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Tim didn't wake with a start. He was grimly and crushingly aware and cognizant when he snapped into consciousness and opened his eyes. The familiar sight of his childhood bedroom greeted him. He hadn't been back in Drake manor in quite some time. In fact, he and almost everyone else in the world had forgotten that Drake was more than just an incidental part of his name. He had put this part of his life behind him so totally that it seemed like a dream, or like false memories. How could it be, that the teenage heir of Wayne Enterprises and the grim Red Robin who, of all the previous Robins, most resembled Bruce, could ever have not have been Bruce's child? The more essential agonies of his life had been because he was Robin, was Bruce's, was part of the flock. The timeline had become murky and ill defined, and so had his sense of the past, but he knew as sure as anything that he was the third of the Wayne boys. What did that mean, then, for the first half of his life? For this time that he had returned to?
Tin sat up and took inventory of his physical form. He was small and lithe, lean stringy muscle that pulled over the slightly gangly limbs of a growing boy. Tim pulled back his shirt to check. Ah, yes, spleen still intact. Not that he'd expected anything else, he'd gotten that later, but he still felt compelled to double check. He turned on the computer in his room to check for a date.
Ah. No wonder. Tim was thirteen years old. Not new enough to be a rookie, but still a spring chicken by all accounts.
It was currently 10pm. The perfect time to go see what Bruce was up to.
Tim listened for a moment. The house was silent. That was convenient. Going by the dates, his mother was... His mother was gone, and his father was in a coma still.
Tim tightened his hands into fists. He allowed himself the space of five deep breaths to be overwhelmed. Then he shoved down the myriad of feelings bubbling up in his chest and clenched his jaw. He couldn't do anything about his parents. Well, he could try a Lazarus pit, but he didn't hate them enough for that.
Tim let himself out via bedroom window and chose to take the back way towards Wayne Manor. The night was crisp and cool, perfect for a jaunt, except of course for the fact that it was drizzling a little. Tim's boots crunched on leaves and twigs as he made his way through the landscaped garden of the drake property and into the hedgerows that bordered Drake Manor. It was the work of a moment to find the gap in the bushes that was the perfect size for a tween boy to squeeze through. Tim stifled the urge to curse as he pushed through. He was almost too big for it even now.
After the hedges was the fence on the Drake's side, which was scale with ease. Then there was a little alleyway between the fence on the Wayne side and the Drake side. Tim followed this alleyway for several yards to an unmarked spot where the fence post on the Wayne side contained a concealed access point.
"Tweety-Bird," Tim whispered. A retina scanner popped out, and Tim pressed his right eye to it to be scanned.
A tiny LED light flashed green for the barest moment, and the whole contraption retreated, concealed again inside the fence post. Tim took two steps back. The paving stone under his feet let out a soft click, then began to descend soundlessly down into the ground.
It was one of the back doors that Batman had installed after Tim became Robin. Tim had actually never used this particular door before, but he wasn't exactly in a mental or emotional state to risk traipsing around outside at night for any longer than he absolutely had to.
Tim made his way through the twisting tunnels with grim determination. He didn't know exactly what Bruce was up to on this particular evening. He had a fairly good memory, but it wasn't eidetic. Most likely Bruce was on patrol, or getting ready to go patrol. Unless he was in the middle of a case or dealing with a villain incident. Maybe Tim would only see Alfred at home.
The caves were artificially lit and ventilated, which made them eerie in a totally different way from the dank abyssal darkness of natural caves. Tim's boots clanked on the occasional bit of metal walkway that bridged gaps or formed short-cuts. Tim counted as he went, making sure he was on the right path and disarming the occasional trap or alarm.
The Cave was empty and silent when the final door slid open with a buzz. Tim looked around. Everything was neatly put away, no half-open files or hastily scattered batarangs. Bruce hadn’t been down here to prep for patrol yet. He was likely in the manor, or else out and about as Bruce Wayne.
Tim made a beeline for the line of display cases. It wasn’t just Jason’s uniform here, but that was what Tim wanted to see. He felt sick with the memory of how Jason had repudiated him, beating him to within an inch of his life. He’d forgiven Jason for it a long time ago, held no grudge and nursed no resentment, but the rejection still sat like a pebble in his shoe. And then there had been Damian. That had been a bad time for Tim, even before Bruce died and everything went to shit.
Tim had made his own peace with Damian, didn’t begrudge him the mantle any more, but Tim was also smart enough to know that it was different for Damian. Dick had embraced Damian as Robin, and that counted a lot more than even Bruce’s acceptance. Or Jason’s. It was different for Tim and Steph and Duke. But where Steph and Duke had moved on past their spells as Robin, Tim just couldn’t do it. He was still Red Robin, just another rejected version of Robin. He would inherit Bruce’s mantle when the time came, eventually, because Dick had Nightwing and Jason was Red Hood and literally everyone else had another new identity, had grown into something different. Even Cass, who was Bruce’s favorite, had grown into something more than just Bruce’s stray. Tim was sure that Damian would get his own schtick too one day. Tim wasn’t so sure about himself. He would probably keep being Red Robin until he was middle aged, then take up the mantle when Bruce retired or died for real. He would take up Wayne Enterprises too. Tim was the shadow, the straggler on, the imposter, the replacement, the copycat. Tim had never had an identity that totally stood on its own, and never wanted one. Tim was still. Tim was still Robin, in his own heart, and he always would be. He would always be the kid who had taken up Robin for no other reason than the fact that Batman needed a Robin. Because he loved Robin, and believed in Robin, and needed Robin.
He touched the glass that contained the bloody, tattered remnant of Jason’s uniform. He had thought he’d made peace with all this. His time with the teen titans and young justice, hell, even his time with R’as had helped him claw his way outside of the magnetic north of Batman-and-Robin. But here was Bruce, still broken, still struggling to relearn how to be a good father and a good partner, who needed him. And Tim had no way back to his own time. He’d known that it was a one way trip when he’d detonated the explosion. There was a version of him left behind in that world, doing his own work. Here was a world that needed him.
Tim smiled at Jason’s empty uniform.
“Sorry, Red,” he murmured. “You never got Robin back either, huh. Well. Don’t worry. Let’s see if we can’t get a few more years out of you as Robin this time around.”
“I don’t see why you think pushing your food around on your plate will fool me, Master Bruce,” Alfred said, giving Bruce a judgemental stare. Bruce, who had missed dinner thanks to a grueling afternoon of WE meetings that ran long overtime, gave his broccoli another half-hearted prod.
Maybe he ought to give up on dinner altogether and go to bed. He had decided not to go patrolling tonight, and had told Tim there wouldn’t be training tonight because he wouldn’t be home ’til late. Not that Tim had seemed keen on training, having chosen to go stay the night at the Drake Manor instead.
He still wasn’t sure how to face Tim. He tried his best, but every interaction felt like the two halves of a snapped bone grinding together.
Bruce sighed again.
Alfred, less preoccupied, or at least more emotionally stable, was not taken by surprise when Tim poked his head around into the dining room like a little ghost. Bruce, halfway through a third sigh at his broccoli, started and barely managed to hide his surprise.
“Tim,” he said, stiltedly. “What are you doing here? Are you... Are you alright?”
Tim stared at Bruce and Alfred with wide, wondering eyes, as if he hadn’t seen them in months.
“Hi B,” Tim said, trying and failing to conceal a tremor in his voice. “Hi Alfred.”
Bruce felt his heart clench with fear and concern.
“What’s wrong, Tim?” Bruce asked, throwing his fork down and pushing his chair pack in one swift motion, then hurrying over to Tim. The kid was too mature for his own good, and always entirely too willing to put on a brave face and sacrifice himself for the sake of others. Bruce knew he was taking advantage of that giving nature, he couldn’t help it when Tim looked at him so earnestly with those wide eyes of his, but it also meant that Bruce was entirely too aware of just how upset Tim had to be to sound like that.
“Bruce,” Tim said again.
Bruce laid a hand on Tim’s shoulder and got to one knee, in order to be at eye level of the boy. He hesitated, wondering if a hug would be welcome.
“Was it… did you have a nightmare?” Bruce asked, trying for gentle and landing on gruff instead. “Come sleep in your room here, Tim. You know you don’t have to go back…go back to the Drake Manor.”
Tim blinked at him owlishly.
“Oh,” he said. “Oh, I. I forgot it just happened.”
Tim looked upset, but not nearly as upset as he had been yesterday, when Bruce had given him the day off from training and tried to offer a shoulder to cry on, only to have Tim run off back to the cold emptiness of Drake Manor.
His eyes strayed to the window in the direction of the Drake Manor, then to the direction of the hospital where his father was still lying comatose. He appeared, for a moment, faraway and lost in thought. Then he shook his head and looked back at Bruce, round face solemn and businesslike.
“Bruce,” he said. “Nevermind that. JL-C6-25-36-9-8636-F.”
Bruce looked at Tim.
He hadn’t gotten up to that part of the training yet. And none of the codes contained the suffix F. But without the suffix, the code was current.
“No F,” Tim added after a moment. “Sorry. I forgot the Flashpoint hasn’t… Uh. No. Yes. Yeah. That’s. That’s what’s going on, Bruce.”
Bruce looked at him. He felt his back threatening to bow under a wave of sudden exhaustion. It had already been a hell of a week. It had already been a hell of a year.
“Time travel, Tim?” Bruce said plaintively.
“Yeah,” Tim said. “Permanent, non-reversible, replacing the consciousness of my counterpart. Sorry for your loss, et cetera.”
Bruce stood and scrubbed at his face.
“How far into the future?”
“Eight years,” Tim said. “Uh. For a given value of eight years. There was some funny stuff going on with time and the multiverse for a while. I might be either nineteen or twenty one.”
Bruce scrubbed at his face again.
“Alright,” Bruce said. “Alright. Just. Give me a moment. No, I don’t need a moment. Report. Why did you travel back in time?”
Tim’s face drew into a serious expression and his body language opened up. His spine straightened.
“It wasn’t intentional on my part,” he said, in the well-worn cadence of someone reporting to their superior. “There was an incidence with the Joker trying to resurrect some… villains from another universe by manipulating the timestream and plucking them out of their timeline the moment before their deaths. The device he was using was unstable, and had the potential to unravel the timeline. There were some multiversal politics that I wasn’t privy to going on, but by my guess, the Bruce and Diana of my time period were working with some kind of multi or omniversal entity. In the end, the Justice League couldn’t send the A team, because the device got more powerful the older someone was or the more important someone was to the timeline. And it’s not like we could send D-listers or the kids. So I took point with a few heroes on a team that I lead for a time. My iteration of the Teen Titans. Or Young Justice. There was some crossover. It helped that the formation of those teams had some kind of time and memory shenanigans associated. We were the right people for it. Experienced operatives with enough heavy hitters to matter; not old enough to cause the universe to unravel if we lost, not young enough to give my Bruce heartburn when he thought about us fighting against the Joker and his squad of multiversal villains without a real adult to supervise us.”
Tim paused to give Bruce a wan smile. Bruce, whose hand had begun to shake when Tim mentioned time travel and who started actively shivering on the spot when the Joker had been brought up, squeezed out an agonised smile that was worse than a frown.
“Anyway,” Tim said. “We can go over the mechanics later, but the gist of the story is that I got caught in the explosion when the device was destroyed. It split my temporal potential in half. One version of me is still in my old timeline, celebrating our victory. The other version of me is, uh. Me. Here. My teammates were caught in the blast radius too, but I’m 98% certain that each of us ended in our own version of the timeline. I can’t say for sure, since the multiversal time and alternate timelines don’t always play nice together, but I imagine that the reason why I woke up now is because… well. It’s before I became Robin, but after Jason died. I… I wouldn’t ever have the potential for power that the Joker is looking for if I hadn’t seen that you needed a Robin and shoehorned myself into becoming the solution, but the parameters of the device’s self defense mechanism meant that it needed to send me back to a time before I was a hero. I guess it’s a good thing that you made me wait and train before taking me on, or I’d probably have ended up back in the body of my baby self. At least I’ve been potty trained, even if I clearly haven’t had much other training.”
Bruce had buried his face in his hands as he listened to Tim speak. The confident, casual tones of his voice belied a faint tremor. He was comfortable with Bruce and not unused to strange situations, but being permanently stuck in the past wasn’t exactly gliding off like water off a duck’s back. And the way that Tim spoke of the Joker. Bruce had hoped that he would have rotted in Arkham forever, or at least for a very long time. But if Tim was still being fucked over by the Joker in six or eight years, then that was clearly a vain hope.
“Hey,” Tim said. “Cheer up, B. At least now you won’t have an angsty 13 year old on your hands. I come pre-trained, and with some pretty handy tech skills. And a lot of knowledge about all the people we fight for the next eight years. Earthquake-proof Gotham, that’s a tip.”
Bruce moaned. His head throbbed.
“Tim,” he said. He stopped covering his face. Alfred had a hand on Tim’s shoulder, and Tim was leaning ever so slightly into Alfred’s side. Bruce opened his arms. “Would you like a hug? I would like a hug.”
Tim stood and looked at Bruce for a moment. He still looked as young and boyish as ever. Nothing about him looked like he was an adult in a child’s body. Slowly, almost reluctantly, Tim opened his arms and pressed himself to Bruce’s torso. He hugged differently. Less uncomfortable, more wary. Alfred closed in and laid a hand each on Tim and Bruce’s shoulders. After a long, long minute of holding himself with awkward tension, Tim relaxed into Bruce’s chest. Bruce’s heart clenched. This was totally unlike the hug that he had given Tim two days ago, upon delivering the news about his parents. This Tim hugged like Dick and Jason used to hug Bruce. Like a child would hug his father. Bruce felt dizzy.
“Chum,” Bruce said gently, retreating so he could look Tim in the eyes but still keeping an arm wrapped tightly around Tim. He hadn’t said that in so long. He used to call Dick and Jay that, but had abstained, figuring that it was too outdated and old-fashioned for a kid like Tim. “Chum,” Bruce attempted again. “Unless there’s anything urgent that you need to act on, why don’t we take a break for a while. You’re in a tough situation, and your…your past self was in a tough situation before you arrived. Come have something to eat, and we can figure it out over dinner.”
“Yes, please do, Master Tim,” said Alfred, taking a second plate off the serving cart and taking the dome off to reveal the plate that he’d made up for Tim just in case.
Tim’s expression softened at the sight of the plate. Then he looked at the long, empty dining room table, and his face crumpled again.
“I forgot how miserable and empty the Manor used to be,” he said, squeezing Bruce. “It’s quiet without the whole circus.”
“The circus?” Bruce echoes.
Tim smiles. “Your addiction to adopting random children off the street doesn’t ever go away,” Tim said. “And uh. Thanks but. Let’s rain-check dinner. There’s uh. There’s actually something pretty time sensitive going on.
Bruce stilled. “Oh?” he said.
“Yeah,” Tim said, pulling back. “Alfie, please put the plate down. Uh. Maybe you both might want to have a seat before I drop the bomb.”
Bruce and Alfred exchanged a look. Bruce took his seat at the head of the table, and Alfred broke his rigid sense of decorum and perched warily on one of the dining chairs too.
“So,” Tim said. “As you know, sometimes things happen in the multiverse and things… glitch. Get a bit weird. Sometimes, those glitches are minor and can barely be detected. Sometimes, the universe glitches because Superboy-Prime punches reality really hard and a boy who should be dead just. Stops being dead.”
“What?” Bruce asked, feeling like he was losing contact with his physical form. “Tim, what?”
“Jason’s alive,” Tim said. “It’s been seven months. That means he’s made it out of the grave and is comatose in the hospital right now. Or has been dug up from his grave and chucked into a Lazarus Pit. Um. Once again, there was some multiversal timeline merging going on, it gets kind of murky sometimes. But those are the versions that he’s told me about.”
“Jason,” Bruce repeated. Alfred said nothing, but put his face in his hands.
“Yes,” Tim said. “No time to be shocked, he’s comatose and half brain-dead. It took a Lazarus Pit to put his head back together last time, but he had the pit madness after that for some time, and it messed him up pretty bad. Plus there was some manipulation. Talia got to him, the bit-... Sorry. Also, there’s something else about Talia I gotta tell you, but that can wait for after we get Jason home. I’m going to go hack Drake Industries’ system and get some medical equipment delivered to the manor, Alfred, you set up a room for him. Bruce. Batman. You need to look in the records of every hospital in Gotham for a comatose John Doe that matches Jason’s description. Can you do that? If not, I can take care of it. Oh second thought, scrap that. The two of you take a moment to process. Go have a manly crying session or whatever. I’m going to take care of it. I’ll let you know when I figure it out. In the meanwhile, why don’t you go find a few changes of clothes for Jason. Clean out his room and put his things back out again. He’ll need his memory jogged, most likely.”
With that, Tim turned and disappeared from the room with all the speed of a Flash. Bruce stared dumbly after him, stupefied and felling like he had lost all grasp on reality.
“Jason,” said Alfred, with his voice barely maintaining his iron-clad decorum. “I…I don’t know if I want to believe Master Tim. I don’t know if I can believe him.”
Bruce picked up a floret of broccoli with his fingers. It hand gone cold. He closed his hand around it and felt it turn to mush in his hand. His hand, which was shaking. He was probably just having a hallucination. Maybe he’d gotten a dose of the poison from the Obeah Man after all.
Bruce opened his hand and let the piece of broccoli fall back onto his plate.
“Don’t play with your food, Bruce,” Alfred said sharply.
“Sorry Alfred,” Bruce said reflexively. He wiped his hand off on his napkin. Distantly, he heard the sound of Alfred waking out of the room. He would be going to the kitchen to polish the silverware. That was what Alfred did when he felt that his life was spiraling out of control.
Bruce stared at his cold dinner. He attempted to count his breaths and to center himself, but the impossibly loud pounding of blood in his ears drowned out every attempt at rational thought.
It could not have been more than a minute later when Tim came back into the room. He had a printout clutched in his hand. Bruce blinked. There was a piece of paper on the table in front of him. Where had his plate gone? Oh, someone had moved it aside.
Bruce stared blankly at the piece of paper, not sure what he was supposed to do with it.
“Bruce,” Tim said. “Bruce!”
Bruce looked up at the sharpness in Tim’s voice. It was a reflex to protect a Robin in distress. Bruce dug his nails into the palm of his hand and used the light sting of pain to center himself.
Tim had found a boy that matched Jason’s description. Comatose, suffering from wounds that matched Jason’s. Hit by a car near the cemetery two days ago, then taken to the hospital while still covered in dirt. No match for fingerprints on any system. Blue eyes, dark hair, pale skin, mid teens.
What cemented the identity of the John Doe was the photograph on file. A pale face covered in bruises, with light burns and abrasions visible on one cheek. Someone must have washed his face and hair clean for the photo, because there was no…no blood. The face was bruised, swollen, scarred, but it was also the dear, beloved face of Jason Todd, looking almost exactly the same as the last time that Bruce had seen him while preparing his body for burial. Bruce hadn’t been able to justify the security risk of a mortician, so he’d prepared the body himself, with Alfred’s help.
“-ce, Bruce!”
Bruce startled, eyes snapping to Tim, who was frowning with worry.
“I’m alright,” Bruce said. “Where is he? Which hospital?”
“Gotham General,” Tim said gently. Bruce looked at the file again. Ah, there it was, right on the letterhead. Gotham General Hospital. He’d been there with Tim just yesterday, to visit Tim’s father. He’d been in the same building. God, the coma patients were probably kept in the same ward. He had most likely passed Jason by and not even noticed. What the fuck kind of detective was he? What the fuck kind of father was he supposed to be? Well. The kind that let his kid get beaten to death by the fucking Joker, that was what.
Tim touched Bruce on the arm.
“You don’t have to go today,” he said gently.
“I’m going,” Bruce said, before he even realized he’d opened his mouth.
“We are going,” Alfred said quietly, standing in the doorway to the kitchen.
Tim looked at Bruce and Alfred.
“I’ve already called a cab,” he said. “Don’t argue. Neither of you are in a state to drive, and I’m not used to driving in my current form.”
“The Batmobile,” Bruce began, but didn’t have the energy to finish the rest of his argument. Sure, the Batmobile had autopilot. But he wasn’t even sure he was up to being Batman at that very moment.
“Come on,” Tim said encouragingly. “Why don’t we go get our coats? It’s cold and raining out. I’ll fetch the umbrellas while you two get dressed.”
Bruce didn’t have a single thought left in his brain that was coherent or productive, so he forced himself to do as he was told. He went to the coat room and put on the overcoat that he’d worn earlier today. He was pretty sure it didn’t match his pyjamas and dressing gown, but he didn’t give a damn and he didn’t want to go get changed. His dressing room was upstairs, and too far away.
Alfred met him at the door, wearing a hat in addition to his thick coat. He said nothing about Bruce’s disgraceful state of undress. Tim appeared with an umbrella for each of them and a leather briefcase in hand.
“Documents,” Tim supplied helpfully when he noticed Bruce looking at the briefcase. Ah. It was one of the briefcases from Bruce’s study. “C’mon,” Tim added, nudging Bruce and Alfred. “Car’s here.”
“Master Tim.” Alfred said suddenly. “I… You go on ahead. I need to. I need to make the house ready for Master Jason. I…I have a lot of cleaning and organizing to do.”
With that, Alfred abandoned his umbrella to the umbrella stand and jogged back into the house, banging doors as he went.
Bruce looked at Tim, then at the direction that Alfred had gone. He felt lost. Were they not going then?
“We’re going,” Tim said firmly. "Alfred just needs a moment. He can come tomorrow."
He took Bruce by the hand and pulled him out the door. The light drizzle of rain that Bruce had noticed earlier in the evening had turned into a downpour that washed over Bruce like the icy touch of death. However, the cold was fleeting. An umbrella appeared over Bruce’s head. Tim had raised his umbrella over both their heads once he’d realized that Bruce wasn’t going to open his own umbrella.
There was a car waiting out in front, a sleek black taxicab, the kind that you only really saw in Bristol or in the Gotham CBD. Tim lead Bruce to the cab by the hand. The passenger window rolled down.
“Mr Wayne?” The cabbie called, raising his voice to be heard over the downpour. Tim stuffed the umbrella in Bruce’s hand and bent to greet the cabbie.
“That’s us,” said Tim. “We’re going to Gotham General. Reckon you can make the trip?”
“It’s a little past visiting hours,” said the cabbie, “but sure. It’ll be a quick drive. Shouldn’t be too much traffic this time of the evening.”
Tim opened the door for Bruce and pushed Bruce inside, taking the umbrellas from him. Then he circled around and got in from the other side.
“Sorry about the umbrellas,” Tim said, angling to keep the umbrellas dripping on the carpet of the foot-well and not the upholstery. “Bruce, your seat-belt.”
Bruce put his seat-belt on.
The cabbie must have sensed, from their destination, and from the tense expression on their faces, that this was not a trip which might have been made more pleasant with small talk.
Bruce stared mutely out the window, half hypnotized by the movement of the windshield wipers. The roads of Bristol were dimly lit and mostly empty, but Gotham glittered bright and beautiful across the river. As the car crossed the bridge into Gotham proper, Bruce felt himself start to shiver.
“You cold, B?” Tim murmured. The cabbie, hearing this, silently turned up the heat on the AC.
Bruce shook his head. Then he sat there, just shaking. His heart pounded in his ears. His vision blurred. Desperately, almost out of reflex, his hand sought Robin’s arm, and was relieved to find him warm and alive. Tim unbuckled his seat-belt and shifted over so that he was in the middle seat, then bucked himself back in. His body, small and slight as it was, was warm and heavy against Bruce’s side.
“Are you sure?” Bruce said. “What if. What if it’s a. A plot. A scheme. How do you know? Can I trust you?”
Tim shushed Bruce.
“We can talk it over when we’re there,” he said pointedly. Bruce belatedly remembered that it was a cabbie and not Alfred in the driver’s seat.
Bruce subsided. He felt his anguish and his hope and his terror and his joy whirling inside of him, encompassed by a sense of disbelieve and unreality. He gripped Robin’s arm tightly, reassuring himself.
“Bruce, we’re here,” Robin said, and Bruce registered Robin undoing his seat-belt and paying the fare. Belatedly, Bruce unbuckled himself too.
“Thanks,” he said dazedly, in the vague direction of the driver, then opened the door and walked out into the pouring rain. The front steps of Gotham General’s reception building were lit with bright warm lights. He walked towards that patch of light, vaguely registering the sound of Tim closing the car door for him and then jogging to catch up.
“C’mon,” Tim said again. He took Bruce by the arm and steered him toward the reception area. “Stay quiet and back me up, okay?”
Bruce blinked at Tim. “Okay,” he said.
Tim pushed the door open.
“Good evening,” Tim said to the woman at the general reception desk. “I’m Tim Drake. This is Bruce Wayne. I’m sure you know who he is. Anyway. My dad is here, but um. Yesterday, when I visited my dad. I saw a boy here that I recognized. Jason Todd. Mr Wayne’s son. We’re neighbors, um. But. Mr Wayne doesn’t. Didn’t know that Jason was alive. Or here. He... He thinks Jason's dead. So. Could you please let us in to see him?”
“It’s not visiting hours, you know,” the receptionist said, peering at Robin through a pair of wire framed glasses. Robin burst into tears.
“I… I’m sorry,” he said, “but I’m really sure. I know Jason! We see each other all the time. And Mr Wayne hasn’t been the same since Jason d- since Jason went missing. Please. He’s gotta know that Jason is alive. Just. Let us see him. Please. For just a minute.”
Robin opened the briefcase and set it haphazardly on the reception desk. “Look!” he said desperately. “Here’s a photo of him and Mr Wayne. And here’s his documents.”
The receptionist blinked at the briefcase full of documents. She picked up the photo.
“One moment,” she told Bruce. She was probably pulling up Jason’s file. Or looking for a John Doe fitting the description. After some typing and mouse clicks, her expression changed and she picked up the phone. After five minutes, Bruce and Tim were on the sixth floor, the same floor that Jack Drake was staying on, and they were being guided down the hallway by a breathless medical intern who was doubtlessly starry-eyed about billionaire Bruce Wayne but who at least had a decent enough grasp of medical ethics and professionalism to not bother Bruce.
She lead them down a familiar set of hallways, stopping three doors down from Jack Drake. Tim’s eyes had darted toward his father’s hospital room as they passed, but had otherwise made no sign of acknowledgement. Bruce’s heart clenched.
Then, he realized that the medical intern had stopped too, and that the room was labelled with John Doe.
“He’s in a coma,” said the intern. “Mr Wayne, once you confirm his identity, you will need to speak with the police. He was found after he had been hit by a car, and the police are investigating.”
Bruce made himself meet her eyes. It took every single ounce of will left in his body.
“Yes,” he said. “Can we see him now?”
A nurse hurried towards them. The intern turned towards the nurse, expression caught halfway between relief and uncertainty.
“I’ll take it from here,” the nurse told the intern, who then retreated behind the nurse like a child hiding behind her mother’s skirts. “Mr Wayne, this way please. He’s been comatose every since he was brought in. However, the accident was quite recent, and we are hopeful that he may wake up soon. However, the chances of a comatose patient waking up decreases the longer that they have been in a coma. I understand that you had been lead to believe that your son had…passed away… and so I would like to make sure that you understand there is a small but non-zero chance that he may never wake up. I don’t want to get your hopes up, Mr Wayne.”
Bruce looked at her. “I don’t care,” he said blankly. “I’ll find a way to wake him up. As long as he’s alive. I… I have connections. And money.”
The nurse was sympathetic but almost pitying. “We will provide the absolute best quality of care possible, Mr Wayne. And the doctors are hopeful about his chances of waking up. However, it may be a long journey to recovery.”
“Let me see him,” Bruce said. He didn’t give a single flying fuck how long the journey would be. His son would be alive and coming home, that was all he cared about.
The nurse’s warm demeanor did not so much as flicker. “Of course, Mr Wayne,” she agreed.
She pushed the door open and Bruce followed inside. Tim squeezed himself in between Bruce and the nurse so that he was through the door before Bruce.
“His condition is stable for now,” the nurse said softly.
Bruce stood by the bed, staring.
“Jason,” he choked out.
His ribs felt incapable of expanding. There was something wrong with gravity. Bruce collapsed to his knees beside the hospital bed. Tentatively, he raised a hand to touch the lax, heavily bandaged hand hanging off the side of the bed. He didn’t dare look at the face.
His heart pounded in his chest. Maybe he was having a panic attack. No. Maybe he was having a psychotic break. Maybe he had pushed himself too hard and was now hallucinating. When he woke up, he would be in Arkham, just another Gothamite who couldn’t keep on facing reality any longer.
“Bruce,” Tim said, right next to his ear. Bruce flinched. “Bruce. He’s real. It’s Jason. Look, he’s still wearing that stupid little earring that you got him for his fifteenth birthday.”
Bruce looked up at Jason’s face. He didn’t have the courage to take in his whole face, but the ear, the left ear, bore a stud. Silver, in the shape of an eight rayed star. The star of Feanor, because Jason had gotten into Tolkien when he was fourteen and would not shut up about fantasy elves. Jason hadn’t worn it in costume, obviously. Bruce had put it on for Jay himself, at the very end. He’d made sure that Jason had been buried with his favorite trinkets and keepsakes. His first edition Austens, his plush rabbit that he pretended he didn’t cuddle with. The medal that he’d won at a state-wide speech competition. His toy Wonder Woman bracers, signed by Diana.
Bruce pressed the very tip of his finger against the little silver ear stud, and burst into tears.
“Sorry, Nurse Adelaide, could we maybe have a moment alone with Jason?” Tim whispered to the nurse. “We won’t touch anything, promise.”
Bruce didn’t pay more attention to how Tim got the nurse to leave the room. He sat on the floor by Jason’s bed, holding Jason’s hand, and shook and shook with the force of his tears.
It was a miracle. It was too good to be true. It was Jason. It was Jason. It was Jason.
“So,” Tim said three days later, after Bruce stopped wandering around in a tearful daze and Alfred had stopped stress-cleaning and actually visited Jason himself. “Jason’s not in a great place right now. And from what he told me back in my timeline, he stays in a coma for a year, then wakes up with not much higher brain function. Couldn’t speak, had no memories, could only fight. Uh. Don’t know if he would have recovered, but after about a year of taking care of him like that, Talia figured that he wasn’t going to get better on his own and throws him in a Lazarus Pit. Now, there was definitely also some shit-stirring and manipulation involved in his whole anti-hero crime lord phase afterwards, but the Pit madness played a part too. So. We’re not going to do that. Instead, you guys are going to figure out a way to transfer Jason into private care here at the Manor, preferably with Dr Thompkins. And once no one is going to blab, I’m going to wake him up another way.”
“And how exactly do you plan to do that?” Bruce asked. “Magic? Science? Advanced future medicine?”
“Hmm,” Tim said. “Uh. Look. So. There’s uh. The thing is. Hmm. You know about Nth metal, right? Well, there’s another kind of metal out there called Dionesium. It’s what gives Lazarus Pits their power. But the pits are impure, that’s why they induce madness. Dionesium isn’t without risks, but the purer it is, the easier those risks are to manage. When you and the Joker got thrown into Dionesium, you both temporarily lost your memories, but they came back soon enough. So, theoretically, if I knew where to get some, which I totally do, I could just expose Jason to it slowly until he starts to recover.”
Bruce was frowning. Tim knew it was kind of a big ask, to trust Tim about this, but Tim had been right about Jason being alive! Hopefully Bats would come around.
“I need more information on Dionesium,” Bruce said eventually. “Who else knows about it? I need to get my hands on a sample and test it first.”
“Uh, about that,” Tim said. “You 100% cannot get handle a sample personally. Um. For important multiversal reasons. Maybe you could get Superman or someone from the League to look at it.”
“And why can I not handle this?” Bruce asked dangerously, bristling.
Tim raised his hands, palms facing Bruce to placate him. “Hmm. So. Uh. That’s a very long and convoluted story, involving the Court of Owls, several evil parallel universe versions of you, an evil multiversal bat god named Barbatos, and the nature of the universe and the multiverse as we know it. Uh. Long story short, there are five kinds of special metals with cosmic power, and if someone is exposed to all five, they open a portal to the Dark Multiverse and get sucked through. And the most evillest version of you I’ve ever seen is waiting on the other side, so definitely please don’t do that.”
Bruce closed his eyes.
“And what are these five metals?”
“Well, there’s Dionesium, of course, and Electrum, which is what the Court of Owls use to reanimate Talons. Nth Metal, from Thanagar, and Promethium. Um. Also the last metal. It didn’t used to have a name, but uh. Hm. Some scientists named it after you. You know, in your honor. Batmanium.”
“Batmanium,” Bruce repeated, clearly thinking that Tim was a bit dim, or else maybe completely deranged.
“If you think that’s a stupid name, wait ’til you hear about the alternate universe version of Batman who is Doctor Manhattan named Batmanhattan,” Tim said, holding back a smirk. “You know, to stay on bat-theme.”
Bruce sighed. “In any case, I’ve been exposed to the Lazarus Pits before, so it makes no difference whether I handle Dionesium or not.”
Tim paused. “Huh, I hadn’t thought of that,” he said, feeling stupid. “Well, in that case, we’re going to go take a trip outside of the city. There’s a cache in the outskirts of Gotham. I mean, it does revive you and the Joker in the future, so maybe you’re going to die in eight years, but hopefully I’ll figure something out in the meantime.”
“I don’t care about me and the Joker eight years in the future,” Bruce said. “Take me to the Dionesium, and I’ll get the League analyzing it.”
“Sure,” Tim said. “No problem at all, boss.”
“And in the meanwhile,” Bruce said, frowning thoughtfully, “you can tell me more about the metals and the multiverse. And the Court of Owls. I thought that was just a myth.”
“Nope,” Tim said cheerfully. “They were formed specifically to fuck you over. And Dick too. Poor guy.”
Bruce rubbed his face. “The centuries old mythical conspiracy?”
“Yep,” said Tim. “They’ve been waiting to fuck you over since before the invention of running water or sliced bread. And I don't mean the general you, I mean specifically you, Batman, Bruce Wayne.”
Bruce groaned.
“He’ll be safe,” a high boyish voice said. “And he’d never have been safe again if he kept being my dad. I know how he would have died. Now he can recover and start a new life. Get together with Dana again. She’d be good for him.”
The steady beep of a heart monitor was not a familiar sound. The room smelt damp and stuffy.
“Ethically speaking-”
“I don’t need him to be my dad,” said the boy’s voice. “I’m twenty one years old, and I’ve got another dad who was, you know, an actual dad to me where he never was. I just need to know he’s alive and safe and not dead because of me.”
Jason tried to open his eyes, but they felt like they’d been glued shut.
He tried to say something, and managed only a soft wheeze.
The conversation stopped immediately. A hand came to rest gently on his cheek.
“Jason,” Bruce said. “Jay-lad, can you hear me?”
Jason wheezed again, then managed a tiny “hnng” of acknowledgement. He pried one eyelid open the tiniest sliver, then immediately had to close it again, on account of the ceiling lights stabbing into his brain.
He was down in the Bat-cave, in the medical bay that Bruce kept for emergencies. He could recognize those stalactites anywhere.
“Buh,” he attempted.
“That’s me, Jason, I’m here,” Bruce said softly, sounding like he was in tears. “Would you like some water?”
Jason grunted his assent.
Bruce slid an ice chip across his lips to moisten them, then fed it to him. After a moment, Bruce gave him another ice chip.
“How’s that, chum?” Bruce whispered.
Jason cleared his throat. “Better,” he rasped. “But. Want actual water.”
“Of course, Jay,” Bruce agreed eagerly. Jason attempted to open his eyes again, squinting until his blurry sight resolved itself into the vision of Bruce holding a little paper cup of water with a straw in it. Jason opened his mouth and Bruce held it for him as Jason sipped slowly.
“Mmm,” Jason turned his head, and Bruce whisked the cup away.
“How do you feel, Jason?”
Jason blinked fuzzily at Bruce, who was hovering with the full force of his overprotective bat-dad energy. It was kind of soothing.
“I’m fine,” Jason said. “Sore. Ow.”
“I’ll up your painkillers for you,” Bruce promised fretfully, immediately reaching for the remote.
“I can take it,” Jason said. He squinted at the little kid hovering behind Bruce, who was poking at his phone. “Who’s the kid?”
“Tim Drake,” the kid chirped. “I’m your next door neighbor.”
“You’re not twenty one years old,” Jason said.
Tim looked startled.
“No?” he said. “I’m, uh. I’m thirteen.”
“B,” Jason said. “Why is there a thirteen year old in the cave?”
“I’m your time traveling baby brother from the future,” Tim said. “Don’t worry about it.”
Jason tried to raise his head, but the muscles in his neck couldn’t quite manage it.
“Wh-” he attempted. “What the fuck.”
“Language, Jay,” Bruce admonished fondly, smoothing back a lock of Jason’s hair.
“I’ve texted Alfred,” Tim said. “he’s on his way down.”
“Thanks, Tim,” Bruce said. He seemed to be fond of Tim, but in a way that seemed strained and wary.
“How do you even know the neighbor's kid?” Jason asked.
“I tried to cheer him up after you were gone,” Tim said.
“Gone?” Jason echoed blankly. Where had he gone? He tried to remember where he’d been, but he could remember nothing but darkness, suffocation, and a horrible pounding headache. “Where… where did I go?”
“Tim,” Bruce said, alarmed.
“Amnesia is to be expected,” Tim whispered to Bruce. Jason could still hear him just fine, why was he hissing like that. “We’ll monitor and see how he recovers. If worse comes to worst, I’ll get in touch with Zatanna or Constantine and see what they can do.”
Jason made a noise of alarm.
“Don’t worry about it,” Tim said reassuringly. “You’ll be alright in no time. And if I have to make a trip to the Pit, then that’s just a chance to pick up Damian.”
“Who’s Damian?” Bruce hissed.
“You and Talia’s secret love child,” Tim replied.
Bruce made a noise like he was being choked to death.
“And Cass too,” Tim added. “She’s your favorite. A real daddy’s girl. I’m not sure exactly where she is right now, but she shouldn’t be too hard to track down at this point in time. Duke’s parents are alive and well still, so maybe I won’t get in touch with him just yet, but the meta powers are bound to manifest anyway, even without the whole debacle with the Court of Owls.”
“What the fuck,” Jason said, still unable to recall how he’d gotten where he was or what was going on.
Bruce echoed the sentiment.
“Don’t worry,” Tim said brightly. “We are all going to be one big, happy family. It’ll be awesome. You’ll see.”
His beaming smile looked more like a very gentle threat.
“If you say so, Tim,” Bruce said, uncharacteristically fond.
Jason gave up and closed his eyes. He had no idea what was going on, and he wasn’t even sure he really wanted to know.