Chapter Text
It had been the kind of Friday that dragged on, like an insolent child with heels dug in the dirt. And Dick, like the professional he was, had dragged himself through it—through four separate tantrums in his toddler classes, through two confrontations with indignant parents at pick-up, through scrubbing half the gym mats clean of an unidentifiable gunk that had spawned overnight, through the rain-soaked walk to his car, through a long slow-moving line at the grocery checkout, and through the four flights of stairs between him and his apartment. The tension slowly began to leave his shoulders as he climbed closer and closer to the top floor. He was more than ready to drag himself through his front door and directly into bed.
Then he spotted his visitor, and all plans for a restful night in went right out the window.
The boy was on the ground, his back to the door. A large backpack sat between his legs, and his white-knuckled grip on the straps made it clear that he wasn’t going to let go of it for anything. It took Dick a moment to place the boy’s face, but once he did he had to fight back a sigh. The only reason he didn’t immediately turn around and retreat down the stairs was the fact that he had two full bags of groceries he needed to put away.
It wasn’t that Dick disliked Tim Drake, really. But if Dick made a ranking of everyone he would be excited to receive a surprise visit from, Tim probably wouldn’t even break the top fifty. He could guess at Tim’s reason for visiting, and he was certain that it wasn’t a social call. It was the last conversation Dick wanted to have, and Tim was the last person he wanted to have it with.
Not to mention that Dick’s temper was even shorter than usual because of how poorly he’d been sleeping for the past few weeks. He might be more equipped to handle a conversation with Tim if those awful nightmares would leave him alone for just one full night.
Dick had been having nightmares about Jason since his death. They had varied in form and intensity, but they always followed the same basic formula: Dick left Jason behind. By the time Dick realized his mistake and went back for him, he was already too late. Sometimes he left Jason in a burning skyscraper, flames climbing higher and higher. At the base of a dark staircase, something lurking in the shadows behind him. At the bottom of a well, the water level slowly climbing. In an empty warehouse, rigged to explode. Most recently, a round concrete tunnel that echoed with agonized screams. And everywhere he turned, in every iteration of his dream, those damn symbols. Gouged into wood, carved into stone, sliced into skin. He never remembered them clearly enough to draw them out when he woke.
More often than not, Dick jolted upright in bed with his last desperate apologies still spilling from his mouth. For the past two weeks, he hadn’t had a single undisturbed rest. The dreams had repeated themselves no less than three times the previous night, so Dick was currently running on about two hours of sleep. The mere idea of having to deal with the kid was wearing on his frayed nerves.
It had been exactly two weeks since the incident at Haly’s. Exactly two weeks since Dick had patiently listened to Tim’s arguments, nodded along to his reasoning, carefully examined his photos, and then politely but firmly told the little stalker to leave him the fuck alone.
He wouldn’t have been so harsh with Tim if not for the fact that he was just so exceptional. There had been a shining and painful moment, however brief, when he had looked at Tim and pictured him in a domino mask. It had fit his face so well that it turned Dick’s stomach. The earnest quirk to his eyebrows, the awkward twitch of his smile—Dick could easily see how the mask would have smoothed that all away into the cocky smirk of a child vigilante who thought himself invincible. All he’d have to do would be to bring Tim to the manor and introduce him to Bruce. Tim, the little force of nature that he was, would have handled it from there.
But when he thought about the Bat getting his claws into another bright-eyed, clever, dedicated kid, he knew that he just couldn’t do it. Tim was qualified—too qualified. Untrained, but brimming with raw potential. If he and Bruce ever ended up in the same room, there’d be no saving him.
So, instead of following his screaming gut and taking the kid to the manor, Dick had taken a deep breath, looked Tim straight in the eyes, and told him to leave him the fuck alone.
Clearly the message hadn’t sunk in, because now he was right back at Dick’s door. Dick couldn’t even pretend he wasn’t home, because Tim had beaten him there.
Maybe some things were inevitable, but Dick couldn’t help but feel that it was still somehow his fault.
The two bags of groceries in his hands were growing heavier the longer he stood there, and it wasn’t like he could just not go inside. His ice cream would melt.
“Pretty sure I told you to buzz off,” he said shortly, adjusting his grip on the bags and starting down the hall towards his door.
Tim jolted at his words and turned, wide-eyed, to face Dick. “You’re early,” he blurted out, scrambling to his feet. “You usually take thirty minutes for a grocery run, plus ten on either end for travel, and you only got out of work twenty minutes ago.”
Dick closed his eyes and silently begged the universe for strength. Tim didn’t look nearly as embarrassed as he should about the level of surveillance he was admitting to.
“Work ended early.”
Tim’s face scrunched a little, like he was doing some quick mental calculations. “Kaity canceled her session?” he asked after a moment.
“Jesus.” Dick shoved his key into the lock, trying to ignore the familiar anger burning at the base of his throat. “Do I even want to ask why you know my students’ names?”
“It’s all in your gym’s database,” Tim said, looking a little offended. “I only went in to get your work schedule, and your solo sessions all have the students’ names listed. It’s not like I have your class rosters memorized.”
“Right, because that makes all the difference. Where the hell are your parents?” Dick asked, shoving the door open and heading inside.
Tim followed him in and shut the door behind him, pausing to slip out of his sneakers. “They’re at home.”
“Another thing,” Dick said, setting his bags down hard on the counter and turning to face Tim. “Don’t follow people into their apartments without being invited.”
Tim frowned. “But this is important.”
Dick scoffed and didn’t reply. He started putting away his food, setting boxes and bags on the counter, depositing his ice cream in the freezer. Tim hung back, his backpack held tightly in front of his body like a shield. His eyes were round and wide, and underlined with heavy dark circles. Dick knew that he probably looked no better, but he was an adult vigilante with a full-time day job. Tim, who had no such excuse, looked dead on his feet.
He was about to offer him a chair or something when Tim spoke up.
“I went to see Bruce.”
Dick’s hands spasmed and he nearly dropped the bag of frozen peas he was holding. “You what?” he demanded, pivoting on the spot to glare at him. This was exactly what he’d been trying to avoid, the whole reason he’d been so harsh on the kid in the first place.
Tim at least had the decency to shrink under Dick’s gaze. “I went to the manor,” he said quietly. “Last weekend.”
“Why.”
Tim finally set his backpack on the ground. The heavy thud echoed through the entire apartment.
“Same reason I came to you,” he said, hands braced on his hips. “He’s dangerous. He’s going to cross a line someday soon, and somebody’s going to end up dead.” It was obvious, from the carefully controlled tremble in Tim’s voice, that he was including Bruce in the list of potential casualties.
“He’s still seriously injured from that stuff with Two-Face, even two weeks later,” he continued. There was a brutal efficiency to his demeanor, like he was presenting an argument to a panel of investors. “If he had taken those two weeks off to heal, he would be in fighting form by now. But he’s continually aggravating the injury and drawing out the recovery time longer, endangering himself in the process.
“He’s clearly still favoring his left side, and it’s obvious enough that even untrained muggers and pickpockets have been able to pick up on it and use it against him. One lucky strike on his injured knee is enough to ground him, which is an insane liability for someone as careful as Batman to ignore.
“The only reason he survived that confrontation with Two-Face at all was because Nightwing was there, and you almost didn’t make it out either. It was way too close, and you both could have died.”
Dick’s bad shoulder throbbed. He really didn’t want to think about how Tim had gathered so much information on the Two-Face fight, nor did he want to dwell on how closely Tim must have been following Batman to witness all of those fights on patrol.
He sighed and shoved the frozen peas into the freezer. “We have close calls all the time. It’s part of the job.” He slammed the freezer shut and turned to look at Tim, arms folded across his chest. “Look kid, you did your due diligence already. You told me Batman needed backup, I backed him up, and we both made it out. I wouldn’t have been in Gotham at all if you hadn’t showed me those photos, so you can sleep soundly knowing that you’re the reason Batman’s still alive. You did good work, but that’s the end of it. I don’t want you getting mixed up in this stuff any more than you already have.”
Tim answered this with a truly impressive glower. “If you didn’t want me getting mixed up in it, then maybe you should actually try fixing it.” He took a step forward and jabbed an accusing finger toward Dick’s chest. “He’s still running around Gotham beating people half to death—do you know how many ambulances I’ve had to call?!”
“Kid—”
“He’s refusing to let his injuries heal like some messed up form of passive self-harm! At this point, it’s not even a question of whether or not he’s going to cross a line, it’s just a waiting game to see what line he crosses first! You backed him up against Two-Face one time, big deal. It obviously didn’t do shit, since nothing's changed!”
“Kid,” Dick said again, more impatiently.
“My name is Tim.”
“I know that,” Dick said defensively, caught so off-guard that he momentarily forgot to be angry. “We met two weeks ago, it’s not like I forgot your name.”
Tim shot him an odd look. Instead of questioning him on it, Dick turned back to his groceries and shoved the last of them into the pantry.
“So you went to see Bruce,” he prompted eventually, when the silence had stretched too long.
“Yeah.”
“How’d that go for you?”
“Fine.”
“Fine,” Dick repeated, unconvinced.
“Sure,” Tim said. “It was fine. I just figured that maybe you’d be more willing to go back to being Robin if he was the one who asked, not some random kid. So I told him what I knew, and I asked him to talk to you about partnering up again.”
Dick pressed his hands to his face and stifled a disbelieving laugh. “Yeah, uh,” he said after a moment, trying and failing to keep the bitterness from his voice. “Bruce and I really aren’t on great terms at the moment.”
“Well I know that now.”
Which meant that Bruce had said something to Tim. Something about Dick, something that would clue Tim in to the fact that the two of them could barely stand to be in the same room.
He swallowed the question before it could scald his tongue. It didn’t matter what Bruce said about him, because Bruce’s opinion didn’t matter to him. Bruce could say whatever he liked, Dick had no reason to care.
“Okay,” Dick said after a tense pause that lasted an eternity. “So you understand why I can’t just be Robin again.”
“Yeah,” Tim said. “That’s not what I’m here to talk about.”
Dick rubbed his face in exhaustion and glanced at the clock. “Look, how long do you think…whatever this is,” he gestured at Tim, “is gonna take?”
“Neither of us has anywhere else to be,” Tim said, tilting his head to the side.
“I could have plans,” Dick said. “I’m a wild and spontaneous twenty-something bachelor. I could be going out on the town tonight. You don’t know.”
Tim frowned. “Are you?”
“I could be,” Dick said.
“But you’re not.”
Dick poured himself a glass of water to avoid answering.
“You want a drink?” he asked, glancing over at Tim.
“I’m good.”
“Suit yourself.” He took a long swig. Then, “So your parents are at home. Do they know where you are?”
“Duh.”
Dick gave him a skeptical look.
“They do!” Tim said. “What, you think they just wouldn’t notice if I disappeared for an entire afternoon? Dad paid for my bus ticket.”
“Okay. And when are they expecting you back?”
“Oh, not until morning,” Tim said, waving a hand. “I’m crashing at my friend’s place tonight, and his mom is driving me back tomorrow. It’s no trouble for her, she commutes to Gotham anyway.” He held Dick’s gaze for several long seconds, as if silently daring him to call his bluff.
Finally, Dick sighed and turned away. “Fine. Whatever. Do you like Thai food?”
Tim looked at Dick suspiciously. “...Why?”
Dick pulled open his junk drawer and extracted his stack of takeout menus. “I’m ordering food. You made it sound like this was gonna take a while, so I’m planning ahead for my union-mandated dinner break.”
“Is there actually a superhero and vigilante union?”
“God, I wish,” Dick muttered. “Maybe we should organize. I’ll talk to the Titans about it.” He glanced up at Tim. “The union-mandated thing was a joke, but the dinner break wasn’t. If you’re gonna be here for another few hours, I’m gonna feed you. So is Thai cool?”
Tim was silent for a lot longer than Dick was strictly comfortable with. He did his best to ignore it, busying himself with his favorite Thai restaurant’s menu.
“I don’t want to impose,” Tim said at last, voice oddly flat.
“We’re well past that,” Dick said. “You’re the one who invited himself in.”
Another long silence.
“So, Thai?” Dick said eventually.
“That sounds nice.”
Dick passed the menu to Tim without another word. Then he jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “I’m gonna go change into comfier clothes, then I’ll call the order in.”
Tim was already pulling his phone out of his pocket. “I’ll send money to cover my food,” he said.
Dick frowned. “Uh, no. You’re like twelve.”
“Thirteen,” Tim corrected absentmindedly, pulling up an app that Dick didn’t recognize. “And it’s fine, I’ve got a food allowance for the weekends.”
He looked slightly ridiculous, standing in the middle of Dick’s entryway in his oversized sweatshirt, designer jeans that probably cost more than Dick’s rent, and mismatched socks. He had the takeout menu in one hand and his phone in the other, and he was glancing back and forth between the two like they were of equal gravity. There was something distinctly and unsettlingly Bruce-like about his demeanor, though Dick couldn’t immediately put his finger on what.
After a few moments, he handed the menu back to Dick, silently pointing at the dish he’d like to order. “Let me know the delivery fee too, so I can cover my half of that,” he said, returning his attention to his phone.
“Kid,” Dick said, glancing down at the menu to make sure he remembered the meal Tim had indicated. “I’m the one that offered takeout. This is my apartment. I’m an adult. You’re not paying a cent.”
Tim’s eyebrows furrowed, but he didn’t look up from his phone. “It’s the polite thing to do,” he said. “Do you want it in your checking or savings?”
Dick rubbed a hand across his mouth, trying to think of another angle. “First of all, please don’t direct deposit into my bank account,” he said after a moment. “I can’t even begin to explain how invasive that is.”
Tim’s slight frown deepened. “Oh.”
“Just, like, Venmo me or something if you’re so determined. But seriously don’t worry, I’ll take care of it.”
Tim’s head snapped up. “I didn’t ask you to take care of anything,” he said firmly. His voice was too hard, his words too fast, all the ease of the conversation drained away in an instant.
Dick blinked. In the very back of his mind, a quiet alarm bell went off. “You’re right,” he said slowly. “My bad.” He wasn’t sure what he was apologizing for. His phone vibrated in his hand, and he glanced down to see that Tim had indeed sent him some money. That was fine. He just made a mental note to send it back later.
Tim nodded once, then looked away. Somewhat bashfully, he nudged his backpack with one foot.
“Where can I…”
“Just leave it by the couch, that’s where I usually eat,” Dick said.
Tim hoisted the backpack into his arms and slunk over to the couch like a chastised animal.
“You gonna be good while I get changed?”
“I’m not three.”
Dick raised his hands in mock-surrender. “Got it,” he said. “Well, remotes are in the center drawer on the coffee table. Put on some baby sensory videos or whatever.”
“Joke’s on you, I love baby sensory videos,” Tim muttered. Dick watched for a moment to make sure he was actually settling down, and then retreated into his bedroom to change and call in the order.
Tim picked a TV show at random and tucked himself into the corner of the couch to wait. He found almost immediately that he was completely incapable of paying attention to the television. He lowered the volume until it was almost silent, so the noise wouldn’t bother Dick. Then, after a few minutes, he turned on the subtitles so it at least looked like he was actually watching it.
He could hear Dick moving around in his bedroom, the opening and closing of dresser drawers, the shuffling of sock-clad feet, the low tones of a voice on a phone call. It was…well, it was weird. Tim’s house always sounded empty, whether his parents were home or not. It was a large house with thick walls, and none of them were the type to shout from the next room.
Tim lowered the volume on the TV to zero. It helped cut back on the ambient noise, but only a little. At home, every footstep echoed. In Dick’s small, cozy apartment, Tim felt like any noise he made might be smothered. It was a different kind of oppressive, one that prickled uncomfortably just beneath his skin.
Nothing had gone to plan. Tim had intended to march into the apartment and give Dick his pitch. He’d been prepared to argue his case. He’d been prepared to blackmail Dick, if it came to that. Instead, Dick had come home early, and thrown Tim completely off balance. With his plan interrupted, Tim had been left to stammer out incomplete answers to Dick’s questions. He hadn’t said a single thing he’d actually intended to say. He’d brought evidence.
But Dick had told him to put something on the TV, and now he was ordering them dinner. It didn’t make sense, it wasn’t what he’d planned on, and now Tim was stuck. He clenched the edge of the couch cushion in his hands, gripping tightly like he might fall off if he loosened his hold. It made the room feel a little more real, if only momentarily.
After what felt like hours, Dick reappeared, now dressed in a loose black shirt and a pair of sweatpants. He smiled at Tim, and it was just as disarming as Tim had always found it. How had Dick lived in Gotham high society for as long as he had, and still somehow never lost that unashamed grin?
“Did you want a snack or something?” Dick asked. “I’ve got baby carrots, pita chips…maybe some other stuff, I’d have to check. I don’t want you to fill up before dinner, but if you’re hungry, I don’t want to keep you waiting.”
Any words Tim could have said in reply got stuck in his throat. So he just shook his head.
“A drink, then. Water? Milk? Tea? I’ve got a few kinds without caffeine.”
Tim shook his head again.
Dick frowned, and Tim immediately changed course. Dick was being a good host, and Tim was being rude. His mother would have been horrified at his manners. His grip on the couch tightened even further.
“Water,” he forced out. Then, remembering himself, “Please.” It barely sounded like a word to his own ears, but Dick seemed to understand just fine.
“You want ice? A straw?”
Tim stared at the man in despair. He could not possibly keep answering all of these questions, especially since neither question had a simple answer.
He only wanted ice if the water was going to be lukewarm. If it was room temperature or cold, the ice would only get in the way and make his head hurt. And if the ice was the wrong size, or if there was too much of it, it would affect the taste of the water itself.
The straw was a whole other beast. Disposable plastic straws made him feel guilty, but paper straws gave him full-body shivers whenever his teeth brushed against them. Glass straws made horrible sounds, and the feeling of his teeth occasionally squeaking against the glass made him want to tear his skeleton out. Soft silicone was fine, but Tim had a tendency to chew right through it, so metal was the safest option for everyone involved. He couldn’t possibly explain all that, least of all to Nightwing.
But Dick just stayed there, expression open and unbothered.
Finally, Tim just shook his head.
Dick didn’t seem convinced, but he vanished into the kitchen.
He returned moments later with the water, and set it down on the table in front of Tim. At least he didn’t try to hand it to him—Tim wasn’t sure what he would have done if he had. Cried, maybe. And that would have been humiliating to an unbearable degree.
“Ooh, good taste,” Dick said.
Tim glanced up at him. Dick was standing off to the side, hands on his hips, looking at the TV screen. He noticed Tim looking, and shot him a smile.
“This is one of my favorites, haven’t watched it in years.”
“I’ve never seen it,” Tim mumbled, silently scolding himself for his poor enunciation.
“Well, it’s a great show,” Dick said brightly. “Hey, is the TV muted? Couldn’t you find the volume control?”
“I usually watch shows on mute,” Tim lied easily. Better to let Dick think he was weird than to let him think he was weak.
As Tim expected, Dick’s face pinched up a little at that. “Huh,” he said. “Okay.” Then he crossed in front of the TV and brushed a hand against the light switch. Immediately, the overhead light flicked off, plunging the living room into darkness. The light from the kitchen filtered out from either side of the wall that separated them, so the room wasn’t completely unlit, and the TV gave off its own blue-white glow.
In spite of himself, Tim felt his grip on the edge of the cushion loosening slightly. He eyed Dick warily as he moved over to the large standing floor lamp in one corner of the room and turned it on, filling the room with a low golden light that was much easier on Tim’s cluttered mind. Then, as if his bizarre attunement to Tim’s weird sensibilities was the most normal thing in the world, he plopped himself down in the opposite corner of the couch.
“Any better?” he asked.
Still not entirely sure this wasn’t some kind of trap, Tim nodded slowly. “Thanks,” he said.
“No sweat,” Dick said, turning his attention to the muted television.
Tim wasn’t completely sure what he was supposed to do with all of that.
So the kid didn’t like noise. Or bright lights. No big deal, neither did Bruce. Or Alfred, for that matter. Dick had always been the odd one out, finding comfort in crowds and well-lit rooms, in cheers and laughter and blinding stage lights. He’d gotten used to compromising, when he still lived at the manor.
So the dimly lit room was fine. Not ideal, but fine. Dick just…couldn’t really stay focused on the show, despite it being a childhood favorite of his. He did his best, but subtitles had always been a bit of a challenge for him—Bruce thought it was probably dyslexia, Dick thought it was probably just because English was his third language. They were probably both right.
He glanced over at Tim, only to see that he wasn’t paying much attention either. He was more interested in picking at the skin around his nails than watching the screen.
Dick tapped his leg a few times, thinking. Then he said, “We don’t have to keep watching this if you’re not feeling it.”
Tim’s thumb was on the power button before Dick could finish his sentence, and the TV clicked into darkness. “Cool,” he said. “I wasn’t, really.”
Dick snorted, then gestured at the small lamp on the end table beside him. “Can I turn this on too?”
With Tim’s hesitant nod, Dick gave the chain a little tug, and the room lightened a bit more. Still not as bright as Dick liked it, but maybe bright enough to keep his brain online. “Just tell me if it’s too much,” he said, though he hoped it wouldn’t be.
Tim’s eyes had scrunched up at the added brightness, but slowly relaxed as he adjusted. “It’s fine,” he said.
“Let me know if that changes.”
“I will,” Tim said. It didn’t really sound like an agreement.
Dick waited for the space of a few breaths. When it became clear that Tim wasn’t going to start talking unprompted, Dick cleared his throat. “So, uh, what did you need to talk to me about?”
It took another five seconds before Tim seemed to properly register the question. “I—I was going—okay, hang on.” He pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes and tilted his head back, going completely still. Dick waited.
It was a full minute before Tim lowered his head and folded his hands neatly in his lap.
“Sorry about that,” he said, smiling with a sort of charming, self-effacing aloofness that must have been a real hit at galas. He barely resembled himself. “Needed to organize my thoughts. I can explain now.”
Dick gestured for him to continue.
“After you and Batman took down Two-Face, I kept watching. I’d hoped that maybe you’d been able to get through to him, and that he’d start pulling his punches, or taking better care of himself, but that obviously wasn’t the case.” He reached for his backpack and quickly unzipped it, pulling out a thin stack of photo sleeves and setting them on the coffee table. “These are all from the past two weeks.”
Dick only had to glance at the photos to know their contents. Over and over again, it was the exact same scene Tim had shoved in his face at Haly’s. Pools of blood, limbs broken at grotesque angles, reckless grapple shots that took away huge chunks of brickwork, a hand mangled by the imprint of a boot.
“So…not better,” Dick said after a moment.
“No. Not better.”
“You went to see him?”
“Yeah, I went to the manor a week ago, once it was clear he wasn’t going to change. It was kind of the same thing that happened with you. I told him I knew his identity, showed him the proof, and asked him to ask you to be Robin again.”
Dick couldn’t hold back a laugh. “Oh, I bet he loved that.”
A tiny, proud grin appeared on Tim’s face. “It was kind of funny. He didn’t talk for a really long time.”
“What’d he say?”
Tim shrugged. “Well, he wasn’t happy.”
Dick snorted. “To be fair, he probably thought you were blackmailing him.”
“I kind of was? That was my plan, anyway.”
“Was it?”
“I mean, it was plan C. But plan A failed, and plan B didn’t seem like it was going to work out either.”
“Plan A was…me,” Dick guessed. When Tim nodded, Dick continued, “Plan B was getting him to ask me to come back.”
Tim nodded again. “Plan C was blackmailing him into taking on a new Robin.”
Dick’s eyes fell closed. “You?” he asked, defeated.
There was a small rustling sound, like Tim shifting in his seat. “I mean…if there weren’t any better options, then yeah. Me.”
“You do make the most sense,” Dick said reluctantly, eyes still shut. “You already know our identities. You’ve got the instincts for detective work, and you were able to follow us through Gotham without any of us noticing, which means you’re stealthy. You handled yourself just fine in that fight at Haly’s. You’d need training, but you could do it.” He hated every word that came out of his mouth more than the last.
“I agree that I’m…qualified,” Tim said slowly. “But it wasn’t a job interview or anything. I really didn’t care who Bruce took on, as long as he took on somebody.”
It was going to be Tim, Dick thought despairingly. There was going to be another kid in the costume, and it was going to be Tim. He’d known it, deep down, since his first conversation with him. That was why he’d been so harsh, tried so hard to keep him away. Because he’d only had to talk to Tim for a few minutes before he knew.
He sort of wanted to scream.
“So,” Dick said at last, finally opening his eyes. He took in Tim’s stiff posture, the way he was gnawing at his lower lip, the way his eyes were fixated on a point somewhere around Dick’s right ear. “You came all the way to Blüdhaven to…what, let me know that you’re taking up the mantle? Do you want me to congratulate you?”
Tim’s eyes widened and flickered over to Dick’s face. “What? No, no, that’s not—I’m not going to be Robin. I didn’t even get to start on plan C. I just promised Bruce I wouldn’t tell anyone, and then I left.”
This really caught Dick off guard. His careful control over his expression faltered. “What? And he just let you go?”
“I think he didn’t really know what to do with me,” Tim said. “He bugged me pretty well, but I found all of them. I’m sure he’s been tracking me with surveillance footage and stuff, though.”
“Did you check your—”
“Shoes, yeah,” Tim said immediately. “And the lining on my jacket. I burned the clothes I wore just in case. And I know you have your own security system here that overrides his bugs, so I swear I’m not trying to invade your privacy—”
Dick adjusted himself so he was facing Tim head-on. “Why did you abandon the blackmail plan?”
“It was—” Tim laughed nervously and ran a hand through his hair. Then he did it again, and then once more, overcorrecting a little bit with each swipe. “I was thinking about it all wrong. I was wrong, I was wrong about all of it. See, Bruce and I were talking, and—and I kept talking about Robin, but he was talking about Jason. ”
Dick frowned. “Jason is Robin.”
Tim shook his head. He reached up and tangled his hands in his hair, gripping tightly at the roots. Not enough to pull it out, just a firm grip. “No, it’s—I know that. Obviously. But—” He pulled his hands from his hair, wiped them on his jeans, and then got to his feet. He stepped directly over the coffee table and turned to face Dick. His hands moved from his sweatshirt hem to his hair to his pockets and back again, unable to linger in any one place for too long.
“Robin is a symbol,” Tim said, still not quite looking directly at Dick. “He’s more than the kid who wears the costume, he’s magic . He’s the dawn to Batman’s night. On the conspiracy forums where they theorize about Batman being a cryptid or creature of some kind, they talk about Robin being the tether that ties him to humanity. Other people talk about Robin being a manifestation of Batman’s soul, or his fighting spirit, or his—” Tim gestured with his hands over his head. “Robin is Robin,” he said, as if that explained it.
Yeah, Dick thought. There was no saving this kid. He’d be in the red, gold, and green before the month was out.
“So?” he prompted after a moment.
Tim started to pace. “So I thought that—that the thing that was ruining Batman was the loss of the symbol. The loss of the—the idea of Robin, the loss of everything Robin represents. I thought that I could convince him to take on another Robin by talking about legacy and impact and hope and…and I was wrong. I was wrong, but I get it now! Bruce loved Jason, like he really loved him.”
Dick laced his fingers together and leaned forward. “Yeah,” he said slowly. “Anyone could’ve told you that. Jason was his son.” And Dick’s brother, as his hollow gut helpfully reminded him.
“Sure, but parents are weird about their kids sometimes,” Tim said dismissively. “Most parents only want the symbol and the legacy, not the actual person that comes with those things.”
That was…an enormous can of worms that Tim had just set down on the table. An enormous and complicated can, full worms and implications, one that Dick definitely did not have time to crack open.
“I disagree,” Dick said at last, unable to let the sentence slip by completely without comment. “But we can talk about that later. Continue.”
“So I was sitting there, in Bruce’s office, and I’m talking about Robin, and he’s talking about Jason, and I just…look at his desk. And he’s got these photos on it, just two photos. One’s of Jason, and one’s of you and Jason together. And it hits me. I understand it.”
Tim, a little short of breath, looked triumphantly at Dick. Like he’d cracked an impossible code, or uncovered a secret kept for centuries. “Batman doesn’t need a Robin—Bruce just needs his son.”
In the silence that followed, a thousand responses ran through Dick’s mind. In the end, he settled on the most straightforward one he could say without crying.
“Bruce’s son is dead,” he said, as gently as he could. Tears still threatened the sentence, in spite of Dick’s careful word choice, saying Bruce’s son instead of Jason or even my brother.
Tim nodded, once. A sharp, jerky thing. “I know,” he said. He looked down at the photo sleeves on the table, and then up at Dick, eyed hard and jaw set. “But I’ve been doing a lot of research. And I think…maybe he doesn’t have to stay that way.”