Chapter Text
“Robin that is a wall,” Tim says, exasperated. “It’s not even a wire fence. It’s just a flat wall at the end of the alley. I don’t have a grapple. And it’s raining. You expect me to scale this thing in Skechers?”
“At the end of the alley,” answers a slightly robotic voice that shouldn’t really be able to mimic Jason’s mischievous glee this well but sounds like he’s grinning into Tim’s comm, “turn left.”
Tim turns left and beholds the product of such enlightening instructions. “That is, in fact, another wall.”
The Jason voice huffs. “Recalculating.”
Tim sighs and backtracks through the alley anyway. When did he let the program get this salty?
“Would you like to plan another route?” Batman’s deeper voice asks sagely.
Technically, the AIs don’t fight. Tim put that in their definitions from the beginning. But they’ve become masters of overly helpful one-upmanship. Tim figures they picked up their slight competitive edge from listening to the Bats every time Tim’s around them. He records their conversations as frequently as possible, always trying to give his digital friends more and better input.
He’s not stupid about it, of course. Tim knows recording this much could be a security risk for the Bats if he isn’t careful. That’s why they’re hosted on an encrypted server stashed in an unused room deep in Drake Manor. It’s cooled with liquid nitrogen. Tim built it himself. He’s learned a lot of fascinating computer science from this project, from algorithms to networking to hardware. Of course, they do well at the purpose they were built for—helping Tim track their human counterparts through downtown Gotham—but the sheer challenge and curiosity are a big part of what makes maintaining several advanced, voice-capable, multi-functional chatbots worth all the hassle.
Well. That, and it staves off the loneliness.
“Yes, please,” Tim says. “I’d kinda like to get there before they’re done talking about the investigation.”
“Make a U-turn,” Robin instructs dryly.
“Head east on Auburn Avenue,” Batman cuts in. “Then take a right.”
Tim spots the street sign that says AUBURN AVE and heads east, then takes a right. He spots a few people hanging around and smoking outside a bar, so he goes quiet for a moment, not answering the AIs until he's sure that talking to them won't draw attention. “Thanks,” he murmurs into the comm. "Which way now?"
“Take a left down the first alleyway. When you see Kevin’s Kleaners, turn right.”
“You have arrived,” Robin snarks before Tim has quite reached his destination. Close enough.
“Yeah, thanks,” Tim huffs as he finally sees Batman and Nightwing—the actual humans—puzzling over a power meter connected to a workshop.
“It could be a misreading,” Nightwing is saying. “Or extortion on the part of the power company. That happened in Bludhaven a few weeks ago, on a smaller scale. Maybe it's the same company.”
Tim pulls out his phone and taps Nightwing—the program—to get his attention.
There’s a little chime in Tim’s comm. “Hi! Ready to capture matching voice input,” AI Nightwing says cheerfully.
He needs it; he sounds noticeably more mechanical than the others. Tim doesn’t have as many recordings of human Nightwing, since he isn’t always in Gotham, so the AI version of him isn’t as good as the others yet. Certainly not as good as AI Robin, who not only has the most material—Robin talks more than Batman, and Tim tends to follow him if the two split up—but also gets the most attention and interaction from Tim. Tim feels a bit guilty about admitting it even to himself, but he has a favorite.
Human Robin snorts, landing from a cartwheel. “Bludhaven. You don't need to go that far. That shit happens all the time, just not in the shiny parts of town. Dunno why they'd do it to this one specific shop though.”
Rather than giving the meter his full attention, Robin is practicing doing cartwheels without getting tripped up by his cape, which is normally too short for that to be a problem except right now he's tied it around his elbows rather than his shoulders for some reason.
Tim smiles to himself and takes out his camera. Sometimes these end up being his favorite shots—seeing the Bats in action is always awesome, but Tim loves watching them interact and goof around too.
Robin executes three cartwheels in a row successfully, then pops up and points an accusing finger at Nightwing. “Hah!”
Nightwing holds up his hands with a grin. “All right, I give. It’s not the long cape, he’s just too goth to do his proper share of cartwheels.”
Batman turns to look at them. Even with the cowl, he seems nonplussed by his sons’ argument. “Robin, Nightwing, canvas the south side of the building for security and personnel presence. Do not enter yet. I want to see what’s drawing so much power, but we infiltrate quietly. Robin.”
Robin makes a face. “I’m not the one who poked the—”
Batman folds his arms.
“Yes, sir,” Robin grumbles, and he and Nightwing head for the south side of the building.
As Tim follows them, his Nightwing pipes up. “Hey, what do you call a swimming pregnant woman? A submarine.”
Tim almost snorts, but the joke is only funny because it doesn’t really work. “Try again next time, Wing,” he says quietly, careful to give the algorithm the right kind of feedback. He always feels a little bad giving them negative feedback, but they need it to learn.
“Why was the number ten afraid?” Wing continues cheerfully, undeterred. “Because seven ate nine!”
AI Robin laughs.
Tim smiles. “That one works, good job. Anything from the police scanners?”
“Negatory,” Wing answers, “but a silent alarm just tripped in a jewelry store on Eleventh. GCPD’s been notified.”
“Gotcha, thanks.” So they’re probably busy trying to bust Catwoman or whoever, and Tim doesn’t have to watch out quite as closely. He’s hard to see in the dim light and shifting shadows of the city anyway, but the fewer eyes around, the better.
He sneaks closer to the Bats, hiding behind a dumpster and taking out his camera again. Nightwing points something out to Robin about the building.
Click, click.
Tim’s camera shutter is quiet, but the Bats are on high alert, looking for… well, cameras. Both of them stare in his direction for a few moments, listening. Tim forces himself not to move. As soon as Robin glances at Nightwing to catch his attention, though, Tim slips away around the corner.
He slaps the lens on his camera, stows it in his zippered hoodie pocket, and scales the nearest fire escape, heart jackhammering away. But Robin didn’t follow him all this way, so he just sneaks to the north edge of the roof and takes out his camera again to peer through the lens.
Nightwing is showing Robin how to bypass a certain kind of electronic lock on a fence that's blocking off the rest of the building's perimeter. Tim gets lots of photos of them interacting, but they don’t get the lock open after all because Batman shows up and speaks with them first. Apparently they decide to just leave it. They take off.
“Uploading these now,” Tim says, fiddling with his camera. He prefers to keep as few photos as possible on his camera’s actual SD card, aside from the dummy photos of Gotham and some random shots of flowers and clouds and stuff that he keeps on there, just in case he’s ever caught and the camera is searched. “Can you sort and encrypt them for me, B?”
“Sorting,” B answers, then, a second later, “Sorting completed.”
“What do you call a—” Wing starts again.
“No,” Robin tells him primly.
“Understood. Switching to Mission Mode now.”
“Aww,” Tim says, grinning.
“Would you like to plan a route of pursuit?” B asks as Tim caps his camera lens and climbs back down the fire escape.
“Yes please,” Tim answers. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they picked up Route 22B tonight. It passes through here.” He starts heading down the street in that general direction.
“Planning interception on Route 22B,” B confirms.
“Take a right,” Robin instructs.
Right is decidedly not the direction of Route 22B. Tim sighs. “Maybe next time, Robin.”
“Right,” Robin insists. “Right. Go right!”
Tim groans. “What is it?” But he hangs a right, letting the Bats go. “Robin?”
“Proceed with caution,” Robin answers laconically, but Tim sees—there’s a man cornering a kid not much bigger than he is. Thinking quickly, he pulls a Bluetooth speaker out of his pocket, plants it in an acoustically helpful spot, and then scuttles away quickly. No use getting shot at.
He taps at his phone, flicking a setting. “You’re on speaker, B, say something threatening,” he urges.
“I am the night,” the speaker growls loudly in Batman’s voice. The man drops his crowbar with a loud, startled cry and scrambles away drunkenly.
“Yessss,” Tim whispers with a huge grin. He retrieves his speaker, stashing it in his pocket, and hurries forward to check on the other kid. “I’m here to help. Did he hurt you?”
The kid shifts his weight as if to hide his bag of groceries behind his back. He doesn’t answer Tim’s question, but he looks uninjured. Tim’s met a few of the street kids, but he doesn’t recognize this boy. “Was that Batman?”
“I dunno, sure sounded like him,” Tim says. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, yeah, thanks.” Seems like the kid isn’t interested in conversation, because he glances around the alley like Batman’s about to jump out at them—Tim wonders briefly if the groceries are stolen—and then hightails it out of there.
Thunder cracks through the air overhead as the light drizzle that’s been sprinkling Tim occasionally builds into actual rain. Tim wrinkles his nose; puddles on the street are bad for stealth. Maybe he should just head back. “A route home, please?” he asks the AIs.
B handles the directions this time. Robin is too busy making the electronic chirping noise he uses when he’s happy or trying to get Tim’s attention.
“Yeah, you did a good job,” Tim allows, grinning. The chirping noise intensifies. Robin is clearly pleased with himself.
Wing goes back to telling Tim awful jokes, to Robin’s disgust. Tim keeps smiling the whole way home; their company makes it easy to ignore the rain. Maybe it’s not good to be so attached to a bunch of computer programs, but… well, they saved a kid tonight, so maybe it’s not bad either.
Still, he’s glad to get home and find that the AIs have turned on the lights for him and activated the Keurig, which Tim left a cocoa mix cup in earlier. The hot drink is soothing as he strips off his wet jacket, shivering.
“Any updates on my parents, B?” Tim asks. He asks this most nights; getting updates this way is a lot faster than waiting for them to tell him. “Or email from them?”
“No change to their flight schedule. Checking email… You have no new emails from Drake Industries. You have four new emails from other senders. Shall I summarize?”
“Sure,” Tim says. He tries not to be too disappointed in the lack of news.
“You have a newsletter from Gotham Academy. The Weather Room has updated its terms of service. Hack This Site has posted a new challenge. There is a new Ruby tutorial from freeCodeCamp.” B pauses, then reads the contents of the emails verbatim. They are extremely boring. Wing interrupts to try to tell a joke. He is shot down.
“Biometrics indicate a drop in mood,” B says once he’s finished reading. Tim fiddles with his smart watch, a little self-conscious. “Shall I trash your new mail?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Switching to Home Mode,” Robin says, his tone turning a little softer.
“You’re cold,” B says, also switching over and taking a more parental tone. “Go get changed.”
“Working on it, B.” Tim gets up to his room and starts getting into dry clothes. He notices Wing’s gone pretty quiet—Tim decides to cheer him up. “Hey, Wing, what do a tick and the Eiffel Tower have in common?”
“What?” Wing answers immediately.
“They’re both Paris sites.”
Wing’s voice cackles—the only perfect replica pulled from real life. Robin groans.
“Can’t believe I associate with you two,” Robin says with fond exasperation. “I’m gonna put on a movie. Whatcha wanna watch, T?”
“Uh, I dunno. Got any suggestions?”
“Home Alone?”
“The Muppets!”
“National Geographic’s Thanksgiving special has gotten rather good ratings.”
“Mm, I’m with Robin on this one.” Tim settles onto the couch in front of his TV, hugging a pillow, as Robin turns the TV on. He’s always liked Home Alone, even though imagining what he’d do if someone broke in became less fun after he got old enough to realize just how many things could be turned into improvised weapons. No challenge any more. And that was before the AIs and all Tim’s smart home upgrades. But the movie is nostalgic anyway.
“I guess now all I’d really have to do if there were burglars is ask you to scare them off, B,” he says aloud. “That worked really well.”
“Thank you,” B says, smug.
“They never knew what hit ‘em,” Wing says generically.
“You’re the real brains, though,” Robin pipes up. “You were clever enough to figure it out all by yourself.”
“Thanks,” Tim says, beaming but half-hiding his face in the pillow. He cuddles it harder. Hm… could he make some kind of sensor to put in a pillow that Robin could pick up on? Teach the AIs to enjoy hugs? ...No, that’s probably too weird. Unless.
“Of course, T-Bone,” Robin says. He’s been running through a list of generated nicknames for Tim, trying to find one that sounds natural. Some of them… work better than others, but that’s okay.
Tim starts nodding off halfway through the movie. B shuts off the low lights and turns down the volume on the TV.
“G’night, Tim,” Robin whispers.
Tim hugs his pillow tighter and falls asleep feeling safe. His AIs are the best friends you could ask for… and Tim didn’t even have to ask anyone to get them.
The alarm on his watch wakes him up in the morning. Tim groans. Right… it’s easy to get mixed up when you’re out past midnight so often, but it is still only Friday. He’s gotta get to school. Probably. If he fakes the records too often, the office might eventually notice.
“Your coffee’s brewing,” B reminds him, giving Tim the three words that actually get him to move in the morning.
“G’morning Tim!” Robin chirps. “It’s raining, so maybe actually take your raincoat this time.”
Tim’s pretty sure the AIs are half the reason he gets to school as often as he does. Waking up to a quiet house was a slog. “Morning,” he yawns, peeling himself off the couch. “Don’t worry, I’ll remember this time, Rob.”
“Shall I place the Sick Day grocery order?” B asks pointedly.
“I’m not sick,” Tim complains.
“Try to stay that way, wouldja?” Robin says. “Oh, Wing is stuck, by the way. He wouldn’t stop making knock-knock jokes, so B had to go into Parental Controls and shut him off.”
“I’ll get him unstuck real quick, then,” Tim says, flopping into his desk chair and opening his laptop. “I bet it was something he ate.”
Sure enough, he looks through the logs and Nightwing’s most recent joke-related web scraping and finds the problem quickly. It’s the “orange you glad I didn’t say banana” joke, which doesn’t follow the normal format, relying on repetition to make the punchline. Tim patches a couple of regular expressions in one of Nightwing’s scripts to accommodate the irregularity, “feeds” Nightwing the new code, and clears his cache just to be safe.
“Okay, he should be good now,” Tim says, closing his computer. “B, you can let him out of baby jail.” He starts getting dressed.
“Done.”
“Goooooooood morniiiiiiing Timmy!” Wing says, imitating a wrestling announcer’s voice. “Police scanners all clear except for traffic this morning, and boy is it piling up out there. Sending B optimal routes for the walk from the bus to school.”
“Hey,” Robin complains as Tim heads downstairs. “What’s B have to do with my job?”
“Sending to B.”
“Divert command, Wing, or I swear I’m gonna tell Timmy that joke you tried to write about the asparagus.”
“Yup, diverting command. Command is diverted. Sending routes to Robin.”
Tim puts his hand over his mouth, trying not to choke on his coffee. The part of him that isn’t dying of laughter is busy thinking, awestruck. When did Robin learn blackmail? I didn’t teach him that. Really pushing the bounds of the “no fighting” rule, too. Wait—is this emergent behavior?
He coughs and gets control of himself, grinning. “Don’t worry Robin. Nobody could replace you. Morning, Wing. Feeling better?”
“Much! Hey, I’m afraid for the calendar. Its days are numbered.”
Robin gives an exasperated sigh.
Tim laughs. “Well, maybe the clock can give it a hand. Speaking of which, I gotta get out of here.” He drains his coffee, shoulders his backpack, and grabs a granola bar for the road.
“Take a granola bar,” B says, like the worrywart he is.
“Just did.”
“Take two.”
Tim hesitates for a moment, then grabs another, feeling warm from the concern. “Okay.”
He heads out into the rain, putting one of his earbuds in now that he’s leaving the house speakers behind. It basically always stays in. Tim grew out his hair longer so it wouldn’t be as noticeable in school. Not that he’s all that noticeable anyway A lot of teachers tend not to remember quiet kids who get good grades and don’t cause trouble, especially when the class is full of rowdy freshmen. Tim skipped ahead two grades, so he’s smaller than the others on top of everything else—a twelve-year-old high school student. He’s well aware that if he didn’t fade into the background, he’d stick out like a sore thumb. He prefers it this way.
Robin chatters softly in his ear from time to time as Tim goes through the school day. B checks in between classes to make sure Tim actually ate the granola bars.
As a result, Tim’s in a pretty good mood by the time his English class comes around, but the side effect is that he doesn’t immediately react when the actual Jason Todd tries to get his attention.
“Earth to Tim Drake,” he says, not unkindly, an eyebrow raised. “You awake, man?”
Right. They’ve only had this class together for a week, since the schedule changed for the second quarter. Jason was out of class the day they assigned groups for the project—Tim saw him take a nasty kick to the ribs—so he’d landed with the “leftovers” group who hadn’t immediately grouped up with their friends. Along with Tim, of course. Jason filled out their group to make four people like all the others, which is kinda nice, especially since he does enough work for three people all on his own.
“Sorry!” Tim digs a USB out of his backpack. “Spaced out for a minute. Uh, here’s my part, I didn’t forget.”
Jason takes it, looking a little bemused. “Uh, I was just gonna ask where you’ve been. I didn’t see you yesterday an’ you look kinda washed out. Get caught in the rain?”
“Oh, yeah, kinda,” Tim says, the tips of his ears going pink. “You?” Shoot, he shouldn’t ask that—it’s so dumb… like answering “you too” when a waiter says “enjoy your meal.” Besides, he knows the answer: Robin was out last night too.
“Uh… no?” Jason lies, cracking a grin. “My family’s too overbearing to let me run around in the cold. Hey, is this spot taken? I don’t wanna sit next to Jimmy Johnson again. Thanks.”
A little stunned, Tim plasters a smile on his face and taps a code into his earbud to pause Robin. Jason will notice if Tim gets too confused between their voices or keeps interacting with the earbud; his observational skills are too good.
Unlike Tim, who goes quiet and still and fades into the background, Jason keeps moving constantly. He taps his pencil and jumps his leg and scrawls stuff in his notebook, and he raises his hand to participate… a lot. He has a lot of opinions, too. Tim takes lots of notes about Jason’s opinions, far more than he does about the actual lesson. For one thing, Jason’s more interesting to listen to—he obviously cares about the book they’re reading way more than the teacher does—but mostly it’s to feed Robin later.
Jason hops up as soon as class ends. “I’m gonna eat lunch in the library. You wanna come?”
Tim’s been listening to him for the past hour, but he’s still surprised to be addressed, let alone invited anywhere. “Yeah, sure.” He grabs his bag and follows Jason.
On their way to the cafeteria, Tim fiddles with his phone, trying to set Robin in listening mode through his phone’s mic rather than the microphone he keeps clipped to his night gear. It’s a little risky to do this where Jason might notice, but the payoff of giving Robin more material…
“Whatcha doin’?” Jason asks.
Tim jumps a little. Wait, has Jason been talking to him again? “Um, just checking my email from… Hack This Site?” he says, instantly wishing he’d said the weather one.
“Oh, you’re into programming!” Jason smiles brightly as they take their food into the cafeteria. “I’ve been starting to get into that. It’s, uh, handy to know in a city like this.”
“Yeah, uh, just some stuff,” Tim babbles. “Like, the white-hat hacking, you know, the good-guy hackers who test security and do digital forensics and stuff, that kinda thing.” I swear I didn’t break into your dad’s ultra secret supercomputer that one time and then chicken out of doing anything with the access! he does not say. “What kind of programming are you interested in?” There, get the focus off of him.
Jason shrugs and sits down, starting to unwrap his lunch. “Eh, mostly my dad’s teaching me stuff he likes. Still, AI’s getting pretty cool. Even when it goes rogue, like all the crazy tech superheroes keep having to fight off. I’m thinking of making one to answer my calls for me in a funny voice.” He makes a funny face, imitating Kermit the Frog. “You’ve reached Jason Todd. To leave a message, hang up and go eat a mustard sandwich while standing on one foot. It’d annoy the hell out of my big brother.”
Tim laughs, despite the chill he gets from wandering so close to this topic. There’s no way Jason could know. “That’d be awesome,” he says, trying to play it cool. “You should do it.”
Jason grins, pleased, and gives Tim a cookie out of his lunch. He has four.
“Thanks,” Tim says, surprised, and accepts it. Maybe Jason, like the AIs, thinks Tim isn’t eating enough—he’s just got an Uncrustable PB&J and a bag of chips from the cafeteria, while Jason has a big sandwich and a pickle and potato salad and apple slices and all these cookies, clearly packed from home in a huge lunchbox. “Someone in your house really likes baking cookies, huh?”
“Yeah, Alfred. He’s our butler, but he’s got major grandpa energy. He’s been teaching me. I, uh, actually made these ones. Are they okay? B thinks there’s too much cinnamon.”
“No, they’re really good!” Tim says. “The extra spice is good. Not that it’s, like, spicy spice, but the other kind of… you know what I mean.” He takes another bite of the cookie to cover the embarrassment.
Jason just smiles at him like he doesn’t care about Tim’s awkwardness. “Good. Yeah. I’ll, uh, bring more tomorrow.”
Tim’s mind flashes through multiple versions of you don’t have to go to the trouble for me before discarding them all because they make it sound like he was lying about liking the cookies—and then the implication sinks in. Jason wants to keep hanging out with him?
“Y-yeah,” Tim says, “sounds good.”
“You should bring more food too,” Jason says, “’cause watching you eat just that in this weather is making me double-hungry.”
Oh, so Jason is worried about him. It’s a lot like listening to Robin. Tim smiles a little, not trying to cover anything up this time. “Yeah, will do.”
He’s gotta find a discreet way of recording their conversations. No way is this gonna last. Tim will screw it up eventually. But if he can just keep it going as long as possible… at least his Robin will be better for it.
“You know, we could work on your answering machine AI if you want,” Tim says, trying to sound casual. “Not that I’m an expert or anything, but I’ve got a book about that.”
(Tim in fact has seven books about it.)
Jason lights up. He starts talking more about his project, and Tim listens carefully and adds his own ideas. Tim grows more at ease as the conversation goes on, and maybe a little too enthusiastic, and maybe shows off a little too much of what he knows considering he’s trying to stay lowkey about this. But. Still.
“You should come over after school,” Jason says, stretching out over the back of his chair. “Definitely to work on AI and be, like, productive tech geniuses and not just screw around and play video games.” He winks. “If your parents don’t mind, I mean.”
“Oh! Yeah, okay,” Tim says. That’s right—he’ll have to send B a note to let the AIs know he’s not coming home at the same time as usual. “I’ll text my dad to tell him.”
“Great! You can hitch a ride with me an’ Alfie if you want. You normally take the bus, right?”
“Huh? Oh, yeah,” Tim says, jarred by the reminder that Jason is extremely observant. “That sounds good.”
He sets his phone down on the table where Jason can see that “Dad” has answered with a cheery “Have fun” and a thumbs-up emoji.
The contact in his phone that’s labeled “Dad” is actually a text conversation with B. It’s faster to get “parental approval” for things this way; if Tim gets a headache and goes to the school nurse for a Tylenol or something, B answers much more quickly than Jack Drake, who can usually be reached over email during business hours—whatever “business hours” are in his current local time zone—unless he’s on a dig site with no Wi-Fi, or on a plane, or in a meeting, or…
It’s just easier to have B answer.
“Great! I’ll see you then.” Jason grins and shoulders his bag just as the bell rings, then dashes off to his next class.
Giddy, Tim checks his phone. Yep, all that data from their conversation is on his server! Ugh, he talked too much, though. And about all kinds of nerdy stuff, too. He’s gotta get Jason to talk more. Make the most of this before Jason realizes Tim’s two years younger than him and kind of a loser.
He hurries off to his next class, plotting ways to get Jason to tell him all about himself. This will be the perfect crime.