Chapter Text
Tim’s parents have been gone for three months now, meaning that Tim has been all by himself for a long time.
At school, he’s not one for friends either. He’s younger than the kids at his high school, having skipped several grades in his parents’ desperation to make him special. To exacerbate the problem further, he’s not even attending school right now. Summer vacation has started this week, and Tim feels the absence of something to do like it’s a wound.
The one upside is that he doesn’t have to limit his time out of the house. He barely has to sneak around, until he’s deep in Crime Alley. He runs through dark alleys, tries to keep up with the Batmobile, and feels that addictive adrenaline that comes with keeping up with Gotham’s protectors.
Tim is fine. He definitely isn’t lonely.
…Except he totally, totally is. He’s a lonely fucking loser who stalks Batman around the city at night, throwing himself behind or into dumpsters to not get caught or shot at. Desperate enough for signs of activity from Batman and the Robins that he almost got straight-up killed by the Penguin once when the guy heard a noise and instinctively fired at it.
While Tim runs around, collecting photos of the heroes, he also tries to keep Batman up to date with the stuff he witnesses, as a fourth set of eyes on Gotham. He can multitask. He writes chickenscratch notes, purposefully blurring his normally pristine handwriting, and tapes it to the bumper of the Batmobile while it’s unguarded before disappearing back into the night. He’s seen Robin grab them, so he knows they get read. It’s funny how they never see him come or go.
The routine is what keeps Tim moving during the summer slump. It’s also becoming exhausting, with his sleep schedule beyond repair.
It’s also why, at four in the morning on a Tuesday, Tim dives behind the correct dumpster and hears a small, scared whine that isn’t his own.
Sounds of the clash between Robin and the goons he’s dealing with almost drown out the sound. Tim sheds his backpack, pushing both it and himself further out of sight, before he eases himself onto his hands and knees to peer underneath the dumpster.
Crouched beneath the dumpster, probably only a few weeks old, is a puppy.
It’s underfed, and unkempt, with ragged black fur and sad eyes and Tim kind of thinks he might get some kind of crazy disease if he picks it up, but it’s so young that it doesn’t seem to pose much of a threat to anyone. It looks so lost, and scared, and Tim’s mind is made up before he can consider any of the downsides to this situation.
Out on the street, Robin’s fight begins to migrate away. He’s headed north, drawing the four armed guards away from the entrance to the speakeasy that Batman’s trying to get into. Tim aches to follow the fight, but he can’t leave. He’ll have to settle for catching up with Batman later.
“Hey,” Tim whispers, trying to appear calming. He scoots back a little bit, giving the dog more space, trying not to crowd it. It doesn’t appear to have grown adult teeth yet, so he doubts that a bite would hurt much, but… Tim doesn’t like being boxed in. He doubts a dog would like it either.
“I’m Tim,” he says, though introducing himself to a puppy makes him flush in embarrassment. “I wanna take you home. Are you hungry?”
The dog blinks at him, all scared eyes. It scoots backwards, cramped in the tight space.
“Where’s your family?” Tim asks. He slowly moves to unzip his backpack and finds his snack stash, pulling out some beef jerky and beginning to open the package. “Did they leave you?”
Robin laughs, far away. The sound echoes, high and proud and brave. Tim sticks to his task at hand, even though he wants to know what the joke was so badly .
With careful hands, Tim rips off a piece of beef and holds it out slowly, then gently tosses it forward so it can roll towards the puppy.
After a few inquisitive sniffs, the puppy cautiously creeps forward and licks it up. The meat is gone within a split-second, and then the dog watches Tim warily until Tim gives it another piece.
He spends half an hour bribing the dog with pieces of beef jerky before he’s lured it far enough forward that it ventures out from underneath the dumpster. He’ll have to put more snacks in his backpack for the next time he’s out, but that’s not his main concern right now.
The puppy trusts him now, based on the food it’s been given. She gives him a shy wag of her tail as Tim pats her head. He takes the opportunity to get a closer look at her. Her ribs are showing on her sides, and she’s filthy, but he doesn’t see any kind of injury. She’s likely just an abandoned stray.
“You were hungry,” he tells her.
She stares up at him with those same sad eyes, carefully tracking every move he makes. She’s warming up to him surprisingly quickly, though; she seems to be enjoying the head scratches.
Eventually, when he’s more sure that she’s not going to try to bite his hand off for picking her up, Tim attempts to do just that. He slowly reaches around and picks her up around her tummy, pulling her towards his chest.
She makes a scared sound, so he slows his movements. Tim cradles her in his arms, letting her wiggle around to get comfortable, before he pulls his extra sweatshirt out of his backpack and wraps the dog carefully, swaddling her so she feels secure but not trapped.
“I’m gonna keep you safe,” Tim promises the dog, clutching her to his chest. The sun hasn’t yet risen, but the sky has lightened considerably. Tim can see the streets dimly around him; it’s the safest time of day to run back home because everyone’s either passed out to sleep or too drunk to give a good chase. “We’re gonna go home.”
The trip home takes as long as it normally does. Tim’s perfected the route back to his house, slipping back inside without being noticed by even the nosiest of neighbors or even the rare landscaping crew that comes for the upkeep of his family’s estate. The crunchy walk through the gravel back road to get back to his home always feels pretty forlorn, but today he has company.
As the sun crawls its way over the horizon, Tim reaches his house. He hears the faint screech of Batmobile tires as they zoom towards the hidden backroad near the Wayne estate as Tim lets himself in through the back door.
Once inside, Tim almost finds comfort in the still, silent air of Drake Manor. Nobody’s around, and nobody will be around. A casual hack into his parents’ personal credit card accounts has told him that they haven’t booked a flight home yet, and so Tim feels free to stoop down and loosen the bundle in his arms, allowing the puppy to finally wiggle free of his hold.
Instead of running off to explore, she freezes in place. She stands still, tail between her legs, shaking. She doesn’t even look around the room, not curious about what’s going on, and Tim immediately wraps her back up and picks her up again.
“Sorry,” Tim murmurs to her. She seems calmer with him holding her, though she’s still shaking as he holds her to his chest.
“You need a bath,” Tim decides. He tries to remember what he’s picked up about stray dog rescue over the years of casually browsing Wikipedia. A trip to the pet store is probably in order, and maybe he’ll be able to find out where to get a flea treatment and actual dog shampoo, but for now Tim thinks it’ll be okay to use normal shampoo, just this once. From what he’d seen in the dim light of the street, the dog’s fur is thick and dirty and matted, and needs urgent washing before she can walk around Tim’s home.
Tim pries his boots off to set them on the rack in the mudroom, and stands on tiptoes to reach a plastic tub above the washing machines. It takes some doing, but he manages to pull one down from the shelf and he takes it with him to the bathroom connected to his room, settling the tub down in the bath and holding the dog in the crook of one arm while turning on the faucet to let the water warm up a little bit.
He narrates things as he goes. He says stupid things that the dog can’t understand, like “These stairs are so hard to walk on in new socks,” and “I like this faucet, I replaced it myself,” and “It always takes a little bit to warm up, but I don’t like hot baths either, so don’t worry.” He just knows that he hates not being spoken to, like he’s invisible, so he chatters uselessly and looks at the dog directly while he does so and she stares back, rapt, still looking sad but at least no longer shaking as severely.
Eventually, the water is warm. Tim pushes the tub under the faucet to fill it, and then turns off the water and eases himself into the bathtub to bracket the tub between his legs.
“Okay,” he says, low and calm, “you might not like this, but you’ll feel better when you’re clean.”
The puppy proves him wrong. Immediately after Tim unwraps her, she wiggles free and leaps into the tub herself, splashing Tim with warm water.
Tim laughs, the sound startled out of him. The dog sloshes around in the water, bringing up her paws to stomp them back down, and Tim giggles again and reaches out to hold her still, to start to work shampoo into her fur.
She licks his wrist, her tail finally leaving the spot between her legs as he scrubs with one hand and scratches behind her ears with the other. For the first time, she seems like a living thing, instead of just a scared one. She loves the water, continually poking her nose into it and jerking her head up to splash it around with delight. The novelty doesn’t wear off for her, even when the water starts getting all soapy and dirty.
The shampoo lather is turning dark brownish grey, soaking up the dirt that’s staining the entire tub of water by now. At this rate, Tim might wash away all the water to find out that the dog’s black and white fur has been solidly white this whole time.
“You need a name,” Tim tells her very seriously.
Tim doesn’t know how to name a pet. He’s never had one. As he lifts her up, holding her in a towel for just a few moments while he climbs out of the bathtub to change the water out, he wracks his brain for any frame of reference. Batman’s dog is called Bat-Hound, which is kind of stupid. Tim can do better than that.
With a shy kind of tone, even though he’s talking to a stray dog, Tim says, “I could call you Shadow.”
It’s a name he used to doodle around his case notebooks, when he was first stalking Batman around and he had his own dreams of being a vigilante. Like he could be out there with Nightwing and Robin, with a persona of his own, actually contributing directly, having a team to work with. It’s a dream that he clings to, but he knows realistically that he’ll never get there. His super cool vigilante name shouldn’t go to waste.
“Do you like that name?” Tim asks, because it’s something that requires permission.
Shadow wiggles again, shaking off some of the soap lathered over her body. Her tail wags.
“Okay,” Tim says. He finds that his smile is still stuck on his face, making his cheeks ache.
Once she’s clean, Tim drains the plastic tub and wraps Shadow in a towel, carefully drying her off until she won’t track anything around the house. With her fur drier, cleaner, it becomes soft and curly and Tim finds that while there are white patches up her neck and chin and tummy, she is indeed mostly covered in beautiful black fur. It hadn’t just been grime.
“You are very cute,” Tim tells her genuinely, still rubbing the towel over her while she stares up at him. “Let me get you some food and water.”
He releases her, and she turns in a little circle, excited to be free but still too timid to run off without Tim. He nods to her, as if she’s answered, and then he opens the bathroom door to go find where he’s abandoned his phone by the front door.
His parents have left him the login information for a grocery delivery service. They’ve never been the type to check what he’s ordering, so he feels safe enough to order puppy food, dog shampoo, and some snacks for himself. He’ll wait to see if Shadow keeps scratching, to see if she has fleas, but he knows he’ll need to figure out a vet visit at some point regardless.
Tim has to admit that he’s a little afraid of what would happen if he lets Shadow make a mess indoors, so he decides to play it safe and he opens the sliding glass door by the kitchen and lets Shadow sniff along the threshold until she gets the courage to step outside. The small patio is ringed by grass, which is surrounded by a closed fence, so Shadow won’t be able to wander far unless Tim opens the gate in the back.
While the puppy sniffs around, cautiously investigating the area, Tim sits down on the kitchen floor with his feet stuck out into the early morning--he’s blocking Shadow’s way back inside while keeping an eye on her. He’ll need to get the groceries when they arrive, so that the dog can eat something more sturdy than pepperoni, but it’s been such a long night.
In the soft, chilled breeze of seven o’clock, Tim rests his head against the doorjamb, watching Shadow become entranced by a butterfly floating on the wind. He watches, similarly entranced, until his eyes become too heavy to keep open.
“She seems very healthy,” the vet says. She smiles, her hands still under Shadow’s chin, squishing the puppy’s cheeks up to make her eyes into happy slits. “Yes, you are.” Turning her attention back to Tim, the doctor reports, “We’ll get back to you about lab results if anything comes up, but after her flea treatment is over, she seems like she’ll be totally fine. Her ears are clean and I don’t see anything else wrong.”
“Thank you,” Tim says, relieved. He’s only had her for a few days, but he’s spent that whole time worrying that she’s secretly sick and will die without him expecting it.
“She’s at least nine weeks old, so she’s due for her first distemper shot right now,” the vet continues. “We can also do the first DHLPP shot, if you don’t want to come back within the next couple weeks. I’ll give you a schedule for vaccinations for your parents to keep track of, so they can be ready for the payments.”
Tim smiles like a normal person, like his parents had even kept up with his vaccination schedule correctly. He hasn’t been to the doctor in years. Tim doesn’t let his eye twitch at the reminder of the upcoming cost of the shots, but his parents haven’t noticed any charges on his credit cards before and they’re unlikely to start caring now.
He’s already handed his card information over to the woman at the front desk anyway, so there’s no going back. “Okay. Yeah, let’s do those two, then.”
The vet nods, keeping one hand on the top of Shadow’s neck while she reaches for a drawer to find the syringes. “We do these all the time, and dogs usually don’t even notice.” She gives Tim a glance, perhaps noticing his anxiety as she pulls out two doses, and gives him a bracing smile. “Kiddo, you want to hold her while I do it? It’ll take two seconds.”
Tim nods and steps forward, hands feeling jerky and unstable in his nerves around any kind of medical professional, but they are steady by the time he sets one on the ridge of Shadow’s back and the other to brace Shadow’s chest.
As she preps the needles, the vet continues to talk, and Tim’s not sure if it’s for Shadow’s benefit or his. “--By her coat and her ears, I’d guess she’s part Newfoundland and part poodle at least, but there could be all sorts of breeds mixed in there. If you found her as a stray, it’d take a genetics test to tell what kind of mutt she is.”
“She’s not a mutt,” Tim reflexively says. He’s only heard that word said in muttered insults, when his parents recoil from any dog in their vicinity.
The vet’s voice softens, lowers. “I meant that in a purely affectionate way. My dogs are both mutts, that’s what I call them. I should have said she’s mixed-breed.”
“It’s okay,” Tim says, embarrassed, still staring at where his hands are buried in Shadow’s curly fur. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s alright, kid.” She pulls up a fold of excess skin at Shadow’s neck and does one shot, then the other, so quickly that neither Tim nor Shadow have any opportunity to react poorly. When she’s done, and as she’s stepping away to discard the needles in the disposal bin, she says, “That’s all we’re doing for her today. Do you have any questions?”
Tim shakes his head, still not daring to look up at her after he was so rude.
“Okay. I’ll give you my card so you can reach out if that changes, okay?” She steps to the counter and presses a button on her computer, and her printer begins to chug away. While a packet prints, she slips their pre-discussed flea treatment into a plastic baggie and then places a few little dog biscuits into a second bag, before she picks up the new printouts and staples them together.
Tim scoops Shadow up into his arms protectively, clutching her tight and reassuring her that it’s over now. He accepts the packet and the two bags, balancing them in the crook of his arm so he doesn’t have to let go of Shadow.
“She’ll need another shot in a few weeks, so I’ll see you then,” the vet says. Tim chances a look up at her, finally, and finds that she’s smiling at him without guile. “It was great to meet both of you.”
“Thank you,” Tim manages, forcing one of his practiced smiles on his face, and escapes out of the clinic with at least a little of his dignity intact.
When they get home, both Tim and Shadow are recovering from residual nerves. He holds the screen door open for her and she hops inside, relieved to be back where she feels safe. Tim knows the feeling.
“Do you want to watch TV?” Tim asks.
Shadow does one of her twirls. She’s not a barky dog--really, she doesn’t make much noise at all--but she’s very easy to understand anyway. She twirls when she’s excited, or hungry, or just loves that Tim’s paying attention to her.
He goes to the living room and turns the TV on to one of the nature channels. Shadow likes watching the shows about wild animals, and Tim doesn’t mind them either.
As Shadow hops up on the couch and turns around and settles onto the spot on the throw pillows she’s decided are hers, Tim finds a soda for himself and brings a treat back for Shadow to enjoy. She crunches the bone, torn between watching the cheetahs on the television screen and the treat she’s trying to inhale as fast as she possibly can.
“I think we need more friends,” Tim tells her. He pops the can of coke open and slurps at the bubbles that try to flood out of the top. When the soda emergency is taken care of, he looks at Shadow again very intently and says, “I can’t take you out birdwatching at night.”
Shadow licks the surface of the couch, snuffling around in hopes of finding some remnants.
“You should be excited about making friends,” Tim admonishes her. “It’s important to be sociable and to make people like you.”
Shadow stands up and wobbles over the squishy couch cushions to fall into Tim’s lap. She’s heavy and warm and Tim laughs, happy that she wants to be close to him even after he’s repeated words from his mother to her.
As they get to the gate of the dog park, Shadow stops and balks, tugging Tim back when he doesn’t stop walking in time.
“What is it?” Tim asks, concerned.
Shadow doesn’t move. She doesn’t seem to want to socialize much with the other dogs. Tim may have waited a week or more too long to introduce her. While she’s been growing at a terrifying rate, she still seems so small and he doesn’t want her to get hurt.
Though he gets her to move after a couple moments, she moves slowly. As they enter the dog park, she sticks close to his heels, almost getting herself stepped on as she cringes away from the sight of older dogs.
“It’s okay,” Tim reassures her. He guides her a few steps to the side, no longer blocking the entrance, where he crouches down and smooths a hand over her head and ears. “I’m not gonna let them get you. They seem friendly.”
They do indeed seem friendly. Two of the biggest dogs are bouncing around each other, almost a tornado of fur. A furnado. Another one has jumped up, basically as tall as the woman it’s with, standing up to give her a hug. If this was a park for Tims, Tim would think it was a pretty chill place to hang out.
Shadow whines, cowering behind Tim’s legs.
Tim sits down in the grass fully, feeling the dewy grass soak into his shorts. He takes a water bottle out of his backpack and pours a little into his hand for her to slurp at while he thinks of a course of action.
A shadow covers the sun. Tim jerks back, startled, pushing Shadow behind him, and the figure standing in front of him in nice sneakers says, “Sorry! Didn’t mean to scare you.”
Tim squints, shielding his eyes with one hand, and peers upward.
It’s not a stranger. Worse, it’s Dick Grayson, in a t-shirt and sweats, a friendly and unflappable smile on his face even as he takes a step backwards to give Tim more room.
Tim swallows. He quickly searches the dog park, trying to catch sight of Bat-Hound. That dog has sniffed awfully close to Tim during some patrol nights, never attacking him but definitely becoming familiar in a way that almost compromised Tim multiple times.
He spots the dog at the base of a tree forty feet away, digging at something while also brandishing an enormous branch in his mouth, having the time of his life. He’s not going to leap at Tim and rip his throat out for knowing too many secrets. At least, not right now.
In all his panicked searching, Tim forgets to say anything. He’s spared when Dick holds out a hand to help Tim up, and while Tim obliges, Dick says, “You’re Tim Drake, right? I feel like I’ve seen you around. I’m Dick, we’re next-door neighbors.”
Tim is smoothly pulled to his feet, forgetting too late that he’s holding on to Dick with the same hand Shadow had just been licking out of. He finds himself nose-to-chest with Nightwing, who’s talking to him like he’s just a casual friend, and Tim wrenches his hand free as soon as he can and scrubs his palm on his shorts and blurts, “I’m so sorry, my hand is gross, I forgot to bring a water bowl--”
“Hey, no worries, man.” Dick smiles, charming and unbothered, like Tim isn’t acting like a little freak. “Did you just get your dog? She’s so cute.”
Tim looks down at Shadow, who is regarding Dick with just as much hesitance as Tim is.
“Yeah,” Tim manages a smile, his pride in Shadow overriding his previous panic for a moment. “She. Um, she was a stray I found. She’s almost three months old.”
“Oh my god, cute. ” Dick crouches slowly, extending his palm for Shadow to sniff at. “What’s her name?”
“Shadow,” Tim says, ears burning with embarrassment as he realizes he’s finally revealing his idea for his hero name to Nightwing. This is the worst moment of Tim’s life.
Dick doesn’t laugh at him, though. He just keeps trying to coax Shadow closer to him, and Shadow eventually pushes her nose into Dick’s hand and her tail begins to wag as he pets her gently.
“Sweetheart,” Dick coos at her. He glances back up to Tim, one eye squinted against the bright sky. “This her first time here?”
Tim nods. He doesn’t have to say, it’s mine too.
“I can introduce her to my dog, Ace,” Dick offers. “He’s a trained therapy dog, and he’s super normal.”
While he manages not to snort at Dick calling the Bat-Hound super normal, any other words catch in his throat. Tim doesn’t want Ace anywhere near him. He stutters, “Um, I don’t…”
“Some of the dogs here are kind of rowdy, but he can be very calm. No pressure, though.”
Tim swallows hard. He can’t think of a reason to decline. Shadow needs a friend, just one, so that this trip hasn’t been a total bust. Finally, he nods, pleading silently that Ace won’t recognize him.
“Ace!” Dick calls, just once, and Ace abandons his stick and his digging and lopes across the clearing towards Dick.
Shadow makes a growling noise and hides back behind Tim’s legs. Tim freezes, staring as Ace bounds closer, and doesn’t manage not to flinch as Ace reaches Dick’s side and his nose gets too close to Tim’s hand.
“Aw, sorry. He came in a little hot there,” Dick apologizes, and pulls Ace back a few steps. “Ace, be cool.” To Tim again, still apologetic and so gracious, “He’s just excited to make friends.”
Tim feels like if he moves his mouth at all, his jaw will crack off. He’s clenching it too tight. Neither he nor Shadow moves for a long moment, but then Shadow creeps back out into Ace’s view and sniffs cautiously.
Ace moves, somehow becoming more gentle and managing to seem respectful as he moves over to Shadow and sniffs her. He does a little loop around both Shadow and Tim, nudging Tim’s hand with his nose briefly before becoming preoccupied with Shadow again. Ace’s tail wags, low and calm and friendly, and Tim begins to unfreeze.
Slowly, Shadow unfreezes too. She stops shaking, and her tail cautiously wags as she returns the customary butt-sniff. When Ace playfully jumps back a few minutes later, Shadow jerks into a playful position too, her too-big paws tangling awkwardly because she’s never played with another dog before.
They’re far enough away from the rest of the dogs that Tim feels alright unfastening her leash so she can spin around Ace unhindered.
Ace is being cautious, Tim can tell. Shadow is too, but it’s more timid coming from her. Gently, the two of them dance around each other, tails wagging more and more confidently, and Tim finds that he’s smiling.
Shadow is very easy to train. She’s uncannily smart at times, understanding what Tim’s trying to teach her quickly and not taking more than a day to pick things up, at the most. He teaches her how to play dead, how to walk on a thin plank of wood like a balance beam, how to wave at him.
Inspired by this education, she teaches herself how to wake Tim up to feed her, how to open the sliding door to go chase squirrels like a madwoman, and how to know when Tim’s having a panic attack so that she can lay directly on top of him.
Tim makes sure he walks her several times a day, even taking her for a run some evenings when it’s not too hot, and he feels such a lightness in his chest when she bounds alongside him, as elated as he is that they’re free to run as fast as they want through the hills of the Drake estate.
Tim hadn’t exactly been in shape when he found Shadow. He was only spry enough to keep up with the Batmobile, and even then he would get out of breath and had to spend a lot of time wheezingly calming his lungs back down. As he runs with Shadow more and more, his legs cramp and get sore but they get stronger over time, giving Tim more confidence to take Shadow on actual runs around the neighborhood instead of staying in his backyard.
Tim shows up at the dog park more frequently than almost anyone else. He learns the names of most of the dogs that are always there, and the names of their owners too, but he mostly tries to stick by Dick when the older boy is there. Shadow frolics around, joining the herd of dogs that enjoy chasing the dogs who chase frisbees, getting bigger and stronger and happier as the weeks go on. She’s barely shy anymore, especially not around Ace.
She’s also kind of forcing him to keep a sleep schedule. He slips out for a couple hours every night, but she’s so nervous without him in the house that by the time he comes back, she’s always whining and barking for him. That’s a work in progress, because Tim will eventually need to return to school, but it’s hard for him to be annoyed at her. He, too, feels so lonely and scared in this house by himself and if he could cry to someone about that problem, he would.
So Tim makes a point of getting sleep, because Shadow wakes up early and needs to be let out immediately after getting up. He eats when she eats, meaning he starts getting regular meals. He teaches her how to be quiet and hide in his closet while Mrs. Mac visits, and bribes her with her favorite treats when she gets through every visit without making too much noise, and the summer crawls on, blissful and so much better than Tim thought it would be.
Summer has just reached July when Dick shows up at Tim’s front door in the early morning. He rings the doorbell and Tim sits up in bed, confused, as Shadow starts barking like crazy and zooming up and down the stairs to inform Tim of what’s going on.
He’s only more confused when he sees who’s on his doorstep.
“Hey!” Dick says, much too awake. Ace is at his side. “I’m headed out for a walk this morning. My physical therapist said I can’t run yet.”
Dick has informed Tim, in lurid detail, of a broken rib injury that allegedly came from a mishap on the high bar at his gymnastics gym. Tim nodded along, grimacing at the right times, even though he was there watching when Nightwing ate shit on a failed leap between rooftops.
“Okay,” Tim says. He’s still restraining Shadow with both hands on her collar as she does her best to leap at Ace, who has become her second-best friend after Tim.
“So…do you wanna come?” Dick asks.
Tim isn’t awake enough to understand what Dick is asking. He just squints in bleary confusion until the words register with him, at which point he says, “Okay. Yeah.”
“I’ll wait out here,” Dick says with a little bit of a laugh, taking in Tim’s sleepy disposition. “Ask your parents if it’s okay, alright?”
“Sure,” Tim says, and shuts the door in Dick’s face to go get changed.
After this, for some reason, Dick decides he likes having Tim as a walking buddy. Even after his rib heals and he’s back out on patrol with Batman and Robin, Dick keeps showing up at Tim’s house and offering to walk with him.
Some mornings, he brings Jason Todd, too. Jason is almost never coherent before the hour of eleven in the morning, and he mostly stumbles along with them in a grumpy haze, but he’s almost as nice as Dick is. Jason starts perking up more as the weeks go on, though that reveals he’s even worse about lying about injuries than his brother is.
It’s mega weird, but Tim kind of thinks it means they’re becoming…friends. And that feeling is something Tim is getting addicted to.
It’s a little sad that Tim’s only friends are his dog and someone who’s old enough to babysit him, and maybe also that person’s little brother. But it feels nice, and Tim tries not to beat himself up too much about it; the alternative is returning to an empty, lonely existence that he hasn’t missed in the slightest.
Tim has been in bed for an hour longer than normal, having let Shadow out for her first walk before crawling back into bed to pass out again. She’d jumped up next to him, letting him wrap an arm around her as he dozed back off, because neither of them do well without physical reassurance.
His night out had been more brutal than most, involving him having caught the edge of a blast radius when Two-Face blew up a warehouse down by the docks. Tim has been toying with the idea of bringing Shadow out with him, but he’s glad now that he didn’t do that. She would have been flung forward by the blast, becoming even more frightened of loud noises than she already is.
But she’s safe. Tim, besides a lasting ringing in his ears and a little bit of road rash from being flung across the pavement, is also safe.
That doesn’t explain why Shadow is barking. He can hear her all the way from where she is, somewhere downstairs.
Tim shakes himself from his haze of exhaustion at the sound, already nervous. His dog barks when she’s playing, though rarely. She barks when Tim’s left her alone for too long and she thinks she’s been abandoned. She barks when a stranger gets too close to Tim, when their proximity makes Tim freeze up in an instinctual fear.
With a numbing kind of dread spreading through his blood, Tim slides off of his bed and pads across the floor, his heart pounding whenever he hears a squeak of floorboards.
Shadow snarls. The noise is threatening. Tim’s never heard that from her.
He wants to call out and make sure that she’s alright, but then she hears a gruff voice answer Shadow, menacing, and Tim’s throat closes up.
Someone’s in the house. Someone Tim doesn’t know.
What if they hurt her? What if Tim stays upstairs and saves himself, but she gets attacked by whoever is here?
The police won’t be here in time to do anything. Still, Tim calls 911 and tells the operator in a trembling whisper, “Someone’s in my house. They broke in. It’s just me here.”
Shadow continues to bark and snarl, getting closer to the stairs and the front hallway, and the intruder’s voice gets louder too.
Thankfully, the operator doesn’t think he’s stupid. He just tells Tim, “Where are you calling from?”
Tim gives his address promptly, hand clutched around the doorframe as he listens to Shadow in distress.
“Are you hidden?” the operator asks.
“No,” Tim says, wavering, “but my dog’s downstairs and I think she’s. I think they’re gonna hurt her, and--”
“Get somewhere safe and lock the door.”
“But she’s--”
“Kid, you need to prioritize yourself right now. The authorities are on their way, and they’ll take care of it. Alright?”
“I don’t want to leave her,” Tim insists, and his voice cracks against the backdrop of Shadow’s barking. His resolve snaps. “I’m sorry, I need to go.”
“Wait, please stay on the phone--” the operator says, but Tim hangs up and runs to the stairs, not caring how long it takes for the police to get here.
On the floor below, the intruder makes a strangled noise, and Shadow’s barks turn to muffled snarls. Tim peeks over the banister to see a large, hooded man struggling with Shadow’s jaws tight around his forearm.
The hand connected to the wrist in Shadow’s mouth is brandishing a knife.
Tim reels back, pressing himself back out of sight. He doesn’t have much time. Barely even thinking as he goes, Tim snatches a framed photo off the wall and hurries down the rest of the stairs, not caring if he’s heard anymore.
He reaches the last step, and the man wrestling with Shadow looks up and locks eyes with him.
Tim’s eyes skate over the scene from this new perspective. Shadow’s drawn blood by now, and she’s still fighting. The man is armed with a knife, though he’s wearing pants with a sort of utility belt slung around the waist, like he’s brought other supplies. Half of his face is covered by a mask. Behind him, down the hallway, Tim sees a shattered kitchen window.
Tim’s going to be in so much trouble. But he lets out a shout of anger and flings the photo forward like a frisbee, sending it careening directly into the man’s face, hearing the glass splinter as it crunches into the intruder’s nose, and Tim yells, “Shadow, c’mon, ” as he turns to run back up the stairs.
He hears a meaty squelch as Shadow releases the man’s arm and then she bolts upwards, zooming past Tim to the top of the stairs, where she doubles back down and barks warningly, watching Tim’s back as he sprints up the stairs.
Both of them reach the top. Tim hears the man shouting, beginning to move, no longer reeling from the probable broken nose. Tim’s heart leaps up his throat and he charges into his room, pausing to let Shadow come in too, before he shuts and locks the door. He tears over to his closet and ducks inside there too, similarly letting Shadow come in after him, and he slams and locks that door too and leans up against it, blood pounding so loudly in his ears that he barely hears the heavy pounding on his bedroom door a few seconds later.
Tim sinks to the ground, bracing his feet against the edges of some shelving, trying to keep the door closed. Finally he looks over at Shadow, who has crowded into his space, growling at the closed door and pressing into Tim’s side.
He sets one hand on the back of Shadow’s neck, trying to breathe correctly. It’s then that he sees that the blood on Shadow’s face isn’t just from her trying to rip that guy’s arm off.
A long gash has bisected her face, curving enough to thankfully miss her eye, and she’s bleeding profusely all over her snout, dripping onto the carpet. That motherfucker had swung a knife at his dog.
Tim lets out a horrified, startled noise, but he doesn’t think he should touch the injury. He just feels tears and hot, vicious anger begin to swirl through his chest all at once, and he throws his arms around her and holds on tight, not caring that his shoulder begins to feel the hot, seeping warmth of Shadow’s blood dropping onto it.
Outside the closet, after a period of silence, his bedroom door is broken open. Tim hears it ricochet against the wall as the man stomps in.
“Kid,” he growls, “I’m not leaving without you.”
Tim tightens his hold on Shadow, squeezing his eyes shut, and she growls in apprehension.
The footsteps near the closet. The doorknob rattles.
Tim turns his face into Shadow’s fur and braces himself against the door with locked knees, and knows that the police take at least seven minutes to reach his neighborhood.
A heavy kick to the door shakes Tim forward, but he throws himself back against it. The last locked door hadn’t stopped this man, but it’s all Tim has now.
Another slam. The door, buckling around its hinges, splinters in a couple places.
Tim can’t completely stifle his choked-off noise of terror, and he feels either blood or tears soaking the fur he’s shoving his face in. He just wants it to be over.
As if hearing him, the man slams his foot into the door again, then taunts, “How about you come out of there, and I won’t kill your dog in front of you?” Another slam, and one of the hinges bends and breaks and Tim hears at least part of it fall to the ground next to him. “It’ll be a short-term arrangement. If your parents love you, you’ve got nothing to worry about.”
Nobody’s tried to kidnap Tim in like, eight years, and he’s forgotten this feeling. The trapped, hunted, sickening feeling of knowing that someone wants nothing more than to drag him away.
A final kick does the door in. It rockets off its hinges, completely unmoored to its frame, pushing Tim forward and then falling away as gravity forces Tim to rock back, startling him out of his hold on Shadow and leaving him vulnerable, half on-top of his destroyed door, staring up at the man who’s broken into his house.
Tim starts to scrabble at the ground, attempting to push himself up, but he’s not successful in finding a grip. He doesn’t know where Shadow went, he doesn’t know how to escape, he doesn’t know when the police will get here.
“There you are,” says the man, sneering. He leans down, a heavy hand clamping around the front of Tim’s neck, and his other hand slaps Shadow’s snout away when she tries to lunge at him.
Shadow yelps. Tim sobs in fury, swinging a desperate fist in a punch that never connects, because his wrist is soon pinned to the ground.
“Don’t be scared,” the intruder says, so sickeningly sweet. The hand on Tim’s throat is slick with the man’s own blood, the sensation making Tim gag. The man opens his mouth, ready to say something more--
And then he rocks sideways, abruptly falling and slamming his head into the wall, slumping at the impact before clumsily turning to face something behind him.
Without someone pinning him down, Tim finally finds purchase on the ground, leveraging himself into a sitting position again. He twists to find a blur of green and red in his room, swinging a bo staff into the side of the intruder’s head for a second time.
Somehow, Robin has beat the cops here. He’s fully suited up, eyes narrowed in rage, and his third strike slams his staff into the man’s ribs hard enough that Tim hears bones crack.
Tim scrambles backwards, back into the closet, where Shadow has remained, still barking. He grabs onto her and pulls both of them farther away from the fight, crawling behind a row of hanging shirts and curling up with his arms around her, trying to remember how to breathe.
She stops barking, her noises lowering into whimpers as Tim clutches her and shakes. She’s hurt, and he doesn’t know how to help, but Robin’s here now. It’s going to be okay, because Robin’s here.
“You piece of shit, ” he hears Robin snarl, and a resounding thud through the floor tells Tim that the intruder’s been slammed down. “You better hope he’s not hurt.”
The intruder only rasps, trying to catch his breath through broken ribs.
“Don’t say anything else to that kid, or I’ll kill you,” Robin tells him, so much more venomous than Tim’s ever heard him. “I’m serious. Shut the fuck up.”
Tim doesn’t hear any further rasping. He hears handcuffs click, and he hears Robin hiss some other threat before footsteps recede, and Tim stops hearing anyone out in his room.
He doesn’t dare move. He clutches to Shadow tightly, hoping he’s not hurting her any more than she already has been.
“I’m sorry,” Tim whispers into her fur, hoping she understands. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
Shadow’s shaking, but she licks at his face as he cries. She might just like the taste of tears.
The clothes hiding Tim shift suddenly, the hangers scraping along their metal rod to expose Tim’s hiding spot. Someone touches his arm, and Tim flinches, shrinking back as far as he can against the wall. Shadow growls, snapping at whoever’s there, but the person doesn’t pursue. They scoot back, and Tim sees in his peripheral vision that it’s only Robin.
“Hey,” Robin breathes, holding both of his hands up to show he’s not attempting to attack. His demeanor has flipped completely around since he took out Tim’s would-be kidnapper. “Hey, kid. It’s me, Robin.”
Tim swipes at his eyes with one hand, and the back of his wrist comes away smeared with red. Balking at the sight, he balks again, taking a second to remember if he’d been hit in the head or not.
“Where are you bleeding?” Robin asks. “Do you remember getting hurt?”
“I’m not hurt,” Tim chokes out, when he remembers what’s going on. He can’t make himself let go of Shadow, but he sniffs and says, “ she is.”
Robin’s eyes skate over the knife wound across Shadow’s head. His eyes darken in anger, and he says, carefully calm, “Alright. It looks shallow, at least from here, alright? I’ll make sure she gets taken care of. Are you sure you aren’t hurt?”
Tim nods. There’s a lingering feeling of aches and pains from having been pinned down, and it’s likely his wrist will bruise, but he hadn’t taken the brunt of this attack.
“Did you break that guy’s nose?” Robin prods.
Tim nods again.
Robin’s face splits into a gentle smile. “That rules, kid. Good work. What’s your name?”
“Tim,” Tim whispers, without the energy to point out that Robin already knows what his name is.
“Tim. Cool.” Robin holds out a hand, slow enough to keep Shadow from taking another bite at him. “It’s safe now, okay? I’ll take you and her to an emergency vet, we just gotta talk to the police for a second when they finally get here.”
Tim nods. He finally uncurls and leaves the tangle that he and Shadow have become, and he creeps out of his hiding spot slowly, unable to purge the residual terror from his bones even though he knows that Robin isn’t going to hurt him.
Robin helps Tim stand up on shaky legs, and Shadow begrudgingly allows it. She sticks close to Tim’s heels as they leave the wreckage of the bedroom and head to the stairs, where Tim sees flashing blue and red lights reflecting through the broad windows of his house’s entryway.
He remembers hanging up on the 911 operator even though he told Tim not to. One of Tim’s hands tightens on Robin’s, and the other sinks into the fur at the back of Shadow’s neck in fear. While the busted kitchen window and the broken-down doors are already going to get him in trouble, he doesn’t want the police officers to show up thinking that Tim’s a bad kid for how he handled this.
“What’s up?” Robin asks out of the corner of his mouth, as officers begin to stream in through the unlocked door. Robin must have left it open when he took the intruder to who-knows-where outside.
“I’m sorry,” Tim says, barely audible. There’s no point in delaying any consequences he’ll face, but he’s breathing too shallowly to explain what’s wrong.
“Buddy. Tim.” Robin keeps a grip on his hand, but his free one plops on top of Tim’s head and ruffles his hair reassuringly. “I won’t leave you to face ‘em alone. I got your back.”
Tim clings to Robin and his dog, and as a trio they brave the stairs.
Police are swarming through the lower level of his home, and a couple brush past Tim and Robin to investigate the brunt of the damage upstairs. An officer stops in front of them, softening his gait to approach Tim without being threatening.
He doesn’t manage it as well as Robin had. Tim eyes the officer suspiciously and takes a half-step back behind Robin, and Shadow bares her teeth again.
“Woah,” the officer says, also stepping back. “I just need to ask a couple questions. That okay?”
Tim swallows, fighting against the phantom feeling of a hand pushing down on his windpipe. He finally manages to nod, but doesn’t give any sign of letting Robin go.
“My dog,” he finally manages to emphasize, his voice crackly from the remnants of his tears, wanting Robin to keep that part of his promise.
“Right,” Robin agrees. His head turns, searching the entry hall, and abruptly stops as he spots a new addition to the scene at the same time as Tim does. “Nightwing!” Robin yells. “Up here!”
Nightwing has appeared, shouldering past officers in his way, uncharacteristically impolite as he rushes towards Robin and Tim’s spot at the foot of the staircase.
Tim’s worry is soothed, just a little, as Shadow gives Nightwing’s familiar hand a cautious sniff, and she doesn’t growl at him even a little. Dick is the perfect person to be here, because he’s the only person in the world besides Tim that Shadow’s really friends with.
“Ti--Kid,” Nightwing says, eyes wide, barely remembering he doesn’t know who Tim is when he’s not Dick. “I’m glad you’re safe. Listen, I can get your dog to the emergency clinic for you. She’ll be all patched up by the time you’re done here.”
Tim shudders at the idea of letting her out of his sight. But he forces his stiff fingers to relax on her collar, releasing her, and he crouches to scratch under her chin. “Shadow,” he says, his stomach turning at the sight of the wound that’s still dripping onto the white carpet, “you’re gonna do with D--Nightwing. Okay? He’ll take care of you.” He looks sideways to Nightwing. “Her leash is by the door,” he says.
As always, Shadow looks very accommodating of the instructions, but Tim can’t be sure if she actually understands or if she just trusts him implicitly. He kisses the uninjured side of her face, pushing his nose into the spot under her ear, and she licks his teary and bloodstained cheek.
Then, Nightwing clips her leash on her, and Tim nudges Shadow forwards, away from him, and she’s gone out the front door.
Tim sits down on the bottom step, unable to find the strength to stand up again. Robin settles next to him, plopping down casually as though Tim isn’t being very embarrassing right now. Following Robin’s lead, the cop crouches, too, his knees cracking with the movement.
“What’s your name?” the officer asks.
“Timothy Drake,” Tim says quietly, staring at where Robin has taken hold of his hand again.
“How old are you?”
“Twelve.”
“Do you mind telling me what happened?”
Tim scrubs at his face again. His drying tears and the crusting remnants of Shadow’s blood have begun to make his skin itch. Flakes of blood rub off on his wrist, but he just stares at them blankly as they flutter through the air. He has to take a minute to sort his feelings into a succinct summary like he’d heard Nightwing and Robin do on patrol.
“I was asleep. My dog was barking so I woke up, and she had caught the guy breaking in. I threw a photo frame at him and me and my dog went upstairs and hid in the closet. He came upstairs and broke my door down.”
“Did he lay hands on you?” the officer asks.
Tim shrugs. He finds that he’s drifted sideways, and is pressing his cheek to Robin’s upper arm as he leans on him. “I guess.”
“What does that mean, buddy?” Robin prompts.
Tim says, “He tried to kill my dog.”
“I asked what he did to you, ” the officer says, like Tim is stupid.
“He tried to kill her,” Tim repeats, hearing new tears clogging up his voice. “She was just-just trying t-to keep me safe and the--the operator said to just leave her.”
Robin squeezes Tim’s hand and soothes, “You came and saved her, though. And after you two hid in the closet, did he do anything else to you?”
Tim bobs his head. He begins to bristle at the feeling of so many people around him, all rushing through his home and tracking their dirty shoes all over the white carpet. It’s going to take a lot to clean it all up.
“I think he was gonna choke me because I wasn’t letting him kidnap me,” Tim says blankly, like it matters at all, “but Robin saved me.”
“Does your home have a security system?”
It does, but Tim doesn’t arm it. It sends notifications to his parents’ phones, and they’ve told him in the past that the frequent pop-ups severely irritate them. Tim can either never leave the house, or he can just leave the system off unless he’s leaving for a long time.
He says, “It isn’t set during the day.”
His tone sounds strange. Robin shifts, like he senses there’s more to the story.
“Maybe you should start setting that,” the officer says, “especially when your parents aren’t home.”
“It’s not his fault,” Robin suddenly snaps. His voice has taken on the vicious quality it had while he ripped the intruder off of Tim upstairs. He sounds more like Jason in a fight at school than the lighthearted, laughing Robin that leaps effortlessly across rooftops. “You think it’s his fault someone broke into his house?”
Tim leans harder into Robin’s side. Robin’s been holding on to Tim’s hand with both of his, but one of them detaches to lift up and wrap around Tim’s shoulders instead, pulling him in more securely.
“It isn’t,” the officer concedes reluctantly, like he’s irritated at being undermined. He seemingly senses that he’s not going to be able to scold Tim with Robin present, so he moves on. “Timothy, are your parents at work? We’d like to get them the photos we’ve taken, for their insurance.”
“They’re at work,” Tim says, because it isn’t a lie. They are at work. In Korea. “I can write down their emails for you.”
“No, we have people calling them,” the officer says, eyebrows furrowing in confusion. “They’ll want to be home to make sure you and your dog are okay.”
Tim frowns back. “I am okay. There’s no need for you to call them.”
Robin’s arm around him stiffens. Tim doesn’t know what he did wrong.
“There is a need to call them,” the officer explains slowly, “because there was an attempted kidnapping of their only child. We’ll tell you when we get in touch with them.” He pauses, then asks, “Was there anyone else in the house? A nanny, or a babysitter?”
“I don’t need a babysitter,” Tim retorts. His breath flutters, not quite filling his lungs anymore. If his parents get called home, he’ll have to figure out where to send Shadow while she’s injured and he doesn’t want to be in the house without her. “I’m not a kid. ”
“Legally, you are, because you aren’t eighteen,” the officer says, his voice raising to the next level of irritation, and Tim has to consciously stop himself from locking up into a statue at this hint of danger. “If you were here unsupervised, we’re having a completely different conversation than if you were supposed to be watched today.”
“There was nobody else here,” Robin interjects, speaking when Tim can’t.
“When did your parents leave this morning?”
Tim can’t help the way his hand tightens on Robin’s. “Early,” he chokes out, and then takes a nervous breath that doesn’t fill his lungs at all. He’s lying to a cop. It’s a lie that can be easily disproved, too.
He should have run out the door after Nightwing to follow Shadow. This is turning into a disaster, and Tim can barely hear anything around him from the heat rising up his face.
The cop opens his mouth for another question, and Tim makes a small choking noise of panic, and finally, finally, Robin steps in. “That seems like enough for now,” Robin tells the officer, leaving no room for argument. “Let me know when you reach his parents. If you have any other questions, please save them.”
“I still--” the officer sputters, clearly not finished, but Robin has decided this conversation is over and Tim isn’t inclined to disagree.
Robin stands, pulling Tim with him. “Tell Commissioner Gordon to inform Batman when the house has been secured again and Tim’s parents are returning. Until then, me n’ Nightwing’ll be watching him.”
“Hey,” the officer tries to argue, because this is definitely not legal protocol, but Robin turns his back to Tim and crouches and says, “Get on my back,” and Tim immediately latches on so he can be lifted into a piggyback ride.
Robin straightens back up and brushes past the officer, not giving the man another second to protest. He keeps walking until he’s out of the house, where he picks up his pace to run towards the gate at the end of Tim’s driveway.
Several officers raise protests, but Robin doesn’t listen. He just runs, managing not to jostle Tim too much, and doesn’t explain anything until Tim asks softly, “Where are we going?”
“I didn’t get my run in this morning,” Robin says cheerily. “The clinic Nightwing went to is nearby enough. You mind if we go for a little trip?”
“Your bike,” Tim feebly protests, glancing back at the hastily-parked motorcycle by his front door.
“I’ll be back for it,” Robin dismisses. “I don’t have a helmet for you, n’ you’re precious cargo.”
Tim holds on tighter, trying to communicate the overwhelming emotions that Robin’s statement makes him feel without speaking out loud. Robin doesn’t say anything else, just keeps running through the streets until the two of them reach a more densely commercialized part of Gotham and he slows enough to orient himself.
Tim spends the run clinging on for dear life, still a little shaky from his ordeal today. If Robin didn’t attract plenty of attention by himself, Tim’s blood-streaked face and his position on Robin’s back would. Tim shies away from the eyes on him and he turns his face down to hide it by Robin’s neck so that nobody will recognize him if photos are taken. The last thing Tim needs is for his parents to see those.
The run takes, at most, fifteen minutes. Robin’s only a little winded when he slows to a stop. Tim dares to show his face, only to find that they’re halfway to downtown Gotham by now. The distance traveled confirms Tim’s longtime theory that Jason knowingly slows down his cross-country race times so he wins with a much closer margin than he could truthfully pull off.
“We’re here,” Robin says, and taps at Tim’s hands where they’re still clasped around his neck. “Let’s go find Nightwing and your friend, okay?”
Tim lets go and slides down, landing on the sidewalk. He takes Robin’s hand when it’s offered, and allows himself to be led inside the veterinary clinic. Almost immediately, they’re intercepted by Nightwing, who beams when he sees Tim, as though Tim is at all an important facet in Nightwing’s life.
Tim’s making vigilantes run around and take care of his dog and babysit him, while they should be getting rest so they can patrol tonight. Tim scratches at a patch of dried blood on his neck, nervous.
“She’s going to be totally okay,” Nightwing assures with a sunny smile, misinterpreting the current surge of Tim’s anxiety. “She only needs a couple stitches; most of it was pretty superficial. They’re just gonna finish giving her those and then watch her for a little while before you can take her back home, n’ hopefully by then your parents will be back!”
Tim nods, compliant, though he doesn’t know what will happen in reality, when Shadow will be done at the vet and the police will still be trying to get his parents on the phone. He says, shy, “Thank you.”
Nightwing squeezes Tim’s shoulder. “No sweat. Here, one of us should go get milkshakes while we all wait.”
“Aw, hell yes,” Robin cheers, “the ol’ Almost Got Kidnapped milkshake party!”
“The what.”
“Timmy, don’t worry, it’s tradition.” Nightwing pushes Tim forward, nudging him until Tim acquiesces to sitting in one of the plastic chairs in the lobby. “There’s a McDonald’s around the corner. What flavor?”
Tim doesn’t know. He doesn’t want to choose. He misses the reassuring weight of Shadow on his lap, reminding him to breathe fully instead of pulling in the short, shallow breaths he’s managing now.
“Strawberry,” he finally manages to whisper. Vanilla is boring, and chocolate is too rich for right now.
“You got it,” Nightwing says, a soft hand tussling Tim’s hair. “Just sit for a minute, Robin’ll go get it.”
“What the hell,” Robin hisses, but he doesn’t sound really angry. He just gets up, resigned to his fate, stalking across the lobby.
“I want chocolate,” Nightwing calls, claiming Robin’s vacated seat. “See you soon, birdy.”
Robin rolls his eyes and pushes the door open, disappearing around the corner without much complaint.
Tim’s feeling too lightheaded to really process that the entire interaction had seemed forced until it’s too late for him to do anything. Robin should have put up more of a fight, he should have made it an argument.
“D’you speak anything besides English, Timberly?” Nightwing asks, about a minute after Robin’s departure.
Tim chances a look sideways, but Nightwing’s just casually looking around the lobby, his eyes not lingering on Tim.
“I’m learning German, French, and Italian,” Tim manages to say without his voice cracking, even though his chest has started to feel like it’s being crushed again. He takes another difficult breath to continue without his voice breaking. “And Hebrew. I just started Russian.”
Nightwing whistles. “Pretty impressive.” Tim tries simultaneously to brush off the patronizing feeling those words carry, while also fighting the urge to preen under the praise. “You like languages, then?”
“They’re okay.” Tim picks them up pretty fast, at least. His parents like that he can absorb vocabulary and grammar rules quickly enough to impress party guests, and Tim likes that the rules are followed enough to be memorized but broken often enough to make things interesting.
“Which one’s your favorite?”
“German.”
“Count to ten for me.”
It’s a party trick Tim’s been asked to do a thousand times, his parents watching him with sharp eyes. This time, it’s just Nightwing and a quiet lobby, with not even a receptionist at the desk because they probably trusted Nightwing to hold down the fort.
Tim breathes in, counts to ten in German.
“Nice,” Nightwing says. “Now do Russian.”
This one takes more focus. It’s Tim’s most recent language, and he’s started with memorizing the alphabet, rather than listening to how the written word sounds out loud. He manages, stumbling a little around the pronunciation of četyre, but he corrects himself and finishes.
“That one was cool,” Nightwing encourages.
“Thanks,” Tim says, perking up a little because Nightwing sounds like he’s actually interested. “I started learning because I found a bunch of Russian books in the library at school in the international section because of a teacher that just started there, he brought some of his personal collection and donated it because he used to work at a Russian publisher and it’s really interesting to see how the books are printed differently than American ones. I’ve been thinking--”
He’s been rambling for too long. Tim shuts his mouth, feeling heat crawling over his ears. “Sorry,” he tries to salvage. “You can ask me to count in something else if you want.”
“Why’d you stop?” Nightwing asks.
“‘S boring,” Tim mumbles. He trains his gaze on the floor.
Nightwing hums, chewing over that response for an extended moment before finally speaking again. “I didn’t think it was boring. But if you’re looking for someone who knows more about books to talk to about that, Robin’s a real nerd for that kind of thing.”
Tim’s seen Jason curled in the back corner of the library at school, nose shoved in some obscure literature that isn’t even assigned for class. He’s the darling of the school’s Language Arts program, a title rightly earned.
“Really,” Tim says, like he didn’t know that.
“Yeah,” Nightwing says. “Ask him about Hemingway if you want a real argument.”
Tim almost cracks a smile. He glances sideways at Nightwing, and finds the vigilante already looking at him.
“Let me get a washcloth for you to clean off your face,” Nightwing finally says. “While I jump over the desk, count backwards from fifteen in Hebrew.”
Tim wrinkles his nose, processing the request too slowly but obliging as fast as he can. Just as he reaches echad, Nightwing has returned, vaulting back over the desk with a white rag in hand, which he brandishes at Tim.
“Just in time,” Nightwing jokes.
Tim accepts the wet rag and swipes it over his face. It picks up a lot more blood than he was expecting, some of which has dried into his eyebrows and hairline, making them into a crusty nightmare to clean. As he goes, the lobby door swings back open and Robin reappears with a cardboard drink tray that holds three milkshakes.
“Snack time,” Robin says, and thrusts the pink milkshake at Tim’s chest. Tim takes the shake, still startled from Robin’s sudden reappearance, and Nightwing snatches his own up.
“Ugh, look at Robin’s monstrosity,” Nightwing stage-whispers to Tim. “He asks them to mix all the flavors together and they always do it because he’s Robin. Should be illegal.”
“It’s called neapolitan flavor, you freak,” Robin snipes back.
“It looks like it’s concrete flavored,” Nightwing says with a grimace.
Tim peers over the edge of Robin’s cup and sees that the milkshake is, in fact, a murky gray. He must not keep the judgment off his face, because Robin sighs and says, “Et tu, Timothy?”
Tim doesn’t respond, just blinks and sips his shake. The cold immediately soothes his mouth and throat.
“Feeling a little better?” Nightwing asks gently.
Tim looks over at him, confused.
“You weren’t breathing very well. Robin thought you might pass out--”
“I did not-- ”
“--But you’re looking a little more healthy now.”
Tim puts the dots together too late. All the counting had been a ploy to get Tim to stop spiraling, and the milkshake is another step of the plan to get Tim to ground himself. He wonders if Nightwing actually cared about the language stuff at all, or if it was just a distraction technique.
He glances up at the clock on the wall, wanting this horrible day to end before he has to overthink anything else that Robin and Nightwing do for him. But instead of finding something to save him from the situation, Tim’s phone begins to ring.
There are only two people who ever call him. Tim sets his milkshake down on the small magazine table and slides off his chair, pulling the phone out of his pocket.
“It’s my mom,” he tells Robin and Nightwing, and he answers the call.
“Timothy,” his mother says, groggy and clearly not happy, “when did you stop setting the alarms in our home?”
Tim swallows hard. He spares a glance to Robin and Nightwing, who are staring at him unabashedly, before steps outside the clinic, pressing the phone harder to his ear like that’ll protect him. As soon as the door shuts fully, he says, “You said you didn’t like the notifications.”
“So you elected to just stop altogether, rather than lessening your time outside the house?”
“I thought--”
“The system would have alerted the police right away, and prevented much of the damage that occurred,” his mom says. She must not have slept well. Tim’s checked the world clock app on his phone and he knows it’s almost five in the morning in Seoul.
“Sorry,” Tim says.
“I’m sure you are,” she sighs, “but I’d much rather you just think ahead.”
“I know. I’m sorry,” Tim repeats.
Janet doesn’t sound like she’s listening at all anymore. “We’ve managed to book a flight in a few hours, though it took some doing. We’ll talk more about this when we arrive at home tomorrow.”
Tim’s looked this up too--the flight time spans almost fifteen hours, not accounting for the travel time to and from the airports. He has that long to figure out how to hide Shadow. He feels a stab of guilt buried like a shiv under his ribs at the realization that he doesn’t want his parents to come home so quickly--but he should want them here.
“Okay. I’ll see you then--”
“And what’s this that the police keep saying about a dog in the house?” Janet asks.
“They must’ve meant a neighbor dog barking was what made me realize something was going on,” Tim says bleakly. “Sorry.”
“Huh, that’s not what it sounded like,” Janet says, not convinced by this. “Well, we can discuss it more when we see you tomorrow. Goodnight, Timothy.”
“Thank you,” Tim says, even though it’s mid-afternoon, “I love you--”
The call is already over. Tim stares down at the sidewalk, which is blurring far below him, and then lets himself back into the clinic. He gets up onto his chair, which is just a little too high and makes his toes barely brush the ground, and he sips his milkshake until his throat stops burning with tears.
“Who was that?” Nightwing asks lightly, conversationally. Tim isn’t fooled for a second by his tone; his eyes are dark and calculating.
“My mom,” Tim says. “She’ll be back soon.”
“Are your parents not in town?” Robin asks, sounding just like his brother had. Fake nonchalance over genuine anger.
Tim bristles. He doesn’t understand why they’re so invested. “They’re on a business trip.”
“Where?” Nightwing prods.
“None of your business,” Tim shoots back.
“Tim.”
“Sorry.” Tim doesn’t want to deal with this. If he tells them they won’t be back until tomorrow, he knows that’ll make them start to come up with logistics for where Tim will spend tonight. Not seeing a way out, though, he forces himself to admit, “Seoul.”
“Hello, what ?” Robin asks sharply, making Tim cringe a little at the loud noise. “They’re in Korea right now?”
Tim shrugs.
“You said they would be home soon,” Robin continues, still too loud. “Tim, you--”
“How long have they been gone, Timmo?” Nightwing cuts Robin off in the same calm tone he’s had all day. He slurps his own milkshake, and then shoots a sharp look at Robin to shut him up.
Tim scrubs at his eye with the back of his hand, realizing far too late that he’s been crying since he came back into the clinic after the call. He’s too exhausted to think a way out of this. He wants his dog back. He wishes the police hadn’t called his parents. He wishes he could go home with Dick and Jason where he and Shadow would be safe.
“I dunno,” Tim avoids. The cool ice cream on his throat helps, so he keeps drinking his shake and tries not to glance upwards at either of his heroes, who he’s almost definitely made a fool of himself in front of a thousand times today. “Don’t you guys have something more important to be doing? I can wait for Shadow by myself.”
“If we weren’t here, Batman would be making us do stupid paperwork.” Robin rolls his eyes magnificently. “Please do not worry about it. Anyway, we asked you a question. How long have your parents--”
At that moment, finally, Tim’s hellish day takes a positive turn. The door by the desk opens, and a vet appears with Shadow on a leash.
Shadow has a cone around her neck, but her fur has been all cleaned up and only three or four stitches hold together the widest part of the wound. The rest of the injury has scabbed over, making whole the shy-looking dog who immediately becomes alert when she sees that Tim is there.
Tim slams his milkshake down, almost missing the table, and he slides all the way down to his knees on the floor. Shadow lunges forward, running into Tim’s arms, and he dodges his head around the lip of the cone to hug her with his cheek pressed to her side.
He sees blurry vinyl floor tiles, and Shadow’s tail thumping a little more slowly than normal on the ground. Tim hiccups and turns his face inward, hiding in her curled white chest fur that’s no longer soaked in crimson.
“Thank you, I’m sorry,” Tim mumbles to her, barely able to pronounce the words around the sob that rocks him.
Nobody tries to pry him off the floor. Tim’s so viscerally relieved that his parents aren’t there, because they would be so embarrassed by him right now. As it is, Tim hears either Nightwing or Robin make a soft noise, and the vet says, “Aw, sweetheart. She’s alright, kiddo.” Then she and Nightwing and Robin sink their words into murmurs, moving across the room to give Tim a moment to himself.
After too long, Tim pulls back and moves his head around the cone again to look Shadow in the face. The wound looks clean even up close, solidifying the vet’s reassurance that Shadow is, indeed, alright. Tim can’t stop crying. Shadow licks his face, nudging at him until he sits back off of his knees and then pushing herself under his hands until he pets her and starts breathing normally again.