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Tim’s feet didn’t touch the floor as he sat in the doctor’s chair.
It was a strange doctor’s office. He hadn’t seen one like this before. All the doctor’s offices that he had been in before had had other people in them - kids, nurses, doctors, parents - all of them had been bustled around and filled the place with a sense of urgency. This doctor’s office wasn’t that. It was dim. Quiet. Dust settled in corners.
Just like the “family” wings of his house. Tim had always hated those rooms. Sometimes, when he was lonely, he would go into those rooms and shift items around, just so things would be a little out of place. He tried to do it late at night, when he was really tired because sometimes he would forget… sometimes he would forget what he had done and think that maybe his parents had come back late at night while he slept and…
Tim wasn’t always sure the short burst of joy was worth crushing feeling once he realised what hadn’t happened.
He still found himself doing it anyway.
His parents were both talking to the person he guessed was the doctor. She was in a white coat and clutching a clipboard. Her fingers kept thrumming against it and her mouth kept twisting into a frown. Her shoulders were hunched up and Tim would guess that her voice was rising.
Anxious, the analytical part of his mind said, calling to mind the book on behavioural cues Tim had read last week.
She was worried about something.
Tim tried not to take that worry into himself and let it sit in his own stomach.
Tim’s mother said something. Her lips were clam but her eyes were knives.
The doctor’s shoulder hunched and her body flinched like she had been struck.
Valiantly, she tried to speak again, protesting against whatever threat his mother must have delivered. Tim had seen these types of protests before.
They all ended in the same way.
Eventually, she sighed, nodded, and went inside to the room with Tim.
“Hello, Tim,” she greeted kindly, even though unease pulled at the edges of her face. “My name is Maya. How are you doing today?”
Tim blinked and ignored the question. “Are you a doctor?”
She visibly winced and her fingers tapped against her clipboard. “Not yet. I’m a medical student. I’ll be a certified doctor in two years.”
A medical student, but still medicine.
“Is there something wrong with me?” Tim asked, his voice feeling small in his throat. All the nerves bundled and twisting inside of him rose up into his chest, his neck, up in the back of his mouth.
He didn’t know why he was here. He didn’t dare ask Mother because she hated when he asked too many questions.
But from the moment they pulled up next to the medical research section of the Drake Industries building, Tim knew something was wrong.
Moreover, than that, he knew something was wrong with him.
“No baby, no,” Maya assured, crouching to be more eye level. It didn’t make him feel better. It just made him want his mom more. He wanted to leave, get back into the car, and go home.
"Just wait here a second, Tim. I'm going to be right back."
He waited as Maya wheeled a cart in. It had all normal medical stuff on it and Tim was about to look away when his eyes caught on a blade.
He froze, unable to breathe. There were knives on the cart.
He looked between Maya and his parents in the waiting area on the other side of the glass. Why would the medical student need knives?
"I'm feeling fine," Tim said, squirming on the table, eyes flicking back to the cart. "I don't need medicine. I want to go to my parents now."
"Just wait up there, Tim," Maya said, still distracted by a machine. "I'll be right over."
"No," he demanded, fear growing in his stomach. He tried using the same commanding voice that his mom used when she wanted something. "I want to leave now."
He looked over Maya’s shoulder, searching for his mother, only to see her back.
She was leaving. Her and Dad. They were leaving him here.
“Mom!” Tim yelped, scooting off the table and crashing to the ground. The med student tried to grab him, but he squirmed away, desperate to get to the door that led into the waiting area. He smacked against it, going for the handle, only to find it locked.
They didn't look in his direction.
“Mom! Dad!” he screamed, panic rising as they silently passed through the exit. His pulse roared in his ears. His little heart pounded against his ribcage and making breathing hard.
“Dad!” he tried, even though they were gone. He banged on the thick glass with a fist, desperate for them to come back.
They must have just forgotten him. They were coming back. They weren’t leaving him here with a stranger and her knives.
“Mom!”
“Tim, please calm down.”
He whipped around, spine grinding into the wall behind him.
“What’s happening? Why am I here? Where are my parents?”
The med student looked pained and like she was about to start crying herself. But why? Why would she be the one crying?
“It’s going to be okay, Tim. I promise. Please just get back on the table.”
“Why,” he insisted, panic making him feel frantic and small. His breath was coming fast and short. “What’s wrong with me?”
“Nothing baby,” she said and tears began to roll down her face. “Nothing’s wrong. We’re just going to have you take a nap alright?”
Tim swallowed the vomit rising in his throat, still pressed tiny against the wall. He took one last look back, searching for his parents and not seeing them.
They were really gone.
“Tim, I promise you don’t need to be afraid,” she said, holding out a hand.
He took the hand, but he didn’t truly believe her.
*****
His parents came back after five hours.
Tim felt terrible. His chest hurt. His throat hurt. His eyes hurt. His body didn’t listen to him and the world swirled around him. When he woke up, everything was too bright and his mind had screamed that he was in danger.
“Tim, please. Please come out of the cabinet.”
There was a hand, too dark to either of his parents’, that kept reaching for him. There was someone crying.
He made himself smaller in the safe, dark space as far away from the hand and the crying as he could get. There was a loud sound that made him jump.
“Where’s my son?”
“He’s having complications. The anesthesia is making him anxious and he’s hidden himself in the cabinet and I–”
“In the cabinet? Just pull him out.”
“But his stitches…”
“I’m not going to allow my son to hole himself away like some animal.”
Footsteps and the door to his dark, safe space was opened.
“Come on, Timothy. This kind of behaviour is below a Drake.”
He whimpered, trying to push back, and before he could, a hand gripped around his wrist like iron. He whined against it, trying to pull his limb back as he was yanked out of the cabinet and into the too-bright world.
He felt his own tears run down his face and his heart beat rabbit-fast against the bones of his ribs. The stitches in his skin pulled and pain bloomed within his stomach, throat, and deep within his skull.
He would have collapsed into a puddle on the ground if his dad wasn’t holding him upright.
“See. That was easy wasn’t it?”
Tim didn’t know if he was asking him the question. He was too busy trying not to pass out or vomit all over himself.
“We will send your check in the mail.”
That was his mother’s voice, distant and swimming with the rest of the world. It was the last thing he remembered before losing the battle to passing out.
~ 8 Years After ~
“Bruce, this really isn’t necessary,” Tim groaned as Bruce dragged him into the Cave.
Literally. Bruce had him by the wrist and was completely ignoring the feeble tugs Tim was giving him. Tim wanted to struggle more, but he knew that if he tugged too much, Bruce would simply pick him up and carry him anyways.
And, as embarrassing as being tugged into the Cave by the wrist like a misbehaving toddler, being carried there like a baby was even worse.
He was just glad that Dick and Jason were out and, therefore, unable to snicker at him from the corner.
Tim grumbled again as Bruce sat him down at the Cave’s long, meeting table which they usually only used for strategizing team operations or missions that required multiple moving parts. It was strange to be at the table alone in his civilian clothes instead of bent over in focus with an ally on either side.
“Sit,” the man commanded, squeezing Tim’s shoulders once before stalking away. It was amazing how much Bruce could still look like a shadow creature, even without the cape and cowl.
A creature Tim was completely immune to at this point.
“This isn’t necessary,” Tim repeated because Bruce so rudely ignored him the first time. “You’re making this into a big deal when it really isn’t that important.”
Tim didn’t know why Bruce was being dramatic about this. They all had scars. Tim’s were any different.
“I think that finding out that you are missing a vital organ due to a deeply traumatic incident qualifies as important,” Bruce snapped, his voice gravelly like Batman’s even though he was also in civilian clothes.
The man paced until he stalked back towards his computer to furiously begin typing something. Tim watched the man’s hunched back. His muscles were tensed in a way that they only got when he was worried about one of his children.
He never looked like that when he was Batman. When he was in the suit and fighting all the evil Gotham had to offer, he was untouchable. He was calm, collected, and able to process dozens of contingencies and perform feats that should be impossible.
But the moment one of them, one of his children, got something as simple as a bellyache, he was anxious. His body language totally flipped and any of them could read it from a mile away.
“It wasn’t traumatic,” Tim argued weakly, putting his elbows on the table and shaking his hair out of his eyes. Bruce paused his typing and gave Tim a level glare.
“Then explain it,” Bruce said, his eyes going towards Tim’s chest.
Tim was wearing a shirt, but suddenly he wondered if Bruce could see through it to the admittedly gruesome scar that decorated the bottom of his ribcage. A couple of inches up or a couple of inches more towards the centre of his chest and it could have easily been his lung or heart that got punctured.
He tried to play it cool.
He tried not to think of pain spreading throughout his chest. Sheer terror as agony began to eat him whole. Sand biting into his open wound. Pru’s gasping breaths were only a couple of inches away.
The vast emptiness of the desert stretched around him and promised him no help would come.
Their blood had been sprayed around him. Mixing together.
He had been so scared and so sure he was going to die.
He never imagined he would wake up, and, when he did he never spoke about it again.
When Stephanie and Dick saw his scar, they didn’t ask. When Damian did, he already knew what had happened. When Jason saw, he stared. They didn’t talk about it, but Tim knew that what he recognised in Tim’s scar was the same thing that Tim recognised in the Y-shaped scar on Jason’s chest.
It was the same thing that made Tim seek out Jason after he woke up clawing at his ribcage and trying to spit out the memory of sand from his mouth.
“It was an accident,” Tim said, even though he knew that it wouldn’t satisfy Bruce. “I was being stupid. I trusted the wrong people.” He weakly tried to add.
He stared down and could have sworn that his scar tinged.
Goddammit. He should have just closed his bedroom door while he changed his shirt.
He listened to Bruce walk over towards the table and the man’s steps were heavy. Bruce pulled out a chair and sat down in the seat across from Tim.
“Tim,” Bruce said, his voice deep and a little choked. “It is not your fault that someone tried to kill you. I am not blaming you for sustaining an injury. I’m just worried.”
Tim looked up and saw Bruce holding a tablet and his fingers worrying around its edges.
“This is not a punishment,” he added as he set the tablet on the table. Tim could see a glimpse of his own medical file shining on its screen.
“I just don’t want to be surprised by one of my children missing an organ again,” he joked and it sounded weak to both of them.
Tim watched the man and then sighed, nodding his head. It was a silent signal for Bruce to begin asking whatever questions he wanted to ask.
He might as well get it over with. Bruce wouldn’t give up until he agreed to it anyways.
The first questions Bruce asked were about the injury itself. He asked about Tim’s recovery – how many stitches had he gotten, how long had it taken him to heal, did he get any infections. (12 stitches. 3 months. No infections which had been a miracle considering the League had stitched him up in a cave.) He asked about Tim’s life now – if Tim had a prescription, where he got his pills from, would he be fine if Alfred took over the administration of his medication. (Yes. Just a regular drugstore. Please.)
Bruce typed in all of Tim’s answers quietly, only commenting to ask further questions or to ask for clarification.
All in all. It was surprisingly painless, though Tim knew Bruce was purposefully skirting around the largest question of how he got stabbed in the first place.
Finally, though, the small inquisition was coming to an end and Tim could sense that they were both relaxing in their chairs.
“Just a couple of more questions, Tim,” Bruce assured, swiping through the tablet screen, eyes flicking between records. Tim was absentmindedly tapping on the table, eyes staring off into the distance as the bats squeaked over them.
“Have you had any other organ removals?” Bruce asked and Tim shrugged.
“Just normal ones,” Tim said lightly and he watched Bruce visibly tense. He almost felt bad for the man. “My tonsils and my appendix. When I was little.”
Bruce seemed almost grateful when Tim gave a perfectly normal answer. Lots of kids got their appendixes and their tonsils out.
He gave Tim a small, empathetic smile.
“You too? I got appendicitis when I was nine and nearly gave my mom a heart attack when I stumbled into her room crying and holding my stomach,” said Bruce in a rare instance of mentioning his parents. Tim could count on his hand how many times Bruce had told him about his childhood. Dick said that Bruce used to talk about it more before Jason died, but after…
After changed a lot of things and Tim was still more used to the colder, impenetrable version of Bruce, than the more fatherly version.
Bruce the father came out more for the other children, his real children, and Tim was used to that. He was fine with it.
But it made moments like this feel like whiplash.
When Tim met him, Bruce was already a firmly established superhero. It was hard to imagine him as human enough to get something like appendicitis. It was even stranger to imagine him as a tiny child, seeking out his mom as any kid would do.
“How old were you when you got appendicitis?” Bruce asked as he typed, eyes briefly flickering to Tim before they went back to the tablet.
Tim tilted his head.
“I didn’t.”
Bruce’s typing came to a stop. He looked up and mirrored Tim’s tilted head.
“Didn’t what?”
“I didn’t get appendicitis.”
Bruce’s brow furrowed and his eyes got sharper. “But you had your appendix removed.”
“Yes.”
“And it wasn’t because of appendicitis?”
“Yes.”
Bruce went very still.
“Explain it to me.”
“I don’t know what there is to explain?” questioned Tim slowly. He didn’t know why Bruce was so confused by this. “I had my appendix removed and I didn’t get appendicitis.”
Bruce’s face spasmed and Tim didn’t know how to read his expression. He could feel a little bit of anxiety begin to roll through his stomach as Bruce tried to figure him out.
“But… but then why was your appendix removed?”
Finally, a question he knew the answer to.
“It was more convenient for me to get it removed pre-emptively,” he said finally, relaxing back in his chair. “My parents knew that children are prone to appendicitis and that it could be a big mess if my appendix burst while they were abroad. I mean could you imagine them having to rebook flights and reschedule everything for me? It would have been a disaster.”
Tim laughed to himself as he thought about his parents being forced to come home because of something that could be prevented so easily.
“My parents decided it would just be better for them to have my appendix removed before I got sick because of it.”
Tim was still smiling a little bit when he met Bruce’s eyes. He expected Bruce to be smiling with him, maybe also be scoffing at the thought of letting Tim be so inconvenient.
But he wasn’t.
He was staring at Tim with a small, horrified wrinkle between his eyebrows and his lips set in a pained line.
“Tim,” he said, and Tim couldn’t help but perk up at his name. “Just so I’m understanding this correctly. You never got sick because of your appendix, and yet your parents had it removed?”
“Yeah,” he said, still not sure why Bruce was pressing on this. It made perfect sense.
Kids got sick and those sicknesses inconvenienced their parents. Tim’s parents simply put in the effort to remove the organs that were prone to illness and that Tim didn’t need.
Bruce’s eyes were searching his face and Tim didn’t know what they were trying to find. They must have not found it though because Bruce just looked sicker.
“Tim, that’s… that’s horrible. Why… why would they…”
“I don’t see why this is confusing, Bruce,” he cut the man off. Frustration was beginning to goad at him like a hangnail. “My parents were just being efficient. Just think of when you were younger. Wouldn’t have it been easier for your parents to have gotten your appendix out when they could have fit your recovery into their schedules?”
Instead of looking mollified, Bruce somehow looked worse. Like Tim had stabbed him in the chest.
Like Tim was digging the knife in deeper with every word.
“But Tim, less than 1 out of 1000 kids get appendicitis.”
“Yeah and that makes it a pretty common childhood disease.”
“Tim,” Bruce repeated and it sounded like he was pleading with him. “You could have also not gotten sick. It’s more likely than not that you would have never gotten sick.”
Bruce’s jaw was tightening. His eyes were going narrow like he was in physical pain as he laid out these statistics before Tim. Bruce was obviously trying to get Tim to realise something, to see the man’s point of view, but all Tim could find were the reasons his parents relied on when deciding that he should get the operation.”
“Sure, maybe I wouldn’t have gotten sick,” he acquiesced because Bruce wasn’t wrong. “But the risk was still there. My parents eliminated the risk.”
“But what about the risks that come with surgery?” Bruce countered quickly. “Surgeries are serious, no matter how common the operation. Every surgery comes with possible complications and one of those complications is the risk of death.”
His voice was raising, getting louder and quicker. He was yelling. Not exactly at Tim, but it still felt like that and the force of his voice made a shiver want to run down his spine. He didn’t know who Bruce was yelling at and Tim didn’t know how to get those answers.
Moreso than that, he didn’t get why Bruce was yelling – this wasn’t that big a deal.
“All those same complications come if I would have gotten sick,” Tim argued, fighting to keep his voice calm and appeasing. “They eliminated that risk. There’s nothing else to it.”
“But they did it by putting you into a situation that for sure had risk!” Bruce shouted, standing up as he yelled, and Tim flinched back. His spine ground into the chair behind him. He watched as Bruce’s chest heaved.
Suddenly, Tim felt like a boat caught bobbing in the ocean as a hurricane approached.
A voice that sounded a lot like his mother’s told him to stay quiet.
Children should be seen and not heard.
He couldn’t stop his stupid mouth though.”
“They made me better. I don’t get why you’re mad that they made me better.”
“They played with your life for no reason!”
Bruce was angry. Truly and furiously angry. And Tim still didn’t understand it. He didn’t know what to say to make it better. He didn’t even know what he did to invite it. He felt his body flinch back before he truly realized what was happening and, suddenly, Bruce cracked.
His face went from angry to miserable in a second and he sat back into his chair.
“I’m not mad at you, Tim,” was the first thing he said, but it didn’t do anything to quell the rabbit-fast pace of Tim’s heart.
He still half-expected Bruce to get up and yell or to least tell him why Tim was acting out of line.
“I need you to understand what happened to you has wrong.” He looked like he was getting physically ill as he spoke. “Tim, please tell me you understand why it was wrong.”
Tim didn’t answer and we watched as Bruce’s heart seemed to visibly break in front of him. It looked like the man was being stabbed, like an invisible knife was sliding in between his ribs.
“Tim, baby,” he sounded pained. “Parents do not unnecessarily force their children to have surgeries they don’t need. I would never have made Dick or Jason or any of my children get any of their organs removed unless it was an emergency situation. Surgeries are dangerous. No matter what kind it is. I would never risk my childrens’ lives like that. They are too precious.”
“Why wouldn’t you eliminate the risk though?” Tim insisted, desperation leaking into his voice. “And on your schedule.”
“Because my children are not risks waiting to happen,” Bruce answered, quickly, firmly, not even giving it a thought. “Potential illness is part of life, of course, but I am not willing to put my children under the knife and risk their lives in order to avoid something that probably won’t happen. I am not willing to force them to cut out a part of their bodies and put them through pain for them to be convenient. That’s not what parents do.”
Tim looked away, trying to process and unwilling to keep holding Bruce’s gaze while he did so. His insides squirmed in his belly and the world was beginning to swim around him. He felt like that little kid in the cabinet, confused and desperate to know what had happened.
“Did they do that with your tonsils too?”
Tim nodded silently and he heard Bruce sigh heavily. He knew it wasn’t disappointment, but it sounded like disappointment. Like Tim had somehow failed him by not having the organs we was supposed to have.
“How old were you?”
“Nine, maybe ten?” Tim mumbled. “I don’t really remember it. Just going to the office and then having Miss Mac stay with me all day and all night after. It was nice. To have someone around.”
“Your parents… didn’t they stay with you?”
Tim didn’t want to answer, but he could imagine Bruce’s blue eyes staring into his soul and trying to pick him apart just by eyes alone.
“No. They had to go to Brazil. The point of me getting the surgery was to make it more convenient for them. It wouldn’t make sense for them to be forced to stay with me after when that was the exact thing they were trying to avoid.”
“But you were nine… you just had surgery.”
Tim laughed and the sound was choked.
“They weren’t even there for the actual surgery. Do you really think they could have been bothered with the recovery?”
“But… but you were nine,” Bruce repeated as if that changed anything. “You were having surgery. Weren’t you scared?”
Tim’s body went cold and detached, thinking about the boy in the surgery room, banging on the door as his parents left, seemed like thinking about another kid.
“I was terrified,” he said, fighting to keep his voice calm. “I didn’t know what was happening. I just knew something was wrong with me.”
Then, he repeated a sentiment that his mother had told him so many times. Every time he had asked about why they weren’t there, why couldn’t they come home, why couldn’t he go with them?
“Kids don’t understand. We’re dumb. Our fears are irrational and we should trust our parents to know better than us. It’s like when a little kid doesn’t want to eat their vegetables. They may not like it, but it’s better for them in the long run. So they don’t get a say. Our opinions simply don’t matter.”
Then, after a second, he added, “They were right too. My fear was irrational. It all turned out okay. I didn’t actually need them there.”
Bruce was silent. The world seemed silent. Even the bats that chittered up above them had seemed to go quiet.
After a couple of moments, Bruce got up and Tim prepared himself.
He waited for the inevitable. That moment a parent left because he had disappointed them, that moment when they decided he was more trouble than he was worth. The image of their backs as they left him behind. The sight of them closing the door as he struggled and cried for them.
All because he wasn’t right. Something was wrong with him.
Bruce had noticed it too and…
He…
He came closer.
Tim stared, his lip wobbling as Bruce came closer.
He didn’t walk away. He didn’t leave Tim behind.
Tim looked up and he swiped a hand over his face to get rid of the tears that were beginning to prickle at the corners of his eyes. He hoped that Bruce didn’t see them, even though the logical part of him knew that the detective would notice that detail.
Then, slowly like he thought that Tim might disappear if he moved too fast, Bruce hugged him.
Tim froze, all of his limbs locking up under his skin as Bruce pressed Tim’s head into his chest. He could hear Bruce’s heartbeat, pulsing against his cheek.
It was faster than it was supposed to be.
The man’s huge hands closed in his shirt, clutching him close, pressing Tim into him like Tim would disappear if he let him go.
Like he was something precious.
“I don’t… I… What’s happening?” he asked, tears running down his face and dripping into Bruce’s shoulder. Bruce didn’t push him away, even though he had to feel the wetness of them.
“I’m hugging you,” Bruce said into his ear and his voice was slightly trembling.
“I… why?”
Bruce whined from the back of his throat, stroking up and down Tim’s spine. “Because I love you. You’re my son. And you just told me that there were things that happened to you, that terrified you and that no one was there to comfort you.”
Then, the thin line of tension and anxiety that had been the only thing keeping Tim together, snapped.
A wet sob burst out of him.
And then another.
And he couldn’t stop them.
“I… I don’t…” Tim was gasping through words, trying to make them between sobs. He was breaking apart. He was coming undone. Bruce’s arms were the only thing holding him up. It was kinder than when his father had pulled him out of the closet and held Tim by the wrist. This time it felt like Bruce wanted him closer like it was where Tim belonged.
“Why didn’t they stay? They h–h-hurt me and they couldn’t even…”
“Hush, sweetheart,” Bruce murmured, stroking Tim’s spine and occasionally petting his hair. “Breathe. You’re alright now.”
“T-they didn’t stay. Why d-did they…”
Bruce made another hurt sound and hugged him impossibly tighter. “I don’t know, Tim. I don’t know, but I do know that that will never happen again. I will never do that to you.”
The man pressed a kiss into Tim’s temple, cradling the back of his head.
“You’re so precious to me. I can’t imagine… I would never… You must have been so scared. You were so small.”
He kissed Tim again this time on the top of his forehead.
He didn’t know how long he stayed there, crying into Bruce’s clothes. Bruce had sat down, dragging Tim into his lap and cradling him like he was a child. He hadn’t said another word, just dried the tears away as Tim made them.
Eventually, Tim felt his sobs beginning to peter out and a fierce headache beginning to form behind his eyes. He still felt broken though, a million sharp glass edges held together with scotch tape.
He sighed, his head still resting on Bruce’s collarbone.
“I’m sorry for crying on you,” he said, trying for humor but it felt like ash on his tongue.
Bruce didn’t laugh.
“Do not be sorry. I was glad I was here. I suspect you’ve had too many times when you cried and no one was there.”
Guilt and some emotion Tim couldn’t name welled in his stomach. He pulled away from Bruce’s shoulder but not off of his lap. It wasn’t like he could leave anyway, Bruce’s hands were keeping him firmly in place.
“I guess, you wouldn’t listen if I asked you to forget this ever happened,” Tim asked, not looking at Bruce and instead playing with one of the buttons on his polo.
“I wouldn’t. This is too important and it’s important for me to promise you something.”
That made Tim look up and he was surprised to see that Bruce’s face was blotchy, like he had been crying too.
“Tim you’re my son,” he said and Tim froze. “What happened to you was a deep violation of your trust with your parents. It was wrong, but even more damaging was what they told you about needing to be convenient and that your fears were childish. A child wanting their parents is not a flaw in the child. You had every reason to be afraid and you believed your parents would care for you. Your parents betrayed that trust.”
The tears came back and Tim couldn’t stop them.
“I want to promise you, Tim, I will never do that to you. You are precious to me. Your life is precious to me. I will never put you through a traumatic event in order for you to be ‘convenient’. I will never leave you terrified and alone to deal with a situation you don’t understand.”
Bruce kissed him again. Tim didn’t think his parents had ever done that.
“I promise, Tim. I will not walk away.”
Tim cried again.
Bruce whispered his promise again.
And with each whisper, Tim believed him.