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Bruce stands very still and waits for Tim to decide when it’s time to go.
He knows better than anyone that ripping Tim away from this moment will do more harm than good. They have nowhere pressing to be. And despite the extensive business connections of Janet Drake, her funeral service is sparsely attended. Tim had been in no state to send out mass communications, and Bruce knows that Janet wasn’t one for cultivating relationships with her extended family--and she was an only child, and her parents are both dead.
It’s only Tim who cries.
The coffin has been lowered into the ground. Tim’s still standing several feet from the fresh mound of dirt, staring at the headstone with his hands in his pockets. Bruce stands several feet behind him, willing to stand there all afternoon if he has to.
There’s no reason to rush home. Bruce remembers how, a year and a half ago, he’d sat at Jason’s grave for almost eight hours, and it hadn’t been enough.
Bruce shakes himself. If he lets himself think about Jason right now, he won’t be able to be there for Tim.
Alfred appears at Bruce’s side. He had attended the memorial service, but has had time to return to the Manor and come back afterwards in the hour and a half since then. He leans just a little closer to Bruce’s ear so that he can lower his voice, keeping Tim from overhearing.
“No update on Master Tim’s father, I’m afraid,” Alfred says. He doesn’t look at Bruce’s face, which means he’s thinking the same thing Bruce is: that Jack Drake would only make this situation worse by waking up from his coma.
That’s not something to say aloud right after a mother’s funeral, though.
“Thanks for checking,” Bruce mutters.
“It’s no trouble at all.” Alfred releases a sad puff of breath. “I’ve taken the liberty of preparing the Drake home for Tim’s return.” Tim had handed over his house key to Alfred with teary eyes when Alfred offered to do so yesterday. “You are still planning on staying there this week, yes?”
Bruce nods shortly. “There’s a bag in my car.”
“Very good, sir.”
Bruce and Alfred stand in silence, listening to the harsh wind whipping through the trees that line the cemetery for at least another fifteen minutes before Tim begins to move. Bruce sees Tim take a timid step back, breaking his trance. When Tim turns and sees that people are waiting for him, he drops his eyes to the ground instead of offering any of his usual profuse apologies and makes his way over.
“Ready to head out?” Bruce asks, purposefully making it clear with his unhurried tone that he isn’t irritated to have been waiting.
Tim nods, eyes still down, and begins to walk.
Bruce keeps up with him. He lifts an arm and pats Tim’s shoulder softly, and Tim sways just a little towards him like he’s a magnet, accepting the touch for a moment before pulling away again.
The ride back is just as quiet. There’s no reason to start chatting; the time for slowly coaxing Tim from the worst of his grief isn’t for at least a week. Still, hearing Tim without words is a constant reminder that the kid is shutting down--not surprising, given that Bruce had hugged the kid and listened to him scream and cry for almost an hour last night.
Tim hasn’t spoken since then. From the sound of his sobs last night, he’d begun to shred and damage his voice far before his rage wore out, and Bruce wouldn’t be surprised if Tim’s voice is entirely shot for the foreseeable future. During the funeral, Tim had opened his mouth to say something to Bruce exactly once, and all that had emerged had been a creaking rasp like an old door swinging shut.
When Alfred stops the car in the driveway of the Drake home, Tim robotically unbuckles his seatbelt and slides out of the backseat, drifting towards the front door. Bruce follows behind, and sees the first proof that Alfred had, in fact, done the preparations he’d promised to do. Not that he doubted Alfred.
Tim still reacts with surprise when he encounters the pitcher and hand towels by the front door. Bruce had been surprised, too, coming home from his parents’ funeral and being so relieved that Alfred knew how to mourn the Waynes correctly.
It wasn’t until years later that Bruce realized Alfred was doing it for Bruce, just as much as he was doing it for Thomas and Martha.
This time, Alfred’s not even tangentially related to the deceased. Actually, he shares Bruce’s opinion that Tim was neglected by his parents for most of his childhood, and Alfred has had zero interaction with any of Tim’s family. And still, he’s spent time today preparing the house for shiva.
Tim blinks tired, overwhelmed eyes at Alfred for only a moment before kneeling down and washing his hands. Bruce and Alfred crouch to follow suit, Bruce taking over pouring when Tim’s hands start shaking.
The house is a quiet one. Bruce has always felt as though it was more of a museum than a home. The varied artifacts stolen/bought from across the world take places of honor around the home, with only one family portrait above the mantel from when Tim was still in elementary school.
Tim’s silent to match the rest of the house. He sits at the small kitchen table with Bruce and Alfred and lights the candle and eats the soup Alfred puts in front of him, not speaking. Bruce and Alfred follow his lead, only exchanging a couple of glances while they try to figure out how best to help.
No one at the funeral had offered to come to visit Tim this week. Bruce knows the feeling, but it makes his blood boil that anyone besides him has to experience this. If Alfred didn’t care, Tim would have no one bringing him meals, and there would have been no one to cover all the mirrors before Tim got home.
It makes sense that mourning Janet Drake would feel just as isolated and desolate as loving her had been. Tim still doesn’t deserve any of this.
After the meal, Tim gets up and Alfred intercepts him on his path to the sink.
“I’ll take care of this,” Alfred promises in a low tone.
Tim complies without any kind of emotional response. He hands his bowl to Alfred and turns and picks up the candle to take it with him out to the living room.
Bruce and Alfred watch him go, letting Tim get settled on the low chair Alfred had placed out there for that exact reason. With Tim out of the room, Bruce says in a low voice, “No one from his family is coming.”
“Yes,” Alfred says sadly. He begins to wash the dishes, and then turns the faucet off for just a moment to continue, “Have you spoken with him about alternatives, given that there aren’t enough people present?”
“I don’t think I need to.” Tim researches everything so meticulously; Bruce had seen him deep in readings on this topic while he listlessly made funeral arrangements. “At what point should I worry about his throat?”
“If he doesn’t aggravate it again, there’s nothing we can do but give it time to heal.” Alfred moves from the sink to retrieve the electric kettle from the counter and fill it. Even if his default mode of comfort wasn’t making tea, it would be the obvious thing to do in this situation. “Would you like to go sit with him?”
Bruce understands that this is a command and not a question. He nods and follows Tim out to the living room, finding a spot cross-legged on the floor that he knows he’ll be able to keep for the foreseeable future.
Tim doesn’t look over at him. He stares at the flame of the candle instead, blank. Throughout the afternoon, and dinner, the only time that words are spoken is when Tim pushes a printed out sheet of paper towards Bruce and Bruce reads the verses out loud in place of the usual prayer.
The next few hours are like ice, glacially slow and undisturbed. When Tim slides onto the floor with the apparent attempt to sleep on the hardwood, Bruce finally shatters the stillness of the house with a quiet, “Up on the couch at least, chum.”
Tim mouths the word, “Okay.” His voice is only a hiss. He gets up and lays down on the couch instead, where Alfred lays a quilt over him.
Dick has agreed to patrol in Gotham for a few days this week. He and Bruce will trade off, but Dick’s taking the first few nights because they both know that Bruce won’t be able to focus until Tim’s a little more stable.
Tim sleeps like a rock, worn out from the emotions he’s been resting in all day. He doesn’t even twitch when Dick lets himself into the house around four in the morning to take over Bruce’s vigil.
“How’s he doing?” Dick asks, eyes moving over the curled-up form of Tim. It’s the first time all day that Tim’s blank face has been a relief and not something gut-wrenchingly sad.
“He’s quiet,” Bruce says. “Don’t force him to talk if he wakes up, he lost his voice.”
Dick nods. He takes a spot in an armchair, facing Tim. “Get some sleep,” he tells Bruce. “I got this.”
“The candle will last until tomorrow afternoon, but there are extras,” Bruce says, and points. Then he leans further back against the couch with his head tipped back near Tim’s knees, and shuts his eyes.
The next two days follow this pattern. Alfred and Bruce and Dick cycle in and out of the house, making sure Tim gets meals and doesn’t sleep on the floor, while still giving him time by himself so he doesn’t feel smothered. Tim finds one of his mother’s long formal coats and a blanket from her bed and makes a nest of comfort on the couch that he sleeps in.
On the third day, Tim moves back to sleeping on his own bed, with the pillows moved to the floor so he doesn’t get too comfortable. That day comes with Tim eating a full serving at all three meals, reliably nodding and shaking his head to respond to questions instead of just ignoring them.
Bruce shows up mid-morning on the fourth day after a post-patrol power nap and finds that Tim’s eyes have regained a little more awareness. He’s nowhere close to his normal demeanor, which is to be expected, but he turns his head to look at Bruce and nods in greeting when he arrives, which is a good sign.
Dick gives Bruce a little wave when he sees him, but doesn’t say anything.
They have lunch. Bruce stays in the kitchen to do the dishes while Dick follows Tim back out to the living room.
He’s finished cleaning up and is headed back out to Tim when he hears Dick speak.
“What’s up?” Dick asks. He’s soft and careful about it, and Bruce stops just out of sight so he can listen.
Tim’s voice scratches and breaks, barely audible. “If I ask you a question will you be honest?”
Dick says, even more cautiously than before, “Sure.”
“If I’d died instead,” Tim croaks, and Bruce’s heart squeezes in his chest, “do you think my parents would’ve sat shiva for me?”
Bruce moves further out of sight as his lungs stop working fully. He hates that he’s already considered this question several times--and if the answer was a definite yes, Tim wouldn’t be thinking about it at all.
“Baby bird,” Dick says, sounding like he’s about to cry, “I didn’t know your folks that well, so I can’t tell.”
Tim sniffles, his inhale coming with a hiss of suppressed emotion, as though passing through clenched teeth.
“That’s the kind of hypothetical that’s only gonna hurt. You don’t know what the answer is.” As though knowing that this isn’t a satisfactory answer, given that he promised to be honest, Dick keeps going, “But if they hadn’t, I would’ve made sure me and B did.”
Tim sobs. After his utter silence for the past days, it sounds like a gunshot through the house.
Bruce can’t interrupt this. Bracing a hand on the wall, he leans around the edge of the doorway and sees that Tim’s gathered up in Dick’s arms, being rocked back and forth.
Bruce leans back, and walks back to the kitchen to put more tea on. Tim’s crying is harsh and ragged and he’s only hurting himself more, but it’s better to let it out than to keep it in.
He gives it about twenty minutes, both for the boiling water and for Tim to cool down. When both have done so, Bruce takes two mugs of tea out to his kids and he sits next to them on the floor while they drink them.
Tim barely has the energy to hold his cup up. His face is blotchy and puffy and he’s still hiccuping. Dick rubs comforting circles on his back while Tim drinks, which seems to be helping. Nobody asks for Tim to elaborate on what he’s been dwelling on this week, but Tim seems to want to explain himself and as soon as the hot water has started to calm down his swollen throat, he tries talking again.
“She,” he hiccups, “the last time we talked,” he hiccups again, the sound even harsher, and his voice becomes nothing more than a painful squeak.
Bruce reaches out and frees the cup from between his hands before Tim can upturn it on himself. The cup is rattling and sloshing all over Tim’s hands already, and as Bruce moves the cup away Dick uses the end of his sleeve to wipe the hot tea away.
Tim watches the process as he shudders and tries to get his breath back. He whispers without making any noise, merely moving his mouth and trying to force sound up through his chest. “She called, she hadn’t called for a month, she said--” Tim accepts Dick’s arm around him, sinking into it like he’s never been hugged before. “--She said, if I c-could behave myself b-better I would have been al-allowed to go with them. ”
Dick’s eyes move to Bruce’s immediately, his gaze steely and furious. Bruce imagines he looks much the same, as the rage that courses through him feels insurmountable. There is no recourse for this anger; the damage has already been done, and Tim has inferred from his mother’s heartless last phone call that it’s his own fault his mother was poisoned.
“I d-dont,” Tim whispers, “I don’t understand how I mis-misbehaved. If I’d been there I would’ve b-been able to--”
“You would only have gotten hurt too,” Bruce says. He reaches out.
Tim takes his hand, desperate for an adult to help pull him out of this feeling. Bruce has been here. Bruce was a kid not understanding how he was ever going to feel better and he was sitting shiva thinking that it was his fault his parents were killed.
He doesn’t know the right thing to say. Nothing had felt alright. Nothing is the perfect thing to say to make this all go away.
“It isn’t your fault,” Bruce says. When Tim looks over at him, eyes red and scared and lost, Bruce makes sure he doesn’t waver at all. He repeats, “It isn’t your fault.”
Tim’s face crumples again.
Bruce moves over, sandwiching Tim between Bruce and Dick. Dick’s still hugging Tim, so Bruce just wraps his arm around both boys and squeezes in. Dick’s hand moves from Tim’s shoulders and clutches on to the back of Bruce’s shirt, and Tim hiccups and cries himself out.
The flame of the candle dances on the coffee table in front of them, and Bruce watches it as he feels Dick stifle his brief bout of tears. Bruce holds the kids together until Tim’s sobs taper off and he begins to slump, his head pressed into Bruce’s chest near his heart.
When the silence has stretched for long enough, Dick whispers, “He’s asleep.”
Bruce gives a thumbs-up, careful not to jostle Tim. It’s only mid-afternoon, but Tim needs rest and he barely has a bedtime anyway.
It’s been a while since a child fell asleep on him. The last was probably…Jason, almost a year and a half ago now. Bruce doesn’t want to think about that right now, but it’s too late--all this talk about culpability and being left behind is making Bruce’s heart start to beat too fast.
His grip has tightened around Dick. Dick looks over at him and sees the frozen, pinched look on his face and immediately knows something’s wrong.
“You need a breather?” Dick asks, apprehensive.
Bruce can’t move. Tim will wake up if he moves. Tim doesn’t need to be abandoned right now. Bruce can’t abandon someone right now.
Dick whispers, “I’m getting Alfred to tag you out.”
Bruce can’t move to signal agreement or disagreement. Dick extricates himself from Tim’s grip and leaves the room quickly, his feet silent on the floor.
Tim sleeps on, his breaths slow and hoarse and congested.
Before Bruce had heard the news about Tim’s parents last week, he’d almost been ready to let Tim out on patrol. He’d thought that Tim was sufficiently trained. But what is Bruce thinking? The child he’s holding is smart, yes, but he’s so small and he’s just cried himself to sleep and--and Jason had been smart and he’d had way more training than Tim and that hadn’t been enough to keep him safe.
Tim is the kind of child who will shred his vocal cords mourning a woman who didn’t care about him enough to remember his birthday. Bruce doesn’t want to be the end of him, like he’s been the end to so many people he loves.
“Look at me,” Bruce hears, and he wrenches his eyes up to find that Alfred is knelt in front of him, angling his head to catch Bruce’s gaze. Seeing Bruce is paying attention, Alfred says, “Put the child on the couch to rest, please.”
Bruce can follow directions. He scoops Tim up as gently as he can while he feels like his hands aren’t attached to his body, and he sets Tim down on the couch.
He doesn’t want to let go. Seeing Tim so limp is making Bruce want to shake him awake, but he won’t do that with Alfred right there. Alfred puts a hand on Bruce’s back and pushes him along back to the kitchen, while Dick takes Bruce’s place near Tim.
Bruce is sat down at the kitchen table. He is handed a glass of water to drink.
“You don’t need me to tell you that this is not about you,” Alfred tells him.
Bruce nods. The water is cold but not icy as he makes himself take a sip.
“Master Tim is grieving. I know that you are, as well, but your shiva for Master Jason has ended. If you need a moment, collect yourself out of sight of the child.”
Bruce nods again. When he speaks, he sounds almost as hoarse as Tim. “I’m going to take a break.”
“Very good, sir.”
Bruce finishes his water. Alfred watches him.
“I’ll be back tomorrow,” Bruce says, and leaves the house without looking back at anyone.
It comes as a relief to Bruce that when he comes back on the fifth morning, Tim hasn’t regressed back to the catatonia of the first few days. He isn’t talking today, though that’s likely due to the inflammation in his throat more than any desire to be taciturn.
He gives Bruce a nod in greeting, Dick waves.
Alfred serves a late breakfast to all of them, camped out on the floor. Bruce is aching from a new array of bruises thanks to the overly intense patrol he’d put himself through last night, but he doesn’t complain about sitting on the ground. It’s a companionable moment and he won’t interrupt it.
These visits are meant to be filled with sharing stories. Even if Tim was able to use his voice, Bruce doesn’t know how many memories of Janet Tim would be able to share. Despite thoughts like these that keep occurring to Bruce, the mood is lighter than it has been. Bruce is capable of sitting still for many hours, and he continues to do so. Dick is less inclined, and he leaves in and out of the room and the house several times but always comes back.
After lunch, Alfred leaves the house abruptly, holding his cell phone. When he comes back in a few minutes later, he gestures to Bruce to meet him in the kitchen.
“The boy’s father has woken up,” Alfred says to Bruce in a low tone while Dick distracts Tim in the other room.
Bruce’s teeth grind together. Tim hasn’t once asked about the state of his father, despite being heartbroken about the loss of his mother. Even before this week, he’s shied away from conversation about his father and he’s far too startled by sudden movements for Bruce to not notice that something’s wrong. Jack Drake is not the correct person to be in the house right now.
“Is he coming here?” Bruce asks.
Alfred shakes his head. “It seems he was paralyzed by the poison. He’ll be under observation there until arrangements can be made for a caretaker. No visitors.”
Bruce leans back to see through the doorway out to the living room. Tim’s looking back at him, head cocked in mild curiosity. Bruce looks back to Alfred.
“Do we tell him?” he asks, lowering his voice further.
Alfred regards Bruce for a long moment, before delicately saying, “It appears his father will not be home for several days. The boy is under quite enough stress as it is.”
Tim can’t leave the house until tomorrow, anyway. There’s no point in introducing more anxiety to his life--frankly, if Tim gets too much more upset, Bruce is worried the kid’s heart will give out.
“Right,” Bruce says. “If his status changes, will you tell me?”
“Certainly.” Alfred inclines his head.
Bruce goes back out to the living room and acts as though he’s just gotten some unimportant business-related news.
Tim doesn’t stay suspicious of him for long. He’s soothed by having let out some of the things that were weighing his mind down for the last week, and he drinks the honey lemon tea that Alfred continuously prepares for him, despite the fact that the taste clearly doesn’t appeal to him at all.
It’s the last night. Tim goes up to his bed to sleep at a decent hour. As soon as he’s retreated upstairs, Bruce tells Dick about the update on Tim’s father.
Dick is, unsurprisingly, not pleased with the news. He’s not the type to wish ill on someone out loud, but his sneer of distaste at the news of Jack Drake regaining consciousness speaks for itself.
“What’s going to happen to Tim?” Dick asks. “Will his dad keep custody?”
Bruce says, “Dickie, obviously he’s going to--”
“I know, I just-- ugh .”
Bruce has already been examining his legal options, covertly. The unfortunate reality is that the case would have been much easier before the incident in the Caribbean. Now, Bruce swooping in with accusations of child abuse would seem heartless, with him bringing a civil case against a man who is paralyzed and whose wife has died.
Bruce’s public image is still a little wobbly right now. People have been cutting him slack because Jason had been adored by the press, but Bruce can’t just swing a hammer at one of his company’s rivals, right after the week of mourning has passed, and not expect it to break bad.
He doesn’t care about that kind of thing, in the face of protecting the kid who cried himself to sleep on Bruce’s shoulder last night. But Bruce can’t rush into anything. He’ll have to settle for continuing to train Tim, and continuing to delay the point when Tim’s allowed to go out and patrol in Gotham as long as he can.
Jason would tell him to just kidnap the kid and then call the police to come find that Tim had disappeared without his father noticing or caring. Bruce doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry about that, so he says it to Dick and Dick both cries and laughs about it.
In the morning, Bruce is awake in the kitchen when Tim comes downstairs. He’s changed into new clothes and he comes into the living room without the same downtrodden and detached look he’s had this entire week. He already has his shoes on, because he’d probably put them on immediately after changing out of the funeral clothes.
Tim hadn’t implied that he wanted Bruce to tell him to rise from shiva, so Bruce doesn’t stop Tim from going to the front door. He just follows and goes outside with the kid, leaving the door shut but unlocked behind them. The candle on the coffee table is less than an hour away from being burnt out, so Bruce doesn’t suspect it’s a danger to leave it for a little while.
Tim turns his face up to the sky, squinting a little. It’s overcast, because this is Gotham, but Tim breathes in the weather like it’s the most beautiful thing in the world.
“I want to go down the driveway and down to the corner store,” Tim tells Bruce, his voice croaky but no longer as flimsy as it was a few nights ago. He clears his throat, wincing briefly, and his voice strengthens. “When we come back, can I show you Mom’s rose garden?”
“Of course, bud,” Bruce says.
Tim nods, satisfied. He steps off the porch back into the world of the living, and Bruce follows.