Chapter Text
Damian only meant to sleep for 3 hours.
That was the plan. A tactical recharge after a fifteen-hour patrol rotation, after breaking up four trafficking rings, after patching a bullet-graze on Father’s side because Father had been too busy pummeling at a mugger to notice the knife-wielding backup. 3 hours. An efficient recharge, then back to staring at case files until his own vision blurred into the kind of double-image that made him want to claw at his eyes.
Instead, he’d made the tactical mistake of… blinking. Closing both eyes at once. And the next thing he knew, huge paws were thundering onto his mattress, eighty pounds of dog landing on his ribs like an affectionate avalanche.
“Titus,” Damian rasped, voice sleep-rough and sanded down. “If you are waking me merely for emotional indulgence—”
Titus barked in his face. Then gripped his robe sleeve gently—but firmly enough to drag the heir of Batman across the bed like a heavy chew toy.
Damian groaned, stiff and half-dead, and let himself be towed. The weight in his bones was pure exhaustion, the kind that felt like lead injected into his marrow. His muscles protested every movement; his eyelids felt like they had weights sewn into them.
He shrugged into his robe, shoved his feet into loafers, tied his sash crookedly. He’d barely managed to push his fingers through his hair before Titus dragged him toward the hallway with renewed urgency.
“Ridiculous animal,” Damian mumbled, rubbing one eye. “I am the son of the Bat. I am not to be handled like a chew toy.”
Titus woofed once, pointedly, and tugged harder.
Damian let himself be pulled, half-hearted annoyance crumbling under the fog of fatigue. The Manor’s hallway was dim, moonlight pooling silver along the floorboards and throwing long shadows up the walls. Cold air seeped through the old structure; something about it made the hair on the back of his neck stand.
His gaze—traitorous thing—slid sideways.
Toward Tim’s room.
A door still perfectly clean. A room still a mess as its occupant left it. The faintest smell of antiseptic because of Timothy being spleenless, because of course Father refused to let anyone clean the room. Couldn’t risk wiping away another clue, he’d said.
It was reminiscent to Jason’s room before it was renovated to house a man who has lived rather than a boy who died. As Jason bitterly stated, ‘Its fucking another godforsaken shrine.’
Six months.
Damian tore his eyes away. Swallowed.
Titus tugged again, impatient. “Fine,” Damian muttered, voice barely more than breath. “I am coming.” He followed the dog, but his brain kept drifting—heavy and slow, like wading through water.
Six months since they realized Tim was missing.
Six months of searching, investigating, interrogating, breaking, begging, reaching out to old allies and older enemies.
Six months of nothing.
He remembered when they first noticed Tim’s absence. It hadn’t been graceful. In hindsight, it was humiliating.
It had taken them almost twenty-four hours just to realize he was gone. And that fact chewed a hole in Damian’s chest that never quite closed.
No trace. No trail. No message. No body. Which was worse. Far, far worse.
A vigilante missing for one month without any leads? That was already enough to list them MIA.
Two months? Logic would whisper them already dead.
Six?
Six months was the threshold where even hope, stubborn thing that it was, began to rot.
Damian’s throat tightened. He didn’t like the way that thought felt in his skull, as if acknowledging it would snap something irreversible.
He stopped in front of a tall window, moonlight soaking his skin in silver-blue. Titus whined softly, reflecting the tension rolling off his boy.
Damian let out a long breath.
Father… Father was unraveling. A quiet spiral into violence, becoming a creature of pure violence. Gotham had grown afraid of him—yet again, the way they once were when the second Robin, Jason died. Damian had finally understood what Timothy meant when he said ‘Gotham needs Batman, Batman needs a Robin.’ Robin is merely not a partner. Robin is not just Gotham’s light.
Robin is a leash.
Batman’s leash.
Richard was pretending. That was the simplest way to describe it. Pretending everything was fine. Pretending they’d find Timothy soon. Pretending his own hallucinations weren’t dragging him into broken sleep every night—hallucinations Damian could see plainly because Richard had never been good at hiding fractures in his heart.
And Jason…
Jason was holding his sanity together with red thread and pure spite. Every dead end pushed him closer to the version of himself the Pit wanted him to be. He’d called every contact he had; burned favors; hunted. He even asked the All-Caste—something Damian hadn’t believed until he’d heard Jason asking for a lead in a voice that sounded like gravel and broken hope.
And Damian?
Damian was the one trying to keep the threads tied.
The moon was bright enough to hurt his eyes. He closed them.
Titus tugged again. “Very well,” Damian sighed, stepping forward. “Let us hope this is not another one of your raccoon crusades.” He padded down the grand staircase, robe swishing around his ankles, Titus pulling him along like a small, furry tank.
He unlocked the front door with numb fingers and cracked it open—
—and saw a shadow slumped on the ground beside it.
His training snapped into place before his consciousness fully caught up. His hand darted inside his robe, fingers closing around the dagger’s hilt. His stance lowered. His senses sharpened.
A threat.
An intruder.
A corpse left like an offering on their doorstep.
He stepped outside, cold night air biting at his skin, and approached.
The figure was motionless. Crumpled. Wrong-shaped, limbs arranged like they’d simply folded and stayed where gravity put them.
Titus sniffed frantically.
Damian’s jaw clenched.
“Who,” he hissed softly, “would be foolish enough to leave a body on the threshold of Batman’s home—” He cut himself off.
Because he recognized the angle of the jaw.
The shape of the hands. The slope of the shoulders.
His vision tunneled. Sound vanished.
No.
No.
No, that wasn’t—It couldn’t—
But it was.
It was Timothy.
Timothy Jackson Drake-Wayne, slumped like a broken marionette against their front door, head tilted back, mouth slightly parted, skin stretched thin over bones that had no right to be this sharp.
His eyes were closed. His chest—was it moving?
Damian fell to his knees.
He didn’t remember choosing to. His body made the decision without him.
Up close, Timothy looked worse. Paler than he normally is—Paler has ever Damian had seen him, he didn’t imagine Timothy could get paler than he already was. Bruises mapped like galaxies across every visible surface. His clothing wasn’t clothing—more like scraps barely hanging together.
Timothy would never wear this.
Never.
Damian would know. He has memorized every article of clothing Timothy has in his closet and he owns.
“What—” Damian’s voice cracked, raw and small. “What have they done to you…?”
His hand hovered over Timothy’s shoulder, too afraid to touch. Too afraid to confirm cold skin. Too afraid to watch his fingers sink into stillness.
He heard himself whisper, “Timothy…?”
He didn’t expect anything. Didn’t deserve anything.
But Tim’s head turned.
Slowly.
Mechanically.
Like his neck remembered how to obey commands but barely.
His eyes opened. Blue—no, fogged, glassy, unfocused—and then somehow, impossibly, focused on Damian.
He blinked.
Just once.
Alive.
Alive.
Tim was alive.
Damian’s breath punched out of him like he’d been struck in the ribs. His vision blurred. His heart climbed so fast it hurt.
Without looking away, he slammed his thumb onto the panic button hidden in his robe’s cuffs.
He had never pressed it so fast.
And never felt it move so slowly.