Chapter Text
Summer always brought around the things Tim hated the most. The heat cooked and boiled all the rotting trash bags people threw onto the streets and turned every alleyway into one huge stew of wet grime and flies. It made the darker parts of the city stink like faeces and death.
The second worst part of the warmer months was the sunlight that stretched on for much longer. The longer days were, the less hours Batman could patrol. Which meant the less chance Tim had of spotting a dark cape on the skyline.
But he didn’t like to complain, any day he was able to scrape his away across the city's rooftops was a good one and Tim knew the problems he encountered were his own fault. It wasn’t like he had any real reason to go poking into the nooks and crannies of Gotham city aside from his own morbid curiosity.
This whole hobby had started out as a one time thing. The hurt and betrayal of his mother’s actions had spurred his legs into motion and soon running became his way to breathe freely.
He hoped she gained some sense soon and stopped hurting him like this. It wasn’t his fault, it was that stupid poster. That poster stuck on his English teacher’s wall.
He thumbed the shutter of his camera as he thought back to the past half a year
“Be yourself!” It had plastered onto it, with three unicorns on a rainbow that arched over the slogan. Below it, in a much smaller print were the words: “Gay or Lesbian or Transgender!”
Tim hadn’t known what any of those words meant. He asked in the middle of a class discussion.
“Um,” His teacher looked slightly flustered. “The best way I could explain it is when someone’s… insides are different to their outsides…”
Someone who people didn’t see properly.
Then, as per usual, a classmate had squashed any joy he could feel.
“My mum said those people should all be locked up in Arkham until they grow some sense. She said you can’t be a boy without a willy!”
“Language.” The teacher said sharply, but she didn’t say anything else, not even a look to defend Tim. “Jenny, just sit down, please.”
“You’re wrong anyway.” Tim scowled at that stupid girl. It didn’t matter what bits you had where.
“Are you calling my mum a liar?”
“No, just an idiot!”
“Matilda!” His teacher shouted at him and he went red at his full name.
“Why do you care anyway?” The girl continued.
“Yeah.” Another classmate joined in, “Are you one of those freaks, Tilly?”
“Should we call you a He-She from now on?” And there was a third. Tim’s face was burning, his eyes were heavy and wet with shame.
“No! I’m not at all!” He shouted. “I was just saying!”
“Class!” His teacher managed to clap and get all heads to swivel to her. “That’s enough!”
Tim let his eyes drift downwards, willing the tears building behind them to go away. It wasn’t like anyone even knew the words hidden in that poster had seemed like a branch of hope. That each sneer and cruel joke made him sure the anguish that coated him would settle like dust on his shoulders for the rest of his life.
His classmates must be wrong, they must be immature. He repeated it to himself over and over as he found his way into his mother’s study. She wouldn’t be as ignorant and stupid as his peers.
“Mother, I have a question.” He looked into her eyes as she smiled down at him from the chair. They were blue, but never icy. Never cold or cruel towards Tim.
“What is it, baby?” She murmured quietly, pulling him closer to her. She was always a quiet person, with soft whispers and gentle touches.
Tim remembers the quiet after he had confessed what had been eating at him for days. His mother had just stared at him, hand frozen in his hair and as she pulled them away in disgust he could see his entire future being dragged along with them.
“Darling, what are you talking about?” A gala smile was plastered on her face. Something fake to shut people down quickly.
“I’m a boy, mama.” Tim stated again, his mother had told him she didn’t like it when he called her mama, that it was too improper for a girl the age Tim was. But he could usually see the way her eyes melted around the sides, how she became laxer with punishments when he called her the four letter word. He didn’t see that now.
“You’re so pretty, Tilly,” His mother seemed to almost beg, “don’t you like being pretty?”
Tim shook his head. He wanted to be handsome.
And suddenly, his mother’s smile dropped altogether.
She had taken the news with the sharp elegance she handled all her problems with. Tim hadn’t even realised she had told his father until the following morning.
His father’s dark blue phone had rang; his work phone. He was sitting at the table with Tim, so the younger boy could hear the conversation about leading a talk for the university students in Arizona. Could hear his father’s hesitance. He always said no to things like that, mentioning Tim needed his parents more.
His father’s eyes found Tim’s.
“Maybe we’ve been letting that child get away with too many things.”
There was a lump at the back of Tim’s throat, as the pressure behind his eyes began to be unbearable. Tim thought in that moment his head would explode.
“When was the flight, you said?”
He pictured the disgust dancing across his mother’s face when he first told her, he knew it would never really go away.
After that, the trips become more frequent. Things they used to ignore for Tim become more important than him. The evenings spent together in the family room dwindled to nothing and Tim had no one to quieten down the despair that ripped through his chest with every breath.
So, Tim found himself becoming familiar with the cracks and corners of Gotham. His feet took him through as many roads as they could manage and that had lead him to Gotham’s shadow personified.
After two weeks of his home being turned into an empty shell, Bat-watching turned into a crutch. He couldn’t think when he ran. That awful manor with those painful memories in every corner had to be far away from him when he flew over Gotham. When he stopped he could feel the ache in his heart for his parents but he wasn’t going back on what he had told them. The moment those words had flown out of his mouth, he could taste freedom. A life where he could be him and not an idea in his mother’s head.
An especially lonely night led Tim into googling the word. Trangender. It brought him to different videos on people that said they got him. It filled him with a new burning hope.
The locs of hair that his scissors snipped through only fueled it as they twirled onto the bathroom floor. People had made things to help him, like tutorials on how to cut hair and binders and puberty blockers and Testosterone shots.
An hour after rummaging through the internet, he was lying down on his bed. His head was dizzy with the knowledge that he was going to ruin his life tomorrow. And how, despite that, it was doing nothing to squash the small hope growing inside of him as he watched the clock count down.
At eight in the morning, he called his mother.
“Mother.”
“Tilly, dear.”
“It’s Tim.”
“Darling, we’re busy. Was something the matter?”
“I’ve cut my hair.”
“Pardon?”
“I’ve cut my hair.” He repeated. “And I'm not leaving the manor to go anywhere until I can go to a new school where they call me Tim.”
“Tilly.” Tim could hear his mother drawing air through her teeth as she steadied herself to answer him. He could imagine her face taking on that particular expression of having sucked on a lemon whenever she had to deal with something she didn’t like.
And then she sighed. A long, tired thing.
“What are your demands?”
Tim grinned for the first time that week.
“A binder!” The exclamation burst out of him, “I already know all my measurements, and I want to change schools!”
He was about to cut off into a rant about how he hates his terrible school but he knew he had to stay on task to get his mother to agree. And he definitely needed to remember to keep his tone in check.
“I would like to move schools, mama” He corrected himself, “And for this new school to know me as Tim, for nobody to know who I used to be.”
She hummed on the other side of the phone, “Darling… are you… are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Ok,” She said, “I will let this happen, as long as you promise me this will never get out.”
“I promise.” Tim was quick to agree, face going red in his effort to stop tears from wobbling down his face. He’d never once actually let himself believe his mother would really allow him this.
“I have connections, dear. I have money.” She paused. “But you can’t come back from this.”
“I know!” Tim practically belted down the phone, “Thank you! Thank you! I love you!”
“Yes, dear.” His mother then continued, ignoring the pathetic sound that had left his mouth at her indifference. “I need to go, we can talk later.”
And the phone pinged off as she ended the call, leaving Tim to fall apart in the silence swallowing the manor.
He realised extremely quickly he had to ditch the binder when he went trailing after Batman. When he did any strenuous activity, the tight fabric compressing his torso might as well have been a spring lock crushing his ribs. Usually, he didn't pay it a second thought, the euphoria that fizzed inside his stomach whenever he saw a mirror made everything all worth it. The back pain, the wheezing breath, the sweat. The borderline child abandonment.
The school his mother sends him to is a normal private school on the other side of Gotham. Far, far away from the evil dwellings of his last one. Tim hadn’t been exactly sure what his mother was going to tell the new media why she suddenly had a son, but he knew the truth wasn’t on the table. In fact, it was so far away from the table, only a tiny blip on the horizon was any evidence it had been here to begin with.
What she had said though made it difficult for him to look at a newspaper without bile spilling into his throat.
His mother’s dramatic retelling of losing a daughter as she found a son. Quite literally. The press went bananas over her “daughter’s” alleged kidnapping and murder. It made him extremely uneasy. Uneasy that he could be snubbed out of existence that easily, and uneasy his family had the funds to do it.
Tim feels emotions he hadn’t in a while, he felt like he could finally tackle being himself. Do the things he wanted to do. It was his life now, not some girl’s. He could have a future. That’s why he picked up Photography, he liked capturing moments. Tim knew just how quickly things could change.
But not everything did. Like the summers he hated and the people he admired in the shadows.