#tim drake fanfic

[laroserie]

— character : Tim Drake

— content : x gender neutral reader - reader is referred to as 'you', tim confessing multiple times and failing, reader is ... dense.

— authors note : as i said - i want to write for each weeks of december ! and today is the 7th so my deadline. this is short but sweet :)

— The first time Tim Drake, told you he loved you was the 7th of december a few years back. It was a regular day, nothings out of the norm expect for the fact that it snowed, when the weather forecast said it couldn't.

You took a moment to react, looking at your friend dumbfounded. You were both sitting at a table, at a coffee shop, you were sipping yours and had to put it down. Not sure how to react you simply laughed.

''Well, I like you too Tim? You are a great friend, but you caught me off guard with ... that.'' You told him after you finished laughing.

He sighed and shake his head, he seemed that he wanted say something else but Tim changed subject, talking about a new novel he was reading.

The second time Tim Drake told you he loved you was the next year, the 7th of december once again, this time you were watching a movie. It was just a cheesy regular christmas movie that you put on because you didn't know what else to watch - both of you were not paying attention to it. You were sitting next to Tim, your head was lying on my shoulder and your hands were intertwined. He wasn't sure how he kept his calm to be honest, his mind was racing and once again he just blurred out a 'i love you'. Not hearing any response from you after a few minutes had passed, he looked at you, to see you asleep. He sigh - once again his confession failed.

This time, he didn't care too much, 'I always have next year to tell them' he thoughts. He watched your sleep so peacefully and couldn't help but smile. Then his gaze lower to your hands holding each others and lightly squeezed yours. He didn't mean to but that woke you up, he let out a small laugh seeing you suddenly jerk up, asking for how long you were out.

The third time Tim Drake told you he loved you, was once again the 7th of december. He had decided to make it his habit, he could confess to you every 7th of december until you gave him an answer. This time you were both walking in a mall, looking at the decorations. It was his idea, he wanted this to be a somewhat romantic hangout and take it as an opportunity to confess but he gave up momentarily seeing how into the decors you were. At some point, you both arrived near the center of the mall, here the malls Santa was. You turned to him and looked at him without saying anythings - Tim understood nearly immediately what you wanted to do. He looked at you back for a while, before sighing and nodding his head. And there you went, getting in line to take a picture on this Santa laps, with Tim by your side, as you obviously dragged your best friend along. When it was finally your turn, he stayed on the side, like a parent do for a kid, while you went and sat on the Santa lap and took a picture. You jumped off the Santa lap and walked to Tim with a grin on your face - he couldn't help but smile lightly and whisper 'i really do love you'. You didn't hear that - but once again. Tim didn't care that much, - he knew he always had next year to tell you that.

The fourth time Tim Drake told you he loved, was the 7th of december, it was been now four year that this little tradition of his was going on. You didn't know about this one, you thought your tradition was to hang out every 7th of the month, which was the truth but not the entirety of it.

This time you both were baking gingerbread over at your house - well you had already finished baking it, it was currently cooking in the oven and you were cooking the mess that had became the kitchen. Tim did understand now why Alfred banned him and most of the residents in the manor from attempting to cook.

While he was washing the dishes, you were cleaning the counter. He quickly finished the dishes and went to help you clean it. 'Accidentally' getting a bit too close to you and brushing your hands against each others.

Once you finished, Tim and you sat on the floor in front of the oven to wait for the gingerbread to be done. While you were staring focused on the oven, he turn to you and blurred out, - once again.

"I love you." He was expecting you to laugh, give him a little punch on the arm and tell him you loved him too - because he was your friend. But you didn't. Still staring at the oven, you swallowed and responded "I love you too Tim.", he took a moment to register your words but he decided to hold back his emotions.

"You know I don't mean it in the 'I love you' like a friend way right ?" He asked. "Hmm I know. I didn't mean it in that way either." You answered, turning to face him.

"Oh. I'm glad to hear that … Can I ?" Tim asked, leaning closer to you. You nodded and he leaned even closer until his lips were on yours. The kiss was short but sweet, once he broke the kiss he whispered "You have no idea how long I wanted to do that …".

[indulgentdaydream]

Missy’s Masterlist

Jason Todd

Cooking Lessons (on both Ao3 and Tumblr) Jason Todd x fem!Reader || Fluff. One Shot. || Word Count: 629 Summary: Jason catches you cooking in the kitchen. He decides to help you out when he sees you struggle.

Drawing Touches (on both Ao3 and Tumblr) Jason Todd x gn!Reader. || Fluff One Shot. || Word Count: 936 Summary: It's too hot to sleep peacefully. Why not play a quiet game of 'can I draw on your back?'?.

New in Town (on both Ao3 and Tumblr) Jason Todd x gn!Vigilante!Reader || Fluff Requested One Shot. || Word Count: 1,185 Summary: There's a new vigilante in town. Jason tries to cope with his newfound emotions for them.

Out of the Bag (on both Ao3 on Tumblr) Jason Todd x fem!Civillian!Reader || Hurt and Comfort Requested One Shot || Word Count: 1,862 Summary: Jason hasn't introduced you to his family. Hasn't even mentioned you. You get injured and the closest place to take you is the batcave.

Meet Cutes (on both Ao3 and Tumblr) Jason Todd x gn!Nurse!Reader || Fluff Requested One Shot || Word Count: 1,035 Summary: You work in a clinic that deals with a lot of criminals, who in turn deal with the Red Hood. One day, you finally meet the man responsible for your talent at sewing up bullet wounds.

M.I.A. (on both Ao3 and Tumblr) Jason Todd x fem!Reader || Fluff Requested One Shot || Word Count: 758 Summary: Jason wakes up and realizes Reader isn't in bed. He goes searching for them throughout their shared apartment.

Bliss and Misery (on both Ao3 and Tumblr) Dad!Jason Todd x Fem!Reader || Angst; Hurt/No Comfort One Shot || Word Count: 1,643

Tim Drake

The Amalgamation That Is The Inner Workings of Tim Drake (only on Ao3) General Fic || Angst Chapters: 4/? || Word Count: 7,932 Summary: Tim Drake comes to understand sibling relationships.

[frothing-at-the-mouth]

Hey there I wrote a really short not serious crack fanfic with the three main three young justice boys, just wanted to share it here real quick. I am still working on my other fic with them Hop n Skip, but I am still working on the next chapter to that on. The drawing here has to do with the silly fic lol.

(ID: A drawing of Impulse holding a speckled trout stuffed animal -ID End)

[ephemerensis]

Kalopsia // Tim Drake x GN! Reader

lolz wrote this to cope bc im losing my mind, not proofread xoxo enjoy this is angst and hurt bc forgiving people is too easy when they were more than you could bear

—

“Let’s break up.”

At the time you felt so grown up to offer it. Looking back, it seemed more like an act of desperation. Those words were a lifeline thrown to sea, a silent plea for him to deny you and prove it was all still salvageable. But lifelines meant little when there was nothing to swim back to, and your ship had long been sinking.

Things moved slower in summer. A cruel juxtaposition to the winter you met in, the winter you felt you embodied and the winter he said he loved. But as the days grew longer, honeying the time you spent together, you could feel it all so much more clearly. You practically bathed in it, suffocated by the ailments of the inevitable. It wasn’t working.

So you casted your lifeline, pleading Tim would grasp it, he would disagree and fight for you. All under the guise that this needed to happen.

Your head rested on his core, the two of you sprawled out on a picnic blanket under the clear skies. His hand was running its course through your hair. The sun was so warm, but not quite as warm as the hope that flickered in your chest when you felt him tense. His hand paused and for a moment you tasted salvation. Then he unfroze, melted in the summer heat. Tantalizingly caught up in the lazy summer air’s slow, he was fine.

And you were bitter when he accepted.

“Okay.”

You could feel the reserved smile that graced his gentle features without looking. But even after all this time, you could never tell really what he meant by it. And that was months ago.

Now you were in the city alone. Your own apartment. A steady job. The same cream cheese everything bagel in the morning with a cup of hazelnut coffee from the cute little bakery on the corner next to the police station everyday, where you knew his brother worked but also knew he would never visit. The one you were bustling into today, the drops of snow that followed you in instantly disintegrating when met with the warm bakery air. The lingering thoughts of him and his coffee comatoses fading as the sharp cinnamon scent hit you.

There he stood. The millisecond it took for you to recognize him stretched on for centuries. You missed him so much that you’d conjured up a visage built from a stranger’s likeness, you’d thought. The familiar unkempt raven head of hair, and the way he was always hunched over to squint at his phone while he waited for his morning cold brew.

But it was him. Your body knew it before your mind did, feet freezing in place as you stared. When he turned around, the roots holding you to the ground grasped you for a moment too long. It was enough for him to see you and your dumb conflicted expression, despite the hustle bustle of morning rush hour. Enough for him to stare back a second longer than he should’ve as you turned around and took off.

You couldn’t place in your head exactly why you were running. The cafe just suddenly felt too small and the look in his eyes as you turned to leave felt too gentle. So against any semblance of logic, you decided to hurry away. You heard him call after you as you ran down the sidewalk. You saw him comb through the crowds almost frantically as you pressed your back against an alley building. You saw him run past the alley. But like an unavoidable magnetism, you saw him stop and turn; eyes finding your own amongst the throng of moving people.

Everything was silent as he approached you. Slow; like a tamer to a wild animal, holding your gaze the whole way. Something about the way he looked at you made you feel so vulnerable. As if his eyes could read your soul.

And then he was in front of you and the noise came rushing back. In fact, it was a little too loud as you stared up at him, you almost didn’t hear him say hello.

It was a timid one. The kind you would offer your mother after the two of you fought and you wanted to test the waters after the smoke cleared.

“Hi,” you said in the same small way. There wasn’t much else to say. This was the boy who knew every unapologetic aspect about you. The one whose wellbeing became your earth shattering priority. The one your heart still whined at the prospect of knowing. The boy you shouldn’t be thinking of again, because he was nothing to you now. You broke up.

He looked at you almost apologetically. Not that he had to. You weren’t mad at him. You had no right to be angry. You, with your subliminal messaging and silent pleas, broke up with him.

Or at least that’s what you told yourself as the memories bubbled up. Never knowing where he was at night. Apology flowers on days that dates were lost to fatigue. That stupid feeling of being taken for granted every time you wanted to get closer to him and he pushed you away as if you were in the wrong.

It was a mutual, clean, break. You must’ve been clingy for him to let you go so easily.

“How are you doing?”

You couldn’t make eye contact. It wasn’t his fault but it didn’t hurt you any less. If he knew you he’d know that. If he knew you. Instead you kept your gaze pinned to the wall behind him as you tried to sort your thoughts and swallow your feelings.

“I’m doing great,” you hated how meek you sounded. As if a person you knew so deeply would make you shrink back in your shell like this. “You?”

“I’m good too. Do you visit that shop often?” If he could sense your apprehension he didn’t show it. Enthused was a better word to describe him.

“No,” you lied. Half because you didn’t want him to know where you frequented. “Just when I’m in the area.” Half because you were tired of bearing yourself to someone that never really saw you.

“That’s cool.” You could hear the smile in his voice. The awkward one that made it seem like this, you, pained him. It was so frustratingly condescending, as if he wasn’t the cause of your misgivings.

“Yeah.” A beat of silence passed and you waited. For what exactly, you couldn’t be sure. An apology, an extension, a follow up question— some tidbit about his life you were dying to know but too hurt to ask. Anything.

But that was it. It was too little and too much all at once. Nothing changed.

Ducking your head down, you slipped past him, reentering the busy sidewalk to just get away as he stayed still there. Foolishly, something in you, the part that still loved him, hoped he would stop you but you knew better.

Except he did. He caught you by your arm just as you were about to slip away into the crowd.

“Wait.”

You had every means to pull away, his grip wasn’t so tight. This was a plea, not a command. He was cruel for it, because as much as you’d get mad and give up and run away, you would crumble if he’d asked. That’s exactly how you felt now. Frustrated to no end but as he uttered that ‘wait,’ you felt the earth crumble at your feet, forging a path that could only lead to staying for him.

It was enough to make you want to cry.

“Please. Don’t do that to me.” Meek and mild and weak; something you could never be to anyone else. The worst part was, you never wanted to present yourself to him that way either— he’d just invoked it in you in a way that made you feel so exposed it was terrifying.

Now he looked confused, as if this was unexpected, “…what?”

“Don’t tell me to wait, because if you do I’ll wait here for centuries. I’ll look for you in every alley that I pass on the way.” You looked at him, locking your tear brimmed eyes with his own cerulean depths you’d fallen into time and time again. “I’ll seek refuge in every stranger I meet, wondering what exactly I’m missing that made us wrong as if I had some fatal flaw that made me so dismissible to you. Every time you open your mouth, I listen like a dog and you would know that if you’d known me. It’s mean, Tim. You’re being mean.”

You were crying now, calcium streaking your cheeks, but you were too used to the embarrassment to care. That’s how it was with him. You were raw. Vulnerable. And he just looked at you as if that’s the way you were.

“I’m sorry.” His hand reached towards you, to rest on your shoulder, but you shrugged it away.

“You’re not! And that’s the thing with you, I can’t even be mad. You’ve done nothing wrong. This is all my fault! I couldn’t ever be good. I couldn’t ever talk to you. I couldn’t ever let go. I overthink every little thing when it comes to you, I can’t even be here without imploding. I broke up with you. So please… don’t be cruel and let me go. Tell me to leave and I’ll listen.”

For a minute he just stared back and you wondered if your words even registered at all. You couldn’t read his expression.

“Why should I?”

It was your turn to be bewildered.

“You’re wrong, for the record, and I’m sorry I let you go; and I miss you.”

“Tim—“

“I know you. Not as well as I’d like, and clearly not enough for you to see it, but I do. You have never been selfish once in your life; not with people you care for. You keep your mouth shut and you act like everything is fine to avoid burdening others.”

He’d taken your hand somewhere during the course of his proclamation, but you didn’t feel inclined to pull away. For the first time you saw it in him; the sundering you felt when you bore your sores to him “I’d known that, and I thought if I just gave you time you’d open up to lean on me.”

“I tried, Tim. I reached out to you every chance I got to the point where I doubted you even wanted to be around me. And I know that’s my fault too for not being more benign, but you can’t have expected that out of me.” You couldn’t count the amount of times you poured your heart out to an empty spigot. He was so above it all, it made you feel bad. Tim never cried like you did, fists pounding on the floor. Nor did he run into half as many conflicts.

“And I was wrong for it.”

Even now it felt like you were losing a war he didn’t know you were fighting. You had your hand laid bare while he was still dealing the deck. “Why’d you agree with me? Why did you let me break up with you?”

“I thought that’s what you wanted and I was stupid. I knew you were hurting, and more than anything I wanted you to be okay. I’m sorry, but please don’t ever think it was easy because it wasn’t. I just didn’t want you to feel any worse.”

“I was hurt! I was so inconsolably hurt, but it hurt so much more to be without you.”

Your voice broke as you choked back a sob. He pulled you in and like a dog you didn’t resist, falling back into the arms you’d run away from. They were so warm.

“Let me try again,” he’d whispered to you.

And against your better judgement you whispered back, “okay.”

[anothertimdrakestan]

oooo boy. first, love your writing boo you’re seriously an inspiration <3. secondly, a fic idea: a friend of tim’s flies in to see him bc she moved to maine forever ago, they were like childhood besties. but when they meet again, there’s a mf-ing sPARkk

Memories - Tim Drake x Reader

~

"I'm so sorry to have to stop taking questions, but we've kept Ms. L/N for 15 extra minutes and I'm sure she has plans after! Everyone please give her another round of applause for coming all the way to Gotham University to present her outstanding research!" the lecture hall erupted with applause as you smiled and waved at the sea of faces in front of you. Presenting your research across the nation was a dream, and although you barely remember it, Gotham was your hometown, and you were excited to see what parts of your rose-coloured memories remained.

"Thank you so much for having me GU! Please, email me with any more questions I'll be happy to reply." you called to the masses that were filing out as you shook your peer's hand one last time, both exchanging pleasantries as the room quieted.

"Sorry again for keeping you over, Ms. L/N, I'm sure you're very busy! But, if you could just take a look at one of my papers up for publication, I would be so, so thankful!" he began, flipping up his laptop as you realized this opportunity to speak was really just an exchange of favours.

A terrifyingly familiar voice echoed across the hall, "actually, she is busy, we have plans." you almost had to squint to see a man's frame leaning up against the doorway, backlit enough that you couldn't make out the details of his face.

"Oh! So sorry. I- uh I can email it to you! We can hop on a zoom call later in the week?" your peer seemed to recognize the figure immediately, packing his things as quickly as the students who were just there for attendance. He scurried away just as quickly too.

"It's been years, but you didn't think I'd find you?" the voice drifted across the room as you turned to face the figure, starting your walk up to him.

"I'm so sorry, the lighting, it's awful! I don't quite recognize you and I certainly don't have plans with anyone I'm afraid!" you replied, practically flying up the stairs just to meet this man face to face. He was dressed exquisitely: suit clearly tailored, hair slicked back with the perfect suave tousle, it was exhilarating.

"You don't recognize your only Gotham friend?"

"I don't have any Gotham friends, I was only here for my first few years of elementary school- oh my god Tim?" you rambled until you made it close enough to see the stranger's face and froze. The eyes, the familiar gleam of mischief and intelligence you had befriended what felt like a million years ago were staring back at you.

"Hey Y/n. Long time no see." he held out a strong hand, helping you up the last few steps, bringing both of you into the light. He continued, "you look, incredible." to which you just gawked in return.

"You look, like Tim" you whispered, tying the strings of comparison between the child you had first hacked a firewall with and the grown man, really billionaire, that stood before you.

He ran an awkward hand through his hair at your response, "thanks, I think." to which you scrambled back, "no! I mean, you look good, really really good, I just can't believe it's you. I mean, I thought about reaching out, you're on my Gotham list [you held up a list of scribbles of old memories] but I just figured you'd be so busy that I didn't bother."

"Didn't bother a partner in underage crime? Callous. Let's see the list though!" he snorted, snatching the scribbles from your hands, holding it up as he read aloud your scrambled childhood memories:

"Visit the nature museum- closed after a Poison Ivy attack, find Mr. Smith from 2nd grade- god you've gotta use google he's long dead he was like 70 when we were 6! Hmmm, visit the Big Belly Burger on 11th- now that's a good one!" he scanned the list quickly while you clawed for it back hoping he wouldn't get to-

"find the old rope swing behind Wayne Manor. You remember that?" the words left his lips just as you tore the paper out of his hand, tucking it back into your pocket.

"Of course I remember it, but it's whatever. It's probably also dead and gone or ruined by a villain. Why are you even here?" you tried to turn the spotlight onto Tim, but he was already halfway out the room, calling "C'mon! At the least I can buy you a 3$ burger and shitty milkshake." to which you haplessly obliged.

"Do you remember getting caught when we rigged the 5th grade presidential election? Why did you even want that kid to win anyway?" You laughed, almost uncontrollably, reminiscing on the old shenanigans.

Tim replied, "oh I didn't care who won or lost, I just wanted to see if we could do it!" to which you threw a french fry at him, which he swiftly caught. "Oh my god we almost got expelled Tim!"

"Doesn't match the time you made us start a homework-completing company in your backyard!" his shoulders shook with laugher.

"We were broke!" you chided, waving your arms exasperated, like you were a kid begging him to join your master plan once again.

"We were six years old!" he chuckled.

"We were, weren't we." you mused, popping the last fry in your mouth, leaning back with a sigh. Some things didn't change. Big Belly Burger was still addictive, Gotham was still filled with pollution, and Tim was still the very best thing about the entire city.

"I can check off one last thing on your bucket list." Tim said decidedly, sitting up in his chair.

"Yea? You gonna bring me to Mr. Smith's grave?" you groaned. But Tim stood up, he had lost the suit jacket and tie somewhere along the 2 hours you'd both spent in the fast food joint, he looked young again. You felt young again.

He had driven you somewhere you only dreamed of pulling into, Gotham Manor. You always wondered how the poor boy from a public elementary school had managed to get adopted by Bruce Wayne, but you never knew how to reach out and ask.

"Tell me you don't still have the rope swing" you shook your head with a grin. Tim just shrugged, hopping out of the sleek black car and running over to open your door for you.

"What do you take me for? A sap?" he crooned.

"Absolutely." you replied, bumping his side with your shoulder as he took the opportunity to lazily sweep an arm around you, guiding you to massive backyard gardens in the Manor.

You mused, "if we wanted to be true to character, we should've snuck in like old times" and Tim snorted, "let's just say I've upped the security pretty significantly, and that wouldn't go so well for us."

You rounded the edge of the perfectly trimmed garden to the scattered trees on the Manor's edge, and sitting there looking the same as ever was a massive tree, a thick rope hanging down tied tightly around a massive tire, the kind a monster truck or a weightlifter threw around, you and Tim had always wondered why it was there, or how the poor tree managed to hold it up, but you never worried about it, both swinging happily late at night after both sneaking out.

You placed a hand on the tree, a few rogue tears slipping down your cheeks as you leaned into Tim's embrace. "I really loved it here you know." you whispered.

"I did too. When you left it wasn't really the same." his voice was soft, you could feel his chest rumbling with every word.

"Really? I guess I always figured you'd find some other genius and take over the world with them"

"You thought I could replace you?"

"No- I mean maybe? I don't know, we were kids I just figured-"

"I didn't forget. You were my first kiss, right here." he leaned forward to put a hand on the old tree.

"Mine too." you replied, smiling as you remembered the nervous peck that occurred the night before you left.

"I was so nervous." he chuckled, staring at the tree, his gaze never meeting yours.

"I didn't think you had the balls." you teased, and his eyes snapped to yours.

"Okay, I was a pretty shy kid, but I've grown a lot."

"Yeah?" you grinned, biting your bottom lip to keep from breaking into a beaming smile.

Tim gently pushed you back against the tree, his hand guiding your chin up, letting your eyes meet his, "yeah" was all he muttered before pressing another gentle, warm kiss to your lips, and the same butterflies you got, all those years ago, took flight once again.

~

I hope you enjoyed, thank you so much for the request! <3

[planetwaynez]

Thought of the day: it's been a while, I have been busy with college and work and stuff BUT today I had a break and I am at my sister's and just... I had this thought about taking ANY of the batboys to a normal house and how that would blow their mind.

SO THINK THIS: Jason Todd cooking with one of your favorite relatives, Dick setting the table, Tim in the corner playing hay day, damian talking with your relatives and Duke just... he is watching TV and he is so happy to be normal again

[goldenraeofsun]

This is Our Get Along Spell

Rating: G

Length: 10.5k

Normally, Tim would be able to handle being turned into a cat. He has a working brain and working limbs. He’s been running around Gotham at night since he was four feet tall – losing a few extra feet shouldn’t make that much of a difference.

No, the deciding factor is the massive dog stalking him across the warehouse, wearing a murderous expression that could only belong to Damian.

Read on AO3

[angel-ixily]

Two of the Same ~Pt 3~

Pairings: Tim Drake//Red Robin x gn!Reader

Fandom: DC Universe

Warnings: Use of language, mentions of violence and wounds

A/N: This is the last chapter, and I’ll be honest, I haven’t proofread much of it, and it’s kind of long! I’m so sorry, loves! I just don’t see enough Tim fanfics on here, and he’s one of my favorite characters ever, so I decided to make some for you! Enjoy!

Summary: Every night a masked vigilante comes into Y/N's bedroom, and to their knowledge, it's to "clean his wounds." But the visits go deeper than that when underneath that mask, unbeknownst to Y/N, is their classmate, Tim Drake, who has a huge crush on them.

— — —

Two of the Same ~pt 1~

Two of the Same ~pt 2~

~~~~~~~~

Are we dating? Are we together? I’m not entirely sure.

I still have no clue who Red Robin is underneath that mask. I have no idea who he is, and it’s killing me. I’ve asked him about it, and he keeps saying “soon.” Like, when’s soon? How soon? It’s already been 2 months, and I’m still not sure what soon means. Does he even know when soon is? I’ve known the guy for almost 2 years, we’ve been all mushy gushy for almost 3 months.

It’s literally killing me.

Does he think that I’m going to hate his face? He wears a thin mask that only covers his eyes. I’ve already seen half of it, and I don’t hate it.

I put down the pencil and notebook that I had just finished writing my thoughts in as soon as I heard my phone buzz.

I smiled when I saw that Tim had sent me another text. In fact, he had sent me two texts.

I squealed and jumped out of my bed, running across the hall and into the bathroom to start the shower. I then ran out of the bathroom and back into my bedroom to get a change of clothes, and some of my hair stuff.

“Y/N! What are you doing in there?” My father asked from what I think was the living room.

“My friend invited me out, and I’m pretty excited, sorry!” I announced. My parents were muttering to each other for a moment and the last sentence I heard was-

“Y/N never gets that excited about hanging out with Jackie..” I laughed at that until I heard my mothers voice.

“Is it that boy? The one you’ve been texting?” She asks. I pause for a moment.

“How do you know about that?” I say as I peek my head out into the hallway.

“Oh come on, Y/N. Your phone bill went up 25 dollars this past month, and you get super excited when your phone lights up with a notification. The only reasonable explanation is a boy.” She stated.

Curse my parents for being lawyers.

And curse me for being so obvious with it.

“Yeah well. It is a boy.” I agree, taking all of my stuff into the bathroom with me.

“Well just be safe, okay? And make sure he’s not in any gangs?” She asked of me.

“But if he is in one, tell us so that we can go against him in court and make money!” My father added, before I closed the door. I rolled my eyes, smiling, as I stripped out of my clothes and stepped into our shower.

I had to exit the shower real quick, though, because I forgot to press play on my music.

When I stepped back in, the warm water felt nice against my back, but because my parents loved high water pressure, it felt like pebbles of rocks were being thrown at me, which was annoying. But I had to do what I had to do.

I washed my hair, shaved my legs, washed my body 3 times with 3 different soaps, and then a scrub. When I stepped out, I smelled like the colors of the rainbow, and immediately wrapped a towel around my body and hair, so that the cold air wouldn’t give me pneumonia.

I did a facial routine as I waited for my body to dry, and took my damp hair out of the towel as I finished up.

I don’t want to take too long and bore you dear reader as I explain what I did for the remainder of the time before Tim got there, so let me just speed things up for you.

I brushed out my hair, dried off my body, put my clothes on, dried my hair, proceeded to sing along to a bomb ass song on my playlist with the brush as my microphone, and the hair dryer blowing my hair back for dramatic effect, styled my hair, brushed my teeth, and walked out of the bathroom just in time because Tim had texted me notifying me that he was outside.

I told him I’d be right out, and I went into my bedroom to grab a pack of mint gum and my wallet just in case.

“Alright. Well I’m about to head out. I love you guys, and don’t have too much fun without me.” I told my parents as I walked past them in the living room.

“Have fun honey! Oh! And gangs! Careful of the gangs!” My mom yelled as I began to walk out the door.

“Money!” My father yelled immediately when I closed the door.

How silly my parents could be. And then I’d wonder where I got it from.

I basically ran down the hallway and down the stairs, until I came in view of the front door leading out to the street. I fixed my hair real quick, and adjusted my outfit, and walked out of the door.

In my view had to be one of the nicest cars I had ever seen, and inside of it was none other than Tim Drake. I smiled at him, and opened the door of the car.

“Hey!” I said as I sat in the seat. He smiled at me.

“You look beautiful.” He commented immediately. I blushed.

“Oh uh. Yeah thanks. You look nice too!” I complimented back. He chuckled, and pointed to the seatbelt.

“Don’t forget to buckle yourself in. I like to think I’m a good driver, but you never know what could happen.” He waited until I buckled myself in so that he could pull out and onto the street.

“So the cafè is a little of a ways from here, but that’s fine! It’s a really nice place, and I can’t wait to take you there.” He commented, glancing over to me. I smiled brightly.

“I can’t wait! I saw it on your Instagram last night, and it looks like a really comfortable environment!” A devious smirk covered his lips.

“I haven’t posted on my instagram in 3 months, Y/N.” He paused. “Were you stalking my Insta?” He asked. I rolled my eyes.

“It’s really aesthetically pleasing. How could I not look at it!” I tried to explain myself. In reality, I really just liked looking at photos of him, which sounded creepy. But to my defense, there was something about him that, and though I hated to admit it, attracted me to him.

Tim was cute, and smart, and funny. He cared about me and always asked if I was doing alright. He came to school more often now, and I had really started to like him. But my main issue was that I also really liked Red Robin. It made my heart hurt knowing that I couldn’t have both, and that I liked Tim while liking the masked vigilante.

“Are you okay?” Tim asked. I looked over to him, while he kept glancing at me, a concerned look in his eye.

“Oh I’m fine! I’m just thinking about a friend right now.” I told him. His eyebrows furrowed.

“Jackie?” He questioned. I laughed. I might as well be thinking of Jackie after she told me of her pregnancy scare last night, but my thoughts wandered elsewhere.

“Not exactly. Though I do worry about that girl sometimes. She’s a little crazy.” I comment, turning my body a little to face him. “Who knows. Maybe I was thinking of you!” I say, a small smile playing my lips. He blushes.

“I’d be honored if you were.” He smiles at me as we pull next to a sidewalk, with the supposed cafè right next to it. It was in Gotham square, and Tim was right, it did look comfortable.

I went to open my side of the car door, but Tim told me to hold on, and jumped out of the car. He closed the door and ran to the other side to open it for me.

“Sorry about that.” He said, as I got out of the car.

“What a gentlemen.” I teased as he closed the door behind me. He smiled, and we walked up to the door to the cafè. This time, I opened it for him.

“My turn now.” I joked. He laughed, and I followed behind him inside. It was quiet, and I could see why this would be Tim’s favorite place to be. It reminded me so much of him, actually. Quiet, peaceful, calm. And if cozy was a word I could use to describe a person, he’d be cozy.

“Tim! Hi!” A girl with long blonde hair said behind the counter. She noticed me and smirked. “Who’s this lovely person with you?” She asked.

“I’m Y/N.” I say, smiling at her. She returns it with a pearly grin.

“The usual, Timmy?” She asked. Tim nodded, and she turned to me. “And you, my love?” She asked. I really liked this girl. She seemed super sweet and enthusiastic.

“Can I get an iced peppermint latte?” I asked. She nodded.

“That’s my favorite too.” She commented, placing up the total. “And I’ll use the family discount for ya, Timmers.” She said, clicking some buttons on the screen. “Your total is 18.61.” She looked up at us and I took out a twenty in my wallet. Tim shook his head.

“I got it! Besides, she’s my sister. I’d never hear the end of it.” He said to me, putting his card into the machine. I stared at the two of them.

“You guys are siblings?” I asked. The girl nodded.

“Yep! Tim here is my little brother! Adoptive, that is. But still!” She beams down at him. He rolls his eyes.

“You’re older by a year. I’m not that much younger.” He reminded her, a smirk tugging his lips. She shrugged.

“Still younger!” She pressed one more button on the screen. “I’ll get those orders right out for the two of you!” She announced before she turned around to make the drinks.

I look over to Tim and he takes a breath. “Let’s sit at my favorite spot. Over here.” He leads the way to a cute little booth by the window, and we sit down across from one another.

“I would have never guessed that was your sister.” I laughed, glancing back at her as she was making the drinks.

“Yeah, my father has a habit of adopting kids. I have 7 older siblings, and one younger sibling.” He informs me. My jaw drops.

“No way!” I say, shocked. He nods.

“Yeah. Kate is the oldest, then comes Babs, Luke, Dick, Jason, Cass, Steph, me, and Damian.” He tells me, tapping his fingers on the table. I start to giggle.

“What?” He asks, a smile forming on his face.

“You give off little brother vibes, is all. Like, I could have figured you were one of the youngest in the family.” I joke. He begins to hide his smile as he shakes his head.

“Everybody says that, and I hate it.” I reach across and put my hand on his shoulder. He freezes, and blushes.

“It’s alright. I’m sure you still keep up with all of them.” I rub my thumb on his shoulder before I pull away. The blush deepens on his cheeks.

“I’m an only child. My parents saw how much of a hassle one child was, and dismissed any talk about having other children. I don’t think they regretted their decision.” I told him. A look of concern spread on his lips.

“Why? Were you that bad of a kid?” He asked. I shook my head.

“No. I’m just straight up my parents child. I act just like both of them, and they didn’t want to know what personality another one of their potential children could have. Having one that shared the same traits of theirs was enough.” I responded. Tim looked out the window.

“None of the adopted kids in my family are like Bruce. We all share similar traits, but we’re nothing alike. Dick is overly positive, Jason is overly negative, Babs is badass, Steph is sarcastic, Cass is quiet, Luke is wise, Kate is serious. The closest one to Bruce is probably Damian, who is his biological son.” Tim spoke, nodding his head as he finished his sentence.

“What about you?”

“Huh?”

“What about you?” I repeated, staring at him straight in the eyes. “What do you have in common with him?”

“I don’t know. My logic? Maybe? I think I’m just like you. I’m probably my biological parents child.” He declared. I nodded.

“Nothing wrong with that! But I think you shouldn’t hold yourself to a lower standard then the rest of your siblings. You all share your qualities, and I really like yours.” I smile at him, and he returns it, making it my turn to blush.

“This may sound cheesy to say, but I like hanging out with you. We should do this more often.” He commented. I laughed, crossing my arms.

“Why? Because you like me complimenting you?” I asked. His eyes widen, and he shakes his head.

“No! No, no, no! You’re just super fun, and… you’re uhm.. you’re a good person so…” He starts to stumble across his words and I shake my head.

“I was just teasing you, Tim. I like hanging out with you too.” We both stop smiling as we’re staring into each others eyes. From the lighting in this cafè, he looks like an angel. It’s lighting up his raven black hair, and making him look even more beautiful in that sweater. The softness of this cafè make his features softer too. A part of me hopes that the reason that he looks so calm and relaxed is because he’s with me.

Or maybe I’m a narcissist who thinks everything is about them. Who knows!

“Tim and Y/N?” We hear Tim’s sister call. We look over and see her standing by the counter with two drinks. Tim and I both get up to get them.

“Thanks, Steph.” He thanks her, grabbing both of our drinks. I pull out my wallet again, and place the twenty that I was going to use earlier to pay, into the tip jar.

“Keep Y/N, Tim. Keep them. They’re perfect.” Steph calls out. Tim hands my drink to me, blushing.

“Shut up!” He yells as we exit the cafè. I laugh.

“Oh shit! I didn’t even ask! Did you want to stay in there or did you want to go to the park now?” He asked. I smiled.

“We can go to the park now if you’d like.” He nodded and opened the car door for me.

“Thanks, Tim.” I told him once he got in. He shot me a toothy grin. We put on our seatbelts and he started the car.

“Anytime! Like I said, I like spending time with you. Making you comfortable is what’s most important to me.” He pulled out of the square. I stared at his hands on the wheel. My eyes trailed to his face. He was biting his lip, and I noticed a small scar on the bottom one.

“What happened to your lip?” I asked him, reaching across to hover my thumb over it. His face flushed and he glanced over to me.

“Some crazy guy on the street. He attacked me, and one of those vigilantes must have been nearby or something, and he saved me.” He explained, putting on the turn signal and turning left. I felt my heart skip a beat.

“Do you know which one it was? That saved you?” I asked. He stayed quiet for a moment.

“The red one. Kind of slim. Black hair. He fights using a long stick.” I smiled. Yep. Of course it would be Red Robin. I sat there smiling to myself, bringing my drink to my lips, but stopped when I had come to a realization.

Black hair. My eyes trailed up to take a look at Tim’s hair. Raven black. A middle part similar to Red’s. My eyebrows furrowed.

My eyes then trailed down to his body. He always wore oversized clothes, but his exterior was definitely not huge. He was a pretty skinny guy. Slim like Red.

And then my eyes trailed back to the scar on his lip. The same place that Red’s lip had been busted at.

And isn’t it so convenient that both Tim’s and Red’s arms had been broken in the same spot? And both of them being the right arm? And in the same week?

My heart started to beat faster, and my eyes widened.

“When did you get attacked?” I finally asked him after a long moment of silence. He was now pulling into the park.

“Uhh like 2 months ago? Yeah, it was kinda bad. What you get for living in Gotham I guess.”

My heart stopped.

I felt ringing in my ears.

Everything around me turned to slow motion, and I just stared at him.

There was no way that nerdy, quiet, billionaire’s son Tim Drake, who had much better things to do with his time and money, would go out at night and defend civilians of Gotham from all the chaos and destruction. There was no way. And how would he keep this secret from his family? They couldn’t of known, right?

But at the same time, it all made sense. All of the injuries that he had had over the years, how he’d sleep during most of his classes, and look exhausted whenever he’d show up at school. How he would act towards me.

The one thing that stumped me was that Red and Tim had two different personalities. Red Robin was mysterious, quick witted, confident, athletic. Tim was quiet, reserved, open, extremely intelligent, anxious, and bashful. There was no way that he was the masked vigilante that came into my bedroom every night. No fucking way!

Or maybe I was just trying to convince myself that.

“Y/N?” Tim’s voice brought me out of my thoughts. I looked over to see my side of the door open, and Tim waiting by it. “Y/N are you coming?” He asked. I nodded.

“Yeah! Yeah! Sorry! Just got lost in my thoughts for a moment. I was thinking about a mystery.” I excused as I grabbed my drink and got out of the car. Tim scoffed amused.

“Are you okay?” He asked as I shut the door behind me. I nodded quickly.

“Yeah- yeah. I’m fine. I’m good. I was just thinking about a notebook. Yeah. The notebook that I kept open on my bed. I hope that my parents don’t read it. They can be kind of nosy.” I added. I waited for Tim as he walked up to me.

“I thought you said you were thinking of a mystery?” He questioned.

I laughed nervously, not looking up at him. I was scared that my hypothesis was correct, and that he was Red Robin. “Yeah. The mystery of whether my parents looked into my notebook.” I say, as I begin walking next to him. I squeezed my drink, feeling the water on the outside of the plastic cup soaking my hand.

“Nah I’ve been there. The amount of times that my siblings have went through my stuff is astonishing. They might be nosier than your parents, and they’ll make fun of me for it!” He chuckled and I felt him look at me. I could feel him examining me. Analyzing for any clue as to what may or may not could have been wrong.

Reading every aspect of me. Something the “worlds second best detective” would do.

“Hey, are you sure you’re okay?” He asked, stopping mid-walk. He lightly grabbed my arm. I stopped too.

Slowly but surely, I looked up at him and into his dark blue eyes. Those blue eyes that I knew all too well. The pupil impossibly dilated, covering most of the iris. The waves of color that were visibly calm in my presence.

This time, unlike the time when we had first kissed, I noticed that we were standing oddly close to one another.

“Have you ever had something happen in your life that changed the course of it forever? And you can’t find an explanation for it, but when you finally do, it just comes at you like a train?” I asked him. The confusion was visible on his face, and he looked in between both of my eyes, possibly unsure of which one to look at.

Or he was trying to find an explanation for my words.

“I… yeah. Yeah I have.” He answers, looking at my lips nervously, before looking back up to my eyes. The triangle method. What a classic.

“Huh..” I said, before closing the space between us, pressing my lips against his. He seems taken aback for a second, before he began to kiss back, wrapping his arms around my waist, bringing me closer.

His kiss was soft, and gentle. It’s intoxicating, passionate, and slow. And once I realize that I have kissed these lips before, I feel faint. I don’t pass out, but my heart races, and my hands become shaky as I drop my drink to the floor, scaring both of us as we pull apart.

“Oh my gosh! I’m so sorry!” He exclaims, looking down at the green and brown coffee in the ground. I could care less about the damn coffee, and instead I’m too busy marveling at the boy in front of me.

“It’s okay. It’s fine. I’m just-” I stare at him in awe. I want to laugh, but I can’t seem to form a coherent sentence. I just stare at him. He stares back after a moment, and a large smile appears on his face.

“Again, this may sound cheesy, but I’ve waited so long to do that.” He exclaims, smiling impossibly bigger, his face a beet red.

I giggle. “Is that so?” I ask him, knowing that he kissed me last night. He nods. “Then it’s a date.” I say as I happily wrap my arms around his left arm, continuing our walk.

He was blushing the whole rest of the “date.”

~~~~~~~

To my surprise, my parents did not go through my notebook, and they had left a little after I did. Lucky me!

But currently. As I did every night, I waited for my injured crusader to pop up at my window. My heart beating with excitement with every moment that passed.

When I was with Tim earlier, I was too astonished to tell him that I knew of his midnight persona, but I was going to tell him when he showed up, which I knew he would. After you spend a day with your crush, and you literally kiss them, how could you not visit them at late hours of the night in a spandex suit? Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do?

At around 9:12, which is pretty early for him, he knocked at my window, and I opened up.

“Hey, stranger.” I greeted sarcastically, a huge smile covering my lips.

“Good evening random civilian. Do you have any clowns in your humble abode?” He asked, as he climbed in through the window. I stepped back, allowing him some space.

“Not that I know of. But I do believe that I have a bird in here.” I stated, tapping my chin. He chuckled.

“I missed you.” He said as he wrapped his arms around me in a hug.

“I missed you too.” I rested my head on his chest, hearing his heart beat. For how calm his breathing was, his heart was pounding at an alarming rate.

I pulled away first. “So…” I trailed off. He chuckled.

“Sooooo?” He repeated. I smiled.

“Your identity.” I reminded him. I wanted to see if he would tell me before I had to do it myself. He shook his head, brushing a hand through my hair.

“You’ll know sooner than you think.” He promised. I shrugged, walking to my closet.

Do I have to do everything on my own?

“Alrighty. What’ll it be this time? Did some crazy guy attack you on the street?” I asked as I reached up to the top shelf. He laughed.

“Some crazy guy always attacks me on the street.” I nod.

“Okay what about accidentally hitting yourself with a car door?” I questioned him, grabbing the First aid kit off the top shelf.

“Y/N,” He laughed. “What are you talking about?” I sigh, playing with the kit in my hand.

“Okay then. Maybe this will jog your memory. What about falling down the stairs at Wayne Enterprises and breaking your arm?” I ask, turning around slowly. The smile on his face falls.

Now he knows that I know.

“Y/N, how did you?” He steps closer to me. “How did you know?” His voice switches to his actual voice, and not the one he uses for Red Robin. I smile softly, continuing to meddle with the kit in my hands.

“I noticed in the car earlier. Your lip has the scar in the same place where you busted it a few months ago. I sort of put the puzzle pieces together after that.” A huge smile appears on his lips.

“So that’s why you said that you were piecing together a mystery. That’s why you asked that question in the park. You had figured out that it was me.” It was his turn to put the pieces together now. I nodded, and his face fell.

“Does that mean you only kissed me to actually tell if I was Red Robin?” He asked. The smile fell off my lips too, and I dropped the kit, walking over to him. I placed my hand on his cheek.

“Can I take this off?” I asked, tapping lightly on the mask. He nodded slowly. Softly, I peeled it off his face, revealing his beautiful blue eyes. The smile returned to my lips.

“Now why would I kiss you and not mean it? At that point, I had already known it was you. I would never kiss just anybody.” I say as I place my lips onto his gently, my hands pressed against his chest. I felt him smile into the kiss.

“I wanted to tell you.” He said once we pulled away. I scoffed.

“Oh I’m sure you did, Mr. “I’ll tell you soon.” I teased. He sighed.

“Believe me, I did! It’s just that you kissed Red Robin not knowing Tim Drake. I wanted you to get to know me so that you’d fall in love with me, not whatever this is.” He gestured to his outfit. I pressed my forehead against his.

“This may sound cheesy, but I’d fall in love with any version of you.” I whispered onto his lips.

He let out an amused sound. “I’m happy that you know now.” He mumbled, his lips rubbing against mine. I pecked them lightly before leading him over to the bed, sitting us down.

“I have so many questions for you.” I informed him, holding his hands in mine, and looking straight into his eyes with excitement.

“Ill answer anything you throw at me.” He squeezed my hands 3 times, and I smirked.

“You’ll be here for a while, then.”

“We’ll call it a date.”

[hearteyeshayley]

I’ve been writing batfam fics like it’s my job. Here are a few recently completed ones

Sore Loser … Tim used to throw fights on purpose to make Kon like him more and turns out Kon is a sore loser

The Talk with Dick and Damian … Dick gives Damian the talk but one of them thinks it’s about sex and the other thinks it’s about murder

Damian Wayne vs. Prom … Damian takes Jon to prom and angst angst angst accidental coming out?

Capture the Flag (To the Death) … the Wayne family plays capture the flag until Gotham is in ruins

To All the Vigilantes I’ve Loved Before … Tim writes letters to everyone he’s ever had a crush on and Damian sends them. The vigilante community will never be the same, especially Kon who agrees to fake date Tim until the drama dies down

Tim and Kon vs. The World … Tim prank calls Kon and tells him he's becoming a supervillain. He expects him to laugh or be annoyed or hang up. Kon doesn't. He believes him. And he's into it.

[emotionalcello-makefanfics]

Words: 10K

Click more to read here, or the link to read on AO3.

Tags: Sad bittersweet ending. Non-Pairing. Jason-centric story from Tim's POV.

Summary:

Tim finds a letter from Jason a year after he beats Tim half to death and dipped from the radar. Tim opens the letter six years later, it contains Jason's heartfelt apology and an offer to meet if Tim so needs it. At this point, Red Hood had never resurfaced after the explosion he set off with Joker and Batman.

Tim takes up Jason's offer to meet. Jason had become a completely changed man. Jason's eyes are blue instead of teal, he has a peaceful smile that he gives freely. Jason Todd seems happy at the Red Poppy Orphanage that he built.

After further research so that Tim can slide in an 'anonymous donation', things unravel, casting doubts at everything Tim saw.

This is Jason's story, told from Tim's perspective.

+++++

+++++

 Tim found a letter from Jason a year after he beats Tim half to death and dipped from the radar. Tim isn’t in a habit of going through his mails, who even still sends physical mail nowadays anyway?

The letter comes in a commercial white envelope, the address is to Tim’s old house, the Drake household. Tim goes there once a year to clean it up and get the mail. That’s when Tim finds the white unassuming envelope. It’s completely blank aside from the writing that says,

“To: Tim

From: Jason”

Simple and neat. It doesn’t have a send date, nor any other details written on the plain white paper envelope, just those four words.

From the looks of it, the letter couldn’t have been sent via postal service. So, Jason must’ve hand delivered this himself or had someone do it. Tim scans the dates of the mails that came before and after it. After doing simple calculations and predictions, the letter must’ve been placed after Jason had almost killed him. Huh.

Tim doesn’t open it right away, but he keeps it.

The letter is kept in a box where Tim stores his lowest-priority documents. At some point, Tim ran out of space in his room and then declutter his room where he puts even more stuff in his low priority. That box had become a junk box where he puts away things that he doesn’t know what to do with yet doesn’t want to throw away… just in case.

The box follows him when Tim moves out of the manor into the newly renovated Drake household. By accident, the letter slips between the pages of a book. It’s a book that Tim had been wanting to read but never ended up reading. The book ended up at the bottom of the moving box and never got unpacked. Alas, the letter is no longer in plain sight and Tim completely forgot about it.

Until 5 years later, he finds it as he was rummaging his attic for an old phone he had for the parts he needed for a prototype UV gun. His old phone is right on top of a book he had wanted to read years ago. It has a slight tilt upwards as if there’s something inside that prevents it from closing all the way flat. It couldn’t be anything important, but Tim checks it just to be thorough. It’s an envelope. Tim didn’t even connect the dots yet by then, not until he flipped the envelop and read what’s written on the cover of it,

“To: Tim

From: Jason”

It’s been years since then. Whatever Tim felt that made him put it away had long gone, not even remembered. Tim opens the envelope without hesitation or lingering feeling to see a short letter.

“For all my words are worth, I’m sorry. For hurting you, for almost killing you. You didn’t deserve any of that. I’m sorry that I’m doing this by letter. I figured my face would be the least of things you wanted to see right now. I’m not asking you to forgive me, but you deserve closure as much as you need to. To heal from what I had inflicted on you. I know what dying felt like. I regret ever making you feel closely that way, especially when you didn’t deserve it, closely aged as I had died. You’re not a replacement, you’re the successor of the Robin mantle, and you’re so much better than me that I couldn’t handle it. So, I took it out on you. I’m so sorry, you didn’t deserve to be treated that way. If you need anything from me, my number is at the back of the page.”

Tim turns the paper that seems to be torn from a ring-bound book, and there it is, a series of numbers.

Sighing, Tim is at loss for what he reads. Jason’s words are short, but so sincere that Tim was dumbfounded. These are not the words of the man that had him on the floor half-dead, screaming bloody murder at him, trying to kill Tim in earnest as if Tim is the devil on earth, the mastermind of all Jason’s misfortune. To think, that this letter is sent so quickly after that moment too…

Tim doesn’t need any closure, but he is so awfully curious.

The last time Jason was spotted by accountable eyes was in that apartment where he withheld Joker and lured Batman into a room full of explosives for an ‘intervention’ or three-way murder-suicide explosion, no one could decide what Jason had truly wanted back then. When Bruce came back barely scratched dragging an unconscious Joker, they all expected Jason had also gotten away from it. For the first year after that explosion, they’re all too busy with the following explosion in Bludhaven, but they’ve been gearing up for Jason to come back guns blazing with revenge.

Then a couple of years go by and Jason doesn’t show up. Not even a glimpse of his face pinged on the satellites. No shiny red helmet nor a six foot 225 lbs of a blue-eyed black-haired man in sight.

They had a lot of theories regarding it.

Jason could’ve been stewing for an ever bigger and worse plan. The anger he showed was proof enough that Jason could go that far. Perhaps Jason got the bad end of the explosion and is still healing from an injury. A wishful hope from them all is that he’s laying low to live a normal life, whatever that normal life is.

They don’t talk about Jason out in the open, not in Bruce's presence who growingly goes tense at the mention of the name. Whenever they talk about it, they say ‘him’ in a certain way, and ‘he’ is talked far away from Bruce and always in vague sentences. Tim is rarely part of this conversation. The other bats use what little sensitivities they have for each other to have the sense not to talk about Tim’s abuser right in his face.

Not that Tim is bothered by talking about Jason, it’s just that Tim doesn’t have any opinion of Jason for him to talk about. The man almost killed him in a blind rage, then never talked to him again, that’s hardly the making of an opinion. Tim’s busy schedule also prevents Tim from reading the letter. Tim was reminded about the letter from time to time, but when the whispers about Jason stopped, Tim also stopped being reminded.

Years ticked by and the bats are focused on other more pressing things. Not even Alfred talked about Jason anymore, it’s why it’s so easy to forget Jason.

Until now, finding the letter by pure accident. Tim stares at the number, contemplating whether to call him. It’s been years since it happened, and it’s not like the first time Tim is beaten till his life hangs on a thread. Tim had let it go a long time ago.

Playing with the piece of paper, Tim rereads the yellowing letter.

Curiosity wins.

He dials the phone.

It rings and it rings.

Then it fell to voicemail.

“This is Jason Todd, leave a message.” beep

Tim stares and stills because what the fuck. Why did Jason from six years ago sent him a number with a voicemail that says his legal name? Coming from a vigilante that’s laying low, it doesn’t make sense. Unless this number is given for Jason’s closest contacts, the closest kept people that know Jason Todd isn’t really dead, trusted people. Tim doesn’t know what to think of that either, it makes him even more curious.

The curiosity bumps into his wariness though. It’s weird, Tim can feel it. There’s just something not normal about the whole thing with Jason’s letter and the phone and everything.

With that, Tim decides to follow through with it.

Tim leaves a message, “Hi, Jason? It’s Tim. Tim Drake. I just opened your letter…” Tim pauses, blanked. He should’ve thought more about what he was going to say. “Sorry it took so long? I didn’t see it for a while and…” Tim sighs, he knows he’s pathetically rambling. “Anyway, I’m open if you want to meet. I haven’t seen you around lately.” Tim curses himself, he didn’t need to say that. “Alright, hit me up when you’re free!” and he finally hangs up.

Well, that was awkward. Nothing to be done about it now.

All Tim can do is wait.

 ++++

 Tim waited for a week without any correspondence. No callback, no text, not even a virus or any attempt at hacking his phone.

For the bats, a week is nothing. Jason could’ve been on a mission, deep in a no-signal zone. Hell, he could’ve been in space or between reality. Tim knows for a fact that this side gig can go crazy and beyond.

But Tim still has this unshakable feeling that something is wrong. Because though a week is nothing, the bats have each other to hold them accountable, to ping each other that they existed. Jason has no one. None that Tim knows.

Look, Tim had been Red Robin for years with a super-computer at the reach of his hands and hacking is just a casual Thursday activity. He didn’t even think of the morality of it all nor the outrageousness of tracking Jason’s phone.

The mystery continues when Tim finds the location of Jason’s phone in an orphanage… in Gotham.

Sure, it’s at the edge of the city of Gotham. If the slums in the middle of Gotham housed criminals and minorities, the edge of the city housed rejects and the weak, people that want to lay low. Ex-prisoners, criminals, older generations, mutants, the homeless, and other people that can’t assimilate into the harshness at the Heart of Gotham. It’s a dead land, barely safe, but only a tad better than the slums.

There’s no hustle and bustle there since most of the roads are ruined. A lot of abandoned buildings and half-done projects. There are some parts of the building that doesn’t even have electricity or running water. It had become that way because it was the area that got affected by an explosion from Bludhaven that happened the same night that Jason blipped out of the radar.

Since then, Gotham hadn’t rebuilt that part of the city. It’s no longer covered in soot and some of the destruction is fixed by desperate people needing a roof above their heads. It’s a total ghost town.

Tim tries to look up the orphanage, but there’s nothing about it. Not a website nor any contact information. Using google maps to look up the coordinates, the orphanage is standing in a decent area, though the photos taken in the area are way outdated.

Tim had thought that maybe it was Jason’s safe house, which coincidentally, Tim has one too around 600 meters from there, though it’s been years since Tim is there too, and he never bumped into Jason. Maybe Jason hadn’t been there in years too, but if he hadn’t, then why did Tim’s call connect to the phone in that area?

So here is Tim, disguised as a civilian so he can go strut the street unrecognized. Though he’s beginning to think that it’s not needed.

The edge of Gotham is a desolate land. It’s a shocking contrast to the bustling city. It’s so severely cut too. Because the forty-fifth avenue is packed with full apartments and the buildings across the street are abandoned, cracked, and empty. Thankfully Tim arrived at noon, there’s no doubt it’ll be way too dark to navigate at night.

He follows the direction on google maps to where the coordinates lead him.

There are a few people still living in this area. They had open doors with a fire pit in the middle of the building. People wash clothes in basins. Children running around and playing soccer with a crumpled-up plastic bottle. There are surprisingly a lot of gardens made at the front yards of the buildings. One of the parks in the area is repurposed as what seems to be a vegetable garden.

Tim is beyond surprised when he got to the coordinates because he had thought it would lead him to Jason’s safe house since the area is desolate. And yet, here it stands, the Red Poppy Orphanage, barely different than the picture. It’s a little cracked here and there with its paint chipping, but it’s a bright dot among ruins of grey. A metal plate engraved at the picket fence, the name of the orphanage in bright yellow adorned with red poppies.

The door is open but no one is inside. From the outside, the building is cracked and dusty like everything else despite its better state, but the insides are painted in cheerful pastel colors and are livable. There are some children’s drawings on the walls, crayons, and colorful papers on plastic low tables for children. Tim knocks on the open door. Yet, before he can say anything else, someone beats him to it.

“Who you’re looking for?” Says a teenager that suddenly materializes beside Tim.

Tim almost jumps, he didn’t hear the kid coming. It makes him more suspicious than necessary, though he shouldn’t, Tim’s head is just too preoccupied with something else. The teenager is dressed in all-black jeans and a hoodie, black bangs cover half his face.

“I’m looking for Jason.”

The teenager looks at him amusedly, though the expression is barely there. “He’s in there, at the room furthest in the building.”

“Okay, uh, thanks.”

Tim walks in and looks around. The building feels lived in, but Tim has yet to see anyone other than the teenager. Perhaps they’re all playing outside.

It’s not until he finally peeks into the furthest room in the building that he finally finds someone. A tall and lanky man in loose slacks, a white shirt, and a muted brick jumper rolled to his elbows to show slender forearms. The man is reading something in his hand, three-quarters of his back facing Tim. From the plaque on the door, the man must’ve been the warden of the orphanage.

“Excuse me,” Tim knocks on the door.

The man inside turns around, and Tim is frozen stiff on his feet as he recognizes the warden’s face.

The willowy man in civilian clothes is Jason fucking Todd. He lost a surmountable weight and muscles. His hair is completely black, and his eyes are fully blue instead of blue-green. His face is leaner and had lost its viciousness. The man is almost a different person entirely, but Tim knows this is Jason, there’s no fooling anybody.

“Tim…” and Jason’s voice is all the same. Only that he doesn’t scream or spat at Tim’s name this time.

“Hi, Jason.”

“I thought you didn’t want to see me,” Jason sounded constricted like he didn’t breathe.

“I called the number from your envelope.” Tim scratches the back of his head, “But you didn’t pick up.”

“Oh… Oh shit, yeah, that phone is- I put it in safekeeping and I hadn’t checked it in… Fuck I’m so sorry-”

“No no! It’s okay, I’m sorry I took so long. I, uh, forgot about the letter.”

“You shouldn’t be sorry, Tim- fuck- I-” Jason bites his lips, hands perched on the table, shaking. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry about what I did to you, and everything I’ve said to you. You didn’t deserve any of it.” Jason’s honest words tumble out all too fast and too suddenly for Tim.

“I know,” Tim shrugs, like it’s nothing, because it’s nothing, truly. Also, Tim just didn’t know how to respond to Jason’s sudden heartfelt apology, Tim doesn’t have a lot of experience with that. Jason seems stupefied by Tim’s nonchalant behavior, wordless for a few seconds before he gathers himself.

“Please, sit down. Can I get you anything?”

“Coffee, if you have ‘em.”

“Yeah, I’ll be just a minute.”

Jason left the room and Tim immediately snoop around. What? He’s still vigilante/detective and Jason is an enigma, he can’t not.

The room has a couple of pictures around, mostly the kids and Jason. The pictures go back far enough that there’s Jason when he’s still big, tall, and menacing that the kids around him look like dwarves. The most recent picture has Jason with drastically less muscle mass, but he smiles brighter and happier. Another thing Tim noticed is that the kids are all the same with more added as they go. All of the kids grow up here, including the emo teen that talked to Tim.

“Learned a thing or two about me?”

Tim’s reflex doesn’t deign Jason with a jolt, but it does surprise him. Jason moves like a ghost. Seems that Jason’s skills hadn’t left him completely. And if Jason is in any way disturbed by Tim’s snooping, he didn’t show it.

“Just that you haven’t been Red Hood for years.”

“That’s true.”

“Why?”

A pair of mugs placed on top of the table with a deafening clink in total silence. Tim can’t even hear Jason breathe.

“Why should I?” Jason finally says, looking out the window.

The question throws Tim for a loop, “The same reason we all fight, isn’t it? Justice.”

Jason ducks, his hand going up to his neck where a calloused scar runs across it, touching it absently.

“No,” Jason says, lost in thought.

“No? Then what? Revenge?”

Jason shakes his head, “It was never about revenge…” Jason gulped, rubbing his hands, “I was angry, sure, but it was never about revenge, not even against Joker. I just wanted answers from my-… from Bruce. I wanted to know if I was ever his son instead of… a sidekick he pities.” Jason’s voice breaks in the end, the tall man looks away. “I got Joker in my arm, gun pointed to his head. I gave Bruce an ultimatum. Me or Joker. Well, he walked away with the clown, didn’t he? Even though I set up the explosion to take the Joker with me, both of them still walked out free. I watched them go, I let them go.”

Tim can’t see Jason’s face, the man looking out the window, to the bright light outside. Partially, Tim is glad, he doesn’t think he can handle looking at Jason with so much vulnerability. Tim wouldn’t know what to do, but he still wants to know… “Why didn’t you come back? Try again?”

“What’s the point? I got what I wanted,” Jason says weakly. Once again, Jason is rubbing his neck. “Bruce made his choice right in front of me and I… I’m tired.”

Tim stood there, shocked and paralyzed by Jason’s grief. Tim can’t believe that he feels pity for Jason. Tim had long forgiven Jason, but Tim had done it for himself. To move on and let go of the distracting anger and pain. He had never thought of Jason’s reasons nor his fate at all, Tim never thought to sympathize. Tim never thought to reflect. Bruce is a man with trauma piled as high as the Empire State building and handling it in the worst way possible, but Tim knows the man is kind in his own way.

Bruce cares about other people more than he did himself, compassionate in his own broken way. Tim believes that Bruce must’ve loved Jason as he did Tim and all the others. Tim understands why Bruce reacted the way he did when Jason’s deep sorrow is acted with genocidal anger. In one way you love your son, in another, that son is wreaking havoc on what you stand for, and Bruce is nothing if not a man that holds his morals like he’s Atlas holding the world on his back. Jason fell short of Bruce’s ideals because he was lashing out. Bruce didn’t see a poor sad boy, he saw a killer that needed to be stopped.

Tim held his tongue. What happened has happened, no turning things back.

And Tim is not here to bridge what’s between Jason and Bruce.

“That’s the truth of it all,” Jason said weakly, turning to face Tim with devastatingly sad glassy blue eyes. “Back then in my angry haze, I had felt that you replaced me. That you’re a better version of me, smarter, stronger, less damaged, morally better, better in everything…”

Tim rubbed the back of his neck, feeling a little awkward at the confession, “You know… I was scared of you for a while, but I never got really angry at you.”

Jason stiffens, “How?” he says quietly.

Tim shrugs, “Because I had an inkling you weren’t angry at me. You were lashing out, and I was the unlucky punching bag. Turns out I was right.”

Jason breaths for a few beats, lips parted, eyes unblinking, “…huh.”

“I do have a question though.”

“Yes?” Jason goes rigid, but he seems eager at the same time.

“The letter, when did you send it to me?”

Jason’s expression flinched, “Why does it matter?” Tim only stares at him and eventually, Jason gives in with a sigh, “A few days after I almost killed you.”

“That’s a rather quick discovery.”

“Hard not to, when I got back to hunting Joker, I was quickly reminded why I did in the first place. The thought that I did the same thing to you that he did to me… When I realized that I just… I almost became the monster I swore to slay. If you died, then it would’ve meant I stooped as low as Joker.”

A moment of awkward silence hung between them. Jason curled up on himself and seems to be deep in thought while Tim stands stiffly. He’s not equipped to handle Jason’s guilt. Tim would love to just get this all over with.

“Well, you didn’t kill me. So, water under the bridge?”

Jason’s eyes widen and chuckle mirthlessly, “If you’re sure…” Jason says awkwardly, though Tim doesn’t miss the relief in his expression, “Thank you.” Jason smiles, and the tenseness in his shoulders bleeds away.

The question is at the tip of his tongue, and Tim reconsiders how wise it will be to voice it. Jason seems at peace here, at peace without the Red Hood. Tim wants to get to know this Jason.

“So…” Tim says, sitting down and grabbing his mug of hot coffee. “What inspires you to open an orphanage?”

Tim doesn’t miss Jason’s surprise at his casualness, but Jason leans into it.

“I’ve always thought about it, actually,” Jason shrugs, sitting across the desk at the Warden's chair. “I was sent to one when my mom died and my dad bailed. I ended up running away because it was so horrible,” From that dark confession, Jason chuckles. “Since then, it’s always been my dream to build one.”

“And you did, this is a beautiful place by the way. Though a little hard to find.”

“I had to, the kids here are runaways.” Like Jason was. “They don’t come from a safe place.”

Tim has a lot of debating points. That it isn’t healthy for the kids, that the system could’ve found them proper parents, and that the government can easily tear down the orphanage if they knew how it works. Tim doubts that Jason has real legalized papers for the orphanage.

However, even though Tim had never been poor or lacking in parental figure, Tim isn’t that naïve. In the general case, the system is untrustworthy, and runaway kids are never the first pick of eligible decent parents.

“How about you?”

“Huh?”

“Ah, sorry, you don’t have to tell me anything classified,” Jason said, a little flustered.

“No, it’s okay! I was just thinking of something. I took over Drake Industries now. Been CEO since I was of legal age.”

Jason is giving him rapt attention of genuine interest, something Tim isn’t used to unless he’s in a suit or in a board room. “I know you’re a genius and all, but the company on top of doing your nightly job can’t be healthy.”

“Yeah,” Tim rubs the back of his head, he can’t believe he’s going to admit it to Jason. “To be honest, I’ve been doing more CEO rather than going out in the field. I find it actually more helpful to just donate a bunch of money and go hack people’s backgrounds to watch them for corruption, then play whistleblower if they do. I go down to the field only when all of the above failed, but it rarely does. It’s way easier to solve things with money and a little hacking.”

“Oh, just finding that out now, rich boy?” Jason smirks playfully, and Tim chuckles.

“Yeah yeah, laugh it up. I admit, I was very sheltered. The vigilante works opened my eyes a ton.”

“Good then,” Jason softly smiles, “You’re doing good things.”

Tim –though touched– feels instantly awkward at the genuine praise, “Yeah, and the sleep is good too.”

Jason laughed, “I know right? I took a long sleep after I put down the helmet too.”

Then they talk. After they’ve passed the awkwardness of past wounds and scars, Jason finally eased up and shows his true self, a compassionate person with a sass and dark humor. It shows in how Jason’s eyes light up whenever he talks about his children, saddened at times whenever he talks about how they get there. There’s lingering sadness in his voice, yet he seems to be at peace with what he has now. “It works for us,” he says. “The children stay safe and I homeschool them myself. This is exactly how I always picture it.”

It's endearing how much Jason had changed. Beneath all that anger and bloody murder is this sweet gentle-hearted person, and Tim likes this person very much. Tim finds that he has a lot in common with Jason. Tim is surprised himself that he’s having fun talking to Jason. That’s why when Tim’s phone rang from a reminder, Tim cursed.

“What? What is it?” Jason asked worriedly.

“Nothing, just a meeting which I’m going to be late to.” It's an important meeting, one that Tam will nag him for if he’s late, but he doesn’t know why it’s so heavy to move, “I gotta go.”

Jason smiles and nods, “Yeah, you do. Thank you for coming, really,” he says earnestly, eyes so honest and intense that Tim paused for a while.

“Sure, uh- sorry for getting back at you so late.”

Jason shakes his head, “It was never too late, I’m just glad you came.”

Tim smiles, “I’m glad too, it’s good to see you. I’ll catch you around!” he waves and runs out of the building, rushing to the nearest main road for a taxi.

   Jason watches Tim walks away from the window.

“Was it him that you’ve been waiting for?” says a voice behind him.

“No.”

A pause. “Your mind’s been made, then. Are you sure about this, Jason?”

“Yes, I’m sure. Someone needs to be there for the kids.” Jason turns around to face the voice. “Thank you, Osra.”

The teenager in all black looks at Jason with one eye, “Once they leave, what will you do then?”

Jason doesn’t reply.

“You can always change your mind,” Osra says and Jason only smiles at them.

The sound of children breaks his reverie. He returns to them.

  ++++

  It takes Tim a full day until he realizes that he didn’t get any contact information on Jason’s orphanage. He was too absorbed in talking to him that he didn’t even snoop around the rest of Jason’s orphanage, not even on his way out! Not to mention that Tim only figured this out when he wanted to slide in some ‘anonymous donation’ to Jason’s orphanage.

Naturally, Tim digs deeper, only to hit a stump yet again. They did have a donation account, way back before the invention of credit cards. When Tim was meeting up with Jason thinking he was meeting him in a safe house, Tim didn’t bother to research the Red Poppy Orphanage. He should’ve. Damn.

Brushing away self-lament, Tim gets into it and found the previous warden of Red Poppy Orphanage. He built another orphanage in a better part of Gotham called The St. Nicholas Orphanage a year after the explosion. It’s a generational occupation. Currently, the warden of St. Nicholas Orphanage is the daughter of the first warden. Tim checks her background and finds that she has a few bank accounts, but none are wired nor connected to the Red Poppy Orphanage on the edge of Gotham.

This can only mean two things. Jason took over the Red Poppy Orphanage, or he was running it illegally once it was closed. The latter seems to be the most logical, Jason had been offline as Red Hood since facing off with Batman while withholding the Joker. Right after then, Bludhaven exploded, along with the edge of Gotham where The Red Poppy Orphanage was. Unless…

Tim raises up from his work desk and walks down to the basement of his house where he disguised his supercomputer behind a pretentious man cave. He goes through aerial scans of Gotham on the day of the explosions. They’re images from Watchtower’s satellite, it was old footage that only took a picture every five seconds.

Tim started to narrow his eyebrows when he puts up the aerial footage of the Red Poppy Orphanage before the explosion because it’s already abandoned even then.

Or it could be nothing, he just assumed that it was in ruins because of the explosion. The information hadn’t been relevant by then.

Tim goes through the frames, then lo and behold, Red Hood among the ruins, noticeably slow and limping towards the building that had used to be an orphanage. It’s a few hours after Jason’s explosion. Tim’s initial assumption was right, it was already Jason’s safe house. Tim continues to watch the building to spot Jason walking out of there. He watches until a year forward, but nothing. He even put the map up and try to see if there was any possible underground exit, but there was none. He could’ve built it, but the time frame doesn’t add up unless he has powered friends and meta-technology. Tim can’t find any of Red Hood’s associates that can build him an underground tunnel in a short time frame. The fact is solidified, that Jason didn’t go out for a year.

He could be laying low, or recovering from his injury… but a year?

Tim keeps going forward in time, trying to spot Jason ever going out of the building. He knows Jason must’ve been out at one point, but Tim had this sinking feeling…as he keeps going forward.

Two years.

Three years.

Four years.

Five years.

Six years.

Then finally to the recent time, just yesterday, Tim spots himself… leaving an abandoned building.

Tim pushed himself up so fast that his chair tipped backward. He touches his temple, massaging a pulse that’s gaining pain. Tim blinks, hoping he’s just hallucinating from the irresponsible caffeine intake. He blinks, looks away, paces, and takes deep breaths. Tim watches the footage again, it’s still the same.

It’s still Tim, coming in, then rushing out, out of a building that’s cracked and almost falling apart.

Tim whips out his phone and called Jason’s number. It rings and rings and once again, fell to voice mail.

“This is Jason Todd, leave a message.” beep

Tim can’t take this. There’s no way… No way!

In a rush and blind panic, Tim rushed out only with a jacket on top of his pajamas and his car key. He hissed and flinched as he stepped out of his room, a painful reminder that it’s day time as the sun shined right on his eyes. Blinking the white spots away, he goes to the parking lot with his exclusive lift access.

He speeds through the busy street and got a few curses but Tim didn’t care. Eventually, the road gets less busy the closer he got to the edge of Gotham, only to be met with a roadblock. Tim cursed at himself for forgetting why he had come in a taxi the previous time. He parked his car, towed be damned, and ran.

Tim heaves and gasps, standing there in front of an orphanage that had never been. The Red Poppy Orphanage, the metal plate said, right there on the barren land, bent and rusted.

“What… the actual fuck…” Tim gasped, looking at the half-destroyed building, no color left on its cracked wall. He walks inside, hesitant and in disbelieve at what he’s seeing.

He was here yesterday where it was brightly colored, filled with children’s drawings, and lots of small desks and chairs. Nothing now. The door is completely gone, broken at the hinge. The paints had chipped and scattered all over the floor. There are rotten papers on the corners and no sign of the desk and chairs that he had seen. Tim feels crazy when he enters the warden’s room and only sees a rotten office desk, and a single coffee mug.

Tim calls Jason’s number again. It rings in his ears.

Then faintly, a ringtone joins the dial.

Tim felt his heart skip a beat as he distances himself from his phone and hears the faint digital ringtone familiar of a burner phone’s. Tim follows it with all the keen sense he had honed as Red Robin.

The ringtone sounds muffled, but it couldn’t be far. Tim steps out of the warden's room and feels a loose plank right outside it. Tim pulls out a few planks that reveal a hinged door under them. There’s a ladder heading down, and the ringtone echoes from below. Wary, Tim descends.

The moment Tim sets foot on the floor, the corridor is lit up all the way to the parted door at the end. Sensors. As he suspected from the very beginning, it’s Jason’s safe house. The power reserve is not empty yet, meaning that Jason rarely stays here. He must have… what other explanation could it be?

The closer Tim walks towards the parted iron door, the louder the ringtone. Tim opens the door, the sensors automatically turn the light on.

“This is Jason Todd, leave a message.” beep

Tim’s phone slips from his hand, landing with a crisp crack on the concrete floor.

His eyes won’t leave the brown shirt under the leather jacket, the gun holster around the thigh, worn by a skeleton of what’s left of a human body, slumped on the floor by the cupboard. A red domino mask on its lap.

Tim looks away, trying to think… of something else, that it isn’t Jason, it can’t be. Even though at the furthest room there’s a board full of newspaper clippings of Batman and Joker, a red target circled at Tim in a Robin costume. Even though there are spare Red Hood helmets hung on the walls along with guns and ammo. Even though within the newspaper clipping, there’s a shot of Red Hood, wearing exactly what the skeleton is. No, it’s not Jason, Tim just saw Jason yesterday. Perhaps this is all a dream. Tim is having a very bad dream. Tim unclenches the fist that he didn’t realize had tightened so bad his nails dug into his palm, bloody and hurts, but he doesn’t wake up.

Tim picks up his cracked phone with numb hands and dials Jason’s phone again. Tim jolts when the ringtone sounds closer than he thought. There’s a glow and vibration in one of the corpse’s pockets.

The pocket stops glowing. “This is Jason Todd, leave a message.” beep

As if it’s not enough, Tim investigates further onto the desk. There’s an open notebook full of scribbles, numbers, plans, gut-wrenching confessions. Drafts to Tim’s letter.

I didn’t mean it I swear! I never wanted to be this-

This is not me. This is not me. This is not me anymore. Jason Todd had stayed dead I don’t know what I am. I don’t know what the Lazarus pit brought back to Jason Todd’s body-

Tim, I’m sorry. Please, live. God please-

You were barely older than I was when I almost fucking kill you. I had become the monster that killed me. I was so blind Tim, I couldn’t see past my rage. Even now-

He needs to pay, even if I’m going down with him- He needs to pay.

I’m sorry for dragging your dad to the crossfire but he was my dad too, and I need answers before I drag the monster down with me.

I’m sorry Tim, I’m so sorry. You didn’t deserve any of it. I don’t know how to make it up to you, to all the pain I inflicted on you.

I wish I could-

Then on the last page, a few pieces of paper are left by the ring of the book. The torn page that was sent to Tim.

“You came back.”

Tim swiftly turns, flicking the switchblade disguised as the keychain of his car key. An unimpressed dark eye stares back at him.

“You!” Tim points at the emo teen standing by the doorframe. Tim chokes on his breath, overwhelmed by the letters, by the bones wrapped in thin dried flesh tissues, and the apparent hallucinations. “You’re not real either!” Because he didn’t see this person in the aerial footage too.

The person says nothing, and Tim is shaking with rage, “Who are you? What did you do to me?!”

“Ever heard of limbo?”

There’s a pregnant pause that follows, and Tim breaks it with a loud “WHAT?”

“Limbo, a place between-”

“I know what Limbo fucking is! It’s not real!”

“Is it?”

The teen lifts their hand, and in an instant, the place changes: cleaner, and the body is gone.

“What-”

The door slams open, Jason walks through the door, walks through the teen like they’re a ghost. Jason is walking towards Tim. Frozen in shock, Tim doesn’t move away, and Jason walks through him too. Jason, whose holding his bleeding neck, he's covered in soot. The explosion must’ve propelled a shrapnel to his neck. Jason is breathing hard, barely does, it sounds wet. Blood had gotten to his lungs. Tim watches horrifiedly as Jason scrambles to get a box under the bed, only to pause. Jason stared at the open med kit, hands trembling yet unmoving by the sides of the box, all while the deep cut in his neck is bleeding profusely.

“Jason?” Tim says, forgetting that Jason can’t hear him.

With one small gesture, Jason closed the med kit box with a deafening click.

Tim felt his heartbeat on his neck when Jason weakly pushed the box back under his bed.

“What are you doing… what is he doing!” Tim says to the other person in the room, who said nothing back.

Jason laid back against the cupboard, head lolled to the side as he lifts his hand to brush against the gash at his neck. Tim got a full view of it, it was deeper than he thought, and there are no shrapnel lodged in his throat. So Jason is either stupid enough to take out the shrapnel or he was attacked. Tim faintly remembers that Red Hood’s body armor under the leather jacket is white, not completely red nor glossy.

Jason did nothing. Just sitting there as his breathing becomes shallower by the second. His hand drops like a dead weight on his side. His gritted teeth loosened to parted lips, trying to breathe. Slowly, the domino mask peeled from his face, revealing teal eyes drenched in tears, turning blue and vacant.

“Wait… wait no!” Tim hurriedly grabs Jason’s shoulder. The image of Jason disperse, and the skull lolled toward Tim instead. Tim gasps, jerking away from Jason’s remains. This close, Tim can see faint traces of human tissue keeping the bones together.

Tim gulps, he’s stepping away, shellshocked. He met Jason yesterday, it had felt real. The memories in Tim’s head feel as real as any other day. Tim can still remember Jason telling him that the orphanage is his whole life’s dream.

When Tim spun around, the person that brought him to the past is still there, standing with one eye on Tim.

“Why… Why did you show me this?”

The teen darkens, becoming one shadow and one eye, “Because you’re the only one who came for him.”

Tim doesn’t understand what he’s seeing or who he’s seeing, but peculiarly, he doesn’t feel in danger, “Why did he do it?”

“I don’t know, maybe you can ask him yourself.”

All too sudden, in a blink, Tim is no longer in the bunker. The instant transition from the dusty dark and gloomy safe house to the brightly colored room and sunny light makes Tim feel dizzy. They’re at the back door of the orphanage. Lots of drawings on the walls, small tables and chairs placed around the room, and books and toys scattered everywhere. A couple of kids run toward them, they stop and stare at Tim.

“Hey! Are you a new soul?”

“How did you die?”

“How old are you?”

“Do you wanna go play hopscotch?”

Tim goes catatonically still, staring at them, processing their questions on top of everything.

“Osra, is he okay?” Says one of the children. Tim looks back to see the shadow is once again in their casual all-black get-up.

“He’s not a new soul, just someone to visit Jason,” Osra says.

“Oh! Finally! I’ve never seen a visitor before!”

“Come on! Jason is back here!”

They pull Tim’s hand to the field at the back of their orphanage, too luscious and green for anything from Gotham. Tim doesn’t know how the children (souls?) are able to touch him. Now that he thought of it, he never touched Jason. The moment the children see their friends running around in the fields, they let him go. Jason was in the middle of chaotic children, setting up a picnic. There’s a peaceful smile on Jason’s face, the same that Tim saw yesterday. The man looks happy, content. He’s looking at the dozens of children like they’re his own. He’s hugging a small toddler that he tried to put shoes on.

“What is this place?”

“I told you before,” Osra says from behind him.

Tim watches the children, “Then why are there kids here?”

“Restless souls know no age. Once upon a time, these kids were scared, angry, hungry, longing, hateful, sad. Their feelings are so strong that once they died all too sudden, they ended up in my domain.” Osra looks around, “Just an eternal place, alike the living but not quite.”

Before Tim can ask for more, Jason looks up from the toddler in his arms toward Tim. Jason seems as if he had seen a ghost. Jason approaches him, or maybe Tim does, but as soon as they're within talking distance, Tim blurts out:

“Why?”

Instinctually, Jason reached up to his neck while his eyes cast down as if remembering. Then he looks up at Tim, smiling somberly, “There’s no one else left to live for.”

It felt like someone sunk a knife into Tim’s chest and twists it, “What about your dream then? All this could’ve been a reality!” Tim shouts, he doesn’t know why his heart is pounding. “You could’ve lived for yourself!”

Jason shakes his head slightly, still with a smile, “That part of me never came back.”

This is not me anymore. Jason Todd had stayed dead I don’t know what I am. I don’t know what the Lazarus pit brought back to Jason Todd’s body-

“No… Jason, that’s not true. Do you hear me? That’s not true!”

“Your time is up, Timothy Jackson Drake,” Osra’s voice surrounds all.

The feeling of being pulled backward is all too sudden, but Jason is fading away, further, slowly.

“Wait! Wait, Jason! Why are you here?!” Tim clawed into the air, to the image of Jason far away, still holding his neck. Tim came to a realization too late, “Jason! Who did this to you?!”

Tim zoomed back, Jason is swallowed by a bright light and Tim fell hard on his back. Groaning, Tim raises by the elbows, and the white light slowly dissipates into the real world. A concrete broken building that once was the Red Poppy Orphanage. His feelings are disconnected, and Tim goes down the same corridor he had found out. It’s the same sensor automated lights, the same corridor, the same bunker, and the same corpse of who once was Jason Todd. Tim looks hard into the face that is no longer there. Eyes hollowed, teeth exposed, nose gone, only dried tissues sticking to bones.

With the professionalism of a vigilante that had seen too much, Tim picks up Jason’s body and lay him down on his bed. Tim rummages Jason’s notes for clues, finding only one hint inside the med kit box under Jason’s bed. As he slides out of the box, Tim notices a seam on the floor, it’s another hinged door that opens to a small and dead cooler. There are expired blood bags inside a pool of what once was ice. Jason could’ve lived, he could’ve saved himself.

Tim stops that train of thought –nothing to be done about it now, and he needs to move. Inside the medkit box –in between medicine and tools– is a photo of Jason as a child, smiling with a gap tooth in the arms of his mother, Catherine. On the back of the photo, there are words in two different handwriting.

‘My precious son, the light of my life. Remember that I will always love you, even when I can’t say it to you. I’m so sorry.’

‘I miss you every day that I’m awake. The only solace I have now is that I’ll finally meet you again, once I’m done.’

Right under is a name, Mnemosyne Cemetery.

Tim’s heart clenched, and his hands shake as he puts the picture in his pocket for safekeeping.

“I’ll be right back,” he says to Jason.

His car is towed, but that didn’t matter. Tim calls a funeral director he trusts with his secret life, and his voice sounds robotic. Tim waits by the street until she came. He lets her wait outside the building for Tim to come out with Jason’s body in his arms. The funeral director is a friend of Tim Drake and Red Robin. Tasya says nothing as she opened the casket.

The walk back to the car is silent, yet it’s heavy with the weight of Jason’s remains in a casket atop a gurney.

“Who is this person, Tim?” She asked.

Tim has no hesitation, “Family.”

He trusts Jason with Tasya as she hauls the casket containing Jason’s corpse into the van. Tim is staring ahead emptily while sitting in the passenger seat, still in his pajamas from the day before. Tim feels nothing, numb to his core, barely processing what he heard and saw. Whether he truly did.

Tasya slams the door of the driver’s seat, even then, Tim doesn’t flinch. She starts to drive “I found Catherine Todd in Mnemosyne Cemetery. I manage to reserve the spot beside her, it’s tight, but I keep it off the record as per your request. I’m afraid we’ll have to dig the earth ourselves.”

“I’ll help you.”

Since Tim is a special customer to a special request, things get hands-on. Tasya uses her inhuman strenght to carry Jason’s casket to the far part of the cemetery. Tim remembers that Bruce had arranged Catherine’s funeral himself, and now Tim is arranging their son’s funeral.

Tim and Tasya dug. Between the two of them, they got deep enough in less than an hour.

“Wait,” Tim says as she’s about to lower… to lower Jason to the ground. “Can you open the casket a moment?”

Tasya nods and does as he requests. Tim takes out the picture and put it on top of his chest, under the leather jacket. He can’t even put Jason in a funeral suit nor embalm him properly, not if he wants things off the record. Jason deserves so much better.

Tasya and Tim both lower Jason to the ground.

“Can I do this part by myself?” Tim says, his voice starting to break.

“Anything you need, Tim.” She paused for only a moment. “What is his name? For the tombstone.”

“Jason Todd. 1997 to 2016.” Tim gulps, his eyes stung. He’s older than Jason ever will be.

“What words do you want to engrave it with?”

It’s the first crack to his icy numbness, “I don’t know… I-I don’t know.”

“At peace, Tim. You can change your mind later. I’ll leave you alone now.”

He doesn’t hear her steps, but Tim starts to cover Jason as soon as he feels alone. His chest starts to hurt, and his head spins. His eyes blur more when Jason’s casket starts to disappear behind the dirt. Tim is fully crying when he finally put back all the ground that was dug out.

“You didn’t deserve this,” Tim whispered, weakened by the lump in his throat. The reality of what just happened finally dawned on Tim. How fucked up everything is, how fucking real the souls he just met. Jason’s soul is stuck forever in there, living in a constant dream that will never be real.

“You hear me, Jason!!?” Tim screamed, “You didn’t deserve this! You didn’t deserve to die alone in a bunker! I don’t fucking know what or who you think you are but you’re a real person. You’re Jason Todd and you’re alive!... You were alive.” Tim’s sobs break his screaming streak, “You deserve to live out that dream. You didn’t deserve to die like this.” Tim wipes his face from his tears, “I’m glad that I get to know you. I hope you find peace.

After Tim drained all his tears and mourned his share of grief, he walks away with heavy steps. Tim wonders if Tim hadn’t known Jason’s soul at all, would it still be this painful?

Tim doesn’t linger much at the thought, because no matter what, he doesn’t regret ever knowing Jason.

 +++++

 The rest of the family figured it out on their own without ever asking Tim firsthand. Not that Tim hid it anyway. Tim had Jason’s letter on his desk in his home office, his computer is partially sharing a server with Batcomputer and Oracle’s computer. Despite the breach of privacy, Tim is glad he didn’t need to say a thing to tell them. Even though half of a dozen people snuck into his home, they leave no trace so it’s easier to pretend that they didn’t. At some point, Jason’s grave is re-dug and reburied. Whoever one of them did it must’ve done it for confirmation, because there’s new DNA data logged into the shared server.

Confirmed Match: Jason Todd.

Tim doesn’t want to waste any energy to figure out who. It doesn’t matter anymore anyway, and perhaps, they needed the confirmation. A group of skeptics that they are.

Things did change though. The Wayne family of vigilantes isn’t known for healthy coping mechanisms. None of them talk about the elephant in the room, but it shows.

Alfred is quieter, but he never leaves any of them out of his sight for too long if they ever visit. Alfred will insist on having family dinners even more frequently, leaving one chair empty. Barbara seeks out Alfred to talk to him, but Tim never asked what they talked about. Dick is MIA from work and from being Nightwing for two weeks. When he re-emerges looking a little haunted when he smiles, with gaunter cheeks, and sunken eyes, no one asks where he has been nor what he’s been doing.

Bruce retracts, he doesn’t talk, and he takes solo missions without telling any of them except for Alfred. Little do they know, that they won’t see Bruce for months. Tim doesn’t come to the manor anymore, not until Alfred insists he comes for dinner, but Tim doesn't linger any longer than he should.

For those who never get to know Jason – Damian, Cassandra, Kate, Duke, and Stephanie– they gave the rest some space with silent support. Stephanie came to Tim’s house for a week straight just to hang out. Cassandra gives them all a hug out of nowhere, sometimes she lingers around one of them. Duke awkwardly hangs around them just to be around them. Kate caves to Alfred’s insistence on her joining dinner when she had never bothered to before. Damian is notably less prickly, and he adds Jason to the family painting, an adult Jason when he was last seen at 19.

One coping mechanism they all have in common is overworking themselves. Had it not for the family dinners insisted on them by Alfred, none of them would’ve seen each other for a long time.

No one asks Tim about Jason, despite all of them knowing that Tim is the one that discovered the body. The clues explained themselves. Jason’s old letter is newly opened. Tim tracks the number behind the letter and finds nothing the first time he checked the area. Then he finds him the second time after researching the place with better equipment. Though can't explain the panic of the second day, the ease of the first day, or why he doesn’t call any of them when he found Jason’s body. Despite so, no one asks. Tim never tells them what he saw, never told them that he had spoken to Jason. It's no use anyway, they'll either not believe him or they'll be even sadder than they already are and Jason stays dead. Tim also didn't tell them about his suspicion about the severe wound on Jason's neck, the one that kills him. Or, the wound that Jason let kill him. Though, from the way Bruce is behaving, at least he knows.

A few days after Tim buried Jason, he came back to Jason’s bunker to tidy up his stuff. There are a lot of Jason’s personal belongings there. Letters, diaries, books, murder plans, and a scarce collection of family photos. Including one with Bruce when Jason won a spelling bee contest. Stephanie helped him with Jason’s stuff even when Tim didn’t ask. Tim doesn’t know where to put them, but once he arrived at the manor, Alfred took them over and put them in Jason’s old room which is still untouched but kept clean. When Alfred broke down crying at the spelling bee picture he took, Stephanie and Tim stayed with him.

Jason’s grave is never lacking flowers, and no wild grass ever runs rampant. His and his mother’s.

A few weeks later, Tim noticed a different engraving on the plaque of Jason’s tombstone.

‘Beloved Son. Forever our Family.’

The words make Tim feel bittersweet about the whole thing, a little bit of anger too, things he has no right to have an opinion on. Tim only bitterly thought: Where was their love when Jason lived again? Sure, Jason got back screaming bloody murder, couldn’t there be any other way to talk him down? Use all of their skills combined to contain him and talk… just talk. Jason is nice and funny once you sit down and talk to him. Jason was. 

Now Jason is in a plane of realm that none of them can reach. Jason who died alone and so unloved that his soul told Tim that he still believed that. Jason is going to believe he’s alone and unloved in a forever limbo.

Tim hopes –he even prays– that Jason knows now.

Tim hopes Jason is reunited with his mom, somehow.

Tim hopes that Jason finds the peace that was owed to him.

 ++++

 Osra feels their world shift, as thus the peculiar world of lingering souls. All the souls feel it, but none of them know what it means, including Osra, the Guardian of the souls in the realm between worlds, or most souls taught them that it was called limbo. There are too many souls in limbo, Osra knows the story of every single one of them. A soul named Jason Todd of Gotham takes his interest the most.

Jason’s soul is unlike they’ve ever seen in all their existence. Jason’s death had been final, his resurrection had been an anomaly in the laws of the realms. Osra found Jason lingered around when he died at fifteen, the saddest little thing that was looking for his dad before Osra coax him to let go and pass to the afterlife where he’ll meet his mom instead. Some time passes before Jason lingered in limbo yet again, still Jason of Gotham but with a wreck of a soul.

Jason the restless soul, always moving, never resting, and broken apart to pieces that hover closely to each other. Not quite a whole soul, not truly scattered that he had lost himself. As if Jason is holding onto himself. Too scattered apart and restless to move further into the afterlife, nothing Osra does can fix Jason’s soul.

Osra watches as Jason tried to keep himself together, adopting a bunch of other restless souls of Gotham to live in this self-created fantasy. Jason’s illusion is so strong that it alters limbo. Alas, Osra lets him be, it is not their predicament whether limbo stays the same or not. Osra merely keeps an eye on the souls, that’s why when another new soul enters Jason’s pocket illusion of limbo, Osra knows.

The first one had been Tim. Tim’s desire to meet Jason and Jason’s restless soul calling for any closure pulls them together. It is not new for the soul of the living and the dead to meet in limbo, but Osra had been surprised. Those two never had a connection in the living world but they manage to reach each other and meet.

The second soul visiting Jason is less of a surprise, they came from the afterlife.

“Jason?” the new soul calls, stepping closer to where Jason is teaching the young souls about an education they’ll never need.

Jason crumbles when he looks at the source of the voice, “…mom?”

Catherine Todd of Gotham, whose soul had lingered in limbo before finally passing on after knowing her son had died at 15.

“Jason, my baby,” She sobbed, running towards her son with open arms as Jason met her in the middle. She cradles her son in her arms as Jason falls apart. She holds him tightly, preciously, kissing his temple, things that she wished she had done but was unable to because of her weakness. “My son, Jason…”

“Why did you leave me?” Jason sobbed. His soul becomes dimmer, “Was it because I’m not your blood son?”

“No!” Catherine pushes him, cradling her son’s face in her hands. “You’ve always been my son. I love you like my own. I’m sorry that I failed you,” Catherine breaks apart. “I’m sorry, my baby. Please forgive me.”

Slowly, as if moving in honey, Jason’s soul comes together and heals, once again becoming whole. For a long moment, the mother and child hold each other. Mending, intertwining.

“Come with me, Jason,” Catherine says to the top of her son’s head, kissing his temple. “You don’t need to stay here.”

“But…” Jason looks back to the lingering soul he had collected and found. The souls that he nurtured and soothed as much as he can.

“They can come too,” Catherine says with a smile, a proud look in her eyes.

Jason’s eyes find Osra’s being, trying to find confirmation. Osra – who in Jason’s eyes is a dark-haired teenager that had been the only one kind to him when he was in an orphanage – nods and smiles. Jason’s pursed lips frown and tremble, holding back feelings of relief and joy. He opens his arms to the young souls that ran to his embrace. Osra rarely hears laughter in their realm, but they cherish it each time. Jason’s soul had intertwined with the young souls, wherever he goes, they go.

“Thank you,” Catherine said to Osra, as Jason does as well, the young souls say goodbye to them as they all go to the light.

Osra knows that their gratitude is misplaced, but they’ll make sure to pass them on to the right person.

  ++++++

  Despite the heavy mourning period, life goes on in the Wayne family household. The talking grievers leave the silent grievers alone. As the latter, Tim feels grateful for not being prodded.

Tim is cleaning his penthouse one day and finds the old phone that he had wanted to take apart for a prototype UV gun which he had abandoned when he found it on top of a book containing Jason’s letter. So much for that project. The phone could’ve still been useful though, you never know.

So, Tim goes to his attic to put back his old phone. Goes to the same box he picked it from where he also put back Jason’s letter.

Tim opened the box and froze. Red poppies in full bloom greet him, growing out of Jason’s letter. As impossible as it is, Tim knows what happened with a surprising certainty that Jason is finally at peace.

The tears in Tim’s eyes are from relief. This is the closest to justice that Jason can have.

Jason is finally at peace.

[animemangasoul]

Boots

Summery: Damian could read people so why could he not read Timothy?

Or, Tim is showing visable concern for him and Damian doesn't understand why or what to do about it.

Damian Wayne sat down wearily on the bench, feeling the weight of exhaustion settle upon his shoulders. The mission had been grueling, pushing his physical and mental limits to the edge. It hadn't helped that it had rained like the heavens themselves were weeping at his efforts. He could feel every muscle in his body ache as he leaned back, propping his boots against the edge of the bench across, trying to pull it off with all the strength of a mouse.

Beside him, Timothy Drake sat, phone pressed against his ear as he reported back to Richard; the older man taking every opportunity to call them whenever he had access to the Watchtowers connection line. It was honestly obnoxious and drove Damian's irritation through the roof half the time, but he also could quietly admit to himself it was good to hear from him every once in a while. He'd been gone for nearly a week after all.

Damian's usually rigid posture had slackened by now. He'd been the only one of the pair to be unfortunately caught in the downpour currently slapping against the filthy Gotham streets and it made his already weary frame feel even heavier. Eyes blinking slowly and muscles aching under his cold skin, he tried to keep himself awake.

Maybe that is why, what happened, happened. Maybe he should have been more careful, more composed, more awake. For as he pulled off his boots, he found himself tipping over. Tipping over sideways and accidentally leaning against one Timothy Drake. Fatigue blurred his senses for a moment, and he didn't immediately realize his mistake. Didn't realize what he'd done.

The moment it dawned on him however, his eyes widened and his breath caught in his throat. He couldn't believe he'd done what he'd done. He couldn't…… but…

In the brief moment of quiet weakness, before he'd realized, Damian had felt a strange comfort. It had been nice. It was nice, to be able to lean against the other. To be able to sag against someone else and just feel something other than wariness. Their relationship had improved over time. It was no longer as hostile as it used to be. Damian having realized in the past three years that he did not need to replace Timothy in order to carve out a space of his own had slowly let his hostilities die and in turn Timothy had acknowledged his efforts by coming to the manor more. Yet, their relationship; or lack there off was fraught with tension, frost and unspoken agreement to avoid one another lest one of them say something regrettable. They'd kept it that way for nearly a year now.

And now hesitation coursed through Damian's veins. He did not move. His exhausted body somehow stubbornly savoring the brief respite that leaning on Timothy provided.

But as his tired mind began to clear, he grew conscious of what exactly he was doing. Timothy, thankfully engrossed in a conversation with Richard; still hadn't noticed him doing something this embarrassing. The man just kept humming in agreement to whatever Richard was insisting on. "I understand," he kept saying. "Of course I'll look after him. It's fine Dick, just focus on yourself."

Damian took the opportunity the distraction provided him to slowly push away but just as he'd lifted his head, an arm was thrown around him. A casual gesture done without missing a beat as Timothy laughed in response to something Richard said. Damian's eyes widened in surprise, his heart skipping a beat.

What the…. What the---- Did Timothy just…..

It was a gesture he had witnessed countless time Timothy extend to Allen and the younger members of the Titans. A sign of affection and support. A casual way to let them know he was there for them, for Timothy was not very good with words. He was not good with gestures either Damian's inner thoughts mused. It was why little actions like this meant so much to the idiots at the Tower. It meant that Drake cared. It meant he was looking out for them.

Damian's thoughts raced. Why would his not brother do this, to him? It did not make any sense. Wait, did Timothy even know it was him leaning against his shoulder? Was this gesture meant for him or was he simply caught in the web of Tim's habitual comfort? Maybe he'd forgotten Damian was the only one present and then Damian had done something as pathetic as lean on him and the man's instinct for his friends had taken over and he'd done this…this thing.

The uncertainty gnawed at him.

And then a sudden feeling of self-consciousness surged through him, and Damian instinctively pulled away, his body tensing as if burned. He shot a glance at Timothy, hoping for some sign or acknowledgment, but the older remained engrossed in his conversation.

Damian frowned. Perhaps Timothy hadn't even noticed the brief interlude. Perhaps Damian's presence had been a mere backdrop, a coincidence.

What he refused to call disappointment surged through him nearly choking him. Damian rose from the bench, feeling angry with himself for showing momentary weakness and seeking solace in something that had not been intended for him as he walked away, the weight of his weariness heavy once more.

Damian's footsteps echoed in the distance as he retreated into the shadows, his mind spinning, spinning, spinning.

It should not have bothered him as much as it did. But it did bother him, very much so. He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. Perhaps his exhaustion was finally getting to him. Throwing his boots in disgust in the changing room; for how dare they trick him into something so pathetic, he promised himself he would feel better in the morning.

In the morning, he would not even remember this humiliating moment.

------------------------------------------------------

Morning came with exhaustion and dreadful fever that wrecked his body until his mind no longer belonged to him but to the bed. The rain-soaked night had taken its toll it seemed, for today he found him stumbling wearily into the kitchen. Body feeling heavy and his movements sluggish from the remnants of a high-degree fever, every step was a struggle, as if the weight of the world pressed down on him.

Damian's bleary eyes briefly scanned his surroundings before landing on Timothy. Drake stood near the counter, engrossed in some task. Automatically, as if sensing his presence, the other man's gaze flickered up to meet Damian's, and a flicker of something unreadable crossed his features.

The youngest Wayne frowned deeply at him. His mood souring immediately at the sight of the other. But any intimidating air he was trying to put on quickly faded as he crossed the threshold, for Timothy's sharp eyes caught sight of his unsteady form.

"What are you doing here?" Damian demanded, his voice strained. He tried to regain control, to assert his usual air of authority. His attempt to deflect attention away from his vulnerability only fueling his frustration.

"I'm just cleaning up," Timothy replied calmly, his voice steady despite the lingering uncertainty. He took a small step back, allowing Damian his space, though his gaze remained fixed on him.

"Whatever," Damian scoffed, pushing past him. "I only wish to have a glass of water-" the words suddenly felt too thick in his mouth, his body too heavy and he tilted, down down down---

'Oh,' he thought. 'I am was falling. How embarrassing.' His eyes closed shut for the inevitable impact with the cold floor, but for some reason, it never came.

Without hesitation, Timothy had reached out, arms wrapping around his smaller frame and pulling him up. Then a hand came to gently brush against his forehead, gauging the heat of his fever.

"Careful," Timothy said softly, his touch featherlight as he held Damian close. But before the warmth of Timothy's hand could register, Damian flinched away, his instinctive reaction nearly unbalancing him.

"I'm fine," he snapped, his voice laced with both irritation and a hint of embarrassment. He pulled back, creating a physical distance between them. Confusion clouded his tired mind, the exhaustion adding a raw edge to his emotions. He did not understand what was going on. He didn't get it. What was Timothy doing. What was happening. Damn it all, he did not understand.

His not older brother's expression faltered, a flicker of something crossing his eyes, but he quickly masked it behind a calm facade. "Are you sure?" It came out questioning, little haltingly too as if Drake too did not quite know what to do in this very situation. It almost made him feel slightly better, almost.

Damian's thoughts churned, a whirlwind of emotions threatening to overwhelm him. He hated how the simple act of 'casual' concern from Timothy seemed to challenge their established dynamic. It was as if the lines between them had suddenly blurred, and he here he was, left struggling to make sense of it all.

Did Timothy no longer see him as a formidable rival, an adversary to be constantly on guard against? Had Richard influenced his behavior, prompting him to keep a closer watch over Damian in his absence? The questions plagued him, their answers elusive. He hated it. He hated it so much.

The room grew silent, tension hanging in the air like a heavy storm cloud. Damian's gaze flickered from Timothy's face to the surroundings, searching for a clue, for something familiar to anchor himself to. But everything seemed different, and he couldn't quite grasp the changes or understand their significance.

Something was different. Ever since Timothy had come back from that mission three month ago. Ever since he'd returned home he seemed more mature, seemed calmer, wouldn't let anything get under his skin. Damian had been severely injured during it so he'd been in a coma for five days. He hadn't been a witness to the change. He'd missed it. Missed whatever had transformed Timothy into the person he was now.

To him, Timothy felt too far away and too close at the same time. Something was different about him and Damian hated, hated how that something seemed to be a growth he hadn't been able to keep up with.

"You seem to be running a fever."

Damian's eyes narrowed, momentarily broken out of his thoughts. "I said I was fine," he hissed.

Raising both hands in the air, Timothy shrugged. "Okay," he said. "Whatever." He sounded so casual, so sure of himself. As if, as if----

Damian's blood boiled. "Well, get out of my way then," he snapped, his voice sharp and tinged with a touch of fury. He pushed past Timothy, his movements more forceful than necessary. His irritation only skyrocketing as the other did not even put up a fight. He filled his glass; hands shaking so badly he had to use them both to not spill it. His cheeks were tinted red and his eyes burned.

Then he stormed out of the kitchen, his thoughts churning like a whirlpool in his mind, anger and confusion colliding. He hated how Timothy's actions seemed to disrupt their existing dynamic. It was as if Timothy was rewriting the script without giving Damian a chance to catch up.

What was he supposed to do? How was he supposed to react when the man who did not even acknowledge him half the time was suddenly being caring. Twice in two days. What was he supposed to do with that.

'Richard,' he thought, feeling angry, feeling scared. 'You did this. Make it stop.' For there was no doubt Richard's overwhelming worry for him had forced Timothy's hand to act as his substitute while he was away and when he came back----

Walking through the hallways, Damian's frustration continued to simmer; directed as much at himself as at the circumstances that had brought them to this point. The sense of isolation and alienation weighed heavily on him. He couldn't shake the nagging feeling that he was missing some crucial piece of the puzzle.

Perching on the edge of his bed, Damian ran a hand through his disheveled hair. He had always prided himself on his ability to adapt quickly, but this time, the changes eluded him, slipping through his fingers like water.

Resting his head in his hands, Damian couldn't help the sudden helplessness that overwhelmed him. He didn't know what he was supposed to do with all of this. What was he supposed to do?

The storm outside rumbled on.

---------------------------------------------------

Damian Wayne's body burned with fever as he sat uncomfortably on the narrow bed in the school's dimly lit nurse's office. The sterile scent of antiseptic hung in the air, suffocating him further. He shifted restlessly, trying to distance himself from the nurse's well-meaning but intrusive presence. Each attempt to feel his forehead or check his vital signs only heightened Damian's discomfort.

Minutes turned into an eternity, and Damian's skepticism grew. Would Timothy even bother to come? He couldn't fathom why Timothy would abandon his responsibilities at Wayne Enterprises just to pick him up from school.

"I will be fine on my own," he'd said when the nurse had hummed low in disapproval and began to dial his not brother. "He is far too busy to pick me up. I shall make my way home on my own."

She had not believed him. And now here he was, likely to suffer the humiliation of having Timothy Drake not show up. It was not as if he believed Timothy was not a good enough person to show up if required but Damian wasn't dying. He was fine. It was only a fever and Timothy had far too much important work to do at Wayne Enterprise. In fact there was an annual board meeting today which his not brother had been stressing about all evening yesterday. Surely that took precedence over his wellbeing.

He would not come and Damian would not blame him for it. Timothy was no Richard. He owed him nothing.

Suddenly, the door flung open, and Timothy burst into the room, his breath labored and his hair in disarray. The sight of him, ruffled and unkempt, startled Damian. He hadn't expected him to arrive in record time, as if propelled by some unseen force. He hadn't expected him to arrive at all.

Damian's eyes widened, momentarily captivated by the urgency etched across the other's face.

But then, without a word, he hopped off the bed, his feet landing on the cold linoleum floor. No matter. Maybe the board meeting had concluded early. Maybe Timothy had been in the vicinity grabbing lunch when the nurse had called. Either way and opportunity was an opportunity and Damian would be damned if he did not take it. But before he could open his mouth and say something to Timothy, what he would say, he was unsure off, the nurse made another attempt to feel his forehead.

Her lips were pursed, her bright eyes as condescending as ever and her overbearing worry painted across the furrow of her brows. Damian growled, wanting to pull away but stopping himself because father had told him upsetting the staff here once more would disappoint him. Resigning himself to this unknown woman touching him again, his eyes widened in surprise when a hand grabbed the back of his uniform and pulled him subtly enough so his not brother could put his arm around his shoulders and drag him away from the nurse.

"Let's get you out of here," Timothy said, his voice a soothing balm amidst the chaos of Damian's thoughts.

It was a gesture done with ease, he noted as his not brother spoke to the baffled nurse as if he hadn't done anything unusual. His presence was…..comforting. Damian did not wish to admit it but having someone else there. Having Timothy there as a buffer, having his arm supporting him, it felt….

He flinched away, surprised and discomforted by his own thoughts. He looked up to gauge Timothy's reaction to his behaviour. To search for an explanation for the other's actions in his eyes at well.

But Timothy's gaze remained fixed on the nurse, a calm facade masking the underlying tension he clearly felt by how he'd held him close; fingers digging into his shoulder. Now his arm lay limp by his side even though his fingers still gently gripped the sleeve of Damian's uniform. Something almost resembling guilt churned through Damian's gut and he glared at the white floor in retaliation For why should he feel something like this at all? He did not owe Drake anything. He owed him nothing.

But…….It seemed….it looked like Timothy… maybe he had reacted instinctively to protect him. To protect him from the nurse's well-meaning but intrusive actions? Damian was not stupid. He'd been trained by assassins. His father was the greatest detective in the world and he'd been raised by Nightwing himself. He knew he could read people. Read actions and Timothy's actions could not speak off anything other than concern.

As his thoughts ran wild, the nurse's presence became a mere backdrop. His attention now solely centered on Timothy, trying and failing to make sense of the situation. Was it concern for his well-being alone that drove Timothy's actions, or was there something more? Had he rushed over for his sake or was this unexpected display of care Richard's influence, a silent agreement between the brothers to watch over him in Richard's absence?

Damn it, damn it all. He just didn't get it. He didn't freaking get it.

Tsking, he squared his shoulders. Then mustered up the strength; which surprisingly required more effort than he could imagine to fully pull away from Timothy's hold. He couldn't afford to rely on others, especially when they might not reciprocate the sentiment like Richard and Jon.

With that resolution in mind and without a word, Damian turned away, his steps purposeful as he walked towards the door. The conflicting emotions burning him to his very core. Fists clenched at his side, head aching with fever that nearly blinded him, he silently chastised himself for seeking solace in a gesture that likely held no significance to Timothy what so ever.

'Do not forget,' he told himself, closing his eyes briefly. 'He does not care for you and your fever is making you assume you care for what he thinks of you. Do not forget.'

But as Damian reached the threshold, he couldn't help but steal a final glance back at Timothy, whose attention was still fixated on the nurse. A flicker of vulnerability passed across his not brother's face, almost imperceptible and yeah, Damian truly was too far gone with this insufferable sickness if he was now seeing such nonexistent nonsense.

Still, for a brief laughable moment, he wondered if there was more to their evolving dynamic than he had initially perceived. But the thought was fleeting, as he reminded himself of the walls Drake had rightfully built around himself when it came to Damian. 'He is doing it for Richard,' he told himself. 'It is for Richard and father. He is good like that.'

'Unlike me' remained loud yet unsaid.

With that thought etched into his features, Damian turned away and exited the nurse's office. He did not look back a second time.

-------------------------------------------------

Damian's eyes flickered open, the hazy remnants of sleep clinging to his senses. The muted glow of the television bathed the living room in a soft, comforting light. His head throbbed, his body heavy with fatigue. He had fallen asleep in front of the TV, succumbing to the clutches of his fever and exhaustion.

As Damian tried to sit up, a wave of dizziness washed over him, causing him to wince. The room spun, disorienting him for a moment. Blinking away vague memories of a dream fading, he scanned his surroundings, his gaze landing on the clock on the wall. Time had slipped away unnoticed, hours blending into each other in the depths of his fever-induced slumber.

Pennyworth was away handling family matters so the care of Damian had unfortunately falling once again on Timothy's shoulders after they'd returned to the manor. The older had silently gone to their medicine cabinet, made him some soup, brought him a glass of water and an accompanying jug just in case and had then left him to his own devices. He hadn't fussed like Richard or scolded him like Pennyworth. He hadn't looked at him in disappointment like father. He had just been. Taking the step by step process in how to care for someone without any of the emotions attached. Damian did not know whether he should feel relieved or hate him for it. And then he'd almost snorted at the thought for that had been his consistent feeling towards Drake these past two days.

After tending to him, Timothy had went back to work. He had not stayed. Damian had not wished for him to do so. He had not. In fact, he'd snapped at the other for even hesitating to go and had ordered him away.

He had not needed him. He did not need anyone. He could very well take care of himself. So, standing up he wobbled his way to the kitchen, heated up the rest of the soup and found his way back to his seat. He could barely force himself to eat three mouthfuls before he had to give it up.

Sighing warily, he curled back under the heavy blanket Timothy had draped over him; he'd only noticed after the other had left that it belonged to Timothy. His not brother having gone through several bouts off fever addled sicknesses due to his lack of spleen. It was a good blanket he thought absentmindedly. It was warm but not too warm and it almost felt like a hug from Richard.

Fatigue slowly began weighed him down, and Damian succumbed to sleep once more, his eyelids fluttering shut as his body sought solace in slumber. Time slipped away, the world a distant blur, until a gentle touch roused him from his fevered dreams.

The scent of Timothy's cologne wafted through the air, heavy and familiar. Timothy did not like to wear cologne he vaguely recalled. Only doing it for business meetings. "To be taken seriously," Richard had once said to him, smiling fondly at Timothy who'd been busy fixing his tie and running his fingers through his bangs, stress-lines easing into something soft when his eyes met Richard's and the older sent him a teasing kiss through the air. "He thinks wearing that cologne makes him look more grown up." Richard had sounded sad then. Damian remembered scoffing and turning back to his dinner suddenly not feeling hungry.

Timothy had only been eighteen back then. Now he was twenty-one. He likely did not need it anymore having proven himself ten times over but now it seemed to be a habit. A habit that was strangely comforting to Damian's sleep addled mind.

He stirred, his bleary eyes opening ever so, as he attempted to focus on the figure standing beside him. He couldn't quite keep up with what was going on, but eventually he found himself being lifted into strong arms. Timothy let out a soft grunt, but he remained steady, stable. An unwavering presence. "There," his not brother muttered to himself too soft yet reassuring. "Let's get you to bed you little gremlin."

Damian would have snapped back in offense if his body had been willing to cooperate with him. Instead his eyes fell fully shut and he let the movement of Timothy lull him into comfort.

His not brother carried him through the dimly lit hallways, his rhythmic footsteps echoing through his mind and making him breathe easier. His head nestled against Timothy's shoulder, finding comfort in the coldness of his body.

The journey was swift and eventually Damian was deposited gently onto his bed, the covers drawn up to his chin. A soft sigh escaped him as his body sank into the familiar mattress.

A sudden muffled meow sounded, and Damian's mind briefly registered where his feline companion had been placed on his bed, as the cat curled up with a satisfied little noise. Timothy had picked up Alfred and put him there, as if knowing that even in his sleep, Damian found comfort in Alfred's presence.

The weight of the action, of the entire thing settled upon Damian's chest when Timothy exited his room; footsteps quiet, a soft goodnight his parting words.

A frustrated tear escaped his eye, tracing a path down his cheek and dampening his pillow. He couldn't quite understand why this simple act of care made him so so sad. It hurt. It hurt so much and he didn't know why it made him….. why it made him wish for something he couldn't fully grasp.

But as Damian's heavy eyelids drooped shut once more, sleep's embrace pulling him into its depths, a sliver of hope flickered within him. Maybe it was okay for them to change. Maybe if Timothy was capable of moving forward, of gentle kindness, maybe he could try his hand at it too.

Yeah, maybe.

------------------------------------------------------

The sun began its descent, casting long shadows that stretched across the meticulously manicured lawn of Wayne Manor. Timothy and Damian found themselves sitting side by side on the porch steps, their silhouettes melding into the fading light.

It had been four days since Damian had gotten sick and now he had finally recovered. Cleared for duty, he meticulously cleaned his boots, his fingers tracing the familiar grooves, each swipe of the cloth against the leather seeming to magnify the weight of his thoughts. Now that he was finally cleared for missions again, his body mending from the fever that had held him captive, his thoughts refused to set him free.

They were sitting out here weighting for Richard to land back on earth. He'd be here in the next three hours and while that held its own sense of excitement, try as he might, Damian could not let go of his thought on Timothy.

He glanced at his not brother, the other engrossed in a book he had chosen on a whim not paying attention to anything other than the words on the page. Damian's fears grew stronger.

He couldn't help but think and think and think. What if Timothy's caring nature had only been a temporary respite, a byproduct of his obligation to Richard? Would their newfound connection dissolve like a wisp of smoke, leaving Damian to navigate their old dynamic of avoiding one another once more? Should he talk to him about it? Timothy had done so much for him these past couple of days. He hadn't complained, hadn't snapped at him. He'd only worried. For yes, it was worry even if that worry might not have been for his sake alone.

Damian hated this so much. The uncertainty gnawed at his core, the need to know threatening to resurface.

A surge of urgency suddenly propelled him to do something drastic. He had to know. He couldn't not know if Timothy's actions were merely a facade or a bridge meant for him to cross. It was a daring move, a test of the delicate balance they had found. Slowly, almost painfully so, he allowed his body to lean against Timothy's shoulder, his breath catching in his throat. Waiting, heart pounding in his chest, for Timothy's response.

The weight of Damian against him did not seem to go unnoticed by Timothy this time. A subtle shift in his posture betraying his surprise. It made Damian almost want to fling himself away and pretend as if he hadn't done it, almost. Instead he screwed his eyes shut and remained. 'Be stubborn,' he commended himself. 'Do not waver from your goal for it is the cowards way out.'

He wanted to be a coward so bad. 

But he needn't have been for instead of pulling away or questioning the gesture, Timothy responded casually once more. Without looking away from his book, with a fluid motion, he wrapped his arm around his shoulders and drew him closer.

Damian's eyes flew open, widening to sizes he didn't know was humanly possible as sudden warmth flooded his senses. He clutched his dirty boot tightly between his shaking fingers and let himself fall even further against Timothy. He couldn't quite believe what he'd accomplished.

He wasn't sick anymore. Timothy was aware of this. He did not need to care for him anymore. After all, Damian had been cleared for missions. Not only that, he'd been cleared for solo missions so this, this gesture it couldn't possibly be for Richard, could it?

He blinked furiously against the sudden wetness in his eyes. The doubts and insecurities that had consumed him momentarily fading away. Timothy's careless embrace offered hope, solace for years of fraught relationship between them. And Damian, Damian couldn't quite believe it. He exhaled softly, a fragile little smile curving his lips.

"Do you mind reading aloud?" he asked, his voice quivering slightly, but not cracking, not breaking. For he could ask for this, he could.

Timothy squeezed his shoulder, placing the book on his lap so he could turn the page. "Sure," he said, his tone even. "Want me to start from the beginning?"

Damian shook his head the best he could. "Sometimes stories are interesting when you start from the middle," he said.

His brother huffed a little laughter and Damian allowed himself to bask in it. For it was meant for him, and this time he was sure of it.

As Timothy's voice reverberated through the air, Damian let his boot drop next to the other, he'll clean them tomorrow.

[automaticsoulharmony]

To Mourn a Loss That Isn’t Yours

Two of the most significant losses in Tim’s childhood, happenned not to him, but his heroes. When those heroes become his family, it gets harder to feel he has any right to mourn.

-

It was late when Dick and Tim finally stopped training. Training with Nightwing was never simple, more of an adventure. They started out by train jumping. This had become a semi-common exercise ever since he had taught Tim how. Then it was the crevices of Gotham. Batman was good at disappearing into the shadows, but sometimes a robin, in their bright colors, needs to take a different approach. So occasionally Dick will do an exercise with Tim about where some nooks and crannies are, and how to hide in them.

“Hey, I have a surprise!” Dick said excitedly. Tim almost jumped, which would’ve been bad since they were sitting on the edge of the tallest building in Gotham. Dick smiled bright at him, beaming at Tim like he was the one looking upon his childhood hero.

Tim often wished that Nightwing would come down from Bludhaven more. It always gave Gotham this sort of light for Tim. Maybe it was because Dick was the first Robin, or maybe it was the suffocating hugs, or the easy talks, or just having fun together.

He knows why the man doesn’t though, It’s obvious. It’s what causes every problem in the house. The name no one would ever say, even mutter. The reason Bruce wouldn’t let him stay in the house, and why Nightwing avoided looking at him sometimes. It was all because of Jason.

It had been a year since Jason got a letter from his real mother. A year since he slashed all the tires in the batcave. A year since he stole the Bat-jet. A year since he went to Ethiopia.

On the last day of this month it would be a year since the publication of his death. A year since Tim cried in his room, no one else in the house, a newspaper clutched to his chest. A year since he had no one who understood why he cared so much about someone he had never even talked to. Of course, no one knew that.

It wasn’t his loss to mourn.

Dick swept Tim into the air, breaking him out of his thoughts. He gripped Dicks arm as he flew through the air. They dropped to the ground in front of something that Tim had seen a million times on patrol. He had seen it more often before he was Robin, when he was birdwatching from the rooftops. Batman often brought Tim’s predecessors here after patrol. He stared at it in wonder, it’s neon lights shining on his face, practically blinding him.

“I’m sure B has taken you here a ton but,” Tim, still staring at the building, not focusing on his motions, shook his head. “Really? B used to take me and.. Um, Jason all the time.”

“I mean,” Tim had to backtrack, quickly. “I mean, he always takes me to Benny’s.” Dick nodded.

“Well then, this can be our place.”

At the end of the month, Tim sat in his empty manor, and stared at a faded newspaper and mourned a loss he was not supposed to.

-

They were falling, the bright colors were falling through the blinding light. There was echoes of cries around him, salt water flooded into his mouth and he was almost choking on it.

Dick Grayson fell off the platform his parents were just standing on. Tim barely picked up on the quadruple somersault on the way down, then he hit the ground. It Wasn't Dick anymore. He gleamed in the bright Robin colors as Bruce put a hand on his shoulder.

Then the scene shifts. Tim could feel the pavement beneath him and knew he was in his city. He looked up to see a boy running, breathing heavily. His shoes hit the pavement hard, trying not to stumble. The hood was up, but you could see a small red curl popping out.

Then he was swept up into someone’s arms. Batman stood there hugging the child, but it wasn’t the small boy, it was Robin, Tim’s Robin, Jason.

Suddenly Tim was on a roof, he was running, faster and faster, he could feel the camera bouncing on his chest as he landed on the next roof. Then he slipped.

He was falling to the ground, it was getting closer and closer. He waited, he waited for Bruce, he waited for his own Robin colors to appear. But they never did, he kept falling, darkness surrounded him on all sides. It felt like he was falling forever. Then he wasn’t.

He was back in a seat with the smell of peanuts all around him. He could hear the music and the loud ring master. Before everything dimmed, and he was staring up at a woman and a man on opposite platforms. They swung towards each other, and Tim’s gut filled with dread. He wanted to tell them to stop. He wanted to warn everyone around but the words wouldn’t come out of his mouth.

Then the cacophony of gasps and screams started. Though the one heard above everything else, was a little boy's scream. And the salt water fell into Tim’s throat, and he couldn’t breath, the whole world blurred.

Tim sat straight up in his bed. His chest was heaving and he was now choking on nothing, sweat covering his face. He could still taste salt water in his mouth, but that probably had to do with the tear tracks on his face.

He knew what day it was. If he hadn’t looked at the calendar yesterday, if he hadn’t been tracking Dicks mood all week, if he hadn’t caught Bruce trying to call Dick two times to no avail, he would know by the nightmare.

He had one every year, on the same night. It wasn’t the same, and it had never been like this before. But it was always about the same thing, and it always ended in that same way. Two people fell, and a boy screamed. Sometimes all he could hear was the snap of the wires, the bodies hitting the ground, and the torrential scream of a little boy.

Nonetheless, he got up. A hollow feeling filling the whole house. He went over to his bathroom, splashing his face and scrubbing it with a washcloth. He took a deep breath, hands still shaking.

He was okay, he had to be. If not for Bruce, for Dick, and if not for Dick, then himself. It wasn’t his loss to mourn anyway.

Forcing himself up to function at least a little this morning. He walked down to the kitchen and grabbed some yogurt, and a grape soda for later. He wanted to be able to do more, but almost on instinct his body headed back to his room. He would have to function enough tonight, putting on a show of being fine, he didn’t need to waste that energy now.

Instead he pulled a folder out from his desk and sat down on his bed. The folder contained his most precious possessions.

Three pieces of paper sat inside. The first picture was of Jason and Bruce, sitting a top a building, it was the first clear shot Tim had gotten of the two. Jason was nestled in Bruce’s cape due to the cold weather.

He gingerly placed that one to the side and pulled out the next piece of paper. It was a newspaper clipping of the night Robin did a quadruple somersault.

Then as he moved that to the side, he saw what he was really looking for. There was a picture of Tim at four years old, eight years ago from today. He was sitting on Dicks knee, and the two older Graysons stood behind them. He let the picture lay in his lap and let his mind wander for a moment.

He sat thinking and wondering about what they were like. What would’ve happened if the wires never snapped? He pondered questions and thoughts, and mourned a loss he wasn’t supposed to.

-

Everything was gone.

Everyone was dead and gone, for the first time Tim had a million losses he was supposed to mourn. He did, he mourned every single person that died that year. The ones who were dead. So he didn’t mourn Bruce.

Tim was living in a small apartment downtown. He was tired. Tired of being alone, in an empty bedroom, no one to talk to. Again.

He thought everything was okay for a minute there. He thought he would get to have ice cream with Bruce, maybe even celebrate his birthday. But that was all gone too. He was kicked on the curb where he probably should have been a long time ago. He had no family, then he had a job and co-workers, and now he was alone.

He could still see the look on that kid’s face as Robin was taken right out of Tim’s palms. He wasn’t allowed to mourn that loss though, it had helped Damian.

But the worst part about all of it, he knew something. He knew something and nobody believed him. He knew Batman was out there, he knew Bruce was alive. Why didn’t anyone listen? He just wanted to save their father.

The whole room was filled with red string. Pictures from different centuries all over the world were scattered on the floor. Tim had barely eaten in a week and only fell asleep in front of his laptop. He just wanted to find Bruce, then this could all be over. Everything could go back to normal, right?

He had to find him, If not for Gotham, then for his family, and if not for his family.. Maybe for himself.

Tim left Gotham soon after. He made a new costume and disappeared without leaving a note.

And for once in his life, the tables had turned. He refused to mourn a loss he was supposed to.

~

[salmonight]

First fic after a... Month? Yea probably that. Enjoy suckers!

https://archiveofourown.org/works/48161014

[slayerkid]

Tim goes to the mall with Jason fic

Note: I was originally gonna make this more shitposty with Jason ditching Tim just to play like arcade games with Roy or something but then the more I thought about it, the more similarities I found between Jason and Tim with like mundane stuff. So like I changed the premise a little bit lol. So enjoy something more wholesome!

Also not beta read, we die like Jason Todd-

Tim wanted to go to the bookstore that's in one of the local malls because he also gotta pick up stuff from an online order he has from Hot Topic

Jason was still readjusting to living in the manor again after coming back from the dead

Alfred knows that there's still some distance and some tension between the Jason and Tim due to at this point in time, Jason is still hurt by the fact that he still feels like he got replaced

Alfred wants the two boys to get along and came up with an idea to at least be an ice breaker to get them both talking to one another

Tim asked Alfred if he could go with him to the mall. Because Alfred is good company to have around just in general.

Alfred used this as an opportunity to get Jason and Tim to spend time together while also making homemade pizza because it's been a while

Alfred tells Tim that he's not able to because he's gonna make something for brunch and told Tim to ask Jason to go with him instead

Tim was reluctant to do so and was mentally rescheduling to go some other day

Alfred saw the look on Tim's face meant that he was going to reschedule so he sent a text message to Jason saying that Tim wanted to talk to him

Alfred let Tim know that he Told Jason

Tim mentally groaned so it meant he actually had to go talk to Jason now because he didn't wanna upset Alfred

Jason got the text and was surprised to see that Alfred texted him just to let him know that Tim of all people wanted to talk to him and not Bruce this time

He was a little uneasy due to him not really making the best first impression on Tim, nor did he at first even like Tim. So we was wondering how this convo would even go

Tim reluctantly knocks on the door and Jason answers moments later

Tim: Soooo uhh... I need a ride to the mall to pick up some online orders. Also gonna need a ride back home and... Alfred said to ask you since he's gonna be busy...

Jason had a blank expression to the perspective of Tim and wasn't sure if Jason was gonna be rude to him.

Jason: Oh uh sure Tim. I don't mind, though uh my only ride is a motorcycle so bring a bag that whatever you're picking up won't fly away.

Tim blinked and it suddenly hit him that Jason had a motorcycle. He shyly nodded his head and went to grab his things.

Jason told Tim as a heads up that he'd meet Tim in the living room after he got ready.

Tim reluctantly grabbed his black & red tote bag (it ain't no dollar store one, this one of them expensive tote bags) as well as his wallet. He also checked if the phone in his pocket was mostly charged.

Luckily this time his battery percentage was 87. Last time he went out with a 35% battery life, Batman and Nightwing crashed a local bowling alley, thinking that Mad Hatter had something to do with it. Tim to this day, still doesn't get where they got that idea from nor never cared. But that's a different story for another day-

Alfred noticed Jason was sitting there on the couch waiting for Tim to show up. The old man couldn't help but smile at seeing that Jason seems to want to get along with Tim

Alfred up his hand on Jason's shoulder

Alfred: Master Jason, just remember to ease up. I'm sure Master Tim will warm up to you as long as you're willing to get to know him.

Jason appreciated Alfred's words and thanked him.

Soon after, Tim walked into the living room

Tim: Okay um, I'm ready Jason

Jason: Alright then we'll be off then

Both boys got to the garage and Jason walked over to his motorcycle

The older brother gave the younger brother a spare motorcycle helmet

Jason: Here. You'll need it. Well, uh just in case we crash or something but don't worry big bro Jason knows what he's doing

Jason slightly cringed at referring to himself as an older brother but at the same time, he enjoyed the thought of being an older brother. Someone who could depend on him for just familial reasons, no crime fighting or anything, just stuff outside of that

Tim wore the helmet and made sure to wear the tote bag handle around his shoulder

Jason meanwhile sat on the bike, took out his keys and started up the engine.

Tim sat right behind Jason

Jason: Make sure to hold on tight there. Don't want ya flying away now!

Tim did end up holding onto Jason tighter after hearing that

Jason pressed the button on his keychain to open the garage door and they headed off

Tim's expectation of Jason's driving was definitely subverted. He expected Jason to speed a lot, but in reality the older brother went at a normal pace.

He expected something more rowdy given the well, to put it lightly, rough first impression the younger had of Jason.

Jason riding his motorcycle put him more at ease. Which he still kept what Alfred told him in mind.

Once they got to the parking lot, Jason parked next to a bike rack and turned off the engine.

Jason: Alright, we're here

Jason took out the security cable and attached the motorcycle to the bike rack

Tim was about to say something about that but decided not to. I mean he does know that Jason of all people probably has more security on that bike than a normal person would anyways.

He's not wrong, Jason has several security mechanics on that bike. Never again would he ever let a motorcycle of his get stolen like back when he was 17, with the League of Assassins

Definitely was one of those times Jason had to make a believable lie to Ra's al Ghul that he didn't just experience a robbery

He still wonders if he actually fooled that old man

Anyways, Jason added a bunch of advance tech into his bike that ensured that no one would ever steal it. From the basics like an alarm system to the bike literally shocking the thief they try to mess with the bike or move it

It's Gotham, it's definitely happened before where Jason comes back and sees a thief or two on the ground next to his bike

He definitely didn't put as much voltage as he did if not even more and somehow still non-lethal with the symbol on his armor for when he's out as Red Hood

Jason let Tim lead the way since he never actually asked where Tim needed to go.

Also this mall is actually a lot more different the last time he's briefly been here with Dick a few months back

Tim was not exactly sure if Jason would even judge him or not for shopping at hot topic

Like yeah Jason's aesthetic sometimes kinda fits with Hot Topic, but Tim never saw anything that would indicate that Jason shopped there or was fine with it

The two brothers walked into Hot Topic and Tim walked up to one of the empty registers to ask for his pick up order

The cashier asked Tim for the order number on the email, which Tim easily brought up the number on his phone

Jason looked around the store, which Tim noticed

At first Tim expected Jason to say he didn't like the store but to his surprise again, Jason actually liked the store

Jason: It's been like forever since I last time was at a Hot Topic. Glad to see the place hasn't changed much. I should probably get a few things more often to have more stuff in the closet.

The younger brother felt really glad knowing that Jason has actually been to Hot Topic before

Jason: That reminds me, I need to rebuy some stuff cuz they uh... no longer fit me anymore. God I was so tiny back then.

Jason offered to give him his old hot topic shirts he had when he was 13. Which Tim accepted the offer and now wondered what Jason used to wear

The cashier from earlier comes back and gives Tim his order which were essentially Sanro and Jojo shirts

The cashier made sure the receipt and the typical $15 off coupon per $30 spent were in the bag. And wished the two a good day

Tim wrapped the bag up and put it inside his tote bag

Tim said that's all he needed and that he also wanted to look at some stuff in Barnes and Noble

Jason asked Tim if they could stay a bit longer just so he could rebuy some shirts and some new stuff as well

Tim agreed and witnessed Jason just walking through the store

Jason would pick out shirts from bands like Sum 41, Green Day, The 5.6.7.8’s, and Lunachicks

What made Tim get excited when he saw Jason look over a My Chemical Romance shirt

Tim couldn't help but ask Jason if he's listened to the band. Which Jason actually confirms he does listen to

Jason: Oh MCR? Yup I've listened to their songs back then, been listening since they started. It's crazy how well known they are these days.

Tim started talking to Jason more about other music groups that they both surprisingly had in common.

There's a few ones Jason never heard of but was willing to listen to when they go back home

Jason was actually glad that it's working out so far, he's actually able to have a conversation about their shared interests

Right before Jason went to go pay for the shirts he would end up buying, he saw Tim look at the pins bin. Who was eyeing a Sanrio bi pride pin

Jason offered to pay for the pin Tim was looking at but Tim semi panicked and tried acting like he wasn't looking at a pin to buy

Jason insisted to place the pin on the counter for him to buy, but Tim placed a different pin to what he was actually looking at. In hopes that Jason didn't see

Jason quietly exhailed through his nose and switched the pin that was on the counter with the exact bi pride pin Tim was looking at

Tim tried to calm down since he was concerned that Jason would judge him and be back at square one with Jason

However Jason reassured Tim that he accepts him

Jason: Don't worry kiddo, there's no shame with being yourself. If ya want me to keep it from Bruce and the others, I will.

Tim was really glad that Jason accepted him for being bi.

He hasn't really come out yet to everyone so he appreciated even more that Jason wasn't gonna tell anyone

Though Tim wouldn't be too surprised if Dick picked up on it

Jason paid for the stuff and the two went to Barnes and Noble

Tim was a lot more comfortable after that and essentially walked around each aisle for books that peeked his interest

Jason found it funny to see Tim walk around the bookstore being really excited to look at books

It reminded him of doing the same thing back then when he dragged Bruce around to help him pick out some books

Jason saw Tim pick up a book that he very much recognized and enjoyed a lot, Pride and Prejudice

Jason: You know, I actually have that book. I'll actually lend you the book if you actually wanna read it

Tim: Wait you actually read books to!? Ah wait that came out wrong I mean-

Jason laughed

Jason: No harm done, I knew what you meant. 'Guess it is surprising for me to be into book reading given that, well, I wouldn't say we met on "good terms".

Jason talked to Tim about books that he's read and how he'd eventually start frequenting the library with Bruce or Alfred accompanying him

Jason also talked about how he enjoyed Jane Austen's other works besides Pride and Prejudice, which Tim eagerly listen to

Tim enjoyed hearing Jason talk about an author that he never considered reading about

After their conversation around the store, Tim caught a glimpse of a book he's never heard of, Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

Fun Fact: Wuthering Heights was adapted into a movie a few times. And in the 2009 mini tv series version, the actor who plays Heathcliff (a major character in the book), would actually go on to later play Bane in Batman: The Dark Knight Rises.

Jason recalled reading some of that book but never got to finish it. He did give Tim a heads up that the book is being told from two different generations with the same names, so to keep that in mind if he was gonna buy it to not be confused

What Jason has said about the book, without spoiling anything, had interested Tim so he decided he was gonna buy it alongside the 6th volume of JoJo part 4

Tim gladly bought the books and put them inside his tote bag, which started to fill up. Didn't help that Jason also had his stuff in that bag

The two walked around the mall a little more and the two stumbled upon an arcade called Round One

Tim saw that Jason seemed interested in wanting to check the place out so he asked Jason if he'd like to check the place out

Jason was reluctant to but he'll admit, it's been forever since he's been to an arcade and this was a new one that seemed to pop up while he was kinda dead, so he accepted

The two walk in and Jason saw how different the claw machines were compared to the ones he's used to

Tim explained to Jason that those crane games were imported from Japan, which Jason was surprised to hear that they imported these claw machines

Though it didn't surprise him too much since he did recognize that some of the prizes were typically characters from anime or other Japanese mascots

Tim looked over the claw machines and dragged Jason to a claw machine that had a Pompurin plush as the prize

Tim looked at the counter on the claw and saw it was at 8, so he took out his game card and swiped his credits into the machine

Jason looked over Tim's determined face and back to the claw machine

The claw popped open and immediately closed onto the plush, thus winning Tim the plush

Tim gave the plush to Jason, telling him that it's for him

Jason tried holding back a smile but it seemed through

Tim: See it as a thank you present from what you bought me at Hot Topic

Jason thanked Tim and looked over the plush

He'll admit, it looks cute though he'd probably shock a few people if they see this sitting in his room somewhere

Though he doesn't mind because it's a gift from Tim

Jason looked at a specific spot on the plush

Jason: Uh Tim...

Tim: Yeah Jason?

Jason: Why does this plush have an asshole sewed on?

And then Tim saw Hatsune Miku

Jason was still questioning it as Tim started talking about the Hatsune Miku arcade machine and how to play the game

Jason found it a bit difficult to keep up with the notes, then again, he'd probably figure it out if he just played it enough times

Tim had him play the Disappearance of Hatsune Miku on hard mode right off the bat

Jason freaked out at how quick the notes went BUT he managed with an 83%

Never had Jason thought that he'd need to look at the notes and reaction time the same way he does as Red Hood

He'll eventually get Tim back for that

Eventually

Then lastly Tim brought Jason over to the mini food court section of round 1 and they got that $1 ice cream

Tim ordered strawberry

Jason ordered cookies and cream

Jason did advise Tim to not really get anything passed the ice cream just because Alfred was making pizza at home

Jason checked the time and said that he and Tim might as well eat the ice cream while heading back to the parking lot

The two brothers walked out of the arcade and headed to the parking lot while eating their ice creams

By the time they got there, there was already a thug attempting to steal Jason's bike

Jason stopped Tim before he would do anything and just smugly looked at the thief while finishing up his ice cream

Jason: Just watch Timbo

Seconds later the thief got electrocuted and knocked unconscious

Jason chuckled

Jason: Works like a charm

Tim: Uh shouldn't we do something about that???

Jason: I got it, don't worry

Jason proceeds to handcuff the thief to the bike rack and took out a notepad saying "This guy tried stealing a motorcycle, your welcome - Red Hood and Robin"

He took out a batarang that would alert the GCPD and put it right next to the note

Tim gave a confused look at Jason

Jason: What? Doesn't 'he' advise you to keep the utility belt on ya at all times?

Tim: I mean- yeah you're right. Let's go before the cops show up

Jason: Couldn't have said it better myself

The two put on their helmets and drove off

The ride back home went smoothly as well

For the most part, both brothers actually had a lot of fun spending time together for once

They never thought they'd share anything in common, but in fact they have

Alfred heard a knock on the door and saw that Jason and Tim came back just in time

Alfred made 3 pizzas with half being BBQ chicken and Hawaiian piza

Yes Tim will die on that Hawaiian pizza hill

Jason asked Alfred if Bruce was in the batcave yet, which Alfred said yes and also Dick was down there too

Jason made the best impulsive decision yet

Jason: How about we make those two eat as well?

The older brother didn't even wait for Tim to respond and just took a whole pizza down to the batcave

Tim: Um Jason, are you sure Bruce won't get mad?

Jason: Nah. Done this a few times with him and he sometimes just couldn't help it. The guy may seem cold when he's being Batman, but the dude is a sucker with spending family time

Tim didn't have time to object so he just quickly went to grab the paper plates in one of the cupboards and ran back to Jason's side

Alfred followed behind the two brothers, who happily took the rest of the pizzas down to the batcave

Jason carefully walked down the stairs and essentially announced himself to Bruce and Dick

Jason: I don't care what's going on, we're eating pizza right now!

Dick and Bruce were surprised by Jason's sudden change but welcomed it when they also saw that Tim was with Jason, who was on the verge of laughing

Dick: Jaybird, you are lucky that we are just dealing with figuring out what Calendar man is gonna do in a couple weeks right now

Bruce couldn't help but be happy to see Jason get out of his shell for a bit and especially getting along with his younger brother

This gave Bruce hope that Jason will stay on the right path for himself

They all dug into the pizza

Dick grabbing slices from both the BBQ chicken and Hawaiian

Jason grabbing just the BBQ

Meanwhile both Bruce and Tim got Hawaiian

Alfred was enjoying his tea, knowing that his plan worked

[ephemerensis]

Enough // Tim Drake x GN! Reader

Y/N is a vigilante moment even though i hate writing Y/N as a vigilante but I needed to write smth about an inferiority complex 2 cope asf and this is the only thing that made sense lmaoo i have finals this whole week pls send thots and prayers love u guys <3 HURT AND COMFORT + not proofread per usual

—

“Currently northbound, everything checks out. How’s it looking on your end?”

Tim’s voice sounded muffled behind the wind. He was using comms mid swing again, despite your countless protests against it for his safety.

“Everything is fine here too. I just checked the last two blocks.”

Or maybe he was just on a rooftop. It was windy after all, especially higher up where you were perched now, overlooking a small corner of the city.

“Sounds good, I’ll see you back at the cave.”

It bit into the side of your face, the parts your mask didn’t cover, chilled fingers running their course across your cheeks. A shiver ran down your spine. Your cape billowed violently beside you, sitting on the precipice as you were it felt as if it could pick you up at any moment. But tonight you didn’t particularly mind.

“Copy that.”

You had no intention of going back. At least not yet. There weren’t any cases to solve or villains to plot against and while it was nice to live in a place full of kind faces and warm gestures, it was difficult to hear your own thoughts when they were being drowned out by the ever flowing conversation of twelve other voices. Nights like these were your own.

Your eyes fluttered shut as you inhaled. If you focused on it enough, letting go of your mind to let it wander, it almost felt as if you were flying. Almost.

How did you get here?

The wind billowed noisily in your ears but in the silence of tempestuous isolation the question rung so clearly in your mind, it clung like the lingerings of a bell chime.

Of course you knew how you got on the roof. And you knew how to get home. And you knew you had a home.

You were happy— undoubtedly you were happy. Your friends were wonderful, your boyfriend loved you; if you didn’t blink twice the world would think you had it all.

Somehow you didn’t though. That’s how you got here. Because you don’t belong.

You felt the cold bite of your tears along your cheeks before you registered them falling.

It was easier some days to forget it; the days when everyone lounged around at home, fighting tooth and nail to avoid taking out the trash. When you wrestled with Jason over TV programs because he wanted to rewatch Riverdale “for the irony of it.” Arguing with Tim on some obscure rooftop about which Spiderman was the best one. Dinners with the family, feasing over Alfred’s food.

But you didn’t belong and you knew it.

Two weeks ago you lost a lead on the disappearances happening around downtown that Tim had to rectify for you. Before that, you scuffed a mission by getting caught; the others had to save you. What good were you?

Even if you did succeed. Your feats were nothing another couldn’t accomplish. It took you three weeks to right a low profile burglary, when Cass could’ve done it in three days. And you tried. As much as anyone could you tried, but trying isn’t enough because effort means nothing when it amounts to mediocrity.

The truth was, even with a full hand— you didn’t deserve your cards. The rest of them and the trauma they faced before getting here; what did you ever suffer for but a few minor inconveniences?

You don ’t belong.

And it was infuriating.

You don’t have the skill. You don’t have the talent. You don’t even have a sob story to your name. You are nothing and nothing you could ever do would be good enough. You would never be good enough.

“Hey.” A voice behind you drew you out of your thoughts, making you whip your head around. You’d thrown the knife you had in hand at the intruder before you could process it, habitually. It hit the door leading to the rooftop with a thud as a figure moved to avoid it. The black boots of Red Robin’s suit emerged from the shadows as he approached you with his hands up.

“Woah! Hey, it’s just me.”

The tension in your body settled as soon as you registered the symbol sprawled across his chest, turning yourself back around to resume your previous position.

“You could’ve radioed me.”

The boy shrugged as he perched himself beside you, legs dangling over the edge, mimicking you.

“You didn’t answer when I did.”

“Oh. I guess I just didn’t hear it.”

His eyes were on you as you stared at the skyline. Your hands were fidgeting, kneading the air between each other in something akin to discomfort. A beat of silence passed until he broke it.

“Wanna know a secret?”

Relief flooded your bones. If he asked you what was wrong you wouldn’t know what to say. It’s not like you could lie, not to him, and you couldn’t bring yourself to tell the truth.

“What happened?”

“Well, I was texting and grappling— like you said was stupid, and I hit a brick wall. And then I went home and told you I got into a huge fight that was super valiant and dangerous! Do you remember?“

You snorted. Two months ago he came back limping through the cave. His nose was broken, wrist was sprained, among other things. You gave him an earful then about how reckless he was that night after patching him up.

“You’re joking! I was worried sick when you just stopped texting me and then when you came back I felt terrible for not being there.” He shrugged again with a small smile.

“It was embarrassing! What else was I supposed to say? To be fair, the wall was looking pretty suspicious, I had to neutralize the target… But yeah! I’m not perfect— go figure!” You leaned over, resting your head on his shoulder with a chuckle.

“Honestly I think we should revoke your phone privileges.”

“How would I talk to you then?”

“I guess we’ll just have to ask Bruce about telepathy tech.” You felt his shoulders shake beneath your head as he laughed. His hand hand grabbed yours before you realized it earlier, drawing shapes over your palm with his gloved fingers.

“Wanna know something else?”

“What else, Timberly?” His nose crinkled at the nickname.

“I had the worst insomnia like three years ago! Which, it’s not like I don’t pull all-nighters anymore but I’m improved I swear! Wanna know what fixed it?”

“Oh please don’t say something corny, I might throw up.” Your teeth sank into your bottom lip to prevent the impending smile from forming.

“You thought I was gonna say you? Funny. Silly! Wrong!”

You gasped comically, pulling away, before slapping his arm with the hand he wasn’t holding.

“Timothy Jackson Drake!” He let go of your hand altogether to fish his phone out of his pocket with a coy smile planted firmly under his mask.

“Not so loud! My identity’s at stake.” After tapping at his screen for a few moments, he handed you the phone, “This is my one stop shop tried and true remedy for sleep support.”

Taking it, you took a look. You hadn’t taken the picture. Which makes sense because you were sleeping in it, on one of the couches in the manor on a sunny afternoon. Your nose was crinkled slightly because the sun was in your face, but it made it look like your skin was glowing.

Handing it back, internally satiated but outwardly bashful, you rolled your eyes, “So it was me anyways.”

“You should feel honored I’m blessing you with it! Any thoughts I have that keep me from sleeping? Gone! You’re pretty cool Y/N. I’ve never needed someone like I need you.”

Ah. So he knew. Wordlessly he knew.

“You need me?”

Somehow he always did. And all this was to make you feel better. And it did.

“Yeah. We all do.”

[planetwaynez]

Please besties vote in here who you want a fanfic next <3