the prophetic spring

When Tim Drake was seven years old he found 4chan. This would eventually kill him, and then proceed to kill very many other people afterwards, thus adding to the website’s already considerable body count. It would also save a few lives, which was a first for 4chan.

Notes:

"Tell the emperor that my hall has fallen to the ground. Phoibos no longer has his house, nor his mantic bay, nor his prophetic spring; the water has dried up."
Fits into my Reverse Robin AU, but it's unnecessary to have read that one before this. Just know that Tim was killed by the Joker and brought back to life, and that the ages of all of the sidekicks are reversed.

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

When Tim Drake was seven years old he found 4chan. This would eventually kill him, and then proceed to kill very many other people afterwards, thus adding to the website’s already considerable body count. It would also save a few lives, which was a first for 4chan.

Tim liked 4chan. He didn’t like all of the porn, and it taught him very many slurs, but he quickly found that the /toy/ and /vp/ boards were fun, and that he could instantly detonate the /pol/ boards by mentioning to the guy he had got into a week long argument with that he was seven. However, his favorite board was definitely /sp/. Superhero sighting.

It was the best way to keep track of Batman, which like any self-respecting Gothamite seven year old Tim was obsessed with. The only superhero he liked more than Batman was Robin, because Robin was a kid like him and had swords and chopped limbs off sometimes when Batman wasn’t looking. 4chan agreed that Robin was an egofag, and kept on posting pictures of Pedobear whenever anyone mentioned him, but they respected his prowess and belief in the death penalty. And, more than any other website, the Gotham boards of 4chan knew how to keep meticulous track of Batman and Robin sightings.

It was in this board that Tim found his calling.

Tim got absorbed into the community. He began downloading every picture he saw that recorded their tracks, placing them on maps and analyzing their trajectories. He begun humble, adding his thoughts here or a possible conclusion there, but soon Tim was stepping up his game to sneaking out of the house and taking pictures of abandoned Batarangs himself. Soon he was sneaking out almost every night, abandoning all half-hearted attempts at homework or socialization. His teachers couldn’t decide whether or not to put him in the vanguard classes or special ed, and they didn’t know what to do with him. He got a little obsessed. Tim did that.

On the internet people respected Tim. Nobody knew he was a little kid if he didn’t say so, and even when he did they didn’t believe him. He was an established and active member on ten different Batman and Robin fan boards, on Justice League boards, on Supervillain boards, even on the niche Green Lantern boards. They didn’t say that he talked weird, or never looked people in the eyes, or told him to stop dissecting roadkill he found in the street. He learned the value of anonymity. When nobody knew who you were, you could do anything you want.

Tim couldn’t do anything he wanted, although it was close. However, he understood that his unlimited freedom had a time limit. When he went into middle school his parents were going to send him to boarding school, and then he’d have supervision all the time instead of the five hours three times a week. He had a limited window of freedom. He had to figure out the mystery now, or he might never have the opportunity again.

When Tim was ten it became clear. He stepped back from the board of pictures he had printed out, of his writeup of clues, of his meticulously documented list after list of evidence and sightings and cross-referenced appearances. He had dedicated an entire room in his mansion to the endeavour, locking Mrs. Mac out of it when she came three times a week to clean and make food for him. It was so overwhelmingly simple, so clear, that he wondered why he hadn’t seen it before.

Batman and Robin were Bruce and Damian Wayne. His next door neighbors. When he went to parties with his parents the three times a year they were home he was stuck in the kid’s room with Damian Wayne, who scowled and snapped and texted people on his phone instead of talking to him. That was okay with Tim. He never talked to people at the parties either. He was pretty sure Damian Wayne didn’t know he existed.

Tim could sell this information, but he had been funneling money out of his parent’s accounts for years and didn’t need any more. He could tell it to supervillains, which might be fun and cause some neat photo opportunities, but that probably wasn’t worth the risk. He could tell it to his friends at school, except he didn’t have any friends at school, or he could tell it to his internet friends, but they wouldn’t believe him.

Then Robin disappeared, and the point became moot anyway. Everyone started saying that Robin was dead, or that he had gone back to his home country, or that he had turned evil(er) and become Deathstroke’s apprentice. Tim cried in his bed for a week when he thought that Robin was dead. He didn’t want anything to happen to his hero.

Damian Wayne went backpacking across Europe to celebrate graduating high school early. Bruce Wayne laughed off any questions about him. Tim reasoned that if Robin was dead then Batman would do a worse job lying about it.

So Tim was stuck in a peculiar position: having information less than a handful of people on the planet were privy to, yet unable and unwilling to do anything interesting about it. He didn’t really want anything.

Well. He wanted one thing.

Batman started getting sloppier. More and more of his blood was found at crime scenes. More criminals started reporting that Batman was getting hurt more often, or that he was hurting more often without Robin there to be a good example for. He was different. Worse. Tim thought about his heart’s desire.

He started following Batman around at night, having memorized his patrol routes when he was eight. It was shockingly easy. Tim had some problems keeping up on the rain slick rooftops, and it took valuable Minecraft time out of his night, but Tim was small and could keep up. He thought about what Rainbow Dash would do, or John Egbert, and found strength to slip out at night and take surreptitious shots on his phone camera to post in the message boards. He saw for himself how Batman was slipping. At this rate he was going to die. That was the last thing Tim wanted. Stalking Green Arrow would be so much harder than stalking Batman, and there was no point to it. He had found out Green Arrow’s secret identity accidentally.

Tim ate the Mac and Cheese he carefully made for himself on the stovetop. He was big now, twelve years old, and Mrs. Mac didn’t come around as much. He knew how to make Mac and Cheese and frozen pizza. He needed some way of getting Batman’s attention. He put the bowl away, washed in the sink, and walked down the dirt road in the outskirts of their affluent suburb for thirty minutes until he reached Wayne Manor.

He came to a halt in front of the large wrought iron gates of Wayne Manor. There was a little intercom next to the gates, just like for Tim’s house, and he cautiously pressed it.

A voice crackled over the intercom immediately. The voice sounded old and British. “Wayne Manor. How may I help you?”

Tim froze. The intercom crackled. He began sweating, and everything he wanted to say stuck in his throat. He wanted to curl up into a ball.

“Hello? Is anyone there?”

Tim ran all the way back home.

Okay, so that was a bust. Tim was clearly very bad at getting the attention of adults, because his parents hadn’t been home in seven months, but he hadn’t known he was that bad. Maybe he should approach him in a less scary way, take some less drastic action. Tim dug his favorite wooden boxes out from under his bed - no, that was his collection of raccoon hearts, the other one - no, that was all of the jewelry he stole from Catwoman, the other one - here we go!

Tim proudly held up a tire iron. Time to get Batman’s attention.

Before Tim found 4chan, he dissected squirrels in the backyard.

He was six. He didn’t remember doing it, despite his near perfect recall of everything in his life since he was three. But his mother had caught him squatting in the backyard during a casual party, tiki torches speared into the soft loam near the deck with fireflies buzzing around his head as the other children caught them and stuffed them in jars in their own acts of cruelty. Tim was huddled in the far reaches of the backyard, carefully brandishing a steak knife he had lifted off the Mayor’s dinner plate, and was slicing open a squirrel so he could find the heart he had read about in his anatomy books. He wanted to make a diagram.

When Janet Drake caught him she didn’t scream. She carefully bent down, ripped the bloody knife out of his hands, tossed it into the woods, and picked him up by his armpits as she dragged him away from the scene.

The only thing she asked him was this: “Did you kill it?”

“Mama! I was looking at that! Mama!”

Then he started crying, and Janet put him back in the house and gave him a video game to play with to keep him quiet. It was easier than dealing with him. He didn’t tell her if he had killed it or not, and she didn’t ask, and soon Tim forgot about it altogether.

Janet was a Gothamite, born and bred, and she knew better than to ask questions she didn’t want to know the answer to. So was Tim, although he had never learned that bit about the questions. That was his father’s influence, a Chicagoan, who frequently complained to Janet that he wanted them to move because he was sick of their piece of shit city. Janet didn’t know how to explain to Jack that she knew that Tim couldn’t survive anywhere else. He’d go insane. More insane. Gotham was where her family had lived for generations, and it was best for him.

Anyway, that was how Tim stole the tires off the Batmobile. He didn’t expect a suit out of it. But he wasn’t complaining. The heart can’t help what it longs for. And Tim’s heart had always longed for this.

HOW I SPENT MY SUMMER VACATION: by Timothy Drake-Wayne

For MY summer vacation I had a very fun time destroying the League of Assassins! First I destroyed Ra’s al Ghul’s base in Gotham, and then every single one of his bases in the continental United States! I fought a lot of ninjas, which was very fun, and I went surfing in San Diego. They have a great zoo. I threw a ninja into the lion enclosure there.

Then, I went to Europe! It was there I ran into Talia. We had a great conversation. I barely made it out of Prague alive, but I took some time to stop and see the Holocaust memorials first! It was very sad :(.

France was fun! I assassinated the financial backers behind the League there. Britain was very cloudy, and the cathedrals were very boring, but I found a very good chippie. I almost had to get my leg amputated in Glasgow!

Then I decided to take a training break, in my break! I trained with Richard Dragon, and Lady Shiva, and so on and so forth. It was extremely educational. I then stayed in a Tibetan monastery for three months and found myself, and realized killing was wrong.

Then I blew up three more League bases. But I killed less people this time.

I was fist deep in some guy’s chest when I heard the news. The Batman was dead! How terrible. I went straight home.

But I stopped into Tokyo first. They had the nicest karaoke bars in Tokyo.

And that’s what I did during my summer break!

Connor looked up from the paper.

“You have to be shitting me,” he said.

Tim shrugged, reclining on the motel bed as he flipped through his favorite websites aimlessly. There was nothing he had missed more during that three month sabbatical in the monastery than internet. He had been about to tear his hair out not being able to go on reddit all day. All of his forum friends were ragging on him for disappearing again. They still hadn’t forgiven him for dropping off the face of the planet a few years back. He had to make up a story about boot camp.

“God’s honest truth, Connor. That’s everything, exactly as it happened.” Tim paused contemplatively. “Although I may have almost lost my leg in Manchester.”

“You weren’t gone for a summer break!” Connor squawked, waving the paper around. “You were gone for a year, dude! Nobody knew where you were! I thought that Dami had dumped you in Arkham or something!”

He would have probably deserved it. Tim was a little disappointed that they hadn’t. He could have had so much fun with Arkham. “How I spent my gap year, then,” Tim allowed. He set the laptop aside, and casually took off his shirt. Connor’s eyes bugged out - Tim was pretty spry for a dead guy, and his six pack had six packs. “Are we going to have sex or not? That’s kind of why I called you here.”

“Are - we - what! What!” Connor was flushing deep red, which amused Tim highly. “Just hold - just fucking hold on, Tim. You show up back in Gotham for the first time since you trashed the place -”

“Starting one little gang is hardly trashing -”

“ - you come home for your Dad’s funeral and then I think you kill David Koch -”

“You have no proof about that -”

“I’ve had no idea where you were for years ,” Connor said loudly, and Tim shut up, “and you call my number that I had no idea you had, you tell me to come to this skeezy motel, you tell me that you’ve been dismantling the League of Assasins for the past year, and now you wanna fuck?”

“Yes?”

“Dude,” Connor said, exasperated. “You’re ace. We’ve done it, like, twice.”

“Dying cured me of that.”

“Dying doesn’t change your sexuality !”

“How would you know?” Tim asked reasonably. “I’m the only person you know who’s ever died and then come back and asked to fuck you.”

Connor shut up, eyes wide. Tim took off his pants.

“We’re talking after this,” Connor said weakly. “We’re - yeah. Hey, wait for me!”

Text channels

#General

BirdinMourning: guess who got back together with his BOYFRIEND

BirdinMourning: this guy B)

TentacleTherapist: Oh, did he return from his far off and very real enlistment? Or is he taking a sabbatical from being "the world's coolest skater"

EctoBiologist: Didn't Red Hood just come back? Fucking knew the SJWar,lords were going to feminize killing people too

TentacleTherapist: Are you implying Bird is currently porking Gotham's newest terrorist

GutsyGumshoe: guyz be nice to Beem it’s not his fault his boyfriend dumped him.

GutsyGumshoe: bc he disappears so often

GutsyGumshoe: and never returns calls

BirdinMourning: my boyfriend is VERY real and it hurts my feelings when youse keep saying that I made him up for clout :(

BirdinMourning: can’t fake how much my ass hurts guys

EctoBiologist: It's ok BM you've always been butthurt LMFAO

GutsyGumshoe: JAKFLAJLFDJDKASF

GutsyGumshoe: speaking of RH check out my newest finding in #sightings

#sightings

GustyGumshoe: [Image. Blurry shot of a red mask on a rooftop. Appears to be wielding a gun.]

GutsyGumshoe: Beem’s boyfriend’s back in the burb

TentacleTherapist: Well damn. Looks like the shit is about to hit the Bat.

TentacleTherapist: You think It knows already?

EctoBiologist: has 2. Hood is a slut for slaughter and the Batman is probs pissed

[Batmad.jpg]

GutsyGumshoe: r u sure? Nobody’s seen Batman in weeks. Last time I checked he was off world with the JL. mebbe RH is taking advantage of him being gone to fuck shit up

GutsyGumshoe: exceepppttt NW’s been everywhere and he’s the one who took down RH last time…..GRUDGE MATCH!!!

TentacleTherapist: I hope you don't get jealous from the amount of unresolved sexual tension between your lovers, Bird

BirdinMourning: Ed shut the fuck up NW and RH aren’t fucking jesus fucking christ

GustyGumshoe: chill Beem it’s just a joke?

BirdinMourning: not funny.

GustyGumshoe: ok

EctoBiologist: it's a lil funny lmfao

TentacleTherapist: It's rather alarming how quickly you struck out at the suggestion. Is there an infidelity in your heart between your two obsessions and your very real boyfriend?

EctoBiologist: pretty sure he just said your BF is cucking you [Smuganimegirl.jpg]

TentacleTherapist: She

EctoBiologist: whatever

BirdinMourning: idc. I don’t give a shit about the batfam anymore. I’m beyond all this shit honestly. This spotting game is a kid’s hobby and im a fucking adult. I need to make an identity outside of them. I’m my own man now. I have better things to do than obsess over what fucking NW is doing all day. Im going independent. FUCK the system.

GustyGumshoe: LMAO DUDE ive known you since you were 15 there is NOBODY who loves the batfam more than you. Admit it, you’re a batfan for life! It’s ok dude!! Fuck im 25 and still into them. Don’t be embarrassed.

EctoBiologist: LMAO HOES MAD. look dude we know theres only one thing in the world that holds your heart more than mountains of suckable cock, and it's batfags

BirdinMourning: RR’s straight dude HOW many times do I have to tell you

GustyGumshoe: :/

BirdinMourning: ok fucking whatever I’m done with this chat anyway

TentacleTherapist: I hope you're ok.

#general

BirdinMourning: I won’t be on for a week. My family’s sitting shiva for my shithead of a dad and I better show up and pay respects or whatever. Sayonara.

GustyGumshoe: TIM HOLY SHIT?

EctoBiologist: since when is your dad dead Tim holy shit I’m so sorry

TentacleTherapist: You have to start letting us in, man

BirdinMourning: [solidsnakesaluting.jpg]

He actually had gone back to Wayne Central, because he would mourn as many parents as he had to and Tim hadn’t spent three months in a monastery with a vow of silence just to stay in denial over the fact that Bruce was the only parent he had ever really had, and that Bruce was actually a pretty shitty parent.

When he had first come back there had been a lot of ‘Oh, he never loved you’, and ‘Think of me as your step-mother!’ and ‘Try killing this guy for us’. Some light brainwashing, on Talia’s part. Tim had made his own choice to believe it. Except for the fact that he hated Talia al Ghul so much he wanted to rip off her face and cram it in his mouth and eat it , so as a result he was disinclined to believe shit just because it spewed out of her perfect little mouth. He could decide his own parents. Besides, it wasn’t like Bruce was around to hate anymore.

They didn’t even have a real funeral. They would sit another shiva when they had the official funeral, months from now. But for this shiva, all of the well-wishers were caped crusaders who gave Tim the stink-eye as they shook a grim Damian’s hand. He didn’t even know why they were doing this. Tim was the only actually Jewish one, and he didn’t give a fuck. But the - ugh - Replacement had converted years ago, and he was all ernest, and everyone was falling over themselves to make his stupid cherubic little face happy, so a shiva they had. Besides, Kate Kane was giving them the stink-eye too.

He lasted about a day. A day under Alfred, who he had missed so much it felt like carving out his heart with a grapefruit spoon, and his stern cooking. A day under Mister Patriarch, stomping around in gloominess and adulthood and rippling biceps. A day with his sisters who kept on trying to corner him to play games with them or read books together and that he had to avoid for dear life because Cass could smell sin. A day with the Replacement, who just cried and cried in his room and refused to talk to anyone. There was even a random brat sulking around, invisible if you didn’t know to look for him, hiding in the rafters. Tim didn’t give a fuck.

He booked it the next day to do cocaine in a nightclub. Whatever. He had tried.

It used to be his nightclub, actually. The Red Hood was not a slumlord, because Tim Drake-Wayne was a classy aristocratic boy, and the Red Hood specialized in eating the rich anyway. But he had his territory, and he had his bars and his laundromats and his protection rackets. He even had a pretty nifty Chinese restaurant. It was all gone, of course - Red Hood had vanished from Gotham after being “locked up”, e.g. Ran Off To Go Find Himself, and his land had probably been eaten by one of the few gang leaders he hadn’t knocked off - and Tim wasn’t particularly interested in rebuilding his empire. What was the point. He could spend that time fucking his boyfriend.

He crouched in the nightclub bathroom, already tipsy from the vodka shots he had been doing off the back of that male stripper, and snorted lines off a handheld compact mirror some random chick in a slinky black dress passed him. She was laughing and chugging her own drink as her boyfriend tried necking at her, but she only had eyes for Tim.

He stuffed a twenty in her bra, just to insult her, before stumbling out of the bathroom. He patted the backs of everything standing in the hallway talking, laughing at them and with them, and stumbled back onto the dance floor so he could go back to grinding against hot guys. Everything was swimming, and Tim felt both very hot and very cold, and every inch of himself was vibrating. Someone stuck another drink in his hand and he downed it without looking too hard at what it was. A guy was whispering in his ear and Tim giggled before pushing him off. He had a boyfriend. He wasn’t a cheater. But - man, would Connor mind? No, he probably would. He was a bit of a goody two shoes.

It hadn’t used to be like that. Tim had always been the prim, uptight, ‘Call me Al’ one. Connor had been the one who hung loose, who snuck weed into Young Justice camping trips and smoked up with Cissie. Cissie, god. What was she doing? Tim wore masks under his masks in the camping trips just in case someone fucking dared him to take it off, only nobody had, Connor had dared him to kiss him instead, and Tim had done it, it was just a kiss -

Oh, jesus. He should buy every gay bar in Gotham so fucking Damian fucking al fucking Ghul fucking Wayne couldn’t walk into a single one with his fiance in peace without knowing that Tim fucking owned the place. God, he was such a genius. Tim was a god.

He was wired. He was electric. Superman Red, Superman Blue. Hah! That sure as hell happened. Tim was going to self-immolate, like monks living under tyranny would. Tim remembered being six, and dissecting squirrels. Later on he had stuck to roadkill, harvesting with his bare hands, the feeling of intestines under his fingertips, squish, splash, sploosh. Tim was alive. He was alive!

Crack, crack, his jawbone breaks - smash, smash, his kneecap. Joker Junior. Tim was dead! But he was alive.

Tim stumbled back to the bathroom and did another line. Not thinking about that, not today, not right now.

“I need another line like I need a hole in the head,” Tim announced to the bathroom stall, kissing the girl quickly on the lips as she giggled just to infuriate her boyfriend. “Pour me another one, Angeline.”

“My name is Jessica,” Angeline giggled.

“Good for you,” Tim said honestly. “Hey, where can a guy score some smack around here?”

Her boyfriend glared at him, trying to shoo him off. “Scram, kid. This is the Hood’s territory. If he catches us passing kids some smack he’ll string me up by my balls. Bad enough you’re on the coke.”

“I’m twenty,” Tim pouted. “Wanna see my ID?”

“Yeah, and with Hood rules you gotta be twenty one. Fuck off, runt.”

“Oh, what ever ,” Tim stuck out his tongue, winking at the girl again. She giggled and twirled her hair. “I’ll find someone who’ll sell to me. It’s not like the Hood’ll find out. This ain’t even his gig no more. He ain’t been here in years.”

“Bats never die,” Angeline said serenely. “They just sleep for a while. Do you want another Russian, darling?”

“I’ll pass,” Tim said, suddenly dizzy. “I want some air, anyway.”

He stumbled outside through the back door, feet crunching in the snow. It must have been cold, but he couldn’t feel it at all. The wind whistled in his face, and when Tim dusted the coke dust off his Rolex he saw that it was two am. Dim lights lit up the alley, tweakers and stoners and bums lighting up and blowing each other in the darkest corners. Electricity shot out of Tim’s finger nails, and he absentmindedly scratched at his palm until it bled. Red. Thick, coagulating. Same as always. Tim was intimately familiar with his blood.

T’chiyat hameitim. Resurrection of the dead, in Hebrew. Tim was technically Reform, which stated that the concept of resurrection was not rooted in Judaism, but the Orthodox still believed in the prophecy of the resurrection of the dead. When the Messiah comes, the temple will be rebuilt in Jerusalem, the Jewish people will gather from the far corners of the earth, and the bodies of the dead will be brought back to life and reunited with their souls.

Many, many, many religions interpreted Superman as the messiah (whose clone Tim was fucking), so by that logic it was about time. Tim had been fated. The idea was heady. Someone was bound to come back to life, and it had been him. Talia hadn’t resurrected him. Neither had Ra’s. They had just found him. Someone else had resurrected Tim. God had done it. Who else could?

On the tails of this religious epiphany, Tim called his boyfriend (“Connor Lane<3”) on his cell phone. He had to ring three different times before Connor woke up. He was a surprisingly heavy sleeper for someone who could hear two flies fucking in China.

“Kon!” Tim screamed into the wind. The streetlight flickered, and Tim imagined that above him Robin was flipping between buildings, alight in life. “Kon, I’m outside a nightclub high on alcohol and cocaine! How are you!”

The line was silent for a long second, crackling slightly, before Connor spoke. “It’s two am, Tim.”

“Yeah, I’m aware. Hey, do you want to have sex?”

The line went dead, and Tim squinted blearily at the screen. He knew that Sgt. Brother was probably monitoring his calls, but he hoped that he hadn’t been listening in. Surely Nightwing had better things to do at 2am? The answer was probably no.

Then the wind blew extremely hard, tossing the long black strands of Tim’s hair into his mouth, and he screwed his eyes shut. When he opened them again Connor was standing there, clearly still in his pyjamas, furious. Very hot!

“Honey!” Tim said, delighted. He stepped forward and tried to kiss Connor, cradling his head between his hands, but Connor easily dodged him and stepped away. What was his problem? “I’m thinking of buying every gay nightclub in Gotham to piss off our brothers, what do you think?”

“Cocaine?” Connor screeched, and Tim winced. “Are you fucking serious? Really, Tim?”

Tim pouted, crossing his arms. “I knew that you would have been such a jerk about it I wouldn’t have called. I would share, but I dunno how it affects Kryptonians.”

“Lex would kill me. Then Pa would get a turn.” Connor grabbed the scuff of Tim’s designer jacket, and Tim knew what this meant. He screwed his eyes shut as he felt his feet lift off the ground, felt the world whirl around him, and he looped an arm around Connor’s neck and pressed in his face close to his clavicle. Flying with him was usually thrilling, but now it just made him nauseous. He felt bile rise in his throat.

The trip home took forever, but just a few seconds. Time was being weird. Tim was thinking about the Torah again, and his bar mitzvah (the bat mitzvah jokes had literally never ended) and the way Tim’s mouth had stumbled over the unfamiliar syllables, how uncomfortable Bruce had looked but the way he had clapped, how his mom hadn’t lived to see it and his dad had been in a coma. They had pulled the plug on his dad pretty soon after that. And that had been that.

Bruce had given his blessing, the baruch she-p’tarani. “Praised are You, our God, ruler of the universe who has excused me for this one.” Given him his tallit, passed down his mother’s Torah. He had looked so uncomfortable, and it had been so funny. Tim had been scared.

A door unlatched, and Tim saw that it was his motel room. Connor must have picked up the memo about him not staying at the Wayne HQ. Tim sloppily tried to kiss him, but Connor pushed him away again. He looked mad.

“You wanna tell me how long you’ve been doing drugs, Tim?”

“Jeez, lighten up. I wouldn’t have booty called you if I knew that you’d get so upset.” Tim flopped down on the bed, pulling his laptop closer. Maybe he could get some work done, if Connor wasn’t going to let him have any fun. “Go back to sleep if you want to.”

“I couldn’t just go back to bed knowing you were high and drunk in some sketchy nightclub, dude!” Connor was tugging at his hair, as dramatic as usual, over the top in every way. Tim rolled his eyes. What a drama queen. “Have you been doing this ever since you came back to life?”

Well, there was that one time in high school. He had gone to a very rich kid high school. “Sure, since then,” Tim said easily. “Look, we can fuck or you can lecture me, so if you’re gonna waste my time you can just leave. Love you, Kon, but you’re being a drag.”

Connor’s expression crumpled, and the vague pang of guilt knocked Tim very lightly on the head. “Yeah, sorry, dude. Sorry I’ve been a bit of a drag the past couple of years. You aren’t the first person to tell me that. I dunno, uh, losing my boyfriend’s been hard. I thought I got him back, but I guess I didn’t. Sorry that’s an inconvenience.”

Tim spread his arms. “I’m right here, man. Remember that my life is a breath; My eye will not again see good…A cloud dissolves and it is gone; So is one who descends to Sheol; He will not ascend.”

The quote fell on deaf ears. Go fig. Connor just squinted. “Is that Shakespeare? You know I’m Jared, 19, dude.”

Yes, Connor had never cracked open a book in his life. Half of that was out of spite for Lex’s fondness for Victor Hugo, though. Tim just shrugged, making a show of relaxing on the bed. He still felt jittery and full of light, and he wasn’t actually horny because Tim had been kidding about not being ace anymore, but Connor was there and he was like a greek god given form and Tim loved him as much as he was capable of loving anything.

“Then I’ll just sit here,” Tim drawled out, “all by myself. All alone. Feel free to leave anytime.”

Connor narrowed his eyes. “You’re trying to manipulate me.”

“Is it working?”

“I just want to talk, dude - what’s wrong? What’s happened to you? You haven’t told me jack. Something’s wrong with you. We can talk it out.”

He should be in Arkham. He was a serial killer. He was an evil genius. He was a super villain. He was a mob boss. He was Robin. He was Red Hood. He was an assassin. Tim’s life had gotten fucking out of control in the past four years.

At least he wasn’t crazy anymore? Or, at least, crazy in a more normal way. Tim didn’t really feel the urge to stuff a bunch of heads in duffel bags anymore. It had just, you know, seemed like such a good idea back then, in a way that didn’t really seem as fun now.

“We don’t have to talk,” Tim said instead.

Connor sighed, and locked the door.

Tim and Connor had met at a League picnic.

It was only a few months Tim had made his official debut, actually. His costume was still stiff and starchy, and smelled like industrial grade detergent. Bruce’s costume was soft and supple to the touch, leather and rubber, and smelled like tires. Sweaty tires. But Bruce had figured that the picnic was as good of an opportunity to introduce him to everyone else anyway, make the rounds. Most people still thought that Robin was just living with his mom (which, he was - well, maybe) and that he would come back any day now. Any day now.

Which he would! Tim’s stance here was very finite. Tim would fill in, beat up some bad guys, make some appearances, until Robin came back. If he would come back. If he never came back, then Tim got Robin for as long as he wanted. Batman was being extremely unclear on this. He had hinted that Robin was very final when he said that he would never be Robin again, but you never know!

Damian Wayne, not Robin. Tim was Robin. That was Tim.

(“Where had the name come from?”

Bruce paused as his fingers hovered over the keys. “Bad joke.”

“Ah.”)

Anyway, the Justice League family picnic was a big deal, if you had a family. Apparently it had started because Batman and Superman were always setting up playdates anyway, and Green Arrow had just tripped on his own son so maybe they could all hang out, and J’onn hadn’t introduced everyone to his niece yet, so Superman had suggested a family picnic, and Bruce has grumbled about it but scheduled it immediately, and now there were three legged races.

But now mostly it was a nice day in Switzerland, everyone had spread out blankets in the valley of the Alps, and they were watching cows graze as the Arrows were very loud and Bruce contentedly sipped wine and ate cheese on crackers as he talked with Wonder Woman (“Call me Diana, honey.”). He was wearing plain clothes except for a large mask over his face, and Tim was dressed similarly. He was sucking at a Capri Sun, feeling very twelve. It was weird to just sit and hang out with Bruce. They didn’t do it very often. That was more of, like, a father-son thing. Bruce was a ‘next door neighbor who trained you how to dodge bullets’ kind of guy.

All of the passing Leaguers had stopped and froze when they saw Bruce and Tim sitting on the picnic blanket, talking easily. Black Canary had narrowed her eyes, as if she was genuinely trying to see if Robin was looking a little pastier than he had a few months ago.

“Robin,” Black Canary said, deeply confused. “Did you...shrink?”

Tim sucked at his Capri Sun, avoiding eye contact.

Bruce sipped at his wine. “De aging ray. Very unfortunate.”

“Uh huh,” Black Canary said, not buying it. “And his, uh, appearance -”

“Teeth whitening toothpaste gone too far.”

“Okay.” Black Canary looked thoroughly spooked now. Bruce had an excellent poker face. “Wow. I guess anything can happen in Gotham -”

“Batman! Robin!”

It was Superman (“Call me Uncle Clark!”), floating over the hill with a small shadow by his side. He was a little older than Tim, wiry and tall, with perfectly coiffed hair. He was very cute, and Tim flushed as he sucked at his Capri Sun. They came to a light stop in front of the Batman Blanket, and Clark clapped the boy cheerfully on the shoulder. The boy grinned hugely, and Tim saw that he had perfectly straight white teeth with crystal blue eyes. Perfectly straight white teeth. It was unnatural.

“Batman, Robin! Dinah! There’s someone who I’d like to introduce.” Superman gestured unnecessarily at the boy, who waved eagerly. “Guys, this is Kon-El. Kon, this is Batman, Robin, and Black Canary.”

Oh. This guy. Tim had read his file. Well, he had read everyone’s file. Kon-El waved cheerfully as Bruce nodded at him and Dinah smiled at him. Tim took a bite out of an egg salad sandwich Alfred had made. It was very good.

“Hi! I’m two weeks old. I love this picnic! I’m having a fantastic time. Hey, is that cheese? Sweet!” Kon-El bent down and grabbed a piece of cheese off Tim’s plate, popping it in his mouth and chewing. Superman winced and Bruce raised an eyebrow. “Aw, man, this is awesome! You have good cheese, little dude.”

“You aren’t that much taller than me,” Tim said.

“You’re the first person I’ve met who I’m taller than!” Kon-El said loudly. Tim blinked at him as the adults looked at each other, amused. “Do you want to be friends?”

“Uh,” Tim said.

“Oh, wait, heck, I did it wrong.” Kon-El bent down and stuck out his hand. Tim glanced at Bruce first, who just nodded. Tim gently reached out a hand and shook it, gloved hand meeting cold flesh. “Nice to meet you, Robin! Now we’re friends. First friend! How cool is that!”

Kon-El beamed at him, and Tim fell a little bit in love.

That had been it.

Then there had been Bart, and then Cassie, and then suddenly all of Young Justice, and Kon-El was never alone again. How dare he? As if he had suffered over those four years? He had gone through nothing in comparison with Tim. Tim’s body had been ripped apart. He had climbed out of his own grave. Tim wasn’t an invulnerable alien with Lex Luthor and Superman for dads. All Tim was, all he had ever been, was an orphan Jewish queer who never made eye contact and never acted right and remembered too much and talked too loud or too quietly.

Tim had always been the wrong shape, had never fit in quite right. Not normal or social enough for Gotham aristocracy, not cute or bubbly enough for his parents. Not talented or ruthless enough for Bruce. Too soft, too weak. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

He had been wrong for Damian too, who took one look at him and hated him so much that he moved to another city just to get away from him. It was unfortunate, and more than a little embarrassing. Tim had hero worshipped Damian until - well, until he died. Or maybe a little before that. He had hero worshipped Damian until he realized that he wasn’t going to save him.

But nobody did, and for the first time Tim felt completely free. Free of societal expectations, free of the ‘look him in the eyes’, ‘be polite to her’, ‘don’t say weird things’, ‘hang out with other kids’ endless chatter and nagging. Don’t do drugs, stay in school. Tim had given up on everyone, and he was free.

Or he would be, if he just stopped calling Connor.

Tim got an apartment.

In cash, under the table, with falsified records and even more cash when needed. Tim was still flush from stealing as much of Ra’s money as physically possible, and he had been careful to select an apartment from the Hood’s old territory in the Bowery. Out of a misplaced nostalgia, he chose the nicest apartment he could. Tim wasn’t used to living in squalor. It was ill-suited for him, and he had found that no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t wear poverty easily. He would rather live someplace without any roaches, thanks. Sorry he wasn’t a gutter baby like the Replacement.

Nobody knew what it was, and he liked it that way. His neighbors didn’t knock on his door to introduce themselves, because this was Gotham and the Hood wasn’t exactly around, and Tim rarely went out in daylight. He got his groceries delivered, he went to the expensive gym he had bought a membership to only in the wee hours of the morning, and his personal gift to all of his neighbors was hacking his way into high speed internet for the whole complex. Never let it be said that Tim Drake didn’t redistribute the important things.

But the Red Hood was still nowhere to be seen, and after almost a month of planning his debut Tim realized that he was just procrastinating. He didn’t know what he wanted the Hood to be anymore. Killing billionaires was fun, but it wasn’t a challenge. Being a crime lord didn’t hold the appeal it once did. Tim didn’t know what he was anymore. Not a good guy, probably more of a bad guy, but without the stomach for slaughter.

BATMAN GONE, the newspaper headlines read. WHERE IS HE NOW?

No Bruce left to hate. No Joker left to hate. No Batman left to hate.

Tim spent his evenings in a wig and prosthetic make-up, lingering on street corners and in bars that he kept on getting carded at listening to the gossip and making valuable friends. He researched the East End district extensively, ingratiating ‘Alvin Draper’ into the culture and scene. Most thought he was some mob punk, even more rumors were going around that he was acting as a scout for Red Hood - which, fair enough. Alvin was fast and loose with the money he passed out to informants, and even moreso just to people who looked like they needed it. He kept his lips closed on if the Red Hood was coming back to the town, but rumor got halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on and soon the word was unstoppable. And people still refused to sell him any snuff. Talk about being his own worst enemy.

Degenerates, low-lives, and criminals. His mother would have fainted dead away at the sight of the kind of people he spent his time with these days. Tim Drake, slumming it like all the other rich kids used to do at Brentwood. He knew what Ives, Arianna, and Bernard were doing. They had no idea what he was doing. Better that way. He lived in fear of running into them at the movie theater. God, how awkward that would be.

A month after he returned to Gotham he was standing on the street corner with his favorite gang of prostitutes, sharing cigarettes and chatting, when his past caught up to him for the first time.

“Are you kidding?” Amber sniffed, taking a long drag on the cigarette. Tim lingered on the outskirts of the group, nodding politely whenever anybody addressed a question to him but otherwise not interrupting. “As You Like It’s the queerest Shakespeare play he wrote. Endless inversion of gender roles, an investigation into falsehood and double lives, the whole works. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“As You Like It didn’t have a production with David Tennant and Catherine Tate,” Rachel argued. All the other women (and Tim) rolled their eyes. It was an old argument. “Nothing beats Tennant’s slutty gay energy. You’re just wrong, Amber.”

“All you talk about is Much Ado About Nothing,” Jackie moaned. “He wrote other shit, you know. Where’s my Macbeth appreciation here?”

“Jesus, youse are nerds,” Angelique muttered into her cigarette.

“Shut up,” Amber said irritably, upset that she was losing the argument yet again in the face of the well-reasoned opposing debates. “Al, what do you think?”

“Oh, sure,” Jackie scoffed, “ask the cokehead.”

“I’m an Austen fan myself,” Tim said honestly.

All of the women nodded in agreement - Austen was pretty great - but Amber just rolled her eyes. “Al, you’re the gay one, you’re just supposed to agree with me. You don’t recite Austen to your boyfriend, do you?”

“I don’t think my boyfriend can read.”

“Oh, shit! Oh shit!” Jackie said quickly, smacking Amber’s arm. “We got an expert in the house, hold on.” She pitched her voice up and waved her arm across the street, trying to get the attention of a small figure walking down the street. “Jason! Jason, honey, c’mere!”

It was dark, and the small figure was ducking between the streetlights, so it took until the figure looked up and waved back before lighting jogging across the street that Tim recognized him. His heart sunk. A flash of green cracked through his vision - no! Not here! Deep breaths, Tim Drake. If he reacts then they’ll all know.

Jason Todd, at sixteen years old, was taller than Tim despite his childhood of malnourishment. He was broad, heavily muscled, and looked older than he was. Tiny things about him, little hints that nobody other than Tim would have ever picked up hinted at wealth - his aftershave, the wear on his shoes, the style of his haircut - but at face value Jason seemed like just another guy from the neighborhood. He fit in better than Tim did, but that was a given. Jason had been born in the East End.

All of the girls cooed over him, Amber kissing him on the cheek as Jason scrunched up his nose. The image of a teenager too cool for affection, but secretly longing for it anyway. A faint sheen of lip gloss lingered on his cheek, and Jason quickly wiped it away and onto the sleeve of his thin and ratty cloth jacket. Tim recognized it from Bruce’s old bin of undercover clothing. He used to wear the same damn jacket.

“If you’re asking who’s the best at makeup again, I know better than to start the Trojan War,” Jason joked easily. All of the girls broke into laughter, as if what he said was so funny. “What’s up?”

Tim fantasized quickly, eagerly, about choking him to death. Feeling his trachea collapse under his fingers. The way he would throw up as he was strangled. Wheezing. The Replacement’s eyes skimmed over him.

“Which Shakespeare play’s queerest?” Amber asked immediately. “Be honest, now!”

“Twelfth Night,” the Replacement said immediately. “Duh. Orsino and Cesario? Antonio and Sebastian? Viola and Olivia? Come on, no contest.”

Everyone groaned. Amber shook her head. “You got me there, sweetie. You damn right.”

“I can’t argue with that,” Rachel admitted. “You win, Jase. As usual!”

“Our little genius,” Jackie cooed, making a show of pinching his cheeks, and the Replacement laughed as he batted her hand away. Maybe Tim’s scowl had finally shown up on his face, because Jackie’s eyes darted to him. “Oh, Al, darling, this is Jason. He’s a real pillar of this community, ya know? Jason, this is Al Draper, he’s fun and gay.”

“If you need an in with the Hood,” Rachel stage-whispered, “he’s your man. Or if anyone’s giving you trouble, you hear me?”

“I can neither confirm nor deny that,” Tim said smoothly. He stuck at a hand at the Replacement, who gave him a friendly smile - no way he didn’t recognize him - and shook it. “Charmed, Jason. Where do you live? I live outta the hood.”

On cue, all of the girls broke into peals of laughter. The Replacement reddened, faking embarrassment, as the girls cackled into their cigarettes.

“Oh, you’ll never believe who he lives with, honey,” Angie said. “Grew up on 12th street, Pine Oak apartment complex, just a little kid I used to babysit! But now he lives -”

Rachel elbowed her, then Amber, and she shut up. Amber flashed a bright, yellowed smile. “He stays with Miss Kyle most of the time. House sits, ya know.”

Angie sighed. “Miss Kyle...what a babe.”

Everyone nodded in solemn agreement. Miss Kyle, with an apartment in the East End and a penthouse in the Diamond District. Neighborhood queen and success story. Don’t ask about the sounds you hear coming from her apartment late at night. Apparently, massive babe.

“I just feed her cats,” the Replacement said easily. “I keep my head down, you know. I don’t want no trouble.” He looked around the group, who has suddenly become somewhat uneasy, and flashed another winning smile. Kid was a charmer, in a way that Tim had never been. “Any gossip, ladies? Of the non-Shakespearean variety?”

Looks like nobody wanted to put the adopted kid of the local benevolent billionaire on the Hood’s hit list. Interesting. Wayne had a good reputation, that’s for sure. Maybe he was the local hero who snapped up one of their own, the same kid who kept so humble he stayed skulking around the East End to catch up with old friends. Old babysitters, neighbors, confidants. He wasn’t even using a cover.

“You’ll never guess what that old pimp Mike’s up to,” Rachel said eagerly. “He’s trying to sign up with the Penguin’s gang! What a loser, right? As if he’s classy or some shit.”

“Mike McDonald?” the Replacement asked, an eyebrow raised. “He was always an idiot. Why does he want to sign up, got a friend in there or something?”

“His girlfriend’s in it,” Rachel snorted. “Trish Walker or something.”

“Oh, ol’ Trish “Warehouse Arson” Walker?” Angie asked.

Rachel nodded. “Very same. Dumb girl.”

The Replacement guided the conversation effortlessly, and Tim kept his mouth shut as he passed around a blunt to the thankful women. He took a hit of it himself, something he would never have done if he wasn’t being forced to look at the Replacement’s stupid, smug little face, and ignored the flash of concern across his brow.

Eventually the night deepened, and Johns began to pull up in their cars, and both Tim and the Replacement knew when to make themselves scarce. The girls hugged and kissed the Replacement on the cheek, and winked at Tim and asked him to say hi to his boyfriend for them, until Tim tapped Rachel on the shoulder.

“Hey,” he said, oddly self-conscious, ignoring the Replacement’s curious looks. “You got any more of the - yeah?”

Rachel frowned at him, eyebrows furrowing together, but she sighed and dug into her bra anyway. She withdrew a small baggie, clinking with pills, and surreptitiously slid it into Tim’s hand. Tim nodded and withdrew a bill from his jacket, but she just shook her head.

“One condition, kid,” she said.

“Not a kid,” Tim said automatically, but she just shook her head.

“Seriously, one condition. You stop this shit before your boss rolls back into town.”

Tim bristled. “The Hood isn’t my boss.”

She raised an eyebrow, unimpressed. “Sure. But he don’t keep addicts on the payroll. Everyone knows what happened to Eddie.”

Tim winced. That had been - yeah.

“It don’t matter if you’re a kid or not,” Rachel continued. “Hood doesn’t give a fuck about kids. Keep your head down and get out of there, kid. You can do so much better than him. You can do better than this.”

The words hit an aching part of himself, the small patch of his soul that was a gaping wound. Tim looked away, expression blank but fists clenched. The other girls were quiet, and he just knew that the Replacement was looking at him, pitying, maybe realizing, knowing what a fuck-up Tim was, what a fucking disaster -

“Hey, Jase,” Jackie said suddenly. “Why don’t you walk Al to the subway stop? The streets aren’t safe this time of night, you know.”

“I don’t need an escort,” Tim snapped.

But the Replacement just shrugged, flashing a small smile at Tim. Walking others home was common courtesy in the neighborhood, humanity’s way of looking out for each other, and even the hookers treated Tim like he was fragile. Maybe it was written all over his stupid face. “Sure, why not? We might have to stop by Selena’s, though - Princess and Mittens get cranky if I don’t feed them at one am exactly.”

“Lead the way,” Tim said frostily, fully aware he wasn’t getting out of this. As if anyone in this neighborhood would jump him. Crackhead Dominic learned his lesson when he came at Tim with a knife weeks ago.

They walked together three blocks away from the street corner in silence, Tim keeping a healthy distance between the two of them, pasting a mulish expression on his face in the hope that it would keep the Replacement from saying anything. He wasn’t the greatest at facial expressions - Bernard used to rate his ability to emote like a normal person like a judge at a dog show - but the Replacement was trained by the Bat. Hopefully he at least knew that Tim fucking hated him.

“We’re announcing the ‘ski accident’ next week,” the Replacement said suddenly, ignoring Tim’s clear nonverbal signals that he would prefer absolute silence. “Just as a heads up.”

He was still pretty damn legally dead. He couldn’t show up at the funeral, or at the shiva. Why the fuck should he care? They gave Bruce a month to get back, he knew that they were keeping a damn close eye on the corpse to make sure nothing about it started twitching, and he knew that they were going to install better sensors on the coffin this time. If he came back, they’d hear about it. But he hadn’t.

“Fun,” Tim finally said.

The Replacement looked away, digging his hands deep in his ratty jacket pockets. Tim remembered wearing that jacket when he was the Replacement’s age, when he was younger. The Replacement was growing out of it in a way that Tim never had. “I really am staying with Selena, you know. Home’s, uh, tense.”

He didn’t give a fuck what was going on at home. “Buddy-buddy with criminals now, huh?” Tim sneered.

“You’re one to talk,” the Replacement said evenly. “Your cover’s shit. Everyone knows you work for the Red Hood. I’ve heard your name around here for weeks. I’ve had to talk three other kids out of coming to you to sign up for the gang.”

He couldn’t help but twitch a smile. “Tell them he’s not taking recruits right now. He’s still - organizing.”

“So it’s true, then?” the Replacement asked, narrowing his eyes. The wind blew colder down the street as they passed young men hanging out on stoops, clustered in alleyways. Occasional cars puttered past, but not many. Most knew better than to be caught out here after dark. “The Red Hood’s back?”

“I don’t know,” Tim admitted. “He’s still - searching for a cause. I think. He’ll figure it out.”

“What are you going to do in the meantime?” the Replacement challenged. “Get high, fuck around? Be bitter? You’re not even doing anything.”

“What do you want me to do, Replacement?” Tim snapped. “Join up with you and the girls again? I’d rather put another hole in my head.”

“The girls miss you, you jerk!”

Yeah, right. Tim scoffed as Jason came to a halt in front of an apartment building, climbing up the steps and punching a code in. Tim recognized it immediately as Selena’s East End place, and he did not want to be here, because Selena had always been so sweet to him, but his feet lead him before his brain could think and he ended up following the Replacement up three rickety flights of stairs before he came to a halt in front of a generic looking door with a kitty-cat welcome mat. Tim rolled his eyes as the Replacement made a point of rubbing his feet on the mat, scraping off caked-on grime, and withdrew a key from the inside pocket in his jacket to let them both in.

But Tim found himself hovering at the edges of the apartment, reluctant to go inside even as the Replacement shucked his jacket and carefully hung it up on the ornate gilded coat hook. He glanced back at Tim, and must have been surprised by something - the hesitance, or was there finally a look on his face?

“Selena’s in her office,” he said awkwardly. “But, uh, her friends aren’t here. If that’s what you’re worried about.”

“It’s not,” Tim snapped, and he stepped inside. He wasn’t a vampire, who couldn’t enter a dwelling unless he was invited. No matter how much he felt like one sometimes. “At least I don’t have to worry about catching Bruce half-naked in here anymore.”

The Replacement laughed awkwardly, walking over the fridge and easily grabbing some sparkling water out of the magnet-studded door as Tim slid into one of the chairs pushed up against the island. It was small, more resembling a student apartment than anything else, with a kitchenette and island separating the dining area from the living room. Cheap popcorn walls, washer and dryer badly hidden behind two shutter doors, but luxurious rugs spanning the entire floor and what Tim was certain were original Monets adorning the walls. Cat bowls and cat trees were everywhere, and he caught glimpses of glittering eyes poking out from underneath cushions and under the sofa. It was richly decorated, almost Bohemian with a mid-century influence, and every piece of furniture was an antique. It would have been rich robbery fodder if anyone in the hood was stupid enough to steal from Miss Kyle.

The Replacement laughed awkwardly. “Aw, yeah. One time I slid in through the window to say hi to the new kitten - that’s Moriarty in the cat tree now - when I caught Dad and Selena just going at it on the couch. So fucking awkward. Plus when I told Damian he got so pissed.”

Tim snorted. “Damian gets mortally offended if Bruce sleeps with anyone other than his mother. And he was with his mother for six months, when he was seventeen, and never again.”

“He’s such a priss.” The Replacement tossed a sparkling water to Tim too, who cracked it open and fished the baggie out of his jacket. “One time I broke his stereo and he didn’t talk to me for a week. As if he can’t afford more!”

“I went inside his room one time looking for a calculator and he never fucking let me hear the end of it,” Tim muttered.

The Replacement barked a laugh. “Fucking oldest brothers, dude. Think they’re on top of the world.”

“It’s his prince complex,” Tim said, and he found himself cracking a smile, and Jason smiled back at him. “Steph’s the only one who never put up with it for a second.”

“Yeah,” Jason enthused, eyes lighting up. “Nobody bosses Steph around! She’s the absolute coolest. But she always said that you were the best at -”

He cut himself off abruptly, and something rotten twisted in Tim’s heart. He ripped open the baggie instead, palming the pills and swallowing them. He chased them down with the sparkling water - La Croix, watermelon flavor - as Jason gave him an uneasy look.

“What?” Tim said mockingly, hoping the pills would kick in to save him from this conversation. He was a little high, but not enough to stop this convo from being painful. “Finish your sentence. Tim was the best at being the reckless, stupid warning story, right? Or is he the best at popping pills? You can be honest, Replacement.” He leaned forward, eyes narrowing. “Selena’s apartment is the most secure location in the East End. Why did you bring me here, Replacement?”

“My name is Jason!” Jason snapped. “Jason Wayne is my name so call me it, asshole!” His eyes anxiously flitted to the baggie for the third time in the past minute, and Tim abruptly remembered that his mother had been a drug addict. Tim silently crumpled up the baggie, sticking it back in his jacket, and something in Jason seemed to relax. He breathed deeply, the way that Tim knew Bruce trained them, and he set his jaw. “I brought you here because Batman’s gone. And he had six kids, and we’re trying to decide who will become the new Batman.”

“Five kids,” Tim muttered.

“Six kids,” Jason insisted. “Both you and Richie count. I mean, Richie’s not going to be Batman, obviously, but we need to know if you’re going to have a problem with whoever we decide takes up the cowl.”

Takes up the cowl. How pretentious. Tim sipped his water again, suddenly hungry and craving alcohol. “Cass should do it.”

“Cass doesn’t want it.”

“She’s the best martial artist in the Western Hemisphere.”

“Yeah, and we aren’t deciding tournament style,” Jason said, annoyed. “If we were doing just based on age then it should be Aunt Kate, but she doesn’t want it. If we were doing based on who’s the smartest, it would be you -”

“I don’t fucking want it,” Tim snapped.

“ - we didn’t think that you did,” Jason said, exasperated. “If we were doing it based on who’s best with people, then Dami says it would be me or Steph. Steph says that she doesn’t want it either. Nobody is dumb enough to actually want to be Batman. I’m still Robining up, and I’ll keep being Robin until I hit eighteen or Richie gets old enough, whichever comes first. Traditionally we, uh, quit at sixteen, but whoever’s going to be the next Batman will need my help. ”

Traditionally. As if Damian running off to go be evil and Tim dying created a tradition. Tim groaned, holding the cool glass to his forehead, stomach rumbling. He wanted the pills to kick in so he could escape from this stupid-ass conversation. It wasn’t any of his fucking buisness. Dead men didn’t get a vote. “You know who’s the obvious choice.”

Jason winced. “Yeah. He, uh, hates it when you say that, though.”

“It used to be all he talked about.”

Jason shrugged helplessly. “He grew up.”

They lingered in awkward silence for a minute, Tim feeling sweaty and overly hot as he slouched on the bar stool. Jason was still awkwardly leaning against the fridge, as if he meant to get more food for himself but didn’t want to break the moment. Cats - Princess and Mittens - slunk out from underneath the couch and began scratching at Tim’s pants leg, Princess stretching and trying to scramble up the denim. He sighed and gently lifted the cat up into the air with the bridge of his foot, ignoring the way Princess meowed in alarm, and gently settled her into his lap. She immediately began purring, like a little industrial machine, and Tim scratched her on the head like she liked it. Jason raised an eyebrow, impressed. Princess didn’t take to just anybody.

“I guess you have been here before. See, the cats remember you.”

“I thought I was unrecognizable,” Tim muttered. But Princess knew him, knew that she had been his favorite, and she was making little biscuits on his pants leg. She poked little holes into the old denim with her claws, eyes closed.

“Tim, I’m not going to ask you to come home,” Jason said, awkward and hesitant. “It’s awkward and sad and awful. I’ve been staying at Selena’s for a reason. And you’re an adult, and plenty of adults move away, even if Dami worries about you, he worries about everyone all the time, but -” Jason cut himself off, before slowly starting again, “You’re my brother. Legally, and - and I grew up with you. Or the ghost of you. I know I don’t actually know you, but I’d like to. I know you have to hate me, but -”

“I do hate you,” Tim said flatly.

“ - we don’t have to be friends,” Jason said, ignoring him. “We’re family. Family isn’t always friends, but we’ll always care about each other. If you just, like, let us in -”

His head was growing fuzzier. There it was, that sweet high Tim couldn’t stop chasing. Tim let himself grin, bright and sharklike, teeth straight and white where Jason’s were crooked. Tim had braces as a kid, had a dentist, had health insurance. Jason hadn’t. Why did Tim care. “Replacement? If I could get away with it, I’d beat you within an inch of your life. Again.”

Jason’s jaw dropped, horror flickering in his eyes, but the sound of a throat clearing by the entrance to the hallway caught Tim’s attention. He whirled around, tearing his eyes away from Jason’s pitifully betrayed look, to see Selena Kyle leaning against the doorframe. She was in nothing but a nightie, with her hair recently cut close to her scalp, and she had deep bags under her eyes. Bruce dying had been hard on her. Boo hoo.

“Hood,” Selena said easily. “You’re in my apartment. Holding my cat.”

You didn’t fuck with Catwoman, not in the East End. Tim could re-debut as the Red Hood and take over the entire area, start up his gang again, and control the entire neighborhood, but one place would always be off-limits and that was this apartment.

“Chatting with your stray,” Tim chirped easily. “He’s a cutie.”

“Here to kidnap any more of my friends?” Selena asked. It wasn’t cold, it wasn’t even defensive, as easy and lithe as everything she said. But there was no affection there, not like there used to be with her. She had second-guessed Bruce’s decision to take on another Robin, but she always liked him. Said that he thought too much, always encouraged him to take it easy. Tim had thought she was cool.

“I’m keeping my nose clean,” Tim said. It was the safest thing to say. Could he win against her - maybe. He had a knife in his boot, and there was no way she had a weapon under that sheer fabric. Could he win against her and Jason, in her own home - best not to try.

“Charming.” She pointed easily at the door. “Out. I don’t let druggies and gang bangers into my apartment.”

“Selena,” Jason plead, “he’s not -”

“That hurts, Miss Kyle,” Tim said, and gently deposited the cat back on the ground. He slid out of the chair. “Right in my cold, dead heart. I have it on good authority I don’t even have a gang anymore.”

“I’ll walk you out,” Selena said, and jerked her head at Jason. “Jason, go to your room.”

“But Selena -!”

“Now.”

He went, sulking, and skulked back into the hallway as he slammed the door to the guest room. His room, maybe. Tim let himself grin broadly, his high making him a little loopy, and waited for Selena to undo five deadbolts before she opened the apartment door and gestured for him to leave.

“To think I was almost your step-son,” Tim joked weakly, although as a general rule he didn’t joke.

“Tim Drake was my step-son,” Selena said cooly. “ You , on the other hand, kidnapped my best friend, terrorized my family, and tried to beat my other kid to death. I’m not going to kick you out of the East End, Hood, but stay away from my family.”

“They’re the ones who keep finding me,” Tim grumbled, but saw himself out anyway. “Good night, Selena.”

“And stay off the drugs, kid, christ!” Selena yelled after him, and he gave her a short wave without looking back as he climbed back down the stairs.

It wasn’t safe for an obviously high newcomer to the neighborhood to walk down the streets at two am, but she knew that. Tim could take care of himself. He rattled open the gate and let his resale sneakers knock aside used needles and cigarette butts as he whistled his way through the patchy aisle of streetlights. It was getting colder in Gotham, fall sneaking up on summer, and for the first time in his life Bruce wouldn’t be around to see the changing of the leaves.

Not that he had any special childhood memories of that - he wasn’t Damian or Jason, didn’t have any cute memories of raking up leaf piles with ol’ Dad and jumping into them. But he used to do it with Cass, who he and Steph had introduced the concept to, and Steph would beg Alfred to mull some cider for them. Tim Drake used to do that, but Tim Drake was dead.

So far, Selena was the only one who had seen that. It was the first time he had gotten that reaction from someone besides Damian - disgust. Someone who he used to care about, someone who used to care about him, who saw what he had made of himself and was disgusted by it. It was a heady feeling, a rush, and it made Tim feel a sick kind of giddy. The same pit in your gut you got when you were turned on by something horrible, when you were sawing off the head of a gangbanger.

Joker had trained that into him. To love killing. Tim wondered if Bruce knew that the Joker viewing killing people like eating chocolate. World’s greatest detective.

Nowadays he replicated the feeling with drugs. It was close, but no cigar. Killing people just wasn’t fun anymore. Coke was the closest he got to it, whenever he did something bad that Good Kids Didn’t Do. Selena hating him - Tim loved it.

Tim wondered, walking down Crime Alley, if he was kind of fucked up.

List of Traumatic Childhood Experiences That Explain Why He’s Like This : by Timothy Drake

Absent parental figures growing up (raised by nanny)

Knowing what he knows now about his parents, this was probably for the best
Replacement father also pretty absent emotionally
Nanny was nice

Gotham

In General

Private School (Elementary)

He played with bugs too much
Special Ed

Private School (Middle)

Gifted and talented programs
Literally so boring he started fighting crime

Private School (High)

Drugs, Drugs, Drugs
Bernard

4chan

In General

Jewish Intergenerational Trauma

Shout out to his bar mitzvah
Holocaust etc etc remember that we suffered etc etc

That one time he walked in on his parents fighting

Upsetting at the time; in context with everything else on this list probably not that bad

Parents again (dying this time)

Life event so upsetting, some people become Batman!

Pulling the plug on his father

Not nearly upsetting enough to make him Batman

Homosexuality

Possibly due to parental neglect? Reread Freud
Blame Trump & Pence

That time when he was six with the squirrel

Yikes

Robin (in general)

Getting shot, stabbed, maimed, Bruce, etc
The Whole Torture Thing

Shooting himself in the head

Parent Dying Again (Part 3)

Not that he cared.

Bruce Wayne died the next week.

Front page of every newspaper. Front page of the New York Times. Front page of reddit. Everyone knew within seconds. Following his second son Tim Drake-Wayne into the afterlife, survived by his actual son Damian Wayne and the spares Cassandra Wayne, Jason Wayne, and the new runt Richard Grayson. Damian Wayne was applying for custody of Jason and Richard. Remembered by his children, charitable works, and for being bugfuck rich.

Pity to lose one of the good billionaires, legions said. No such thing as a good billionaire, Chapo said, which Tim agreed with. Justice League (didn’t he fund them?) made a public statement, too bad, so sad. Wait, isn’t he a Jew ? He’s not even going to Heaven. GNU Bruce Wayne. F Bruce Wayne. RIP Bruce Wayne. Hey, are you supposed to say RIP for Jewish people?

The best conspiracy boards were immediately convinced that the secret lizardmen billionaire Jewish society that knocked off the Drakes had finally finished up the Waynes too. By best Tim meant grossest. He refused to even interact with those ones. The better ones said that the FBI had bumped him off, JFK style. Trump had bumped him off. Putin had bumped him off. Moscow Mitch. Bernie. Warren. Harris. Damian’s mom. Damian. One truly bizarre theory posited that Tim had done it, who had faked his own death, resulting in a crossover with the incredibly popular ‘Tim Drake is alive and living in the Bowery’ theory. Tim enjoyed that one.

Most had bought the skiing accident. Or, at least, ‘the sheep’ had. Buried in the Wayne family cemetery (a hold over from when his family wasn’t allowed to be buried anywhere else), next to Tim Drake and his parents, a closed funeral, rocks on a gravestone. The truly enlightened knew that Bruce Wayne had faked his own death to go elope with Damian’s long lost mother and was currently living in comfort in Saudi Arabia. The thought was somehow comforting to Tim, that in some weird way Bruce would live on not as Batman, but as himself, perpetually alive and getting a tan at the Middle Eastern beach.

Was this the reaction when Tim had died? Had there been this outpouring of support, of positively spun news stories, of crocodile news anchor tears? Had he trended on Twitter? Or had nobody cared, another body lost to the Joker, not even Bruce sparing a tear.

Tim remade the Red Hood costume, but it stayed hung up behind the false back of the closet. Who was the Red Hood? Good guy, anti-hero, bad guy? Tim used to fancy himself a bit of an anti-hero, had thought it was cool and sexy because he had been eighteen and hurting. Nowadays, Tim was a very old and tired twenty, and all he really wanted to do was drink and do drugs. Booty call his boyfriend. Live life to the fullest.

He wasn’t dead. People who fucked, people who snorted, people who smoked and drank and huffed weren’t dead. The hole in his head had healed over without even a scar, and all Tim had left was a vague list full of childhood traumas and throwing up in a bar bathroom at two am, wishing that he was living his afterlife differently.

Every time he got drunk, it was always the same thing - I’ll never drink again. Then he forgot, and he took another pill, and he booty called Connor again, and he resolved never to drink again, then he forgot, then he took another pill -

The Red Hood rode again when Angie pulled him over at the street corner one day. She was sniffling, with a black eye, and asked him for a favor.

“I can’t pay,” she hiccuped, “I have a little boy, I’m barely scraping by. But please, I’ll owe you and him one, if you can just make this happen for me. Please, Al?”

“I’ll let him know,” Tim said, “but I can’t promise anything.”

The next day Red Hood broke into Patrick Wharton’s apartment and shot him in the head. He strung up his body on the streetlights as a warning: everything under the streetlights was in his protection. It felt pretty good.

It was like a long-predicted hurricane had hit. Word spread instantaneously, and the next night the streets were dead. Everyone locked the doors, kept their kids inside, and even the hookers did their business from craigslist that night. Nobody dared to go out, because they knew that the Red Hood liked to strike fast, thoroughly, and sensationally.

Tim’s heart wasn’t really in it. He settled for planting bombs in the hearts of the Italian, Irish, and Mexican mob hideouts and blowing up a significant percentage of each mob that had stayed underground due to fear, but he didn’t really stick around to gloat or anything. It didn’t matter, anyway. The Batman hadn’t even tried to stop him.

Because the Batman was on the streets again. Robin loyally at his side, both their costumes unchanged, Batman and Robin went back to punching goons as if they had never left. A month wasn’t his longest disappearance - that would be the whole Bane situation, which Tim always grimaced when he thought of - and nobody questioned it when he went back to busting up the Penguin and Scarecrow on their most recent Arkham escapes. Tim had made his return messy and public, practically advertising that he was going to strike again - but they hadn’t even bothered.

Was this what Supervillains felt like when Batman didn’t catch them? He knew that sometimes the Riddler purposefully self-sabotaged so Batman would chase him down. But all the Waynes played ‘nose goes, not it’ with the cowl, and poor Damian was stuck making a show of being the same old Batman when he had never had his father’s fanaticism. Tim knew that all Damian really wanted was to retire with Jon in a farm in rural Norway, keeping cows and chickens. Damian’s Batman style wasn’t flashy, wasn’t fun. Just as practical and ruthless as Damian always had been.

It was obvious to Tim that they weren’t the same person, but Tim knew the Wayne fighting style better than anyone alive but Cass. It definitely wasn’t obvious to the common street thug, or to Gordon, or even the Justice League. And the world went back to normal, and once again Damian ignored Tim.

Well, what ever. He wasn’t doing this for attention. He was doing it for justice. For truth. For vengeance. For -

“You’re doing it for attention,” Connor said, sitting on his windowsill. He was chewing bubblegum as Tim smoked up, letting TV run on in the background. Normally Tim only ever called him if he was high and wanted sex, but sometimes Connor showed up anyway and Tim couldn’t get him to leave. He knew that Connor was worried about him, but that he knew that if he confronted him about it Tim would start refusing to see him. So he didn’t push, and Tim kept blackmailing Connor with affection. It was healthy! “Red Hood was a revenge plot. It didn’t have any other point. You don’t actually care about the poor, the downtrodden, and the hungry. You wanted to fuck over Batman, and you did, and then you wanted to fuck over Ra’s, and you did. Now what?”

“Why did Bruce have to die,” Tim muttered, splayed out on the couch. He chose indica for the night, and after Connor left he would probably conk out. “I, like, barely yelled at him.”

“I can’t believe your dad’s dead and you’re most upset that you couldn’t ruin his life,” Connor said, amazed. He slid off the windowsill and sat down next to Tim on the couch, crossing his legs and frowning at him. “Are you going to the wedding?”

He didn’t have to specify what wedding. “They slipped an invitation in under my door,” Tim said, pained. “I think if I don’t show up in disguise or some shit Cass is going to judo strike me and carry me there.”

“She told me explicitly that was her plan,” Connor said, “so yeah. I’m so fucking excited, dude. I’ve been waiting for them to get hitched for years. I can’t wait to legally be related to the Waynes. I’m gonna have such crazy bragging rights at college. Christmas is going to be so lit, forever. They’re gonna be like the rich gay uncles who show up and unleash the gift reckoning.”

“It’s not that fun.”

“Dami’s been like my brother for longer than he’s been like your brother,” Connor said bluntly. “I’m best man. You are gonna be my date. You are not gonna be a jerk and ruin a happy day for everyone.”

“Who said I was going to do that?” Tim bitched. “The last thing I want to do is see my stupid family.”

“Because you love ruining good things, and you hate to see other people happy. That’s why. Because this entire family, yours and mine, needs a good damn day, because losing Bruce is crushing everyone. Pa is more upset than I’ve ever seen him in my entire dumb life. We need this wedding, dude. I’m not going to let you take that from everyone.”

“Why are you here, Kon?” Tim asked, suddenly exhausted. The weed was making him sleepy, and he felt locked down own the couch. “Why did you even come?”

Why are you still dating me? Tim wasn’t Connor’s boyfriend. Tim wasn’t the guy Connor had become friends with, who he had asked out, who he had fallen in love with. He was a zombie, a nobody, a fake.

“Because I’m the only person you let through the damn door.” Connor stood up, frowning at Tim, who just blinked sleepily at him. “Get some sleep, dude. I’ll tell Dami you’re doing fine. Although you’re, like, not. Oh, and Cassie says to text her back.”

“I blocked her number.”

“Great. Well, have fun murdering people. Bye.”

He was climbing over the windowsill to jump off at the speed of sound when Tim found himself sitting up, found himself calling out for Connor to wait. He did, because he always did, and Tim dragged himself up and forced himself to kiss Connor lightly on the lips. He ended up slumping over a little instead, but that was okay because it meant that Connor held him, for just a little bit.

“I’m not Tim Drake,” Tim muttered.

“You desperately want that to be true.”

“I’m not a good person.”

“Neither is half the world,” Connor said. “And they’re doing fine. Tim, you’re just - you’re just like this lost dog, okay? Like from Homeward Bound.”

“Why did we let Greta show you movies.”

“You’re like the dog from Homeward Bound,” Connor said loudly, “who fell off the moving truck and now has to trek across America who find his family again. You’re lost. You just have to find home again, okay? And get therapy. A lot of therapy.”

“I don’t think the Homeward Bound dog needed therapy.”

“Maybe an inpatient program?”

“But you are a loyal puppy inside who loves his family very, very much,” Connor said loudly, to the gang boss and mass murderer, “and if you stop doing drugs you can live happily ever after, the end.”

“I hate you.”

Arkham had inpatient therapy, Tim thought nastily. He didn’t know why Damian hadn’t shipped him off to Arkham yet. He could hardly be accused of sentiment. He was getting married, but that was probably a logistical decision. Like in Pride and Prejudice. The idea of Damian in love, of Damian in a genuine human relationship where they hugged and fought and whispered secrets to each other in the middle of the night, boggled the mind. Damian didn’t have a soul. He was The Enemy. Like Jason was, who was sixteen and so miserable at home he was staying at his father’s ex-girlfriend’s apartment in the East Side.

“I love you too,” Connor said cheerfully, like an idiot. “I’ll never stop. See you later, geek.”

“Get out of here, you jock,” Tim said rotely, finishing their favorite goodbye, and Connor smiled at him. Tim couldn’t bear to reciprocate, and in the flash of a second Connor was gone, his plastic shutters flapping in the gust of wind.

Tim’s limbs were heavy, and he wanted to eat a lot of Funyuns and pass out on the couch as he stared at his fingers for the next three hours. But he stumbled to the bathroom instead, splashing water on his face, and when he looked up at the mirror he took category of what he saw there.

Ways The Red Hood Looks Nothing Like Tim Drake-Wayne:

White streak in hair that won’t dye out
Bright green eyes, electric and terrible
Skin whiter than paper, paler even than it used to be
Muscular in a way that Tim Drake had always been thin and lithe
Last of the baby fat gone from his cheeks
Gaunt, prominent cheekbones
Hair loose and floppy where it used to always be cut short
Red-rimmed eyes
Thick bags under his eyes
Muscle twitches (coke)
Tremors (coke)
Coke under nails (coke)
Hankering for brains

Ways The Red Hood Looks Like Tim Drake-Wayne:

Black hair, wavy and thick that he had gotten from his birth father
Sharp eyebrows that framed a domino mask
Full, kind of femine lips that Connor used to tease him for
What else?
What else?

“Truth or dare. Truth or dare. Truth or dare.”

“It looks like we’re doing Truth or Dare,” Cassie said wryly as Suzie squealed and clapped her hands. The campfire crackled, its oppressive heat pushing away the encroaching October chill. It wasn’t the best camping weather, but everyone had been so excited to do ‘Team Bonding’ Tim had agreed to come along. He didn’t really understand what ‘Team Bonding’ entailed, but he was cautiously excited for it. Sin had helped them buy hot dogs and marshmallows and told them that she was even leaving them unsupervised. Bruce wasn’t really into the bonding thing, but that was okay because they spent a lot of one on one time together anyway - well, that time was mostly beating him up, but that’s fine - maybe they could do team bonding with Damian one day? If Damian ever stopped hating him, which was seeming increasingly unlikely -

“Man, Truth or Dare? I haven’t played that in years.” Cissie speared a marshmallow onto her scavenged branch, plunging it into its firey destiny. She shot a speculative glance at Cassie, who seemed oblivious. “Is it gonna be, like, sexy? I hear that when teenagers play Truth or Dare it’s always sexy.”

“It doesn’t have to be sexy,” Cassie said quickly. “I don’t want to make anybody uncomfortable.”

“I’m down with sexiness,” Connor said loudly, thrusting his hand into the air. “How do we play? Do we just start making out?”

“Wow,” Cissie said, impressed. “You’re probably the only thirteen year old on the planet who doesn’t know what Truth or Dare is, Superboy. That’s pretty impressive.”

“I’m an impressive guy,” Connor boasted, unaware he was being made fun of.

“What’s Truth or Dare?” Bart asked, miraculously. Miraculous, because he must have had about ten jumbo marshmallows in his mouth.

“It’s like game -” Cassie began to explain.

“Game? Where’s the Omicrons?”

“Okay, two thirteen year olds,” Cissie amended. She glanced at Tim. “Let me guess. Daddy Batman never let you out of the underground bunker where you all live until you made your debut as Robin, and you don’t know what Truth or Dare is either.”

“Uh,” Tim said, unwilling to admit how correct she was. “I don’t, uh, get out much, if that’s what you’re saying.”

“I heard about Truth or Dare on TV,” Suzie said eagerly. “How do you play it?”

Cassie and Cissie shared inscrutable glances. “Four,” Cissie said finally. “God help us all. At least I have you, Wondy.”

“I don’t. I mean. I know how to play it.” Cassie looked down at her fingers, a little awkward. “But I, uh, never went to a lot of sleepovers as a kid either. I went to archeology camps! And math camps. And coding camps. Not sleepovers, though.”

“Ah,” Cissie said, finally realizing that only nerds and people with very unusual childhoods became tween superheroes. “Well, okay. You play it like this.”

It didn’t seem like a very complicated game, although Cissie had to stop Tim from taking notes. Connor seemed a little crushed that making out wasn’t mandatory, but whenever anybody played Truth or Dare in those teen movies that he used to catch on cable there was usually making out. So it was probably fine. Tim didn’t particularly want to make out with anyone, but Cassie had jumped into the middle of the explanation about how everybody could skip on a dare with no consequences, so it probably couldn’t hurt. Batman wouldn’t be finding out about this.

Tim had even gotten permission to turn the recording device in his domino mask off for the night. Although he would still be sending ‘all clear’ texts every ten minutes. Tim wondered what all of these safety precautions said about Damian, or if they were newly implemented for Tim. He wasn’t sure which one he preferred.

“Okay, does everyone understand the rules?” Cissie said finally, eliciting eager nods from everyone. She grabbed an empty soda can out of the trash bag they had set up behind one of the logs they were sitting on, and carefully placed it in front of her. “Awesome. I get to make the first challenge, obviously. Let’s spin the can to see who gets put in the hot seat.” She gave it a deft twirl, and everyone watched with bated breath as the soda can teetered around and around in a circle and came to a final rest in front of…

“Suzie! Truth or Dare?”

Suzie blushed grey, abruptly terrified. “Uh. Uh! Truth?”

Cissie sighed. “Nobody ever freaking picks dare.”

“I’ll pick dare,” Connor said eagerly.

“I’d pick dare too,” Cassie added, much more awkwardly.

“I want truth,” Suzie said blankly. “Is that bad? I can pick dare if you want…”

“Ugh. No, you’re fine. Suzie, uh...okay.” Cissie steepled her fingers, thinking hard of a sufficiently juicy question. Bart was already losing interest in the proceedings, sticking a marshmallow into the fire and blinking at it as it lit on fire. Tim leaned over and blew it out for him, eliciting an appreciative smile. Tim didn’t smile back, but Bart didn’t care about that kind of stuff. “What is the coolest thing you can do with your powers?”

Everyone stared at Suzie, who flushed and sunk in her seat. “I think I can make a gateway to Hell?” Suzie cautiously volunteered.

Everyone nodded. Seemed legit.

“Wait,” Tim said, “Hell in the Biblical sense? That’s real?”

“I’m supposed to be pagan now,” Cassie squeaked, abruptly afraid of Zeus smiting her for blasphemy. “Hell’s real? I can’t be pagan if Hell’s real.”

“Uh.” Suzie played with her fingers a little, hunching her shoulders. “I’m not sure. It’s, uh, not very nice. I saw some things that looked like demons...but it could be something else. I’m not sure. The mysterious government agency that kidnapped me told me not to do it again.”

“What’s hell?” Connor asked.

“I think it’s a pagan mythological thing,” Bart said off-handedly, raising many questions.

“It’s a Christian afterlife,” Tim explained easily, refusing to any more in depth than that. “You go if you - uh, don’t worship God enough? I don’t know.”

Cissie rolled her eyes, taking another sip from the beer can she had smuggled into the camping site. If Sin found that she would kill them. “You go if you aren’t confirmed in the church. Also if you drink, do drugs, and sin. But I said fuck you to southern Baptism, so whatever. I’m gonna have premaritial sex and not even feel guilty about it. Fuck my mom.”

“Wow,” Cassie whispered, “you’re so cool, Cissie.”

“Yeah, I know.” Cissie flipped her hair. “You sick of this shit too, Rob?”

Uh. Uh. Oh no. “Yeah,” Tim bluffed. “Sunday school...more like Sunday Skip, am I right?”

“My congregation used to say Batman was the devil.” Cissie gagged on her beer, and she quickly put it down. She was older than the rest of them - in high school - but Tim got the sense she didn’t actually enjoy alcohol all that much. “Okay, Secret, your turn to spin the bottle and see who you get to interrogate. Go ham.”

“But it’s a can,” Connor said, confused.

“Where’s ham?” Bart asked.

“Can we go back to the ‘is hell real?’ question?” Cassie asked. “That’s bothering me.”

“Nope. Suzie, please go.”

Suzie awkwardly leaned over and spun the can, and everyone watched with bated breath as it skittered around to...Tim.

Crud. Crud. Tim forced himself not to react, blinking sleepily as everyone glanced furtively at each other. He knew that he had the most secrets to spill out of the entire group, but no way was he doing dare. He could probably lie...except that seemed to be forbidden in these kinds of social situations. Tim began sweating. If he went for Truth they would ask him his secret identity for sure.

“Truth or dare, Robin?” Suzie asked.

Forgive him, Bruce. Tim took a deep breath. “Dare.”

Everyone’s eyes grew wide, and the girls huddled together to whisper under their breaths. Tim didn’t know why this had to be a group effort. Were they going to make him kiss somebody? Tim began panicking. He would rather be facing Killer Croc. What if they asked him to say the Hail Mary or something and prove he was Christian? Wait, wasn’t that a football move? Was that even a real prayer? Tim didn’t know football either. He was a homosexual. What if they asked him if he was gay? That was why he didn’t pick truth!

The girls seperated, and Suzie steeled her jaw. “Robin, I dare you to...take your mask off!”

“No way he’s gonna do it,” Cissie whispered. Louder, she said, “We’ll shame you if you don’t do it!”

“Nobody has to participate in any of the challenges,” Cassie said frantically. “You can always pick truth instead, Robin!”

Connor yawned. “Then they’ll just ask you to truthfully say your name, dude.”

Bart frowned. “This seems sneaky.”

“It’s a game,” Cissie said condescendingly. “It’s just for fun. Right, Rob? We just want to know what color your eyes are. Please?”

But Tim just shrugged. “Okay, sure.”

Everyone’s jaw dropped. Nobody had expected him to actually do it. Tim reached up and carefully began peeling at the edges of his mask. He had some spray in his utility belt to help it come off quicker, but even he had a sense for dramatic tension.

“Holy shit, he’s really going for it,” Cissie whispered.

“Robin, you really don’t have to -” Cassie began, before Cissie elbowed her and she shut up.

Only Connor looked bored by the proceedings, snapping off chocolate and popping it in his mouth. “His normal face really isn’t that special, guys. He’s just kinda squirrely looking.”

The girl’s eyes whipped to him, even as Tim was laboriously taking his mask off. “You know -” Cissie began.

“Did you all miss how he’s my brother-in-law?” Connor asked irritably. “Duh! His brother stayed in my apartment for like a week!”

“He’s your what ?” Cissie screeched.

“Nightwing’s not my brother,” Tim muttered. “They’re not even married. Do you guys want to see my stupid face or not?”

The attention turned back to him as he finished peeling off his mask to reveal...another mask.

It was almost funny, the way the girl’s faces fell. Tim couldn’t help but smirk a little, displaying the second mask under his primary mask before carefully reapplying it.

“You wore two,” Cassie said, slowly. “Because you knew we were going to play Truth or Dare. And you knew someone would ask you to take the mask off. So you wore two masks. And we didn’t notice. Because there was a chance this might happen.”

“His entire family’s like that,” Connor said, still bored. “I’m still finding Batarangs under my bed.”

“Next time we dare him to take them both off,” Cissie said grimly. “Bet you don’t have two under there, sport.”

Tim quickly pressed a button on his glove that sent the ‘All clear’ text to Bruce, despite the sudden hostility he was feeling around the campfire. “If Green Arrow promised you a thousand dollars if you uncover my identity, be aware it’s a sucker’s bet. He’s offered it to every kid he has and none of them have ever cashed in.”

“I am not his kid,” Cissie snapped quickly. “And I don’t take money from him.”

Social faux-pas. Damn. Tim didn’t know what he did. He raised both hands in a plea for mercy, filing the reaction away for later. “Sorry. Just saying, you’re receiving the torch on a battle as old as time here. Batman and I will never tell.”

“I know Sin knows,” Cissie said mulishly. “But she won’t say anything. I want that cash.”

So? It was only a thousand dollars. But Tim knew enough to know that people didn’t like it when he said stuff like that, so he kept his mouth shut. Bart, as usual, was thoroughly checked out of the conversation, and Connor was eyeing Tim with a strange look that he couldn’t place.

“My turn,” Tim said. He was sitting across from Cissie, so he nodded at her. “Spin the bottle for me?”

She did, and it turned and turned, until it landed on...Cassie. She squeaked, turning a little red.

“I pick dare!” Cassie said, looking very far away from Connor.

Hm. Tim tried to think of a good dare. He already knew her secret identity. He didn’t even particularly care about that. What did he care about what Cassie did in her free time? He had other stuff to blackmail her with. “Um...I dare you to teach me the Amazonian headlock technique you used against me in sparring last Monday. The one where you hit at one of my pressure points.”

Everyone stared at him. What did he say this time?

“You can dare her to do anything,” Cissie said flatly, “and you choose a battle move?”

“Men aren’t allowed to learn Amazonian tactics,” Cassie said apologetically. “Sorry, but I really can’t. Diana would have my head. Or she’d, like, look really disappointed in me, which is worse. Can you ask me a truth instead, then?”

“Worth a shot.” Tim shrugged. “Uh, tell me your greatest weakness in battle.”

“Wow,” Connor said, impressed. “You sure you and Nightwing aren’t related?”

“Jesus christ!” Cissie threw up her hands. “Ask a real question, you nerd!”

“That is a real question!” Tim protested.

“That falls under the category of Amazonian secrets, Robin,” Cassie scolded.

“I thought this was an information gathering game!” Tim exclaimed. “I don’t understand you people! Just tell me what I’m supposed to ask and I’ll ask it!”

Why were people always so confusing? Why did nobody ever act in a way that made sense? Tim could memorize rules, could follow a script, but just when he thought that he had everything down they pulled the rug out from under him. He was just trying to be the best Robin possible. The best Robin knew the battle styles and weaknesses of his team members. Were none of them seriously planning for the eventuality of mind control, malicious cloning, or evil alternate reality duplication? Tim knowing how to take Cassie down in a fight could save his life one day. Why did nobody else get that? Why did they only care about stupid stuff like the color of his eyes?

“It’s a bonding game,” Cissie said, exasperated. “You play it to be embarrassed together and learn fun things about your friends. Learn how to make friends, Rob, Jesus. Even Bart’s better at this than you.”

“What are we talking about?” Bart asked.

“Never mind. Rob, we’re skipping you. Cassie, your turn.”

Tim felt his cheeks heating up, and fought the embarrassment. He hadn’t done anything wrong. This wasn’t fun anymore. He wished Bruce was here, so he could explain what he was supposed to be doing. He wanted Damian. He wanted the Damian that lived in his mind, that was a big brother and explained social stuff to him without being condescending or mean and who showed him how to cut off limbs with a katana. The Damian that patted him on the back and said ‘Good job!’. You know, the imaginary one.

Cassie spun the bottle, and it finally landed on an ecstatic Connor.

“I pick dare,” Connor said quickly, before Cassie could say anything. “C’mon, c’mon!”

“Uh…” Cassie colored pink, biting her lip. “I dare you to...kiss somebody.”

Connor whooped, fist-pumping the air. “Yeah! Awesome! Who, come on, tell me who!”

Wow. That was a guy with a sex drive. Tim was almost impressed. Cassie opened her mouth but Cissie quickly elbowed her in the side, cutting her off. “Let’s spin the bottle to see who and make it fair,” Cissie said quickly. “Between me, Suzie, and Cassie, okay?”

“Why only between you three?” Connor asked, genuinely confused. “Why not Robin and Bart?”

All three girls blushed again. “Well, I mean, if you want to,” Suzie stammered, twirling a wisp of hair around her finger. “We wouldn’t make you -”

“Are you, like, gay or something?” Cissie said. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”

Connor shrugged. “I’m not going through life with one hand tied behind my back.”

Despite himself, Tim felt his cheeks warming up too. Now everyone was embarrassed but Bart, who was taking advantage of the confusion to stuff marshmallows in his mouth at super speed. “I call not it. That stuff’s gross.”

“Do people not kiss in the future?” Cassie asked, morbidly fascinated.

“ I don’t kiss in the future,” Bart said. “The Legion does, but they didn’t accept me, because I’m too ditzy and can’t focus I guess. The Legion does not stop kissing. One time I walked in on Brainy and Supergirl just, like, going at it, and I was all like, ‘oh, gross, what about Nyle’, but Nyle was under the desk, and then I really got out of there -”

“Do I want to know who Supergirl is?” Connor asked.

“You don’t want to know who any of these people are. They’re weirdos.”

“Just spin the bottle,” Connor said, deciding it was better not to ask about people even Bart considered weird. “If it lands on me or Bart we’ll spin again. Deal?”

“If you’re a clone of Superman,” Cassie said slowly, “and you’re, uh, yeah, does that make Superman -”

But nobody wanted to finish that sentence, and Connor was rolling his eyes, so Cissie settled for spinning the bottle again. Everyone watched with bated breath as it shuddered and shook and rattled around until it came to a slow and steady stop in front of…

Inarguably, Tim.

Different reactions from everybody. Cassie sagged, disappointment evident, as Suzie and Cissie squealed. Bart rolled his eyes, clearly just glad he was saved from any grossness, as klaxon alarms went off in Tim’s head. Abort. Abort. Abort.

“Oh, will you look at that!” Connor said cheerfully. “How weird. You wanna go for it, Rob?”

No, because that’s inappropriate. No, because Tim had never felt very strongly about kissing either. No, because he was Robin and that wasn’t what good Robins - well, okay, there was precedent for Robins kissing Superboys. Bruce could hardly complain without being a hypocrite when Nightwing and Flamebird lived together in a non-platonic way.

Bruce didn’t even have to know.

“I’m not doing anything unless you actually say yes with your mouth, dude.”

Tim shook himself, willing his ears to stop burning. “Sure. I guess.”

“Awesome!” Connor, who was already sitting next to him on the log, shifted position, and Tim shifted next to him. The flickering firelight dappled his face in soft yellows and reds, casting half of his face in shadow, and the glint of his earring simmered in the flame. Tim felt very hot and claustrophobic all of a sudden. Connor’s teeth were just as straight and white as the day he had met him, unnatural and artificial. His eyes were crystal blue, identical to Superman’s, like flecks of unearthly ice. He was like a Ken doll. No acne, not a hair out of place, not a snaggle tooth. Unearthly, perfect. Nothing like Tim.

Connor leaned in. Tim leaned in too. Their noses bumped. Their lips brushed in warm contact and pressure, wet and soft. There was no physiological reaction in Tim: no electricity, no fire, no light. Just Connor’s breath against his. It was very, very awkward.

They separated, on mutual cue, and Connor grinned happily at him. Despite himself, despite everything, Tim smiled back.

“Thanks,” Connor said.

“Don’t mention it,” Tim said.

The girl’s eyes were wide, Cassie strongly looking as if she had seen Nirvana, as Bart experimentally set his fingers on fire.

“My turn to spin,” Connor said. He lifted a hand and the can flew out of the air into his palm, landing with a soft smack. TTK, tactile telekinesis, remote movement of objects. Could be done without touching them. They had all forgotten. “Let ‘er rip!”

Tim pressed a button on his gauntlet. All clear.

Make the East End Afraid Again!

That was Tim’s campaign slogan. There had been a noticeable change in the air ever since the Red Hood reared his ugly helmet back up again. People were more likely to stay in at night instead of going out, and the people lurking on the corners of society submerged themselves in anonymity instead of taking a step into the light. Familiar spiritualist practices began to crop back up: cookies left out on fire escapes by children wishing for a Bat to make a visit, word purposefully spread down the line of gossip when someone wanted to make a deal with the devil. People began flying his clan’s flag again, subtly setting out solid black welcome mats or draping a black cloth over the front window, and the Bat re-established their foothold on the East End.

It was night and day from the Bowery, where Tim still maintained his apartment. If anybody talked about the Hood there he was understood as a gang banger, not as a vigilante. Word hadn’t spread about the new Bat on the Hood’s chest. The chips he had thrown down.

The Bat stenciled on his chest was included to piss off Damian. Did it work? It hadn’t seemed to catch his attention. Tim hadn’t even seen him. But he didn’t care. He didn’t do what he did so Batman could pay attention to him. Except - well, he kind of did.

He spent days in fevers, crouched over his desk and creating elaborate revenge fantasies before he snapped back to himself and tossed them in the garbage. Sometimes he lost full days, even a week, to this green fever. When he came back to himself he usually barely remembered what he had done. His bank account would randomly double, then randomly be cut in half. He would get mysterious packages to his apartment he didn’t remember ordering with technical devices inside that he barely understood the purpose of. He installed more stringent locks on his costume - not to keep anyone else out, but to stop him from making a mistake he may not be able to take back.

He felt a strong sense of shame and frustration whenever this happened. He was never the impulsive, stupid one. He was about control, always in control. He never showed an emotion on his face he didn’t want to, he never said anything without a purpose.

But that was who he used to be. That was Tim Drake-Wayne. Now Tim was someone different, someone better, someone who wasn’t being crushed under a black boot. Maybe this was freedom.

Red Hood scared people straight. Red Hood took out the trash. Red Hood was always in control of a situation, because Red Hood had two glocks and C-4. Tim wondered if it was possible to be in love with yourself, or at least the version of yourself you had meticulously created. He got a rush whenever anybody addressed him as the Red Hood, the familiar thrill of anonymity. It felt like his real name, like who he really was.

Anyway, losing time due to magical insanity induced blackouts was stressful, so Tim went to the nightclub and took drugs to relax. He hadn’t bothered re-establishing control over it, but the beautiful part was that he didn’t need to. Everyone was on their best behavior now. He hadn’t had to stop a guy from dosing a girl’s drink in weeks. The minute he walked into the room all the roofies were whisked away. It made Tim feel almost giddy.

The bar was dim, glimpses of caked-on makeup and sweat shining under the fluorescent lights, and the crush of bodies around him as women and men in tight clothing and high heels whisked drinks away from the bar and leaned close into each other suffocated him. Liberated. It smelled like sticky beer and dirt, and some trashy no-name pop music blasted on the speakers as young people and some people far too old to be here ground on each other and laughed. It was loud, crazy, and made Tim want to go wild. Nobody was looking at him, and he went unseen by everybody except when he wanted to make a scene. It was perfect.

He was hugging the bar tonight, scanning the crowds to try to find one of his usual guys to deal to him. They had been even more stringent ever since the Hood showed up, and he was barely even squeezing coke out of them anymore. What was the fucking point of coming here if he couldn’t get coke? The bartender didn’t care about his fake ID, but he was starting to ask condescending questions about if Tim should be in school or not. Please! Adults these days had no respect. It wasn’t his fault he had a baby face. He had barely been able to convince anyone he wasn’t seventeen.

His sternum and skull thumped in time with the music, and Tim was occupied scanning the crowds and scowling when he saw the bartender slide a martini in front of him. Tim grinned rakishly at the bartender, who rolled his eyes.

He wiped his hands on a rag before twisting open another bottle of vodka. “Compliments of the girl over there. Want me to tell her she’s barking up the wrong tree?”

Tim pressed a hand over his heart. “You wound me, Kev. Why does everyone think I have no interest in women?” He didn’t, but women were useful.

Kev gave him a flat look, as if he could tell that the thought “women were useful” was running across his mind, and just shook his head. He jerked his thumb to the left, where a beautiful woman in a tight dress that left nothing to the imagination was sitting a few seats down at the bar. She was alone, with glowing blonde hair cascading over her shoulders, and she was looking right at Tim.

Women never used to look at him like that, like he was special. Tim made a show of looking her up and down, grinning at her, and picked up his drink and walked over to where she was sitting. He slid in the empty seat next to her, ignoring the way the couple now sitting on his other side evacuating their own positions as quickly as possible, and he smiled at her. She smiled back, thin and flirty, and traced a finger around the rim of her own drink. It looked like straight vodka.

The woman said something to him - was she a woman or a girl? She looked barely old enough to be here - and winked at him, but it was lost in the roar of the crowd and the stupid music.

“What?” Tim yelled back, dumbly.

The woman said something again, louder but not loud enough, and Tim barely caught something about dancing. Sure, why not.

He downed the drink quickly and grabbed her hand, tugging her off the barstool, and she stumbled on her heels as she quickly stood up too. Tim caught her by the arm, and briefly got a squeeze of incredible muscle before she straightened and gently shook him off.

She tugged him down - in her heels she was much taller than him, but most people were - and spoke directly into his ear. “Let’s get out of here.”

Oh boy. Hoo boy! “I just want some coke, man,” Tim yelled back in her ear, and she rolled her eyes and grabbed him by the wrist as she tugged him into the girl’s bathroom.

Wow. Wow! He would have to turn her down gently, since he had a boyfriend and everything, and he was still kind of gay, but girls never used to pay attention to him like this. Ariana - well, whatever. Maybe he really had gotten a lot cooler and awesome since he came back to life. Hah! And he stayed up at night wondering if he was a directionless loser! Take that, insecure four am Tim!

The bathroom was empty, which was weird since the bathroom was never really empty this far into the night. The girl tugged him in, closing the door behind her with one stiletto, and Tim resolved to handle this like a gentleman and ask her if she had any drugs before bouncing.

Something slipped over his wrist, like a bracelet had accidentally slid down her arm to his. Tim looked down at it. It was glowing and golden. And thick. Too thick for a bracelet, actually.

Tim looked up. The tall, beautiful woman with great boobs and flowing blonde hair wasn’t smiling anymore. She was suddenly a little familiar.

“Wow,” Tim said, “Cassie? Can you give me the name of whoever got you that boob job?”

She kicked him in the kneecap and Tim went down hard, bouncing his head on the grimy tile and making his pretzels and sandwich surge up in his throat. He gagged as he was roughly dragged along the tile, and the other end of what was now undeniably a lasso looped around the exposed piping of the sink. Cassie bent down in her tight dress, efficiently and quickly tying the other end of the lasso around the sink and drawing it tight until Tim had barely a foot of loose rope. He tugged on it, but there was absolutely no give. Magical compulsions buzzed at his wrist, washing up and down his body in a cool wave, and he felt abruptly a little sedated and slightly sleepy. Or was that the alcohol?

His expensive converse scrabbled on the floor as he tried to push himself up to a sitting position, arms held ignobly to his side as they were tied together at the wrist. Cassie stepped back, propping hands on her hips, surveying her handiwork quickly before nodding and looking at Tim. He pasted on his most polite, good boy expression.

“This is quite shameless of you. Aren’t you afraid of someone walking in?”

“Bart’s covering the entrance,” Cassie said smoothly. “Burst pipe. Lots of sewage in this bathroom.”

“That’s not a nice thing to say about yourself.”

Her expression twisted in a sneer of disgust, and Tim batted his eyes innocently up at her. She really had grown in the past three years. Like, yeah, she had a hell of a growth spurt when they were sixteen or so and finally got something resembling breasts, but the three years he spent rotting she spent learning how to apply makeup and do her hair. He had seen that expression of hatred and disgust on her face before - she had always burned hot, maybe hotter than any of them save Cissie - but never directed at him. It hit at a weird pit in his gut, the kind that wanted to press and push and twist to see how far he could drive someone.

“You’ve really changed, Tim.”

“Thanks,” Tim said lightly. “It’s a new outfit. Listen, uh, if you wanted to tie me up, there are more comfortable ways to do it.” He tugged at the lasso, gritting his teeth as it wrenched his shoulder. He may have pulled something. “You could have just asked. Connor and I wouldn’t mind a third. Oh, sorry!” He pulled a faux-expression of surprise. “Is he still refusing to fuck you? Even when I was dead? That’s cold, man.”

Her expression contorted in rage, and there was the Cassie that he knew. The kind that always stood up against injustice, the one who campaigned and rallied and fought back against every perceived slight and discrimination. The awkward thirteen year old fangirl, somewhere along the way, had become a pillar of the superhero community and a shining beacon of justice that never gave up. Meanwhile, Tim was doing drugs.

She opened her mouth, probably to bite back, but one of the restroom stalls opened and two familiar figures stepped out. Anita, with a different natural hairstyle but her familiar crop top and high waisted shorts, moved to stand next to Cassie, and Cissie was right behind her. Cissie looked healthy and happy, a far cry from the stressed out and crying girl he remembered once she had given up superheroics. What was she doing here? She was still retired, going to some exclusive college and taking dozens of pictures a day for her Instagram. She had a million followers. Good for her! Meanwhile, worms had been eating Tim’s brains.

They both stood on either side of Cassie, arms folded and looking down at him, and Tim realized very abruptly that this was an intervention. Whoops.

“ ‘Nita,” Tim said pleasantly, grinding his teeth. “How are the folks? Still teething?”

“Making macaroni in Pre-K,” Anita said serenely. She had always been unflappable, calm and level headed and intelligent. She gently rested a hand on Cassie’s bicep, whose face was contorted with rage. “Easy, girl. Remember what we discussed.”

“Tim,” Cissie said easily, waving her fingers in a wave. Tim didn’t wave back, since he was a little tied up. “You look like shit.”

“Cissie,” Tim shot back, “you look like a has been. Where’s Greta, hiding in the toilet?”

“She’s not involved in the game anymore,” Cissie said, crossing her arms. “Neither am I, technically, but I’ve always wanted to kick your ass. She’s too nice for that kind of thing.”

“Are we going to beat me up?” Tim asked curiously. “Because I wouldn’t mind, but it’s a bit out of character for you three. Well, it’s out of character for Anita.”

“We’re not beating anyone up,” Cassie said sharply. Maybe that was why Slobo wasn’t there. Tim wondered idly if Slobo was still alive. Was he and Anita still together? They were a cute couple. “We’re just here for answers.” Hence the lasso of truth. Go fig. “And to give you a warning, Tim.”

“Does Batman know you guys are in his city? Do you have permission to interrogate a member of his Rogue’s Gallery with a weapon not authorized by the Geneva Convention?”

“Yo,” Anita said, “we’re asking you the questions here, not the other way around.”

“Yes, but is it legal?” Tim insisted. “Did you read me my Miranda Rights? I was just standing here. My greatest crime is underage drinking. I think I'm innocent. This is vigilante brutality. Batman really hates it when heroes pull this shit, you know. I could call him right now.”

For the first time, the girls looked a little uncomfortable. “This is just a conversation,” Cassie insisted. “I’m just going to ask you a few questions. Nobody’s getting interrogated here.”

“You literally tied me up -”

“You’re breaking Sin’s heart,” Cassie yelled, at a volume that made Tim’s heart jump and made the other two girls look around anxiously. She tugged at the lasso, and it glowed sluggishly. “Do you even care that you’re hurting her, Tim?”

The compulsion hit him on the head like a brick. He had been under the lasso’s influence before, just for fun or for testing it out, but the magic was ancient and not even Bruce had ever found a way of circumventing it. Tim had no chance. “Of course I give a shit,” Tim screamed back, and the girls flinched away. “She’s the closest thing to a mom I fucking have! Jump off my dick, asshole!”

“Then why didn’t you call?” Cassie yelled back. Anita withdrew one of her sticks from a thigh holster and Tim couldn’t fight a recoil, but instead she muttered a spell and lit up the runes engraved on the stick. He recognized the runes for a privacy spell. There goes any chance of help. “You show up, go crazy and kill people, then disappear for a year without even letting us know you were alive? Now you’re back, and the only person you’re talking to is poor Connor? Why didn’t you call any of us? We could have helped you!”

“I didn’t want your help,” Tim ground out, fighting back the words. Stupid compulsion. Stupid Cassie. He was going to make her choke on her fat tongue. “I could handle it on my own.”

“Really?” Cissie butted in. “You call this handling it? You’re a fucking disaster, Tim. Anybody with eyes who’s not depressingly in love with you can see it.” That eliminates Connor, then. “We’re your team. We swore , Tim, when we were fifteen and stupid, that we would always be here for each other. Why didn’t you call?”

“I didn’t give a shit about you,” Tim said.

Cissie looked at Cassie, and Cassie tugged at the rope. “Why didn’t you call us when you were in trouble, Tim?”

Damn. “You would have tried to stop me,” Tim gritted out.

“This is getting us nowhere,” Anita said brusquely, and Tim ground his teeth. “Just yelling at him isn’t going to get through to him. Cassie, can you ask him my questions?”

“Sure.”

“Alright.” Anita locked eyes with Tim, whose skin crawled at her attention. Anita had always been...she had always been different. “Is killing people wrong, Tim?”

Cassie repeated the question so the compulsion took effect, and Tim bit through his tongue hard until it bled. He spat blood on the floor, for the theatricality of it, and ignored the way Cissie and Cassie recoiled.

“Yes,” Tim spat.

“Why are you doing it?”

Cassie repeated the question.

He couldn’t keep his jaw shut. No wonder this fucking thing wasn’t covered by the Geneva convention. Tim wondered if the girls knew that they had brought a warhead to an AA meeting. Did they think this was fucking helping him? It was going to leave him with psychological damage. He had heard stories of people who knocked themselves out fighting the lasso too hard.

“It makes me feel good,” Tim choked out. He looked at the ground, so he didn’t see the looks of disgust on the girl’s faces he knew had to be there. Why was he ashamed?

It wasn’t omniscient. It didn’t force to reveal the universe’s truth, only the truth that was real to you. So Tim still saw killing as wrong, deep in some brainwashed part of himself. He hadn’t even known that.

“Do you want to stop killing?” Anita asked. Cassie repeated it.

Yes. No. He didn’t know. Tim groaned, biting his tongue again and drawing more blood. The compulsion pushed him towards answering the question, but he didn’t know the truth. “I want everything to stop,” he said, skirting the question as much as possible. “I wish I was dead again. I hate being alive. Are you happy, guys? Maybe I didn’t want to fucking talk to you because I didn’t want you to see me like this.”

Uh oh. Too much vulnerability. Cissie and Cassie were looking upset, and Anita was nodding as if this was more or less what she had expected to get out of this conversation. Like fuck she did. She didn’t know him. Nobody knew him. He was fucking unknowable.

Finally, Cassie awkwardly said, “Tim -”

“I’m not Tim Drake!” Tim exploded. “I’m not him! Tim Drake is six feet fucking under! I’m the demon that came back in his body! I’m not your brother! I’m the Red Hood and I want to rip you limb from limb, Wonder Girl, I want to choke you to fucking death and see the light leave your eyes so you can know what it’s like to die! I’m a mass murderer and I’m going to fucking string you up by your -”

It happened in a flash. As fast as Connor could, Cassie darted forward and grabbed Tim by the collar of his shirt. She lifted him up, unravelling the lasso with one hand and raising Tim high until his feet were dangling off the floor and he was feeling a little choked himself. She released his lands from the lasso, but he knew better than to think he could break her grip. The magic snapped, releasing him from the compulsion, and Tim grinned down at her with bloody teeth.

“It’s Troia to you,” Cassie said evenly, and coldly, and all the things she had never been. “Red Hood.”

Tim couldn’t fight the delighted laugh, the laugh that he knew was more than a little demented and cackling. “You know how to thrill a guy, Troia! C’mon, do it harder. C’mon!”

Her lip curled, and Tim let blood dribble out of his mouth. Cissie looked disgusted behind her, while Anita just looked thoughtful. “Stay away from Connor, Hood. He deserves better than you. All you’re doing is hurting him, and I won’t let you. Young Justice protects each other. Even if it’s from itself. That’s my role as the leader.” She released a hand from his collar, holding him above her head with just one hand, and casually wrapped the lasso around her wrist. It glowed with its soft golden light, and Tim remembered abruptly that the magic worked even on Amazonians. “I’m your sister. I’ll always love you, no matter who you turn out to be. I don’t think you’re a bad person. I just think you’re in so much pain you want everyone around you to suffer too.”

“I’m going to fucking kill you,” Tim hissed.

“Good luck with that, sport.” She dropped him on the ground, and Tim bounced ignobly on his ass. She wound up her lasso and tucked it back into her dress, and turned abruptly on her heel in dismissal. As if she had sized him up and found him unworthy. “C’mon, girls. There’s nothing left for us here.”

“I told you this was a bad idea,” Cisse muttered, but she didn’t spare a last glance at Tim as she walked out with Cassie. Only Anita lingered, eyebrows furrowed, but Tim couldn’t bear to meet her almond eyes. If there was anything she wanted to say to him, he didn’t want to hear it.

The door opened, and Bart stuck his head in. He was - he was tall, now, short but well conditioned and silky hair stuffed under a baseball cap. He surveyed the scene - the girls standing in front of him looking pissed off, Tim sprayed on his ass with blood staining the floor and gnashing his teeth. Bart’s eyebrows rose incrementally.

“I told you so,” he said cryptically.

Bart, Bart - thirteen years old, the both of them, the Flash holding onto Bart’s collar so he wouldn’t zoom around and break everything in the Watchtower. The way Bart blinked at him, and asked him about what the Flash meant by ‘school’ and ‘homework’ and ‘you ask too many questions’ and ‘you’re so weird’ - what did weirdness even mean, anyway? And Tim hadn’t known either, and they had smiled at each other, and Connor had said that he had the best idea ever, I’ve been talking to Sin and she says that we should -

“Yeah, whatever,” Cassie said, and Bart held the door open for them to exit, leaving Tim alone. The door slammed shut behind him and Tim was left sitting on the floor of a girl’s bathroom in a nightclub, blood trailing down his lips, green staining his vision.

It occurred to him, for the very first time, that he could just call Sin. He could call and tell her everything, mend her broken heart, beg for forgiveness. Hug her again. He hadn’t been lying, for years she was the only person who hugged him, who told him that she was proud of him. The thought that he was hurting her was painful to him.

He could crawl back, ask Cassie and Cissie and Anita and Bart and Slobo and fucking Connor to forgive him. They would. He could be Tim Drake again. He had always been a good liar. If he played his part he could have what he wanted.

But if Cassie ever slipped that lasso on him again, she would know. She would expose him. Tim Drake was dead, and there was no resurrecting him.

He should have stayed dead. This world had nothing he wanted.

CASE FILE [CLASSIFIED: S]

NAME: Timothy Jackson Drake-Wayne

KNOWN PAST ALIASES: Robin, Alvin Draper

CURRENT ALIAS: Red Hood

RELATIVES: Janet Drake (Mother, deceased). Jackson Drake (Father, deceased). Bruce Wayne (Adopted Father, deceased). Damian Wayne (Adoptive brother). Jason Wayne (Adoptive brother). Cassandra Wayne (Adoptive sister). Richard Grayson (Foster brother).

BIRTH DATE: December 5th, 1999.

DEATH DATE: June 21st, 2015.

AGE: [CHRONOLOGICALLY] 20 years old

[RESURRECTION DATE: Unknown. Likely roughly a year after death. Cause unknown.]

SEX: Male

GENDER: Male

WEIGHT: Around 130 lbs [NOTE: DRUG ADDICTION, MAY BE LOWER]

HEIGHT: 5”6

PLACE OF BIRTH: Gotham City

SEXUALITY: Homoromantic asexual [POSSIBLY OUT OF DATE]

RELIGION: Ashkenazi Jewish

PREVIOUS AFFILIATION: Batman and company, Young Justice, Justice League, League of Assassins.

CURRENT AFFILIATION: Unknown

ALIGNMENT: Unknown

CURRENT RESIDENCE: Unknown [BOWERY?]

PRESUME ARMED AND DANGEROUS AT ALL TIMES.

SKILLSET:

Timothy Drake-Wayne is a highly skilled physical combat operative. Trained personally by Batman, he is one of the premier martial artists in the United States. However, his true danger is in his skills in computer science and tactical planning. Timothy Drake-Wayne is the best hacker in the Business, and his detective and tactical skills are unrivaled. Talented in gadgetry, disguise, and charisma, Timothy Drake-Wayne is manipulative and convincing. Skilled in bomb manufacturing and technological support.

[ROBIN AND BATGIRL: DO NOT APPROACH SOLO. IF ENCOUNTERED, WAIT FOR BACKUP FROM BATMAN OR BLACK BAT.]

PSYCHOLOGICAL PROFILE:

Genius, but socially somewhat inept. Never officially screened with a psychiatrist, but according to a medical report [SEE: THOMPKINS DRAKE ASSESSMENT, 2015] at risk for childhood conduct disorder, depression, anxiety, and PTSD. Extremely low levels of empathy. Excessive violence and temper difficulties were common in childhood. Since reaching the age of 18, a diagnosis of Antisocial Personality Disorder may be appropriate. Post-kidnapping incident, PTSD and depression was at appropiate levels of severity that he commited suicide during rescue.

Since resurrection, psychological profile must be adjusted. Dangerously high levels of instability have been recorded, but as this instability is partially magic it is difficult to make a psychological diagnosis. Regardless, in alternate circumstances forced institutionalization would be necessary. Reports indicate a strong suicidality, incoherent and disrupted sense of identity, and substance addiction. Excessive violence and temper has seen a marked increase. Danger to both himself and others. If apprehended, Arkham would be a more suitable incarceration instead of Blackgate.

[STATUS: DO NOT APPREHEND. HIGH RISK OF COMPROMISING IDENTITY OF BATMAN AND COMPANY.]

PROFESSIONAL RELATIONSHIPS: [AS OF 4/05/2019]

Batman I: Adopted father. As of resurrection, seems to be a focal point for anger and resentment. As Red Hood, he has expressed desire to hurt, punish, and possibly kill. Most of his motivations seem to be centered around such attempts. Without him, Timothy Drake-Wayne seems to be directionless.

Talia al Ghul: Patron. Unknown limit or extent of their relationship. Seems to have groomed and manipulated him after the resurrection. If possible, find more details on this relationship.

Ra’s al Ghul: See Talia al Ghul. However, the relationship between Timothy and Ra’s has been highly emotionally involved ever since Ra’s found what he determined to be an intellectual match in Timothy. It is possible that the grooming started as early as fourteen or fifteen years old. Possibly intended as a ‘replacement’ for Batman II since he made formal break with the League of Assassins. Note that Ra’s has historically respected Timothy as much as, if not more than, he has respected Batman I and Batman II. Ra’s has shown almost no interest in Black Bat, Batgirl, or Robin. If possible, find more details on this relationship. As of 4/05/2019, it is clear that Timothy Drake-Wayne holds no affection for the League.

Superboy II: Romantic Partner. Only person from pre-resurrection that Timothy keeps in even vaguely friendly terms with. Has been recalcitrant on details regarding Timothy’s mental state, but repeatedly insists that Timothy is “the same guy, just kinda coked up all the time” [X]. Knows where Timothy is living, but refuses to give the information. Has alleged that their relationship is mostly sexual, which is drastically out of character for Timothy and warrants follow-up.

Batman II: Adopted brother. See Batman I. Subject of hatred and resentment.

Robin: Adopted brother. Particular subject of hatred, had displayed extremely violent behavior towards in the past. Timothy has expressed homicidal desires towards Robin. [KEEP AWAY FROM]

Black Bat: Adopted sister. See Batman I and II. Subject of hatred and resentment.

Batgirl: Close friend. See Batman I, Batman II, and Black Bat. Subject of hatred and resentment.

[FOR CRIMINAL CONTACTS, REFER TO THIS FILE] [X]

[FOR PROFESSIONAL CONTACTS AS ROBIN, REFER TO THIS FILE] [X]

[Batman I’s notes, 9/20/2018: Disappeared from police custody after apprehension in kidnapping of Harleen Quinzel. Current whereabouts unknown. After much deliberation, I have decided not to pursue. Robin is correct: what jail could hold him? Although an active and concerning risk regarding our identities, I do not believe that he would freely share the information. It is most likely he is seeking revenge against Ra’s and Talia al Ghul. In our conflict, he seemed more confused and distraught than homicidal. My suggested method of operation is to wait and see if he returns to Gotham. If he displays aggressive and law breaking behavior in Gotham I shall deal with his actions then.]

[Batman II’s notes, 4/05/2019: To our shock, Tim Drake-Wayne has returned to Gotham. I do not think it is an act of reconciliation with us, and if it is to join us in mourning then it is half-hearted. Rather, I do not think Tim knows what he wants to do now that he has ruined the League. Red Hood had recently been acting in the East End in his old territory, but his actions seem directionless and unfocused. Reports from Superboy [X] and Young Justice [X] indicate a severe mental disruption in self-concept and internal desires. I do not anticipate Timothy acting in a way that steps outside the bounds of illegal vigilantism, and thus do not plan on arresting him. However, he is a suicide risk. There is no good way to approach this problem. It is best if I keep my distance from him. Superboy has promised to keep an eye on him, and that is the most I can do at this point. I feel very powerless.]

FILES:

Academic history [X]

Reports written as Robin [X]

CASE FILE: Beheading Murders [X]

Adoption paperwork [X]

Medical history - THOMPKINS [X]

Psychiatric history - THOMPKINS [X]

Autopsy - Timothy Jackson Drake-Wayne [X]

CASE FILE: Robin II Kidnapping and Murder [X]

CASE FILE: Teen Titan Report on Infiltration and Attack on Robin III [X]

IQ Test Results [X]

[RICHARD, GET OFF THIS DOCUMENT, YOU AREN’T SUPPOSED TO HAVE ACCESS TO IT.]

:( working on my english s'il vous plaît. J'ai reçu un email avec ce fichier en pièce jointe.

[NOTE: INVESTIGATE THIS]

PSYCHIATRIC INTERVIEW SUMMARY WITH TIMOTHY DRAKE BY DR. CLAIRE JIMENEZ, HOSPITAL PEDIATRIC BEREAVEMENT COUNSELOR.

I gave Timothy Drake an informal intake interview after medically induced death of his father Jackson Drake. This death was shortly following the kidnapping and murder of his mother Janet Drake. As a pediatric psychologist specializing in bereavement, I wanted to have an introductory conversation with Timothy to see if he would be a good candidate for further therapy.

Conversation with Timothy was difficult. He was obviously very intelligent and present emotionally, and was not in obvious distress or excess emotionality. He appeared well groomed, if slightly tired. I believe he suffers from chronic sleep deprivation, but as a long-term ailment extending before the death of his parents. At thirteen years old Timothy was unusually calm, collected, and disengaged. This is especially concerning considering his father’s death only the previous day.

When asked about his feelings about his father’s death, he said that it was “fine”. When probed further for his feelings about it, he refused to elucidate. When asked about how he felt about his mother dying, he said sentences such as “I don’t know” and “that was a while ago, wasn’t it?” repeatedly. I asked him what he would miss about his father, and he appeared unable to answer. I probed further for any signs of abuse or maltreatment by his parents, but he said that “they were good parents” and “it doesn’t really matter now, right?”. These behaviors are worrying.

As is already known by staff, Bruce Wayne has professed to be a long time friend of Tim and expressed desire to adopt him. I got the most emotional reaction out of Tim by asking about Bruce. Tim clearly hero-worships Bruce, and enthusiastically responded to my attempts to ask about their relationship by stating how “cool” he was and how he was “fun to hang out with”. I asked Tim if Bruce Wayne had ever asked him to keep any secrets, or if he had ever done anything that made Tim uncomfortable, and Tim immediately understood what I was asking and laughed me off. “Bruce is the coolest, funniest guy I know. There’s nothing weird about him. Mostly we just do stuff like play sports and mess around. Bruce is teaching me how to play baseball. It’s a ton of fun.” I believe that the relationship between Bruce Wayne and Tim is healthy and appropriate, but it warrants continued supervision by CPS.

Mostly, I am concerned by how non-responsive Tim is to treatment, and how necessary it may be for future healthy functioning. Losing two parents in such a traumatic way severely destabilizes children as young as Tim, and moving to a new home with a new family is also traumatic. But, at surface level, Tim seems a very ordinary if reserved young man. This is very anomalous behavior at his developmental age considering his background of trauma. He appears heavily invested in assuring me that he is “fine” and “normal”, but doesn’t seem to understand what normal is. I caught multiple instances of impression management where he was subtly trying to guide me to a conclusion or make himself seem nonthreatening. This is not unusual in intelligent children, but there seemed to be signs of very low empathy and compulsive lying that warrant follow-up.

Further therapy and a referral to a specialist in childhood trauma is recommended. A diagnosis by a neuropsychiatrist of ASD may also be helpful in identifying the issues with empathy, but I do not believe that he displays full symptoms of ASD. A pediatric bereavement therapist is mandatory if he wishes to attain any level of normal future development.

ADDENDUM 10/14: Bruce Wayne, his legal guardian, has refused any further counseling or therapy outside of court mandated CPS appointments. I highly urge his social worker to insist on further therapy if Bruce Wayne wishes to maintain custody. Continued therapy is essential for Tim Drake’s standard of living and in managing what I suspect to be undiagnosed psychopathology.

Tim was having a lot of fun setting an Amazon Warehouse on fire when his communicator rang.

Okay. He wasn’t really having fun. Tim didn’t really enjoy things. But the sweet sight of the flame he craved did make him feel An Emotion, even if he wasn’t sure what that emotion was. Don’t worry. He checked to make sure nobody was inside. Maybe one of these days he could kill Bezos? It was a thought. Tim had set up an alert to notify him if Bezos ever visited Gotham. Batman had always taught him to never miss an opportunity.

But the communicator ringing was of greater priority. Tim only kept it on his gauntlet to listen in on police broadcasts, and to communicate with lieutenants he didn’t really have anymore, and nobody had the number anymore. He couldn’t think of a single person who was good enough technologically to mine the number either. Tim had always been the best with computers out of anybody he knew.

The alert flashed on his helmet’s UI, a soft red box warning him that it came from an unknown number. Tim shouldn’t answer it. Whoever it was, he probably didn’t want to talk to them. There were very few people he was actively interested in speaking to these days, actually.

He was standing on the roof near the warehouse, watching the smoke slowly cloud over the windows and start licking the top of the roofs. The fire department would be here...eventually. He should probably bounce. This wasn’t the East Side, where anything could be done with no consequences.

Nobody would ever call him, something in Tim’s mind whispered, unless it was an emergency. Actually, there was only a small group of people who would even think to get this number, and they deserve -

Tim sighed, and pressed the accept call button on his glove.

“Red Hood. This better be good.”

“It’s Batgirl,” Stephanie’s voice cut in, and Tim’s heart stuttered in his chest. Stephanie. He hadn’t talked to her in - since the funeral. She sounded so much older. He had loved her, once upon a time. “Have you seen the kid tonight?”

“You dig up my number, call someone who’s cut all ties with you, and interrupt me in the middle of my arson to ask if I’ve seen Robin?” Tim asked, incredibly irritated. “Go look in an abandoned warehouse. He’s a big boy, I don’t give a shit.”

“Not Robin,” Stephanie snapped. “The little kid. He’s gone. He and Batman had a fight and he ran off. I wouldn’t be asking if we weren’t worried out of our minds.”

Richard Grayson. The little ghost with crystal blue eyes, always perched on a chandelier or a high place as it could keep him safe. He was...just a kid.

Unless, something deep in his mind whispered, Stephanie was lying. She was probably trying to manipulate him, try to get him to come back so she could lock him up. Richard was the bait, and Arkham would be the hook, and -

Tim shook himself forcibly. Pit madness. All Tim had ever had was his mind, he wasn’t losing that now. “Did you check the graveyard?”

“And every circus in town,” Stephanie said, frustrated. “And Commissioner Gordon’s house, and Selina’s apartment, and Young Justice and Teen Titan headquarters. Zip. He’s been gone for hours, and - and this is a rough city, Hood. I just wanted to know if you’ve seen him.”

Why would he have seen him? He had barely exchanged ten words with the kid, Richard would never come running to him for help. He didn’t seem like a kid who ever lost at hide and seek either. The truth was, Stephanie was scared, and after all this time she still turned to Tim when she needed help. Not because she was weak enough to need him - although that had been kind of true, once upon a time - but because she was strong enough to admit when she wanted him.

“Send me the search pattern you’re using,” Tim said gruffly, stashing his lighter back in his belt. Looks like he’d have to stick around to admire his work next time. “I’ll comb my territory first, and mark it all clear if I don’t see anything. Who do you have on police broadcast?”

“Hood, you don’t have to -”

“Of course I don’t,” Tim said. “Shut up about it before I change my mind.”

“Understood. A will be manning the coms for the rest of the night. Batgirl out.” Her voice softened, for just a second. “Thanks.”

He hung up on her.

Alright. A large part of Tim wanted to just go home. A larger part of him wouldn’t be able to live with himself if anything happened to the kid. He hadn’t - he hadn’t even done anything. Tim was stuck on that. If there was an innocent in all of this, it was him. Kids shouldn’t be hurt.

Tim had deserved to be kidnapped, tortured, and killed. He had deserved it because he was a bad person. Richard didn’t.

He hopped off the rooftop and onto his bike, cranking it on and hightailing it out of the dusty alley. Smoke was crawling into the sky, clouding the clear night, and sirens could finally be heard in the distance. But the helmet prevented any smoke from getting into his lungs or staining his eyes, and he ripped his way across Gotham.

On his wrist computer, Tim ran facial recognition through the Gotham CCTV cameras. More than half of them were dysfunctional, and facial recognition sucked, but it was enough to get a lead. He ran the cameras for the biggest hotspots of human trafficking he knew, drawing a blank - thank god - and double checked the police dispatch to make sure nobody had reported a missing kid. His greatest worry, and he knew the greatest worry of the rest of the vigilantes, was that the cops were going to find a kid who didn’t speak English and who couldn’t provide any papers and jump straight to deportation. They would find him before that, and the majority of the cops at least knew the faces of Gotham’s most famous orphan family, but it was something they had all seen happen far too often. A kid like Richard with no papers absolutely couldn’t afford to run afoul of the cops at all. Damian was pulling as many strings as he physically could - which was plenty - but the process would take months before it finally went through. If Bruce was still here -

Tim shook himself, and on a hunch checked all of the intake records on the homeless shelters. Nothing. Airport? Nothing. If Bruce was here, he would have given him a subdermal implant months ago -

A childhood memory clobbered Tim around the head. He remembered vividly, his attempt as a six year old to sneak into a plane bound for Argentina a day after his parents left on another dig. He snuck out with his backpack full of snacks and a fist full of change for the bus, and had made it all the way to the airport before a well meaning security guard called his parents. He had completely forgotten about that.

He had been such an idiot. There were no direct flights from Gotham to Buenos Aires. He would have had to make a transfer at Mexico City. What kind of six year old didn’t know that?

Something occurred to him, and Tim made a very dangerous lane change as he took a sharp right. His gut screamed at him, and his ruthlessly logical mind worked out all of the pieces. He should call Stephanie, tell her his hunch, but something stayed his hand.

Gotham flickered in his peripheral vision, sagging buildings and houses sold for the price of a VCR flashing in his vision. Bar hopping yuppies, shuffling homeless people, tent cities set in protective camps under highways. 2.7 Million people, lurching through life. Most in poverty, some in splendor. Some in human trafficking, some in gilded mansions. Somewhere, far away, a little boy sat in an orante windowsill with his nose pressed against the glass, waiting for his parents to come home. In a time long gone, a little boy next door did the same, knowing they would never come back.

Children lost parents every day. In one year there was a little less than a thousand murders. Children lost parents to suicide, to drunk driving, to heart attacks. Nobody was innocent of trauma and fear. It wasn’t so strange. Wherever you looked, unhappiness reigned.

Tim had become a superhero for a lot of reasons. He had been bored. He, like every thirteen year old, had found Batman and Robin the pinnacle of life’s aspirations. But, maybe more than anything else, he hated seeing others in pain. He could never stand the sensation of powerlessness that his parents had left him with every time they left, and hated being powerless to ease other’s pain. Tim had seized his own power, clamored and scraped and scavenged for every ounce of skill he had. Now he was somebody who nobody could ever hurt again.

Was it about the underprivileged, the downtrodden? Or was it about Tim? He wasn’t like Bruce, experiencing violent crime in one traumatic moment that never left. He wasn’t Damian, who was groomed into causing evil and knew only how to sublimate that into good. He wasn’t Jason, who experienced violent crime every day of his life until he was twelve. Stephanie, with a dad who beat her and hurt others. Cass, with a dad who shot her and trained her to hurt. Even Richard, who had an almost identical experience to Bruce. Tim was as privileged as you could physically get. Did he care about creating a better world? Or was he just desperate, hoping that curing the world would cure himself?

Tim liked being a detective. He liked solving crime. He liked extending a warm hand into the dark. And if that was true, if that was all it was, he would have become a fucking cop.

Or, more realistically, take over his parent’s company and become a keyboard warrior. Let’s be real here. Maybe in that life, at least, he would have lived past sixteen.

Tim barely bothered to park at the bus depot, hopping off his bike immediately before he turned it off. The grifts around him, clutching cigarettes or shifting from foot to foot holding suitcases, very politely looked away. Pretend you don’t see the supervillain/vigilante, and he may not hurt you.

He didn’t bother changing out of the outfit. Forget what comic book said, there were cameras in alleys and it was not safe anywhere near a well lit bus depot to shuck the helmet. He kept it on instead, ignoring the averted eyes and covert stares and hidden whispers as he walked inside the bus depot.

They were all the same, everywhere. Tim was intimately familiar with all of Gotham’s Greyhound and Megabus stops. This Greyhound was inside, at least, and dense in those too poor to afford cars. Squalling children sat attached to mother’s hips, and a restless security guard prowled the periphery. The aging security guard’s eyes widened when he saw Tim, almost gulping down his toothpick.

Tim waved easily, drawing up a picture on his phone and hold it in front of the security guard. “Evening, officer. I’m looking for a runaway. About nine years old, blue eyes, black hair, nonwhite, bad English, nice clothing?”

“Red Hood,” the security guard stammered. “I - I saw him go in, yeah. Is there - is there trouble?”

“No trouble,” Tim said cheerfully, slipping the phone back in his jacket pocket. Aces. “Just a family who wants him home very badly.”

Well, that was one more person than yesterday who thought Richard was the son of a mafioso or something. When Tim walked inside the waiting area, he saw Richard almost instantly. He was standing in front of the information desk, arguing furiously with a peeved looking desk clerk. Another woman was sitting at the desk, someone who Tim was guessing was the actual clerk. The man Richard was arguing with clearly was clearly from another department. Had to find someone who spoke a language in common, then.

“ - I have money!” Richard was saying in Spanish, when Tim walked up. He was, indeed, holding a fistful of hundreds. Robbery bait. Great. “I just want a ticket!”

“Kid, you need a passport to go to Canada,” the man said, also in Spanish and growing more and more frustrated. “If you’re on the run from the law, we don’t help criminals escape America here.”

“I am not a criminal,” Richard yelled. “I am just trying to go home!”

“You’ll want a different bus for that,” the female clerk said snidely. Idiot. His accent was pure European Spanish, lisp and everything.

Tim didn’t speak as many languages as Richard, who spoke more languages than anybody he had ever met, but he was very fluent in ASL and pretty good in Spanish, Arabic, and Chinese, and passable in Polish and Tagalog. He also spoke and read Hebrew, although that was pretty useless for everything else besides fuelling the online conspiracy theories. (For the record, Cass only spoke ASL and English and Steph liked to brag about how she knew her Grandpa’s Cajun pidgin and nobody else in the family did. Bruce and Damian, of course, had spoken everything, and Jason knew every language in the East Side the way the denizens actually spoke it).

The employees saw him before Richard did, their eyes growing wide and freezing. Richard only noticed when Tim clapped a hand on his shoulder with faux-friendliness.

“Excuse me, all.” Tim said cheerfully in Spanish. “Time to take this camp home. Rodrigo, you’re in big trouble with your Mama.”

Richard whipped around, eyes wide as he looked Tim up and down. It occurred to Tim that this was probably the first time had ever seen Tim in the outfit. He wondered if he looked different, somehow scary or intimidating. Nothing about the outfit was meant to strike fear to anybody who wasn’t in on the joke. He didn’t run around in a fuck-off cape.

“Red Hood,” Richard whispered, the English breaking through. He switched back to Spanish when he continued, “How did you find me?”

“A little birdie told me,” Tim said, and Richard scowled. Tim had no regrets. Damian had played that dumb big brother joke on him endlessly when he was a kid. You didn’t escape being a Robin having that not even funny joke recited to you a million times.

“All of the money’s in the safe,” the woman squeaked. “Please don’t hurt us!”

Okay, he wasn’t exactly holding them up here. He didn’t even have his gun out, although everybody was staring at his gun anyway. Still, what was the harm?

“Oh, yeah.” Tim reached into his thigh holster and withdrew his gun, aiming it squarely at the lady and very aware that he was traumatizing her for life. “Give me, um...your hat.”

“My hat?” the woman squeaked.

“Yeah, sure, whatever.”

With shaking hands, the woman took off her signature Greyhound hat and passed it over the counter to him. Tim took it, realized that it wouldn’t fit on his helmet at all, and jammed it over Richard’s head. It was more than a bit big for him, but it hid his face well.

“Thanks for the donation,” Tim said easily. “Let’s roll, Rodrigo.”

He slung an arm around Richard’s shoulders and gently guided him out of the bus shelter. It wasn’t until that they were safe in the alleyway, or as safe as either of them could ever get, that he released his arm from Richard’s shoulders.

“I do not think donation means what you think it means,” Richard muttered angrily in English. “I think it means when you give a person a thing because you are nice. Not because you have a...”

“Gun.” Tim spun his around in his hand and reupholstered it, slinging his leg around his motorcycle and fishing a small helmet out of the back that he tossed to Richard. “Put it on. I’m taking you back to your parents.”

Richard bristled, clutching the helmet tightly and not moving to join him. In Spanish, he spat, “You know I don’t have -”

“This is not a secure back alley,” Tim said easily, also in Spanish. “So I think it’s best not to say anything incriminating unless you want to get the both of us in very big trouble. Got it?”

“I am going to go to Canada,” Richard said stubbornly. “I know a circus touring there. I’m going to join them and I’m going to be an acrobat again. We will tour in Quebec and I won’t have to speak stupid English. You are a hypocrite to stop me.”

Kids. Stubborn little assholes. Tim sighed, and for the first time in a year he pressed a few buttons on his wrist communicator and voluntarily dialled a number he never thought he would dial again. Kids have no idea what you sacrifice for them.

She picked up immediately, obviously. “Batgirl to Red Hood.”

“Red Hood to Batgirl,” Tim said, keeping an eye on the sullen kid. “I’ve picked up the package. I’ll deposit it at the usual drop-off location.”

“You have him?” Steph yelled. “What did you find him? Is he there with you?”

“Way to blow my eardrums out, woman,” Tim mock complained. “I’m not in a secure location, I’ll explain it later.

“Did you traumatize him?”

“How am I supposed to know what traumatizes children or not?” Tim asked irritability.

For some reason, that made Steph laugh. Almost hysterically, almost as if she had to relieve a great burden, she laughed. “Don’t bother with the usual drop-off point,” she said, “it’s too far away. I’m sending you alternate coordinates to meet one of our operatives there and to drop off the package. Tell him I love him and get him there ASAP.”

“I’m kidnapping him and smuggling him to Mexico,” Tim said, before hanging up.

When he looked back at Richard he was still scowling, still holding the helmet to his chest and refusing to put it on. “I’m not going with you,” he said stubbornly. “You will have to knock me out and kidnap me.”

For a second, just a brief second, he reminded Tim of Damian. The little scowl, the stubborn pride. It made his heart hurt. And Tim didn’t really normally do that whole feeling thing.

“Let me guess,” Tim said deliberately, resting his elbows on the handlebar. “You had a fight with your ‘old man’, right?” Richard nodded hesitantly. “Tired of him telling you what to do or whatever?” Richard shrugged. “Tell you what. Tell me where you want to go and I’ll go with you. I don’t have any safehouses in Canada, but I got places all over. Spain, France, Germany, Turkey, Russia, the works. Anywhere, and it’s yours.”

Richard’s eyes grew huge, reflecting the dim light of the neon sign in front in his blue eyes. “Anywhere?”

“Sure,” Tim said. “I got nothing keeping me here. I don’t blame you for running off. I did the same thing just a year ago. I’ve been thinking of dropping by Europe again. Wherever you want, I’ll forge a passport and papers for you and we’ll head out tomorrow morning at the latest. Won’t even tell the rest of the fam where we are.”

“I think this is a trick,” Richard said dubiously.

“Is this the face of someone who would lie to you?”

Richard squinted at the blank red helmet. Finally, he settled on muttering, “I just want to go home.”

“You don’t got one,” Tim pointed out, perhaps not as gently as he should have. “It’s not safe to go back to the old homestead. You have to find someplace new now. It can be anywhere you want, Rodrigo. Anywhere in the world. Just tell me where.”

Richard stared fixedly at the ground at his feet, and Tim realized far too late that his eyes were filling up with tears. Maybe that was one point where he different from Damian, who had also been ten years old with no home to go back to and nobody who truly wanted him. His eyes filled up with tears until they were splashing on the ground, and his shoulders began hunching, and his hands began shaking, until finally he was crying in ernest. Almost silently, almost noticeably, but real tears that couldn’t be held back anymore.

Maybe Steph or Cass would have hugged him. Damian definitely wouldn’t have. Tim didn’t either, just sitting on the motorcycle, waiting for Richard to make the decision. Finally, Richard wiped his eyes with his sleeve, put the helmet on his head, and climbed on behind Tim. He put his little arms around his chest, holding on tight, and Tim revved the engine and got them out of there as quickly as was safe.

The address was, of course, Selena’s apartment. Tim sighed, steering it into the covered parking lot and knowing that nobody was dumb enough to steal it. He didn’t want to be seen entering Selena’s apartment as Red Hood, but there were definitely security cameras overlooking the parking lot. He should drop Richard off and leave. That was the only sensible thing to do.

“Are you coming inside with me?” Richard asked quietly, still clutching onto Tim’s leather jacket. It was a cold night, and he was shivering.

Christ. “Yeah, obviously. C’mon, let’s go get yelled at by your sisters.”

“Not my sisters,” Richard muttered.

“That’s what I said. For years.” Tim turned the bike off, carefully hopping off it. “And I was dead wrong.”

They climbed up all five stories, knowing full well the elevator didn’t work and that Tim was not about to go in through the window with an adventurous kid in tow, and Tim fought the rising anxiety in his chest. Maybe only Selena would be there. It was unlikely that Stephanie wouldn’t be, actually. And where Steph was, Cass was. Probably Jason. But that was probably it. Maybe it would really be just Selena.

No big deal, Tim recited to himself, trying not to acknowledge that he was afraid of his family. No big deal. Just drop Richard off, and go. He tried frantically to turn that anxiety and fear to hate, to dredge up something he hated about them, but with Richard’s hand clutching his it failed.

Sometimes it felt like Tim’s only hobby was turning everything that made him feel bad into weapons against everyone else. The fear, anxiety and depression, tasted so much sweeter when it was used to hurt someone else. It was so much he couldn’t bear to keep it all inside, and so it overflowed constantly.

Finally they stood in front of Selena’s door, and Tim took a deep, shaky breath.

Richard looked up at him, out of the corner of his eyes. “Are you scared?”

“No.”

“Liar,” Richard said, satisfied. “It was you who gave me access to those files.”

“So what?” Tim snapped. “You’re none of my business, kid.”

“Then why did you walk me up?” Richard asked smugly, and Tim knew that he had been duped.

In the end, they didn’t even have to knock. The door opened from the inside, and Selena stood in the doorway. Her eyes opened just a little bit wider when she saw Tim, who was still holding Richard’s hand, but she quickly pulled them both inside the apartment before anyone else could see them in the hall.

The minute they stepped into the apartment, Tim’s vision was overcome with the sight of Batman and Flamebird in the living room. Larger than life, too big for their small containers, Batman stood in the center of the room in full costume with his ruber cape almost draping on the ground. A little shorter than Bruce, Tim noted absently. Alfred would have to hem it.

That was the last intelligent thought he had before Batman pulled his cowl down and revealed only Damian, eyes wide and mouth open, and Tim could only stare in shock as Damian ran forward in three quick steps and quickly gathered Richard into his arms. He hugged Richard tight, as if afraid that he would drift away, and Richard hugged him back just as fiercely. He was almost swallowed by the folds of the cape, by the enormity of the suit, but then a tired Flamebird stepped up and hugged Richard tightly too.

“I’m sorry,” Damian said in Arabic, “I’m so sorry, Richard. I’m sorry if I pushed you, or if you aren’t ready. We’ll figure out an alternative together. I shouldn’t have pushed you.”

“We care about you, Richie,” Jon said, running his fingers through Richard’s hair, and it made Tim want to die again. “We’ll figure something out together.”

“I’m sorry,” Richard sobbed in Arabic, “I’m sorry I left. I do want you two to adopt me, I was just scared. I want this to be my home.” He switched to English. “I want you to be my home now.”

It wasn’t until Steph and Cass moved to stand next to him that he noticed anybody else in the room. Selena had walked over to stand next to Jason, who was leaning against the fridge, and she placed a hand on his shoulder and spoke slowly into his ear. Both Steph and Cass both seemed a little anxious, glancing back and forth at him and the two figures sitting on the couch, and Tim didn’t see what made them so worried until he followed their gazes and saw that Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy was sitting on the couch too.

Tim’s hands grew clammy, and his head grew fuzzy. His chest hurt, constricting and pinching him, and almost without conscious thought his hand drifted to his gun.

A small, slender hand caught his wrist before it could go any further, and held it firm like it was made of titanium. “Nobody is going to hurt each other,” Cass said softly.

“Too late.”

But he didn’t move his hand, and eventually Cass slipped her hand down in his and squeezed. With a shaking hand, Tim lifted up his other hand and pressed the special latch in his helmet, lifting it over his head and letting it drop and roll onto the floor.

Poison Ivy - Pamela - was staring at the unlikely scene, but Harley Quinn was staring at him. There was something in her eyes, something Tim didn’t know or care to identify. They all let the new family, the strange little haphazard family of the alien and the prince and the kid from nowhere, come together, and Tim could not stop staring at the woman who ruined and saved his life.

“She and Pam live in this apartment building,” Steph hissed in his ear. “They were helping us search. Don’t you dare.”

There was no point, the logical side of Tim’s mind pointed out. Jon was pretty occupied, but he would still be able to stop an assasination attempt before Tim could even get too far with it. Harley wasn’t a slouch either. The not-so-logical part of his mind, the part that wanted to rip and tear, said that it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered, except for Tim’s own pain.

Finally, Damian released Richard, who withdrew and hugged himself tightly. Jon was still bent down, whispering in his ear, but Damian walked forward and stared down at Tim, who was unfortunately still the shortest of the family. Except maybe for Richard, now.

“Tim -” Damian began, before Tim attacked him.

He didn’t mess around. He dived for his neck, extending his hand in a ruthless chop straight from the League of Assassins, and Damian just barely blocked. Then Tim swept out a foot, almost knocking a hole into Selena’s plaster, and Damian dodged. Tim attacked, ruthlessly on the offensive, as Damian blocked and evaded every blow that he could. Some he couldn’t, and Tim watched in shock as one of his blows actually connected with Damian’s jaw. He could have never landed a hit on Damian when he was a kid. But he was an adult now, or as much of an adult as a twenty year old could ever be, and he wasn’t scared anymore.

No, that wasn’t quite true. Tim was terrified. He didn’t realize until he saw that nobody else had moved to step in, not even Richard, that he was so terrified out of his mind he was almost crying. Damian wasn’t even fighting him, just defending, and Tim couldn’t fight the tears that prickled at the corner of his vision. He hadn’t cried in a long time. It felt incredibly bad.

But the tears wouldn’t fall, and the blows kept coming, and he and Damian danced around each other in an ancient choreographed routine that the League of Assassins had hammered out for him years ago. Did he realize? Did Damian al Ghul see now, that Tim had been trained by the same people who trained the prince, shaped into his replacement? That he was just as good, just as talented, just as skilled?

That Tim could never have been enough for the League, like he wasn’t enough for Gotham?

It was stupid. Tim had been seeking a confrontation from Damian for months, but he wanted to do it dramatically. In a way that felt real. Red Hood versus Batman, in a battle for the fate of Gotham. Then Tim would get carted away and put in Arkham like he deserved, and he would be free, and everybody would know what a bad person he was.

“Stop!”

It was Richard, pushing away from Jon, and it was enough to stop both Tim and Damian in their tracks. Really, Tim thought that they both just wanted an excuse to stop. Jason and the girls didn’t look very happy with either of them.

“You cannot fight anymore,” Richard said, struggling through the English for the sake of the room. “No more. Your hair is - your hair is white from it. Do you not understand? You will die all over again. I cannot lose anyone else.” Richard started crying again, fat tears rolling down his cheeks. “We have to do this without Bruce now.”

Silence draped itself over the room, everybody staring at the ground awkwardly. Jason was sniffling a little too, wiping his eyes angrily. Tim didn’t know what to say. He knew it was all his fault. He knew his family would be better off if he was gone.

The idea stuck in his heart. All he did was cause pain. They would be better off if he was gone. He turned on his heel, and before he could let himself think about it anymore, walked out of the apartment and slammed the door behind him, shutting them all out.

He climbed the steps to the roof almost in a daze. All he did was hurt his sisters and brothers. He wanted Bruce. He wanted his Mom and Dad. If he forgot, if he let himself forget, it was like they were still in Argentina, and they would be home any day. Maybe some cold, desperate part of himself was still that little boy, nose pressed up against the window, waiting patiently for parents who would never come home.

Yitgadal v’yitkadash sh’mei raba, Tim thought dumbly. B’alma di v’ra chirutei, v’yamlich malchutei...fuck, how did the rest go...he didn’t remember anymore. He hadn’t heard it, not really, since his father died. He hadn’t gone to Bruce’s funeral, didn’t remember the Mourner’s Kaddish they told. He hadn’t even been there for his own funeral. Had they said it then? Had they ever stopped?

He climbed the steps to the roof, barely thinking at all. His family would be better off without him. His guns were heavy on this thighs, one nestled in his jacket, another in his boot.

It was late at night, as dark as Gotham ever got. Store signs, street lamps, and car headlights lit up the night, punctuating the darkness. The moon waned far above his head, and the hum of the building’s air conditioner churned behind him. The air tasted even more polluted up here.

He should apologize to Damian. He should kill Damian. He should vanquish the Batman, hahahahah! Ha.

He would hate this, Tim thought wryly. He sat down on the eaves of the roof, letting his heels kick against the side of the building. He had no intention of jumping. The old idiot would hate having the Batman die from Darkseid, and for the first bird brat to be his replacement. He was no fun. Never got the joke.

The thought cheered Tim up a little. He could imagine it. That nutjob pulling a great, big elaborate heist, only for Batman to show up and deck him in the face the second he saw him. Never leaving time for a joke or a quip or a heart crushing monologue about the inherent evil of people.

God, what was that speech he always went on about? ‘One Bad Day’? That was it. Everyone was only one bad day away from being him. Real master of psychology, that one. Get a life.

Bruce hadn’t killed the Joker. Damian did. Tim knew how assassins worked. It was an honor thing, nothing more. Damian would have never borne the insult against his family, however lopsided it was. It wasn’t anything personal. He had no way of knowing that he would rob Tim of the only purpose he could possibly have after he rose from his own grave.

No Joker to kill. No Bruce to rage at. No more friends to alienate - or friends who refused to let themselves be alienated. No family to take revenge upon - nothing that needed revenge. No more dastardly plot to take over Gotham - what would he do with it? What was the point of living?

What was that old poem? Razors pain you; rivers are damp; acids stain you; and drugs cause cramp.Guns aren’t lawful; nooses give; gas smells awful; you might as well live.

Might as well live…

When he heard footsteps walking across the roof, he just sighed. “I’m not going to do it,” he said finally, staring out at Gotham. “And if you want a rematch I’m not going easy on you.”

“Ew, no thanks. If we’re having a rematching I’m bringin’ my mallet!”

Tim’s head whipped around, only to find Harley Quinn standing on the roof. She was wearing pyjama bottoms and a crop top with Stitch on it, smiling brightly with crooked yellow teeth at him. She wiggled her fingers in a hello. Tim wanted to strangle the life out of her. Die. Die. Die. Die -

“Uh oh, I know that look. Mind if I sit down? Thanks!” She sat down, without even waiting for him to say anything. “I heard you were back in town, from Selena. She’s a real gossip master. You didn’t even drop by my place to say hi or nothin’! You know I own this apartment building now? It is the funniest story -”

“Why are you here.”

“Oh, I don’t know why I do anything,” she said flippantly. “I was just curious, I guess. Why’re so mad at your brother?”

Not my brother. Tim opened his mouth to say that, but ended up saying instead, “I guess I’m just mad at him.”

“Well a’ course you’re mad, kiddo!” Harley said brightly. “You’re grieving!”

That, more than anything else, made Tim falter. Maybe it was the only thing that made him falter. “What?”

She kicked her heels merrily against the brick, heedless of the heights. “You’re grieving. It couldn’t be clearer. A diminished sense of self, an identity disruption, an avoidance of reminders of the reality of the loss, an inability to trust others, a bitterness and anger. Difficulty moving on and numbness. You’re sad that someone close to you has died. It’s just that the person is...well, you!”

“You’ve been disbarred, it’s illegal to psychoanalyze me,” Tim bit out.

Harley just shrugged. “You don’t gotta be as smart and cool as I am to see it. But it’s very normal what you’re going through, you know.”

“Normal!” Tim exploded. “What about this is normal? I’m a freak of nature! A fucking zombie!”

“You’re a kid,” Harley corrected, “who’s hurting something bad. You’re lashing out, hurting other people. Doing some drugs. You shoulda seen all of the LSD I took back in med school. I don’t remember my second year! What you’re doing is normal, Tim. You aren’t some kind of freak. Other people have been through it before. There’s another side to this.”

Nobody had ever said that to him before. Nobody had ever told him that he could get better.

Tim curled his hands around the eaves of the roof until his knuckles creaked. “Don’t call me Tim. That’s not my fucking name.”

“Okay,” Harley said promptly. “What d’ya want me to call you?”

“I-” Tim was speechless. “What?”

“What do you want me to call you,” Harley repeated, a little slower.

Nobody had ever asked him that either. “Uh.” Tim didn’t know. “Red Hood?”

“Sounds good, Red,” Harley said amicably. “Mind if I call you Reddie? That’s real cute. My cousin was named Reddie. Old Reddie Quinn, we all called him. Cuz that was his name. Well, his real name was Redford, named after the actor, but we all thoughts that was sooo pretentious.”

“Okay?” Tim said, a little turned off balance. “Whatever.” The wind whipped at their hair, hot with a bite, and he struggled to find his anger. “Listen, lady, I’ve seen all the therapists and psychiatrists and shit and whatever. I got a fuckin’ psychiatric file in Batman’s records if you fucking want it. I’m beyond help. All the Bat’s files say - they say the same thing.” He rubbed at his arms, suddenly a little cold. “He thinks I’m a psychopath. Thought. I didn’t grieve for my parents. The doctor lady thought I was a freak because of it. I didn’t even care when Batman died. I’m an immoral freak.”

Harley hummed, not looking at the skyline or at the cars below them in the street but at him. It made him distinctly uncomfortable, and he avoided eye contact with her. “I don’t know about any of that. Maybe you are! But you know I specialized in the treatment of violent incarcerated populations during my residency, right? I’ve seen, like, a lot of psychos.”

“I have a body count higher than most of them,” Tim snarked.

“That’s none of my business,” Harley said gilbly. “But you’re very different from most of my patients, Red. Wanna know why?”

“You’re gonna tell me anyway.”

“You have a good support system,” Harley said. “I’m not gonna be the one to tell you that you are or aren’t a good person or whatever. I think that kinda stuff doesn’t mean a lot. But I do want to tell you that you have a lot of stuff available to you. You got your sweet dish of a boyfriend, it sounds like. You got cash. That’s important! You aren’t incarcerated or nothin’. You have a roof over your head and you have health insurance. You even got a family and friends, if you want to see them.”

Tim thought guiltily of the hodge podge of people downstairs. “If I never see my family and friends again it’ll be too soon,”

“Then you have me,” Harley said, as if it was simple. “You got me and Pammy and Kitty. I dunno if you can call you an’ me buddies -”

“You tortured me to death .”

“And I feel, like, super bad about that! But what the Sirens got that the Bats and your lil’ super teams don’t got is that we been where you been. I know how it feels, Reddie.” Harley looked away from him for the first time, lost in whatever approximated for thought in her tiny brain. “I got outta Arkham with nothin’. My family don’t wanna see me no more, and I don’t blame ‘em none. My Puddin’ - eh, you know what happened to that loser. No money, no job, and absolutely nobody telling me I could do it but Pammy. And Pammy kept on trying to get me to go back to a life of crime! But I didn’t wanna. I wanted to keep my nose clean. I had people supporting me, but what really got me there was myself. I guess I was grieving too, in a weird way. I guess I knew that I had lost that dumb dream I always where me and Puddin’ made it out of all of this in two pieces. But I have a new life now!” She flexed proudly, grinning at him, and something stirred in Tim’s chest. “If a cool girl like me can do it, so can you. Think of the Sirens like Supervillains Anonymous. I’ll be your sponsor, and you can make a clean break. If you wanna, Reddie. But the rate you’re going, it’s either that or taking a prat-fall off this roof. And I don’t wanna assume, but you don’t really want that.”

Something shivered and cracked in Tim, something that couldn’t be repaired, and shamefully the back of his eyes grew hot. “Why?” He croaked. “Why do you care?”

She looked surprised, as if the thought had never occurred to her. “I just told ya! I got stuff to make up for too! And you’re one of them, Reddie. It’s the least I can do for you. If I can make something good out of something bad I did, then that’s just a big old load off my shoulders. Besides, you’re a cute kid. I want to see you have a good life.”

Something shuddered loose inside Tim, and something opened inside of him. He didn’t know what it was, only that he was suddenly crying. Gasping, actually, almost sobbing. He bent over himself, hunched over on the roof with nothing between him on the ground, and felt the aching absence of his heart in his chest.

“I don’t want to die,” Tim sobbed, and for the first time he realized that it was true. “I don’t want to die!”

“I know,” Harley said. She didn’t make a motion to put her arm around him or hug him, but he would have broken her arms if she did. “It’s okay.”

“I don’t like hurting people,” Tim gasped, “I don’t like hurting myself.”

It was like he was outside of himself, looking down. Red Hood, supervillain, pathetic and crying. For the first time he realized how stupid his life had gotten. How had he let it go this far? He was fucking killing people. He was a drug dealer and a drug user - maybe even a drug addict. What would Mom and Dad say? What would Bruce say?

He didn’t know what his Mom and Dad would say. He had never had them. But he thought that maybe, just maybe, if Bruce was here then he would hug him and say that everything would be okay. Maybe he wouldn’t have - maybe he wouldn’t have understood, maybe he would have reacted in a way that he would have regretted later - but he would have cared. But Bruce was dead, and unlike Tim he wasn’t coming back.

Tim missed his dad. Tim missed his dad!

Tim missed himself! Where had that kid gone? That kid who liked Minecraft, who liked webcomics and 4chan and nerd shit. The kid who went to high school like everyone else, the kid who ate lunch with Bernard and Ives and Ariana, the kid who yawned and slept and brushed his hair. He was gone, and he hadn’t been resurrected. In his place was a nasty, mean boy, who didn’t like suffering as much as he pretended and who had never once felt happy when he wasn’t high.

He had a choice. He had a choice, right now. He could slide off this roof and die, or he could live the rest of his life. He could have happiness again, if not now then later, and he could hug his boyfriend and visit his dad’s grave and eat frozen yogurt and feel the grass underneath his fingers. His life wasn’t over. Through some horrible miracle, through some gift he hadn’t deserved, he got to wake up tomorrow. Maybe one day things would be okay again.

Tim wanted to see Richard grow up. He had that. He wanted to go to Damian and Jon’s dumb wedding, he wanted to hear Cass sing, he wanted to see the glint of Stephanie’s hair in the golden sun. He wanted to hold Connor. Tim had to live, to have these things. There was no way around it.

“Okay,” Tim gasped, making the decision for the first time since he was sixteen to live, “okay. We’ll do it your way.”

That should have been the end of it. But he couldn’t stop crying. Who was he crying for? What was he mourning?

But Harley sat with him, long after he had tired himself out, as the sun slowly began to set over Gotham and into the future.

epilogue

Tim woke up, and fell out of his computer chair.

He groaned, massaging his cheek from where it had been pressed down on the keyboard all night. He blearily grabbed the cheap folding table and pulled himself up, rubbing his eyes and squinting at the large monitor. There were four different flatscreen monitors on the cheap table, taking up the whole space and barely leaving room for a little Rainbow Batman Funko Pop tucked into the corner. Tim yawned, and saw that his code was now mostly five thousand lines of the letter ‘j’. That’s what he got for falling asleep on his keyboard.

He wiggled the mouse, and clicked out of Notepad++ to check his instant messages. Steph had nicknamed the instant messaging client ‘SuperChat’, and it had really taken off among Young Justice and the Teen Titans. He had created it to make it easier for the Bats to message each other securely, but whatever. If he put in the option to make your icon a gif he could start fleecing money from every West-Allen out there.

He clicked over to the ‘Young Justice II’ chat, which was mostly Bart’s dumb memes and Connor feeling the need to tell everybody pointless details about their day. Last night, at...four am, it had been a fervent argument over the merits of future sushi, grown in a lab, or the super special expensive Luthor sushi only billionaires ate that Connor’s dad kept stocked in the fridge.

Cissie: u cant keep going on about how good rich ppl fish is w/out giving us some Con

Cassie: Sushi night this Saturday? :D

Bart: I am IN

Bart: altho its not gonna be as good as the sushi the losh serves at their work fx because absolutely nothing is

Bart: to say otherwise is lies and slander

Connor: FUCK YOU

Connor: Also Dad doesn’t let me give out the sushi to poor ppl :/ sry

Greta: Steal it.

Cissie: GRETA????

Greta: What? He’s rich and evil. It’s not a crime if you’re stealing from a supervillain.

Anita: lmao #directaction

Slobo: CRIME

Slobo: CRIMECRIMECRIMECRIME

Greta: Not a crime!

Greta: But is anything a crime if you do it against evil people?

Cassie: For an ex-superhero your understanding of the legal system worries me.

Tim rolled his eyes. Peasants. Luthor’s sushi paled in comparison to the sushi they served at Wayne Enterprises Japan’s business dinners. He switched the tab to the Batfamily server, which was mostly shop talk with Steph changing the subject every two seconds. Richard wasn’t in it, because sometimes they talked about sex, but mostly because they didn’t want him involved in vigilante stuff whatsoever. Not that it wasn’t only a matter of time. Also Jon kept on saying that he was too young for a cell phone, but Jon was raised by a farmer.

Batgirl: hey is anyone free to go to Richie’s open house this saturday. Teachers want to talk about how he can’t sit in a seat for more than two seconds.

Batman: Jon and I won’t be back in Gotham until Monday, unfortunately. Jason?

Robin: bball game with the youth center, but I can cancel…

Batgirl: Those kids love you D:

Batgirl: Cass?

Black Bat: We should homeschool him.

Batgirl: with what TIME?

Black Bat: Alfred can do it.

Black Bat: He’s not meant for the public school system : (

Flamebird: Yeah, he’s having problems adjusting. That’s hopefully the point of the open house and parent teacher conference. Dami and I are gonna look like shitty guardians if we can’t even attend his open houses ;__:

Batman: I have a COMPANY. EXCUSE ME if I’m BUSY SOMETIMES.

Robin: Selena?

Black Bat: Aunt Kate?

Batgirl: how do we know SO MANY PEOPLE but NOBODY HAS TIME

Tim sighed. The conversation had petered out, probably because patrol had ended, but he typed out a quick message anyway.

Red Hood: hopefully by Saturday I won’t be legally dead anymore so I’ll see what I can do

Immediately, and bizarrely, Jason began typing.

Robin: what did you do

Robin: WHAT DID YOU DO

Red Hood: ;)

Tim switched the tab, staring for a long second at the Greek myth he was reading, before finally locking the monitor. He yawned widely, running his hand through his hair, and looked around the basement.

He had moved out of his apartment in the Bowery and moved in here. He had an actual apartment on the third floor, but he had rented the basement under the table too. Nobody else complained, because he had jury rigged some very good internet, but occasionally over the long months of setting this up he had gotten a little too excited and knocked out the internet for the entire building. Nobody had been happy about that, and he had found out that way that apparently Killer Croc lived here and was very particular about missing Wrestlemania.

It was a basement filled with modems, external hardware, and computers. It had a lot of extra gear and vigilante equipment. Probably more explosives than was legal. Tim had spent months building the most powerful computer in Gotham in the basement of an apartment building in the East End, constructing the most absolute network, and linking together every official and unofficial government network into his own. He could hack the White House. He read Trump’s emails for fun, and then leaked them to whoever the fuck he felt like. Also, he was the god of the PC building forums.

It took him away from patrolling, and from more physical crime fighting, but Tim found that he didn’t really miss it. Connor stopped by frequently, making fun of him for sitting in a dark room all day on the computer and dragging him out into the sun. He had gone back to coffee and energy drinks instead of cocaine. It felt better.

He trudged upstairs, still in his crumpled jeans and t-shirt, but didn’t bother climbing up the stairs to his apartment. Instead, he climbed up to the first floor and barged into the closest apartment to the front. The door was unlocked, and Tim yawned widely as he collapsed on the first couch he saw.

A delicate green toe pushed him to the side, and a woman sat down next to him.

“Did you even get back to your bed?”

“Fell asleep on my keyboard,” Tim yawned. He held out a hand. “Coffee…”

Pam sighed, and pressed a coffee mug into his hand. “I could tell. You have the imprint on your cheek.”

“Yeah? It sexy?”

“You’re interrupting something, you know,” another voice said. Tim sat up, sipping the sweet, delicious, impeccable ambrosia of the gods, and saw Selena reclining regally in an armchair. She had a cat on her lap, and was impeccably dressed in make up and heels despite it being ...okay, it was past noon, whatever. She arched an eyebrow at him. “We’re having a very serious Gotham City Sirens meeting.”

“What, and I wasn’t invited?” Tim teased.

“Of course you’re invited!” Another, far more grating voice cheered. Harley walked out of the kitchen, already chugging a mimosa that was probably more vodka than screwdriver. “We’re going to liberate all of the hyenas in the Gotham Zoo tonight? Want in?”

“Pass. I’ll deactivate the security cameras for you, though.”

“Aw, thanks!” Harley grinned. She blew a kiss at him, and Tim mimed grabbing it and putting it in a blender. “You do the sweetest things for us, Red!”

“About that,” Tim said casually, ignoring the looks of vague curiosity on all of the women’s faces. “I’m thinking about a moniker change, actually.”

“Really?” Pam asked, feigning disinterest carefully but unable to hide the gleam of speculation in her eyes. She loved gossip as much as Selena. “Going back to the Bats officially, then? I have to assume it’ll be bird themed.”

Tim snorted. “Please. I don’t work for Tall, Dark, and Broody anymore. Nah, I’m thinking of my own thing. Maybe acting as a bit of a freelancer. Helping the entire community out equally, you know. Committing cybercrime. The usual.”

“Sounds helpful,” Selena said, eyes gleaming. “We’ve all been sorely needing a technological expert.”

“You’d help us first, right?” Harley asked, batting her eyes at him. “Help out your favorite team, the Gotham City Sirens?”

“My services are yours,” Tim said gravely, “so long as your basement is mine.”

“Deal!”

“How much money can you embezzle from banking online?” Pam asked him.

“You have no fucking idea.”

It’s getting better, Tim thought, all the time. He withdrew his phone from his pocket, checking the messages popping off on his group chats. Connor was sending him a good morning text, Adriana wanted to know when he could get coffee, his forum friends were sending blurry pictures of Batman’s ass again. He grinned and, before he could think better of it, quickly changed his username on the Bat-sever.

Oracle is online.

Notes:

That's the last of this series for the time being. More isn't off the table, if I have more ideas, but I don't have any more stories in the pipeline for this right now. Hit me up me at yellowocaballero.tumblr.com if you want to inspire me or wonder if writing this was weirdly cathartic (it was).

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