Work Text:
Jason yawned sleepily as he made his way to the heavy punching bag that Bruce kept down in the cave for training. It was a family favorite for working out aggression, especially after nightmares.
Maybe that was why it was occupied.
Jason paused in wrapping his hands as he took in the sight and sounds of Tim Drake, Time Traveler Extraordinaire, going ham on the innocent punching bag. Tim was covered in sweat, skinny limbs sticking out of gym shorts and a tank top, both of which were drenched.
He paused after a few moments, glancing back over his shoulder at Jason.
“Oh, hey,” he said. “You want the bag?”
“Its fine,” Jason said indifferently, trying not to show how awkward he felt. “I can wait.”
“I’m done anyway,” Tim said darkly.
Jason raised an eyebrow. For all that he had no sense of boundaries and was kind of a control freak, Tim was usually pretty polite and upbeat. It was rare to see him obviously fuming.
“What’s got your panties in a twist?” Jason asked, feeling amusement wash away the cold terror of the nightmare that had driven him down here in the first place.
“Philosophical disagreement,” Tim said. He turned and gave the bag a loud, firm right hook to punctuate this point.
“A… philosophical disagreement,” Jason said. “Must have been some disagreement.”
Tim made a noise of disdain.
“Bruce and I,” Tim said, giving the bag a vicious uppercut, “disagree on the finer points-” jab “-of time travel-” jab “-ethics.” Uppercut.
“Bruce seemed pretty alright with changing the timeline so far,” Jason prompted.
“Oh, it’s not about that,” Tim muttered. He gave the bag one last jab, this one with terrible form and a lot of emotion. Jason winced. “It’s about how he thinks it would be unethical if I systematically ruined Lex Luthor’s life, career, and credit history using my hacking skills and my knowledge of Lexcorp’s future business decisions.”
Jason felt his eyebrows fly up towards his hairline.
“I mean,” Jason said, perhaps a little cattily, “you keep telling my why it’s okay that Bruce won’t murder the Joker even though he murdered me. I don’t think Lex Luthor is worse than that.”
Tim made an aggravated noise.
“Lex Luthor,” Tim ground out, “is a piece of shit asshole. Also, he’s not more crazy than the Joker, but he’s 100% stone cold evil, no insanity plea, no excuses, no nothing. Pure concentrated essence of cynical bullshit businessman with too much money. Thematically, he should be Bruce’s real nemesis, I don’t know why he’s so obsessed with Supes. When the Joker waffles around and pretends to be an anti-hero for a week, it’s because he’s gone crazier than usual. When Luthor does it, it's because he thinks he's too smart and cynical and rich for morality and consequences. He thinks he's so FUCKING clever, with that stupid ugly giant head of his.”
Hmm. Jason was beginning to sense that it might be personal.
“Screw Superman,” Tim said. “I’m declaring Luthor my nemesis. I’m going to fucking grind him to dust. I don’t care, I’ll fucking do it.”
It was very surreal for Jason to see a tiny thirteen year old boy with round cheeks and an overall cherubic look to be pouting and brooding and threatening famed supervillains. He had the uncomfortable thought that this must have been how he’d appeared to Dick, once upon a time.
“Maybe,” Jason began, motivated by the sudden feeling of his own superior maturity, “you could just… egg his house or slash his tires or something. Leave the white collar crimes for when you have a bit more hair on your chest.”
Tim made a high pitched groan, halfway between petulant cat and angry raccoon, then gave the sandbag a roundhouse kick that was hard enough to make it creak and groan.
“I didn’t send my father into witness protection and manipulate him into handing Drake Industries over to me just to have to listen to B’s stupid lecture on financial crimes,” Tim said. There was an uncomfortably intense gleam on his face. “Oh, if it’s too good for Wayne Enterprises, then that’s all well and good, but Drake Industries is fully disposable as far as I’m concerned, and it’s not like I’d be sloppy about it either.”
Jason paused before he replied. Perhaps this was a moment where he told an adult. He used to have a tendency to ignore moments like these and plow head-first into trouble, but his head wasn’t so hard that he didn’t learn a lesson or two from a crowbar. He used the pretense of pushing up his sweater sleeves to discreetly jab the emergency alert button that was linked directly to both Bruce and Alfred.
“Hmm,” Jason said. “Cool, definitely don’t do that. You’re starting to sound like a supervillain, kid. You can’t… sink to his level. You need to be better than he is. It’s not about personal satisfaction or grudges when you’re a hero. This clearly isn’t about The Mission, you’re making this way too personal, and I can tell you’re testing that moral event horizon. And the people who work for Drake Industries are innocent. You shouldn’t destroy their jobs just for an opportunity to get one up over some egotistical idiot whose daddy didn’t hug him enough as a kid.”
Jason was man enough to acknowledge the irony of him turning around and trying to talk Tim out of his vendetta when Tim had been the one badgering Jason and trying to get him to stop being mad at B for not hitting the Joker with a crowbar until he stopped moving forever.
Tim’s frown was more a pout than anything else.
“Tim? Jason?” Bruce landed with a thump, having taken the fast way down to the Cave via a fireman’s pole. “What’s wrong?”
Jason turned to Bruce.
“Your newest pet bird has just started monologing evilly about all the crimes he’s planning on committing,” Jason said. “Since I’m still benched from crime-fighting, I figured I should redirect this to you.”
Tim squawked, betrayed.
“Tim,” Bruce said, sounding tired. “Tim. You’re not thinking clearly, you haven’t slept for the last thirty six hours. You’re going to go to bed. In fact, we are all going to go to bed. We are all going to get a full night’s sleep to restore our sanity. Then, tomorrow afternoon, we are going to have a family trip.”
Tim crossed his arms, unimpressed. Bruce pushed on ahead.
“We are going to visit the JL,” Bruce said, “and Superman and Green Arrow are going to have a nice chat with you about why we don’t use our vast riches and the corporations with our names on the logo for personal vendettas, and also why we don’t misuse our abilities to vaporize our enemies.”
Jason snorted at the mulish look on Tim’s face.
“What are you laughing about, Jay?” Bruce said mildly. “You’re coming too. You can talk about your ethical dilemma with Superman and Wonder Woman.”
Jason immediately sobered up.
“Aww, B, no fair,” he whined. “This sucks, I don’t wanna debate Superman! You’re just doing this to be petty.”
“Wow,” Tim muttered under his breath. “Half a month with two kids in the Manor, and he’s already lost all integrity. Foisting us off on his stupid harem of lawful good boy scouts.”
“Superman doesn’t kill,” Bruce continued, pointedly pretending he hadn't heard Tim, “but Wonder Woman is an Amazon, with very different ideas of heroism and what it means to be a warrior. Perhaps you might find a discussion edifying. Now, go the hell to bed, you two. It’s 4am on a non-patrol night, and I have to be up at 10 for a board meeting.”
Tim brightened.
“Can I come to the meeting?” he asked. “I used to be pretty involved in WE, you know. I covered for you whenever you were busy or dead or lost in time. I was the best nepotism hire the company had seen in decades. Centuries, even.”
Bruce gave Tim the stink-eye.
“I don't doubt your competence,” Bruce said. “You can apply for an internship once I’m sure you’re not going to get the whole company nuked for financial crimes.”
Tim pouted.
“Fine!” he said, outraged. “I’m going to bed. You never let me do anything! I hate it around here, this family is a nightmare!”
Tim stormed off.
Jason met Bruce’s eyes.
“What?” Jason said.
Bruce said nothing, only smiled and ruffled his hair.
“Whatever, old man,” Jason complained. “Go the hell to bed.”
One Hour Earlier:
“No,” Tim said reasonably. “Making use of my future knowledge doesn’t count as insider trading.”
Bruce narrowed his eyes.
“Tim,” Bruce said, just as reasonably. “You have privileged, nonpublic information, and it would be unethical to abuse that. Definitions aside, the reason that it’s unethical stays the same.”
“I also have nonpublic information about your face,” Tim said viciously. Perhaps the sleep deprivation was getting to him. It had been a solid thirty something hours since he’d last slept.
Bruce just looked at him silently. Tim immediately wilted in shame.
“It doesn’t count because I’m not an insider!” Tim protested, face red. “I am the opposite of an insider. I am, in fact, an Outsider. Well. I was one for like three seconds. But still! I’m not affiliated with any of these companies, and I have no connection to any of their employees! There was no exchange of information. The knowledge spontaneously came into existence inside my brain, you can’t legislate against that! The SEC can't get you for having a hallucination that turns out to have been true.”
Bruce pinched the bridge of his nose.
“Tim,” he said. “Why are you trading your own stocks. I am literally richer than God, and your parents aren’t exactly middle class. Also, you’re a minor. Hire someone to do it for you.”
“Oh, so that’s how it is,” Tim muttered. “He’s not too good to fistfight thugs in a dumpster but he’s too damned good to trade his own stocks.”
Bruce’s stern, fatherly expression contorted briefly.
“Tim.” Bruce placed a hand on Tim’s shoulder and bent down to try look Tim in the eyes. “Tim. Why do you need to be doing this. There are better things you could be doing with your time. Like sleeping.”
Tim looked up from the stupid color coded keyboard of the Bloomberg terminal he was jabbing futilely at.
“Bruce,” Tim said. “Every single keyboard in this house is either a horrible mushy membrane keyboard or those weird clunky buttons that you have on your Bat-computer consoles. Pressing random keys on this colorful keyboard with a weird layout is the closest that I’m going to get to my custom hand built 98% mechanical keyboard with five layers of foam, three kinds of lube, custom switches, and a one of a kind keycap profile that I designed myself. I had to leave my one and only true love in the future, never to be held in my arms or be caressed by my fingers again, so until my rush order of components arrive, I’m going to be forced to type on and listen to the worst typing experiences on earth. The best keyboard in this house is your horrible old IBM buckling spring keyboard, and I hate buckling springs. Let me push some colorful keys on this keyboard that's connected to the NYSE, and maybe it will remind me enough of my favorite keyboard ASMR videos for me to be able to fall asleep eventually.”
Bruce sighed slowly. Then he grabbed the cord of the keyboard and yanked it from the terminal.
“You can have the keyboard,” Bruce said sternly. “Leave the dubiously ethical trading. And stop using my account or the Securities and Exchange Commission is going to start asking me uncomfortable questions.”
Tim rolled his eyes extravagantly.
“Bruce, I’m not an amateur,” Tim said patiently. “I’m not using your account. Give me some credit. The SEC are going to trace things back to Lex Luthor.” He swiveled the monitors in front of him to show Bruce that he wasn’t actually using the Bloomberg terminal, but rather was doing something arcane and mysteriously hackery on one screen while another screen showed a bullet point list of securities that Luthor could plausibly have insider knowledge of.
Bruce closed his eyes to process this.
“Tim,” Bruce said. “Are you trying to frame Lex Luthor for insider trading? Why would he even want to… Lexcorp also isn’t publicly traded. Why does Lex Luthor need to engage in insider trading. He builds powersuits and kryptonite bombs. He would try blowing up the NYSE long before he would stoop to insider trading like some sort of… some sort of coked up New York stockbroker. This is ridiculous”
“Wooooow,” Tim muttered. “Wow. B, way to stereotype.”
Tim supposed focusing so much on their street level vigilante activity made it easy to forget why people did white collar crimes instead of more sane and sensible things like smuggling firearms, or concocting gimmicky gauntlets of puzzles with deadly forfeits, or spraying down random innocent civilians with condiments for shits and giggles. In Gotham, white collar crime was when someone in a white lab coat threw you into a vat of something that bubbled and glowed.
Also, Lucius was neurotically strict about keeping a clean house, on account Bruce’s fun nightly activities, so Bruce probably never had to think about this stuff much.
“Well,” Tim said. “I don’t give a shit about why Lex Luthor would want to try his hand at insider trading. Maybe his massive brain needed a more intellectual challenge or something. All I know is that if he goes to jail for insider trading, he’s much less likely to be elected as the fucking president.”
“P-” Bruce took a deep breathe. “Lex Luthor becomes. President. Of the United States. Of America.”
“Yuuup,” Tim said, popping the ‘p’ sound. “Three years in office before you got rid of him.”
“I’m sure I didn’t get rid of him,” Bruce said, shifting uncomfortably. How sweet, he was still imbued with a last lingering vestige of belief in the sanctity of American democracy. Tim didn’t see why. Like Bruce said, he was literally richer than god.
“Wait til I get into his personal servers,” Tim said. “I am this close to finding something that the IRS would care about. I’m going to take him to the cleaners and then nuke his entire shitty existence from the face of the planet.”
Bruce frowned.
“Tim,” Bruce said firmly. “Do not do that. No. Listen to me. You cannot do that. That is beyond ethically dubious. We cannot judge people for actions they haven’t commit yet, we cannot stoop to entrapment, and we definitely cannot start framing people. Are you hearing yourself talk? I’m revoking your computer and network access for the next twelve hours. Go back to your room and get some sleep. We will be discussing this in the morning.”
Tim glared balefully at Bruce.
“I’m letting you win,” Tim informed him, “but only because I haven’t had a cup of coffee in thirty minutes and the universe is starting to whisper its secrets to me.”
He pushed his computer chair back aggressively, picked up the keyboard, wound the cord around it several times, wedged it under an armpit, picked up a gigantic mug with an inch of tar-like coffee dregs at the bottom, and stormed out of the room.
Bruce sighed and massaged his temples. Maybe it was time he sat his children through the Ethics Refresher PowerPoint Presentation that he made Clark give to JL memebers every three months.