Chapter Text
Timothy Jackson Drake's first near death experience happened when he was fourteen. He and his father had been trying to repair a relationship marred with neglect and years of regret, just after his mother had died, and Timothy had stepped out of the conversation (read, argument) by going outside for a walk. Y'know, to cool off. As one does.
Gotham, however, had other plans. The city had been plagued by an incredibly fast spreading - haha - plague; the Ebola Gulf-a, common name, apocalypse virus. Everyone quarantined, toilet paper was treated like gold dust. Etcetera.
Tim took precautions, of course he did. The virus was airborne, so he covered up. All gloved and masked up like some surgeon.
But he still caught the virus because his immune system had always had it in for him, and the worst part is he hadn't even realised at first.
He came home, coughing, wheezing so hard for the first time since he tried a rocoto chile for the first time, and was holed away in his bedroom. For a long freaking time. At least until his father could prove he wasn't infected but obviously things just went downhill from there.
The virus consumed him, turned said immune system into a weapon against him. He felt his body tense, his muscles clenched like a raisin, bleeding eyes, pores swelling with welts - it was a storm of all sorts of nasty and he was in the thick of it.
And yet, he survived.
Once the sickness had fully passed, and word got out that Timothy Jackson Drake had survived the Great Apocalypse Plague, his father had given him a choice:
Let doctors and scientists draw blood from him and figure out how to replicate his immunity, or decline, hoping to recover as quickly and peacefully as he could, while the rest of Gotham burned to hell around him (about 80% metaphorical).
Tim, with his innate hero complex, agreed to the blood tests.
It seems that in spite of recovering from a disease that could be akin to cancer, parents will still be parents. It seems even after beating Ebola's pissy new variant, his father refused to let Tim's previously arranged spot at a boarding school to go to waste.
Sure, it had been too expensive to let go, and sure, in the end, his father had still insisted on getting a private room for his poor, sickly son . But c'mon. The prestige was enough to make him sick, the place reeked of snobbery and expensive shoe polish.
Oh, How Tim hated the looks of pity he got from the administrative staff, looking at the list of conditions and allergies he'd developed after the plague had passed. It had been hell trying to document them all, and the list was at least one and a half pages long.
In A4.
It was distressing, quite honestly.
But soon, move in day came along, and all of Tim's belongings were moved in to the private boarding room, posters on the wall, bedding sorted. Classes would officially start in three days, though Tim had his timetable pinned to the bulletin board next to pictures of Gotham's infamous cryptid, Batman and his -now dead- sidekick, Robin.
Bruce Wayne and his son, Jason Todd. Tim had figured that little tidbit of information when he was nine. He had planned on confronting Bruce before the plague had spread, but his father had come home, his mother had died, his father had been comatose.
The last three years had not been good to him, but his father promised.
He promised that this would be a fresh start.
He'd be out of Gotham, safer here, less likely to catch anything because he was alone.
And as Tim sat down on his bed and looped his arms around his knees, he realised just how alone he actually was.