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Fuck Bruce, fuck Dick, fuck the whole of Wayne Enterprises for even having the damn Christmas party.
Tim, beyond annoyed, had given up on socializing in hour two, and was now attempting to maintain a mildly pleasant expression while sitting off in a corner, holding a partially-empty glass of champagne. If Bruce hadn't had to go off-world, if Dick hadn't had the rebellious teen excuse to stay in Bludhaven, Tim wouldn't be here. Wasn't supposed to be here. Everyone was gone on some mission, aside from Oracle and Helena, who were gallivanting about on some Birds of Prey activity, and Stephanie, who had conveniently disappeared right before Tim could beg her to be his plus-one. He should be on patrol right now. But no. Images were important. So he was here for another hour at least.
Thirty minutes later, he debated telling Lucius there had been some emergency, chickened out twice at the thought of the lecture that would come down the line, and was in the middle of stuffing his face with a very soggy sandwich while psyching himself up for a third time when the gunfire started.
For the space of a breath, he thought at least it's not boring anymore, and then he was moving on pure instinct, ducking behind the snacks table while people screamed and glass fell. They were shooting the ceiling for attention, he knew that much. No civilians in danger yet.
The gunfire ceased, taken over by quiet crying of old rich people and the slow crunch of footsteps caused by heavy-duty boots.
"Where is Bruce Wayne?" The mystery villain called. No one responded.
Tim frowned. That voice. He didn't recognize it, and it had a robotic lilt to it, like they were using a voice modulator. He decided it was worth the risk to peek around the edge of the table.
It was. Tim had never seen the man before, tall and stocky, with thick cargo pants and a brown leather motorcycle jacket. And of course, the bright red metal helmet atop his head, with two narrow glowing white eye slits.
A Red Hood gang knockoff, Tim figured, though he thought they had all stopped that nonsense after the last one's fate.
"This isn't the type of quiz that you can leave blank, unfortunately."
The steps were slow. Measured. This was, sadly, not some idiot trying to get rich quick. Tim didn't know what he was trained in, but the guy was trained. Which meant Tim couldn't just lay about and wait for him to shoot himself in the foot. Tim needed to get out of here and slip into something more comfortable.
Lucius's voice came from the other side of the room and the feet pivoted, so Tim ran. He had already been in the corner of the room, and there was a closet that had (thank god) an escape hatch. He didn't hear what Lucius had to say, focused on staying low and silent.
He escaped into the ducts. Rather than go towards the ballroom, he went far enough away that he wouldn't be heard, and pressed the small comm sitting in his ear.
"Oracle? We have a situation."
He climbed out of one of the vents one floor up - the ballroom on the bottom floor of Wayne Enterprises took up two floors, but had a vent set into it high at the top, if Tim could get to it, he could get a better view of the situation. And there was a suit supposedly hidden somewhere up here. There hadn't been any more gunfire, which was a good sign. But Oracle hadn't picked up, which was not.
"O? You there? This is kind of an emergency."
Normally Tim would handle it all by himself. He was a big boy. He could take down one mystery Red Hood gang member. But the way the gunman moved - and the amount of artillery Tim had seen on him from his brief glance - coupled with the amount of civilians and Tim's own identity meant that having someone else be the knight in shining armor here would be much preferred.
Tim found the latch on the wall that opened the compartment and yanked it open to find-
Nothing. His suit was gone.
Okay, so Tim wasn't the best about taking care of his suits, but he had never even touched this one. And this compartment was fingerprint activated, so there were about five people in the world who could have taken it.
They hadn't taken the weapons though, and Tim filled his pockets with batarangs and smoke bombs aplenty. Meanwhile, Oracle still hadn't responded, so he tried one more time before switching to the open channel, the one that picked up police chatter and Justice League channels.
Nothing. Complete silence. Tim often wished he had a bit more privacy as Robin, but the sudden lack of contact was unnerving. Five years with Oracle's voice in his ear, Bruce only the hit of a button away, the Titans always picking up. Now he was completely alone.
He dug his phone out. Dead. Which was impossible.
Tim kept moving. He would take a look through the vent, and then leave. This much gunfire meant someone had to have called the cops.
He picked the lock on the closed door that he was fairly certain led to the room with the vent and was there in seconds.
The occupants of the ballroom had been forced into a small huddle of people in the middle. The man was pacing in front of them, a large black duffel bag just behind him. He was not nervous. He didn't look around or fiddle with his weapons. Most of these first-time bad guys, they get all anxious when it's finally time. Not this one. Which made Tim wonder if he really was a first-timer. Ex-military, maybe? But he didn't move quite right for that. The military taught you power, which he had in spades, but not that lethal grace. There was something…
The man held something up to him mouth and Tim squinted, trying to see what it was.
The hiss of radio static started up and he jumped.
"To anyone currently hiding, I thought I'd provide an update on your current situation." Tim's breath caught. "Nothing comes in. Nothing goes out. No people, no radio transmissions, no secret messages. You're all trapped."
The sound was echoing, coming from everywhere. He had to have installed speakers, but when? Where?
"But don't worry, I'm reasonable. So the second I see the face of anybody with the last name of Wayne, gifted or otherwise, I'll let all these fine folks go. But if I don't…"
Tim waited, breath caught in his throat.
A slamming sound from downstairs, followed by teary screams, and he chanced a look out of the vent again. The man was standing above something - a body. One that had clearly been dead for a bit, limbs stiff. The face had been disfigured with a large-gage gunshot, as had the stomach.
"Then I get to see how many of you I would need to sign my name in blood."
He turned, broken glass crunching underfoot, and gestured to the wall where a mural of the skyline of Gotham had been lovingly sketched.
"'The Red Hood was here.' Seems like a more accurate depiction of Gotham to me."
He turned back and his head tilted up, seeming to stare Tim directly in the eye through the vent.
Tim bolted.
Okay, not very heroic. Sue him. No suit, no mask, minimal weapons, and no backup, with a well-trained creepy asshole who seemed to somehow know all of the Bat tricks. Tim knew when to be a hero and when to flee and get help. The man - the Red Hood, Tim had been right - was clearly not stupid and had probably blocked the fire exits, but if Tim could get to the roof, there was a compartment in Bruce's office with more spare suits and tools, and if the Red Hood had been the one to tamper with the other compartment, he may have also left the tools in Bruce's.
If. May. Terrible words to base a plan on, but he was still warm from the champagne and high on adrenaline, so he wasn't expecting any grand light bulb moments anytime soon. If he got one, he would act on it. For now, he was stuck with his maybe-terrible plan.
Then again, he could just go down there. The Red Hood had said if he saw a Wayne, he would let them go. With Tim's adoption in the news just a month ago, the wording - gifted or otherwise - felt pointed. And everyone knew Bruce wasn't going to be here tonight, though the news had said it was because a Polish heiress had invited him to her chateau for a Christmas getaway. So the Red Hood was looking for Tim, specifically.
Why?
Tim wondered as he worked his way through the maze of rooms, forehead beginning to line with sweat. Had the man taken Tim's suit? How was that possible? Why would he leave the weapons? How could he have even taken out Bat-level radios? Why was Tim's phone dead? Who the hell was this guy?
Tim's head was beginning to hurt. If he could get to the elevator, he could take it up to the floor below Bruce's. Bruce's floor could only be accessed using a fingerprint pad in his desk, so Tim would have to climb the rest of the way up, which wouldn't be that hard.
Tim slipped into the hallway. The elevator opened with a ding. Tim slipped inside. And for a whole thirty seconds, everything was going according to plan.
And then the power went out.
The elevator shuddered to a stop and Tim froze, telling himself that it wouldn't drop even as it creaked. It did not.
Everything was silent. No hum of machinery, no buzz of lights, no one on comms. The building was too well insulated to hear the outside sounds of Gotham. For the first time while not on fear gas in a while, Tim was unnerved.
Fine. He would take the stairs.
He pried open the elevator doors and hauled himself up. It wasn't all bad - he was only two floors down from Bruce. The dim red emergency lights had come on, illuminating the hallway in a certain bloody glow, but it was enough to read the fire escape map next to the elevator and figure out where the staircase was. Only a few doors down on the right. Perfect.
A buzz, and then the Red Hood's voice flooded the halls. In the unnatural silence, it felt oppressive, like the sound was pressing in on Tim.
"I'm sure you're wondering how I'm still speaking to you."
"Yeah," Tim muttered to himself. "I had just put it at the top of my list, right above 'who is this asshole?'"
The voice continued, obviously. "But unfortunately for you, I will not be sharing that. All you need to know is that I have decided that I don't have all night to wait around for you, so whichever Wayne is in the building right now has ten minutes to get downstairs." A pause, and then, "I was going to do five, but then I thought what the hell, it's Christmas."
"How generous." Tim was getting tired of this. This was not how he had wanted to spend his Christmas Eve.
"Ten minutes. Then I start taking out hostages."
The buzzing stopped.
Tim debated the merits of slamming his head into the wall. If he could just get the cops here. If he could just get one of the Bats here.
Again, he thought about just going downstairs.
"But what if you get shot, Tim?" he mumbled, and scrubbed his hands over his face. God.
No, he would stick to the original plan. Even as he began to count doors, he wondered how the Red Hood was still speaking. It sounded like a transmission that cut on and off that was being wired through speakers, clearly communicated through whatever he had held in his hand - something like a radio…
Tim froze with one foot on the step. Radios. Dick had designed special radios early on as Robin that could either play pre-recorded messages or be spread out and used as a network. He used them to disguise where he was. They were high-quality in sounds - you couldn't tell the difference between the words coming out of his mouth and coming out of the speakers.
He burst back through the stairwell door and into the hallway. This damn red light wouldn't help anything, but they couldn't be that small. He started to scan the floor before remembering what Dick had told him right as he started training.
No one ever looks up.
Tim's gaze flew upward and, lo and behold, on top of the elevator doorframe was a small black box. Bingo.
He knocked it down and then stared at it, unsure of where to go from there. It buzzed alive in his hand.
"Nine minutes."
Tim scowled at it and searched for the little switch that would allow transmission. He held it down and pulled the thing close to his face.
"I wonder what the Bat will think of your little hostage attempt here. Or did you forget you're doing this in Gotham?"
Silence.
The red flashing light was going to drive him nuts. It was getting faster, and kind of mottled blue-
Cop lights. Tim bolted to the window at the end of the hall and glanced out. Far below, shining through the mist, two cop cars pulled up to the entrance of Wayne Enterprises.
Tim laughed and held down the button again.
"Oops, here come the cops! Looks like your party is over."
A buzz. "Who do I have the pleasure of speaking to?"
Tim wasn't going to answer that. The voice did not seem to care.
"And I hate to burst your bubble, but those are my dear friends, officers Agosti, Zenali, and DeLuca. All of them have, shall we say, family ties."
Tim's stomach dropped.
Buzz. "What? Did you forget you were doing this in Gotham?"
Tim hit the stairs running even as the robotic laugh echoed through the stairwell. Maybe his comms would work outside of the building.
"Eight minutes."
Tim got out on Bruce's floor. The door, normally locked by key card, burst open under Tim's force, though it cost him valuable seconds.
Bruce's office door, also locked, also got taken down.
"Seven."
The secret compartment had had the same exact treatment to it. No suit, weapons intact. And more importantly, a grapple.
Just in case, Tim hit the emergency signal under Bruce's desk. Probably disabled, like all the rest of them, but worth a shot.
He had looked at the schematics, but couldn't remember which hallway led to roof access, and stared between the two of them frantically. Think, Tim, god.
"Six."
Tim chose wrong. At the end of the hallway, outlined in the flickering light of the exit sign, stood the man.
"Well, who is this?"
Tim, absolutely out of other options, kept his face as neutral as possible in the hopes of playing dumb.
The Red Hood walked forward, those same even steps. He had shed the jacket and helmet, and was left in those pants - more jeans than cargo, Tim saw now - and a tight black shirt. But even without the helmet, the darkness did a suitable job of hiding his face. No, actually, he had a domino mask on. He stopped a few steps away from Tim, out of arm's reach.
The closeness made Tim deeply uncomfortable.
Something about the man was disarmingly familiar. Though it was dark, the dull red emergency light the only way to see anything at all, his face was oddly comforting to Tim. The build was unfamiliar, the voice was only recognizable from what he had heard on the ground and over the radio, though it did something odd to Tim's mind now that the voice modulator was gone, and that streak of white hair was distinctive enough that Tim would have remembered it. But the shape of his mouth…
Tim laughed, dialing up the giggle factor to play a convincing kind of tipsy.
"Oh, I knew I shouldn't have had all that champagne, I just can't focus at all! Would you believe, I've been hiding upstairs all this time? I mean, I heard the gunfire, but it's a Wayne gala." He laughed. "These things get held up all the time! I figured I'd just wait up here until Batman swooped on in and saved the day."
The man laughed with Tim, and even that caused something to ping in Tim's mind, some very far away memory, buried deep down. If only he could put his finger on it.
Even faking it, the laugh had a kind of mean quality to it, like he was just waiting for Tim to figure out the joke.
"Sorry, Timothy Drake-Wayne. You're not stupid, and unluckily for you, I know that."
He raised his arm and clicked on a button. The radio in Tim's hand buzzed. "Six."
Tim did the absolutely only thing he could think to do and threw the radio at the Red Hood with all his force, and then ran. He made it to the door and didn't bother to shut it, simply ripping open the second one to reveal a set of stairs. Even if he couldn't grapple away or radio for help, he could hide and buy time.
The Red Hood called after him,
"If you take one foot onto that roof, the whole thing will blow. I know Bruce designed this pretty well, but it's not designed well enough to prevent that rubble from hitting the nearby buildings and civilians below."
The way he said Bruce's name…familiarly, like he was used to saying it a lot.
Tim froze, hand on the door handle. He could be lying. Maybe he was. But Tim didn't think so. Slowly, he turned back around.
The Red Hood stood at the base of the stairs, head cocked, staring up at Tim. For a long moment, they simply looked at each other, Tim feeling naked in his finely tailored suit.
"Come here," the Red Hood said. Tim laughed, short and disbelieving. The Red Hood didn't look surprised, but he also didn't look pleased. He took a step up and Tim flinched, hand tight on the doorknob. Maybe the bomb threat was fake.
"Oh, come on." Something…something in how he said that. In the tone he used. Maybe not the voice itself, but the lilt of it. It was driving Tim mad. There was both such a threatening newness and unpredictability to him, and a strange kind of recognition. "I know you're used to taking orders."
"Actually, CEOs usually give the orders," Tim responded, not moving whatsoever. The Red Hood had seemed to have forgotten his little countdown, so maybe this distraction could be used to Tim's advantage. Though how on earth he could have any kind of perceived advantage right now was beyond him.
The Red Hood laughed and that swoop of familiarity hit Tim's lungs like a kick to the chest.
"That's not what I'm talking about, Robin."
The ground seemed to fall away beneath Tim's feet.
"I don't know what you're talking about." It came out flatter than Tim meant. The Red Hood advanced another step.
"You are Timothy Jackson Drake-Wayne, born to Janet and Jackson Drake, temporarily the dependent of Dana Winters-Drake, now the third child to be adopted by Bruce Wayne." Another step. "You became Robin three years ago following the death of the second Robin at the hands of the Joker. You're a part of the Teen Titans, though it's a different merry band than the first one had." Another step. "When you get dosed with fear gas, you see Nightwing being disappointed in you."
"Stop," Tim snapped, and the man grinned. They were almost face-to-face now, and even though he was two steps lower, the Red Hood was taller than Tim.
"You have no idea how much I'm going to enjoy this," the Red Hood said, and shoved Tim down the stairs.
Even as he fell, Tim had to admit it was a nice throw, but it only worked because he had been distracted. And the man's form was sloppy, overly reliant on sure footwork. Tim landed with a thud that knocked the breath out of him, but had no time to recover as the Red Hood launched himself at Tim. Tim recognized that move. This man had been trained by the League of Assassins.
Unfortunately for him, Tim had trained to defeat the League.
He shifted his weight just enough that the man had to twist to avoid breaking his ankle on the landing, and that twist meant he landed awkwardly on one foot, giving Tim plenty of opportunity to hit him squarely in the side. He hit the doorframe roughly, but even as he bounced off, his hand ducked down to his waistband for a weapon.
Tim was ready.
The raised knife glittered in the light for a moment - holy shit, that looked familiar - before swinging down and being met with Tim's batarang. Instead of pulling back, the man tried to force his way through the blow, which would've worked on a straight-bladed weapon. But a batarang was not straight-bladed. Tim shoved up and turned his hand as he did it, moving towards the man's thumb. The knife caught in the curve and was yanked out of the man's grasp.
This close, Tim could feel the way the man moved, and he was going to go insane if he couldn't place why he recognized it. Yes, it was League training, but more than that. The League trained people to move like shadows, never staying in one place for long enough for you to get a hit in. They were strong, but the challenge came from their agility. The Red Hood had the agility, but he also had power behind it, enough sheer force that he could just muscle his way through fights.
It also meant he was clumsy.
Tim jumped as the man lost grip of the knife, and springboarded as best as he could off of the man's chest. He grunted in shocked and stumbled backwards, missing the doorway and falling into the hallway with Tim. Tim landed some feet away, smoke pellet hitting the ground at the same time as he did. There was a window behind the man, if he could reach it, he would just have to break it and grapple out that way.
He started to run. The smoke billowed around him, hissing.
An arm around his neck, another on the back of his shirt. He yanked to a stop. This position…
Alarm bells sang in Tim's mind.
"You'll have to excuse the poor memory, but understand that I fight hundreds of you psychos a week." Tim's words were a little breathless as he struggled. "Have we fought before?"
That laugh, right next to his ear.
"Aw, one too many blows to the head?"
Tim tried to slam his elbow into the man's side, but he anticipated it and dodged. Tim could feel blood sliding down his face where he had been hit, and the chaos of the night had left him panicked. He tried to shove his shoulder back into the man's chest, and only succeeded in getting himself more boxed in, this time, with the cold kiss of a blade against his throat.
Like most things that night, the position felt painfully familiar.
The Red Hood tightened the band of his arm around Tim's chest, his arm so large that it could wrap around all of Tim and touch the skin just at the edge of his back on the other side. His legs were moving, and Tim couldn't figure out what they were doing, but one of them slid between his and pressed up. Tim froze.
"Have you done this yet, Tim?" The voice was low and cool in his ear, unaffected.
The world stilled around them, the only sound Tim's ragged breaths.
"High from a fight, covered in blood, your skin torn open. You and someone else - one of your little teammates, maybe - on a rooftop, hidden from the world. Or maybe a shower room, everyone else asleep. I prefer a bit of dirt, myself."
He dug in the knife a bit on the word 'dirt' and Tim shuddered.
"You look at each other and recognize that shared instinct for violence, that feeling you get when your knuckles hit another being. And blood starts to rush all kinds of wonderful places."
One time…one time, when Bruce was still out in the field, and Alfred was upstairs, and everyone else was busy. When it was just Tim and Dick alone in the Cave, Dick had peeled off the top half of his costume, like he always did. And then he kept going, looking at Tim out of the corner of his eye, brilliant blue hidden under those long eyelashes. Tim had thought…
"But no, I bet you're too scared." The thumb on the hand banded around his waist started to move, rubbing circles over Tim's ribcage. "Too guarded. Bruce would never let you out of the house with that kind of reckless behavior. Not after the last kid. I bet you go back to your room and muffle yourself with a pillow and get yourself off, cold and desperate, terrified that someone will find you and see that crack in Robin's perfect armor. Terrified that Bruce will throw you out on the street if he sees the filthy things you want."
Tim had. He had let Dick strip all the way down without saying a word, stared long and hard at the scarred skin of his thighs, and then let him go shower alone. And Tim had gone up to his room and locked his door and came so hard he thought he was going to pass out.
"At least my weaknesses aren't my failure to stop a teenager from kicking my ass," Tim hissed, but it was weak.
The Red Hood laughed again, and a shiver ran up Tim's spine. "I'm not the one being pinned with a hard one while the big bad wolf whispers sweet nothings into my ear."
Tim lashed out and the man actually let him go for a moment, but only to flip him around and slam his back to the wall. This close, Tim could see the pulse of his heartbeat under his jaw. His eyes flicked down to Tim's neck and his lips quirked up.
"Oh, Tim." His voice was mocking. "You have nothing on the first Robin."
Well, duh. None of them ever had. None of them ever would.
"What do you want?" It wasn't a shout, but it felt as loud as one. Tim felt like him talking at all somehow broke the spell the Red Hood was casting.
"I want you to get to your knees."
What?
Tim just stared into the whites of the domino mask. There was…something…
The arm lifted from Tim's chest and he tensed, wondering if he should run. The Red Hood's mouth twisted up, and his head tilted.
Tim did not run.
The arm turned into a hand, turned into a trailing movement down Tim's side. The layers of suit and shirt felt impossibly thin, like nothing at all. Being this close, without the arm in the way, he didn't feel familiar at all. Whatever he reminded Tim of was a feeling only noticeable from a distance. Pressed chest-to-chest, he smelled like grease and smog, and Tim could feel his belt buckle digging into Tim's stomach.
Wait, wait, wait-
The hand found its target - under Tim's jacket, yanking the shirt the rest of the way out of his pants, and then-
Holy shit, fingers, the rough drag of gloved fingers on Tim's iliac crest, starting to dig under the waistband, and Tim, in the absence of strange feelings, was suddenly deeply aware of how much he didn't know this man, this man who was a villain, this man who probably had a gun on him right now.
Upsettingly, this did nothing to assuage Tim's hard-on.
The hand stayed where it was, fingers stroking back and forth. Tim managed to convince himself to stop staring at the man's grey shirt and look up.
"Aw, c'mon." His voice was low and sharp. It had a strange kind of raspy quality to it, like some kind of trauma had happened to the vocal cords. "You still haven't figured out the mystery yet?" He tsked and added, "And here I heard you were some great detective. Much smarter than the last one, at least."
Tim's head was swimming. The dull red lighting, the stuffy heat from lack of air movement, the confusion of the night, and the way some part of his head was screaming at him that he knew this man were causing a dull swirl where Tim's thoughts should be. If he could just think-
"Get on your knees."
Tim got on his knees, though the closeness of the Red Hood made it awkward. Down here, he could see that one of the legs of the man's jeans was spattered with dried blood.
Belt. Button. Zipper.
"Open your mouth."
Tim opened his mouth.
His brain was quieting somehow. Emptying out. Fingers reached down into his hair and tugged him forward, while the man kept talking.
"You know, you really are something."
Choking was what Tim was right then, unpracticed as he was.
"I've been watching you, you know. Watching you fight. Watching you detect. Watching you get lost in your filthy little fantasies, looking so tiny in those huge rooms, in that huge bed. I wonder…" But Tim sputtered on unexpected liquid and the Red Hood had to pull him off with a scoff. He caught his breath, eyes on the blood on the man's pants. Maybe it's his. Tim doubted it.
"When you go home tonight," the man was saying above him. "Will you think about this?" Tim tried to focus on keeping a good suction. "Will you remember how it felt to have me standing above you, knife in hand?"
Tim felt lightheaded. He must've made some sound, because he was yanked backwards and held there by his hair.
"Oh, for god's sake-" And then Tim was being hauled upright into the filthiest and meanest kiss he had ever experienced. Stephanie kissed him like it was another kind of hug. The Red Hood kissed him like it was another kind of punch. It was teeth and biting and broken skin spilling copper into his mouth and when the man pulled back, some of Tim's blood was on his lips.
Tim, dazed, just stared at it.
"Come here, then," the Red Hood said, and shoved one leg between Tim's. Tim, beyond all kind of civility or really any kind of higher thought at all, began to grind down desperately.
"That's right, I know you need it."
Need, not want, because Tim was clutching onto the leather jacket with both hands, barely able to stand upright, the man's other arm wrapped around his waist. An almost-romantic pose, were it not absolutely filthy.
Tim's little breaths felt like an admission to something that he wasn't comfortable with, panting and trying hard to keep the whine out of his voice. And he was al. most. there.
He came with a shudder, all but collapsing onto the man, who was annoyingly unmoved by the entirety of Tim's weight being dropped onto him. A moment of stillness. In the distance, sirens. And then,
"You know, if you ever get tired of running around playing pretend, you could really make a killing on your knees."
The moment froze.
Pretend.
As clear as day, he heard a voice saying "-before I slit this pretender's throat." And the world caved in.
He landed from a fall the way Bruce taught them to.
He hid the radios up, where Dick always said no one looked. He used the kind of radios Dick had designed.
He walked light on his feet, ready to move, the way they were trained to.
And that laugh. Tim had heard it, only much younger. The way it pitched up at the end. The familiar way his mouth wrapped around the word Bruce.
Tim shoved himself away, using gravity to drop himself from the grasp and then stumbling down the hall. The Red Hood let him go, just watching, a small smile on his lips.
"No," Tim said, and then, "how."
"Nice scar," the Red Hood responded. "It healed up well. I was kind of hoping to make more of a mark, but I'll take what I can get."
"That's not possible," Tim snapped, ignoring him. The man sighed and clearly rolled his eyes, shifting to lean against the wall.
"Tim, last week you broke the arm of a woman who can speak to plants. Let's not go throwing around words like 'impossible'. It's a bad look."
"Prove it, then." Tim didn't want to say it out loud. It sounded insane. And if it was true…
But he didn't need to prove it, did he?
"Your fingerprints," Tim said, and Jason grinned. "We never deleted…your…fingerprints from the system. Why would we…"
A loud bang from downstairs. Tim jumped.
"GCPD!"
"Well, that's my cue." The man pushed himself off of the wall and started backing towards the huge window at the end of the hall. "It's been nice."
Tim couldn't move. He had to stop him. You're letting the bad guy get away, Tim. But if it was…then he couldn't…
"Wait," Tim said, then louder, "Wait!"
The man pulled out a gun and shot the window three times. The panes shattered and suddenly, the sounds of Gotham came in. Sirens, screams, helicopters, wind. It was this, this comforting familiarity, that gave Tim the courage to say,
"Jason-!"
Jason turned, and just for a moment, lit by the police lights, grinning, Tim saw it. Tim saw Robin.
"See you in your dreams," Jason said.
By the time the police burst into the hallway, all that was left was Timothy Drake-Wayne, clutching his broken wrist, terrified. The rest of the hostages, he was informed, had been evacuated long ago. He nodded and shook with fear the whole time, anxiously asking, did Batman come? and telling the police that no, he hadn't seen his attacker's face, just the helmet.
And later, sitting safely in Wayne Manor, he pressed one hand to the small scar on his neck.
Jason Todd was back.