#Anyway Tim self-isolating @the nest

[b-rainlet]

Hear me out: TimDami fic where Tim gets exposed to truth serum and absolutely books it whenever Damian so much as breathes near him

[hellsbellssinclub]

Broken Nest for Broken Birds. Part 3

Part 1/ Part 2/ Part 3

Read it on AO3

Summary:

Dick Grayson. Jason Todd. Timothea Drake. Stephanie Brown. Damian Wayne.

All five were Batman’s birds. All five are broken in their own little ways.

Bruce Wayne struggles to keep his family together while keeping his more volatile children calm and feeling secure within their place in the family. But that is not an easy thing to do when you have five young adults with all very different needs that demand to be met and when you have your own issues to deal with.

*Follows the different Robin’s and Bat’s stream of consciousness as they deal with their day to day lives and try to figure out how to be a family together.*

Part 3. Dick Grayson. Age 22.

Unresponsive. Broken like a marionette puppet without her strings. Timmy looked like she has watched a world implode and she could have done nothing to save it while she sat in a space shuttle, safely away from the blast zone.

He should have been there, seeing Timmy home after they had been on patrol together with B. He should have made sure she was safe and well and that she had not been alone, especially after Bruce gave her that lecture and half about safety and not taking risks.

But he had left her. Gone and followed Bruce’s Orders once again and now he was looking down at the broken and exhausted face of the girl who was his baby sister. It wasn’t hard to imagine her on the ground, head twisted in an unnatural angle with blood around her head like a fucked-up halo.

He let her fall. He didn’t catch her. He wasn’t there to catch her. He had gone back to the cave like a good little Robin because he was Ordered to and now…

Dick felt lost as to what to do. He had failed another sibling. He was a terrible big brother. First Jason and now Timothea. She hasn’t spoken a word since she finished screaming and was she would only drink the tea that Dick had Alfred make, the one that Jason suggested before he took off on his bike, when Dick placed the cup against her lips. He wished he could be there alongside Jason. Away from the Manor and away from the biting feeling in the back of his throat that this was his fault for not being there with Timmy when she had finished patrol.

Timmy wasn’t doing anything much now that she stopped screaming her lungs out. Just breathing little choked and wet sobs under her breath. No more tears. She was still shaking and giving full body shudders as if she was in a snowstorm or the biting rain that Gotham has in winter time. Shock, most likely. Or the grief. Timmy wasn’t that close to her Dad or Step Mum but Dick knew she loved them. Seeing them dead like that… no child should ever see their parents like that. It is mentally scaring and destroying.

He should know. He still hasn’t gotten over his parents. Neither has Bruce or anyone else he knows who have found or saw their parents get killed. The Superhero community is full of heroes who have lost their parents or watched them get murdered. They even had made different clubs so that people could go and talk about their trauma and shit.

Not that any of the other Bats have ever gone to one of those clubs. Bruce is too fucking scared to admit his trauma of seeing his parents get shot when he was eight and is always high-key terrified that someone is going to turn on him because his Post-Traumatic Hypervigilance makes him to paranoid to trust anyone with his feelings. Jason was still on the outs with pretty much everyone. No one was sure how to approach the former dead Robin and he wasn’t inclined to go to any of the clubs anyway. Jay never had been in his first life and the sentiment was the same in this one too.

Dick had gone once, when he was still Robin. He didn’t go back again for another meeting. He never wanted to talk about what happened with his parents and looking back he probably should have tried. Really, he blames Bruce for his lack of healthy coping skills because all he ever learned really while living in the Manor was that unless it was all about to explode and end up with him hurting himself or someone else than Bruce was going to avoid the hell out everything and pretend that it was all normal.

And Timmy, poor little Timmy never qualified for any of them before now. She was as normal as one could possibly get before all this. She was just an average kid who wanted to do some good and she did. But at what cost? She lost all three of her parents, has been shot, stabbed and has nearly been murdered so many times in the past three years and Dick wanted nothing more than to go back in time and to tell the small girl who had come up to him with hopeful eyes that she should get lost and forget everything. That it wasn’t worth it at all.

But he couldn’t do that. He couldn’t. Besides all of the time related bullshit that would go with changing the timeline, Dick was selfish enough to say that he did not want to let the young girl go at all. He wanted her to stay. He wanted her and Jason to get along and for them to both be siblings without having to fear that Jason’s Pit Madness or whatever it was didn’t flare up and he wanted for Bruce to be surrounded by everyone who cares for him.

If wishes were fishes Dick would be able to open his fish market and make a lot of money, that was for sure.

Running a wet, warm cloth over Timmy’s face only got him a blink or two. She wasn’t reacting to anyone now. She just sat there, in the blood-stained clothes Bruce all but wrangled her into before the cops arrived at her house. She needed to change. To get out of the bloody mess and into something clean.

“Okay Tiny-Tim. Let’s get you out of these clothes and into the shower.” He doesn’t speak loudly, not wanting to startle the young girl out of whatever shock she was in.  

The lights are on but no one is currently home in Timmy’s mind right now. Looks like they are just going to have to call back later it seems. She wasn’t reacting or moving on her own. With the help of Bruce and Alfred, Dick was able to strip her out of her clothes and get her into the shower. There were wounds, fresh and painfully wounds all over her pale body. Some must have been from patrol because the stitches on her hips looked fresh and painful. And broken. He would need to fix that.

He knew that Tim’s team was downstairs and that Oracle had called them all as soon as the call came through that all the Drakes were dead. He knew that they were all there and were all waiting desperately to see Timmy. But Dick didn’t want them near her. She was fragile and needed to be handled with care. He knew that they all just wanted to help her and that was good. The overwhelming need to comfort a friend in need is what makes them all good people. Makes them the caring and thoughtful heroes they are.

But Timmy didn’t need any of them right now. She didn’t need them crowding her or being in her space. She needed family. She needed Dick and Bruce and Alfred and Jason when he has calmed down and maybe Cass and Steph because they were all family and that was all Timmy needed.

He knows he should not be thinking like that. Possessiveness was a terrible trait that he needs to let go of but it is hard, so very hard not to kick everyone out of the Manor and keep Timmy safe and isolated away from anything that could harm her. He shouldn’t be having these thoughts and he knows, he really does know, that these thoughts only happen because he lost Jay and he doesn’t know how to deal with that guilt even now that Jay was alive and here with them and-

And he needed to calm down. He needed to stop and think and act like Nightwing, the leader and big brother. He cannot afford to act like Dick Grayson here. Dick Grayson was a human disaster and won’t be able to help his sister right now if he starts acting like a self-centred idiot.

Still, looking down at her all but hanging loosely in his arms as he dried her off and sat her down on the large tub so that Alfred could redo those broken stitches, Dick just couldn’t help those feelings of possessiveness overwhelm him. And by the look on Bruce’s face, he was feeling it too.

Timmy was their Baby Bird. The one the adored and wanted to protect all the time because she was just so weak and small and Dick knew in his head that she was a force to be reckoned with these days and that she was well on her way to becoming an A list hero.

But in his heart, he still saw her as the baby faced little twelve-year-old girl who he taught how to throw a decent punch. She was the little sister he had always wanted when he was younger and still with the circus. He adored her and loved her completely.

And he did know that some of that love came from guilt. Guilt that he hadn’t been the best big brother he could have been to Jason because he had been angry at Bruce at the time. He had been so angry that Bruce had taken his Mother’s name for him and had given it to Jason without his permission that he had taken it out on Jason, rather than Bruce. And after their first and terrible meeting, Dick had known that he had forever fucked up his and Jay’s relationship.

If he had not have died, Dick believes that they may have eventually gotten along properly. That they would have worked something out. But Jason died and then he had a small, excited child who looked up to him and he couldn’t, wouldn’t let himself fuck it up like he did with Jason.

So, Nightwing became the always the cool, calm guy who is everyone’s big brother. At least to the younger generation that is. To his own team and friends, he was allowed to be a normal person with normal emotional outbursts. But since taking on being the younger teams ‘den mother’ and all-round mentor and big brother to Timmy, he has forced himself to be this person that doesn’t get angry easily.

Which is you know, absolute bullshit. Everyone calls Jason the Angry Robin but anyone with half a brain knows that Dick is the Angry Robin. The Robin that rages and explodes and leaves a trail of destruction in his wake. At least Jay has a reason for his anger. The Pit fucks with people’s minds and the trauma he went through with dying really did give Jaybrid a reason to lash out. Dick just gets angry and fucks shit up before someone calms him down.

He knew that Timmy didn’t feel like they loved her, especially since taking Jason back in. But they did love her. They love how she stumbled down in the morning after a long case or patrol and would look at them sleepily before stealing Bruce’s coffee. They loved how she would get excited about small little things and would ramble on and on until she blushes and stops because she realises that she is still talking. They love her enthusiasm and joy and how brilliant she is.

They love her. All of them do.

And watching her sit numbly on the edge of the bath, barely twitching or moving as the stiches go through her skin, broke their hearts.

One of them would have go downstairs soon and tell Timmy’s team to go home for the night and come back tomorrow evening. They needed to get some clothes for Timmy for the next few days, seeing as she only had over night clothes in the Manor. Bruce needed to send a few messages to his lawyers about getting custody of Tim.

There was so, so much that needed to be done. And Dick didn’t want to leave Tim’s side at all. His Baby Bird was hurt and needed help and the guilt was just eating him inside, telling him that it was his fault that she had to face this alone when he could have been there with her but he had not and-

And he would not be any help his sister, father, brother or grandfather if he let himself fall apart right now. There was work to be done and the quicker he gets it done, the easier it would be on all of them.

He may have given Jay three days to go and find out what he could but Dick would be damned if he doesn’t go out and help the younger man search. With the rage and guilt rising like bile in the back of his throat, Dick could say honestly that he was looking forward to beating some heads in. And to leaving the oppressive atmosphere of grief and pain that was seeping into the Manor’s walls.

But that will wait. Right now, there are jobs to be done. The jobs won’t ease the guilt or rage like a good ass kicking would, but they were necessary and needed. Alfred and Bruce can look after Timmy for a few hours or so while he does these few jobs.

He isn’t running away.

(He isn’t.)  

[violetsystems]

#personal

This is week two.  To be fair, I woke up in a fairly horrible mood.  My final paycheck was not what I had expected it to be.  There’s not a lot that I can expect in terms of transparency these days.  Still don’t even have final paystubs to work with.  So I have to always improvise.  The last week has been a wake up call as to who I can rely on.  In absolutely catastrophic times like these, it is only me.  I definitely feel like my entire life has been disrupted.  At the same time, no one cares enough in real life to ask or reach out.  People are scared.  Embarrassed.  Maybe too overloaded with their own problems.  I’ve been scrambling to move money around to make sure bills are paid through August just in case.  Every day there seems to be a promise of a new lump sum but no solid date in sight.  I spent yesterday biking to the bank to fix an error in a transfer.  I sent money to my credit union to pay a bill ahead of schedule and the bank somehow reversed it.  Taking the money out instead of putting it in.  It may well have been my own mistake.  I withdrew money and went to deposit it at an atm to fix it quickly.  Every PNC bank that accepts deposits for my credit union no longer does.  So there was absolutely no place to fix the error myself.  I spent more time at the bank and on the phone getting suggestions on how to fix it.  In the end, I got dinged thirty two dollars but rectified it with both parties by handling it myself.  I also spoke a bit with a banker about the future in terms of checking accounts and investments.  This morning I woke up to a message from TIAA that a small windfall went from process to payment in that same account.  They sent that at one thirty in the morning.  The overwhelming message here being that throughout the process people were still working with me.  I felt embarrassed and vulnerable.  And this is week two.  And this is still all easier to navigate than the unemployment system.  I am not unemployed.  I’m self employed.  Technically I’m on severance though I am in a limbo of sorts.  It’s all not very clear.  Also I don’t even have a state id or driver’s license to claim that at the moment anyway.  Only a passport that expires in 2021.  I do have enough money to lock myself down for a long while.  And as horrible as yesterday was to deal with on my own, I learned I have far more options than I realize.  And also that working any harder for more money right now is unhealthy.  Even the printer that was on it’s way from Dell to print my resume is delayed until August 15th.  Too bad everything is online anyway.  

And then there’s the state of things in this world.  Yes, my health insurance expires in October.  Yes, I have the money to pay COBRA.  Yes, that’s expensive.  Yes, there’s a lot of taxes that the government is getting from me this year.  And yes, Mitch McConnell probably would use me as the poster boy for pension denial.  The free nest mini that YouTube sent was reading the news headlines the other day.  One of which that DeutschBank was being sued for it’s ties financially to Jeffrey Epstein.  The other big one in Chicago is longtime speaker Madigan tied to a scandal with ComEd regarding bribes.  All this money is invested and stored in these great financial institutions.  Come twenty years after how many ever lawsuits and scandals, will my pension be safe?  Will I even be alive?  People made decisions in the short term to secure their long term survival.  I was not part of that survival so I am on my own.  The process is pretty clear to me.  And thus, with some heavy penalties I decided to completely decouple and divest from twenty years of my life of constant employment.  I don’t lose sleep at night.  I don’t worry about how I feel about China.  I don’t worry about who I am sexually attracted to and why.  I don’t even worry about anything beyond August other than keeping myself alive, happy and healthy.  And this has grown out of two weeks of experiencing the world and my country.  Shit is fucked up.  Nobody wants to admit it.  Things will crumble.  I’ll still be out there in the bike lane trying to get my shit together before everything seizes up.  And the police will still park in that bike lane to openly intimidate me.  You can’t even get more than one roll of quarters at a time from the bank now.  And imagine if I had to deal with this and still bite my nails about where my next paycheck comes from.  My next paycheck comes from me.  I spent years working on music, my identity, and being a good person.  I was brainwashed into thinking that was not enough.  Now I am the only person I can rely on.  It’s strange.  Harsh.  Emotional.  But there’s no real breakdown.  And what I see from my perspective and optics is not what the world sees.  And in times like this, how you handle yourself says it all.  When the world is flailing and failing every step of the way.  My feet don’t waver.  And my instincts aren’t held back.  It’s a pretty fucking feral time for me.  Although I really haven’t changed much.  I don’t have any time to apologize really.  Because I’m owed way more than you can imagine.  On paper.

I do these weekly because it is part of my regimen.  Staying healthy and connected during times of extreme isolation is imperative.  The reality that we may go back into lockdown is going to fuck with a lot of people’s mental state.  Things are shaky for me right now for sure.  But not in a way that threatens the roof over my head or my high speed connection to the internet.  A lot of people want to jeopardize that from the outside without ever walking a mile in my shoes.  People see it now.  See just how long it’s been going on.  How many lies people told about me to make me stumble.  How many people out there are projecting openly and why.  All the trainees at the police academy who make it a point to park another squad day after day in the bike lane on my route to downtown.  People are obstinate, angry, disorganized and irritable.  And it will only get worse until it implodes.  They don’t stop and reflect.  They don’t understand their place in the ecosystem.  They don’t love thy neighbor.  They preach it.  But it’s more of a way to keep other people in check.  It’s also from the Bible.  Matthew for the record.  I’m not Christian.  I accept all religions.  I quote the Quran as much as I’d quote the Bible.  In an election year, politicians like Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio ignite and manipulate voters about Hong Kong over the same type of rhetoric.  China returns the favor by sanctioning both of them.  It’s great theatre.  But I live in a city that has revealed to me a painful truth.  It’s got nothing to do with politics or sentiment.  It’s all about money.  How much you have.  How stable it is.  And how connected to the swamp that will drain over time due to the laws of physics.  People built their fortunes on pyramids that will not weather the storm.  The storm is just out there.  If you’ve ever biked in a city all season you know how it feels to bike against the wind chill across a bridge.  I doubt any of your politicians who were elected on huge piles of cash ever felt that connection to nature.  I have.  I’ve lived.  I’ve survived.  And I keep looking sexier doing it every day.  And I don’t have to cry about it.  I don’t have to command everyone’s attention.  I don’t have to say anything.  It moves within me.  Fear does at times too.  Which is why I plan and take action.  I set goals for myself.  I don’t rely on validation much.  I rely on myself.  I think maybe deep down I’m beginning to show you that more than I ever could in the past.  It’s not easy.  But I’m not angry.  Not anymore.  I do think it’s all kind of funny.  And I do still remember how to smile.  I smile a lot when I think about you.  If you think about me make sure not to worry.  I’ll be alright.  Stay fine and stay safe.  <3 Tim