Work Text:
Given how he had been raised, to be independent and in control, therapy wasn’t something that Tim had ever seen himself taking part in. His life motto up until this point was “Repress Repress Repress”. He was great at it, ignoring the problem until it either went away or it got worse. In Tim’s opinion, it was the greatest motto ever.
But not even he could have repressed this issue. And he had tried to. Very hard. Multiple times.
Wayne Enterprises had, in an idiotic turn of events, had implemented a mandatory psychological evaluation for all employees. Something something Gotham was a hell hole something something daily trauma bla bla bla, whatever. It had been voted in by the majority of the board, which was stupid. And every time Tim tried to subtly divert attention away from the topic of mental health, Lucius would give him this stupid little look, you know the one, long suffering and judgmental.
He had replied in a very mature way if he did say so himself, and he did say so himself. Sticking his tongue out at the man was peak maturity.
But the board had been swayed, the notion relatively well received and was to be implemented immediately, and to Tim’s chagrin, it did not exclude the CEO from taking part in said psychological evaluations. Even if he was their boss.
And in the immortal words of the poor psychologist that had been assigned to do his evaluation, Tim was an unstable little monster, chock full of abandonment issues and a tenuous grasp of his own self image, who shouldn’t be allowed within thirty feet of sharp objects.
So, if he wanted to keep his job, which meh, but also yes, and keep the news of his mental fallacies out of the morning papers, he had to participate in ten mandatory, hour long, therapy sessions. Mandatory therapy.
Tim will admit, under extreme duress, that his reaction to hearing that particular tidbit of info didn’t win him any points in the mentally stable category. Let’s just say that there was a lot of broken furniture and more than one vandalized W.E billboard. Spray painting giant penises where everyone could see was a classic and quite cathartic.
Downside, those ten therapy sessions were bumped up to fifteen. Fifteen mandatory therapy sessions. Boooooo.
He stood by the fact that his reaction was completely justified and in no way indicated that he was mentally unstable in any way whatsoever.
Mrs. Lasch, his newly acquired therapist, was a woman in her late thirties with honey blonde hair that was usually pulled back from her face in a thick braid or a bun. She had a kind face. With dimpled cheeks and crows feet in the corners of her eyes. Her warm expression is what Tim would have expected a mothers face to look like. Tim wasn’t going to assume anything though. Janet Drake emulated a marble statue on the best of days, her face smooth and eyes hard. But Mrs. Lasch looked nice enough for someone trained in mind wavey magic psychology bullshit.
So, once a week, Tim dragged himself to her office with all the grace of a dying man. So, with not much grace and a lot of groaning face first into his carpet.
But he did go and against all odds, the sessions seemed to actually be helping him work through his issues. Yeah, that one had surprised him too. It was weird and it was freaking him out.
As it turns out, talking about and working through your problems was a good thing. He was sleeping better, actually getting some of that good ol’ REM sleep. It was like crack cocaine.
And he was taking better care of himself. He had gone out and bought himself a fresh tube of toothpaste and almost a hundred new pairs of multicolored socks. So many socks that he could wear a new pair everyday. It was great. He sometimes wore two pairs at a time layered up, just because he could.
He was learning so many new things! Like, did you know that brushing your teeth was to keep them clean and not something that his parents used to make him gag. Who knew? Well, everyone else apparently.
Another thing, which he had already vaguely knew about, was that most of his familial issues and health issues and well… everything else, stemmed from the general existence of the Wayne family and their particular cloud of shit-smelling problems.
And yeah, Tim may have kinda sorta inserted himself into Bruce’s life and the vigilante business, but he literally only did it to stop Bruce from committing suicide by criminal after he inevitably killed someone in a blind rage. He had just cause to intervene with Bruce! And the man had welcomed him into his life eventually, so he was allowed to be there. Just because they didn’t like him all that much didn’t mean they had the right to kick him around like a mangy little dog!
He was an ethically bred dachshund at worst. He had rights!
Mrs. Lasch was helping him go into detail regarding these issues and given how hard Tim had worked to repress all the issues in his life, it took quite a few bribes from her to get his mouth moving. A lot of frothy Frappuccino's and a lot of time that Tim got to spend waxing poetic about whatever conspiracy bullshit that he wanted too.
Never in his life been more sure that Mothman was real, no matter how unhealthy Mrs. Lasch thought his conspiracy directed manic episodes were.
But none of that mattered, what mattered was, that with the help of the therapy sessions that had been foisted upon him, he was now clearly mentally superior to his fellow vigilantes. He ignored the voice in his head that sounded suspiciously like Mrs. Lasch telling him how much and why she disagreed with him.
Therefore it was well within his rights to rub it in their faces! They didn’t know he was in therapy and they certainly weren’t in therapy. Like c’mom, Bruce? In therapy? Don’t make him laugh. So what else was he supposed to do? Not rub it in Bruce, Dick, Jason’s and Damian’s faces?
No, he was better than that. He’d been keeping himself from hitting them all in the face with his Bo Staff for years. He deserved this.
Bruce had treated him like a disposable tool for years, Dick had replaced him with Damian the minute that he could, even when he knew how painful it was to be set aside and replaced. Jason and Damian had tried to kill him on multiple occasions, and never had any repercussions for it. Hell, Dick was infantilizing Damian so much that he couldn’t seem to see how much damage it was doing to Tim and Damian.
Damian was going to grow up without knowing how to interact with other people and was eventually going to get himself killed or put in jail for pissing off the wrong people. He was so spoiled, that the minute that someone who he thought was disposable did something that he didn’t like, he would meet them with a knife to the throat.
And look, sure, Jason had died and come back, but he seemed really upset that his dad hadn’t killed himself in his grief over his son's death. We get it, you died and nobody killed themselves to be with you, big whoop. Blame anyone else but the fact that you are an angry little kid who wanted his daddy. Jesus, it’s not like he was the only one who got his shit rocked by the Joker, Tim and his fear of tasers could attest to that.
And Dick, oh Dick. He was halfway there to working himself to death. Too many responsibilities, not enough time. He wasn't perfect either, but Tim’s issues with him mainly stemmed from the way he blinded himself to any of the problems that he didn’t want to see. Jason died and he left, Bruce was losing his mind and Dick ignored Tim when he told him that Bruce needed him. Instead of believing Tim when he told him that Bruce was still alive, just trapped within time, Dick was quick to label him unstable and give the mantle of Robin to Damian without asking Tim first. Wow, it was almost like this had happened before and Dick had lost his shit and moved to another city.
And he wondered why Tim was hurt.
And Bruce had tried to parent them into a bat assigned set of morals and instead he had ended up pushing them all away. Dick moved out, Jason died, Tim was only talking to the man for things like patrol or the company, and Damian saw his oldest brother as more of a father than his actual father.
It was a straight up crazy bitch, shit show.
The opportunity to showcase his asskicking therapy skills presented itself pretty much immediately. Everyone was in the cave for once, except for Cass and Steph, but that was only because Steph had texted him earlier telling him that she was stepping up her friends to lovers' slow burn relationship with Cass. She was living her dreams, she’d even burnt the second bed in the apartment that she was renting just to live out her fanfiction dreams. Cass definitely knew. Get it girl!
Anyways, all his brothers were in the cave for once. Damian and Dick were usually there, but Jason was only there because he had managed to snap his arm like a twig during patrol, like an idiot.
“Bruce, do you think you’re like this because of the unresolved trauma from your childhood, the death of your parents and then how you dropped yourself into the worst parts of Gotham, or did you realize what a terrible person you’ve become, how you’ve twisted all of your children into a mockery of yourself before they had a chance to grow up, and come to the conclusion that it’s not worth the effort to better yourself?”
Silence. Sweet beautiful silence. It was like MMA fighting with his mind. About time it was quiet, the way Bruce had been going on, Tim thought he would never shut up. Apparently, stopping for more than five minutes during patrol, just a teeny tiny break, meant that he was irresponsible and warranted a lecture. He was still in his patrol gear, Batman hadn’t given him a chance to take off his suit before the man had rounded on him.
He had only been able to get his cowl off. His hair was sweaty and he really needed a shower. But Bruce didn’t care about that, he just wanted to establish his non-existent authority over Tim. He had been lying to Batman’s face since before he could legally sit in the passenger seat of a car. This was no sweat.
Mrs. Lasch would sigh that disappointed little sigh of hers if she knew half of what went through his head. It wasn’t his fault he was so good at thinking. Therapy had prepared him for this, which was one of the only things that therapy was good for and he stood by it. Mrs. Lasch’s thoughts about his self worth be damned. She was clearly wrong and he was perfect.
Even through Batman’s cowl, Tim could see the way that the man’s jaw tensed, the vein in his neck popping. Wonderful. Over on the other side of the cave, away from the computer, where Red Robin and Batman were, Jason, honest to God, rolled out of the gurney he was sitting on from the force of his laughter, hitting the floor with a thud. “Fuck that hurt!”, but he was cackling as he said it.
“Red Robin-“
“Uh uh uh,” Tim interrupted,”you don’t get to lecture me when I have been consistently saving your ass for years. With no thanks from you, might I add, just some emotional abuse and neglect. Like honestly, you would think that after so many kids you would at least get one right!”
Dick dropped whatever he had been holding to the ground with a clatter as he stared at Tim with wide eyes. Even Damian was looking at Tim like didn’t know what he was saying.
“He’s!-“ a snort, “he’s got you there Bruce!”
“Red Robin, this is not appropriate.” Batman growled, “If this issue needs to be brought up, you can do it in private.”
Tim scoffed, smiling a bit meanly, ”Why, so you can ignore whatever I say and pretend that I don’t actually have a good opinion? Cause that’s not happening again. I run your fucking company Bruce, give me some respect. I’ve saved your life, I dragged you back from the fucking Jurassic period, when I could have just left you to the dinosaurs. Just because you hate yourself doesn’t mean that you can treat me like shit. You’re deflecting your own self hatred and guilt, and let’s be honest, slightly psychopathic tendencies, onto other people, mainly me. Just go get some antipsychotics, please god, just do it and save me the fucking misery.” He was panting a bit when he finished up his totally justified verbal beatdown.
Bruce didn’t even try to silence him after that little tirade. He just stared down at Tim, his jaw clenched. Tim’s cheeks were flushed slightly, but that might just have been from his patrol.
“Jesus, I can’t breathe! God my arm hurts, laughing hurts, this is great!” Jason said to no one in particular, clutching his broken arm to his chest as he laid on the floor, his chest heaving with laughter.
“Shut up Jason.” Tim sighed, running his hands through his hair and turning away from the silent bat in front of him. He ran a hand through his hair, untangling the sweaty strands, “you’re just as bad, just in a different way.”
That shut him up. Wonderful. Hmmm, he was tired, maybe he could get home and order some take out. Some Red Bull maybe. It would be swell.
“The fuck does that mean?!” Jason demanded, his laughter stopping abruptly.
“You know what it means,” Tim said absentmindedly as he moved to the lockers against the wall to start taking off his suit, “you just scream ‘daddy issues’” Tim waved a hand in Jason’s direction,“I mean look at you, everything about you screams my daddy doesn’t love me. You’ve got your panties in a twist because nobody killed themselves when you died. I mean, Bruce tried and now he hates me for stopping him, should’ve just let him do it, would have saved me some trouble.”
More of that sweet, sweet silence.
“Yeah, yeah, horrible thing to say I know.” He stripped his chest piece off, unclasping the utility belt that crossed his chest, “but you’re all horribly mentally ill anyways so it doesn’t matter. I mean you're all halfway to killing yourselves anyways because you refuse to compromise on anything or seek out help. Terrible qualities to have.”
Damian finally spoke up, making his grating pre pubescent voice known in the silence that followed.
“What are you saying, Drake? Silence yourself before you embarrass yourself even more than you’ve already done.”
Tim turned to stare directly into the younger boy's eyes. Blue meeting green.
“You're going to ruin your own life if you keep doing what you're doing.” Tim stated, his face hard, “Dick and Bruce have infantilized you so much, have completely erased the concept of boundaries and consequences, so the minute you don’t get what you want, you’ll do something stupid and end up as a felon. I mean, technically, given how many people you’ve killed and attempted to kill, I.e, me, you’re already felon material.”
Tim turned away again to finish taking off his gear. He was almost in his under layers when he had to tilt his head to the side to avoid the dagger that flew towards his head. The knife clanged off of the metal lockers and Tim caught it before it could hit the ground.
“You do realize you just proved my point, right?” Tim asked, twirling the dagger in his hand. It was a nice knife, sharp,” and I’m keeping the knife.”
Dick moved forward to tug Damian back from where it looked like the boy was about to launch himself at Tim.
“Maybe we should all calm down?” Dick said, sounding unsure.
“Hell no!” Tim said, glee bleeding into his tone,”I’m sharing my super awesome therapy powers, pointing out everything that you all seem so intent to ignore so that maybe you could finally get around to fixing yourselves.” He said as he slipped a sweatshirt over his head, one of Cass’s it looked like, “seriously though Bruce, you should look into getting something to deal with all-“ a hand waved at Bruce’s general everything “-that.”
“Therapy powers?” Dick asked, still holding Damian by the shoulder.
“Therapy powers.” Tim affirmed, a pep in his step as he bounced towards the stairs leading up and out of the cave, “something all of you could benefit from. You especially, to be honest, need some milk. Laced milk. Lots of antidepressants mixed in. Now, I’m going to go see how Cassie and Steph’s slow burn, friends to lovers thing is moving along. Ta ta for now, see you again when you all get your shit together! Remember Bruce, value me as a human being or I can implode your entire company!”
Now, to see how the one bed was treating the girls. If his OTP didn’t get together he was going to schedule his own therapy session outside of the mandatory ones, even if it was like, against his religion or something like that.