Chapter Text
Jesus Christ, it was cold.
Tim knew that it was wrong to use the Lord's name in vain, even if it wasn’t technically his lord since he wasn’t Christian, it was still a bad thing to do, but it was the only way to honestly convey how utterly freezing Tim was. The stinging, violent, icy cold that was biting at his skin left his fingers stiff and his teeth achy.
It was cold, it was the middle of December in Gotham where the average temperature for winter was between 25 and 35 degrees and that particular night was one of Gotham’s coldest, with snow coming down so heavily it was a safety hazard to drive since you could barely see five feet in front of you.
You wanna know the worst thing about it? Tim couldn’t even complain about it since it was his own fault. He forsook grabbing his coat when he left the house, he instead spent that time repacking his bag for his usual Bat-stalking essentials and backing up his camera onto his computer.
Now, his black, Cashmere sweater was sopping in cold water and Tim had no one to blame but himself because he was a total imbecile who somehow looked at the fact that Gotham was expecting to get around four feet of snow and forgot to leave the house with a coat or his backup blanket.
It’s not like he would let something so inconsequential as physical discomfort sway him from his stake-out, that was completely out of the question. It wasn’t just some dumb guess that Tim decided to climb the fire escape and set up camp on the roof of Gotham’s tallest bank on Burtley Court, right along the city's port.
It took months of rigorous planning that Tim is not shy of bragging about, even if it only is in his head, of researching other hotspots of crime other than Crime Alley that were still largely ignored by the city’s police. He spent nights staking out outside liquor stores and family-owned grocery stores.
He set up cameras on busy highways and small recording devices in thin, dark alleys. It is what made him so successful in his pursuit of- oh and there Tim was getting carried away showing off.
When Tim was six years old he had a babysitter, an older woman who was just a bit younger than his mother. She had long, yellow hair that was pulled into an extra tight bun and could barely pick Tim up off the ground with her frail arms. Her voice was shrill and scratchy, damaged from the amount of cigarettes Tim saw her smoke.
The second night she was tasked to put him to bed she told him the tale of ‘The Batman’. A half-man-half- bat that grew up in dark, damp, slimy caves underneath Gotham until it came up to Gotham's surface. It had wide, pointy bat ears that gave him an extra foot of height and sharp fangs like knives that protruded from his mouth. Its skin was translucently pale and he needed to cover it with a suit darker than the night itself.
She said that Batman could smell the depravity of criminals which marked them as food, the smell of food would draw it out of his cave and into the night. It was at least eight feet tall and three feet wide, it could easily pluck them off the ground, unhinge its jaw, and eat them with only three bites, using its fangs to tear through their flesh and eat their bones so there was nothing left before it used his wings that stretched as far as the eye could see and disappeared back to its cave before the sun came up.
She also told him that on top of criminals, Batman could also smell little boys that didn’t listen to their babysitters, and if he disobeyed, it would come through his window in the dead of night, creep into his bed, and before his eyes would even open Batman would unhinge its jaw and eat him hole, only leaving a pool of blood in his bed to stain his sheets.
She would mention it every day, whenever Tim wanted to stay up late or didn’t have his homework finished by a certain time, she told him that exact same story up until she w as replaced by an even older woman, Mrs. Mac, to be the manor's housekeeper when Tim no longer needed a babysitter. Mrs. Mac refused to talk to him about such ‘nonsense’ when she would come over twice a week.
He asked his parents about it the next time they came home and they weren’t against talking about Batman, so much so that Tim completely regretted bringing up the topic at all.
His father was convinced that he was conspiring against the government and playing the long game of bringing Gotham into complete anarchy.
His mother was the opposite, she thought that the whole image of Batman was just a myth, a folk tale that the Gotham police conjured up to scare people out of crime. Tim knew that his parents were wrong, and he never doubted his parents since they were the smartest people he knew, his father once took him to meet Gordon Moore so that was saying a lot.
At age seven Tim took it upon himself to track down Batman, find out who he was, what he was doing, and where he was going to be next, everything the police of Gotham didn’t know or wouldn’t put on the news.
He spent six consecutive 6 nights underneath his covers researching Batman on his brand-new computer. There were grainy pictures taken off of someone's balcony of someone in the air, another handful were just a blur of black, nothing of real substance that he could go off of.
The closest he could find to news was a surplus of conspiracy blogs written by geeky teenagers who lack real hobbies (unlike Tim who was geeky but had yet to reach double digits) who thought that Batman was secretly the devil from the bible or the mayor in disguise.
It seemed impossible that no one in the entire city of Gotham could post a picture of Batman, the Batmobile, or his numerous sidekicks, it was almost like someone was preventing any photos of the legendary vigilante from emerging.
One would think that Gotham’s government didn’t even know about Batman, which was impossible, more like they were choosing to pretend to be oblivious and no one dared to ask questions about it and break the perfectly functional system Gotham was functioning off of where everyone ignored that Batman existed.
He needed to prove his parents and babysitter wrong as well as satiate his curiosity about the total legend that was Gotham’s most famous and only vigilante. Shockingly, it wasn’t very difficult to beat the Gotham police at their own game and find a way to track Batman. All he needed was an excess of technology, money, and free time which were all things he had with his parents working overseas and his monthly allowance.
By the age of eight he had built up a system, he was able to use the planted cameras and recording devices to find out where Batman was that night and get his way over there with a camera in his hand to take pictures of him.
He found out that Batman was not, in fact, not a half-bat. His ears were part of a mask that covered the greater part of his face and he did not have giant wings that sprouted out of his back, Tim never found out if he had fangs or not but he had a feeling he didn’t give the fact that he has never seen Batman unhinge his jaw and eat someone, or kill somebody at all.
Even accounting for the amount of mass his armor gave him, Batman was ginormous, larger than any man that Tim had ever seen in real life. He rarely used weapons but he rarely needed to. Tim once caught a picture of Batman smashing a man’s face in with one punch, he even caught the man’s tooth flying out of his mouth along with a concerning amount of blood.
The sight of him or even the mere thought of running into him convinced most people out of a life of crime.
Tim never showed his pictures to anyone, in person or online because 1. If his parents found out about his ‘little hobby’ they would undoubtedly murder him. And 2. He didn’t need Batman somehow finding out and coming to eat him in the middle of the night.
Sure, he’s never seen Batman kill somebody but there must be some way Batman is making sure his true identity doesn’t get out and he wasn’t going to take that chance given the fact Tim didn’t want to get cannibalized. Would it count as cannibalism if Batman did end up being half-bat? Or would it just be half-cannibalism? Do Bats even eat people? Whatever, that’s beside the point.
After two years Tim had compiled 457 photos of Batman and his abounding sidekicks: Robin, Batgirl, another Batgirl, and another Robin, there are so many that Tim had to make a separate bulletin board to keep them straight. He had 63 voice recordings of Batman talking over his earpiece, talking to a mystical Oracle or the even more mysterious Agent A.
He collected a sample over Thanksgiving break of Batman and Nightwing -a guest star in the show that is Gotham’s crime life who mostly stayed in Bludhaven as its sole protector- talking in hushed whispers in an alley on Maple Street where Tim just so happened to have a live-action camera set up.
He listened to that clip around seventeen times give or take and it all led him here, currently freezing on a bank's rooftop.
Tim knew that during that week between the times of 9 pm and 2 in the morning Batman, along with Nightwing, would show up outside an old, seemingly abandoned warehouse only a few yards away from the building Tim was currently on top of where they were planning on busting a- well Tim didn’t actually know what they were planning on doing once they got there since he couldn’t make it out on the recording, but did it even matter?! He was getting pathetically desperate.
It had officially been two months since Tim had seen Batman in person and all his set-up cameras only got a few sightings of a silhouette of darkness in what was just more darkness.
He almost cried tears of joy when he found that small recording of Batman and Nightwing talking, even if it was only a two-minute and thirteen-second clip.
Batman was everything except for predictable, it only took a few weeks when he started for Tim to catch the hint that Batman was the dictionary definition of incalculable.
There was no algorithm or mathematical equation that he could use to predict where he was going to be or if he was going to be out at all. Tim never saw him two nights in a row and there were plenty of months where he would completely disappear off the radar.
That didn’t stop Tim from looking for him nearly every night or keeping an eye on his cameras for the nights he couldn’t find a way to get from Bristol to downtown Gotham.
Tim had spent from sunset to sunrise on that goddamn building- mind his language- with nothing but granola bars, a rotting blanket, and his camera, just waiting for a mere sign that that night would be the night Batman would come back to Gotham, for the last week.
He had to be there tonight, if he wasn’t then Tim would probably pull all his hair out and throw himself off the building in frustration and exhaustion.
It was nearing one in the morning and the ledge he was pressing his body up against was coated in a foot of fresh snow, underneath that the ledge was usually inlaid with bird feces, and underneath that, given the building's overall hygiene, a layer of mold with another layer of bird feces underneath that.
The rooftops' putrid smell was so pungent it found a way above the city’s customary smell of car exhaust and dampness.
The stench of urine nearly made Tim throw up the first night but it became strangely easy to ignore. It must be that hundreds of the bank disgruntled customers came up to the roof to ‘get even’ which Tim could somewhat understand- wanting to get even, specifically, not so much the urinating on top of a 7-floor building- but unfortunately Tim got to be on the receiving end of their ‘act of revenge’.
These pictures better be worth it because Tim was so cold and so tired. So tired that time was moving so slowly and his body was slightly swaying from every small movement of the wind if Batman could have the decency of just showing up already so he could go home- sorry, sorry, irritation was a symptom of sleep loss, Tim had looked it up.
Tim kept his eyes wide, he had to if he wanted to have the chance of being able to spot him. A small rustle, or almost unsensible movement in the night was the only sign that Batman was somewhere close. Now with Tim being nowhere within earshot, it was like trying to find Waldo if you were playing Where's Waldo with the lights shut off.
He didn’t see him, but he could feel him. He felt the quiet rumble of the Batmobile’s engine. He couldn’t hear it but he could feel the way it shook the entire road underneath it, shooting its vibration up Tim’s spine even when he’s 7 floors off the ground.
The hairs on his neck stood up. fear, he felt fear, adrenaline, restlessness, and anticipation. He quickly pulled his camera up, laying his numb pointer finger on the shutter button.
He tried to steady his bitterly cold body, if his hands shook the pictures would turn out crappy, and then the last four days would’ve been all for nothing.
Still, he struggled to still his fingers that struggled to properly hold the camera. If his mistake of not wearing a coat prevented him from getting the perfect shot Tim was going to throw himself off the building.
He zoomed in on the moving silhouette with his camera, Batman was pretty much impossible to capture before he stepped into the light but Nightwing, who trailed closely behind him, was far easier.
His uniform was mostly black except for the electric blue symbol that adorned his chest and arm which made him easy to recognize and easy, or at least easier, to spot at night.
In comparison to all of Gotham’s vigilantes, Nightwing was the most fun to take pictures of. He didn’t avoid the light, actually sticking to taller buildings and always fighting with more flare than Batman cared to use.
One of his favorite pictures of him was doing a quadruple backflip off of a billboard, an incredibly rare feat that had only been used by Batman’s original Robin.
The two both fought with the same fighting technique of using gymnastic flips and tricks to block and dodge and while the first Robin used a bo staff, Nightwing used two escrima sticks which are two painful weapons, one needing more skill than the other which would come with age and experience they even looked similar when one has the ability to look at photos side by side.
Nightwing was unquestionably taller but unlike Batman who concealed a majority of his face, the robins and Nightwing only wore domino masks that covered a sliver of their faces and, wouldn’t you know it, Nightwing had the same jet black hair as the two Robins had.
He first caught a glimpse of Nightwing a few months after Batman’s original Robin had retired but he became more of a regular in Tim’s pictures once Batman’s second Robin ‘disappeared’.
How could you even describe the second Robin? He showed up almost out of the blue and the first time Tim saw him he knew that the first Robin was replaced. Even with the identical hair color, the new Robin was shorter but had more obvious muscle to him.
Unlike the first, the new Robin always fought on the offensive, more aggressively, and even wielded his collapsible bo-staff differently, putting more force behind his hits.
Still, the new Robin wasn’t scary, not by any means of the word. He smiled and laughed, everything Batman didn’t do. He also added pants to the Robin uniform which was good since Gotham was freezing most of the time.
Tim loved him, not in a weird, creepy way but in a ‘he’s my favorite vigilante of all time’ type of way where Tim admired him and the feeling of hope or created.
It was a winter month when Batman disappeared, Tim didn’t see him at all, not even with his set-up cameras, and at first it wasn’t unusual until that time continued to stretch until crime began to increase and the streets were no longer safe enough for Tim to go out outside at night.
When Batman did come back, Robin was nowhere to be seen and Tim would hear on the news about a new criminal that was left sprawled on the sidewalk overnight, beaten till they were unrecognizable, barely alive.
The news never said anything about how they got there but Tim knew. It didn’t dawn on him until two weeks later, that Robin died and Batman was beginning to unravel because of it.
He cried so hard he threw up and then he looked back at his old pictures and cried even harder. He went into his parent’s room for comfort and curled up outside their door when they inevitably kicked him out.
He didn’t leave the house after that, he didn’t check the cameras or even open his computer, he didn’t watch the news and instead tried to distract himself.
He binge-read his mother’s history books until his eyes stung and even tried to learn how to play the violin. It wasn’t until Nightwing seemed to set up camp in Gotham that the fog of fear and unease that covered the city in a haze finally dissipated and Tim came out of his hibernation and quit the violin.
And now he’s gotten distracted and lost sight of Batman and Nightwing. He squinted through the camera, even with the special lens, the snow had begun to thicken and it was now impossible to see anything on the ground which was just so, so, so fantastic.
He made sure not to close his eyes for too long, if he did he would fall asleep, and if he fell asleep he would probably get hypothermia which would mean he might either die which mess with his current goal, or have to go to the hospital which was even worse since they would have to call his parents. The thought of it woke him right up.
“Hey buddy’’ a soft, almost lulling voice came from a couple of feet behind him. Tim's head shot up but he refused to turn around. Was it someone working in the bank, could he tell them that he was lost? No, that’s just stupid, how could he get lost on a bank rooftop? The voice sounded familiar.
“What are you doing up here?’’ The voice was gentle but still somewhat unnatural like they were purposely pitching it differently. Definitely familiar.
Nightwing.