Chapter Text
Tim suddenly jerks awake like someone hauled him out of sleep by the scruff. His eyes snap open—focused, already triangulating points of interest—while his brain hangs for an uncomfortably long second, like a program that insists on ‘Not Responding’ until you start threatening the keyboard.”
A ceiling stares back. White. Smooth. Crown molding. Familiar enough to stir that particular brand of déjà vu that lives somewhere between dread and annoyance. The feeling he gets right before finding a bug in a case file he wrote himself.
He bolts upright.
This is… Wayne Manor’s south wing guest room?
His eyes blink, gummy and insulted. The room’s smaller than it should be—old guest room small. The kind of small that makes his spine remember scratchy suit jackets and charity galas he was tricked into attending under the guise of “family duty.”
Neutral art.
White curtains.
No personality whatsoever.
Yep. Definitely the “Alfred put a visiting teen here once” suite.
Also: the infamous over-fluffed pillows. Of course. How could he forget that?
But… something’s not right.
The thing is, he has never slept in the Wayne Manor’s guest room. He has a perfectly functional condo near the clock tower and a mattress engineered to cradle the spine of a man with too many injuries and not enough impulse control. Paid for with… well. A combination of actual work and whatever qualifies as “work” when you grew up rubbing elbows with three different kinds of old money.Which it counts enough for his pride!
(Read: which is still technically nepotism, regardless of how many freelance invoices he claims justify it, but the man did NOT work for that condo, thank you very much, and pretending otherwise is just polite fiction.)
But more importantly—
“I don’t… remember going to sleep,” he mutters. His voice cracks a little, thin and annoying, exposing a vulnerability he immediately resents.
His pulse picks up, a dull, off-rhythm thud tapping insistently at his ribs. Something in him is screaming that he should not be here.
Tim scrubs a hand down his face. Everything behind his eyes feels swimmy, like someone shoved his recent memories into a washing machine and hit “delicate cycle.” He tries to pull the thread of last night—no, the last thing he remembers—through the mental tangle.
He was with Anarky. The first one in particular. Well, obviously—Lonnie Machin, not Ulysses Hadrian Armstrong, his brain supplies reflexively, like a leftover snark macro firing off inside his skull. Absolutely not, Ulysses. As if he’d tolerate breathing the same air as that guy. He barely tolerates Lonnie already, and that’s on a good day, with snacks and light terrorism.
Right. He was with Lonnie, following up a lead. Something about a—
Nothing. His memory just face-plants. It’s like someone took a pair of scissors and deliberately snipped the film reel mid-scene, leaving a clean, blank gap.
An icy prickle of hostile environmental factors crawls up his spine.
He glances down at himself, already bracing for a disappointment he can’t yet name.
The disappointment arrives instantly, escalating rapidly into personal offense.
The sweatpants are… gray? Maybe? They’re a heavy cotton blend so aggressively average they practically hum at a beige frequency. A color designed to blend into the inside of a filing cabinet. He visibly sneers at the fabric, the contempt as palpable as if the gray cotton had personally bankrupted his parents and then murdered them in cold blood.
These look like they smell like lukewarm tap water and disappointment, a vicious little voice notes. The aesthetic choice alone is a violation of the Geneva Conventions. Something Sebastian would wear to prove a point about asceticism.
And the shirt—oh god, the shirt.
Tim slaps a hand over his face again, groaning.
“Coffee Cult? Seriously?”I look like an extra in a low-budget mockumentary about caffeine dependence.
He would never wear this shirt. He didn't even know they sold shirts like this. The lettering is cheap, the graphic is a badly rendered parody of a corporate logo, and the entire thing looks like it was designed by an algorithm trained on ‘things suburban dads think baristas find hilarious.’ Also, where did he even get this shirt?
He swings his legs off the bed. Cold wood bites his feet. His balance wavers, and yeah, okay, his head hurts. Not quite a concussion, but hovering in the neighborhood, like a raccoon doing petty crimes on the porch. And the whole room has this uncanny, wrong vibe flavor—familiar décor arranged just slightly off, like someone tried to recreate Wayne Manor from memory and missed a few key pixels.
Tim forces himself to breathe slowly and steadily. Externally, he looks mostly calm—maybe a little tight around the mouth, the only tell of the frantic data processing happening inside. Internally? His thoughts are skidding and cross-referencing every threat matrix he’s ever made.
Kidnapping? Maybe.
Memory interference? Probably.
Temporary body possession? You could never know.
Alien parasite? He refuses to rule it out purely because experience has taught him better. And also because Hal Jordan is number one on that list.
But whatever this is, it’s likely deliberate.
Because something is very, very messed up.
And it’s messed up in a way that feels utterly intentional. This wasn't an accident. This was a statement.
A strange one with unusual fashion choices, but a statement nonetheless.
He stands—slow, deliberate, the exact pace of a man who fully expects the universe to drop an anvil on his head out of spite. His brain immediately starts cataloging exits (not the door, the secret-secret door pretending to be a wall—wait, never mind, that is a wall; the actual secret-secret-secret door is… the window, which is just. A window. Great), potential weapons (extra fluffed pillows do not qualify, even if he glares at them hard enough), and vantage points. Old instincts slide back on like that ridiculously overpriced leather jacket Kon owns, the one Tim has absolutely never borrowed. Ever.
Because if he didn’t lie down here…
If he didn’t choose to sleep…
Then waking up is the first clue in a mystery he absolutely did not consent to; then again, it’s not the first thing he’s been dragged into without consent. He still hasn’t forgiven them for Game Night.
Wizards and Warlocks is staying locked up in the closet until further notice.
The hallway outside the door is silent. Not peaceful-quiet—predatory-quiet. The House Playing Dead kind of silent where “something is either watching you or plotting to fall on your head.” Absolutely never a good sign.
Tim squares his jaw, which is really less a brave gesture and more him trying to physically keep his brain from leaking out in exasperation. Someone moved him like he’s a chess piece—one of the boring ones, too, not even a knight—and whoever did it has a fashion philosophy that could be legally classified as a crime against fashion. Okay, maybe he’s being a little dramatic; sue him. He’s seen better tees than this.
Questions churn like they’ve got somewhere urgent to be, but three cling to the rails the hardest and refuse to be shaken off:
What happened after Lonnie?
Why is last night one big, blinking void?
And most pressing of all… who decided to put him in sweatpants so aggressively mediocre they feel like a personal attack?
His brain tosses out the world’s laziest theory just to get something on the board:
maybe he sleepwalked. Sure, maybe he did buy these horribly dull pants and tasteless shirt in a fugue state. Maybe he did trek all the way back to the Manor while unconscious and also—apparently—surrendered his dignity to corny stylists.
He gives that thought one full, unimpressed second.
Yeah, right. Let’s file that under “Scenarios That Would Require Me to Have Survival Instincts of a Wet Paper Bag and Negative Taste.”
The real problems—the big, toothy ones—are circling the perimeter of this morning like sharks smelling coffee.
The day is already shaping up to be a disaster, and he hasn’t even made it past the door yet.
His fingers hovered over the handle.
A ripple of instinct crawled up his spine—quiet, precise, the kind of warning he usually trusts without question. Don’t.
No dramatic explanation. No obvious threat. Just that cold, clinical signal his body gives right before something sharp happens.
It should’ve made his decision easy.
Instead, it made him hesitate.
His hand hovered over the knob.
And that’s when it hit him—not a thought, not even a hunch, but an honest-to-god instinctual spike of dread that slammed into his nervous system hard enough to make his breath stutter.
Which… made no sense.
He didn’t get instincts like this. Not the spooky gut-feeling kind. His danger sense normally came from math, deduction, pattern recognition, and the occasional “huh, that shadow shouldn’t be there.” His body didn’t just revolt at random.
And especially not over a door.
In Wayne Manor.
A bedroom door.
A door he’d opened literally hundreds of times since he lived here.
The dread crawled up his spine anyway—thin, electric, and completely unfamiliar.
That alone scared him more than the feeling itself.
He didn’t hesitate at doors. Doors were the easy part. He’d kicked them open, picked them open, and acrobatic’d through them in ways that defied several basic physics principles. He’d walked through doors that had blood on the hinges, scorch marks on the floor, and crime scene tape fluttering like party streamers.
But this one—this innocuous, beige, aggressively normal door—made his pulse trip.
His chest tightened.
A memory flickered hard and fast: Lonnie turning sharply, alley-washed light cutting across half his face. Tim raising the datapad to show him something. A corner turn.
Then static.
White-out.
Nothing.
The dread spiked, sharp enough to raise the fine hairs at the back of his neck.
He almost stepped back.
Almost.
He clenched his jaw instead, irritation slicing clean through the fear.
No. Not happening. He was not letting an interior door psychically intimidate him. He had a brand to maintain. A reputation. A pattern of deeply questionable choices.
He’d literally faked being stabbed once just to get a door open. He can totally open doors just fine, thank you very much.
He rolled his shoulders back, straightened, and forced his breathing into something even.
It’s a door. Open it. You’ve handled worse before already, starting with waking up.
His hand closed around the knob. Cool metal. Solid. Ordinary. Nothing that should’ve made him tense.
He inhaled once—steady, controlled, the way he did before opening crime scenes or explaining expenses to Bruce.
Then he turned the handle and pushed—
—and snapped sideways as a knife cut through the air like it had an appointment with his skull.
It hit the doorframe with a deep, decisive THNK, the handle still quivering from momentum.
Tim blinked.
Once.
Twice.
His voice came out perfectly calm, perfectly flat. “Right. So I wasn’t being dramatic.”
He looked up.
Someone was in the room.
Someone armed, balanced, and already pulling back for a second throw.
Someone who did not look thrilled to see him.
“Damian?” Tim said, already exhausted. “Gosh, it’s too early for this. What is it this time? I thought we agreed that if there are any issues in the family, you don’t try to kill them—you talk it out. You’re usually better than this, so what’s going on?”
Damian scowled like the word communication offended him on a molecular level.
“Drake.”
Great.
Great.
Back to square one. Not even square one—square zero. Square negative two. Early-day Damian, “I’m thirteen and ready to commit homicide on anyone who approaches me” Damian.
He hasn’t even seen Damian in a while.
Look, he didn’t exactly expect affectionate reunions, but they’d at least reached a mutual, begrudging, non-murder understanding. And now he was getting last-named before breakfast? Now that’s just rude. Retroactively rude.
Tim sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “What? What do you want, Damian?" This is Tim's first interaction in the house, and he already wants to get it over with.
Damian responded by flicking another knife at his head with the easy, relaxed motion of someone tossing a piece of popcorn into the air.
Tim didn’t even flinch—just tilted his head half an inch to the left. The blade sailed past, skimming his hair.
It thunked against the wall behind him.
He blinked at Damian. Deadpan. Utterly over it.
“Really? That’s your follow-up?”
For a heartbeat—just one—Damian hesitated.
Not physically. His stance stayed perfect. His grip stayed perfect. But something behind his eyes faltered, like a skipped frame in a video. A flicker of confusion that absolutely did not match the kid who threw knives with the same confidence most people had tying their shoes.
Then it vanished. His expression shuttered hard.
He slid the third knife back into his sheath, precise and controlled—almost too controlled—and walked past Tim without a single insult, jab, or condescending lecture. It was… strange. Damian rarely passed up an opportunity for dramatic irritation.
A small breath.
“Tt. Drake… this farce? Not finished.”
Tim remained exactly where he was, eyes on the two knives jutting out of the wall like punctuation marks in a sentence he couldn’t parse.
His brain began sorting through possibilities with the efficiency of a machine that had been rebooted one too many times today. Every scenario returned the same useless answer.
Okay, so that was weird.
No, wait.
That wasn’t normal.
Damian hadn’t behaved like that in a very long time.
Not since Dick stepped in and did what only Dick Grayson could do: pull someone toward the light without forcing it, without shaming them, and without giving up when things got tough. Tim hadn't been present for the majority of that shift; he'd been everywhere but Gotham, chasing his own impossible threads while the people back home rebuilt themselves.
But even from a distance, even through secondhand observations and the occasional awkward holiday meal, the change in Damian had been unmistakable. He’d grown. Not slightly. Not imperceptibly. He’d learned restraint, empathy, and discipline that wasn’t rooted in violence. He’d learned to choose conversation over escalation. And more importantly, he’d chosen it consistently.
This?
This knife-first, question-never version of him?
It didn’t line up with the Damian he knew. The Damian the family had worked so hard to raise. The Damian who’d already fought his way through years of progress.
And the worst part—the part Tim couldn’t shake—was that flicker of confusion he’d seen in Damian’s face. A moment where even he looked unsure of why he was reacting this way. As if he’d been dropped into a moment that didn’t belong to him.
A version of him that shouldn’t exist anymore.
It made Tim’s skin crawl in a very specific, very unwelcome way.
And Tim's confusion, which was brief but unmistakable, made matters worse. Damian hadn’t just regressed. He didn’t even seem aware of the regression.
Tim exhaled slowly, leaning a shoulder against the doorframe. A muted ache throbbed behind his eyes.
If this is a time displacement case, he swears—
He cut the thought short before the headache could file a formal complaint.
Time travel was a mess. Alternate timelines were worse. And meeting younger versions of his family usually ended with headaches, paradoxes, or someone accusing him of ruining everything.
He let his head fall back lightly against the wood.
Please don’t let this be a time travel situation. I am not emotionally equipped to deal with a version of myself making questionable wardrobe choices.
Tim pushed off the frame, glanced again at the knives, and muttered under his breath—
“…something is very, very off.”
The hallway didn’t disagree.
He exhaled through his nose.
He needs a drink immediately. Not for the fear. For the gray sweatpants and offensive shirt choice.
That and the fact that he is developing a migraine.
So down the hall Tim went.
Every step felt slightly off-kilter, like he was walking through a memory of the manor instead of the real thing. The details were all technically correct but arranged with the wrong intent. The portraits hung exactly where they’d been years ago—before Bruce decided to rearrange the frames so they wouldn’t interfere with the upgraded ventilation ducts. The hallway runner was the one that got replaced after Dick tripped on it during an ill-advised 2 AM sandwich run. It looked new again. Too new. Perfect in a way that ignored how eight years of shoes, patrol boots, and one (1) angry Great Dane had actually treated it.
Little things. Familiar things. All shifted just enough to agitate the part of Tim’s brain that never turned off.
The air even smelled off. Colder somehow. Older. As if the stone had been rolled back to an earlier draft of the manor.
He hit the staircase and started down.
His hand brushed the banister, and the wood was… smooth. Not just well-maintained—practically polished flat. Almost like someone had sanded out the history embedded in its grain. He resisted the impulse to stop and check for fresh varnish with his fingernail.
His memory tugged, sharper this time.
Lonnie standing under the jaundiced glow of the alley lamps. A datapad in Tim’s hand. Strange readings. A look on Lonnie’s face Tim couldn’t name—fear, realization, something almost like apology—and then—
Nothing. Again.
Like a doorway slamming shut behind him.
He reached the bottom step, muscles wired tight. Whatever had happened last night wasn’t gone; it was removed. Cleanly enough that the absence itself felt like evidence.
Which was never comforting.
By the time he crossed the main hall, his mind was already trying to form possibilities. Wrong behavior from Damian. Altered environment. Missing time. Too much nostalgia embedded in the layout. That creeping pressure at the edges of his awareness, the one that whispered that something fundamental was out of alignment.
None of it gave him anything he could use. Just static and discomfort.
He kept walking anyway. Because standing still would mean admitting he was spooked, and Tim Drake did not get spooked by interior decorating choices.
He rounded the corner toward the kitchen.
He had one goal in mind—not coffee, rarely coffee, but something caffeinated enough to keep him from faceplanting into a wall. Also, a kitchen appliance check could tell him a lot more about the manor’s timeline than the hallway décor ever could.
He’d barely put one foot inside the doorway when the universe decided to test his blood pressure again.
Jason Todd.
Helmet off. Sitting on the counter. Eating straight out of a neon-blue cereal box like breakfast was a competitive sport and he was trying to win.
Tim stopped dead.
Jason did not eat breakfast in this house. Jason broke into this house for supplies or arguments, not casual morning carbs. He operates out of a safe house on the other side of town. His presence here, eating breakfast, implies an unacceptable level of domestic comfort.
Jason glanced up, squinted at him, and then rolled his eyes. The easy familiarity with which Jason had settled on his counter was the sharpest clue yet. Jason hit him with, “Ugh. Replacement.”
Tim’s whole body froze mid-stride.
The word hit him like an anvil someone tried to pass off as a throw pillow.
Replacement?
Replacement what? Replacement who? Replacement since when? He stared like Jason had just announced he was a priest now.
Also, “Replacement”—who the hell starts a conversation like that? He literally just got here.
Tim’s face contorted into the purest expression of judgment and disbelief he could muster, a silent critique so sharp it could’ve been weaponized. Jason, of course, didn’t so much as flinch, blissfully immune to both social cues and the concept of personal shame.
But with all that aside, his thoughts pitched sideways like someone had yanked the floor out from under them. Jason had just spoken to him like they were in the middle of a very old, very stupid argument they had never actually had. Jason had plenty of issues with him, sure, but that particular nickname? That wasn’t one of them. That had never been one of them.
Pretender? Sure, that was a one-time hiccup in a timeline where even he had the decency to let Jason think he was the center of the universe. Replacement? Oh, please. As if anyone with half a functioning brain—or any understanding of social nuance, strategic thinking, or basic competence—would ever mistake Tim for something so interchangeable and trivial as a placeholder in his chaotic little world.
Jason crunched a spoonful of neon-blue cereal, eyes flicking over like Tim was background noise.
Tim stared at him, incredulity flaming through his exhaustion.
“…excuse me?” It came out sharper than he intended—tight, baffled, edged with a quiet, surgical bite. Not anger. Just sheer disbelief that apparently this morning had decided to speedrun all of his least favorite hypothetical scenarios.
Jason shoveled another mouthful of neon-blue cereal into his mouth, completely unfazed, like he hadn’t just lobbed a grenade at the continuity of Tim’s life.
Tim stepped fully into the kitchen, posture settling into that sharp, observant neutrality that always made people underestimate how fast his brain was moving.
“Well, morning to you too, I guess,” he said, his tone calm enough to be dangerous. “I see we’re recycling old material. Very retro.”
Jason didn’t look up.
“Didn’t ask for commentary, Replacement.”
There it was again. Lazy, practiced. Like it belonged here.
Tim’s eye twitched.
“You’re really committing to that, huh,” he said, tone flatly unimpressed. “Breakfast of champions and personality regression. Did I miss a memo here?”
Jason gave him a look—half bored, half irritated, and fully unfamiliar. Not the wary détente they’d carved out over the years. Not even the grudge-warm hostility Tim could usually predict. This one was… baseline contempt, like Tim was a stranger Jason already disliked out of principle. “Did I stutter? Replacement. Go brood somewhere else.”
Something sharp and cold twisted in Tim’s gut.
Damian earlier. Now Jason. Both acting like they’d been rewound to some version of themselves he’d never actually interacted with.
Great. Fantastic. Exactly what he needed. A morning where all evidence pointed toward the universe handing him a script for a feud he didn’t remember auditioning for.
He kept the rising dread locked behind his teeth.
He did not voice the string of theories rattling through his skull.
He definitely didn’t say the word “universe.”
He just narrowed his eyes slightly, drew in a steady breath, and forced his voice into something dry and composed.
Something had shifted. Quietly. Sharply. With intention.
Jason finally glanced up, eyes narrowed with that old, brittle hostility Tim hadn’t seen in a while.
“You’re staring,” Jason muttered.
“I’m thinking,” Tim corrected. “There’s a difference. One involves more brain cells. One you don’t have.”
Jason’s chair scraped back an inch. “You wanna start something, Replacement?!”
Tim didn’t flinch. He considered flinching—purely out of self-preservation, given his skull was still doing that faint echo-y drumline from last night—but then remembered he possesses both spite and terrible impulse control. Two natural predators of good judgment.
He knew poking Jason was a bad idea.
He also knew that had never once stopped him.
He opened his mouth—probably to say something inadvisable, add fuel to the fire, they say, certainly to commit to the bit—
—and then footsteps padded in, light and cheerful and catastrophically mistimed. Ending his fun before it started.
Dick barreled in with all the grace of a man who had somehow survived multiple concussions and still believed mornings were a social event.
“Little Wing! You’re actually up before noon!” he crowed, like this was the greatest miracle since gravity.
Jason groaned into his cereal.
Tim felt his soul detach, hover above his body, and consider relocating to a quieter dimension.
Dick’s grin snagged when he saw their faces. “Uh… did I interrupt breakfast violence? Is this a fight? A pre-fight? Like, a warm-up argument? Because you know what I’ve said about kitchen combat—Bruce spent so much on that backsplash—”
Tim blinked at him.
Then at Jason.
Then back at Dick, who was currently radiating sunshine, confusion, and the kind of dangerous optimism that felt like it should come with a warning label. That is completely blinding, mind you. When did they get a lighting crew in here?
Dick’s attention finally landed on Tim, brightening like he’d just remembered Tim existed. “Oh! Good morning too, baby bird!” he chirped. “You look—um—alive? Mostly. Good for you! Did you finally drink coffee?”
Tim went statue-still.
Not a blink.
Not a breath.
Just pure, concentrated buffering.
Baby bird.
BABY. BIRD.
What in the seven layers of continuity hell was that?
Who was out here manufacturing nicknames like they were running a black-market pet store?
He didn’t even dislike it—he rejected it on principle. Dick Grayson principles. Because Dick Grayson nicknames came from very specific eras of emotional turbulence, none of which Tim had lived through in this timeline.
Dick moved in for a hug—arms already spreading like a human octopus ready to ensnare its prey.
Tim took one step back.
Then another.
Then a third, just to be safe.
“Woah—hey!” Dick laughed, lunging forward like he thought Tim was playing. “C’mere—”
Tim sidestepped so sharply he might as well have evaporated.
Dick whiffed the air where Tim’s soul had once been.
From the counter, Jason snorted loud enough to echo off the marble. “Smooth dodge, Replacement,”
Tim shot him a look sharp enough to peel paint.
Jason responded by shoveling more neon-blue cereal into his mouth with the smug satisfaction of a man who believed this universe had always worked like this.
Dick blinked between them, baffled. “Since when do you dodge my hugs? And since when do you eat cereal before lunchtime?”
Tim just stared, heart pounding once—not from the almost-hug, but from the certainty settling in his bones.
This wasn’t just wrong.
This was deliberately wrong.
Oh no.
No, no, no.
This wasn’t a Jason Problem™.
This wasn’t even a Damian Problem™.
This was an as-far-as-he-knows-everyone-is-acting-weird problem.
A house-wide continuity error wearing a friendly smile.
Tim dragged a slow breath in, spine stiffening like he was bracing against an avalanche.
“Fantastic,” he muttered, voice flat enough to be a weapon. “The circus is here.”
Jason snorted. Dick looked wounded in that baffled golden-retriever way.
And Tim, standing there with a concussion, a bowl of neon cereal, and two brothers treating him like a plotline he’d never lived, felt reality tilt again—subtle, unnerving, deliberate.
If the morning kept spiraling like this, he was two steps from discovering Bruce had been replaced with a distant “we’re-not-having-this-conversation” father figure out of a cautionary tale.
And somehow, that possibility didn’t even feel like the worst of it.
“Coffee? ”
“Sure.” Why not?
He needs it anyway.