Chapter Text
“Oh, crap, Bruce.”
Dick wakes up at the sound of Tim’s voice. He fights through the drugged fog of his mind to figure out what’s going on, and his gaze settles on Tim guiding Bruce to sit down on the cot next to Dick’s. Bruce’s lower face is covered in blood, the source clear from the bent angle of his nose. Dick doesn’t note any other injuries as he gingerly sits up, and is surprised at the evidence of Jason’s restraint. Bruce is staring at Tim with an expression Dick recognizes as ‘desperate’.
Good. He fucking should be desperate.
Tim goes to grab the necessary supplies once Bruce is seated.
“Hey Tim?”
“Yeah?”
“Bruce and I need a minute.”
Tim pauses and looks over at him.
“Um. I mean should we set his nose first?”
“I’ll take care of it.”
Dick gives him a soft smile as he steps away from the bed with a shrug.
“Wait, Dick, I need to speak with Tim—”
“Not until you’ve spoken with me.”
Dick doesn’t bother to hide the ice in his tone. Tim looks from Bruce to Dick with mild concern, but Dick gives him a reassuring nod. He’s gratified when Tim nods back, shooting Bruce one last concerned glance before turning and leaving the medbay.
“I really need to speak with Tim, now,” Bruce says, standing as if to follow his third son.
“Not until I’m sure you aren’t going to hurt him more than you already have,” Dick snaps, all pretense of calm vanishing.
Bruce actually flinches, but he meets Dick’s glare steadily.
“The contingency was a mistake. I never read it.” The forced calm in his tone makes Dick’s temper flare.
“A mistake,” he echoes. “You let Tim think he was an expendable tool for over three years and all you can say is it was a MISTAKE?"
“Of course I have more to say to Tim—”
Dick is on his feet, anger shoving aside the mild drug haze that had let him sleep earlier. Pain burns through his back at the sudden movement, but he welcomes the alertness it brings.
“What were you thinking? Tell me Bruce, really, how could you possibly give that assignment to a child who had nearly been tortured to death? And then APPROVE IT without reading it?”
“I know,” Bruce says, the faintest crack audible in his voice. “It was an intolerable oversight. But I can’t undo the past, and I need to let him know that I never thought of him that way.”
Dick should be reassured that his father had never intended such a heartless act. But for some reason, knowing it was an accident does little to dim his anger.
Three and a half years. Once mistake, and a child—his little brother—spent his formative adolescent years assuming he was—that he was—
“Dick,” Bruce says softly, and Dick becomes aware of the burning in his eyes and the tears wetting his cheeks. “I need to talk to Tim. Now.”
Bruce takes a step forward and reaches out a hand as if to clasp his shoulder, but Dick jerks back. Bruce pales and drops his arm. Dick feels vicious satisfaction at the pain on Bruce’s face. He knows he’s being unreasonable, knows Bruce never tried to hurt Tim, never tried to hurt any of them—
But Jason already killed the monster that forced Dick to hear his youngest brothers beg to be murdered, and Dick isn’t done with the rage and fear that consumed him in that moment.
“I’m not leaving you alone with him.”
“Dick—”
“I don’t trust you with him,” Dick snaps. “You can say your piece with me here.”
Bruce's brow furrows, pain morphing into something more stubborn on his face.
“I understand how upset you are, but you can’t dictate how and when I speak to my other children. I need to have this conversation with Tim alone.”
“No.”
“Tim needs—”
“If you really care about him, you’ll want me there to make sure you don’t fuck this up,” Dick sneered. “Like you usually do.”
Bruce’s jaw is tight with tension, and Dick can tell he’s focusing to keep his hands from curling into fists. Cruel satisfaction that he’s hit a nerve mixes unpleasantly with a jolt of guilt for deliberately hurting his father.
“I deserve that. I know.” Bruce’s voice is far more gentle than Dick expected, and he feels suddenly unbalanced to not have his vitriol returned in kind. That’s not…that isn’t how these fights are supposed to go.
Wrongfooted, Dick forces himself to listen as Bruce continues in a similarly careful tone. “But, Dick, if you are here, Tim won’t listen to me, not really. He’ll be trying to keep us calm, to fix this argument between us.”
Bruce is right. Dick hates that he’s right. His chest tightens painfully at the thought of leaving Tim alone with Bruce, but he can’t see a way around it. If Dick is there, Tim will focus on him and will try to help him and Bruce reconcile—just like he has so many times before.
Dick closes his eyes and forces himself to take a slow breath. He needs to cool off. He can feel his temper running away with him, and that’s not going to help Tim. He still wants to make someone hurt, but he can’t do that anymore without hurting Tim as well.
Depression settles uneasily over the anger as Dick calms enough to acknowledge the pointlessness of his rage. Bruce knows what he did wrong, and the monster that started this is dead. Dick didn’t protect Tim from Bruce’s idiocy back then and he didn’t protect any of his brothers from the monster—he was useless in both situations, and there’s nothing he can do now to change that.
The guilt of these failures echoes uneasily alongside an older, familiar regret. Dick knows he won’t ever completely forgive himself for how he handled Tim and Damian when Bruce was supposedly dead. Knowing that Tim had this in his head that entire time makes the shame burn so hot in his head he wants to raise his fist and beat cracks into his skull to get this sick, screaming self-loathing to leak out. He’s been trying to push back against the reminders, but as he loses outside targets for his anger, the stricken, betrayed expression on Tim’s face when he first saw Damian in the Robin uniform won’t leave his mind.
(At the time he thought he was conducting triage. He never meant to put Tim on the altar—but that doesn’t unspill all the blood Tim left in the desert or restore the guileless trust Tim used to hold for him.)
“Dick.” This time he lets Bruce’s hand descend carefully onto his shoulder, if only because he’s too preoccupied keeping the storm of emotions and memories off his face to move away. “You can see him right after. I…it would be best for you to be there. To make sure I didn’t…fail in my objective.”
Dick forces himself to breathe, to compartmentalize, to process what his father is saying. The awkwardness of Bruce’s words manages to extinguish the last of Dick’s anger at him. Bruce is trying. He’s trying so, so hard, and Dick knows he needs to encourage that. He can’t let his own guilt prevent Bruce from doing what he needs to do to make things better for Tim.
“Fine. Okay.” The words feel far away, as if spoken by someone else.
Dick pulls away from the hand on his shoulder. He doesn’t respond to Bruce’s quiet “thank you” as he leaves the medbay.
“Dick?”
Tim scrambles to his feet from where he was sitting on the floor outside. The sight of his little brother sends waves of remorse and relief crashing through him, all the horrible ‘what if’s’ from days past threatening to send him shaking to his knees. Dick pulls his little brother into his arms and squeezes, trying and failing to blink back the tears that are dripping onto Tim’s hair. Tim carefully returns the hug, leaning into him but only letting his hands ghost over the bandages. Dick wishes he would cling back, even if it would be agony on his wounds.
“You should stay in the medbay, I can talk with Bruce somewhere else,” Tim says, voice muffled in Dick’s chest. Dick waits a moment before answering, worried that a sob will escape the moment he opens his mouth.
“No,” he says once he’s sure he can speak calmly. He slackens his hold on the back of Tim’s head just enough so that Tim can tilt his head up to look at him. “I need to get out of the Cave.”
“Promise you’ll go rest in your room?”
“If you promise to come see me after talking to Bruce. Immediately after.”
“Okay. But I’m not going to wake you up if you’re asleep.”
Dick knows he won’t be, but he nods anyway.
He pulls back reluctantly and places his good hand against Tim’s cheek.
“I love you, Baby Bird. So much.”
Tim smiles, mildly embarrassed but obviously pleased. Unlike his other brothers, Tim always openly appreciated Dick’s clear statements of affection. “Love you too, Dick.”
Dick gives him a gentle kiss on the forehead before letting go and walking out of the Cave, waiting until he’s turned the corner to the stairs to begin brushing away his tears.
#
Sitting outside the medbay and waiting for Dick and Bruce to finish their talk, Tim focuses on his breathing to preempt the anxiety prowling around the back of his mind.
Tim has never been able to completely shake the fear that he’ll eventually overstay his welcome as a member of the Bat team and Wayne family. Anytime Bruce wants to have a Talk, Tim’s mind immediately reviews his past actions for any possible mistakes that might have finally been too significant, or any sign that he’s been made too redundant to be worth keeping around.
His logical mind tells him it’s a foolish worry. Over the past couple years, everyone has provided assurances—in the form of both words and actions—that he is part of the Wayne family. Tim might not be as close with the others, or as needed by the family as a whole, but he knows he’s a family member and has plenty of reasons to believe that status is permanent. But Tim’s life hasn’t led him to find much security in family.
As usual, he tries to focus on all the ways things have changed for the better:
Bruce apologized for his harsh treatment of Tim in the early days of their partnership, and he made it clear when he adopted Tim that it was because he considered him a son and wanted him to be legally recognized as part of his family. Since returning from the time stream, he’s done his best to respect Tim’s independence while still checking in regularly. He helped Tim switch from majority shareholder of WE to assistant director of R&D, and they have lunch together at least once a week. It’s all solid proof that Bruce loves him and wants him to be happy.
A few months after Bruce’s return, Jason apologized to Tim for his past attacks and promised to have his back. He’s kept to that promise, and reacts aggressively anytime a rogue or goon goes after Tim a little too hard. A year after that initial apology, Jason introduced him to Artemis and Bizarro as his “annoying little brother.” He makes food for Tim at least once a week, and he was the one who helped Tim get his GED. Given how Jason has never been one to quietly tolerate people he dislikes, it’s evidence enough that Jason wants him in his life.
Dick started calling Tim a brother barely six months into Tim’s Robin training. That relationship was shattered soon after Bruce’s “death,” but Dick never shied from doing the work necessary to heal it into something new and strong once Tim returned to Gotham. After many conversations (some louder than others), Tim came to understand that Dick wasn’t rejecting Tim when he gave Robin to Damian. Dick wanted Tim by his side and did everything he could to get him to stay, even if he did masterfully fuck up by passing on the mantle without talking to Tim first. Nowadays they are solid; it’s different from before, of course—too much has changed for their dynamic to simply return to its original form—but it’s good and real, and Tim trusts Dick again.
Even Damian gave Tim a stilted apology for the murder attempts and acknowledged that Tim was a member of the team, nearly a year ago now. It was obviously done on Dick’s insistence, but the formal language of it was sincere. Damian’s sense of honor wouldn’t let him go back on such a direct statement, and he hasn’t physically attacked Tim since then. He and Damian still aren’t close, but Tim trusts him in the field and they’ve had a few good moments discussing art or taking care of Damian’s turkey (Tim and Jerry have bonded ever since that time they were both chased by a particularly angry possum that got into the barn).
So there’s no reason to be worried. Tim knows he’s part of the family, and he trusts that Bruce won’t cast him out…mostly.
Of course, the trouble with deep wounds is that they leave scars. Sometimes the evidence doesn’t feel like enough, and he finds himself staring at the old injuries, waiting for them to split back open and bleed.
Before he can begin to spiral, Dick leaves the medbay. He gives Tim a tight hug and those impossibly sincere words, and it’s enough to bolster his confidence; Tim walks into the medbay with the old worries merely whispering instead of shouting.
Bruce is sitting on one of the cots, his broken nose still bloody and unbandaged. He looks up when Tim enters and gives him the faintest smile, but his eyes are sad and tired.
“Bruce?” Tim asks carefully, going to his side.
“Hello, Tim. Thank you for waiting.” He gestures to the chair beside the cot and Tim takes a seat.
“Of course.”
They stare at each other, both sitting with the stiffness of uncertainty. It’s obvious Bruce wants to say something, but he can’t seem to force the words out. Luckily there’s an easy solution to end the awkward stalemate.
The materials for fixing Bruce’s nose lay unused on the nearby cot, and Tim picks up the damp washcloth to clean off the blood.
“Let’s fix your nose,” Tim says steadily, falling into a familiar routine. In his early days as Robin, Tim gained plenty of experience with Bruce’s various silences, and he learned that it was best to address any physical needs first, whether that meant bandaging wounds, forcing him to drink or eat, or dragging him to his room and shoving him onto the bed.
Bruce doesn’t say anything, but he nods once, the tension in his brow relaxing into something that might be gratitude. Tim wipes away the blood and resets Bruce’s nose without preamble. Bruce lets out a short groan as the bone scrapes into place, but doesn’t protest as Tim goes about preparing the dressing. Since Bruce still isn’t speaking, Tim begins to talk.
“Humboldt has been apprehended. The evidence I’ve gathered includes all his bank statements since February….”
Tim goes through all the details of the case he’s built as he tapes Bruce’s nose, gives him a mild pain reliever, and then puts an ice pack in his hand and guides it up to his face. By the time he’s finished disposing of the bloody cloths, Bruce’s stillness has settled into something less stiff, and he’s watching Tim with an odd softness. His gaze feels strange to Tim, but not unpleasant.
“Okay, done,” Tim says, briskly disposing of the bloodied materials.
“Thank you.”
His tone is normal enough, and Tim judges that it’s safe to prod the conversation along. He goes back to the chair and sits in it cross-legged, facing his adoptive father.
“What did you want to talk with me about?” Tim asks, his tone carefully neutral. The anxiety that had all but vanished while Tim was providing medical aid heats back to a simmer, and Tim exerts some effort to keep his body language open and calm.
Bruce certainly isn’t helping Tim’s nerves at the moment. He doesn’t respond immediately, staring at Tim’s face as if searching for something.
“Bruce?” Tim prompts softly. Bruce blinks a few times and straightens.
“Tim, I need to talk with you about LPC 0108.”
“Okay.” Did Jason convince Bruce he had to change it?
“I should never have asked you to complete that contingency plan. It was—an inappropriate assignment for your age and situation.”
“...Okay.” Tim wants to investigate that further, but he can tell Bruce has more to say, and it would be better to have all the information before he begins asking questions.
“But what was worse is that I didn’t review your submitted plan before confirming it.”
Tim is stunned. Bruce approved Tim’s plans without reviewing them? That’s either a massive show of trust or…oh. Of course.
“You didn’t really need those plans, did you?” Tim says tiredly. “It was busy work.”
“Tim, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
And before he can rush to reassure him, Tim is shocked into complete silence because Bruce—Bruce is crying.
“I didn’t look at the plans, but Tim, you need to know I never would have approved 0108 if I’d read it. You are absolutely not the first option for a suicide mission. I wouldn’t—I would never allow you to do something like that, not while I’m still breathing. You’re my son, Tim. I love you, and I will never see you as an acceptable sacrifice.”
The words don’t make sense right away, lagging in Tim’s consciousness as he tries to process what he observes—the tears, the sincere tone, and the warm hand gently placed over his own in his lap.
He realizes that he needs to respond and opens his mouth.
“Oh.”
Brilliant, 10/10, Tim thinks, feeling…feeling too much.
I would never allow you to do something like that, not while I’m still breathing.
Why does hearing that make Tim feel so weightless? The contingency plan was valid, not personal. He knew Bruce loved him, the plan was just…part of the job. They had to compartmentalize, and Tim got that, he’d never been bothered by the idea that Bruce thought he was the least useful Robin, or that he’d send him on a kamikaze operation, because it was just—it was the mission. And the mission came first, right? And Tim was always fine with that, he was fine —
“Oh, sweetheart,” Bruce murmurs, and Tim is suddenly pulled into a strong embrace. His vision is blurry and his face is wet as he presses against his father’s chest.
You’re my son, Tim. I love you, and I will never see you as an acceptable sacrifice.
Why did it mean so much? Why did it make his heart ache, like it was breaking and being sewn together all at once? Tim was used to sacrifice long before he was a vigilante. His biological parents made sure of that, made it clear that they all needed to sacrifice for the family, for the company.
They’d certainly never hesitated to sacrifice their time with him, after all.
“I’ve got you, Tim. My boy. I’ll never give you up, do you understand, Tim? You’re too important to me,” Bruce says, and Tim feels a few stray tears drop onto his head. He’s shaking slightly as he clings to his dad, unable to speak, but Bruce doesn’t push him away or try to make him calm down. He just rubs comforting circles around Tim’s back, pressing a kiss to the top of his head and rocking slightly.
And for once, Tim isn’t the slightest bit worried that Bruce is going to let go.
#
Tim doesn’t remember falling asleep. He wakes with a mild headache and the faint pain of dried tears in his eyes. He blinks his eyes open and finds himself in Bruce’s room, ensconced in blankets and brothers.
“That’s not in the Scrabble dictionary.”
“Look Dickhead, ‘agreeance’ is a word, I read it just last week.”
“No, you said I couldn’t use ‘cray’ earlier because it wasn’t in the dictionary.”
“That’s because ‘cray’ is slang. ‘Agreeance’ is a regular fucking word.”
“No it’s not! You probably read it in one of your ancient books. It’s archaic.”
“The 1800’s are not ancient, oh my god Dick….”
Tim finds himself smirking and then lets out a wide yawn as he shifts himself into a sitting position. Jason and Dick both let out dismayed yells as they hurry to steady the Scrabble board that was placed over Tim’s legs.
“Finally,” Damian says with great irritation. “Timothy is awake. We can put this ridiculous game away.”
“Aw, Dami, you’re not still grumpy because ‘hanbok’ wasn’t in the official dictionary, are you?”
“If ‘kimono’ is valid, there’s no reason for ‘hanbok’ not to be valid as well!” Damian snaps.
“I’m with Damian on that one,” Tim offers as he settles into his new position. Dick is lounging on his side to Tim’s right while Jason sits cross-legged on his left. Damian is at the foot of the bed with Alfred the cat in his lap.
“Thank you, Timothy. Apparently your concussion is healing,” Damian says primly as he glares at Dick. Tim’s eyes widen at Damian’s use of his first name, but he stops himself from commenting.
“Here, drink,” Jason says, passing Tim a glass of water from the bedside table. Tim takes it quickly, well-aware Jason will simply pour it on him if he tries to refuse.
The bedroom door opens and Bruce and Alfred walk in, both carrying food trays.
“Perfect timing!” Dick says. He gives Tim a quick kiss on the head and then rolls off the bed to help set out the food. Tim feels a brief flash of embarrassment when he looks at Bruce, remembering the overwhelming emotion of their earlier talk, but Bruce just gives him a gentle smile in return and Tim finds himself smiling back—a real smile, not one pasted on just to assure others that he’s fine.
Alfred has prepared a picnic-style meal, and Bruce’s Alaskan King bed is plenty large enough to fit them seated in a circle (Alfred refuses to join on the bed of course, but he does take a seat beside the bed and pour himself a cup of tea). After sitting up, Jason wraps an arm around Tim and hauls him close with the pretense of making room for Bruce, and when Dick returns to his place he sits close enough for his foot to rest against Tim’s leg. Bruce prepares a plate for him, and Damian fussily adds to it, as “Timothy never eats enough.”
And as he eats his tea sandwiches and blueberries, warmed by the closeness and affection of his family, Tim feels truly chosen—not as a sacrifice or a tool to be used, but as a brother, son, and grandson. As something wanted.
He laughs freely as Jason and Dick banter over cinnamon rolls and thinks, I could get used to this.