Fatherless Behaviour - lemonlimemadness - Multifandom [Archive of Our Own] (2024)

Chapter 1: Tim gets to keep his internal organs

Chapter Text

Given the number of times that he’s been stabbed over his vigilante career, Tim is basically a connoisseur of being impaled.

But, it’s also safe to say that this is by far the worst stabbing he’s had to go through. Not because of the pain, but because of the company he has when he wakes.

He wakes up in the Cradle (strike one), with Ra’s looming over his prone form (strike two) right next to the Lazarus Pit (strike three, four and five).

Zero out of ten stars, would not recommend.

Which is why it’s not entirely his fault when the first thing Tim thinks when he jerks awake on the surgery table, registering the green luminance of the Lazarus Pit beside him, is not about his very recent very violent shish-kebabing.

It’s about whether he’s also stolen Jason’s shtick of being undead as well as the entire Robin thing.

Because, dang, they were just starting to get along after the entire Titan’s Tower thing, the murder attempts, the stabbing, and honestly a whole host of other issues. Tim would have given up five murder attempts ago with any other person, but come on. It’s Robin! His Robin!

His head is still spinning from whatever drugs the League have him on, because Tim feels like he could probably fight Superman right now. But. Priorities.

First things first, figure out whether he’s about to become Jason Todd V2 Replacement Extraordinaire: Pit Edition.

He tries to twist around, get a glimpse of his surroundings, see if he could spot himself in a mirror. His hands aren't really cooperating right now, and when he moves a little too much, one of the assassin doctors says something at him, roughly reorienting his head straight.

Tim blinks at him. Everything sounds like it’s underwater.

Above him, Ras’s toxic green eyes pierce into his soul. Tim looks back, because the ceiling is boring and he’s the most interesting thing in his field of view at this very second. His mouth moves into a cruel smile (or maybe it’s just a normal one? Tim has no idea) and begins to speak at him.

Tim estimates that he probably started with “Hello, Detective,” and then started monologuing about world domination or Batman or something but Tim is on the Good Stuff right now. He’s been awake for approximately two minutes, maybe less than, and he only woke up now because Tim’s gained a semi-tolerance to general anaesthesia through repeated and extensive use.

He is, as Dick would say, tripping balls.

Ra’s is still talking at him. Tim nods along. The language part of his brain hasn’t rebooted yet, and the only reason Ra’s hasn’t noticed that Tim doesn’t understand a single word coming out of his mouth right now is that he does the exact thing to Batman all the time.

“You’re taking needless risks!” Brain is off. Tim is mentally absent. Maybe he’ll text Kon later.

“Growing boys need more than four hours of sleep a night.” That’s nice, great, good for you. Where’s the nearest caffeine source?

“You need to stop drinking so much caffeine,” How about no.

Now he misses Bruce again. It makes his chest hurt.

Or maybe that’s the stab wound.

Eh. He’ll heal.

Ra’s finally finishes what is most likely an evil villain monologue. Tim blinks up at him blearily. Like, that’s nice, bro.

Ra’s stares down at him blankly. Says something that is most likely Tim’s name.

Tim gives him a weak thumbs up.

Now he’s tired again.

He decides to go back to sleep.

The next time he awakes, he’s feeling significantly more coherent.

He tries to ask Ra’s whether he died and got dunked in the Pit. It comes out like, “Shmeepf mugh gwa pit uagh,” with an accompanying line of dribble. Ra’s looks slightly off put, and motions for a poor ninja to mop it off his face.

Curse you, feeble mortal shell!

If only he was Kryptonian, or Amazonian, or literally any enhanced type of human. He would kill for an enhanced metabolism right now. Ra’s attempts to monologue at him again, but Tim is having none of it. He closes his eyes at the first “Detective,” he hears and falls asleep in three seconds flat.

Tim can’t escape the monologue the next time he awakes, unfortunately. They’ve taken away the good pain meds, because, ouch, he can feel it now. There’s a line of stitches down the front of his chest that ache like hell just under his heart, and they’re sharply pulling on the hole in his back he tries to sit up.

He’s awoken on the floor of an opulent hall, elegant yet ostentatious, like a throne room.

Oh wait, it was a throne room.

About ten metres in front of him sits Ra’s, on an equally ostentatious chair on a pedestal, surrounded by finely armoured guards.

Ra’s, with Tim as a captive audience, explains who stabbed him (the Widower), why they stabbed him (for fun, basically), and that if Tim works with the League to obliterate them as a team, he’ll gain all the League’s resources for tracking down Bruce. They’re okay terms. Tim already knows the fine print, like ‘betray us and die’ or, ‘includes a million different inescapable recruitment pitches’ or ‘free healthcare.’

Tim knows about the free healthcare. Ra’s has his spleen in a jar over there.

Which is not in him, being a functioning, important part of his immune system. Tim needs that, really really badly. He lives in Gotham!! It’s like, the ground zero of every disease to ever exist in the history of the universe.

Tim wants it back, thank-you-very-much.

Not just in him, but in general. The last time Ra’s got someone’s DNA he made Damian. A terrible thing to inflict on the world. Tim would very much like to avoid the same fate.

In the end, after some fancy wordplay, a lot of attempted and rebutted manipulation from both sides and some snide, below-the-belt insults, they come to an agreement of sorts.

Tim will get full access to the League’s resources, which he will use to annihilate the Council of Spiders, posthaste. He tried to get some buffer time in before Ra’s forced him to go assassin hunting, but Ra’s was firm. The casualties the League was suffering right now was at an unacceptable level, and it was beginning to affect their other business exploits.

Once the threat is gone, Tim will gain further access to the League resources on a global scale, which he is free to use as he wishes to retrieve Bruce from whenever he hell he is in time.

The plan is: help destroy opposing assassins, then use magic gizmos to get Bruce back, send him on his way, and go with him.

Why after? Because Ra's doesn’t trust Tim to blow everything up on his way out, Bruce in tow. He wants his part of the deal done first, and given that Tim is the one sitting on the floor in front of at least six heavily-armed ninja-assassin guards and heavily injured at that, he’s not really in a strong position to negotiate.

Tim does not want to have to deal with Ra’s for a single second longer than he absolutely has to.

They shake on it, Tim gets shown the tech available, the magic artefact room (both of which are waiting for him after he disposes of the other assassin group), and then his quarters, where Pru (and a very large supply of caffeinated beverages) is waiting for him.

Her eyes widen when she sees him, and she grins, signing enthusiastically at him. As it turns out, the Widower only nicked the important, life-threatening areas, and totally wrecked everything else. Her vocal cords are down for the count for now, but she’s healing well.

She’s a bit more worried for Tim and his impalement, but she still manages to bully him into sitting down and eating something substantial without a voice.

Neither of them mention Owens or Z.

She helps him rebandage his wounds, then they get to work.

Tim progresses. Slowly but surely.

He builds programs upon programs, shoring up the atrocious internal cybersecurity the League has, enough so that he can actually plan for a confrontation without them immediately being outed. He plays chess with Ra’s every few days, occasionally trains with his assassin guards. Pru bullies him, and he bullies back. His surgery site heals more slowly than he’s used to, and Tim attempts to get used to his newfound vulnerability to infection.

A month passes before he’s deemed sufficiently battle-ready. They haven’t let him anywhere near Bruce’s case apart from light reading. It’s making him antsy. Ra’s seems almost apologetic, but firm. Tim upholds his side of the promise, then Ra’s will.

The assassins sometimes bring him news from Gotham; something about an apocalypse, Hood starting another gang war, Stephanie being alive in general, Damian and Dick’s crusade against crime, etcetera. Pru’s throat heals up, and she starts vocal exercises. Her voice is gravelly from disuse and strain, but she enjoys being able to fully express her disdain for Tim’s plans. Sarcasm is way harder in sign language.

Tim executes his plans.

He likes to think he’s a practical kind of guy. Logical when the need arises, plans and contingencies for every event, that sort of thing.

He’s beginning to realise that there might have been a flaw in his logic somewhere.

Because, if he was as rational as he thought he was, he wouldn’t be here, playing clean up for the League of Assassins now, would he?

His mother would be turning in her grave if she could see him now.

Well, technically, if she could see what he was doing even when she was still alive, she’d be turning in her grave so much that they could probably hook her up to a generator and comfortably power the entire east coast of America. His mother cosplaying a rotisserie chicken in her grave aside, Tim was fully beginning to understand how terrible of an idea this all was.

Asking Tim to do this particular task. He had to admit, that was very sneaky of Ra’s. Sending him, a guy who refuses to kill, after very deadly, very highly trained assassin-killing assassins?

Anyone else could have done it in a quarter of the time.

Genius. Months of forced proximity, months to test his boundaries and build his tolerance to their aims and methods.

More importantly, hundreds of recruitment pitches. Tim’s kept count. Ra’s asked him once or twice a week in the beginning, but now he doesn’t need to. The League’s IT department has a shrine for him next to the coffee machine in the breakroom, and sends him emails detailing the working benefits daily. They even leave flowers and chocolates (unpoisoned!) on his desk twice a week.

Still, he isn’t swayed.

It takes them months and multiple attempts to finally trap and incapacitate each member of the Council of Spiders.

After the last showdown at the Cradle, Ra’s laughs and affectionately calls him, “My detective.” Tim cringes so hard that they drag him to the medical wing to check he’s not about to die.

Jokes on them, he did.

Inside.

Multiple times.

God, Tim wished he had’ve taken the opportunity to blow the Cradle sky high, preferably with him in it.

The fact that this was his only real option helped to soften the blow a little. Dick (and his worried fretting and large social circle) had made it clear to the Justice League and Co. that Tim was very much in denial about Bruce’s death and that he needed a lot of therapy before going back into active service again. He was officially their resident basket-case, and needed to be treated with caution, lest he try to stab himself or multiple other people.

He wanted to scream at them, show them the proof he’d found, the hypotheses he’d made. But he couldn’t.

There wasn’t enough time.

From his calculations, Bruce was travelling through time exponentially faster, and the window for collecting him was getting shorter and shorter. He doesn’t have the time to explain the whys and hows of Bruce living, nor about how he got this information to the Justice League, and it’s been made pretty clear that he’s all on his own.

A fairly large part of Tim runs on spite. He’s known it since his computer science teacher told him that learning to code was too difficult for children, or when he cornered Dick about being Robin again, and he’d said something along the lines of, “Just leave him be. What can a twelve-year-old do anyway?”

Well, sucks to be them, because Tim became really good at computers, and then became Batman’s emotional-support-child slash Robin.

He lives for the little I told you so's, which, to be completely honest, is probably why Jason tried to stab him a lot of times before they became vaguely friendly, and why Damian is still trying to stab him now.

Entirely valid responses, really.

But now, proving Bruce is still alive? Bringing him back, even? This is about to deliver the mother of all I told you so's to everybody back at home.

Everybody left, that is.

But nope, he’s not thinking about that now, ha ha. Not now, and not ever! Tim was trained by the undisputed master of emotional suppression, he wouldn’t have been a good protégé if he hadn’t picked up that skill! Batman doesn’t feel emotions, apart from rage and vengeance, and neither does Tim.

Sorta.

Tim doesn’t really get angry that often per se, so he just locks it all away. A level head is important!!

This, in hindsight, is probably why he’s depressed as hell.

Which is what led him to the earlier realisation that he probably isn’t all that good at compartmentalising if he’s ended up in this situation. So much for being a genius.

So here he is, locked deep in one of Ra’s weird tech basem*nts tinkering with magic artefacts to get Bruce back.

Could be worse, if you ask him.

Fortunately, if you ignore the overly dramatic décor, the big threatening chairs and endless blah blah blah join me, detective blah blah blah I have your spleen blah blah blah insert evil monologues here blah blah blah , Ra’s Al Ghul is actually a pretty good ally to have. One of the many advantages of being one old, rich, powerful asshole with an army of disposable ninja at his fingertips, is that Ra’s has had centuries to get his grubby little hands on every little magic artefact he’s ever wanted in his life.

Translation: Surely one of these weird gizmos deals with time travel? Right?

And one of them does. More than one, actually. Then it’s just a matter of slapping together a machine with them at the centre, rigging a method of selecting the time and place for the device to travel to, incorporating another magical artefact to steal a particular person from said time and place, and make sure that they end up where Tim is, here and now, intact.

It’s a lot harder than it looks.

Tim would know. Even Pru had started to look slightly concerned after the fifth day of surviving on purely gummy worms, energy drinks, and excessive amounts of coffee. But hey, a great mind is at work and Tim is so deep into his research and construction binge that even Pru physically dragging him out from his little cave to force him to eat actual sustenance and shower can’t stop him from puzzling out the schematics of what he’s building.

He’s on a roll with all this. A big roll. An even bigger roll than what his mother is probably doing in her grave right now.

Pru had informed him an indiscernible amount of time ago (A day? A week? Time gets weird after more than three days without proper sleep) that if he didn’t stop drinking energy drinks, the caffeine would kill him before his lack of spleen and sh*t self-care could.

Too bad. Caffeine is amazing. Tim is doing amazing, if he ignores the way his vision blacks out at the edges, or the aching burns on the roof on his mouth caused by the combo of piping-hot coffee and acidic caffeinated beverages, or the way his abdomen aches something serious, he’s totally fine.

When he sleeps, he sees temporal analyses and magical theory behind his eyelids. When he wakes, he stays awake until Pru physically forces him onto a flat surface. He translates tomes on ancient runes, dissects the effect of the Lazarus pit on the ley line beneath them, learns how to use warding to create a magical isolation field, researches anchors and targeting and omega particles until he knows the textbooks and theoretical applications like the back of his hand.

Like this, his eighteenth birthday passes. To celebrate, Pru and him get rip-roaring drunk somewhere off the east coast of China, and gain consciousness in a pile under a conference table in a North Korean air base.

He borrows parts from Ra’s personal Hadron Collider in one of his bases in Iran, repurposes a rocket engine he stole from NASA, steals a LOT of purified uranium and figures out how to synthesise and stabilise what is probably the rest of the elements on the periodic table, and speedruns an entire Masters degree in electrical engineering at Harvard. A lot of other random sh*t too, but none of that stuff could be linked back to Tim, so they don’t count.

On the other hand, Alvin Draper is now wanted by Interpol for robbing multiple banks, Caroline Hill has a ‘kill on sight’ designation by a good part of the New York criminal underworld, and Iggy Pollaky has been charged with public indecency by the Venetian Police in an incident involving a water fountain, three chickens, a second century wolf pelt and a whole ton of men with guns.

It doesn’t matter anyway, because it’s over now.

From several PhDs worth of research on space, time, physics, magic, engineering and a whole other unconnected topics, Tim has created his new child.

In front of him, the machine sits, a hulking behemoth of magic and machinery. It has fancy lights and a ton of different coloured cords, a couple of different panels and dials and a big red button under a glass protective case. There's even some glitter and stickers on the metallic bits, courtesy of Pru.

It’s monstrous.

It’s beautiful.

All he really needs to do is stick a big red flashing countdown on the front of it, and it would be hard to distinguish between Tim’s new brainbaby and what probably could be the Joker’s first attempt at rigging a massive bomb.

It’s a mess.

Tim, on day six without sleep, dead on his feet and hallucinating flashing colours at the edge of his vision, is far past the point of caring about elegance or cleanliness or being streamlined; the machine works, pretty much perfectly at that.

The few tests they’d done (retrieving various objects from parts of history using some of his parents archaeological finds) meant that now Tim was the very proud owner of a few brand-new Qing Dynasty vase, a freshly crafted stone axe of Neanderthal make, and various other bits and bobs that were probably priceless in an auction. Useless stuff really.

Step aside, Cleopatra’s jewellery, Tim is about to yoink Batman through time.

The actual plan to rescue Bruce had gone something like this: steal Bruce’s genetic material from Ra’s and Talia. Tim knows they have more of Bruce’s DNA lying around, they made Damian, didn’t they? For this step, he has to hope Pru comes in clutch to save the day, because the rest of the plan isn’t going to make itself.

She does. Tim very pointedly Does Not go near it, apart to configure it into the machine. He ain’t touching that with a ten-foot stick.

Next, get a plane from Ra’s. Easy.

Tim wants a stealth jet.

Ra’s wants Tim’s personal autonomy and servitude.

With his own personal freedom on the line, Tim just has to play (and win) some of the most mind-boggling games of chess he’s ever had, on hour seventy-six of being awake. As an added negative, Ra’s won’t shut up while they play, chattering about world domination and how great Tim would be at it and how he’s squandering his talents by chasing after a guy whose coping mechanisms involved dressing up as a giant bat furry and punching people at midnight.

Tim kind of tunes him out. It’s a talent he’s painstakingly honed by being forced to listen to megalomaniacs monologue for the better part of five years, and perfected by tuning out Batman himself.

Anyway, he wins by a fraction, and Ra’s upholds his promise and gives him a stealth jet like promised.

From then, with the speed of someone who’s done a lot of interior modelling (the Nest was a travesty before he got his hands on it) he rips out most of the interior to make space for a very specialised isolation bay, complete with monitoring and other medical stuff. Bruce’s spontaneous trip to the annals of history had probably stabbed out his immune system as bad as the Widower had stabbed out Tim’s.

In the co*ckpit, he rehauls it with some nice Bat-Quality tech, puts kill switches on Ra’s trackers and sets the controls for home.

Now for the machine itself.

To start it, Tim needs to dribble some of his blood over Magic Artefact #2 (to set the return coordinates), insert Bruce’s DNA into the appropriate slot to set the target (Pru does this), then press the Big Red Button on the Machine he’s added for no reason.

Well, there was one reason.

Pressing a Big Red Button is more dramatic and he was nothing if not Bruce’s child in spirit.

Then, once he’s retrieved Bruce, they’ll stick him in the stealth jet, ditch Ra’s for Gotham, and remotely alert the rest of the Justice League and tell them I told you so. Loudly, repeatedly, and as many times as he can get away with.

Easy.

The first part of the plan goes off smoothly.

Unfortunately, Tim forgot to account for the simple and obvious fact that an adult human male, especially one as large as Bruce, is a lot more complicated than a simple piece of pottery, gold jewellery, or an axe made out of some sticks and strings and stone by someone with a room-temperature IQ.

The moment Bruce appears, a split second after the depression of the button, Pru is already hauling his prone figure into the jet, setting him up in the isolation bay, drawing blood and getting readings. Tim stares after them with wide, tired eyes.

With every test that comes back normal, Tim can feel the weight of the planet on his shoulders lightening, bit by bit.

It worked.

All of this, all the sacrifices, his spleen, the League, it wasn’t for nothing.

It worked.

The machine in front of him, painstakingly built over weeks, looms over him. Something rises in the back of his throat, in his eyes. They’re blurry now. He’s not sure whether it’s the overwhelming relief bubbling up, or joy, or grief. Maybe he’s finally beginning to process the hellish months he’s just suffered and all of this is just the suppressed emotions coming to the surface.

Or not. Tim’s wayyy too emotionally constipated for that, come on! He was basically raised by an empty house then by the poster child for emotional suppression!

But he’s definitely feeling something, that’s for sure. A lot of somethings.

He goes to drop his tired head into his hands, very nearly overwhelmed, before jerking back when the hands resting on his face don’t fit like they should.

He looks at his hands.

His teeny-tiny itty-bitty little baby hands.

They're short and stubby, unscarred and uncalloused, visibly lacking the years of wear and tear and hard use. He flips them, absently noting the lack of the scar Jason gave him during the Titan’s Tower fiasco, the missing line though his pinky where the Joker tried to cut it off once. They're bare, entirely uncalloused, he faintly notes amid the rising panic. And it’s not just his hands.

Oh no.

Oh no.

He slaps his hands on his face and feels chubby cheeks once again, looks down and his clothes hang off him like ill-fitting rags.

He instinctively looks up for Pru, and comes to eye level with her armoured sternum. Height spurt, wherefore art thou, he thinks desperately, looking up further. He has to crane his neck - something he’s never had to do to see her before - only to see her looking at him with an unreadable glint in her eye.

“Hey there, short stack,” she crows. “How’s the weather down there?”

“Uhh,” Tim says, cutting himself off when his voice sounds several registers higher than he remembers it. “Uhhh?!?! ”

Oh dear, Tim realises, he’s been de-aged.

Chapter 2: Tim makes a bad life decision

Chapter Text

Tim stares into the mirror like a man on death row.

A child on death row, now.

He makes a face at his reflection. Mirror-Tim does the same. He hates it.

Tracing untouched skin where scars used to cover, Tim marvels at the smooth, soft surfaces he forgot were supposed to feel like that. The scars gained from his endless work, from hard-won fights and the reminders of losses, of why he had to be strong, of torture, of good memories, of why he picked himself up off the ground to continue each time he got beaten onto it.

His entire life has been erased from his skin.

He takes another step closer to the mirror. Takes a deep breath. Compartmentalises.

His bones no longer ache from repeated breaks. The evidence of life-threatening injuries that used to exist all over his torso, evidence of a hard life lived, all gone. His semi-permanent headache is gone. His vision is clearer in his right eye, sounds are louder and clearer by magnitudes, and where he’s gripping his pants, white-knuckled, the unbridled texture almost sears into his fingertips. Did he have nerve damage at some point? Probably, if this is what full sensation is like.

From behind him in the mirror, Pru is staring at him in disbelief.

The moment Tim had hit that button, Pru had carried out the Plan to perfection, exactly like they’d rehearsed. She’d loaded the unconscious form of his father-figure into the gurney, and then into the safety of the isolation bay in the jet they’d prepared for immediate decontamination. She’d done his bloodwork, tested for various deficiencies and immunities and did a full body screen. Then, she did it again, just to be sure.

Tim was supposed to be reconfiguring the machine they’d used into a magical bomb, so the next time someone tries (hopefully Ra’s) to start it, they’d probably get blown the f*ck up. After his mental breakdown, of course.

He doesn’t even get to have his crisis. Pru had found him staring blankly at his own teeny hands in the middle of the room, brain rebooting like a lagging 90s Dell computer.

Safe to say, she’d found him an actual mirror for him to have another, second mental breakdown in, before executing Contingency 15Qz, or, what to do if a) Machine works, b) Pru is alive and uninjured, and c) Tim is somehow incapacitated and or having an existential crisis. He knew she’d been paying attention to his Powerpoint!

The crease of her brow is softer than it usually is, and if it's pity he’s currently seeing, Tim is going to break her nose again.

“You alright?” she asks, resting a hand on his shoulder softly.

No. Tim is not alright.

Given the current state of his body, he hasn’t even begun training as Robin yet, not in Paris, not on his own. The scraped knees are the only real scars he has at this point, from a bad fall when he was still nine years old and reeling from the knowledge that if Dick Grayson was Robin, then that meant Bruce Wayne was Batman.

It’s healed over though, so that places him at approximately ages ten to twelve.

A closer look, and his permanent second molars haven’t even started erupting yet, and he’s got a grand total of two and a half adult canines.

So he’s about eleven years old.

He has chubby cheeks, his hair is fluffy and unstraightened, his hands remind him of sporks and his eight-pack and jawline are gone with the wind. The only good thing about this entire situation is that Tim has been de-shish-kebabed, and thus has a functioning, Gotham-appropriate immune system in working order again.

As a negative, he has to go through puberty again. God is dead.

Puberty, which includes the precious height spurt he’d spent literal years waiting for. Being able to physically actually look down on stupid people? Being able to look Batman in the eye? The added intimidation factor? Being able to (finally) reach the top shelves in the Wayne Manor kitchen? It was everything he’d ever dreamed of.

His first height spurt was at fifteen and a half, a relatively late bloomer. Which, according to his estimated current age, is over four years away. He’d just breached the six foot height mark, and now he’s back at four and a half feet. If that.

If God isn’t dead, Tim’s going to murder him.

“Oi, idiot.” Pru says in the background.

But wait! It gets worse!

Tim is like, eleven.

See, that in itself isn’t so bad. His body, and the wear and tear that came with putting a meatsuit under the stresses and strains that he did on a daily basis, is all wiped clean. The peripheral nerve damage that he now knows he had (probably from repeated injury and the occasional torture), the hearing loss from one too many warehouse explosions. A fresh slate to start over. Puberty will suck, but now he knows what to expect, what to look forward to and how to manage it.

However, Damian is turning fourteen this year.

That’s right. Tim has achieved youngest child status. Also shortest child status, given that Damian is shaping up to have inherited Bruce’s height and stature.

“Tim!” Pru’s grip on his shoulder is used to fling him around so he’s facing her. He blinks slowly at her.

It’s an utter disaster.

No wonder Pru’s worried about him.

He can’t even take himself seriously. He’s a f*cking fetus. A blue-eyed, floofy-haired, innocent looking little baby-faced child. No wonder why Bruce didn’t take him seriously when he first tried to fill the Robin-shaped hole in his side, not until Tim revealed the copious amount of blackmail he used to highkey threaten him with.

Bruce, who is currently dead to the world in the isolation bay they’d set up in the plane.

Also, regardless of de-aging, Tim is still on day six of being awake, child body and all, and has just completed the goal he’s spent the last eight months in a research binge for. Currently, leftover stress and his own sheer willpower is the only reason he’s currently standing.

And not for much longer, too, given the way his vision is blurring. The last thing he sees is Pru is darting to him, arms outstretched.

There's something hard digging into his cheek. And over his ribs.

There's a pleasant haze over his thoughts, a familiar cloak of exhaustion he’s long since learned to push past. The soft light under his eyelids isn’t piercing for once, and the migraine that usually only dissipates with at least a couple hundred milligrams of caffeine isn’t present, strangely. His knees aren’t aching after mere hours of disuse. There’s no incense here, not like the sandalwood or jasmine burning in his sleeping quarters, just wet earth, a tang of iron, smoke and gasoline and just under that, something even more familiar and welcoming. That’s all it is. Comforting.

He’s warm, tucked into a crevice, under a blanket. No pillow strangely, and the surface his arm rests across is hard and flat. Not a normal bed. It’s not entirely comfortable, but he’s tired enough to ignore it in favour of releasing the breath he’d been holding to settle back to sleep.

There’s nothing pressing to wake up for. Nothing’s niggling in the back of his brain that refuses to let him sleep, to let him rest. Nothing is kicking his paranoia into overdrive. Tim’s finished the machine, achieved his goal, so there’s no need to get up right now, to wake up at all. No stress. He just gently wriggles further into the embrace and into the warmth and tries to go back to sleep.

Unfortunately for Tim, his brain says No.

This isn’t his bed, isn’t his desk, and he’s fallen asleep to the hum of magic so many times that waking up without it is jarring. And where is Bruce? He’d gone to all that effort to get him back, figuratively and literally selling his soul to a demon, so is he okay? All it takes is for him to notice that, then the other realisations come piling in, one after the other.

Consciousness returns to him slowly, then all at once.

Tim immediately wishes he was asleep again. The thing digging into his cheek? Bruce’s body armour.

Pru, in her endless intelligence, had decided not to put him back in his own bed, but to dump him on top of Bruce to hug like a teddy bear in the jet’s infirmary. He’s tucked into the gap between Bruce’s arm and torso, his own arm draped across B’s waist like a seatbelt. Bruce himself is slightly curled towards him, in a protective-esque pose, heavy arm draped over him.

Pru is reclining beside the infirmary bed holding a massive pot of coffee.

Her utility belt is carelessly cast aside on a pile of throw blankets on the floor, and she appears to be holding a battered copy of Wuthering Heights open with one hand. The book is lit with a mere sliver of light through the door, but even that brings Tim's headache back with a vengeance.

He cringes back into Bruce.

Pale green eyes flick to his own, and Pru snaps the book shut, roughly throwing it on the bedside table.

“Shut it, speed bump,” she hisses, seemingly predicting his ire.

Tim gathers himself enough to give her a Batglare: Mini Edition. With his one free arm, he frantically motions at his current position, namely the entire hugging Bruce thing, “Pru, why am I here?” He whisper-hisses.

Pru holds up four fingers and ticks them off with each point she makes. “Didn’t have a bed near the time machine, I was tired, here I can keep an eye on both of you, and,” she lists, completely straight-faced, “you can finally deal with some of your nascent daddy issues, your touch starvation, and your insomnia.”

”He’s immunocompromised!”

”Only slightly! Plus, you haven’t been in contact with anyone except for me in the last week. Not to mention, once we scram from here, your little Justice League will take over, and they’ve got even better facilities than we do. Besides, he’s fine. I’ve been monitoring you both.”

“The machine? I didn’t get to, uh, edit it.”

“Did it for ya. If Ra’s tries to use it to knock a couple decades off his age, it'll knock a couple decades off his lifespan instead.”

Then Pru, that utter turd, looks him straight in the eye and downs the entire pot of coffee in one go.

“Back to sleep you go, Tater Tot, I’ll wake you up later.”

Well, the joke’s on her, because the moment he doesn’t feel like he’s just spent six straight days awake (because he did), Pru is dead.

Tim wakes to the sensation of a hand ghosting over his hair. Once, twice, before coming to rest there, warm and reassuring. A pause, then he melts into the hand, and he hears Bruce inhale softly. They share the moment in silence.

The warmth of his fingers caressing his hair, careful yet clumsy in a way that doesn’t just speak of inexperience, but of semi-consciousness. He’s removed his bat-gloves, Tim realises.

With his head pressed against Bruce’s side, he can feel Bruce speak more than he can hear him.

Under his breath, slurred and exhausted, Bruce softly murmurs, “Damian?”

And Tim is wide awake.

And very aware that even if he still mentally views himself as an adult, he is still child-shaped and child-sized and there are consequences to these changes forced onto him.

Because this isn’t about being mistaken for Damian (even if he is a little insulted), this is about facing the realities of his new, well, stature.

Legally, Tim Drake is currently eighteen, emancipated, and nearly completely estranged from the whole Wayne family. Being physically eleven years old all of a sudden is not going to pass muster, even if he drops from the public eye for a decade or so.

If he wants to rejoin society in any sort of functioning way, he needs a waterproof new identity, one that explains how a random teenager popped up out of the woodwork like a Jack-in-the-Box and got adopted post-haste, and looks exactly like Bruce’s previous child, Tim Drake, without kicking the hornet’s nest of public opinion and paparazzi.

He is now a minor in every other way that counts.

One that needs a parental figure, and if he returns to his previous position in Gotham, he will, without a doubt, be readopted by Bruce for the rest of his pseudo-childhood. The fake Uncle plan worked a treat the first time he tried it, but he doubts it’ll pass scrutiny a second time.

But, the real question is, does Tim want to be readopted by Bruce?

As he lies in Bruce's arms, it’s rapidly becoming clear that they can’t go back to what they once shared.

If Pru was here right now, she’d probably slap him to ‘shake him out of it,’ given Tim’s tendency to plan, catastrophize, create increasingly complicated contingencies and then spiral. He’s pretty sure this would count as spiralling, but he can’t stop. Not right now.

His thoughts are going a million miles an hour, picking apart every scenario, every plan.

He’d been too tired earlier to even give a thought to the what now , and it’s biting him in the butt.

Bruce and him, their entire relationship revolved around Tim being Robin. It’s sad, but the truth. Little Tim, pushing his way onto Batman’s radar, armed with only sheer stubbornness and a metric sh*t-ton of blackmail. Bruce, as the closed off, grieving, reluctant mentor who eventually became something like a father figure to him. Yes, he did eventually get adopted after his parents died, but at that time, Tim was Robin. His partner.

Something he really can’t be right now.

Without the muscle memory and the brutal training that had shaped his career as Robin, then Red Robin, Tim is as useless as a plastic cheese grater in a gunfight. Sure, he could try and re-train himself, but actually going out in the field? Batman never allows new Robins to patrol alone and if he dared to try and retake his place by Batman’s side, Damian would actually eviscerate him.

There’s a new Robin now, one that supplanted him so easily, and strong enough to take sixteen year old Tim down at an age of merely eleven. And that was before Tim had years and years of effort and training wiped away in an instant.

The manor, though it may be his home, hasn’t been a safe place for a long time. Even back then. It couldn’t be, not with the sheer number of murder attempts that Tim has had to avoid (some more narrowly than others). He was able to protect himself before.

Now, though.

Now, before Damian, Tim is as vulnerable as a concussed toddler.

And that’s not even getting started on everyone else.

When Tim left to go track Bruce down, he left on bad terms with literally everybody. Steph had faked her death and never told him it wasn’t real, Damian had tried to assassinate him on what seemed like a daily basis, Jason left him for dead, Alfred didn’t really do anything and Dick replaced him the first chance he got, at the worst time, in the worst way.

Facing them, after all this time?

He doesn’t want to have to deal with them, on top of dealing with his own new circ*mstances. Everything has changed, and Robin is the latest in the very long sequence of upheavals his life has been.

Once Bruce goes back, Dick can go back to being Nightwing, Jason can come home with his newfound appreciation for Bruce’s work as Batman, Cass might come back from Hong Kong, and Damian can settle in his new role and hopefully grow to be less homicidal. One big happy family. He can’t mess that up for them, and it wouldn’t work anyway, not with the logistic side, nor with the interpersonal stuff.

It’s very simple, actually.

He can’t be here.

Just being by their side wouldn't work. Not as Robin, not as an adopted son, not as a vigilante. For every option Tim throws out there, increasingly more desperate, all signs are indicating NOPE.

He knows he needs a new identity, and it looks like Tim’s going to have to use a contingency he’d never intended on ever using: burning the identity of Tim Drake.

His real identity.

Permanently.

Fuuuck, he never thought he’d actually have to use this one.

Of course, he’s not going to pull a Steph and let his family think he’s dead, but just inform them he’s… incapacitated for the near future, and won't be able to take up public duties with the rest of the family (his family) or private ones, as a vigilante on the streets of Gotham. He might phrase it like an extended vacation, or something similar, so they aren’t too worried by the very public death of his main identity.

It’s just a separation.

Tim Drake dies, and Tim (last name pending), starts a new life.

And besides, look at the bright side! Tim’s going on vacation. He’s going to get a tan, a pot plant, and a house in the Caribbean and spend the next decade lounging around in heated jacuzzis. He might stalk some heroes, pick up photography, get some hobbies that don’t risk a painful death. Away from Gotham.

Because if he ends up on Bruce’s radar, he’ll be instantly adopted, and there is no way that can end well.

If he’s going to separate himself from the Waynes and their superhero colleagues, he needs to cut all ties. Starting here, with this one, from the warm arms in which he now lies. Bruce hasn’t seen him since being thrown in the timestream, and if Tim has his way, won’t see him after. It’ll make the break easier.

It’s okay.

Bruce has been rescued. There’s a new Robin. His legal identity is ruined. He’s obsolete as a protege and useless as a hero.

Tim hasn’t just served his original purpose of saving Batman from himself, he’s gone above and beyond.

So it’s okay.

A few seconds of frantically wriggling down and out of Bruce’s hold, and Tim is out the bay door, leaving Bruce’s prone figure alone in the infirmary bed.

He tracks down Pru, who is taking a well-deserved nap in their quarters.

He ignores the double takes of the assassins he pushes past. One even stops to rub their eyes, blinking, before physically noping in another direction. Tim appreciates the fact that the minions aren’t too expressive, thanks to the ninja training, as it means he can pretend for a little longer that he doesn’t look like an ipad kid.

Climbing onto the wooden footboard of the bed, he launches himself on top of her, taking full advantage of his new size change to inflict maximum annoyance. Pru wakes with a shriek and an assassin-worthy reflex kick, sending Tim flying across the room. He tries to land in a roll and push to his feet in a single motion, but with the absence of any muscle tone and muscle memory, he just ends up with a sore tailbone.

“We leaving yet?” she asks, pushing to her feet. She doesn’t apologise to Tim, and he doesn’t expect her to.

Pfft. Like they’d apologise for something as menial as grievous bodily harm.

”Nope,” Tim announces, hauling himself up from the floor, ignoring his new bruised tailbone. It’s harder than usual, given that his pain tolerance is currently non-existent. “New plan.”

Pru, pausing from where she’s strapping her gear back on her belt, blinks, once. Twice. “Why.”

“Damian nearly killed me multiple times when I was older. Look at me, Pru. ” He motions to himself desperately. “Look at this face! Does this face look like it can face one or Ra’s Al Ghul’s spawn and live? I’m too adorable to die! I’ve got so much to live for!”

She raises a shaking fist. Her fingers twitch in the way that Tim knows she’s imagining them around his throat. “Are you telling me, Timothy , that not only will we not be using any of the exit contingencies from the two-hundred slide powerpoint you made me sit though and memorise, but that we’re throwing it all away?”

She takes one threatening step towards him.

“Uhh, yes.” He edges closer to the door. She follows him, step by step.

“Get over here, baby brain. I’m feeling the sudden urge to snap your tiny neck.”

“You don’t kill anymore!”

“I’m making an exception. Get your scrawny ass over here. ”

Chapter 3: Tim finally gets to say I TOLD YOU SO

Chapter Text

First, he steals a pad of sticky notes from the desk in the corner, next to the aptly named Tim’s Conspiracy Corkboard.

Because Pru was terrible, she’d only bought them in bright pink with little flower and butterfly decals in the corners, rather than the plain blue Tim had requested. He wasn’t even allowed to replace them, because that was wasteful and bad for the environment and Tim is currently living with a bunch of eco-terrorists radical enough to put Ivy to shame.

Tim raises a purple glitter gel pen, clicks it a few times, and writes Behold, Bruce f*cking Wayne across the top.

Then, I TOLD YOU SO right below it, in bold strokes and underlined roughly.

Bruce's chest softly undulates in the corner of his eye. He’s been sleeping since they pulled him from the time stream, with only brief periods of semi-consciousness in increasingly short intervals. If Tim’s going to send him back, now is the time.

He’s made his choice. It makes something in his chest clench.

P.S. I’m going dark for the foreseeable future. You're also probably going to see something about me in the news in about a fortnight or so, just ignore it, the bottom reads in Tim’s messy scrawl.

Perfect.

Now they definitely won’t be concerned when they hear about Tim’s brutal death.

After clicking the lid of the glitter gal pen back into place and looking over the rest of the note, satisfied, he sticky-tapes it firmly to Bruce’s chest armour.

His handwriting has changed a little, because his hands are now child-sized and the pen sits differently in his grip, but overall it looks similar enough to pass muster.

And that’s the end of it.

The coordinates to the Batcave are set, Tim’s Justice League beacon in the co*ckpit set to deploy mid-route to Gotham. Everything else is taken care of, or stable.

All he has to do is leave.

So simple, and yet his feet feel like they’re weighed down by concrete blocks. His chest already feels like he’s been thrown in Gotham Harbor.

Some time ago, he’d recognised that all this was toxic.

That being a vigilante was the cause of all the pain in his life, of every life-changing event. That leaving was an impossibility.

Sure, his parents may not have been in Gotham for ten months of the year, but they still cared enough to call him once every few weeks. He had a safe place to rest his head, good food, clean water, and an education that most would envy. In the beginning he’d had a future, outside of the cycle of crime he’d dedicated his body and mind to stopping. For this, he’d slowly given all that up and more, until all he had left was the cape.

And it wasn’t just that he’d noticed. Now, when he looked in the mirror and saw an impossibility staring back, he’d seen the contrast of what he’d become. A Tim who was colder and darker, becoming less sane and grounded with every month that passed for the sake of a vision of Gotham based on impossible standards.

He could have been normal, he sees it now. Back when he was eleven, properly eleven, he could have walked another path so easily. Let the adults deal with a grieving Bruce. Blackmailed the rest of the Justice League into an intervention. Anything, really.

Tim is unhinged, yes, he knows this.

He’s so far beyond unhinged that he’s not even connected to the doorframe anymore. It’s been well-documented over the years he’s been in the field, mission documentation and patrol reports recording glimpses of the depths Tim would fall to, the lengths he would go for a person he considered important enough.

And Batman was always important enough.

But now that he’s been displaced from Batman’s side, maybe he could take this second chance that’s landed in his lap and use it to move on. Escape the cycle of pain that Robin had wrought onto him, while he’s been stripped back to baseline, and build himself up into something better.

Something happier.

Find a purpose that wasn’t self-sacrificial, didn’t validate his need to be useful, and doesn’t involve chaining himself into a mantle that would destroy him again.

Because while being a vigilante gave Tim an all-encompassing purpose in life, it often left him feeling emptier than when he started. For Tim, it took everything.

Was it really so selfish to want to be greedy for once?

Yesterday, Tim looked in the mirror and saw a fresh slate. This is a second chance, one he’s going to grasp with both hands.

He turns on his heel and marches out of the jet, leaving Bruce behind. Giving the signal to Pru, the engines roar into action as it smoothly rises into the open air. He watches it depart in the direction of Gotham. His eyes blur.

This is fine.

He’s going to need so much therapy.

Tim kicks the door to Ra’s throne room open. Tim also underestimates how weak his body is currently, and how heavy the door actually is. It sways on its hinges slightly with a slow creak.

Someone kill him now, that’s so embarrassing.

Once he’s actually in, he struts past the throne and into the private quarters behind it, guards behind automatically flanking him until the door, where they let him pass through unhindered.

Had it been a year ago, Tim wouldn’t have dared to enter Ra’s private living quarters so frivolously, not without expecting multiple assassination attempts and an entire week of the vigorous mind games and manipulations that had come to characterise their relationship. As much as Tim would love to shove the man into a particle accelerator, and as much as Ra’s hates how much power he has over the League’s online infrastructure, they both have too much history and blackmail to do anything other than fake cordiality or risk mutual destruction.

Like a cold war.

Actually, exactly like a cold war. Tim has nukes.

As it turns out, he did a lot more on his eighteenth birthday than get alcohol poisoning, sneak into North Korea and fall asleep in a puppy pile with Pru.

If Ra’s so much as touches Tim or anyone he cares about, those launch codes get remotely activated, and then it’s sayonara to at least five of Ra’s favourite Lazarus Pits. He also blows up every League base in existence via their generators and dumps all their data onto the dark web. As the cherry on top, the subroutines he’s set up covertly on their servers are designed to systematically run through every email address even vaguely associated with the League, and if they haven’t already done so, sign up to every adult site his program could find on the internet.

Even better, once activated, it runs itself in two month intervals. So unless they find someone better than Tim at computers (which is very unlikely) the League would be doomed to endless amounts of inappropriate spam, unless they dismantle their servers entirely or somehow find and disable the subroutine.

Basically, he’s untouchable.

Ra’s knows this.

Ra’s also knows that if he leaves the base that Tim is currently inhabiting, he will cause unchecked chaos.

This is a tragedy, because the moment the Demon’s Head leaves, Tim’s pretty certain he can get the ninja here to unionise within three weeks, tops. With the motivation of dental cover (especially in a job that requires excessive amounts of violences), anything can happen. He’s already started his own cult in the IT department, and he’s pretty sure the Logistics Department is on the verge of straight-up worship.

Which, in hindsight, is probably why most of the ninja here have been given explicit instructions to avoid him, apart from Pru.

The deal they made has also led to the unique situation of Tim being able to parasitise Ra’s resources, while the man himself watches on helplessly, because they didn’t specify time limits or any other reasonable modifiers when they agreed on the terms over a year ago. Tim is going to squeeze every inkling of use out of the League that he can.

They delay his retrieval of Bruce, Tim delays his departure from their premises. It’s entirely fair.

Ra’s might be a self-important, egotistical megalomaniac, but he at least has some semblance of honour, which, to be honest, is probably the only reason why he hasn’t kicked Tim out into the desert yet.

The only other reason is because of the loose companionship that they’ve formed amidst their cold war. They play strategy games, train, and psychologically pick the other to pieces, jabbing where it hurts. Tim wouldn't dare start open hostilities and he knows Ra’s equally averse, not when he thinks he can see Tim’s potential.

Although the recruitment pitches had stopped after Ra’s had realised how lame he was sounding with what was basically as close to begging that a proud sociopath can get, he’s still veeery obvious that he wants Tim.

Only Tim’s brain, thankfully.

Which is wild, because him? Seriously?

What on earth about him screams ‘successor’?

Tim’s firmly in Batman’s pocket, is a walking human disaster, and wouldn’t know ‘self-care’, ‘limitations’ and ‘common sense’ if it hit him in the face with a spiked baseball bat.

It has resulted in strangely complimentary interactions between two people who respect each other and simultaneously really don’t want to piss the other off. Tim hates to admit it, but when Ra’s isn’t being an overtly evil megalomaniac, he can occasionally sometimes kinda be decent company. Sue him, he’s a sucker for intelligent conversation, and the debates they can get into can be quite fun.

Two years ago, Tim would never have pictured himself in this situation. Acquaintances with Ra’s Al Ghul, of all people.

As such, here he is in his most vulnerable state, trusting in the knowledge that they can destroy each other while they tolerate each other’s company.

It’s with this in mind that he barges into Ra’s private quarters without slowing, newly 4’6” and as confident as he was now adorable.

“I have made a miscalculation,” Tim loudly announces as he enters the lounge.

Ra’s, who is elegantly sipping on some three-century-old wine or something else equally expensive, chokes. It forces him to sit up as he coughs hard enough to hack out a lung, swinging his feet off the chaise where he was lounging to sit upright, spilling bright red liquid on the ornately woven surface as he hurriedly moves his half-full glass to the tea-table. It’s going to leave a horrendous stain, Tim just knows.

He ignores Ra’s dying across from him. “Not only am I small enough that biting people has just become my only viable self defence option, I am both entirely untrained and have an additional decade or so before I reach retirement age. I know, I’m devastated too.”

“Det-detective,” Ra’s coughs, then waits a couple of seconds to regain his posture. When he speaks again, he’s completely poised, the fearsome Demon’s Head. “Does this mean you’ve succeeded in retrieving the Batman from his trip through time?”

Tim plops himself on an opposing chair, and chooses to ignore the way his feet no longer reach the floor. He also resists the urge to swing them back and forth or something equally childish.

“He’s in the infirmary now. Preparations to leave are on hold due to… unprecedented circ*mstances.” While larger words like that usually sounded cool when he was older, taller, and generally way more dangerous, it’s important to note that he has since halved in size. He sounds like an eleven year old trying to sound smart. It’s incredibly cringy to hear his own voice do that.

Thankfully, Ra’s seems to be too distracted by the fact he’s shrunk. He’s shocked. His eyes are a millimetre more open than they would be in his usual above-your-worldy-problems slash vaguely-disappointed-in-your-existence face and Tim isn’t fooled for a second.

“What is the cause of,” Ra’s waves a hand in his direction when his voice fails. “ This. ” There's something in his voice that sounds distinctly like Damian. Tim tries not to feel insulted and fails.

“I wanted my spleen back and the universe answered.”

“Timothy.”

“I discovered immortality.” Ra’s eye twitches.

“Seriously, Timothy.”

“I mean, I certainly added a few years to my lifespan.”

“Childish behaviour does not become you.”

“Well, funny you should say that. Because I have, in fact,” Tim motions to himself with both hands, “become child.” He’s not sure if the added sass is due to euphoria at retrieving Bruce, or if his mental state is beginning to regress to his biological age.

Ra’s pinches the bridge of his nose. “Damian was never this… obstinate in his youth.”

Tim would beg to differ, having actually spent more than ten minutes in the same room as Damian. He’s not sure Ra’s can say the same.

Tim leans back in the seat, templing his fingers. He probably looks ridiculous, being as small as he is.

“Because you traumatised him into obeying you,” which is a pretty fair thing to point out. It was entirely Ra’s fault that every child he came into contact with came out the other side supremely messed up. “Kids are just tiny human beings who haven’t learnt basic decency or impulse control yet, I don’t know why you’re so surprised.”

“Maybe I expected you to be better, Detective. Or is your mind regressing to match your age?”

Tim hates how Ra’s can pose a reasonable question, yet make it sound like an insult. His mother was an unmatched master at making basic marks and somehow using them to doubt the poor victim’s intelligence, sense of style and family line, so it’s nothing new to Tim, having it aimed at him.

“I wouldn’t know the mechanics of it,” he smiles with all of his teeth, Janet Drake come to life, “Would you argue the same with your little… dips in the pit?” He tilts his head, knowing that Ra’s would hear the ‘ are you sure you’re not senile?’ he wasn’t saying loud and clear.

Ra’s matches his bared teeth with his own, razor sharp. “Who knows, detective, maybe only time can tell? You’ve always had a youthful spirit.” You’ve always been childish, his grin belies.

This pointed banter is familiar. Tim finds himself slipping back into old habits.

He nods, pretending to consider what Ra’s said.

“Of course,” he demurs, lowering his chin as he pretends to think, “with all your centuries of worldly experience, you can’t blame me for thinking some things might become blurred.”

“Your consideration is appreciated. It's a shame you don’t apply it to what matters.”

“What can I say, I’ve always appreciated the small things in life. It’s easy to lose sight of things like that.”

“I’ve always been more fond of the bigger picture, you know this. Some lesser things get lost by the wayside.”

“I can see.” Tim smiles acidly. “I would say that I'm impressed, but you’ve always been exceptional.”

“Exceptional, you say,” Ra’s takes his time to drag his gaze over Tim in a way that is discomforting. “As one who has done something truly exceptional, would you mind enlightening me on your hypotheses on your current stature?”

“Surely someone as knowledgeable as yourself would have a few suspicions.” Tim bites back, recrossing his legs as he reclines back in the chaise. Not a single muscle twinges with old injuries or past overuse, leaving him slightly off-kilter as his body once again fails to act like the body he’s so used to.

From across him, Ra’s leans forward, gently resting his chin on one the back of one of his hands. He blinks slowly once, fixing his full attention on Tim.

“Let me guess,” He tilts his head considering. Like the other gestures, there’s nothing kind about it. “You played with magic, and you failed to predict the price it would extract.”

Tim remains stone-faced, neither acknowledging nor denying the on-point accusation levelled at him. Personally, Tim suspects the blood he used to calibrate the temporal targeting system forged a link, which was used to extract the price. He’s not telling Ra’s that, no way. That old fogey has the Pits to dunk himself in, no need to give him additional methods to artificially extend his lifespan.

“I’ve been de-aged approximately six or seven years, from my own estimations.” Tim admits in lieu of actually giving Ra’s a response. “I’m inclined to think it’s permanent, given the nature of the magic, but only time will tell.”

Ra’s accepts the subject change with a dip of his head. “And yet, you have contingencies for your unfortunate condition,” he probes.

Tim does. Many of them. He’s not telling them to this guy though, no way.

“Would you reconsider the offer I gave, back when you woke up after your surgery?” Ra’s continues, pushing himself to a standing position. An assassin flits to his side, placing a new goblet in his outstretched hand before disappearing back into the shadows, and Ra’s walks towards his terrace. Tim has no choice but to follow, given the way one of Ra’s assassin guards inclines their head in that direction.

Like this, Tim can feel the power imbalance much more strongly than from the lounge. Ra’s towers over him despite retaining a polite distance from Tim, looking down his nose and making him feel truly, truly small for the first time since he ended up in his own unfamiliar body.

“Your potential is untapped physically, and your brain is malleable as it redevelops.” He casts a critical eye across Tim. “With the League’s resources and your adult self’s knowledge, I can hone you into a weapon uncomparable to what you were before. My offer to train you from before stands, but know, Detective, that my fervour has only increased.”

First of all, no. Second of all, absolutely not. Third of all, Tim would rather fistfight Bane.

Tim just hums noncommittally. “I’ll be staying for a little while longer, tying up loose ends. My job doesn’t just end with Bruce.”

There's still a grocery list of menial tasks to do before he leaves, including orchestrating his own untimely death, getting a new waterproof identity and writing multiple notes saying ‘I TOLD YOU SO’, which he is going to mail to the civilian address of every member of the Justice League who ever doubted him.

“And one of your loose ends will be your new identity?” Well, Ra’s would learn what he was doing eventually, regardless of how hard he tried to hide it all, so he may as well push while he’s ahead.

Ra's squints down at him. “I understand that usually the one asking for favours should offer something in return of equal value. What can you offer me?”

Tim raises his eyebrow. “I got rid of a rivalling assassin cult for you, and you don’t even let me keep one of the minions you gave me? Hospitality is dead. Besides, you actually want me around. You should be the one paying me.”

Chapter 4: Tim f*cking Dies (sorta)

Chapter Text

With Bruce halfway across the Atlantic Ocean right now, Tim finally kicks himself into gear again.

The beacon for the Justice League to find has lit up, and movements on his scanners are indicating that the JLA will find the ship in the next ten seconds at the speed they’re going. Satisfied with their movements, Tim disconnects his systems from those of the ship’s, leaving no trace that it was once being controlled by an outside source.

He inverts his arms and stretches, body aching slightly from the long period restricted to this single chair. He only gets one satisfying crack from his spine. When he was older, a single motion like that would have released a cacophony of various pops, especially after being sedentary for a period as long as this.

He effectively has a brand spankin’ new body now, and hell, was his old one really so addicted to caffeine? He feels like a new person without the constant urge.

…Maybe he’ll chill out on the addictive substances this time.

Maybe.

Actually, no.

The taste was godlike, and if it didn’t increase his productivity by a hundred and fifty percent, he would be a lying liar who lies. And Tim is nothing if not a terminal workaholic. He would rather lick a cheese grater than go without.

That’s an issue for Future Tim though, because there’s work to be done.

As per the New Plan, Pru is in charge of creating new watertight identities for them, which is probably a decision he’ll regret later. Tim, though, is going to do Science.

It involves commandeering one of the League’s fancier labs with Ra’s blessing, much to the annoyance of their current occupants. A few of the white-coated scientists glare at him as they file past him on their way out, leaving Tim alone in their fancy lab.

Leaving Tim Drake, Gotham-born mad scientist and self-proclaimed master of human cloning, freshly eleven, alone, unsupervised, in a fancy laboratory.

Oh ho, bad idea.

It’s time for science.

He throws on a lab coat (sleeves rolled up several times), slides on some protective glasses (the smallest pair he could scrounge from the storage rooms), some gloves (the XXS size was still too large, but he’s just going to have to work with it) and goes to grab some of the chemicals he knows he’ll need from the storage room.

He would, if he could reach anything.

Because the bench was shoulder height, and how is he supposed to do science if he can’t even reach the microscopes?

Or the cabinet with the scalpels. Or the bunsen burners. Or the glassware.

Tim has to admit they really did a good job when they childproofed the lab, because he can’t reach anything.

That’s fine.

With the help of a couple of confused ninja, he pulls off a heist. He nabs even more stools, and chairs to stand on, and when everything is finally accessible to him and reachable, the fancy, clinically neat laboratory looks like a bomb had hit a furniture store.

Good thing he has assassins to do the clean up for him.

Now he can actually work, it’s easy as breathing to isolate and culture some of his own cells, setting them up in pods and modifying their growth for his desired purposes. These labs are different to the one’s he’s used to, so he sends some ninja to go and steal his cloning equipment from his other lab beneath Gotham to speed up the process.

Given that it’s a Ninja Delivery, the express shipping time for a figure of Tim’s ranking inside the League is insanely fast. Even faster, given that Tim’s had the favour of the Logistics Department since he gave their ordering and tracking systems complete overhauls last year. Their opinion of him borders on straight-up worship.

Merely six hours and five pots of the coffee-slash-energy drink hybrid he’d engineered while trying to get Bruce5 back, and the lab doors open to make way for ninjas rolling in Tim’s specialised isolation tanks.

Of course, a sane person would question why on earth a morally upstanding vigilante such as himself had human cloning equipment squirrelled away. Heavily used human cloning gear, at that.

But it was Tim.

Tim, who had invented a time travelling machine for Bruce, who had nearly executed an elaborate Saw-like trap for his father’s murderer, who had mastered human cloning to get Kon back.

If he would throw himself into dangerous situations to save strangers, then it was quite easy to extrapolate what he would do for the people he loved.

His moral scruples only lasted as long as the lifespans of those he cared about.

In hindsight, maybe that was a reason why Ra’s thought he would be a good ally to have.

It was a pretty well known joke that while most of the Metropolis villains were either aliens or business graduates, most of the Gotham rogues had PhDs. Tim also happened to be the recipient of multiple honorary PhDs. Of his family, it was a lesser known fact that Bruce was most concerned about Tim snapping and becoming a supervillain.

When Bruce had first died, Dick had managed to get a hold of Bruce's will to prepare themselves for what was to come, worst case. Past all the soppy words and handouts of incredible monetary value, there was a post-script.

PS, it read, don’t let your brother become a supervillain.

To anyone else reading the will, it would have been regarded as a joke. Ol’ Brucie Wayne, always having a laugh. Anyone who actually knew Bruce would know how utterly serious it was.

Between the four of his sons, they’d sat together in the Batcave, casting suspicious eyes on each other. Calculated glances. From what Tim could infer from body language and subverbal communication, they were all hilariously wrong.

Jason had thought it was talking about himself (or maybe Dick). Dick had thought it was about Damian. Damian had assumed it was Jason.

Tim knew it was absolutely 100% about him.

When Kon had first died, he’d been beside himself in his grief. Trying to clone his best friend from what little genetic material he had left was the only thing he could do to prevent his misery from overcoming him; he refused to lose another person he loved.

But it wasn’t like they could stop him.

He’d only had a limited amount of Kon’s DNA available, and it was too valuable to use for test runs, so he had used his own to practise. He’d cloned himself in staggering amounts. Brains, lungs, hearts. He’d played with his own genetics in these test tubes, to grow eyes that were brown, six-fingered hands and mirrored anatomy. Every flavour of Tim imaginable.

And yet, despite all this practice cloning the human side of Kon, the Kryptonian side remained unyielding.

He’d broken into old Cadmus labs for data, had managed to hack Lex Luthor, had managed to steal both Clark and Luthor’s DNA to separately merge them together to make him from scratch, had used Kon’s leftover DNA from blood samples and anything he could get his hands on.

Over a hundred attempts.

Over a hundred failures.

Tim was forced to stop when he began to run out of Kryptonian genetic material to use, and shortly after Dick managed to duct-tape him to the wall and host an intervention, complete with sparkles, cupcakes, and business cards for every therapist in Gotham. He’d been able to tell something was wrong, but he’d never found out how far Tim had fallen in his grief.

But still, good intentions can’t remove Tim’s experiences.

This is why it only takes a week and a half to whip up genetic and morphological duplicates of his older self’s organs.

He grows them separately, organ by organ, ageing the copies until they could pass muster as him on a morphological level. He even takes the time to inflict the injuries on the parts of him that are publically available in his medical history, such as the mass of scar tissue on his left lung, some of the more obvious cuts on his fingers and the scar from the piercing he’d temporarily had on his tongue, years ago during a rebellious phase.

Extracting them from the tanks is careful work. He’s forced to remove all traces of the nutrient solution he was using as an incubator, before hacking them off the supports he was growing them on roughly with an old, rusted knife and dousing them in his own cloned blood.

Next, he dumps each organ in some of the League’s sterile Blackmail Boxes (made exactly for the purpose of anonymously transporting threatening messages and body parts to people) for Ra’s premium courier assassins to transport exactly to Tim’s specifications.

Because if Tim is going to fake his death, he’s going to be dramatic about it.

There's a line of courier assassins waiting in front of him in standard League dress.

To the first one, he hands the box containing his brain, alongside further instructions to deliver to the GCPD, and to get creative about it.

The second, he gives his heart, and asks them to deliver it to Wayne Manor, because it’s symbolic and they’ve already been warned to ignore anything they see about him so it won’t worry them too much.

To the third, he gives them his tongue and Vicki Vale’s address. He was debating whether to actually send it to her, but then he realised that self-obssessed woman could really use a little bit of a scare, and ensured she would focus solely on his unfortunate ‘demise’ in her journalism for the next month or so, spreading the word and cementing his presumed death in the public consciousness.

He hands out the rest of the boxes with his other organs to the remaining assassins like candy, and instructs them to either dump them in Gotham Harbor, or to circulate them into Gotham’s organ trafficking rings to implicate more people.

And then, last but not least, Tim turns to the final assassin.

They’re looking at him with stars in their eyes.

Oh no, he’s about to smash someone’s rose-tinted glasses again. They’re never going to forgive him.

He dumps the box containing his hacked off middle finger into the arms of the waiting courier assassin. “Deliver this to the Justice League headquarters, please.”

The assassin looks at the box like it just grew arms and shot a child, then back at Tim, as if to say, The Justice League headquarters? What did I ever do to you?

“The one in space, please,” Tim adds.

The assassin looks impossibly more devastated.

He reaches up on tip-toe to pat the assassin on the shoulder comfortingly. “There there,” he says, patting. “Off you go now, there’s a good chap.”

He waves merrily at their absolutely betrayed expression as they retreat from the room.

Ha. Bye-bye, Tim Drake.

Now, the only thing left to do was to figure out what the hell to do next with his newfound freedom, but he thinks he has the perfect idea for that situation.

First, he goes to the League’s IT Department to give them a heads up that he’s leaving.

He opens the door, to reveal them all bowing down to a marble statue of what appears to be him with a halo, and holding a laptop in one hand.

“-Rejoyce!” A bespeckled ninja in a plaid suit shouts, “For our Lord has perished, and has since been reborn in a more innocent, cuter form! He has reached true enlightenment, and will be seeking therapy!”

A series of gasps sound from the crowd of IT ninjas. Someone faints.

One stumbles to his feet, shaking, “Surely not, Reverend!” he cries, “Our lord is performing self-care!?”

The one who is apparently a reverend for Tim’s new religion nods seriously. “He is indeed, my dear friend.” The ninja who asked falls to his knees and begins to cry happily. The ninja near him pat his back comfortingly, also misty eyed.

He raises his voice to a near shout. “It is time, time for us all to support Him in his new path! As He forges forward, we shall endeavour to support Him in any way we can!”

The crowd of ninjas cheer. The reverend allows them to celebrate for a minute before silencing them with a raised hand.

“New beginnings, my friends. New beginnings for all of us,” he says solemnly. He looks at every audience member, one by one. “What better way to start fresh, to grow more devout, stronger, to forge new connections, than to dissolve the generations-long standing feud with the Logistics Department?”

The cheers are deafening.

The IT and Logistics department of the League hate each other. Them teaming up either means the world is about to end, or the League’s enemies are about to get ended. And to unite for Tim? He’d be flattered, but only if there were less statues of him involved.

You know what?

They can sort themselves out. He fixed their systems, surely they can cope with his departure.

Tim closes the door firmly behind him.

Ra’s can deal with that, because he sure as hell isn’t.

His nose itches. The fabric of the makeshift blindfold is pushing some of his eyelashes the wrong way. He knows Pru is watching right now, and if he goes to scratch it, she’ll claim he’s cheating and decide they’re going to go live in Greece or something.

In front of him, Tim tries to picture where the world map pinned to the wall is. He’s already centred himself according to the crack in the floor he can feel under his bare feet, now he just needs to be able to hit America with the dart in his hand. Sue him, he’s still a little homesick. Besides, how else is he supposed to pass his time, if not by stalking the local superheroes?

With school or by building healthy relationships? Ridiculous.

Good thing that he’s had years of experience with darts, both in combat settings and on Young Justice game nights. Despite being both out of practice and de-aged, Tim is a master at this, and it’s a good thing he’s never played around Pru, because then there would be absolutely no way she let this be the decider.

Tim draws, and lets the dart fly on the exhale, ripping off the scratchy blindfold to rub at his eyes. Pru is already examining the map gleefully in front of him, and Tim nearly trips over his own feet to push her armour-plated shoulder aside, to see where they were about to start their new life.

Okay, he hit America, good start, east coast of America, even better.

North-east coast, near New Jersey, Tim’s subconscious might be telling him something right about now, but he is electing to ignore it entirely. His hand shakes in anticipation as he lines his finger up to the dart puncture mark, revealing that their new home will be in-!

“Metropolis!” Pru crows, thumping Tim on the back. It stings. “Great aim, boss. Really,” she says mockingly, before bursting into cackling laughter at his expense.

Tim kind of wants to slap her. Metropolis? Of all places? Really? Tim can’t help but look down at his pudgy little baby hands in abject, horrified betrayal. Metropolis!

Pru is still laughing at him in the background.

He knows he’s a proud Gothamite, a place which is widely regarded as a colonoscopy bag of a city by the rest of America, but it’s not that bad! These same people on the internet also really seem to like Metropolis in comparison. It’s widely regarded as leagues ahead of Gotham in literally every sector of population wellbeing, demographics and safety.

And now Tim’s going to go live there.

Surely it can’t be that bad, right?

Right?

Chapter 5: Tim’s note reassures everyone (NOT)

Chapter Text

Dick is having, quite possibly, one of the weirdest weeks of his entire life.

Bruce is back and recovering well, and woah, if that isn’t a trip and a half, Tim’s also gone f*cking AWOL according to his note. Technically, he’d already been AWOL for the better part of the past two years, but as expected of someone who managed to stalk two consecutive Robins and Batman, the Titans and their civilian identities for the better part of his childhood, Tim just goes poof. Vanished.

Dick had tried to find him. A lot.

His new therapist keeps saying that all he can do is his best, but the guilt still eats him alive some nights.

But, it gets worse. Two hours ago, Hal called him in a panic, something about a finger popping through the Zeta tube in the Watchtower.

And-

f*ck’s sake, Tim.

Way to give him a heart attack.

He stares at Tim’s lone middle finger in the glass case in the lab. Yes, it was his, they tested it.

“I think this is kind of a pointed message.” Wally says from beside him.

“Really,” Dick slowly turns to give him the world’s most deadpan look, one which is only compounded by the Batman costume he’s still in. “What gave it away? Was it the fact he sent us his middle finger? Or was it that the last contact we had with him involved the words ‘I told you so?’ Really, please enlighten me as to what he possibly could be implying.”

Not to mention, the note Tim had sent alongside Bruce vaguely mentioned something mildly worrying happening in about two weeks. It was, as of this morning, the two week mark since receiving that communication.

Up until now, they’ve heard nothing.

Now, with a piece of his finger in the Watchtower, it’s probably safe to say that whatever Tim had planned in that brain of his is probably about to smoothly unfold.

What they’re not looking forward to, however, is the PR nightmare on the horizon.

Tim would not have mentioned the news unless something was about to become very, very public, or he was about to do something as massively stupid as make another fake uncle.

Thanks for the heads up, lil’ bro, but please, a teeny bit more detail would be very muchly appreciated. Like, a lot.

Now, Dick is staring at what appears to be Tim’s middle finger.

It’s not his actual finger, because it’s missing the callouses the real Tim has, the ones he got from the bo staff, and the thin subdermal slash line from where the Joker tried to remove it after Tim got a little too sassy in a hostage situation.

So, clearly not Tim’s finger.

Great, that answers one question.

The second, more pressing question, is why?

“Oi, asshole.” Jason reclines against the doorframe of the dining room. Although he doesn’t come to the Manor often, tensions with Bruce and his own crime-lording duties notwithstanding, in the past year they’ve all begun to make efforts to bond again, in the form of Alfred-enforced Wayne Family Dinners.

“Wrong body part,” he says, mindlessly going through and deleting evidence of Nightwing from the Bludhaven Police Department’s databases. “It’s Dick.”

“Please never say that to me ever again.”

“Politely, I refuse on grounds of the Funny.”

Jason sighs, and turns his head towards the ceiling, as if praying for divine intervention. Dick hears him murmur something that sounds suspiciously like ‘this could have been an email’ under his breath. It couldn’t have been an email. He doesn’t want to miss out on Alfred’s cooking either.

“GCPD got a cool little gift stapled to their front door earlier today. No note, nothing on the cameras,” Jason starts, uncrossing his arms. He pushes through the doorway, making his way over to rest warm forearms on Dick’s shoulders, leaning heavily over him to peek at the computer screen. “Gordon’ll probably call you about it tonight, just wanted to give you a heads up.”

Now Dick’s paying attention. He looks up to Jason’s chin, poking him. “What kind of gift? Fun or horror movie kind?”

“Yes, Dick,” Jason says his name like an insult, “There was a stuffed bunny rabbit and a get-well-soon card- no, you idiot, it was someone’s dissected brain pinned open on his office door like those frogs you did in high school biology.”

“Ah. Sounds fun. Any other info?”

“I think they’ll have finished identifying it by the time he calls you, but this seems to be a pretty specific message to someone. There was no accompanying evidence or DNA. Perp left no trace.”

Dick nods, lost in thought.

“Hang on a moment, dickhe*d,” Jason pushes his hands on the laptop aside to take control of the screen, laughing incredulously, “Is Dick Grayson, golden boy, billionaire playboy excetera excetera, hacking into the Bludhaven Police database to delete evidence?”

Dick squints. “Noooo?” He says, slowly trying to force the screen of the laptop closed.

Unfortunately, Jason also has a modicum of computer skills and can see exactly what he’s been doing while hanging over his shoulder like a giant, muscled, gun-wielding limpet. He moves his hand under Dick’s, holding it open so he can see the code flicking across the textbox in the corner of the screen, superimposed over the Nightwing file on Bludhaven PD’s digital evidence archives.

Dick tries to close the screen. Jason holds it open. They’re caught in a stalemate.

A crooked grin splits Jason’s face, “You really are, Goldie!” He fake-gasps in horror, bringing a hand up to gently cover his mouth like a delicate maiden, “My own brother, a dirty cop!”

Dick slams the screen shut, and a split second later he has Jason in a headlock, roughly tousling his hair. “Someone has to delete evidence or they’ll catch me, and besides, you’re a crime lord, you have no grounds to speak!” Dick protests, thoroughly ruining Jason’s hair.

Of course, this results in Jason flipping Dick over the back of the chair and trying to get him into another hold, which Dick slips out of thanks to his gymnastic skills, doing the same to the next hold, and the next one, and the next one after that. Eventually, it just leads to them tussling on the floor in the middle of the dining room with Jason trying to pin him with muscle, and Dick outmanoeuvring him at every turn.

Jason gets a good shot on his ribs, only for him to return the favour. Dick hears a breathless oof when his hand connects with Jason’s kidney. He gets his hair yanked playfully in revenge.

Behind them, someone clears their throat.

Instinctively, they jump apart and point at the other. “He started it!” They yelp in unison.

Alfred, unimpressed, raises an eyebrow.

“Excellent to see that you are both sharing the responsibility, the extra help cleaning up after dinner is greatly appreciated.”

They both slump. Getting voluntold to help after dinner is far from the worst that Alfred could do, but still, chores.

Dick moves to set up the table, whereas Jason goes back into the kitchen to help Alfred bring out the plates of food. As he gathers the cutlery and moves them into place, his mind wanders back to the Watchtower, the GCPD.

A body part. A message. Two in a single day.

One is by chance, two is a coincidence. And unfortunately, in their area of work, not much is left up to coincidences. Dick has a bad feeling about this.

His train of thought is interrupted by Damian entering, slowly leading Bruce to the table. Being honest with himself, Dick still isn’t over his sudden return. Every so often he’ll walk into a room or the cave and Bruce will be there like nothing ever changed, and Dick will feel a pang in his heart.

It’s still Bruce, though.

Emotionally constipated and hesitant with affection, but distance has made the heart grow fonder for them all, and having nearly everyone in the same house again is nearly enough to make him tear up.

Damian must feel his gaze, because when he looks over, there’s a silent uptick in the corner of his mouth.

He’s a far cry from how he used to be when he first came to the manor, jumpy, aggressive and standoffish. It’s taken over a year of affirmations, re-education and some serious therapy to get Damian to where he is now. Still jumpy, aggressive and standoffish, but friendlier, with softer edges and better-adjusted.

He’s grown bigger too. Dami’s first growth spurt hadn’t been unexpected but he seems to be taking after Bruce as he grows, taller and heavier in stature from both hard work and genetics. From where he’s standing next to Bruce, all Dick can see is the similarities between the two of them, the tilt of their jaws, the cowlick in their hairlines, the quiet contentedness in the way they look at him.

Just seeing him here is indicative of the progress he’s made.

The pride that fills him is a soft thing.

“Hello.” A quiet voice from over his shoulder makes Dick jump. Cass grins at him, his precious little sister. “I am here.”

He embraces her softly, how she prefers it, and smiles.

“Good to see you again. Have you snuck into the kitchen to see what Alfie and Jason have made?” Dick fights to keep the grin off his face. She knows as well as he does that they’re all entirely banned from the main kitchen after multiple incidents .

“Hmm.” Cass fakes a thinking face, then declares, “Food,” she says in the way she means not telling .

Dick collapses dramatically against the counter, and begins to loudly bemoan traitorous siblings.

It makes her smile, and seeing her humour lifts his own heart up too.

Dinner starts with the typical on-brand chaos typical for a room full of vigilantes. Death threats are made and received, Damian feeds Titus and Alfred the Cat on rotation under the table and denies everything with a completely straight face, Jason manages to juggle three steak knives without stabbing anyone and Steph shows up halfway through to steal their food.

Dick, though, is still waiting for the other shoe to drop.

His gut feeling is proved correct when half an hour later, the doorbell rings. Dick excuses himself to go and get it, only to look down and see a human heart bleeding over the doorstep.

Three times is a pattern.

Holy f*ck.

He was right.

So, of course, the first thing he does is immediately shut the door on the bloody mess, take two deep f*cking breaths, and calm-as-he-can walk back into the living room where the rest of his family waits.

Bruce, who was only just cleared five days ago to be in any position other than lying down, immediately clocks onto his emotional turmoil. His eyes sharpen, and dang, Dick really can’t get away with anything in front of his dad. “What is it,” he says sharply, cutting off the rest of the conversations occurring along the dining table.

“Guys,” he starts, voice strangled. “I think Tim’s f*cking dead.”

The silence is deafening.

Then absolute chaos reigns.

…

He probably could have phrased that a little better.

Bruce eventually manages to retake control.

“-ason, Tim might actually be dead, stop whining about how he stole your tragic backstory as well as both of your previous mantles. Damian, get back here, we can deal with the heart on the doorstep later, you’ll contaminate the crime scene. Cass, have some water, sweetie, we’ll get to the bottom of this and then you can go beat them up. Steph, I know you insist you’re not my child, but everyone please sit down and be quiet.”

Finally, they all sit down and shut up.

Bruce finally turns to Dick, face hard. “Explain.”

After Dick’s frantic explanation of his hunch, they take a sliver of the heart and Babs starts a genetic analysis through the Batcomputer. Slowly, the percentage on the large screen ticks upwards.

He wordlessly syncs the display to his wrist computer, eyeing the flashing [04:32:06 UNTIL COMPLETION] counting down in the corner of the screen. While the percentage analysis on the large screens ticks upward, the bickering between his siblings ticks upwards as well.

“-Literally warned us that this would happen two weeks ago, of course it’s part of one of his plans-”

“-let him fake die if he wants to pretend, seriously-.”

“-pictures of the note he left again, look, it’s weird.”

A large monitor to the left of the DNA analysis switches to the pink sticky note.

“See!” Steph says frustratedly, “I did my homework with him for years, the handwriting’s off!”

Jason narrows his eyes and leans in closer. “I dunno, it looks like his handwriting.”

“Yeah, and how close were you with him, other than the occasional stabbing spree?”

“Okay, valid. Point taken. Cass?”

“Strange. Is Timmy’s, but strange.”

“Are there any hidden codes Drake would have included?” Damian pipes up from where he’s sitting near Bruce.

Bruce shakes his head. “No buzzwords, grammar is in order, capitalisation and punctuation is normal. It does look rushed, but other than that there don’t appear to be any hidden messages or ciphers.”

“The pad used seems to be one shipped and sold in Nepal.” Babs informs them. “The only indents on the paper from previous notes written above this one has the phrase, ‘be gay, do crime’, and then what appears to be a grocery list. The rest is either wear and tear or illegible.”

“Do you think he wrote it under duress? Like a script or something?”

“No,” Dick points out, underlining both the phrases ‘Bruce f*cking Wayne’ and ‘I’m going dark,’ on the screen, blowing them up. “See, here. His g’s and y’s are both looped unlike how he normally does them, so we know he wasn’t forced to write this, or they’d be jagged and straight.”

They all stare at the screen in silence.

“So.” Steph says, clapping her hands together. “Who’s calling the police? And what’s the cover story we’re going for, when they inevitably ask about Tim?”

Babs groans. “If he’s actually alive, he isn’t going to be for much longer once I get my hands on him. You guys deal with the police, I’ll start fudging the records of his ‘world travel’ for eventual scrutiny, but I am going to strangle him when he eventually reveals himself.”

Wheeling herself over to the Batcomputer, she immediately cracks her neck, steals the nearest mug of piping hot coffee (Bruce’s) and downs the entire thing.

[04:25:18 UNTIL COMPLETION]

They call the police.

Wayne Manor is technically now a crime scene, but since the police have no idea whose heart it is or why it was sent to them, the police let them go after nearly two hours of questioning. Being the kids of one of the most influential men in America does have its advantages.

While the police are there Dick cries, Bruce giggles, flirts and asks stupid questions, Cass miraculously loses the ability to understand spoken English, Damian grunts all his responses, Steph interrogates the police right back for fun and Jason and Babs hide in the Cave, drink all the coffee and brainstorm ideas for Tim’s wild coming-of-age adventures.

Once they’ve all been questioned and photos have been taken and B puts his whole ‘Brucie Wayne’ act into full swing for their benefit, they reconvene in the cave.

[02:09:34 UNTIL COMPLETION]

It’s Jason who breaks the silence, clicking his red helmet into place.

“Staring at it won’t make it go any faster.” His modulated voice is punctuated by the muffled clicking of the armour in his jacket. He roughly slings it around his shoulders, zipping it up. “I say we go visit Gordon about the organ issue he’s also having and figure out if Dickwing’s right.”

Steph, Cass and Damian are already partially suited up. All that’s left is to attach the dominoes and cowls before they’re street ready.

Beside them, Bruce is methodically checking through the failsafes on his old Batman costume, the first time he’s donned the cowl properly since they all thought he died. Dick was worried they’d both be out of practice, but Bruce slips into the fit like second nature, and finally being able to wear the Nightwing costume without the Batman mantle on his shoulders feels like coming home.

“I don’t understand.” Damian crosses his arms. “Drake stands to inherit Wayne industries, and has forged many valuable connections in both his civilian persona and his hero one. He has too much to lose, and disposing of his main identity doesn’t seem realistic.”

Cass raises an eyebrow at Dick. He shrugs. Tim never really cared about consequences, not when they applied to him. He made up a fake uncle to avoid being adopted by Bruce. He stalked Batman and Robin for years.

“Sorry to break it to you, buddy,” Steph pats him on the back mockingly, leaning in, “but he totally would.”

“Regardless of whether he would or not, Jason is correct,” Bruce reasserts. “We go out tonight as normal, and reconvene when the countdown hits the ten minute mark.”

A murmur of agreement ripples through the circle of vigilantes, and like that, they scatter.

[02:03:56 UNTIL COMPLETION]

Nightwing swings through the city, graceful as an acrobat. No heavy armour to weigh him down, none to hinder his flexibility. A scream, three blocks northeast, he corrects the angle of his next grapple, sending him arcing towards the disturbance.

He sees two burly men cornering a woman.

The escrima sticks buzz to life under his careful grip.

[01:52:44 UNTIL COMPLETION]

At her request, he walks the victim home, making wisecracks the entire way and glaring at anyone who looks at them more than once.

She hugs him around the ribs tearfully when he drops her off at her front door, thanking him profusely. Nightwing can’t help but grin. This feeling, this is why he became a vigilante.

[01:45:36 UNTIL COMPLETION]

“What’s up, O? Anything for me tonight?” I need to take my mind off the coutdown, he doesn’t say.

“Hmm.” A pause. “Orphan is busting a drop-off a few blocks away, if you’d like?”

“You’re the best, O,” He breathes. Two seconds, and she’s connected to his domino, marking the address on his visual display.

She grunts. “Don’t I know it.”

[01:34:12 UNTIL COMPLETION]

A drug bust with Cass and three more muggings later, and Nightwing is nursing the satisfying ache of a fight gone well, and a decent-sized bruise on his ribs from a lucky strike. Apart from the usual in a city as crime-ridden as Gotham, it’s rather quiet.

A crackle in his left ear.

”Hey everyone, we have just under half an hour until the DNA analysis goes through,” Oracle sounds over the comms. Nightwing instinctively goes to press on his earpiece, making a smooth landing on a nearby apartment block with a beautiful tuck-and-roll. The gravel digs into his knees and fingertips as he presses himself upright, feeling his knees protest.

Oracle continues through the earpiece, “On the other hand, CCTV shows that the Commissioner is finalising paperwork in his office, we should expect him on the roof of the police building in the next ten minutes, after he finishes his coffee. We should rendezvous there.”

“Message heard loud and clear, O.”

Similar murmurs of assent sound through the comms.

Nightwing checks his grapple, his earpiece and the timer on his wrist computer before he launches himself into the open air of Gotham again.

[00:24:58 UNTIL COMPLETION]

When Commissioner Gordon steps out into the frigid air atop the GCPD building, he barely manages to stifle his shock. The figure that is illuminated by the city lights and light pollution isn’t the same figure he’s been working with this past year. It’s broader, taller, and the costume is one of familiarity; it makes him release a breath he didn’t even know he was holding.

His old friend, his long-time ally, the first Batman.

“It’s good to see you again, old friend.” He says into the darkness. “I was worried at first, but your successor did an excellent job.”

Some muffled chatter sounds to his right.

Gordon spins so quickly he feels the vertebrae in his neck grind. They’re not alone?

He squints into the darkness, and more figures slowly emerge from the shadows as his eyes start to adjust to the dark. Apart from Batman, there’s four other figures on the roof with them. There’s a fifth too, a smaller black-clad figure he nearly missed.

As he drags his gaze over each one, they come forward into the light, and the way they act speaks of familiarity, of shared work and spilt blood.

Of course, he recognises Robin, sword tucked away on his belt, half hidden behind Batman’s hulking cloak like a wraith. Nightwing waves jovially from next to Spoiler, who is fiddling with something on her wrist beside the smaller black-clad figure with yellow streaks on her costume that he’d nearly missed entirely earlier.

And then…

“First things first, why is he here.” Gordon points at the Red Hood. Everyone looks to where his finger is aimed at.

The Red Hood, one of the banes of Gordon’s career and massive pain in the ass, shrugs. “Don’t mind me buddy, I’m just along for the ride.”

No. Absolutely not. Gordon is not just going to let this slide.

He points between them rapidly. “Aren't you trying to arrest him? Weren't you guys beating each other up just recently?”

Nightwing and the small black figure shrug. Spoiler gives a so-so motion with her hand. Robin, as per usual, gives him a death glare. Good to know some things don’t change.

“It was a phase.” Batman deadpans.

“It’s not a phase, Dad,” Red Hood mocks under his breath. Nightwing snickers beside him.

“Dad?” Gordon repeats, voice cracking.

The circle of vigilantes all glare at the Red Hood.

“Ignore that. Please.” Batman says, tone flat.

Yeah, no way.

“Like I’m also supposed to ignore that he dropped off a duffle bag of heads at our front door?” Gordon points out. That week was hell on earth, and Gordon isn’t letting any of them forget it that easily.

“I’m more mentally stable now.” The Red Hood himself pipes up, raising a hand.

“No you are f*cking not,” He snaps, “You wiped out an entire gang, like, last month.”

Everyone turns to look at Hood, who shrinks under the attention.

“They were selling meth to kids! What else was I supposed to do?”

If Gordon wasn’t currently in massive amounts of denial, that could almost have been considered as whining. Uh. Maybe the ‘Dad’ thing wasn’t too far off from the truth.

“Uh, I don’t know,” Spoiler retorts, “maybe by not murdering them?

“The police do exist, you know.” Nightwing points out.

“They’re useless!” Hood cries out, throwing his hands up in the air, “They don’t do sh*t!” He then turns to Gordon as if mollified, “No offence, officer.”

Gordon has no idea what to say to that.

[00:07:24 UNTIL COMPLETION]

“I haven't had the chance to signal for you yet.” Gordon starts. “What brings you here?”

“Same as you,” Batman grunts. “That brain that got pinned to your office door.”

Not again. As soon as he saw the blood trailing down his door, he shut down the entire floor with a made-up bomb threat, no one should even know about it, much less the Bats. It’s at times like this he wonders about the extent of their information network, and about the men and women under the masks.

For now though, all he can really do is accept that yes, they can tear apart his firewalls like string cheese and help themselves to anything they want, and sigh heavily.

“How do you know about that.”

Once again, everybody turns to the Red Hood.

The crime lord in question waves at him cheerily.

That’s even worse. Does he have a mole?

What is he even saying. Of course he does. Half his current men are corrupt at any given time, regardless of how many dirty officers he fires. Of course the Red Hood has a finger in that pie. Still, he feels obligated to at least ask.

“How do you know about that? We locked down the information almost immediately.”

“I know all.” Red Hood says faux-mysteriously. He does jazz hands to drive the point home.

Gordon stifles the urge to strangle him, arrest him or do something else stupid.

He needs a pay raise.

[00:05:13 UNTIL COMPLETION]

“In the last twenty four hours, three body parts have been delivered to various addresses. A brain pinned to my office door, a heart to the doorstep of Wayne Manor, and a tongue nailed to Vicki Vale’s bedroom door.”

Now that catches them off guard.

Vicki Vale, he sees Nightwing mouth incredulously.

“Why would he do that?” He barely catches Spoiler hissing to the black-clad figure.

“Publicity,” she whispers back.

So they do know something. He estimates that by the way they’re all here, this is something larger than he thinks, larger than they’re letting on.

Batman gives away nothing, unlike his companions. He nods, stone-faced. “Have your tests revealed if they are from the same individual?”

They definitely know something. And they’re not going to tell him anything, are they.

“The brain and the tongue are from the same individual, and the lab suspects the heart is too. Is there anything you can add?”

Batman grunts. “We have our suspicions,” he confirms. “You’ll know later on.”

It’s a clear dismissal.

They aren’t telling him anything.

Well, he tried. Gordon isn’t paid nearly enough for this.

Good thing he has a convenient group of crime-fighting furries who show up whenever he turns on a particular light. Of course, with great power comes great responsibility and all that jazz, but Gordon is the Chief of Police. He has red tape. And laws to follow. And a budget.

Who is he to make all his men do overtime, when he can turn on a big light and get someone else to do it for him?

He probably shouldn’t, but sometimes he turns on the Batsignal randomly to see who’ll turn up with a concussion at the doors of the GCPD that night..

Now, after this, he’s going to do it out of spite.

“Right.” He says shortly, annoyance building up. “Good talk.”

He leaves, planning to drown his thoughts in cheap office coffee. It’s going to be a long night.

[00:00:26 UNTIL COMPLETION]

“Hey,” Babs says quietly over the comms, sombre. “It’s happening.”

[00:00:05 UNTIL COMPLETION]

[00:00:01 UNTIL COMPLETION]

[00:00:00 UNTIL COMPLETION]

Their wrist computers vibrate softly in unison, and they all pull up the analysis screen.

A single message flashes in red.

TIMOTHY JACKSON DRAKE: 99.86% MATCH

“Well. f*ck me,” Jason says.

“sh*t,” Cass agrees.

Dick wordlessly passes around the swear jar he keeps in his utility belt.

Bruce drags a hand down his face. The low light from his wrist computer throws his features into exhausting detail. He looks shattered. “Think of the positives,” he starts, getting indignant looks from nearly everybody on the rooftop, “at least he’s only faked his death.”

“Think of the positives?” Jason snaps. “Are you sure you’re actually B? No alien kidnapping? Tim is still about to be super f*cking publically dead, thanks to Vicki Vale of all people, who is definitely going to report this, and we have no idea why!”

“Names in the field,” Babs snaps.

Dick nods along. “Besides, only faked his death? B, your frame of reference is screwed up. We need to find out who drove him to this, and find out why.”

“Then kick butt,” Cass adds, crossing her arms.

“Then kick butt.” Steph echoes in agreement.

“In my defence,” Bruce starts, “I’m just glad he didn’t invade another country. Or create another fake relative. Or become a supervillain.”

“Another country?”

Dick motions abruptly, cutting off the burgeoning conversation. They’ll talk about that later, he’s sure, but now they have other priorities. “The only certain thing about this is that the League of Assassins is definitely involved. First, we retrieved B from a League jet, and now this has been traced back to Nepal. I’m not sure if Ra’s has human cloning expertise, but Nanda Parbat is probably our best option for answers. Hood, Robin, Orphan, I’d appreciate it if you could get ahold of your connections in the League.”

Bruce moves to stand beside him, resting a warm hand on Dick’s shoulder. “We’ll find him. But now that we’re fairly certain he’s alive and that he planned for all this, we can focus on making sure that it goes perfectly.”

“How?” Damian asks. If Dick didn’t know him so well, the plaintive note would have been hidden under seeming derision. “What can we do to assist?”

“Well for one,” Bruce’s smile is wry. “Since this can’t be brushed under the carpet, we can play along with the authorities like good, law-abiding citizens, weather the media fallout, and plan the funeral exactly according to his wishes.”

Dick knows exactly what wishes Bruce is talking about.

Tim’s contingency plans in case of his real (or faked) death were something else entirely.

This was going to be… well, very interesting.

Chapter 6: Tim does not vibe with Metropolis

Chapter Text

Thanks to Pru’s arrangements, Tim is now the owner of an airy, open plan penthouse apartment in one of Metropolis’ gleaming skyscrapers.

He had honestly expected the arrangements to take a few days, but Pru had selected a building and paid the chubby old real-estate agent enough money to fully fund his retirement to speed along the process. Which is why, merely four hours after missing Gotham with the dart, Tim and Pru land in Metropolis International Airport. The journey over had taken a mere few hours with the League’s resources, and they’d done so in style.

From there, it’s a very, very frustrating forty-five taxi ride through rush hour traffic while moving at a snail’s pace, and the taxi finally drops them off at the base of an apartment building so white and shiny that Tim can’t look directly at it without feeling his eyes shriek in pain and die a very sad death behind his eyelids.

By the time they’ve taken the private lift to their floor and Pru has had enough time to verbally tear apart the very lacking security on their front door, TIm is still blinking away sunspots from his corneas.

He is not enjoying this.

The photos on the real estate site had done it justice. Of course, the first thing Tim does is lower all the blinds so that the brightness isn’t searing his eyeballs, but the sunspots are back, seared behind his eyelids.

“Dibs the master bedroom!” Pru calls, muffled from down the hallway. Tim’s jaw drops.

”Absolutely not!” He sprint-slides down the hallway on socked feet, throwing the door open with a bang and leaping at Pru. “That’s my money you bought this place with, I get first bed dibs!” She dodges his lunge, cackling all the while.

”Whatcha gonna do about it?” She mocks lowly, then leaps onto the king-sized bed and rolls into a provocative pose on it. “Make me move, pipsqueak.”

The audacity. How dare she?

He jumps on top of her, and does his best to throw her onto the floor, only to be foiled at every move. They tussle for a while, Tim making jabs, and Pru shutting down every attack, occasionally making a lazy poke of her own. He gets a good shot to her nose, but pays for it immediately after when she manages to burrito him in the duvet.

Eventually she gets him pinned in her arms and Tim just goes boneless in her hold, too exhausted to keep on fighting. He feels her chest heave with laughter, head tucked beside her collarbone, ear against her heart.

Damn his prepubescent, untrained stamina.

“Maybe try for a bed your own size next time, short stack.” Pru says, somewhere above him.

“I liked it better when you used to call me boss.”

“You wish, speed bump.”

Tim drowns his defeat in the jacuzzi for a full six hours. Literally. Being short sucks.

The sun sets. Pru bullies him for sulking, and then for looking like an actual prune, and then for nearly drowning. In retaliation, he tries to dunk her. They have greasy takeout pizza for dinner, and eat ice cream on the balcony while dissing Lex Luthor’s tower in the distance.

Tim thinks he could get used to this.

Sorta.

It’s a shame it’s Metropolis.

Strangely, being de-aged didn’t reduce his love for energy drinks, just his tolerance for it. Still, one thing that’s stayed the same is the way he stumbles around like a zombie until he ingests over 160mg of caffeine each morning. Once he’s awake enough to function like a normal human being, Tim decides that today, he is going to be Productive.

He opens his closet to get dressed, and-

He immediately closes it.

Tim facepalms.

He slowly reopens the closet, and stares at the horrible range of clothing the assassins had packed him. No wonder Damian was so angry, if they forced him to wear stuff like this when he wasn’t wearing assassin garb or training gear, Tim would probably hate the universe as well.

It looks like a pack of highlighters threw up over his closet.

It’s all rainbow and colourful, and so incredibly cringey that Tim wouldn’t be caught wearing five sixths of the things in there dead. His mother would have made a pyre out of these clothes, no question.

Which is why he immediately replaces ‘get superman stalking equipment’ as first on his mental to-do list with ‘GET SOMETHING REASONABLE TO WEAR.’

He then tries to burn them in a pile in the living room, only to be stopped by a frantic Pru. Apparently smoke detectors actually work in Metropolis, fancy that?

He ends up shoving them into trash bags, and down the trash chute they go.

There is a grand total of one (1) black thing he has found that is vaguely wearable, and that’s one of Pru’s turtlenecks he stole from her closet. It’s way too large on him, but it’s the only thing that isn’t a garishly vibrant colour. He’s forced to pair that with a pair of tan/creamish overalls, as it is the only combination he can do which doesn’t make him want to pour bleach in his eyes.

Pru narrows her eyes at him as he speedwalks out of the apartment door, “Is that my shirt.”

“No,” Tim says. Because it’s not a shirt, it’s a turtleneck.

“Tim.”

He speedwalks faster.

“Bye Pruuuu!” He calls, “Have a nice day.”

He hears muffled cursing from the kitchen and the scrape of chair legs. “IF THAT IS MY FAVOURITE TURTLENECK, YOU ARE SO DEAD-,”

He slams the door, locks it with all the speed he possesses and hightails it out of there.

Tim is really beginning to dislike this city.

He’s been sitting in the back of a standard Metropolis cab for the past half hour, going at speeds that a turtle could outrun.

Hell, if he ditched the cab right now and walked, he’d still probably make it to the Metropolis Mall at least ten minutes ahead of the number on the Cabby’s beaten up GPS. In front of the little triangle indicating their current position on the streets, the road in front of them is highlighted in neon red, a glowing [+15 minutes] hovering above it. Even worse, all the roads are that colour, and the GPS is insisting that this - this clogged nonsense- is the fastest route. Stupid traffic.

TIm takes a deep, calming breath, releasing his nerves with the exhale, untensing his fingers on the plush of the bench seat. It’s hard beneath the artificial gauzy covering and digs into his tailbone, and there’s a permanent indent of someone’s butt - probably lots of someone’s butts - just two centimetres to the right of where the centre is.

The car smells like artificial air freshener and body spray. He almost wants to open the window just for the more familiar scent of gas and pollution, but the window controls on his window are permanently depressed in a way that indicates it’s broken.

He presses it regardless, and it makes a dull clicking noise. The windows remain stubbornly closed.

He presses it again. Click.

And again. Click.

He begins to press it in a rhythmic pattern, like following a beat to music the cabby can’t hear.

Click, click, click. Pause. Click, click. Pause. Click. Pause. Click, click.

Movement up front draws his eye to the taxi driver. They make eye contact in the rear vision mirror. Flicking back to the window controls, Tim continues his clicking. In double time.

Click, click. Click. Click, click. Click, click, click. Click, click. Click. Click, click.

“SO,” The cabby says loudly, “What’re you doing at the Mall, kid?”

Not again. This was the fourth time that he’d tried to make banal conversation this trip, and Tim wasn’t sure how many one word answers would convince him to stop talking.

“Shopping.” Tim says shortly. He continues clicking.

Click, click. Click, click, click. Click, click.

Next time he’s 100% taking public transport. If Metropolis has any. This city already sucks, and he’s been here less than twenty four hours.

The driver mutters something disparaging under his breath. “Where are your parents?” he asks at normal volume.

“Mall.” Tim lies.

Yeah right, like he’s answering that. If this was Gotham, no one would give two sh*ts, unless they were looking to traffic or kidnap him. The Bat-tazer in his pocket is ready for use the moment this old geezer changes from the route shown on the GPS.

They sit in silence only interrupted by Tim’s clicking.

“Can you please cut out that bloody racket?” The cabby fully turns around in his seat to face him, lips pursed, voice curt. Finally, some entertainment. Psychological warfare, one of Tim’s favourite hobbies.

Tim squints.

“No.”

The cabby’s eye twitches in barely concealed annoyance. Tim can hear his teeth grinding from where he sits.

Click, click. Click. Click, click. Click, click, click. Click, click. Click. Click, click.

The taxi ride takes another half hour, and there was no more conversation or probing questions.

Tim exits the taxi at the mall, and promptly gets blinded again. Why is everything so bright? Why is it all so boring? Where are the gargoyles in the décor?

Who designed this stupid city?

With a huff, he turns on his heel and marches into the shopping centre, only to be faced with even more stupidity.

Shiny exhibits on display everywhere, and no armed guards? He can see jewellery stores and flagship designer outlets without bars over the windows! If they got robbed, it would be entirely deserved. Not to mention the number of people around, and the shopkeepers don’t even look alert. If this was Gotham, half their wares would have disappeared into the pockets of the nearest passerby by now, only to show up on some black market auction, or sh*ttily rebranded.

Who cares. That’s their loss, after all.

Tim walks into the first store he sees with clothing that might suit him, and doesn’t come out until he has something wearable, something that is vaguely respectable and serious, befitting of a child that used to be an adult and all the changes in sensibility and social consequences that entailed.

Of course, that means a ton of XXXS sized band T-shirts and undershirts, jeans, cargo pants, track pants, the works. Nothing in his closet was even borderline wearable, which is why it’s all halfway to a trash compactor by now.

He hands his purchases to the lady behind the counter, letting her systematically scan them into the system. Absently, he taps his foot.

After this, he’s got a few more stores in mind he wants to go to, plus a high-end camera store across the Mall. The only problem he’ll likely face is the combined weight of all his shopping, but if he stuffs enough of it in his backpack, he should be able to fit in everything he needs, without any suspicion or additional issues. He should be able to avoid further scrutiny if he-

“That’s all paid for,” The lady says as she hands him his purchases, “Is your mum waiting for you outside?”

Dang, he almost forgot this isn’t Gotham. Here, people actually worry about lone children.

“Yes.” Tim says, caught off guard “My parental figure is indeed, outside. Out of sight. Where you cannot see. I am going now. To my mother. Who is definitely waiting. Yes. Goodbye.”

Nailed it.

“Hey champ,” A random dude with a football jersey says behind him in the line to the checkout. “Are your folks anywhere nearby? Do you need any help”

Not again. “They’re waiting for me outside.” Tim says, avoiding eye contact.

“Dad told me not to talk to strangers,” Tim matter-of-factly tells the concerned security guard. “You’re a stranger.”

He should mind his own business. If this was Gotham, he definitely would have been stabbed by now. He’s lucky Tim is a rational, sane person.

“They’re on holiday in Majorca.” He tells a worried tourist couple. He hikes his growing collection of shopping bags further up his shoulder, only for them to slip back down to where they were before. How annoying. “I’m pretty sure it’s gotta count as neglect at this point.”

Some passerby are beginning to give him strange looks due to the number of shopping bags he’s holding.

“They’re dead.” He deadpans as the cashier hands him the now paid-for shoes over the counter. She gasps, dropping them with a clatter and starts to apologise profusely, tearing up. Tim grabs the shoes and leaves, done with all this.

“They died horrific, brutal deaths,” Tim tells a shopkeeper who’d gotten too nosy. “Mother died first, and Father got put in a coma by the guy who was holding them hostage, only to get murdered later when a different guy hunted him down and impaled him. He slowly bled to death while on a phone call with me.”

No less than three separate people around Tim send him horrified looks.

Tim, master of emotional suppression, ignores them all. They should mind their own damn business.

He tells the staff at the camera shop that he’s doing a project on ‘investigating large fauna in a city habitat’, which is Tim-speak for ‘stalking Superman and his civilian identity.’

Fortunately, one of the staff, a young college-age worker takes him under her wing, showing him the best they’ve got on offer, avidly debating the advantages and disadvantages of which overpriced lenses would do the best for the job, and in what ways they fall short. Of course, he selects the best camera he can get in the store, and wastes no time in buying it, and eventually purchases a lens in accordance to the recommendation of one of the workers. She doesn’t even ask him where his parents are! It’s a massive win in Tim’s book, and he vows to remember her small kindness.

By this point, each time someone asked him where his parents were in that horrible, condescending voice, Tim had resorted to staring back at the concerned citizen, blank faced, and telling them that both his parents had recently died horrible, painful deaths.

Just to get them to shut up and leave him alone. Even then, it only worked about 80% of the time.

Another over-concerned taxi driver later, and Tim is beginning to sense a pattern.

He drops off his purchases in his room, resolving to sort through them later.

Pru has gone out, probably to go clubbing or something given the amount of makeup and glitter splayed over the kitchen bench and the smear of eyeliner on the wall. He shoves it over and onto the floor with a crash, and sets his new camera up, tweaking the aperture and shutter speed to his liking.

He’s going to be photographing Superman, after all. The setting needs to be perfect if he wants to get even a single shot.

Sure he’s going to spend a lot of time outside, in the presence of concerned taxi drivers and well-meaning old ladies and in Metropolis (ew), but Tim’s been stalking Batman for years! He already knows Superman’s civilian identity, address, workplace and zeta tube location.

How hard could stalking him possibly be?

Chapter 7: Tim, cyberbully extraordinaire

Chapter Text

A mere week of living in Metropolis, and Tim is already searching for the next flight back to Gotham.

The Gothamites were 100% right.

Metropolis sucks.

The sun hurts his eyes constantly, and there’s no such thing as shadows with all the tall, reflective skyscrapers and lights everywhere. Where on Earth was the convenient pollution-induced smog covering the sun at all hours? He’s not built for this! He has sunburn!

Everything was clean lines and modern angles; it was so boring. There wasn’t even a single gargoyle to add character, and the jacuzzi is deep enough that even slightly drifting off ends up with him underwater. It’s happened four different times! Pru bought him baby floaties as a joke. Tim threw them off the balcony and nearly gave some poor pedestrians a heart attack.

Beating up clowns is apparently ‘illegal’ and ‘aggravated assault.’ Pfft. Those guys should have known what they were signing up for, dressing up like that.

The pollen from all the green spaces and flowers makes him sneeze, and he can’t even openly carry weapons for his own safety without a permit, which is utterly ridiculous.

Nobody is vaccinated, people actually follow the laws, and worst of all, everybody follows the speed limit and the road rules when driving. It was slow enough to give him actual anxiety. If this was Gotham, someone would have caused a road-rage induced multi-car crash by now with a lot of property damage, or would have been arrested for ‘suspicious behaviour’.

Even worse, there was a serious lack of petty crime, it was all corporate bullsh*t, which made it even more boring. How was he supposed to stalk Superman and take pictures of him if there was so little violent crime to stop?

Reasonably, he knew that Superman had amazing hearing and only showed up if someone called for help, but holy sh*t did that make him impossible to stalk.

He’d briefly considered bribing Pru to move to another city with a more stalkable resident superhero, but then he’d realised it was all pointless.

The Flash was too fast to properly stalk, and solved most instances of petty crime even before Tim would even be able to lift his camera. Wonder Woman was in Themyscira, and stalking the Green Lantern would be frustrating because Tim could come up with a million better ways to use the Green Lantern’s powers better than Hal ever could. As for Green Arrow and Captain Marvel, Tim absolutely refused to waste his life stalking Oliver Queen on principle, and stalking Captain Marvel (who was about Tim’s age) would feel weird, so he didn’t even consider it as an option.

He’d broached the subject with Pru, and she’d given him a thumbs up, claiming that the club scene was pathetically boring and that weed was way too hard to get compared to back in Gotham.

Pru had dived right back into house hunting again, and Tim had gone back to the Metropolis Mall to buy snacks for the drive to the airport, because even if the flight itself was literally thirteen minutes in-air, the taxi drive to the plane would probably take the better part of three hours.

Snacks were basically essential, as they’d learnt.

Since it was three in the afternoon, the map on his phone indicated that it would be actually faster to walk to the Metropolis Mall than to bother taking a taxi with another nosey driver.

In the mall itself, it was strangely quiet.

The stores were all empty, counters abandoned. In the distance, a siren shrieks.

It would be eerie, but Tim is a Gothamite. Liminal spaces are his jam, and empty buildings just makes it easier for him to shoplift from large corporations. According to Tim’s extensive experience at identifying siren distance, the alert is going off at least three kilometres away, which is basically on the other side of the city.

There was literally no reason to be hiding.

Silly Metropolitans. Imagine actually evacuating!

In Gotham, you’re more likely to die if you do that, because most of the more deadly rogues actively target the shelters.

As the only one in this damn city with a modicum of common sense, Tim goes about his day. He picks out two packets of lollies, another two of chips and a soft drink. Dropping a handful of dollar bills on the counter, he throws a peace sign at the security camera’s beady eye as he leaves the store. He’s debating whether or not to grab a packet of TimTams he’s spotted in a corner store when he feels a dull BOOM echo through the mall, under his feet. Dust trickles down from the ceiling displays. He thinks he sees a crack going up the dry plaster wall to his right.

Tim, having automatically dropped into a ready position at the first rumble, abandons his earlier leisurely pace and beelines towards the TimTams. Because they don’t have those in Gotham, and his personal honour is riding on it now. He seizes a packet, before bolting towards where he thinks the exit might be.

A single escalator rumbles to a stop, having lost power, then another. A series of clicks above him, and every light in the building explodes with an ear-splitting BANG, plunging everything into darkness.

Tim keeps on running in the direction he thinks is the exit, only to collide hands-first with a hard surface, narrowly avoiding giving himself a concussion on the unlikely surface. The painted concrete under his palms tell him that he’s in one of the main emporiums, by a support pillar. A support pillar, that if he places his ear against, he can hear straining under some unknown weight. This is bad.

The air stills.

Then all of a sudden with the shrieking rumbling of metal and concrete twisting apart, the world falls apart around him.

Tim only has time to loose a breathless squeak of terror before he hits his head, hard, and everything goes dark.

He wakes maybe seconds later, rubble settling around him.

“Ow,” was his first coherent word. “f*ck.”

He coughs, once, twice, then he’s hacking his lungs out, unsettled dust in the air going in his lungs, in his eyes. Scrambling with his shirt, he unbottles the soft drink to pour over the base of the fabric before pulling it up and over his mouth and nose as a makeshift gas mask, a skill every Gothamite has mastered. Taking deep breaths, he waits for the coughing to subside.

It’s pitch black, so dark his hands in front of his face appear to be part of the inky darkness. A quick injury check, and he comes up clear apart from an egg forming on the side of his skull and something sticky and warm on his hands, seeping through his hair. His entire body feels like a bruise, especially with his currently lacking pain tolerance, but years of exploded warehouses and hard knocks have taught him enough to identify that there’s nothing really wrong with him.

With further investigation and wriggling around, he appears to have been saved by that exact same support pole that warned him about the impending collapse. He’s in a small pocket of debris barely taller than he is sitting up, slab roof slanting in a way that frees up maybe a metre and a half of free space. There’s some rebar sticking out of it, and given the way he can feel it embedded into the floor next to him, he got really lucky.

But then, if this was Gotham, he’d be totally dead right now. Thank god Metropolis construction companies actually obeyed building regulations.

His phone, somehow, isn’t either dead or pulverised in the collapse because it turns on just fine.With all the casual devil-may-care attitude of someone who deals with this sort of situation on a monthly basis, the first thing Tim does is not to call for help and then attempt to preserve phone charge for as long as possible.

Jailbroken Flappy Bird however, looks like an excellent passtime right now. He also turns the sound up the full way, to block out the creaking and low rumbles coming from outside his little enclosure.

He comes close to beating his high score of thirty-seven a couple of times, before the meaty sound of his bird thwacking against pipes repeatedly begins to get on his nerves. So, he re-hacks into the game files and replaces the collision sound with a soundbyte from his official Nightwing Blackmail folder, one of Dick ziplining straight into a fire escape that collapsed, creating both a cartoonish squeak as the metal gave out, and a cartoonish shriek from Dick as he pancaked it.

Opening up a packet of chips sounds like a pretty good idea as well, because if this ends badly then at least he'll die with a stomach full of artificial honey soy chicken seasoning.

He eats them one by one, making satisfied cronch cronch cronch noises that echo in the enclosed space.

When he gets bored of that, he goes on Tumblr and stalks Jason’s account (the one he uses to rant about old books and other boring stuff) and anonymously asks him dumb questions about Jane Austen. He then claims that the Count of Monte Cristo is definitely more Batman-coded than Red Hood-coded because Red Hood is dumb.

The cherry on top is the zero justification Tim provides for any of these statements.

He waits.

Cronch cronch cronch goes the chips.

Three, two, one, and…

His phone explodes with angry notifications.

It’s a tried and tested method of stress relief, and Jason falls for it. Every. Single. Time.

After the entire Titan’s Tower debacle, stuck in an infirmary bed in the Batcave and hopped up on the good pain meds, Tim was helpless to strike back at Jason, apart from harmless cyberbullying. So, that is what he does.

And as with anything else that Tim does, he excels at it.

At first, he only did it in direct response to Jason being a pain in the butt, or any time his Jason-inflicted injuries flared up. Unfortunately, Tim’s reasons for cyberbullying him expanded to other people annoying Tim (usually Ra’s), then for a form of stress relief, then as a hobby that he does every so often.

It’s never failed him before.

Predictably, Jason replies with a raging fervour against his person, his dog and his family tree that Tim has known to associate with the Lazarus Pit. All he had to do to get on Jason’s nerves was call Wuthering Heights ‘kinda lame’ and ‘nothing really groundbreaking, or are u in luuuuv with herrr >:3, ’ and Jason gets Mad.

It’s excellent stress relief.

He’s such a keyboard warrior, Tim loves it.

Of course, Tim escalates, because it’s fun. He also manages to call Jason a ‘Batman simp’ and links his old pre-Ethiopia AO3 account (under the same username) for proof.

Jason’s responses are priceless.

Once he estimates that he's approximately five-sixths of the way to an anger-induced aneurysm, Tim hits him with the classic ‘lol imagine fighting with an eleven year old online.’

Not only does this promptly shut down the threats (which were pointless in the first place, because his identity is behind Tim-level defenses, and Oracle isn’t going to stoop to give Jason the identity of someone who called him a ‘overly-dramatic skunk-faced nerd’ on the internet. Like, come on. She has standards), it also probably leaves Jason feeling distinctly stupid, which Tim appreciates. This is the first time he’s been able to use his age card to his benefit, and it’s been a massive success.

Loser.

Jason replies after a five minute break, You learned to read five years ago as a maximum, there’s no f*cking way you’ve read any of the books I post about so why are you even here?

Given the time period it took to respond, Tim knows that he’s just run through a set of Pit Rage breathing exercises. How does he know this? From doing this kind of thing in the same room as Jason and watching him get mad at his phone.

It’s hilarious.

Get off the internet and go back to preschool, Jason’s paragraph finishes. Tim skipped the middle bit.

No, he replies, also ur literaly my age given how immature u are so u can’t say that to me. And ur anger issues are hilarios

A pause.

Where the f*ck are your parents and why are they letting you have a phone, Jason replies, and why am I being bullied by an eleven year old? To said eleven year old, what are you even doing with your life?

Tim cackles, and quickly types the opening to his ultimate insult, his magnum opus.

His next message reads: Parents r criminally neglectful + got brutaly murdered. In response to your other question, have u read the Dune series

He crosses his fingers, staring at his screen in rapt apprehension. Please, universe, listen to him for once in his life, it’ll be hilarious and he will die happy. Please. Take the bait. Take the bait. Take the bait.

Jason responds.

Very concerning thing to gloss over, but yes. Are you reading it?

Tim grins evilly. All his cyberbullying experience has led up to this very moment.

The only thing I’m dune is ur mom.

Jason stops responding.

Chapter 8: Tim gets minorly inconvenienced

Chapter Text

After another successful cyberbullying session, Tim adds another mental tally to his side of the count.

Tim, 362. Jason, 1.

Of course, the one on Jason’s side was purely honorary, because Jason was way too much of a nerd to actually fight back online and all his insults were references to obscure literature that Tim had never bothered reading, so they didn’t count.

He was basically bullying himself!

No, the singular tally was for Titan’s Tower, because that was just plain bullying on Jason’s part. Once they’d been on better terms, Jason had revealed that it wasn’t even personal! His 5D-chess revenge plan was all for Bruce, and Tim was just collateral used to send a message. Well. That was just offensive.

Which is why it’s only fair that Tim gets him back, three hundredfold.

And unlike Jason, Tim doesn’t attack innocents, so eat that, idiot. He brought this onto himself. He made it personal. That ‘one’ is the justification for this in itself. (That is, of course, if you ignore that Tim added the 1 retrospectively, nearly a year after the Tower fiasco. Before then, he was just being petty, but as they slowly fixed their mess of a relationship, a justification was looking more and more necessary)

He’s surely become a master cyberbully through years of effort and training. Tim’s always been two years and a foot behind his peers at school, so the only way for him to actually shove someone's head in a toilet was on the cesspit of social media. Metaphorically, of course. And only if they really deserved it.

He has no idea why there are so many campaigns against it in school.

It’s so much fun.

Sure, the adults around him might have disagreed if they knew, but throughout his childhood not a single person above the age of twenty-one paid close enough attention to Tim to notice and subsequently act. Any who tried to intervene found themselves chasing digital ghosts.

Tim was Robin. The light to Batman's darkness and dubious morals. Paragon of innocence and tech genius.

The pressure of being perfect was very difficult, especially when Tim’s entire role in the family was hinging on the quality of his blackmail, so he had to make it worth Bruce’s while.

He couldn't really be blamed for finding an outlet, especially one as harmless as this.

He sighs, lamenting the end of his less-than-friendly conversation with Jason, and goes back to the drawing board for the next time. He has sixty-two different literature-based dumb questions to ask, twenty segues into insults and thirty-seven comebacks involving Jason’s own AO3 account and past tumblr posts. If he uses these to greatest effect, he should be able to win at least another fourteen cyberbullying sessions, making the updated count: Tim, 374; Jason, 1.

Excellent. That should last him another few months or so in terms of stress relief.

He’s only midway planning more inflammatory statements to use during his next ‘decompression session’ when the ground rumbles under him, and he’s showered in more concrete dust as the wreckage shifts. Some gets in his eyes, and he tears up instinctively, blinking rapidly and trying not to scrub.

Argh, it stings.

Vision blurring, he drops his phone back, letting the screen illuminate the rest of the little rubble pocket he’s ensconced in.

He doesn’t get the chance to actually do anything though, as the rumble-shrieking of the concrete and rebar above him crescendos, sending even more dust flying everywhere.

His senses are overwhelmed with light, real light.

Instinctively jerking up his hands to cover his irritated, sensitive eyes, he spots a blurry figure through his outstretched fingers hauling away the rubble.

“Hey there, kid. Are you alright?”

Tim watches with wide eyes as Superman, larger than life, holds the edge of a giant mass or concrete and rebar, and flips it away from them in a seemingly effortless motion. It lands with a crash he can feel through the ground under him.

His hand drops away from his face. He stares, gobsmacked, clutching the half-eaten snacks and phone to his body. Woah, that was fast for a rescue. He was expecting to be here for hours while the emergency services dither around.

As his eyes get used to the light, more details come into focus, helping him put together a more coherent picture. Half a cape missing, large gashes decorating the left side of his torso, blistered hands. Tim only gets to mentally run through the profiles of half of Superman’s villains, before he’s brought out of his head by the man himself gently touching down in front of him, kneeling beside Tim.

“That was pretty scary, wasn’t it?” Superman says gently. “But the threat’s all gone now. Would you like some help out of here?”

Tim goes to say something along the lines of ‘Hello Mr Superman, I am a-ok. I eat Metropolis villains for breakfast. Your city is terrible and I am moving back to Gotham, immediately. Please don’t look at my face too closely even if it is covered in enough dust to choke a vacuum cleaner’ but with more tact.

Tim also forgets about the dust in his throat.

He manages a quiet, “Hewwo,” before his voice gives out and he dissolves into hacking coughs.

Hewwo? Hewwo?

Kill him now. If he gets recognised now he’s going to have to jump off Luthor’s stupid shiny skyscraper to recover his dignity.

He is never going to recover from this.

Luckily, the only reaction Superman has is a slight softening around his eyes, making his plastered-on smile seem a little more genuine. Good to know someone’s enjoying his screw-ups, at least.

“Are you hurt anywhere?” he repeats softly, hand gently outstretched towards Tim, palm up. Tim takes it, eager to move on from whatever the f*ck that self-introduction was.

Hewwo? Simply horrible. He’s bleaching his brain as soon as he gets back to Pru. Maybe she can give him that free lobotomy she’s always wanted to give him.

But first; Superman’s question. Is he hurt anywhere? Apart from that one spot on his head, nah.

Still shaken by the sudden and vicious betrayal of his own voice (he hopes that with enough effort, he can forget that the Hewwo Incident ever happened), he shakes his head no, sending concrete dust everywhere. Some goes in his nose. He sneezes, once, twice, and misses Superman bundling him into his arms and carefully lifting them into the air, smoothly carrying them away from the rubble.

The hard muscle under the costume reminds him of Bruce’s hugs when he was still Robin, held against a wide chest, enclosed and protected.

It brings tears to his eyes.

Or maybe that’s the dust.

Tim doesn’t angst. He’s a master of emotional suppression. A master of emotional suppression who kinda really wants to go home now.

As they descend to where the paramedics are waiting, Superman attempts to gently brush some of the concrete dust from his hair. All it does is get all over his costume, some of it becoming a greenish paste as it sticks to some of the unidentified liquids dirtying his suit. Superman doesn’t seem to notice, though, entirely focused on Tim.

Which is good, because that means Tim’s finally free to GTFO out of the mall wreckage and then out of Metropolis in general. He’s got a flight to catch. It’s also very, very bad because Superman doesn’t seem to know he’s currently holding his work-husband’s adoptive de-aged kid in his arms. It’s either a miracle or some form of magic that he hasn’t been recognised yet.

He hopes it stays like that, because that’s one awkward conversation Tim would like to never ever have, thank you very much. It also ruins, like, seventy-two of his contingency plans and has a high probability of ending with a long, meaningful talk about emotions.

He nearly shudders at the thought.

A large hand begins to rub up and down his back in a way that is probably supposed to be comforting. Ah. Superman probably sensed his visceral reaction to his own train of thought, and is trying to help. It’s nice, but this is his best friend's dad. His best friend, who is currently dead. It’s kinda weird.

“Where are your parents?” Superman asks in his Victim Voice.

Only his remaining tact keeps him from spouting the rote response he’s been feeding the other nosey citizens. Y’know, the ‘parents were brutally murdered’ response. Or the more truthful ‘got forcefully ex-adopted when your best friend was brutally sorta-murdered’ response. It’s not even a toss up, but his brain is only working at half-capacity right now so he decides the best course of action is to give Superman big, gooey, bambi eyes.

It’s super effective. He’s so lucky that Dick had declared puppy dog eyes as a ‘vital life skill.’ It was thanks to him that literally every single person in Wayne Manor knew how to do them with military efficiency for maximum emotional manipulation.

They land, and Tim gets placed back down onto his own two feet with the same gentle hesitancy of someone who is handling a much more fragile creature than themselves.

Of course, Superman is probably just being careful given his own superstrength. It still feels like he’s being manoeuvred with the same care that one would use on a hamster, though.

He looks back at Superman’s face to properly thank him because Tim has manners, thank you very much, and sees Kon superimposed over him. Kon, who he buried.

Only someone who knew him closely would recognise the lines of exhaustion around his eyes. Tim would know. Kon was the same.

“I’ve spotted you around. You’re the little guy with the camera, right? Your heartbeat sounds like someone I knew, a while ago. The son of a close friend of mine.”

Ah. That makes sense. Tim's original heartbeat is gone. Since he's been shrunk, the tempo of his heart has also been reverted back to how it was, before puberty and before the damage he did to it with years of exposure to toxins and electricity and life-threatening injuries. There would be a passing familiarity, but Clark never met Tim at this age, wouldn’t for a few years yet.

Tim looks at him, again, blinking hard. Kon’s ghost stares back.

It hurts his heart. It makes him want to cry.

Something in Superman’s face softens further and something distinctly Clark surfaces.

“Go home, kid.” Clark says softly, lifting into the skies once again, leaving Tim alone in the hustle of the crowd of first responders, good samaritans and nosey civilians alike.

People, from all walks of life, uniting in the face of such overwhelming tragedies. For once, if Tim ignores the clear blue skies and the shiny, utilitarian architecture, he can almost pretend it’s Gotham.

Almost.

Is this what homesickness is like?

Go home, kid, Clark had said.

Tim, for once, does.

“Whayd u eef awl da good chisps,” Pru says through a mouthful of inferior sour cream and chives flavoured chips.

Eyeing Pru like a middle-aged mom eyes a 5% discount in the local supermarket, Tim calculates his chances of dragging a greasy hand over Pru’s bald head.

Although the slap would be very satisfying, and the grease stain would be hilarious, going through with it would probably result in another broken nose and three weeks of petty revenge plots. If Tim was still in a competent, honed, older body, he’d do it in a heartbeat.

Unfortunately, he’s not.

Tim shelves his plot for another day, when he has plausible deniability and preferably a convenient scapegoat.

“Hi to you too, asshole,” he dumps the remaining treats on the counter. “I had a nice shopping trip, thanks for asking. If you couldn’t tell by all the sirens in the distance, the massive amount of smoke you get a perfect view of through the living room window, and the amount of dust I am currently covered in, I had a totally great time.”

Pru blinks at him, cheeks blown out with the amount of chips she’s shoved in her mouth. “But no hony shoy tchiken chisps?”

Tim throws his hands into the air. What did he even expect.

“I hate you,” he informs her primly, and goes to have a twenty minute shower so he doesn’t smell like Eau Du Collapsed Shopping Centre.

Since the attack is over and traffic has resumed, there is no chance of reaching the airport on time the normal way, unfortunately.

Fortunately, neither of them are ‘normal’ and neither of them want to spend a single moment longer in this city than they have to.

A little bit of a light mugging later, and Tim and Pru are on the way to the Metropolis Airport on the back of a stolen motorcycle, piloted through traffic at speeds that would make a non-Gothamite pale and then update their will. Fortunately, this means they leave the contingent of flashing police cars far behind them.

They’re on the plane and in the sky even before the Metropolis police department can warn anyone in the airport to stop them.

The ensuing flight is only thirteen minutes long, but Pru and Tim manage to make it a memorable affair for the unfortunate people sitting around them.

They’d started by having a loud argument about what their favourite bomb types were, much to the subtle panic of the hostesses. Pru had stolen no less than seven separate pairs of fancy sunglasses in the Metropolis airport, and broke three of them in the following food fight over the Timtams. Tim had counted no less than six passengers turning their phones off aeroplane mode mid-flight to book seats on the next plane back to Metropolis, three scandalised old ladies and several calls to the Gotham ER upon arrival about a poor man with several jelly beans lodged up his nose. He’d picked the wrong fight, and Pru had taken great pleasure in asserting her dominance.

No one stops them from disembarking, and because it’s Gotham, no one bothers to track them down or identify them, because it’s Gotham, so they walk off scot-free of any potential consequences. Exactly how Tim likes it.

The moment they step off the runway, Tim eyes the nearest security cameras, angling his face away out of sheer habit. He wonders if Oracle is watching right now. The air burns like home as he breathes it in, the pollution he grew up favouring, wreathing his lungs. He can already hear the shriek of sirens in the distance.

Gotham sweet Gotham.

“Pru.” Tim breathes deeply through his nose in a way that the internet said was supposed to be calming. Jason’s breathing exercises for the pit rage had already failed.

In front of them is their new Gotham residence.

“Why,” Tim starts, taking another deep breath, attempting to bury the urge to stab her in the kidney. It very nearly fails. “Why of all places, is our new place in Crime Alley?”

Ahead of them, is an apartment building that can best be described as a hovel.

Tim’s seen more sanitary garbage dumps.

Sure, it could have been nice, if that, at one point in its very long lifespan. Like, fifty years ago. Given the rate of building demolition and Rogue attacks in this area, the only thing remotely impressive about it is that it was still standing.

Behind him, Pru picks her nose with a pinky, other hand on a co*cked hip. “Blew the budget on the Metropolis place, of course.”

He looks at her in aghast horror.

“Our budget was massive. Surely we can afford more than,” he waves his hand at it, “this.”

Pru shrugs, before grabbing his shoulders and half pushes half guides Tim towards the side of the apartment block. “Because we sold and moved so suddenly, the Metropolis penthouse hasn’t been sold yet. So we’re stuck here until it does, and we get the funds back. That jacuzzi was expensive.”

Not that stupid jacuzzi. First it tried to kill him, and now it’s killed their finances, and any hopes of (re)growing up semi-well adjusted.

Well. Sorta.

Tim was already plenty screwed up, he didn’t need this added to his mountain of issues.

The entrance Pru leads him to is near invisible from the streets in the dark of the alley, the brick walls of the building stretch up high, parallel to its neighbours, and its neighbours past that, forming more pathetic living spaces for those unfortunate enough to end up in this place. There are no windows lining the walls. The ones on the storefronts are barred because finding intact glass in this part of town could be classified as a miracle.

Tim protests as she pushes him up and up the internal stairs, because of course the lifts don’t work. “I need enrichment in my enclosure, not violence, smog, and organised crime!”

He almost faceplants on one of the steps. Sue him, he doesn’t usually have to lift his feet so high to do something as simple as walk up stairs.

“It’s this, Bratface, or you can go running back to one of your little-,” she drops her voice to a whisper over his shoulder, “-Bat-hideouts, and risk the entire furry armada dropping in on your head, right after you rescued Batman after almost no contact for two straight years, immediately went dark, then faked the death of your very public real identity. Need I say more?”

Tim shuts up.