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Batman stares at Robin’s blood work. Bruce Wayne stares at his son's (in everything but name) blood work.
Tim had contracted the Clench, a deadly plague that had the side-effect of making its victim hemorrhage from ocular and oral orifices, necessitating a blood transfer in the more severe cases.
AB- is the rarest out of the 8 main blood types.
Jack Drake had O blood type, Janet Drake had A+ blood type.
Blood types follow specific rules where A and B are both dominant alleles, where O is recessive.
For a child (like Tim) to have AB- blood type, he had to receive an A allele from one parent and a B allele from the other parent.
Ergo, Tim Drake could not be the biological child of Jack and Janet Drake.
Bruce remembers another boy, searching for his biological parent. He closes the tab and erases his traces thoroughly.
Oracle and Robin have no reason to snoop and will not find anything if he does not attract attention to the problem.
Tim might die from the Clench. It wasn't the right time.
He had seen Alfred muffle his sobs with a handkerchief, mindful of a boy crying tears of blood with a too sharp hearing but not Batman hiding in the shadows of his own cave.
He opens Tim’s file and adds his newly discovered blood type.
(Sloppy and negligent of him. Before Ja-... Before Batman would never have made such an elementary mistake.
Factually untrue. Perhaps if he had discovered his parentage beforehand...
If he had properly investigated, alone, without pesky emotions getting in the way, it would have been different.
It will be different this time. He had learned his lesson the hard way.)
Batman puts on the cowl. Robin is not dying on his watch.
Not from the Clench. Or anything else.
Anyone that tried would have to step on Bruce Wayne’s cold dead body first.
Tim wakes up, healed with no debilitating effects thankfully.
Bruce, Dick and Alfred fuss and coddle him until Tim whines at them to stop.
They don't truly stop.
It only becomes more discrete. Bruce knows Dick discreetly checks his little brother's pulse every time he puts him in a headlock.
Alfred makes more cucumber sandwiches, Tim's favorite snack and exceptionally stocks the pantry with grape Zesti soda, though he complains the whole time.
One day, Bruce, tortured by the need to know, wakes up in the middle of the night.
Dick is long gone. In Bludhaven. He had a shift in the morning and Tim had refused to let him reschedule, so he had reluctantly ruffled Tim's hair for the last time before driving back to his apartment.
Alfred had retired to his quarters long ago to rest after a long arduous day.
Tim was sleeping soundly in his room, in his father's house when Batman had checked before retiring for the night. His vitals were consistent too, he checked.
So Bruce puts on his robe and begins the trek down to the Batcave. He tests Tim's blood against his database.
After a short while, the computer announces that a match has been found, he stops the search before it can cross-examine the rest of the database.
His own face stares back at him. It is a match. Brucie Wayne's escapades hadn't been all acting. People would talk and look closer than he wanted them to if it had been.
Bruce is irrationally happy for a man that has found out he just wrecked a family and perhaps tainted a son's last memory of his mother.
He could never be rational about his Robins, especially his youngest.
Tim who, with brittle bones and small narrow shoulders, had carried his burden, akin to the giant Atlas.
Had saved him when Bruce had dragged him down like an anvil.
Yet, Tim had managed the unimaginable.
He had persisted when Bruce's grief and despair had chased everyone he loved and Bruce had latched unto him like a vice in return.
Tim had to float and drag Bruce with him back to the surface and had succeeded against all the odds stacked against him.
Where everyone had failed before him. Dick. Clark. Alfred. Leslie. Jim. Diana.
Subconsciously, Bruce knew it was wrong. Still, he couldn't unhook his possessive clawed grip.
He knew it was wrong when he had crashed Tim's date with his civilian girlfriend because he had wanted Tim to help with the grunt work when he hadn't really needed the help.
Bruce knew it just as much as Tim did. He griped about it to him but still helped.
(He was leaving the cape behind, leaving us behind! An insidious little voice whispers to him.
He listens to it more than he wants to.)
He knew it was wrong when happy go-lucky Tim had become more closed off and distrustful, (more like him like Alfred had voiced with a disapproving tilt to his voice).
He reassured himself that Tim had just gone through his mother's loss, just as he did when he told himself he hadn't ruined his children's lives.
He clicks on the file. They are not closely related enough to be father and son and share the same genetic inheritance a grandfather would leave his grandson.
Not father and son. Bruce irrationally feels like something has been ripped away from him.
Still, even though Bruce is getting up in age he is not old enough to be a grandfather to a boy Tim’s age. Time travel or alternate universe at play.
He hates dealing with timeline related shenanigans and largely leaves them to the Flash and Booster Gold, as much as that man loves to brag he is surprisingly competent when needed.
It doesn’t mean that Batman doesn’t have the equipment needed.
The numerous tests are negative, no alternate universe influence.
It’s not until next week that Bruce understands why the timeline had been working properly even with such an oversight.
Most of the time, Bruce fears that Tim knows the truth and that he stuck around to make sure his father will be born.
Bruce doesn’t care if he’s humoring an old man’s whims. He wants, needs his son near. In this time.
(Was he born after his grandfather had died ? Had Bruce been destined to never know his son ?)
The next mission Batman encounters Booster Gold, he discreetly questions him under the guide of being prepared.
Booster Gold is fooled, Batman is known for always being prepared after all and he is even flattered that he chose to ask him.
“Yeah, I guess it would, in theory, work if there’s a canon event. The timeline doesn’t take too kindly to change otherwise. God knows how many times I failed before.”
He muttered before brightening and going to explain the reference to him.
Batman stops him in his tracks with a raised hand.
“I know” He grunts and turns around to leave.
Bruce and Tim had watched Spiderman on a rough night.
Bruce had learned that Spiderman was Tim’s favorite fictional hero.
He had been so happy when Bruce had made him that gun meant to replicate Spiderman’s web and incapacitate armed assailants. He had stopped using it after Johnny Warlock.
His borrowed happiness could crumble at the faintest touch.
If Tim learns the truth, will Bruce have to watch as his son is ripped away from his arms ?
Or will he be kept awake at night, by what has whisked his son away from him where he couldn’t see, now that Tim had accomplished his mission ?
Tim is his son (grandson?) even if he doesn’t see him that way because he has a perfectly good father (was he?) worried at home next door.
(He knows that personally, he investigated Tim's home life as soon as he received that call from Dick about a child who knew too much.).
Having children also meant protecting them from their childlike curiosity.
Children explored the world, ignorant of the danger around them.
And hurting themselves was part of the learning curve as exploration was their main medium.
Parents were supposed to assure that this hurt wouldn’t be permanent or debilitating.
Parents weren’t supposed to let them get hurt at all. He had failed countless times before but he would do better with Tim.
Bruce knew it wasn't the right time. He needed more time.
It’s Father’s day today and Bruce doesn’t expect anything.
Dick, his oldest, had been very clear that he never saw him as a father because the role had already been filled by John Grayson. It seemed like a betrayal to replace that man that had been such a great father to him.
Jason had been dead. And now he wasn’t but he hated everything Batman stood for.
Tim had modified his father’s will to include an estranged uncle, creating a paper trail strong enough to fool Gotham administration and foster system but not Batman yet.
Bruce had never been so proud.
When he had recounted the story (bragged to) Alfred, the man had questioned his decision to ply and encourage deceit with new gadgets and top of the line vehicles for crimefighting.
But Bruce was pretty certain that all parenting books he had consulted had unanimously agreed that positive reinforcement through communication and your preferred love language was ideal to encourage qualities you wished to encourage in your child.
Bruce had found that this method had yet to fail him with Tim, who seemed to need more reassurance at times.
They were his sons in name now but he wouldn’t begrudge them their reluctance to consider him as their father.
Bruce understood, it’s how he felt about Alfred most of the time. His time had been cut short early with Thomas Wayne but no one could replace his father.
And if Bruce had an interest in psychoanalysing himself, he could investigate how this was reflected in every facet in both of his lives.
But Tim had been running late on his solo patrol and Bruce hadn’t yet taken off his batsuit, only the cowl, ready to go out again to search for Robin.
He was fastening and stocking his utility belt with tear gas pellets when the Redbird entered the cave.
Bruce immediately sat down and acted busy, not wanting Tim to think he didn’t think he was capable enough like Dick had accused him countless times before.
Tim reached his seat in front of the Batcomputer in quick strides.
“Sorry Bruce. It took me weeks to repair your father’s watch with confusing tutorials. I put it in a gift bag and everything ! But I guess a goon got a lucky hit when I was patrolling… Happy Father's day, Bruce.”
He looked sheepish and remorseful as he dangled the broken watch from the leather strap.
The dial was broken, the hour hand was crooked and the minute hand hadn’t moved in the minutes he had been staring at it. Direct heavy strike from an adult male. The lug had little horizontal scrapes. Potential abrasion/burn from concrete ground.
Bruce Wayne has hundreds of name brand collector watches whose retail sale began in the six figures in his dresser upstairs.
This was the best thing Bruce had ever received.
“Tim. You coming home enough is enough.”
Bruce pulled his son into his arms as Alfred watched them with an endeared smile. The slightly more demure version of cooing at cute animals videos on the internet.
Klarion the Witch Boy has turned the adult superheroes team into their teen version and teen superheroes into adults.
Bruce can only think of the extreme resemblance between Tim and him as he glues on the Robin mask.
Tim is an excellent detective on his own and Bruce firmly believes that he would surpass him if given time.
So Bruce is particularly grateful when Alfred timely distracts Tim with questions about his measurements.
After a brief deliberation, they discover that Tim would not reach 6' feet as an adult, which he is particularly miffed about.
Alfred works his magic and manages to shorten a spare Batman suit before patrol rolls around.
Everything goes well, no one Batman and Robin come across can tell there had been a change at all.
Jim Gordon, who has known Batman in and outside the mask for decades, only comments that Batman seems to be particularly chatty today.
How Bruce had acted with him had been a coin’s toss. Mostly overprotective, paranoid to anything that could hurt him, he had often preferred to get hurt to avoid calling for backup.
Other times, more rare, but often following an explosive shouting match between Dick and Bruce when the latter turned his neurotic anxiety on his firstborn, he would leave Tim to himself.
Leaving Gotham to him, trusting him to protect its inhabitants. Although he quickly regretted it when he came home to the reports Tim wrote.
Apparently, taking on and beating the Joker alone was too soon.
The next time the Joker breaks out of Arkham, Bruce pays to sent Tim's whole class to Japan. Bruce can deny it as much as he wants but Tim knows he also hired someone to follow his every move and report back.
Bruce sees himself in Tim when he thinks he killed Johnny Warlock to avenge Spoiler.
He has his mother’s chin and lips and his father’s eyes.
His mother’s lips are downturned and her chin is facing the ground.
His father’s pupils shake with unshed tears.
But it’s his reflection starting back at him as Tim storms out of the cave.
Brooding, repressed, isolating himself to lick his wounds like a wounded animal. Bruce Wayne. Batman.
He knows Tim doesn’t want to be anything like Batman and Bruce wholeheartedly supports him but he has never looked more alike to the boy who had first created the mantle to overcome his fear of bats.
Sometimes, Bruce thinks that he’s like poison, insidious, corrupting everybody who had ever loved him with his rot.
He wants to brood and contemplate how Bruce loving his son the only way he knows to, has changed his son irreparably.
“Go take a shower and I'll shut down every argument you make about being a horrible person !” He shouts instead.
Talia stands before him and her mouth is moving but Bruce can’t hear anything she says.
Their son has a sword to his jugular and all he can think about is Tim.
Could they be uncle and nephew ?
Or father and son.
Damian, he learns is his name, is miffed when Batman tests his blood multiple times.
He thinks Bruce doesn’t want to recognize him as a legitimate heir or that he doubts his mother’s honesty.
Bruce doesn’t correct his assumptions, he’s too engrossed in the results the Batcomputer spat out.
They are father and son.
Bruce thinks the time has come, but then he stops dead in his tracks when he enters the cave.
Tim. His son is lying, unmoving on the pieces of Jason’s memorial case.
Damian is standing proudly over his body, he too is injured but not as badly.
For a moment, Bruce is terrified that he is too late again.
He learns later that the memorial case was the only thing standing between Tim and a certain death.
He also learns that Tim only fell because he had offered Damian a helping hand when he had been dangling from the Dinosaur animatronic.
Tim is too trusting, he only sees the good in the people he meets. Bruce intimately knew he would rarely receive the same courtesy.
He sends Damian back to his mother and enrolls Stephanie Brown in his plan to remedy that.
It’s not the right time yet but Batman still notes that Damian and Robin have a compatible (the same) blood type in the health contingencies folder before he turns off the Batcomputer.
In case there are no suitable blood packs available and he is not available to reveal the truth.
It happens but Tim follows him and this contingency is never used.
Bruce comes back. Tim had brought him back. Had he been wrong about his goal ?
Still Bruce knew it wasn't the right time.
Bat Inc. Bringing Cassandra home. Re-education. Learning to know Damian. Spending time with his children.
It all started with Duke and a mission that had exceptionally reunited the whole family on the same rooftop.
A middle-aged man shot in the chest. An everyday occurrence for Gotham.
The case had been easily solved and the only hitch they had come across were the different methods of investigation each vigilante used and the different conclusions they consequently came to, making them all disagree with each other.
Again, nothing out of the ordinary for the family. It would have been more concerning if they had not once disagreed with each other.
Tim. Red Robin had been adamant this had been the work of Killer Croc as soon as he landed on the rooftop.
He reported “smelling him all over the scene”.
The others had denied smelling anything other than Gotham’s usual nostalgic smell. A disgusting mix of pee, industrial smoke, oil and the metallic smell of blood that always covered their olfactory traces from metas with enhanced senses and police dogs better than the bat-grade disinfectants and soaps they lathered themselves with before and after every patrol.
Robin had agreed that the smell was different but had attributed the change to the presence of blood and the fresh corpse it came from.
The man had been cuckolded by Killer Croc and killed when he had discovered his lover’s affair.
Red Robin had been right.
Batman had clasped his shoulder in approval as always. The only change would have been Nightwing's behavior.
After that case, he had made sure to always keep dog treats on him, not for his dog like a normal person, but to throw them at Red Robin every time he saw him out and about in Gotham.
Yes, even as Tim Drake. Batman had put his foot down on this though, and now Nightwing could only harass Red Robin when he wore the suit.
Duke had taken Dick aside to ask him why he would do that after a shootout where he had spent half the time throwing treats at Red Robin.
“They’re not actually dog treats. It’s human food shaped like dog treats. I throw them at him because he catches them with his mouth and eats them. He thinks he’s doing it to spite me, but I'm actually conditioning him to get used to snacking during patrol so he’ll offer to pay for the ice cream and fajitas runs.”
“Dude, most dog food is human grade, and you probably just spend more on the fake treats than you would have on ice cream.” Duke sighed.
It was hard to remember that Dick had been a mathele and one of the best detectives and strategists in the business, when he did stupid shit like this all the time.
And he wasn’t even doing it to be underestimated like Tim, he was genuinely just like that. Duke knew because he had spent his first few months casing him out because the whiplash had been violent when he had spent more time with Dick and seen him in action outside of official missions.
Dick Grayson was a cop and the only vigilante in Bludhaven, who knew how to cook and clean after himself pretty well for a guy that had been adopted by a billionaire with a butler.
He was also, as Duke had come to learn in his bitching/gossiping sessions with Tim about the other members of the family, willing to taste unknown substances in random alleys in Gotham (!) and crash his bike in the sewers to make Tim think he had died (which what the hell man, he understood now why Tim had started those sessions!).
Nothing would have changed if not for Duke Thomas.
Signal was still on blood work training, officially supervised by Red Robin. Unofficially, this was their bitching time as they went over complex biology and forensic concepts that Tim made sound so easy.
Tim had to leave early for a slumber party with his Young Justice (Young Just Us?) team and weirdly Cissie King-Jones?!
Duke hadn’t let him leave until Tim had pinky promised him to bring him an autograph.
Duke was about to run to his room upstairs to choose what picture to give him for the autograph, but Tim had laughed and refused. Apparently, “Cissie always keeps pictures on her” for this reason ?
Duke tried to concentrate again, but his mind kept going back to Tim.
Since he was getting no proper work done, he decided to fiddle with the Batcomputer a bit and work on the side project he had relegated to the back of his mental list.
Prove that Tim obviously had enhanced senses (see that time with Killer Croc and every time he decided to stick an unknown substance in his mouth as a test, a test that ended up right most of the time for some reason. “Yes, Tim, obviously that made you a hypocrite !”).
A quick google search showed some results. A study claimed that an enhanced sense of smell had been found to be linked to genetic inheritance.
To be more precise, people of Asian descent had a better sense of smell than Caucasians, who then had better olfactive senses than African Americans.
Fuck, Duke hated playing this game. Is it reliable or good ol’ scientific racism ?
Well, this study could explain the deal with Damian, but not what happened with Tim.
He scrolled down. There. A Reddit post that said you could gain a better sense of smell with specialized training.
Honestly, this made more sense. But if Tim had gone through "smell training", they were close enough that he would have told him, right?
Duke groaned. He was wasting his time and it was almost his bedtime.
Nothing better than to go back to the source, I guess.
So Duke used his last resort.
The thing he promised himself he would never touch when Tim gave it to him that day, with a wink and a knowing smirk and more protection than the Pentagon ever had.
Duke went through dozens of different scanners. Iris recognition. Blood recognition. And the annoying algorithm you could only crack with hours of screen time and weeks of talking with Tim after he had imprinted on you.
The Superman-proof door opened. And there it was.
Dozens of samples. Skin, hair, nail and blood. Anything you could sample, really. From each and every member of their fucked-up family and more frequent allies. (The villains' side was in another vault.)
Duke walked past Cass and Jason samples. (They weren’t numbered or named, Tim was too paranoid for that and instead had made him memorize the spatial layout.)
He took the samples that had picked his interest, Damian and Tim’s, and walked back to his work station after reactivating the security system.
He was grateful Tim had insisted they be left alone in the cave during those sessions for “a better learning environment” and that Batman had signed on it because he could never resist puppy eyes or a logos-based argumentation. Tim was apparently a master at both.
Duke was grateful because it meant that nobody was around to see what he was doing. Crazy, stupid science bullshit. He had always preferred the humanities anyway.
And no, of course it had nothing to do with the bet Dick had started.
“I give you two weeks until Timmy contaminates you with his mad scientist agenda!”
Which, first and foremost, why had they chosen to let Tim teach him about this then?
And he had no second point, but Duke could see Dick’s insufferable smile as he claimed his winnings, and he refused to play a part in this.
This could barely be considered mad scientist bullshit anyway.
They analyzed blood samples they collected in crime scenes every night. This was no different.
No matter what the armored bat-grade safe behind him had to say.
Which was nothing, by the way because Tim was too cautious to connect it to the Internet or add an AI he had made.
He would start with a simple, vague genetic comparison and if he found anything of interest, would zoom in to hopefully isolate the gene responsible for the enhanced senses.
Duke stared at the results. Befuddled. Stunned. Bamboozled. Dizzy. Faint. Discombobulated. Shell-shocked.
What. The. Fuck. He wanted to scream.
Instead, he blankly manually restarted the process.
Duke knew his body was on autopilot and that he was out of it, but by the fifteenth time the same results stared back at him, he snapped out of it.
Duke smashed the red button repeatedly.
“I call “unethical Frankenstein experiment type that gained consciousness and attacked its creator”!”
Tim screamed before even getting off his bike. It had a name. Redbird? Duke thought absentmindedly in between the throes of unending dread and the anxiety pit down in his stomach.
“You’d be the one to know that.” Nightwing smirked, putting his hand on his waist.
Duke frowned.
Everybody had their copying mechanisms, whether it was cloning your situationship a hundred times or joining a corrupt system that crushed countless people under its heel as an enforcer.
Duke personally thought that only one of those things was really bad (and it wasn’t the cloning. Think again, Pig.)
“I’ll take a mad scientist before a piggy everyday, Dick.”
Steph barked a laugh and Tim high fived him.
Duke could swear on his parents’ souls (scratch that, he would only be willing to bet on Gnomon’s soul, if he even had one) that even Batman had done his version of cackling like a hyena. A weird mix between a grunt and an eyebrow raise that only a man raised by a British butler would think to make.
Bruce was intentionally much harder to read with the cowl on, acting like expressing a positive emotion would destroy his street cred, or whatever it was that boomers like him used these days.
(Duke was still going through the flashcards on Batman clues and microemotions Tim had made him and hadn’t even started on the bound manual yet.
Tim had assured him that they were warded to the teeth and that anyone that wasn’t this “dimension, genetic, physical aged Duke Thomas” couldn’t access them after Duke had asked him tips on how to hide them better in his room.
Well, he had hinted to a worse fate but Duke knew how to pick his battles and choose to remain willfully ignorant on how his brother in all but name had gotten those samples and what exactly would befall the poor soul that got his grubby hands on those cards.
But Duke was also a nosy fucker that couldn’t let sleeping logs lie (or whatever the fuck was the expression English puritans had coined) so he had to ask at least why his brother thought this was even in the realm of a good idea.
Tim apparently wasn’t worried about rogue dimensional trespassers as much as he was about “sticky prank wars”.
He even offered to do his favorite pair of clothing, Duke clutched his silk Akatsuki bonnet like one would pearls, and shook his head quickly before Tim thought to surprise him.
“There are lots of clothing thieves in this manor, Duke. I left for two seconds to bring Bruce back from the dead and Damian repays me by ransacking my closet! I know somebody who can help us though…”)
First of all, hell no. Second of all, of course he knew somebody for that too. (That's what had gotten them into this mess in the first place!)
The guy was a social butterfly, making friends everywhere he went, whether he had gone willingly or not in the first place.
Duke hadn’t believed that Lima syndrome was a real thing until he had met Timothy Drake-Wayne.
Duke had brought Tim to his cousin’s and turned his back for a minute to bring them beverages like a good host and when he came back they were talking like long lost childhood friends.
From what he could understand from outside the conversation, they had bonded over fishing of all things.
Now, Tim was the AGFIBG (assigned good friend/influence by a guardian) and Duke could just shoot Jay a text saying he was hanging out with Tim when he had Signal business instead of sneaking out and inventing worse excuses every time like he used to.
Before he would have gotten multiple questions, texts and at least a call (it was Gotham after all and Jay was responsible) but now it was “Oh say hello to Tim for me! Duke! Ask him if we’re still on for the..”
And he wasn’t the only one who had noticed.
Gotham had noticed when Batman “I work alone” had reluctantly teamed up with other vigilantes than Robin, the Boy Wonder.
Huntress, Azrael, Nightwing, Spoiler, Orphan and Oracle had been the first shot at a “bat-team”, a Bat family some theorized.
And Robin had obviously been the cause.
As much as he remained unseen by any cameras, people all over the world obviously talked when teenage heroes bombed Mount Rushmore to reveal a super secret government lab experimenting on meta children or invaded a supervillain country with an army of teenage heroes.
All strikes against Robin for some idiots on the internet.
Duke had spent hours of his very limited screen time and life defending the new Robin from disgusting allegations made by morons who were probably bots made by Luthor’s army of exploited morally corrupt scientists.
Robin wasn’t from Star City (yes, he had teamed up with the Flash but so did Nightwing and he was the one on a team with him).
Robin wasn’t from Paris (he had been in the trenches when debunking this rumor, because every time he tried to, the concerned party was spotted there again!).
Even though a concerningly large amount of evidence and people were against him, he had prevailed over his enemies.
But because Robin III, for some reason (Duke knew now that the reason was training with the deadliest assassin on the planet), had made his first debut in his suit in Paris, that theory tended to pop out every month or so.
You win some, you lose some. His mother always used to say, though he doubted she’d use it on this occasion.
The worst of all, were those braindead (mainly Superbat shippers) morons who thought that Robin was from Metropolis. (Since Robin was sociable and friendly he was obviously Batman and Superman's secret lovechild!)
He thinks that the first time his powers manifested was when his eyes were violated with that filth.
His mother hadn’t been amused when she came home to a hole in the wall that connected their apartment to their neighbor’s.
But then she had learned why, and she had laughed and laughed and laughed for what felt like years to a guilty 7 years old.
(They were probably still laughing, and laughing and laughing right now in the best ward Wayne money could buy. Duke thought bitterly.)
All of the prayers that Duke had made during Sunday mass in his best church clothes came through.
A clone of Superman and Lex Luthor appeared.
There was only one thing to do.
Duke founded the SuperSons.
(Damian totally copied him but he's not gonna be the one to tell him why people outright laugh at their faces when Robin and Superboy Jr introduce themselves with that moniker to the people they save or fight.
Capitalism 101 : don't pay for something you can get for free.
They’re basically free, legitimate ambassadors for his venture. Was it child labor?
Fuck, Tim had rubbed off on him too much.
Maybe Duke can get Batman to mention that on camera?)
He is the founder, the captain and only member of the SuperSons ship.
That is until he gets mugged by a man with a knife to his throat and Robin saves him before he can freak out and expose that he's a meta in fucking Gotham.
His eyes don't leave Robin as he masterfully disarms the criminal, zip ties him to the pole of a nearby stop sign and comes to check up on him because Duke had been staring at him with an open mouth like an idiot for God knows how long.
Robin seemed used to this reaction. But it's not as much awe as it is an eureka moment.
He visualizes the suit. Memorizes every detail and shade of red and as soon as he gets home he commissions an artist to draw him some biblically accurate fanart with his birthday money.
As it turns out the red and blue dynamic sells every time. Duke pats himself for a job well done and watches the chaos unfold.
It turns out that people are also much less tempted to headcannon Robin as a Metropolitan now that the SuperSons ship has that Romeo and Juliet situation going on.
Duke obviously had a form of dissociation going on.
He had shown no reaction to Dick and Steph calling his name but didn't seem to be panic attack level distressed so the others had elected to let him be until everybody got there.
Tim wondered what Duke was thinking about so deeply.
He greeted Cass and Barbara who had arrived in the meantime with a hug.
They began to catch up and snickered when Alfred brought beverages and snacks and Bruce insisted they didn’t need any because “it wasn’t professional”.
Barbara said that his trackers had been in Louisiana an hour ago. Tim recognized it as the question it was and answered.
“Yeah, I was there visiting friends. Impulse brought me back when I got the alert.”
Jason receives that doom alert on his comm dedicated to Bat-business when he's about to monologue to his goons about reclaiming the drug trade on the East Side.
It could mean that a world-ending catastrophe is about to hit them but it could also mean something much better.
Tim has been the last person to push that sweet red button (what a cliché but you could hardly rely on Batman of all people to be original).
Jason fondly reminisced as he rode his motorcycle through the dark streets of Gotham, uncaring of traffic laws.
That day, when Jason had gotten there Tim was glowering at Barbara, who was poorly hiding a guilty grin.
“I am NOT addicted to coffee ! Barbara organized this defamation campaign against my character to distract all of you from the real problem ! The fact that she probably supports the coffee industry in this state and the next state alone !”
He looked manic or like a chihuahua on steroids (which Jason knew because Gotham scum had always liked its dog fights).
“She tainted my character irreparably ! I drink Zesti like a normal person and only use coffee as a last resort !”
“Man. It’s so weird to see that Tim was raised rich.” Duke whispered to Steph.
“Preach ! He looks like your teenage dirtbag skater boy boyfriend your parents would hate most of the time. Then it’s whiplash when you see Richie Rich at a gala. He has a rich people laugh and everything. I thought he was possessed the first time I witnessed that.” She shuddered.
Dick was dragging Tim in the direction of the door. “Let’s get you to bed, huh?”
Big mistake, Cass shook her head. What a noob.
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2
3
Tim headbutted Dick and screamed, enraged. “I just woke up from a 12 hour nap, Dickhead!”
Jason almost burst a gut laughing.
He kept yelling his head off about “critical thinking”, “correlation not causation” and “manipulating footage with malicious intent” until Bruce had managed to calm him down with a solemn promise to look into it seriously. “Yes. Of course you can help me, Tim.”
At the end, they had found out that Tim was in fact right and very upset at the coddling he had received, saying it was an “attempt to deprive him of his freedom and agency”.
Cass could see that something more had rattled him and decided to ask later when they were alone.
Everyone had gained more respect (and wariness) for Babs who had managed to keep up this con for years without leaving any trace to incriminate her (unless you were Timothy Jackson Drake who connected seemingly unrelated points to get the right conclusion as a hobby).
The reason had made Jason laugh even harder. He didn't think he had ever been so deprived of oxygen, not even when he was digging his way out of his grave.
Barbie had apparently found Tim’s old blog where he had vehemently defended StarWing (Starfire x Nightwing) over BatWing (Batgirl x Nightwing) in numerous fandom ship wars.
The attacks he had spearheaded (and won) against the opposition hadn’t always been the nicest to Batgirl’s image.
He often used the argument that Batgirl had “clearly robbed the cradle” with Nightwing. It had worked every single time.
Barbara had needed a target for her scheme and Tim had painted a bright red target on his back.
Bruce had called Jim Gordon (the snitch!) and sent him the invoice for every bean of coffee Barbara had ordered in the last six months.
Barbara knew an intervention was coming, just like it had for Tim countless times before. She groaned, pained.
“I would've gotten away with it too if that meddling kid hadn’t poked his nose where it didn’t belong !” She spat jokingly, making everybody but Damian and Cass laugh.
Tim saw how confused they looked and said. “It’s a Scooby Doo reference.”
“Dick! Dami and Cass haven’t seen Scooby-Doo!” He screamed, alerting everyone in the room.
“How did you even manage to fuck it up this much?” Duke shook his head in disapproval.
Steph ran to drag Cass to the movie theater.
“Do we even have the DVDs ?”
“We’ll pirate them. Keep up Bruce!”
“No we won’t, Jason. Not for Scooby at least, I have all the movies in my room.” Tim said, running to his room. Duke went with him.
“Steph and Dick, you're in charge of the good snacks.”
“Aye, aye captain!”
“Bossy.” Dick ruffled his little brother’s hair affectionately.
Jason ended up staying until the end because he knew B would come to regret letting his two, very much not trusting, assassins-raised kids watch Scooby-Doo, where the moral was that everyone could be the monster behind the mask.
"It was good. Funny. " Cass shrugged.
"The moral was quite deep for such a childish animated show. Constant vigilance, an enemy could always be near." Damian said.
Cass nodded seriously in agreement.
In the background, Dick stumbled over his words before turning to stare and whisper menacingly at his father.
"It's your job to fix this B."
"Titus would not be opposed to having an intelligent companion." Damian added, serious as the dead.
Bruce sighed and dragged a tired hand on his face. Next to him, Duke, Steph and Jason were dying of laughter.
Tim was attempting to film the interaction but he was shaking too hard to get any useful footage. Who cares, they had cameras everywhere anyways.
Jason hoped it was another Tim situation. He hadn't laughed in Batman’s face in a while.
Everybody but Jason was there.
Duke clearly his throat. Finally bringing himself to speak before Jason debarked on a dinky, modified to the brim (Roy's work probably) motorcycle that had clearly seen everything Gotham had to offer (not in a good way. Was there even a good way?).
He jumped off the bike, not even taking out his key or looking back when it went careening off to the floor (that explained the bumps) and immediately shot up his memorial case.
“What the hell, Jason !” Dick covered his ears.
“I saw something moving behind.” He shrugged, clearly lying because he had a large smirk on his face.
“And your solution was to empty the clip of a rocket launcher, meters only from the full meeting room in a situation of crisis." Bruce said blankly.
"Yup!" He shrugged.
Bruce's face went a concerning purplish red.
Duke knew in theory that it was a thing white people did when they were angry but he had never seen this color outside of a cartoon.
Bruce took deep calming breaths and signaled for Signal to speak before he burst a vessel.
“I think a villain modified the genome of one of us. Nobody warned me this was a thing !” Duke blurted out, panicked.
“I bet on Tim!”
“Dick?” Tim asked betrayed.
“Timmy.” Cass nodded.
“Sorry ex-boyfriend. I like to win.”
Jason was hacking off a lung next to him but managed to sign “Tim”. Tim hoped he died or at least got majorly inconvenienced.
Damian said that it was beneath him and Tim could have kissed him.
“Come on guys ! You’re jinxing me!” He whined.
Duke didn’t say anything. Tim was beginning to grow more concerned, Duke was lost in thought again.
Duke would have thought that it was another instance of a long lost relative like him and Gnomon or Jason and Sheila Haywood but Damian was clearly too young to have fathered Tim the normal way and Duke assumed they would have said something if this was another open secret.
Like the fact that Bruce had a favorite kid. (The others thought it was Cass or Dick or even Jason but Bruce looked at Tim the same way his mother used to look at him. Before she could look at him and recognize him at least.)
Or that Tim was weirdly the most trusting out of the bats even with his contingencies and all.
Nobody had warned him this could be a thing when he had created his gang of Robins.
Duke knew science had no limits, especially in their universe, where Gods and Demons co-existed and humans with special powers popped up every year (he was one of them after all.) but this was crazy.
Erasing half of you, your genome and rewriting it like it was an eraserboard was crazy !
Duke knew all about Ra’s al Ghul obsession with an heir but this was uncharted territory.
He thought that blood wasn’t that important to the man since he had asked Bruce to be his heir probably long before Tim had been born !
Who the fuck did shit like that ?!
And now, Duke had to break the bad news to his favorite brother. It would ruin his life but at least Duke was ready to be supportive and there for Tim in any way he could.
The others quietened down and became more serious as they saw how shaken Duke was.
“Ra’s did something to your genome and now you’re related to him. Through Damian because he is biologically your father!” Duke burst out, breathing heavily like he had just battled with Killer Croc in the sewers.
“WHAT?!” Dick screamed.
“Oh great heavens!” Alfred dropped his serving tray. He had thought that Master Timothy was the product of a dalliance Master Bruce had. This was an entirely unexpected development.
His fine blue china set crashed and shattered into tiny pieces on the floor and no vigilante in the room, with their superior reflexes reacted.
Alfred didn’t move to get the sweeping broom.
“It can’t be- This is preposterous and not an appropriate time for such a jest, Thomas !” Damian uncharacteristically floundered, losing his iron control on his tongue.
“It is true.” Bruce admits darkly.
“Of course, you’re hiding important intel from your teammates. Intel that concerns them ! You think that is the right course of action every fucking time ! It’s not like it will explode in everybody’s faces at the worst moment possible or anything ! Oh wait! Like it did the hundred times you tried this course of action before !” Barbara erupts, her face as red as her hair.
Dick’s open mouth shows that he too was about to give Bruce a piece of his mind but he contents himself with nodding in agreement with everything Barbara screams.
Damian’s looking at Tim like he’s never seen him before. Categorizing. Searching for any familiar (familial) features in him.
Every time he finds one, his eyes widen and Tim can almost see the tallies he carves mentally in his pros and cons list.
Tim knows because he’s doing the exact same. They really are father and son.
Steph watches everything like a ping pong match, her head snapping back and forth, desperate to understand what’s going on.
She opens her mouth and Cass doesn’t have Duke’s clairvoyant powers but she can see the metaphorical truck, full of extremely flammable, very deadly oil, dangerously rushing towards the car crash. Car pile-up really. She’s overwhelmed trying to deal with the news and dealing with everybody else reacting to the news, vocally or worse silently.
Everyone’s body language is saying so much and she can’t deal with it. Tim would have used a nerdy metaphor like having your computer be infected with so many many pop-ups that it overwhelms your ability to close them all and Cass tends to agree with the sentiment in not so many words.
So she’s helpless to stop what’s coming. She already knows Stephanie is going to regret saying it as soon as her mouth stops having a brain of its own.
“Did you know that kinks are genetic? It’s funny because Tim liked-” She starts to speak. Thankfully, Jason and Duke interrupt her. Duke woke up from his daze. Good.
“Why the fuck would you say that?!” Duke shrieked, giving her a disgusted look.
“What’s wrong with you oh my God ?!” Jason screams at the top of his lungs.
“I was panicking okay?! I don’t have control on what I say!” She screams back, fire red. ”Also rude. But also coming from you?” She gives Jason an up and down look and wrinkles her nose.
“TMI! TMI! TMI!” Duke wails like a broken alarm.
“What the fuck is that supposed to meant Blondie?!” He yells, offended.
“You know exactly what I mean. Coward.” Steph spits, undeterred.
Jason cocks his gun. It’s his rubber bullet one but he still manages to shoot off a blonde stand off her aggravating birdbrain.
She screams in outrage.
Bruce only reacts to the sound of the gunshot and immediately puts a stop to it.
It doesn’t work for everyone. Barbara is still screaming even though her voice is hoarse and Dick has started screaming too in support. (“That’s why the chimpanzee is a better detective than you’ll ever be!”)
Damian and Tim are locked in a staring battle. It doesn’t look offensive, more like small snails testing the waters with their antennas after getting out of their comfort zone.
They look alike. Brothers. Or father and son.
“I think Damian and I want to have this discussion in private.”
Everybody quiets down at hearing Tim speak for the first time since the reveal.
“Alone.” He adds when nobody moves.
He doesn’t open his mouth to speak again until everybody (some more reluctantly than others) leaves the cave. They’re not far away, probably still in screaming for help zone but Tim knows he’s not going to need it.
He scrambles the audio and video of every technological product in the radius.
Damian opens his mouth to speak.
“Do you think they’re killing each other in there?” Duke asks anxiously.
“No. Blood ties and family are important to Damian.” Dick answers quickly but he doesn’t look too sure of himself.
He’s still in the optimal position to run to help, which Duke knows because everybody else in the room is too.
They don’t speak anymore in the half hour it takes for Tim and Damian to join them upstairs.
Sated. Bone-tired. Faintly red eyed. But unharmed, emotionally and physically. Clearly satisfied with the compromise they had reached.
"Welcome to the evil deadbeat parent club, Timberlina! You have to bring homemade food to the potluck."
Jason smirked. This was the first thing he had said after laughing their faces for five minutes, his speech was still laborious and strained by the lack of oxygen.
Damian wanted to stab him. It would also prove him right so he barely refrained from doing so.
“I think you have to be raised by said parents to qualify though. My parents were the pioneers of gentle parenting and always on top of every new pedagogical study there was.”
Steph felt such an all-compassing fondness for her little freak.
Leave it to Tim to “Um, actually” Jason between the discovery that his whole life was a lie and the ensuing existential crisis that came with learning that your little brother boned (Will bone? Had boned?...Fuck, that’s why she hates time travel shenanigans so much.) your mom.
A quick glance to Dick and Cass showed that they agree with her.
Once, Cass had told her that Tim got hives the rare times he had to agree with Jason.
Steph had yet to discover if this was also part of her unsocialized tube baby humor but still everytime she’s in the same room as both Jason and Tim since Cass told her that, she scrutinizes her ex-boyfriend from head to toes, hoping for a flaw in the mask.
She knows she won’t find any. This was surprising to a lot of people, but Tim was the actual hopelessly optimist between them.
It was probably the blinding iconic aesthetic she had going for her and weirdly the blonde hair?
Tim, that dweeb, had more friends than her, and probably in every country knowing him.
While Steph was like a racoon, she had found her favorite dump on fire (the girls and Tim she moonlighted as a vigilante with) and now not even Death could chase her mangy big ass out.
Bruce had tried and failed countless times and he is known for the stick in his ass. Well, really it was for his rigid and solid moral compass but meh, Steph liked the first option better.
Steph had always been too mean in her thinking, too quick to judge, toughened by her salt, vinegar and everything sinister childhood in the dumps of Gotham.
She hadn’t taken up the mask and tights to help save innocents out of selflessness like the others.
She hadn’t really wanted or expected to save anybody at first, except maybe her mother from her shitty love choices.
Spoiler wanted revenge and the satisfaction of sticking it out to the man.
Despite what she had told Batman and Robin countless times, being Spoiler wasn’t really for the benefit of Cluemaster’s potential future victims.
Her father was only a wannabe Riddler that foiled his own schemes by sending tips to the cops before committing the crime.
She knew that the GCPD, incompetent and corrupt as they were, were more than enough to take him on. Cluemaster was too insignificant to get into Batman and Robin’s radar.
But she wanted to rub it in his face and maybe rub his face on the concrete too.
“I’m better than you. Better than anything you wanted me to be.” She wanted to scream but didn’t, because the excuse she came up with sounded better to her ears and to Batman’s and Robin’s too probably.
She craved the validation of the other real official true heroes, no matter how much she acted like she didn’t. Because if people so good saw her as good too then maybe she could become good. With her inherited selfishness and willingness to hurt the people she loved so easily and all.
Stephanie Brown was no better than Arthur Brown or Crystal Brown.
She was her father's daughter when she betrayed and hurt her boyfriend for scraps of approval of a man that would never see her as worthy, as his own.
Crystal Brown stared back at her when she got too into her head with irrational jealousy fits and even more irrational responses.
(It tasted bitter on her tongue. More than any fits of morning sickness ever had.)
But Steph knew she was the outlier, the bad apple that spoils the barrel. In a team of heroes that took on the cape for selfless reasons, she was the obvious fuck up.
Whether they had been pushed by personal tragedy and the desire to protect another from that fate and never feel as impotent as they did that fateful day like Bruce, Dick or Duke.
Or, full of hope and belief that the cape was a necessary symbol of hope and magic like Jason, Tim or Barbara.
They could also be retired assassins that had learned everything but being good and soft, yet were more empathetic than anyone like Cass and Damian.
Under that glittery, bubbly veneer, was her father’s daughter, rotten and poisonous.
Tim was the one with the stable childhood and parents that always showed him (healthily!) unconditional love and plenty of supportive friends before he had lost it all to Gotham’s cursed happiness detector and had to rebuild everything on the ashes of his previous life.
But then again, Steph personally knew the horrors vigilantes faced every night and Tim had been on the scene a while before she had put on the mask.
She gasped. Maybe he was one of those anomalies, that kind of people that got bit countless times and lost a hand yet extended the other. People like Superman.
Any hope she could ever have had been strangled in the cradle by the grip her cheap costume Superman cape gave Arthur Brown.
In another life, Steph thinks he could have been another eager, hopeful Jimmy Olsen that worked a real person job as a hobby because he had supportive rich parents and a million-dollars trust fund that kept growing thanks to passive investments and the internationally acclaimed stockbroker in charge of it (or whatever it was that rich people did to keep getting richer without working for it).
She shuddered and locked this reflection in the deepest pits of her mind.
She would throw it at Tim’s face next time she felt the urge to needle him because she was bored and needed the drama it would cause.
Still Steph wasn’t anything but aggressively stubborn. Hell, that’s how she got into this mess in the first place.
So she cracks a joke and smiles at the laughter she gets.
“Still a deadbeat, though. Can’t believe we’ve got our own fucked up version of Andi Mack !”
“If he’s Damian’s son how come he’s so… so social ! Are you sure he isn’t actually Dick’s secret son?” Duke asks Bruce, scrunching his face.
“Osmosis.” Cass answers simply instead.
“Nah, he inherited that from him through hero worship.” Jason argues, pointing at Dick.
“I'm sorry to inform you that master Timothy in fact, came to us “like that”." Alfred corrects unhurriedly but still visibly shaken.
“At least we know now why blackmail is always his first option.” Dick points out weakly, still faint.
“Or have we considered that maybe Damian’s type is friendly extroverted dwarves?” Stephanie brings up, trying not to snort.
“You’ll pay for this offense, Fatgirl!” Damian unsheathes his sword, ready to spill blood.
Batman raises a hand in a tired, halfhearted attempt to prevent bloodshed once again.
After everything and everyone had settled down, Bruce clears his throat in an attempt to speak but is interrupted again.
“I’m sorry, ex-boyfriend. I guess this is the end for us.”
Stephanie stops speaking to wipe an obvious fake theatrical tear.
Crying on command was a requirement for undercover operations.
”Having Batman as a future father-in-law was bad enough but now you’ve gone and added the demonic brat !” She grimaces exaggeratedly.
“Yeah, a real cockblock, wonder who’s gonna look past all your bat issues and bat-daddies to pop yar cherry.”
Jason leers at Tim, before bursting into mocking laughter that was cut short by Dick’s protective look that promised violence and his loose handle on his escrima sticks and Black Bat unblinking look.
Jason knew she was only waiting for an excuse to physically express how much she disagreed with his willingness to murder.
Jason was also famously known for his lack of self-preservation, a warning tale that big bad heroes told their sidekicks, if you would.
“M’bad. I forgot about Tweedle dee and Tweedle dum over there.”
Nevermind, that the little shit was his favorite in this shitshow of a family that Bruce fucking Wayne had tried to glue together like one would if they had broken their mother’s favorite flower vase.
Jason wouldn’t know. They hadn’t had the money for a vase, much less flowers but he knew one thing.
He would gleefully put some heads in a duffel bag or bomb a high school again if a shithead sniffed after the kid too closely, and showed him untoward advances that didn't get a resounding yes first.
If a shithead sniffed around the kid too closely, period.
Shovel talks were a big brother AND an uncle thing, right ?
He reminded himself to ask Bizarro later, he was the only one he knew with nephews.
He should also ask about the Super that had been sniffing after the kid, too closely.
Still, Jason smirked, knowing it would activate the Cain instinct in his siblings.
“Timothy was bewitched by your vulgar wiles ! He only saw reason when your faults were so great that even he had to recognize them !”
“Yay! Your secret daddy’s not a deadbeat. You got one over Jason at least ! He recognized your existence!” Stephanie cheers mockingly.
“Someone should call CPS on your ass, you demented brat.” Jason curses as he tries to run from Damian and a stab wound. Nobody helps him.
Dick gasps in realization.
“So that’s why you bought him every bat vehicle there was, I thought you were relaxing your rules or that Tim was your favorite but you were just playing the doting grandparent!” He screams out.
It starts an all out war again. Everybody chimes in with their two cents.
Tim smiles secretly. He’s home.
“Hey Tim ! You weren’t supposed to be here today.” Conner says curiously.
“What ? I'm not welcome at the Tower ? Wasn’t aware I got banned.”
Tim snarks in a tone that he means to be teasing but Conner knows that the vague alertness he felt at Tim breaking his routine just became a blaring red-someone-died-or-is-dying-shade alarm. It pierces his brain. Help him. Help. Help.
Raven’s abnormal hovering- not her power that she uses everytime she feels angsty and wants to show it- is her version of hovering and coddling a friend during an emotional crisis.
Raven has always been mindful of privacy and the potential violation her emotions related powers could be on an unwilling participant so she keeps her mouth shut every time she senses a problem.
She makes up for it by subconsciously sticking around, showing support to her friends with her presence.
The other Titans hadn’t told her of this tell because they hadn’t wanted her to be self-conscious (and it was also a useful tool to understand the more emotional repressed members).
The last time Tim had been around for this to happen, his dad had died and he hadn’t told anyone.
Kon had to learn this from Superman of all people ! So he wasn’t ashamed to say that he was worried.
Bart was running circles around Tim, asking him thousands of questions a minute without taking a breath.
This was normal Bart behavior but Conner knew that he could tell something was wrong too.
He contemplated asking Bart to cheer Tim up by baking a cake again.
Or more likely, pulling dozens of weird objects related to their shared niche hobbies, out of his (sometimes metaphorical) magician hat he had only bought for the occasion.
Cassie caught his eye and did the universal sign to “cut in out”.
Conner was about to argue loudly against this insulting lack of trust.
Bart and him had been Tim’s first hero friends ! They were the founders of the Young Justice team ! Cassie didn’t get to call dibs or pull rank because she had been the only one out of them alive to hangout with Tim that one time !
Cassie and Kon had never been the discrete type, Tim snickered.
Even with Bart, Raven and Gar distracting him with his animal transformation, Tim could see them having an entire wordless conversation by glaring at each other.
Tim could even recite in his head the arguments they would use.
They used the same stupid rhetoric every single time they disagreed on something.
He would be willing to bet another organ that Kon was currently whining about Cassie and Tim “hanging out alone” when they were dead.
To distract them from the chaos about to unfold, Tim decided to throw them a bigger curve.
“Robin is my biological father. Batman thinks I time traveled to save his life so they would meet.”
There’s a long, pregnant silence where his friends are trying to discern if this is another instance of his dry humor.
Tim can see the realization in their eyes because they immediately do their best impression of a very, very excited zoo. Literally, for Gar.
After they calm down a bit, the questions start.
“I have been waiting for this moment my whole life ! Young padawan, let me teach you what to do in case you end up in the past under your grandfather’s care !” Bart rambles excitedly.
Tim whips his head back violently. “Wait, you knew the whole time and didn’t tell me?”
“Yeah, that's not crash dude. Totally against bro code.” Kon shakes his head in disappointment.
“No, no no ! Statistically, it was bound to happen to someone else !” Bart shakes his head so hard, they can only see the blurry afterimages.
Cassie interjects. “Wait. Isn't it more my thing ? Finding out you’ve been related to your mentor the whole time ?”
“Well, I wrote a book about it !” Bart sasses.
“Does this mean that you beat your father ?” Kon gasps.
“He took one for the team.” Cissie says in approval.
Her voice sounds genuine, coming from the phone call Cassie made so that she would take her side against Bart.
“Living the dream.” Anita says dryly next to Cissie.
Tim can hear Greta scolding them for being insensitive from the couch he’s lying face down on.
They bicker and rehash this argument until Vic pops his head in the room cautiously.
“Should I know ?”
“The newest Robin is Tim’s biological father. Batman thinks he time traveled to save his life so they would meet.”
“What the hell.” Vic blurts out.
“Man, our lives are so fucked up.”
Sometimes Tim thinks of what his life could have been like if he never chose to put on the mask.
He knows that unlike his siblings and other heroes he worked with, he had no personal tragedy spurring him on. No personal loss.
He had no true vested interest other than a citizen’s concern about the city they live in, simply their chances of survival were lowered if it said city started to crumble down around them.
But Tim had never been good at minding his own business.
His dad would ruffle his hair and call him his “little prodigy” or tell his mom that he was “born with an archeologist’s passion” when he bothered him the hundreds of questions his books couldn’t answer.
His mom would laugh and tell him to knock it off. “Jack, you know he can make his own choices. Right, baby?” She would caress his face and hold him closely to her and Tim felt that no one could reach him there.
His parents couldn’t always be with him though. They wanted him to have a choice, the best future money could afford.
A future Jack and Janet could only dream of before the company had started to take off.
Tim understood. They hated parting with him to go on short but crucial business trips.
Tim was also bored.
His dad had been killed because he had been bored once. He had lost countless people because he had been bored once.
You couldn’t really trust your thirteen years old self to make good life-changing choices.
Sometimes Tim thinks of what his life could have been like if he never chose to put on the mask.
Now, he guesses that he never really had a choice.
He doesn’t know if it makes him feel better or not.
It was… reassuring to know that something so good had come from him. He had always jealoused and despised his predecessor because he had set impossible, selfless, precedents for the violent, blood-thirsty and vindictive assassin to reach.
And he could see that the others saw it too. Todd with the same loathing and barely suppressed jealousy that had transformed into affectionate (for him) teasing, and sometimes too mean remarks.
Richard in glassy eyes that didn’t see him, as his little brother, asTimothy Drake, turned his back on him.
Richard who had shown him the true meaning of his father’s legacy.
Richard, who hid the reluctant responsibilities he felt he owed to his father through Damian.
Responsibilities that had burdened and killed Nightwing when he had first downed the cowl.
Batman.
Father.
Bruce Wayne in carefully masked downturned lips after missions when battleborn instincts and unrehearsed wordless support between Batman and Robin (not him, never him) hadn’t borne fruit.
Hadn’t been the symbiotic relationship the previous dynamic duo had shared, Damian knew full well.
His mother had shown him the footage their spies had managed to gleam repeatedly as he trained.
There was a long silence as Jon tried to process everything that had just been unloaded into his poor shoulders.
“I guess bats are extremely competitive in every way, huh? And there I “foolishly thought” that having a hybrid brother-uncle was weird!”
Jon blurted out, awkward after the long silence but amused and failing miserably to hide it.
“Don’t-”
“So where’s the proud parent photos ? My mom always complains that people always show her too many pictures of their “unfortunate-looking” babies when she gets them to talk. But I guess you skipped the teething phase? Unless you still have pictures- Wait who I am kidding you’re a Bat of course you have pictures. Did you take them off of the dartboard to put them in your ridiculously large wallet? Or are you more like the collage type ?”
“-make a mockery out of my unfortunate predicament ! The clone clearly rubbed off his unseemly demeanor on you excessively.”
“Hey! That’s not nice. Kon’s awesome. You’ll clearly have to get used to him too, he could become your son-in-law one day.”
Damian let out a scream of rage (or was it a war cry?) and stormed off, presumably to prevent that fate one way or another.
Jon cussed, his mouth always got the best out of him when he wanted to make a point. It was how his parents caught him the rare times he lied.
His dad had always insisted he only ever use language he meant wholeheartedly and never act out recklessly in anger.
“You can’t take words back Jon.” He always said, a comforting hand on his shoulder as emphasis.
“Your mother and I never say things we don’t mean because we know they can never be truly taken back.”
His mother sat at the kitchen counter, smiling behind her morning cup of coffee, staying out of the discussion, content in her role as observer.
She lazily gave her input as her husband’s desperate plea for backup reached her.
Though, it went right over Jon’s head. They always tried to present a united front in front of him.
“Right. The pen is mightier than the sword and all.” She gestured, mimicking taking out a sword out of its sheath and making her boy giggle. Well, they tried to at least.
Jon pulled out his phone from his pocket quickly (he knew for a fact if Damian had still been there he would drone on and on about it being a security risk that could befall all of the hero community, Jon.) and texted his brother.
>> Watch out. Dami’s out to get you.
<< ???
The reply was instant. Jon knew it was because Kon had a special ringtone for him. He did the same.
The first notes of Kon's ringtone began to play but Jon turned off his phone. He had to hide too. He knew that Damian would come back to exact his revenge on him as soon as his wrath was satisfied, a probably (only really annoying but not deadly. Fingers crossed.) revenge.
They had been invited for lunch at the Lane-Kent’s and Bruce had accepted despite his reasonable hang-ups.
“You have not yet consumed the required caloric intake for the amount of physical exercise our nightlives demand.” Damian begins unhurriedly, not even looking up from his plate.
“Don’t start with the “eat your vegetables” bullshit again !” Tim points at him with a menacing finger.
He fails miserably to convey the intended effect as it always makes him look like a tantruming child no matter how strong his arguments are.
Once upon a time, Damian would have gladly pointed this out with a cutting witty quip but now he contents himself with hiding a grin behind his spoon and ignoring him.
It drives Tim up the wall just as it does Damian when it’s directed at him. They really are father and son.
Tim, incensed, continues to rant, abandoning his plate to point at his father with the fork.
“I’m sure you tinkered with my genes in some way so I wouldn’t surpass you in height like you will with Bruce.” Tim cries out, pointing at his father who was growing like a weed.
Said father shrugs off the members their fucked-up family that come to his defense.
“Come on Timmy. It's crazy to accuse Damian of something like this !” Dick chuckles, flustered.
Clark’s eyes look like they are going to fall off with shock, as he mouths what he just heard.
Duke, feeling compassionate, pats him in the back.
Lois looks interested and starts a discussion about the ethics of such genetic engineering with Barbara who looks just as interested at finally having a debate with such an intelligent conversationalist.
Under the table, Kon keeps kicking Tim on the leg just to show him that he was callously laughing in his face. Tim swears that he will take his revenge when he least expected it.
Jon was uncharacteristically silent as they ate, though he was weirdly red and kept glancing at Timothy’s face.
Stephanie kept looking back and forth between Tim and Jon with a widening grin and a glint in her eyes that promised mischief.
“It is a legitimate concern.” Damian says proudly, content to see that his lessons were obviously sinking in.
“Ra’s al Ghul just sent me a framed picture in the mail. Regular American postal mail. And yes, Bruce, I've done all the recommended tests and more. Thrice.”
Tim turns the frame around to reveal an older picture of him, when Bruce still wouldn’t take off the training wheels he had made for him.
Bruce's reasoning is explained by what Tim is doing in the picture.
He is in civies, trying to run over Ra’s al Ghul and his minions with the Giant Penny Bruce stores in the Batcave.
“Al Ghuls have mastered the art of making a first impression memorable.” Damian says with pride, slightly puffing his chest.
“This was the first time we met. I didn’t even know there was a murderous immortal cult leader out in the wild !”
“It’s in our blood.” Damian shrugs like he didn’t basically drop an atomic bomb on him.
Next week, Alfred opens the door to a perfectly normal delivery man that has a packet that requires the signature of the so-called “Timothy Al Ghul-Wayne”.
Alfred is a modern man so he pulls out his cellphone and sends a message to the group chat the children have created.
Although he only called Timothy down, Alfred can hear multiple steps tumbling down the numerous stairs all over the manor. It's unlike the perfectly civilized polite young lads and ladies Alfred knows they can be.
Timothy arrives first but he is closely followed by the rest of his siblings and Miss Stephanie.
“It seems that this young man requires your signature for a package.”
It is obvious to everyone in the corridor, save for the poor deliveryman, that Timothy did not in fact order something under his newfound alias.
Since the package might be explosive or poisonous, Alfred exceptionally forgoes any propriety and decorum and swiftly dismisses the worker with curt words.
It is unlikely with all the magic and technological measures in place and the sheer number of surveillance on every inch of the grounds. Still, one cannot be too prudent.
Because the children presently have on hand the means and material to contain and examine the delivery, they do so in the parlor near the entrance, eaten away by curiosity.
Jason looks disappointed. “An’ I thought he was gonna ream your ass for playin’ the Clash too loud in your room again.”
He pulls out a fiver from his wallet and reluctantly gives it to Dick who is smiling smugly from ear to ear.
Duke sighs and reaches to do the same.
“My mistake for thinking this shitshow was over, I guess.”
“Yeah, it’s so last week. Move on creep.” Stephanie pouts but gives him a crumpled twenty dollar bill. “You’ve steered me wrong Cassie !”
Cassandra frowns next to Timothy and pulls out her brother’s wallet to throw fifty dollars at Dick, still smug.
He becomes less amused though since the fifty dollars were all in one dollar bills, and he has to use his bat training to catch every bill before it lands and becomes public property.
Cassandra grits her teeth in anger as she watches her big brother show off with forward and backwards somersaults as he elegantly catches said bills.
Her fists clench at the smugness radiating from his body language after he managed to emerge victorious in the implicit challenge, it’s probably enough to power Superman and Metropolis at large for years.
Or something. Maths aren’t her forte. Sometimes, she thinks not introducing her to that headache-inducing torture was the only mercy Cain granted her. Later, she’ll ask Tim to do the math, he loves it, the weirdo.
“Are we gonna talk about how Dick’s such a liar, he managed to confuse Cass’ body language reading skills?” Duke asks tiredly.
He already knows the answer since witnessing bat-grade bullshit every day desensitized you pretty quickly.
“Nah. Big Bird’s always been a liar.” Jason shrugs.
“He’s a performer and an actor.” Tim immediately jumps to his big brother’s defense. Damian nods in agreement next to him.
Tim kind of agrees with Jason, he hadn’t chosen to bet against his big brother for a reason after all.
But Tim had also made his family and team promise to shoot him in the head if he ever happily agreed with Jason on anything not crucial or vital related to the mission.
It would probably be a Tim Drake from one of those universes where Dick’s failed replacement had managed to lobotomize him into seeing him as “his robin” anyway.
During his first years as Robin, Tim had the tragic unfortunate experience of being sent to an alternate universe.
An omegaverse universe. Where Timothy Drake was a whiny bitch and an omega that cried at every perceived offense.
This was just wrong, omegaverse only had its place in the Superman x Luthor fics he wrote and occasionally read in the works of his internet friend TheBestYellowSonic.
Plus, Tim had always imagined he would be a Beta anyway.
But worse had yet to come, for poor ignorant Tim.
He had met Alpha Jason because apparently he comes back from the dead? It was shocking but not as shocking as being in the vicinity of Omega Tim and Alpha Jason.
Omega Tim (because gaining scent glands apparently made you lose any taste) idolized Jason Todd.
Which was just wrong and probably where their timelines had decided to diverge and separate into different universes.
But because Tim had not suffered enough. Alt Jason hated Tim's guts and attacked him viciously whenever he could.
It was okay. Tim had always liked Dick better and hated when he had left Gotham to become Nightwing and Jason Todd had been chosen as his replacement because Batman had clearly lowered his requirement after having the perfect successor.
But Alt Tim hadn’t retaliated when Jason had slit his throat or called him “replacement”. No! He had cried and let him beat his ass because “he deserved it for replacing Jason”.
Which was concerning. Holy inferiority complex!
But also dumb as hell. The best part of having a brother you idolized is breaking into his home and jumping him at every occasion !
Tim thought every version of him knew better. (He still made sure to properly educate that universe Tim before going back to his universe.)
When Jason Todd had come back to Gotham, crazy like a pair of cats in a bag, had asked him to “be his Robin”, Tim had aired out the whole block out of shock.
For a scary, long, minute he thought he was back in that wretched universe. Or worse, that Jason Todd wannabe that called him “replacement” and “pretender” had come for him.
Tim believed in redemption and the sanctity of life but he was also only human.
Tim would hate to give any version of Jason the satisfaction of cleaning Gotham the easy way but it had to be done.
He was sure that Bruce would understand that putting Jason down like the mangy rat he was was totally necessary and an appropriate response.
Bruce had not been a fan so he contented himself by wearing one of the dozens of copies he had made of his favorite t-shirt.
The “Dick Grayson Fan #1, Human #2” t-shirt, Dick had given him said everything Tim Drake wanted to be remembered by.
Tim had talked so much shit about Jason when he was dead and he still stood by and meant every word.
(If Jason thought he had managed to get some begrudging affection from Tim, he was sorely mistaken.
It was merely the pity and mercy one granted a lower intelligence form.
Ugh, now he was talking like Damian.)
They do the testing in the Batcave.
Bruce gingerly opens the box and there’s no message once again.
Talia has apparently sent him a perfectly preserved spleen ready for medical usage.
It’s not his spleen because his spleen has a giant sword-shaped hole in it, courtesy of the Widower.
For a moment Tim fears that his biological grandmother had somehow cloned him to provide him with a backup organ bank like she did with her son.
But no thankfully it’s only the Widower’s spleen.
Tim thinks it was supposed to be proof that she avenged his humiliating defeat but Damian insists that his mother is not too fond of symbolism and prefers practicality.
Damian is right. The spleen is somehow compatible for a transplant.
Damian stands firm in his opinion that Tim should take the spleen to make up for the glaring flaw in his immune system.
Bruce argues back and Tim escapes when the rest of his family is dragged into the argument and starts taking sides.
As soon as he reaches his bed, Tim calls Kon to complain.
In the middle of his tirade, Tim is interrupted by a discord notification.
“Steph just started a discord poll about what we should do with my spleen. Damian, Dick and Jean-Paul for some reason? already voted yes.” Tim is tired and confused and he doesn’t know why he thought that his friends would be any help.
His best friend laughs at him for a while before he speaks again.
“Bart says he votes that you should take the spleen and volunteers to do the operation.”
Tim drags a tired hand on his face. He can hear screaming in the background.
Kon comes back to the phone after a minute.
“Cassie and Anita agree with Bart and y’know how I feel about keeping you alive.” Kon shrugs.
Tim hangs up and screams in his pillow.
(He ends up taking the spleen.)
Damian could feel the hairs on his body rising, signaling danger in like one of those childish comics Timothy hoarded and kept in pristine condition, in a display in his room.
He turned around because his mother hadn’t raised a coward and because Jon was as discreet as a bull in a china shop. As much as he couldn’t comprehend why this was in use in the English tongue, it felt oddly fitting for the occasion.
Jon looked awkward and nervous. A bad sign. Damian braced himself for the impact.
“Hey Damian. You remember that joke I made about your future son-in-law asking for your blessing?”
Damian felt the migraine form. If this was another practical joke, I swear-
“And you know how Tim and I are the same age, right ?”
Jon was blushing and stammering, chewing his words. Uncharacteristic. Damian knew full well the importance Lois Lane placed on elocution and that woman would not have neglected to pass on that skill to her offspring.
Perhaps, Damian ought to do the same. Timothy had a tendency to mumble when excited about a breakthrough he made on a case or when presenting one of his asinine conspiracies to someone else.
Damian had personally spectated many of his powerpoint presentations.
It was his preferred medium when the presentation was prepared and meant for other eyes than his own.
For spontaneous, almost manic presentations, he favored his ridiculous corkboard wall that Father had gifted him when Timothy had run out of space on his ridiculously large corkboard and hadn’t wanted to part with anything he had pinned on it.
The presentations were very informative and enthusiastic, which were very agreeable qualities that one had to cultivate and nurture in an offspring with positive reinforcement as he had come to learn in his Father’s household.
The content and resolutions he proposed for the problems at hand, less so.
“Camping in the woods for a week with Conner to check out if he’s real” to befriend him and introduce him to the Manbats, a family of bat humanoid creatures, in order to “create a support group”, was, even to Damian’s limited social knowledge, a comically absurd idea.
Thanks to inane but unavoidable high school locker room talk and the excruciating extremely detailed “sex talks” of his Father, was well versed on teenagers desire to canoodle at every given moment.
Not to mention the abnormally high number of homicides committed in isolated woodlands.
Damian was not worried about any strangers taking a page out of the numerous insipid movies Americans called “horror flicks” where one masked freak would accost unsuspecting victims with a chainsaw.
No, it was the clone he was worried about.
Despite the popular misconception, you were in fact more likely to be murdered by an acquaintance rather than a total stranger lurking in the dark.
Gotham criminals worked hard to tweak the numbers but it was still largely applicable everywhere else on the Planet.
And the clone had shown himself to be very susceptible to mind altering substances.
Damian didn’t care that Luthor had installed a “kill switch” in his brain, he should have done better and he had told this to Timothy at length in one of their weekly “enriching educational sessions” or “hang-outs” like Richard referred to them.
(“Didn’t you try to kill me without being mind controlled ?”)
Damian had a lot of wisdom to pass down. Timothy was suitably intelligent as expected of a descendant of his two great bloodlines, although he lacked discernment at times.
Damian had learned that Timothy had begun his tenure as Robin with a slingshot.
Timothy could clearly not be trusted to ensure his continuous survival.
He might have been biologically older than him but Damian knew that children (and this one was not even born yet!) needed supervision and lessons in the art of murder and war.
Damian might not be an assassin anymore but he still religiously kept up with his training.
Thus he had made sure to refurbish every bō he could find with a deadly twist.
Some already had hidden blades beforehand which Damian appreciated.
Damian had a vested interest in the continuation of the Wayne Al Ghul legacy after all.
This was the only reason that Superman and Black Bat (though Damian noted appreciatively that she had been rather halfhearted in her attempts) had been required to hold him back from exacting his revenge on that traitor for propositioning his son.
Damian had clearly been wary of the wrong Kryptonian and he would not be making this mistake again.
Scooby Doo was right, even the most unexpected person could turn around and stab you in the back.
“You’re grounded.” Damian's voice is muffled in the coton of Tim’s shirt but he can still hear how shaky his voice is.
“You’re grounded until college.” Bruce agrees, voice shaky with the tears he had just shed.
Tim knows his family is worried about him and that they are only clinging to him because they thought that they had lost him and mourned him for six months, not at all healthily if he might add.
He still grumbles but doesn’t dislodge from the group cuddle pile.
“You can’t ground me ! You’re fourteen !”
“I’m sorry Timmy but he’s right.” Dick adds with a teary smile.
It’s Jason and Cass who clue him in.
“Baby nephew.” She points at him.
“Yeah everybody knows it goes by age order. So Alfred, Bruce, Bruce’s kids and then Bruce’s kids’ kids.”
“Yeah man, you’re at the bottom of the family hierarchy.” Duke says.
Tim looks at Duke, betrayed.
“Sorry I don’t make the rules.” Duke says but he’s smiling and doesn’t look that remorseful.
“Tim, you haven’t technically been born yet.” Barbara joins in.
“Yeah it was such a headache to figure out what dates to put on your headstone.” Steph grimaces like she’s reminiscing about a painful memory.
“Well I’m sorry I sacrificed myself to save Gotham citizens from painful deaths !” Tim snarks halfheartedly.
“You’re still grounded.” Bruce rumbles, nosing Tim’s hair. His voice is tingly in his ears.
“Apology accepted. It is the least you could do.” Damian sniffs.
“Why does this always happen to me!” Tim groans tiredly.
Tim wondered if he was destined to have two dads who only agreed with each other when it came to teaming up to ground him.