Your name is Tim Drake and you are nine years old.
Today, tomorrow, and soon, you're going to save Robin.
----
Tim stares at his reflection on the sink tap. It trembles, along with the plane, as he contemplates his situation.
His face is rounder, now, with unfamiliar baby-fat rounding out the sharp lines he'd come to expect. Even with the subpar reflection, Tim can tell that his dark eyebags are all but gone, replaced with youthful skin.
Magic. He's being quite literal, seeing as he's been tossed into the body of his younger self at the hands of a crazed magician.
He could find a way back... or he could create a completely different timeline by fixing everything that went wrong. It's not like he has anything to go back to, anyways. That crazed magician was actually competent and killed everyone he ever cared about. Tim barely got away with his life. He could go back to save that shell of a world- surrounded by people whose minds were broken beyond magical and medical repair- or stay here, fix his own personal troubles and cut off the magician before he could start with his world domination bullshit.
Well, Tim already has an idea of what he wants. So he begins a list, after having oriented himself.
Save Robin
There's no point trying to convince Bruce that he knows where Jason's being held. So, Tim finds himself on a plane to Ethiopia a day before Jason's meant to die. This was long before Barbara even thought of being Oracle, and the tech is ancient in his hands. In short order, nine year old Tim has a trust fund with millions in it, all siphoned from billionaires like Lex Luthor and his own parents.
Tim toddles back to his seat, after washing his hands because he still can't shake the extra bit of paranoia that came with a missing spleen. Oh. Tim blinks guilelessly at his seat neighbor, smiling like Timothy Drake, Angel of a Son as he reels from the realization that he still has his spleen.
Tim adds another box to his list:
Keep Ra's away from my spleen, creepy bastard.
What else...? Ah, the League of Assassins.
Damian
Tim pauses. Holy crap. Damian's only six right now. Tim moves Damian's box upwards in urgency. Tim might have a mildly antagonistic relationship with his younger brother back then, but he wants baby pictures of his siblings, dammit. He's gonna put that photography expertise to good use if it's the last thing he does.
Watch over Z, Owens, Pru
'They're alive!' His mind screams. Cold rationality slaps the sentimentality down with a quick 'But they won't be if I fail.'
His mind wanders to Dick Grayson. He scowls as something pops up in the back of his head.
Catalina Flores
Contact Nightwing- in space
He's gotta call Dick back from that Teen Titans mission, Jason's gonna need all of the support he's going to get.
Find Cass
Train Steph
Save Duke's family from Venom
Tim taps at that last point. He'll save them. But that might mean Duke might never join their family.
But he'll be happy and Tim... will deal with it. He'll be the only one mourning, anyways. To end on a lighter note, he adds something that he should have done ages ago.
Give Tam a raise.
Tim sighs as he gets out of the airport, the hired escort he found and vetted, delivering him to a predetermined hotel. They think his parents are already inside. He laughs and does not say anything to make them think otherwise. He has so many things to do, Tim laments as he settles down to track the Joker's movements. Here. That's where Jason's being held. Being tortured.
He can, however, knock two things off his list in one go. Tim picks up the burner phone he acquired. He doesn't have time, or else he would have done this sooner and saved them all the trouble.
[RR: Are you in Ethiopia yet?]
[Deathstroke: Payment confirmed. In Ethiopia.]
[RR: Third building by the docks.]
An hour.
[Deathstroke: Confirmed. Target spotted.]
Ten minutes.
[Deathstroke: Target eliminated. Bringing Robin to Safehouse.]
Twenty minutes.
[Deathstroke: Basic first aid applied. Leaving.]
[RR: Secondary payment sent. Confirm?]
[Deathstroke: Confirmed. Pleasure doing business with you.]
Tim sprawls on the king bed. He sighs a breath of relief. He'd check on Jason in person, if he weren't paranoid about leaving traces that would get back to him. Tim's pretty sure that Deathstroke's going to get hunted down in the near future, regardless, so he made sure to add a huge tip on top of the extra fees for burning one of Deathstroke's safe houses and the emergency first aid. He taps into the rudimentary camera Deathstroke had given him the access codes to, to stare at Jason's rising and falling chest. On a further table, the Joker's head laid in a preservation box.
He bypasses all of the security on the Teen Titan's tech to send Dick a message.
[Robin has been retrieved from the Joker. Contact Batman for details.]
Then, he sends Bruce the location of the safe house. Tim spends the rest of the day staring at Jason and watching his father in another timeline break as he huddles close to the broken body of Tim's Robin.
Timothy Drake destroys the burner phone.
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Unpleasant Revelations - DPxDC Ficlet Idea for the Stillborn Au
"Have you met my youngest, Damian, Mr. Masters?"
Its only from twenty years of long, hard experience and practice that Vlad doesn't increase the room temperature from 'borderline uncomfortably cool' to 'unbearably hot' the moment Bruce Wayne pulls his youngest and "only" biological son out in front of him.
He puts only in quotations because twelve year old Damian Wayne looks scarily, uncannily like one Daniel Brown. Jack and Maddie's foster son, second victim of their foolishness, and only other halfa in existence. Second only to him.
It's nauseating how similar they look. From the scowl and terrible glare on the young boy's face, to his brown skin -- which was only a few shades lighter than Daniel's, the shape of his nose, and even the strange winged edge of his eyebrow. Something that Vlad has long since come to find endearing on the child he considered a son of his own. The only difference was that Damian had dark, sharp green eyes.
Daniel's eyes were blue. The same glacier shade as his father's, who stood behind Damian with a proud, oafish smile on his visage.
It was infuriating how similar they look. Vlad might not have rapidly swung the room temperature from one extreme to the other, but he can't stop himself from letting the fury burning within his core from slipping out and raising the temperature up a few degrees.
Because it really only meant one thing.
Damian Wayne and Daniel Brown were related.
Damian Wayne and Daniel Brown were brothers.
Standing in front of him, it was clear as day. He can already picture a phantom image of Daniel standing beside Damian, the same scowl written on his face, the same glare carved into his eyes. The only difference being the dark, exhausted circles beneath them that seemed to be permanently painted onto his skin. The only thing missing being the permanent loneliness and vigilance permeating his being like a scar.
This, if revealed, would be enough to ruin Bruce Wayne's reputation. Or, at the very least, darken it quite a bit. The great philanthropist Bruce Wayne with another secret blood child? One related to his youngest? One that had been put into foster care? Seemingly thrown away?
It would be a firestorm.
One that Vlad is not keen on starting.
It would ruin Bruce Wayne's reputation, yes. But it would hurt Daniel in the process -- the harassment he would face alone might just be enough to break that fragile child completely. That was just not something he could allow. Or, even worse, bring him into his biological father's care and custody -- something Vlad was even less willing to allow.
It's not out of kindness to Wayne that Vlad will keep mum about this.
His grip on his champagne flute tightens, just a bit. He's still aware enough of the world around him to not let it shatter in his hands. His plastered, pleasant smile tightens around the corners, and he forces his focus to slide from Damian to Wayne.
"The resemblance is uncanny, Mister Wayne." He says, slanting his smile to the side slyly. Although he's not talking about the resemblance between Wayne and his son. Rage simmers beneath his skin, burning coal and embers in the core of his chest, nestled between his lungs, as he meets the man's eyes.
Wayne swaggles his head proudly, his ditzy smile widening as he squeezes his son's shoulder affectionately. Bastard, Vlad wants to spit.
He breathes in through his nose, and exhales out through his mouth. The champagne in his hand cools, and stops its unusual bubbling.
The Damian boy scoffs under his breath, his mouth still coiled upward into a scowl. With the revelation of his blood relation to Daniel evident, Vlad's not sure if he should find it endearing or not.
He is not Daniel, so he decides that it's just simply irritating. He decides to ignore it.
"And you said he was your only biological son?" He asks, voice lilting and head tilting. He knows its a suspicious question at worst, insulting at best. But considering Wayne's past proclivities, he can hardly call it an unexpected question.
Damian puffs in great offense, face twisting angrily. It reminds him of Daniel when Vlad insisted that he was wrong about something or other, and for a moment his heart swells, fond.
But this is not his child, and so the feeling quickly crashes and burns, simmering back into rage. This was not Daniel -- this was his replacement. A replacement that Wayne was free to keep.
Wayne chuckles, idiotically, as if he'd said some funny joke. Vlad's other hand, the one gripping his cane -- something he's required ever since he was dispatched from the hospital all those lonely years ago -- tightens instead. He grinds his teeth -- him and Jack Fenton would get along like a house on fire, he hates it.
"I can understand why you'd ask that, Mister Masters," Wayne says, squeezing Damian's shoulder again, "but yes, Damian is my only biological son. Although that doesn't mean I don't love my other children any less."
Bastard.
For all his posturing and flouncing about caring for his city and his children, Vlad never would have thought the Prince of Gotham capable of abandoning one of them.
But, well.
They all have their dark secrets.
And what one man throws away, another man picks up. If Bruce Wayne didn't want the treasure child that was Daniel Brown, then Vlad Masters was more than happy to take him instead.
"I see."
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