all makes it a bit difficult to find the photographer. In the absence of witnesses or security footage, Tim doesn’t really have much to go off on. It doesn’t help that, well… he hates to admit it, but Tim isn’t all that great at detective work.

He may be able to endlessly follow around whoever he likes without being noticed, but that doesn’t mean the person he’s following is going to actually lead him to anything useful—or even that he’s following the right person. He remembers how long he followed Hard Eyes around before he realized he really should have been following Baseball Bat. Detective work of this sort relies heavily on timing—leads grow cold fast, perpetrators disappear, victims die. Tim can’t afford to be dallying around; he should be making quick, decisive moves, not just poking around until he just happens to overhear something relevant. And yet… there’s not much else he can do.

Tim can’t question victims or interrogate suspects—or at least, he’s had very little success in the past when he’s tried. He can’t run DNA tests or compare fingerprints against a database; he doesn’t have the kind of resources Batman or GCPD does. And even if Tim did manage to somehow find the perpetrator, he wouldn’t be able to detain them—all he can do is keep on following them around.

Even beyond all that, there’s another issue that prevents him from ever being a proper detective: he has no mentor.

It’s a frustration that Tim continually gnaws at like a dog on a bone, and not just when it comes to detective work. All of his skills are limited by this dame issue. He may be able to understand most of the languages spoken in Gotham, but he isn’t conversational, let alone fluent in any of them, and it’s all because he doesn’t have anyone to practice with. Similarly, he may have the technical knowledge of what to do in a fight, but he’s never actually been able to spar with anyone, so there’s no muscle memory to back up the theory. And, of course, his powers… well, suffice to say that if he had a mentor he’d probably have at least some inkling of how they work.

Most of the time, his shortcomings are surmountable—Tim finds ways to work around his limitations, and manages to reach his goals regardless. But for this one… it just seems like it’s not possible for him to track down the photographer all on his own.

Thankfully, Mom doesn’t seem to hold it against him.

Honestly, Tim gets the impression she’s not particularly surprised at the difficulties he’s been experiencing. When he reluctantly informed her that he wasn’t sure if he was going to be able to find the photographer, she just nodded. She hasn’t told him to stop looking, but her focus seemed to have pivoted towards brainstorming PR strategies to help deal with the inevitable fall out.

It’s strange to think this because Mom’s always been so strong, but Tim honestly suspects that she mostly just wants to have him close so she has someone to lean on emotionally. Someone she can trust, even after her own husband—someone who she relied on, even if she didn’t love him—betrayed her.

They eat together a lot. Tim gets used to having lunch in her office, her at her desk and him on one of her spare chairs. They don’t always talk; a lot of times they just sit in silence. But Tim thinks his mom finds comfort in it regardless.

Other times he makes her tea, or just sits with her in silence as they both do their work. He also starts sleeping at the Manor on a regular basis again, which isn’t something he’s done in a while.

Tim should be happy. He’s getting to spend so much time with his mom—he’s probably seen her more in just the last few weeks than he usually does in a several months. Plus, he’s helping out at Drake Industries, at least in theory, which…

It’s a little strange, but Tim’s always liked it when Mom assigned him work directly related to Drake Industries, whether it was testing the security, following an employee that was suspected of skimming money off the top, or checking up on worker productivity. After all, back before everything with his powers, Tim was supposed to be the heir to the company, the future CEO who would carry on their legacy into the next generation. He knows all of these little contributions aren’t nearly enough to live up to that ambition, but… it still feels a bit like some sort of at least metaphorical ownership of his family’s company.

Especially because this time around, Mom actually gave him an ID card.

It’s not as if it’s anything super fancy, just a little rectangle of the same sort of plastic credit cards are made out, with the company and employee name slapped on top of a generic modern art flourish. It doesn’t even have Tim’s real name or photo on it. And yet, something about having it, about having given it by Mom, makes him feel… warm.

Time with his mom, and the illusion of contributing to the company… it should be enough to make him happy. And yet, during all of the long hours Tim spends doing nothing in particular, just lingering around Drake Industries HQ, he finds himself thinking about Gianna.

He made a promise to his mom, yes. But he also has certain obligations to Gianna, too. And his mom isn’t actually that badly off, comparatively; emotionally harmed, yes, but not actually in danger like Gianna is. Isn’t it then reasonable to decide to leave his mom alone a little while—just for one evening, she’s busy with paperwork right now, she’ll be fine without him—to quickly check up on Gianna?

It’s with that rationale in mind that Tim exits Drake Industries along with the rush hour commuters and catches the next bus out.

Scarecrow’s warehouse is even worse than he remembered.

The laboratory equipment has multiplied, and where before most of it was empty, now all of the containers seemed to be full of burbling, noxious liquids in various suspicious-looking hues. The chemical formulas on the whiteboards are layered over each other; at the borders they spill out onto the naked wall in writhing lines of chicken scratch that loop and dive where Scarecrow’s hand cramped or he ran out of space. Many of the textbooks are open; some of them seem to have had their pages ripped out.

And the people. The people.

There are so many more than before. They’re forced to sit four or five to a table, each chained to the leg so they that have to work shoulder to shoulder, elbows brushing every time they move. Most of them look ill in some way or another; Tim spots bits of blood crusted at the corners of mouths, pus dripping from inflamed blisters, and, bizarrely, a layer of what looks like pink sediment over some of the workers’ faces and hands.

Looking at them, it occurs to Tim for the first time that there’s no way Scarecrow arranged all of this himself. Scarecrow is intelligent, yes, and he does have the ability to manipulate people—but he’s an academic more than anything. He’s more concerned with what new ways he can innovate fear toxin’s formula than the scale on which he can produce it, or how long it takes him. Scaling up production this way, arranging to house all of these workers… it just isn’t his style. He didn’t do this on his own, Tim’s sure of it.

But why would someone foot Scarecrow’s bill? Even the other Rogues don’t like him—the sort of chaos he causes tends to be inconvenient for everyone, even other criminals. After all, even the most hardened gang member has some fears they’d rather not face.

As Tim approaches one of the nearby tables, he spots a clue that might be able to help explain exactly what’s going on—a pile of pinkish dust that looks like it’s made out of the same stuff as the sediment that’s lingering on many of the workers’ skin. Something about it seems familiar, but he can’t quite place his finger on what…

When he gets a glimpse of the workers carefully packing the powder into oval-shaped capsules , it clicks. The diet pill from back before Catwoman’s most recent heist of the museum—the one he suspected was using one of Poison Ivy’s pollens as part of its base. It’s being made right here.

A cold shiver runs through Tim’s belly. To be able to consistently source pollen from Poison Ivy, even after he made sure she knew what was going on… to be able to work with the notoriously volatile Scarecrow… whoever it is who’s behind this whole operation, they’re the kind of threat even Batman might struggle to root out.

How did Tim miss this? Yeah, he’s been pretty cut off from the goings-on of the underground ever since starting the Kierny project, but to not notice something this big…

Tim is shaken out of his thoughts by the grating rasp of Scarecrow’s voice.

“Is it done, then?”

He’s bent over one of the tables towards the front of the room, gangly limbs folding awkwardly as he looms over the bowed head of a shaking workers.

“It’s done,” she confirms in a soft, trembling voice.

A high, harsh sound comes out of Scarecrow’s mouth, something like a mixture of the bark of a dog and the cawing of a crow. It takes Tim a moment to realize it’s a laugh.

“Excellent, excellent,” Scarecrow says. He lifts the product from the table with one skeletal hand—it’s a stoppered vial of clear, perfectly ordinary looking liquid, the kind of thing that you might mistake for water if you don’t know better. Peering close, Scarecrow watches the way it moves in the glass vial with one beady eye.

“The pH?”

The worker hesitantly hands him a test strip.

“Well,” Scarecrow muses as he looks at the strip, “it at least looks perfect.” He smiles. “Good job.” One hand drops absently down onto the girl’s head. He seemingly doesn’t notice the way she can goes rabbit-still under his touch.

“Still,” Scarecrow continues in a louder voice, “I wouldn’t be a scientist if I didn’t conduct experiments on my prototype, would I?”

He begins pacing the room, hands clasped behind his back as he surveys the workers in a way that eerily echoes a professor searching on some unsuspecting student to call on.

“Now, I’m not sure if any of you know this—I certainly didn’t see any of you in my lectures back at Gotham U—but to properly test a hypothesis you need both a control group and an experimental group.” Scarecrow reaches the end of one row, turns sharply on his heel, and begins to stalk back the way he came.

“Most of you can here can be part of the control group, but I do still need someone to be the experimental group, or this wouldn’t be a test, would it?” His lips curl back in a slow grin. “Do we have any volunteers?”

The warehouse is dead silent. Tim’s not sure if anyone is breathing. His own heart seems to have stopped.

“Come now, class,” Scarecrow says. “This is a major part of your grade.”

There’s another long silence.

“Well, in that case,” he announces, “I suppose I’ll have to pick someone to call on.” He taps one long finger against his cheek theatrically. “Now… who to pick?”

A shiver seems to run through the bodies of everyone in the room.

“How about… someone who mouthed off at me? How about someone who disrespected both myself and my work?” His voice rises slowly with each word, building towards some terrible crescendo. “How about someone who called me a crackpot old fraud?”

His head snaps straight towards Gianna.

A jolt of pure panic shoots through Tim’s chest. He knew Gianna had a mouth on her, but to turn that on Scarecrow himself, while being held captive by him… he doesn’t know if she’s idiotic, brave, or both.

Scarecrow grins, that terrible abrupt smile that cuts across his face like a knife wound. “Yes, I think that sounds perfect.”

The sheer awfulness of that smile unsticks Tim from his frozen state. He lurches towards Gianna, hands shaking as he frantically scrambles for his lockpicks. If he can just somehow manage to unlock her chains in time…

Scarecrow whistles sharply. There’s the scrape of the door opening, and the sound of a heavy tread on the grimey floor. Tim doesn’t have much time. He ducks under the table. His hands close around the lock.

The heavy footfalls draw closer and closer. There’s the abrupt sound of a sharply in-drawn breath. Despite himself, Tim looks up. One of the guards who was outside on lookout is forcing Gianna’s mouth open. Swallowing, Tim bends back over the lock again. If he can just get it to open—

Scarecrow’s drawing close. He’s saying something. Gloating, probably. The words aren’t registering with Tim. The lock is so close to opening—he’s almost got it—

Scarecrow uncaps the bottle. He’s swirling the liquid in it tauntingly, readying to pour it down Gianna’s throat.

The lock gives.

Gianna doesn’t move.

Of course not. Why would she? She doesn’t know she’s free.

Scarecrow tips the bottle over Gianna’s mouth. Like sand in an hourglass, the liquid begins to pour…

Tim shoots out of under the table, slamming his body blindly into Scarecrow’s. The fear toxin splashes out in a wide, glittering arch. His hand clenches into something like a fist and without consciously deciding to he finds himself driving it into Scarecrow’s mouth.

He spins and yanks Gianna out of the loose grip of the shocked guard. “C’mon!”

They burst out of the warehouse. There’s shouting behind them, the sound of running footsteps. Tim speeds up, dragging Gianna along with him. His heart is pounding faster than he thinks it ever has in his life. The streets of Gotham race past as he ducks around corners and into alleys, using every trick he knows to lose their pursuers.

“There,” Gianna gasps. She points to a hole at the bottom of a nearby fence, one too small for an adult to fit through.

Tim nods. They run over and hurriedly wriggle through. Gianna stumbles unsteadily to her feet, then pulls him up, both of them panting.

“We should keep moving,” Gianna says. Tim nods again. Bullets can still reach them here, even if the guards themselves can’t.

They keep on running for a while, but when no sound of pursuers is forthcoming, they let themselves fall into into a rapid walk. Gianna clutches at a stitch in her side with one hand; Tim wipes sweat off his brow.

It didn’t really register at first, what with the adrenaline of the chase, but… Gianna is seeing him. She had offered him her hand earlier, and even now, Tim can feel her gaze hot on his face. He can sense the unspoken questions pooling in her mouth—questions he really doesn’t want to answer.

“This coming stop—you can take the bus into Burnley,” he tells her. “From there, you should be able to get back to Alanzo’s without… without any trouble.”

Even as he says it, he knows just how cruel it is to make someone who only just escaped from human traffickers make the journey home by herself. And yet even that knowledge, and the accompanying guilt, isn’t enough to make him bite back his words. Not when being around Gianna is making him feel like he needs to crawl out of his own skin.

“What about you?” she asks.

What about me? Tim thinks. He might as well cease to exist once she stops looking at him.

“I’ll be fine,” he tells her. He digs around in one pocket and produces some spare change. “This should be enough for the bus. Be—” he stutters, caught off guard by the way her sharp eyes are locked onto him. “Be careful.”

Tim should probably say more, but her gaze is unbearable. He turns sharply on one heel and walks away, leaving her standing at the bus stop with a bunch of quarters loosely grasped in one fist.

Things get a little blurry after that. Tim’s running on autopilot, using muscle memory more than anything. He finds himself sitting on a bus without really registering catching it or even waiting for it; he’s not even sure what line it is until he looks out the window and sees the passing streets.

It’s headed towards the Manor, he realizes. That’s a problem, seeing as Mom is expecting him to be back at Drake Industries.

Tim lifts one hand. It shakes faintly under his gaze. His mind keeps on recycling the same few seconds—the liquid tilting, rolling down towards Gianna’s mouth; the lock finally giving; the awful realization that Gianna still wasn’t moving; the burst of adrenaline, the punch to Scarecrow’s mouth, the footsteps pounding behind them as they ran.

Gianna grabbing his hand. Gianna speaking to him. Gianna seeing him.

He feels… he wants to go crawling back after her, to beg her to keep looking at him. He wants to hear her asking “what about you” again, even though he’s in no danger at all. He wants her to look him in the eye every time he visits Alanzo’s, to ask how he’s been and remember his order.

He also wants to crawl somewhere so deep and dark and hidden no one will ever find him, will ever look at him, again. He wants to never see Gianna again. He wants to shed his own skin, or rather to shed this strange sense of corporeality, this feeling that he exists on the same plane as the rest of the world after all; that maybe it can touch him just as surely as it can anyone else.

Tim fishes his phone out of one pocket and shoots off a quick text to his mom—some bullsh*t about heading home early because he felt sick. And then he presses his forehead against the cool glass and tries to not think at all.

When he finally does get home, he takes a long shower with water hot enough that it almost feels like a hug. His clothes are badly enough off that he’s honestly not sure if they’re salvageable—the pink dust from the pills the workers were making is clinging to the shirt he was wearing in a fine layer, and his jeans are thick with some sort of strange, mud-like substance of incredibly dubious origin from when he crawled under the fence—so Tim just throws the whole mess into his hamper and decides to deal with it later.

With that handled at least for the moment, he collapses into his bed and passes out immediately.

He only realizes that the Drake Industries ID card that was clipped onto his shirt is missing that following morning.

Chapter 8: Collision

Chapter Text

Tim exists in a state of tense, lock-jawed anticipation for the next few days. He can’t seem to get his shoulders to drop down from where they’re clenched near his ears, and even the quietest noise startles him; he’s wound so tight that it feels like the smallest touch might rip him wide open.

He knows he had the ID card on him when he left Drake Industries, because he’d used it to swipe his way through the exit. He’s also pretty sure he had it on him on the bus; he faintly recalls fiddling with it as he watched the scenery pass. But Tim can’t remember anything past that.

Logically, he could have lost it any number of places. He might have misplaced it while fiddling with it on the bus, or lost it while walking to the warehouse, or dropped it on the mad dash to freedom—he could have possibly even snagged it on that fence they’d had to crawl under to get away. There’s no reason to assume he left it at the warehouse.

And yet he can see it in his mind’s eye with an almost precognitive clearness; the little card with its stupid fake name and photoshopped, generic picture, “Drake Industries” scrawled across it in a proud font, lying on the pink-dusted, grubby floor of the warehouse. Lying waiting for a long, bony hand to reach down and pick it.

Years of taking every possible precaution to leave no trace. Years of wearing gloves even though he’s never been fingerprinted, of pulling on a beanie so he doesn’t leave even a strand of hair behind, of evading every camera even though they only ever pick him up as a vague, faceless blur. Years of effort and care, and he throws it all away because he forgets to unclip his employee ID.

The worst part is that it’s not like this is going to impact Tim either way. No, much like how the consequences for Jack’s actions came down on Mom’s shoulders, she and the employees of Drake Industries are the ones who will be at risk if Scarecrow does find the card and decide to come collect on Tim’s terrible debt.

Once, when he was younger, Tim was mindlessly flicking through the different channels on the TV when he landed on a family sit com. The son was having an argument with his parents when the mom abruptly snarled, “you’re just like your father”. She looked nothing like Janet, but Tim still felt a hot jolt of fear in his chest. The very thought of his mother ever saying something like that made him feel like his stomach was compressing down into a hot black ball of misery.

Tim is his mother’s son above all else, if only because he tries so hard to not be Jack’s. And yet here he is. Repeating his father’s mistakes, making his mother shoulder the burden, shoulder the risk. The shame sits in his belly like a rock, heavy and dense and unmoving.

His mother may not be merciful, but perhaps the universe is, because the days pass by minute by minute, hour by hour, and nothing happens. Tim’s jaw slowly unlocks, and his shoulders drop inch by inch. It seems as though the danger has passed; his idiotic mistake has been overlooked.

With all of the ardor of a devotee bowing and scraping in their church pew, Tim promises that he’ll be more careful in the future. He won’t take this for granted. He’ll be better from now on. Just let this luck hold.

And it does. In fact, he’s just at the point where he’s starting to wonder why he was even so scared at all when Mom calls him into her office for a new assignment.

“Hello, darling.” She greets him with her usual smile. Even so, Tim can see the little cracks—the single strands of hair hanging loose from what would usually be an impeccable chignon, the subtle shadow of exhaustion peaking out from under her unusually thick under-eye makeup, the way her nails are ever so slightly grown out. “I’ve decided that Jack and I will be going to the Cunningham’s dinner party tonight.”

Tim nods. It makes sense; it’ll allow Mom to shore up the Drakes’ social status in anticipation of the news of Jack’s affair inevitably breaking. He only hopes that Jack doesn’t mess this up for his mom, too.

“I’ll begin my research,” he says. Honestly, Tim’s glad for the work; it’ll be good to have something to distract him from his worries about the ID card.

He’s about to turn and go when Mom stops him.

“And Tim? One more thing.” He turns back around to see that her smile has deepened. “We’ll go try out that new ice cream cake place afterwards.”

The first time Tim tested out Drake Industries’ security, Mom patted him gently on the cheek and announced that they were going out for ice cream at the new place down the street.

It was the beginning of a long tradition; every time Tim helps out with DI’s security, they visit somewhere new. At this point, they’ve tried gelato, sorbet, sherbet, soft serve, frozen yogurt, snow cones, and even the weird goo produced by a working Batburger ice cream machine (that one took some real work to make happen).

The only problem is…

“But—I didn’t find the photographer.”

“I know.”

There’s a moment of silence, and then Tim nods. “Alright. Thanks, Mom.”

He leaves with a warmth in his chest and a smile of his own.

Tim’s approach to investigating guests changes significantly when the event in question is a dinner party as opposed to a larger event. With larger events, he tries to get a broad idea of what’s happening and lets the juicier bits of gossip naturally float to the top. With a dinner party, it’s necessary to dig a little deeper, specifically focusing on those people who seem most promising or are most important to have leverage over.

In this case, the Cunninghams are his big target.

His first move is to take a peek into their finances. Every successful businessman in Gotham has committed at least a bit of fraud; this means checking out their finances is a sure win, but it also means it’s worth less—when everyone is breaking the law, it matters a lot less. Still, if they’re doing something particularly egregious, Mom may be able to use it as blackmail.

Looking at their finances is also a good first move because it can open up new potential avenues of investigation. For instance, Tim quickly notices that Mr. Cunningham has been secretly funneling money to a little apartment in Brideshead that he has no official affiliation with.

Tim gets dressed, triple-checking to make sure there’s nothing incriminating on him as he does so. He really doesn’t want to repeat his earlier mistake with the ID card, even if it looks like he’s managed to get away with it this time.

Once he’s all ready, he heads out.

It feels good to stretch his legs. He’s been sticking close to his mom ever since the ID card incident; some part of him felt like maybe she’d somehow be more safe if he was there. As nice as it is to be there with her, Tim’s used to spending his days on the move, criss-crossing the city and going where his nose leads him; he’s not well-suited to staying in one place.

It’s raining, because of course it is. It’s the kind of rain that’s so cold and thick that it’s almost solid, like it’s just on the edge of turning into hail. Tim wouldn’t be surprised if the first snow of the season comes soon.

Finals at Gotham U are going to be in just a few weeks, he distantly realizes. Tim doesn’t think he’s so much as looked at his textbooks since… honestly probably since that first week of the term, now that he thinks about it. Sure, he half-heartedly attended some of his classes after finding Gianna, but he sure as hell wasn’t doing his assignments, let alone doing the readings.

He’s always been a pretty terrible student. It’s just one more way he’s lucky to have his powers—no way truancy officers will ever be able to catch him when they can’t see him or even realize he exists.

Seriously, Gotham is so lucky he’s never decided to become a supervillain. He’d be basically unstoppable.

Tim steps off the bus and, pulling the hood of his raincoat up over his beanie, heads towards the apartment complex. It’s rundown, but a fairly charming place nonetheless—there are some bedraggled camellias growing in a pot on one of the balconies, and although the paint is peeling there are hardly any bullet holes; the only bit of graffiti is a cute doodle of a cat that might actually be sharpie now that Tim looks closer.

It’s the kind of place, he thinks with a flash of grim intuition, where a wealthy man might keep a well-liked mistress.

Another woman, upon learning her dinner companion was having an affair shortly after her own husband cheated on her, would immediately inform the victim. Mom’s not like that, though. She’ll keep the information in reserve, using it as most benefits her instead of acting out of some sense of feminine solidarity.

That doesn’t mean it won’t hurt her—that the reminder of what Jack did won’t dig into her, no matter how little she shows it. That’s why Tim doesn’t want to be right.

Unfortunately, he also doesn’t have a choice—and everything he sees in the apartment points to his earlier conclusion being correct. Designer handbags hanging in the closet, even as the apartment’s owner uses a cheap rice cooker to make her meals. A lush bouquet frothing with blood red roses. Leftovers from an exclusive, membership-only restaurant next to a couple of yoplait yogurts and a half-dozen mandarin oranges.

The crowning jewel, of course, is the note Tim finds tucked away in the bottom-most drawer of her bedside table, the one dripping with sweet nothings and empty promises.

The powerful can be unbelievably complacent, he thinks as he runs his thumb over the last line. The poor bastard’s signed his name, bold as brass.

Tim takes photographs of everything and sends them off to his mom. She thanks him, and although there’s nothing in her text that anyone except him could ever pick up on as a sign of upset, he can still sense the way this shakes her.

If Tim were a better son, he’d be eager to reassure her, to come up with ways to make her feel better. But for some reason, he can’t think of anything, and the thought of trying to change that just makes him feel tired. So he tells Mom that he’s going to stop by a local diner for an early dinner of his own, that he hopes things go well and he’s looking forward to getting ice cream cake with her later.

The food at the diner Tim goes to isn’t as good as Alanzo’s, but whose is? There’s just something special about mob pizza.

Still, it’s a nice place. The huge glass window means Tim can watch the streets to his heart’s content, and the waitress, Dianne, know how to make a mean cup of coffee. Plus, it’s the Riddler’s favorite spot to eat, which means Tim often gets to spend his lunch break reading over Nygma’s shoulder as he comes up with his newest cypher or riddle or puzzle.

The only real downside is that the diner staunchly refuses to use Doordash, Uber Eats, or any other app like that—which means that Tim has to place his orders in person, repeating them over and over until they finally sink in. Even then, Dianne often brings him the wrong food. It’s not such a trial, though, since everything they cook is so tasty.

It may be dinnertime, but Tim orders some hashbrowns and eggs regardless; he’s a firm believer in the delights of breakfast at any and all times of the day. He also asks for a nice hot cup of coffee and a slice of pie. That done, he settles into wait.

There’s not much to see out the window, and the Riddler unfortunately isn’t present, so he finds his mind wandering.

He’s glad that Gianna’s free now, but the other people in the warehouse—all of those workers with their blood-crusted mouths, sediment-stained fingers, inflamed blisters—are still trapped. The dogs in their kennels in the old school still shiver and shake, flinching away from Hard Eyes’ reaching hand. All across Gotham, people overdose everyday on pills being constructed in the very warehouse Tim’s visited so many times. Is it really okay for him to just leave things like this?

At the same time… should he really be pushing his luck? Tim shivers a little as he remembers the lost ID card. Freeing Gianna may have somehow, miraculously worked, but it’s not as if he would be able to dismantle an entire criminal operation, especially one as broad-reaching as this one, on his own. He’d have to give a tip to either the Commissioner or the Bats—and considering his luck with the Commissioner, what he really means here is just the Bats.

A dark head turning. White eyes locked onto him.

It feels ridiculous to even consider it. Avoiding the Bats might as well be one of the Ten Commandments. Batman has his One Rule he obeys above all else; Tim, too, has his own One Rule, that being to steer clear of terrifying, meta-hating vigilantes.

Besides, hadn’t he just been guiltily thinking to himself about how if someone found the ID card, the consequences would come down on Mom, not Tim? It’ll be the same with this, too. Tim’s powers make him slippery, hard to pin down—people may underestimate Mom, but at least they can see her. She’s vulnerable in a way Tim isn’t, the perfect scapegoat for any of his crimes.

Tim sighs. He doesn’t want to think about this right now. He feels like he’s spent the last couple of months endlessly circling around and around this same question, pulled between what he owes his mom and what he owes these people so in need of his help. It’s an old, tired, debate, one he’s sick of having.

Instead, he gets up and goes to fetch his order—Dianne’s left it on the middle of the counter, like she went to give it to him but forgot what she was doing halfway through. She’s set out bacon instead of eggs, and a donut instead of a slice of pie, but at least the coffee’s there.

After he finishes his meal, Tim pulls out his laptop and starts idly poking through the internet, alternately fruitlessly searching the vigilante forums for any sign of the new Bat and equally fruitlessly trying to figure out who the hell is behind the operation involving the Ibanescus and Scarecrow.

Of course, Tim ends up getting distracted, as one is wont to do, and within a couple of hours he can be found diligently reading through the Wikipedia page for the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary while polishing off his third donut and fourth cup of coffee.

He’s just pulling up a complete pdf of Mandeville’s Travels (reading the Wikipedia entry about a mythical lamb growing from a plant is fun, yes, but nothing’s better than a primary source) when he hears a sharp gasp from behind him.

Tim turns to see that Dianne is gaping at the cracked flatscreen the diner plays the news on, one hand pressed over her mouth. He pulls one earbud from his ear, mind racing as he tries to figure out what’s going on. Is it Firefly? Killer Croc? Or… the Joker?

But when he looks at the tv screen, all he sees is a car crash. A nasty one, sure—it looks like the first snow of the year came after all, and that, along with a bit of bad driving, led to a truly deadly combination—but… they get bad car crashes in Gotham all the time. Is it a slow news day or what? Why are they bothering to report on this?

And then he sees the ticker at the bottom.

CEO OF DRAKE INDUSTRIES CRASHES CAR

The floor has dropped out from under him. No, the world has dropped out from under him. Abruptly gravityless, his belly floats almost to his chest, floats like it’s going to climb up his throat and out of his body. The world is unreal; fiction seen through a fishbowl.

He moves through molasses. Lurches up. Hands trembling, fumbles around until he can find the remote, turn the sound on. Even then, it takes a minute for the words to start registering.

“...Jack Drake was driving, with his wife Janet in the passengers’ seat. It looks like the car hit a patch of ice, causing Drake to lose control of the car and, ultimately, collide with this nearby pole.” The reporter gestures to the pole in question. It’s sectioned off behind bright yellow caution tape. A thick patch of dark blood stains its center.

Tim sways. He braces himself against the counter with one trembling hand.

This has to be some sort of mistake, some sort of… of dream, or error, they thought it was the Drakes but it was some other family, some other rich Gothamite losing control of their car. That isn’t blood on the pole, no one’s hurt, and if it is it isn’t Mom. It isn’t Mom, it isn’t Mom, please don’t let it be Mom.

“It appears that Janet Drake died on impact.”

Something crumples. Something breaks. He can hear it, shattering glass, fracturing bone, cracking ice.

His legs fold under him; he hits the floor like a puppet with cut strings. His head dips. His limp hand smacks the tiles. He can feel the impact of it reverberate in the bones of his knuckles.

Mom, he thinks. Mom, Mom, Mom.

It can’t be right. It can’t be right at all.

“...appears Jack may have been drunk, as other drivers reported seeing him weaving between lanes. Additionally, some witnesses report that it appeared as though Jack and Janet were arguing. A combination of distraction, alcohol, and the ice was likely the cause of this deadly crash.”

No, this isn’t right at all. Mom would never… would never… Jack might try to drink and drive, that’s true. But Mom would never let him actually do it, not to the point of it being dangerous.

She would never die like this. She would never just leave him behind, because—because she’s the only one who knows him, and he’s the only one who really knows her, and—

And.. and she wouldn’t argue with Jack while he was driving. If she was angry, she would sit in icy silence the whole ride home; it would be later, when they were back behind closed doors away from prying eyes, that she would verbally eviscerate him.

No, no, no. This is like hearing a story about other people, people who aren’t his parents. Other people who are dead, maybe, but not his parents…

Tim levers himself to his feet. The tv is saying they’ve moved Jack to Gotham General. Mom’s probably there too. He’ll just go there. He’ll go there, and everything will make sense. Reporters get things wrong sometimes. They misunderstand things, or miss things, or misinterpret things. So… he’ll just go there, and he’ll see that…

He’ll see that…

Abruptly, he feels his eyes fill with hot tears; they spill down his cheeks in two long, continuous streams. He feels as though his heart is splitting down the middle. The crack in the ice is spreading, the broken bones are rubbing against each other, the sharp shards of glass are shattering more deeply. Breaking isn’t just a moment, it’s a long process of fracturing, halves dividing and those new halves dividing themselves, endless fragmentation until all that’s left is something like sand except without any ocean to wear it smooth.

Mom. Mom. Mom.

He stumbles out the door. He’ll go to the hospital. He’ll see her. Things will make sense there. He’ll know what to do.

There will be some way for him to fix this fissure in his soul.

Chapter 9: Vengeance

Chapter Text

She’s dead.

It sunk in sometime around Tim having to leave Gotham General because she wasn’t there, or maybe it sunk in when he finally found her lying in the morgue like so much lost luggage, or maybe it sunk in when he pulled open the body bag and saw the state her head was in.

Either way, here Tim is kneeling beside the steel tray they’ve laid her out on, holding her cold hand and trying to accept that… that she’s dead.

Because it still doesn’t make sense, not really. He knows she’s dead, he does… it’s just that. It’s just that he saw her earlier today, and she was fine. Sure, maybe she was a little tired, a little out of sorts from everything that’s been going on, but still. Fine. Alive and continuing to be alive and going to be alive.

And… Tim knows she’s dead, he does, but it doesn’t make sense, because she said they were going to get ice cream cake together later, and Mom always keeps her promises. She wouldn’t just go back on her word like that, she wouldn’t just… she wouldn’t just leave him for no reason.

Mom made another promise to him, too, back when he was younger. The first time she and Jack left him all alone, that first time they gave up on finding a nanny for him because the nannies never noticed him anyways.

“Darling,” she told him, one hand cupping his tear-stained cheek, “I know it’s scary, but you have to endure it. Just remember, wherever we go, however long we’ll be gone, we’ll always come back eventually."

But no one can come back from the dead.

Logically, Tim knows people don’t choose when and how they die. But… like this? A car crash? A car crash because of drunk driving, because of ice, because of an argument? There’s no way. The reporters may believe it, but they’ve always underestimated Mom, just like all of the socialites do, just like all of Drake Industries’ rivals do, just like everyone except for Tim does. They think she could die like that because they don’t know what she’s really made of.

There has to be some sort of reason, some sort of way he can make this make sense. Because it doesn’t like this. Because this isn’t nearly enough of an explanation.

…the reminder of Jack’s cheating had upset her. Tim had been able to tell just from her text message. Maybe if he hadn’t stayed at the diner, maybe if he’d actually tried to console her, then maybe…

Tim’s mind flinches back from that train of thought with an instinct like a hand drawing back from a hot stove. Do not go down that path, some part of him seems to say. There lies madness.

A different thought comes to him, comes to him in a bolt like lightning, in a hit like a sucker punch to his chest: the ID card.

How could Tim have forgotten about that? He’d been so worried, had been on edge for days looking for some sort of evidence of approaching retribution—and yet when it came, he didn’t make the connection at all.

Until now.

So. He dropped the ID card in the warehouse, and Scarecrow picked it up, and saw the Drake Industries logo, and had the people he’s working with try to find the culprit—and when they couldn’t, when they saw that there was no Alvin Draper working at Drake Industries, they lashed wildly out at the first, most obvious target they could: the CEO and his wife, the namesakes of the company, the Drakes.

That makes it still partially Tim’s fault—partially, because he was the one who was stupid enough to bring the ID card with him, stupid enough to drop it, stupid enough to not protect his mom better after realizing it was missing. But it also means that it’s mostly Scarecrow’s fault, his fault and the fault of whoever it is bankrolling him and running the whole greater operation the warehouse is a part of.

His mom didn’t die, she was killed. And he has some idea who did it.

Tim lifts his mom’s cold hand. He presses his lips to her knuckles. “Mom,” he says. “I’m sorry I didn’t save you. But I promise I’ll avenge you or—or die trying.”

He may have broken his earlier promise to her. But this one, he won’t. This is a vow written in blood, an oath on his mother’s grave. A prophecy that should make whatever sick bastard is behind his mom’s death tremble in fear.

Tim squeezes his mom’s hand one more time, then rises and leaves. He doesn’t look behind him as he goes.

He may not bring be able to bring her back, but he’s sure as hell not going to let her death pass unnoticed.

Mom’s been home for longer than usual. Tim can’t be too happy about it since he knows it’s because she got malaria, but he’s still a little happy about it.

Especially because Mom’s paying more attention to him than usual. Maybe it’s just because she’s bored, or maybe it’s because she feels grateful for the way he’s been taking care of her recently, bringing her ginger tea and glasses of cold juice, but… either way, it’s really nice.

Right now, Mom’s trying to teach him how to play poker. Tim’s not very good at it—he’s not used to people paying attention to his expressions, so he’s terrible at bluffing. It’s still fun, though. Spending time with Mom always is.

Mom sweeps all the poker chips over to her side of the bed, smiling that sly, subtle little smile that Tim loves. “I beat you this time,” she tells him teasingly. “But you’re not going to let me win next time, are you? You won’t let this stand, will you darling?”

Tim shakes his head back. “I won’t,” he vows.

The corners of Mom’s eyes crinkle. “I thought not.”

As much as Tim might wish otherwise, righteous anger does not confer any superpowers upon him—or at least not any beyond the ones he already has. He’s still a scrawny, know-nothing loser of a kid, without training or resources or even anyone who knows he exists. All he really has is the element of surprise; the people he’s hunting have no idea he’s after them. It’s a small boon, but he thinks it’ll be enough.

He’s spent years slowly unraveling various corporations, tracking precisely what threads to pull on and levers to push to make everything slowly fall apart. Although he’s never applied the skills to a criminal enterprise, in theory the underlying principles are still the same, and even if they aren’t Tim’s always been a quick learner.

And yet… he finds that’s not what he wants at all. After all, this whole thing is meant to be about justice—about ensuring a certain equality, balancing the scales which selfishness and cruelty have tipped off kilter. And if it’s about equality, well… Mom didn’t have her company fall apart under her, she didn’t lose her power and status—she was killed. They took her life, not her legacy. Shouldn’t her killer meet the same fate?

Tim’s never killed before, but the idea isn’t so foreign as it should be. The thought of killing brings no feeling of taboo, no sense that this will be some crime or sin; rather, it just seems like the natural response. Things fall when you drop them; everything comes from something; people who kill should die. A law of the universe like any other—just one that requires a little help in its enforcement.

There’s a certain elegance to it. Not just because of the natural balance it will create, although Tim certainly appreciates that as well, but also due to the sheer simplicity of it. There will be no scheming, no careful manipulations or pulled strings. Tim will find the person at the head of the operation, the one running this whole mess, and he’ll kill them.

Vengeance as precise as a surgical cut. The boss may be protected, may be layered behind security systems and bodyguards, but nothing can keep them safe from Tim—nothing can keep them safe from justice. He’ll just need one chance; by the time they notice him, it’ll already be too late.

All he needs to do is find them.

“Patience,” Batman says. If Tim cranes his neck just so, he can see that Batman’s lifted one hand and put it on Robin’s shoulder in a reassuring, paternal gesture. “All you need is a little patience, and everything will become clear as day.”

Tim heads back to the warehouse.

As he draws closer, Tim can feel the hair on the back of his neck start to rise. Here’s the spot where their energy gave out and they let their running fall into an awkward sort of speed walking; here’s the fence they ducked under; here’s the corner where Gianna tripped over the curb and Tim had to frantically haul her back upright. Here are the doors they burst out of; here is the warehouse she was imprisoned in; here are the people who chased after them. Here Tim is, back again.

He hesitates uncertainly near the entrance. What if they see him? Sure, they never noticed all of the other times he visited the warehouse, but that was before he liberated one of their prisoners. And… his powers have been acting so strangely lately. They don’t seem to be behaving consistently, and if they are it’s according to some sort of logic he can’t grasp at all.

It’s not that Tim’s afraid of them catching and killing him. It’s that he’s afraid of being found, of being caught out, of their gazes on him like a cheese grater scraping over his skin. And more than that—of being unable to fulfill this last promise he made to his mom. Of his attempt at accomplishing this last goal sputtering out, ineffectual and pathetic, before he can get anywhere close to avenging Mom.

Tim’s standing there, shifting uncertainly from foot to foot, when he hears the tread of someone drawing near. He slides back into a nearby patch of shadows and settles in to watch.

Years of spectating on all manner of happenings within Gotham have left Tim with a keen eye for identifying all manner of thugs, hooligans, and troublemakers. Birdwatchers categorize various avians by their feathers and colors; Tim can tell different types of criminals apart through their manner and the weapons they carry.

The man walking up now is a drug dealer if Tim’s ever seen one. There’s nothing of the bruiser in him; he’s too slender, not nearly intimidating enough. Nor does he have the hard, charismatic cruelty of a pimp, or the cold, sharp eyes of a boss; just the sly ease of a salesman and the confident swagger that comes with packing heat.

He’s met by one of the guards—a man Tim vaguely recalls from the night he fled with Gianna. If he’s remembering correctly, that guard was the one who wanted to try to shoot them. The other guards had to stop him with repeated reminders that they needed to avoid “damaging the merchandise”.

“They don’t usually send you,” the guard says.

“Yeah.” The drug dealer smirks, showing off a brief flash of teeth. “I’m a little high up for street dealing.” Not that you would know anything about that hangs in the area, unspoken.

That’s the kind of thread Tim could tug on, if he wanted to. They should consider themselves lucky that he has different plans.

The guard scoffs a little, visibly swallows back his anger. “What do you want?”

“Boss lady wants to test the new product before we put it out on the street.”

Tim can see the guard gritting his teeth. “I’ll go check with Scarecrow.”

“Mm-hmm,” the drug dealer hums. “You go do that.” Still smirking, he watches the guard head in. After a moment, he leans up against the wall and pulls out a cigarette, lighting it with a flick of his Zippo.

A few minutes pass. The air fills with the smell of cigarette smoke. Tim waits in silence, hardly moving, barely breathing.

Eventually, the guard comes back out. He’s carrying a small, plastic-wrapped package under his arm; he’s got a scowl on his face like he wishes he wasn’t.

“Here.”

“Thank you,” the dealer drawls. With a sarcastic tip of the head, he turns and heads back the way he came.

Tim follows him.

“Here’s the sample you requested,” the dealer says. He tosses it down onto the table with an ironic flourish.

The woman he came here to meet glances up, her eyes cool. The dealer falters momentarily under her icy gaze, then seems to recover his sense of bravado—at least most of it. In a slightly quieter voice, he says, “Let me know if there’s anything else you need.”

The woman flips her hand in dismissal, and he leaves.

Once he’s gone, she returns to her paperwork. Tim looks her over, trying to categorize her the way he did her subordinate.

Oddly enough, she reminds Tim of no one so much as his mother. He saw it in that flip of her hand, which was so much like his mom’s sharp flicks of her wrist as she shooed him away back at the museum that he felt it in his chest like an ice pick driving in. It’s there, too, in the well-tailored, subtly pinstriped blazer she wears, in the tasteful gold jewelry that gleams at her ears, in the slash of red lipstick like blood around her mouth. Even the scar that trails down the side of her face has a touch of the elegant to it.

It’s all enough that looking at her hurts a little.

Tim leans up against the wall and closes his eyes. He just needs to get through a little bit more. He just needs to be patient. The end is in sight.

“I didn’t find anything,” Tim says. He’s too used to being alone, to being unseen, to even think of trying to quell the childish pout tugging his mouth downwards.

Mom sighs. “It’s only been a day, darling. This isn’t like following your Bats; businessmen move on slower timelines than vigilantes. But that doesn’t mean that they aren’t up to interesting things. It just means you have to be a little bit more patient.”

Flushing hot with shame, Tim bows his head. For a moment, Mom just continues drawing on her eyeliner, and then after a minute, her voice a bit more gentle, tells him, “Think about it this way: Batman and Robin have to do stake outs all the time, yes? This is just like their stakeouts. The only difference is you get to do your surveillance inside, where it’s nice and cozy and you aren’t going to get rained on.”

“If you get bored,” she adds, “You can daydream a little. You don’t have to spend the entire time searching their space or cataloging every tiny little thing they do. Just don’t get so distracted that you miss something important.

Tim nods; satisfied, Mom returns to doing her makeup.

Tim doesn’t bother to pay too much attention to the goings-on of this little drug gang. The minutiae of their dealings hardly interest him; he’s only concerned with their affairs insofar as they allow him to find the next link up the food chain.

Instead, he finds his mind drifting. Sometimes, it falls into an almost meditative blankness. Other times, he finds himself idly thinking about conversations he had with his mom years ago, or recalling the shape of her lying on that cold metal table in the morgue; he pictures the form of her ruined face over and over like a finger tracing the same lines again and again again.

Mostly, though, he imagines the moment of the kill.

A knife to the neck. A gun hot in his hand. Poison, slipped into their drink. The methods change in each imagined scenario, and he can never seem to quite imagine their face—that stays blurry, just a vague expressionless shell; plastic wrap stretched flimsily over something darker.

What’s consistent is the feeling that it brings him—the spurting blood like cold water after a long night of nightmares, the moment their eyes dim like that first breath you take after being underwater for too long, the feeling of relief as deep as in that moment when exhausted eyes finally slip shut for good. The ultimate catharsis, the only thing that can finally end this painful feeling slowly crushing Tim’s chest.

The only thing that can fix this fissure in his soul.

Not fix it by closing it, no. Nothing can close it, except perhaps time running backwards.

Fix it by breaking it the rest of the way—a clean, complete separation. There is some comfort in something being as broken as it can be, destroyed so completely it cannot be destroyed more, so bad it cannot be worse.

(Some tiny part of him, a part he ignores, whispers even now: things can always get worse.)

Tim watches, and waits, and daydreams of death sharpen him like a whetstone sharpening a knife.

Tim’s standing behind her chair and idly reading over her shoulder when Bloody Lipstick gets the text.

Tonight. Midnight. The factory at Fifth and Jackson.

Bloody Lipstick freezes, just for a split second. Her reactions are subdued, even when she thinks she’s alone, but Tim can tell she’s surprised—confused, maybe even a little scared.

For the first time in a long time, Tim feels a spark of curiosity lighting in his chest.

Whatever this is, it’s going to be interesting.

Chapter 10: The Meeting Place

Chapter Text

Usually, Tim leans up against the wall to watch during meetings like this.

Well. Usually, he doesn’t go to meetings like this. Gatherings of big underworld players all-too-frequently end in double crossings and shoot outs, and even Tim’s powers can’t save him from the blind spray of a machine gun. Even at his nosiest and most curious, the temptation has never been enough for Tim to justify the risk.

He doesn’t care about that anymore. The only risk he cares about now is the risk of failure—and this meeting is too juicy for him to pass up.

The bosses of Gotham’s eight most successful drug rings, all settled in around the same table. A week ago, Tim would have bet good money on never seeing some of them in the same room, let alone at the same table—for instance, he’s frankly astounded Chichi and Vanda haven’t shot each other yet. The sheer pull it would have taken to arrange this meet, let alone coordinate whatever it is they’re meeting about… it’s almost as big a feat as turning Scarecrow’s chaotic “hobby” into an organized, profitable business. Tim knows it’s dangerous to assume, but it seems more likely than not that it’s the same person behind both accomplishments.

The only problem is that he can’t see anything. All of the bosses seem to have decided to bring their buffest bodyguards; it’s like they’re competing over who has the biggest bruiser. That wouldn’t be a problem if this was just a board meeting at some rival company, but Gotham’s bosses tend to be men of few words—if he can’t see their faces, he’s going to miss out on half the conversation.

That’s why when one of the bruisers pulls out a chair for their boss, Tim takes the opportunity to clamber up onto the table.

He realizes how stupid a decision that was right after he makes it—he’s set himself up to be right in the middle of the crossfire if one of the bosses decides to shoot another one—but, well, if things go south he’s probably dead no matter where he’s sitting. And the view is excellent.

Tim takes a moment to look around and catalog everyone in the room. He doesn’t know everyone—the drug trade is brutal, gangs scrambling their way to the top only to be ripped down shortly after—but he’s not totally in the dark either. He knows Chichi, Vanda, and Freddy Thornton by name, each of them having managed to stay on top of their game long enough to make names for themselves in the business, and most of the other faces are at least familiar.

The bosses are looking around, too. Not at Tim, of course, but at each other. Sizing each other up, weighing each other with their eyes.

The silence stretches on for a long moment, tense and taut, and then it finally breaks.

“Alright, Vanda. Why did you call us here?”

Vanda blinks, his lips curling faintly. “What are you talking about? This wasn’t my meet.”

“What the hell? Who set it up, then?”

“I thought it was you East End motherf*ckers,” a man Tim vaguely recognizes as being the boss of a Chinatown gang says. He points an accusatory finger at Bloody Lipstick. “You already rolled over for the Black Mask and I figured you wanted to ask us in.”

Now it’s Tim’s turn to blink. His heart pounds hard and fast in his chest, and he can feel his fingers moving, twitching like he’s grasping onto something. Black Mask? Is that who’s behind all of this? He knows Bloody Lipstick is working in tandem with Scarecrow, so if she's working for Black Mask, then Scarecrow must be, too.

On an intuitive level, it makes sense. Black Mask’s always been clever, with a mind for strategy that few of the other Rogues can match. He wasn’t at nearly this level of dominance the last time Tim properly surveilled Gotham’s underworld, but he wasn’t doing badly either—it’s not so unbelievable that he could’ve expanded to become the foremost power in Gotham’s underground in the time Tim was busy.

And yet, it still feels like Tim’s missing something important, some detail that he needs to understand what’s really going on here. Even if he assumes Black Mask was the one who set up Scarecrow’s drug dealing operation, that still leaves the question…

“Nah,” Bloody Lipstick says, “I thought it was Chichi’s meet.”

…who set up the meet?

“Wasn’t my meet,” Chichi says.

Thornton scoffs, pushing back from the table. “f*ck this sh*t. I’m out.”

A harsh voice cuts him off. “Sit down, Freddy.”

There’s a man standing on one of the factory’s raised walkways. He’s wearing a red helmet, and he’s got an assault rifle hoisted against one shoulder.

f*ck, Tim thinks. f*ck. Sitting on the table really was a stupid f*cking decision. He wasn’t intending to get shot today, but with every passing minute it’s looking more and more like he won’t have a choice.

The bosses’ hands all fly to their weapons, and Tim despairs. Sorry, Mom. Best I could do was “or die trying”.

The man in the red helmet lifts his gun, and Tim flinches back—he’s going to die and the person killing him isn’t even going to know—DON’T SHOOT—the steady drumming of gunfire pounds in his ears almost as fast as his heart—

—and then the gunfire stops and—and Tim hasn’t been shot. Baffled relief fills him as he realizes he’s somehow escaped unscathed. Slowly uncurling, he sees that the bullets were mostly been aimed at the ground around him, shredding the already battered concrete of the factory floor. In a bizarre turn of fate, sitting on the table seems to have actually saved him.

“I said sit down.” The man with the red helmet settles the AK-47 back against his shoulder, and Tim feels his shoulders lose just a bit of tension. He’s safe—for now. “You wanted to know who called this meeting, didn’t you? Well, here I am.”

Red Helmet starts talking about how he’s taking over the drug trade—how they all work for him now and not Black Mask—but Tim’s struggling to focus on what he’s saying. Part of it is the adrenaline still flowing hotly in his veins, setting his hands to shaking and keeping his lungs from quite expanding all the way, but part of it is also that… there’s something about Red Helmet. Something, oddly enough, that’s a bit… familiar.

Maybe it’s something about the voice? Not the register of it, or the timbre, but something else about it… the tone, perhaps? Or maybe it’s the phrasing he uses, the flare in his gestures? The way his head jerks sharply to the side, attention locking onto the one idiot that was stupid enough to move like they were about to stand back up?

The dark form turns, head unerringly following the sound of Tim’s scream until those inhuman white eyes lock onto his.

Batman. The reason Red Helmet is familiar is because he reminds Tim of Batman.

It’s absurd, baffling—but now that he’s got the thought in his head, it lingers. He can’t stop seeing it. It’s there in the way Red Helmet moves—eerily graceful, light on his feet in a way that seems almost unnatural for a man of his stature. It’s there, too, in the sheer presence he brings to bear, the way he seems to fill up the room, to loom over them all like a storm on the horizon. Even Red Helmet’s silence seems to have weight.

“This is all very generous, but why the f*ck should we listen to you?”

Red Helmet lifts something from the ground beside him, swinging it smoothly over the railing. A duffle bag hits the table next to Tim with a disturbingly wet-sounding thump. The unzipped flaps gape open. Bloody heads, stacked atop each other. —lying in the morgue like so much lost luggage, he unzips the body bag and sees her head—

Tim’s stomach spasms and he spews burning bile all over the table.

Whoever this is, it definitely isn’t Batman. So why does Tim still find himself seeing something of the Dark Knight in the smooth way Red Helmet hefts his AK-47 as he sends another spray of bullets across the factory floor?

The bosses flinch and duck back behind whatever cover they can find. Tim watches and tries to wipe the bile from his mouth with the corner of one sleeve.

“Make no mistake,” Red Helmet warns. “I’m not asking you to kick in with me. I’m telling you.”

No one makes any objections to that.

Considering that display, you would think Tim would dismiss the earlier resemblance he’d seen as nothing more than the deluded ramblings of an overstressed, sleep-deprived mind. You would think that he would follow Bloody Lipstick, or Chichi, or literally anyone except the gun-wielding maniac who almost shot him, twice.

And yet, when Tim leaves the warehouse, it’s Red Helmet that he trails after.

If was asked, he would explain that, as counterintuitive as it may seem, following Red Helmet is Tim’s best chance at finding Black Mask. After all, there’s no way in hell any of the bosses Red Helmet just threatened are going to keep working for Mask—and with the way he’s acting, Red Helmet is setting himself on a collision course that’s sure to end in a bloody confrontation with Mask. All Tim needs to do is keep on trailing Red Helmet, and eventually he’ll find Black Mask, too.

Tim could say all of that, and all of it would be true. But it’s also true that part of him—a part of him that he thought died with his mom—is deeply, unbearably curious. Who is this strange man, who reminds him so much of Batman but does things Batman would never condone? Where did he come from, and what are his goals? When his clock finally runs down and he has his ultimate confrontation with Black Mask, will he survive, or will he fail like so many wannabe crime bosses before him have?

And so Tim creeps after him, even as his mind still churns with images of bloody heads spilling out of an unzipped duffle bag.

Tim’s known for a while now that people’s homes can reveal a lot about who they are. That applies for Rogues and gang leaders as much as it does for civilians and socialites—possibly even more so, in fact. The Riddler’s hoarded collections of Rubix cubes, vintage wooden puzzle boxes, and board games; all of the photos of his wife that Mr. Freeze keeps around; Catwoman’s feline-themed decor—all of them help provide the kind of insight into the Rogues’ psyches that criminal profilers everywhere would give up their left arm to receive.

It’s why Tim finds himself wondering what Red Helmet’s home will look like. Will his place be neat or messy, cluttered or minimalistic, modern or old-fashioned? Will he display his weapons openly, or tuck them away behind layers of security? Will he have decorated around some sort of theme, the way Selina Kyle did? What sort of food will he keep in his fridge, what sort of things will lie nestled in his cupboards and drawers, what will he hide and where?

Even location can reveal a lot. High levels of inequality means that Gotham is strictly segregated by socioeconomic status; you can get a pretty good idea of someone’s class affiliations and financial situation just by where they live. Plus, looking at different Rogues’ relationships with their neighbors can be really interesting; Tim once spent several delighted weeks of investigation following Condiment King’s extended fight with his local Homeowners Association.

Tim follows Red Helmet right into the heart of Crime Alley. That’s already immensely interesting just by itself. Crime Alley is a purgatory of perpetually fighting small-time criminals, scrapping it out over tiny patches of territory that the winner then inevitably loses to another group two weeks later. If Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires, Crime Alley is the graveyard of criminal empires; in all his years following the going-ons of Gotham’s underground, Tim has never seen any group, no matter how powerful, successfully take it over. At this point, few even try.

To try to launch an attack against an already-established burgeoning criminal empire from Crime Alley… Tim should dismiss it as idiotic, delusional, ill-advised beyond all measure. And yet, having seen the sheer ruthless efficiency with which Red Helmet acts, the expert skill imbued in every line of his body as he moves, the confidence in his voice as he speaks… Tim isn’t as sure about that as he should be.

Red Helmet begins disarming a series of complex traps while Tim watches over his shoulder with interest. Several of the mechanisms used are familiar; he recognizes a trap the Riddler used several years ago, as well as what looks like the improved version of something he knows the Mad Hatter cooked up a while ago. Whoever Red Helmet is, he’s been hooked into the going-ons of Gotham’s underground for quite some time.

Based on that, you might assume that Red Helmet’s home would be lived-in, filled up with the detritus of years living in Gotham. And yet it’s just the opposite—it’s minimally furnished, with no real personal touches that Tim can spot. It’s small, too; little more than a bolthole.

A safehouse, Tim realizes. This is a safehouse, not a permanent residence.

He doesn’t have time to think on it more, because Red Helmet’s reaching around the back of his head to unclip his helmet. Tim freezes. For a moment, he’s overtaken by the absurd certainty that he’s about to see Bruce Wayne’s face emerging out of under that red metal shell—but no. It’s someone else entirely.

A wave of deja vu sweeps over Tim as he examines the stranger’s face. It feels like he should know who it is he’s looking at, like the name’s right on the tip of his tongue, and yet he just can’t place just who it is he’s thinking of. That heavy brow, that strong jawline, that crooked nose—it’s all so familiar. And yet, the closer he looks, the more that sense of familiarity seems to slip away. He’s left with a faint, disconcerting sense of thwarted connection, like the man he sees when he looks at Red Helmet is a friend from a dream he had once.

Red Helmet lifts his gaze—green eyes, so foreign and yet it almost feels like there’s something about them that he should recognize—to focus on some point just behind Tim. Even though Tim knows he’s just staring off into space, there’s still something disconcerting about someone gazing so intently about a point so close to him, and he’s glad when Red Helmet blinks.

Rubbing his eyes and stifling a yawn, Red Helmet shambles into the kitchen and starts idly rifling through his fridge, tossing out ingredients that he evidently judges to be subpar in some way as he goes. Once he’s collected a selection that meets his exacting standards, he starts making himself a meal. His movements are just as deft slicing an onion as they were reloading his gun.

That’s always one of the strangest part of following people like this—remembering that as larger than life as rogues and gang leaders might seem, they’re still just people, too.

Red Helmet goes to bed pretty much right after he finishes eating, but Tim’s still got plenty of energy. He takes the opportunity to look around a little more thoroughly now that he’s not distracted by Red Helmet's cooking, but there’s not much to find. There are no knick knacks, no bits and bobs of accumulated junk; even for a safehouse, the space strikes Tim as abnormally bare and utilitarian. There aren’t even any cobwebs or dust bunnies in the drawers. If it weren’t for the astoundingly well stocked first aid kit tucked away under the kitchen sink, Tim might think that Red Helmet didn’t know he had any extra storage space.

Not that he has that problem with the fridge. Even after Red Helmet went through and tossed out the ingredients that didn’t meet his standards, the fridge is still well-stocked with a mixture of fresh fruits and vegetables, eggs and milk, carefully packaged and labeled cuts of meat and fish, and even what looks like homemade bread. Tim supposes that maintaining a body best described as the love child of a brick sh*thouse and a tank requires good quality food, and a lot of it, but this still seems a little excessive.

Maybe he’s some kind of disaffected pro chef, Tim muses idly as he pokes through the discarded food that Red Helmet piled next to his trash can. Most of it looks perfectly fine to him—no mold or anything—but then again, it’s no surprise that the kind of neat freak that cleans every single drawer to the point of there not being a single speck of dust has similarly high standards for their food.

That could plausibly be why Red Helmet became a villain. If he was working as a pro chef at a restaurant in Gotham, the sheer number of health violations he saw on a daily basis would definitely make him snap. Tim’s been in the kitchens of more Gotham restaurants than many career chefs and he’s yet to see a place that wasn’t breaking at least two or three food safety laws.

Tim makes himself a sandwich out of two slices of slightly stale bread, a couple of pieces of lettuce that might wilt if you left them in the sun for a couple of days, and some salami that thought about tasting too salty where Red Helmet could hear it. There’s even some ham and cheese to bulk it out. As far as meals scrounged up from the leftovers of the people Tim’s following go, this is one of the best.

After he finishes his dinner, Tim curls up under the quilt hung across the back of the safehouse’s couch and drifts off.

As easily as if he were tossing a ball, Red Helmet lifts the duffle bag and throws it over the railing. When it hits the table, one of the heads inside bounces before rolling to rest against Tim’s knee. With one trembling hand, he reaches to turn it over.

His mom’s ruined face stares back up at him.

Tim jolts awake, his heart jackhammering away in his chest and bile clinging thickly to the back of his throat.

Tim’s followed a lot of people. CEOs and street bums, working mothers and drug dealers, Rogues and cops, he’s tailed them all. Sometimes, following people can be really interesting. He’s watched as Poison Ivy tenderly coaxed neglected house plants back to life, has witnessed the mayor being bribed in broad daylight, even once stared in absolute awe as one of the Batburger employees emptied an entire bottle of Firefly Sparkling Mustard™ directly into a customer’s eyes.

Most of the time, though, it’s pretty boring. Even the busiest, most important, most interesting people have more down time than one might think. Few people are actually constantly rushing around, jumping from one big event to another; most people’s days are actually mostly made up of doing things like eating lunch, and filling out paperwork, and trying to write emails but getting distracted. Mob bosses have to deal with logistical issues too; Rogues binge watch TV just as much as anyone (in fact, the Riddler has a bizarre obsession with “How It’s Made”); even Commissioner Gordon likes to wind down every night before bed by reading dense autobiographies of various historical figures (the last time Tim checked, he was working his way through a 800 page brick on Andrew Carnegie).

In one sense, it’s interesting to see all of these tiny, humanizing details of such singular figures' lives. Mostly, though, it’s really f*cking boring. People being all about the same in the end means there’s not much new or interesting about watching the person he’s following pick their nose or do their dishes or procrastinate on filing their taxes, no matter who they are. Still, Tim’s accepted that that’s just the nature of people—they always have their down time, their routines, their empty expanses of time spent dealing with the minutiae of living.

Not Red Helmet, though.

Sure, he spends time cooking meals, straightening up his apartment, and buying groceries. In fact, he’s absurdly obsessed with keeping everything tidy, and he likes to make elaborate, over the top dishes—half of which he tucks away in the fridge for later and then seemingly just… completely forgets about. (No wonder he ends up throwing away so much perfectly good food, Tim thinks with a perhaps somewhat hypocritical level of judgment.)

Other than that, though, he doesn’t seem to have any hobbies. He doesn’t read; he doesn’t watch TV; he doesn’t even idly scroll through social media. Any other free time he does have is spent meticulously cleaning his weapons, sharpening his knives, and checking his body armor for any scratches.

Not that he has much by way of free time.

You see, Red Helmet has been cutting through Gotham like a scythe. He’s relentless, unceasing, and absolutely brutal. The duffle bag of heads was just the beginning; he hits all of the little gangs of Crime Alley, demanding they either throw in with him or be wiped from the face of the earth. The cut he asks for is small, much smaller than what any other boss would demand, but his rules are strict. No children, whether out on the street corner selling, or in the alley buying; no human trafficking (the East End dragons find out the hard way that yes, that does include organ trafficking); and no cutting drugs with additives. He lays the law down with an iron fist, writes it across the streets of Crime Alley in the blood of the people who dare to disobey.

The whispers spread out before him like a wave, ripples cast out before a dropped stone. They fear him, but they’re in awe of him, too. They call him the Red Hood—which Tim has to admit is a better name than the one he’d came up with—and they plaster the crumbling walls of Crime Alley with the red outline of his helmet.

Considering all that, it’s not as surprising as it should be when the first alley kid comes looking for him.

It’s well into winter by now; snow lingers on the street in grayish, ever-present piles, and at night, the temperature regularly dips down to levels that would have even Mr. Freeze looking for a sweater. This is the deadliest season for street kids, a time where they die in droves, either freezing beneath the inadequate shelter of thin cardboard boxes or starving to death, unable to make up the calories they burn just keeping warm.

The kid’s clearly desperate. They’re rail-thin, their tattered clothing hanging off of their body in a way that’s sure to let all the cold air in, and they’ve got dark eyes under their eyes so big they could be bruises. And yet, despite it all, there’s something undeniably fierce in the proud, upright way they hold their body.

“Mr. Hood, sir!” They fix their gaze right onto the white eyes of Hood’s helmet. “If you’re going to take away our work, you should at least give us some other way to make a living.”

Hood’s body language completely transforms. He bends his broad shoulders inwards, kneels down so he’s at the kid’s level, lets his hands hang limp and open where the kid can see them. Where before he was larger than life, something closer to a statue carved out of marble than a man, now he seems… warm. Approachable. The kind of person you can trust.

“I see your point, kid.” Even the way he speaks is differently—a warm, gravelly rumble instead of a flat, harsh command. And there’s something just so familiar about it…

Tim suddenly knows exactly who the Red Hood is, and—he swallows back against the bile rising thickly in his throat—it’s not Batman.

Robin crouches in front of the girl, his hands hanging loose and limp near his knees. “It’s going to be okay,” he tells her. A brilliant yet soft smile lights up his face, much like a candle lighting up a dark room. “We’re going to help you now, alright? Everything’s going to be okay.

Robin’s dead, and Batman is rampaging across the city. Every night, he seems to get closer to killing one of the criminals he beats—and closer to killing himself. Tim follows him, unable to do anything but watch as blood splatters, as bones break, as teeth scatter across the pavement like fallen pearls.

He has these powers, powers which allow him to do things no one else can, to see things and know things no one else does—and yet Tim didn’t save Robin. If he’d just realized what was happening, if he just hadn’t been such a coward, if he’d been willing to follow Robin more closely when he saw how upset Jason was, if he hadn’t let fear of being seen overcome his desire to help—

Robin’s dead, and now Batman’s indomitable heart has been broken.

Tim should—should try to fix this, should try to get Nightwing to come back and become Robin again, and if that fails should try to patch together Batman’s broken heart himself, but…

He has another responsibility. A much closer, more pressing responsibility; his obligation to his mom.

Tim closes his eyes. His stomach twists; his heart sits thick and heavy in his throat. He breathes in deeply, focusing on the sound of the air rushing into his lungs instead of the wet, meaty thump of Batman’s fist.

He turns on his heel and walks away. He doesn’t look back.

Tim needs to leave. He needs to leave now.

He scrambles back through the grayish, trash-spattered snow covering the street, leaving Robin behind for a second time.

Chapter 11: Recoil

Chapter Text

Tim goes to the Iceberg Lounge.

Gaudy and ostentatious as the decor may be, he’s always found it to be a decent place to crash in a pinch. The hors d’oeuvres are good, if a little too rich, and there’s always some fight or underworld deal or bit of gossip to keep him entertained. When he finally gets tired at the end of the night, he can filch some socialite or trophy wife’s piece of mink fur from the coat room and curl up on one of the couches with that as his combined blanket and pillow.

Unfortunately, tonight Tim doesn’t feel up for watching Falcone’s niece-in-law feud with the girl current gossip says Salvatore Maroni’s godson is planning on marrying. Nor does he feel particularly interested in taking a Grade A Select Mahogany nap in one of the booths. Instead, he’s feeling an urge—an uncharacteristic one, considering he’s never drank before—to drown his thoughts in champagne.

It’s not as if anyone is going to stop him—or even could. Access to alcohol in the Iceberg Lounge tends to be based on prestige more than age, and invisibility supersedes all of that. All Tim would have to do would be lift a glass off a waiter’s tray.

Jack gulps down his glass of vodka, giving Mom a sardonic little wave. “No sugar, see?”

Tim sighs and presses his forehead to the cool marble of the bar counter. When he closes his eyes, he sees Jason Todd—sees Red Hood kneeling in front of that alley kid, voice warm as he reassures them.

He wishes he could tell himself he was wrong, that the resemblance he saw in that moment was nothing more than the bizarre delusions of a formerly Robin-obsessed mind. But he knows that wouldn’t be true. As insane as it sounds, as unexplainable as it is, that is Jason Todd. He knows it with the same intuitive certainty that he knew Dick Grayson was Robin.

But it shouldn’t matter. It can’t matter. Because Tim made a promise to his mom, a promise to avenge her or die trying, and he can’t let himself be distracted.

It’s bad enough he spent so long following Red Hood around, letting himself laze around and watch Hood clean instead of properly focusing on his mission. It’s bad enough that he allowed himself to briefly become curious about who Hood was, about what he was doing and if he would succeed. It’s bad enough that for a little while, he almost felt happy, even though Mom is dead.

Tim doesn’t need to kill Mom’s murderer today or even tomorrow. He can take his time with this—in fact, it’s better if he does; he’ll only have one chance, so it’s best to spend it well. But that doesn’t mean he should forget about his duty, either. Doesn’t mean he should let himself noodle around doing whatever he likes instead of working towards his goal.

He presses his forehead harder against the marble counter, screwing his eyes tightly shut. Tim makes himself remember the dripping duffle bag, the casual way Hood slung it over the railing, the spray of gunfire that could have hit him if he wasn’t so lucky. The unzipped flaps falling open, the bloody heads within. He makes himself linger on that image, linger on it until it becomes engraved into his mind, until it’s carved into him like a picture burnt into wood, until it supersedes that moment of Hood kneeling in front of the street kid with his hands loose and empty.

And then Tim turns his mind to the morgue. To how cold the metal table was when he touched it, to how strangely small his mom looked lying there, to the empty way her hand half-curled around nothing. To the the remains of her face, an unrecognizable mockery of what it had once been.

He rolls these things over and over in his mind until he feels sick with grief, until it feels like a hot hard black thing is sitting thick in his stomach, until his eyes are hot and wet with rage. His blood pumps fast in his veins; his hands are ice cold; his mouth fills with saliva like he’s about to bite.

A knife to the neck. A gun in his hand. Poison in their drink. The method changes, but the result is always the same: the catharsis, the ultimate relief, the fissure finally breaking for good. The world coming back into balance.

Tim slowly pulls his head up from the counter. He stretches, rolls his shoulders, forces the aching tension out of his back, lets his muscles all go as easy-easy-easy loose as the moment right before the pounce. And then he stands.

It’s time to go back to work.

Tim has to scrounge around for a while, but he eventually finds a lead—a lead in the form of the man he suspects to be Black Mask’s personal attendant.

The man doesn’t look like much at first—just another office drone in their suit and tie—but a closer look reveals that there’s more under the surface. His suit is cut well enough that Tim can tell there’s no way it’s off-the-rack, but it’s by no means flashy—just a simple blue number, nothing like the extravagant get ups worn by small-time bosses trying to seem bigger than they are. The blazer hangs such that the man could easily be carrying a concealed gun, and though his shoes are still plenty formal, Tim suspects they’re easier to run in than your average Oxfords.

More than that, though, the biggest tell is his face. With his simply cropped hair and plain glasses, it’s easy to overlook, but Tim’s a master of noticing the things others don’t; the man’s eyes gleam with a hard, sly intelligence, and sometimes, when no one’s watching, his lips pull back into a truly vicious smirk. Beneath that placid facade he wears there is a schemer, someone who’s perfectly happy to bow and scrape when it’s necessary but still has a spine of iron in the end.

In other words, he’s the perfect personal assistant for a man like Black Mask.

Tim follows him home and inspects his little apartment. It’s out of the way, nondescript—but it’s also well-situated, and the security is a lot better than what most civilians can rustle up. Plus, there are four different concealed weapons located in strategic spots within the space, and the first aid kit has the supplies to deal with anything from a bullet wound to most common poisons.

The man—Glasses, Tim decides—changes into less formal clothing and starts washing the pile of dishes he’s left in his sink. He’s got a long scar on his arm, one that looks like it’s from a blade; it’s probably covered most of the time by the carefully picked suits he wears.

Aside from the weapons and the first aid kit, there’s nothing that interesting in the apartment. Unsurprisingly, Glasses is too smart to leave potentially sensitive information just lying around.

Tim returns to the kitchen and starts digging around in Glasses’ fridge. The only thing he can take without it being noticed is some leftover chicken and a kale smoothie shoved to the back of the fridge. Blegh, health nuts.

It makes him wish he was back with—

Tim shuts the fridge door a little too hard. Not that Glasses notices, of course.

After Glasses finishes the dishes, he makes dinner and settles down on his couch with his laptop. The security on his computer is good—good enough that Tim’s not sure he would be able to crack it. Luckily, he doesn’t have to.

Tim watches over Glasses’ shoulder as he inputs a whole slew of passwords before skimming through his emails, checking his calendar, and pulling up an Excel sheet. Watching him from a distance, most people would peg him as just an ordinary secretary catching up on work—little do they know about his impeccably color-coordinated calendar is full of drug and arms shipments.

In fact, looking a little closer… does that abbreviation stand for kryptonite? Tim peers closer, fingers tightening on the couch as alarm sparks within him. He’d better jot down the details; if he has a bit of spare time, maybe he’ll be able to find some way to leak the details to the relevant parties. Tim’s been around the block a time or two, and kryptonite in the hands of a Rogue always spells out Big Trouble, capital letters included.

In any case, there’s something strangely satisfying about watching Glasses work. It actually reminds Tim a bit of watching his Mom in her office—a comparison which makes his heart throb painfully in his chest.

Eventually, Glasses finishes his work. After doing some quick stretches, he downs a melatonin pill and conks out. Tim wanders aimlessly around his apartment for a little while longer, then eventually settles down on the man’s rather uncomfortable couch and tries not to miss the quilt that Hood always left slung over the back of his sofa.

Glasses leaves bright and early the next morning, Tim trailing more slowly after him. At least Glasses has a proper coffee maker; Tim was able to make himself a cup while Glasses took a quick shower and put on today’s suit (a dove gray ensemble with burgundy tie and pocket square).

They head right into the center of the Diamond District, into a building that looks just like all of the others around it. Still, much like with Glasses’ nondescript little apartment, the security is suspiciously comprehensive, and Tim thinks the seemingly ordinary glass of the building is stronger than it looks.

Part of that comprehensive security is an extensive system of cameras. Mom taught Tim to always keep an eye out for cameras—drilled him in it until it became second nature, really—so he notices them before Glasses even parks his car. For a moment, Tim’s chest jolts with a bolt of sheer panic, and he considers hanging back, coming back another day after he puts the cameras out of action, but—

—the security on Glasses’ laptop was thick enough he wasn’t sure if he would’ve been able to get in. The security for the cameras will probably be as bad, if not worse. Plus, there are too many for physically disabling them to make sense logistically.

And… Tim’s heart pounds hard and fast in his throat. He’s so close. So close to finally being able to avenge his mom, so close to finally completing his mission. Sure, being caught on camera is risky, but let’s be real here. Tim is planning to walk in there and shoot Black Mask. He’s not going to be walking back out of there, cameras or no cameras—and he has no one else left to protect.

Tim steps out of the car and follows Glasses into the building.

Glasses passes through the layers of security easily; guards give him nods as he walks by and a simple tap of his card is enough to send the building’s elevator shooting up towards one of the highest stories. Leaned up against the wall behind him, Tim clenches and unclenches his fists in the fabric of his jeans as he watches the numbers tick up. His stomach is twisting in knots and his face feels hot with some sort of combination of anxiety, excitement, and sheer anticipation. He’ll be face to face with his mother’s murderer in minutes. Justice is so close he can almost taste it.

The door opens, and Glasses steps out, Tim close on his heels. Bizarrely, as he follows Glasses, he can feel his pulse slowing; the tension drops out of his body, and he finds himself breathing easily for the first time in what feels like weeks. He’s calm, as calm as if he was already dead.
Tim doesn’t bother to look around Black Mask’s office. Nor does he register anything Glasses is saying. His gaze is stuck on the ravaged, skull-like visage of his mother’s murderer.

It’s right, he thinks, that his face is ruined, just like hers.

It’s right, but it’s not enough.

He tears his eyes away from Black Mask, casts a cursory glance around the room. Where would be the most likely place for someone to stash a gun in this room?

The desk. Tim slips under Black Mask’s arm, ducking a little as Mask slams his fists down on the desk. Glasses’ update is making Mask angry. That’s good. In another minute, he’ll be dead, and that’ll be even better.

Black Mask has a surprising amount of junk in his desk drawers. You would think a crime lord would be able to keep his things better organized. Then again, maybe Tim’s just biased because he’s gotten used to Red “Neat Freak” Hood.

There! Tucked away at the back of one drawer—a gleaming black pistol, lying casually atop a crumpled stack of paperwork. Tim pulls it out of the drawer, blinking a little at the surprising weight of it in his hand. He’s never held a gun before, but he’s seen people using them enough that he’s able to figure out how to double-check that it’s loaded without too much trouble.

Tim lifts the gun. He doesn’t recall any of his old fantasies, doesn’t swallow back any regrets or hesitation, doesn’t even picture his mother’s face. If he thinks anything, it’s just this: finally.

He lets out a slow breath, one last exhale.

And then he pulls the trigger.

Several things happen in such short succession that they all seem to occur in the same instant. The gun jumps in Tim’s hand, the recoil greater than he would have predicted; the muzzle shifts, and the bullet skims right by Black Mask’s face, digging out a long channel of flesh just above the gaping void where his nose should be; both Glasses and Black Mask turn, their eyes locking right onto Tim—

—and in that same moment, the window behind them shatters, glass shards flying across the room as the Red Hood rolls to his feet, pistols in hand.

Tim barely has time to register Hood’s presence, because Mask is drawing a gun from within his jacket and pointing it right at Tim—Hood rams into him, the shot goes off course, something slams hard into Tim’s side, a punch maybe, Tim just registers that Glasses has drawn his own gun and is aiming at Tim when Hood shoots him right between the eyes, a red circle like some sort of tarnished coin appearing in his forehead as he crumples to the ground.

Black Mask lunges towards Tim, teeth snapping like he wants to bite, only held back by the sheer weight of Hood sitting atop him. Tim flinches back anyways, wincing as something in his side catches painfully.

“No,” Hood snarls, voice as cold and unyielding as if he were commanding a dog. When Mask reaches toward his pocket like he’s looking for another gun, Hood slams a knife through his hand, pinning him down like a stuck butterfly.

Tim’s side is burning, a stabbing pain like someone’s stuck a lit poker through him. When he touches it gingerly, he feels something hot and wet. The world seems to go strangely slow as Tim lifts his shaking hand up to eye level. His fingers are soaked in blood, thick and dark and viscous.

Oh, he thinks distantly. I got shot after all.

A dizzy wave seems to sweep over him. He should… he should be doing something. Putting pressure on the wound, maybe? But when he brings his hand back to the aching mass of pain in his side, he can’t bear to touch it, let alone press on it.

“Idiot kid,” a harsh voice snaps, and Tim is suddenly swept up in a pair of warm arms that wrap around him like iron bars. One hand presses down hard on his wound and the pain crescendoes; Tim lets out a high, strangled scream, hands fruitlessly scrabbling against the arms holding him as hot tears roll down his cheeks. He thought he was ready to die but this hurts, this hurts so much.

No matter how much he struggles, it doesn’t seem to make a difference; the arms just wrap around him even tighter, the hand pressing down more firmly into his side. “Absolute f*cking idiot,” the voice grumbles, the sound of it rumbling through the chest Tim’s pressed up against. He shudders, less from the pain this time and more from the sheer strangeness of being so close to someone. Their presence is inescapable: the heat of them, the sound of them speaking, the absolutely bizarre, terrifying sensation of their arms locked around him. “What the hell were you thinking?”

The arms brace him up against one muscled hip—like he’s a child—and the person starts moving, every step jolting the tangled hot wet knot of pain in Tim’s side. He’s faintly aware that he’s whimpering, but he can’t seem to bite the noises back. The arm wrapped around his waist shifts, hefting him a little higher, and the hand presses down hard into his side. He screams again, but this time under it he can hear the voice telling him, “it’s going to be okay. Just breathe, alright? I’ve got you.”

Tim loses track of things a little bit after that. There are gunshots, and shouts, and the pain in his side. But also always, always, the arms holding him, the chest against his back, the voice reassuring him.

Cold air rushes past his cheeks, and Tim’s eyes slip open, his head lolling back against the shoulder behind him. The arms are lowering him down, not letting go of him even as they set him on some sort of seat. “Hold on, okay? Hold on as much as you can.” And then a helmet is sliding over his eyes, and one of the arms reaches past him, and there’s the rumble of a motorcycle starting up.

Tim’s eyes slide shut again, and for a bit he doesn’t register anything at all. But when he opens his eyes again, a hand is pulling off the helmet, and the motorcycle’s stopped, so he must have managed to hold on alright after all.

“Alright, we’re at Leslie’s clinic,” the voice says. “She should be able to patch you up.” The arms lift him up, the hand on his side never shifting even as he’s cradled up against a broad chest. “Do you have any allergies to medication? Anything a doctor should know?”

Despite himself, despite it all, Tim laughs. Doctors don’t notice him. They overlook him just like everyone else, forget about him just like everyone else. With his luck, they’d probably let him bleed out on the operating table, leave him there halfway in a middle of a procedure to die and never even realize they’re doing it.

The arms tighten around him. “I won’t let that happen,” the voice tells him fiercely. “I’ll stay with you the entire time. I’ll make sure you’re okay.”

Tim hums skeptically. Yeah, right.

And then his head dips, and there’s nothing.

Tim wakes up slowly, bit by bit. The first thing he’s aware of is that everything feels fuzzy and a little distant, oddly removed in a way that he thinks isn’t just sleep. It feels like there’s some sort of sensation missing, that he should be feeling something but isn’t.

Where is he? He’s slept unusually deeply—he usually just catnaps, only ever letting himself fully relax at home, in the safety of the Manor, and for some reason he feels like he hasn’t been there in a while, although he can’t quite recall why. Is he following an executive for Mom? Or maybe he’s in Red Hood’s safehouse—he’s always felt oddly comfortable there, secure in a way that he almost never does in the homes of the people he follows.

Red Hood. Tim’s eyes snap open, abruptly completely awake. Red Hood, Black Mask—Mom’s dead, how did he forget that Mom’s dead—he failed, he f*cking failed, Black Mask is still alive and Tim got himself shot and somehow Red Hood saw him, saw him and—and—for some baffling reason saved him from Black Mask, picked him up and carried him out of there as Tim bled out.

Why? Why would he do that? Why did he do that, and how did he see—well, Tim supposes that Hood being able to see Tim makes sense, he is a former Robin. But… it’s still baffling, so absolutely incomprehensible that Tim feels like he can’t quite wrap his head around it.

Batman’s seen him, of course—he looked Tim right in the eyes as he screamed at the circus. The new Bat saw him, too; she stared right into him with those awful white eyes. And the other Bats have sensed his presence before, sometimes turning their heads at the sound of his too-loud tread or pausing like they can feel him lingering close. Once, when Tim got clipped with a batarang, he saw Nightwing’s nose twitching like he could smell the blood spilling between Tim’s fingers.

Still, none of the Bats have ever talked to him, have ever addressed him directly the way Hood did yesterday. And, of course, none of them have ever touched him.

Tim shivers a little. Logically, he knows that his powers don’t make him incorporeal—that he’s just as solid as anyone else—but… it sure feels that way sometimes. Usually, no one touches him except Mom and the cats Selina Kyle keeps in her apartment. Tim might as well be a ghost, utterly invisible, the only real thing about him the impact he makes on the world around him.

Arms, strong and unmoving as iron bars, yet also strangely warm, wrapped around him. A chest against his back; when his head lolls back it rests against a broad shoulder. A voice, promising that he’s going to be okay, that they’ll stay with him the entire time.

Tim shudders, a convulsion that ripples through him like an earthquake through the ground. He feels… he’s not sure how feels, but he knows that it’s strange. It’s strange that Hood shot Glasses for him, and held the blood inside his body, that he carried him out and brought him—

—where did Hood bring him, actually?

Tim pushes himself up to a sitting position, gritting his teeth against the pain that explodes in his side at the movement. He’s laying in a hospital bed. There’s an IV in his arm, and it looks like he’s been hooked up to some sort of heart monitor. And—Tim’s heart jolts as he realizes that Hood’s sitting in a chair right beside to his bed, sleeping with his head slumped on his folded arms. In fact, he’s resting on the bed; if Tim moves his foot just a bit to the side, he could poke him in the face.

What the f*ck, Tim thinks blankly.

He stares at Hood. Hood’s got his helmet off. He looks smaller than usual, more human. His body’s slack in sleep, unmoving in a way that seems bizarre on a man that Tim’s only ever seen as an unceasing whirlwind of energy. Still, even as he sleeps, his face remains creased with tension; there are dark circles under his eyes, and his brow is crumpled in a way that Tim recognizes as one of the tells Robin used to show when he was worried.

As he watches, Hood shifts, and for a moment Tim freezes, rabbit-still, certain that Hood’s about to wake up. But then he lets out a little snore, and tucks his nose more deeply into his elbow, and is still.

Tim lets out a slow sigh of relief. He really needs to get out of here before Hood actually does wake up.

Tim swings his legs over the side of the bed, wincing at the way it tugs on his wound. He’s dressed in some sort of hospital gown, one thin enough that he can see the outline of the bandage on his wound—and the blood starting to stain it. Still, there’s nothing for it. He needs to leave—and anyways, he can put on a new bandage as soon as he gets home.

The tile flooring is ice cold beneath his bare feet. Evidently they took his socks along with the rest of his street clothes—and his backpack. Tim grimaces at the thought of his backpack—it contains a number of important things, whether that be expensive products like his camera and laptop, vital necessities like his spare clothes and snacks, useful tools such as his swiss army knife and lockpicks, or even a few irreplaceable items, like his collection of cassettes and the batarang he’s kept all these years as a memento (and a reminder to be careful).

It’s painful, but Tim’s going to have to leave his backpack behind. He has no idea where they might be keeping it, and while usually that wouldn’t be a problem—usually, he would have all the time in the world to leisurely search through the entire facility—he has no idea when Hood will wake up. Besides, he doesn’t know if the heart monitor he’s been hooked up to will send some sort of warning when he removes it.

Well, he was planning to go back to Drake Manor anyways, so that’ll allow him access to at least some of the things he’ll be leaving behind. And it isn’t like this is the first time Tim’s lost a backpack—he’s dropped them in the harbor, forgotten them on buses, and on one memorable occasion watched as one was eaten by Killer Croc.

Tim removes his IV and pulls off all the leads. The high, ringing tone of the heart monitor fills the air; he can only hope it doesn’t wake Hood up. Moving as quickly as he can’t without unnecessarily aggravating his wound, Tim ducks out of the room, gently closing the door behind him.

He has no idea where he is, so Tim just goes straight down the hallway, ignoring the doors on either side. As he hobbles along, a nurse with feathery gray hair and steely blue eyes rushes past without looking at him, her lips pursed tightly.

Once Tim gets out of the building, he’s able to orient himself a lot better. It’s clear just from the distinctive smell—a unique mixture of rotting garbage, marijuana, and iron—that he’s in the East End, and he recognizes one of the nearby buildings. This must be the Thomas Wayne Memorial Clinic. He’s never visited—too afraid of running into one of the Bats—but he’s heard of it before.

Pulling the thin hospital gown as close around him as he can—he really wishes he’d had the forethought to grab the blanket from his bed before he left—Tim limps off towards the nearest bus stop.

Chapter 12: The Apparition

Chapter Text

The first time Jason sees the kid is right before he shoots him.

One moment he’s lifting his gun, smirking behind his helmet as he imagines the way the scumbags in front of him will duck and cry, and the next he’s frantically jerking his wrist, redirecting the spray of bullets down at the floor and not the table, because—because that was a kid—

Except when he looks, there’s no one there.

He could have sworn there was someone, though. He didn’t get a good look at them, just a bare collection of impressions—the outline of a bent head, of swooping dark hair, of skinny shoulders. Still, it was enough. Enough to tell it’s a child. Enough to make him turn his gun aside.

Am I going crazy? he wonders.

There have long been rumors that the Lazarus Pit instills a certain madness in those who come out of it. So far, Jason’s dismissed them as just that—rumors—since he felt perfectly sane when he emerged. But then again, isn’t that one of the symptoms of madness? Thinking you’re sane when in reality you’ve gone totally off your rocker?

It doesn’t matter. Crazy or not, he can’t show weakness here. He lifts the dripping duffle bag he brought with him—

—a pale face turned up towards him—

—and throws it over the railing, coincidentally aiming it so it lands to the side of the place where he thought he saw the kid.

The drug dealers flinch back, faces draining of blood as they register just whose heads those are—

—skinny shoulders spasm, bile, a body sitting cross-legged on the table bends with the force of its retching—

—Jason is definitely going crazy. There’s no f*cking way that’s a real kid. Absolutely no one would be insane enough to just… walk into a meeting of mob bosses and sit criss-cross-applesauce on the table all cozy-like, even in Gotham.

And yet, even as he lectures and threatens, Jason can’t bring himself to let that table get hit with so much as a bullet shell.

When he leaves the warehouse, he can tell that someone is following him.

Jason can’t put his finger on exactly how he knows, but he’s lived long enough and had enough close calls to never ignore his instincts.

Whoever it is that’s tailing him, Jason doesn’t want to reveal that he’s onto them yet, so he takes care not to look over his shoulder or otherwise make any indication that he’s sensed their presence. Instead, he flicks a quick glance to the side, using a nearby shop window as a mirror to look over his shoulder.

There—a slight figure with dark hair. And—is that the barest flash of blue eyes?

Heart sinking, Jason turns his eyes ahead again. It’s looking increasingly likely that he is indeed going crazy.

Either that, or he’s being haunted by the ghost of the boy that died in Ethiopia.

Shoving that thought aside, he turns his attention to potential dinner plans and tries to ignore the presence trailing after him.

Letting a possible-hallucination maybe-child either-way-semi-invisible-entity into his main safehouse probably wasn’t his smartest decision, Jason acknowledges as he watches out of the corner of his eye as the kid wanders around the small space, trailing indistinct fingers over random bits of furniture.

And yet, Jason still can’t bring himself to kick the kid out—and not just because of how embarrassing that would be if the kid really is just a hallucination.

He would like to take a proper look at them, though.

When he takes off his helmet, the kid’s focus snaps to his face with an almost hawklike intensity. Jason examines them in turn—or tries to.

It’s oddly hard to look at the kid. And he doesn’t mean that in some metaphorical way; he means that it’s literally difficult to focus his eyes on the kid. His gaze seems to just.. slide off of them; trying to hold them in his field of view feels oddly similar to trying to hold onto a very slippery, squirming fish.

The longer he tries, the harder it gets. The kid starts shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot, and a space right behind Jason’s eyes starts to ache. After a moment, Jason looks away. Remembering how uncomfortable the kid looked, he purposefully blinks, rubbing his eyes and twitching his brow like he’s regaining focus after staring blankly into space.

Whatever’s going on with the whole… maybe-child maybe-hallucination debacle, it’s clearly not something Jason’s equipped to deal with. He pulls some food from the fridge to leave out for them and drapes a spare quilt over the back of the safehouse’s cheap sofa right before heading to bed, but that’s it. He has enough problems of his own without adding anyone else’s.

The kid follows him like a bad smell.

It’s as if they’re a baby duck who’s decided Jason’s their mother. Or—no. No. It’s better to say that it’s like they really are a ghost haunting Jason for his sins. That they’re some callous god’s cruel reminder of what the Joker killed, of what the Pit couldn’t bring back.

Either way, the main thing is that they follow Jason. Everywhere. Constantly. Sometimes it’s more obvious than others—sometimes, Jason will spot a flash of long, pale fingers, or hear footsteps, or even get a glimpse of that blurry, bony little form. Still, even when Jason can’t see the kid, he can still sense that they’re there—can feel them watching as he cooks, as he cleans, as he sharpens his knives.

As he stitches wounds shut. As he kills traffickers and threatens gangsters. As he dodges bullets, as he returns fire, as he lovingly massages a glob of C-4 onto the wall of a building that will soon be deconstructed into dozens upon dozens upon dozens of composite pieces.

It’s a damn good thing the kid is just some sort of a Pit-induced hallucination, because it would be a major problem if there was actually some little shrimp following Jason around.

Hallucination or not, Jason does slowly get used to the kid’s presence. He leaves food out for the kid in the same way one might leave tuna out for a stray cat. He makes sure there’s always a quilt hanging on the back of his beat-up couch. Lately, he’s even been thinking about putting on his big boy pants and swinging by Park Row Library.

He hasn’t been able to bring himself to visit since his return. In fact, he hasn’t been able to bring himself to pick up any books at all. It brings back too many memories—hunting down first editions, curling up in a puddle of warm sunlight in the library at—at—

It hurts to even think about it.

And yet he’s feeling like he might be willing to make the effort despite it all. He knows his child self—remembers what a nerdy little sh*t he was—and he’s sure the kid must be bored out of their mind right now. Mad with grief and disappointment for how he’s turned out, of course—but it’s not like Jason can do anything about that. Picking up some books is a little easier.

And then the kid disappears.

One minute he’s talking with some half-pint from the Alley, working together with them to figure out some sort of solution so that there’d be work opportunities available for street kids that aren’t sex work or dealing drugs, and the next he’s glancing up, the back of his neck tingling, because—because the kid’s gone.

Maybe they’re just checking something out around the corner, Jason tells himself. Besides, sometimes he’ll go for long stretches without catching a glimpse of them—just because he doesn’t see any flash of hair or shoulders right now doesn’t mean they’re necessarily gone.

Still, the unease lingers with him as he finishes up talking with the street kid, as he makes a promise to find them again later and discuss this more, as he continues on his way. He’s gotten so used to the kid’s presence, it feels a little strange to have them gone—it makes him feel like he’s forgetting something, like he’s left the house without his keys or failed to double-check his grapple gun before suiting up.

A few days pass, and the kid doesn’t come back. There’s no one watching from the kitchen stool as he cooks, no one dropping bits of pocket lint in the corners of his safehouse just to watch him vacuum them up, no one there to read the children’s books he picked up from a yard sale near Burnley.

Maybe he’s starting to recover from whatever madness was induced by the Pit, and that’s why the hallucination-kid disappeared, Jason muses as he fiddles with the pile of books. It’s been more than a week, there’s no way the kid’s coming back, and it hurts just to look at the books; he should really donate them. He keeps on telling himself he will, but he never seems to get around to it.

Alternatively, the kid really was a ghost of his past self, and they’ve finally moved on. Maybe seeing that Jason isn’t a complete bastard—that he still has enough of a heart left to at least look after the alley kids—was enough to let the poor brat finally rest in peace.

Either way, Jason should be happy. Whether he’s stopped hallucinating or he’s no longer haunted, it’s clearly a good thing either way. So why does he find himself searching for little flashes of movement out of the corner of his eyes, why does he keep on leaving extra food out even though he knows the kid is gone, why does he keep putting off donating those books?

Why does he, against all reason, miss the kid?

It doesn’t seem like it should make a difference, but having the kid gone actually makes Jason’s mission just a bit easier.

He didn’t realize until the kid was gone, but Jason had been pulling his punches—had been being just a bit more cautious, a bit less vicious, a bit more willing to do things the complicated and safe way as opposed to the simple and dangerous way. Even knowing that the kid’s not real, some part of him still balked at letting them see just how dark Gotham’s underworld can really get—and he couldn’t imagine that the ghost of his child self would be happy to see their undead successor bleed out in front of them, disappointment or not. Once was enough, right?

It’s too easy to notice the kid’s absence in the quiet of his safehouse at the end of the night, so Jason stays out longer, hits harder, fights dirtier. It’s not like the kid’s there to wince at the blood, and if he passes out from exhaustion, he can fall asleep without wondering where they are—which is a dumb f*cking thing to wonder, since the kid literally does not exist.

The work is going well. Jason’s taken out most of the trash in Crime Alley, and the gangs that remain are learning his rules well—although of course they need a few reminders from time to time. He’s been able to set up some really good things in the Alley—unionized brothels, systems by which civilians can relay tips or ask for help, even a shelter where street kids can get in from the cold without having to worry about being reported to CP&P.

With his power base solidly in place, Jason can start to really f*ck with the Black Mask. Not to say he wasn’t before, but…

First he took what Mask had for his own, whether that was by intercepting weapons shipments, recruiting Mask’s people, or even nabbing and repainting a gorgeous custom-made bike that Mask had gotten shipped in. Then he began cracking down on Mask’s things that he has no desire to acquire, through methods including but not limited to blowing up buildings and laced drug shipments, killing the filth that was too untrustworthy to fold in under his leadership, and cutting down Mask’s money laundering operations along with his “above board” businesses.

Now, though? Now that those other old methods are starting to feel a little dry, now that he has a little more spare time and energy to bring some artistry to his work? He can get creative.

Jason squats on the roof across from Mask’s headquarters, a matte black trunk laid out in front of him. Movements precise, he unbuckles the trunk and reverently lifts the contents from within: a gorgeous shoulder-fired anti-tank rocket launcher, more commonly referred to as a “bazooka” or, more colloquially, “oh sh*t run”. The fact that it’s one of Mask’s bazookas makes the moment just that much sweeter.

Mask’s headquarters are densely and meticulously outfitted with security, fortified to withstand anything Gotham can throw at it. But the east window of Mask’s office is currently being repaired, and one of Jason’s new recruits saw fit to point out exactly where it would be vulnerable enough that a sufficiently powerful strike could punch through the fragile, newly laid glass and steel.

Just to be sure he’s correctly oriented, Jason pulls out a pair of binoculars and aims them at the glass, searching for—

He freezes, all thoughts of bazookas and fortified steel buildings suddenly dropping from his head as he blinks, walks the binocular back, tries to swallow back against the bile that’s threatening to climb the back of his throat.

That’s the kid. Their form is far clearer than usual, almost clear enough that Jason thought they were someone else—but no, he recognizes that head of dark hair, that posture, those skinny shoulders. That’s the kid, standing alone in Black Mask’s office.

Jason grips the binoculars so hard he can hear the plastic creaking beneath his fingers. As he watches, the kid casually slips past Mask’s personal assistant and—ducks under Mask’s arm, he’s inches from Mask now, Jason’s going to have a f*cking heart attack, the kid is riffling through the drawers of Mask’s desk—

—he pulls out a pistol.

Jason realizes what the kid’s about to do right before he does it. His body moves before he makes any sort of conscious decision—it’s muscle memory that allows him to duck the worst of the glass shards as he smashes through Black Mask’s east window, to roll as he hits the floor, to rise with his pistols already in hand.

He charges Black Mask; he’s not fast enough to prevent Mask from shooting, but he at least manages to throw Mask’s aim off, turning the shot from one that would be immediately fatal to one that will hopefully just be damaging. Black Mask’s personal assistant pulls a gun; Jason puts a hole between his eyes. He can feel Mask lurching beneath him—he clearly didn’t learn the lesson the first time—“No,” Jason informs him, no you cannot f*cking hurt the kid—and just to really drive the point home he slips a knife into the space between the tendons of Mask’s hand.

He would love to finish Mask off right here and now, he really would, but the kid’s losing more blood with every passing minute, and he just doesn’t have the time.

Jason approaches the kid. He’s just a few feet away, but even at this distance, even with them looking so much clearer than usual, he struggles to make out any real features of the kid’s face. Still, he can see the way their hand trembles as they stare at the blood covering it. His heart throbs in his chest like an open wound.

“Idiot kid,” Jason says, trying to lift them in such a way that it won’t hurt too badly. He forces himself to start putting pressure on the kid’s wound, even though the sound they make when he does breaks his goddamn heart. They should’ve just stayed with Jason, kept on dropping lint in front of his vacuum cleaner and maybe read the books he got for them, instead of trying to shoot Black f*cking Mask. No, seriously, what on God’s green earth made them decide to do that?

“Absolute f*cking idiot,” Jason mutters to himself, “what the hell were you thinking?” He shifts the kid, bracing them against his hip so he can carry them with just one arm—he needs to have the other hand free in case they run into anyone on the way out—and starts moving.

Luck is with them, and Jason manages to get them out with minimal pain and suffering—at least on their part, that is. Once they’re outside, he settles the kid on his motorcycle and heads towards Leslie’s clinic, breaking every traffic law in the book and then some on the way. The kid passes out almost as soon as he starts the bike, so Jason has to keep one arm wrapped around them to keep them on, his hand pressed to their side as he desperately tries to keep their blood where it belongs—but he ran motorcycle drills with the f*cking Bats. This is nothing. This is nothing, because he makes it nothing.

The kid wakes up a little when they arrive. Jason takes the opportunity to ask if they’re allergic to anything, but the kid just laughs, muttering something about how doctors forget them just as easily as everyone else, how the doctors will let them bleed out on the operating table and not even realize they’re doing it.

Not going to happen, Jason thinks, gritting his teeth. Not on my watch.

He storms in, the kid cradled in his arms like the precious f*cking cargo he is. Leslie looks up from where she’s helping a patient, her eyes going wide, and for a moment Jason thinks that the kid is wrong, that she’s seeing him just fine, seeing him for the bleeding-out child in need of help that he is—

“J—Jason?”

f*ck. Right. He took off his helmet so the kid could have a little head protection, so the kid wouldn’t end up with a concussion on top of everything f*cking else.

“No time,” he grunts out.

Leslie’s face smooths out into something a little more composed—she’s always been a consummate professional—and she nods. “You’re covered in blood,” she says. “Where are you injured?”

“Not me,” Jason tells her. “The kid.” But she just blinks blankly back at him.

“They’ve got powers,” he explains. “Makes ‘em hard to see, and easy to forget.” He lifts the kid a little ways from his chest, tries to make it so that their powers won’t let them blend into Jason’s body. “Do you see them now?”

For a moment Leslie just stares, brow furrowed—Jason grinds his teeth, the kid doesn’t have time for this—but then her eyes clear. “Yes,” she tells him. “Yes, it’s blurry, but—but I think I can see a form.” She sighs. “You’re going to have to help me treat him.”

Jason jerks a nod. He’d figured as much.

The surgery is absolutely brutal.

Jason received extensive first aid training, both before his death and during his time with the League, but all of his training assumed you could consistently see the f*cking patient. Leslie needs to know exactly where the gunshot wound is, exactly what it looks like, if there’s an exit wound or if the bullet’s still inside the kid, and if it is where it is—all information that requires Jason being able to see a lot more than just a flash of dark hair or the outline of some shoulders.

He’s trying his best, but it’s like the kid’s powers are actively fighting against him; the more Jason and Leslie try to focus on the kid, the harder it seems to get. At some points Leslie actually forgets about the kid entirely—her eyes go unfocused, her brow furrowing in confusion—and Jason has to snap her back with clipped reminders of the work she needs to be doing.

They’ll let me bleed out on the operating table. They’ll leave me there to die and not even realize they’re doing it.

The space behind Jason’s eyes starts to pound, an aching hot pressure roosting there like some terrible bird. His eyes slide off of the kid again and again; he has to forcibly return them back to where they belong. It’s as if his very body is rebelling against him, telling him to turn aside, let it go, just look away.

Jason’s lips peel back in a snarl. No. Not going to happen. He refuses to let the kid die.

It takes way longer than it should, but slowly, bit by bit, they manage to get through the surgery. By the end, both of them are exhausted, and Jason’s head is pounding in a way that—he can’t believe he’s saying this—might actually be worse than a migraine. More than that, he’s struggling to focus his eyes on anything around him, and he feels absolutely exhausted—like every last bit of energy has been wrung out of him until there’s nothing left. The kid’s powers are strong.

Leslie’s just finished setting up an IV line and a heart monitor for the kid when one of her assistants comes rushing in. She hurries out, promising to come back as soon as she can.

Jason just hums in response. He knows he needs to keep his eyes open—he can’t let the kid out of his sight, they’re sure to try to leave as soon as they wake up—but it hurts, and he’s so tired… maybe it’s okay for him to just rest his head on the kid’s bed like this? He’s so close to them, there’s no way they’ll be able to leave without him noticing…

His eyes slip shut.

Jason is sitting in his favorite chair in Wayne Manor’s library, a stack of books piled up on the table beside him—but he hasn’t so much as glanced at them, because the kid is here, too, and they’re about to leave.

“Please,” he says. He knows there should be other words—things he can say to make them stay, the methods Bruce taught him to talk down jumpers and soothe scared children—but for some reason all he can say is just “please”.

The kid looks at him. They’re melting away, body slipping into the sunlight. “You’ll forget me,” they say. “You’ll let me die and you won’t even realize you’re doing it.”

“No,” Jason promises, his heart twisting in his chest. “No, I won’t—take my hand, just take my hand, and I’ll keep you safe, I swear it.” He reaches out for them, but they’re melting away, melting into nothingness.

“How can I believe that?” the kid asks. “You forgot that I got shot.” Red unfurls across their side like ink spreading through water. They touch the wound with one hand, then lift it towards Jason, showing him the blood that coats their fingers. “I already died, and you forgot that too.”

A door slams open, and Jason jolts awake, eyes flying open—only to slam shut as the very act of trying to focus them sends hot, jagged pain stabbing through his head.

“Are they gone?” Leslie demands. She sounds uncharacteristically frazzled. “I—I got a notification that they flatlined—I forgot—I forgot—”

Panic hits Jason like a bucket of cold water. He makes his eyes open, forces them to focus onto the bed—the empty bed. Not a sign of the kid anywhere around. “I think they left,” he says. Leslie crumples in relief, catching herself against the doorframe.

Not that them leaving is good; it’s the dead of winter, and they have a gunshot wound—but it means they’re still alive, at least for the moment.

“God protect them,” Leslie murmurs, crossing herself.

Jason bows his head, his stomach twisting uncomfortably in his chest. He feels ill. He knows better than anyone else that the protection of some uncaring god isn’t enough. The kid needs more, deserves more. None of this should have ever been allowed to happen to them—and they need someone to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Someone to protect them, to keep them safe, to see them.

I’ll keep you safe, I swear it.

Can Jason make that promise?

…can he not?

Chapter 13: The Void

Chapter Text

The commute back to Drake Manor sucks.

Tim’s exhausted, a bone deep sort of fatigue that make his eyes feel gritty and strange, that makes all his limbs heavy and unwieldy. The world around him is cold and empty; the gray sky above him looms like a blind, aching void. It makes it feel like Tim’s walking through a dream.

His side aches with every step he takes. He keeps a hand pressed to the bandages. At least when blood spills out it warms his fingers.

When he gets to the bus stop, it hurts to stop. He’s not sure if he’ll be able to start moving again when the bus does come. Part of him wants nothing more than to lay down in the snow and the trash, to let his head rest against the unforgiving concrete and just… let go.

Avenge her or die trying, right? Well, Tim’s certainly tried.

But he’s not dead yet, despite Black Mask’s best efforts. So he forces himself to stay awake, biting at the frigid tips of his fingers when he feels the sensation leaving them or it seems like he’s about to nod off.

It takes a long, long time for a bus to stop for him.

When Tim finally is able to board a bus, the warmth of it is so heavenly that he almost drops off right then and there. The seats are grimey, flattened by the weight of a thousand commuters, but right now, they feel more comfortable than any bed.

He forces himself to stay standing, to hold onto one of the bus-strap with the hand not pressed to his side. Still, even standing like this isn’t enough to totally ward off sleep; his head dips, chin hitting his chest, and he has to forcibly blink himself awake again.

His bare feet are pale as ivory, almost blue-tinted in their milkiness—except for the toes, which are a bright, almost mockingly jolly red. Oh sh*t, Tim thinks distantly. He’d tried to keep his hands warm as best he could, but he hadn’t even thought about his feet.

Tim sits down after all, if only so he can put his feet right next to the rattling grate that spits hot, dusty air into the body of the bus. Slowly, slowly, his toes heat back up, color evening out bit by bit.

Still, he knows that if he gets his fingers or toes cold again, he may end up losing them. It’s a long, snowy walk from the bus stop to Drake Manor; he needs to come up with some sort of solution before he arrives.

There are only a handful of people on the bus—it’s midday (or at least Tim thinks so, judging by the light out) and most of the commuters crossing over from Gotham to Bristol do so at either the start or the end of the day. Still, there are a few; a man in a suit tapping away at something on his phone, a woman engrossed in a book, an exhausted-looking mother cradling her napping baby against her chest.

The man in the suit took off his gloves so he could use his phone—he must not have gotten a fancy touchscreen-compatible set—and the woman with the book left her scarf balled up casually beside her. And… there’s a blanket in the bassinet resting in the seat next to the mom.

Stealing from a literal child is a new low, even for Tim. But… he’s in real danger of losing some toes if he’s not careful. Gritting his teeth, Tim lifts the blanket out of the bassinet, then limps over and retrieves the gloves and scarf.

The gloves are blissfully warm around his fingers, and with a little fiddling he figures out a way to tie the scarf and blanket around his feet so that they sort of approximate socks. That done, he curls back up right by the heater and waits for his stop.

Tim doesn’t register much on the walk from the bus stop to Drake Manor. He has to put everything he has left into just keeping moving, just putting one foot in front of another.

When he finally does get home, he crawls into bed, out before his head hits the pillow.

His sleep is deep and utterly dreamless; when Tim finally does wake up, it feels more like he’s coming out of a coma than anything else.

As tempting as it is to just turn around and fall right back to sleep, Tim knows that he really, really shouldn’t. He’s still wearing the thin hospital gown from earlier; it’s crusty with dried blood, the bandages at his side thick enough with it that there’s a disturbing crackling noise whenever he moves. Plus, he hasn’t eaten in… he doesn’t even know how long.

It takes a few seconds for him to gather the willpower to get out of bed. When he does, it’s with a long, heartfelt groan.

The hot water of the shower feels good, at least. Tim lets his head rest against the wall, water rolling down his back. Blood mixes with dirt at the drain.

Thank God for the first aid kit under his bathroom sink; there’s no way he’d be able to go out on a grocery run right now. After some quick googling about gunshot wound aftercare, Tim carefully cleans the area with a gentle, plain soap, then covers it with a thin layer of Vaseline and wraps it back up again. Several of the stitches broke, so he may need to sew himself back up again later, but he just… can’t deal with that right now.

That done, he gets dressed in a soft, comfortable pair of pajamas—making a quick mental note as he does so that he really needs to do a load of laundry once he’s feeling a little better, his hamper is overflowing—and slouches off to the kitchen.

A lot of the food in the fridge is rotting. Tim supposes with Mom dead and him out and about, there hasn’t been anyone in the Manor for quite a while now.

He throws the rotting food away, then scrounges up something from what’s left in the cupboards. He barely tastes it, jaw just moving mechanically as he slowly chews and swallows.

And then he shambles back upstairs to his room and passes out once again.

A few days pass like that, Tim only waking up to eat or change his bandage. A few more stitches break, and he decides he does need to sew the wound back up after all—which is a whole new hell of its own, he may have grazed by a bullet when he was younger and even hit with a batarang once, but neither of those injuries were bad enough to necessitate stitches. He doesn’t have any experience sewing, and as it turns out, “right before performing surgery on yourself” is literally the worst possible time to learn.

Still, bit by bit he’s able to recover. Tim finds himself sleeping a little less and feeling a little better each day, until at last he wakes up one afternoon feeling almost normal. Unfortunately, in the absence of his previous haze of exhaustion and illness, it’s all too easy for him to belatedly realize that his room is a colossal mess—even by his own standards.

There are dirty plates, empty wrappers, and discarded bits of bandage scattered on every available surface. More importantly, there’s an improbable amount of blood staining various parts of the room—from the ink-blot mark on his formerly white sheets where the blood collected while he slept, to the droplets that splattered and dried into the carpet when he first walked in, to the smears on the white porcelain of the bathroom sink from when he replaced his bandages after his shower. It’s one thing to be a little disorganized, but just leaving blood in a living space like this is honestly a biohazard.

Tim starts by stripping the bed. His first impulse is to try to wash it, but… he’s not sure such a large amount of blood will ever entirely come out, no matter what the internet says about the magical properties of hydrogen peroxide and cold water. Besides, he’s pretty sure they have spare sheets somewhere in the house—although he doesn’t know exactly where.

Stripping the sheets reminds him of the bloody hospital gown he left in his hamper. Some of the blood from the gown got on the other clothes, so Tim pulls the hamper away from the wall and starts sorting through the dirty laundry within, trying to separate the bloody pieces from the rest. Thus occupied, it doesn’t take long for him to run into another problem—the clothes he abandoned what seems like an eternity ago, back when he came back to the Manor after rescuing Gianna.

Tim groans. He’d totally forgotten about these. Even if they were salvageable once, they definitely aren’t now. Mud has dried deeply into the jeans, leaving it with a stiff, almost cardboard-like texture, and Tim is frankly unsure if it’s even okay for him to be near the shirt without some sort of gas mask on. Who knows kind of impact breathing in that weird pink dust could have.

With another sigh, he levers himself to his feet. It takes a little digging, but he’s eventually able to find a big black trash bag in the depths of one of the kitchen cabinets. He figures he’ll just stuff all of the bloody, muddy, and/or drug-dusted clothing into that.

As Tim walks back into his bedroom, his eyes catch on a dull glint along the wall near where his hamper had been. A flimsy metal clip, attached to a dust-covered rectangle made out of scratched plastic.

No. No, there’s absolutely no way. Right?

Tim reaches out and slowly swipes the dust away with trembling fingers.

The Drake Industries logo sits above a generic modern art flourish. Alvin Draper, the card proclaims.

He’s faintly aware that he’s breathing way too fast, shallow quick little breaths that don’t seem to be giving him any air at all. His hands are shaking like crazy, the tips going numb as his mind races, skipping rapidly along dark paths that lead him to even darker conclusions.

If the ID card was here the whole time, then there would have been no way for Scarecrow to make the connection between Gianna’s escape and Drake Industries. There would have been no way for Black Mask to know to go after Jack and Janet Drake. Which means the crash wasn’t the result of a Rogue’s tit-for-tat reprisal at all.

A combination of distraction, alcohol, and the ice was likely the cause of this deadly crash, the reporter had said.

Is that really true? Did Mom—terrifying, hypercompetent, underestimated Mom—seriously die because of drunk driving? Did she really leave him behind, breaking the single most important promise she ever made, because of drunk driving?

It’s so—so unbelievably, blindly senseless. So meaningless. That the most important person in Tim’s life left him behind, left him to struggle on alone for the rest of his goddamn life, because of drunk driving? For no reason, for nothing? Not even anyone’s fault, not even the result of anyone’s machinations, just because of ice and alcohol and an argument?

So it was all pointless, then. So Tim got shot for nothing. So he’s been living this last—this last he doesn’t even know how long for nothing. His whole mind, his whole being, wrapped around one goal—for nothing. He thought he was seeking justice, that he could avenge his mom and at least let her rest in peace that way, but now it’s nothing more than ashes in his hands. How do you get revenge for an accident? For a loss that can only be blamed on alcohol, and ice, and distraction? Start a f*cking “Sons Against Drunk Driving” chapter?

There’s no closure for him. No fix, no separation or split that will end the pain for good. All there is is endless fracturing, fragmentation of the shattered remains until his world is made of grains of sand that still have the bite of glass.

Things can always get worse. There is no such thing as rock bottom. Tim knew that he was descending into a dark place, but he thought it was like he was digging a hole, slipping downwards bit by bit. Now he sees that’s not true at all. It’s more accurate to say he took a step off the edge of a cliff and realized far, far too late that the only thing there to greet him was void.

There’s no way out. All there is left is to fall.

Although there’s an endless number of ways a Gothamite can commit suicide, some methods are more popular than others. Jumping off Kane Bridge is one classic approach; according to urban legend, the bridge got its first jumper mid-construction, before it even formally opened. Besides the classic nature of this method, Kane Bridge is high enough up the water that most jumpers die on impact, which is definitely a big benefit.

If the thought of dying on impact doesn’t appeal, there’s also always drowning in Gotham Harbor. The harbor’s full of rip currents, and underneath the oil-slick, filthy black surface, the results of generations upon generations worth of Gothamites dumping their trash forms a deadly maze. Overall, drowning in the harbor is undoubtedly a nastier and more painful way to die but, again, that appeals to some.

Of course, Gotham Harbor is also a classic place for dumping people who most distinctly do not want to die, so if you drown yourself there, some people may assume it was foul play and not the result of your own will. But as noted earlier—that could be a plus for some. Everyone has different criteria to judge what makes a suicide method satisfactory, so what put might one person off could be very appealing to someone else.

If you want a painless and clean suicide, there’s always overdosing. Drugs are extremely readily available in Gotham, and although they generally have horrifying side effects, if you’re going to die anyway that’s less of a concern. However, it’s still somewhat of a gamble, because if you end up surviving, you may find yourself addicted to whatever you took.

Although those three are among the main approaches Gothamites take, they are by no means the only methods available. In fact, some suicidal Gothamites seem to almost compete over who can kill themselves in the most interesting way.

For these thrill-seeking daredevils, suicide by Rogue is especially appealing. Few ever have the opportunity to antagonize a Rogue without fear for the consequences, so that’s definitely a major plus. With this method, you can have the opportunity to tell Mr. Freeze you f*cked his wife, inform the Joker that he’s a comedy failure, or even accuse Bane of being melodramatic. Although you will die, you will live on in glory in the minds of Gotham’s most spiteful citizens.

If dying by Rogue isn’t your style but you still want to make your suicide an impressive one, you can always try to inaugurate one of the company buildings in the Diamond District. Security is tight, as no business wants the bad press of a suicide—or to have their office workers to be distracted by some plebian’s broken body laid out on the sidewalk—but for some, the challenge is what makes it fun.

Over the years, despite the best efforts of various corporate security groups, almost every skyscraper in the Diamond District has had at least one or two people jump from it. Every skyscraper, that is, except Wayne Tower.

There are a couple of reasons behind that. Firstly, Bruce Wayne’s well-known commitment to funding mental health services means that even the most spiteful Gothamites tend to decide that there are other CEOs who deserve to have a dead body inflicted on them more. Secondly, Wayne Tower’s security is truly unparalleled, to the point that even invisible metahumans have trouble slipping through. Thirdly, even if someone does decide to try to commit suicide on Wayne Tower and manages to get past the aforementioned security, there’s a higher-than-average chance that one of the Bats will appear to talk them down.

Regardless of the reasons, the important thing is that no one has committed suicide by jumping off of Wayne Tower—yet.

Yes, that choice of words is correct. “Yet”, because Tim Drake is about to be the first.

Despite what some might assume, Tim didn’t choose Wayne Tower as the site of his suicide out of some sort of bitter grudge. Nor did he do so because he’s secretly hoping one of the Bats appears to talk him out of it—Bruce Wayne barely even comes into work, so it’s not like anyone would know to call a Bat in anyways.

No, Tim is going to jump off Wayne Tower because that will maximize the chances of someone, at some point, finding his body.

Tim’s stomach spasms, but all that comes out is bile—a thick, syrupy bile. He’s dehydrated, so dehydrated that he might die of it. If he does die, how long will it take for someone to find him? Will his powers remain in death, obscure the smell and hide his remains? Or will they unravel like the rest of him, finally letting him be seen, if only as a corpse?

Other people, when planning their suicides, might prioritize speed, or comfort, or prestige. Tim just wants a burial. Let someone see him, just one more time. Let there be a funeral, even if its only guest is a single man attending out of obligation. Let there be a gravestone, even if his name isn’t on it. Let there be some indication that he did exist, that he did manage to leave a mark on the world, no matter how small.

It’s like a different world up here.

The gargoyle Tim’s sitting on is ice-cold; he can feel the stone rapidly leaching heat from him, even through the thick pants he wore. A biting breeze winds itself around the tower, chapping his cheeks and making him bury his lips beneath the collar of his jacket. And yet he hardly notices any of it, because the view is simply extraordinary.

Below his dangling feet, the other skyscrapers of the Diamond District glitter so brilliantly that for once the neighborhood’s name actually seems fitting. The setting sun throws rays of golden light across the sky, casting the clouds into shades of salmon pink and poppy orange and deep lilac. The dense, clinging smog that usually hangs over Gotham is nowhere to be found up here; the air is clear and clean as water from a mountain spring.

Well, Tim tells himself. It’s not like I have to jump right away.

Slowly, the brilliant oranges and golds and pinks fade and sink; the sky above darkens to a deep purple until all that remains of the light is a single glowing golden band clinging to the horizon. A few stars dot the sky like grains of salt. Below, the cityscape looks like an abstracted version of its grounds-floor self; the smog floats above it like a dull halo, and a messy jumble of lights is all that stands in for the teeming life Tim knows lies below.

And yet… he may be a thousand feet up, but is he really so much more distant than usual? It’s true that Tim’s walking the city streets he can see the faces of Gotham’s people, but either way, down below or high above, they can’t see him. Like an asymptote, you can get infinitely closer without ever reaching him.

How do you really know you’re alive if no one can see you or touch you or know you? They say you die twice—once when you lose your life, and once when your name is spoken for the last time. By that metric, Tim is already dead in the way that matters most. In fact, by that metric, maybe he was never alive at all—or at least not to anyone other than his mom.

Considering all of that, is jumping even really suicide? Isn’t it more accurate to say that Tim is just… resolving a contradiction?

Tim watches a boat slip up Finger River. From here, it looks like more like a firefly than anything—a lonely light, a single glowing smear traversing the darkness on its own.

All across the city, people are heading out on dates and turning the lights off above their kid’s bed and slumping their way to night shifts and buying weed and setting up on the corner to see who’ll beckon them into a car and checking that they’ve got enough ammo for whatever the night brings and zipping up their kevlar suits. And not a single one will notice Tim’s absence. If he kills himself today they’ll do it all again tomorrow night just the same.

He shivers a little. The cold is really starting to set in properly now. A little ways below, a flock of birds wheels lazily through the sky.

When Tim was much younger—so much younger that his memories of those days are dream-blurry—he had a naturalism phase. This was before he started following the Bats, before Mom started spending almost all of her time off on trips with Jack, maybe even before Haly’s Circus—although that seems unlikely, since Tim’s not entirely sure there even was anything before Haly’s Circus.

Anyways, the main thing is that when Tim was really little, he wanted to be naturalist. He doesn’t exactly remember why, but he thinks it had something to do with it being similar to archeology. He remembers that Mom would help him with it. He faintly recalls lying on his belly in the garden, watching a worm squirm across the wet grass; sitting in Mom’s lap as she paged through a book on bird identification; cradling a petrified nest that he’d received as a gift.

Tim’s never thought of Gotham as having much nature in it. But now, as he watches the birds wheeling above, he finds himself thinking of all sorts of animals he’d previously overlooked. The squirrels, the pigeons, the seagulls, the stray cats, the rats, and now, the—he squints—sparrows?

It’s like they exist in some other world, one parallel to and undergirding the one of the city.

One, maybe, that I exist in too. After all, can’t all of the stray cats and seagulls and rats see him, even though humans can’t?

His stomach rumbles, and Tim becomes abruptly aware of how dry his throat is. He should probably go back down and get something to eat—either that, or jump and end this for good.

Some distant bird calls, a low, clear sound that rings sweetly in the clean air.

I can always come back, Tim decides.

Tim’s usually really good about actually buying food from grocery stores and restaurants instead of just stealing, but he didn’t bring any cash along with him for his suicide attempt, and. Well. It’s been a long day, okay?

Diamond District doesn’t have very many good places to eat. Sure, they have expensive places—all of the people who work in the Diamond District’s skyscrapers need somewhere to buy their small-batch hand-ground pre-work coffee and drink their top-shelf post-work fruity co*cktails—but nowhere that’s actually good.

Frankly, Diamond District is like that in general. It’s mostly made up of corporate offices, with a handful of high rise apartments mixed in so that the rich office workers who push papers for Gotham’s top companies don’t have to commute. Of course, the true upper class, the old wealth families of Gotham, the ones who own those companies, have their estates in Bristol—but they don’t commute either, because why bother to come in and actually run your own company when you can pay someone else to do it for you?

The architecture is, by and large, bland and uninspired—just endlessly generically minimalist glass and steel buildings. The only skyscraper that still has that classic Gotham panache is Wayne Tower; none of the others even have any pointed arches.

(Now that Tim thinks about it, maybe that’s also part of the reason why no one jumps off Wayne Tower. It would be a shame to tarnish the one building in Diamond District that actually looks halfway decent.)

The actual contents of the buildings themselves are similarly bland. Yoga studios and Apple stores (everyone knows real Gothamites use Nokia); overpriced brunch places boasting Instagram-friendly low-fat no-carb non-GMO something-or-others; designer clothing stores with discreet bulletproof glass and panic buttons under the checkout counter. There are barely any actual grocery stories, and the ones that they do have are…

Tim grimaces as he picks up some “organic water” in a recyclable waxed paper container. Boxed water won’t save you, he thinks grimly. The pollution is in the air, too.

After staring at the branding for a moment in morbid fascination, he puts the boxed water back down. He usually goes for water when he’s thirsty, but even he has standards. Surely there’s got to be something at least somewhat normal?

Tim lets out a little sigh of relief as he spots some oat milk. Mom used to get that before she decided that she liked hemp better.

He pulls the box off the shelf and cracks the little twist cap off. The container is icy cool in his hands, and when he takes a big gulp, the milk itself is sweet and good.

“...what the f*ck?” a voice whispers, soft with what sounds like baffled awe.

Sounds like another poor regular person has stumbled into this overpriced hellscape. Tim turns, interested to see what bizarre product they’re looking at—

—that is. Stephanie Brown. Standing next to Dick Grayson. A shopping basket full of Organic Whole Wheat and Acai Berry Homestyle No Hydrogenated Oils waffles hanging from one arm. Staring right at Tim.

Tim drops his oat milk. The flimsy container explodes, milk flying everywhere.

“Hey,” Stephanie Brown says. “You should probably, like, pay for that.”

Tim can’t help it. He bursts into tears.

He’s faintly aware that Spoiler’s speaking, her hands fluttering around frantically as she tells him that it’s okay, they can pay instead, if he’s hungry they can get him something to eat, she didn’t mean to scare him, everything’s going to be alright—none of it really registers, though, because he’s too busy trying to stop f*cking crying.

He needs to pull himself together so he can get up and leave, get out of this goddamn situation, why is he even letting himself break down like this—this is so embarrassing, and they’re looking at him, he needs to stop crying—

And yet the more Tim tries to pull himself together, the more he seems to fall apart. When he tries to swallow back his sobs, they turn into huge, painful wracking wails that claw their way up out of the very pit of his stomach; when he tries to wipe away his tears they start rolling down his cheeks even more rapidly; and when as a last resort he tries to curl into himself so at least he can hide his face, well. It just means he crumples like a house of cards, shaking as he collapses into a tiny, pathetic little ball of snot and saltwater.

A warm voice speaks close by. “Would you like a hug?”

A hug?

Warm, strong arms wrapped around him, and a voice promising to keep him safe, that everything is going to be okay.

Tim nods without lifting his face from where he’s buried it in his knees.

A new set of arms wraps around him. They’re not as thick as the first pair had been, but they’re still hard with muscle. And yet, just like the first pair, they still manage to be incredibly warm and gentle even so.

The voice hums, and one long-fingered hands starts rubbing gentle circles in his back. Tim shivers at the unfamiliar sensation. That feels… his head dips, swaying a little. He never wants them to stop. He doesn’t even know how to describe the way it feels, he just knows he needs them to keep doing that.

Tim can feel himself instinctively bending closer, drawn in like a moth to a flame. He’s woozy, almost as if he’s been drugged with something. He feels like he’s melting, like he’s turning to a puddle under that addictively gentle touch. He craves that warmth, that weight, that undeniable sensation of just being with another person—of being seen, of being loved—

With a painful wrench, Tim tears himself back to reality. This isn’t his mom. This is Dick Grayson. Dick—no, Nightwing doesn’t love Tim. He doesn’t know Tim. The only reason he can see Tim at all is because he’s a Bat. This doesn’t mean anything to Nightwing, so it can’t mean anything to Tim either.

It takes a tremendous effort to pull away from the warm embrace of Nightwing’s arms, but Tim manages it eventually.

“Kid?” Nightwing asks. His voice is soft and gentle and so thick with concern that it makes Tim’s heart ache like someone’s touching a bruise on it.

“I have to go,” Tim tells his knees.

“Kid—”

“Please let me go,” Tim begs his knees.

Nightwing lets him go.

Tim pushes off the floor, refusing to look at either Nightwing or Spoiler, and stumbles out of the store. At least no one else around him can see the tears on his cheeks.

Chapter 14: A Hidden Knife

Chapter Text

Usually, they’d be out on patrol right now, but something’s going on with Bruce.

He doesn’t show it on his face, which is set in the same stoic expression he always wears as Batman, but… it’s there. It’s definitely there. His presence is like a black hole in the Batcave, all of the light and sound sucked in towards him until where he is sits is all dark and stillness and pressure, unrelenting pressure, coiled up and carefully held under control.

Nightwing can clearly tell, too. He keeps on looking over at Batman with the sharp, hard, reckless expression of someone who’s shoved a stick between the bars of a cage in the zoo and is thinking about whether or not to poke.

They’re clearly hurdling towards disaster, Stephanie thinks, and, well. It’s not like either her or Nightwing are much use just lingering in the Cave like this. Usually when Dick gets like this she’ll suggest they patrol together, but Batman is clearly not up for that—he says it’s not necessary, that things haven’t been too busy lately, but Steph can tell that it’s really because he’s worried. Worried about what, he won’t say, but definitely worried about something.

Well. There are other ways for her to diffuse the situation.

Stephanie stretches, audibly yawning. Dick’s attention flicks over to her, the hard lines of his face dissolving into something softer and more fond. She can’t help but smile back at him.

“Alright,” she says. She’s found that direct communication is best with Bruce, so… “B, you’re clearly worried about something, and it’s making N stressed out, too. You don’t have to tell us what it is right now, but you need to give us something to work with, yeah? You have 72 hours til you absolutely have to give us some sort of explanation, alright?”

Bruce jerks a nod.

“Thanks.” Steph smiles, then strides over and presses a kiss to the part of his cheek that isn’t covered by the mask. It’s subtle, but she can see the tension near his eyes relaxing a little, the corners of his mouth lifting up just a bit.

Turning away, she claps her hands together. “Alright! N, we’re going for a waffles run. I want those weird acai ones from that fancy place in Diamond District, so you’re going to need to drive me. Get into your civvies, you know those richie-rich types will freak if they see a vigilante.”

“Be careful,” Bruce rumbles.

“We will,” Dick promises.

Barbara spins her swivel chair so she’s facing them and gives them both a wave. “Pick me up some of those truffle-infused cheese puffs, too,” she orders.

“Will do,” Steph replies, shooting her a quick salute. “Cass, you want anything?”

Cass shakes her head. Thank you, she signs.

“Alright, see you all again soon!”

“You shouldn’t have to do that,” Dick says as he closes the door. He waits as she buckles her seatbelt.

“What, help you out with B?”

“Yeah.” Dick starts up the car. “I don’t want you to feel like you have to solve our problems for us. Bruce and I are adults. We can handle things ourselves.”

“I know you can,” Steph tells him. “It’s not… it’s not like I’m getting in the middle of an actual fight between you two, yeah? I’m just helping you out a bit. Sometimes an outside perspective is good. Sorta like how it was good when you explained that when Bruce gets overbearing, it’s usually more because he’s worried and not actually because he thinks I’m incompetent.”

Dick hums, still sounding a little skeptical.

“Look,” she says, “I promise, if you guys are making me uncomfortable, or I feel like I’m getting caught between you, I’ll say something.”

“Alright.” He reaches over to ruffle her hair, laughing when she exaggeratedly ducks and covers, hands leaping up to cover her precious curls. “Thanks, Steph.”

There’s a minute of comfortable silence, and then Stephanie says, “so, can I pick the music, or are we going to be listening to ABBA the whole drive?”

Steph wants to get one of the big shopping carts so she can push off and ride on the iron bar on the back, but this area is so hoity-toity that if she did that they might actually ban her, and then where would she get her acai waffles?

Heaving a gigantic sigh, she long-sufferingly picks up a shopping basket from the stack and loops one arm through Dick’s. “Waffles, here we come,” she says.

“Don’t forget the truffle cheese puffs,” Dick adds.

“How would I, when I know Barbs likes ‘em so much?” Steph has also been known to steal great quantities of said cheese puffs herself, but that’s irrelevant.

They head down into the frozen foods aisle and beeline for the acai waffles. They’re obnoxiously expensive, just like everything else in the store, but hey. It’s Bruce’s money, not hers. If he didn’t want her to buy overpriced waffles he shouldn’t have made her an authorized user on his Amex Black Card.

It’s kind of a pain to drive out all the way to Diamond District just to get these waffles, so Steph pulls several boxes from the shelf. Once she’s judged that they have enough, they head towards where the truffle cheese puffs are usually kept—

—and come to an abrupt stop because for a moment, Stephanie thought she saw a figure out of the corner of her eye, and it almost looked like they were…

She squints. It’s weirdly hard to see—they look almost… blurry, for some reason—but that is definitely someone… drinking oat milk directly from the container?

“What the f*ck?” she whispers.

The blurry form turns, and then suddenly snaps into focus, everything about them abruptly crystal clear except the area around their eyes, which remains strangely indistinct; in fact, when Steph tries to look at their face, her gaze seems to slide right off.

“You should probably, like, pay for that,” Steph’s mouth says on autopilot, because seriously, what the f*ck.

The kid bursts into tears. That much is very clear, even through the weird censorship force-field thing they’ve got going on.

Ah, sh*t.

“Hey, no,” Steph tries, “I’m sorry, I didn’t make to make you cry. If you can’t pay for it that’s alright—we can cover it. In fact, let’s get you something proper to eat, yeah?”

The kid just keeps crying. In fact, they seem to be crying even harder than before. As Steph watches, they sink to the ground, seemingly not noticing the oat milk still splattered everywhere around them as they bury their face in their knees and start rocking back and forth. They’re making these awful noises, the kind of belly-deep sobs that you only hear when something is really, really wrong. It makes empathetic tears prick at Stephanie’s own eyes.

In fact, now that Steph can get a proper look at them, it’s pretty obvious that there’s something wrong in general. They’re skinny and small, with a bony, half-starved look that makes Steph want to shove one of her acai waffles into their mouth, and even as they rock, Steph can tell that they’re trying to avoid aggravating some sort of painful spot near their stomach. Hunger pangs, maybe?

Dick crouches down and opens his arms up. “Would you like a hug?”

Good call. Dick Grayson Hugs™ are basically the eighth wonder of the world.

The kid nods, perhaps because they can also sense that Dick’s hugs are basically the best thing since sliced bread. Dick sidles over and wraps his arms around them; Steph can tell he really wants to pull the kid into his lap, to cradle them close so they aren’t sitting in oat milk anymore, but is holding back out of fear of scaring the kid.

The kid is tense at first, but as Steph watches, they absolutely melt into Dick. They’re visibly shivering, even as they turn towards Dick like a flower towards the sun. When Dick starts rubbing their back, the tremor escalate into a full shudder, and then they’re tilting so far Steph thinks they might actually collapse into Dick’s embrace.

Steph knows they’re both thinking the same thing. Touch starvation.

From Dick’s expression, Steph can see that he’s seriously debating the merits of just picking the kid up and carrying them home along with their waffles, and frankly she can’t blame him because this is heartbreaking—

The kid pulls back, saying something about how they need to go.

Go back to who, Steph thinks, a surge of protective anger rushing through her. Who left you like this?

Dick’s clearly reluctant to let them go, but it’s not like he can force the kid to stay, either. He lifts his arms, and the kid shuffles out without looking at either of them.

They watch the kid go. Even after he’s gone, for a minute they’re just silent. And then Dick closes his eyes and says, “f*ck. Every time I think I’ve gotten used to the worst of what Gotham has to offer…”

Steph nods silently.

They’re quiet for another minute, and then eventually Steph pulls Dick up off the floor and they head to check out.

“—and then the kid just got up and left, just like that,” Steph finishes.

Barbara hums, her brow furrowed. “Seems like they probably have meta powers of some kind—although I suppose it could also be magic.” She starts typing with one hand, her other hand still idly fishing around in the bag of truffle cheese puffs. “I can’t think of anyone right off hand who would fit that description, but maybe there’s something in one of of our case files…”

“I mean, it’s not really surprising if you think about it,” Dick calls from where he’s hanging upside down by his knees from one of the Cave’s gymnastics bars. “Kid’s powers literally make them unnoticeable.” He dismounts with an elegant flip. “What we should be really asking is why we could see them at all.”

“Are you sure they’re really unnoticeable?” Barbara asks. “Or is it just the…” she gestures vaguely. “Facial distortion?”

Dick makes a face. “Some shoppers passed by right after he dropped the oat milk. They didn’t so much as blink.”

Steph frowns. She hadn’t noticed that.

Laughing, Dick flicks a finger against her forehead. “Maybe we should put you through another set of situational awareness drills,” he teases.

“That could be it,” Barbara murmurs. “Our training around observation and attention could lessen the powers’ impact… especially if it’s based around exploiting distractions…” She pulls her hand out of the cheese puffs bag and starts typing in earnest.

“What’s this?” Bruce strides in, hair damp and a towel around his neck. Cass follows a step behind, her own hair wrapped up in one of those magical swirly towel towers that Steph never figured out how to do.

Dick starts giving them the rundown of what they missed while Barbara continues searching through the Batcomputer’s database. Steph figures this’ll take a bit, so she heads over to Batcave microwave (the Batcrowave, some might say) to heat up some of her hard-won waffles.

She’s just finished carefully pouring the syrup so it fills the waffle indentations in a checkerboard pattern when Barbara shoves back from the Batcomputer with a sigh.

“There’s nothing,” she informs them. “No mention of anything remotely similar in any of our mission reports. This must be the first time we’ve encountered them—at least,” she adds wryly, “that we can remember.”

Bruce opens his mouth, then closes it. When Barbara lifts a questioning eyebrow in his direction, he says, “actually, they fit a description that Leslie gave me.”

Every head in the room snaps toward Bruce.

“What?” Dick asks.

“Last Wednesday, at around 11 am, a child with dark hair and pale skin, likely somewhere between thirteen and sixteen years old, arrived at the clinic. In her own words, the child was ‘hard to see’ and ‘easy to forget’.” Bruce’s lips thin. “They had been shot in the stomach.”

“Shot?” Dick looks a bit ill. Steph can relate. She’d thought the kid was being careful of their stomach because they were hungry, not because they were nursing a bullet wound.

“How did… how did she even operate on them?”

Bruce goes stone-still, and there’s a long moment of silence where Dick just stares at him, brow furrowed like he’s willing Bruce to speak.

“Seriously, Bruce?” he finally asks.

A muscle in Bruce’s cheek twitches, but he doesn’t open his mouth.

“Is this related to the thing that you’re so worried about?” Steph has to cover her mouth to keep from giving everyone a look at the syrup-drenched waffle she’s chewing.

There’s another long moment, and then Bruce nods.

Dick lets out a long sigh. “Alright,” he says. He turns to Barbara. “If the kid had been shot in the stomach, that could explain why we could see them. I know that for many metahumans, the strain of recovering from something like that could lessen the effectiveness of their powers—especially if those powers include a self-healing component.”

Barbara’s about to reply when they hear the gentle knock of a fist against one of the Batcave’s tables. They all turn to look at Cass.

“I saw them,” she says.

Barbara blinks. “You did?”

A while ago, she signs. When I stopped Catwoman’s heist. They were following her.

“Why didn’t you include that in your report?” Bruce asks. He doesn’t seem angry so much as baffled. Cass may need Barbara’s help with transcription, but her reports are always thorough—succinct, yes, but never missing important details like this.

Cass lifts her chin a little, and her eyes seem to glitter with a fierce light. They were scared. “No,” she says, tasting the words carefully. “Terrified.” Of me. Of the way I could see them. Of the way I could tell Catwoman, and then maybe Catwoman would see them, too. Writing about them in the report… she pauses for a moment, sorting out her thoughts. That would have been another reason for them to fear me in the future.

Bruce sighs. He looks like he’s too tired to argue.

“I will help them,” Cass says. Her expression informs them that any arguments to the contrary will be ignored.

“You’ll be point of contact, and I’ll do research behind the scenes,” Barbara decides. Invisible or not, it’s unlikely that the kid didn’t leave any traces—and if anyone can find them, it’s Babs.

Cass nods. She knows as well as any of them just how valuable Barbara’s work is.

Stephanie opens her mouth to offer her own services, but Cass shakes her head before she can get so much as a word out.

Batman will need your—she indicates Stephanie and Dick—help on his case.

Stephanie nods slowly. There’s a good chance Cass already has some inkling of what it is Bruce is so stressed out about, and even if she doesn’t, she undoubtedly has a very good idea of exactly how it’s impacting him. If she says they need to help him, Steph trusts that.

Dick nods as well. His lips are a little tight—Steph knows he would have liked to be directly involved with helping the kid—but he trusts Cass’ judgment just as much as Stephanie does.

“Alright, Batgirl,” Bruce says. He doesn’t look happy, but it’s clear he’s accepted that this isn’t a battle he’s going to win. “Remember that you can always ask any of us for help.” He pauses awkwardly for a moment, then adds, “Not just for this case, either. For anything.”

“I will,” Cass promises, pressing a quick kiss to Bruce’s cheek. For a moment, it seems like that’s the end of the conversation—

—and then her eyebrows lift as she seems to remember something, and she signs, actually, there is something that I could use help with right away.

“I thought you didn’t want to be in the public eye,” Dick says as he artfully ruffles his lightly-gelled hair. “Not that I can blame you. Paparazzi…” he shudders exaggeratedly.

“I didn’t,” Cass replies after a long moment. “But it’s worth it for my mission.”

“Oh, you think the kid knows we’re Dick f*cking Grayson and Stephanie f*cking Brown, rather than any old supermarket randos?”

Steph is a little flattered to be called “Stephanie f*cking Brown,” but she’ll never say as much. Especially when she can feel Barbara rolling her eyes.

“Obnoxious phrasing aside, it’s not much of a stretch to assume that they recognized you,” Babs agrees. “You were both dressed in a fairly recognizable way, and you were in Diamond District.”

“What, you don’t think I deserve a f*cking?” Dick asks. He pulls a few strands of hair forward to gently brush his forehead and then makes a “perfect” sign to himself in the mirror. Dork.

“I’d like to remind you that Stephanie is still underage,” Barbara replies dryly.

“Actually,” Steph informs them all smugly, “I’m sixteen now. In fact, I have been for almost six months now. Honestly, it’s rather offensive that you forgot.”

“You’ll always be a babe in arms to us,” Dick fires back immediately.

“Bite me,” Steph replies pleasantly.

“We’ve gotten off topic.” Barbara turns to Cass. “So?”

Cass tilts her head, clearly confused. “Dick… f*cking Grayson?” she asks after a moment.

“What I mean is, the kid knows our civilian identities, so by publicly associating with them, you can get an in with the kid, yeah?” Dick opens a tube of lip gloss, contemplates the color, and then closes it again.

Cass pauses for a long, long moment.

Then: “No.”

They all turn to look at her.

“What is it, then?” Dick asks. His voice remains light and casual, but his hands have gone still against the bathroom counter. “How’s this plan work?”

There’s an even longer moment of silence, and then finally Cass signs, they know you as Dick Grayson and as Nightwing. They know Steph as Stephanie Brown and as Spoiler. But they only know me as Batgirl.

“What?” Stephanie asks, voice sounding faint to her own ears. “What do you mean? You just mean that you need a civilian identity to use, right? Not that—”

“You think they know our identities?” Nightwing asks. Because it is undeniably Nightwing speaking right now. No one else besides Nightwing ever has quite that covered-blade, steel-under-silk quality to their voice.

Cass nods. She looks way too calm for someone who’s implying that a random civilian knows their super-secret vigilante identities.

It’s just a hunch, she signs, but she looks pretty confident for someone who has “just a hunch”. Cass takes a moment to gather her thoughts, then, explains, From how they act, most people can’t see them. But we could. After a moment, with emphasis: us Bats could.

Steph just stares in blank confusion, but Dick catches on to what Cass is trying to say almost at once.

“You think something about being a Bat—probably our training, judging from what you said earlier, Babs—makes it so we can see the kid?” Dick asks. “And—and because of that, because Bats can see them even though most people couldn’t, then when they ran into two people who could see them in the grocery store, they figured we were probably Bats?”

“Okay,” Stephanie objects, “Why would the kid assume only Bats could see them? The only data they’d have would be Cass and us, right? And if they only know that we’re Bats cuz only Bats can see them, but they know only Bats can see them cuz of us, that’s circular logic.” Logic that’s so circular, in fact, that just trying to keep the phrasing straight as she explains it is giving her a headache.

Cass shakes her head, a faint furrow of frustration marring her brow. They knew before they saw me.

“Knew that Bats could see them?” Barbara clarifies.

Cass nods. I think so. She pauses. The way they looked at the bat symbol on my suit… She trails off, her lips twisting. They were… surprised I could see them. But it wasn’t confusing.

Dick opens his mouth, but Cass holds up a hand; he falls silent as she figures out how to phrase what she wants to say. If you see a shot coming, your body is still surprised when it hits. But your mind isn’t. It was like that for them.

There’s a moment of quiet as they digest that, and then Dick speaks.

“Now that I think about it, they never…” He swallows. “The kid never asked how we could see them. Don’t you think, if you had powers like that, if you were never seen, never noticed by most of the population, and some random strangers at the store could suddenly see you, you’d be asking how?”

Cass nods. Exactly, her expression seems to say.

A wave of dizzying heat sweeps over Steph as the implications hit her. If their theory is correct, then it means that for the kid, that simple experience of being seen—something which is as ordinary as breathing to her—is so unique that they… they just…

Dick and Cass are right. The kid didn’t show any sort of confusion about how Steph and Dick could see them, only shock at being perceived. They must have immediately assumed that if someone could see them, it was because they were a Bat. And that means that, at least from their point of view, the only people who can see them are Bats. And none of the Bats remember seeing them before the incident with Cass, so—so that would suggest that they haven’t been having any sort of mutual human interaction, at all.

That can’t be right, Steph has to be missing something—but as she circles around and around the issue in her mind, she can’t find any holes in her logic.

If we’re the only ones who can see them, she thinks, then it’s on us to help them now. And it’s on us that we didn’t help them before.

That gunshot wound—those skinny, trembling shoulders—they should have prevented all of that. They should have been there for the kid from the beginning. If they’re the only ones who can see the kid, why weren’t they looking after him this whole time?

Steph is starting to actually feel the guilt like a weight in her stomach, so she figures a change of topic is probably in order.

“Cass… everything you’s said so far makes sense, but I’m still not entirely sure why you want to show up in a paparazzi photo. Why let them figure out your identity?”

Cass chews the inside of her lip for a long moment, then finally just signs, a hidden knife is more threatening than a visible one.

Steph understands at once. Being seen was so overwhelming for the kid that literally just being verbally acknowledged made them burst into tears. None of them will ever understand what it’s really like having powers like the kid’s, but… for vigilantes like them, revealing their identities is the ultimate vulnerability. By allowing the kid to see the entirety of her own, unfragmented Cass-and-Batgirl self, Cass is trying to balance things out as much as she can.

Dick huffs out a laugh. “Man, if Bruce knew you were planning on intentionally revealing your identity like this, he’d have a conniption.”

Cass gives him a cheeky smile with just a hint of edge to it. She might as well have said “what, and you’re going to tell him?”

Dick grins a little ruefully. “Usually, I’d be giving you the lecture right alongside B, but really… the kid will only be able to figure out your identity if your theory is right and they already know both Steph and my identities. So it’s a pretty measured risk, all things considered. And B’s got enough problems on his own plate right now as is.”

He glances over at Barbara, his lips curving up in a sly smile. “Don’t you agree, Babs?”

Barbara shrugs. “I work with Bruce, not for him.”

Behind Dick’s back, Steph signs, I just like breaking B’s rules. No justification necessary.

Cass laughs, a little of the tension that’s been lingering in her body ever since she first proposed the paparazzi plan melting away. She may be acting like none of this phases her, but Steph knows she’s nervous.

Steph sidles up closer to Dick and imitates B’s bat ears with two curved fingers. “Usually, I’d be giving you the lecture alongside B,” she mouths exaggeratedly. Cass stifles giggles with one hand; Babs doesn’t even bother pretending she’s not laughing.

Dick lifts his gaze and for a moment he and Steph make eye contact in the mirror; the corner of his mouth twitches ever so slightly. And then his face goes neutral and he’s back to carefully twisting one strand of hair around his fingers, looking for all the world like he hasn’t noticed a thing.

Dork, Steph thinks again, rather more fondly than she would ever admit.

Chapter 15: Wide & Shallow

Chapter Text

Tim stumbles in through the window of Selina Kyle’s apartment. His entire body is shaking, faint little tremors that run through him like the aftershocks of an earthquake, like he is a leaf in a storm, holding onto his branch by will alone. His chest aches with hollowness. There is a stillness within him, as of death.

He collapses to his knees on the soft carpet. Otto trots up to him, already sniffing at his limp fingers. A terrible hot pressure gathers behind his eyes.

Otto meows, rubbing his cheek against the back of Tim’s hand. The pressure behind his eyes is a bubble held together only by surface tension, a storm on the verge of breaking. But his eyes are dry. He’s denied even that sweet catharsis.

Tim stares down at Otto. His hands tremble as he slowly runs his fingers over Otto’s soft, warm fur. Another long shudder runs through him, like he is a string someone is plucking at. But there is no music from him, only agonizing silence, heavy and thick and choking.

Otto makes a demanding noise, butting up into the heel of Tim’s hand like he’s asking why Tim isn’t petting him. Tim obediently strokes the top of Otto's head. He can feel tears pooling in his eyes, but they refuse to fall.

Otto meows louder. What’s wrong? he might have asked, if he was a person.

I’m just tired, Tim thinks back. I’m just a little tired.

It’s just that he’s a little empty. It’s just that he wants some company. It’s just that his skin is a bit tingly.

It’s just that it feels kind of like he’s some deep sea creature that’s been forcibly de-shelled, it’s just that his skin is raw and new and naked, it’s just that his shoulders are crying out to have a warm, heavy pressure wrapped around them, it’s just that for some reason loneliness is crushing him from the inside out like he’s an imploding star and he’s aching for relief, it’s just that—it’s just that—

“It just that it hurts,” Tim says aloud.

Not that it matters. No matter what he says or how loud he says it, no one will hear it. So difference does it make if he’s silent or if he screams? What does it matter if he lives or dies?

Tim still can’t cry, but the lump in his throat might actually choke the breath from his lungs.

He buries his—dry, dry, why is it so dry, why can’t he cry—face into Otto’s soft, vibrating chest.

I should have just stayed in that hospital room, he thinks, bizarrely and more than a little idiotically.

It’s just that it made Tim feel so safe.

When he was being cradled ever so gently in those warm, strong arms, it was hard not to believe that Jas—that Hood would protect him from all danger. It felt like—like everything was going to be okay. Like nothing could ever hurt him again. Like he was loved.

And—and he knows that’s an illusion, he does. He knows that Hood has no idea who he is, that he’s not—he’s not Tim’s mom, he’s just some stranger, he doesn’t—he doesn’t love Tim—but—

Hood fought off Mask and brought him to safety and watched over him as he slept. He kept every promise he made and then some; no one could have expected him to somehow manage to make a surgery on someone like Tim work, but he did. He went above and beyond the call of duty, more than fulfilled any obligations he might have to some stranger, to a fellow traveler trawling the depths of Gotham’s underworld—which is the very reason why it’s so awful that Tim still pathetically, desperately wants more from him.

He’s got a black hole in his chest, greedy for light and possessive of warmth. Look at me, look at me, look at me, it screams. Love me, love me, love me—

It doesn’t understand that Tim isn’t made for sunlight or warmth or love. He’s a shadow; turning the light towards him doesn’t reveal him, it destroys him. Warmth dissolves him into nothingness and love is wasted on him. That black hole within him may be hungry but it can never eat.

Tim winds his arms around Otto’s purring body. This is the best I’m going to get, he reminds himself, so it needs to be good enough. He scratches under Otto’s chin, smiling faintly at the way Otto eagerly lifts his head.

Dick Grayson had rubbed soft little circles in his back when he hugged him. Tim’s shoulder blades flex, spine arching like it’s trying to lean into a touch that isn’t there, as he remembers.

When he embraced Tim, it was like all of the falling-apart pieces of Tim—all of the messy dangling bits and stupid emotions he was unable to hold inside where they belong—got firmly yet kindly squished back into him. For just a single, blessed, blissful moment, it felt like Tim was properly whole again… and then Dick let go and Tim fell back apart, pain and longing spilling out of him like organs from a gaping wound.

And if Dick hugged him again… would he be whole? Would he be a real person, just for a minute? Known, loved, if only for that moment?

Tim can feel his face crumpling into a sob, into a rictus of agony—but no tears fall.

How could he have let this happen? How could he have let them see him? He should have never let himself get injured, never let himself break down in the grocery store like that. If he had, he wouldn’t be hurting like this now, wouldn’t be letting his stupid heart delude himself with daydreams of being loved when he knows any possibility of that died along with his mom.

Why is he being so stupid? If anything, if the Bats knew about him, they’d hate him.

He can still feel Stephanie Brown’s eyes on him like a brand. Shouldn’t you pay for that? Tim laughs, although it’s more like a hoarse, cracking cough than a real laugh. If she knew what he’s done, what he’s tried to do… she’d be asking him to pay, all right, but she wouldn’t be talking about money.

In the only end the only embrace the Bats will ever give him is the cold clamp of cuffs around his wrists. Theft, attempted murder, corporate espionage, breaking and entering, trespassing… the rap sheet would be miles long. Even Hood… he probably wouldn’t care that Tim tried to kill Mask, or about most of his other associated crimes, but Tim really doubts he’d be happy to learn that someone knows his secret identity.

Plus—Tim’s lips twist in an unexpected bout of humor, wry and bitter but still genuine—he tends to forget this, but he’s theoretically aware of the fact that people operate under the assumption that they generally exist in a state of privacy. For example, the average person assumes that they actually are alone just because it happens to look that way. And, well. It’s presumably rather distressing to have that illusion broken.

Again, this isn’t something Tim can personally relate to, and not just because he doesn’t think anyone could violate his privacy even if they tried. He sort of gets why someone who learned that a stalker was following them around would be distressed; there’s a potential threat there that the person never knew about, and that’s scary. But it’s not like that with Tim. It’s not like Tim is a person in the same way a stalker is.

It sounds bizarre to phrase it like that, even to him, but the underlying concept is actually quite sound. You see, most people exist as part of a greater social fabric, which they actively influence and are influenced by in turn, while Tim… well, it’s like he’s not there at all.

More than a person, it’s like he’s an immaterial observer, a floating eyeball above Gotham, a narrator telling other people’s stories. Why should characters worry what the narrator thinks of them? Worrying about Tim’s watching gaze would be like worrying that you’re haunted by invisible, intangible, powerless, yet incredibly judgmental ghosts. Sure, maybe in a theoretical sense it’s discomfiting, but it doesn’t matter in any real way, and any grounded person would dismiss worries about it as totally unfounded.

At least, that’s Tim’s perspective. Mom always did say that if any of the people he followed around found about him they would find it extremely, possibly even existentially distressing. He generally takes—took her word about these sorts of things, seeing as she knew a lot more about what it was like to actually live as part of the world than he does, so he assumes that Hood would, indeed, feel very distressed if he learned that Tim had been following him around that whole time. But who knows? Such things are beyond Tim’s purview.

Tim rolls over onto his back, lifting a purring Otto and unceremoniously depositing him onto his chest as he does so. None of Selina’s cats have ever wondered about why he’s in a space that, according to common sense and the law, he should have never been allowed to enter. They just want him to give them chin scritches.

Frankly, the idea that people would get upset at Tim for wandering about wherever he likes makes him feel a little angry. Sure, there are like, anti-trespassing laws or whatever, but there’s also a general expectation that buses will stop to pick up passengers and that baristas will actually make your order correctly and that if you wander around in public clearly and grievously wounded someone will try to help you. Tim’s powers means that society rarely fulfills its side of the contract, so why should Tim still abide by his half?

He’s always viewed his being able to explore wherever he likes as the natural counterbalance for not being able to actually talk to anyone except Mom. He’s heard it said that you can either go wide and shallow or narrow and deep—by seeing everything he wants but never actually being able to carry on a conversation, he’s going wide and shallow. Saying that Tim shouldn’t go anywhere an average person isn’t allowed because of “privacy” or whatever would constrain him to something narrow and shallow.

And for what? For a benefit that no one would ever actually consciously experience? No one even knows he’s there—it’s not like him not following people would make a difference in any Gothamite’s actual quality of life. The whole thing just seems stupid.

Tim huffs a sigh, one hand idly knotting itself in Selina’s carpet. It all makes perfect sense to him and yet somehow, he doesn’t think explaining his rationale would make any of the people he’s followed feel less angry.

Narrow and deep, wide and shallow. You can have always end up with narrow and shallow, but you can never have wide and deep; it just leads to you losing both benefits. The only real solution is to pick either narrow and deep or wide and shallow. Tim had wide and shallow picked for him from the moment his powers first started to muffle the sounds of his hungry crying.

He never had a real choice, but that’s okay. At least if he’s careful and clever and able to keep from being greedy, he can hold onto what he has.

Wide and shallow, wide and shallow, wide and shallow… Tim lets his eyes slip shut, letting the faint sound of Otto’s purring lull him into a relaxed, almost meditative state.

It feels strange to just lay here like this, not watching anyone, not particularly thinking about anything, not working towards some greater driving goal. There’s no vengeance to carry out, no company to dissolve, no one to investigate. There’s nothing to do at all. Tim is a seed in the wind.

These past few months have been crazy. Tim’s not even sure when things got so crazy—was it when Mom died? When he rescued Gianna? Or maybe even earlier, back when they learned Jack had been cheating on Mom? Or… perhaps it was like a landslide, every little problem compounding upon itself until Tim was facing a clusterf*ck of truly massive proportions.

When even is it? Tim can’t remember the last time he thought to check the date. He knows it’s still winter, but that’s about it. Are the students at Gotham U done with their finals? He supposes they must be. Tim’s never been a very diligent student, but this has really been a particularly pathetic showing on his part. If he was actually enrolled, they’d probably have him on academic probation right now.

The more he thinks about it, the more curious he is about the date. Did he miss Christmas? What day was Christmas? Was Christmas the day he was shot, the day he failed to kill Black Mask? The day he learned his mother really had just died in a completely accidental, innocuous car crash? Or maybe… Christmas was one of those ordinary, boring days he’d spent happily following Hood around. That idea hurts a little more than the others, for some reason.

Usually he’d just pull out his phone to check, but, well. His phone was in his backpack when Hood took him to Leslie Thompson’s clinic, along with basically every single other worldly possession that he actually gives a sh*t about.

Maybe Tim should stop at some sort of internet cafe somewhere. He can check the date that way, and, well. He needs to eat sometime soon, anyways. He’s gone past hunger pangs and out the other side; his stomach isn’t growling or painful, just very empty—he’s lightheaded and weak and feels light and distant as driftwood. If this keeps up for much longer he’ll get to the point where he’s so nauseous he doesn’t want to eat, and things always get nasty after that.

It’s not as if holding Otto is really helping, anyways. In fact, Tim thinks on some level it might be actually making things worse—having something so close to, but not quite the same as, human touch almost feels like it’s rubbing the lack of it in even more.

With a big sigh, Tim gently lifts Otto off his chest and deposits him on the nearest couch cushion. Otto makes a confused mrrping noise as he’s woken from his nap, but he settles back down after a few comforting strokes from Tim.

There’s a truly incredible amount of cat hair on Tim’s shirt; he takes a moment to brush as much of it off as he can before he leaves Selina’s apartment.

It’s been a long time since Tim’s been to a cafe. Both Glasses and Ja—Hood did all of their cooking at home, and before that, well… honestly, the time immediately after his mom died is one big blur of murder fantasies and terrible, rage-drenched grief, so it’s hard to be sure, but Tim doesn’t think he followed Bloody Lipstick to any cafes, either.

In fact, now that he thinks about it, the last time Tim visited a place like that may have been the diner.

Dianne’s sharp gasp. The cracked flatscreen with its horrible ticker. The impact shakes through the bones of his hand when he hits the floor.

There’s something heavy in Tim’s throat that makes him feel as he’s going to throw up, and a sudden horrible dread is rising through him like dark storm clouds foaming on the horizon. With the same awful premonition that he once knew that Scarecrow picked up his ID, he is suddenly completely and awfully certain that if he goes out to eat, everything will break in some new way. He knows it in his hindbrain, knows it in the same intuitive way that moviegoers sometimes know a jumpscare is coming, knows it like he knew on Wayne Tower that if he jumped he would die. He knows it like he knew that losing that ID card would take everything from him.

Except there’s nothing left for Tim to lose. His mom is already dead—dead, for nothing and no one, for no point at all, not even killed by anyone, just dead. He’s lost his world and his purpose and the only sense of self he ever had. What else is there to take from him? How can anything ever get worse?

That terrible voice: things can always get worse.

Tim makes himself draw in a slow, deep breath. All of that stuff about the ID card was just bullsh*t, the deranged imaginings of a mind trying to grasp at some semblance of logic in a logicless situation. And it's the same thing now; his mind is just trying to find patterns where there are none. Nothing bad is going to happen just because he goes out to eat. Everything will be fine.

Tim forcibly turns his mind to other thoughts. Where should he go? Not so long ago, the question would have been absurd, moot—obviously he would be going to Alanzo’s. But… Gianna could see him when they escaped together. What if she can still see him now? Tim’s stomach twists as he remembers the heat of her eyes on the side of his face, the way she’d asked, “what about you?”

What about him? He’s no one, no one and nothing. She and Hood and Nightwing and Spoiler and all the rest need to stop f*cking looking at him, because when they do it deludes him into thinking he’s a person and that hurts more than anything else in the world. Maybe even more than Mom dying did.

So no Alanzo’s.

He can’t go to his second favorite place, either, because his second favorite place is the diner the Riddler likes to go to, and if he sees that f*cking cracked flatscreen, he thinks he will actually throw up.

Nor does he particularly want to go the Iceberg Lounge. The kind of things he was thinking and planning the last time he was there… it would be like pulling blood stained gloves back over hands that he’s only just managed to wash halfway clean.

Tim casts his mind about, trying to think of somewhere with internet, somewhere that’s quiet and has decent food and doesn’t have any horrible memories associated with it—

Ah, right. There is that one place that he used to visit back when he did that stint following Victor Zsasz. Hopefully it’s still standing.

When Tim walks in, Dick Grayson is buying a black coffee at the counter.

For a moment, Tim’s heart stops, in fact his entire body stops, he freezes completely, he can’t breathe, he’s not sure if he’s begging Dick to turn around or to not notice him at all, he’s—

He’s slowly deflating at “Dick” turns around and the illusion falls away. From the back, that could be Nightwing’s hair—but the face is all wrong. That’s not Dick Grayson at all.

Obviously it’s not. What would Dick f*cking Grayson be doing in some run-down, shabby little internet cafe, drinking terrible black coffee that may or may not be partially motor oil? It’s not as if he’s the one who follows people around. That’s Tim.

Well, that was stupid, Tim thinks succinctly, and refuses to examine if it was relief or disappointment he felt in that moment after he realized it wasn’t Nightwing.

Trying to shove the entire thing from his mind, Tim swipes a muffin from the counter and pours himself some coffee—he really isn’t up for dealing with the baristas ignoring him today—and settles down in front of one of the computers.

Holy f*ck. It’s not just past Christmas, it’s the new year. It’s well into the new year. As in, the students at Gotham U have already started their next semester. As in, they’re probably going to be starting to worry about midterms not too long from now.

It’s not even going to be winter for much longer, is it? Give it another few weeks and the snow will start to melt. This cold landscape will turn to muddy sludge interspersed with the stubborn heads of weeds bursting up out of the cold earth, throwing dirt off their bent shoulders.

Mom and Jack liked to travel a lot during the winters. Oh, they were always sure to make it back for the society holiday circuit—the Wayne’s winter gala, the New Years Eve parties, the premiere of the Gotham Metropolitan Ballet’s annual showing of the Nutcracker—but they liked to avoid the snow, the frigid cold, the terrible storms that sometimes knock the power out even in Bristol.

They would usually come back for at least a little while in the spring, though—if only to take a break between trips. And when they did, Mom would always fill her rooms with creamy white tulips.

He should get some for her. He can imagine the way her eyes will—would have crinkled at the corners in quiet happiness.

He can lay them down beside her in the morgue.

Except—except, no. It’s been almost three months. There’s no way she’s still just lying there in the morgue, abandoned, forgotten like a pile of loose luggage. She’s not Tim. They wouldn’t do that to her.

They must have buried her. There must have been a funeral. That—that thought hurts. That his mother had a funeral and Tim wasn’t there.

All he has to do to know is look it up. His hands are right there on the keyboard. The knowledge is literally right at his finger tips. One quick Google search, and he’ll know where his mother’s grave is.

Instead, Tim turns to one of his classic “f*cking around online” time-wasters: looking up advice for how to use meta powers.

Approximately 95% of the advice is the usual “trust in yourself”/develop your self control through reading pseudo-Stoic philosophy/meditate like you’re an anime protagonist trying to level up bullsh*t. It's frankly ridiculous. If Tim’s powers actually obeyed him, he wouldn’t be Googling advice in the first place; those platitudes are totally useless to him.

Of course, the other 5% is also useless, but sometimes it’s funny useless.

One Redditor who can apparently shoot wind from his hands insists that the key is calling out attack names as loud as he can—although Tim’s pretty sure that’s just a sh*tpost. A different fairly popular Twitter user claims to be able to control the probability of gacha game spins, but only if they’re eating bananas; naturally, they have a “banana fund” ko-fi linked. Perhaps best of all, someone on a tiny, obscure running forum that seems to have been primarily used during the early 2000s says he’s able to use superspeed, but only if he drinks copious amounts of orange juice.

The actual post is pretty funny, but the comments are where the real gold mine is at.

holysocks
What, are you Florida’s version of the Flash?

trainerstruther
Are you sure you’re actually going any faster as opposed to just suffering from delusions stemming from your excessive orange juice consumption?

mrmarathon
>>> trainerstruther Are you sure you’re actually going any…
There’s no reason metahumans powers’ should have arbitrary “rules” like that. I bet this dude just happened to be drinking orange juice the first time he discovered his powers and now he’s developed some sort of psychological block.

kingofthetriathalon
>>> mrmarathon There’s no reason metahumans powers’ should…
Bold of you to assume he’s not just straight up lying.

harderfasterstronger
Can’t wait to see the IOC try to figure out if consuming orange juice counts as doping just for this one specific guy

Tim laughs. Who would have thought runners would be so brutal?

He tabs out of the running forum and, without particularly thinking about why, finds himself googling the Waynes.

The Wayne Foundation has just announced a new community art exhibit; Dick Grayson recently got drunk (“drunk”) during a Buzzfeed interview and said that Lex Luther reminded him of a particularly shiny egg; there’s a new batch of paparazzi photos being thirsted over by the degenerate bottomfeeders of stan Twitter.

Scrolling past an incoherent rant about how Dick Grayson can, should, and must be considered the newest fashion “It Girl” despite not actually being a girl, Tim pulls up the photos in question. There’s Dick—looking astounding unfashionable in an 80s colorblock silk windbreaker with shoulder pads, no wonder that rant was so incoherent—and there, of course, is Stephanie Brown, and then there’s—

Someone new.

A graceful girl with bright, curious eyes and a set mouth. Shiny black hair frames her face in a chin-length bob. There’s no way to be totally sure, but Tim would bet good money that’s the new Bat.

Tim reverse image searches the photo, but none of the celebrity gossip news sites have a name listed; most of them just refer to her as a “friend of the family” or “Stephanie Brown and Dick Grayson’s friend”.

Tim shoves back from the computer, lips twisting with annoyance. Still—at least he knows what she looks like. And he’s sure that in time he’ll be able to learn more about her.

He wonders how she ended up becoming a Bat. Was she an independent vigilante who then got folded into the existing structure, like what happened with Stephanie Brown? The way there’s no word of her being adopted seems to support that. But then again, Jaso—the second Robin’s death probably changed Batman’s approach to that sort of thing. Maybe the reason neither she nor Spoiler have been adopted is because Batman can’t bear the thought of losing another child.

Speaking of which, Tim supposes that at some point Batman’s inevitably going to learn that Jason Todd is alive—and that he’s become Red Hood.

The fact that Jason, the same sweet boy who said Robin gave him magic, who always brought hot cocoa for the working girls and had a kind word for the street kids, has become a terrifying, gun-toting crime lord… it’s shocking.

Or, well. Logically, it should be. It certainly will be to Batman.

As for Tim… Maybe it’s just because these last couple of weeks have been chock full of other, equally if not more worldshaking revelations, leaving him with no more bandwidth to feel shock. Or maybe it’s because Tim himself has an intimate understanding of how a brush with death can change your perspective. More likely it’s that he can’t help but see the second Robin’s same kindness in the stubborn gentleness with which Red Hood carried him out of the very building that should have been Tim’s tomb.

Regardless of exactly why, Jason’s new persona is… surprising, yes, but it’s by no means incomprehensible to Tim. Mostly he just idly wonders why Jason didn’t go home to his family—although he thinks that on some level he knows the answer to that, too.

The computer screen dims, threatening to go to sleep entirely. Tim jostles the mouse to keep it awake. He was going to look up where his mother had been buried, wasn’t he?

He’s only just started skimming the first article that pops up when his gaze catches on a recommended headline.

Jack Drake Wakes From Coma

Jack was in a coma? He thinks, and then, how did I forget about Jack?

Chapter 16: Prodigal

Chapter Text

The hospital room is quiet and clean and the sheets are soft, but Tim can still smell the taint of blood in the air. He fluffs up the tulips in their vase so he has an excuse to avoid looking at the bed, where J—where his dad lies.

Is Jack his dad? Biologically, he may be, but Tim hasn’t thought of him as family for a long, long time. The way Tim views Jack is probably more analogous to the manner in which a child might begrudgingly tolerate a new stepparent; he doesn’t particularly like Jack, but is willing to endure him out of the understanding that his mom finds—found some use in him.

Then again, in the end, did Jack’s usefulness really outweigh the trouble he caused? He cheated on Mom—and not only that, he cheated sloppily, messily, cheated in a way that made getting exposed a matter of “when” not “if”. And it’s hardly as if he ever did that much to help in running the company, either—or actually served as someone Mom could turn to for support in navigating the often brutal social scene of Gotham’s elite—or… honestly, Tim’s struggling to recall what benefit Jack did provide.

Access, he decides after a long moment.

Jack grew up with the world spread out before him, with every possibility he could want, and none of the will to actually take advantage of any of it. Mom had the ambition to actually turn those opportunities into something meaningful. Everything Jack would have squandered, she turned into gold.

And now that she’s gone, Jack will run everything she built into the ground.

Tim’s movements slow, his hand coming to rest on the gently unfurled bulb of one tulip. He can’t bring Mom back, and he can’t avenge her. But maybe he can at least protect her legacy. Maybe he can at least ensure that what she built outlasts her.

He can’t do it on his own, of course. Tim may be able to destroy a company by himself, but running one is a very different beast. Companies need leaders, visible authority figures who can be trusted to steer the ship, to intercede in negotiations, to address the concerns of the rank and file. Tim can never do that.

But… maybe he can help Jack the way he helped Mom. Maybe he can keep Jack from destroying her legacy.

It would at least give him something to do.

Tim lets go of the tulip. Heart pounding hard and fast in his chest, he makes himself turn around.

Jack is lying on his back in the bed, eyes half-open like he’s on the verge of falling asleep. Nothing about him twitches or shifts or looks as Tim walks over.

Has he ever looked at Tim, really? Maybe he did years ago, when Tim was very young, but if he did, Tim can’t remember it.

He stares down at his dad for a long moment. Tim’s limbs feel heavy and still, his tongue nothing more than a great useless lump in his mouth. It all just seems a little…

…pointless.

But he should at least try, right? For his mom’s sake.

Jack may not have ever seen Tim, but other people have. The Bats, of course, but also Gianna, and the guards who chased them, and Scarecrow, and Black Mask, and Glasses.

He’d grabbed Gianna’s hand, and punched Scarecrow, and very nearly shot Black Mask—all actions that were so significant and startling that it makes sense that even his powers couldn’t hide them. As for Glasses and the guards, they were there with someone who could see Tim, so… maybe just knowing that there was someone there was enough?

Tim’s not really sure, but that doesn’t matter so much anyways. The main thing is to see if he can replicate the same mechanism that made Gianna, and Scarecrow, and Black Mask able to see him.

He reaches out to where Jack’s hand is lying limply on the mattress. Tim hesitates, fingers curling back towards his palm—and then he takes his dad’s hand in his own.

Jack’s hand is warm, but only faintly so, and utterly limp in Tim’s. When Tim glances at Jack’s face, he’s still wearing that same stupid, almost gormless expression of lassitude.

Well, it hadn’t been as though Tim had just gently held Gianna’s hand, right? He had yanked her free—had practically tugged her along for the first stretch of that mad sprint to freedom, in fact.

Tim squeezes Jack’s hand hard enough that he can feel the bones rubbing against each other. Jack slowly blinks, a slight furrow appearing between his brows, as if he’s curious about something, as if he’s idly wondering about some theoretical in his mind—and Tim can feel something inside him snap.

“WAKE UP!” He yells. “Wake up, you stupid bastard! Mom’s dead, for f*ck’s sake!”

The furrow deepens, like a fold slowly developing in a previously perfectly crisp shirt, like a little sand running down a dune. His fingers twitch ever so slightly in Tim’s iron grip, like something in Jack’s subconscious is trying to escape the pressure. It makes Tim want to squeeze until the bones in Jack’s hand break.

Instead he pulls his hand away from Jack’s. There’s no way even Jack can ignore a loud noise right by his ear, right? Cupping his hands to create the best acoustics, Tim claps as hard as he can right next to Jack’s left ear.

Jack flinches slightly, reflexively blinking. He looks a little more awake now; his eyes start to slowly skim the room, passing smoothly over Tim as they go.

“I’m right here,” Tim snaps; he can hear the frustration thick in his own voice.

Jack’s still staring blankly, but now he’s at least staring blankly at the correct side of the room.

Good enough, Tim thinks with a sigh.

“What’s the biggest problem at Drake Industries?” he asks. “What do you most need done?”

All Jack has to do is say the word, all he has to do is ask, all he has to do is just reply to this one question and Tim will fix everything for him, he’ll give Jack the world on a silver platter and all the success he never earned. All that, if only he looks at his son.

Jack’s eyelids are sinking back towards half-mast, his gaze rolling back towards the ceiling. Tim claps again, and this time as he does so he yells, “JACKSON DRAKE!”

Jack’s eyes blink open, his gaze flicking back towards Tim’s general direction, but never actually landing on him.

“What’s wrong with Drake Industries?” Tim demands.

For a moment, Jack just stares blankly. Tim’s about to reach out and shake him for all he’s worth, hospital bed be damned, when he finally mumbles, “...scandal.”

“Scandal?” Tim asks. “The biggest problem is that there’s still the threat of the public learning that you cheated on Mom?” He leans closer. His lips tremble as he licks them.

“Dad. Do you want me to help with that?”

Jack doesn’t reply. He’s closed his eyes, and his breath is lengthening. Tim is sure in a few minutes he’ll start actually snoring.

Tim opens his mouth, venom pooling on his tongue—would you f*cking look at me? he wants to demand—but then… as quickly as it came, all the anger drains out of him like water through a sieve.

This is all so pointless. What did he think was going to happen? That Jack would leap up out of his bed and sweep Tim up into a big hug, eyes locked right onto his? That he was suddenly going to have a father, when the most he’s ever had was a mom?

“This is so stupid,” Tim murmurs. He really shouldn’t go to the effort of helping Jack. He’ll be such a pain to work with, and Tim’s not even sure Mom would want him to bother.

And yet even as Tim thinks that, he’s still absently brainstorming groups that would have both the motive and the power to sneak into Drake Industries HQ and take photos of Jack cheating, still absently making plans to do the very work he knows Jack doesn’t deserve to have him help with.

It’ll end the same either way. Jack will stare on up at the hospital ceiling, or sip at his drink, or kiss another woman who isn’t his wife, eternally gormless and ignorant, eternally privileged and never having to think about the sacrifices that uphold that privilege. But what else is Tim going to do? Let the company his mom spent so long building crumble into ashes? Wander Gotham listlessly, void of not only name and shape but now even purpose? Go back to the top of Wayne Tower and actually jump this time?

No. Better to at least have this, small and nasty and disappointing though it may be.

Tim double-checks that the tulips have enough water one last time—he doubts anyone will be able to see them or remember them long enough to take care of them—and then leaves, closing the door gently behind him.

Tim buys another batch of white tulips—twice as many this time. He holds them carefully on the bus ride out to the cemetery, making sure to not let any of the petals get crushed.

Mom’s tombstone is small and nondescript. Janet Drake, it reads. Beloved wife. There’s no mention that she was a mother, too.

Tim frees the white tulips from their plastic and lays them down on her grave. He wishes he’d thought to bring something else, too—some of the silver needle tea she liked so much, or ice cream from that place they said they were going to try together. Her headstone looks so lonely with only the flowers for company.

“I miss you,” he says aloud. “I really miss you.”

Mom doesn’t reply. The snow over her grave is pristine—a perfect white blanket.

Before, Tim had investigated the photographer by looking at Drake Industries’ security system, trying to find the flaws that allowed them entrance.

This time, he intends to take a different approach. Rather than tracing his way backwards, he’ll make an educated guess at who hired a photographer, then try to find evidence to support that in the course of following his targets. Hopefully, from there, he’ll be able to figure out a way to stop the photos from being shared with the press.

Right off the bat, there are two obvious suspects. The first, and frankly more unlikely of the two possibilities, is Kierny Tech. Tim was surveilling Kierny Tech higher-ups only a month or two before the photos were taken, and not only did he not see any evidence that anyone was plotting a scheme like that, but… well, the truth is that Kierny Tech was well and beat by that point. The board members seemed more inclined to fight over what scraps remained before slinking away with their tails between their legs than make any last-ditch efforts at fighting back.

The second suspect is a former Drake Industries employee who left the company the previous spring. Previously a vital member of their finance department, she quit when DI abruptly cut the maternity leave she’d been promised to only just over what they were legally required to provide. Janet had argued fiercely against the decision, but a combination of Jack’s apathy and the mostly-male makeup of the board had rendered her efforts moot, and Rivera had quit rather than be forced to accept the quibbling “break” she’d been offered.

Tim had kept tabs on her for a little while—although the work he was doing on the Kierny Tech project at that point meant he was limited more to hacking than anything—and she hadn’t seem inclined toward vengeance then… but it’s also true that some grudges deepen with time. She may have grown progressively more and more resentful, before eventually snapping and deciding to ruin the company that treated her so callously.

In any case, Tim’s past experience with investigating her makes jumping back in that much easier. He already knows where she lives, and has a good idea of her usual schedule besides. It’s easy for him to slot himself into the shadows of her life.

Easy, but not exactly enjoyable. Rivera seems to primarily use her fridge to store baby food which, while nutritious, is not exactly something Tim wants to eat. Additionally, her daily life is—well, frankly, it’s really f*cking boring. Maybe it’s just because the last people he followed spent so much of their time either planning or breaking up drug deals, respectively, but listening to Rivera’s conference calls and tagging along with her to Pilates or—worst of all—date night, really isn’t doing it for him.

It wouldn’t be so bad if he at least still had his backpack. If he had his backpack, he would be able to use his laptop, or listen to cassettes from his collection, or hell, at this point even practicing picking locks sounds downright thrilling. At least then he would have something to do.

It doesn’t help that Tim is increasingly getting the feeling that he’s following the wrong person. Nothing about how Rivera is acting suggests she’s on the verge of releasing racy photographic blackmail in act of revenge against the company that mistreated her. She seems more concerned with getting her kid to sleep through the night than anything else, honestly.

Tim is just on the verge of giving up on Rivera and finding someone from Kierny Tech to shadow instead when he follows Rivera to her month brunch meeting.

Rivera’s life may be boring now, but it wasn’t always. At this point she’s pivoted to focus most of her energy on raising her kid, but back in the day, she used to actually be pretty plugged into the Diamond District’s social scene. She wasn’t really a big player, but she definitely wasn’t a shut-in, either; she went to parties, snagged tickets to the hot new shows, even dabbled a little in art collecting.

Those days may be past, but once a month she gets to relive them. Once a month, she meets with her core circle of friends—the same friends that she made her bridesmaids when she married, that attended her bridal shower, and that even now occasionally send her bouquets of flowers with tags like “love you, girly!” or “missing you, xoxo”. She can live vicariously through them—can hear about all of the parties they’ve been to, all of the shows they’ve caught, all of the art they’ve seen that made them think of her.

As far as Tim can tell, it’s the only event that breaks the monotony of Rivera’s carefully managed life as a new mother—but boy, break it it does.

The clique has their get togethers down to a science. They sync all of their schedules using one extremely chaotic shared Google Calendar, help each other think of elaborate excuses to get out of potentially conflicting commitments, and engage in a complex game of what seems to be a mix of chicken and gambling to determine who pays. And that’s not even getting started on the in-fighting that occurs with regards to what the outfit theme should be.

The entire affair is so rife with pageantry and ego, so full of complex moving parts and balls to juggle, that just watching the coordination process gives Tim a headache—and a sudden, intimate understanding of exactly why Rivera was able to keep Drake Industries’ finance department running so smoothly.

Although the clique fights furiously over many of the details of the event, one thing is a foregone conclusion not even worth discussing. No matter the theme, no matter the specific scheduling, no matter who’s paying, the group is definitely meeting for mimosas and crepes at La Plume.

La Plume being (of course) a trendy brunch-only establishment immensely popular with residents of Diamond District due to its extremely Instagrammable spreads, intense exclusivity, and lax policies surrounding the use of cocaine and other, harder, drugs.

Perhaps somewhat less well known is that it’s run by the Penguin.

The really funny thing is that Tim is pretty sure Penguin wasn’t trying to make La Plume popular. He actually tries to make the Iceberg Lounge popular, because having Gotham’s upper crust circling around his open bar like so much chum in the water is good for business. La Plume, though? Tim would bet good money that that was just supposed to be a money laundering operation.

Still, the Penguin is nothing if not adaptable, and he’s gracefully pivoted, transforming La Plume’s business model to reap the benefits of this unexpected opportunity. Presumably he bought some other, less popular location to use for the aforementioned money laundering—although the brief, half-hearted investigation Tim had made into where said front might be located hadn’t turned up much.

Tim kind of wishes he was continuing that investigation right now. Even at its most interesting, Rivera’s life is still really, really boring. Plus, he’s dead thirsty, but no one in Rivera’s little clique will order anything without alcohol, and even at his most apathetic Tim would never be able to justify ditching the person he’s shadowing to steal orange juice from the kitchen.

He sighs. None of the gossip they’re sharing is even interesting; it’s mostly just yammering about how Harley and Ivy seem to have gotten together (f*cking obviously, they’ve been dating for ages, has the general public only realized that now?) and various digs at Gotham Museum’s curator, which, like… it was funny at first, but… c’mon. The man’s been in Gotham for a little under sixth months and has already been burgled by Catwoman, made fun of by basically the entire populace up to and including Commissioner Gordon, and (according to rumor) visited by Batman himself. Hasn’t he suffered enough to be considered at least Gothamite-adjacent?

In other words: don’t they have any new material?

“—work been treating you lately?”

Tim outright groans.

“Oh, it’s been fantastic,” Rivera’s friend with the vintage chinchilla fur coat (this month’s theme is ethically sourced fur) gushes. “I got the most lovely new intern lately—this sweet, sweet girl, very hard worker, and oh, she’s got the nicest sense of fashion. A real command of form and color that you don’t see much in girls her age, these days. I keep on trying to persuade her to go into fashion journalism but, of course, she’s got plans to work in the family business.”

“The family business?” Ms. Nutria asks, biting at what even Tim can recognize as extremely obvious bait.

Ms. Chinchilla smiles smugly, delighted at the opportunity to brag further without looking uncultured. “Yes, dear Tera’s determined to restore Kierny Tech to its former glory.”

Tim chokes on his own spit.

“Right, right,” Ms. Beaver says, as Tim valiantly tries to regain his composure, “it’s good that you like your coworkers. But what about the work?”

Not to be deterred, Ms. Chinchilla reveals an even wider, smugger smile than before. “Oh, it’s going ever so well! We’ve been working on some really interesting stories.”

What on earth did they do to give her such a big chip on her shoulder, Tim wonders faintly. Most of him, of course, is still just thinking Tera Kierny?!

“In fact,” Ms. Chinchilla says, smiling so widely she’s revealing her back teeth, “we’re going to be posting something quite juicy, right about…” There’s a faint dinging. She pulls out her phone, laying it on the table for them all to see. “...now.”

JACK DRAKE, CEO OF DRAKE INDUSTRIES, REVEALED TO HAVE BEEN CHEATING ON HIS NOW-DEAD WIFE

They all stare down at the headline.

“Okay,” Ms. Nutria says with admirable frankness, “Look. I’m sorry I ever said you weren’t a real journalist.”

Ms. Chinchilla is opening her mouth again, and Tim is sure that whatever she’s about to reply is going to be hilarious, but he really doesn’t give a sh*t.

He looks at the headline again. The words remain the same.

“f*ck,” he says succinctly.

Tim gets up and takes a walk. At this point it’s not even clear if there would still be any benefit in shadowing Rivera (probably not, honestly), and he’s really quite thirsty.

The kitchen is very well-kept… and also contains five different hidden weapons. Tim idly rifles through their first aid kit, then heads to the bathroom with his pilfered bandages and antibiotic ointment. He has no idea how long it’s been since he changed the bandage on his bullet wound, which is probably, broadly speaking, not something to be proud of.

Luckily, the wound doesn’t look too bad. It doesn’t look great—it’s still a bullet wound—but it doesn’t seem to be infected, and it appears to be healing at a nice, steady rate. Tim cleans it, spreads another layer of antibiotic ointment over it and wraps it back up again. Then, tucking the remaining bandages and ointment away—maybe having them on him will help him remember to take of the wound—he grabs some orange juice from the fridge and wanders back out to where Rivera’s little clique is eating.

Ms. Chinchilla currently has her hands fisted in Ms. Nutria's hair and is pulling with all her might while Rivera looks on with the expression of someone whose view of the animals at the zoo just got a little too close and personal. Tim watches idly, but his heart isn’t really in it. He’s too busy thinking about Tera Kierny.

It’s not entirely clear how Kierny Tech got ahold of those photos, but Tim thinks he can make a pretty good guess. Tera Kierny is well known within Gotham high society for being a sweet, mild-mannered, hardworking girl; no one would think of her as a threat. Mom, for all that Tim loves her, has always been prone to rubbing her victories in perhaps slightly more than is prudent. Drake Industries recently started an internship program; Mom must have allowed Tera Kierny entrance, knowing she could spin it as an act of benevolence, knowing (or thinking she knew) that Tera couldn’t do anything to harm DI, sure that this was an indulgence that she could afford.

Not knowing that Jack was cheating on her. Not knowing that Drake Industries had a glaring vulnerability just waiting to be found. Not knowing that she’d just doomed the very company she’d always fought so hard to build up.

Tim can’t exactly blame Tera. If he was in her shoes, he would have done the exact same thing; he’s done a lot worse to companies that threatened Drake Industries a hell of a lot less. And yet…

Just—god, what a mess.

He’s honestly not sure there’s any way for him to fix this.

Tim said he was going to stop doing this, because he knows it’s stupid, because he knows that Alanzo is a real person who does not know or care about Tim at all, but—

It just seems like such an insurmountable problem, he imagines telling Alanzo. He would be sitting on one of the red leather barstools, Alanzo leaning casually against one of the scratched wooden tables. Like, I just don’t know what to do.

Well, Alanzo would say, you don’t have to fix everything right away. Right now, just focus on getting started. Every journey starts with a single step. And then he’d smile and offer to make Tim a milkshake, free of charge, just because he was so glad to see Tim back at his pizzeria again.

Right. Coffee first, and then he’ll go back to the hospital and visit Jack again. Maybe this time it’ll go better.

Chapter 17: Drip Brew

Chapter Text

Barbara may be a technological genius (and no, that’s not bragging, just acknowledging reality) but this may end up being a challenge even for her.

You see, as it turns out… the kid isn’t exactly crystal clear on camera, either.

The first thing Barbara does is pull up the security footage from the grocery store Steph and Dick visited. Really, in a way they’re lucky that they ran into the kid in Diamond District and not somewhere else; a lot of the shadier areas in Gotham take a more… hands on approach to loss prevention; there isn’t much reason to bother with cameras when your cashier is packing heat.

Once Barbara has the footage, she starts sifting through it to find the relevant camera angles and time stamp. Stephanie said that the kid was drinking oat milk, so that would probably be in aisle five, alongside the boxed water and “detox” sparkling juices. She and Dick had left the manor at around eleven, so, accounting for the drive over and a bit of time spent shopping, they probably ran into the kid at about midnight.

Barbara starts at 11:45 just to be safe. Multiplying the usual playback speed by five, she watches the denizens of Diamond District making their late-night grocery runs, loading up on organic cucumber soda, replica asparagus-based vegan ribs, and—there! At 12:17, a blurry figure steps into frame and briefly picks up a boxed water, before putting it down and lifting a container of oat milk instead.

Barbara resets the playback speed to normal and watches as the kid opens the cap and starts glugging. A moment later, they turn, flinch, and drop the container—before sinking to the ground in tears. Dick crouches down beside them, pulling them into a brief hug before the kid shakes him off and stumbles out the door.

Throughout the entire interaction, the recording of the kid stays consistently blurry. Dick and Steph are crystal clear, but the kid’s one big smear of blurry static. Their face in particular is so degraded that at times it’s hard to tell exactly where their head even is.

Usually, Barbara would use facial recognition software to find her target—but it’s not like she can do that without a face for the software to recognize. She’s going to have to be more creative with this one.

Barbara pulls up the feed from the security camera near the grocery store doors and makes a mental note of the direction the kid was headed when they left. From there, she’s able to track them for a few blocks using CCTV cameras—but then they quickly drop off the map.

Sighing, she plays Dick’s interaction with the kid back again.

The kid twists open the oat milk cap and tilts it back, gulping directly from the container. Then they turn, flinching as they recognize just who it is they’re facing, the static corrupting their face seeming to almost spike, spreading outwards in jagged bolts—

Barbara frowns. Hadn’t Stephanie said the kid got clearer when they turned? She’d said that they snapped into focus, right?

Barbara slows the footage down, then plays it again. The kid turns, body language loose and casual—they flinch, tensing in surprise—the static seems to flinch with them, jolting outwards just as their muscles startle inwards, the oat milk exploding at their feet—and then it settles, the kid looking just the same amount of blurry as always, even though Barbara knows for a fact that they’re looking a whole hell of a lot clearer to Steph and Dick right about now.

Assuming the static is the result of their powers—which it must be, no one else looks at all staticky on the footage—then presumably the spike of static is the result of… of some sort of change in the way their powers are acting? A transition in their function, from the extreme blurriness Steph described seeing before they turned, to the crystal-clear-except-for-the-face state that Steph saw after they turned.

Barbara plays the footage again, watching as the kid turns, flinches, the static spiking—

The static spikes after they turn. The transition into clarity happens after the kid sees Steph. Not after Steph sees the kid, but after the kid sees Steph.

After the kid saw Steph and, if Cass is right, recognized her.

Dick had proposed that the kid knew they were Bats because Dick and Steph could see them. But what if Dick and Steph could see them because the kid knew they were Bats?

Barbara clutches onto the edge of the desk. She’s suddenly very, very glad that Cass decided to reveal her civilian identity to the kid.

Still, this theory has its own flaws. If there’s nothing inherent about the Bats that makes it so they can see the kid—if they can only see the kid because the kid knows they’re Bats—why? Why does the kid knowing they’re Bats allow them to see the kid, when seemingly no one else can?

Her earlier theory—that something about the training Batman put them all through allows them to see the kid—makes more sense intuitively. But it doesn’t explain why Steph could only see the kid clearly after the kid saw her.

Barbara taps a finger against her desk slowly. Clearly. Steph could only see the kid clearly after the kid saw her, but… but she could still see the kid before that. So…

So… so what? Barbara sighs, pressing a hand to her temples. The squishy, esoteric logic of meta powers is beyond her. Trying to figure this out feels like wading through sand, or maybe like walking through some endless, spiraling hall of mirrors.

She replays the footage again, watching the turn, the flinch, the spike of static, the explosion of oat milk spraying everywhere. And then yet again, this time honing in on the strange static that clings to the space where the kid’s face must be. It’s nothing like the noise or horizontal lines that sometimes interferes with CCTV footage; this static whorls and churns in a distinctly unnatural way.

I wonder… Would it be possible to track the kid through that static? If she could just code a program to identify static that behaves in the same irregular way as the static around the kid’s face, then maybe that would allow her to find more footage of the kid.

Barbara opens her favorite programming environment and starts coding, her mind racing out before her fingers as she types. It’s hard to judge if she should make the parameters by which the meta-influenced static is identified narrow or wide—if they’re overly wide, she’ll have to sift through endless hours of Ring footage and bird watching feeds, but if they’re overly narrow, she might miss an important clip of the kid she’s trying so hard to find. In the end, all she can do is take her best stab at it and tweak it based on its results.

This turns out to be a good call, as the first time she runs the code, the only thing that comes up is the very same footage that Barbara’s already watched over and over again. She widens the parameters and runs it again.

This time, she gets a lot more results—almost too many. Still, she’s not willing to risk missing anything, so Barbara knuckles down and starts reviewing the footage manually.

Almost six hours later—and that’s while playing everything back sped up—she finally manages to find something promising: a clip from last spring, from the security camera of a local coffee shop not too far from the very same Diamond District grocery store that Dick and Steph had seen the kid in. The kid only makes a brief appearance; they squirm their way through a crowd of office workers, judiciously applying their elbows as they go, and then swipe a coffee off the “online pickup” corner of the counter.

Barbara spends an embarrassingly long time trying to enhance a still of the cup of coffee before she realizes that no, the footage isn’t bad, the barista really did just scrawl out a vague scribble where they were supposed to put a name.

Her stomach twists at the realization. If no one but the Bats can see the kid, and they don’t know the kid’s name either… is there anyone who does? Does the kid ever hear their name called? Do they even have a name?

Barbara shakes herself from her fatalistic thoughts. Hey, at least now she knows the kid’s preferred coffee order. And, more importantly, where they might go to get it. It’s not much, but it’s something.

The quality of coffee available varies widely depending on what part of Gotham you’re in.

In the shadier neighborhoods, the coffee generally tastes like it’s cut with motor oil; in East End, it often actually is. Additionally, some of the bosses there encourage their subordinates to add other, less legal stimulants to their coffee for a little extra “kick”; Tim learned the hard way to always double check that the “sugar” any grunts he’s following are putting into their cups really is just sugar. It’s a good thing he never liked his coffee too sweet, even as a kid.

In the nicer neighborhoods, the coffee contents are less dubious, but the lines at their shops tend to be long, and the busier and more harried the baristas are, the more likely they are to forget Tim’s order entirely, even when he orders through a food delivery app.

Loathe as he is to admit it, Diamond District is one of the best neighborhoods in the city for coffee. Which is to say, Tim’s favorite places to get coffee may not be in Diamond District, but the concentration of decent coffee is higher in Diamond District than in any other neighborhood; if you’re going to get coffee and you don’t have a specific location in mind, wandering Diamond District is a pretty good bet.

This is for a two simple reasons: firstly, Diamond District is full of overworked, sleep deprived office workers. Secondly, Diamond District is also full of unbearably pretentious people.

In most of Gotham, your coffee options are just black or (drumroll please) the same previously black coffee, but now with added cream and sugar. In contrast, in Diamond District they have slowly percolated pour overs, smooth and sweet cold brews, frothy and fluffy macchiatos, and generally everything a coffee addict could ever ask for.

Unfortunately, they also have a lot of things no sane coffee addict would ever want.

You see, Diamond District denizens may be universally pretentious and highly caffeinated, but not all of them actually like coffee—which means that there are a lot of strange, gimmicky “coffee” drinks designed to deliver the most caffeine possible with the least coffee flavor. Much like those fruity little mixed drinks that actually contain way more vodka than is immediately obvious, Diamond District’s “coffee” drinks hide truly insane amounts of caffeine behind injections of syrupy sweet faux flavors.

Now, Tim certainly has nothing against highly caffeinated drinks that don’t actually taste like coffee. Back in the day, he used to slam back cans of Zesti like it was going out of style—the only reason he stopped was because his mom pointed out that no dentist would be able to see him long enough to fill any cavities he got. It’s just that Tim is of the opinion that if one is drinking coffee, said coffee should actually taste like coffee. If you want a non-coffee caffeinated drink, then why not just go order that?

Luckily, there are a few coffee shops in Diamond District that stand bravely against the tide and continue to make just normal, coffee-flavored coffee. Tim might occasionally frequent one of the heathen, sickeningly-non-coffee-flavored coffee shops in a pinch, but the few remaining brave bastions of classic coffee cultures in Diamond District are his usual go-tos. After all, if he doesn’t support them, they might go out of business, and then what is possible the only good thing about Diamond District would be gone.

Of those coffee shops, there are a handful that are Tim’s special favorites. One of those is a particular place right on the border between Diamond District and Old Gotham which always leaves their pour overs on a side counter where patrons can watch them brew. Tim finds watching the coffee drip through its filters oddly soothing. It’s a good place for thinking; the slow dripping of the coffee reminds him of the slow way answers to his problems often come together in his mind.

Thus, when he stops by to grab coffee before visiting Jack in the hospital for a second time, that’s the place that he visits.

Tim ordered ahead using Ms. Chinchilla’s cell phone, so all he has to do to get his coffee is elbow his way through the clumps of office workers trying to get in a little caffeine during their lunch break. No need to talk to any baristas or repeat his order for the umpteenth time. God, he really loves online ordering.

As soon as he’s got the coffee in hand, Tim lifts it to his lips, already thinking about what buses he needs to take to get to the hospital. He turns toward the door—

The new Bat is standing right there.

Predictably, Tim drops his coffee.

Her hand shoots out, quick and graceful. Tim flinches back, but she isn’t trying to touch him; instead, she lifts the cup of coffee out towards him.

She looks right at him. Her eyes aren’t covered in those blind white lenses anymore, and that makes things so much worse. All Tim can do is stare back blankly, rather like a deer in headlights.

Tim feels like he’s caught in her gaze. It’s like he’s a moth in amber, like she’s holding him right in the palm of her hand. He can’t move. He can’t speak. He can hardly think. The feeling of being seen is too overwhelming.

Her eyelashes flutter as she deliberately glances aside, resting her gaze on a spot just an inch or two to the left of his face. Tim feels like he’s stepped out of sun and into shade.

Her lips curve up in a soft little smile and she gives the cup of coffee a little shake, like she’s reminding Tim to take it from her.

Tim does.

She lets her hand drop, but doesn’t move aside from that. She’s still looking just to the side of him, although Tim can feel her attention like the heat rolling off of a fire.

Tim shifts uncertainly for a moment and then, in a sudden burst of courage, flees.

It’s only once he’s safely on a bus headed towards the hospital—a bus that he double and then triple checks has no Bats on it—that Tim can relax enough to start wondering about what the f*ck just happened.

Because seriously. What the hell was that?

How did the Bats find him? And why—actually, no, Tim thinks he has a pretty good idea of why. He had a whole crying meltdown in front of two of them, and the Bats are vigilantes who feel responsible for helping distressed people, even when they’re random strangers who they don’t actually care about on a personal level.

And… Tim presses his lips together tightly, his stomach churning. There’s a good chance they have at least some idea of how his powers work. He was drinking a carton of oat milk in the middle of a grocery store—that’s the kind of behavior that generally gets you kicked out, or at the very least draws a little stares. The Bats are world-class detectives; it’s unlikely they didn’t notice that they were the only ones who seemed to pick up on Tim’s strange behavior.

As for how they found him…

The thing is, Tim is excellent at picking up on where cameras are. At this point, he has so much practice in spotting them that it’s almost as if he has a sixth sense for it. And, whenever he’s going somewhere sensitive—following a company rival into a board meeting, or sneaking into an off-limits area, for instance—he’s extremely diligent about incapacitating all of the cameras that might pick up him doing it.

But… it’s also always seemed a little pointless to go to all the effort of hacking cameras that, even if they did catch sight of him, would only be seeing him buy some groceries or check out a book from the library or get some coffee. Tim’s a good hacker, but that doesn’t mean it’s effortless—and all of extra wasted time adds up.

It’s so much easier to just stay out of the cameras’ field of view. The same hard-won experience that allows him to predict where cameras are with pinpoint accuracy also allows him to intuit whether said camera can see him or not; he can simply skirt around them, elegantly cutting down on the amount of time he has to spend looping camera feeds.

And… and maybe sometimes, there aren’t any available blindspots, and he does allow himself to appear on camera, just for a bit. Is it really such a big deal? As noted earlier, he’s just picking up books or buying groceries or grabbing coffee—and footage of him is always so blurry—

So yeah. Tim isn’t as surprised as he should be at the idea that there may be footage of him grabbing coffee from that particular café. In fact, now that he thinks about it, he hadn’t even tried to stay out of view of the cameras at the Diamond District grocery store—he’d been simply too out of it to care about that at all. So really, it’s not so surprising that things ended up like this.

Mom always did tell me not to cut corners, Tim thinks ruefully.

He lets out a sigh and presses his forehead to the cool glass of the bus window. At most, they have a vague idea of Tim’s powers and are curious about how, exactly, they work. They still don’t know who Tim is, and they definitely don’t know what he’s done. So… the situation’s a little alarming, yes, but things are still under control.

But—Tim feels a sudden jolt of alarm as he recalls a crucial detail he’d somehow managed to forget. The new Bat saw him when he was following Catwoman on her heist. So he can’t just assume that the Bats don’t know anything about his… extracurricular activities. After all, one of them practically caught him red handed.

It’d weirdly easy to forget that the new Bat saw him with Catwoman—after all, nothing ever seemed to come of it. There had been no investigation, no one hunting him down or questioning him, nothing at all. It was like… Tim almost wants to say it was like the new Bat hadn’t seen him at all, but he knows she did.

Her eyelashes flutter as she deliberately glances aside, resting her gaze on a spot just an inch or two to the left of his face.

Did… did the new Bat intentionally not tell Batman about seeing him? Is she… is she trying to protect him?

That would be absurd. But it would be equally more absurd to say that Batman knows Tim is going around committing crimes and is just… letting him.

Tim lets out a long, shaky sigh. God, he wishes so badly that he could go back to a year ago, when the only time a Bat had seen him was at the circus, when—when his mom was still alive—

But he can’t. All he can do is make the best of the situation he’s found himself in.

The hospital is the same as the last time Tim visited it; quiet and cold and white, with the taint of blood lying beneath all of it.

Jack is limp in his bed, face slack with sleep. The tulips are wilting in their vase, stems curling under the weight over their flowers. The way they bend reminds Tim of the way people’s backs bow sometimes when they’re really and truly exhausted, worn down by everything life has thrown at them.

Tim carries the vase out of Jack’s room, wandering the halls until he finds a bathroom where he can fill it back up with tap water. He keeps his head bent so he doesn’t have to look into the mirror that hangs above the sink.

The vase is a lot heavier now that he’s filled it back up with water, so Tim takes his time and makes sure to take breaks when it feels like his arms might give out. He doesn’t think the vase would shatter if he dropped it—the hospital floor is carpeted—but best not to risk it.

Tim returns the vase to its place by Jack’s bedside, fiddling a little with the tulips like a bit of attention will make them stand up as he does so.

“Well,” he says to no one and nothing—to open, unlistening air—“Well. I did like you asked. I investigated the photographer. I thought the most likely candidate was Rivera, so I followed her for a while. Turns out it was actually Tera Kierny. My best guess, she got in through the internship program. She’s got a reputation as a sweet girl, but I think a lot of the time, the ones that seem like they aren’t a threat at all are the ones you really need to look out for.”

Just like Mom always had been. Tim wonders… if Mom had been alive, if he’d been able to tell her just who the photographer was, would she have been proud of Tera Kierny, in her own cold way? Impressed despite herself by this unassuming, toothless-looking girl who’d torn Drake Industries to shreds, just like Mom had done to so many other companies?

The tulips on Mom’s grave have probably wilted, too, he realizes abruptly.
“You know, Dad,” Tim says aloud, “Mom’s the one buried, but in a way you’re more dead to me than she is.”

Jack snores a little in response. Tim sighs.

“Do you even know you have a son?” Tim asks softly. “I guess not, huh.”

Can someone have a family member and not know about it? It doesn’t seem like it to Tim. They may have the biological relationship, but actually being family seems like it must require some sort of mutual, reciprocal bond.

So by that metric, Jack is right.

“Well,” Tim reasons, “either way, I’m still the son of your wife. And she’s the one who built up your company. So there’s no reason I shouldn’t stop you from letting it all go to sh*t.”

And with that, he claps next to Jack’s ear as loud as he can.

It takes a while—longer than it feels like it should, honestly, but then again Jack was always the sort of person to sleep through all of his alarms—but Tim eventually manages to get Jack awake and (mostly) aware. His eyes keep on slipping shut again, but Tim just claps to wake him back up again.

Still, best to be quick. Tim doesn’t know if Jack will get used to the clapping noises and learn to ignore them eventually; it seems all-too-plausible, considering how much trouble the man consistently causes for him.

“Okay, Mr. Drake Industries CEO,” he asks a little sarcastically, “what do you need?”

“...money,” Jack slurs at last, and then promptly drops back asleep.

Money? Tim supposes he sees the logic in that. Drake Industries’ stock has hit an all-time low; in order to pull back up out of the hole they’ve ended up in, they need to show they can still make investors money—but in order to show they can make investors money, they need to announce some new project, and new projects require investments, and investments requires money which Drake Industries doesn’t have, especially because current stock prices means selling off share prices isn’t exactly the efficient way to raise a little cash that it used to be.

If Tim can give Jack a little liquid capital, that’ll give Drake Industries some more wiggle room—slack with which they can untie themselves from this Gordian knot.

But… Tim’s not exactly drowning in cash, either; Mom always kept his accounts topped off, but now that she’s gone there won’t be anyone refilling them once he runs out of money.

And even if Tim’s accounts were full, the allowance Mom gave him never was… it was always generous by any sane standards, but that definitely doesn’t mean it’s the kind of amount needed to give a failing company the necessary leverage to make a comeback.

Nor is it exactly as if Tim can make money in any of the usual ways. He doesn’t even want to imagine the hell that would be trying to do a job interview with these powers, let alone trying to actually work somewhere.

Which means…

“Alright,” Tim says lightly. “Grand larceny it is.”

Chapter 18: Shell Game

Chapter Text

In many ways, Tim’s powers vastly constrict his life, narrowing his world down to a near needle point—to his mom’s hand in his hair, to the snow on her grave, to tulips that will rot unnoticed in a cold hospital room.

In other ways, however, those same powers open the world up as surely as hands flinging wide windows open. So many places are accessible to him—the deepest vaults, the most obscure forgotten tunnels, the roofs of the tallest towers—while being closed to almost everyone else.

As a result of this, in all of his years wandering Gotham, following and investigating and exploring, there have been countless opportunities for Tim to simply… pick up some of the items around him and take them with him. While following Catwoman on her heists, he could have easily grabbed another one of the museum pieces and let the theft be pinned on her. That time he’d seen the mayor being bribed, he could have easily taken his own cut, lifting a few rubber-banded stacks of that dirty money from where the mayor had so casually stashed it in the back of his Rolls Royce. Hell, he could have stolen the watches off the wrists of Gotham’s eight most successful drug lords at that meeting Red Hood crashed—and he did steal Black Mask’s gun from his desk.

Tim’s powers set him up to be an ideal thief. There are undoubtedly countless cat burglars and purloiners, pickpockets and pilchers, crooks and sneaks of all stripes and schools, who would pay considerable (if illicit) sums to gain his advantages. And yet… Tim has never made much use of them.

Oh, of course, he uses his powers—that is certainly not in question. But rarely does he apply to them in pursuit of material goods. Usually he’s trying to hunt down less material benefits, whether that be blackmail, company secrets, or just some juicy gossip; it’s far less common for him to be trying to acquire something that he has to physically carry.

Mostly this is because his mom simply didn’t ask it of him. Someone as rich as her hardly needed to acquire wealth through petty theft; she had her eyes set on more impressive prey.

But… it also always felt a little wrong to Tim.

Not so much out of some sort of goody-two-shoes sense that he shouldn’t steal, but rather because it felt disruptive to the spaces he intruded on. After all, the people he follows may not notice his presence, but they will notice if they lose their wallet; and the increased paranoia resulting from that may cause problems in its own way.

So yes. Tim’s thievery has been fairly minimal over the years—leftovers from the back of people’s fridges or from the depths of their pantries; spare change when he hasn’t had a chance to visit an ATM in a while; pens or scraps of paper when he needs something to write on.

Hell, sometimes when he’s feeling particularly whimsical, he’ll go through people’s closets, snagging single socks or gloves or earrings, only to return them to his victim days or weeks later. Usually he does so by stashing the misappropriated goods in the most absurd location he can think of, whether that be under the windshield wiper on their car, thumbtacked to the corkboard above their desk, or lovingly nestled in amongst the fresh flowers they just had delivered.

Tim is so distracted remembering some of his best exploits over the years—he recalls with particular fondness the time he winnowed down Riddler’s collection of question mark socks week by week until there was only one pair left, and then slipped the left sock of the pair into the very same puzzle box that the Riddler had just finished constructing for use on unassuming vigilantes—that he almost misses his stop.

Frantically pulling the wire, Tim stumbles off the bus just in time to avoid having the hem of his jeans caught in the doors for what must be the hundredth time.

Maybe in the future, he should focus on specifically hiding bus drivers’ socks.

It’s currently raining, a pathetic sort of pissing rain that feels disconcertingly lukewarm and promises to chip away at the grand task of turning all of the pristine snow piled up around Gotham into grayish sludge dotted with patchy, bald bits of mud. Grimacing, Tim turns up his collar and weaves through the post-work crowd with their damp suits and sleek, understated black umbrellas as quickly as he can.

Considering all of the opportunities to steal that Tim’s passed up over the years, it seems like it should be easy now that he’s decided to knuckle down and get to thieving. The problem is, most of the opportunities Tim’s had have been on the relatively small scale—watches worth as much as a mid-priced car, stacks of cash that probably added to some fifty or sixty thousand dollars, heirloom pearl earrings that were purportedly “priceless” to their owner.

Well. When you put it like that, the opportunities were not “on the small scale” by any means. But still. It’s nowhere near enough to be of meaningful help to the company; the kind of cash Tim needs to procure for his dad is in the millions, not the thousands or even hundreds of thousands.

Some of the museum pieces he had an opportunity to make a pass at sold at auction for that much. But Tim doesn’t know if Catwoman is currently planning any heists, and he has no idea if he’d be able to fence any pieces he stole even if she was—especially since he wouldn’t be benefiting from the authentication process that actual legal auction houses use.

He needs something with a guaranteed price in the millions of dollars—something that will fetch that much even if it’s sold by an unknown supplier, through clearly shady means, without any form of authentication. Something that he can get his hands on now. Preferably something that he’s uniquely suited to steal, something where there won’t be any competition from other opportunists, something, preferably, that only he knows about.

Tim comes to an abrupt stop, the businessman behind him almost running into his back as he stares blankly in through the window of the coffee shop he’s in front of. That kryptonite on Glasses’ spreadsheet, the shipment of more than a hundred pounds of it that Black Mask had set up… that was coming in next month, wasn’t it?

Mind racing, Tim steps into the coffee shop. He can tell that there’s a camera in the corner pointed towards the door; he ducks his head, turning his body in a way that he knows will minimize his profile, and quickly steps out of its field of view. Going after Black Mask for a second time will be difficult. He’s pretty sure even his powers can’t make Mask forget about a literal attempted murder, and he has no idea how much Mask was able to figure out about Tim and his powers just from that incident. The security at Black Mask’s HQ has undoubtedly been at least redoubled. Targeting Mask was risky the first time; this second time will be downright idiotic.

But he’s still going to do it.

Why? Because a hundred pounds of kryptonite is worth at least twenty million on the open market.

Of course, selling kryptonite to anyone who has the balls to bid for it and the money to pay isn’t exactly… ethical. Tim himself had been planning to tip the Bats off to the shipment to avoid this very eventuality. Also, hadn’t he just been thinking about how the Bats are probably going to arrest him at some point for his very long list of criminal acts? Considering that, this is probably not the best time for him to steal a hundred pounds of kryptonite from the man he tried and failed to kill and then sell it to whichever scumbag can procure the largest amount of money for him.

If Mom were here, Tim muses as he elbows his way towards an empty table, she would tell him that this is the stupidest idea he’s ever had.

But Mom isn’t here. That’s the whole problem.

Stealing a hundred pounds of kryptonite from Black Mask, leveling his wits against Gotham’s foremost crime boss once again, trying to pull of a heist that Tim guarantees no one else would have the guts to even think of trying…

For the first time in a long time, an actual smile—no, more than that, a full blown grin—spreads across Tim’s face.

What’s the worst case scenario, Tim thinks cheerfully. I get arrested? If he gets thrown into Arkham, he could probably just walk out without any of the guards noticing. None of the other inmates would hassle him because they wouldn’t be able to even f*cking see him. And even if the Bats did figure out his powers, then that’d probably just mean he'd be put in a special Bat-prison, which would probably mean higher quality of life (and definitely better food) than Arkham.

Besides, if things ever start spiraling beyond Tim’s control, or he isn’t up for continuing the game he’s constructed any longer…

Tim watches a boat slip up Finger River, a lonely light against the dark.

Hey, there’s always suicide.

Still grinning, Tim shoves back from the table. He still doesn’t have a phone or a laptop—something which he really needs to remedy before he sets about stealing the kryptonite—which means that he’s going to have to try his luck with the barista. And yet he’s in such a good mood that even that can hardly dim his cheer.

He’s just trying to decide if he should get a cold brew or a pourover when a hand settles on his shoulder. Heart pounding rabbit-quick in his chest, he spins around, fists instinctively raised like he’s trying to protect his face—or maybe hit whoever it is who just touched him.

It’s the new Bat, a hesitant smile clinging to her lips.

“Hi,” she says, quickly lowering her hand from where it had been on his shoulder and turning her gaze so it’s not locked directly onto him. Her voice is low and sweet, with just a hint of huskiness to it. “I’m Cass.” She lifts a cup of coffee towards him, almost like she wants to make a toast—it takes Tim a minute to realize that she’s trying to hand it to him.

It’s his order from the previous coffee shop. More than that, it’s still hot.

“Can I sit with you?”

Can he say no?

Her lips turn down, almost like she can hear what he’s thinking. “I won’t hurt you,” she tells him softly. Her eyes flick over to his for just a moment, then away again. “It’s okay to say no.”

For a moment Tim stands there frozen, his tongue like a lead weight in his mouth. And then his dry lips part, and he hears himself say, “alright” without seeming to choose to speak at all.

He stumbles back over to the table in the corner on trembling legs, Cass following a step behind him. Tim collapses onto the same chair he was sitting on before; Cass slides into the seat across from him.

Tim’s hand is clenched so tightly around the cup of coffee he thinks the lid might explode off. His breaths are coming shallow and fast; Cass may be looking away, but he can still feel her attention on him like fingers skimming along his skin. Why did he say yes? Why did he let himself get into this situation?

He’s just wondering if he should make a run for it when Cass lifts a rubik’s cube from the inside of her jacket. She bends her head over it, her brow furrowing as she starts moving the individual squares.

Is she… is she ignoring him?

It seems like she is.

Slowly, Tim feels his breathing even out as he registers just how engrossed she is in her task. Her eyes don’t ever flicker over to him and she doesn’t speak; Tim can almost pretend she can’t see him at all.

He watches as she slowly twists the cube, rows of squares churning past as she lines up a perfect white side. It seems pretty clear she’s new to it. He wonders who taught her. Was it Nightwing? He remembers that during a Buzzfeed Puppies interview a few years ago Dick Grayson had mentioned that he could solve a rubik’s cube in under eight seconds. It could also be Barbara Gordon, though—it seems like the sort of thing she’d enjoy doing.

Tim gives himself a little shake, taking a big sip of coffee as he does so. Who taught the new Bat how to solve a rubik’s cube is hardly relevant. What he should be thinking about right now is how he’s going to part a certain fool from his kryptonite.

Unfortunately, Tim doesn’t have the notes he’d taken on the kryptonite shipment; those had been in the backpack he left behind at Leslie Thompson’s clinic. But then again, he’d need to double check that none of the details have changed in the time since Black Mask’s near-assassination anyways.

Besides, he does at least remember the basic outlines of Mask’s plan for the shipment.

The kryptonite will arrive by ship, along with a number of other goodies—arms, mostly, but also an android that apparently has the ability to absorb powers. Tim has no interest in interacting with the android; he knows his skills, and fighting androids is not among them. Besides, even as someone who’s currently planning out how best to steal and then sell a hundred pounds of kryptonite, giving a murderous android the opportunity to get ahold of powers that would make it invisible to the authorities seems way too irresponsible.

After the kryptonite is taken off the ship, it’ll be transferred to a truck. From there, it’ll be driven to one of the warehouses that Black Mask controls, where it’ll be locked behind the extensive security Black Mask no doubt set up for it.

The period of time when the kryptonite is on the truck is clearly the best window of opportunity for Tim to steal it. But… it’s not as if he can hold up a truck driver. Even if the driver could see him, one scrawny kid with a gun he barely knows how to shoot isn’t exactly going to make the kind of driver Mask hires to transport kryptonite quail in terror.

Eyes mostly unfocused, Tim watches absently as Cass continues solving the rubik’s cube. She seems to have gotten into her stride; her movements are more confident, the flicks of her fingers sure as she slides the last couple of squares into place. It almost reminds Tim of a trick he’d seen a street magician do once—the deft way they slipped the ball they were hiding from one cup to another, all while still smoothly shuffling all three around to distract their audience.

A shell game. That’s what it’s called.

What if Tim did the same thing with the kryptonite?

If he can just conceal where it is at a crucial moment, if he can just think of some way to scam it out of the custody of the truck driver while still somehow leaving them convinced they’re proceeding exactly according to plan…

Tim takes another big gulp of coffee. How, though?

The driver will be on edge the entire time, well aware that if they can’t successfully complete the delivery their head will be on Black Mask’s chopping block. They’ll only relax once the kryptonite is safely in the hands of Mask’s security at the warehouse.

…or when they think it’s safely in the hands of Mask’s security.

The corner of Tim’s mouth twitches, his heart pounding a little faster as he feels an idea starting to slowly pull together in his head. If he can make the driver think that something’s gone wrong at the warehouse—that it’s been compromised in some way, but not to worry, the driver’s superior will helpfully redirect him to another drop off location, Mask’s security will meet him there… and from there Tim can kill the driver and…

And what? It’s not as if Tim can just carry off a hundred pounds of kryptonite by himself.

Tim sighs, the breath hissing out harshly through his teeth. It’s not like he can just hire some drivers, either; firstly because hiring anyone while invisible isn’t really feasible in the first place, and secondly because even if he did somehow manage it they’d then be a loose end for Mask to pull—a way for him to figure out exactly who stole his kryptonite shipment and where it was being kept it.

Cass spins a row of squares with her thumb, completing the yellow side. Movements hidden from the watching crowd, the magician slips the ball into the very same cup that the audience just saw was empty.

Why should Tim let his drivers know it’s kryptonite? All that matters is that they transport it to a safe location—it’s not as if they need to know what it is or why it’s being moved. In fact, it’s probably safer for them if they have no idea.

Really, the only place he can store the kryptonite is Drake Manor. Tim may know lots out of out-of-the-way, mostly forgotten corners of Gotham that people rarely visit—but “mostly forgotten” isn’t enough when it’s a hundred pounds of kryptonite. He needs a place where he can have absolute control over who visits, and Drake Manor is the only place that fits the bill.

Tim slowly taps one finger on the table. Back when Mom was still alive, and Jack wasn’t in the hospital, they’d often bring in some… less than legally acquired goods. After all, why bother going through all that senseless red tape when you could simply circumvent it, bringing your finds straight from the dig site to the display case?

Smaller artifacts could generally be brought in by air—especially if one was willing to sacrifice a few boxes of cigarettes or rolls of cash—but some of their bigger acquisitions had to be transported by boat. Tim himself had coordinated a few of these shipments by email, as part of his duties as unofficial personal assistant to Janet Drake.

Why not contact those same drivers? He can tell them it’s a belated shipment, one previously held up due to the pesky inquisitiveness of an overly ambitious customs officer—one last trophy that Janet Drake tragically never lived to see come home. It’ll just be business as usual to them. Nothing of note to report to anyone—even if Black Mask starts asking around, they’ll have no idea they have anything relevant to tell him.

Tim suppresses a grin. Across the table, Cass slides the last block into place, leaving the rubik’s cube in a state of meticulously color coordinated organization. He’ll need to double check Black Mask’s set-up to be sure, and of course there are a multitude of smaller details to iron out, but… he thinks he has the skeleton of an actual working plan here.

As predicted, investigating Black Mask’s plan for transporting the kryptonite is a major pain. Tim can’t just slip into the HQ like he did when he was trying to kill Mask; instead, he has to stick to shadowing random Mask goons after they’ve left the security cameras’ view. As a result, it takes him a while to even gather enough information to know who is worth following—and then even more time beyond that to actually learn who Mask has assigned to take point on the shipment.

In many ways, Tim is really lucky that he has as much time before the shipment arrives as he does.

Then again, he supposes that it makes sense. Black Mask needs the forewarning as much as Tim does, if not more; he needs to have a secure, defensible long-term storage location set up, whereas Tim just needs to have somewhere to stash the kryptonite while he waits to sell it.

Really, now that he thinks about it, owning kryptonite is a lot more logistically difficult and generally dangerous than simply trying to steal it.

Mask’s goons seem to recognize as much, considering how anxious they seem to be about the whole thing. The truck’s driver, a musclebound man Tim’s mentally nicknamed Green Eyes for his surprisingly soulful peepers, has been visiting his local church unusually frequently—or at least Tim presumes as much based on the baffled and somewhat frightened reaction of said church’s bishop. Meanwhile, all of the goons who’ve been drafted into riding with him as bodyguards have been updating their wills; last week, Tim caught one of them looking up “kryptonite equivalent for Nightwing” on Reddit, and then, when that failed to give him any useful results, “anti-vigilante protection charms” on Etsy.

Similarly, the goon who’s supposed to be on call during the drive seems to on the edge of some sort of mental breakdown. He’s been working out obsessively and subsisting primarily on protein drinks that he makes in huge batches and then drinks on a precisely kept schedule. Tim doesn’t think he’s actually chewed anything in weeks.

Besides the undeniable—if rather immoral—humor Tim takes from learning about all of the goons’ bizarre neuroses and increasingly absurd superstitions, the information he’s gathered provides him with some otherwise unimaginable opportunities. Amed with knowledge of the goons’ daily schedule, personal mindsets, and general tendencies, he’s able to discern just what levers he should pull to have them acting exactly as he needs them to.

Tim begins with a phishing scam targeted at Liquid Diet. It takes a couple of tries to figure out exactly what kind of key words he needs to use to get Liquid Diet to click—“Best High-Protein Foods to Add To Your Smoothies” is a bust, as is “Jaw Strength Benefits of Eating Solid Food”, but “How to Make Your Protein Drinks Caffeinated Without Making Them Taste Like Coffee” ends up being a winner in the end. From there, Tim uses a combination of manipulation, promises of free strawberry-flavored caffeine paste, and straight-up lies to get Liquid Diet to download a “protein drink optimization app” that allows him to remotely access Liquid Diet’s phone.

At the same time as he’s dealing with Liquid Diet, Tim also begins correspondence with the drivers the Drakes historically used for picking up and delivering their less-than-legally-acquired artifacts. Luckily, the drivers are a lot easier to trick than Liquid Diet was; they have no reason to question anything, and seem more concerned with trying to negotiate their pay up than questioning the validity of anything Tim is telling them.

Additionally, Tim stops by a local pharmacy, where he picks up some sleeping pills. He’s careful to double check appropriate dosages, as well as the amount of time it takes to set in, side effects, and effectiveness in crushed as opposed to whole form.

He also takes a pistol from one of Liquid Diet’s many hiding spots around his apartment. He tests the weight, makes sure he has plenty of bullets, reminds himself and over again to take recoil into account—in other words, readies himself to use it.

Aside from those tasks, there isn’t much else to do but wait. Tim runs through the plan again and again, keeping obsessive track of Liquid Diet’s schedule to make sure it really won’t deviate, counting down each passing day, reminding himself of everything he has to do—until at last, the moment of truth arrives.

The day of the shipment.

Tim has the plan; now it’s time to see if he can execute it.

Chapter 19: Retrospective

Chapter Text

One mistake, and Jack’s lost everything.

The doctors tell him he’s a paraplegic now. That it’ll take months, possibly years of physical therapy for him to recover, and even then they have no real idea how much function he’ll be able to get back. They use a lot of scientific names and medical terms, the sort of obfuscation experts in every industry employ to avoid answering direct questions; they talk a lot without actually saying much.

What Jack knows is this: he can’t feel his legs. His dick is basically useless. He can’t control his own bowels anymore. And none of these bastards in their white coats will give him an actual answer on when any of that will change—which any idiot with a brain in their head knows means the chances aren’t looking good.

Of course, the doctors don’t say that. They say that he shouldn’t give up. They regurgitate buzzword-laden drivel, talking about “adaptation” and “resilience” and “adjustment periods”. They tell him that he has the most potential for rehabilitation if he starts physical therapy right away.

All this because they’d like to squeeze even more money out of him, and dangling the illusion of potential progress in front of him is a good way to get it. Or it would be, if Jack didn’t have the business savvy and plain goddamn common sense to be able to see exactly what they’re doing.

Jack didn’t spend nearly two decades at the helm of one of the nation’s foremost companies to be swindled into investing into something with uncertain returns. If physical therapy would really be so impactful, they’d be able to give him a hard timeline of when its so-called “benefits” would start setting in.

The doctors aren’t the only ones squeezing him, of course. Drake Industries’ board wants him metaphorically, if not literally, back on his feet as soon as possible. They’re asking for a show of strength, something that they can use to turn the crash into the heroic story of an underdog rising back up to a position of superiority instead of the schadenfreude-inducing narrative of a once-great company’s downfall it’s currently being spun as.

Bloodsuckers, Jack thinks derisively. They’ve all gotten so used to riding on his coattails that it doesn’t even occur to any of them that now would be a good opportunity to man up, take a little initiative, and get to work sorting this mess out themselves. Instead, they all seemed to determined to put everything on Jack’s plate, hospitalization be damned.

That’s the curse of competency. Everyone wants you to do their job for them.

And the thing is—the thing none of them seem to get—is that even is Jack was willing to step in and do the PR department’s work for them, it still wouldn’t fix anything. None of them are willing to actually be honest with themselves and face the brutal reality: there is no coming back from this one.

Underdog stories only work if there’s an illusion of innocence—and considering all of the tabloid articles lambasting him for supposed “irresponsibility”, innocence is in short supply for him. Besides, even if Jack rallies, endures that useless pseudo-scientific physical therapy and performs for the media like some inbred little tyke at a dog show, whatever bastard it was that was spying on him and Victoria will still just release those damn photos to the press.

So yeah. No matter what any of them tell him, no matter how much the nurses needle or the board wheedles, he’s not going to be swayed. Sure, he could do what they want…

…or he could just lie here and not think about his problems.

In his mind’s eyes, he relives his glory days. The pop of champagne bottles, the taste of cognac, the haze of smoke from a Sobranie Black Russian. The wedding gifts piled high, red wine and spilled frosting staining the perfect white Egyptian cotton tablecloths. The slide of silk as he fisted his hands in that fantastic vintage kimono Janet had worn on their honeymoon. The party thrown in his honor the first time his leadership brought Drake Industries stock to a previously unimaginable height.

That moment of sweet, greedy awe he always felt when they uncovered some new hidden wonder, that delight knowing that all of the riches of the earth, all of the glories of history, were his to peruse. The first time he strode confidently past airport security with his suitcase full of unreported artifacts, a few sweet words from Janet along with a couple of boxes of cigarettes enough to have them elegantly skirting all the paperwork they would have otherwise had to endure. The pride he always felt spinning his office chair around and seeing Roman busts and Egyptian grave goods and Japanese pottery where a lesser man might have kept mere books.

The warmth on Victoria’s face when she looked at him, that sly little smile and the mischievous light in her eyes. That one red dress she’d worn just for him, the one that was practically backless. The strange—so uncharacteristic of her that he’d almost thought he was imagining it—shard of hurt in Janet’s eyes when she found out, something finally cracking through that frigid exterior she insisted on always keeping up.

It made him want to laugh.

Later, he really had laughed. Right to her perfect f*cking face.

She’d seemed so upset—so genuinely betrayed, like some tragic lover who’d been cheated on by her soulmate, and it had just been so ironic, because she’d never loved him a day in her life—

—and so, well. Jack couldn’t help but laugh.

Janet had turned towards him, snarling, her blood-red lips curled back, practically spitting—not so untouchable now, Jack had thought smugly, finally fallen from your pedestal have you?—and then she’d slapped him, those horrible long claw-like nails digging into his skin.

Things are a little hazy after that, but Jack knows that he turned away from the road, that the wheels lost traction, that they crashed.

Really, it’s so horribly ironic that all the gossip rags in Gotham are blaming the crash on Jack when it was actually all Janet’s fault for distracting him like that.

Sure, Jack may have had a little to drink at the party, but he knows his limits. In fact, he’d argue that a little bit of alcohol actually makes him a better driver. Loosens him up, puts him in a better mood for dealing with the way Gothamites seem dead-set on cutting him off and refusing to let him in when he’s trying to merge. Makes him more able to endure the shrill wailing of his harpy of a wife actually expressing something approximately comparable to a human emotion for once in her life.

You know, despite it all, despite everything Jack’s lost, it’s at least nice that he doesn’t have to listen to Janet’s bitching and moaning anymore.

Jack can feel himself slowly slipping towards sleep. He hopes he dreams of his glory days, of all of the sunrises seen from hotel penthouses, of all of the digs and gallery shows, all of the parties and—and—

There’s something bothering him. Something about his hand? Maybe it’s caught in the sheets. He tries to lift it, but can’t quite manage it.

Jack thinks he can hear someone saying something. It’s distant, like they’re in another room. God, you would think a hospital this expensive would bother to soundproof their VIP rooms. He’ll have to complain to the nurses about it.

Later, though. For now, he wants to sleep. He lets his eyes slip closed…

A sudden noise cuts through his daze. Jack flinches, suddenly much more awake. Did something fall? He looks around, trying to figure out if whatever it was that got knocked over was important.

There’s someone in the room with him, he thinks vaguely. A nurse, probably, here to pick up whatever fell.

Worse yet, they seem determined to make conversation. Jack answers on autopilot—he hates having to be polite to the help, but he’s smart enough to recognize the power nurses have over bedridden patients, even rich ones—then falls asleep before they can bother him further.

Hopefully his dreams of better times include competent, polite, quiet servants.

And hopefully, the next time a nurse comes in, he’ll be able to get someone to take those f*cking flowers off the sill.

The kid leaves their backpack behind.

It’s a worn-down, busted-looking thing, streaked with dirt and what looks like dried blood. It’s not even especially sturdy beneath all the grime—just the same sort of Jansport students use for their books.

And that… that hurts. Because the kid should be one of those students, should be procrastinating on homework and wondering who to take to prom, not narrowly avoiding being killed by Black Mask.

Jason’s fist clenches so tightly that the crescents of his nails bite into the flesh of his palm like little teeth. Every time he thinks about what happened that day—about the kid, alone and unprotected, holding a gun to Black Mask’s forehead—getting shot in the side, and only avoiding worse because of Jason’s intervention—they’ll let me die and not even realize they’re doing it—

He lets out a slow, careful breath. Getting angry won’t help anything—but maybe there’s something in the kid’s backpack that will.

The zippers stick when Jason tries to open it up; it takes a few tries for him to figure out the trick to it, that being that you have to angle the zipper pull just right and give it a little wiggle as you go.

Inside there’s a whole variety of things, a seemingly random mishmash that Jason has to sort through slowly in order to even start to understand what they are, let alone why the kid has them.

Spare clothes, clearly in need of a wash—and, in some cases, a good mending. A swiss army knife. A worryingly well-stocked first aid kit, complete with several rebreathers and plenty of rubbing alcohol.

Jason’s heart clenches as he tries not to imagine how many times the kid must have patched themself up, knowing that there was no one else to help them—knowing that if they got injured in a way they couldn’t fix on their own, there would be no one to save them.

He closes the first aid kit with fingers that tremble ever-so-slightly. Your owner won’t have to patch themself up alone again, he vows, even though he knows there’s no guarantee it’s a promise he can keep.

There’s a pair of gloves crumpled up beside the first aid.

Gloves, Jason notes, that are of a disconcertingly high quality, especially in comparison to the grimey, ripped clothes. The leather is so thin that someone wearing them would be able to feel the world around them almost as well as they could with naked hands. And… they’re clearly custom-tailored.

Doctors can’t see them, but glovemakers can? Jason wonders a little sardonically as he carefully sets the gloves aside. The kid has small hands, he observes; slender and long-fingered—hands suited for playing the piano, Alfred would say.

His heart clenches again, this time for an entirely different reason. Shoving his thoughts aside, Jason devotes himself to investigating the backpack’s contents.

There’s a seemingly endless collection of cassette tapes, along with a corresponding cassette player. Almost all of them are for learning various languages, whether that be Cantonese, Spanish, or Ukrainian. And… there’s also a battered, yellowing book from the 1980s on picking up Romanian tucked in with them.

Why Romanian? Jason wonders as he riffles through the book’s pages.

Then again, all of the items in the backpack seems to bring up more questions than they answer, don’t they?

Tucked away in one pocket, he finds a pair of lockpicks—clearly frequently put to use, judging by the level of wear and tear on them. Leaning up against the back, hidden beneath some more spare clothes, he finds a phone and laptop; both of them are protected by such dense security measures that Jason thinks even Barbie might’ve been taken aback of them. And… a batarang, one that’s years old judging by the design.

“Where did the kid find you, I wonder?” Jason murmurs, running his thumb over the blade. It’s definitely several years old; it doesn’t slice through his skin, even though batarangs are designed to stay laser-sharp for ages.

More thoughts that he doesn’t want to acknowledge bubble up. Swallowing, Jason shoves them aside once more in favor of gently lifting the last big object from the depths of the backpack: a camera.

A camera that, unlike the phone and laptop, doesn’t have any security measures to prevent him from rummaging through it.

The most recent photographs are relatively innocuous, mostly surprisingly artsy shots of what looks like some random apartment in Gotham. A handbag dangles off the knob of a scratched mid century dresser; a kitchen counter struggles to hold all of the bits and bobs piled atop it; a beautiful bouquet swims in a pool of the golden afternoon sunlight that’s always so rare in Gotham.

A piece of thick, creamy paper lays out on a floral bedspread, displaying several paragraphs of the looping cursive script favored by Gotham’s old money elite.

It takes Jason a few minutes to decipher the words.

Isn’t Alexander Cunningham married? he thinks a little dizzily—and then the penny drops.

Heart pounding, he skims through the other photographs.

Close-ups of an annotated floorplan of the Gotham Museum of Antiquities, complete with details about guard shifts, camera locations, and hidden tripwires—and then a pull-backed shot of all the papers, scattered across a cluttered desk. On one corner of the desk, he spots a cold cup of coffee balanced atop a book; on another, there’s a pair of half-sewn pointe shoes, the needle trapped under a clear glass cup.

Selina’s desk, Jason thinks with a somewhat hysterical laugh. That’s definitely Selina’s handwriting, and she’s danced with the Gotham Metropolitan Ballet for years.

Which means… that little sh*t snuck into Catwoman’s apartment and took photos of her planned heist, didn’t they? In fact, knowing what the kid’s like, Jason is willing to bet they actually tailed Selina during her burglary, too.

Still chuckling, Jason checks out the rest of the camera’s contents.

Farther back, there are pics of someone’s diary—a diary full of scrawled cursive notes describing various bits of high society gossip, no less—and shots of some CEO-type Jason doesn’t recognize kissing a woman who, judging by how she’s dressed, is probably his secretary.

Most of the camera’s stock is unused, but holy sh*t, what Jason does get to look at is—illuminating.

“What the hell has this kid been doing?” Jason asks aloud. That thing with Black Mask wasn’t a one-off, was it—the kid’s seriously been running around Gotham totally invisible, without any sort of adult supervision, just… blackmailing random members of Gotham’s elite and following Catwoman on her heists, huh?

“Dumbass kid,” Jason declares, grinning.

He got up to some sh*t back in the day himself—trying to jack the Batmobile’s tires, for one—but the kid clearly has him beat by a mile. Even at his wildest, his most rebellious, his most f*ck-you-authority-I-do-what-I-want, Jason never would have been able to get up to the kind of shenanigans this camera implies.

Of course, Jason also never would have tried to shoot Black Mask at point-blank range, but that’s more out of a sense of self-preservation than anything else.

Letting out a whistle, Jason lets his head fall back against the wall and shakes his head. It was always clear the kid would be a handful, but this is something else—an armful, more like.

It’s clear the kid’s going to be a lot of work, and yet he finds that if anything, he’s looking forward to it.

After a minute, Jason shoves himself back to his feet and starts picking up all the kid’s dirty laundry. After he’s done cleaning the clothes, he’ll mend all the rips and tears—as a result of the extensive instruction Alfie gave him, there’s few things he can’t do with a needle and some thread.

A scrap of paper gently drifts to the ground, displaced from where it had been tucked in the folds of a hoodie. Jason picks it up, unfolding the crumpled edges as he goes.

KRY→BM
4/14 N DCKS 3 AM
54T WRHS ~3:45 AM

Another smile spreads across Jason’s face, but where the one before was a bright grin of joy, this one is slow, creeping, and rich with anticipation.

Gently folding the little scrap of paper, he puts it in his own pocket and goes back to lugging the kid’s dirty clothes over to the washer, humming a little as he goes.

Weeks of planning, hours upon hours of meticulous preparation, all leading up to this moment. The dominos are all arranged; all that’s left to do is tip the first one over.

Tim takes a long, slow deep breath, centering himself in the same way that a runner does in the moments before the gun fires. Although, in his case, there’s no need to rush—instead, precision is the name of the game here. He’s left plenty of time for each step; what he’s more in danger of is making some small mistake.

Another long, slow deep breath. The sweet clear call of a bird rings in his mind, not yet dulled by memory. It’s true that no one in Gotham knows his name—will ever know his name again—but that won’t diminish the magnitude of his accomplishment… if he can pull this off.

One more careful slow breath, and then he begins.

Tim pads across the carpeted floor of Liquid Diet’s tiny apartment until he reaches the moldering little fridge with its stash of protein-infused sludge. Opening the door, he counts the carefully arranged rows of goo-filled bottles within. Having double-checked everything to his satisfaction, he grabs the appropriate bottle and deposits it on Liquid Diet’s faux-marble counter.

Here, his past preparation serves him well; there’s already a small baggy of meticulously crushed and measured white pills in his pocket. All Tim has to do is tip the contents into the sludge-filled bottle and stir until there’s no trace of anything having ever been added. That done, he returns the bottle to where it belongs.

After making another quick circuit of the dour little apartment just to be certain that there’s nothing out of place and nothing he’s forgetting, Tim heads out.

It’s a long commute to the docks, but he took that into account when he was making his plans. There’s no sense of impatience as he waits for his bus; he has plenty of time before he needs to reach his destination.

Nor does Tim find himself running over his plan in his mind or compulsively trying to double-check details, either. At this point, if he f*cked something up, it’s too late to change it; his machinations are already in motion.

Really, he doesn’t think about much of anything at all. His mind is blissfully blank, heart filled only with a sort of a strange still sort of anticipation—much like that which he had felt in the weightless moment right as he confronted Black Mask.

Is it strange that, even knowing Mask didn’t kill Mom, Tim still finds some satisfaction in that memory? Is it strange that he now daydreams of all the ways Black Mask might react once he realizes the kryptonite is gone?

Tim reaches the docks and settles down to wait for his prey. The hours and then minutes tick steadily down; Tim is still and silent, utterly calm, as placid as the unrippling surface of a quiet lake.

At exactly three am on the dot, a dingy ship pulls into port; Green Eyes and his team arrive only a minute later. The bodyguards hurriedly shuffle out of the truck’s cab, immediately beginning to help the ship’s crew move the kryptonite into the cargo area. All of them are tense and quiet, too busy scanning the rooftops for vigilantes to spare any time for small talk. Their distraction is so great Tim thinks he likely would have been able to slip into the truck even without his powers.

There’s no room for him in the cab; Black Mask packed it full with every single bodyguard he could. That’s fine. Tim learned his lesson from the meeting with the drug lords; this time, he’s happy to stay well out of the way of any potential gunfire.

Additionally, this allows him can keep a direct eye on the box of kryptonite. There’s something comforting about having his prize right next to him—and, Tim confesses, a little cool. There aren’t many people who can say they’ve used a big lead box containing more than a hundred pounds of kryptonite as a makeshift backrest.

The truck drives steadily onwards, entirely unaware that they’re carrying an extra passenger. Tim counts the minutes, mentally ticking off each passing street; just past the twenty-minute mark, he picks up his phone and uses the “app” on Liquid Diet’s phone to access the man’s messages. If all has gone according to plan, he’s currently sleeping like a log, having succumbed to the pills in his oh so carefully prepared protein shake.

Original warehouse has been compromised. Detour necessary.

Tim helpfully drops a location pin so Green Eyes will know exactly where he should be detouring to.

Unload the package and await backup.

“f*ck.” Green Eyes’ exclamation is audible even through the wall of the cab. His volume drops as he starts giving orders to the rest of his team in a low, terse voice.

While Green Eyes revises his path, Tim quickly checks in with the Drakes’ usual driver. It’s alright if they’re running late, but he cannot have them running early; if they see him killing Green Eyes’ crew, that’s going to be a major problem.

Tim touches the ice-cold gun he’s got tucked away in his pocket, and for the first time since he left Liquid Diet’s apartment, feels a shadow of trepidation fall over him. He couldn’t shoot Black Mask; what if he similarly fails to kill Green Eyes and his crew?

Shaking his head, Tim reminds himself that he had been able to pull the trigger on Black Mask; the only problem was that he hadn’t accounted for recoil. He knows better now. This time, he’ll be able to kill without a hitch.

Ideally, Tim wouldn’t have to kill at all. In a perfect world, he’d be able to trick Green Eyes’ crew into handing the kryptonite off to the Drakes’ drivers by lying to each group about the others’ identity—but it simply isn’t feasible. It’s highly unlikely Green Eyes would ever OK handing goods this valuable over to a group whose faces he doesn’t recognize, even if Tim sent him a confirmation over text from Liquid Diet’s phone; it would all simply be a little bit too suspicious. And with the chance that someone among the Drakes’ drivers would recognize one of Black Mask’s goons, or even just think to question who the other team is… the risks are simply too high.

Tim idly rubs his thumb against the side of the barrel. This is the only way, he reminds himself. He’s chosen this path, and now he must follow through.

The truck pulls to a stop, and the goons immediately start unloading the kryptonite. Their hands are shaking, their eyes darting about frantically like any of the warehouse’s shadows could contain Batman himself. Green Eyes is crossing himself; the goon whose search history Tim had derived so much amusem*nt from is frantically clutching some sort of crocheted bauble undoubtedly supposed to provide him with protection.

Tim swallows. The gun feels so heavy in his hands.

It’s too late to back down now, he reminds himself once again. The drivers are coming. Black Mask’s people are going to figure out where the kryptonite went eventually. It’s you or them, Tim.

He steps out of the cargo bay, legs trembling as he trails after the big box of kryptonite.

Just in time, too; Etsy Protection Charm closes the cargo bay’s doors moments later. Surveying the lead box and the loose clump of goons surrounding it, he asks Green Eyes, “so, what? Now we just wait until one of the other teams catches up?”

Tim raises the gun. Etsy Protection Charm is closest, so probably Tim should kill him first—he keeps on idly rubbing his little crotchet charm between his thumb and forefingers, he’s mid-word—Green Eyes is the leader, so it should be him—he’s reassuring the rest of the team that everything will be fine, unaware that Tim’s about to blow his head off—unaware that he’s about to die—

No matter who Tim kills, all of the remaining men will spin towards him, their eyes wide with fear and rage, locked onto him—accusing, knowing he killed their friend, that he traded their lives for a little money—

Locked onto him—

Locked onto him—

Staring—

The sound of gunfire cuts through the air, precise and rhythmic as a heartbeat. The men crumple to the ground, dead.

“Goddamn, kid,” Jason Todd says. “We really have to stop meeting like this.”

Chapter 20: Bargaining

Chapter Text

Tim stops dead in his tracks.

He knows he should be doing something—running, maybe, or spouting off some bullsh*t that could explain the situation—but instead he’s frozen, rigid and unable to move, a rabbit gone stone-still under the shadow of a hawk.

Hood stalks forward, holstering his gun as he goes. Tim is suddenly reminded that this is the same man who reintroduced himself to Gotham with a duffle bag of heads—who cut through all the gangs in Crime Alley like a scythe through the harvest—who he stole food from for weeks—

Hood reaches out and Tim tenses, caught between flinching back and leaning in, part of him is begging to be touched so badly that he might even welcome a punch—

Hood is… patting him down?

Checking for weapons, he thinks at first, but—Tim has a weapon. He’s very clearly holding a gun, and yet Hood hasn’t made any sort of move to take it from him. Instead he’s just patting Tim’s body, his hands unbelievably warm even through the gloves he’s wearing. It’s bizarre. It’s really, genuinely, bizarre.

“Hey, kid.” Hood’s voice is gruff, but also strangely gentle. For some reason, Tim’s eyes start to pool with tears just at hearing it. “You alright? Anything injured?”

Tim can’t reply. He’s a butterfly on a board, pinned by the needle-point focus of Hood’s attention.

Hood sits back on his heels and removes his helmet. His heavy brow is furrowed, his green eyes searching as he skims over Tim’s face. Tim feels naked—feels more than naked—feels cracked open, like a hermit crab that’s lost its shell—

“You’re being very quiet,” Hood says softly. He lifts one hand and grasps Tim’s chin, carefully turning him to and fro, squinting as he peers at Tim assessingly. Now he really is in the palm of Jason’s hand, both literally and metaphorically. Tim’s eyes flutter shut; his head wants to dip, to go limp in that warm grasp.

Jason hums. Tim imagines curling up against that armored chest, feeling the vibration instead of just hearing it. If he shot himself, would Jason hold him again?

The sheer absurdity of that thought—the absurdity of the way Tim is actually almost considering it—is enough to break through the haze a little. He somehow makes himself pull his chin free of Hood’s grasp, although it’s one of the most difficult things he’s ever done—it feels like his very body is rebelling against him, is fighting to stay there caught between Hood’s warm fingers—

He’s not Mom, Tim reminds himself. You can’t trust him.

Tim does want to trust him, though. In fact, he wants to trust Hood so much that it makes him a little crazy. The terrible hunger at the heart of him would do absolutely anything to have that warm touch continue; he would let Hood shoot him if it just meant he would hold him as he bled out—he would forgive it easily, there would be nothing to forgive, it would be a fair bargain—

You’re nothing to him, Tim tells himself, trying to ignore the part of him that says it doesn’t matter, that says it would worth it to be a pebble in Hood’s shoe if it just meant he would touch him—

“Kid?” Hood asks in that same soft voice.

Tim wants to cry. Instead he frantically scrabbles backwards, shivering with the effort of not flinging himself into Hood’s arms. He could snap your neck with a twist of those hands, he reminds himself. He could shoot you. He doesn’t give a sh*t about you—you shouldn’t trust him, he could hurt you.

The words all ring hollow, however; Tim is struggling to remember why he should care. What does it matter if it hurts? Being ignored and unnoticed hurts too. At least this would be a new type of pain.

Why is Hood even here, Tim wonders as he keeps on scooting backwards. His hands scrape over the rough ground; he can feel gravel digging into the flesh of his palms. Gotham is such a big city—how does he keep on running into the very people he most needs to avoid?

Tim’s back collides from something solid and very heavy. The box of kryptonite, he realizes.

The box of kryptonite. That must be why Hood is here.

You can have it, he thinks a little hysterically. Just let me go.

The thought of watching Hood leave hurts—but everything in this situation hurts. Tim is like a caught animal, some tiny rabbit that fell into a briar patch and is now stuck, each attempt at thrashing free only driving new thorns deeper. There’s pain in every direction, pain before and behind and always. The only dignity Tim has is in choosing which type of pain to suffer.

Hood’s still staring at him. His brow is even more furrowed, now; his lips are twisted, his hands raised in front of him like he’s trying to ward something off. As Tim watches, he bites his lip almost uncertainly, then opens his mouth again.

“You’ve got a plan for how you’re getting that out of here, right?”

For a moment Tim just blinks uncertainly, utterly lost—but then Hood flicks his eyes over to the box of kryptonite, lifting his eyebrows pointedly.

Tim manages an affirmative hum. He’s not sure why it matters, though—isn’t Hood just going to take it from him either way?

“Somewhere safe to store it?”

Tim hums again.

“A buyer lined up?”

Tim is silent, breath still and stifled in his chest, because no, he doesn’t.

There’s a long moment, and then, voice still soft and gentle but now threaded with disapproval, Hood says, “That’s no good. It’s not safe to be holding onto something like kryptonite indefinitely.”

Which is why you will now oh-so-generously offer to take it off my hands, Tim thinks with dry, delicate sarcasm.

“How about this,” Hood says. “You transport that to the safe place you’ve got figured out and store it while I line up a buyer for you just as fast as I can. Yeah?”

Oh, so that’s how he’s going to play it. He’ll just lie about how much the kryptonite sells for and take a huge cut of the money.

Still, considering that just a moment ago Tim was assuming he was going to have give the kryptonite up entirely, there’s no reason for him not to take the deal.

Swallowing, he gives Hood a hesitant nod.

Hood smiles, looking oddly relieved. It’s strange to think that a literal crime lord would be so in need of cash, but Tim supposes he might have started some new project recently or something.

“Excellent,” he says. “Can I borrow your phone for a minute? We’re going to need each other’s contact information for this.”

Tim draws his phone out of his pocket and puts it down on the ground between them. A slight smile tugs at his lips as he realizes that having Hood’s number means if he skims too much off the top, Tim can always sign him up for a blitz of spam calls.

“I guess that my presence could be a problem when whoever you’ve got transporting the kryptonite arrives,” Hood says as he puts Tim’s contact information into his phone. Tim manages another affirmative hum; that’s an understatement if he’s ever heard one.

“Alright.” Hood’s brow crinkles. “I guess I’d better go, then.” He hesitates—reluctant to leave the kryptonite, Tim supposes?

“You shouldn’t carry a weapon you aren’t prepared to use,” he says at last.

Tim stares at him incredulously. Is he going to take Tim’s gun? Isn’t it enough to take his money? And besides—they both know Tim doesn’t have any real power in this situation, but shouldn’t Hood at least pretend they’re partners?

“I won’t take it from you,” Hood says. “Just…” he unstraps a sheath from his leg, placing it down alongside Tim’s phone. “Maybe you’ll feel more comfortable using this.”

He hesitates another long moment, and then finally exits.

As predicted, watching him leave hurts like hell.

Tim has to just breathe for a moment, letting the shivering, adrenaline-electric tension slowly drain out of him, and then he leans down and picks up the sheath and phone.

He needs to close his eyes for another long moment when he realizes the knife’s handle is exactly the right size for his hands.

One more deep breath and Tim carefully levers himself to his feet. He has to go get ready for the drivers’ arrival.

Tim stores the kryptonite in his room.

Hearing that, most people’s first impulse would be say that that Tim is being stupid and reckless, that he’s taking unnecessary risks for no reason. But really, how dangerous is it? Kryptonite’s impact on humans may be relatively unknown, but considering the low frequency of the radiation bands it emits, Tim highly doubts he’s in any danger of developing cancer. And anyways, it’s all safely tucked away in a lead box either way.

Nor has Tim just decided to put the kryptonite in his room out of some petty desire to be near it, or even due to some contrarian tendency to rebel against what other people would consider common sense. No, he genuinely believes his room is the best place for it.

Even now, Tim doesn’t really know how his powers work. In fact, these last couple of months have left him more confused than ever. But… he’s noticed that people tend to avoid his room.

It’s not just that Jack never enters it—never looks at the door, in fact never seems to recognize that there’s a room there at all—it’s also that in all the years Tim’s been directing the cleaners, he’s never once had to tell them to stay out. And, also, it’s in the way that back when Mom was briefly thinking about getting the Manor remodeled, the architect’s floorplans didn’t include it at all—not even noting it down as a linen closet or a spare bedroom, but rather simply… forgetting it entirely.

So yes, Tim thinks this is a good place for the kryptonite. Even if someone for some reason decided to break into Drake Manor—decided to, and actually managed to execute said decision, which would be a feat all its own—he really doubts they’d ever stumble upon his room, ever open his door, ever see the huge box of kryptonite tucked right up against his dresser.

Really, he thinks it’s a rather clever little solution—a neat way to keep the kryptonite off the board until it’s ready to be reintroduced to play, a play that means no one can one-up Tim by stealing from the very thief who originally filched it.

There’s just one problem.

As it turns out, lead boxes filled with more than a hundred pounds of kryptonite are big. And Tim’s room doesn’t exactly have a lot of spare space.

Of course, Tim could probably lessen that problem a little by, well. Actually cleaning and organizing his room. But… it’s a big mess—in large part because throughout his long years of only ever staying here for a few weeks before hurrying off again, Tim developed a bad habit of just dumping whatever useless deadweight had accumulated in his backpack somewhere in his room without actually taking the time to organize it.

Additionally, in order to mitigate the pain of losing a backpack, he’s stocked his room with endless spare versions of everything replaceable—clothes, first aid kits, even lockpicks. The end result is a huge mess of items, many of which are probably useful in some way—maybe even very useful—but none of which are organized.

So yeah. Tim really, really doesn’t want to go to the effort of sorting through everything.

In the end, he just decides to avoid his room for a little while. It’s also a good way to minimize any potential side effects from cohabitating with a big box of kryptonite, anyways, so really it’s killing two birds with one stone.

Thus, a mere three days after Tim’s triumphant return with his green and glowing prize, he heads back out again.

He begins by making another visit to Mom’s grave. As predicted, the tulips he laid there before have wilted; he replaces them with fresh versions, along with a container of silver needle tea.

Shortly after, he swings by Selina’s apartment to spend some more time with Otto—although he ends up leaving fairly quickly. Just like last time, it seems to do more harm than good; the warm, soft touch of Otto’s fur just makes him remember the feeling of Jas—Hood holding his chin that much more keenly.

He’s not really sure where to go after that. He could go to Gotham U, but he doesn’t know what any of the classes being currently offered are, and honestly doesn’t particularly feel like sitting through a lecture anyways. He could also swing by the Iceberg Lounge—listen to some of the gossip, nosh on the hor d’oeuvres—but…

Hood’s currently trying to sell a hundred pounds of kryptonite—and the Iceberg Lounge is one of the best places for him to look for a buyer.

Not f*cking happening, Tim thinks staunchly. Bad enough Hood has his number—bad enough that he ran into Stephanie Brown and Dick Grayson at the f*cking grocery store back in February—Tim absolutely refuses to start making awkward eye contact with vigilantes while he’s snarfing down his fifteenth shrimp appetizer.

God, how is this even his life?

In the end, Tim ends up just aimlessly wandering around Gotham, not really going anywhere, just following wherever his feet take him.

He’s long felt that Gotham is most itself in the falls and springs, during the murky, transitional months between the two extremes of winter and summer. Whereas summer is humid and sticky, almost syrup-y hot, and winter is of course frigidly, bitingly cold, the months between are inconsistent, almost temperamental—much like Gotham itself.

Either way, the rain remains frequent, nearly inescapable really. The ever-present fog thickens with the addition of real clouds, heavy with their wet burdens; puddles linger on the sidewalk without a chance to ever evaporate; commuters swaddle themselves in rain coats. Everything is damp in these months, damp and clammy and muddy. The dirty slush leftover from the winter has melted away; now is the time to see what it’s left behind.

Tim doesn’t think there’s much left for him.

Am I really going to dedicate the rest of my life to propping up the shambling corpse of Mom’s company? he asks himself as he passes a group of teenagers using their skateboards to shield themselves from the drizzle. Is that all there is for me?

One of the teenagers slams their board down. “Race you!” she cries, and the other skateboarders immediately start following suit, uncaring of the rain drenching their hair. Their laughter rings through the air in clear, sweet harmony.

Maybe I should pick up a hobby, Tim muses. He supposes he already has photography, and language learning, but both of those ended up being more extensions of the work he did for Mom than anything else.

It doesn’t help that back when he did take pictures just for fun, it was almost always of the Bats; it’s hardly as if he can start that back up again now.

Although… Tim snickers a little at the thought of Stephanie Brown staring, hydrogenated oil-less waffles in hand, telling him to pay for his oat milk—and then blinking as he raises his camera to take a picture of her at point-blank range.

He rummages through his brain, trying to come up with other things he enjoys doing, but it’s hard to think of anything. He’s spent so long constantly working on some project or another—following someone, or investigating something, or just… doing something—that all of the things he does seem to have been specifically chosen to both further those goals and easily fit into whatever bits of spare time he has. Language learning cassette tapes to listen to on stakeouts, lockpicks to fiddle with as he sits in the back of some target’s car, a camera to use when there’s blackmail to photograph—is there anything he really does just for himself?

He turns, watching the skateboarders as they duck into a nearby parking garage. They definitely seem like they’re having fun—maybe he should try skating sometime?

It would be difficult, of course. There would be no one to teach him, to tell him if he’s standing wrong or give him tips on how to do tricks. But hey, at least it would be something to do, right?

Sighing, Tim turns back and continues walking. The momentary spark of interest he’d felt is already fading at the thought of the effort it would take to find and buy a board, to do the research necessary to teach himself how to skate, to find somewhere to practice, to set up all alone, knowing that no matter how much time he put in, he’d never have that moment of dashing down the street towards his favorite place to skate, board in hand, calling easily out to his friends—

Having friends—

He wonders how Gianna’s doing. Is her hair still bright red, or has she dyed it a different color? Are there still artichoke hearts in Alanzo’s fridge? He supposes there would be no reason for there to be, considering he’s stopped going to the effort of sneaking them in.

Can he count sneaking his favorite pizza ingredients into Alanzo’s fridge as having been a hobby? If so, maybe he’s not so badly off after all.

Around him, the buildings are slowly getting more and more upscale—grimey, crumbling Brutalist apartments turn to brownstones with gilt accents and street trees, interspaced with creamy neo-Gothic apartments with spires like lush buttercream frosting on a wedding cake. Places like this—the nicer parts of Gotham—almost feel like they should be bathed in sunlight even while the rest of the city’s drenched in rain. But of course, there are some things even money can’t buy.

Tim remembers the organic water in its little box back at the Diamond District grocery store and chuckles. Yes, in the end even this place’s upper crust still has to suffer the fundamental indignity of living in Gotham, don’t they?

Except for the Drakes, of course. Really, hadn’t Mom cracked the code? All of the benefits of being a rich Gothamite but none of the pain of actually residing in Gotham.

Personally, Tim doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to leave.

On a purely logistical level, it would be easy enough—all he’d have to do was slip his way onto a boat or a bus or a train. He could travel the country, hitchhiking his way all across the continental United States—visit Bludhaven, explore Titans’ Tower all the way in San Francisco, go to Mardi Gras or catch some waves in Southern California, sneak into movie productions in LA and engineer his own cameos—god, the true crime podcasters would have a field day over that—and then in the end, when all was said and done, perhaps he could wander off into the depths of the Alaskan wilderness and live off the land there.

After all, what would being invisible matter if there was no one there to fail to see him?

And yet… all of this is easy enough in theory, but never going to happen in practice. Tim loves this filthy, ugly, terrible city with all of his filthy, ugly, terrible soul. It’s gotten its hooks into him as surely as a snake latching onto its prey. He knows it like the back of his hand, knows it better than he knows his own face—the Clock Tower and Cathedral, Iceberg Lounge and the police headquarters, the sewers and the highest gargoyles, the back alleys and the busiest roads—knows it, and loves it in the inevitable way you have to love anything you know that well.

He just wishes it loved him—knew him—back.

Tim must have stepped over the invisible border between Upper West Side and Diamond District without noticing it, because within the space of a block or two, everything seems to have been redone in glass.

God, the Gotham Gazette really is right to constantly rag on Diamond District for its architectural sins. It’s not even visually cohesive with the rest of the city. The single redeeming feature is Wayne Tower.

Tim doesn’t want to have to look at these ugly glass buildings anymore. Besides, at this point he really is uncomfortably rain-soaked. He ducks into the nearest coffee shop, scraping his muddy boots on the mat as he goes.

There are a couple of seats in one of the corners out of the way of any peering eyes, but they’re also right by the wall, which means they’ll be cold. That’s why Tim lets the edge of one shoulder dip into the view of the cafe’s security camera; it’s inevitable if he wants to get the seat he’s got his eye on.

He sits down. His shoulders are stiff with tension. There’s no point in trying to get coffee here; they don’t have any sort of online ordering system set up.

Instead he stares out the window, frozen and unmoving. He can hear the ticking of the grandfather clock they have set up by one wall. He’s just about to leave when he hears the little bell ring as someone enters.

Cass, her short hair slick with rain water, her chest rising and falling in subtle pants. She must have run here, Tim thinks. He can feel a faint flush rising on his cheeks at the thought. It’s lucky that she can’t see it. At least, he thinks she can’t see it.

“Hi,” she says, smiling beatifically, her gaze politely locked onto Tim’s right ear.

Tim is too blinded by the sheer beaming brightness of that smile to reply. It’s a good thing she doesn’t seem to expect an answer; she steps confidently up to the counter, quickly ordering with an Amex Black Card Tim would bet anything belongs to Bruce Wayne.

Bruce Wayne. God, it really would be so incredibly stupid to hang out with her on purpose. It’s good that this is definitely an accident that will not happen again.

Cass slips into the seat across from him, sliding a cup of black coffee across the table to him, then handing over a little porcelain plate with some sort of little almond pastry on it. “Could be good,” she tells him with a little shrug.

She blows on her own cup of cocoa a few times, then pulls out another rubix cube. This one is both significantly bigger and significantly more complex than the one before—but then again, it’s been a good month since he last saw her.

Tim watches her fingers move. My project was successful, he thinks about saying. Or, well. The initial goal was fulfilled. But someone else got involved, and now they’re interfering in my business, trying to scam me out of my money.

He ignores the little twinge that reminds him of the knife in his pocket, the one Hood handed over easy as anything—that reminds him of how carefully Hood had held him on the way to Leslie Thompson’s clinic—that reminds him that you know that’s not what Hood’s doing—

Tim ignores it because if he thinks it’s something other than Hood taking the opportunity to make a little money off a gullible kid, and then he ends up being wrong, it really will kill him, no jump from Wayne Tower necessary.

That’s just how it is.

Cass completes the white side of the rubix cube. Tim tries a little bite of the almond pastry, then takes another big gulp of his coffee. He focuses on the soft sound of the rain hitting the class window.

RH
found a buyer
let’s meet soon to discuss details

kid

[typing…]

[typing…]

alright

Chapter 21: The Sale

Chapter Text

Jason is running late, and it’s all the Bats’ fault.

They’ve been following him for a while now—ever since the clinic, actually. Realistically, Jason knew he was never going to be able to expect Leslie to keep his reappearance in Gotham a secret, but he still feels weirdly betrayed by her snitching. She couldn’t have even given him a couple of days headstart?

It’s ironic. Once, Jason would have been reveled in the attention the Bats have been giving him. He would have gloried in taunting them with hints of who he used to be, in dropping little details of the gory, terrible death and even more horrific rebirth they consigned their supposed-son, supposed-brother to. Hell, he would have probably even sought out interactions with them out of the same sense of perverse delight that leaves children poking persistently at their own bruises.

All of that would be true, if not for the kid.

The kid. The kid, with their skinny little shoulders too slight for the burdens they bear. The kid, with their backpack full of blackmail and the collected relics of a lonely, dangerous life. The kid, staring at a trembling hand covered in their own blood.

Once, Jason’s greatest goal was forcing Bruce into making the ultimate decision—into choosing between him and the Joker, right there with both of them in front of him. He wanted Bruce to either prove his love or so terribly forsake him that Jason could stop—could stop f*cking hurting so bad and just hate him uncomplicatedly, in peace. He wanted a clean cut, a surgical strike that would snip apart the terrible bloody tangled knot of his heart. And, of course, he wanted his vengeance—he wanted the Joker dead so he could finally feel safe.

But the kid… the kid…

He sees it in his mind’s eye. The kid is there, gun pointed directly at Black Mask’s forehead, pulling the trigger without a second’s hesitation. The kid is matter-of-factly telling Jason that they’re going to bleed out on the operating table. The kid is staring up at him from where they lean against the box of kryptonite, nuzzling sweetly into Jason’s hand like no one’s ever given them a kind touch in their life—because probably, no one has.

The whole point of being Red Hood is to protect children. Without that, Jason’s no better than Black Mask himself. And the kid—the kid has no one. As far as Jason can tell, he’s the only one who can actually, properly see the kid, which means he’s also the only one with even a shred of a chance at looking after the little dumbass.

So really, they’re not just “the” kid—they’re Jason’s kid.

In other words: it’s Jason’s job to protect them, Jason’s job to keep them safe, Jason’s job to put them above everything else—including his own desire for vengeance.

So no. He doesn’t have time to deal with the Bats’ bullsh*t. Batman’s silent looming, Nightwing’s nonsensical pleas to “just talk” to him, and both of their persistent and blatant attempts to get a DNA sample—it’s all just a waste of time keeping Jason from what’s really important: the kid.

It was bad enough with the kryptonite shipment—Jason had to take so long shaking the Bats off his tail that he was nearly too late, the kid could have died—and he knows it’s just going to get worse from here.

You see, now that the kid’s got their stolen kryptonite safely stowed away and is no longer likely to be following any Mask goons around, Jason has two main goals.

Firstly, of course, is coaxing the kid into accepting a little adult supervision. Jason’s not delusional enough to think he’s going to be able to get the kid to actually stop their insane escapades—at least not right away—but he can at least make sure they have some sort of support system to fall back on so that they’ll never be in a situation like the one they were in with Black Mask, ever again.

Gaining the kid’s trust enough to do so is sure to be a delicate process, which is why Jason really can’t afford to have any Bats following him around. They’re literally the last thing he needs to add to an already complicated, difficult situation.

As for the second goal—well…

Jason knows Sionis, and he is by no means the type to just forgive and forget an assassination attempt. As long as Mask is alive, he will be a threat to the kid.

So—no more playing with Mask. No more trying to steal territory out from under him or recruit his goons with promises of better pay and ideals high enough they can actually feel proud of their work instead of ashamed of it. No, instead Jason intends to permanently neutralize any threat Mask might pose to the kid—to destroy everything he would use to hurt them, to rip down every structure that protects Mask, to line all the dominoes up so that someday soon Jason can kill the bastard.

And that isn’t something the Bats can be allowed to interfere in, either.

Really, Jason thinks viciously as he sends another warning shot at the ground near Batman’s feet, they should just f*ck off.

He’s supposed to meet the kid at BatBurger in fifteen minutes. Judging by his previous encounters with the Bats, it’ll be at least forty until he can get them to leave him alone—and then even after that he’ll still need to actually make it to the BatBurger. If the kid thinks they’ve been stood up—if they leave because of this—

Jason grits his teeth. “Hey assholes!” he yells, yanking off his helmet. “You wanted a DNA sample, didn’t you?” Drawing one of his knives, he severs a lock of hair from his forehead and flings it off the edge of the roof they’re standing on. “Fetch!”

If they try to harass him like this again, Jason resolves grimly as he grapples away, he’s going to shoot Nightwing in the leg.

It’s been a while since Tim last visited a BatBurger.

BatBurgers have a couple of things going for them: they’re cheap, the food is consistent and surprisingly (bizarrely, some may say) tasty, and they’re incredibly ubiquitous. They also often have built-in entertainment; Tim once saw a “Newbie’s Guide to Gotham” Tumblr page describe BatBurgers as being like “Waffle House but on steroids”, which is supported by his own treasured memory of a certain BatBurger employee’s enlightened use of Firefly Sparkling Mustard™ as an improvised chemical weapon.

For the most part, though, BatBurgers kind of suck. They may suck in a consistent, soothing kind of way—the Joker could be cackling directly outside the door and the BatBurger cashier would still stare at you with the same dead-eyed expression as usual while informing you that no, the ice cream machine isn’t working—but they still suck.

Their kitchens are also manifestly gross. If Tim was going to rank the kitchens of various establishments in Gotham from most to least health code violations, the average BatBurger would be hovering somewhere around the ninetieth percentile. And that’s not even touching on the unmentionable meat Robin discovered being used in a certain (now condemned and exorcized) BatBurger location in Crime Alley way back when. It’s been years, but some things, Tim thinks with a shudder, cannot be forgotten.

Still, all of that could have been forgiven—God knows that after years of eating whatever random leftovers he could scrounge from the fridges and cupboards of his targets, Tim’s standards for food are at rock bottom—except for the unfortunate reality that A) trying to order food from BatBurger through a food delivery app is an exercise in frustration worthy of the ninth level of hell and B) BatBurger employees are insanely forgetful.

Tim can’t exactly blame them—after all, he wouldn’t be able to make it a week working at BatBurger—but it still means he isn’t exactly interested in patronizing their fine establishment.

He glances at the clock for the umpteenth time. It is now officially one minute after he and Red Hood were supposed to meet. Maybe, Tim thinks hopefully, Hood is late.

Maybe, he thinks even more hopefully, I’ve been stood up.

How long does Tim have to wait before he can justify leaving? He’s never met with anyone except Mom (and that really wasn’t the same thing at all) so he really has no clue, but he hopes it’s not long. Maybe two minutes? That’s not unreasonable, right?

One more minute and then I can leave, Tim tells himself placatingly

Right as he’s thinking that, the door swings open and Jason Todd steps inside.

Because it undeniably is Jason Todd and not Red Hood; he’s divested himself of helmet, and instead of his usual gear, he’s wearing ripped black jeans and a soft red hoodie. There aren’t even any visible bulges from holstered guns.

Tim has it on good authority that Red Hood was patrolling earlier tonight, so—did Jason specifically change mid-patrol? If so… why?

Jason skims the room; his eyes lock onto Tim and he waves, smiling, then lifts his phone and gives it a pointed tap. As Tim watches, he gets in line for the counter, typing away all the while.

RH
what should I order for you?

Tim’s stomach churns. What the hell is going on? This is not how crime lords act when meeting up with colleagues, especially not ones they’re scamming.

Why did he take off his helmet? Tim wonders again. Sure, Jason may not have a legal identity anymore, but still, shouldn’t he want to keep the public from learning his real face?

Unless, he realizes with a wave of nausea, Jason knows that I already saw it.

Which means—could Jason actually see him the entire time Tim was following him?

The quilt on the back of the couch—the food left out—

“Oh my god,” Tim whispers.

RH
Almost at the counter
Better order soon

Tim stares at the blinking cursor on his phone for a long, long moment, and then finally—feeling vaguely like he’s in some exceedingly strange dream—types a response.

kid
Just a FreezeShake and some fries, please

Tim buries his face in his hands and moans. “What the f*ck is going on,” he mutters. He would scream, but there’s someone here who would actually f*cking hear him, what the f*ck.

It’s not too late to walk out, Tim tells himself, but he knows he’s not going to do it.

Jason returns all too quickly. He passes the FreezeShake and fries over to Tim, then sits down across the table from him.

For a moment Tim just watches him, waiting—but Jason’s not even looking at him. He’s just eating his burger. After a moment, Tim dips a fry in his FreezeShake and starts chowing down too.

For a while they just eat in companionable silence, neither of them really looking at each other, just appreciating the greasy goodness of some classic Gothamite fast food.

“So,” Jason says at last. By this point he’s finished his burger and is making good progress on a box of Night Wings he produced from his bag—Tim has to wonder just how many things he ordered. “First things first. That gunshot wound. Did it heal up alright?”

“Yeah,” Tim tells his FreezeShake.

Jason hums skeptically. “You sure? Cuz if not, we can definitely go back to Leslie’s clinic. I’ll make sure she actually treats you properly.”

Tim shakes his head. He really is fine. Jason did more than enough just by making sure the surgery actually went alright.

“Okay,” Jason says. “But if you ever need medical treatment, make sure you say something, yeah?”

Seriously, what is going on?

“Also, what’s your name? We never really properly introduced ourselves, so—I’m Jason, and you are…?”

Tim stares at him blankly.

“It’s okay if you don’t want to tell me,” Jason assures him. “Here, have a wing, these are great.” He deposits a Night Wing into Tim’s fries.

Now Tim is staring equally blankly at the wing. He finds himself remembering all of the food left out by the trash can—the quilt slung over the back of the couch—the knife that fit his hands perfectly—

“Tim,” he says.

It comes out soft, but Jason seems to hear him anyways, because he immediately says, “Tim! Great name—so many potential nicknames: Timmy, Timantha, Timbuktu, Timker Bell—Mortimer—”

That last one startles Tim into laughing. When he looks up at him, Jason is smiling at him with a strange soft look in his eyes that makes Tim’s chest hurt.

Tim looks back down at his fries. Once again, he’s feeling that odd sense of being held in someone’s gaze, but this time, he doesn’t feel pinned or crystallized, he just feels… warm.

He wonders what he would have to do to make Jason give him a hug.

It’s a dangerous thought, of course—like a swimmer glancing down into the depths, he’s vaguely aware of the terrible lengths he would go to if it just meant he would feel some facsimile of love. He knows he shouldn’t give someone power over him like that—he knows that with his abilities, he could become a terrible weapon in cruel hands—but—

Tim’s increasingly finding that he just… doesn’t care.

And—would Jason really do something like that? Jason, who left food out for him, who made Leslie pay attention to him long enough to patch him up, who’s by this point shot more people than Tim can count on one hand just so they wouldn’t hurt him? Jason, who protects children, who is so stubbornly, indomitably kind?

Tim’s finding it really hard not to trust him.

When Tim glances up, Jason is still looking at him—Tim’s caught in that warm gaze, it’s like he’s in a beam of sunlight—he feels as if he’s going to melt like chocolate—his mouth hurts in that same way it does when he eats too much of something too sweet too fast—

“Alright there, Timmy?” Jason asks, and—

You alright? Anything injured? You’re being very quiet. A hand grasping Tim’s chin, turning him to and fro.

—abruptly it’s just all too much. Tim is on the edge of tears.

“Fine,” Tim forces out. “The—the kryptonite—?”

Mercifully, Jason doesn’t push. “Yeah. There isn’t actually a ton we need to straighten out for that—really, I just need to know where you’re keeping it. Of course,” he adds quickly, “I don’t expect you to just give it up and wait for me to give you the money—I figured you could just catch a ride with the kryptonite, it’s not as if the drivers will notice—”

Tim can barely remember why he was ever even suspicious Jason was going to scam him. “Alright,” he says. “And. Um. It’s at Drake Manor?”

“Drake Manor?” Jason blinks, and then suddenly he’s laughing. “God, you’re sly, aren’t you?” He sounds almost… admiring.

“I mean,” Jason adds, still grinning, “It makes sense—not as if there’s anyone there to notice it—but man…” he shakes his head.

Tim smiles back hesitantly. He’s glad that Jason seems to be assuming he snuck the kryptonite in, as opposed to realizing that Tim, you know, lives there. Although—why would he ever think that anyways? As far as anyone knows, Jack and Janet Drake don’t have any children.

“Alright,” Jason says, sobering a little. “My buyer should be coming in tomorrow—you think you’d be free then?”

Tim nods. When is he not free? His schedule is wide open.

“And…” Jason fiddles with the bones from one of his Night Wings. “Look. I know this isn’t the first time you’ve done something like this—God knows I remember you trying to shoot Black Mask all too well. So I was thinking, we could work together like this again. You sneak around and do your thing, and I provide backup, step in if anything gets too dangerous, fence whatever sh*t you get your hands on, give you some training you can fall back on if things go wrong.”

Tim stares at him blankly. At this point, he’s feeling so overwhelmed that nothing Jason’s saying is even really registering. Sure, he may understand what Jason’s saying on a literal level, but on an emotional level? On a “this is an actual, non-joking, legitimate offer you need to consider” level?

“Of course,” Jason adds quickly, “You don’t have to decide right away. Just something for you to think about, yeah?”

Tim nods slowly.

“Alright,” Jason says. “I should go make that call to my buyer soon. But before I go, is there anything else—any questions, anything you need?”

A hug, Tim almost blurts out, but—he can’t just—just—

“Can we meet somewhere with less people next time?” It’s late enough that the BatBurger is pretty much empty, and Tim has purposefully chosen a table tucked away as far into the corner as possible, but… he still finds himself worrying that someone will overhear Jason talking to himself—will be so intrigued that they’ll start scanning the space near him, and somehow manage to notice Tim even through his powers—

Jason’s brow furrows; he looks confused. “I thought that you’d want to meet somewhere public, so that—”

So that there would be witnesses, just in case? Tim wants to laugh.

“Right,” Jason says softly. An unreadable expression passes briefly over his face, and then he forces a smile. “Alright, next time we’ll meet at my safehouse, and I’ll make us something tasty to eat. That sound good to you?”

Tim nods.

Crumpling up his trash, Jason stands. “See you tomorrow,” he says. He reaches out and briefly, almost absentmindedly, ruffles Tim’s hair, and then, before Tim can react, he’s striding out, casual as anything.

Tim’s scalp tingles with the phantom brush of Jason’s fingers. He feels like a hurricane has just whirled through his house, leaving as quickly as it came.

He takes a slow slurp of his FreezeShake. It’s strange, but he’s almost looking forward to tomorrow.

You would think transporting something so highly regulated would be harder than this.

Tim had the Drakes’ usual drivers leave the box on a pallet with wheels when they first dropped it off, so all he has to do is roll it down onto the driveway. Red Hood’s men arrive precisely on time; while they secure the cargo, he slips easily into the truck with them. And just like that, he’s once again riding alongside a hundred pounds of kryptonite.

It’s nice that this time, I won’t have to shoot anyone, he thinks a little wryly. Nor does he have to worry about drivers running late or drugged supervisors miraculously waking up; all he has to do is wait patiently and see whether or not Hood follows through on his promises.

It’s a long drive. The swaying of the truck slowly lulls Tim off to sleep, his head pillowed on his knees. When he comes to, it’s to a warm, gloved hand gently shaking him awake.

“Figured you wouldn’t want to miss the sale,” Hood says. Tim nods, blinking sleep out of his eyes, and rolls unsteadily to his feet.

Hood’s men have already left—Tim guesses the buyer wanted a little more privacy for the deal—which means it’s on Hood to get the kryptonite off the truck. He doesn’t seem to have any problem doing so, though, just smoothly rolls it down a little angled stool thing he pulls out from the cab.

God, Tim thinks as he watches, wheeled pallets really are so useful. Asking the Drakes’ drivers to leave the kryptonite on one was seriously a stroke of genius.

“I really doubt this is going to get violent,” Hood says, “But you never know. Stick behind me just in case, alright?”

Tim seriously doesn’t understand Hood at all.

They’re a little early, which gives Tim plenty of time to appreciate the ambiance. Rain drizzles artistically through a hole in the roof; the unique smell of Gotham warehouses fills the air, wafting the inside of Tim’s nostrils with the delicate perfume created by mixing mildew, rat droppings, and blood.

Warehouses like these, Tim feels, are a quintessentially Gotham phenomenon. More than any board room, bar, or country club, this is the true center of Gotham society. Like peering under an overturned stone, just a bit of surveillance of a warehouse in Gotham will reveal a rich glimpse of the thriving, no, teeming life of Gotham’s underbelly.

Tim would know. After all, back in the day, one of his favorite ways to get a finger on Gotham’s pulse was to stake out a random warehouse and just see what happened.

The doors opposite them rattle, then open. Their guest is a lean, almost whip-like man with dark eyes and pepper in his hair. He’s also an out-of-towner; Tim can tell just by looking at his fancy dress shoes.

He strides towards them, a blank look spreading over his face like a mask as he tries to ignore the filthy water sloshing around his ankles. Tim glances at Hood; he thinks he can see a hint of suppressed laughter in the way he’s scrunching his shoulders. Jason, of course, is wearing thick steel-toed combat boots with plenty of ankle support.

By the time the visitor reaches them, Hood’s straightened his posture back out and more than looks the part of the stoic, terrifying crime lord.

“Hood.” The visitor nods sharply. He has a thick accent, although not one Tim can immediately place. “This is the kryptonite, then?”

Hood nods. “And that’s the money,” he says, angling his head towards the huge, hard-shelled suitcase at the visitor’s side. It isn’t a question.

The visitor smiles—a quick, grimy, oil-slick grin that reminds Tim of the same filthy puddles he just trod through. With a terrible sick twist of his stomach, Tim wonders what, exactly, the kryptonite is going to be used for. “Yes. I assume you would like to check?”

He opens the suitcase, revealing row after row of crisp, tightly bound stacks of hundred dollar bills. “A beautiful sight, no?”

Hood doesn’t reply, just cracks open the box of kryptonite. A soft glow much like the light emitted from a candle fills the warehouse, tinting everything green.

The visitor seems to suck in a little breath despite himself. “Yes,” he says softly. “That, too, is a beautiful sight. You don’t mind if I take a closer look, do you?”

Without waiting for an answer, he strides forward and—and buries his hands in the kryptonite, practically up to his elbows, without even a moment’s hesitation.

“What the f*ck?” Tim breathes.

“He’s a collector,” Hood whispers back, angling his head so there’s no way the visitor will overhear. “Has some sort of fetish for it.”

Tim watches as the visitor—seemingly starts trying to eat a piece of red kryptonite?

“I thought out-of-towners were supposed to be normal,” he says blankly.

Hood chokes back a laugh. “C’mon, no need to watch him make out with it.” He walks over to the suitcase and bodily picks it up. Tim trails after him, still in a state of shock.

“Enjoy,” Hood says dryly as they pass the kryptonite fetishist on their way out.

Unlike Jason, Tim doesn’t have a reason not to laugh out loud.

Chapter 22: Houseguest

Chapter Text

Bruce keeps his promise.

He sits them all down in the Batcave, tells them they can ask questions at the end but they have to let him finish explaining as best he can first. Even though they’re in the Batcave, he doesn’t wear the cowl—he lets them all see his face, watch the micro-expressions play out across it, note the dark circles and the new worry lines. His body language is open, his phrasing clearly carefully chosen, every implication considered.

Stephanie should be happy. She’s been trying to coax Bruce into becoming better at communicating for ages, and here he is doing everything she could have asked for and more. She should be happy, and yet—

—and yet she almost wishes Bruce had kept this to himself after all.

Here is what Bruce tells them: Jason Todd is back from the dead. And he’s become the Red Hood.

Of course, he isn’t so direct as all that. He continually reminds them that it’s not entirely, definitively clear that the Red Hood really is Jason Todd; there’s still a chance it’s not, that this is all some sort of elaborate deception playing on their heartstrings. Everything is couched in maybes, in appears-to-be’s, in all sorts of other language clearly indicating that there’s room for ambiguity here, that he might be mistaken.

It doesn’t make a difference.

Things fall apart fast. Like a piece of glass shattering under the force of a strike, fractures develop in their oh so carefully cultivated unity as everyone copes with the concept in their own ways.

Dick seems immediately and entirely convinced that Jason is back, but not that he’s the Red Hood—or that if he is, he’s not actually as bad as all that. Do they really know for certain that Red Hood was the one to behead all of those drug dealers? Surely it could have been just a rumor? And—doesn’t Hood have a code, a soft spot for children and the beaten-down? Why should he be classed as a villain, as a Rogue, when he could just be another, albeit slightly grittier, vigilante? Why make contingency plans for encountering him instead of just talking to him?

Bruce vehemently disagrees with this take. In contrast to Dick, he seems unwilling to even consider the possibility that this really is Jason back from the dead; no, if you ask him, this is just another power-hungry upstart looking to carve out a slice of Gotham as bloodily as they can, the only thing that differentiates them from all the rest being that they have the knowledge and cruelty required to give the knife that extra twist, to put that extra bit of salt in the wound. Why should they try to carry on a conversation with someone who’s mocking the family’s pain like this, who’s defiling Jason’s name like this? Better to take care of this particular threat with prejudice.

Considering their diametrically opposed opinions, it’s no surprise that Bruce and Dick begin fighting constantly. Every conversation they have, no matter how seemingly innocuous, bubbles with tension. Sometimes, the facade of small talk will crack and they’ll leap back into debate; other times, they simply grit their way through their interactions, the air between them thick with all of the retorts and counterarguments they swallow back.

No one else in the family is particularly interested in getting pulled into their fighting, so everyone else keeps their own opinions about Jason’s possible return close to their chest. Fortunately, Stephanie is well versed in picking up on how people are feeling and has a good sense for intuiting how various people react to different events. As a result, with a little work and a couple questions for Cass, she’s able to develop a good sense of what idea on what even the most seemingly “neutral” family members actually think about the whole situation.

Alfred seems to mostly be in agreement with Dick. Stephanie isn’t sure he really believes that Jason’s managed to keep his hands as clean as all that, but frankly Steph doesn’t think Alfred actually cares that much either way. Similarly, she also doesn’t think that Alfred is actually that convinced that it is Jason—but either way, in Alfred’s view, undead or not, crime lord or not, family is family, and even a slim chance at bringing the Wayne family’s lost son back into the fold should be followed up upon with all care and courtesy.

Meanwhile, Cass doesn’t believe that whether or not Red Hood is Jason should be of any particular relevance. As she herself points out to Steph, the Red Hood has killed. Multiple times, seemingly with no difficulty and even less remorse—and no, despite what Dick may like to believe, his beheading the lieutenants of Gotham’s eight most successful drug lords was not rumor, but rather cold hard fact. Even if he is Jason Todd, he’s broken Batman's One Rule; why should love for who he used to be protect him from justice?

Of course, Steph reflects privately, would Cass still feel the same way if she’d actually known Jason? How much of her willingness to see Jason as a bloodthirsty, irredeemable killer comes from her rigid moral viewpoint as opposed to the fact that neither of them actually ever knew Jason as the sweet, stalwart, feisty Robin that everyone else in the family describes him as?

As for Barbara… Babs plays her cards closer to her chest than anyone else. It takes Steph a long time to figure out what Babs thinks, and when she does, she’s shocked.

Unlike Dick, she seems incredibly aware of just how violent the Red Hood is. In fact, she repeatedly warns Steph about him, urging her to steer clear of him and let Bruce and Dick take the lead on the investigation as much as possible.

And yet, at the same time, she doesn’t react to the idea of the Red Hood being Jason with the same skepticism that Bruce seems unable to abandon. Of all of them, she seems the most able to accept the idea; as far as Steph can see, she’s the only one who’s truly able hold the two concepts of “Red Hood is my beloved dead adopted relative” and “Red Hood is a violent, dangerous murderer” in her mind at the same time.

And… as much as she warns Steph about him, as much as she says that they need to be wary of Hood, Steph… Steph thinks Babs actually empathizes with him a little—maybe even feels like on some level, the brutality with which he acts is actually… actually a little justified.

Steph supposes it makes sense, considering that Babs is the only one who’s been victimized by Joker at anything close to the same level of severity as Jason had been. And yet, it’s still quite shocking. If Babs can empathize with him so much—were they once in danger of Barbara turning villain, too? Of Batgirl becoming not Oracle, but something much more brutal?

Honestly, it’s a terrifying thought.

“Put on your seatbelt,” says up-and-coming crime lord Red Hood.

Tim stares blankly back. Seriously? he thinks.

Huffing, Jason reaches over and latches the buckle for him. “Look, Timmy,” he says. “I may break some laws—okay, a lot of laws—but car safety is no joke, even for big bad crime lords like me. The laws of physics don't care about your street cred.”

Tim just blinks back at him.

Rolling his eyes, Jason pulls out of the warehouse parking lot and onto one of Gotham’s many pot hole-spotted side streets. “Alright, where do you want me to take you?”

Tim’s stomach sinks. He thought they were going to go back to Jason’s safehouse.

He shouldn’t be disappointed, though. Isn’t this for the best, really?

When Tim doesn’t reply, Jason says, “I’m assuming you want to drop the cash off before anything else?” He casts a quick glance at Tim—Tim feels it on the side of his face like a ray of sunlight—then turns his gaze back to the road. “We can also just go straight to my place, though. I seem to recall promising you a proper, non-fast-food meal.”

“That sounds good,” Tim replies. Despite his best efforts, his voice still comes out a little soft, a little whispery.

Jason still hears him fine, though. “Excellent,” he says, and sounds like he genuinely means it. “What do you want for dinner? I’ve got some smoked salmon—expensive as hell, but hey, crime pays well, and man is it good on toast with some cream cheese and capers. And a little bit of dill on top, of course. It isn’t the same without the dill.”

Tim isn’t sure what dill is. That’s a type of pickle, right? Why would you want to eat a pickle with salmon? That sounds disgusting.

“Then again,” Jason muses as he merges onto one of the busier roads in the area, “That seems like kind of a cop-out. I said I was going to cook for you, and making a sandwich can hardly be classed as ‘cooking’.”

Tim would absolutely class making a sandwich as cooking. If he didn’t, then that would mean he’s never cooked before, and that sounds kind of pathetic.

They pull to a stop at a red light. For a crime lord, Jason really does seem set on following traffic laws.

“Of course,” Jason says, “it is cooking if the sandwich in question is a grilled cheese one. What a philosophical dilemma.” He taps his fingers against the steering wheel thoughtfully. “I think I have some fresh basil in the fridge… how do you feel about grilled cheese and tomato soup?”

“I like all your cooking,” Tim says, and then winces slightly, because reminding Hood about all the food he stole from him is probably not the best idea.

Jason just laughs, reaching over to quickly ruffle Tim’s hair again.

Right, Tim remembers. He left it out for me on purpose.

“This isn’t really the season for tomatoes,” Jason decides. “Not yet, anyways—it’s just a little too early. I’ll make you some in a couple of weeks.”

Tim can feel something warm ignite in his chest at the way Jason casually assumes they’ll still be spending time together then.

Then again, wasn’t he the one that proposed they work together? Tim’s the one who’s left things up in the air.

“I should also have the ingredients for clam linguine—you seemed to like that before,” Jason says, casting a sly little glance over at Tim, who promptly blushes bright red, because—because he did; in fact, he remembers eating not only all of the clam linguine Jason left out, but actually going back for seconds from the fridge.

Jason laughs. “It’s even better warm,” he promises. Tim just hides his face in his hands.

The rest of the drive passes in a similar fashion. Jason seems intent on using every silly nickname he’d listed at the BatBurger and then some, and he keeps on ruffling Tim’s hair at every possible opportunity.

It’s weirdly pleasant.

It’s also strange seeing Jason’s safehouse again and knowing that this time, he’s an invited guest. The actual apartment doesn’t look that different—it’s still fairly bare and spartan, the only real pop of color the quilt thrown over the back of the couch—but it somehow still feels different.

“Take of your shoes,” Jason orders, untying his own boots. “There are some books for you on the floor by coffee table; feel free to take a look while I start making dinner.”

Tim obediently shucks off his Vans and pads over. Towards the bottom, the stack seems to be mostly children’s fantasy—Ursula K. Le Guin, C.S. Lewis, Gail Carson Levine, even a thick red book that seems to be about a girl who has the power to read stories into reality. Tim wonders what his life would be like if he had that power, too—would he be happier? He’d still be isolated from the rest of the world, but at least he’d have the company of all the characters he could read into being.

About halfway up the stack, the contents start to change. Suddenly the books aren’t just in English—there’s a collection of Pablo Neruda’s poetry in the original Spanish, a battered novel written in Cantonese, even what looks like an anthology of Romanian fairy tales.

How does Jason know I understand these languages? Tim wonders as he starts flipping through the book of poetry. For most of the languages he’s learned, he’s generally better at understanding the spoken than written version, just because that’s what he mostly uses his skills for, but the extent of the difference varies between different languages. He barely remembers any Chinese characters, but Spanish orthography is so intuitive that even after months of not practicing reading it, he’s still able to dive back in pretty easily.

He’s just finished reading an “ode to a big tuna at the marketplace” when Jason finishes dinner.

“Put that book down and get your ass over here,” he orders cheerfully. “No books at the table, that’s a house rule, and no eating on the couch either.”

Neat freak, Tim thinks, but he obediently sets the book down and joins Jason at the table.

Jason hasn’t just made clam linguine, he’s also prepared a fruit salad, some improbably delicious roasted brussell sprouts (Tim didn’t even know brussell sprouts could taste good), and even a creamy chocolate-pudding type dessert that he insists Tim can only eat after he’s had the rest of his dinner.

They’re both mostly quiet during dinner, just eating in pleasant silence. It reminds Tim of the day before at the BatBurger—the way Jason had methodically demolished first his BatBurger, then his Jokerized fries, then his Night Wings, then even an Ivy Salad, all while Tim mostly just nursed his FreezeShake (and obligingly ate all the fries and wings that Jason for some reason kept foisting onto him).

Once they’re done, Jason packs up all the leftovers in tupperware and stores them away in the fridge, then carries the dirty plates over to the sink.

“I can do the washing up,” Tim offers, but Jason just shakes his head.

“Nah, you just sit and eat your chocolate budino,” he instructs.

Another couple of minutes pass in companionable silence, the only noises Tim’s fork clinking against his plate and the water splashing in the sink as Jason rinses the plates off.

Finally, Jason breaks the silence.

“Have you thought about my offer?” His head is bent, all of his attention turned to the pot he’s furiously scrubbing at.

Tim sets his fork down, trying to be gentle enough that it doesn’t make a noise. “I have.” His heart pounds fast in his chest; he can feel his palms sweating. He wipes them off on his pants. “I wanna do it.”

He casts another hesitant glance at Jason. He was the one who offered, so he must be up for it—but what if he regrets it? What if he’s changed his mind?

From this vantage point, Tim can just see the corner of Jason’s mouth curve up in a lopsided smile. “Cool,” he says.

Tim smiles back, although Jason can’t see it.

They go back to the same companionable silence from before, Tim eating his dessert and Jason continuing with the dishes.

After a minute, Tim says, “You didn’t take a cut of the kryptonite money.”

“Of course not,” Jason replies as he starts drying off a plate. “You earned that money fair and square. You were the one who took the kryptonite from Black Mask, not me.”

But I would have been dead without you, Tim thinks. And you were the one who found me a buyer.

“Speaking of which,” Jason continues, “I have something of yours. Just a minute.” He wipes his hands off and heads into his bedroom.

Tim glances over at the suitcase full of money, which Jason left casually leaned up next to the couch. He’s got plenty of experience hiding socks and gloves, maybe he can—

Jason steps back in, a familiar backpack hanging off one shoulder.

“Is that—” Tim shoots up from the table, his hands instinctively reaching out for his long-lost bag. Jason obligingly plops the backpack down into his arms.

“Yup,” Jason says. “It’s how I found you when you were stealing the kryptonite—you’d left a note in there.”

Tim just hums, too busy groping around in the backpack to really pay attention to anything Jason’s saying. There’s his old phone, his laptop, his camera—even the batarang he’d gotten hit with all those years ago. Smiling, he runs his thumb over the now long since dulled edge.

“I also washed all the clothes in there,” Jason says, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand. “So, uh, if you wanna crash here tonight, you totally can. Of course, I can also drive you back to wherever you live—”

Tim cuts him off. “I wanna stay here.”

“Alright.” Jason smiles.

For a moment they just stand there smiling at each other, and then the moment breaks and Jason turns back to the sink. He wipes up a bit of water that’d splashed onto the counter, then washes his hands.

“Do you want to be the first to shower, or—”

Tim shakes his head. “I already showered this morning.”

Jason nods. “Fair enough.” Casually ruffling Tim’s hair as he passes—he’s is never gonna get used to that—Jason heads into his room to grab a towel and some clothes to change into.

As soon as Tim hears the water start running, he pads over to the suitcase and grabs a couple of stacks of money. They’re a little thicker than your average pair of socks or gloves, and Jason’s excessive neatness makes it more obvious when anything’s out of place, but Tim’s got years of experience hiding things, so he’s sure he’ll be able to someplace to stash each of them.

He prowls around the apartment, peering into drawers and squinting at every nook and cranny. The goal is to put the money somewhere out of the way enough Jason won’t find it right away, but still somewhere where he will run into eventually. Obviously he’s going to realize what Tim’s done at some point—it’s not as if Tim is hiding bits of change—but—

Hiding change. Grinning, Tim slides over to the couch (holy sh*t, Jason must wax his floors or something cause it’s like Tim’s gliding on ice) and pries the cushions aside. Sure enough, even Jason’s meticulous nature isn’t enough to prevent a few coins from accumulating. Why shouldn’t the couch stash contain a couple hundred dollar bills, too?

After smoothing the cushions back over, Tim grabs a chair from the table and leans it up against the oven. From there, if he balances on his tippy toes, he can just manage to shove another stack up onto the top of the microwave. There’s barely any dust up there, so Jason must clean it pretty frequently—he’ll have a nice surprise the next time he dusts.

Quickly moving the chair back to its usual spot, Tim opens the fridge and tucks another stack under all of the weird fancy cheeses Jason keeps in one drawer—then just to be thorough rolls up another stack and hides it behind the produce.

That gives him another idea. He pulls out the egg carton—as predicted, it has a few empty spots where Jason’s already used up eggs. Unfortunately they’re too small to hold full stacks, even folded ones, but if Tim just pulls a couple of hundred dollar bills out of under the rubber band and then crumples them up…. Giggling, Tim puts the refilled egg carton back in the fridge where it belongs.

Closing the door, he heads to the cupboard where Jason keeps his dishes. Tim plops another section of cash into the top-most bowl in the stack, then for good measure adds a rolled-up hunk of cash to Jason’s favorite Wonder Woman mug. Figuring that’s probably enough for the kitchen, at least for now, he quickly returns to the living room. He only has two stacks left—where to hide them?

Quickly grabbing a bit of tape from his newly returned backpack, Tim sticks the first stack onto the underside of the coffee table. Then, for the pièce de résistance, he clambers up onto the back of the couch and gently balances the last stack of money on the very center of the ceiling fan, where it won’t fall off even when the fan’s running.

He can hear the water shutting off; Tim just has enough time to hurriedly scramble down from the back of the couch and yank the quilt over him before Jason strides in.

“Dumbass kid,” Jason says, some strange note thick in his voice. “Didn’t I tell you to change into your pajamas?”

He doesn’t seem to expect a response; he just tucks the quilt more tightly around Tim. “Little idiot,” Jason says, voice soft, and reaches to run the knuckles of one hand over Tim’s cheek; he can’t help but arch up into the touch, even though he knows he should be pretending to be asleep.

Jason is silent for a long moment; Tim can feel his gaze heavy on his face. Then he smoothes back Tim’s hair, presses a kiss to his forehead, and pads off to bed.

Tim buries his face in his arms. His face is hot, his eyes oddly damp. Something small and soft is growing in his chest, some tiny plant seeking the light. For the first time in a long time, there are no worries, no nagging fears, nothing that needs doing. It feels as though he’s basking in sunlight.

His breathing slows; his eyelids flutter, then slip shut again.

He dreams that he’s sitting in a library with Jason, both of them reading in silence.

Chapter 23: Disclosure

Chapter Text

Tension winds them all tighter and tighter, a grinding pull that yanks their muscles taut, that leaves the air between them thick and still. There’s the feeling of a held breath, of something dangling over their heads—a sense that they are circling closer and closer to some inevitable end, fish caught in the outer reaches of a whirlpool, drawn around and around, inwards—inwards—

Things slip. Maybe it’s not a circling but an unraveling, everything falling apart piece by piece. Skipped meals, late nights and early mornings, the scrapes and bruises that come from uncharacteristic carelessness. Details missed on cases; information that comes too late or not at all; an entire shipment of kryptonite lost, disappearing into the depths of the Gotham underworld, because Nightwing and Batman were too busy trying and failing to tail Red Hood to notice what was happening.

This isn’t sustainable. Steph knows it, and she’s sure that at least Babs, Alfred, and Cass know it too—honestly, even Batman and Nightwing probably recognize it on some level. And yet they still continue on, unable to slip free of the tides of their fear and desire, caught in the manic tunnel vision of needing to know—their reopened wounds demanding satisfaction, their questions demanding an answer—

And then.

A fistful of shorn hair, painstakingly collected from every which way the wind had blown it. A DNA test. All of them crowded around the machine, staring. Waiting.

With an stiff, unceremonious hiss, the machine spits out its little sheet of paper. For a moment, they remain frozen, no one quite reacting—Bruce especially looks like he could be carved from stone—and then Dick steps quickly forward, turns the paper over with trembling hands.

“It’s Jason.” He says it quietly at first, and then, louder: “it’s Jason.”

There’s another moment of dead silence. Steph glances around, tracking everyone’s reactions. Babs’ lips are pressed tightly together into one thin pale folded line; Cass is slowly half-curling and then uncurling her fingers, like she’s trying not to make fists; Bruce remains statue-still, his face unyielding, merciless, like the cliff face that waves break themselves over.

“It’s Jason,” Dick repeats, a new edge to his voice. Now it’s his turn to glance around, eyes bright and hard as embers.

Another long moment of silence; the tension is so thick in the air that Steph swears she can feel it crawling along her skin.

“Okay,” Babs finally says. “Okay, it looks like it’s probably Jason, but—”

Whatever she was going to say is cut off by Bruce finally breaking free of his icy stillness to announce, “This isn’t sufficient evidence to reach any sort of certain conclusion.”

Dick stares incredulously. “What? It’s literally a DNA test!”

“DNA tests aren’t infallible,” Bruce grinds out. “There are still ways that it could be—”

“Bullsh*t,” Dick snaps. “That’s total bullsh*t, and you’re lying to yourself if you say you believe that. You just don’t want to acknowledge the truth! In your core you know that Jason is alive—we’ve both known ever since we first saw him, how could I not recognize my own brother—how could you not recognize your own son? The time for denial is over, Bruce, we have the proof and now you have to acknowledge that it is Jason. Stop lying to yourself!”

“At this point,” Babs ventures, “it does seem like Red Hood being Jason is the most likely option. The sheer knowledge and resources it would take for someone to pull off this kind of fraud does seem rather improbab—”

“More improbable than someone coming back to life?” Bruce interrupts.

“Yes,” Babs replies coolly. Amazingly, the sheer frostiness of her tone is enough to momentarily silence both Bruce and Dick.

A beat passes, and then she continues in a somewhat more measured tone. “We live in a world of gods, magic, and metas, Bruce. We already know that the Lazarus Pit can extend life indefinitely—who’s to say there isn’t some way to bring back the dead?”

Bruce’s only response is a clenching of his jaw.

“Why are you so set on denying this?” Dick demands. “Why aren’t you happy to have Jason back?”

“That’s not Jason,” Bruce answers grimly.

“We have literally just been over this, at this point it’s highly unlikely that it’s some elaborate scam, so why—”

“Even if Red Hood is Jason, he’s not the Jason you knew,” Babs says.

Dick turns. Some of the anger slips off his face, revealing some softer underbelly to his emotions—something more vulnerable, more pained, that Steph can’t quite read. “What?”

“Dick,” Babs starts. Hesitates, bites her lip, tries again. “Dick, the Red Hood is an extremely violent and dangerous crime lord. On his first night in Gotham, he killed eight people, put their heads in a duffle bag, and—”

“Do we really know that he actually did that?” Dick snaps. “That’s so over-the-top, it’s almost certainly just a rumor.”

For a moment Barbara just stares at him incredulously, and then she finally says, “Who do you think you’re talking to right now? Of course I know that that’s true.”

Dick flushes. “Right, of course. I’m sorry, I just—”

She waves him off. “The point is, Jason isn’t the Robin you and Bruce knew anymore. He’s a Rogue now. More than that, a murderer.”

“He’s taken lives,” Bruce agrees. Cass nods, her eyes dark and solemn.

“But…” Dick’s fists clench and unclench. “It’s still Jason at the day. It’s Jason.”

Babs nods. “Yes, but—”

“What do you mean by ‘yes, but’?” Dick’s voice rises. “Isn’t love supposed to be unconditional? How can any of us claim to have really loved Jason when we have limitations on that love—when there are things he could do that make us stop loving him? He died and came back—there shouldn’t be anything that stops us from bringing him back into our family, not if we ever really loved him!”

Bruce starts to reply, but Dick spins to face him, cutting him off harshly. “Don’t f*cking justify it to me, Bruce! How can you be so ready to condemn your son when you’re always preaching second chances for Rogues? Why can you forgive the Joker but not the person he killed?” By the end he’s yelling, every word punching itself out of him like they’re bites of flesh he’s spitting up.

A hollow, ringing silence falls.

Dick’s chin dips; for a moment it looks like his face is about to crumple, that he’s going to dissolve into tears—but then it abruptly smooths out and hardens, as though someone has poured molten iron over it to make a cast. When he lifts his gaze again, his eyes are cold and clear.

Finally, Bruce speaks.

“It’s not that I don’t love Jason unconditionally.” It would be hard to doubt that, hearing how tenderly he pronounces Jason’s name—as though his very mouth is cradling his lost son. “It’s that—”

He pauses, closes his eyes. They’re all silent, just watching as he tries to gather his words.

“I love him too much,” Bruce finally confesses, voice taut and low. “I would forgive him anything. My son—I want to excuse everything.”

“But I’m not just a father. I’m Batman.” There’s no victory in those words, no sense of pride, only the familiar chains of obligation. “And that means I need to be impartial.”

Bruce sighs. “Back in the earliest days, when I had only just became Batman, many of the various gangs and groups tried to bribe me. They told me if I accepted, I would still be keeping justice in the city—I just wouldn’t be touching them.” His eyes flick over to Barbara when he says, “it was only when I rejected those offers that Commissioner Gordon first began to trust me.”

“The vow I have made to see justice through impartially—that is the only thing that separates me from any of the other people who roam Gotham in costumes at night. I act as objectively as I can, serving the needs of the city rather than my own whims and desires. That is the nature of Batman. That is what makes me who I am.”

“If I break that—if I let my desires control me, even if they are desires which arise from love—I will not be worthy of being Batman or a father.”

Nodding, Cass reaches out and squeezes Bruce’s hand. Bruce squeezes back, but his expression doesn’t change, and his eyes are locked on Dick.

“So…” Dick’s brow furrows, lips twisting with frustration. “So what, you can’t—you can’t just—forgive Jason as much as you would anyone else? Balance justice and mercy when it comes to him, too?”

“He’s not anyone else,” Bruce tells him. His eyes slip shut; he looks more mortal than Stephanie has ever seen him. “Maybe if I was—stronger, or better, I would be able to do it. But I can’t. I know if I tried to be objective, I would fail. I can’t think of him as both my son and a Rogue at the same time.”

Dick doesn’t seem to have any reply to that. He just stares at Bruce.

He looks lost, Steph thinks with a pang. She rarely sees Dick look anything less than self-assured; seeing him like this makes her stomach twist.

“So,” Stephanie finally speaks up. “Bruce. You can’t be impartial when it comes to Red Hood, cuz you know it’s Jason?”

Bruce nods sharply. He’s still looking at Dick.

“In that case,” she says, “there’s an obvious solution. I should be the one to deal with Hood.”

There’s a moment of silence, and then an explosion of protests. Cass is shaking her head and signing rapidly; Bruce and Barbara both start telling her that it’s not safe; even Dick is arguing against it.

“Think about it,” Stephanie tells them all, voice pitched to be heard clearly even over their protests. “I’m the only one here who doesn’t have any strong opinions on this. I didn’t know Jason before he died, and I don’t have any sort of bias that could impact how I see him. We need to be able to determine how to deal with Hood—and really, who else could do it except me?”

Sensing their incoming counter-arguments, she raises one hand. “Yes, yes, I know, I’m young and inexperienced, and interacting with Hood is potentially dangerous—but also, Hood has a reputation for protecting children, and there isn’t any reason for him to have a grudge against me the way he does you guys. So I think you’re all overestimating the risk.”

“I don’t—I’m not sure if I agree with that argument,” Dick says, eyes narrowing as he glances over.

Bruce makes his usual “hrm” noise in agreement.

“Well,” Stephanie tells them, “If it makes you feel better, Babs can help me out. The important thing is that I have to be the one gathering information and coming to conclusions; that doesn’t mean I have to go it totally alone.”

Bruce rubs one hand across his face. “We’ll talk about this more later.”

Steph grins. She knows it’s only a matter of time until they give in.

Tim wakes up slowly. The world feels warm and syrupy around him; his whole body is oddly loose, as though he’s relaxed muscles that were tense for so long he forgot they were being held taut at all.

He rolls his head off his arms, turns his face towards the light. A quilt slides off of him as he pushes himself into a sitting position.

“Morning, Timberina,” Jason calls. “How do you like your eggs? I’m making them with hash browns, if that biases your decision.”

“Anything is good,” Tim says, and then, when Jason hums skeptically, “sunny side up, please.”

Rubbing his eyes, he wanders over to the kitchen. Sure enough, Jason’s got hash browns frying along merrily on the stove, alongside a pan of bacon and another pan of what looks like some sort of steamed mushrooms. As Tim watches, Jason turns quickly to the fridge and pulls out a carton of eggs, then starts prepping another pan.

“By the way,” Tim says, “I should probably move the money today. But…” he can feel his face growing hot; he forges on anyways. “But—let’s talk about working together after that.”

“Alright, sounds good to me.” Without looking, Jason reaches and grabs an egg from the carton, effortlessly cracking it one-handed into the pan. “You’re still staying for breakfast though, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Cool.” Jason grabs another egg from the carton and is halfway through cracking it when he realizes it is not, in fact, an egg, but actually a crumpled-up hundred dollar bill. “Wha—?”

Tim can’t help it. He collapses into giggles. Hiding his face, he sinks behind the counter.

“You little sh*t,” Jason grumbles, amusem*nt thick in his own voice. He lobs the little balled-up dollar over the counter; it lands right on Tim’s head. “Dis—respectful, dis—tasteful, an affront to common decency—get off my lawn—”

Ducking to avoid the hail of rolled-up bills Jason is flinging at him, Tim tries and fails to control his laughter. Soon he’s devolving into silent wheezes that leave his abs aching.

Sighing dramatically, Jason turns back to the eggs; Tim takes the opportunity to quickly pocket all the crumpled-up bills. He’s sure he’ll be able to find a chance to hide them in Jason’s apartment again sometime soon.

Breakfast is even better Tim expected. In addition to the perfectly crispy hash browns, fluffy scrambled eggs, and succulent mushrooms, Jason also pulls out some orange juice he apparently squeezed fresh and even some farmer’s market berries that somehow taste both sweeter and tangier than any of the store-bought berries Tim’s eaten.

“You know,” Tim tells Jason absently as he shoves another heaping forkful of hot-sauce-covered hash browns into his mouth, “before I saw you without the helmet, I thought you might have gone all guns-and-duffle-bag-of-heads cuz you’d been working in a Gotham kitchen and all the health code violations made you snap.”

Jason laughs, almost choking on his own hash browns in the process—and then pauses, his brow furrowing. “Wait, what do you mean before you saw me without the helmet?”

“Um.” Tim swallows, his face going hot. Why did he say that? What if Jason gets angry that Tim knows his secret identity? But then again—he had introduced himself to Tim using his actual first name, so maybe—

“Hold on,” Jason says, “do you mean that—were you following Batman and Robin around, back in the day?”

Something about Tim’s reaction must give him away, because Jason barks out a laugh. “God, I shouldn’t even be surprised. Of course you were.” Chuckling, he turns back to his food. “Let me guess, you’ve known the secret identities of all of the capes in Gotham this whole time.”

Blushing, Tim nods.

“You must know a lot that most people don’t,” Jason muses.

“Uh, one of the econ professors at Gotham U is actually some sort of social experiment artist type trying to see how long it takes people to notice that someone in a position of authority is a fraud,” Tim offers shyly. “They don’t know anything about econ, they’ve just been winging it.”

When Jason laughs, Tim continues, “Harley used to leave dead mice on Catwoman’s windowsill all the time. It sounds bizarre but I think Selina genuinely appreciated it, cuz her cats are indoors but they really like mice?”

“Oh, also—the reason the Batburger ice cream machines are always broken is cuz a local witch placed a curse on them for giving her a brain freeze.”

“Wait, seriously?” Jason’s brow furrows. “I thought it was ’cause that way the company that made the machines makes a ton of money from being called in to fix them?”

“Nah, that’s McDonalds.” Tim takes another big bite of hash browns. “The real racket at Batburger is that they don’t pay any sort of royalties for using a ton of superheroes’ and Rogue’s names even though it logically seems like they’d absolutely have to be doing that. Even I’m not entirely sure how they manage it—you’d think Poison Ivy or Mr. Freeze or someone would shake the company down for their cut. And yet they don’t seem to be having any problems.”

“Maybe they’ve got their own invisible shrimp keeping up a steady supply of blackmail,” Jason offers. “The whole company’s threatening their way into Poison Ivy branded salads and FreezeShakes made by underpaid teenagers.”

Tim laughs. “Maybe.” He scrapes the last couple of bits of hash brown off his plate and then shoves back from the table. “Uh.”

Tim needs to find some sort of way to say goodbye, to politely pad out the fact that he’s leaving with the appropriate social pleasantries—but he has no idea what to say. Whatever it was that had allowed him to so easily speak just moments before has completely fled him; now, he just stares blankly, suddenly all too aware of Jason’s gaze on him.

“You need to transport the money, but you’ll be back later,” Jason helpfully fills in. When Tim nods, he reaches over and ruffles Tim’s hair again—Tim thinks he’s gotten more friendly touches from Jason in the last week than he’d had in the past year all added up together—and orders, “be careful.”

Tim nods again, a warmth igniting in his chest at the words.

He can feel Jason’s eyes on his back as he grabs the money and pulls his shoes back on it. It makes leaving hard, like he’s moving through something as viscous and sweet as honey.

But Tim’s been doing hard things for a long time now.

The door closes behind him; Jason’s line of sight is cut off, the warmth of his gaze withdrawing like a hand falling away from lonely skin.

Tim grits his teeth against the loss and starts tugging the hard-shelled suitcase along behind him, its cheap wheels catching on the cracks and bumps of the grimey sidewalk.

Here he is again.

The hospital room never seems to really change. The tulips from last time have of course wilted, and the bedcovers are a little more rumpled than the last time, but there’s still that same ever-present smell of blood under all of the antiseptic, and his father is just the same as always: asleep, insensible, inaccessible.

And yet for some reason, it feels different this time.

I forgot to bring fresh tulips, Tim realizes absently. But then again, does it really matter when it’s not like Jack will ever notice them?

He gives the suitcase a last tug, squeezing it through the door and into the hospital room. The hard plastic shell has gotten scratched and dirty; mud stains one side where a car splashed it, and there’s a new dent in the top. But hey, the money inside is the important thing, right?

It’s just what Jack asked for.

Tim watches his father’s slack, unknowing face—the way it shifts with each snore, the way his nose twitches slightly as if he’s unconsciously fighting off a sneeze. They might as well be on opposite sides of a pane of glass.

I brought your money, Tim could say. He could detail all of the careful planning that went into its procurement, the way he would have died if not Red Hood stepping in when Tim’s nerve gave out.

He could tell Jack about the sale. Could joke about the kryptonite fetishist, could describe the bizarre way he’d buried his arms elbow-deep into the glowing pile of space-rock.

He could share what it was like visiting Jason’s apartment as an actual guest and not just an invisible shadow, could talk about the delicious breakfast and how deeply he slept and how good it feels when Jason runs his hands through his hair.

But even in the quiet sanctity of Tim’s own mind, he can’t imagine Jack having any sort of reaction to any of that beyond, perhaps, another idle twitch of his nose—or maybe a wiggle of his fingers, a furrow of his brow, a roll onto his other side as he tries to get away from the annoying irritant disturbing his sleep.

Tim casts another quick glance over at the suitcase. It’s big, and it stands out from the rest of the room—all of the scratches, the mud, the dents, contrast jarringly against the smooth, well-bleached, sheet-corners-tautly-tucked-in world of the hospital. It should be obvious—should be impossible to miss.

Almost as hard to miss as your own child, standing right in front of you. Tim’s lips twist in an utterly humorless parody of a smile.

Hey, then again, maybe it’ll be different this time. After all, Jack always has cared about money more than his family.

Tim doesn’t bother trying to wake his father up, doesn’t move the suitcase to somewhere closer or more visible. He just turns around and walks out.

Either Jack will notice it or he won’t. It’s not as if anything Tim does will make a difference.

Tim stands staring out the window of one of Diamond District’s many coffee shops. He carefully ignores the way one of his shoulders is just brushing into the corner of the security camera’s view, instead focusing on watching the rain slowly roll down the glass.

It’s a warm rain, a spring rain—one of those mild, misty drizzles that seems designed to gently courier water to the thirsty root systems of new buds. Already Tim can see a few hardy sprouts in the planter bed outside the window shaking the Gotham dirt off their backs, baring soft green skin to the open air. He wonders if they’re one of the pollution-resistant strains Poison Ivy engineered, or if the earth really is so much cleaner here in Diamond District.

Probably the former. There are some things even wealth can’t insulate you from.

As the season progresses, these dripping rains will grow less and less frequent. Instead, the moisture will hang in the air, a humid pressure that looms over Gothamites’ shoulders like the hot breath of an animal. Crime in Gotham, Tim once overhead Nightwing muse, has a different character according to the different seasons; summer is the time of crimes of passion, of irrationality, of impulse. The tension of that hanging humid moisture demands something snap, and if the weather won’t then sometimes people do.

When it does rain, it’s in the form of heavy, pounding storms; storms that unzip the sky with the vivid force of their lightning, that shake the air like corrugated sheets with the sound of their thunder. Sometimes the rivers swell, bloated, gorged with rainfall; other times lightning strikes a tree, a gargoyle, a person. Some of the older families in Gotham, the ones that are more traditional, still take the lightning strikes as omens—still try to divine fortunes in what, or who, the lightning strikes, and how.

Mostly they’re inaccurate. Sometimes they’re not. Back when Tim was sitting in on that statistics class, he took on an investigation of the accuracy of the “divinations” as a sort of self-assigned homework. The Falcones, it turns out, tend to have the most predictions come true—but Tim’s pretty sure that’s because they were carrying out “fate” with their own hands.

The bell above the door rings; Cass walks in, smoothly folding up her umbrella as she goes. She smiles at Tim, gaze politely turned to hover just to the side of his face.

“Black coffee and cookies?” she asks.

“Sound good,” Tim replies.

She approaches the counter, already slipping a black Amex out of some hidden pocket. Tim watches for a moment, then turns back to watch the rain again.

Maybe he should feel bad for letting her buy coffee for him. After all, he’s a Drake—he can well afford to pay for his own coffee.

Then again… he’s a Drake, but it’s not as if he was written into his mother’s will. He’ll never inherit so much as a share from the company; they’d have to know about him for that. Before Mom would put his allowance into his account, she’d always have to run it through so many shell companies you’d think she was laundering money.

It’s not like it really matters either way, though. Even if he was flat broke, his account completely empty, he could always just pick up a little cash from one of the Falcones or Maronis or, hell, even just a Batburger cash register. And even beyond that—what does he really need money for anyhow? If it really came down to it he could simply pull food off the shelves, could wander Gotham like some post-modern hunter-gatherer lifting whatever he wanted from whatever room he passed through.

The labels of “rich” and “poor” don’t really apply to him; class distinctions are the burden placed upon those who belong in society, who have a place carved out for them—one they cannot leave behind, for better or (more often) for worse. They don’t apply to him, whose existence is like a piece of driftwood floating along the tops of the waves.

Has been like that. Lately things have been getting much more complicated.

Cass turns away from the counter, hands piled high with two drinks, along with a plate of almond pastries and what looks like a couple of snickerdoodle cookies. She gives Tim a little wink then starts heading over to the table they’d sat at before, balancing her burden with a grace that even long-time waiters would envy.

What would you think, Tim wonders as he watches her, if you knew the things I’ve done?

Kryptonite, sold uncaring for whose hands it would end up in. The point-blank shot he’d aimed at Black Mask’s head—he’d only been saved from becoming a murderer by his own ineptitude. Thievery and trespassing, attempted murder and blackmail, corporate espionage, spying—there’s no way she would smile at him in that same sweet, welcoming way if she knew what he was.

And… Tim’s heart skips a beat as he realizes something else for the first time.

What would Jason think?

He’s not entirely sure what’s going on between Red Hood and the Bats, but he knows that Jason is far from friendly with his once-family—and Cass is very much a Bat. Would Jason get angry if he found out? View it as a betrayal, cut Tim off, lock him out of his apartment, retract his promises, tell him to never come back?

“Coffee?” Cass asks softly, brow furrowing slightly in what looks like concern.

Tim swallows. Despite the way his stomach is twisting uncomfortably, he forces himself to smile, to walk over and sit down across from Cass.

It’s not like he’s even known Jason that long. So it shouldn’t matter anyways.

It doesn’t matter, he tells himself, taking a sip of coffee—but his knuckles are white against the handle.

Chapter 24: Threads

Chapter Text

“—need to have a works cited?”

“This is just meant to be a short response describing how you personally feel about the book,” Miss Donovan replies. “So no, there doesn’t need to be a works cited—you shouldn’t be citing anything at all. Are there any other questions?”

Hands shoot up across the room. “Yes, Sam?”

“So, we don’t need to have the names of our sources in parentheses throughout the text?”

For a minute, it looks like Miss Donovan is going to let out a loud, long-suffering groan. Steph can relate.

Tuning the class out, she turns her head to the side and stares out the window. Rain rolls down the glass; a little farther out, she can see the whip-thin branches of a young sapling swaying in the breeze. Shy green buds nestle in the branches’ junctions. Time, as always, passes relentlessly.

It hasn’t been that long since they got definitive proof that Red Hood really is Jason Todd. Intellectually, Steph knows no one expects her to have made much progress at this point—and yet she still feels the pressure looming over her. This is a big case, and more than that, one that’s of great personal importance to all of the Bats, so she really wants to do well. Even though right now she doesn’t even have the slightest idea of what approach she might want to take.

If she just had something—some thread to pull on, some idea of where to at least start—

Turning her handout over to access the blank back, Steph starts to idly doodle. A broad-shouldered form in a leather jacket, the distinctive outline of a certain helmet’s eye-slits, the rough shape of a motorcycle…

It doesn’t help. All she’s doing is wasting graphite.

She lets her mind wander. At first she just sketches out the bending sapling outside the window, but soon she finds herself drawing other things—a box of waffles, a falling box that sprays liquid across the floor—a strangely blurred face—

Maybe it would have been better for her to work on the invisible kid case; it definitely seems more up her alley. But then who would deal with the whole Red Hood clusterf*ck? As ill-suited as she is for it, everyone else is worse.

She roughly outlines two forms, one smaller, curled around their own belly; the other, larger form wraps the first figure up in a careful hug. It’s still hard for her believe the kid had a gunshot wound that whole time and neither Dick or her realized. How did they even get treated?

She knows they went to Leslie’s clinic, since Bruce had told them as much, but that still doesn’t explain how Leslie was able to operate. What was it Bruce had said, exactly? She strains her memory, trying to recall.

Dick had asked him the exact same question Steph is wondering now. And Bruce had just… frozen up, his jaw twitching in that way it does sometimes when he’s feeling especially stubborn.

And then —and then Steph had asked if it was something related to whatever it was that he wasn’t telling them, and Bruce had nodded.

Red Hood is Jason Todd. That was what he wasn’t telling them.

That means—the invisible kid and Red Hood cases are connected? And Bruce wasn’t going to tell anyone? Holy f*ck. Steph has to cover her mouth to suppress a slightly hysterical laugh.

Well hey, she thinks wryly, you wanted a thread to pull on, didn’t you?

Tim stands in front of Jason’s door, anxiety churning in his belly.

You told him you were coming back. He’s expecting you, Tim reminds himself.

But… Jason doesn’t know that Tim just met up with Cass. Would he still want to let Tim in, train him, cook for him, look at him if he knew that only a few hours before, he’d been happily drinking coffee with one of the Bats?

In fact, even setting that aside, why is Jason willing to do everything he does in the first place? What can Tim do for him—what value does he provide? Jason wouldn’t even take a cut of the kryptonite money.

He’s expecting you, Tim reminds himself again, but it sounds like a flimsy excuse even to him. Standing here on Jason’s doorstep, he feels a deep, visceral sense of unbelonging, as if the very stones beneath his feet are repelling him, as if every brick and beam is staring at him, judging him, finding him wanting—

But even that were true, at least that would mean someone was looking at him.

Whether it’s a stare of hatred, awe, or disgust, Tim doesn’t care. He just wants that feeling of a gaze on him—that knowledge that he really is real, that he really does exist, that he can be certain of it because this other person knows that he exists, too.

Steeling himself, Tim raises one fist and knocks on the door.

“Timmy!” Jason pulls the door open. “Come in, come in, I just finished making cookies.”

Tim trails inside after him, pausing to take off his shoes as he goes.

When he pads into the kitchen, Jason immediately hands him a plate loaded up with several gooey chocolate chip cookies and a glass of frothy, ice cold milk. “Man,” Jason says as he joins Tim at the table, “I really underestimated the number of hiding places you found for that cash. Like, how did you even think of putting it onto the top of the microwave?” He shakes his head, chuckling.

Tim doesn’t know how to reply, so he just stays quiet. They eat in silence, Tim trying a little too hard to keep from spraying crumbs everywhere.

Jason gulps down his last sip of milk then says, “Right. Training. Is now a good time to talk?”

Tim’s heart is pounding hard in his chest and he’s feeling a little sick to his stomach, but he still nods. It helps that he’s a little curious about what training is going to look like—will Jason teach him how to throw a Bataraang? To grapple down a building? To do a flip?

“Before anything else,” Jason says, “we have to establish a healthy baseline for you to build off of. Without good nourishment and solid stamina, your ability to pick up the skills I’m teaching you will be impeded—and it’ll make things more dangerous for you in the field in general.”

“We’ll start by covering the basics of nutrition,” Jason continues, “Then get into meal planning and basic cooking skills. We’ll also be working on bodily conditioning at the same time, along with establishing a solid stretching routine and sleep schedule. I know it doesn’t sound very interesting, but these things are really important for a solid foundation. Plus, we can start you on first aid training right away as well.”

Tim nods. He’s little disappointed he’ll have to wait on the batarang-throwing, but he understands why Jason wants to start slow. He’s excited for the first aid training, too. Tim may already have some basic knowledge, but it’s spotty—really just the results of whatever frantic googling was necessary to give him the information he needed to cope with whatever injury he’d happened to incur. It’s really just luck that, aside from that time Black Mask shot him, he hasn’t gotten any injuries beyond his ability to treat. If Tim can get proper first aid training, that should pretty drastically raise his life expectancy.

“And…” Jason hesitates, slowly turning his empty glass in one hand. “We should also talk about your powers.”

Tim goes utterly still. His mouth feels like it’s filled with chalk, his lips like they’ve been glued together. But Jason is clearly waiting for a response, so at last he manages to unstick himself enough to say, “What do you mean?”

“I know that for metahumans, sharing details about their powers is very personal,” Jason says. “So don’t feel pressured to share anything you aren’t comfortable with. But it’s pretty clear that right now, they’re putting you in danger. If talking about your powers can help you control them—”

“I can’t.” Tim swallows, a little surprised by his own words. “I can’t control them. And I don’t know how they work. They’re totally inconsistent—every time I’ve thought that I understood how they worked, something totally contradictory happens.”

“Alright.” Jason leans back in his chair, face thoughtful. “What do you know about your powers?”

When Tim is silent, he adds, “it’s fine if what you say seems contradictory, or if you’re not sure how accurate it is. And like I said before, you don’t have to share anything at all if you don’t want to—that’s fine too.”

There’s another long stretch of silence. Jason doesn’t say anything to break it this time, just watches Tim quietly.

“People… people don’t see me.”

Bus drivers closing the doors before he can get out. Baristas forgetting his order. Standing unseen at his father’s bedside.

“They don’t notice me. It’s like I’m not there at all.”

Like he’s a ghost, the only evidence of his existence whatever meager changes he can work on the world.

“Sometimes I can make someone see me for a little while, if I’m doing something really difficult to ignore. But then their attention inevitably slips, and they forget I was ever there at all.”

Yelling at Jack, clapping right by his ear, trying to make him acknowledge Tim’s presence for even a few seconds.

“Some people notice me more easily than others. I used to think it was about how observant someone was, but there are some extremely observant people who never see me at all—no matter how much noise I make, no matter how I’m acting.”

No matter how much I needed them to, Tim thinks, remembering how Catwoman had completely missed Tim getting grazed by a bullet even though he was just a few feet away.

It’s a strangely bitter thought. Why should he presume that he has some sort of right to being noticed? That the world owes him anything? This is just how things are.

He can feel Jason’s gaze locked onto him. When Tim glances up, there’s some strange expression on his face—something Tim doesn’t know how to interpret.

Tim looks away, casts about for something to say. “Animals can see me fine, though—cats are especially good at noticing me, actually. And plants can sense me as well.”

He still has no idea if Poison Ivy would be able to pick up on his presence through the Green. He supposes that if they’re really going to figure out exactly how his powers work, that might be one of the things on the list to test.

Jason doesn’t ask about that, though. He looks like he’s biting back some question, but whatever it is, he doesn’t broach it.

“I do show up on camera, but it’s always super blurry. I’ve gotten really good at avoiding being filmed; it makes my life a lot easier. And when I can’t avoid being filmed, I’ll hack in and erase the footage.”

Jason is still silent. Tim wishes he’d speak up. It’s harder this way—instead of being able to just mindlessly answer Jason’s questions, he has to actively dig around for things to share, and that’s so much worse.

“Oh,” Tim adds. “Mirrors don’t work for me.”

Jason’s head shoots up. “What?”

“Mirrors don’t work for me,” Tim repeats. For some reason, this is the detail of his powers that hurts the most to share. “Maybe I’m actually a vampire, not a metahuman?” He tries to smile, but he thinks it falls flat. Not that he knows; it’s not like he’s ever seen what his smiles look like.

“I’ve seen your reflection, though,” Jason says. “When you were first following me, I used a shop window to look over my shoulder.”

Tim stares. What did I look like? he almost wants to ask, but he bites the question back. Tim knows what he looks like—he has his mom’s smile, and the same blue eyes as hers.

Except—he doesn’t know what his nose looks like. He knows his eyes are blue, but not the shape of them. Not the contour of his browbone, not the arch of his lips. He knows his mom’s face like the back of his hand, and sometimes that’s enough to imagine something that might be his face—but he doesn’t know for sure.

Hell, maybe the only thing he inherited from his mom is his eyes, and the rest of his face is a carbon copy of Jack’s.

He doesn’t think so, though. If that was true, how Mom be able to look at him and be so delighted, in her own quietly smug way, with how similar the two of them are?

“That just goes to show how inconsistent my powers are,” Tim tells Jason at last. “I have no clue why you would be able to see my reflection when I can’t.”

“You said you can’t see your reflection,” Jason says, “But can you see your own body when you’re not looking into a mirror? Your hands, for instance?”

“Yeah.” It would horrible if Tim couldn’t even see his own hands. At that point, he wouldn’t be able to do anything—he really wouldn’t exist at all.

“But you’ve never seen your face?”

Tim swallows. “No.” The word drops into the air between them like a stone into a still pond.

“Okay,” Jason says. He leans back, rubs one hand over his mouth. “Okay.”

“I ask because, well.” Jason sits forward in his chair again. “The way I see you now, everything is crystal clear except your face.”

The words make a little shiver run down Tim’s spine. He suddenly feels so naked, so soft and vulnerable, like a crab that’s been pulled out of its shell. Jason’s gaze itches against his skin. He swallows.

“When you were first following me around, I could barely see you at all,” Jason tells him. “I’d just see a little flash in the corner of my eye, the faintest impression of a figure—like a shadow or a ghost.”

A ghost. Yeah, that sounds about right.

“Over time, you seemed to get a little more visible—or maybe I just got better at picking up on the signs that you were there.”

It’s still strange to think that Jason knew he was there the whole time—that he really was putting that food out on purpose, leaving that quilt on the back of the couch knowing that Tim was curling up under it at night to keep warm.

“But then,” Jason says, “when I saw you standing in Black Mask’s office, it was like my vision suddenly went into perfect focus—I could see everything except your face.”

Tim remembers that moment: Glasses and Black Mask turning, their eyes locked onto Tim, at the exact same moment that the window shattered, glass flying everywhere as Jason rolled to his feet, tackled Glasses out of the way, and then stabbed a knife through Black Mask’s hand. The belated realization that Tim had been shot, and then the strange dreamlike incoherence following that, everything dissolving into a strange mixture of pain and panic and the odd, absolute intimacy of being held by someone—of being saved by someone.

If I got shot a second time, would Jason do all of that again?

And yet, on the heels of that, another thought: he can’t even see your face.

He can’t see Tim’s face. He doesn’t know what to do with Tim, doesn’t seem to have any purpose or plans for him at all; he wouldn’t even willingly take the money Tim brought him. He’s not like Mom at all.

“Have you always had these powers?” Jason asks.

“I think so.” Mom once told him that the reason she and Jack didn’t travel the first couple years after he was born because the nannies didn’t always notice when he was crying—and then, of course, eventually they stopped noticing him entirely. “But I think they weren’t as strong when I was little.” After all, even by the time he was five or six, Mom was still trying to teach him how to be noticeable, how to stand out; was still trying to groom him for a role he would never be able to fulfill. She wouldn’t have done that if it was obvious from the start that his powers were too strong to be overcome.

Jason hums, taps one finger against the table. “You said there were times when you would think one thing was true of your powers, and then things would change.”

“Yeah.” Tim runs one finger along the rim of his glass of milk. “I used to think that people would only forget about objects I touched as long as I was touching them. Like sometimes I’d throw rocks to distract someone; they wouldn’t see me throwing it, but they’d turn when they heard it hit the ground.”

Jason grins. “Clever.”

Smiling tentatively back, Tim continues, “There have been some times lately when people haven’t noticed objects that should have been really obvious, though. It seems like maybe sometimes my powers cling to the things I touch, or places where I spend enough time, and then…” he shrugs. “They get ignored too.”

“Huh,” Jason says.

A moment passes in silence. Tim doesn’t exactly have a lot of experience in carrying on conversations, but he thinks this one is winding down—or maybe he just hopes as much.

“One last question,” Jason says at last. He lifts his gaze, skewers Tim with it like a stake through the corpse of a butterfly—if you can’t see my face how can you look at me like that, Tim wants to demand—and asks, “Are there other people besides me who can see you?”

Yes, Tim should answer. My mom could always see me. And so could the Bats. All the Bats can see me. That’s why I keep on getting coffee with Bruce Wayne’s daughter, even though it’s objectively such an incredibly stupid and dangerous thing to do.

He really, really should say that. And yet Tim can’t seem to so much as open his mouth.

“Alright,” Jason says at last. His voice, which often seems as if it were built for gruffness, is almost painfully gentle. “We don’t have to talk about this anymore. I’ve learned a lot already; thank you for being willing to share what you did.” He gives Tim a smile. “I’ll do some research; I have some connections that may be able to help provide some insight. We’ll figure this out together, I promise.”

A thick lump forms in Tim’s throat. Biting his lip, he nods. “Alright.”

“Hey, Mom.” Tim leans over the arm of her chair, only narrowly resisting the urge to crawl into her lap. Mom’s been paying more attention to him ever since she learned about his photos, but he’s not sure how far her newfound indulgence will stretch. Probably not far enough to forgive him messing up the lines of her silk skirt. “You said you can see me fine, right? Not like how Dad only sometimes sees me, but mostly forgets about me?”

“That’s right, darling. And you don’t have to call him Dad. It’s hardly as if he deserves that title when he won’t even go to the effort of remembering you exist.”

Tim supposes he sees the logic in that. “Not like how Jack sees me?” he corrects himself.

“Yes, that’s right.” Mom gives Tim a smile—subtle and small, but undeniably there.

“So you know what my face looks like, right?”

“Of course, dear,” Mom says.

Tim swallows, gathers his courage as best he can.

“Can you describe it to me? What my face looks like, I mean?”

Mom hesitates. “Well,” she says, “it’s hard to describe a face. You know my skills mostly lie in categorizing artifacts, don’t you?” She casts another glance at him, gives him that same little smile from before. “You look like me, I suppose.”

Tim stares up at her, his heart pooling with some strange hot, aching emotion. For the first time in his life, he feels seen—really and truly seen.

“Yes,” Mom says slowly. She sounds almost surprised. No, delighted, Tim decides. Delighted by the reminder of how alike they are. “You have my eyes. Blue eyes.”

Later she’ll tell him that he has some of her expressions too—the same tells she had to learn how to quell so no one would be able to realize when she was lying, the same sly, subtle little smile as the one she wears in private. But most of all, Tim will always remember her telling him that he has her blue eyes.

This time, Tim can’t fall asleep so easily.

The blanket feels too soft, the couch too yielding. Tim keeps on feeling Jason’s touch on his forehead, smoothing back his hair—keeps on thinking about Jason plopping his wings down in Tim’s fries, and finding books for him to read, and promising to keep him safe.

Keeps on thinking, also, about his mom. About her pale, icy hair, pulled back into a neat chignon; her lily perfume, spritzed delicately on each wrist; her perfect almond nails and the soft sound they would make when she would tap them impatiently against her desk. Everything about her measured, everything about her reserved; speaking to her, there was always the sense of something held back, some words unspoken yet still considered with careful attention.

Jason isn’t like that at all. Nothing about him is held back, nothing about him is restrained. He dives into whatever lies before him with total abandon, committing completely. He’s bold, decisive, utterly confident—when he moves, it’s as if he makes the world bend around him.

Every touch from Mom—every brush of knuckles against his cheek, every time she ran her nails through his hair, every squeeze of his hand—was weighed with care. Praise never slipped out of her thoughtlessly; she never smiled at him impulsively, or glanced at him without meaning it. She never loved him by accident, and so she never had to take any of it back.

But Jason acts like there’s no risk. He makes promises fearlessly and gives generously. Even before he knew Tim’s name, Jason was already bursting through glass windows and shooting his way through Mask goons just to save him. It’s as if he has no comprehension of what this might cost him, as if he doesn’t know how not to give.

Which means that, someday soon, when he does learn the price he has to pay for his generosity…

Suddenly, Tim can’t bear to just lie here like this anymore. He springs up, pushing the blanket back from his shoulders. The apartment is dark and silent around him; he pads carefully across the room to grab his shoes and jacket, then unlatches the window and steps gently out into the night.

It’s raining, of course. Water drips down the fire escape, leaving the steps slick and the railing ice-cold. Tim makes his way down slowly, not wanting to slip and break an ankle tonight of all nights.

Even in the rain, Crime Alley is alive. A motorcycle speeds past, sending a wave of mud and oil-slick puddle water splashing up behind it. The strip club a little ways down from Jason’s apartment has its lights on, spilling neon pink and the smell of sweat and alcohol and cheap perfume out onto the sidewalk; as Tim watches, the doors open and a drunk man stumbles out, escorted by two security guards. This is one of the strip clubs, he knows, that’s under the Red Hood’s protection.

The whole point of going out like this was to stop thinking about Jason and his foolish, almost unthinking generosity, his promises that he doesn’t ever hesitate to make, his warm couch with the blanket on the back and the way he still can’t see Tim’s face.

Tim walks faster. He needs to get out of Crime Alley. Everything here is Red Hood’s territory, all of it infused with his presence and covered with his fingerprints.

There’s a huge new tag on the apartment building on the corner that has the caved-in roof. The spray paint is running in the rain; weather waits for no man, no matter how pressing the demands of territorial expansion and signaling may be.

There’s new growth in the cracks in the pavement, too; Tim sees dandelions and bits of grass and other weeds he doesn’t know how to identify peeking their little green heads up from the splitting concrete.

They’re such hardy things, used to endless rain and little sunlight and poison in what bits of soil they do have. Would they even know how to grow if someone transplanted them into some pretty little pot in Metropolis? Is it possible to wither from too much of a good thing, from too much given too quickly when you’re used to eeking along on only a bit more than nothing at all?

Tim turns his collar up and keeps walking.

There’s a parking complex near where the Bowery begins that’s held up surprisingly well over the years. In some other city, it would be a place to stargaze, maybe, or for teenagers to exchange kisses where there’s no chance of their parents butting in—here, it mostly serves as a convenient location for buying and selling stolen cars.

Sure enough, when Tim steps inside, there are a handful of small-time crooks in hoodies and cheap, plasticky windbreakers leaned up against their wares: Hondas and Toyotas and—is that a police car? Jesus, Gotham becomes more itself every day.

Turning away, Tim heads up the stairs. There’s no way it’ll be clear enough to see much of anything, but he still wants to at least try peering out into the rain—give his nighttime roaming some illusion of a purpose, of a destination that justifies the trip.

Just as he reaches the top floor, the previously relatively steady rain abruptly turns heavy, pounding down like there’s something on the earth it would like to flatten or drown. Thunder rumbles in the distance; Tim squats down on his heels, huddling deeper into his jacket.

There’s a puddle right in front of him. Rain drops keep sending ripples through the surface, but it’s still clear enough to reflect the bolt of lightning that skitters across the sky above.

All Tim would have to do is lean a little forward on his haunches. He already knows a bit of what he should see—he’s neglected cutting his hair often enough to know it’s black, and Mom told him he has her eyes, her smile.

Jason said he could see Tim, looking over his shoulder and using a shop window. There’s no logical reason Tim shouldn’t be able to do the same thing with this puddle.

Maybe just his hand, at first? Tim could just reach out a hand and see if it’ll be mirrored in the puddle below. That’s not so hard, right?

Except that he’s frozen, every bit of him calcified, hard as some organic thing that got abandoned in a stream for eons.

Thunder rolls above. Tim is still as a rabbit, although there’s nothing looking at him at all. Unmoving and unlooking, he’s like a pebble on a shore, like he’s nothing at all.

At long last he manages to get up again and walk back to Jason’s apartment, where he slips inside like a ghost.

Chapter 25: Discovery

Chapter Text

First things first: Stephanie needs to double check her little theory.

Leslie’s clinic is as busy as ever; Steph holds the door open for a pregnant woman as she enters, and the waiting room itself already contains a pale-faced teen clutching at his stomach, a middle-aged woman grimly keeping pressure on a huge cut that’s sliced through the flesh between her thumb and first finger, and a bruiser type who keeps on glancing around like Batman’s going to pop out of some shadowy corner.

There’s a harried looking woman only a couple of years older than Steph herself manning the front desk, probably one of the endless rotation of Gotham U Pre-Med students that tend to volunteer with Leslie for two or three weeks before realizing they can’t take the heat. “What’s wrong?” she demands.

“Nothing, I just need to talk to Leslie when she has a minute,” Steph tells her. That done, she heads over to one of the remaining chairs and settles in with her Calc homework; no reason not to make the most of her time, right?

Steph manages to get about six problems done (she’s definitely gonna need to ask Babs for some help if she wants to do anywhere in the realm of “okay” on the next quiz) before Leslie walks out and waves her over.

“I’ve got a minute, but I won’t be able to talk long,” she tells Steph as she heads up to the sink and begins peeling off her gloves.

“That’s fine. I just have a few questions.” Steph watches as Leslie throws the gloves away and starts briskly washing her hands. “That kid you treated, the one who was hard to see—who brought them in?”

Leslie’s movements slow. For a moment, she doesn’t reply. Finally, she says, “Jason. It was Jason Todd.”

“I couldn’t see the patient at all at first.” She isn’t looking at Steph, just watching her hands as she scrubs under her nails with a little too much pressure. “I just saw Jason. He was covered in blood, but it was the patient’s, not his. After he explained the situation, I was able to see their form, but not much more than that. Jason had to come into the operating room with me, to guide me—several times, he had remind me what I was doing there at all.”

She sighs. “After the surgery, I had to leave momentarily to deal with another crisis and—I—I forgot. I forgot they were there. Jason had fallen asleep—he was exhausted, working against their powers took a lot out of him—and… the patient left. They left, and no one noticed.”

Leslie glances over at Steph, her expression dry, maybe even a little cynical. “If this is you trying to find some evidence that Jason isn’t the Red Hood after all, you won’t get it here. He was carrying that awful helmet of his with him.”

Steph swallows. “Did he mention how he knew the kid? Anything about who they were, or what their relationship was? Or—” the words slip out without her quite realizing it “—who shot them?”

Leslie shakes her head. “He didn’t have their medical information memorized, I know that much. Aside from that…” she shrugs.

There’s a long moment of silence. Leslie turns off the faucet but doesn’t start drying her hands yet. “He was very protective of them,” she says finally, softly.

Steph waits to see if Leslie has anything else to add, but she just dries off her hands, pulls on a fresh pair of gloves, and leaves with nothing more than a quick nod goodbye.

As promised, training starts slow. It’s not very hands on at first; Jason kicks things off with several lectures on everything ranging from macros to posture to the importance of drinking lots of water. Honestly, a lot of it feels more like the kind of “take care of yourself” nagging Tim would sometimes see on TV than anything, which… he knows he’s supposed to be annoyed about it, but… it’s actually weirdly really nice? It’s oddly pleasant to have someone else so concerned about if he’s wearing supportive shoes, and getting enough protein, and staying hydrated—it makes Tim feel like he’s really important.

(But how can he be, when he isn’t doing anything for Jason? He isn’t providing any value, isn’t fulfilling any need, isn’t serving any purpose—so why is Jason willing to do all of this? Why does he care so much regardless?)

It’s also a little difficult to be pissy about the lectures when they’re objectively the easiest thing about the training. Trying to establish a good sleep schedule is literally hellish (what do you mean he can’t drink coffee in the afternoon?), his new stretching routine is making Tim feel like his muscles have been replaced with tangled wire, and, well, as for conditioning…

Tim’s embarrassed to admit it, but he actually thought that conditioning might not end up being that bad. Sure, he’s no marathon runner, but he criss-crosses the city practically every day just to get where he needs to be; if he had a smart watch with a steps counting app, he would be blowing all of those suburban moms in their Lulu Lemon yoga pants out of the water.

As it turns out, that’s still nowhere near enough to be on the same level as a vigilante. It stings a little to realize just how out of shape he is, especially when he compares the ease with which Jason completes the simple body weight exercises he’s having Tim do with his own pained attempts. Still, Jason is always encouraging—he never pushes Tim too far, and he constantly reminds Tim that everyone starts somewhere, and that the important thing to focus on his own progress, rather than comparing himself with others.

In contrast to his struggles with conditioning, Tim takes to learning first aid with surprising ease. Jason covers everything Tim thought he knew over again from the ground up, whether that means helping him perfect his CPR technique or making him memorize all of the things he needs to do to minimize the chances of infection when treating wounds. The sheer amount of information Jason has to share is a little crazy—ten different ways to improvise a splint, fifteen ways to perform a tracheostomy in a pinch, the warning signs for everything from going into diabetic shock to having a seizure… it’s like getting a crash course in being an ER doctor.

Jason stresses again and again that these are just for emergencies, that if it’s at all possible he should always get treated by a professional, but… it’s still really reassuring to know that he has these skills in his back pocket, just in case.

Ultimately, the thing Tim struggles with the most is how to cook. Everything else Jason is teaching him, he has at least some level of knowledge to build off of—but Tim knows absolutely nothing about cooking. Jason keeps on instinctively assuming that Tim knows how to do basic things like mince garlic, or boil water, or—hell—even turn off the burner when he’s done. In reality, Tim genuinely knows absolutely nothing—meaning that Jason continually has to revise his expectations down, circling back to teach him the most basic skills.

After one particularly grueling session, during which Tim managed to somehow turn their dinner into a grayish mush despite Jason supervising his every move with an eagle eye, Jason groans, “God, kid, what did you even eat?”

Tim perks up, sensing an opportunity to get out of consuming the technically-edible but wholly unappetizing results of his efforts. “There’s actually this really great pizzeria in the Bowery that I would get food from a lot.”

Jason straightens up, casting a quick glance over at the grayish goo meant to be their dinner. It seems to wiggle a bit in its pot, as though giving a little wave. “Hm,” he says. “How late does it stay open?”

Tim grins. “I’ll go put my shoes on.”

“Make sure you grab a coat,” Jason calls. “It’s chilly out.”

Tim flaps a hand back in acknowledgment, too busy trying to remember where he left the shearling jacket Jason gave him the week before to respond verbally.

A minute later, they’re walking out of Jason’s apartment together. Jason tosses Tim a helmet—“even your thick skull won’t make it through a crash without a little help”—and then they’re off, whizzing through the streets of the East End while Tim clings onto Jason’s back like a burr.

Alanzo’s looks the same as always—same neon red sign, same smell of baking pizza dough rising out into the cold air, same checkered tile flooring and red leather stools just visible through the grease-stained glass. It’s honestly a little disorienting, to see it looking like nothing’s changed at all when it feels like the whole world’s gone topsy-turvy beneath Tim’s feet in the time since he last visited.

The last time I was here, Tim thinks as he stares blankly in through the pizzeria’s windows, Mom was still alive.

That was back when he was still trying to figure out a way to free Gianna—back before stealing the kryptonite, back before getting shot by Black Mask. Back before coffee with Cass and dinners with Jason. It feels like another life.

“So, uh, are we gonna go in?” Jason asks.

Tim has to clear his throat before he can respond. “I’ll wait outside.”

Jason’s brow furrows a little, but he just says, “what do you want to order?”

Canadian bacon, onion, and artichoke hearts. “Uh, pepperoni.”

Jason nods. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

Tim waits by Jason’s motorcycle. He tries not to peer in the windows, instead focusing on examining the concrete. Hey, there are some new weeds—that’s one thing that’s different from the last time he visited.

Jason comes back a couple minutes later with a huge, greasy bag in hand.

“How’s Alanzo?” The words slip out without Tim quite registering them. “And Gianna, is she still there? I mean—she’s the girl with the red-dyed hair.”

“Yeah, she was there. Bagged the food for me. Both of them looked fine.” Jason casts Tim a quick glance. “Why do you ask?”

“Uh. I’ll explain while we eat. Did you get the pepperoni?”

“And garlic bread on the side,” Jason confirms. “C’mon, let’s go somewhere with a better view.”

They go to the parking complex where East Enders sell stolen cars. Tim studiously avoids looking into any of the puddles.

Jason throws down his leather jacket so they have somewhere dry to sit, and then opens up the bag, releasing hot, delicious-smelling pizza fumes into the air. Tim can feel his stomach grumbling—it’s been way too long since he last ate Alanzo’s food.

For a little while they’re quiet, busy with their food—God, the garlic bread is good, Tim can’t believe he never got any before now—but once they’ve demolished a couple slices each, Tim forces himself to speak up.

“Uh, so you remember how I ended up in that whole mess with Black Mask?”

Jason hums in acknowledgment.

“Well…” well, I thought Black Mask killed my mom because he found out I was trying to save Gianna from him? There’s no way Tim’s going to say that. The words don’t even get far enough to stick in his throat, just sit in his belly like stones.

Tim takes a fortifying bite of garlic bread, tries a different angle. “Like I told you earlier, I used to follow you and Batman around, back when you were Robin. And, uh, I found this place after one of your patrols. I was really hungry, and it was the only place open that I could find, so…” he shrugs. “Their food’s really good, right?”

“You can say that again,” Jason agrees, which is high praise from possibly the most pretentious foodie Tim’s ever been around.

“It’s cuz Alanzo has a deal with Falcone—I don’t know the details, but I think he did Falcone some favor or something, so now Falcone’s people protect the pizzeria and all Alanzo has to do is launder some money for him. Which means he doesn’t actually have to be profitable, and he can use as fancy ingredients as he wants to. It’s a passion project, you know?”

“Sounds like a good deal,” Jason says.

“Maybe even a good retirement plan for a crime lord,” Tim replies, managing to deliver it dryly enough that Jason snorts cream soda out of his nose.

“I’ll keep that in mind.” Jason bunches up one of the complimentary napkins and wipes off his upper lip, then directs his gaze back to Tim, encouraging him to get to the point.

“Anyways, I’ve been going there to eat for a while. The food’s good, and uh…” I used to imagine Alanzo actually knew me? That sounds pathetic. “I used to sneak extra ingredients into his fridge, so I could ask for custom pizza orders. Alanzo’s more observant than most, so he was better at remembering that kind of thing—other places, I’d ask for pepperoni and they’d give me cheese, or they’d just straight up forget I was there and not give me my food at all, but here I could get a whole Canadian bacon and onion pizza no problem.”

“Onion? On pizza? Gross.”

Tim very maturely throws a napkin at him.

“How does this connect to Black Mask, though?” Jason asks.

Tim had been sort of hoping Jason would forget about that.

“Well, because I was there so much, I noticed right away when Alanzo hired Gianna. Or—I don’t know if hired is the right word. It was more like he adopted her? Anyway, though, basically the first time I went for pizza and Gianna was there, some of the Ibanescus’ thugs came ‘round to try to hold the place up, you know, demand some protection money.”

“But Alanzo’s was already under Falcone’s protection, so there was trouble,” Jason fills in.

“Yup. Well—they left, and everything seemed fine at first, but then… well, I don’t know exactly how it happened, but the next time I came by, Gianna was gone and Alanzo was calling all of the cops on Falcone’s payroll, trying to find a way to make someone care about finding her.”

Tim twists another napkin in his hands, starts picking at its corners. “I figured if I found out what happened to her, I could leak the information to the cops—you know, try to draw the Bats’ attention that way. I knew the Ibanescus were involved somehow, so I went to one of the businesses under their protection, and then—well, long story short, I started following some of their underlings around, tracking all of the different people they were trafficking. And, well… eventually I managed to find Gianna.”

He falls silent, remembering the grimey little warehouse, the chains that bound each person to their table, the pinkish dust collecting on their makeshift face masks. Scarecrow, stalking up and down the aisles, lecturing in a mockery of his past as a professor.

“Kid?”

Tim shakes the memories off. “It was an operation involving Scarecrow, using compounds from one of Poison Ivy’s pollen and people trafficked through the Ibanescus. I knew there had to be someone bigger behind it. Turns out it was Black Mask.”

“Oh, so that’s why—?”

Tim shrugs, lets Jason draw his own conclusions. He can’t talk about Mom. He just can’t.

“Right.” Jason huffs out a sigh. “Well, kid, I still think trying to shoot Mask was a dumb f*cking thing to do—but I can’t say I don’t understand the impulse.” He reaches over and ruffles Tim’s hair. “Just don’t do it again, yeah? You’re going to give me gray hair before I can even legally drink.”

He musses Tim’s hair a little more, then returns to eating his pizza. “That operation you mentioned—where was it located?”

“Warehouse not too far from the docks. And there’s a dog-fighting ring they were running too, in the Alley.” Tim tosses the now-shredded napkin aside in favor of picking up another piece of garlic bread. “I have a big dossier with information about the whole thing—stuff I tried to give to the cops.” He shrugs a little jerkily. “Commissioner Gordon never noticed it. Powers working overtime, I guess.”

He glances over at Jason. “You found anything on that?”

“Yes, but,” Jason warns, “I don’t think you’re gonna like it.”

Tim laughs a little bitterly. What, does Jason think it’s going to be such a shock to hear that his powers are f*cked up, that they don’t make sense, that there’s no way to control them?

“Hit me with it,” he says. He reaches out, grabs another slice of pizza, takes a big bite.

Jason eyes him quietly for a long moment, then finally speaks.

“I don’t think they work the way you think they do,” he says.

I don’t think they work at all, Tim thinks.

Jason leans forward, dusting bits of parmesan cheese off his greasy finger tips. “You believe that they should be bound by some sort of hard logic, that they must have some sort of fundamental law they’ve actually have been obeying this whole time and if you just figure out what that law is, everything will make sense. But I don’t think they do. I think they act based on you.”

What? Tim sputters, nearly choking on the bite of pizza in his mouth.

“Think about how many inconsistencies there are, how many contradictions.” Jason’s on a roll now, the words pouring out of him like he’s been holding this back for a while now. “If your powers can break the same rules seemingly governing them, that means those ‘rules’ aren’t fundamentally controlling how they function—there must be some other deeper, underlying mechanism. It only makes sense if they’re actually governed by you—they generally act logically because you think they should act logically, but sometimes you have your own other assumptions… hence the contradictions.”

Tim wants to tell Jason to shut up, to just let him think for a minute, but he can’t seem to get the words out. “Occam’s Razor—what’s more likely, that your powers have some incredibly, insanely complicated, contradictory set of rules, or that they’re like every other meta’s powers—controlled by the person they belong to?”

Shut up, shut up, shut up.

Jason continues relentlessly. “That also explains why you’re sometimes clearer, and other times harder to see—like how you were crystal clear when I saw you in Black Mask’s headquarters, but it got so much harder to see you when Leslie and I were operating on you. You believed we wouldn’t be able to see you properly—you literally said that we wouldn’t be able to see you properly—so your powers made it true.”

“This could also explain why you’re not able to see your reflection, and why no one is able to see your face. You’re used to not being visible—you don’t think of yourself as visible—so you aren’t visible to yourself. You don’t know what your face looks like, so of course other people can’t see it either. It’s not about your powers, it’s about how you perceive them.”

Jason finally, blessedly, goes silent. It barely makes it any easier for Tim to concentrate, though—his thoughts are wiggling away from him like eels from the net, twisting away whenever he tries to grasp them. He doesn’t know how to argue against this—he just knows it’s wrong.

It has to be wrong.

“That’s not—there’s still so much that doesn’t explain, though,” Tim finally blurts out. “Like—what the hell is the deal with how I appear on cameras, and—and why could you see my reflection when I can’t—”

Except that Jason already covered this. The contradictions come from other underlying expectations Tim has, ones that counter his usual assumptions. Tim assumed that Bats could always see him, so Jason could—even when Tim himself couldn’t.

And yet, still—

Why didn’t Commissioner Gordon see the envelope? Why didn’t Catwoman hear him cry out when he got shot? Why can’t anyone see him?

Why has he had to live like this?

“What, so then this is all my fault?” The words burst out of Tim with so much venom that he hardly recognizes his own voice. “Everything that happened—I chose to be like this? Is that what you’re saying?”

“No! No, f*ck, that is not what I’m saying.” Jason reaches over and bodily picks Tim up, unceremoniously folding him into his arms. Tim’s finally getting that hug he wanted, and he can’t even appreciate it. “You did not choose this. This is not your fault.”

“You deserve better than this,” Jason says, tucking Tim’s head under his chin. “You never should have been so alone. Nothing about this was ever fair to you.” His presence is inescapable, a warm weight that forces Tim’s tense muscles to loosen inch by inch.

Tim is silent. He doesn’t know what to say, doesn’t know what to think. As much as he rails against it, Jason’s words make a certain intuitive sense. It doesn’t immediately explain everything yet, but Tim thinks that probably, if he thought everything through, it would eventually. All of these tangled assumptions and memories and superstitions—he’s like a spider caught in its own web.

Something bitter and poisonous rises within him like a snake lifting its head, like a set of fangs unsheathing from soft pink flesh. How long has he lived like this? How much has he lost? And for what? For what?

“I’m not trying to guilt you,” Jason says. Tim can feel the rumble of his voice in his chest, he’s tucked up so close. “What I’m trying to do is help you find a way to make things better in the future.”

Fixing him, freeing from the mire of his powers—is actually possible? And if it is—what will it cost him?

Tim closes his eyes and curls closer to Jason. He doesn’t want to think about this anymore. Isn’t it enough to just sit here, held warm and close? No matter what it costs him, no matter what it means—isn’t this enough for now?

Who shot the kid? That’s the question on Stephanie’s mind, the thought that she keeps on picking at like a scab. Who shot the kid? Or—was it a ricochet, some bullet the kid caught just by being in the wrong place at the time? An accident that Red Hood happened to witness?

That doesn’t seem likely—the chances of that happening would have to be vanishingly small. And yet... for someone to shoot the kid, they would have to see the kid, and so far it’s seeming as though the only people who can do that are the Bats.

So—was it the Red Hood, then? Considering how protective of the kid he is, Stephanie seriously doubts it was intentional—but maybe they scared him somehow, startled him so badly that he fired off a shot without thinking? That could even explain why he’s so protective—someone like Hood, who’s notoriously concerned with keeping children out of fights, would probably feel incredibly remorseful about accidentally hurting one.

And yet, somehow, that doesn’t feel right either. Hood is well-trained; even startled, Steph can’t imagine him shooting someone without intentionally choosing exactly who and where the bullet would hit. Besides, Jason didn’t say anything about accidentally shooting the kid to Leslie. If the kid’s injury really was the result of his own actions, Steph imagines Jason would be guilty and eager for absolvement; he probably would have spilled the whole story to Leslie, or at least been visibly distressed enough for it to be noticeable.

Which brings Stephanie right back to the same question that was gnawing at her from the start: who shot the kid?

Steph shoves her calculus textbook away (it’s not as though she’s getting any work done anyways) and pulls out a spare piece of graph paper, which she starts covering with quickly jotted notes listing everything she knows about the kid. She begins by writing down when they were shot, as well as all of the other details Leslie shared from when she saw them, then adds what she and Dick saw during the encounter at the grocery store, along with everything they’ve been able to figure out about the kid’s powers so far.

Steph taps her pen against the paper absently, trying to think if there’s anything she’s missing, anything that might give just a bit more insight.

Right—Cass had said she saw them following Catwoman during the museum heist. Stephanie adds that to the timeline, even though she thinks it’s even less likely Catwoman shot the kid than Red Hood—firstly because it didn’t sound like Selina could see the kid either, and secondly because that’s just not in Selina’s nature. Still, that at least shows that the kid has a history of ending up in dangerous situations, which would support the hypothesis that the kid was unlucky enough to tangle with someone who they realized was capable of seeing them just a little too late.

It still doesn’t provide even the slightest hint who that would be, though. There’s no way for Steph to guess who might have had the ability and motivation to shoot the kid from just this.

Stephanie sighs. Maybe she’s looking at this the wrong way. Moving to an empty spot on the paper, she starts writing down what she knows about Hood, starting with a rough timeline of his behavior.

He announced his return to Gotham by presenting a duffle bag of heads to the bosses of Gotham’s eight most successful drug gangs. From there, he forced the small fry of the Alley to either throw in with him or suffer the consequences. Initially, he seemed focusing on consolidating his resources, creating a strong power base, but as time passed he increasingly began to antagonize Black Mask. More recently, though, he seems to have taken the metaphorical kid gloves off—he’s been hitting Mask with a viciousness, a level of cold ruthlessness, that almost speaks to hatred.

It’s been a point of confusion, Steph knows, because there isn’t any particular history there from Jason’s time as Robin; there’s no reason Jason should hold any particular grudge against Mask.

Except if Mask was the one who shot the kid.

Steph crumples the piece of paper up and tosses it into her backpack, then shoves her calc textbook in as well before jogging out of the library. She needs to get to the Clocktower, now.

It feels like it takes forever to get there. Steph’s mind is racing a mile a minute, gibbering excitedly as implications and theories and ideas spool out like endless unrolling ribbons. By the time she finally arrives, she’s so worked up she can hardly even speak properly.

“The kid—Black Mask—” Steph pants out. It probably doesn’t help that she was so impatient she decided to sprint the last couple blocks.

“Breathe,” Barbara advises.

Stephanie obediently takes several deep breaths, then tries again. “You remember how I told you that Jason was the one who brought the kid in after he got shot? Well, I was trying to figure out who shot them, and—I think it was Black Mask. That’s why Hood’s been hitting Mask so hard—he’s got a grudge because Mask shot the kid!”

Barbara’s eyebrows raise. “That does seem plausible,” she says slowly. Turning back to her computer, she opens up a programming environment and starts typing. “I created a program to track the kid a couple weeks ago, but I only set it up to look through my usual network of cameras. If I just crack into Black Mask’s system and use the same program on his network…” Eyes still locked onto the screen, she turns her head towards Steph and says, “you can stay here while I work if you like. But you’ll have to stay quiet so you don’t distract me.”

Steph mimes locking her lips and throwing away the key, then bodily flops onto one of the beanbag chairs Barbara keeps in the corner for guests. Now seems like as good a time as any to take a nap—no reason to make herself do calc when she just had such a big breakthrough on the case, right?

She doesn’t end up falling asleep in the end; the excitement of the case has her wound too tight. When Barbara announces she’s finished, Steph immediately springs up and eagerly bounds up to see the results.

“Seems you were onto something,” Barbara says. “Let’s take a look at this.” A tap of a finger, and footage from Black Mask’s security system starts playing.

At first, all Stephanie sees is a car pulling up towards a building. A lean, nondescript figure in a well-tailored suit unfolds himself from the front seat, and then—there! Slipping out behind him, a blurry smear of static in the rough shape of a skinny teenager.

The figure in the suit passes through security swiftly; guard after guard waves him through, unaware of the kid on his heels. Soon the two of them are stepping into the elevator, the man reaching out to tap some sort of ID card while the kid fidgets behind him, staticky form twitching with what Steph thinks must be anxiety. Are they aware of the risk of being filmed? Is that little jerk of their blurry head them looking around for cameras?

What are they doing in Black Mask’s headquarters—what was so important to them that they would go somewhere that they had to know would have cameras?

The footage switches to a different camera feed—a bird’s eye view of Black Mask’s office. The man in question is sitting at a desk in one corner; he looks like he’s reading over some sort of report.

The elevator doors open. The suited man from earlier walks in, the kid close behind him. The tension is gone from their body; their staticky limbs are loose as they casually stride into the office of one of the most notorious crime lords on the Eastern Seaboard.

And then—easy as anything, limbs still loose and stride hardly pausing—the kid slips under Black Mask’s arm and pulls a gun from the desk. Stephanie and Barbara can only stare in mute horror as they raise the gun to Black Mask’s temple.

The window shatters, the feed exploding into chaos. Red Hood slams into Black Mask, Mask has a long bloody wound just above his nose, the man in the suit falls over backwards, dead—

Barbara rewinds and slows the footage. They watch as the kid pulls the trigger, bullet flying just a little off of center, Black Mask and his subordinate turn towards the kid—

“Wait, wait.” Stephanie reaches out and pauses the footage. “They’re seeing the kid? How are they seeing the kid?”

“I don’t know.” Barbara shakes her head.

They restart the footage. Red Hood flies through the window, slow-mo rendering him into something that would almost pass for a movie action hero. Mask draws a gun, pointing it at the kid—definitely seeing them, then—just as Hood slams into him.

“Did the kid get shot?” It’s impossible to see through all the static.

Hood reaches one arm over Mask’s shoulder and shoots the subordinate between the eyes and then, when Mask starts bucking under him like he’s going to bodily throw himself at the kid, sinks a knife into the meat of his hand.

“Brutal as he is, you can hardly deny his efficiency,” Barbara remarks.

Hood abandons Mask, hurrying over to the kid. At this point, the blood pouring from their side is visible even through the static.

He bends, dipping to gently lift the kid into his arms. Even knowing that the kid will live, Steph still feels her stomach twisting as she sees their body going limp, head lolling senselessly back against Hood’s shoulder.

Hood clears a bloody path out, pistol in one hand, the other pressed tightly against the kid’s wound. The last view they have of him is his back silhouetted against the sky as he vaults out a window.

For a minute, they just sit, staring at that final frame.

“Well,” Barbara says at last, “it looks like you were right.”

Stephanie is silent.

Then she smiles.

“I have an idea,” she says. “But you’re really not going to like it.”

Chapter 26: the Enemy of My Enemy

Chapter Text

Killing Black Mask should not be taking this f*cking long.

The bastard is slyer than Jason gave him credit for. He’s managed to sink his roots into what seems like damn near every corner of Gotham, coopting coffee houses and warehouses, subsuming gangs and companies, buying off cops and judges—hell, Mask’s even managed to hash out mutually beneficial arrangements with some of the mafia families.

Every head Jason cuts off seems to grow two more. What was supposed to be a relatively simple mission has turned into an endless slug fest. Mask is insulated by his operation and far better prepared to endure a war of attrition than Jason; Bat-trained or not, he’s still just a man. He needs his sleep, his meals, his time to spend with the kid—he can’t stay out for days at a time anymore, can’t take the kind of risks he used to, can’t let himself get the kind of injuries that would make Tim worry.

Which means Jason needs to change his strategy. Instead of approaching this like a free agent, he needs to delegate more, to lean on the gangs he’s already folded in under him and make new connections with other potential allies.

So far, Jason hasn’t asked much of those who’ve thrown in with him. They have to follow the rules, of course, and he expects them all to pass on relevant information, but beyond that he’s really just demanded a light cut of their earnings.

That changes now. He isn’t going to use any of his men as cannon fodder by any means, but there’s no reason they can’t lighten his load a little—especially if he sets up a system to generously compensate them for their labor.

The new strategy is an immediate success. His men apply themselves to their work with vigor, eager to prove themselves and make some money. Some of them have seen how Crime Alley has improved under his guidance and want to protect those changes; others are simply ambitious, and recognize that Hood is the fairest employer they’re going to find. Regardless, Mask’s operation buckles under the onslaught.

With more free time and a bit more room to maneuver, Jason is able to really focus in on those tasks that require a more personal touch. First things first: the issues that Tim mentioned.

Jason begins with the dog fighting ring, since that’s the easier of the two tasks. The hardest part there is figuring out what to do with the dogs themselves. Most of them need rehabilitation, which Gotham is nowhere near equipped to provide; the city barely has any resources for rehabilitating humans, let alone dogs. It’s the kind of logistical problem that Jason has always hated dealing with; it’s lucky that he has a handy pint-sized schemer who he can assign all sorts of busy work to under the guise of training.

“The only real solution that I can think of is to find qualified programs outside of Gotham,” Tim says, already pushing his plate aside and starting to pull out his laptop. “But they’re still going to need to be transported there, and they’ll have to be a lot of different locations, to avoid overwhelming any single shelter.”

“That’s fine,” Jason replies. “Arranging transport won’t be a problem.” It’s almost a little scary how quickly his men have taken to minionhood; it’s as if they’ve just been waiting for Hood to start ordering them around. He’s certain that he will not only be able to find someone willing to do it, they’ll probably brag about being assigned the honor.

A lot of them have started wearing red. Hell, last week he thought he overheard some of them arguing about what they should call themselves.

“There are some dogs that haven’t been forced into the ring yet, right?” Tim asks. “Those ones shouldn’t need rehabilitation, so they can probably just be adopted out to whoever in the Alley would want to take them. They’d still need vetting, of course, but that shouldn’t be difficult; I can just follow all of the candidates around for a bit, get a sense of their personality, if they’d be able to responsibly raise a dog…”

Jason has to actively keep his lips from twisting downwards. He doesn’t like the thought of having the kid away from home for days at a time—he’s gotten used to having the little idiot close, where he can make sure Timmy’s not antagonizing any notorious criminal bosses or stealing any highly volatile elements.

But… Tim knows what he’s doing.

At least, Jason hopes he does.

More than that—well. Jason’s instinct may be to be protective, but he knows that being overprotective can be just as dangerous as not being protective enough. And having the kid tail some of the adoption candidates would give Jason the space to do a couple of longer tasks he’s been putting off.

“Alright,” Jason replies at last. “But I don’t want you to start letting your sleep schedule slip, or falling back into eating like sh*t.”

“Yeah, yeah, and I’d better make sure to brush my teeth before bed every night too,” Tim says. His face is too blurry for Jason to quite make it out, but by the tone of his voice, Jason would bet good money he’s currently rolling his eyes.

“You’re goddamn right.” Jason reaches out and roughly musses the kid’s hair. “Floss, too. Dental hygiene is no joke, Timbuktu.”

That sorts out the dogfighting ring, then. The human trafficking near the docks will be more difficult to handle, unfortunately.

Unlike the dogfighting ring, which really was just an Ibanescu project, the entire clusterf*ck at the warehouse practically has “Mask” written all over it. On top of that, it’s also just a more complicated enterprise; it has more moving parts, more groups working in tandem. If Jason isn’t careful how he approaches it, things could get really messy.

Of course, that same level of complexity gives Jason more threads to pull on.

It’s not too difficult to meet with Poison Ivy. All he has to do is drop into Robinson Park and wait.

Of course, it would be a bit more difficult for someone without his training, because when Jason said “drop in”, he did mean that literally. The iron fence surrounding the park is basically one big green mass of poison oak and nettles and other, stranger, less easily identified green and growing things; the only non-organic part visible is the iron spikes poking out the top. You’d have to be a total idiot to even think of trying to climb over that, and considering the dense root systems no doubt threading through the earth underneath, trying to dig your way in is hardly any better. Grappling in is the only way to go.

Jason lands on a relatively clear spot near the entrance, which (at least at first glance) doesn’t appear to have anything too terribly dangerous. Just in case, he doesn’t move around too much, and double-checks that the filtration system in his helmet is functioning properly. Taking it off so Ivy can see his face would be the polite thing to do, but he’s not going to do that unless he’s sure she’s not about to hit him with a big blast of one of her horrible pollen concoctions. Besides, he doesn’t want to deal with Ivy potentially recognizing him as the second Robin back from the dead—that’s a can of worms he doesn’t feel particularly inclined to open today.

He doesn’t have to wait long. There’s a faint rustling from the undergrowth, and then the leaves part as Ivy steps forward.

“Red Hood,” she says, eyes locking unerringly onto his even through the helmet. “I keep on hearing rumors about you.” She steps forward, practically stalking towards him. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“The pills Black Mask has been having his people deal, the pink ones—they use one of your pollens. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re doing the same thing with some of their other products, either.”

“I know.” Jason can see a muscle in her jaw clenching. “I was made aware of it some months ago.”

He waits a moment to see if she’ll elaborate, but she says silent, her lips a hard line.

Well, why not lay all his cards on the table? Ivy always has appreciated honesty.

“The entire operation is run on human trafficking,” he tells her. “I’m interested in dismantling it. I think our interests may align.”

Poison Ivy eyes him in silence for a long moment—and then her lips curve up. “You know, I think you’re right,” she says. A wave of her hand, and the shrubbery parts once again. “Come. Let’s talk.”

Tim steps out of Jason’s apartment and into the cool morning beyond. The world around him is damp and quiet, the scruffy bits of grass poking out of the cracks in the sidewalk dotted with drops of dew; the very air feels rich with potential.

Tim breathes in, luxuriating in the feeling of freedom that rises within him, and then begins to walk. He has a good idea of his target’s daily schedule, but he’s most certain about the earlier hours, so it’s best not to linger too much.

It feels good to be out and about again. He loves staying with Jason, he really does, but the longer Tim’s lingered, eating Jason’s food and taking up his time, the more he’s felt a niggling itch—a sense of creeping pressure that looms over him like the threat of a coming storm.

It’s nothing that Jason’s done. Jason is unfailing decent; he may appear a lot more intimidating than he did back when he was Robin, but he still has that same unrelenting kindness at his core. He hasn’t asked anything of Tim except his presence and, more recently, that he do a little bit of research into trustworthy shelters for the dogs that survived the Ibanescu’s fighting ring. Really, he’s been ridiculously good to Tim.

Which is the problem. No matter how kind Jason is, no matter how much Tim trusts in his innate goodness, he can’t seem to silence the part of him that demands he needs to pay Jason back in some way—and Jason isn’t giving him any opportunities to do so.

In the absence of any chances to do something that would solidly justify his presence, Tim finds himself getting increasingly anxious about accidentally doing something that might annoy Jason. He finds himself worrying about what might happen if Jason finds out about all of the times he’s gotten coffee with Cass, or wondering if he should be doing something different to make Jason happier—talking more, or talking less; learning how to cook faster, or trying harder when they work out; in his down time, he even finds himself wondering if he should be spending more time reading the books Jason picks up from the library for him instead of just doing whatever he likes.

It feels good to get away from all of those worries, to be doing something that he knows is helpful. And, well, it’s also a good way to remind himself that he doesn’t have to rely on Jason. He was fine before staying with Jason, and he’ll be fine if he has to leave.

Sure, just following random people around may not be a sustainable way to live his life, but at the end of the day, it’s still a decent way to pass the time—and he can always crash at Drake Manor if he needs a space of his own. It’s not as if his dad is using it.

Of course, hopefully it won’t ever come to that. But it’s good to have a backup plan, right?

Tim double-checks the address on the block of apartments in front of him, then heads around to the fire escape. According to the information Jason gave him, his target should be on the third floor. Tim makes sure his backpack is secure, then clambers up onto the sill of the back window. From there, he leaps up, grabbing onto the bottom of the fire escape with the tips of his fingers. He lets himself hang there for just a moment, catching his breath, then with an enormous heave he swings himself up onto the platform.

It’s far easier than it would have been a couple weeks ago; back then, he’d probably have to wait until someone exited the front of the apartment complex to walk their dog or grab the newspaper and gotten in that way. Looks like those workouts have counted for something after all.

Rubbing at the indentations on his palms where the edge of the fire escape bit into the soft flesh of his hands, Tim makes his way up to his destination.

If Tim was visible, he wouldn’t be nearly this anxious about potentially upsetting Jason, or not being able to pay him back. As much as he may tell himself that he can leave whenever he likes—that he can easily go back to living without Jason—Tim knows he’s lying to himself. Crashing at the Manor or following random people may provide food and shelter, but it won’t give him a purpose.

But if he could just make himself visible—if he just become the sort of person that everyone could see—

Tim swallows. Jason thinks you can, he reminds himself. That it’s all within your control.

There’s a window just a few feet away from him, the surface of the glass darkened by the black-out curtains hanging on the other side of it. All Tim has to do is look in. If Jason’s right—if Tim really can control his own powers—he should be able to peer in and see his own reflection.

Anxiety twists tightly in his stomach, making his throat tight and his hands damp. His fists clench at his sides. Logically, his powers have to be under his control—Occam’s Razor, right? They just act based on how he believes they will. So if he believes he can see himself, he should be able to.

I can see myself. I can see myself. I can see myself.

Tim forces his clenched fist to unfurl and slowly moves his trembling hand in front of the window. Heart pounding in his chest, he flicks his gaze over—

There—a mirror image of his hand, just as clear in the reflection as it is in reality.

Like plunging into deep water, Tim lunges forward, jerking his head to face the window. A stranger stares back at him—a skinny teenager with blue eyes and long, messy dark hair.

“Is that me?” The stranger’s lips move. It can’t be. That’s his dad’s nose, and why would Mom say he looked like so much like her if he has his dad’s nose?

The face in front of him goes loose and blurry, like an ink drawing getting submerged in water. No matter how much Tim squints, no matter what he tells himself, he can’t get it to come back into focus.

But at least he saw it. For a moment, Tim saw himself.

Jason tries his best to stay safe, to avoid unnecessary risks and delegate as much as possible, but, well. Some level of danger is inevitable. It’s not a surprise that his luck would run out eventually.

Leslie leans back with a sigh. “Alright,” she says. “That should heal in two to three weeks. I would tell you to rest up until it’s completely better, but I know you won’t listen either way, so… at least keep the wound clean, and come back in if the stitches pop.” She levels a stern glare at Jason.

Jason nods. “Yes ma’am.”

Satisfied, Leslie rises, walking over to the sink to wash her hands. Jason leans down to pick up his jacket, being careful not to pull on the wound in his side as he does so. For a minute, they just exist in comfortable silence, Jason gingerly pulling back on his jacket, Leslie washing her hands with the same methodical care as always. And then:

“By the way,” Leslie says, her voice deceptively light. “The patient you brought in earlier, the one with the powers. Are they staying with you?”

Jason freezes, muscles going rigid.

He wants to ask why she’s bringing this up, but he bites the impulse back. Better to wait, to see where she’s going with this first.

“Yes,” he says.

Leslie pats her hands dry, then turns, sitting back down on the stool next to Jason.

“And how are they doing? Did the bullet wound get infected?”

Maybe Leslie really is just motivated by professional curiosity. Jason doubts it, though.

Still, he’ll play along for now.

“No,” Jason replies. “It healed well. Scarred, unfortunately, but not too badly. I’ve been having them put on scar gel every night, and that’s helped.”

Leslie smiles. “That’s good to hear.” She starts packing up her supplies, movements loose in a deliberate, almost studied way. “And how are they doing more generally? Have you been able to keep them out of trouble?” She asks the last question nearly teasingly, a light-hearted lilt lifting her voice, but Jason still finds himself struggling not to flush at what sure feels like implied criticism.

Have you been able to keep them safe?

Jason forces himself to reply in a similarly light tone. “I do my best,” he tells her, letting out a casual little laugh that somehow, absurdly, reminds him of Brucie Wayne. “The kid seems to find new ways to get into trouble every day, but I’m just as persistent in getting them out of it.”

Leslie chuckles softly. “Reminds me of a few repeat patients I knew back in the day.” She raises one brow at Jason meaningfully; he struggles not to scowl back.

“It’s been a long time since those days,” Jason replies tightly. He doesn’t have any patience left for this byplay. He locks eyes with her. “What’s this really about, Leslie?”

Leslie leans back on her stool, watching him thoughtfully. “How old are you, Jason?”

Jason keeps from gritting his teeth with effort. Leslie damn well knows exactly how old he is.

“Eighteen,” he finally replies. Almost nineteen, he wants to add, but he knows it’ll just make him sound even younger.

“And how old is the patient?”

Fifteen. Tim told him that he’s fifteen.

Sometimes, the kid seems older than that. When he’d casually slipped under Black Mask’s arm to grab the gun—when he’d told Jason that he’d never seen his own face… he’d seemed world-weary, bent under the weight of a long life of solitude.

More often, though, he seems younger than he is.

It’s strange; Jason knows Tim is well aware of the brutal realities of the world, but… he is also startlingly inexperienced with actually navigating even the simplest problems. Tim can describe the inner workings of a half dozen criminal empires, often down to the way they dispose of their bodies, but he didn’t know how to throw a proper punch before Jason explained it to him. Everything he knows is intellectual, held at a distance; like a hobbyist who’s learned everything from the books, Tim excels in the theoretical, but can’t always quite carry that over to application.

Sometimes Jason thinks Tim doesn’t really believe he can actually get hurt. It makes sense, in a way—his powers have left him living in a bubble, isolated but also protected. It’s just that that even bubbles will pop under the right pressures.

There is a certain level of cynicism, of self-protective skepticism and just plain discernment, that comes with years of interacting with strangers. The every day grind of buying groceries and doing group projects and interviewing for jobs rubs up over you, thickening your skin and toughening your shell. You learn to navigate the push and pull of conversations, of people’s motivations and secret desires and petty grievances. You learn to read what you can expect of them, what you can ask of them, what you can leverage to make them give a little more.

But Tim doesn’t have any of that experience. Everything he knows about people is theoretical. He’s intellectually aware of the complex social web that makes up society, but he doesn’t have any experience actually existing within it himself. It is, in its own way, utterly foreign to him.

Back when Jason first started getting to know Tim, he’d been worried about how to gain Tim’s trust—how to coax him into letting Jason help.

As it turns out, that was the wrong thing to worry about.

Jason is objectively someone Tim should be wary of. He is stronger and older and far more brutal than Tim; he is a crime lord, a violent man who has done, and continues to do, violent things. And yet… Tim has always been incredibly trusting of him.

Oh, he was certainly shy at first—he had to be coaxed like a nervous cat, Jason relearning all of the tricks of softened voice and careful touches that he used to calm victims as Robin—but he wasn’t ever truly untrusting. Maybe he knows the danger he’s in, but either way he still seems utterly incapable of putting up any sort of resistance; the slightest hint of affection melts him instantly.

Maybe part of it is that he knows that these aren’t dangers he can protect himself from. There’s no one Tim can go to—no point in meeting Jason in public when no one would step in either way, no more danger in getting in a car with Jason or following Jason to his apartment than there would be interacting with him anywhere else in a world full of people who will never help him.

Either way, Tim is truly, terrifyingly willing to trust. He is like a lamb that walks up to the executioner and lays his head on their knee, like a chained dog that still leans into the same hands that locked it away.

Sometimes Jason thinks of Black Mask, and imagines what would have happened if instead of immediately trying to shoot Tim, Mask had reached out and just for a moment touched him gently—a hand on the cheek, perhaps—

Jason is sure Tim would have turned into that touch like a flower towards the sun; that, no matter the pain that followed, it would have been enough that he would not have been able to strike back against Mask ever again.

“Jason?” Leslie’s voice breaks through his thoughts. “Are you alright?”

“Fine,” Jason bites out gruffly.

For a moment Leslie just studies him, but then finally, blessedly, she lets it go—if only so she can go back to latching onto something else with that steel trap mind of hers.

“Now, I can’t say for certain, but I would estimate that patient to have been somewhere between thirteen and sixteen. Would you say that’s accurate?"

Jason doesn’t reply. No need to give her more information than she already has—not when she’s already proven that she’s happy to share his business with the Bats.

“Not much younger than you are,” Leslie observes. “After all, you’re barely an adult yourself.”

At fifteen, Jason was naïve enough to trust Sheila—was naïve enough to die. But no matter how young he was, Jason has never been trusting in the way Tim still is. Even at thirteen, at ten, at five, Jason has always been the sort to fight every step of the way—to bite and kick and scream—the sort that knows better than to trade a bit of affection for his one and only life, because he had had enough love in his life that it wasn’t such a worthy trade, for him.

So yes. Jason thinks he is old enough to be the one looking after Tim. There are ways that Tim is very much younger than him, and probably will be for a long time.

Even if he was inclined to share any of this, there isn’t any time to speak, because Leslie continues relentlessly: “Are they enrolled in school? Do they have dental insurance? A birth certificate, a social security number?”

Jason skewers her with the sort of glare that has his underlings scurrying to obey, that makes bruisers and drug dealers and gang leaders bow and scrape and promise to change their ways. Leslie doesn’t even blink.

Her eyes bore into him. “Do you have a will? A plan for who will take custody of them if you die?”

Jason thinks of Tim scooting back from the kitchen table that first morning, awkwardly trying to figure out what to say, looking like he thought if he said goodbye wrong, there might not be a place for him to come back to. Of how sometimes when they’re walking together Tim will pinch onto Jason’s sleeve with his thin hand, like he’s worried Jason will slip away from him.

Jason has to swallow before he can speak. “Just say it.”

Leslie obliges. “Are you really capable of taking care of this child?”

The weight of Tim’s head in his hand had been so heavy. Weightier, in its own way, that all of the pounds of kryptonite in the box behind them. Tim was so quiet, so docile; he had nuzzled into Jason’s hand like a lonely cat.

Jason may not be Black Mask, but there is more than one way to hurt someone.

“Is there anyone better?” Jason’s voice is cold even to his own ears. “What are you saying, Leslie? That I should give him to you so you can enroll him in a school where no one will see him, so you can set him up with a dentist who will forget he exists halfway through the appointment? So that you can keep in your apartment, where you’ll only remember him when I remind you?”

Leslie’s lips thin, pressing down into one tight line.

“You don’t think there’s anyone who can help you raise him?”

“I’m the only one who can even see him,” Jason snaps. “So no, I don’t think there is. And yes, I may be an eighteen year old crime lord, but I’m better than nothing, so forgive me if I don’t want your criticism.”

Jason stands up and leaves without waiting to hear how Leslie will reply.

Stephanie’s never spent much time in East End.

She grew up in the suburbs outside of Gotham. Her parents weren’t exactly wealthy, but their financial troubles were generally more of the “it’s either community college or somehow swinging a full ride” variety than the “picking between hot water and gas for the month” variety. She never went to bed hungry, and although in the years after her dad went to jail they had some Christmases with pretty minimal presents, there was always at least turkey at Thanksgiving and buttercream cake on her birthdays.

Mom was always clear about which areas of the city were and were not safe for Steph to visit, and for the most part, Bruce maintained those same rules. It feels a little overly restrictive sometimes—Stephanie is literally a f*cking vigilante, you would think they’d be able to trust her to handle herself—but it’s hard to be too irritated with the Bats for their overprotectiveness when she knows exactly where it’s coming from.

Steph’s heard stories about the East End, of course—most of them revolving around the ever-notorious Crime Alley. They circulate around her high school constantly, growing ever more lurid with each retelling. One particularly persistent urban legend details how a couple of seniors—from the class that graduated five or seven years ago, depending on who’s telling it—decided to visit the Alley on a dare. What exactly happened to those seniors isn’t exactly clear—some say that they ended up caught in a shoot out between two gangs, while others claim that they were killed by Harley Quinn herself—but the story always ends with only one senior returning.

“They made him valedictorian,” Steph’s group project partner had whispered with a dry quirk of her lips. “The most important skill in Gotham is knowing how to survive, right?”

Steph always sort of just assumed that the stories were exaggerating, but honestly… the reality is a lot worse than anything her classmates were capable of dreaming up.

Spoiler has a good view from her current vantage point, and what she’s seeing is not pretty. Most of the buildings are in some state of disrepair; the better ones are just dotted with bullet holes and graffiti, while the worse ones are missing roofs, doors, even walls. Trash piles, stinking, on the side of the roads, which are more pothole than asphalt. In the distance, Spoiler can see a fire burning, thick clouds of oily smoke mixing with the soft orange haze of a classic Gotham sunset. She’d bet good money it was caused by a meth lab exploding.

There’s the distinctive click and hiss of a grapple behind her.

“Spoiler.” The voice is low and heavily mechanized; it’s impossible to read the tone.

Spoiler turns. The figure in front of her is huge, almost as big as Bruce. His broad chest is covered in body armor; the bulge of holstered guns is visible underneath the brown leather jacket he’s wearing. There are knife sheaths at his belt, strapped to his thighs, tucked into his steel-toed combat boots.

Hitting him, she thinks, would be like trying to punch a brick wall.

“Red Hood,” Spoiler replies, voice even only through intense effort.

Hood tilts his head, helmet gleaming bloodily in the low light. “You’re a long way from home, little bird,” he says.

Not bird themed, Spoiler thinks but doesn’t say. She’s been known to do some stupid sh*t on occasion, but taunting a murderous crime lord seems like a little much even for her.

Hood circles her. His every step is a study in deadly grace; he moves like a big cat stalking. Spoiler holds onto her composure by her teeth, barely managing to keep herself from tracking Hood’s movements.

“Why did the Bats send you?” he asks. It almost sounds musing, almost playful. “All on your own, too. It’s as if they want you to die.”

And that—that is not playful. That’s pure rage, right there, distilled into something as concentrated and deadly as absinthe.

“Batman doesn’t know I’m here.” Barbara does—she’s on the line right now, muted but listening to every word, Spoiler’s location pulled up in front of her.

“Oh?” Spoiler can’t read Hood’s body language. “Why are you here, then?”

“I heard you’ve been targeting Black Mask—and you’ve been picking up allies to do it. Delegating, instead of just acting on your own. You’ve even started working with Poison Ivy.” Spoiler looks right into the eye slits of Red Hood’s helmet. “I want to join you.”

“Why?”

Spoiler really, really wishes she could see what kind of expression Hood is wearing under that helmet of his.

“My reasons are my own.” Her fists clench and unclench uneasily at her sides.

The silence stretches for a long moment. Stephanie is just starting to wonder if she miscalculated when Hood finally speaks.

“There’s a pizzeria a couple blocks from here. We can talk there.”

He grapples away without another word.

For a minute, Steph just stands there, grinning like a loon—and then she finally shakes herself out of it, lifting her own grapple gun and following after Hood.