Chapter Text
Tim Drake would like a refund on his life.
He’s four years old when he comes to this conclusion. It isn’t through any special detective work or some magical flash of intuition that leads him to this conclusion. Any child can tell when their parents hate them.
Jack and Janet Drake have hated him as long as he could make memories. Long before he heard the word ‘hate’ Tim knew it intimately. It isn’t the first word he learns how to spell, he’s not that edgy, but it's the defining emotion in his relationship with his parents.
Whatever crime of his birth he committed had been unforgivable and their forgiveness will come long after the heat death of the universe. Maybe it was just being born at the turn of the millennium. He’s a Y2K baby and this will come to define him though he does not know it yet.
But before that, he needs to make it through childhood. His only reference to his biological mother is a coldly dispassionate blonde woman who sometimes appears in his hazy memories before leaving. The woman he mistakes for his real mother is his nanny, a kindly woman who raises Tim in tandem with her own daughter named Stacy.
They explore the mansion together. Her laugh is a high, sharp thing, and she’s older than him, her limbs longer and her footing surer. He loses every race and comes away from their wrestling sessions covered in mud and bruises. The next day, they do it again and again, one long continuous chain of fun moments. He likes his nanny. She teaches him to read in between her duties as the housekeeper of an empty mansion. Tim calls her Stacy’s mom before he learns to call her Missus Hunter.
Looking back on it, four is the best year of his childhood. Parents indisposed, sent to dig sites and business meetings throughout the year, plenty of warm spring days and a hot summer spent playing in the sprinklers. Tim runs wild during the day and dreams big dreams. One day he’ll be an astronaut. Another he’ll be an architect. On a few, he dreams of being an archaeologist like his parents so he can be with them.
Missus Hunter shows him how to cook basic meals and work the kitchen tools, and shows him to all the storerooms and the equipment shed. Within a day he can recite the numbers she makes him memorise: one for the private hospital the Drakes use, the non-emergency number for the police, and one she emphasises is purely for a life-threatening emergency for one Mister Judge. Tim’s never met the man, so he pays it little heed.
These halcyon days will stay with him even as life grinds down the simple joys of childhood. By the time cynicism is all he knows and anger has coiled its way around his heart, this endless year of happiness will temper his harsher edges.
Jack and Janet’s return heralds hail and snow, a frigid cold snap that seeps deep into his bones and threatens to eat his fingers. If Tim understood metaphor, he would know to be afraid. If Tim even knew there was something wrong with parents who vanish for a year, he wouldn’t be excited to see them again.
He’ll learn in time.
Janet startles when she sees him waiting on the staircase, watching with wide eyes how these strangers enter his house so confidently. Tim takes a risk and walks down to the landing, holding himself uncertainly as his apparent mother watches him.
Missus Hunter dressed him in stuffy clothes that are too tight and pull at him awkwardly. A buttoned shirt and green cardigan, dress shorts and polished shoes. Nothing like the vest and shorts and bare feet of the year prior.
He fidgets as he catalogues these people who are meant to be his parents.
Jack Drake has sharp features and high cheekbones that Tim inherited, his dark hair combed back in a ponytail. Tim can’t see any other features they share. Not the build as Jack is a man of wide shoulders nor the ears as Tim’s are sharp, elfin things compared to the round ears Jack sports.
In Janet, he sees even less of himself. They share the same slightly curl to their hair but hers is more blonde. They share the same long fingers though Tim’s are blunted by the pudginess of youth. Maybe the leanness of his build comes from her?
Jack’s eyes never land on Tim, a dead zone in his perception as he speaks to Missus Hunter. The dismissal is cruel because one has to actively pretend someone doesn’t exist to do that.
Janet, on the other hand, is finding a dozen mistakes in his posture and bearing and general existence. Tim doesn’t know which he hates more just yet.
“You are dismissed. Your belongings will be shipped to a new receiving address in three days.”
“Sir, he’s too young to—”
“Are you still in my presence?” Missus Hunter flinches back. “The boy is not your concern. Dismissed.”
That will be the last time he ever sees Missus Hunter.
When she has left, shutting the main door with a quiet click, Tim is left alone with these elongated adults made of sharp lines and unpleasant expressions. The quiet builds and builds until Janet scoffs and walks past him toward the kitchen, brandishing her designed purse like a weapon.
Jack’s gaze trails after her, a slight softening to his expression. “Always leaving me to deal with the real work.” The warmth calcifies when he focuses on Tim again. “Your name.”
“Tim,” he says with a frown.
“Answer in full when I ask a question.”
“Timmy?”
“Are you asking me or telling me? It doesn’t matter. Timothy Jackson Drake. I expect you to know these things. You carry my name and the name of our family. You will not embarrass me. Can you read and write?”
“Yes.”
“Can you cook and clean?”
“Uh-huh.”
Jack closes his eyes, pinching his nose. A deep inhale and a sharp exhale. Forcing his anger away.
“Janet, deal with your spawn.”
The woman who should be his mother turns to them, currently sipping from one of two wine glasses. Red, the aroma cloying to Tim’s young nose. He’ll get used to it in years yet. “Why? The boy is alive. That is as far as my interest extends. Anything else is for your benefit.”
“You’re impossible on a good day.”
“I haven’t had a good day in four years, three months, and eight days.” Her eyes dart to Tim once. “Unfortunately.”
“Fine. Timothy, you have earned nothing. Your station in life is an unfortunate accident of birth that I must suffer. You are unwanted, your existence a necessity that I will accept only in small doses.”
He’s four and a genius, but his vocabulary isn’t that strong yet. He recognises their tones from the villains in the cartoons he likes watching but not the words. Intent but not the context.
Jack grabs him by the chin and tugs him forward, fingers digging into Tim’s flesh. He forces Tim to meet his gaze, unyielding green glancing at him dispassionately.
“Here is the rule. One rule that you will follow if you want to enjoy your comfortable life leeching on my protection. Do not ever cause problems for us. We will not be called by the police or concerned neighbours. Not by teachers or principles. Not by a stranger. Am I understood?”
“Don’t be trouble,” he says fearfully.
Jack lets go of him and that’s that, the man entirely erasing Tim from his perception.
They’re gone in three days. They came with the cold and stole the best part of his life, the warmth and joy he’d taken for granted.
As Tim makes himself breakfast, toddling on a stool to fry an egg, he realises Missus Hunter always knew it wouldn’t last forever. She showed him how to fill out the requisition orders so the pantry stores and kitchen will always be full.
So long as he’s resilient and self-sufficient, Tim won’t die.
*
Later that year, he finds a disused laptop from his parents’ spare office and the world will never recover.
Tim’s an early adopter of Reddit—because 4chan being founded two years ago makes it ancient in his young mind—and Youtube because home videos are a pretty cool concept. Wikipedia is pretty awesome as well. He accidentally hits a button and the words on the screen turn to something unintelligible.
This is Tim’s first foray into computer programming. It all starts with HTML script and CSS, but he gets bored of those pretty quickly. They can make pretty web pages and they help him understand what’s happening behind the scenes, but he wants more.
C++ is the first thing he learns. He finds an old textbook on programming in the library being used as a paperweight. Tim devours it and asks questions on forums and message boards and very quickly becomes a creature plugged into the great data source that is the internet.
He doesn’t spend all his time glued to the computer. Exploring the mansion continues to bring him joy. He discovers a photo album and sees his parents in foreign locales, sweeping desert storms and luscious forests, murky undergrounds and glittering beaches. A whole world that Tim explores through them. As he gets further through the photos, Janet’s belly swells and swells, and whatever happiness the two held fades to cold disinterest. At the base of the box, he finds a ring. More accurately, the three silver rings are inextricably linked with neither beginning nor end. It tugs at him. He knows he’s seen something just like it before.
One day, Tim comes across a crypt with tunnels that seem to stretch forever. He takes one look at the oppressive darkness, turns around to find a torch, and explores. One room turns out to be a wince cellar which is utterly boring but some of the other rooms are weird like the one with the weird circle and squiggly lines or the one with the sapphire that Tim swears looked back at him. Deeper than that are rooms locked tight with sounds like howling winds and metal clanging against metal. Tim is brave but he isn’t stupid and leaves well enough alone.
The attic has some old stuff in it, including a camera. Maybe the same camera that took the last pictures of happy parents. The concept is so big that Tim learns everything he can about it, holding the steel-and-wood body of the camera close to him. It and those pictures are all he holds of a different life that might have been better.
His first pictures are shoddy things. His hands shake and he knows too little about lenses and shot composition to make anything noteworthy. Tim loves them anyway. An empty mansion softened by the blurry shot. The groundskeeper distorted into something comical by the lens he uses. Butterflies in flight are little more than blurry shapes.
*
His parents return on occasion, fluttering into his life and leaving devastation in their wake. The memories they implant are a minefield he is forced to crawl through as he grows.
The first time he dares ask for anything goes terribly and though it does not set the tone, it clarifies it.
“Father, can I—”
Before he knows it, he’s being dragged forward by his tie. It closes around him, stealing the breath from him. “Only call me that in public and only at social functions. Am I understood?”
Tim mumbles an acknowledgement.
“Look me in the eye when I speak to you.”
He never meets his parents’ eyes. They’re far too piercing for that, cutting him down and dismissing his very existence.
He does this time. It will hurt less to obey.
“Yes, sir.”
He’s glad he doesn’t know them better just as much as he wishes there was a chance to know them. He knows them in the negative space that they leave. Janet likes her food to be boring and healthy while Jack gives up on fighting it. The paintings were all picked out by Jack while the furniture was chosen by Janet. They agree on little on politicks except that the Poors are a problem and metahumans are a blight to the world.
Oh, and they both loathe the very idea of Batman.
Which, whatever. knows Batman is cool and Robin is even cooler. He says nothing in their defence, though, focused on his very mature book. Seen, not heard, and minimal on the seeing part is how they want their household.
They start taking him with them to events when they’re around for longer than a week. An opera here, an art gallery there. Pictures of the happy Drake family are taken and when the cameras are put away, his parents continue on their business, meeting allies and making allies of enemies.
He enjoys the restaurants even as he’s expected to keep silent. It’s still bland meals for the Drake family, black pepper too spicy for Janet. Tim can’t wait for them to leave. He’s stocked the pantry with the good spices and he can handle them since he’s a big boy.
One morning, he messes up. Gets the day his parents are leaving wrong. He’s thundering down the stairs with his camera in hand when he sees them in the foyer, freezing in place. Confusion first, then sheer rage from Janet.
“Where did you get that?” Janet asks him.
“The attic.”
“You ungrateful little shit. Come here, right now.”
Jack raises his hand, stopping Tim in his tracks. “Just leave it be. It isn’t worth it.”
“It belonged to—”
“Jan. Enough.” Jack rarely if ever tells his wife what to do. As far as Tim can tell, the pregnancy meant Jack used up every request he was ever allowed to make. “What’s happened has happened. Move on. If anything, you should be happy that a part of him still exists.”
“I loved him more than you,” she says spitefully.
“I assure you that he loved me more anyway.” Jack’s eyes linger on Tim for a moment too long. “Run along.”
Tim doesn’t want to understand what that conversation was about. He purges it from his mind as he flees to the underground crypt and hides there. The darkness welcomes him and hides him from the world, the echoing screams a strange comfort to him. He doses in a corner, arms around his knees, and comes away covered in dust.
He waits till he’s certain the mansion is empty. No cleaners. No gardeners fucking in the spare closet. Just Tim.
When they are gone, he heads to the dusty attic and walks past cobwebs that cling to his face. He’s long since stopped being afraid of spiders. They’ll do as their nature intends. The box with the photos and ring is where it always is, hidden beneath piles of clothes too small to fit Jack and far too cheerful for the cold man he knows.
The box of matches weighs heavily in his right hand, perhaps more so than the lighter fluid in his left.
For a long moment, he wrestles with the decision. Setting them on fire would be so easy. If he’s lucky, the fire will spread and consume the mansion and everyone in it.
It is the first time he considers his mortality.
In the end, he decides against it. Not because he is afraid or realises something truly profound.
Burning everything to the ground won’t solve anything. He may find relief in the cleansing flames, but it will be short-lived and hollow.
Slowly, Tim realises he doesn’t just want to quit despite the hand he’s been dealt. He wants to reach across the table and strangle the dealer with his bare hands. He wants his revenge because he is petty and spiteful.
*
They’re gone for two months this time. In that time, Tim learns the glorious art of piracy, falls in love with LimeWire, and cries when he gets his first computer virus. He desperately asks the staff and eventually, someone takes pity on him and helps him get anti-virus software. They also expose Tim to the concept of a credit card. Specifically, his parent’s credit card. Which leads to his understanding of this whole money and banking thing.
Between learning how anti-viruses work and the different levels of access from guest level to kernel ring zero, Tim starts going through his parent’s financial statements. His parents are meticulous in their record keeping and store their documents in a sealed room. Tim knows the password from observation and is smart enough to destroy the videotapes from the hidden cameras. It’s a string of confusing numbers and terms but the library has tax accounting books and corporate law books.
Where those don’t work, he has all his friends on the forums who think he’s some kind of criminal. It’s not like Tim talked about money laundering first. And foreign bank accounts? Tim’s mind is blown by that.
With how little his parents are home and with how many accounts they handle, they don’t notice that Tim’s gained a new line of credit since he knows all of their verification information and can forge a signature, and since there’s a trust in his name, he can start stashing away money. It’s an open trust, which apparently only exists because heroes need to get paid anonymously, and Zurich doesn’t care about the small transfers he makes—anything shy of twenty grand gets ignored. More a slush fund than anything, the standards for it are lax if you have certain verifications which Tim does.
It lets him slowly acquire things he wants rather than the things he acquires by virtue of being a Drake. Trips to the mall become more common since he can pay a private driver on retainer. They’re trained not to ask questions as long as his account is in good standing and assist with basics like carrying things or standing lookout. Some of the better ones are trained bodyguards. His first purchase is a new laptop. His second is a personal computer, this one prebuilt though he has plans to start building his own. Camera lenses galore are next, from macros to wide angles and fisheyes to telephotos.
He relishes this freedom, getting a lay of the city. He gets a nice physical map of Gotham in the 20s from an antique store. It’s a thick roll of parchment and enthralling to look at. He makes it a point to visit a few landmarks and see how they’ve changed.
His explorations always fade to nothing when his parents return.
For all that they can be cruel, his parents do learn to put up with his presence. Janet doesn’t startle in surprise so often and Jack acknowledges his existence. It’s better, the situation between them more tenable. So long as Tim dresses right and speaks correctly and keeps his presence to a minimum then his parents are more than content to let him be in the same room.
Tim enjoys listening to them. Adult conversations can be boring but he learns new things. The names of people they consider important. Locations in the city worth going to. Hints of the broader politics that make Gotham.
Sometimes, the conversations are painfully uninteresting.
“The Stanfield family is attending the banquet.”
“We don’t care about them. Our business interests don’t intersect and they have nothing to do with—”
“They can manage a conversation unlike some of your plebeian friends. They have some personality.”
His parents argue the matter longer, Tim having long since ignored them. He’s reading a tech journal, intrigued by emerging CPU architecture, glancing over to a computer science textbook for terms he’s not fully sure of. Threading is still a weird concept and—
“Let the boy choose,” Jack says spitefully, startling Tim terribly.
“Fine, but whatever he picks is what we go to. The Fairchild exhibition or the opera.”
Both options are horrid. He racks his memory for other events his parents have mentioned, then remembers an invitation that was sent yesterday.
Tim takes the third option. “Let’s go to the photography exhibition. The Carmichaels are—"
Janet turns to her husband. “I retract my earlier statements. I’ve found something more banal than your friends.”
Jack laughs something sharp and cruel. “Worry not, we will suffer together. The Carmichaels. Ugh, their youngest is flamboyant. And we’ll have to speak to him. I’ll have to speak to him.”
“What’s another scandal rumour for the famed tomcat?”
“Don’t even start.”
The exhibition isn’t for another few days so Tim makes sure to behave. He does the work his tutors assign early, not that his parents check. So long as his tutors don’t have complaints, his parents let him study what he pleases.
*
Tim hates galas, especially of the charity sort. Most of the attendants aren’t sincere and it grates on Tim. He stays close to Jack, the man straddling the line between mild annoyance and bemusement. Then he inclines his head at one of the guests and tells Tim to guess how much their suit costs. Tim does and even gives a reason for it.
“You’re overestimating him. Always look at the shoes. They don't match. He can’t afford that suit. It’s a much nicer rental or even a hand-me-down.” Jack nods at one woman politely. “Her watch. What was it made from?”
“Gold.”
“Pink gold specifically. Diamond encrusted face. Quite an unappealing contrast. Never mix warm and cold colours if you don’t know what you’re doing. It is an art form and most lack any talent for it. Now, the man in the black sweater and jeans. Guess his net worth.”
“Seven figures?”
“Nine,” Jack corrects, almost gently. “You’ll find that tech moguls tend to eschew any dignity at events like that. I would call it reprehensible, but I already expect nothing of substance from new money.”
This is the most he’s spoken to his father and the most pleasant conversation. To be taught by Jack was never something he thought was an option, so he absorbs his lessons. Toddling behind his father, Tim learns to recognise wealth in all its varieties, new and old, genuine and pretend. Despite his time overseas, Jack has a near encyclopedic knowledge of everyone they encounter, their public scandals and their holdings. He can the current stock price of the companies represented here and their relationship to Drake Industries.
“Whatever you do, never speak to the Lukas family. They attempted a hostile takeover of our textiles arm before you were born. The next time I speak to a Lukas will be the day I tell them I’m selling their company for parts at a discount. Lukas Textiles. Engrave that name in your brain. Drakes always get their revenge, and we take it in full.”
So that’s where my pettiness comes from.
“The acquisition of one company by another against the wishes of the former. Wouldn’t it hurt more to make them work at your mercy?” Jack does the unthinkable and sends him a smile. A small smile, but if the sun vanished for a few seconds, you would still be utterly stunned. “I think I might let you decide what to do with it.”
“Oh.”
Tim smiles back, finally seeing the Jack in the photo album who was capable of joy.
“Every Drake needs at least one company they’ve performed a hostile takeover on.”
Then Jack’s smile dies. His gaze is focused on someone to the side. Tim turns around, keeping Jack between him and the newcomer, a middle-aged man of indeterminate features. You could maybe say he had a sharp jawline but it is also somehow soft. Not too tall and not too short. Not fat or particularly thin. Neither a manicured appearance nor an unruly one. He’s the most non-descript man that Tim has ever seen.
“Mister Judge.”
“Mister Drake, it is good to see you in Gotham once more.”
“My work requires much of my time spent overseas.”
“It was no admonishment, merely an observation. Archaeology. Both you and your lovely wife. Where is she if I might ask?”
“Acquiring a Joan Miro painting. It caught my eye and she plans on getting it for my birthday. Would you be so kind as to not let her know I know where she went to?”
Mister Judge laughs a dead laugh. “Young love. Quite a beautiful thing.” Tim isn’t sure when thirty-three became young but okay. “I am told the Court recently acquired approval for the dig site in Algeria.”
Jack’s attention sharpens. “And who might the contract be going to?”
“I believe you could make your case on Thursday.”
Tim’s eyes widen, feeling betrayed. He pulls on his biological father’s sleeve. “You said we were going to the exhibition together.”
“And who might this be?”
“Timothy Jackson Drake. My son. He’s quite the smart child but you know how smart ones are; they love their books and nothing else,” Jack adds with a false chuckle, his grip on Tim’s shoulder bruising. “Not quite used to functions like this.”
“I can tell. Worry not, I wouldn’t want to interrupt a family activity. Do send Carmichael Sr. my regards at the art exhibition.”
“Of course. Please, excuse us, Mister Judge.”
The man nods and turns about face with envious dignity. His incredibly expensive shoes click and clack as he leaves them behind. Tim watches him for a few moments longer, held in place by Jack’s unyielding grip. Then he is led away.
Jack quickly finds Janet and they all return home as Jack narrates the encounter. Jack’s voice is level, flat, the warmth from it gone. The Jack from the party who mocked people in good humour is gone. He sounds and holds himself like an entirely different person.
They enter the foyer and Jack dismisses the staff for the day. In the kitchen, he pours himself a drink while Janet mentions something about a fund in Gotham. The last of the help staff nods to Jack before leaving, closing the main door behind with a sharp click.
A few seconds pass, then a few minutes. Tim isn’t sure what’s happening. His parents say nothing. He opens his mouth to ask what he did wrong.
He doesn’t make it that far.
Janet slaps him hard across the face. The large emerald snags on his skin, slices through the cheekbone. He stumbles back into the kitchen island face first, sending stools clattering to the ground in the process.
“Do not ever embarrass the family again.”
His head rings terribly. The words are difficult to parse with how hazy the world is. There’s a coppery taste on his tongue. Soon, he feels his eyes burn.
“Not the face,” Jack hisses before taking a final swig of his drink. Then he smashes the glass at Tim’s feet, sending him flinching back. “I forgot for a moment that you were a disappointment. What was the rule? Don’t cause problems. Simple. Yet somehow you just lost us access to a dig site.”
“Can we still plead our case?”
“No. Mister Judge is an entirely literal man. The contract is closed to us because of family activities.”
“Fuck.”
“We could try for another.”
“I’ll strangle the next one before it goes that far. Should have done the same to this one.”
“Motherhood never did suit you.”
“I gave your parents their heir and that got us the Court seat. They will get nothing more from me.”
Tim didn’t know he had grandparents. Jack and Janet never spoke about them. He’d assumed them dead. At least now he knows they just have no interest in his life.
“Your sacrifice is appreciated.”
“That was the last sacrifice they will take from me. And they will take nothing else.”
Jack’s eyes land on Tim. “Clean those wounds and apply makeup.”
“Yes, sir.”
*
They still go to the art exhibition and Tim is on his best behaviour. His parents give Carmichael Senior the best regards of Mister Judge with fake smiles and even faker congratulations.
All the while, his face aches.
*
Eventually, his parents get a permit for another expedition.
When they are gone, Tim feels like he can breathe for the first time in months. Every day, he’s walked on eggshells, taking care not to set off his parents. Given that remembering his existence set them off as well, that was a futile gambit. Tim becomes an expert at cleaning and bandaging his wounds, learning which kinds of makeup work best for his cuts or bruises.
He goes back to his explorations, enjoying the art of photography. One day, he stays out late and gets lost, finding himself in the sort of streets where everyone has a gun or two. He runs up a fire escape to find safety and there he finds his first true love. The rooftops of Gotham.
From here, the city stretches out like a jewel. Get high enough and the very shape of the city is revealed to you, the elegance of the roads, the curve of the bay, and the gentle inclines that vanish from ground level. So high up, he can feel free for once, unbound by the chains of his name and the cage that is Drake mansion.
A sharp scream startles him from his reverie. Tim cautiously walks across the gravel roof, coming to stand on the lip of the roof to overlook the alley below. Graffiti in neon colours. Men in dark suits and bowler hats. Another man painting the street crimson.
Tim will realise years from now that this is the first killing he notices. In Gotham, most people see someone killed around five, so Tim is pretty late.
He glimpses a spectre in the night descending in the midst. Batman. He stands surrounded and yet he seems bigger than the mob who have harmed a citizen of his city.
It is an act of beautiful violence. Batman is brutality perfected, vengeance made efficient.
One left. He has a metal pipe and charges because in Gotham it doesn’t matter who you’re facing, you stand your ground and fight back. A blur in red and yellow takes him out with a knee to the head, twirling once, then twice, then thrice to land. Robin, the hope of Gotham.
Tim takes a picture before he can think it through and decides to leave in case vengeance applies to children as well.
At home, he takes a look at the photo. It’s blurry, his hands shaking when he took it. Robin is either a rather slim adult or someone in his late teens. Seeing Robin or Batman is rare, both of them clinging to the shadows. They are stories of retribution, not people.
But now, Tim has proof that they exist. Proof for himself.
He goes out more. Each night now. Hoping for a glimpse of anything. Building a police scanner helps him get to crime zones faster and those have the best chance of a picture. He gets lucky maybe once every other week, but he cherishes those photos. There is Batman bringing Robin an ice cream. Here, Batman pulls Robin out of the line of fire. Robin alone, twirling in the sky like he owns it.
Tim wants to know who that boy is. Maybe if he knows then Tim will have a way to be as free as him.
His forum friends are his first avenues of research. The 4chan boards and superhero subreddits are a mess of contradicting information that always degenerates into a fight. The forums he frequents are old school, the interface disgustingly inefficient, but they’re in the know and he gets access to a dedicated relay chat.
Part of him suspects he’s talking with criminals. With how casually they mention where you can get weapons—Tim’s holding off on buying a gun just yet—or how best to monetise minor metahuman abilities for crime, Tim fully expects an FBI raid one day. Assuming they get past his firewalls that he’s continually upgrading.
He spends months working through scattered information, coming up to one dead end after another. It sucks, but it teaches him patience.
One outlandish suggestion is Bruce Wayne. Tim wrote it off initially, but he’s desperate and he can check easily enough. There is distressingly little information on Bruce Wayne given that he’s a celeb and owns a massive company. There should be more information. More pictures. More SEC filings. More records in city hall. But too much of it is missing. After asking his friends, he learns information can be scrubbed from the internet with enough time and money, though it’s impossible to fully be certain. Not leaving a paper trail is better in the first place. It’s a strange curiosity but there’s an obvious connection to Robin that doesn’t need any of that information.
Bruce Wayne adopted Richard Grayson eight years ago. He’s in his late teens now and Robin didn’t become active till six years ago. The two have been spotted in public events on days that the dynamic duo worked together. Suspiciously enough, that’s one of the easier pieces of information to find, almost like he’s being led to it. An easy piece of information to dispel suspicion.
Tim doesn’t buy it for a second. Batman has saved Richard Grayson and Robin’s saved Bruce Wayne before. There are explicit pictures of that. Scattered reports of all four being in the same gala that the Scarecrow interrupted. Bruce’s opinion of Batman is generally negative and dismissive of the vigilante’s efforts.
So much overwhelming evidence that Batman is not Bruce Wayne. Too much. It’s too specific a denial. Tim’s brain sees patterns in data and this pattern is obvious.
Richard Grayson was part of the Flying Graysons. A circus kid. Tim pulls up all the recorded videos he can find of them, which are two ancient advertisements before Grayson would have been alive. He sends feelers for any hand-recorded stuff, offering a decent sum of money because he’s a big acrobatics fan and never got a chance to see them. A few people claim to have the videos. Tim pays it out, getting scammed only eight times before someone has a genuine VHS recording.
It's grainy, taken from a terrible angle. But it’s real. Tim learns how to transfer VHS to digital formats and makes a copy. Tim scrubs through the footage frame by frame eagerly.
There. Richard Grayson doing his act. A flip. And then another. And then one last one, culminating in a delicate landing that sends the crowd wild.
Richard Grayson is Robin.
It’s the year the global economy crashes to the ground and in the nuclear fallout of failed globalism, 808s & Heartbreak is released. It is also the year that Tim Drake, at the tender age of eight, uncovers Batman’s secret.
He feels inordinately pleased with himself. Tim won’t do anything terrible with the information, he just likes having it.
Tim continues exploring the rooftops of Gotham, chasing after his sightings of Robin, of Richard Grayson.
Richard Grayson dances in the air, unlike Batman who hurtles through Gotham with neither hesitation nor doubt. He is an immovable force and Gotham will bow to his resolve.
One day, he just vanishes. The city mourns the loss of Robin. Most assume he died even if there’s no body. In Gotham, missing children tend to die if they aren’t trafficked or forced to be drug mules.
Tim knows it’s due to the very public falling out between Richard Grayson and Bruce Wayne. The media has a field day with it. Dozens of sordid details spill out.
“Couldn’t keep his boy in line,” Jack says when the news breaks, halfway between pleased and disgusted.
“CPS never found anything untoward during their searches. We checked and they didn’t take any bribes.”
“I still don’t like it. Not from a person like him. He’s too promiscuous and never says anything no matter how much he says. He’s pretending to be the idiot.”
“Don’t be paranoid, dear.”
Still, Janet takes Tim’s hand in her own. He nearly startles before mastering his reaction. They’ve been better as a unit, more a mismatched family that might grind itself into something that fits than strangers at war. Her fingers are long, elegant, and perfectly manicured. Her thumb explores the planes of his palm, mapping out the knobbiness of his knuckles, and his crooked ring finger.
It’s a strange thing that leaves Tim’s hand tingling pleasantly, his heart bursting, and his eyes stinging. He engraves the memory of her touch in the very atoms of himself. Though her right hand is heavy with rings, her left has only her wedding ring. Three bands of gold interlocking perfectly, identical to the one in the attic if not for the material.
It bothers Tim but it fades quickly as he realises this is a chance to be with his mother. The news rattled her terribly. She sticks close to him that day, seeing him in a way he didn’t think possible. He dares show her some of the photos he’s developed.
Sometimes, the universe rewards bravery. They sit on the floor of his messy room—organised chaos is the excuse of the lazy, Janet had said with appropriate gravity though with no heat—as he shows her the things he’s immortalised. From his first toddling attempts to capture the deer that sometimes graze on the shrubs to a candid shot of his parents in the kitchen at the tail end of a stupid argument where they were leaning close to one another. Janet handles them with reverence, staring at them as if they have the answers of the universe, and then staring through Tim as if the architect that laid the cosmic brickwork of the stars can be found in him. As though in Tim, she might find something of the person both Jack and Janet loved.
The day is so amazing that it feels like a fever dream. Janet makes him tea and asks him what snacks he likes. Him. Tim. As if his wants might matter to them. Jack had found them like that, frozen in bewilderment at the doorway, as they interacted.
“Look,” Janet says, tapping one of the photos Tim took.
For as much as Jack runs the household, it is to Janet that he finds all answers and reason. He takes the photo, one of Jack washing his Porsche, taken from the second-floor dining room. Jack is in shorts, his painfully hairy back on display, but contentment is evident in every line of his body.
“This was you?” Tim nods uncertainly. “I see,” Jack says just as uncertainly.
Jack says nothing else about the photo, but he does sit down on the stool beside Tim and enjoys a glass of whiskey.
The Dynamic Duo were smart enough to have Robin continue his patrols in Gotham for another two months after Richard Grayson moved to Bludhaven. A good strategy to throw off the scent, especially with all the social media posts of him exploring his new city and trying out food places.
Two months later, Bruce Wayne adopts Jason Todd. The tabloids must be praying to their gods for getting such juicy stories. Jason’s name is smeared, Bruce’s reputation attacked, and the whole thing is disgusting.
“Black hair and blue eyes again,” Mother murmurs as the news shows the boy. “He’s going to get away with it as well.”
His father’s chuckle is a hollow thing full of despair. “At least now we know why Bruce has never settled.”
Bracketed between his parents, Tim feels stifled by the desolation of their feelings. Mother drums a stuttering rhythm on his knee, Father with a protective grip on the nape of his neck. After Richard Grayson’s exit, his parents had kept him closer, even bringing him on some trips, but the rumours of Jason Todd brought out something possessive in them.
“Don’t joke about this. It’s sickening.”
“It is as it is. Nothing we can do about it. Just hope the kid makes it out.”
“You wouldn’t be saying that if it was Tim.”
“We’d be dead in that case.”
Tim will admit that his parents might be cruel half the time and negligent the other half, but even they have standards.
It’s terrible because Tim knows the truth. Bruce Wayne is Batman and Batman would never do something like that. He would never hurt children.
A terrible part of Tim is glad. Knowing they care, even in this way, is more than he ever expected.
*
Eight months later, there’s a new Robin on the streets.
Those eight months have been wonderful to Tim. Maybe they looked at him, saw his black hair and blue eyes, and saw something terrible happening to him because they started paying attention to him. Sometimes it was as simple as Tim reading in Jack’s office or Janet sipping tea beside him in the kitchen. They took him to the park once, though they’d been furiously whispering to each other on whether children need a leash on their walks.
With stuttering steps, they make their way from a broken idea of family to something that could fit the dictionary definition. He gets to eat with them when they’re home, and when they leave, they sometimes take him with them. On the shorter trips, at least.
“We’ll be back in the evening,” Jack promises, kneeling before Tim. He’s dresses in a neat black suit. “Is there something you wanted?”
“Um, some cake?”
Jack looks over his shoulder at Janet impatiently waiting in the doorway. He winces. “Pick something that won’t have my wife killing us.”
“Sneakers,” he suggests after a moment. People like those, right?
“Sneakers,” Jack says in utter confusion. “Your generation, really.”
He does buy Tim sneakers. Multiple pairs of them. Of varying different brands like he just asked for a selection at the first store he could find. Inside one of the shoeboxes that’s been emptied, there’s a small box with a slice of tiramisu cake in it. Later, at around midnight, his mother sneaks into his room and leaves him a box with a slice of a triple-layered chocolate cake in it. Like her husband did earlier, she strongly suggests he keep quiet about it and not mention it to her spouse.
His parents are fucking idiots.
Tim finds it hilarious.
Perhaps not as hilarious as the second Robin’s debut as he knees a man straight in the face and gives his friends the middle-finger. Jason, the second Robin, doesn’t have the same grace that Richard did. He stumbles and he trips. He’s also made of violence and sounds like Gotham.
Magic swirls around him, hope and determination and faith. A kid from the worst part of Gotham brightening the shadows with a cocky grin and shitty attitude. He’s anger and spitfire, the rage of Gotham’s unwanted and the hope of those unloved by the systems that ravaged this city.
Tim watches him for months, astounded by how his anger is honest to Gotham.
“Oi, fuckface, she’s younger than your daughter. Get your hand off her before I break your hand.” Robin cracks his knuckles, his grin bloody and made for Gotham. “And when your wife serves your divorce papers, you will sign them quietly or I’ll break your hand.
There is one story after another. The kind of cases this Robin cares about compared to the other. Robin the First cared about people in a general messianic way. Robin the Second is selfish, his focus narrower. He prioritises the girls and boys working corners. He goes after dealers who sell a shit product. Abusive husbands and fathers take worse beatings the murderers. And rapists? This Robin has no mercy for them.
He’s a Robin that people can understand. People see his actions and intuitively understand why he could put on that cape and risk getting shot at. His accent drips with the sludge of Gotham’s underbelly and his compassion for people working corners or kids running from home is evident.
Richard Grayson as Robin may have set the standard for child heroes, but Jason Todd puts all of Gotham on his back and forces it to rise above the standard. Robin the first brought the first rays of light to a city so steeped in darkness that its greatest protector will never see the sunlight, but Robin the second shows Gotham what it might be like to stand in the morning. His is the righteous anger of Gotham, the embodiment of fuckups given a second chance, the ability to rise above your origins.
He is Gotham’s Robin in a way Richard Grayson could never be.
Tim finds himself obsessed. He stalks Robin on the roofs and fervently tracks everything Jason does. He does community work helping out at soup kitchens but gravitates to the mosque on 5th and Cunningham. People know him and they call him lucky as hell, but no one holds a grudge. In Gotham, making it out is the greatest victory possible. He also does his best to connect people to recruiters and encourages them to sign up for brand new programs to help with addiction and interview techniques and trauma counselling.
Following that money trail had obviously led back to Bruce Wayne but it was still a fun exercise.
“We should donate to these people,” Tim says, having cornered his father in his office.
“We already donate to charities,” Jack says slowly, giving Tim an opportunity to prove his intelligence.
“Yes, for perfectly legal tax-deductible reasons and to funnel money into other ventures.”
“Correct but do not mention the latter to other people.”
Tim continues his explanation of the groups he wants them to donate to. His father listens patiently, clamping down on his irritation when Tim goes on a random tangent.
“This is a good proposal. Better than my middle managers give. You’re doing this for Bruce’s boy?” Tim nods eagerly. “I don’t understand.”
“I just think he’s doing good stuff. He’s from those areas so he probably knows which groups do good work. Better than us.” Tim looks down at his expensive shoes. “And maybe he’ll feel better knowing other people want to help as well. Maybe he won’t feel so terrible in that house.”
The last part is a lie. Batman is a good person. But his father knows nothing about Batman being Bruce. There’s a sharp inhale from his father.
“Alright,” he says eventually. “We’ll donate to them.”
“Thank you.”
“Did you want to go yourself?” Jack asks before he can leave.
He turns his head over his shoulder. “I would like that, yes.”
“Be kind to the boy if you see him.”
“I will, Dad.”
The sound his father makes is delighted. Tim runs before he’s forced to deal with messy feelings.
Is it perhaps creepy that he’s monitoring Jason? Maybe. Will Tim stop? Never. Not so long as there are rooftops in Gotham and there’s a Robin to follow.
To his endless disappointment, he never does meet Jason Todd in his civilian life.
They’re hit by a rain shower in the middle of what should be a dry summer. It lasts a few hours and coats the roofs slick. Apparently, all the criminals decide they may as well hope Batman stayed indoors and do their thing.
Tim runs and he runs, trying his best to keep up with Robin, heading from one safe spot to another.
Tim slips on an invisible patch of water and tumbles over the edge.
The scream is out of his mouth before he can process it because fuck fuck fuck that’s the ground and he’s going to die for fuck’s sake because it rained and he hates everything fucking fuckity fuck—
Robin catches him.
“Hey, you’re safe.”
“Huh.”
They land gracelessly, Robin struggling to carry both their weight.
Tim shakes. Maybe adrenaline, maybe fear. They’re in an alley that smells of piss and condoms. It’s quiet enough and there are no windows on the buildings bracketing them. Not to spec but in Gotham spec is whatever your bribe says it is.
“You with me? I know that was scary. First time I fell off a roof, I pissed myself.” That startles a laugh out of Tim. “Batman gave me a whole lecture about it. No, Robin, you can’t get in the Batmobile smelling of piss, steal your own car. You know, cause even Batman boosts cars.”
Slowly, Tim feels his shakes fade.
“So what’s your story? You are way too young to be on these rooftops.”
He looks anywhere but his warm blue eyes, settling on a mole on his cheek. “Uh, art project.”
Jason laughs and it’s like sunlight seeped deep into Tim’s bones. He isn’t too much older than Tim, just four years, but it makes such a difference. His self-assured confidence is infectious and Tim feels himself standing taller.
“You’re such a bad liar. How’s about you give me that film roll, I destroy it, and don’t tell Batman? Sounds fair, right?”
“Why?” dumb Tim asks instead of taking his out.
“I don’t really care who told you to take those pictures, but you shouldn’t get in trouble for it. Not a toddler like you.”
“I’m turning nine.”
“Toddler, like I said.”
Robin grins. It sends a thrill straight to his chest and he’s left breathless at the very idea that this impossible person exists. His shaky hands shake more as he hands over the film roll and he nearly combusts when Jason pats his head and waits with him for a cab to show up. Doesn’t even ask questions about his destination, just hands the driver a Benjamin.
That encounter awakens something in him. He finds himself comparing the smiles of other boys to Robin and they just don’t compare. Their eyes are dull as well and even the laugh is wrong. Other boys might be better fed, but they lack the sort of muscles Jason has.
Sometimes, when his parents are home, they go to the Synagogue Tim can’t figure out the pattern of their attendance. Best he can tell, they’re excuses for Jack to speak to his society acquaintances in a more private environment. There is never a suggestion that Janet will attend. She’s an extreme atheist and it holds true even after Fawcett city has its annual demon invasion. The trips aren’t a burden on Tim, and as a reward for good behaviour, Jack usually buys him ice cream.
“I’m cheating my diet,” Jack said the first time they went together. “Don’t tell your mother or we’re both dead.”
“This is the point where I blackmail you for more concessions to extract maximum long-term value from you before disposing of you, yes?”
“You’re going to be quite terrifying when you’re older,” Jack says, smiling fondly—fondly! “But unfortunately this is a case of mutually assured destruction. We both lose. It would be quite MAD to reveal the truth.”
“Can I get another scoop anyway?”
“Well, since we’re here.”
That day, specifically, the two of them stay behind to watch the choir practice. That’s the cover, at least, for Jack to have a conversation with a very dangerous-looking man. He walks like a gang enforcer would, violence in every step.
Tim should maybe pay attention to the conversation but his focus is drawn to a boy maybe four years older than him. Curly hair licking at his temple and a smile that livens up the room. A rainbow tie stands out against his black shirt and suspenders in patterns of pink, blue and white.
But his voice? It’s liquid gold. Too beautiful for this world.
The conversation ends but Tim can’t tear his eyes away. He’s never going to make eye contact, but this is the first time he wants to.
A sharp pain ends his trance. Jack, his fingers digging in Tim’s shoulders.
No words are said, but Tim can read the disgust in Father’s harsh lines. The way he holds himself almost away from Tim.
“Why does he have a gap tooth?” Tim asks quickly, faking his confusion.
The grip on his shoulder doesn’t let up.
Jack makes eye contact with him and Tim forces himself to match it despite how it makes his skin crawl. The assessment is dispassionate, an accounting of failures Tim doesn’t have words for just yet.
“She’s poor,” Jack says tonelessly.
“The shoes are from a good brand,” Tim says with just as little emotion.
He doesn’t know why this conversation is so fraught, but he knows it has changed things permanently between them. Jack looks at him like he’s seeing Tim for the first time.
“Borrowed. They don’t fit her properly. Pay more attention to the small details.”
“I will, Father.” A flash of insight passes through Tim. “Is there something wrong with him? Perhaps his kind shouldn’t be allowed here.”
Jack’s flinch is tiny, but Tim feels it through his shoulder. Something devasted crosses his features before being buried beneath flat planes of disinterest. It doesn’t change the bruising grip he has on Tim, the tiny tremor in his arm as he takes one deep breath after another. Jack masters himself after another moment, letting his hand fall away.
It is the first victory he’s had against Jack but something about it feels like a loss. It feels like the first time Jack hit him but in reverse. Like he betrayed his father with his words.
Tim hates it.
No matter what, though, he stops looking at boys so closely.
*
*
*
“Your father sometimes gets obsessed with his French heritage,” his mother whispers to him, drawing him into conspiracy under the blistering sun, her face cast in shadows by her large hat. “The Drakes had one moderately wealthy French relative before they moved to America. Don’t ask me how they got the name and don’t mention it to your father if you want to avoid a rant. There was this rather boring debacle after the first World War where they managed to restore some of their original land holdings that he will likely force you to listen to. The house in Amiens is traditionally where Drakes have summered these last three generations.”
“And you? Is your family French as well?”
“Oh no, we’re descended from defunct English nobility though, that was so long ago, it only matters to people like your father who are obsessed with blood and status. I know that look. You’re thinking I’m a hypocrite.”
Tim didn’t know he had an expression like that so he schools his features into blankness. “No, ma’am.”
“Please, I’m too young to be called that. Mother will do just fine. Janet if you wish to be irreverent.”
“Well, Mother Janet”—that earns him a gentle hair tug in the middle of a Parisian street—"where do you come from?”
“Quite a bit of land ownership. A decently sized farming conglomerate. My grandfather, now he was an inventor. Nearly a dozen patents to his name. Very eccentric. He blew himself up right in front of me.” Janet’s laugh is entirely at odds with her dark anecdote. If Tim develops any sociopathic tendencies, he knows who to blame. “I was very young at the time. The rest of it comes from the usual. Very boring management in safe investments. Just enough lucky guesses to offset the bad ones. Lots of bribery and political collusion.”
“How come I’ve never met any of your family?”
“Well, you see, when I told them what I wanted to study and do with my life, they mocked me for it. Now they never will. Oh, don’t give me that look. I love certain things and everything else is just an enemy waiting to happen. And believe me when I say blood is no reason to love someone. Had your father been slightly less endearing, I may have eliminated him. Where do you think you fall on the spectrum?”
There is a bubble of space around them despite the colourful crowd. People instinctively stay away from the predator that is Janet. Tim is very certain that she wasn’t joking about possibly strangling him.
“I’m not sure I want to know.”
“Well, these days it’s the former.”
“Oh, good.”
“I do find your precocious nature quite endearing now that I acknowledge your existence. Did you know your father still hasn’t noticed how swollen your trust fund is these days or how little control he has over it? You’re quite the blind spot for him. I suspect he is terrified of your genius and perhaps more terrified that you’ve inherited any of my more uncomfortable viewpoints.”
“Like familicide.”
“Exactly. Your comfort in discussing this is what scares him. That, and whatever you did to him at the Synagogue a few months back. Gosh, he worked himself into a frustrated tizzy. I spent the better part of the night listening to his incoherent rambling and occasional sobbing without even receiving an explanation.”
“Are you supposed to be telling me this?”
“Your father is a seesaw made of moods. It’s better that you know this now.”
“I don’t even know what I did to him,” he says petulantly.
“Truly now? Well, you are still a child and children are uniformly cruel creatures. Do try to be kinder to your father. He’s of a more delicate constitution than us.”
Things have been better with his parents. His mother still sometimes forgets he exists, shocked to remember she spawned a human, but she swallows her shock whole and keeps moving. Her attention is more exacting, and she dresses Tim like a doll, selective with fabrics and cuts and textures, explaining her reasoning behind each choice. She expects brilliance from every aspect of him even if not formality. A pair of sneakers can go with formal slacks if you know what you’re doing, and his mother certainly knows.
She also cuts his hair for him. They could go to a barber, Tim even suggested he’d do it alone, but she’d just scoffed and told him, ‘They’d never do your ears justice,’ before proceeding to trim his hair. He doesn’t know if he even likes the hairstyle, but he does like that she’s spending time with him.
Jack hasn’t forgiven him for his words at the synagogue—which isn’t fair since Tim still doesn’t understand what he did wrong—and keeps him at a distance, hiding parts of himself once more. Sometimes they leak through, moments where he pats Tim’s head or points out people he wants to make fun of. Sometimes, he sits him down and teaches Tim about the family business or points out places his archaeology ventures have taken him to. Sometimes, it feels like Janet and Jack forget they’re supposed to hate him.
“Do you speak French?”
“Child, you’ve heard me speak French. Rephrase that question.”
He bows his head, accepting the chastisement. “How well do you speak French? I can’t hear it well enough to tell.”
“Better than your father. His language skills are weak. I hope you take after me. You’ll learn French first to assuage his obsession with his heritage. After French, would you like to learn Spanish, Mandarin, Arabic, or Swahili first?”
“Which one is your favourite?”
Janet’s laugh is delighted and makes Tim delighted in turn. He smiles so hard it hurts.
“I have been enjoying Italian. There were these lovers recently uncovered in Modena. Skeletons buried together sometime between the 4th and 6th centuries. If one must go, I suppose being with your lover isn’t so terrible a way.”
“Did they speak Italian that early?”
“A smart question.” Tim preens. “They would have spoken a vulgar dialect of Latin from which the Romance languages descend. I already know Classical Latin and I wanted to learn a new language. And so Italian it was.”
“Italian next,” Tim settles on.
*
Things aren’t perfect but they’re getting there.
They could do anything at all. Visit art galleries or a winery. Instead, Janet sneaks him away towards a crepe store and orders two servings that are American-themed with how large they are.
“Don’t tell your father. He thinks I don’t cheat my diet.”
Tim, mouth stuffed, says, “okay.”
It’s really quite ridiculous that they both cheat on their diets and hide it from one another. They could have cheat days together. Well, whatever. It means that sometimes Tim gets super cheat days.
Janet rolls her eyes but doesn’t berate him for it. They have five days together exploring Paris as they wait for Jack to finish his business in Algeria. Five days where it’s just the two of them. Tim shows her how to work the camera and she takes photos of him in his neat little vests or ruining his perfect clothes by playing in the park.
“Should we go to the beach tomorrow?”
Tim sits up, eyes wide. “Really? We can go? Just us?”
Janet laughs. “Yes, just us. Who else would we go with? Unless you’re hiding a brother in your room.”
“I’m not.”
“I believe you. Oh, I’ve never bought you swimwear. Let’s go do that right now.”
When she holds out her hand, Tim takes it fearlessly.
Just months ago, had someone told Tim that he’d be on holiday with his mother, he would have called the police on the weirdo babbling nonsense. Now, it feels almost natural. Even his father’s arrival doesn’t hamper anything. They drive north to Amiens. Jack is intense as he explains the places the Drakes lived and travelled through, claiming a heritage that his mother mocks in perfect French much to his despair. Tim, because he’s a little shit, repeats Janet’s French which has her laughing and Jack fuming because he can’t really be angry that Tim’s getting his pronunciation right, especially since he doesn’t know what the words mean.
That’s how it goes. Jack tells him a history of a French family and Janet teaches him how to mock his father in French, sometimes slipping in a few phrases of Arabic.
For a moment, it feels like everything will be alright.
*
Janet Drake dies and Tim only learns a month after the fact.
Tim’s been left alone after they had an emergency meeting in Paris. When they hadn’t come back after three days, Tim knew he’d be in France for a while. No passport or ID with him since his parents always kept those, so no way to get back until they came to fetch him.
They would come for him. He knows that. They’d made plans to visit the Louvre and to get a family portrait done. Whatever else his parents are, they aren’t liars. They can learn to care. They’d left him a hundred Euros just in case he needed it.
If they wanted him gone, they would have better ways of doing it.
Being alone isn’t new to him. The country might be different but the routine is the same. Get food. Make food. Live. Occasionally have fun.
He learns French faster, gobbling it up with morning news which he only understands one word in twelve, at markets where people find it endearing that the tiny American kid is learning the language or too busy to give a shit over a kid wasting time in line, and more than a few action movies he isn’t supposed to watch.
A call comes through on the TV. Like all their main homes, it has a camera and a great microphone system for telepresence calls. Tim answers it and is greeted by Jack Drake.
His father is in a wheelchair over the video call. Old is the first thing Tim thinks. A month away, and Jack Drake looks ancient.
“Your mother is dead.”
The call ends before Tim can process those four words.
He runs them over and over in his head, as he goes about his day. Mother means the person who birthed him. Dead means cessation of biological functions. Your is the possessive form of you. Is represents the present tense of to be.
The words individually are perfectly reasonable in different contexts. Combined as they were, they are obscene and disgusting. Janet Drake was cruel in the way of cats, and she seemed too real to die.
The quiet townhouse in Amiens feels so much lonelier. Three Drakes had vacationed here at the start of Summer. One is permanently gone and the other is in a different country. Only Tim remains, haunted by the negative space of his parents.
He chooses to mourn her and it is a mourning process of extremes.
There is no need to cover the mirrors. They’re all broken within the day and his hands bleed terribly. He cries out his rage and despair like a vengeful spirit. Or maybe like a boy whose mother is dead and his father indifferent.
He doesn’t need many candles. His eyes soon adjust to the pervasive darkness.
Who needs to shower when getting off the couch seems like more effort.
Is fasting a part of Shiva? Tim can’t remember. He’s Jewish but only as an accident of birth. Beneath the performative nature of it, he sometimes thought Jack may have genuinely believed. He’d never stumbled over his words during prayer or song and Tim vaguely remembers seeing a leatherbound Torah in his office.
Seven days to sit Shiva. He remembers that much. And so seven days he will sit for a mother who harmed him more than she cared, who ignored him most of his life except for moments that feel false in his memory now. Was their holiday real or some strange fever dream? He doubts it.
Janet Drake barely loved him. Didn’t acknowledge him for most of his life. Two years can’t change that much.
So why does it hurt so terribly?
*
Alright, week of mourning done. Time to get the fuck out of France.
In a small antique, his eyes stop on a camera, and he’s absolutely stumped to see a genuinely good polaroid camera there. It’s grimy and scuffed to hell, sure, but he’s fixed worse. An impulse has him buying it with the last of his Euros.
Fuck, he wishes he had a good internet connection and his verification documents. With those, he could just get some money and charter a flight back home. He considers visiting the American Embassy for one fleeting moment before realising how terrible the press would be. Drake's Son abandoned by father in France. The man’s obviously been hurt even if Tim doesn’t understand how, but by now there won’t be a reasonable justification. If he was fine enough to call Tim, then he was fine enough to call the authorities and have his return arranged. And there’s no way he missed all the calls Tim tried making.
Jack doesn’t want him back. It’s as simple as that. Well fuck Jack Drake, Tim is his son and he’s inherited pettiness.
Living in France is a struggle. He picks up odd chores for a couple of Euros and sells the cheapest photos to tourists. A few run-ins with the police and whatever counts for vigilantes in the boonies aside, it’s still better than most of his life. No empty house and no parents who hate him.
When he’s on the verge of sleep, exhausted by the daily hustle, he slips into memories of a father who could smile and a mother who laughed with him. And when he inevitably wakes up in the middle of the night, he finds his cheeks wet and his heart racing.
One day bleeds into the next. He spends time in the evening searching for ways to make a few more Euros and visits the library for access to their computer. He learns that his parents were poisoned with an exotic poison and airlifted to a hospital, reports confirming that Janet died on the way. The reports end there to his disappointment.
He leaves the library close to closing and wanders the narrow streets, sticking to the shadows. He gets turned around at one point and soon can’t recognise the streets or landmarks.
That’s when he’s dragged by burly arms that cover his mouth before he can scream. Tim thrashes but he’s too small to fight it and soon he’s being shoved into a vehicle, arms bound and mouth gagged. He isn’t the only child in the van.
Of fucking course he gets snatched.
What else did he expect? A reasonable and fun family vacation?
*
A few hours later, Tim Drake suffers the indignity of being processed for human consumption. He’s stuck in just his underwear, frozen in fear as he’s dispassionately observed by three people who note down his physical characteristics.
“They like them blonde back home,” the one with the gun says. Somewhere pacific. Oregon? BC? “The tan is good. Keep him in the sun.”
Tim’s tan has come from long days in the summer heat. It isn’t a uniform tan, odd stripes of paleness against bronze. All of it is on display.
The woman in the sharp suit takes his jaw and forces his mouth open with a pencil torch. “Very good teeth. Underfed but some like them skinny.”
He’d run if not for the ropes binding his legs and arms. It continues much like that and they use his fucking polaroid camera to take pictures. Someone will pay decent money for those pictures and Tim doesn’t even want to know why. He’s miserable and just wants to go home again.
When it is done, he is thrown in a room with other miserable, hollow-eyed kids. Too many of them to fit comfortably. Tim finds a spot near the wall that’s free and sits down to wait for what comes.
He’s never coming back to France, that’s for certain.
*
He counts the days by the one meal they provide at irregular intervals. It’s never enough and fights always break out over it. Tim never wins, but he learns to struggle for his few scraps, feeling the strength leech from his body.
One day becomes five becomes twelve as they suffer in this shitty room. At least they get buckets for piss and shit and those are taken away with the meals. Smart. The kids are too desperate to try escaping when they have food presented to them. The one kid who tried bolting out is still in the corner, his back a map of pain in blue and purple.
On the thirteenth day, they’re dragged outside and hosed down with freezing cold water before being shoved in a van again and driven to a dockyard. They are split and mixed with other kids and some women before being loaded into a storage container. Only a few chemical lights stop it from being a completely miserable experience, just most of a miserable experience.
Tim cries most days like the other kids. Maybe they also have mothers who died and fathers who abandoned them. Maybe they’re also unwanted heirs for old families. Or maybe they started life with nothing and expect life to end with nothing.
Not everyone makes the trip across the ocean. The kid who had been beaten terribly dies in his sleep. Tim is the one who realises first, seeing the blue fingertips and the unnatural stillness. He’s from Gotham and dead bodies are just another part of daily living.
He still screams himself hoarse until the container is opened and the body removed.
*
When they arrive at their port destination, Tim is quietly hoping to die. He’s been in that state for a few days now, contemplating fashioning a shiv out of the bars housing the chemical light. Sharpen it just right and it will tear through his throat easily enough.
Half the scratches on his arms are from desperately trying to avoid doing something stupid. He just has to keep it together for a bit long. Pain ends eventually. He can make a plan when they’ve landed and from there, Tim will find a way to win.
Just another day he tells himself on the third day. Another day that bleeds into another and another. He buries his despair and builds up his anger into a furnace to keep him warm on the inside. Tim develops a list of things he hates in descending order of current importance:
- France
- Jack Drake
- Amiens
- French child traffickers
- Skype calls
- Cargo containers
- Small rooms
- Jack Drake
- Mothers who die
- France
It’s a great list and completely reasonable. When Tim gets free, he is going to get his revenge and it will be glorious. There will be fire and brimstone and rage screamed to the high heavens. He’ll bring down half the world to get it.
Yes, his retribution will be merciless and it will be just.
His rage has banked when they finally land and he reassesses his list slightly. Jack gets second and third place instead. That feels fair.
Tim takes a deep inhale when the cargo container is opened, salt air cutting through the thick odour of unwashed bodies and the piss bucket in the corner. The fight has long since fled his body. Too hungry and weak to struggle much, he lets himself be led away. Stay silent, stay quiet, and when they think they’ve won, Tim will run his way to freedom.
To his utter bewilderment, he is in Gotham. Tim would recognise that skyline even with gouged eyes and he would know the distinct sound of Gotham’s misery even if his ears were sliced off. It seems he’s taken the long way back.
Hysterical laughter bubbles out of him. The absurdity of it all. This was his goal the whole time and the universe took the cruellest route to bring him back.
Tim is being shoved into the van when the grip on him vanishes. He twists around slowly at the pained yelp and sees vengeance. Batman. He’s here. Not some figment of his imagination. But here in graphic realism. No one could mistake the violent snap as Batman breaks Tim’s captor's arm and disarms him of his handgun in his other hand.
A flare of his cape and Batman is pouncing on the next person. Gunshots deafen him and screams fill the air. Tim huddles down, shimmying beneath the van. Fuck no is he dying of a stray gunshot.
It ends quickly after that. Most people don’t understand this about Batman but he’s efficient. A fight going a second longer is another second where a stray bullet could hit him. When he kicks you in the chest, the goal is to break ribs. Every punch to the head is meant to render you unconscious, broken skulls are just an unfortunate reality. His grabs dislocate limbs and sometimes break them.
Tim takes his opportunity and sneaks away. He’s been watching Batman long enough to know his right ear is his bad ear and he doesn’t hear quiet sounds as well.
Gotta escape and get home. Before he gets deported to a country that isn’t his own. Or worse, he gets recognised as Tim Drake and his father is involved. No, not that. Jack will kill him if he embarrasses the family like that. Fuck trusting that the man who told him stories still exists. No, Tim has to assume Jack will take any free opportunity to kill him.
Gotham’s docks aren’t familiar to him but so long as he’s heading vaguely southish and away from Batman things will be alright. His feet ache against concrete and glass but he ignores it. Pain is temporary; family embarrassment is forever.
He turns around the next cargo container and smacks face first into Robin. Gentle arms catch him. He’s got a soft smile that has Tim feeling relief and despair at the same time. Of course, he didn’t escape Batman.
“Heyo.”
“Uh, hello?”
“You speak English.” Tim nods. “Do you know who I am?” He nods again. “Good. Come on, let's get you back before you get shot running in Gotham.”
Tim shakes his head. “Non.”
“You know, running off like that isn’t too smart. Did you even have a plan?”
Jason isn’t smiling for once. Exhaustion paints him older than his fifteen years. A hint of grief at seeing a bunch of kids about to be sold off to the highest bidder. Perhaps more sympathy at the life he might have had with a deadbeat dad working as a henchman and a mother who’d sooner sell him for dope than care for him.
“What you call it? A meilleur de plan. A real plan intelligent,” he adds, thickening the hodgepodge French accent he’s picked up.
“Which is?”
“The land of the free. I want to be free.”
Robin sighs like he’s ancient. “It doesn’t work like that. You don’t have papers and you won’t make it ten minutes in Gotham.”
“Please,” he begs, straining to keep any hint of Gotham out of his voice. “Just let me go.”
“You need to go home.”
“What home?” he asks with bitterness that will never die.
“We can get you somewhere—”
“Non!” Robin recoils at the intensity of his shout. “There is nothing for me there. Nothing but death.”
“Your family—”
“Dead. Nothing but death is there. Rather die free than on my back.”
He glares at Jason, willing him to understand the truth. Letting the authorities take him will kill Tim, one way or another.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck, Batman is going to kill me.”
Robin reaches into his boot and then shoves something in Tim’s hands. A hundred bucks. A worried look.
“Don’t make me regret this.”
“Au revoir, Robin.”
It is the last time he speaks to Jason Todd before he dies.
*
Tim heads to one of his boltholes in the city first. A small nook fit only for waiting out a storm, it still feels like home in a way that has him crying himself to sleep then he’s waking up in paranoia, doubting the idea that he’s actually free. He takes a piece of concrete to his arm just to check, pleased when he bleeds red and the dream doesn’t end.
A few bottles of water that he drinks slowly and some energy bars that taste like heaven. He eats them so quick he makes himself sick which is utterly unfair and now he’s crying again. It’s not fair. Nothing about his life has been fair since the day he was born.
In the morning, Jason’s hundred bucks get him a taxi to streets that should be familiar but feel alien. The driver gives him a passing look but accepts the money and asks no questions. The less the driver knows, the more plausible deniability he has. Enough baby criminals use cabs for their crimes that it’s well known every driver always keeps at least two guns on them.
Tim clambers over the fence easily and slips past the security systems using overrides he installed a year ago. Everything is much the same, the rooms just as well appointed as always. The vases are the same and the furniture is in much the same places. The big difference is the stair lift. The next are the small changes. The books and magazines he’d left strewn about the place. His handmade Nixie tube clock housed in elegant wood vanished.
Worse of all are the photos. The framed photos he’d taken are missing. They were all candid shots of his parents in moments caught unaware. There was even one of the three of them taken on a timer, Tim with a hard hat too big for him but his grin was even bigger, Jack holding him up by the armpits and Janet laughing.
For a time, they were a family. The evidence of that is gone. Tim bites back on his tears. He knows stories and he knows this should have been a triumphant return. The stolen prince has finally returned home. There should have been celebrations and his father waiting for him at the top of the stairs, and when he got there his father would hug him and speak of his pride in Tim, and they would go mourn his mother together.
Life has never been fair to him. It takes even that tiny victory from him.
Tim showers and scrubs his body clean three times. His soul feels dirty despite it. To his dark amusement, his old clothes are loose on his frame.
It is only the next day that he encounters his father.
Even in a wheelchair, his father cuts an imposing figure. His suit is well cut and absorbs the light, contrasting with the streaks of silver in his hair.
“You’ve returned,” Jack says flatly, seeing through Tim. Perhaps seeing the ghost of his wife in his son. He doesn’t notice the bruises or at least pretends not to. Ignores how sharp Tim’s bones are or how skinny his exposed wrists look.
“Yes.”
“Why? The house in France was well appointed.”
“I wished to see where Mother was buried.”
“Months late.”
Tim keeps his expression blank. Four months gone and it feels too short for them both. He wants to scream at his father, demand to know why he was abandoned or how he dares to act like it’s Tim’s fault he couldn’t be here earlier. He wants to scream those weeks in a tiny room and the weeks in a storage container. He wants to shake him and ask if Tim looks better tanned, if his damned society friends would like a boy since Jack so clearly doesn’t.
He says none of this. Fighting against Jack has never brought him victory.
Maybe some of his vicious hatred seeps through. Maybe the cloying darkness pervading his soul infects the room. Maybe Jack has a fucking heart because he backs down and looks elsewhere.
“The driver will take you in the morning,” Jack says and turns in his chair, pushing himself away.
*
It is cold in the morning when he is taken to the private cemetery. Tim is bundled in a jacket that cost more than he lived on for an entire month in France and could have kept him going for another two. He’s crowned in a Gucci cap, his aggressively bright pink sneakers are weapons against the world, and a cashmere scarf shields him from the world.
It is a simple upright slab made of granite so black it seems otherworldly, reflecting the wan sunlight at its edges. It carries her name and the years she lived for. It is not an extravagant monument, nor does it carry a message for those who come after.
Janet did not believe in G-d. She did not even fear death. It was simply a nuisance that needed to happen. To make a spectacle of something she so dismissed would be to dishonour her.
Those who knew her will need nothing else.
Tim should say something. Figure out all the words for love in his heart that he never got to say. Perhaps curse her for leaving and taking with her any warmth that might have lived in their household.
He says nothing and after an hour he leaves.
His mother is dead.
Words aren’t enough.
*
Life settles into an unpleasant routine for Tim.
Jack can no longer go to dig sites and his bitterness consumes him from the inside out. His wife was lost to him, his body crippled, and his passions in life taken from him. Were Tim in his position, he’d be angry as well.
After what he’s lived through, Tim has no forgiveness in his heart left to give.
Jack could afford a caretaker, but he chooses not to. His pride is too great to be seen as weak and needy. And he has a son right there to assist him. Tim learns to wake up at five and change Jack’s bedpan since it will be Tim’s fault if Jack is reminded of his weakness. Some mornings, Jack’s limbs tremble from the poison and Tim will have to help him into the wheelchair and push him to the bathroom for a shower.
On a good day, Jack will forget about his existence. Those days are rare.
In Tim, Jack sees everything he was robbed of.
In Jack, Tim sees the future he was robbed of.
They’re a matched pair, the two of them. Both angry and bitter and spiteful. Both bound by a frayed string of affection and joy that’s turning into barbed wires to rip them from the inside out.
“What did you do with my photos? The ones in the hallways?”
“Did I give you permission to speak?”
“If you want a servant, you can pay for one.”
The glass shatters beside his head. A shard slices his cheek. Tim barely blink. He’s suffered through worse. He can order a replacement bottle easily enough.
Tim pours Jack another drink silently, placing it in front of him, and leaving to get the broom and cleaning supplies. A few minutes later and the room is clean though smelling heavily of alcohol. One day, he hopes his nose becomes numb to it.
“Where are my pictures?” he asks again.
“Gone.”
Tim pushes him to his bedroom as a good and dutiful son would. It is a façade like so much of his life. He settles Jack into bed, tucking his blankets in properly. It would be so easy to kill his father, so easy to complete the job and get away with it. Tim refuses to succumb to his father’s expectations. He is his mother’s son, but not in all ways.
“He would have liked you,” Jack says bitterly, brokenly, lost to whiskey-hazed memories. “He always liked pathetic things.”
“Who would?”
Jack doesn’t look at him, falling ever deeper in memory. “I loved the two of them. They were the only things I ever loved. You took them both from me.”
“I know.”
He receives only stuttering snores for a response.