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Tim knows that really he shouldn’t be left at home for months at a time. But it’s better than when his parents are home because that leaves him with more bruises and scars then his adventures through the city. And he doesn’t even mind the galas he has to go to in order to hold up the façade that he's just a normal kid who's a little shy. In fact he decides- looking at the Wayne family- he loves the galas.He could choose to look closer, to observe the cracks and the hurried tape holding the perfect clan together, the whispered rumours of dead parents and street vermin infesting the model lineage. But he ignores them, he gazes upon the Wayne's and holds them with the same reverence as his parents do with the artefacts they bring back.There's Bruce, Bruce who always ruffles his hair as a passing thought when he wanders past him to find some more wine. And Dick who always has a smile so honest and caring that sometimes Tim wonders if he stole a human mask too. Jason who's rash and indecisive and fires remarks back at the shocked people murmuring about his upbringing with such passion and anger until Bruce comes to clean his mess up with hurried apologies and donations.Slipping between all of them is Cass, who never speaks a word to anyone except her family, but still brings Tim a bite of her favourite meal when she spots him trying to find an out to conversations with uptight businessmen and makes hoarse laughs at his rushed attempts to devour it. Steph who likes to lurk in the corners with him and make fun of all the desperate women trying to get Bruce's attention.But despite all this, Tim knows the Wayne's do not care for him. Not in the way they care for each other. They care for him in the way one might spot a stray cat and pet it for a moment before remembering all the diseases and bugs it might carry and push it away. He is an afterthought, something to be cared about when everything else has had its turn.He’s not blind to the fact that sometimes they'll look at him when they think he can't see, and tilt their heads and mutter words like ‘odd’ and ‘strange’ behind his back.So no, Tim doesn’t mind being alone. He loves it.
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Despite the manor having one inhabitant for the majority of its time there are always voices echoing just around the corner and behind doors. They tell of a gentler past, with laughs and giggles and blueberry muffins. A time before Tim. Before Tim came along and ruined the quiet, turned the laughing into crying and the giggles into harsh words.He was told he came into the world silent, eerily so, the midwife had told Janet she thought he was a stillborn at first when he did not make a noise for the first few minutes. The videos Jack took showed a mild glimpse of hope in Janet's face when she said that.It took until Tim was a toddler, crawling around and staring with his piercingly sharp eyes at his parents for them to notice something was wrong with him. Everything he did came with a sense of wrongness. If Janet picked him up and helped him make muffins they would come out deflated and sour. If Jack tried to teach him to build towers with his blocks the colours would become mute and dreary.His toys were found stranded around the house, smiles etched onto their faces with rough stitching. The house phone frizzled and talked in static when he was around it. Photos taken of him always left his face blurry. Small features seemed to change every time Janet looked away, his eyes going through a kaleidoscope of colours before he had been told, in an uncertain tone, that it was improper for Drakes to behave like this. After that his eyes remained his mothers blue.Jack Drake thought the best method to deal with this was locking him away, keeping him in his room and sending the nanny in to deal with him. Of course the nanny wasn’t qualified or vetted, but why would she be? A silent child who didn’t break vases and annoy Janet into slapping him meant a job well done.It took until Tim was five and in school, biting and snarling at the other children and wearing his scars and bruises with a sense of pride for the teachers to notice something was wrong with him. His work was done to perfection, but written in foreign languages he claimed to have learnt from books. He spoke in hoarse whispers and screeched if anyone dared to touch him. After that the teachers quickly learnt that the best way to deal with the Drake child was to not deal with him at all.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Tim was quite proud of himself, his parents had been away on a trip to Africa for a few months now and he hadn’t needed to call his nanny once to get her to bandage his scratches. She would’ve just told him to stop playing in the forests around his house if he had done that.The forests were his true home, he played with the foxes and learnt how to scavenge from the birds and badgers. Once he had even seen a bear who had growled at him before relenting and letting him stalk it for practice. Which he needed a lot of if he was to follow the bats around.He had to be careful not to slip into his forest disguise at school or with his parents, around them he had to be perfect and pristine, hair tamed and smoothed over with handfuls of gel. His face was delicate and he thought it was a rather good imitation of the boy he had seen in his books.At night when he left to stroll his territory he liked to follow around the brightly coloured silhouettes of the Bats. The streets of Gotham liked to twist and turn around him, leading him through alleyways and dark streets with no end in sight just to keep him away from them. Tim considered it a game, he liked to see just how far he could run before the city gave up and let him leap from building to building with no interference.The second Robin was his favourite, a ball of spitfire and quick remarks. Tim thought that maybe Robin was just an excuse for Jason to get his snark out before school sometimes.Gotham treasured them as much as it hated Tim. It coddled them in its shadows, swept them away from bullets that could’ve been fatal.Sometimes Batman would swing around and look directly at where Tim had been standing, but Tim knew how to disappear into the dark, merge with the bricks and mimic a starving cat.He supposed he might’ve liked other people once aside from the Bats. There was a girl in his old class that he had thought pretty, but it became clear to him she had no interest after he had brought her one of the dogs she had liked to pet on her way home. It wasn’t his fault that the dog had died from the smile he had carved into its muzzle. He had thought it would make her happy, seeing the stray with blood dripping down its body in rivulets. It made him happy.
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Jason died, Robin fell to the hands of the Joker and Tim is furious. Batman's Robin was killed and he has done nothing to avenge his son.The city is in uproar and Gotham pulses with anger, riots break out and are dealt with swiftly and darkly by the so-called hero of their city. Bones are shattered and blood is littering the streets in a way never done before.And Tim watches. Because above all, that was his. His life to take, his life to cherish and hold with care. And he looks at the Joker in his cell and he knows what he needs to do.He knows where the nanny hides the knives; knows his mother told her to. He takes the steak knife. He thinks it will do for carving through skin if it works for cowsThe guards pose a threat but Tim knows how to slip past crowds and avoid the gaze of someone wanting desperately for their shift to be silent and peaceful. Laughing echoes through the corridors and Tim snarls with a fury he has not felt for lifetimes. Because how can the man, who took his warmth, his sun, his fire, and killed it, have enough of any emotion left to laugh. Cackle at the fate he delivered to the boy who deserved anything but.It’s frighteningly easy to glide through the doors and bend the iron to his will, something to note for when he wants to play with the other rogues. He finds the room he's looking for fast, a ghost hand guides him around corners and towards his destination.The Joker gets his own cell, the door engraved with his name, ‘Arthur fleck’. Tim scoffs at the audacity of him to have a name as simple, as meaningless as that. Raising his hand to the entrance he burns it off, melts it down until it's nothing more than silver liquid solidifying into lumps on the ground. Sounds of struggle arise from the inside, taunts and jeers that turn into irritable ‘stops’ and ‘what are you doing?’. The door swings open and Tim stalks into the room with a predatory grin.Tim takes his knife and he slits the Jokers throat, he watches the blood drain out and splatter the walls a deep shining scarlet and he grins with delight. The halls fill with his giggles as he slices a deep maniacal smile into the face of his victim.Joker lies silent, his eyes are cold and bland and his new smile reaches the edge of his ears.As a last thought Tim goes to dip his finger in the puddles of blood and writes on the wall ‘Joker, dearly hated, and missed by none.’He thinks Bruce will like that one.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~The next day the city calms its tide, it washes back to sea and the floods evaporate into trickles of water. The riots slow, and the bones are set, blood washes into the drains and is torn from the pavement by the ever present rain. The guards are questioned and fired, the cameras are checked over and over, but the face in all of them remains ever blurry.Tim walked out of that building with blood sticking to his clothes, knife covered in shards of bone and muscle.Tim walked out of that building with a smile.
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Dick knows, he knows that neighbour kid is a little strange, a little odd. But he’s a child, and Nightwing protects them.It’s why he always flashes the kid a smile at the galas, aware of how stuffy they used to seem to him when he was the same age.It’s why he can pass off the longing stares as nothing more than a rich kid looking at Bruce with a taste for money.It’s why, when Bruce looks at him with the same gaze he looked at when he saw Dick, Jason, Cass, and Steph for the first time Dick grabs his face and tells him, under no circumstances will he be adopting Timothy Drake.Timothy Drake already has a family, he has two loving parents who take him on trips to Africa and give him everything he needs. He gets his own nannies and butlers and maids.Unfortunately, when said child is walking down the streets in Gotham, with dried blood coating his sleeve and tears welling up in his eyes, he realises that he might have been too hasty in those assumptions.Because this is crime alley, no sane parent would let their kid just wander around scott free in the middle of the night without having something wrong with them. And so, with great reluctance. Richard Grayson-Wayne, looks at Timothy Drake and heaves a sigh, because he knows this child won't be going back to his own house for a long while.God, he thinks, Bruce is going to love this one.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Tim's aware of the car following him, he's been aware of it for quite a while.He thinks it would be nice to catch some fresh prey tonight. He's gotten a taste for blood after the Joker.So it really isn’t his fault when he lets his body summon drops of salty water to fool the offender into thinking him weak and gullible.It’s also not his fault he didn’t realise that Dick was in the car. Tim would also, like to state for the record, it is not his fault that he tries to stab Dick.In-fact, he would argue, it is Dick’s fault for jumping out of a car and yelling his name in the middle of crime alley.Any sane inhabitant of Gotham would do the same as him, so it probably doesn’t help that he is anything but. His knife barely meets skin before it's torn out of his grasp with an offended gasp.“Did- Did you just try to stab me?” Dick sputters out. Tim thinks it’s funny how shocked Dick looks, he seems to barely even comprehend that he just performed a manoeuvre that no normal person would have managed.Honestly, it’s a miracle that Tim was one of the first to discover their identities. They really don’t hide them very well.Some part of him knows that this is a bad situation, he's covered in blood and he's holding a knife that he knows could be traced back to the Joker's body. The other parts of him know that Dick would never believe little old Timmy Drake from next door, with his loving parents and doting nanny, could ever muster up the strength needed to kill.And so with a peaking curiosity he lets Dick take him, lets Dick believe he's in shock and barely thinking let alone speaking.He lets Dick take him to the Wayne manor, to Bruce, and he feels for the first time a little spark of hope that he might obtain more than a fleeting ember of attention and love from the family he's imagined himself in for the past eleven years.
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It’s with a sense of absolute certainty that Dick knows this child has something wrong with him, he doesn’t know if he's been trafficked, or abused, but he hasn’t spoken or moved of his own accord since he tried to stab Dick.He might be in shock, Dick isn’t really certain.With great care he leads Tim towards his car, dragging him by the arm and peering closely into his vacant eyes that seem to stare straight past him.Adjusting his limbs carefully he clicks his seatbelt in and looks worryingly at the kid, the second he gets home he's going to-very politely and kindly- interrogate him.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Keeping his eyes shut and making it look genuine is more hard than Tim thought. No one had ever bothered telling him what sleep felt like so he might’ve been doing it wrong, but considering Dick hadn’t tried to talk to him other than gentle nudges and whispers of ‘doing alright there buddy?’ and ‘I got you now Tim’ he thought he was doing a pretty good job.Tim knows when they reach the manor because Dick leans over and carefully unbuckles him before herding him into his arms. It’s… It’s nice to have someone hold him like that with no ulterior motive other than kindness.He hears the door open and he thinks he's being bundled into blankets but he isn’t sure. A distinctly british voice rings out and starts to reprimand Dick for not informing him of yet another child being brought into the manor.Not smiling is proving difficult but Tim manages.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~“Bruce,” Dick tries desperately, “He’s so little! Look at him, I couldn’t just leave him on the streets.”A deep sigh that echoes memories of someone who's gone through this exact song and dance with another, leaps from wall to wall around the cave. “Well, you could’ve just dropped him back to his house, with his parents.”“No but Bruce! That's the thing, his parents aren’t there, I checked! They’re in Asia for the next few months. He’s free property!”Bruce looks at the little huddle under the blankets, red spots covering his worn and threadbare clothes, he looks at the scars he knows covers the child's skin under them.And Bruce relents.“One week. One week Dick and that’s it. I’m calling his parents and I’m sorting this out, but in the meantime, you get one week.”Alfred looks at Bruce with a blank expression but he knows that the butler is smirking at him, finally seeing his ward having to go through the same struggles he did.He thinks of how Jason would’ve been the first to run to the door when Dick knocked, would’ve been the first to beg Bruce to let him have another little brother ‘Because I need someone to play with when Cass and Steph aren’t around!’ and he lets a small smile grace his face for the first time in a long while.Maybe having another kid around for a bit could be good.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~He wakes and all he can feel is pure unfiltered rage, anger at Gotham, anger at Batman, anger at, well, everything.The air around him is sour and stale (which isn't right. The air in Gotham is foggy and thick and smells of desperation.) and Jason finds he doesn’t need to breathe it in.His hands claw through the wood and fight with dirt until he breaches the surface and is met with the smell of rotting flesh, it invades his brain and focuses his thoughts so entirely on it he doesn’t even notice when he starts to grapple out of his hole and towards the ones close to him.Distantly he thinks something’s wrong, but by then he is already digging down into the healed earth and scattering bones and decayed muscle from corpses long dead. Green fog twists around the moulding fat and turns it into shining apples hanging from trees. It slides through his mind and sorts out memories and people until it reaches the core, and then it hesitates.Because something has already staked its claim on this soul, a bright burning red mark that curls around the centre and hisses in open defiance. And as strong as the mist may be, it knows its limits. Retreating back into the ground it leaves only hints of green liquid to meld with his thoughts.
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Tim’s been staying at the Wayne's manor for nearly two days. He thinks those two days have been the best days of this life, maybe even the best of all of them.
Hot chocolate has been served to him in small cups, decorated with dainty marshmallows and made with love and a scattering of pepper. Hugs and smiles have been granted as easily as a hot knife slides through butter.
The only thing that ruins it all, is that Tim knows it can’t last. Knows that eventually they’ll grow tired, let him fade from their memories until he is nothing but the next door neighbour’s child who they saw at galas. Knows that his parents will come back and tut at his disorganised hair, his carefree attitude, and his smudged mask.
But for now, Tim basks in the attention. He lets himself lay in the sun and purr when his hair is ruffled, he smiles politely at the butler and cleverly avoids the obvious questions about his homelife that Dick and Bruce send his way.
For now his worries are quieted, smoothed down by love and care.
The knife has been cleaned with bleach and burnt by his hands, his clothes meeting the same fate. Dick doesn’t ask about what he did with the blade or the garments, just gives him the same effortless smile he always does.
The room they gave him is dappled with spots of sun streaming through the leaves of the tree outside his window. The bed lies in the centre of the space, carefully made with a deep green bedspread and silk pillows. Tim thinks it might even be a better bed than the ones he makes with the foxes and hedgehogs, carved into trees and fluffed with moss.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dick strides into Tim's room, walks into him wrestling with a pillow trying to organise it perfectly in line with the others. His gaze is illustrated and perfectly calm.
“Tim? Buddy? I know it’s hard but I really do need to talk to you about something.”
Panic floods Tim’s brain with urgency. He knew it was coming but being kicked out still leaves him with a deep aching wound in his heart. He fights the urges telling him to slice through skin like scissors through paper.
Tim calms his features, makes his mask as perfect, as untouchable as it always is, as it always needs to be. And when he speaks he tries to add in the air of authority that Janet
uses.
“I’m grateful for the hospitality you’ve shown me during my stay. I placed a burden upon you that wasn’t needed, I apologise-”
Bruce interrupts his speech, strolling into the room and swivelling his gaze around the area until it lands on Tim, his eyes sharpening.
“Did you know your parents have a specific lawyer for cases involving you? Because I’ve just learnt that. In fact Timothy, I’ve just learnt they haven’t even checked in with your school about your absences these past few days. And, for some unforgivable reason, that lawyer hung up on me the second I asked where your parents were.”
Tim hesitates, because this could go three ways.
One: Bruce is sorry for Tim. He feels bad and takes him under his wing like a little nestling.
Two: Bruce is angry. He's furious at Tim and for some reason that feels like the worst outcome of them all.
Third: Bruce is angry at his parents, and really, that's the most unbelievable one out of the lot.
So Tim regains his stone features, repaints his mask, and clears his stare. He lets tears run from his eyes with a newfound determination. Because he knows that, above all else, Batman cannot deal with a crying kid.
He saw once (from his perch up high on a water tower) a case where they had to rescue children from a shipping container and one of the kids had rushed into the caped figure’s arms and absolutely bawled. He saw the way Batman had frozen up, and had hesitantly reached over to try pat their head. He saw the desperate look he sent to Nightwing and the answering smirk he got in return.
He remembers thinking he wished he could’ve been that kid.
Tim’s weeping works. Bruce freezes and stares at Dick for help. And just like when the kid clenched the cape in their hands and thanked him with their hoarse voice, Dick just lets the tiniest little smile dance across his face.
Tim wishes he had a camera on him right now to capture the way the edges of Dick’s mouth perk up in synchronisation and how lights sparkle in his eyes before fading back into his concerned expression. But alas, the moment is lost in time. Frozen in Tim’s mind and kept delicately contained in a case of glass.
“Timbit, don’t worry ‘bout it. You’ve not done nothin’ wrong,” Dick glances at Bruce meaningfully. “Bruce didn’t mean to make you sad, honestly we just wanted to know ‘bout your parents, it’s really not good for you to be out on the streets late at night in that neighbourhood.”
It’s funny he says that, considering Tim’s been on the streets for years and they’ve never bothered. Probably because he didn’t let them.
Still, the pained expression that flits across Dicks face is enough to make Tim hesitate before saying some half truth to get them to leave.
He settles on trying, very elegantly he may add, to answer their questions.
“Well, I was, uh, going for a walk.” Great job Tim, quick and believable, one his better lies if he does say so himself.
Dick presses three fingers to his forehead and looks at him with disappointment. “At three AM. You were on a walk, in the middle of one of the most dangerous streets in Gotham, with no one else, with blood soaked clothes and a knife, which you tried to stab me with, at three AM?”
Tim nods, finally they understand. He once again gives kudos to himself for how smart he is.
Bruce is staring, bewildered and frozen in place as he watches the previously sobbing child perk up immediately.
He still doesn’t know where Tim’s parents are, or why they have a specialised lawyer specifically for him. He’s starting to understand the lawyer thing a little bit though.