Archive of Our Own ^beta

It starts the stupidest way anything has ever gone wrong in Tim’s life.

It starts when he falls asleep in the shower.

***

Ten minutes later, and he’s propped up against the toilet, the sound of the shower still raining water down on the empty tile covering up his hissing wheezes of pain. He tries to find a way to position his shoulder that doesn’t send bolts of white hot pain shooting through his entire arm. He fails.

Blinking back tears, he thumps his head against the cabinet next to him.

Of all the fucking ways he could have broken his arm.

Something is broken, he’s sure of it, the demanding throb of cracked bone unmistakable, especially after several minutes in which the pain has only gotten louder. He suspects his shoulder blade, right where it slammed into the stupid little ledge for soap when he went down. He’ll need an x-ray to know for sure.

Of course, that’s going to mean either a hospital, which means getting his dad out of bed so he can come sit in a waiting room and sign whatever stupid forms Tim isn’t allowed to sign himself, which sounds like absolute hell for both of them, or getting himself over to the manor and admitting to Alfred and Bruce that they were apparently right to send him home to get some sleep.

He can already imagine the looks they’ll give him when he admits that he dozed off standing up. In the shower.

This is literally the most humiliating thing that’s ever happened to anyone ever.

***

“It was super stupid,” he says fifty minutes later, sitting in Bruce’s car buried under the massive fabric expanse of the other man’s house coat, the heat cranked up to battle the shivers sending sharp static bolts of pain through him, the regrettably predictable consequence of standing outside in November for twenty minutes in nothing but pajamas and still-wet hair. “I forgot I left my backpack on the floor, and I didn’t turn on the light to my room when I came in, and my foot caught on the strap, and - man, this is worse than the time I got dropped in a dumpster and broke my ankle, remember that? That was a lot more graceful. You are not allowed to tell Dick about this, ever, you have to say I got mauled by Killer Croc or something -”

Bruce huffs a breath that’s almost a laugh. The looks he keeps shooting Tim from the driver’s seat are concerned, but fond. “I won’t tell Dick, I promise. Though if I did, I’d also remind him of what his room looked like growing up. Frankly, I’m surprised something like this has taken this long to happen.” His hands are gripping the steering wheel a little too tightly, taking the turn on the driveway just barely slow enough to avoid jostling Tim. His next breath is much more of a sigh. “Chum, why didn’t you ask your father to take you to the hospital? I know he’s home, I checked his flight plans yesterday.”

Tim scowls. “Stalker,” he mutters, ignoring the raised eyebrow he gets in return. He slumps down another inch in his seat. “I didn’t want to wake him up.”

Two raised eyebrows this time. Bruce turns his whole head to stare at him incredulously. “I can’t imagine he would mind being woken up, seeing as his son has a broken arm.”

“Okay, it’s a shoulder, not a whole arm, don’t be so dramatic,” Tim corrects him. “And keep your eyes on the road, car crashes are only cool and exciting if you don’t have any broken bones going into them.” The eyebrows have dropped back into a glower, like even they’re too exhausted for this. Valid. Tim would also like to go to bed. “I didn’t want it to be, like, a thing, okay?” He resists the urge to throw up his good arm only because he knows that will also hurt. “If I woke him up, we’d have to go to the ER, and we’d probably be there till like 5 am and it would be super boring, and we’d both be exhausted, and it would just be a whole thing. And I don’t want to deal with a thing. I already broke my arm, I should get a pass on having to deal with things until noon, minimum.”

This time, it is definitively a sigh. It sounds nearly identical to his sigh that time he caught Dick trying to teach Tim how to snorkel in Alfred’s duck pond. “I hope you realize this is still going to be a thing, as you’ve so articulately put it. Alfred is going to have to do x-rays to see how bad the damage is, and if there is any reason to think it’s beyond what we can treat at the manor, I’m still taking you to the hospital, which means I’ll still have to call and wake your father up.” He gives him a look out of the corner of his eye. “And it’s your shoulder, not your arm. Don’t be so dramatic.”

“Nuh uh, see, I get to say that because I’m the sensible one in this car. You don’t get to say that, because you are the most dramatic person in the history of ever. Your solution to everything is to become a furry. You telling me not to be dramatic is like Condiment Man telling me not to play with my food, drama is basically your superpower.”

Bruce hums, pursing his lips. “Do birds count as furries?”

Tim stares at him for a long moment, doing his best to put every bit of his current emotional and physical pain into his glare. He angles himself away from the man, tugging the edge of the housecoat up until he’s half hiding under it. “I’m not speaking to you anymore. You’re officially one of the things I’m not dealing with until at least noon.” A few seconds later, he pops his head back out. “I don’t have ears!”

The car slows down, only long enough for the gates to open to the manor grounds. “Well that sounds like a much bigger problem than your arm. Be sure to mention it to Alfred.”

The sigh Tim lets out feels like it contains about half his total body volume, and makes his shoulder shift painfully, but he can’t deny the laugh that wants to come out with it, or the small smile it coaxes out on Bruce’s face.

Even if this does have to be a Thing™, this was definitely the right move, he decides.

He can’t imagine a reality where there would be any amusement to be had if it was his father driving him right now.

***

Good news: no hospital! Yay!

Bad news: he has to wear this sling thing that keeps his arm velcroed against a strap around his waist so he can’t move his shoulder, and he can’t patrol until Alfred clears it. Boo.

“I can still be on monitor duty,” he argues. “You don’t need a shoulder for monitor duty.”

“And how exactly do you plan to type?” Alfred replies as he dries the breakfast dishes Tim is handing to him.

Tim chews his lip, passing him a mug. “What if I wrote a program to interpret certain abbreviations, sort of like a computer shorthand -”

“What if you did your homework and went to bed at a reasonable hour, just this once?”

Tim twirls a spoon between his fingers. “‘Just this once’ implies one night. I have to wear this thing for weeks, Alfred, weeks.” He refuses to acknowledge the whine in his voice, especially as it is clearly not having any effect on the butler.

“Master Tim, you have a very bright mind,” Alfred replies kindly, taking the spoon away from him before he can splatter any more soapy water across his countertop. “I am confident that it will take at least a few months of boredom before it atrophies to the point of brain damage. I expect the damage of the next few weeks will be fully reversible. Have you contacted your father yet to let him know where you are?”

“Yeah,” he lies. “I texted him and told him I went skateboarding with Ives.” It’s what he will tell him. Later. When he has to come up with an explanation for why his shoulder is in a sling.

Right now, seeing as it’s almost 8:30 in the morning and his father hasn’t called him to scream at him yet, he’s already left for physical therapy without noticing that (to his knowledge) Tim never came home last night or got up this morning, which suits Tim’s purposes just fine. He’ll be able to get home long before his dad, at which point his father can berate him about coming home late, about sleeping in late, and then again about getting himself hurt skateboarding, and then they can go about their separate days once that’s all out of the way. Easy-peasy.

“What if I hooked my phone up to the batcomputer and just texted everything I need to? I can text one handed, no problem.”

“Excellent to know, Master Tim. Perhaps you can text some of your civilian friends and let them know that you’ll have plenty of free time to spend with them over the next few weeks.”

***

This whole being grounded until his shoulder heals thing would be all well and good (it would not) (it would still be mind-numbingly boring) if he had a few weeks to spare. Unfortunately, crime stops for no one.

More specifically, the sale of counterfeit pharmaceuticals that are actually mostly baking soda and sawdust disguised as legal medication in Red Hood’s territory stops for no one.

So, look. Okay. He’s not doing Jason a favor. Jason’s the one who decided he’d rather use Tim as a stress ball than be friends, and after the events of the Tower, it’s a decision Tim is perfectly happy to accept and is not at all bitter about.

But when he realized this was going on, and that Jason hadn’t noticed it yet because the fake drugs were hitting pharmacies instead of street corners, well.

He could have just sent Jason a message with the evidence he’d uncovered, asked Babs to force it through to make sure Jason didn’t just delete it without reading it, and let him handle it. But the prospect of getting to beat Jason to the solution, in his own territory and his own game? Too tempting.

Jason did say some pretty mean things about his capabilities as Robin when he was kicking his ribs in, after all. What kind of Robin would Tim be if he took that lying down?

Metaphorically speaking, of course. At the time he was very much lying down after the broken leg and repeated bashing with his own staff. It was definitely his second most embarrassing moment, after the whole falling in the shower thing.

The point is that obviously it’s not a case that can just wait for weeks - even if there wasn’t the motivation to solve it before Jason notices it’s happening, people aren’t getting their correct medications now. If Tim’s grounded, he needs to turn it over to either Jason or Bruce.

Or. Hear him out.

He could keep working on it.

It’s basically just intel gathering anyway! Sure, the shoulder thing kind of puts a dent in the daydream he had of standing victorious over a bunch of drug dealers while Jason looked on, impressed no matter how much he sulked about it, but honestly that was unrealistic anyway. The reality is never as cool as the daydream. And if he cracks the case, he can still smugly hand over a complete file to Jason. And Jason hasn’t tried to kick his ass in at least a couple months, so he probably won’t do it when Tim’s arm is in a sling. Fair fights, and all.

It’s settled then! He’ll be grounded, except for this one little project.

No one’ll even have to know.

***

Jason does not keep tabs on the kid. Seriously, like hell if he has the time in his day to gather intel on a bratty fifteen year old. Not his fucking responsibility.

Plus, he bought some of those self-help books about managing your anger, and you know what’s really helpful for not being pissed off all the time? Avoiding things that piss you off. Like the stuck-up face of the teenager who replaced you.

Ergo, avoidance is an effective therapeutic technique. Maybe he’ll write an anger management book.

It’s just that effective avoidance means knowing where the thing you’re trying to avoid is, and since the thing he’s avoiding has legs and a grappling hook, keeping up to date on the kid is kind of critical for staying out of situations that are going to end in him dropping the kid three stories into a dumpster. Again.

He doesn’t feel bad about it. The Replacement was fine.

He does, maybe, feel a little bad about the whole Titan’s Tower… thing. And that time he slit the kid’s throat. And a tiny bit bad about the time he ran over his foot with his bike, but also, he figured Batman would’ve trained the Replacement to get out of the way in time, so really, who’s fault was that?

Batman’s, obviously.

The point is that he’s done a lot of growing since his return, and these days he can maybe possibly admit that he’s been… unkind, to the kid. Probably more than the little shit deserved. Hence, why he’s carefully tracking where the kid is and what he’s up to, so he can make sure their paths don’t cross.

Hell, he found out the Replacement was stalking around his territory last month, and he didn’t even go strangle him for it! That practically counts as an apology!

Of course, pointedly ignoring someone is only meaningful if they’re around to ignore.

Which Tim hasn’t been. For over a week. Approximately nine days, in fact.

Which is nothing, really. Not even in the double digits. Batman’s been patrolling as normal, sans Robin, no sign that the kid’s been kidnapped, and Nightwing greeted Jason cheerfully a couple nights ago, which he definitely wouldn’t have done if precious Robin #3 was dead.

He hates the way that the thought makes him feel like he can’t breathe properly.

Brat probably got grounded for shitty grades or something. He always did strike Jason as the kind of asshole who never did the reading and expected to skate by because his parents are rich.

It’s on the morning of the tenth day, when Jason is hacking into the school’s records, that it occurs to him that this level of involvement definitely violates his ‘leave the kid alone and stay the hell out of each other’s lives’ rule that he’d set down in his mind. He clicks back out of the records, irritated with himself.

He can’t help but notice, from his brief glance, that the kid’s grades are perfect.

Fuckin’ show off.

***

Day twelve, and the Replacement decides to show up in Crime Alley again, like nothing happened.

Jason doesn’t know what he’s more annoyed by - the fact that he’s here, in his territory, or the fact that he catches himself breathing the smallest sigh of relief when he spots the traffic light colors disappearing over the top of a fire escape.

He doesn’t even hesitate to follow him up, boots thudding ominously on the concrete roof.

The Replacement whirls around, the lenses of his mask wide. He’s holding a pair of binoculars like he's not sure if he should throw them at the threat or hide them behind his back. “Hood!” he squeaks, then clears his throat and tries again. “Hood,” he greets, much more calmly. “What are you doing here?”

Jason crosses his arms, glaring at him. “Could ask you the same thing. The fuck have you been?”

Tim blinks. “The store.”

Jason blinks back. “The – the store? You’re trying to tell me you were at the store for almost two weeks?”

“What? No. I went yesterday. I don’t know, you asked me where I’ve been, it was the first place that came to mind.” Tim’s cheeks are spotted pink. “What are you talking about?”

“Did you get fucking brain damage?” Jason sneers. “I’m asking why Batman hasn’t had a little bird in his shadow lately.”

“Oh.” Tim cocks his head, looking surprised and puzzled, like he’s startled Jason noticed. He gestures with the hand holding the binoculars towards his other arm, cradled close against his chest. “I broke my shoulder.”

The arm isn’t just cradled, he realizes upon closer inspection. It’s in a sling, one of those three-part ones designed to keep the shoulder from moving too much.

Tim shrugs with his good shoulder, clearly sensing Jason’s raised eyebrow under the helmet. “My grapple latched badly,” he explains. “I hit a wall.”

Jason tilts his head. “Should watch your aim better next time,” he says flatly after a moment. “B know you’re out here right now? I know A didn’t clear you if you’re still in a sling.”

“Oh, he knows,” Tim says, casual as anything. “I’m not allowed to get into any combat, but I had a hunch someone from a case we’re working on might be passing through the Alley. He said so long as I’m careful, it would be fine for me to check it out. Observation only.”

He’s gotta hand it to him - the kid lies like a Robin.

“Uh huh,” Jason says, hoping he can hear how unimpressed he is through the helmet’s modulation. “Well, observation time’s over. Get the fuck out of here before I call Dickwing and tell him I caught you literally single-handedly trying to take down Black Mask.”

Relief flashes across his face, and Jason is tempted to make good on his threat just for the hell of it.

Then, Tim pulls out his grappling hook.

“The fuck are you doing?” Jason snaps, and Tim looks back at him, bewildered.

“Leaving?” he tries, and, nuh uh.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Jason mutters, stalking towards him. Tim flinches back, eyes going wide, but Jason’s already snagged a hand into the collar of his suit and is dragging him towards the edge of the building, hand falling to the belt of his own suit.

“Hey - Hood, don’t - !”

He’s already swooping towards the ground.

Jason doesn’t set him down as hard as he could have, taking care not to jar his injured shoulder as he unwraps his arm from around his waist and abandons the shorter boy to stumble forward unsupported. He disengages his grapple from the building, meeting Tim’s wide-eyed expression with a glower of his own.

“I could’ve done that,” is the first thing the scrawny idiot thinks to blurt out.

“You don’t grapple with a broken fucking arm,” Jason hisses. “That’s not even fucking Robin training, that’s just common sense.”

Tim is still staring at him, the lenses of his mask narrowed now, like he’s a puzzle to be solved, and it’s making Jason deeply uncomfortable. He bares his teeth under the helmet. “Now’s the time to fucking scram before I make you wish I shoved you off the roof.”

That finally gets him moving, though his expression remains analytical rather than intimidated. He takes a couple steps back, opening his mouth as if to speak, and then closes it again. He settles on a short, two finger salute with his good hand by way of goodbye.

It’s the kind of gesture a Robin would make right before leaping away off the edge of a building into the night, and for a moment, something deep in Jason’s heart aches.

The coolness of it is somewhat mitigated by the way Tim turns and takes off down the sidewalk at an awkward jog, glancing each way like a grounded bird expecting to be pounced on at any moment.

Jason watches him go until he’s reasonably confident that he’s going to follow his unspoken order to stay off the grappling line, before he takes himself back up to the safety of the rooftops, feeling just as uncomfortable out in the open.

All his questions follow him up, gnawing on the back of his neck with dull teeth.

He remembers the time he had to wear a sling identical to the one little Timmy’s got on now.

He hadn’t been Robin for very long yet, then, and he’d been so focused on the henchman he’d been fighting that he’d completely missed the one coming up behind him.

The man had been a giant, almost as big as Bruce. By the time he’d turned around and saw him barreling towards him, there’d been no dodging. He’d slammed his back against the brick wall behind him, and his shoulder had fractured like a plate slammed down on the counter.

Fucking miserable injury. The amount of whining he did about it, it’s a miracle poor Alfred didn’t just lock him in the cave until he healed. He’s pretty sure the butler must’ve at least thought about it.

Look.

The thing is this.

Jason does not keep tabs on Tim Drake - but he’s uncomfortably aware of him.

He knows when he hits the streets in the evening, and he knows when he and Batman return home for the night. He knows when the kid gets in a tough fight (the fact that his opponents often turn up dead within the week is just housekeeping - a few broken bones are good for the brat, helps build character. Guys that think they can whale on Robin and get away with it aren’t guys Jason needs running loose around Gotham).

And he knows that the last time Robin was out, twelve days ago, he and Batman had stayed out until just after three in the morning, at which point after a fairly quiet night, they’d headed back to the Batmobile parked off 7th street and gone home.

They’d grappled down off the roof of Gotham’s Savings and Loans. Batman had gotten sewer slime on his cape, and Robin had cracked a joke that made him sigh so loudly Jason could hear it from across the street.

There’d been a smile on Batman’s face as he got into the driver’s seat. Jason had felt it in his chest like a pair of concrete boots.

Robin had grappled down to the street. He’d laughed and joked as his feet hit the pavement.

His shoulder had been fine.

***

Alright, so Jason’s decided to be a big pain in Tim’s ass. Fine. Nothing new there. It’s not like Tim is trying to help him. Whatever, doesn’t matter.

He’ll just be sneakier next time. He’s super trained at that.

He swings his other leg in through his window, tries to steady himself to catch his balance as he slides into the room, and is abruptly reminded that he’s velcroed to himself. His feet hit his bedroom floor with a loud thunk, and he stumbles into the nightstand, catching the lamp from falling and shattering at the last second.

His alarm clock is not so lucky.

The clattering of the clock crashing to the hardwood finally dies out, and down the hallway, a muffled door slams.

Tim lets his backpack fall smoothly off his good shoulder, dropping it silently on the floor and shoving it under the bed with his foot just as his door is thrown open.

“The hell are you doing in here?” his father snarls. He’s in his wheelchair today - it must be a bad pain day.

“Sorry!” Tim says, grimacing and bending down to pick up the alarm clock and hold it up in demonstration. “I was just going to close the window before bed and I bumped into the nightstand.” He’s never been more thankful to not be wearing the Robin outfit - he’s hoping in the dim light, his father might not pick out his black shirt and dark jeans as being sneaking-out-to-stalk-around-Gotham clothes.

Unfortunately, his father is plainly in a Mood™, which means he’s not going to leave until he finds something to yell at Tim about. He slaps the light switch, and Tim squints against the sudden light.

His gaze rakes over Tim, eyes bloodshot but alert. His lip curls up in sneer. “Had a nice night out, did you?”

Crap.

“I have that biology project I told you about,” he says smoothly. “I went over to my partner’s house to work on it.”

He does have a biology project, though no partner. Bruce helped him with it last week. And he knows he hasn’t so much as mentioned it to his dad, not that his father is likely to remember either way.

“Oh, a biology project,” Jack scoffs. “And what if I needed you here, huh? Guess your homework’s more important than your own dad, now. Nevermind that it’s my goddamn money paying for you to go to those classes.”

Tim bites the inside of his cheek to remind himself not to roll his eyes. “It’s barely past nine, dad, the nurse only left an hour ago.” She was scheduled to leave for the night an hour ago. Actually, he passed her car on the road out of the neighborhood less than fifteen minutes ago - his father never lets the staff leave on time when he’s here without finding some last minute task for them. He’ll check the accounts later and make sure the poor woman actually gets paid for that overtime. “I figured you would already have gone to bed once she left.”

Besides - his father’s plenty far enough along in his recovery to take care of his needs on his own if no one is around to help him. There are days when the nurses don’t come when his father never finds reason to bother so much as speaking to Tim - it’s only when Tim isn’t available that suddenly his father is helpless.

The worst part is, there’s still a sharp tug of guilt in Tim’s stomach.

“I’m sorry,” he says, more sincerely. “I really didn’t think you’d need me, I thought this would be the best time to go - I didn’t even think you’d notice.”

His father’s expression, already set in a sullen pout, darkens further. “Oh, so now it’s my fault? Jesus, Timothy, what, am I not paying enough attention to you? I mean, it’s not like I have anything else occupying my time,” he snarls, sarcasm dripping off his tongue like venom.

And Tim is… Tim is tired. He forgot to bring his pain medication with him when he went out and his shoulder is throbbing dully, and his brain is occupied with Jason’s odd behavior and how he’s going to work on his case, and it is so exhausting trying to predict how his own words are going to be used against him.

It is much too simple to open his stupid mouth and say, “That’s not what I meant, but now that you mention it, I’ve heard that it’s actually pretty common for parents to talk to their kids once in a while, especially when they’re living down the hall from each other.”

Jack’s eyes flash, an ugly red rising to his cheeks.

His eyes are bloodshot. Tim cataloged that as soon as he saw him - the kind of information certain children eventually learn is important, a priority.

He’s not supposed to drink with the medication he’s on. Little things like that have never stopped him before.

Tim’s ashamed of it before it even fully happens.

His father shoves his wheelchair forward, less than a foot, the movement sudden and aggressive.

And Tim flinches.

The furious gleam in his father’s eyes settles, satisfied. He leans back in his chair with his lip curled up in disgust. “You can talk like you’ve finally grown a pair all you want, kiddo. You wouldn’t last one day under other parents - though god knows you might’ve turned out better.”

He doesn’t bother to turn the wheelchair around on his way out, just pulls himself back through the door frame. He never made it more than arm’s length into the room.

Tim stares at the open door he leaves behind. His hands are shaking.

When he finally makes himself cross the room to close it, the first thing he does is switch off the lights.

As a child, he used to have to check the hallway for monsters before bedtime.

Now, the darkness gives him the confidence to shut the door without peeking.

He still locks it before he can go to sleep.

***

Alright, so the kid lied to Jason about how he got hurt. Whatever.

It doesn’t have to mean anything.

It’s not like they usually trade detailed gossip about their days - maybe he got in, fuck, a skateboarding accident or something. He knows he skateboards, he’s seen him carrying a board, back when he was surveilling him to figure out the best plan of attack.

But why would he lie about that?

Okay. Back up.

Jason’s brain feels a dog circling its bed, trying and failing to find a comfortable position to settle down.

He just needs to be analytical about this, that’s all. Think about it like it’s any other case to be cracked.

Look at the evidence, just like he was trained to.

So okay. What’s his evidence?

His evidence is Tim didn’t get in a fucking grappling accident.

Alright. Back up again.

There are a lot of ways for someone to get hurt in their line of work. There are a lot of reasons to lie about it.

There’s not a lot of reasons to lie to someone who knows what their nightlife looks like.

Someone hurt the kid.

That’s the core of this, ain’t it? The fact Jason doesn’t want to look too hard at because he doesn’t like the way it squirms uncomfortably in his mind. There’s no good reason for Tim to lie about anything else, not to Jason, of all people.

So now the question is who, and why.

Option one: it was a stranger. Never impossible, again, given their line of work. But seeing as he knows it didn’t happen the last time Robin patrolled, and he hasn’t heard anything from his guys that would suggest Robin was out between then and now, it would’ve had to have been either while Tim was Tim, or some sort of targeted attack.

It would take a special sort of skill and sadism to attack Tim outside of the city, somewhere he should be safe.

What are the odds of that happening twice? Unlikely! Jason kicks the idea off into the dark corners of his head before he has to think about it too hard.

Maybe Tim is being bullied at school?

He’s a nerdy little twerp, skipped a grade or two. Jason still remembers what the kids at Gotham Academy were like - the spawn of every rich prick and entitled asshole in Gotham’s highest social strata. Sure, Jason always figured Tim would’ve fit right in, but, well. It’s possible he’s made some assumptions.

Bullies are a very reasonable explanation, he tells himself as he breaks back into the Gotham Academy records. Even with Robin training, they could’ve taken him by surprise, or overwhelmed him with numbers, or Tim could’ve held back on defending himself to protect his identity. Shitty for the kid, but the kind of childhood trauma mommy and daddy’s money can buy plenty of therapists to deal with down the line.

A nice, easy explanation, he thinks grimly, staring at the school’s tidy and clean file on Tim, with no disciplinary infractions of any sort connected to him. According to the school, at least, the closest Tim has ever come to getting in trouble has been a handful of tardies, and detention once for falling asleep in class.

Yeah. Bullying doesn’t escalate to the point of breaking a fifteen year old’s shoulder without something getting documented, at least not at a school like this, where the staff probably get special training every week on spotting liability risks for the school.

The suspect pool gets narrower.

It’s time to look at home life.

It’s… it’s not Bruce. It can’t be Bruce. For all of Jason’s problems with him, for all of his justified fury with his many, many mistakes and unacknowledged personality flaws, that was never one of them.

Not that he ever needed to use his fists to fuck up his kids, but hey, that’s still better than fifty percent of the men who ever tried to raise Jason. Half point to B for not falling through the fucking floor and hitting that bar on his way down.

At the same time… if he’s pretending this is any other case, he can’t cross Bruce off the list.

Too many fucking kids have been failed because the people who could have done something thought that just because an abuser hadn’t hurt them, there was no way they could be going home and taking it all out on someone who couldn’t protect themselves.

If he’s looking at this objectively, he has to assume that Bruce is just as much a risk as anyone else, no matter how much the thought kneads at his stomach with cold hands.

He clicks out of the school files, and sets to work compiling a new one of his own.

***

By the time morning comes, Tim has gotten very little sleep, but he has come up with a solid outline for the plan he should probably have just come up with in the first place. Live and learn.

Trying to keep sneaking out until he got the intel he needed - that was stupid. That was a dumb plan. Expecting to get past the other bats, and his dad, and now Jason? Too many failure points, as Bruce would put it. Cocky gets killed, as Jason would probably put it, even if “killed” in this scenario just means “yelled at until he wants to claw out his own eardrums”.

Well, maybe killed if Jason catches him again. Who knows what’s going through that guy's head.

The point is - trying to sneak out consistently was always liable to fail, but sneaking out once?

That’s doable.

Technically twice, if he’s counting yesterday’s endeavor. But he’s not.

All he needs are some of Bruce’s little transmittable spy cameras. He’ll set them up around the areas he was planning on staking out, gather his intel from a distance.

It’s not ideal - there’s a reason why they do live stakeouts instead of just planting cameras for every case. The range of vision will be smaller, the quality of the footage worse than it would be through a pair of binoculars, and he’ll have to gather the cameras back up when he’s done so he’s not leaving bat-equipment scattered around the city. But he can get it done, and today’s the perfect opportunity. Dick’s out of town, today is one of Bruce’s rare days at WE making the board members appreciate the many days he doesn’t come in, and he’s not likely to run into Hood out and about in the daytime.

He probably won’t escape Oracle’s notice, but she’s good at respecting privacy - she won’t tip Bruce off unless he actually gets himself into trouble, and he’s willing enough to let her have this as blackmail material.

He waits until he hears the sound of his father heading down the hall, his cane tip-tapping along briskly, before finally getting up. He checks through the window while he’s getting dressed, watches his father getting into the van to take him to physical therapy.

The van starts down the driveway, and he grabs his backpack, taking the stairs down two at a time.

A quick stop by the empty cave - he grabs an extra laptop, an excuse just in case someone asks him later why he stopped by, and is in and out before Alfred has a chance to come down and intercept him.

He takes the bus into the city. From there, it’s a quick walk from the bus stop to the pharmacy at the center of the whole case. He hasn’t determined yet if the pharmacist who runs the place is responsible or if it’s one of his employees, but he’s pretty confident no one could effectively steal and replace the medication without some sort of inside access.

He’s brought his camera with him, since he’s in his civilian get up for this particular excursion, blending right in with the busy stream of pedestrians shopping along this street as he takes photos of the old-fashioned neon sign outside the pharmacy, the mural on the wall of the grocery across the street.

Idly, he thinks that he should come back some time at night with his camera to get the sign in all its glory. It’s been a while since he’s indulged his favorite hobby for fun rather than surveillance.

Technically, this is still for the purposes of surveillance, but still. It counts as having fun. Dick’s always trying to encourage him to do that more often, so really, he should be delighted that this is how he’s spending his day.

A snapshot of a big black cat that watches him with narrowed eyes from the alley. As he takes it, he slips a camera onto the rain gutter of the grocery, angled towards the drug store. He adds another one to the dumpster for a slightly different angle.

He eyes the apartment building across the street. He wasn’t really planning on climbing around anywhere high, not in the daytime and not in civilian clothes, but if he climbs the fire escape he can get some good high angles of the street and any cars coming or going.

He cautiously checks the street. It’s pretty busy for this time of day, people rushing along trying to get to their various stores and appointments without lingering too long in the cold. Basically, what you’d expect from a Saturday in early December before the holidays.

Perfect. No one’s gonna bother paying attention to him.

He makes his way across to the apartment, pulling up his hood once he’s slipped into the narrow alley next to it. He has to climb on top of the dumpster to reach the bottom of the fire escape, and by the time he pulls himself onto the bottom level his arm and shoulder burn fiercely. He ignores their complaints, making his way quickly and quietly up the side of the building until he can perch on the top level, sitting down as casually as any apartment dweller in the mood for some fresh air.

A quick scan below him shows no eyes looking up at him, and he relaxes.

He sticks one of the little cameras on the edge of the fire escape, another underneath just to be sure.

His shoulder is starting to really bother him, now that he doesn’t have anything to distract him, so he pulls out his bottle of pain meds from the pocket of his backpack and swallows one dry.

The uncomfortable lump has just started to make its way down his throat when a hand reaches down off the roof and yanks him up by the back of his jacket like a kitten, and he chokes on a yelp, too garbled by surprise and the pill to possibly reach any bystander on the street below before he’s dragged over the lip of the roof and out of sight.

Fuck. I should’ve brought my panic button, is all he has time to think before he’s flat on his back on his throbbing shoulder, staring up at the gray December sky. Then a red helmet appears in front of it, and he thinks fuck, I have never hated any of the rogues this much.

“We talked about this, Replacement,” Jason growls. To Tim’s surprise, the modulation in his helmet is turned off, and the effect is much more exasperated than murderous. “Is this your hobby? Being a pain in the ass?”

“Right back at you,” Tim snaps, a little breathless with pain. Did he have to drop him on his back quite so hard?

Jason tilts his head, expression unreadable through the helmet, but there’s an uncomfortable new hunch in his shoulders as he reaches out to help Tim sit up, much more gently than Tim would have expected. If Tim didn’t know any better, he might say he looked guilty.

“Seriously, what are you doing up here?” he asks gruffly, squatting to meet him at eye level. “There are like fifteen reasons why you shouldn’t be anywhere fucking near here, so what the hell’s your excuse this time?”

“How did you find me?” Tim asks instead of answering.

“Flagged your credit card,” he replies easily, like that’s not total stalker behavior. “Saw you bought a bus ticket into the city, and didn’t trust you not to be a moron. As I was right to. Last chance, what are you doing?”

Tim eyes him warily, but finally holds up his camera bag. “I’m taking photos,” he says. “Not for a case or anything. It’s literally just a hobby.”

Jason holds out a hand expectantly, and Tim freezes.

He… he can buy a new camera, if Jason breaks it. But this is his camera, the one he first bought with his own allowance when he was a kid. And even as he reminds himself that it’s just an object, and it’s best not to get so emotional over anything that can be taken away to punish him… he can’t help the sharp bolt of dread that goes through him at the mental image of the camera, smashed beneath Hood’s boot.

A huff of impatience. Jason wiggles his fingers at him. “C’mon, shortstack, trust but verify. Lemme look.”

He fumbles a bit trying to get the zipper open one-handed, hoping that maybe if he cooperates, Jason will give it back when he’s done, especially since he grabbed a fresh SD card for this trip and therefore knows for a fact that there’s nothing incriminating for him to find.

He chews on his lip as Jason clicks through the photos, studying the pictures of signs and alley cats. He reaches the earliest photos - a couple shots of Alfred’s roses that Tim snapped to test his settings before he left for the bus. His fingers stutter over the buttons, hesitating a half second longer than he had for any of the other photos.

Tim holds his breath, waiting.

Jason’s helmet shifts angles, and Tim can tell he’s looking at him, now. Whatever Jason sees on his face, it makes him stiffen.

He lets out a sharp sigh, and his fingers relax around the plastic of the camera. He holds it out to Tim, the motion too careful to truly be casual.

Tim takes it back, finally letting out a silent sigh of his own as soon as it’s safely back in his hand and out of Jason’s, even though he knows Jason could still rip it away from him at any second if he changes his mind.

But he doesn’t. Instead, he drops down from a squat to sitting on the rooftop, legs criss-cross under him. “Look, kid, we gotta talk.”

Tim is immediately on guard again. “Talk about what?” he asks, keeping his tone politely neutral.

One of Jason’s hands twitches, and Tim’s eyes dart to it, though he’s careful not to flinch or lean away. The hand stills as soon as Jason sees him looking.

Another sigh, this one quiet enough to be almost unnoticeable. Abruptly, Jason reaches up and presses the latches on his helmet, pulling it off and setting it down beside him.

Tim watches him, bewildered. He’s got a domino mask underneath, but it’s still one of the only times he’s seen the former Robin sans helmet since the tower.

Jason licks his lips, and Tim has the sudden realization that he’s… uncomfortable?

“Look, I, uh, I know you don’t exactly trust me, which is, I mean, yeah you probably shouldn’t,” he shakes his head sharply. “What I mean is you have every right not to trust me. But I’m, uh. I’m not as mad as I used to be. Like, I’ve got some anger management books now.”

He says the last sentence very sincerely, and looks at Tim expectantly. “Con…gratulations?” Tim tries, incredibly confused.

He nods firmly, apparently satisfied. “Thanks. Anyway, point is, um.” He falters. A muscle in his jaw jumps. And then he sighs, and his shoulders slump. “Look, are you… okay?”

Tim doesn’t think this interaction could be more surreal if he had stood up and started hula dancing. “Yes?” he says, unable at the moment to dredge up any tone other than ??? “I’m fine.” He pauses. “Are you okay?”

In return, he gets a flat, exasperated look. “I know you lied about your shoulder,” he says bluntly, and Tim feels himself go still with surprise.

He frowns, cocking his head uncertainly. “My shoulder? Why would I lie about that?” he questions, tone perfectly confused.

Jason leans forward, hands resting on his knees. Discomfort radiates from every part of his body language, but his face is almost alarmingly solemn. “Tim, if someone did that to you, you should tell someone,” he says quietly. “I’m serious. I know it’s… it’s fucked up, and maybe you’re… embarassed, but -”

“What the hell are you even talking about?” Tim says, louder than he means to. “It was an accident. No one did this to me.”

“Is that what they told you?” Jason responds sharply. “That it was an ‘accident’?”

“I didn’t interrogate the wall to figure out its motivations, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t part of a bigger plot.” He narrows his eyes. “Seriously, what are you talking about?”

That muscle in Jason’s jaw jumps again. He’s got the lenses on his domino down, showing teal eyes, but now there’s a flicker of green around the edges. Tim resists the urge to lean away, alarmed now. “If -” he breaks off, then tries again. “If it’s B - if he did something -”

Just like that, it clicks. Tim barks out a shocked laugh before he can stop himself. “No,” he says vehemently, and Jason’s mouth snaps shut, watching him like a hawk. “Jason, are you seriously asking if B is abusing me? This is B we’re talking about here. I cut my hand on a broken glass one time and he made me stay in that night. For a cut that didn’t even need stitches.” Some of the tension in Jason’s posture releases, a complicated expression flickering over his face that Tim’s pretty sure is relief, the green in his eyes dissipating.

But Tim’s gone from baffled to angry. “I mean, I know you think I’m crap at my job,” he scoffs, “but what the hell do you think I’d screw up so bad that it’d make B break my arm?”

Jason stiffens again, opening his mouth, but Tim barrels over him. “And also - can we talk about how hypocritical it is that you’re here right now having this conversation with me? You sure didn’t seem to care if anyone hurt me before,” he spits the words out like they’re broken glass.

Suddenly, it’s like he can feel the cuts they’ve left behind, and his throat burns.

He pushes himself awkwardly to his feet, shoving the camera back in its case and ignoring the harsh pressure the strap puts on his shoulder as he does.

Jason stands as well, face pale. Tim lets out a bitter laugh. “You wanna know the truth? You got me. I lied about how I broke my arm. I fell asleep in the shower and slipped, okay? And it was stupid, and I lied because there is no reason for you to care except if it’s another thing you can make fun of me for. Congratulations, you can be proud of the fact that you never broke a bone slipping in the shower. Go rub it in B’s face or something and leave me alone.”

He spins around and stomps towards the fire escape. “Tim -” he hears from behind him, but he doesn’t look back.

This time, wisely, Jason doesn’t try to stop him getting down to the ground on his own, no matter how much it hurts.

***

Well.

It’s been two days, and Jason has decided that that whole excruciating experience went about as well as Jason could’ve hoped. Could’ve been way worse - kid could’ve started crying. Being yelled at is way better.

Regrettably, he discovers, as he’s staring at the blank wall of his safehouse next to his bed, curled on his side (he can’t sleep on his back, not anymore), his brain has not dropped the subject, gnawing on it like a bone and growling every time he tries to take it away.

It’s fucking fine, he tries to convince himself. He fell in the shower. Reasonable explanation! No abuse happening here! He spotted something suspicious, he did his due diligence, now he can pat himself on the back for not knowingly abandoning a kid to an abusive situation and fuck off and never think about his replacement sympathetically again. Hell, he can even totally use this as ammo to mock the little twerp. Smart instincts, not telling him what happened outright.

He rolls over to his other side. Flips his pillow over to the cool half. Rolls back to the side he started on. The clock on his bedside table (analog, never digital) claims it’s going on nearly four-thirty in the morning.

He throws his blankets back with a miserable groan and starts getting dressed.

The thing is. The thing is.

The thing is that Tim lied like it was instinct, like it was the default to guard any information that could be used against him. You don’t learn that kind of instinct by putting on a mask for a few hours a night for a few years, you learn it by never feeling safe enough to take your mask off.

The thing is that when Jason confronted him, he asked what he’d have to screw up to make Bruce hurt him.

As if, under the right circumstances, if they did something bad enough, hurting a kid was to be expected.

He pauses, frozen in the middle of lacing up his boots.

There’s a sour taste in his throat. He swallows. It clings anyway.

It continues to cling as he zips up his jacket and grabs his helmet, as his bike roars and weaves among the sparse morning traffic towards Bristol.

He thinks maybe it is time he went and had a little conversation with Bruce.

***

His access codes for the cave still work.

He’s not entirely sure what to do with the wave of emotion he feels when the little light turns green, and the heavy gate to the underground access tunnel swings open. For a long moment, he just sits there, bike idling, and talks himself out of bolting.

Bruce had said he could come home. He hadn’t really expected he’d be allowed to just… come in.

He follows the rest of the familiar tunnel, and no traps spring, no security doors slam in his face.

And then the cave is swallowing him whole, the massive burrow like finding an old childhood clubhouse long abandoned in the woods, its familiarity soft as rotten planks turned to splinters.

He slows to a halt next to the batmobile, realizing too late that he missed an excellent chance to ding the mirror.

Of course, if he does it now it’ll just look petty.

Bruce is standing on the platform, face carefully blank. He’s still partially in his gear, was probably wrapping up his report for the night before Jason showed up. He’s holding his cowl in his hand, like he was debating whether to put it on before Jason reached the cave.

He watches Jason as he dismounts and makes his way up to the platform. “Hood,” he greets, carefully neutral, voice somewhere in between Bruce and Batman. “Is everything alright?”

“Nope,” he answers flatly.

He had words in mind - a speech, taunts about how B has once again left one of his little birds be fucked over by someone who doesn’t give a shit about Batman, that the fear he’s supposed to inspire has once again done jack-all to keep them from hurting someone more vulnerable than they are.

But with his adoptive father actually in front of him, he finds he really just wants to get this conversation over with so he can fucking walk away from this home-that-isn’t-his-home.

“How did Tim break his arm?”

Bruce’s face twitches, the closest thing to being taken by surprise that he’ll show. “Why are you asking?”

“Just answer the question, old man. Were you there? Did you see it happen?”

He studies him, a small furrow in his brow. “Will you take off the helmet?” he asks quietly.

Asks, not orders. He doesn’t even particularly sound like he expects Jason to comply, and that, more than anything, is what makes Jason do it, after wavering for a moment.

He tucks the helmet under his arm, glaring at Bruce and regretting not putting on a domino before he left.

The glare has little effect on the older man. Bruce’s face slackens slightly. He controls his expression quickly, but there’s an emotion Jason can’t quite read in the crinkles around his eyes, drinking in Jason’s appearance.

He speaks just before Jason can get antsy enough to snap at him. “No, l wasn’t there,” he says slowly. “What information are you looking for?”

“What did he tell you happened?”

The furrow in his brow, softened when Jason took off his helmet, deepens again. “That it was an accident. He tripped over a bag he’d left on the floor of his room.”

“His room here?”

“At Drake Manor,” he clarifies.

Jason squeezes his eyes shut. He kinda wants to stomp his foot like a toddler. “Fuck!” he explodes instead, like the grown adult he is. “Was really fucking hoping he was telling the fucking truth this time.”

“You and Tim… talked?” Bruce says, baffled.

Jason points at him furiously. “Yeah, we talked, and you know what he told me? That it was a grappling accident. Then he told me he slipped in the shower. What do you think’s more likely - that he lied to one of us, or he lied to both of us?”

Bruce’s gaze sharpens. “He told you he slipped in the shower?”

“Yep,” Jason says, popping the P. “Who else lives at Drake Manor with him? Is it just him and his dad?”

Bruce steps back, setting the cowl down on the desk and sitting down, brow furrowed in thought. “To my knowledge, there is no live-in staff. There’s a housekeeper who comes a few times per week, a couple of gardeners, and a rotating set of nurses to help take care of Jack. I’m not up to date on how often they come, but I don’t believe they spend the night at this stage of his recovery.”

Jason is also not up to date, he realizes to his slight embarrassment. He doesn’t know much about what happened to Jack Drake at all.

He knows there was some sort of accident - some messy business in the Caribbean. Janet Drake died, Jack Drake came home in a coma. Nothing that had been very interesting to Jason at the time beyond figuring out how to get Tim isolated at the Tower, which a comatose dad had helped with. He knew he hadn’t died - there’d been a small article in the paper the day he was released from the hospital.

At the time, all it had inspired was bitterness that his replacement got to keep Bruce and his bio parent, despite all odds.

“What do you know about his dad?” he asks.

Bruce doesn’t get a chance to respond.

At that moment, a shoe scuffs against the stone floor, and they both turn to see Tim in the doorway, staring at them with all the alarm and betrayal of a cat who’s just been unexpectedly shoved into a carrier to go to the vet.

“Are you guys… gossiping about me?” he splutters.

***

Tim’s morning had started out great.

His dad was still ignoring him because he was pissed that Tim implied he didn’t pay enough attention to him, he had a caffeine-induced breakthrough on one of his coding projects, and best of all! His cameras gave him some wonderful footage of the pharmacist’s idiot of a son unlocking the drug store at two in the morning to let in a couple of suspicious-looking guys carrying duffle bags that might as well have had SUSPICIOUS CRIME THINGS embroidered across the sides.

All that was left was to use the batcomputer after Bruce went to bed to run facial recognition on the men buying the drugs and swapping them with fakes, compile it all in a file, and write a nice, snarky message to attach when he dropped it in Hood’s inbox.

He’s debating the impact of just putting a middle finger emoji and no text when he reaches the bottom of the stairs to the cave, and finds…

Jason.

Talking to Bruce.

About his dad.

Outrage doesn’t begin to cover the emotion he feels.

He points at Jason, who, to his satisfaction, looks about as horrified to see Tim as Tim is to see him. “Is this some sort of new evil plan?” he hisses. “It’s a manipulation tactic, isn’t it? You realized overblown dramatic monologues don’t work on him so now you’re trying to make him sappy by coming back home without the costume so he’ll be too happy to notice you’re lying about me. It’s smart, I’ll give you that, but I’m not gonna let it work, buster - ”

“Tim, none of that is happening - ” Bruce starts, at the same time as Jason furiously sputters “My dramatic monologues are not overblown, you little shit - ”

It is important to the context of Tim’s morning to know that he has not slept in nearly thirty-six hours.

This was fine when he was hyperfocusing on his coding project. This was fine when he experienced the giddy euphoria of getting a breakthrough on a case midway through his fourth cup of coffee that hour.

This is not fine when his overloaded and exhausted brain is faced with a situation that would be confusing and stressful to navigate at the best of times.

All that outrage and emotion spikes and stretches, brittle over his overworked brain, and very quickly reaches the point where it all snaps.

By the time his face starts to screw up, there are already hot tears spilling down his cheeks.

Jason’s expression plunges straight into horror. “Oh fuck,” he stammers out. “Oh - please don’t cry, what the hell.”

Bruce is much more efficient. In a flash, he’s out of the chair and sweeping over to kneel in front of Tim, expression concerned. “Hey, chum, it’s alright,” he murmurs, swiping a slightly panicked thumb over his cheeks to wipe away the tears. “What’s going on, Tim?”

Tim’s chest stutters as he tries to suppress the sobs that want to bubble up. “Why are you guys talking about my dad?” he manages, as steadily as he can. “Why is he even here?”

Bruce’s eyes dart to the side like he wants to turn back to look at Jason, but he keeps his face turned to Tim. “Why don’t you come sit down, bud,” he says, gently, kindly.

Tim hiccups, fighting back another sob, but he follows the careful hand on his shoulder as it guides him over to the chair in front of the batcomputer. He scrubs at his face with his sleeve, embarrassment peeking through the exhaustion as the sudden emotional outburst begins to fade as quickly as it came.

Bruce doesn’t back away, just kneels down again once Tim’s seated. Jason chooses to hover, like an anxious, menacing gargoyle.

Tim shoots him a glower, and hopes his puffy eyes don’t show how uneasy the looming makes him.

“Jason and I were talking about you,” Bruce says, drawing his attention back to him. The man is frowning, looking like he’s choosing his words carefully. “Jason was… concerned.”

Tim scoffs. “Sure he was,” he mumbles.

“He said you told him a different story about how you hurt your arm than you told me,” he says quietly.

“So?” Tim replies shortly.

“So I’d like to know what the truth is.” Bruce doesn’t rise to the bait, no hint of frustration in his tone.

Tim’s eyes dart between Bruce and Jason. Bruce is watching him attentively. Jason is standing a few feet back, arms crossed over his chest and holding his helmet like it’s a shield. His eyes narrow when Tim’s meet his, not looking away.

“I slipped in the shower,” Tim finally answers, proud of himself for how even his voice comes out. “I’m sorry I lied,” he continues mechanically. “I was just embarrassed. I thought tripping in my room sounded better. It was stupid.”

Bruce casts a quick glance towards Jason. Neither of them look satisfied. “Alright, that makes sense,” Bruce says slowly. “I’m… sorry, if I made you feel like you couldn’t tell me what really happened - ”

“Oh, cut the crap,” Jason snaps. He stalks forward a couple steps, steel-toed boots hard against the stone, and Tim.

Tim keeps making the same mistake.

He flinches.

Jason freezes immediately, he and Bruce both. His expression is faintly sick.

Tim doesn’t feel much like crying anymore. He is seriously considering whether he can make it out of the cave and back to his house before either of them can catch him.

The answer is obviously no, but his eyes flick to the door anyway.

“Jason, I think it’s best if you leave,” Bruce says abruptly.

Tim and Jason both turn to look at him in shock. “But - ” Jason says, but Bruce, no give in his voice, cuts him off with,

“I don’t think your presence here right now is helping.”

There’s a flash in Jason’s eyes at the order, a jade glint like the spark of a blade. He turns to Tim.

Tim has no idea what his expression looks like, but Jason takes one look at it and his face crumples.

He steps back. “Yeah, I - yeah. You’re right.” He cradles his helmet against his chest. “I’ll just - ” He jabs a thumb back towards his bike.

And Bruce means it when he tells him to go.

But Tim sees it anyway on his face: disappointment.

This is the first time since he’s been back that Jason’s come home.

“It’s okay,” Tim croaks. “You don’t - you don’t have to leave.”

Jason hesitates.

Abruptly, Tim is just plain irritated with him. Not only has he screwed up Tim’s entire morning, one little flinch and now he’s just going to leave? And abandon Tim with a Bruce who’s not just worried, for some reason, but is going to be mopey about Jason leaving?

Nuh uh.

“Would you just ask whatever stupid questions you obviously want to ask me?” he snaps, glaring at Jason until he reluctantly slinks back beside them.

Bruce’s expression is somewhere in between relief and concern, and comes out looking slightly constipated.

Jason takes one look at it and apparently settles his decision. He huffs a frustrated sigh, and drops down on the floor, folding his legs under him in a mirror of the way he sat when he confronted Tim on the roof.

“Tim do you - do you feel safe, around your dad?”

Tim scoffs. “He’s in physical therapy half the week. He’s still regularly using a wheelchair. He can’t hurt me.”

Bruce’s eyes sharpen. “Can’t, or wouldn’t?”

Tim only hesitates for a moment. It’s a damning moment.

Bruce’s face crumples the same way Jason’s did. “Tim -” he breathes.

“You guys are making a way bigger deal about this than it is,” Tim says insistently. “He can be a bit… difficult, sometimes, okay? That’s all. We all have character flaws. And, I feel like we’re really just ignoring the fact that he didn’t do anything to my shoulder. I only lied about that one the first time, I really did fall in the shower.”

“You lied about it at least twice,” Jason chimes in.

“I only lied about that one the first and second time. I really did fall in the shower and I totally admitted it the third time.”

“Tim,” Bruce says again, and this time it’s a sigh.

Tim knows that sigh. It’s the I’m tired of this sigh, the why are you being so difficult right now sigh. “I’m not lying,” he snaps, agitated.

“Okay,” Bruce says hastily, putting a hand up to appease him. “I believe you.” Jason does not look like he believes him, but he keeps quiet about it. Bruce leans forward, trying to catch Tim’s eye when he tries to look away. “I believe you,” he repeats. “But I still have some questions, and I’d really appreciate it if you’d try to answer them.”

Tim shrugs in response, picking at his cuticles. His mother’s voice echoes in his head.

Don’t fidget when your father is speaking to you, Timothy.

He forces his hands to lie flat on his thighs, and he looks up, meeting Bruce’s gaze.

“Has your father ever physically hurt you?” Bruce asks quietly.

Tim shrugs again. He wishes he could flutter up to the ceiling like one of the bats, and hide among the stalactites until they both gave up and stopped looking at him like that. “He’s been a lot better since the accident,” he mumbles.

Jason makes a sharp noise. “Better?” he scoffs. “Sounds to me like he just wasn’t physically capable of beating you up anymore.”

Tim whirls on him. “Oh, you mean unlike you?” he hisses. “Why are you here, Jason? Why, after everything, is telling Bruce on me the thing that finally gets you to come home? Are you kidding me? You have the nerve to act like you’re outraged that some guy you’ve never met was a bit of an asshole years ago to some kid you ran over less than a year ago?”

Jason, whose face has been getting steadily paler with every word, finally finds his voice. “That was an accident! I thought you’d get out of the way in time!”

Tim throws up his hands. “I couldn’t get out of the way!” he cries, starting to feel a little hysterical. “My other foot was still in a cast because you beat me with my own bo staff! There’s only so many ‘skateboarding accidents’ I can get in before the doctors start looking at me funny, Jason! And you,” he whirls on a stricken-looking Bruce, sensing an incoming interruption. “You have never once asked me what my dad is like when he’s around before now. I had to make stuff up so the teachers wouldn’t get worried that my parents were never around! I did that! And I never had to worry about you asking questions! But now you’re all serious and worried about it? Both of you, you’re picking now, when my dad’s the easiest to manage that he’s ever been, to make my life miserable about it?”

He stands up, glaring viciously at both of them. Jason looks satisfyingly like he’s been punched in the face.

Bruce looks…

Tim falters, the furious roll he’d been on wobbling suddenly in its track.

Bruce looks the way he did the day Tim woke up after Titans Tower, when Tim managed to stumble through a panicked and jumbled explanation that the Red Hood had attacked him and the Red Hood hated him and the Red Hood was Jason Todd.

It’s that same expression, like Tim has taken a piece of him and snapped it and scattered the pieces on the ground.

He didn’t mean to ever inspire that look again.

“Look, just… just leave me alone.” He tries not to acknowledge the crack in his voice.

No one moves to intercept him as he storms off.

***

It’s Jason who comes to find him, half an hour later where he’s lying on his back on the rooftop lookout. Tim listens to him pulling himself up through the small attic door, stubbornly refusing to look at him. He’s surprised the older boy is even still here.

He hears his footsteps hesitate, then slowly approach, each step purposefully loud. “Dick take down that stupid pink patio umbrella he put up here, or did Alfred finally burn it?”

Tim doesn’t deign to reply, still staring stubbornly up at the low gray clouds like they hold the secret to getting rid of him.

A small sigh. When Tim doesn’t tell him to fuck off, he sits down next to him. “Sooo…” he says awkwardly. “I owe you an apology.”

Tim snorts. “For what specifically?”

“Most of our interactions so far,” he replies, with none of the passive aggressiveness that Tim was expecting.

It’s enough to make Tim sit up, shifting until he can lean against the lawn chair Dick brought up here at some point and look at him.

He’s left the helmet somewhere downstairs, and it leaves him looking strangely vulnerable. The fact that he’s also obviously uncomfortable with being here heightens the effect.

Tim finds he’s not very satisfied by his discomfort anymore.

“I’m not going to apologize for telling Bruce I thought something was up,” Jason adds, when Tim makes it obvious he’s not going to break the silence. “Because, well. Something was up. Is up.” He shifts, shoulders rigid. “And even if it wasn’t, I still wouldn’t be sorry about that. Telling Bruce, I mean.”

Tim cocks his head. “Cool. You’ve been up here five minutes and you’ve spent ninety percent of that time justifying why you’re not sorry, and exactly two sentences to actually apologizing. You might seriously be worse at saying sorry than Bruce is.”

Jason shuts his eyes, letting out a slow breath. Tim waits him out. “I’m sorry,” he finally says deliberately.

He doesn’t sound annoyed, despite Tim’s proding.

“I fucked up. I can say that about… a lot of things, actually. But I really fucked up when I attacked you. Both times. And the time I hit you with my bike, even if that one was an accident. It was still my fuck up, and I should’ve apologized sooner.”

He runs his fingers through the strands of white hair above his forehead, tugging at them with his fingertips. “I, um. I kinda knew I owed you an apology - a bunch of apologies, actually - a while ago. But I guess I just… convinced myself it wasn’t a big deal. That you’d get over it, because it was just the kind of shit that happens in our lives. And, I don’t know,” he lets his hand drop back in his lap. “I guess maybe I was a little embarrassed about it too. Pretending everything was fine was just… easier. But it wasn’t fine. You didn’t deserve that, and I shouldn’t‘ve taken my shit out on you like that.”

The backs of Tim’s eyes prickle, even though he’d thought he’d cried out the last of his tears. “S’okay,” he croaks. “I, uh. I know what you went through… really probably sucked. A lot. It makes sense that you were mad.”

Jason gives him a shrewd look, tinged with a tired sort of understanding. “Don’t accept my apology just because you didn’t think you’d get one, kid,” he says wearily. “You can accept it if and when you’re actually ready to accept it. Still gonna offer it either way.”

Tim swallows. “Okay,” he murmurs.

Jason stares off, towards the hazy outline of the city, visible above the tops of the trees on the grounds from this vantage point, expression melancholy. He takes a deep breath. “B ever tell you anything about my bio dad?”

Caught off guard, Tim blinks. “His name was Willis Todd,” he rattles off on autopilot. “He worked under Two-Face, until he was arrested and died in prison, eight years ago.” Softer, he adds, “Bruce didn’t tell me anything. I read your file.”

Jason doesn’t look angry at that. He just nods thoughtfully, like he was expecting it, gaze still distant. “He was an asshole,” he says abruptly.

He turns back to face Tim. “He wasn’t, I don’t know, evil. Wasn’t a supervillain. Wasn’t a pedophile or a rapist. Lotsa kids in the Alley had worse monsters in their lives.” He shrugs, one-shouldered. “Sometimes he was even pretty cool. Taught me how to play poker. One time I busted up my nose in a fight and he took me out to get BatBurger, even though I lost, cause he said he was proud I didn’t back down even though there were two of them and one of me.”

His throat bobs. “He was also a fucking loser, and a bully, who’d go lose money on stupid bets and then come home and beat the shit out of my mom for existing near him, and if she was too sick to make it satisfying he’d come after me instead.”

There’s an old school photo of Jason in Bruce’s office, Jason perched on the stool in his Gotham Academy uniform, grinning brightly at the camera. The lighting in the photo was just right to highlight an old scar across his cheekbone, a small cut the size of a ring. When he smiled, it looked like an extra dimple.

It’s gone now, Tim notices for the first time, washed away by the waters of the Lazarus Pit.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers.

Jason just shrugs again, that same jerky, unbalanced motion. “He’s dead,” he says simply. And for a long moment that’s all there is to say.

Of course, Jason doesn’t let it last. “I checked out your file while you were up here.”

Tim gives him a blank, artfully disinterested look.

“You sure got in a lot of skateboarding accidents as a kid.”

Tim draws his knees up towards his chest. “How mad is B?”

“Oh, apoplectic,” Jason answers cheerfully. “Pretty sure even Alfred fucked off and left him alone until he’s capable of being around other human beings again.

Tim winces, and Jason’s expression immediately changes. “Dude, he’s not pissed at you,” he says gruffly.

Tim scrapes a nail over the fabric of his jeans. “I acknowledge that my outburst earlier was… disproportionate,” he says formally, but Jason scoffs.

“It was totally proportionate,” he snaps. “Just because Bruce didn’t know what was going on doesn’t mean he shouldn’t have. He’s a fucking - naive old bastard who assumes just because his parents were perfect angels that no one else could possibly have shitty ones. He deserves to be yelled at, and I’m not just saying that because I’m, you know.” He gestures vaguely.

“You?” Tim guesses drily, and some tiny kernel in his heart warms when Jason barks out a short laugh in response.

“Yeah, me.” He leans forward towards Tim. “When I left him, he was on the phone with one of his lawyers about you, Timbo,” he says seriously.

Tim lets his forehead sink down onto his knees. “Fuck,” he mumbles.

“Okay, look, you don’t gotta be grateful that some grown-up is finally doing the right thing, but you can be a little grateful,” Jason huffs, his tone not as biting as it probably would have been a week ago.

“I’m not ungrateful, I’m just - ” he lets out an exhausted groan. “This isn’t how my morning was supposed to go.”

“Yep, a billionaire superhero is chomping at the bit to adopt you, your life is a series of horrors,” Jason drawls in response.

Tim doesn’t think he’s imagining the hint of bitterness in his voice.

Unconsciously, he feels his fingers wrap around the flash drive he stuffed in his pocket, what feels like hours ago. Making a snap decision, he pulls it out and offers it to Jason, who stares at it, confused.

“Here,” Tim mutters. “There’s a pharmacy in your territory. The owner’s son is making deals to trace medication for fakes that the store can sell while the actual medication gets put on the black market. I noticed it and I solved it.”

Jason warily accepts the thumb drive, brow furrowed. “That’s… that’s pretty good, kid. I didn’t catch that one yet. Nice job.”

Tim shrugs, swallowing nervously. “I, uh. I got footage of the guys he’s dealing with, but I haven’t run facial recognition yet. That’s… actually why I came to the cave earlier.”

Jason tilts his head curiously.

“Do you wanna stick around for a bit and help me run it?” he blurts out before he can convince himself it’s a bad idea. “I mean, it’s basically your case anyway, since it’s in your territory and… you know. You’ve got the whole drug trade thing going for you.”

Jason laughs. It’s a short, startled sound, but for once, it doesn’t sound like he’s laughing at Tim.

“Jesus Christ, kid, you say it like I’m running an Etsy shop,” he snickers. “Yeah, fine, I’ll stick around and work on my little drug trade project. It’ll be a fucking blast.”

He stands up, dusting off his Kevlar pants, and reaches out to help Tim up. Tim lets him haul him to his feet by his good arm, easy and gentle.

“So you really fell asleep in the shower, huh? Does Dickie know about this?”

“Babs gave me footage of you tripping over your own untied shoelace last month.”

“... Threat acknowledged.”

Tim hesitates at the door to the attic.

Jason bumps his good shoulder lightly with his own. “Hey,” he says quietly. “I’m on your team if you need me, alright.”

Tim nods, swallowing thickly.

Together, they head inside.