Hear it in your tone (you're slowly letting go)

by sexyPineappleMan

Chapter 11

Tim walks to the DI building flanked by his two bodyguards – Larry and Kevin. It’s miserable, being watched every second of his day from the moment he steps out of his front door to the moment he walks back in. The Commish even came to his apartment with a whole bomb squad to inspect it the other day, in case the Maronis had planted something and miraculously dodged every security system Tim has.

He’d say it’s overkill, but with McNary having been killed off with a car bomb yesterday, maybe Gordon had been right to bring the squad.

That doesn’t mean it doesn’t grate on his nerves to be driven to and from work, to have cops watch his building, to be watched every second to make sure he’s still breathing. It’s been five days of this, and Tim is already itching to be rid of them.

He’s survived just fine until now with no supervision, he grumbles internally. This time would have been no different.

He knows it would be easy to slip away at night, since the Commish hadn’t wanted to push Hood’s good graces by stationing more than one patrol car to watch Tim. It’s not ideal security, and Tim is grateful for it. He needs to give Hood a basket of chocolates. He could easily sneak through the window in his office that leads to the fire escape, right in the patrol car’s blind spot. He could walk down the alley to the other side of the block, could keep walking until he got to the subway station and just… leave. Take a breath of fresh air.

But he’d also get chewed out by Tam if he did, which by far outweighs any pros he could get from a night of freedom. She’d find out, somehow, and keep him under an even tighter lock and key.

Stifling his sigh, Tim finally makes it to the front doors of his office building. He greets his janitor, Evan, who seems to be picking up feathers on the sidewalk. A bird – it looks like some type of goose or duck, from what Tim can tell – must have hit the windows this morning. Poor thing. Walking into the lobby, he greets the receptionist as usual, walking faster than normal to the elevator. The sooner he gets to his office, the sooner Larry and Kevin will be gone from his side, made to stand outside his door. Freedom, at last

The wait in the elevator is excruciating, and the moment the doors open on his floor, he’s out, forcing himself to walk normally to his office instead of running. It would be rude to Larry and Kevin to do so, even if he really wants them away and not hovering over his shoulder.

Opening his office door, he thanks them for their work with a smile. The moment it closes behind him, he lets out a deep breath, the tension leaving his shoulders at once. Peace and quiet, finally. He hopes this thing with Maroni blows over soon, or he’ll actually lose it.

He sits down at his desk, pulling up his email on his computer, when Tam bursts through his door, a stormy look on her face, brandishing her phone.

“What the hell is this?” Tam asks, slamming the door behind her. Tim barely catches the worried look shared between Larry and Kevin before the door shuts with a bang.

“I don’t know,” Tim answers, trying to read what’s on her screen. Tam has been so high strung these last few days it could be anything, really. “You’re waving your phone too fast, I can't read what’s on there.”

“An RSVP for an interview,” she huffs, “a live fucking interview with Bruce Wayne on GTV.”

Right, that. Tim groans. “Don’t remind me, it’s going to be unbearable.” He’d been signed on for that interview for months now, but of course GTV had to wait until the last minute to confirm who the second guest would be. So now he’s stuck doing an hour long interview with Bruce motherfucking Wayne sitting right next to him. If he hadn’t thought the Bats were watching him after Dick showed up at the gym, he sure is now. Bruce Wayne doesn’t do interviews on live TV, not since the Vicki Vale fiasco four years ago.

“Oh, let go of your beef with Wayne for five seconds,” she snaps. “That’s in two days. You’ve got the Maroni family up your ass and you’re going on live TV?” she asks incredulously. Tim tries not to wince. She’s not wrong about this being a bad idea.

“Have you talked to Priya about this?” Tim asks, reasonably. As head of PR, she’d been spinning tales of ‘looking strong’ and ‘putting on a brave face’ or whatever. Tim just did whatever she asked of him and hoped she didn’t steal his soul or something. Since the almost-civil-war debacle of two weeks ago, she’s been pretty calm, but this whole thing with Maroni has fired her back up. He doesn’t want to go do an interview with Bruce Wayne by his side, but Priya made it known that it was non-negotiable if he wants to ditch the Wayne New Years party.

So there he will be, in two days, sitting with Bruce Wayne on live TV. Yay.

A dark look crosses Tam’s face. “Of course she’s involved,” she growls.

“Look, yes Priya’s involved,” Tim admits. “But she’s right, I can’t just hide for the rest of my life. I’m going crazy here,” he tells Tam, voice rising. He can live his life like normal, he can go to damn interviews if he wants. “I’m going, and it’s final,” Tim says sternly.

“Do you know how much of a security risk that is?” she hisses, starting to pace his office. “You could die, Tim. Die. Do I need to spell it out for you? D–” she starts.

“Tam, I’m going,” Tim repeats, interrupting her. “I’m tired of being treated like I’m made out of glass.”

“Fine,” she snaps, clearly unhappy with it. “Go test fate if you want, but I’m in charge of security, Priya be damned,” she adds, the last part of her sentence spit out between clenched teeth. “We’ll have to brief the director, and alert the GTV’s security,” she starts to mumble more to herself than to Tim. “We could bring in more of our guys and place them in the audience. Actually, scratch that, we should just replace the audience –”

“Tam, be serious,” he says, pinching the bridge of his nose out of exasperation. “We can’t replace the live audience with our security team.” It would cost thousands for the salary alone, even without compensating the sold tickets to be in the audience. He’s not sure GTV would even let them.

She stops pacing just long enough to give him a withering glare. “We could and you would be safe, since you insist on going to this stupid interview.”

“Tam, you know how important this kind of press is for us, ” Tim sighs. He has a persona to maintain, and live interviews on talk shows are the best way to keep it up.

“That was before you went and made yourself the target of one of the biggest crime families in the city,” she snaps, pointing a finger in his face. He looks at her flatly and she lowers it, taking in a deep breath.

“Tam– Tam, look at me,” he says, walking around his desk to grab her shoulders. “There have been no direct threats. Yes,” he adds quickly when he sees she’s opening her mouth to argue, “there has been suspicious movement from the Maronis, I know that.” It’s all he’s been hearing about all week. “But we’ve alerted the Commish, we’ve put security on high alert, and I’m walking around with at least one bodyguard all day.” He squeezes her shoulders reassuringly. “I’m fine, I’ll be fine, and we’ve done all we can. Calm down,” he tells her.

She still frowns. “You could be wearing a bulletproof vest,” she grumbles, but Tim knows he’s won.

“Tam, I’m not wearing a bulletproof vest,” he sighs, pulling his hands back from her shoulders. “This is Gotham, everyone knows to aim for the head if you want someone dead.” She glares at him for his comment, but it’s not like he’s wrong. Gothamites tend to pop back up like cockroaches. “It’ll be fine,” he tells her gently. “Trust me.”

“Tim,” she starts, hesitant, “why do you do this?” She looks at him, misty eyed. “All of this. You don’t have to push yourself so hard. You don’t have anything to prove.” Her eyes search his face, looking for answers.

He gives her a small smile. She wouldn’t get it. “I have everything to prove, Tam.” He has to prove he’s worth it, that he can be someone his parents would be proud of. To himself, to his mom, to his dad, to Bruce, to everyone.

She shakes her head. “No you don’t, Tim. I don’t understand why you think you have to stick your neck out like this.”

“That’s okay,” he tells her gently. He knows that at least he doesn’t have to prove himself to her. “You don’t have to.” As long as he knows why he’s doing all of this, everything will be fine. He’ll keep things on track.

–

Steph makes her way down into the cave at breakneck speed, running after Damian. “You little shit,” she yells at him. “Give me back my CD.”

“It’s for a good cause,” he calls from ahead of her. Good cause her ass. She leaps down the side of the railing, cutting him off at the bottom of the stairs where they turn to the main part of the cave.

“Give it back,” she growls. He’s a few steps above her, holding her mixtape CD in his hands, a sneer on his face.

“I will not listen to another second of your Destiny’s Child,” he snarls back, pulling her CD closer to himself, “or worse, the Pussycat Dolls,” he adds with disdain.

“Hey,” Dick calls from somewhere behind Steph, “they’re not bad.”

“My ears are bleeding, Richard,” Damian yells back, never taking his eyes off Steph. She sees him shift his hands, putting his thumbs in the center while he holds onto the periphery of the disk. “It must die.”

“No, you fucking asshole, don’t–” she says quickly, reaching forward to try and snatch her CD from his hands.

She’s too late.

He snaps it in half, accidentally sending a few shards into Steph’s direction, slowing her down as she protects her eyes. She gives him a look of pure hatred, and he seems a little less confident. “You’ll regret that,” she whispers to him. It’s a promise. He lets the shattered pieces of the CD fall to the ground, eyeing her victoriously.

“Tt.” He throws his nose in the air, looking down at her. “I’m doing you a favor.”

“Oh, you’re not doing anyone shit,” she tells him, tackling him, the two of them crashing onto the small landing, both trying to throw the other one down the three steps left to the cave floor. Not enough to injure, but enough to hurt.

“Richard,” Damian calls as Steph uses her weight to pin him to the ground, looking to Dick for help.

“I’m not helping you, little buddy,” Dick answers, leaning on a workbench, looking at the two of them fighting. “The Pussycat Dolls are iconic, and I liked that CD.”

“Father,” he calls, louder. Steph tries to put her hand over his mouth, to shut him up. He starts squirming harder to throw her off and licks the inside of her palm.

“Are you bleeding?” comes Bruce’s faint reply, too far away working at the Batcomputer to see what’s going on.

“Profusely,” Damian croaks out, managing to wrench his head from under Steph’s hand, trying to sound pitiful like the lying liar he is.

“He’s lying,” both Dick and Steph say at the same time. With a grunt, Damian manages to break the hold Steph has on him, hitting her in the neck as he does, making her yelp in pain. They’re both back on their feet in an instant, crouched in a fighting stance. Steph is in the better position, with Damian between her and the short stairs.

“Hm,” is Bruce’s only answer, echoing through the cave from where he’s sitting. It’s as close to permission as it gets with Bruce. She gives Damian a bloodthirsty smile.

“We’re going to have a fun time, buddy,” she tells him, preparing to launch herself at him.

“I hope you mean that you’ll be doing a fun activity on patrol together, Miss Stephanie,” Alfie’s voice rings out from above. Her blood freezes in her veins, and she quickly drops her stance, standing straight and innocently. From the corner of her eye, she can see Damian do the same. When neither of them say anything, he raises a pointed eyebrow. “Well?”

“Of course, Alfie,” she says with an innocent smile. “We were planning on going to the music shop. You know the one on the corner of Twelfth and Crowne?” Aka the one that blasts early 2000s pop music and has mannequins dressed in juicy couture in the front window. “Damian just couldn’t help but borrow my CD because he liked it so much.” She turns to give Damian a shark-toothed smile, daring him to contradict her while she’s saving both their asses from Alfie’s wrath. He takes the ‘no fighting unless on the mats’ rule very seriously.

Glaring at Steph the whole time, Damian clearly bites back what he wants to say. Steph can see Dick behind him, trying to hold back his laughter, his phone in his hands. “I simply love Nelly Furtado,” he deadpans, looking dead inside. Dick can’t hold back a snort at that.

“Indeed,” Alfie says, clearly unconvinced but placated by the fact they’re not fighting anymore. “Shall I assume that the broken CD on the ground has no relation with the complaints I’ve been hearing about Miss Stephanie’s music?”

“Yup,” Steph says, not offering any alternate explanation.

“Very well. I shall expect to see which CD you’ve picked, Master Damian,” Alfie says before turning around to leave.

“You fool,” Damian hisses the moment the door closes behind Alfred. “I will not be brought to that tasteless, inelegant, unseemly, dowdy, unbecoming–”

“Trashy?” Dick offers.

“–trashy establishment you call a music shop,” Damian snarls, glaring daggers at Steph. She looks at him smugly.

“But Dames,” she says, faux concerned, “Alfred wants to see which CD you picked. You wouldn’t want to disappoint him, would you?” She gives him a shit-eating grin.

He glares at her a moment more, unable to counter her point. With a frustrated huff, he goes to sit at the chair of the workbench Dick is leaning on, curling up on it to sulk. Dick turns to Steph, biting his lip to keep himself from laughing.

With a smirk of her own, she picks up the shattered halves of her CD. She won’t tell Damian that she has the playlist saved on her phone, and that Babs has a CD burner she can use at the Clocktower.

Speaking of Babs, Steph can hear her voice coming from deeper within the cave. She’s probably on a call with Bruce.

With a little saunter, Steph makes her way down deeper into the cave towards the Batcomuter, making sure to leave the broken CD on the table next to Damian.

“Hey Babs,” she calls happily. “You ready for tonight? I’m so ready to team up with the Birds.” Since Cass is stuck in Blüd, Steph’s been cleared to replace her for smaller missions. She’s really excited to go. Goodbye boring bugging and uneventful stakeouts, hello action and adventure. “Hey, do you think Harley would be mad if I–”

“You have a new mission,” Bruce interrupts her, voice leaving no room for argument. Seriously? Just when she’s about to have a fun night? Unbelievable.

“Is it cold cases?” she whines. She hates doing cold cases. ‘It’s good for detective training,’ they say, ‘It’ll help you sort through evidence,’ they say. Steph says it’s utter bullshit and a way to put her in time-out without officially calling it time-out because she’s not B’s kid. She doesn’t understand how everyone else manages to stay sat for so long. “I already told you, it’s not my fault that your capes are all two inches shorter and now people can see your toes.” She still can’t believe Jason would try to pin it on her. “If it were me, the stitching would have been purple. You can’t punish me for that,” she warns, pointing her finger at him.

“It’s not that,” Bruce says, though he seems a little pissed off at the mention of the short ass status of his capes.

“Is that why ‘twinkletoes’ is trending on Twitter?” Babs asks under her breath, though it still gets picked up by her mic. Oh, Steph so has to send her a meme she saw yesterday. She opens her mouth to tell Babs all about it.

“Focus,” Bruce growls, his hand twitching to go pinch his nose. Steph closes her mouth with a click. “We’ve found Jack Drake’s murderer.”

“Captain Boomerang?” Steph is pretty sure they all already knew where he was, escaped out of jail and in Central City making trouble for the Flash. Did Flash catch him again? She thought all the speedsters were busy with a weird time loop thing. Why would B need her for that anyways? It’s not like the Bats are ever in charge of transporting prisoners.

“No,” he corrects. “Phil Marin.”

Steph freezes. Actually, she bluescreens. She’s pretty sure she’s making the sound that comes with it as she tries to reboot her brain. Huh?

“Phil Marin? As in the guy who tried to take over DI?” she asks, even though she already knows the answer. Her brain catches up to the implications of what B’s just said. “As in the guy who was supposed to look after Tim?”

Bruce looks incredibly awkward, though she can tell he’s trying to hide it. “Yes.”

“Fuck,” she says, draggin her hand down her face. “Fuck, I need to sit down for this.” She doesn’t really need to sit down, but this feels like some sitting-down-information, like out of respect for her brain that’s trying to process it.

She sits down right there on the cave floor, criss cross applesauce. Fuck. What the fuck?

“Further investigation into Marin’s bank account revealed a trail that led to Captain Boomerang’s account, with a transfer of 5 million dollars two weeks before the assassination,” Bruce recites, voice devoid of emotion. To him, he’s just saying facts, statistics, like it’s any other case. It doesn’t feel the same to Steph. It’s probably a good thing she sat down, actually.

“Why didn’t we do this earlier?” she asks. Why didn’t they do this when Jack died? Why didn’t they do this the moment Phil was caught for fraud? Why did they leave Tim with him? B could have taken him in, right? Could have kept him safe from Phil.

Bruce shifts his weight and clenches his jaw. He isn’t happy they missed this either. “It wasn’t on our radar,” he says darkly.

“It wasn’t on your radar?” she asks incredulously. “It wasn’t on your fucking radar?” Tim could have died, and it wasn’t on their radar? She has no fucking clue how Tim made it past 18, if he was stuck with Jack’s murderer looking after him, but fuck, the Bats should have figured it out. She should have figured it out. It’s all so fishy, looking back on it.

“Langage,” he tells her, calm as ever.

“That’s what you’re focusing on?” she asks, her voice pitching up in outrage. She can swear however much she wants, thank you very fucking much. This is information that calls for swearing, in her humble and extremely good opinion.

Babs speaks up, her voice slightly tinny through the Batcomputer speakers. “Tim Drake wasn’t a priority at the time,” she explains, stern but kind, tearing Steph away from her thoughts, “we were dealing with Hood’s return, and Damian showed up not long after.” Steph can hear the steel in Bab’s voice, trying to cover up her own thoughts about the situation. “Marin had no ties to any crime families or villains, and the FBI took the case for investigation.”

“The FBI is barely competent,” Steph sneers. “If it knew how to do its job, I’d be able to take holidays off!”

“Spoiler,” Bruce says, not scolding, but not gentle, bringing her attention back to him. “If you’re too close to this case, we can send Nightwing.” It’s both a warning and an offer. She has to calm down before B decides her emotions could cloud her judgement, or she can ask Dick to do whatever it is B wants her to do for her if she doesn’t think she can keep her cool.

“I’m fine, B,” she says, biting back the outrage in her voice. She can keep her cool. She can think about this like a Bat. She takes a deep breath, clenching her jaw. She’s good. She’s great.

“Good.” He turns back to the Batcomputer, bringing his cowl up onto his face. “We’ve sent the details to Commissioner Gordon so it can be added to the cold case, but until the FBI gets through the data, it can’t be used in court.” Another reason why Steph hates the FBI. Incompetent assholes. “It’s possible that Tim is undermining Bruce Wayne because he holds a grudge against Batman,” Bruce continues, as though he isn’t talking about himself in the third person twice over. Weird how he does that.

“We think he might have recognized the Wayne tech we use since DI works in the same industry, or that he’s working off the rumor that Bruce Wayne funds our operations,” Babs adds, to which B grunts in mild agreement. They fought over this, Steph figures.

“So what am I doing?” Steph asks seriously, pushing down her feelings about what she’s just learned, still on the floor. What’s happened has already happened. It can’t be changed. Tim is still alive, and Phil is in prison. What’s next?

“By breaking the news to Timothy, we’re hoping to lighten the grudge,” Bruce says, though Steph can’t tell if he believes it will work or if Babs convinced him to go with her idea. Probably the latter, but it could also be that Bruce is trying to make up for not saving Tim’s dad.

“So you’re trying to get off his shitlist?” she asks, simplifying Bruce’s words.

Bruce says nothing, which means yes. “Nightwing will be monitoring the cameras he placed at the gym. Timothy is currently there. He’ll warn you when he leaves, but you should already have enough time to enter Timothy’s apartment.”

“On it, Boss,” she says, getting up and dusting her ass off. As she walks towards the lockers to pull out her suit, she remembers what she’d been planning to say earlier. “And Babs,” she calls, yelling across the cave, “before I forget, tell Harley I’m adding to the bet.” There’s no way she’s letting this golden opportunity for both Harley and Riddler to chill out. B will understand why there’s a new charge on his credit card.

–

“Should we tell her about Maroni’s new threats?” Oracle asks, once Spoiler has left the cave on her motorcycle. She’d seemed stricken by the new information they’d given her. Batman isn’t sure whether it’s a good idea that he let her go after all. She’s prone to being rash. “They were quick with McNary, and there’s evidence they’re moving to–”

“No,” he says, cutting Oracle off. “I’ll deal with it.” He’s kept Stephanie as far from gang troubles as possible since she die– since she was taken to South Africa. He’s not letting her get involved with the Maronis, not when she’s so close to the case. Never again. “I won’t have a repeat of what happened with Black Mask,” he growls, pulling on his cowl as he ends his call with Barbara, cutting off her reply. Maybe it’s not fair, but it’s safe. That’s all that matters.

–

With a little too much force, Steph pulls back on her grapple, swinging herself through the streets. Her feet hit the gravel of the roof of Tim’s apartment with a thud, the impact reverberating through her ankles.

She hasn’t been to Tim’s apartment yet, even though she’s been working on the case for ages, too busy snooping through his fucking endless companies and holdings. Like seriously, why the fuck does he need twelve warehouses across the city? And why the fuck does she have to snoop through and bug every single one of them?

Because life isn’t fair sometimes, that’s why, she tells herself. She’s still mad Dick got the fun undercover bit of the case.

Looking around, she cases the building. It’s small, only a few stories tall, and looks pretty average for the area, though it looks more recent than most of the buildings in the Alley. It’s a lot less rundown than most places, that’s for sure. There’s an undercover cop car parked across the street, since Tim’s in a little trouble with the Maronis, but it’s high enough up the block that the bulk of the building should hide the fire escape from its view. Her eyes linger on the large mural on the wall of the apartment complex across a side alley. It’s of her – Cass and Babs are there too, of course – but she’s the Batgirl who’s front and center, her blonde hair almost a halo behind her head, her hand clutching red, yellow and green fabric. Whoever made this was a good artist. It’s almost ironic, how big of a coincidence it is that Tim lives here, she thinks. As if her ex-best friend was still trying to keep her close.

She tears her eyes away from it and slips inside his apartment, crouching on the rusted fire escape that’s thirty years out of code to break in through the window. From Dick’s text, Tim had left the gym a few minutes ago and would get back to his apartment within half an hour.

It’s surprisingly hard to break in. She should have expected it, what with Tim being the CEO of one of the biggest companies in town, especially one that deals in tech, living in one of the dingiest parts of Gotham. Technically, the apartment is in the Crime Alley district, but it’s one of the more affluent streets from Robbinsville that were added when the mayor moved the Sprang Parkway a few blocks over after No Man’s Land. Tomato tomahto, she’s still trespassing in Hood’s territory.

After a few minutes, she manages to slide open the window into his – she takes a quick glance at her surroundings – office without triggering any alarm systems. She makes sure to close the window behind her and to rearm the security system, so as to leave no trace of her passage.

She does a quick walk of the apartment, casing it, looking for every possible entry and exit point. She hesitates to hide bugs around his apartment, but finally relents to her inner Batman and hides one under Tim’s desk in his office and one in his kitchen, for audio recording only. She feels bad about it, since she knows Tim and there’s no way he’s a supervillain in the making, but it’ll make B a little bit less unhappy than if she hadn’t bugged it at all. She pokes around in his kitchen for a few minutes, having found nothing of interest in his office and only some strewn about clothes in his bedroom. There’s a lot of alcohol in a few different cupboards, she notes with a frown. If the police ever did a raid on the place he’d be sent to jail for a million years.

The apartment is strangely decorated, a mix of Tim and… plain, boring interior decor. Half of his apartment is alive and lived in, with touches she recognizes as distinctly Tim’s, and the other half is soulless, like he’s trying to erase himself. She shakes off the strange feeling it gives her. Maybe his design tastes have changed since she last spoke to him.

Her tour of the apartment done, she goes to wait for him on his couch, looking at the different movies and games he has stacked on the shelves next to his TV. Still a fan of Mario Kart, she notes, though she never would have guessed he’d be a fan of The Notebook. She grabs the DVD case, opening it up in curiosity, and a small paper slides out of it. She picks it up, reading it quickly before snapping the case shut and sliding it back where it came from. ‘I told you it was a good movie – Tam.’ Steph had never been able to convince him to watch it.

Lost in her thoughts, she barely has time to straighten up and lounge casually on his couch before he walks into his apartment, the slide of his keys into the lock her only warning.

Play it cool, she tells herself for no reason. She always plays it cool. She’s the epitome of coolness. She’d calmed down on the drive over, and now she’s super ready to have this conversation with Tim.

Tim walks in, looking tired and throwing his keys onto the small table he has in his entrance before opening the light. It takes him a second to turn around, too busy putting his – she thinks it might have been Popov’s first from the size of it – leather jacket onto one of the hooks next to the door. Once he does, he jumps almost a foot in the air, easily spotting Steph’s purple Spoiler costume on his couch. Steph tries not to laugh at him, her lips twitching.

“Jesus fuck,” Tim breathes, putting a hand over his heart. “Don’t fucking scare me like that.” he runs a hand through his hair, probably trying to put it back into place. It doesn’t do much else than make it even messier.

She decides not to answer him. She can’t promise that after all, she’s a Bat. It’s part of their MO. “Nice place you’ve got,” she comments. “Love the movie selection.” Okay so maybe she’s a little sour that his new, apparently perfect best friend Tam was able to convince him to watch one of her favourite movies when she hadn’t. Just a little.

“...Thanks.” There’s a small silence. Steph uses the time to look at Tim more closely. The only times she’s had a glimpse of him in the last few years was during galas or business events, where Tim was far away and covered in makeup. He’s not now, and it’s jarring. He looks tired. He looks exhausted.

She still can’t figure out why he went into business. Like, sure, he inherited his shares from Jack when he turned 18 or whatever, but… he didn’t have to become CEO. Okay, there was the thing with Phil stealing money, and the whole assassination plot he wouldn’t have known about, but why did he take over himself? Why stay CEO? He could have gotten someone else to play CEO while he still kept his veto power as a shareholder. She remembers how Tim had wanted to go to university, to continue gymnastics. His wrist injury wasn’t career-ending, he could have gone back once things settled down.

Instead, he stayed as CEO. He hasn’t gone to university, and hasn’t continued competing either.

Is he happy?

Looking at him now, Steph isn’t sure.

Tim clears his throat, bringing her back to the present. “Anything I can get you?” he asks, guarded, moving towards the kitchen. He stands on the other side of the small island, pulling out a mug from the cupboard. “Water?”

“I’m fine, thank you,” she answers on autopilot. She’s not thirsty. She has to stop stalling. She stands to place herself in front of him, across the island, as he fills up his own mug with water. “Timothy Drake,” she says, voice serious. “Your father’s case has been reopened.” Not officially, but it will be soon, when the FBI gets the tip to look at the specific transaction the Bats had given to the Commish.

He turns back to her, leaning on the counter where his sink is. “It’s been closed for years,” he says, a frown in his voice. “The detectives concluded it was an unexpected Rogue attack.”

“New information has come to light,” she says gravely, bracing to tell him the information. “As Phil Marin’s case is still being investigated by the federal authorities –” which is always bound to take forever since this concerns Gotham, but is also an excuse to cover the fact that the Bats are looking into him “-- more strange transactions are coming to light. One of them involved paying off Captain Boomerang, for the assassination of Jack and Timothy Drake,” she says, softer.

She hears him take a sharp breath. It can’t be easy to hear about it.

“We’ve already contacted the Commissioner,” she adds quickly, looking to reassure him, “he’ll contact you for a statement tomorrow, we just wanted to…” she trails off, looking at him. He’s still, leaning on his counter, hand clenched around the mug in his hands. There’s a tightness to his shoulders. He doesn’t look at her.

He says nothing.

The bastard says nothing.

“You knew.” It strikes her dumb. She knows Tim. She can still read him pretty well, after all these years. He knew.

He puts his mug down beside him on the counter lightly, keeping his fingers on the rim to play with it. She watches as he tips the mug on its base slightly before righting it, a nervous tick. He used to do it with his water bottle in school, whenever Steph asked about going back to his house for an evening, or whenever she invited him to hang out at Bruce’s.

“I did.” He picks the mug up and takes a sip of the water inside.

“You– what?” Hearing him confirm it doesn’t make it easier for her to understand. He knew? She’s been beating herself up about it the whole evening, thinking of how to break the news, and he already knew?

He looks at her with a cocked eyebrow. “I knew.”

What? What is wrong with him? “And that didn’t… bother you?” she asks incredulously. He’s just… fine with it? He seems fine with it, leaning on his counter like he has no care in the world. Most civilians would be freaking out at the mere sight of a Bat in their apartment. Tim’s barely bothered.

“It did,” he says plainly, going back to playing with his mug, spinning it on its base. He doesn’t elaborate. Steph has a bad feeling about it. There’s a sinking feeling in her stomach.

“And you haven’t– you haven’t done anything about it?” She wishes Cass were here. Cass would know what Tim is thinking, would know what the fuck kind of brain fart he’s had.

His eyes flash with anger. “I’ve done what has been necessary,” he says harshly, standing straighter. Finally, some emotion other than indifference.

“What has been necessary?” she repeats, tone disbelieving. “Then why haven’t you brought in the police? Or called the Commissioner? I know you have him on speed dial,” she argues, voice growing louder in anger. He’s been sitting on this for years.

“We have a mutually beneficial agreement,” he says lightly.

“He’s blackmailing you,” she says flatly, picking out the truth he’s trying to hide.

He makes a non committal hum. “Like I said, it’s a mutual thing.” He looks so unbothered by it, like it barely means anything. She feels like she’s just been presented with an alien copy of Tim, a bad clone who’s been given a fucked up moral compass to go with an assholish demeanor. He still looks the same, has the same tells, but it’s like there’s someone else who’s thinking.

“What did you do?” she asks, tone disbelieving.

“What did I do?” he asks with an ironic smile. It’s so cold it sends shivers down her spine. He shrugs. “Nothing, actually.” He finds this funny, she can tell.

She doesn’t believe him. For the first time, she has the passing thought that Bruce might be right. She feels like she’s looking at Lex Luthor 2.0 right now, like she’s watching the start of a spiral into villainy. She feels like she’s ten again, listening to her dad try to justify to her mom why what he’s doing isn’t bad, why he’s not the bad guy. She feels like she doesn’t know him anymore.

“Then why bother blackmailing him?” Why? Why? WHY? Tim makes no sense. “You do know that’s illegal, right?” she asks. Fuck. What happened to him? “Look Tim, if you’re in trouble, we can help, alright?” She’s skirting professionalism right now, offering Tim something she wouldn’t if he were any other civilian.

“Help me? Help me?” His voice rises in volume, and he stops playing around with his mug. She knows she’s struck something in him. She can’t tell if it was a mistake. “If you wanted to help me, you wouldn’t have sent the Commissioner the details,” he snaps at her. He rubs his face, as though this is nothing but another problem for him to fix. Like Steph is just adding trouble onto his plate. It hurts.

“The hit wasn’t just on you,” she snaps back, anger taking over. “Jack Drake still deserves justice, Tim,” she says, and the words burn in her mouth. “No matter what he did to you.”

That shuts him right up.

“You think I don’t know that?” he bites out after a moment, voice quieter but no less tense. She’s never seen Tim this worked up. He was always easygoing, if a little anxious, but never angry. She doesn’t know if he does get angry. “But all in good time,” he says, his eyes flashing.

“All in good time?” she asks incredulously. She can’t believe what she’s hearing. What the fuck is Tim involved in? “This isn’t a game, Tim. This isn’t something you can delay just because you want to,” she snaps, before reigning in her temper. “Look, let us help you,” she repeats, biting down on her own anger. She doesn’t like seeing Tim like this, so cold, so callous, so… different. She wants her friend back.

“You’ve already done enough,” he snarls, eyes glittering in the dim light. Steph can barely recognize him, his face twisted in an angry grimace. This isn’t the boy she knew in high school. This isn’t the same Tim who she used to play video games with, the same one who made her choke on her juicebox almost every lunch with his wry humor, the same one who let her make stupid memes of him and run his twitter account.

He’s angry.

Tim’s never been angry at her before. She’s pushed him too much.

It’s not the same, she knows. He’s angry at Robin, at Spoiler. Not at Steph. He doesn’t know they’re the same person.

It still hurts.

She misses him.

She misses her friend.

“Why are you doing this?” she asks quietly, not even knowing what she’s asking anymore.

He lets out a dry bark of laughter. “Ask that to big ‘ol Bats, why don’t you,” he laughs, pushing past her back towards his front door. With a sinking feeling, she realizes Bruce is right about Tim going after Bruce to get to the Bats. “Fucking omniscient motherfucker,” he finishes under his breath, barely caught by Steph. Oh, this is bad. This is so bad. Does he know? “Lock the door on your way out,” he calls, pulling his coat on and grabbing his keys noisily from where he’d thrown them carelessly when he’d come in. And just like that, he’s gone.

She stands still in his now-empty apartment, frozen in disbelief. She listens as his footsteps sound towards the stairwell at the back of the hallway. She hears the metal door open with a clack, and close with a bang. She turns to watch from the window as his hooded figure walks down the alley. Towards the subway, probably. She wonders where he’s going. She wonders who he’s going to. The Precinct? His assistant? Some other incriminating location?

“Whatever,” she mutters out loud in the silence. All at once, it’s as though her anger takes over her body, ever familiar. Fuck him. She turns on her heel quickly, her cape snapping behind her, and stalks to the front door, pointedly locking it using her lockpicks with an angry scrunch of her nose. He won’t see it, but it’s the thought that counts. She does pause a moment in the hall, clicking on her comm to connect to Babs’ line.

“Hey,” Babs’ voice rings into her ear, “done with your mission already?”

“He took off,” she says curtly, her anger clear in her voice. “I’m not following him.” She shuts her comm off before Babs can reply. She’s too mad to talk about it right now. She’s done what she needed to do, reported it, but she’s not doing anything more. It’s useless to follow Tim in person. Babs can do whatever she wants now, but Steph is done for the night.

She takes a deep breath and heads for the roof, intent on leaving this stupid friendship behind her like Tim has. He can go get shot by the Maronis for all she cares. She stops in her tracks when she spots the Batgirl mural again, her painted face smiling at her own frowning one. With a frustrated yell, she throws a punch to the AC system on the roof, a tinny bang sounding from the impact of her fist on it. It’s less satisfying than she’d like, and only hurts her knuckles. She hits it another few times for good measure.

Fucking Tim Drake.

“Hey Blondie,” a deep modulated voice sounds, a scuffling noise and faint whizzing sound announcing Red Hood’s arrival on the roof. “Is the AC committing tax fraud or something?”

She lets out a wordless yell, kicking at some stray pieces of gravel on top of the roof.

“Rough night, huh,” Red Hood concludes. He sits down on the side of the roof, legs dangling in the air. “That’s a nice mural,” he comments, as Steph pants with anger, her eyes burning. “I like that they added the Robin suit. It’s a nice detail.”

Steph can’t help but snort, though there’s not an ounce of laughter in it. She lets her anger go for a minute, biting out a reply. “You hated me in that suit. Tried to kill me, remember?” She moves to sit down next to him, swinging her legs in the air, her hands clenched on the side of the roof, head fixed determinedly at the mural.

Hood hums, tilting his head. “Nah, you wouldn’t have died. And you’re not wearing the Robin suit in the mural. That’s why I like it.”

“Right, just get me to the brink of death,” she mutters under her breath.

“See? You get it,” he says happily, knocking his shoulder with hers. “So, what brings you sulking around my part of town? Reunion with the ex-boyfriend go bad?” Ugh, of course he’d know about it.

“Hell no,” she immediately replies. “As if I’d ever date that jackass,” she spits out.

“So he rejected your friendship bracelet or what?” Steph has the distinct feeling that if Hood weren’t wearing gloves right now, he’d be examining his nails.

“Ughhhhhh,” she groans, flopping backwards to lay down on the roof. “I forgot how much he pisses me off sometimes.” And how much of a clusterfuck this case has become. Fuck, she can’t believe Bruce is right. Tim is a fucking supervillain now. B’s going to be unbearable about it now.

Hood only makes a low hum, listening. Steph barely hears it, the words already pouring out of her mouth.

“He’s just so– so stubborn, and cold, and mean, and calculating, and I hate it. I hate it so much. It’s like I don’t know him anymore. And– ugh B has a file on him, and I never bothered to read it, because it’s Tim, right? I know Tim. He used to be my best friend with Cass, and he used to tell me everything, and apparently that wasn’t true. At all.” She takes a deep shuddering breath, out of air. She can’t quite wrap her head around it. She hasn’t been able to, even though it’s been days since she’s read his stupid updated file. “He was supposed to go to the Olympics, you know that?” she says, a little more quiet. “I mean– you were gone, so maybe you don’t, but – he was meant to go. As a gymnast. He was so good,” she adds, her voice cracking a little, her anger slipping away from her little by little. “I used to run his Twitter, actually,” she says with a small laugh. “He was just so… captivating. Like seeing Nightwing for the first time up close.” Hood makes a small hum at that. She knows he can understand what she means. “And he was so happy doing it too – he’d almost never smile, except when he was in the air. He was so good,” she repeats. She has to take another breath, her eyes beginning to burn.

“What happened?” Hood asks quietly, tapping his knee to hers in encouragement. That’s the million dollar question, isn’t it?

“He broke his wrist,” she says, evasively answering Hood’s question. “Said it was a car accident. I believed him.” She rubs her face with her hands. “I can’t believe I was so stupid. I mean, I was Robin, I’m meant to see things like that. Fucking–” her voice cracks. “Parental abuse.” She can’t believe she let Tim go through the same thing she did. And she never knew about it. “I’m meant to save people from it. And I couldn’t even help my best friend.” She wants to yell, she wants to punch something, someone. She wants to go back in time to punch Jack Drake, to punch herself, to grab Tim by the shoulders and shake him and tell him she loves him. “His dad broke his wrist.”

Hood is frozen next to her, muscles tensed in the way they always are when it comes to kids in abusive homes. “Look, I don’t keep a close eye on the guy, but he looks like someone who keeps his cards close to his chest. I know his type. There wouldn’t have been any signs,” Hood says bitterly, ever the voice of reason.

“But there were signs,” she says angrily, more frustrated with herself than anything else. She sits back up. “I never made a report about it, but I found him one time, on top of a building, looking down. It was one of the abandoned tenements off the side of the Midtown Bypass, where it cuts into the ground. I thought he was going to jump.” She’d been so scared when she'd seen him there, almost disbelieving that it was her Tim. She’d hovered close for a week after, looking intently for other signs, for any signs, but there were none. It had truly seemed like a one-off, like he’d been telling the truth about just admiring the view. “And now, in his file, B says he thinks he’s an alcoholic–” she chokes out, her voice breaking again. It’s probably true, with the amount of bottles there are in his apartment. She feels like she’s failed him, and she hates it. They aren’t even friends anymore. She doesn’t know him anymore. “After his wrist broke, he pushed me away – and it worked. I gave up.” She swallows down the lump in her throat.

“I’m sorry Blondie,” is all Jason says. He’s taken his helmet off, and his soft voice rings out in the night. “Sometimes people don’t want help.”

“I know,” she croaks miserably. “I know. But this is Tim. He hurt me so much by pushing me away, it– it blinded me. I hated him. I hated him for years after, even when his dad died, even when it came out that Phil had been stealing from the company, even when he’d get kidnapped every two months. I was so angry.” She wipes her nose on her gloves. “And he’s still in trouble.”

“And he still doesn’t want help?” Jason guesses. Bingo, give this man a million dollars.

“No. He’s mad we actually helped.” She can feel the anger bubbling inside her again. “Turns out,” she says wrily, “his dad got murdered by Phil, and there had been a hit on him as well, and he knew. He fucking knew, and did nothing with that information – except for– except to blackmail Phil for some fucking reason.” She lets out an angry sigh through her nose. “Fucking ‘mutually beneficial agreement’ my ass.”

Jason hums. “Who’s Phil?” he asks.

“The old CEO of Drake Industries,” she explains with a wave of her hand. “Tim went all Lion King on his ass the minute he turned 18.” Jason snorts, and Steph turns a glare to him. “What?” she snaps. She’s pouring her heart out to him and he laughs?

“You know that makes you Pumbaa, right?” he tells her, a shit eating grin on his face.

The stupidity of the comment snaps her out of her angry spiral. “What? It does not,” she says, outraged.

“You would let Cass be Pumbaa?” he asks her, an eyebrow raised in doubt.

Fuck, he’s got her there. She looks away from him. “Fine, I’m fucking Pumbaa.” Jason wheezes out a laugh. She punches him in the shoulder in retaliation. “It’s not funny.”

“I’ve never seen someone be so mad about Pumbaa,” he manages to wheeze out. He lets out a bark of laughter at her glare. “If it makes you feel better I could call you Rosencrantz,” he offers.

“Who the fuck is that?” That’s even worse, she thinks. It’s a stupid sounding name.

“From Hamlet?” he says, distinctly judgemental. “What the Lion King is based on? Didn’t you go to that fancy school?” Okay mr. judgement, not everyone is a fucking book nerd, she thinks at him. She knows about Hamlet, even if she doesn’t remember every single name in the play.

“Right,” she grumbles. “I only skimmed the Sparks Notes for that one.” She’d only managed a passable grade on her essay thanks to Tim, who’d actually read the Sparks Notes. She lets out another sigh at the memory.

“Look, it’ll be fine, Blondie. He seems to know what he’s doing.” That’s what Steph is afraid of. Why does he know what he’s doing? Batman won’t be happy about it.

“That’s not a good thing,” she says darkly. “One of B’s theories is that he’s going after Bruce Wayne to get to us.” She looks towards where Tim left, through the back alley. “Looks like he’s right,” she adds, her voice grim. Fuck, she still can’t believe it. He’s a fucking full-on villain at this point. She does not need a Luthor-figure in her life right now.

“Damn,” Jason says, "I shoulda known I couldn’t trust a businessman.” He throws a piece of gravel from the roof, his face looking deep in thought. “Wanna bomb one of his warehouses?” he finally proposes. Trust Jason to make blowing up shit the solution to everything.

“Can’t,” she sighs. “Not until we have actual dirt on him.” It’s all speculation for now. There’s not a single piece of evidence that can justify the Bats destroying his property, or to get him properly tried in the court of law. This case is such a shitshow.

“Boo,” Jason says, slipping his helmet back on. “And here I thought you were the fun Robin.” Excuse him, Steph absolutely was the fun Robin.

“Excuse you,” she snarks at him, “I’m going shopping with Robin for CDs, like a cool person. He owes me at least a new Aqua album for breaking my favourite mixtape,” she grumbles.

“Oh, he finally broke it? He’s been planning the hit for days,” Jason says drily, sliding his helmet back on. Steph narrows her eyes at him. This is his second betrayal this week, she’ll have to get back at him once Cass is back in town. With a creak of his leather jacket, he stands up, pulling out his grapple gun. “And don’t worry about little Timmy over here. I’ll tell my guys to keep an eye out for him.” She’s not sure she likes that idea, but it beats letting him run around without any supervision.

Steph stands with him, pulling out her grapple gun at the same time as him. “What do you think the blackmail Phil has on him is?”

Hood shrugs. “Probably nothing good if it has him freaking out like this,” he answers before jumping off the roof, his grapple zipping through the air.

With a final sad sigh, Steph follows. She’ll put Babs on the case, she’ll be able to figure out what’s wrong quickly enough. Anything to procrastinate having to write her report about tonight. B won’t be pleased.

–

Tim has to run.

His heart rabbits in his chest with panic, and he feels as though everyone is looking at him. From the windows of the sky-high apartment towers, from the alleys where the homeless huddle, from behind, from in front, from everywhere.

Everyone knows.

They all know.

They’re all laughing.

They’re all pitying.

He knows he’s already hidden everything.

No court case. No court documents. No NDA, no paychecks, nothing.

Not a single mention of parental rights.

Nothing to see. Just regular old Timothy Drake being slandered by the ex-CEO he put in jail.

But why would Phil lie? Why this specific accusation? People would believe it nonetheless.

He made sure, years ago, since before he turned eighteen, to remove everything from the databases. There wasn’t much, since Gotham’s always been slow to switch to digital – especially in the case of the public sector – there had been no online documents to erase other than his mother’s will. Was it flawless? Probably not. But just because someone knew something used to be there doesn’t mean they can recover it. Tim made sure there was nothing to recover. He made sure to demand every last copy of the physical documents once he became a major, paying people off to do so, and to subtly send those involved, the judge, the lawyers, anyone who could be convinced to blab – none of the Wayne lawyers, but they aren’t easily corrupted – to places far far away from Gotham. One lawyer had been found guilty of corruption, another tied to a cold case. The judge’s affair had been leaked to the press, and he’d been arrested by the feds for an unrelated crime once his picture had been in the news. It had been easy to do, with how dirty all the officials are in the city. He hadn’t even needed to fabricate anything, just to point people in the right direction. It had been the one time he’d been willing to do something that wasn’t clean, and he’d hidden every trace of it.

There’s still an electronic copy of everything, of course, hidden on a USB key, far from any hackable network. He couldn’t bring himself to destroy everything completely.

It’s safe, he knows, hidden where no one but him would know where to find it, far from any curious Bats.

But there’s still that shred of doubt. It makes his skin crawl. He can’t verify if it’s still safe, not with all the eyes on him. He’d be drawing the Bats’ attention to where it needs to not be.

He feels the pressure of the cameras around him, like eyes looking at his every move, even when he does his best effort to dodge them. He’s already dodged the cops the Commish left to watch him, but he doesn’t know if the Maronis have spies in the street. He needs to run, he needs to hide. He needs to lay low. Did Steph call it in to Barbara Gordon? Does Bruce already know about his argument with Steph? Is Nightwing following him from the rooftops?

He heads to Little Odessa, where he knows the camera coverage is shit, and where he can lay low for the night. Going to see Tam is already out of the question, with how late it is. He glances up at Popov’s apartment as he crosses the empty street. The lights are off. Popov’s apartment is out too then. He uses his keys to unlock the back door to the gym.

He hasn’t done this in a while, he realizes now that he’s out of sight from all the cameras, still in the doorway. He lets the door close gently behind him and shuts off the alarm system before rearming it immediately. He used to come here all the time, at night, just to breathe in the air of the gym, the lights closed and moonlight filtering in through the high windows.

He swallows a lump in his throat, tugging his hood off his head and taking off his shoes.

He doesn’t let himself be swallowed by the memories of his worst moments.

He makes his way to the main area of the gym in the dark, one hand running along the wall even though he doesn’t need it. He’s walked through here enough times he’s memorized each step, each turn, each breath it takes to get to the heavy doors into the gym. He slips in, his footsteps quiet, though the sound of the loud door breaks the silence inside.

It’s empty.

Of course it would be.

It’s still a relief. A paranoid part of him expecting to see Nightwing in the rafters dies down. He hasn’t been able to stop thinking about it, since Nightwing started working here. The gym is still safe. He takes a deep breath in, taking in the lingering smell of the plasticky mats and of the chalk. Without much ceremony, he walks to the foam pit and throws himself in.

He’s so tired.

It had been an exhausting day, followed by some training that evening, his security guards at his heels the entire time. Already, he’d been bone tired and ready to go to sleep by the time he’d made it to his apartment and sent the security guards home. But Steph had been there.

It’s always tiring to see Steph again. He knows she’s mad at him. She’s probably right to be. But she makes it so hard for him to keep his cool, to keep his persona of Timothy Drake.

He’s missed her.

Jack Drake still deserves justice, Tim.

Now that he’s not running away – and maybe he should have called for one of his bodyguards now that he thinks about it. Whatever, he’s still alive – her words catch up to him.

He picks up a block of foam from next to him and wedges it behind his head like a pillow. Justice. She talks about fucking justice. Of course she would. She used to be Robin, after all. But Jack Drake is dead, he doesn’t need justice. Where’s Tim’s justice? Nowhere in fucking sight. So he’s making it for himself. His dad can wait a few more years until he gets his justice, Tim thinks angrily. Once the Waynes are gone, once he’s gotten his birthright, once it won’t matter whether Bruce Wayne is his father or not because Tim will have won. Once Tim will have proven he’s a Drake through and through.

He turns on his side, determined to leave her voice behind. He can’t.

No matter what he did to you, she’d added. So she knows. Bruce had spilled the beans about his wrist. He wonders what else she’s come to know in the few years since they’d last talked. He doesn’t know how it makes him feel. Betrayed, probably. He shouldn’t be. What reason would Batman have to keep Tim’s secrets? It still tastes sour in the back of Tim’s throat.

He hates them. He hates how hurt he is, still.

With that final thought, exhaustion catches up to him, and he falls asleep.

–

He’s woken up in a start by an unholy screech. In an instant, his head shoots up, and he blearily looks around him, bright morning sunlight shooting straight into his eyes somehow. Where the fuck is he? In a panic, he grabs the nearest thing he can – a foam block? – and throws it towards whatever made the sound.

He has a slight moment of panic as he thinks the Maronis have gotten to him before his memory comes back to him.

He’s in the gym. He must have fallen asleep. He didn’t text Popov to let him know he’d be there.

Staring at him with wide eyes is Dick Grayson, clutching the foam block Tim had thrown close to his chest.

He’s not dealing with this shit. Tim glares at him. “Fuck off.” He falls back into the foam pit, burrowing into it. When he hears no sound that would indicate Grayson has moved, he cracks an eye open to stare at him. Grayson is just staring at him, looking torn between offense and sheer confusion.

“I–” he starts, then pauses, mouth closing slowly. Confusion seems to be winning the battle. Maybe it’ll be enough to leave Tim to sleep the remaining hours until his alarm in peace. He regrets to be informed that it is not when Grayson starts talking again. “Are you supposed to be here?”

Tim groans, debating whether or not he should even bother answering. Sleep is so close, he can feel it. He could probably get away with five minutes. Grayson throws the foam block back at him, managing to nail him in the face. What the fuck, man?

“I asked a question,” he says, and Tim can hear the frown in his voice. “Do I need to call the cops or something? How’d you break in? The alarm wasn’t even triggered.”

“Are you always this chatty before 9 am?” Tim grumbles, knocking the foam block off from his face. “And I have the keys, dumbass. I don’t have to break in,” he impatiently explains, glaring at the older man the entire time.

“Oh,” he says dumbly, like it hadn’t occurred to him. Looks like Tim wasn’t the only one with sleep deprivation this morning. “It’s past 9, by the way.”

“Huh?” is Tim’s intelligent answer as he closes his eyes again. He can feel his eyebags.

“It’s like,” there’s the sound of shifting fabric as he pulls his phone from his pocket, “10 am. Classes start soon.”

“Hm. Have fun with that,” is Tim’s only answer. His brain isn’t working well enough for this conversation.

Grayson clears his throat, and Tim can hear him shifting on his feet, the plasticky fabric lining the foam pit crinkling under his shifting weight. “There’s a group of older kids coming in in half an hour. They’ll probably fall on you if you stay here.”

“So be it,” he says. “God can decide if my time has come.”

“Aren’t you a great big ball of sunshine,” Grayson grumbles in a frustrated tone before walking away. Victory at last. The sun from the high windows shines on him, warming him up. He feels like a cat on a sunlit floor, content and comfortable.

He’s drowsing away, his mind already half-forming dreams, when voices cut through his sleepy drowsiness.

“Aw. He has not done this in a long time,” says Popov’s accented voice, seeming far away. “He would fall asleep after practice sometimes, back when he was…” Popov makes a considering hum, “this tall.” He sighs, and Tim can hear him take a sip of his coffee. “I have many pictures.”

“So he’s allowed?”

“Oh, yes. I gave him the keys years ago.” He hears Popov grunt. “Though he should know to at least come to sleep on my couch instead of the foam pit,” he adds, louder, directed at Tim. For the second time this morning, Tim gets nailed in the face by a foam block.

It wakes him right the fuck up, and he lifts his head, glaring at Popov. “I was sleeping,” he basically whines. He’d be embarrassed to do so in front of Nightwing, but he’s never been a morning person, and it’s his own damn fault for coming to work here. This is Tim’s gym, and he’ll be damned if he lets Dick Grayson take that away from him.

“But you are not asleep anymore,” he says, as though he isn’t the one to have woken him up. “Now get out of my foam pit,” he orders, leaving no room for argument.

“Ughhhh,” Tim groans, miserably getting up from the comfortable foam. “You’re a tyrant.” He pulls himself up and flops back down on the ground at Grayson’s feet. “You just had to snitch,” he grumbles without much heat.

“Do not blame the man for doing a proper job,” Popov gently scolds. “Now get up, you are helping today.” He gently toes Tim in the thigh, prompting him to get on his feet.

“Alright, alright,” Tim agrees easily, getting to his feet. He leaves Grayson behind as he follows Popov. “What am I doing today?” he asks with a big yawn.

“Start with shower, then food. I have some syrniki in the refrigerator,” Popov orders as he heads back to his office, no doubt to finish whatever work he’d started before Grayson had come to get him. “Then you come back and help with the level seven group. One of the boys needs help with the high bar. You will help.” This is why Tim loves Popov; he doesn’t ask questions and just lets Tim sleep in his foam pit like a weirdo.

Tim nods. He’s given a helping hand before, and a level seven isn’t too bad a task. “Will do. What time does the class start?” He checks his watch. It’s almost a quarter past ten.

“Eleven.”

Tim nods and slips away quietly. Not a bad way to spend a Saturday.

–

Dick had almost had a heart attack when he’d walked by the foam pit and had seen someone out of the corner of his eye. He absolutely did not overreact by screaming out loud. He’s a trained vigilante after all. Even if he did, which for the record he did not, it would have been in order to build his civilian persona, and not at all because he’s been running on fumes for almost a week.

Moving on.

There’s a guy in the foam pit, who Dick can easily recognize as Tim Drake now that he’s had a second to process. Said Tim is decidedly not happy about Dick’s presence, and throws a foam cube with surprising accuracy at him, all the while still looking in the throes of sleep. Dick would be impressed if it hadn’t come from a guy sleeping in the foam pit. What the hell, can’t he get a damn day off? It’s always one thing after another.

Tim had been splayed half on his stomach and half on his side, his black hair an absolute mess, face scrunched up in disgust as he’s woken up from his – not beauty sleep apparently. His dark circles are so bad they rival Dick’s, which is quite the achievement. Tired-Timmy squints up at Dick, and promptly announces his supreme judgement to the empty gym. “Fuck off,” he orders, before falling backwards into the foam put and burrowing down further.

Dick is offended for an entire second, mouth open in shock. Are you fucking kidding me? Is all he can think.

He can’t believe this is the super-evil guy everyone is freaking out about.

He’d heard the drama second-hand from Babs first, who’d been made in charge of looking for whatever blackmail the ex-CEO of DI had on Steph’s ex-friend. He’d hardly believed it, from what he remembered of little Tim he’d been a model kid. What kind of dirt could Phil Marin have on him? There’d been no leads last he’d heard, and holy Batman, he had heard. He’d come back to the cave to Steph and Bruce in a screaming match, arguing over whether she should have tailed him or not. Something something that’s her friend, something something blackmail, something something duty, something something fuck off Batman.

He’d intervened at that point, ordering everyone to their rooms to cool off.

He’d waited for the cave to empty out before going up himself, hovering before Steph’s door, listening to her rage in anger, interspersed with a few sobs. He didn’t go in, too exhausted himself to do anything, having spent the night running around the city after Firefly and having been busy getting stabbed by a gang member over on the docks. He could hear Cass’ voice on the phone behind the door. They’d be fine.

He’d gone back down to the cave alone, and went through the footage of the night from Steph’s lenses. And yikes, what a conversation that turned out to be.

But still. After storming out, this is where Tim went to lay low? The foam pit?

Actually, no, Dick gets it. It’s a really comfortable foam pit.

Back to the matter at hand, though, why is he here of all places? He’s only being hunted down by one of the biggest crime families of the city, why not walk across the entire city to sleep here, he thinks sarcastically. He’s split between being disappointed in Tim’s lack of survival skills and impressed he’d managed to dodge any sign of detection by anyone, even Babs.

Tim opens up one eye just a crack to glance at him, as though checking if he’s still there.

“I–” Dick starts, unsure of what to say. This is such a weird situation, and he’s so tired. He’s had maybe two hours of sleep, helping Babs with the case, his leg hurts where it got singed last night, and his stitches are pulling at his stab wound. Ah, the life of a vigilante. He wishes he could be sleeping in the foam pit. “Are you allowed to be here?”

Timmy just groans in answer, tucking his face into his arm. He looks so peaceful and innocent, like a kid. Dick’s heart mellows for an instant, before remembering he made Steph cry and is likely planning his family’s downfall.

He throws the foam cube he’s still got in his hand right at Little Timmy’s face.

“I asked a question,” he tells Tim sternly, almost dipping into his disappointed Officer Grayson voice. “Do I need to call the cops or something?” Never mind that I’m the cop, Dick thinks. “How’d you even break in?” he asks, the thought just now occurring to him. “The alarm wasn’t even triggered.”

“Are you always this chatty before 9 am?” Tim grumbles from under his foam cube, batting it away like an angry cat to glare at Dick. How he wishes he could snap a picture to send to Steph. It would cheer her right up, with his hair sticking out in every direction. If Tim is doing all of this to look disarming and throw the Bats off his trail, Dick has to admit it’s working a little. “And I have keys, dumbass, I don’t have to break in.”

“Oh.” That makes sense, now that Dick thinks about it, although the sass is wholly unnecessary. Popov had said Tim is basically family. “It’s past 9, by the way,” he adds helpfully.

“Huh,” he says slowly, as though the concept of time is news to him. His eyes close again, almost of their own accord. Sheesh, this guy is not a morning person.

“It’s like,” Dick starts as he pulls out his phone from his pocket, “10 am.” It’s more 10:05 but whatever. “Classes start soon,” he informs the CEO sleeping in the pit. He has a group of level twos in twenty five minutes who are all so adorable. They’re so fun to work with.

Tim hums in response. “Have fun with that.”

Dude, get out of the foam pit, Dick thinks, exasperated. He’s almost jealous at how comfortable Tim seems. Time to take out the big guns to convince him to get up. “There’s a group of older kids coming in soon. They’ll probably fall on you if you stay here,” he informs Tim, using logic and the basic human urge not to have a child hurtling at you in an imminent crash landing as his argument.

The common sense approach does not work.

“So be it,” he croaks out, not even bothering to open his eyes. He sounds bone tired. “God can decide if my time has come.” Fuck’s sake, Dick gets why he used to get along so well with Steph.

“Aren’t you a great big ball of sunshine,” he grumbles under his breath, patience finally running out. Nuclear option it is. He goes to get Popov. “Hey, coach?” he calls, poking his head into Popov’s office.

Popov looks up from some forms. “Is there a problem?”

“Uh, yeah, sort of.” He shifts uneasily on his feet, not knowing how to explain the weird fever dream going on in the main gym. “Right, so– Tim Drake? He’s in your foam pit.”

“Ah, yes. He does that,” the coach says, before turning back to take a sip of his coffee. Dick feels his smile strain a little.

“Um, that’s great for him, but class starts soon, and he’s not leaving.”

“Hm. He does that too,” Popov adds, though he does get up, grabbing his coffee as he walks towards the aforementioned pit, Dick following behind him.

It’s still a hard sight to wrap his head around the second time. This is the guy who’s got B’s panties in a twist? The guy who’s being blackmailed and blackmailing someone? All Dick sees is the little kid who’d wander behind Steph when he’d come to pick her up at school. It’s crazy how supervillains can switch up on you like that.

Popov coos next to him. Dick’s half convinced he’s fallen in an alternate universe. It takes some convincing and Tim calling Dick a snitch, which – rude – to get him up. The entire time, Dick experiences a weird state of cognitive dissonance. Tim is going to help teach one of the groups. Tim, Timothy Drake, CEO of Drake Industries, one of America’s top ten bachelors, one of the most prolific businessmen of the decade, B’s weird one-sided rival… is going to help teach a gymnastics class on a Saturday.

Yeah that sounds like Gotham.

He misses Bludhaven at times like these. There are no weird billionaires there.

Thing is, Tim is weirdly good at teaching.

While Dick teaches his level twos, seven young girls starting to learn the skills on the parallel bars, he keeps an eye on Tim – now showered and having changed into sweats and a tanktop – as he works one-on-one with a higher level boy. He does a good job, patiently spotting the kid as he tries to land his tap swings.

Time flies with his group, and before he knows it, Dick’s class is over, and he’s on break for lunch. He uses the time to eat, of course, Alfred would skin him alive if he came back with a full lunchbox, but also to look closer at Tim, who doesn’t seem to notice Dick’s watchful eye. He’s patient and observant, if a little strict, making the kid practice his swing taps a few times before offering a correction. He’s closer to the goofy CEO persona he uses in interviews, very far from the cool calculating Timothy Drake Dick’s used to seeing at galas. It’s striking how at home he looks here, far from the high rise buildings and the rich socialites.

Dick’s not sure which persona is real, if one of them is at all.

Timothy Drake has always been a sort of enigma. Someone far down his radar, but always on the periphery of his life. He vaguely remembers meeting him at galas, when he’d been only a small kid too shy to say anything to him. He remembers him better as Steph’s friend, though he wasn’t in town often enough to get to know anything very substantial about the guy. He does remember how angry Steph had been when they’d stopped being friends. Then Tim reappeared in society, changed. Gone was the kid Dick had sort of known, replaced by a cold socialite to be. Dick hadn’t paid him any mind then, too busy trying to get to grips with the fact Jason was alive, and then too busy trying to keep an eye on Damian.

Looking back, Dick’s not sure when the Bats should have started paying attention. Tim had blended right into the background of high society, invisible and forgotten. He doesn’t know if it’s too late to try and bring Tim back on the right path.

Last night, watching through Steph’s mask, Tim’s fate had felt hopeless. But right now, looking at Tim smiling gently and laughing with his student, he can barely imagine him as a supervillain in the making. It doesn’t help that other than last night, there hasn’t been anything incriminating about Tim. He’s so clean as the CEO of DI it’s driving even Babs crazy. Sure, there’s some mild manipulation and loopholes he’s using, but it’s all legal. No one in Gotham does legal, except WE. Even then, their big boss dresses up like a bat at night to go punch people for justice as an illegal vigilante.

There has to be something. Apparently there is, but it’s ‘nothing he’s done’, and Babs hasn’t found it yet as far as Dick knows. Dick’s getting a headache just thinking about it. He should have gone off-planet with the Titans when they’d offered last month.

The rest of the day passes in a blur, with Dick teaching some longer classes with higher level kids, each group smaller than the last. By the end of the day, he’s ready to take a fat nap before his patrol. He starts putting away the training mats after waving to the last of the kids leaving, humming to himself as Popov and Tim still putter around, talking in low tones. Dick keeps an ear out for anything interesting being said between the two, but they’re just talking about the kid Tim had helped out earlier today.

With no excuse to stay in the gym once his tasks are done, Dick bids them both goodbye before heading to the staff locker room to grab his bag. He’ll check the footage from the bugs he’d hidden in the gym to see if he’s missed anything.

Rifling through his bag for a change of clothes, he notices he doesn’t have his water bottle. He must have left it in the gym, he figures. Leaving his bag in the hallway next to the gym doors, he slips in quietly, pausing in the doorway as he hears the sound of the high bar reverberating in the gym.

Most of the lights are off, but the apparatus section is still lit up, Popov nowhere in sight, probably back in his office to close up everything for the night. On the high bar, Tim lands his salto, a cloud of chalk puffing up as his hands hit the bar.

Dick doesn’t even pretend not to watch Tim, his water bottle completely forgotten. He’s impressive. Dick had stalked Tim’s old twitter account for the case, rewatching the videos Steph had recorded and posted, and while he’d seen the potential, it’s not the same as watching Tim now, older and better.

He’s being absolutely wasted as a CEO, Dick can’t help but think.

He’s graceful, moving like water, redirecting his momentum and fluidly swinging from one move to another, his leaps perfectly timed and executed, his form impeccable. Steph hadn’t lied when she’d said he was good. Dick just hadn’t thought that it would mean he’d be great now, not after the accident and his lack of practice.

This is a side of Tim he’s never seen, smiling wide and bright, happy. It reminds him of himself, of Jason, and Steph, and Cass, and Damian, and Duke. It reminds him of his family when they’re flying, when Dick gets to watch them goof around and chase each other around the city.

Dick feels a stab of pity flash through him. Tim looks so young.

He is young. Fuck, he’s younger than Steph, almost by a year. Dick’s mouth twists down into a frown as he wonders if Tim would still have taken over DI if Dick, or Bruce, or Babs, or Steph, or anyone had looked into him a little closer. He knows it’s useless to think it, that they’d been busy with Jason coming back and Damian showing up, that some things inevitably fall to the wayside. They can’t monitor the whole of Gotham. Dick knows that.

But he can’t help but feel like he’s failed.

He was just a kid. Still is, really.

Dick is so lost in thought he almost misses the dismount. With a final cloud of chalk puffing up in the air as he finishes a second giant swing, Tim lets go of the high bar, flipping forwards once, twice, three times, Dick counts as Tim adds a half twist, and four times.

He lands it, not even wobbling on his feet.

Dick blinks. What?

He feels frozen in place, hand still keeping the door to the gym open. That’s a new dismount, his brain notes, processing as Tim mechanically pretends to bow to a panel of judges. That’s a quadruple flip dismount. His mind reels as he considers the implications, the first quad that he knows of successfully performed in gymnastics.

It tastes sour in his mouth. That’s Dick’s thing.

Quadruple flips are his thing. His parents’ thing. Their thing. For years, he’s been the only one able to perform them in the world.

This looks practiced. This looks routine.

It hurts more than he thought it would.

“Holy shit,” he says loudly, the words echoing in the gym and causing Tim to startle, looking around with wide blinking eyes. Dick’s not sure what his expression looks like. Hopefully not half as devastated as he feels. He blinks, and grins widely, stamping down his sadness. “Holy shit, was that a quadruple flip?” he repeats, grinning, forcing himself to walk up to Tim, who looks like a deer caught in the headlights. The door to the gym closes with a clang, making Tim flinch minutely. “That’s awesome,” he tells Tim, who looks a little bit lost at Dick’s enthusiasm.

“Thanks?” he mumbles, looking confused. His hands twitch, and he moves to straighten himself up before half-aborting. Dick’s caught him off-guard.

Dick presses his advantage. “It was so smooth,” Dick says brightly, clapping a hand on Tim’s shoulder. “The whole routine was, actually,” he adds with a smile.

There’s a minute twitch of Tim’s eyebrows, a tiny frown forming. “I– Thanks. It’s an old routine. I was supposed to perform it before– well,” he cuts himself off, rubbing at his wrist, his face reddening a little. His eyes flicker towards the door Dick just came from.

Dick fights to keep his smile on his face. Tim’s been able to do a quad for years now. Okay. It’s fine. Everything is fine. He can feel his hand involuntarily twitch.

“Wow, that’s–”

“I should go,” Tim blurts out suddenly, shifting his shoulder down to dislodge Dick’s hand. He looks uncomfortable, his body language screaming that he wants to escape. “I have work tomorrow,” he adds, mumbling, turning to grab his things on the side of the landing mats, jaw clenched. He’s so tense Dick thinks any small movement of his would send Tim running for the hills.

Tim takes off his grips and picks up his own water bottle and his small towel, wiping away the sweat on his forehead. He gives a small nod to Dick, eyes suspicious, looking like a caged animal. Dick nods back, and Tim takes it as his signal to leave. It doesn’t feel like enough.

“Hey, Tim,” Dick calls out as Tim walks towards the door of the gym. Tim stops, turning to look at him, shoulders so tense he must be fighting to keep them from rising up to his ears. “Be careful out there, yeah? I’ve heard about the Maroni thing.”

A strange expression crosses Tim’s face. Dick can’t decipher it. “Yeah,” Tim answers, looking at Dick with unreadable eyes. His posture loosens as he pauses for a moment, clearly hesitating to say something. “And I’m sorry,” he says, like every word is being ripped out of his mouth against his will. It takes Dick by surprise. What is he apologizing for? Tim stares determinedly at a spot next to Dick’s feet, avoiding eye contact. “I know the quad was your parents’ thing.”

Oh.

Dick opens his mouth, preparing to give out a generic and polite excuse, then closes it with a click. He didn’t think Tim would bring it up, or even know about it. He doesn’t know what to answer. Tim’s jaw clenches as he slowly looks up to watch Dick’s face. Dick is hit again by how young he looks. He feels like saying the wrong words could crush whatever olive branch Tim is giving him. “I–” Dick starts, voice more choked than he’d expected. He clears his throat, glancing away from Tim’s eyes. “It’s okay,” he says with a sigh, bittersweet. “I knew it was going to happen one day,” he adds with a small smile. He doesn’t know if he’s reassuring Tim or himself.

There’s still a frown on Tim’s face, but he gives a small nod. There are a few beats of silence, both of them unsure what to do. What do you say when a suspected villain apologizes to you for hurting your feelings? B’s powerpoints never covered this.

“I need to–” Tim starts, clearing his throat and shifting on his feet, clearly still wanting to escape from the conversation with Dick. “I do have to go. Tam’s probably about to send a search and rescue party for me,” he adds wrily.

“Right, of course, it’s getting late,” Dick agrees, internally celebrating at Tim making a joke. “Good night, Tim,” he says with a smile.

“Yeah,” Tim answers, a small smile on his own face. It looks real. “Good night, Dick,” he adds, looking him in the eye. It feels honest, like he really means it. It feels like a step in the right direction.

Dick watches Tim’s back as he leaves. He doesn’t know what to make of the kid, even if he’s made some progress with him today.

There’s something he’s missing. There has to be. Tim just doesn’t make any sense.

Dick looks back to the high bars. He’ll have to copy the footage from the cameras he’d hidden in the gym, ask Cass to read Tim’s body language.

He sighs, running his hand down his face. He should head back to the manor, Alfred must be waiting for him to start dinner by now.

Picking up his water bottle, which he’d left near the floor apparatus, Dick can’t help but look back at the high bar one last time. He wonders what his parents would have thought, seeing Tim do a quad. He doesn’t think they would have felt as bitter.

Notes:

Hi everyone!!!

I can't believe it's been a year (and some change) since chapter one was posted. One of my resolutions this year is to get this fic finished up, and I am determined to do it. So trust that I will be updating soonish.

I started writing this chapter in October, got really busy with school, and didn't touch the docs until after Christmas :/// (happy holidays and new years by the way). So if some parts of the chapter are of different quality that's probably why lmao.

I'm mostly really happy with it though, and I'm really glad I found Steph's voice. Hopefully it's not too much of a whiplash compared to last chapter. Also I put Destiny’s child, the pussycat dolls, and I think it was Nelly Furtado on Steph’s CD since they’re some of the only late 90s early 2000s pop artists I know. I headcanon that Steph listens to that music since that’s when her character is “from” and since it fits her vibe (I say pop but I’d also include R&B and hits from hip hop/rap; basically hot girl music from the late 90s early aughts). If you guys know other artists/songs of this era, please let me know since I want to listen to more music from then and also because it might better fit Steph’s vibe.

Related to this, I think Tim listens to more of the grunge and alt music from the same era and the britpop artists (blur, Oasis, idk if the Clash counts I think that’s more punk actually but they’re british)

I feel like I'm not being really subtle about what's going to happen in the next chapter, but I love seeing your thoughts in the comments. Let me know what your theories are!!! I want to know if I'm doing my foreshadowing right or not haha. (honorable mention to everyone in the comment section from the last chapter it's awesome to see you guys talk with each other)

Commissioner Gordon, making sure Tim's apartment is secure and opening the kitchen cupboards to see all the alcohol: you know that's illegal, right?
Tim: I know you spike your coffee in the morning, let me have this.

Also please let me know if the section breaks are too small. I'm looking through my draft to make sure the italics are in order and I'm realizing it's a little small. Let me know if it's an issue, and I'll change it :)))

If you see I've made any mistakes, please let me know!!

Thank you so much for all the well wishes in the comments, I really appreciated them <333

If you have any questions, comments, or just want to talk to me, don't hesitate to come to my tumblr!! https://www.tumblr.com/batslapp?source=share

edit: I fixed the obstructing justice stuff! I'm not an expert in legal procedure or terms or crimes really, so please let me know if I get something wrong :)) (Thank you to absolutely_flabbergasted for bringing it up and especially to VasyatheBrave for correcting me about it <3)