Chapter Text
JASON
Ok so it is quite possible that pissing off an entire warehouse full of armed and very angry gang members was not the absolute best idea that Jason has ever had, but at this point, he’s kinda got to roll with it. The drug shipment that Jason has been tracking for a week had finally been handed off to the leader of a medium-sized not-super-duper-dangerous gang at 11 that night, and Jason had been sitting in the rafters of the warehouse, waiting for the shipment to land, since eight-freaking-thirty, so when the crate was finally dropped off, almost an entire hour late, he was not too keen on the idea of waiting for a whole extra hour to find the perfect drop time.
In hindsight, he probably should have waited, Jason thinks, as about two dozen guns go off, with every single bullet headed his direction, only a couple of seconds after he dropped two canisters of red smoke on either end of the warehouse.
Jason has already landed on another rafter by the time the bullets reach his previous perch, and the heavy Red Hood signature smoke fills the warehouse, but not quite fast enough for the surprise factor he was really going for. Well, gotta deal with it now, Jason thinks, before cocking his guns and systematically incapacitating the members of whatever-gang-this-is.
Bodies are hitting the floor left and right, heads disappearing into the heavy red smoke, but bullets are still flying in every direction in the warehouse, all of the gang members shooting upwards randomly in hopes of catching the Red Hood. And what could possibly be worse than a completely random obstacle course of bullets flying from a horde of terrible shots?
Jason leaps from rafter to rafter, twisting out of the way of the random spray of bullets, and picks off the remaining men with only a little difficulty, not really worrying about trying to make kill shots on some low-level drug dealers for whatever-gang-this-is-now, but also not particularly caring how many of them bleed out. Green haze creeps into his field of vision as he fires, the pit rage roiling in his stomach, rising as each body thuds against the concrete floor of the warehouse.
In the space of only a minute or two, the Red Hood was standing in the middle of a field of bodies, breathing hard and trying to force down the rising anger. After his detox with Roy and Kori on the island, the pit rage had been manageable, easier to ignore, but in the heat of the moment, it almost always reared its ugly green head.
And finally, finally, Jason had a full crate of Angel Juice, sitting right in front of him in the dissipating cloud of red smoke.
Angel Juice had shown up about three months ago, first only a faint whisper, barely even a rumor, from somewhere out of the Bowery. Some new drug, similar to heroin, one that provided an almost instantaneous high that lasted for close to an entire day. It was cheap as hell and just as dangerous, with 51 deaths in just the first month that it was on the street, and the numbers climbing every week. Nobody knew where it was coming from, but it seemed to Jason that almost every single gang in Crime Alley was ending up selling it.
The problem was, Jason was never able to track the shipments. Maybe if he still had Babs in his corner, but on his own, he was only ever able to find the Angel Juice after it had been distributed to dealers to sell. But now, finally, an entire month after he had started to try and find the group behind the Angel Juice, he had a freshly packaged crate of the injectable death.
After the third working girl he knew, and the fifth kid, had been found dead thanks to an overdose of Angel Juice a week and a half ago, Jason had decided it was time that this new drug rise on his priority list but it turns out tracking the original shipments was an absolute bitch. The paper trail was practically nonexistent, the transportation system twelve kinds of fucked over, and all of the tracks covered with meticulous care. Somebody was spending a shit ton of money to distribute the Angel Juice, and a shit ton of money to make sure that the drug could never be traced back to them. He had to admit it, Jason was frustrated as hell.
But here he had a full crate, and this was the break that he needed to get out of the rut he had been stuck in for the month regarding the drug.
Jason carefully examined the box containing the shipment. On the outside, slightly dented, unassuming cardboard with a generic-looking label. Jason fished a penknife out of his pocket and peeled off the label, stuffing it in his jacket for later investigation before slicing through the plastic packing tape on the top of the box.
Inside of the typical cardboard sat a wooden crate with no label, several nails holding the top of the box closed. Jason turned to scan the warehouse, now devoid of red smoke but with two dozen bodies, either unconscious, dead, or unable to do anything littering the floor. And, aha, a crowbar held loosely in the grip of one of the fallen men nearest Jason.
He pulled the crowbar out of the lax grip of the unnamed would-be drug dealer and levered open the crate, immediately flinging the tool as far away as possible with a shudder. Fucking Joker and his fucking torture methods.
Nestled in the crate were small bottles of the yellowish fluid. Jason counted six rows of six, and who knew how deep it went. That was a shit ton of Angel Juice.
With a sigh, he began to poke through the crate, looking for any sort of clue as to its shipper, but there wasn’t anything more than six layers of foam and fluid, and hot damn, that meant that just one crate had 216 bottles of Angel Juice. That was 216 possible bodies for just one little shipment, for a medium level-almost entirely obscure-gang and their dealers.
But there was nothing else. No logo, no paper, nothing showing up under the ultraviolet penlight Jason was shining into the unpacked box. Fuck. No lead but a generic FedEx shipping label on a generic cardboard box dropped off along with orders of iron screws by an oblivious mailman. Fuck!
Jesus Christ on a cracker, a week and a half dedicated to finding this box in this warehouse at this time, only for the suppliers of the drugs to be too fucking sneaky for him to glean any substantial information at all from an entire shipping crate of the shit.
Jason’s head shot up as he heard sirens wailing in the distance, likely in response to the excessive gunfire that had wrapped up not even fifteen minutes ago, so he dropped a small explosive on the ground next to the unpacked drugs to ensure that they never hit the streets and hauled ass outta the warehouse, heading back towards his nearest safehouse to go over his (very meager) supply of information on the source of the Angel Juice.
After running every number, code, and scannable image on the shipping label, there was nothing indicative of a shipment of drugs popping up. And hey, he probably needed two or three more labels to be able to identify any patterns, but all that he could find was that this was a routine shipment of iron screws among eight other routine shipments of iron screws, and it was shipped directly from the factory to the construction zone containing the warehouse that Jason had just raided.
The buyer and seller of the screws checked out completely (and weren’t even located in Gotham), and besides, the Angel Juice had clearly been shipped via other companies’ heftier shipments as well. Not gonna lie, Jason was frustrated as fuck and tired as hell, so once he hit the third or fourth dead end with the assorted tracking numbers, shipment numbers, and barcodes on the label, he stripped out of his Red Hood gear and practically stumbled into the shower.
The hot water of the shower did much to relieve the lingering tension in his muscles, letting the roil of the pit rage in his gut calm like a snake going to sleep until it was barely a buzz in the back of his skull. Sighing, he turned the water off and slipped into his civvies, just sweatpants and an old T-shirt of Roy’s.
It was nearing three in the morning, and Jason was all outta brainpower to try and think through the supply chain of Angel Juice, so he slipped a gun under his pillow, double-checked his security system, and flipped off the lights, sinking into his bed. He was out before his head even hit the pillow.
At ten the next morning, Jason groaned and rolled out of bed, his shoulder aching. “Fuck, must have fucking pulled it last night,” he grouses to himself before shuffling into the main room of his safehouse.
It wasn’t his nicest apartment that he maintained, but it certainly wasn’t some shitty disposable bolthole. There was the living room and small kitchen that made up most of the square footage of the safehouse, with a couch, coffee table, and TV acting as his living space and a desk, computer setup, and several cabinets crammed against one wall.
The other wall made up the not-too-shabby kitchen with a tiny little table tucked to the side, mainly used when Roy, Kori, or one time, Dick, came for dinner. Then there was his bedroom and the bathroom. It wasn’t massive or particularly homey, save for the cramped bookshelf in one corner of the bedroom, but it was perfectly fine for one vigilante who only used it for a week or two at a time every two months or so.
Jason padded into the kitchen, still half asleep, and set a pan of butter to melt on the gas stove. Omelets were always good for a post-shootout breakfast.
If there was one thing he could never regret from his Pre-Death jaunt with Brucie and Dick was having Alfred teach him how to cook. Because god damn did Jason like to cook. Those hours with Alfie in the kitchen, the old butler gently showing him what spices went where, or how to stuff a chicken, those were some of his fondest memories from Before. They were also some of the least painful to think about, those years where he still believed that Bruce gave a flying fuck about him.
God, sometimes Jason misses Robin. He misses flying through the air next to Bruce, his father, laughing every single night, the adrenaline that came with being small and lean and flipping across the rooftops of Gotham. He misses Dick, who had just started to become his big brother when the Joker blasted him to bits in a warehouse in Ethiopia after his own mother sold him out. He misses Bruce, gently calling him Jaybird, and he misses Babs, who was so, so proud of him when he could finally hack the GCPD database.
But then he remembers crying out for each of them, hour after hour, as the Joker broke just about every bone in his body, and he remembers the pit in his stomach that grew once he realized that there was nobody coming to save him. He remembers the rage that coiled in his stomach when Bruce refused to kill the Joker, who blew him up, and instead left him for dead with a batarang sticking out of his body.
Jason pulls himself back to his omelet before he can let himself get lost in the pit rage that has started to roll in his gut at the thought of Bruce and Dick and Babs and the Joker, and instead tries to focus his energy on solving the goddamn drug case.
The rest of the day Jason spends trying to eliminate places the Angel Juice could definitely not some from, and trying to brainstorm something, anything, to help him out on this case. By seven, he’s no further than he was the night before, save for some half-brainstormed theories on where in the shipping chain the box of nails became a box of highly addictive drugs.
With a groan, Jason shuts off his laptop and moves to go make dinner. He’s feeling like spaghetti tonight, so he gets busy making the meat sauce and does his best to ignore his growing despondency with the Angel Juice issue. Tonight, Jason’s feeling like a nice, cathartic, classic patrol. Bash some heads in, stop some rapists and muggings, shut down a few drug deals.
It’s just when he’s thinking about how nice that all sounds that somebody starts to pound on his safehouse door.
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TIM
For the past three months, Tim has lived contentedly alone in Drake Manor with nothing but the weekly visits of the housekeeper, Mrs. Mac, to keep him company. And really, he’s fine with it. Because Tim would take three YEARS alone in Drake Manor, WITHOUT Mrs. Mac’s weekly visits, over his parents staying in Gotham for more than a month any day.
Because when Jack and Janet Drake decide to prolong their stay in Gotham, it means they have business in Gotham. And Tim really really hates the type of business his parents do.
But here they are, three weeks into their stay in Gotham and Tim has no idea when they’re going to leave again.
When Jack and Janet are in town, it makes Tim’s life about 100x more difficult. For one, his nightly stalking sessions following around Batman and occasionally Nightwing and Black Bat become a rarity. Tim doesn’t like to think about what his parents would do if they found him sneaking out of the house to go climb around fire escapes in the middle of the night in order to take creepy stalker photos of Batman and his assorted vigilante crowd.
For another thing, Tim is expected to constantly dress and act the part of Timothy Jackson Drake, future CEO of Drake Industries, heir to the Drake Estate, and son of the esteemed Mr. and Mrs. Jack Drake. For the months his parents are in Libya or Switzerland or Chile or wherever, Tim is content to slip around the house like a ghost, eating in his bedroom and only ever wearing sweats or jeans or very occasionally, khaki shorts. The slacks and jackets and polo shirts that his parents have him wear constantly under penalty of no meals are intensely uncomfortable, and what kind of kid wears pressed pants to high school?
Most importantly, though, would probably be the massive drug trafficking ring that Tim is definitely not supposed to know his parents created and run.
Look, Tim may be small and young and a little naïve, but he is certainly not stupid. In fact, he’s two grades ahead in school and could probably already have his diploma, if he was keen on having that kind of pressure placed upon him by his mom and dad.
Tim has crunched the numbers a dozen times, by hand and by calculator and by a computer program he wrote himself-Drake Industries does not put out the profits that it does by anything happening above the board. There’s just no way. When he was about nine, just before he figured out who Batman and Robin #1 really were, he brough his spreadsheets to him mom and asked where the extra money came from.
He wasn’t permitted to leave his room for a week, and Janet Drake told him, very clearly, that he was never, ever, ever to speak of the extra funds again, and to drop his “foolish crusade.”
Of course, being Tim Drake, Boy Genius, he decidedly did not drop his foolish crusade. First, of course, he had to figure out where in the world all that extra profit was even coming from, and the best place to learn that was directly from the source: Jack Drake’s “100% OFF LIMITS, Timothy” work computer. Thus, Tim Drake, Boy Detective, was born.
The next time his parents left, this time for a two month jaunt around East Asia, Tim spent every single day in the Gotham Public Library after school without fail, reading every single book, manual, and textbook available on computer science. This is how he met sixteen-year-old Barbara “call me Babs” Gordon, who was quite possibly the world’s greatest library volunteer.
A month in to Tim’s quest for computer science knowledge, while trying to figure out exactly how to get around a certain firewall, Barbara sat down right next to him and smoothly showed him that he knew practically nothing when it came to the world of hacking things. Absolutely in awe, of course, Tim begged her to teach him everything she knew and…she did!
So next time Tim’s parents were in town, he was prepared. From his own computer, Tim broke right into his dad’s laptop using all of the tricks that Babs had taught him and very swiftly learned a lot more than he had ever wanted to about drugs. But Timmy idolized Batman and Robin, both Dick Grayson and Jason Todd of course, and there was no way he ever wanted to run his parents’ drug business when he was older.
This is the point at which Tim Drake, Boy Hero was born. So for three and a half years, Tim has collected every scrap of evidence there was against his parents, saved his files onto a dozen flash drives he has hidden around Gotham, and even locked paper copies of all of the photos, emails, documents, and spreadsheets in two hidden lockboxes that he continuously adds to.
It is when Tim is doing his routine checks of the money his parents are reeling in from selling various opioids that he realizes profits are way way higher than they usually are. So Tim digs. And digs. And digs some more. What he finds eventually makes him sick.
His parents have somehow synthesized a new drug, one building off of heroin, using money and resources from Drake Industries. It’s called Angel Juice, and so far, for the three months that it’s been around, it has killed over 200 people. Tim wants to throw up a little. God, how could his mom and dad do this? How could they?
He makes copies of everything. Tim doesn’t think he’s ever been so meticulous in his evidence collection. Every single scrap of information, no matter how unrelated, gets downloaded, copied, printed, and saved to a flash drive. Tim has never really done anything about his parents before.
He hasn’t. Sometimes, he’ll leave files with information on their buyers and distributors, or gangs picking up the drug, or where they’re getting shipped to for Commissioner Gordon to find and fix, but it’s never against his actual parents, just smaller pieces further down the line. For whatever reason, he’s never been able to bring himself to turn them in, though he certainly has enough to get them stuck in Blackgate for life. Whatever type of sad, convoluted loyalty to Jack and Janet Drake he has is very quickly diminishing as Tim reads the tox reports on overdose victims of the Angel Juice. His parents made this stuff. His parents are responsible for the 200+ lives that have been taken in the past month. The numbers are rising quickly, too.
But that is going to change, tonight. Because Tim really cannot stand by and watch his parents’ greed bring about the collapse of Gotham. He just won’t let it happen. So when he hears the door to his parents’ room close around midnight, Tim slips out of bed and pulls on jeans and a dark hoodie, pockets a brand new flash drive, and climbs out of his window like he used to back when he had a nanny.
It’s a long bike ride from Bristol into the heart of Gotham, but it’s one Tim has made many times. He knows exactly where Batman is going to be tonight, from years and years of deducing his patrol routes and tracking his movements. Nightwing is in Bludhaven until the weekend, Black Bat is in Hong Kong for the foreseeable future, and Spoiler hasn’t been seen in months. It’s only Batman tonight.
Tim parks himself on his chosen rooftop and waits, carefully studying the skyline. He didn’t even bring his camera tonight, and the lack of the familiar weight around his neck is making him jumpy. Or that might be the fact that he’s about to completely betray his parents. He hasn’t really thought about what he’s going to say to Batman tonight. I mean, it isn’t like he can just say “Hey Batman! It’s me, Tim Drake, your neighbor! I know exactly who you are so please trust me when I say my parents are running a drug trafficking ring! Cool! See ya around I guess!” Tim’s pretty certain he would get his mind wiped or something.
He doesn’t really have time to ponder it though, before a black shadow briefly blocks the light coming from the window of an apartment building not far off. He’s here. Tim pops out from behind the A/C unit he was leaning against and stands right in the middle of the roof just as Batman lands on the ledge.
“Um…” Tim says eloquently.
Batman stops, standing right in front of Tim and holy crap he is so much taller up close. Tim can feel his heart drop to his feet and all of a sudden his palms are sweating and his stomach is doing flips. Tim doesn’t really like tall men standing in front of him like this, focusing their attention on him. Tim doesn’t like that at all, and he knows, logically, that this is Bruce Wayne, who has three kids and who always smiles so warmly at him at the galas he’s dragged to, he knows that this is not Jack Drake with his fists and his belt and the wooden spoon, but he can’t get his trembling hands to stay still.
“It’s too late for children to be out. Go home.” Batman growls at Tim, face fixed into a disapproving frown and this is not how this was supposed to go at all. His knees are shaking now.
“N-no wait! Wait! Um…Batman…I um…I have a flash drive for you!” The frown has deepened into something halfway to a scowl and Tim just wants to cry, okay? Robin has (had?) always been his hero, but he looked up to Batman too. He shouldn’t be afraid of him, but Tim hasn’t felt comfortable around adults since he was like, five, and being locked in his room without dinner didn’t make enough of an impression for the lesson to stick, Timothy.
“Go. Home.” Bru-Batman’s voice is firm and low and dangerous. “Kids shouldn’t play detective.”
“N-no please! No Batman! Really, it’s important! It’s about…um…” but Batman is already on the next rooftop over, cape fluttering in the night, and Tim is left standing shaky-legged on a rooftop alone, the flash drive still sitting heavily in his pocket. Shit.
The next morning Tim wakes up to his mother rapping on his door thirty minutes earlier than he’s due down for lunch, and Tim’s stomach sinks.
Last night, he had crawled, defeated, back through his window, tossed his clothes back into the corner of his closet where everything but the slacks and jackets and polos got shoved during his parents’ rare visits home, washed the stink of the Gotham downtown out of his hair, and stuffed the flash drive in his box spring until he could figure out what to do about it.
It wasn’t like he could just stuff the evidence in Bruce Wayne’s mailbox, he’d be busted for sure, and then Mr. Wayne would phone his mom and dad and he would never be allowed to leave his bedroom again. And if he dropped it all off for Commissioner Gordon, it would take weeks and weeks before his parents could ever be arrested, and they would have fled the country by then easily, leaving Tim behind in the big empty house, probably forever.
But right now, Janet Drake was rapping on his door insistently, shouting-without-shouting for him to get out of bed, dress himself, and meet in his father’s study promptly. Tim very nearly fell face first on his carpet in his haste to get out of bed.
“Yes mother! I’ll be there in a minute!” he called back frantically before she could come into his room and see what a disheveled mess he was. She responded with a huff of air, and Tim could hear her heels click back down the hallway. He let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding.
Tim pulled on a pair of pressed pants and a polo shirt and combed his hair at record speed, sliding his feet into a pair of socks because “dignified children should never stroll around the house barefoot, Timothy.” He walked as fast as he dared down the stairs to his dad’s study and paused outside of the closed door, knocking properly.
“You can enter, Timothy.” That was his dad’s rough drawl, pushing the “thy” sound of his name through his teeth. Tim could feel his heart beating erratically. His palms were starting to sweat. God no, he’ll kill me if my palms are sweaty. Tim wiped his hands on the inside of his shirt and pushed the door open, stepping into the dimly-lit room.
Jack and Janet Drake were seated at his dad’s desk. There was an empty chair next to his mom. She turned to face him and her lip curled up, like a shark. Janet Drake could smell fear, he was fairly certain. Tim stopped next to the chair and his dad nodded to him. Tim took his seat, doing his absolute best to stop his leg from bouncing, his hands from trembling.
Jack gazed at him disdainfully, Janet had her usual air of disapproval. Did they know? Tim thought frantically. How could they know already?
“Place your hands above the desk, Timothy, it makes you seem much more trustworthy,” was the first thing that his mom said to him. Tim obeyed, folding his hands pleasantly on the wood of the desk.
“Yes ma’am.”
Jack’s lips turned down into a frown. “Timothy, do you know why we’ve summoned you here?” His dad asked, cold and robotic. Because I’m your son and you’ve decided you finally love me? He wants to ask. He doesn’t, of course, at the risk of a broken arm.
“No.” He says instead. Jack’s eyes narrow and Tim realizes his mistake too late. He’s out of practice. Tim can feel his stomach doing somersaults.
“No sir.” His dad’s hands curl briefly into fists. Crap, this hasn’t started well.
“No sir, father.” Janet sighs.
“Well, Timothy, if you showed any initiative at all, you would know that Drake Industries has seen a significant increase in profits.” His dad starts and Tim thinks, yeah, from the freaking Angel Juice! At the cost of over 200 people already! Jack continues after a brief pause. “This is thanks to a new project that our biochemical department has developed and is improving upon.”
Tim doesn’t really like where this is going very much. He risks a glance to the side at his mom, who is wearing a mask of perfectly polite disinterest. It’s the face she makes during a risky business transaction, her perfect Janet Drake poker face. Tim’s gut roils. Tim nods along to whatever his father is saying, trying to ignore the bile in his throat.
“-and as you would know, as a young scholar, human test subjects are becoming increasingly pricey, and the legal hoops are a nightmare.” Jack is going on and on, and Tim can feel himself paling. “-and wouldn’t you be so interested in participating in the family business, Timothy? Finally starting to pay back your debts to your mother and I?”
Jack is waiting expectantly, so Tim chokes out a rough sounding “Yes sir, of course.” His dad’s face turns stony and Tim tries not to flinch.
“Timothy, why does your tone suggest that you’re lying to me?” Jack asks, eyes dangerous. “Are you implying that helping to further the research of Drake Industries is something that you wouldn’t be inclined to partake in?” One eyebrow raises, and Tim tries so hard not to shake, he really does, but a tremor runs through his hands and Jack sees, of course Jack sees.
His dad has his arms locked in his viselike grip in seconds. Jack is standing now, towering over both Tim and Janet, but mostly Tim. Janet is inspecting her nail polish.
“N-no S-sir, I, I would be s-so honored to participate in the, uh, research. S-sir.” Well, it was worth a shot. Jack wrenches Tim forward and drags him around the desk, pulling him up by his shirt now. He can’t even meet his dad’s eyes. He’s going to have bruises where his dad’s hands were on his arms, and it’s summer. They’re going to suck to have to cover.
“Now Timothy, as a future CEO, you would think you would make an effort to sound a little more convincing, hmm?” Tim can feel his eyes going wide with an unfortunate rush of fear, and then his head is snapping to the side, the loud smack resounding through the room. Jack sneers at him. “You are to go to your bedroom. In a half hour, Dr. Collins from the biomedical division will be here to test the new strain of our little project on you. I expect you to be presentable and in the foyer to greet him in exactly twenty-five minutes. Am I understood?”
It is all Tim can do not to squeak as he says a final “Yes, sir” and makes the fastest possible retreat to his bedroom. Crap, crap, crap!
His parents want to test the effects of the Angel Juice on him now! Tim had read their files last night while compiling his flash drive, they wanted to focus their efforts more on the homeless children of Crime Alley and the Bowery, so of course they needed a strain that created the ultimate high for a minor, with a less developed nervous system.
Tim can barely see straight as he crumples to a heap behind his door, his breath coming in short gasps. His parents are going to drug him. It takes him ten minutes to calm down, and Tim has no idea what to do. Nightwing is in Bludhaven, Black Bat in Hong Kong, Spoiler MIA, and Batman told him to go home, Batman thinks he’s some goofy fanboy.
Well, there is one other vigilante he could visit.
His Robin. Jason Todd. The Red Hood. The back-from-the-dead hero-turned-kind-of-hero who ran Crime Alley. Tim knows his patrol routes too, his safe houses, his schedule. Of course he does. Jason Todd was his Robin. And he doesn’t exactly have very many other options.
So Tim shoves all of his printed data and his flash drive into a backpack, pulls on jeans and a T-shirt, and climbs out the window with five minutes to spare before the doctor was due. He was supposed to be in the foyer. He has to go, as fast as possible, right now, before his mom or dad come looking for him.
Tim tosses his bag over his shoulder, slides his shoes on (Converse, not the god-awful loafers his dad constantly insisted on) and climbs out the window, shimmying down the trim and drain pipe and windowsills faster than he ever has before. Dr. Collins is ringing the doorbell, and Tim bolts to the end of the driveway where his bike sits in the bushes. He can hear the door opening, can hear his mother’s shout of “Timothy JACKSON Drake” but he doesn’t stop, just leaps onto his bike and pedals as hard as he possibly can.
Four hours later, Tim shifts from foot to foot at the base of the Red Hood’s apartment building. Technically it is one of five apartment buildings, two warehouses, and one office space, but this is the safehouse that Jason Todd is currently occupying, Tim’s certain of it. He’d better be, since he ditched his bike three miles away and ran across the roofs to get here in an effort to lose his parents and their “employees.”
Tim suddenly isn’t feeling quite so confident in his plan, but he’s out of options, so he hikes up his bag and steps inside the building. There’s nobody in the small hallway and the elevator is empty as well, with does a little bit to curve Tim’s unease. The Red Hood was dangerous, volatile, prone to shoot first and ask questions later.
However, Tim thinks, as he presses the button for the top floor, the Red Hood is notorious for being protective of Gotham’s children. He’s never hurt a kid beyond a couple of bruises, and Tim is really hoping that he doesn’t accidently become an exception to the rule as he rides the elevator upwards.
His palms are sweating by the time the short ride upwards ends and Tim really, really hopes he doesn’t get shot. He heads towards the end of the hallway, pauses before the final room, and without giving himself time to chicken out, taps his knuckles against the door with far more firmness than he feels capable of exuding.
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