Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

*********************

Tim Drake was the sneakiest nine-year-old he knew.

He admitted it to himself while also wondering if ‘sneaky’ was the best word. It was such a negative word, and he had come by his skills honestly. For the first seven years of his life he lived full-time with his mother and father. There was a nanny sometimes, for their summer overseas trips and their winter ski trips and several important business dinners a month, but otherwise if Tim was home one or both of his parents were too. 

Jack and Janet Drake had a quite traditional parenting style. They generally thought children were better seen than heard, and moreover should only really be seen at scheduled, appropriate times and circumstances. Every weekday they had a family dinner, and every weekend there was some sort of family outing-–mostly things to make you more cultured, like museums and operas and ballets, but sometimes they did something fun like a beach visit or a trip to the zoo. (Never to the circus. In a rare example of same-mindedness, all the Drakes had sworn off circuses.) But the rest of the time, Tim was expected to be quiet and not underfoot. So that’s why sneaky wasn’t exactly the right word: it wasn’t like he was hiding from his parents, sneaking around. He just was quiet and unobtrusive, generally kept himself to rooms they were not in unless they told him to come, and overall he was never seen unless he needed to be.

Stealthy! That was a better word. He was stealthy.

He had uncovered Batman and Robin’s secret identities in a single dizzying day right at the beginning of winter break-–to think that if his parents had not had the news on in the background, he would still be in ignorance!--and spent the next two weeks in a feverish haze of planning. Fortunately his parents typically gave him just a couple of Christmas presents but an envelope of cash that he could use as he saw fit: he budgeted the money down to the last penny, and not two weeks after the start of the new semester at boarding school he was crouched on a rooftop at three in the morning in new, dark, nondescript clothes, clutching a new notebook and a new space pen (it could write in zero gravity! Wet or dry! Upside down! On a stick of butter! He had blown his budget just a little on the space pen). His initial tentative guess at a patrol schedule, worked out from news articles and bat-sightings, was apparently a bust: no caped crusaders crossed his sight that night. But he tried again, and again, and finally on his fourth middle-of-the-night unauthorized excursion he caught his first real-life glimpse of Gotham’s heroes. 

It wasn’t a terribly exciting glimpse: no fights or even really any derring-do. Just two figures, one big one a bit smaller, swinging from rooftop to rooftop in the yellow street-lamp light a couple blocks away. (Tim mentally made a note to possibly watch from fire escapes and the like until he knew which roofs they tended to land on) It didn’t have to be exciting though: Tim was hooked.

He restricted himself to three nights a week-–no sense in risking discovery any more than necessary. Wednesday night, Friday, Saturday. He saw Batman and Robin about once in four trips...until his map of their patrol routes started getting better.

It was starting to become quite a comfortable routine when he realized in quick succession one chilly spring night that a) someone was watching him as he watched the heroes, b) that someone was very stealthy, but c) that someone was more stealthy than sneaky and they were going to get him caught. Something had to be done.

The third month in, nearly at spring break, something was.

Chapter Text

t was Saturday, which meant that if Tim wanted to do something he had to do it tonight, or else wait three whole days til Wednesday. His Nicola Tesla project had to be sacrificed: he’d gotten a good grade on it, so he’d kind of wanted to keep it around and maybe show his parents some time, but he needed the posterboard. Once he’d taken off all the pictures and text blocks he sat on the floor of his dorm room and frowned at it thoughtfully. 

“I SEE YOU!” was what he first thought to write, but not only would that result in rather small letters it wasn’t actually true. He hadn’t seen his observer, as such, just knew someone was watching him. He frowned thoughtfully at the posterboard for some time, and eventually uncapped his marker and carefully wrote out in huge capital letters: S T O P. There was still a little room, so after a moment of thought he drew a >:( at the end. It would have to do.

That night he was almost twitchy with nerves, trying to both keep an eye out for Batman and Robin, and an ear out for anything that would make him need to run, and a, uh, back-of-his-neck out for the silent watcher. They showed up only about twenty minutes after he arrived, and he decided based on the normal patrol routes the heroes weren’t likely to be near here for at least a couple of minutes. He kept his gaze outwards in case he’d guessed wrong, but pulled the folded posterboard out of his bag and held it right behind his head where whoever-it-was couldn’t miss it. He waited with bated breath for a while, but the sense neither lessened or changed. With an annoyed sigh, he got to his feet and instead held the board in front of him. “Hey!” he hissed, trying not to be too loud. All the apartments in the top floor of this building were condemned, but there were a couple of squatters there most nights. “Hey!” He narrowed his eyes, looking carefully all over the roofline: the building he was on backed almost directly into two taller buildings, one built wall-to-wall so you could pull yourself up onto the taller roof (if you had the reach for it), and the other a narrow-alley-width away. That meant the dark corner of this roof  was very dark, but he glared into it, knowing that something was there. “I can see you,” he said a little louder, and threw the posterboard towards the corner in a fit of frustration. 

It didn’t go very far-–too much surface area. It frisbee’d about five feet away before a corner tipped up and the whole thing flailed in mid-air and flopped onto the roof to land pathetically in a puddle. He’d spooked the watcher though and they darted for the westward building. He yelped, but they weren’t even looking at him: they scrambled up the taller building and vanished over the ledge. 

“Hey,” he said, more quietly, to the empty roof. That had been a person not much bigger than him, and in the brief moment they darted through the faint beam of moonlight they had looked very very ragged. Tim felt a pang of conscience. He’d just chased off some homeless kid, who maybe lived here. It wasn’t like this was Tim’s roof, what right did he have to chase someone off it? He let his head thunk down on the crumbling brick half wall at the roof edge. “Dammit.”

***

Sunday night wasn’t a ‘midnight excursion’ night, because the first class of Monday was at 730 AM, but…three whole days wait. The thought made him twitchy. He made different preparations than he would if he was going bat-and-bird watching, since if his schedule was right their patrol didn’t come close to any of his observation sites on Sundays. (At some point, maybe in the summer, he had to do a more detailed study of their routes on a night-to-night basis: Dick Grayson would be graduated by then, so he couldn’t think of any reason their schedule would be different for summer break) 

The bats weren’t there, but he hadn’t realized that a dealer set up on a corner near site two on Sundays. Tim climbed the fire escape with labored breaths after having to absolutely book it to evade a wild-eyed, twitchy teen who would definitely not ask politely for the $20 in Tim’s backpack. He settled on the roof and brought his breath under control, taking careful sips from his canteen-–he’d started karate this semester and learned very quickly that gulping water after hard exercise was the fast train to pukesville. The wait was long and anxious, and he almost gave up on the homeless kid appearing: but close to four in the morning, he scrubbed grit out of his eyes and looked up hopefully. “Hello,” he said politely to the shadows, and carefully started unpacking his backpack. His mother always said you can catch more flies with honey than vinegar. She usually was talking about making connections at galas or conferences, but Tim figured it applied here too. He lifted up the package that he thought was the bribe most likely to be successful: a plastic-packaged milk bun with custard filling, soft and fluffy and delicious. “I brought food to share. Since I felt bad about scaring you off. This roof is big enough for the both of us, you know?” He opened the package and took a bite. “Mm!” It really was good. He took another bite. “Here, this one’s for you. Please don’t get scared.” He set the package on the ground and tried to telegraph his movements as he slid it across the roof to the waiting shadow.

Well, tried to slide it. The roof wasn’t exactly a smoothly polished surface so it got about four feet. He grabbed another bun, the last one, from his bag and–-again with slow exaggerated movements-–chucked it with an underhanded pitch. “It’s yours,” he said again, and deliberately turned his back to the corner as he sat down and finished his own snack. He listened, straining his ears, and eventually heard a whisper of movement that could maybe be a plastic-wrapped milk bun being picked up. A muffled package-crinkle followed: then the faintest gasp, cut off. He beamed, and made himself turn around slowly. Just visible at the rim of the deepest shadow was the kid–a girl, he saw now. Probably. Their clothes weren’t obviously girl-clothes, and their hair was longish but so unkempt that it could just be couldn’t-get-a-haircut long: but there was something about the grace with which they drew back as his movement startled them.

“Sorry!” he whispered, and took a drink from his canteen for something to do. The sound of his swallowing didn’t cover the sounds of someone tearing through a milk bun with ferocious haste. When he looked up the person froze, half-a step out of the shadow and looking at the package that he’d tried to slide. Looking longingly, he thought. “That one’s–” a shout from the street made Tim flinch, and the girl looked in that direction before switching her gaze back to him. “That one’s yours,” he finished at a whisper. He scuttled to the package and the girl half-leaned forwards like she wanted to dive for it but couldn’t make herself move closer. “Here, it’s for you.” He carefully tore open the top of the package before setting it back down and nudging it closer. “Go on, before the ants get it.”

The girl was almost quivering with what he guessed was a fight between fear and desire. She took another half-step, and he smiled at her brightly, wrapping his arms around his knees and trying to look as non-threatening as possible. “For you! To apologize.” She looked at him as he talked, though she looked at his hands instead of his face. She stepped closer slowly, slowly, until she was close enough to snatch up the package and retreat slightly.

“Bon appetit.”

She didn’t look up this time, but bit into the milk bun: very gently, which surprised him from how it sounded like she’d torn into the last one. She didn’t exactly nibble , but she bit the bun carefully, all around, then the top and bottom, until all that was left in her hand was a goopy wad of custard. “Best part,” he whispered in agreement as she licked it up with an expression of pure joy. Definitely a girl, he was sure of it now: even more ratty and weathered-looking than most of the other street kids he’d seen, very unwashed and obviously very hungry. He thought she was probably pretty, under the dirt and stuff: she had Asian features, very delicate, and the hands that held the final traces of rapidly-disappearing custard were thin and quick. She licked up the last possible bits and looked back at him. He tried another smile and waved at her. “Hi. I’m just gonna…” he thought about standing up but that might startle her, so instead he scooted backwards on his butt until he reached his backpack and could draw out the rest of its contents: a stack of granola bars. “Do you like chocolate chip? I hope so, it’s all I’ve got. I only had the three buns, these are all the other snacks I had in my room.” She didn’t respond to this either, and he frowned as a sudden thought occurred. “Oh! Are you deaf?” Wait, no, that was stupid, he’d seen her respond to sounds just a second ago. “Or mute, I guess?” She didn’t respond at all, still just watching him–though her gaze was more curious than wary now. “Can you please nod if you’re mute?” No nod. Maybe she was mute and didn’t speak English? 

“Oh, man,” he sighed, as he gathered the granola bars in his hands and spun to scoot back in her direction again. Could he take notes about her in his ‘nighttime’ notebook along with the Batman and Robin observations, or would she need her own? He would have to test different languages to see what worked, maybe steal some of the good snacks from the commissary…. “This is going to take so much time away from my other job!” 

Chapter Text

*****

It was the third Wednesday of the month, which meant Tim needed to go to the secondary Wednesday observation site to have a chance of seeing Batman and Robin. (Or maybe only Batman–that happened sometimes) He hesitated over it a bit, since he still wanted to try again at communicating with the homeless girl and she hadn’t yet observed him (as far as he knew) at this location: but he figured there was always Saturday. The secondary Wednesday site was under the train tracks near the Dixon docks, a section not long enough to be really called ‘elevated track’ but with a few feet of scaffolding where a small kid could squirm underneath. It was a bit more exposed, technically, than some of the other sites, but in Tim’s experience people tended to assume bodies lying under bridges were homeless people sleeping. And this location was too small for most homeless people to bother! He was honestly kind of proud of it. 

His worries were for naught though, as soon after his own arrival a head and pair of shoulders leaned down silently from above and he waved at her frantically. “Shhh, get down here if you’re gonna come, gotta get out of sight!” …and also not get run over by a train, but he was pretty sure someone as with-it as the mystery girl would feel the thunderous rattle of the rails long before she was in danger. She looked him over thoroughly, head-to-toe. He gave her a thumbs-up that she glanced over with no sign of recognition, before he could see her make a decision. She reversed her grip on the edge of the track and flipped down and into the empty space below him in one sinuous move. “Woah,” he whispered. She did not respond and he remembered his research over the last two days: “Oh! I gotta–” he squirmed in place, freeing his backpack, and pulled out a notebook. “I looked up–” he noticed that her eyes had locked onto the notebook and a look of great disappointment had gone over her face before it was smoothed away back to blankness.

Stupid stupid Timothy. He squirmed again, his arm straining at the elbow as he dug in his pack, before triumphantly pulling out an apple. “Sorry, sorry, I figured you would be hungry! I snuck some fruit from dinner the last two nights. Sure hope you aren’t allergic to apples.” He held out the apple hopefully, and the girl did another of her full scans of his face and body before carefully reaching out and plucking the apple from his grasp. She crunched into it straight away, and he waited for her to be done. It was kind of nice, seeing how much she enjoyed it. She had eaten a ring around it before she began biting it from the bottom up and he said, “Wait, not the–” she bit straight through the core and he subsided. “Don’t eat that part,” he finished uselessly. Didn’t apple cores have arsenic or cyanide or something in them? She had clearly been eating food from the trash and stuff, so maybe she had built up an immunity.

(now there was a thought: he was taking judo starting in the summer to supplement the karate lessons and he was already signed up for computer science in the next school year, but maybe he should look into things like building poison resistance….)

He shuffled out the notebook where he had written down a bunch of ways to say ‘Hello, what is your name?’ in all different languages. Gotham had a pretty high Vietnamese immigrant population, so he started with that, sounding out the syllables carefully. The girl was watching him but she didn't react to the words, so either his pronunciation was so lousy it didn’t register or that was still the wrong language. He made a little x beside ‘Vietnamese’ and tried Korean, Japanese, Mandarin, Tagalong…on and on for the twenty languages he’d looked up and written down. She didn’t respond to any of them, and after the first couple she looked away from him, watching their surroundings instead. He would have thought she was just ignoring him, but he was pretty sure she didn’t stop listening. It was more like, just, what he was saying was completely meaningless. He x’d out the last option and groaned. “Now what?”

She looked at him, and while she didn’t make a face he thought she seemed a little nervous. She glanced from side to side, then looked at him bravely and tried on a small smile and little wave like he’d done to her. He smiled back, relieved that even though they didn’t really understand each other she didn’t seem to be annoyed at him. “I’m sorry, could you tell I got frustrated?” He frowned. “Maybe you’re an empath?” She did seem to understand his mood very clearly whenever it changed. He thoughtfully dug back into the bag, pulling out an orange this time. Given how she’d eaten the apple core, he dug his thumbnail under the skin and tugged until a sliver peeled off. He showed her what he was doing as she watched hungrily. “You gotta peel it, see? The skin is no good.” He let a chunk of skin fall off into the gravel below and held out the orange. “Enjoy.” The girl took it from him gingerly, looking it over. She pulled at the edge of where he’d peeled the skin and her forehead furrowed: she stuck her fingers in the gap of the skin and tore the orange in half.

“Well, I guess that works,” Tim said as she licked pulp off her fingers. (aw, man, her really dirty fingers. Hopefully she had an immunity to germs too). She started pulling apart the orange, prying it loose from the peel, and Tim let his head thunk into the scaffolding. “If you can’t tell me your name I can just make one up for you, I guess?” A thought struck him, remembering a game show some of the kids had been watching in the dorm the other day where two teams were playing charades. “Or, hey!” He shuffled onto her side to face her. She looked up as soon as he moved, although her fingers still worked at freeing orange segments even as she watched him. “My name is Tim,” he sounded out carefully. He patted his chest. “Tim. Tiiiiiiim.” He patted his chest again and then held his hand out to her, trying for an exaggerated curious face. “Your name?” She blinked at him, then looked at the orange in her hands. She carefully pulled what was left into halves and held out one half to him. He waved his hands, saying, “Oh, no, no, that’s yours! I just wanted to know your name.” She pushed the orange piece at him, more insistently, and he accepted it. She nodded, looking approving, and made quick work of what was left in her hands. He looked down at the piece she’d given him, feeling a pang of remorse. Here she was starving and thought he was trying to take food back from her. He broke the portion in half–she’d given him four segments, so he made it two and two. 

She watched him in interest, licking juice off her fingertips and he pushed the two segments back at her. She only took them when he nearly dropped them, and he shoved the bit he’d kept in his mouth and chewed it, satisfied. She looked at the two segments with narrowed eyes but then snorted. Her flat expression cracked and something amused shone through. She split the two segments, giving him one and leaving one for herself. “Hey!” he protested, starting to grin himself. She ate her piece and gave him a ‘now you’ kind of look. Snickering, he tore the segment in half and solemnly held one of them out. She took it, grinning, and they ate them in unison. He laughed as he ate, and the girl gave a breathless huff that was probably a kind of laugh. Tim licked his own fingers clean and lay back flat again, looking up through the tracks to where the city skyline was visible in the muddy mix of artificial light and starlight. What to name her? It didn’t seem right to do some basic boring name like Anna or Mary or Susan. He didn’t know where she was from so he couldn’t pick a name that way. Something that described her then? Like a superhero code name, almost. 

He looked at her out of the corner of his eyes. She was also watching the skyline, looking as still and immovable as a gargoyle. She was quick and stealthy. She was brave, and kind-–to have shared her food when she was hungry. She was also dangerous. (Tim thought he had a pretty good grasp of what dangerous people looked and moved like. In his nights watching for Batman and Robin, he’d seen plenty of other things on the streets…things he didn’t like to think about, mostly. He kept those feelings shoved neatly in a box, the same one he’d started using the first spring break of his first year of boarding school-–when his parents were late to pick him up in the carline, and he’d seen Becky Sunday’s nanny almost dive out of the car to meet her and shower her face with kisses)

She was like a serpent, was his first thought. Quick and graceful and dangerous. Only, Viper wasn’t a very good name for a girl, it sounded more like a supervillain name. Maybe a bird name, like Robin? She was kind of like a bird of prey. Sometimes when she was listening to something she tilted her head to the side like the sparrows that landed on the bird feeder outside the library.

“Peregrine?” He said aloud. “Like a peregrine falcon?” She was pretty small, only a little bigger than him. “Or Kestrel?” The shadows under the track were deeper than they’d been when he arrived, but her bright eyes watched him from the shadows. “Kestrel is nice. I can call you Kes, right? Like in Star Trek Voyager! Is that okay?” She didn’t say anything, but he nodded anyway. “Ok. We’ll go with that for now. Kes.”

Chapter Text

As soon as his mother’s shiny black camaro rolled to a stop in the carline Tim hurried to open the back door–-Janet Drake didn’t like dawdlers. He shoved his duffel bag across the seat carelessly but climbed in with care: he was wearing comfortable shoes but nicer clothes, since by his calculations he was due for a trip to the museum to be cultured. (On winter break they had gone ice skating, to the theater [to see A Christmas Carol], and to the ballet [for The Nutcracker], so it had been a while.) His mother’s eyes in the rear-view mirror were approving, so it was good he hadn’t worn t shirt and jeans. “Hi, mom.”

“Tim,” she greeted him in return. She kept her eyes forward but turned her head and leaned back so Tim could stick his head between the seats and give her a polite peck on the cheek. He then presented his own cheek and she kissed the air above it. She was always careful not to leave lipstick marks. “We are going straight to the condo.”

Tim blinked. “Oh?”

“Your father and I have bought a lovely little manor on the mainland just north of Gotham,” she said briskly. “We’re selling the condo, so you will pack up your room and set aside anything that needs to be done away with. You’ll go back to school for the rest of spring break while we handle the move.”

“Oh,” he said, struggling to keep up. “Oh, that’s…will I be able to see the house?” That explained why she’d told him to only pack an overnight bag instead of a full week’s-worth. 

“We’ve got the real estate listing printed off, so you can look at that when you’re done packing.”

“I see,” Tim said, trying not to be disappointed. It would be a lot harder to do anything from Bristol than from Midcity…maybe it was just as well they were having him stay at school instead of coming to the new place. And he’d been almost looking forward to the museum, too: there was a traveling taxidermy exhibit there now that he was interested in.

He looked up from his hands in his lap and met his mother’s eyes in the rear-view mirror. “You aren’t sulking, are you Timothy?”

“No ma’am,” he said, straightening up. “No, it sounds nice to have the new house. I was just surprised, is all.”

“I suppose that’s understandable.” She shifted lanes without using her blinker and raised her middle finger, topped with a pointed pink nail, at the driver who honked in protest. “Hmm. I tell you what: if you get your room packed up in a timely fashion I’ll let you pick where we eat dinner tonight. Your father has a meeting so it will be just us.”

That was a pretty good award. “Okay,” Tim said brightly, already mentally going through the restaurants his mother liked to pick which one he wanted to visit today. “I don’t think there will be all that much to pack, I have most of my stuff at school.”

It really did only take a couple hours to pack. The very first thing he did was secret away the little collection of happy-meal toy robots from the drawer of his bedside table-–he was pretty sure if she saw them his mother would think they were some of the things that needed to be ‘done away with’. Those safe, he methodically went through his clothes, putting aside everything that didn’t quite fit any more. There were a couple books he actually wanted for his dorm, so he packed those in his duffel, along with the scrapbook that held newspaper clippings. Most of his stuffed animals and other kiddie toys had already gone away when he was put in boarding school, and since nine was a lot more grown-up than seven he didn’t even miss them really: but he did tightly roll up the wool blanket at the foot of his bed and stuff it at the bottom of his duffel with the toys and books, since it looked too ratty to survive his parents appraisal and he really didn’t want to lose it. His mother stuck her head in a couple of times, first to tell him that there was no need to pack his bedding or suits since they would be packed specially, then to appraise his progress. She even brought him a sandwich at lunch time, which Tim thought was very thoughtful of her. 

Dinner came early, and Tim had to work very hard to not fidget with excitement as they approached Bangkok Bao. (Janet Drake did not care for fidgeters.) Once their orders were in, Janet pulled a folded piece of paper from her purse and held it out to him. “Here.” Tim opened it, finding a very familiar form. “Your father and I will still be overseas for your birthday, and there’s no other school breaks between now and summer, so go ahead and write down your birthday list.”

Tim nodded. He was a little disappointed, though he knew it was stupid to be: his parents had only been in town for five of his nine birthdays so far, since the date unfortunately fell around the same time they took their yearly trip. “Okay.” The form held space for four entries: when he was younger it had held more and his parents (or nannies) had written down what he told them, but he was practically a teenager now and didn’t need so many presents. The first thing he listed was a camera: the form had a space to put the reason, and he wrote that he was going to be taking photography as his art elective in the new year. For the second space he listed ‘extra camera lenses’ with the specs he was looking for. The third item he just listed as “Nice pens and notebooks” and put the reason as “It has proven useful to be able to take plenty of notes in class.” (and outside of class, of course, but no way he was gonna tell them that.) Deciding that was more than enough money to expect them to possibly spend, he set the paper back on his mom’s side of the table.

“Hmm.” She picked it up and rolled her eyes, passing it back. “All four if you please, Tim. We’ll be the judge of whether you actually need it or not.”

Chastened, he thought for a second even as the waiter brought their appetizer and refilled his mother’s iced tea. Eventually he wrote “Packaged snacks for my dorm room”. For the reason, he could not write “To take with me on nighttime excursions and share with a homeless girl” so instead he put, “Kids who have snacks in their rooms are always very popular.”

This time his mother accepted the form, reading it even as she nibbled at a bit of appetizer held deftly in her chopsticks. Her expression was carefully neutral, but when she got to the end it actually softened slightly and she gave him a pleased nod “I am glad to see you thinking about these things, Tim. Networking with your schoolmates will provide lots of opportunities down the road.”

“Thank you,” he said abashedly. “I do try, I just don’t want to let my grades slip.” His parents were generally satisfied with a report card of Bs as long as there was an A or two, but their tolerance had a limit.

“I have been keeping up with your report cards as they come in” Janet said. “Not good, but not bad. And the report from your RA was very encouraging.”

“Jim-–I mean, Mr Loflin said nice things?”

“‘Tim is the quietest and best-behaved boy in the dorm’,” she quoted. “‘I worried once he got his skateboard but he only uses it in designated areas. He stays on top of his work and doesn’t let the other boys tempt him into causing trouble’.”

“Aww,” Tim said, blushing. Jimmy really was a very nice RA, and Tim was extra careful about sneaking out on the nights he was on duty because he didn’t want to get the twenty-something in trouble. “I’m glad.”

She merely hummed, and then their food arrived and nothing was said for a while. After her entree was nearly gone, she started, “Timothy. You have had good reports as to your behavior and you have kept your grades up.” He nodded, not knowing where this was going but certainly not upset at the praise. “Our new house location will doubtless be safer overall than the condo, and you will be ten years old soon-–that’s the recommended age at which a child can be left alone in this state.”

He felt his eyes widen. “Oh! It is?”

Janet waved a hand. “It’s not even a law that children need a full-time adult younger than that, but better to not rock the boat. Anyway. Your father and I were wondering if you thought you would be up to staying in the house without a nanny on break this summer.”

Tim sat up even straighter and nodded furiously. “Oh! Yes ma’am!” In his nine years of life he’d only had short-term nannies, fifteen of them all told, and it was a crapshoot (in his opinion). The one he’d had for Christmas when he was five had been so wonderful he still missed her sometimes, but the one from last summer had been…not to put it too finely…a bitch. “Yes! I can definitely take care of myself.” He winced, and felt obliged to add honestly: “I don’t know how to do laundry, though, or use a stove.”

“We were thinking of hiring a housekeeper,” she said warmly, clearly pleased at his attitude. “Someone who could come perhaps every other day, do laundry and grocery shopping along with keeping the house tidy, and make sure you have home-cooked dinners occasionally instead of just sandwiches and microwave food.”

“Oh, sure,” Tim said confidently. “I could definitely work with that. You can rely on me.”

“Hmm,” Janet said, but she didn’t sound particularly doubtful, which was a relief. “Do you know, I think we can. Perhaps we can call this summer a test run.” She smiled at him, her sharp business smile. “If you pull it off, we might even be convinced to disburse the difference in cost between a part-time housekeeper and a full-time nanny as an allowance for you.” 

Tim beamed, and held out his glass of soda like his father did when making a toast. “It’s a deal.”

Janet, smirking, tapped their glasses together. 

“Oh!” he said as an afterthought. “I wanted to visit the museum this week. Do you think I can go by myself?”

“I suppose your father could pick you up on Wednesday and drop you off, and you could take the bus back to school,” she said. “Good for you, Tim. I’m glad you are trying to keep up your education even over break.” And then she even let him order dessert.

Oh, this summer was going to be fantastic. 

Chapter Text

*****

The best thing about not going home for spring break was that Tim could get a head start on his plan to better map out Batman and Robin’s patrol routes. There were a lot less adults on campus over break because only a couple dozen kids were staying in their dorms, so it would be easy to sneak out safely, and with no classes in the early morning it wouldn’t matter if he overslept every night. The second-best thing was that on the way back to school after dinner, his mother stopped by the store with him and let him pick out a small basket of snacks, so he had plenty to share with Kes. He had an impulse to bring them all with him on Saturday night, because surely she was hungry all the time and it would be nice for her to have a stash of them whenever she wanted one: but then again over the last few months he’d seen too many homeless people have all their stuff stolen either by other homeless or by cops, so he decided the majority would be safer in his dorm. 

Kes was already waiting for him when he arrived, which lit a warm confused glow somewhere under Tim’s breastbone. He beamed at her, waving. “Hi, Kestrel! I’m glad you came!” She waved and smiled back, though more reservedly, and she didn’t try to say ‘hi’. He was working with the theory that her not talking or responding to speech at all meant that there was something going on with her brain, either—what was the polite term?--either some kind of impairment or some kind of metahuman ability. She definitely seemed able to read his mind at least a little, and could interpret some of his gestures. She drifted closer as he set down his bag and dug around in it, and he produced a Little Debbie and a nalgene water bottle. “One of the kids left this in the rec room when they left for break so I swiped it. I think it was Emmett Walker anyway, and he’s a prick. Don’t worry, I washed it reeeeeally good—but I figured, you know, it’s probably hard to get clean water on the streets, so.” He handed both to her, and she took them gently. She snapped open the top of the water bottle and took a careful long drink: that was good to know. She knew how to use a water bottle but not how to eat an apple…he needed to write this down in the notebook.

He pulled out all three notebooks in his pack, and Kes watched him even as she methodically nibbled through her Starcrunch. “This one is for Batman and Robin,” he told her: it was part of a pack of Justice League-themed books, and this one had Superman’s logo. (the one with Batman’s logo was used for his math notes, because he didn’t want to make things OBVIOUS) “This is for general stuff, things that come up that I need to research later or look up or general notes. And this one–” he held up a plain black and white composition notebook: “--is you! Sorry that it’s so boring.” He flipped it open to the tab that said ‘skills’ and put ‘open and use standard nalgene water bottle’ on the list right under ‘flip smoothly from up on the tracks to a precise position underneath’. It felt a bit silly when he listed it like that, but he knew so little about her and he had to start somewhere. And after the thing with the apple he didn’t want to assume anything. 

She finished her Starcrunch and let the wrapper fall down on the roof. The part of Tim that was Timothy Drake cringed at littering, but the roof was covered in bits of crap anyway and he didn’t want to risk offending her, so he just ignored it. “Come on,” he said instead, beckoning her over to the edge of the fire escape. “We can watch from here.” She looked at him, uncomprehending. He reached for her hand and she jolted away. “Sorry!” Tim winced. “Sorry, I just–” he beckoned her again, and sat down on the top level of the fire escape himself. She wavered, then followed him slowly. He held his breath until she actually set down, at which point it rushed out of him with a whoosh that made Kes side-eye him. “Sorry,” he said again. “But we have to be sneaky more than stealthy. Because I want to see–” he shaped his hands into goggles and put them over his eyes, ‘looking’ around at the roof-lines exaggeratedly: “--to see Batman and Robin. Batman–” he put his hands up at the side of his head to make the shape of the cowl, tried to spread an imaginary cape: “--and Robin.” After a moment of hesitation he decided to represent Robin by putting his fingers around his eyes like a mask and grinning. He wasn’t sure if Kes understood him, but she was watching him with a slightly furrowed brow like she was trying to understand, which was more than she did when he was just speaking words. Man, he needed to try learning sign language. 

She cocked her head and he continued, encouraged. “If we hide as much as possible in the stealthiest places possible-–” this was harder to mime out but he tried: “--they might notice us because they’re really observant. They look for crooks and stuff, you know? But if we don’t stand out in the open but are kind of hard to see, like now, we don’t look as much like someone hiding. Just like maybe some kids playing hooky. So if they spot us we will be less suspicious. That first night, you were up on that peak of the roof, most people couldn’t reach that. So you stand out.” She didn’t nod, but he thought she kind of relaxed a little and stopped looking so tense like she wanted to dive back into the shadows. So either his words or his gestures or her mind-reading had maybe got the main point across. He grinned at her and gave a thumbs-up, nodding encouragingly. “It probably helps you most of the time to be super stealthy like that, but because I’m deliberately putting us in the path of Batman and Robin it’s better to be sneaky like this. Got it?” 

Her eyes narrowed in thought, and after a moment she shaped her hand into a thumbs-up that mirrored his.

“Yeah!” he said brightly, letting go of the railing to give two thumbs-up. “That means you understand, I think! Good. We can work with that.”

Over the next few nights he spent as much energy trying to communicate with Kes as trying to spot Batman and Robin. He found a book on sign language in the school library: it wasn’t very easy to understand, since it was just pictures with motion lines, but he memorized some of the easier ones like ‘eat’ and ‘thank you’. Kes didn’t seem to understand them any more than the charades. When he literally mimed a thing or action, or showed a picture of something, she seemed to understand, but it didn’t seem like she could connect the hand-sign for a thing to the thing any more easily than she could connect a word to a thing. There were a couple of exceptions, like the thumbs-up that they were using as an “I understood that” sign, or a nod or shrug, but only a few. He really wished that he was some kind of medical professional or psychiatrist or something who had a chance of realizing what her deal was so he could communicate better. 

On Wednesday while Tim was doing some housekeeping with his nighttime notebooks, a sudden realization hit him. He flipped through the Superman-branded notebook carefully, comparing it to the general research one and even the Kestrel one in case he’d misplaced a note…but no. Batman had always gone out some nights without Robin, but the last time Tim had actually seen Robin was literally two Wednesdays ago. He grabbed his news-clippings scrapbook out of the bottom drawer of his deck and flipped through it urgently, looking for some big bust or something around that time that could have resulted in an injury that would bench the hero for a couple of weeks-–nothing. He couldn’t remember any big news reports about Dick Grayson either, but he would need to check the tabloids for that since they were usually the ones that posted stalker-y things like “Gotham’s Favorite Billionaire and Foster Son Spotted on Vacation in Metropolis!!”

He was so distracted by this new mystery that he wasn’t careful enough crossing from Nelson to 13th and the big Rottweiler that guarded the tattoo shop at the corner took offense and gave chase with a nasty, aggressive growl. Tim had to book it for three blocks before the thing gave up, and on the way rebounded off a building corner hard enough to scrape his forearm. It stung, but just a little, and he’d nearly forgotten it by the time he got to the tracks. Kes was there and he waved at her, dropping down into the ditch. “Hi, Kes! I have a snack cake and an orange today, I got lucky at the lunch line.” Her eyes stopped halfway through their usual scan of his whole body and she stiffened. “Kes?” She swung out of the scaffolding as athletically as a panther and pointed strongly at his arm. “I don’t…oh this?” He pushed back his sleeve. The scrape wasn’t too bad, not bleeding or anything, though it would probably end up being a bruise. Nothing he couldn’t pass off as a skateboard accident. “It’s fine, see?”

Kes narrowed her eyes at him and shrugged, which they had been using as a general marker of a question. She pointed at his arm and dropped into a fighting stance, then shrugged. “No one hurt me, if that’s what you’re asking.” He wavered, trying to figure out how to describe the incident, and eventually just mimed a fall. “Just me being clumsy, see?” He finished off the imaginary fall with a slap to his forehead and exaggerated embarrassed look. 

Kes snorted, relaxing slightly, though her brow was still furrowed in thought. He pulled out the orange and held it out but she shook her head, pushing it aside. She pointed at his arm and did the fighting stance again. She mimed a swipe with clawed fingernails. Then she tapped her chest and turned, stepping basically in front of him and holding up her fists, making a rabbit-punch at the air. She turned back to him and waited. 

Tim’s ears warmed. He actually felt warm all over. “I think…you’re saying you would protect me?” He gingerly reached out, and when she didn’t object, put his arm around her shoulder and held up his fist, shaking it at the air like she’d done. She gave him a thumbs-up, and instead of dancing away from his grip she just maneuvered her way to stand at his back and draped herself over him. She patted his head and Tim felt his eyes well up with tears he didn’t really understand. “Thanks, Kestrel,” he said, hearing the way his voice choked but unable to do anything about it. “I think that means you think I’m your friend. You’re my friend too. I’m not as dangerous as you yet, but….”

She patted his head again and gave a little growl in his ear that was almost playful before plucking the forgotten orange from his hand and going back into the scaffolding as gracefully as she’d exited it. 

Chapter Text

**********

Tim was probably about as good at plans as a nine-year-old boy without precognition could hope to be, but the lack of precognition was biting him in the butt this week.

As soon as Janet had told him he’d be at school for all of spring break he’d started scheming, but he couldn’t have known that his plan to map some standard  patrol routes over eight days would be overset by the huge change in status quo that was Robin leaving Gotham. (He’d bought a stack of tabloids at the corner and one of them had had a short column on Dick Grayson leaving for New York–-a mean-spirited little piece full of rude speculation that made Tim bristle in indignation on behalf of both Dick and Bruce….even though it ended with some dismissive lines to the effect of it being normal for newly-legal-adult men to leave their fathers’ houses.) This was making him understandably paranoid about his other plans. The museum trip had fallen through as Jack had been too busy to drop him off, but it was just as well as it gave him more time to prep for the last big plan that had a chance of succeeding before school started back up. 

But you know. The best laid plans go astray, or however that mouse poem put it.

When he hauled himself up the dumpster to get on the concrete ledge above, Kestrel’s head poked out and her eyes immediately sharpened as she looked him over and did her emotion-sensing thing. She shrugged to mark a question, and glared at the street behind him with her fists held up.

“No, I’m not in danger,” he sighed, putting up his own dukes and shaking his head. He had to get better at concealing whatever he was giving away that let her read him so easily…though he supposed, no one else was probably as good at that as Kes. “I’m just nervous ‘cause I don’t know if this will work and I don’t wanna offend you or scare you off. I need a win right now, buddy.” There was no good way to communicate any of that with charades, so he rested his chin on his fist with an exaggerated thinking face. They seemed to have settled on that as the sign for ‘There’s something I want to communicate and I don’t know how’. Kes made an annoyed, frustrated face. “I know,” Tim said glumly. “I need to get it together.” He passed her a snack cake so he wasn’t wasting her time completely as he tried. “OK, here goes!”

He scrambled back down the dumpster to the concrete of the alleyway. He sighed, wishing that he’d been able to think up a better tactic, and with his palms up began reluctantly to drag his forearms through the mud and oil and much that was never far to be found in this neighborhood of Gotham. Once they were properly grody, he looked up and met Kes’s confused stare. Maybe he looked as disgusted as he felt, because she clapped a hand over her mouth and laughed her silent laugh. She shrugged, three times in a row, still snickering.

“Why, indeed,” Tim moaned–-maybe a little exaggerated, but Kes laughing wasn’t an everyday thing. He climbed back up. “OK, gross, right? Yechh.” He pointed at his filthy arm. Kes, still grinning, nodded in agreement and made the universal expression of someone smelling something truly tragic, waving her hand under her nose. “Yeah! Exactly.” He copied her, then pointed at her arm and did the same. This was the part he’d worried would offend her, but she just nodded still grinning. She held up her arm next to his, nearly as dirty but not quite: then held up her arm next to his clean face. She snickered again, and deliberately smudged his cheek.

”Kes,” Tim protested, and stuck her tongue out at her. She rolled her eyes but sat back on her heels attentively, dropping the plastic wrapper of her snack. “Right, OK, phase two.” He pulled his canteen out of his backpack along with a handkerchief and carefully poured a big splash of water over his left arm. He rubbed with the handkerchief until it was mostly clean and looked up at Kes to see if she looked confused. No, still the look of careful interest. He pointed at his still filthy arm and made the ‘ewww’ face and gesture. He pointed down, swept his hand around to indicate where they were. He then pointed at the clean (-er) arm and smiled, nodding. He tapped his chest, carefully reached out and tapped Kes’ chest, and made a beckoning gesture. She almost lit up with understanding, giving him not one but two thumbs up. She made grabby hands at his canteen, and when he handed it over she held it over her head and poured out a trickle, making a hissing noise that was a little like a shower sound. “Yeah!” Tim cheered, mirroring the thumbs-up. “Yeah! I want to take you where you can get a shower!”

Kes nodded eagerly and launched herself off the ledge. Tim, used to it by now, didn’t flinch more than just a little as she flipped easily down from the dumpster and stood waiting for him below. “We still gotta be quiet, though,” he cautioned her, and led the way.

This site was about a thirty minute walk from Tim’s school: they made it in less time than that, because Tim was less nervous about the streets with Kes walking beside him, her keen eyes missing nothing. He led her around the back, crawling to the place where a hedge hid the spot in the fence that he’d cut last year when he wanted to go out without asking permission. They crawled through together, and she looked around with great interest as he led her to the rec center. “This is the way to do it,” he babbled to her quietly, nearly giddy that this was actually working. “There are only showers here and in the dorms, and there’s like no one here until people start coming back over the weekend. I’ve tested it, and as long as we only turn on the two can lights in the boys locker room no one should see us from outside, and it’s well sound-insulated so gym class doesn’t get too loud and disruptive, right? It’s perfect!” The back door was locked, of course, but Tim had taught himself to lockpick when he was six and his dad had locked his stuffed bunny in his office. This door was no harder, and they crept inside-–Kes was so silent he almost worried she had stayed outside until he felt her breathing along the side of his face. “Over here,” he whispered, taking her hand just long enough to tug her in the right direction.

The showers weren’t as intimidating and awful when they were only dimly lit through the adjoining doorway: Tim could never bring himself to be okay with showering what felt like out in the open with all the other boys under the harsh overhead lights. “I hid some stuff,” he said, scurrying over to pick it up, “So you can-–” he turned back to her and squeaked, dropping the soap and washcloths as he covered his eyes. “Kes! Why!”

She didn’t answer so he peeked between his fingers reluctantly. As he looked she finished undressing, kicking her clothes to the side, and stood facing him. Her feet were planted shoulder-width apart, hands loosely behind her back, eyes forward and face completely blank. Parade rest, the part of Tim’s brain that never stopped churning pointed out while the rest of Tim was panicking. In his brief initial glance he realized that while she was…lacking a certain part…otherwise her body looked like any of the boys Tim’s age. She definitely wasn’t a teenager yet: Tim knew what older girls looked like naked because of his parents' many issues of National Geographic. His hands dropped away from his eyes as his embarrassment was chased away by horror because on her skinny bare body he now saw…scars. So many scars, everywhere, long jagged ones and short cratered ones and something that looked like a shiny burn. “Oh, Kes,” he whispered, almost in tears, and took a hesitant step forward. She didn’t look at him, still just staring straight ahead with that flat resting look, and Tim sniffed, picking up what he’d dropped. “Sorry. Sorry for looking. Though I guess you don’t mind.” He had always kind of known that Kes had come out of something terrible: why else would she be living on the streets? Why else would a girl not even a teenager yet move with the confident dangerousness of Batman? But seeing the clear evidence of old healed wounds stabbed Tim right in the heart. He swallowed and steeled himself, shaking off his weakness briskly. He had brought her here to help her, so he would help her. He strode over to the control for the nearest shower-head. It felt weird and rude to be fully dressed when his friend was naked, so he pulled off his shirt as he went and tossed it aside as casually as Kes had kicked her raggedy jeans and smock. 

As he turned on the shower she stepped forward-–no, marched forward. She almost walked straight into the freezing cold water and Tim yelped, “Wait, hold on–-” and reached out to grab her shoulder. As he touched her she blinked, a crack finally in that stony blank face, and looked at him in confusion. “Wait just a second,” he said. He held up ten fingers, counted two seconds and folded one finger down, two seconds and the second finger…Kes took over and he let her finish counting out the twenty seconds as he held his hand under the water and let it warm up. “OK, it’s good now.” Kes, still looking confused as he stepped aside, stepped under the spray and made a shocked sound of pure enjoyment. Tim grinned, feeling a slight easing of the itchy panicked need to do something helpful that had filled his whole body when he first saw her scars. “Much better, right?” He handed her the soap and a washcloth and she started scrubbing herself down with business-like motions. “I’ll grab you some shampoo too!”

***

Tim and Kes sat on the top of the washing machine as it rumbled beneath them with Kes’s regular clothes and Tim's shirt inside. Kes and Tim were both wearing baggy t-shirts, and Kes had on some dark leggings that Tim had stolen from the lost and found. (He hadn’t had the guts to try and get girls’ underwear so in the bundle of clothes he’d passed to her after she dried off were instead just a clean pair of boys’ briefs. He didn’t think she’d minded.) Kes was rocking back and forth in time with the rattle of the machinery, looking as peaceful and happy as Tim had ever seen her. He wanted to enjoy her happiness, but now that they were just waiting instead of actively doing things the horror from before was coming back.

Kes noticed. Of course she did. Tim mentally kicked himself as she stopped rocking and smiling, her forehead instead creased as she looked at him and read him. She hesitated slightly before swaying sideways to bump her shoulders with his. She shrugged and waited patiently for him to answer.

Tim sniffed, wiping his eyes on the hem of the t-shirt. “I’m sorry, Kestrel. I didn’t mean to ruin it.” He hesitated and reached for her: she didn’t draw away. She let him pick up her arm and gently turn it over, revealing a white scar on her forearm that had been covered with dirt before. “That’s why I’m sad, Kes,” he said miserably. He tapped his cheek as a tear rolled down it and gently patted the scar. “Because someone hurt you. A lot.” Maybe she had been one of those child soldiers the news talked about sometimes? Maybe. That would explain a lot. And she’d escaped somehow, but been unlucky enough to wash up in a place as bad as Gotham.

Kes gently patted his shoulder until he looked up. She touched her scar and mimed flinching back, hissing in pain. She shook her head. After a moment of thought, she tapped it and made the ‘eww’ face and wave they’d used before, then looked at him with a question on her face.

Tim frowned. “I guess you mean…it doesn’t hurt? It’s not nice, like being dirty is not nice, but it doesn’t hurt.” He gave a thumbs-up and hoped he really did understand. Kes touched his cheek with an exaggerated crying face and shook her head firmly. She spread her arms, displaying her not-new but not-old clean clothes, her clean arms and legs. She beamed at him, and pulled her shirt up to give it an exaggerated sniff before sighing happily and nodding. Tim’s eyes were still leaking, but no longer just because he was sad. He gave her a second-thumbs up. “You’re welcome.” 

Of course Kes sensed the abating of his misery after her silent pep talk. She grinned at him, then shook her head rapidly so her wet hair whapped him back and forth across the face. “Hey,” he spluttered, shoving her away but laughing. Kes let herself be shoved, then swayed back and plopped her head down on his shoulder. She patted his knee.

Tim tried to stay calm, to not ruin the mood again, but notions were crystalizing inside his brain faster than he could keep up. Kes had been hurt, terribly hurt by someone. Maybe a lot of someones. Maybe not too long ago. He had thought, once or twice since meeting her, that maybe there was some way to find a trustworthy adult to help take care of her: but whatever awful person had made his friend a child soldier might want her back. Until Tim found a way to make her safe, safe for good and free or that, she would have to be the biggest and most central secret of Tim’s life. 

Well, fine: Tim was really good at keeping secrets. 

Chapter Text

With the end of spring break Tim was busier than ever before. He recalculated his plans based on the grading rubrics of his classes: he generally only did as much homework as was needed to maintain Bs and As, but his last report card had had just two As and his mother had said it was acceptable, so he figured he could get away with ending the school year out the same way. He switched his observation nights to Tuesday -Friday-Saturday, and tried not to worry when Batman got into scraps that he really needed a partner for. (Dick was going by the name Nightwing now and seemed to be living it up with his superhero team in New York, but surely he’d come back to help if there was some kind of really really big problem?)

The third weekend in April ended up being the best opportunity to take a rare daytime unauthorized expedition. The RA for the weekend was Brad Saffey, not Jimmy, and not only was he gently high half the time there was a big ball game on Friday that he wore himself out watching–there was no way he would do more of a bed/wellness check on Saturday than walking around the building once or twice to make sure no one was making a ruckus. Tim slipped out after breakfast so that someone would remember having seen him that day, and snuck out the back with a buzz of nerves in his head. He’d tried to get across to Kes that he’d be coming in the day today, but as always was never sure she got it. 

Walking through Gotham in the daytime was weird. His school took them on field trips occasionally, to historical sites or cultural events or whatever, but being bussed somewhere and herded along with forty other kids by harried teachers was not the same as going alone. It was in theory safer than going out at night, but in practice Tim felt incredibly naked and exposed. Trying to sneak along in the smoggy Gotham sun would be pretty conspicuous. So instead Tim walked along without a care in the world, mostly wearing his nondescript nighttime clothes but with a hoodie over top: it was red and too small for him, but his newer hoodie was too new and he didn’t wanna get mugged over a freaking hoodie. His backpack felt weird on his shoulders, since it was empty except for a snack and Kes’ water bottle and the little plastic baggie. When he got to the alley beside Lucky’s he waited for an opportune moment to slip into it and then almost sabotaged his own stealth by yelping in surprise.

Kes, who had definitely jumped down like that purposefully TO surprise him, snickered. She spread her hands and shrugged. “Hah, hah,” Tim said, rolling his eyes. “Very funny.” He grinned back at her though, and said, “I’m so glad you came! I was worried this was going to be another one of those best-laid plans situations.” He sobered as he looked her over: she yawned as he watched, and scrubbed briefly at her eyes. “Oh, shoot. You probably sleep during the day, right?” So that was the meaning of what she’d been trying to get across to him last night. In hindsight it made total sense. “Sorry.” He gave her the sad puppy-eyes of apology, and she patted his shoulder to show he was forgiven, then shrugged again. “Oh! Right. We’re going shopping.” He took off the backpack and pulled out the baggie: she looked at it in interest as he withdrew the wet washcloth that was inside it. “Wash your face and hands with this, ok? We need to look not rich but not destitute.” He mimed scrubbing it over his face and she nodded, taking it and giving herself a brisk scrub. She did her hands too when he gestured, then let him zip the now-smudgy cloth back in the baggie. “OK. We’re going shopping!” He stepped back towards the entrance of the alley and beckoned her to follow. 

She hesitated, and he could read that she was nervous. She shrugged again, then looked him over intensely. “It should be safe,” he said reassuringly, trying to project confidence. He smiled at her and patted his face like she’d done with the washcloth, cautiously reached out and patted hers, then smiled wider and nodded. “We look respectable.” He plucked at his clothes, then hers, which he had surreptitiously washed and then returned to her last Tuesday, and gave another nod and smile. “Couple of regular kids in regular clothes.” He made a show of looking them both over, then nodded approvingly. He squared his shoulders and marched a couple of confident steps across the alleyway. “We’ll just play it cool, okay?”

Her brow was creased a little. She didn’t give him a thumbs-up so she hadn’t understood it all, but she hesitantly stepped towards the alley entrance like he’d done before.

“Yeah,” he encouraged her. He hesitated, but reached for her hand: she let him hold it. “Come on. You’re my adopted big sister, if anyone asks. That’s a normal thing to be. We’re going shopping!” She let him lead her out of the alley but stopped just outside it. She had her stone-face on, but he could tell that she was overwhelmed by all the bustle of a daytime Gotham street. “Come on,” he said again, and deliberately did his best to wipe all concerns and doubts from his own mind. Tim could be confident so Kes didn’t need to be worried. “It’s like a thirty-minute walk away.”

They walked through the streets, Tim occasionally making friendly comments to his silent companion. Despite the slightly gloomy atmosphere the weather was about as perfect as mid-spring got here, not too cool but not too warm, the air washed cleaner than usual by last night’s rain. They passed more than one thrift store on the way, but Tim kept his eyes on the prize. It was a little out of the way, but the store he had his mind set on was big enough to have a wide selection and busy enough that they wouldn’t stand out, and it was near one of the further of his observation sites so they had a well-known territory to run through if for some reason Kes needed to run. When they got there Kes hesitated at the door again and Tim squeezed her hand. “It’s okay.” She furrowed her brow and rested her chin on her fist to tell him that she had something she wanted him to know but she didn’t know how to explain. He waited patiently, and after a moment she pointed towards the store, tapped her chest, and made an angry face and throwing gesture. “You think they’ll be mad at you? Throw you out?” He made sure no one was looking at them and pulled out his wallet. His parents gave him $50 for each A so he had a hundred dollars inside. He pulled her hands out and had her hold them-palm up, then repeated her pantomime from just now. Then he placed money in her hand, and pointed from the store to her then beamed with a beckoning gesture. She gave a slow-thumbs up but still looked bewildered.

“Oh boy,” he said, trying to figure out how to do charades for ‘Money can be exchanged for goods and services’. He took his money back, and after a moment of thought handed her his backpack. He pretended to look around, then see the backpack with a look of delight. He waved at her, pointed at the backpack, and held up a five-dollar bill. Slowly, after much thought, she held the backpack back out to him and he took it, handing her the money in return. “Get it?” Her eyes narrowed but she gave a thumbs-up. She looked less confused now and more just weary. “Sorry, Kes. I know it’s so much stuff.” He supposed that if you’d never bought something with money before (he doubted child soldiers got given a paycheck, and she’d communicated to him a couple of months ago that she got everything she needed from dumpsters before he came around) it didn’t really make sense to trade bits of green paper for actual useful things. “It works, though! So let’s go shop.”

Once she didn’t think someone was going to hurt her for going in, Kes thoroughly enjoyed the store. He picked out some things for himself first, since he wanted more clothes that didn’t mark him as a rich kid at a single glance, and Kes watched him hold them against himself to check for fit and check the labels. A couple of outfits later she was browsing through the girls’ section with laser-like efficiency. She chose things easy to move in and comfortable, dark colors that wouldn’t stand out. In the shoe section she passed by all the tennis shoes for a pair of boots a little too big for her, but Tim didn’t try and argue. He did argue though when she passed him her little heap of clothes and nodded like she was done. “Hold on Kes, don’t you need….” he trailed off, and sighed. “Oh, come on over here. And we'll get a backpack for you before we leave, too.” The underwear was in baskets against the wall, and at his urging she dug through them carefully. After a moment her hands stilled, and Tim stopped manfully looking away to see that they were holding a pair of yellow panties with little orange flowers. “Will they fit?” he asked, sternly admonishing himself for his embarrassment. If it didn’t bother Kes it shouldn’t bother him. She hesitantly lifted them up towards the bundle of clothes in the shopping basket, and seemed to wilt as seeing how brightly they stood out. “No, no, it’s fine ‘cause they’re inside,” Tim urged her. He mimed ‘inside’. “So you can still have dark clothes ‘cause these will be inside.”

He hadn’t realized the other lady in the girl’s section was close enough to listen to them until she made a muttered comment under her breath that included the very impolite term for someone with a mental impairment. Tim snapped his head around and shot her a nasty glare. “Mind your own business!” The woman sniffed, but left, and Kes grinned at Tim when he looked back at her, looking seriously tickled about his show of temper. She mimed rabbit-punches at the air. 

“I wish I had punched her,” Tim grumbled, and grabbed the underwear from Kes to put in the basket. “If you like pretty ones get pretty ones. You know what you need and like and some stupid old lady has got no business thinking about you.” After this he was taking Kes to McDonalds.

Chapter Text

Tim wasn’t the impulsive sort of kid who changed how he did things for no reason. ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’, as his mom had said a couple of times. His nighttime excursions were going swimmingly and he was very satisfied with his observation sites-–a couple of times he’d even seen Batman close enough to count the number of pouches on his utility belt! But he usually saw him once a night, sometimes very briefly, and it had occurred to him that if he tracked the patrol routes well enough he could take shortcuts and catch the hero in action at more than one point in his route. He just needed a good justification to change things, and in this case he had three reasons. 1) In the time they’d been, uh, working together, he had gotten stealthier and Kes had gotten sneakier: 2) with Robin/Nightwing absent Batman had more ground to cover and there was less likelihood of them being spotted, and 3) Tim really really wanted to. 

The first night he tried it they fell behind immediately and never caught up enough to catch another glimpse of long black cape. The second night, Kes had caught on and started refining their route. He was pretty sure that she didn’t have the patrol routes mapped out like he did, but when Tim aimed for a target she plotted the fastest route for them—even if it required jumping the occasional gap or climbing a fire escape or two. Tim still wasn’t as fast or strong as her, but she had a perfect grasp of his abilities and never left him in her dust. It took a couple of weeks, but they started getting better at it: and helpfully, in that two weeks Batman got a bit distracted because Bruce Wayne adopted a street kid named Jason Todd.

The news had given Tim pause when he read it. He was under the impression that adults were generally glad of the peace and quiet once they were relieved of the burden of a kid at home. Tim himself had thought that Batman needed a partner, which suggested that Jason had been chosen mostly as an apprentice…even though Tim had seen the way Batman and Robin (and Bruce and Dick) interacted, and knew that it wasn’t just a business relationship. But then again: Bruce was exceptional. Tim knew from his own excursions that it took serious patience to do a lot of what Batman did, the research and detective work and stakeouts, so presumably he could handle a kid in the house better than most. And it was common in some professions for a master to train a series of apprentices. (That presumably made Nightwing a journeyman! That made Tim feel weirdly better about him ditching Gotham.)

For that matter, he could have had his pick of kids. Gotham wasn’t lacking in orphans and the unfortunate, and someone as astute as Bruce could find perfect candidates easily. And yet he’d chosen a random street kid. It made Tim feel reassured in his trust: he definitely didn’t want most adults anywhere near Kes, but if Bruce ran into her he would protect her, and that counted for a lot.

Batman had been covering his route with his normal deliberateness earlier tonight, but right now he was practically flying. Tim had been sure they would lose the chance to catch sight of him at the next observation site but Tim and Kes had made amazing time thanks to her dragging him down an alley that had been blocked off with scaffolding last Saturday–-once they actually started this new normal of moving targets at night, she seemed to memorize routes after having gone down them only once, and he now wondered if she scouted them even on the days Tim didn't go out. She stopped at the top of the fire escape they were running up so abruptly that Tim collided with her back with the muffled ‘oof’ of someone who had learned the hard way how to be quiet when colliding with something after hours. (when he was a kid, he’d knocked over a plinth in the upstairs hallway while trying to go pee in the middle of the night and Jack had not been pleased to be awakened, and despite what his parents seemed to think sometimes you did not have to teach Tim the same lesson twice!) Kes put back a hand to steady him and he whispered, “What is it?”

Without the distraction of running and climbing, as they were standing still and silent, Tim could hear the discordant howl of way more police sirens than usual. None super close, but coming from the north-west in alarmingly large numbers. Batman, Tim realized with a held breath, was on the roof just one building over, so close that he could see the vigilante‘s masked face faintly lit by the screen of some kind of tablet device he was using. Kes, Tim could feel from where he was pressed against her back, was as tense as he had ever felt her be, dialed-in on Batman and blocking Tim’s entire body with hers. Batman made a final stab at the device, stowed it away, and said something that they weren't quite near enough to hear as more than a faint growl. Tim started as a new chorus of sounds spilled out from all around the area, fainter than the sirens but much closer and more numerous. He struggled to figure out what the sound was as Batman fired his grapple gun and swung away: Kes relaxed as soon as the hero was out of sight, but Tim gasped and felt himself blanch as he connected the dots. “Dammit, dammit,” he swore, and ripped his backpack off to rummage through it. “Oh, hell, Kes, this is probably bad!” She watched him intently as he dug out his flip phone and held down the power button to boot it up. “Come on, come on….”

When he brought it with him it was always off so a random ring could not betray his position: as it powered on it joined the disperse chorus of all the other phones in the area ringing to the same municipal alert. “It doesn’t look like severe weather,” he said frantically, punching in his passcode, “And the only other thing the city uses that alert for is Poison Ivy or—” 

Scarecrow loose in Midcity, remain indoors, if you have a mask wear it now the text said on his phone screen.

“Shit!” he said, and pulled at Kes’ arm. “Come on, we gotta—” he flung himself back down the fire escape trusting that she would follow him. She did. 

When they got to the bottom he hesitated. Scarecrow was one of the rogues who wasn’t afraid to do his own dirty work, so he didn’t always have henchmen as a vanguard. Tim had a panicked mental image of Kes, she of the upraised I’ll-protect-you fists, trying to attack Scarecrow and it being the last thing she ever did. “OK,” he said, digging the general notebook out of his pack with shaking hands. Kes pressed up against his back and it steadied him. “OK, OK, look here.” In the back of the notebook were profiles for various rogues, each with several pictures clipped from newspapers and magazines: he almost tore the Penguin page turning it quickly and held up the page for Scarecrow where Kes could see it. “Scarecrow,” he told her, tapping the photo. He turned to face her and she nodded and studied the pictures with narrowed eyes. “He’s really dangerous, Kes. He…” Tim trailed off in frustration. One of the pictures of Crane was a shot of him in a lab with a beaker in his hand. Tim tapped the image of the beaker and looked at Kes to make sure she was getting it. She met his eyes and he could just tell she was following along. “He’s got bad chemicals, Kes. Its–” he pulled out his canteen now, tapped the image of the beaker and then the canteen. He then mimed something wafting up out of the canteen, and leaned forward to sniff the imaginary fume: when he breathed in, he cringed back with an expression of fear and pain. He made sure Kes was still following, and finally tapped the image of Crane and his beaker, gestured north-west, held a hand over his mouth and nose, and braced as if to run in the opposite direction. 

Kes gave a thumbs-up, comprehending, the narrow-eyed glare hardening into absolute granite. She reached into her own backpack and pulled out a pair of leggings,which she then ripped in two as Tim yelped in protest. She tied one leg over her mouth and nose with lightning speed, and repeated the makeshift mask on Tim: then she grabbed his shoulder and sprinted .

Tim clutched the notebook and his backpack, hoping nothing would fall out the opened zipper: the canteen was left in their dust. 

They weren’t the only ones running and clearly Kes had decided speed was more important than stealth, so Tim almost collided with someone as they raced around a corner. “Fucking get inside!” someone shouted, “Dumbass fucking—”

Thirty minutes to the boarding school, if Tim could keep it up that long at this speed. He couldn’t, but why not hope? Kes ran at his side, keeping his pace precisely, and Tim swore to himself as they skidded down an embankment and he felt his shirt rip. “Sorry! Sorry….” he was already slowing down slightly after five minutes, and Kes steered them sideways to stop beside an iron grate that blocked off an alley. She got his attention, mimed taking deep breaths, and flashed all ten fingers three times. Tim gave a thumbs-up as he doubled over, gasping for breath. Sixty seconds breather was just what the doctor ordered. It hadn’t been the full sixty though when Kess stiffened and grabbed his shoulder again, wrenching him into a fresh run. Tim didn’t bother asking for an explanation, just ran: he knew why when he heard a mocking shout from not very far away at all, heavy running footsteps coming after them. His hindbrain tried to panic, thinking about Scarecrow, but the rest of his brain knew better: he’d read several articles and seen the statistics, and while most people sensibly tried to disappear when a rogue was loose, there were always opportunists who took advantage of the chaos. There were a lot of assaults and thefts in the early hours of this kind of emergency, and most of them had nothing to do with the big-name villain of the hour. “We just want to talk, kids!” One of their pursuers shouted, and Kes stopped on a dime and pivoted to sprint directly at them.

Tim, unable to stop nearly as quickly, half-tripped over his own foot and then had to fling both arms forward before he crashed into a building. When he stabilized and looked behind he wished he’d had the full minute to catch his breath because Kes was trying to give him a heart attack: the muggers (three men of various ages) had stopped as Kes barrelled towards them and as soon as she was in range the biggest guy swung the tire iron he carried straight at her head. Or rather where her head had been: she dropped low, as graceful as a ballerina, and kicked his leg–the knee bent sideways and he howled. The other two hesitated, clearly even more shocked than Tim, as Kes levered herself up using the knee she’d just broken and slammed her elbow into the big guy’s head. He dropped like a stone. The other two were only frozen for a moment, but in the moment Kes stepped on the first mugger’s body, launching herself up high enough to jab stiffened fingers into the second guy’s throat, and as he choked and started to collapse she kicked the final guy in the head. In midair.  

“Hold crap!” Tim blurted through his makeshift mask, feeling dazzled. “Holy crap!” Kes didn’t pause once the last guy hit the dirt, just reversed course again and pulled Tim into motion once more. “You are the actual coolest!” Tim panted, then gave up talking to save his breath.

Sneaking into his dorm room was harder than it had been to sneak out: the perimeter security lights were blazing as bright as day and there were security people watching at the gates. Thankfully no one seemed to have found his fence gap, and the security people who were patrolling the grounds were waaaaaay easier to avoid than Batman and Robin. Tim slipped the tool he’d made from heavy-gauge wire into the notch he’d carefully carved in his window sash, and with a long-practiced motion unlocked the window and shoved it open. Kes followed him as he silently crawled inside, and made a confused sound at what was right under the window. “It’s a fake me,” Tim whispered, showing her that the lump under the sheet was his rolled wool blanket and the dark hair on the pillow was a wig (that he had stolen from the drama classroom last year). He let her wander around the ten-by-ten space, poking at all his furniture, while he checked his backpack with bated breath. Everything was still inside, thank god, except of course his canteen. He carefully pulled out the three notebooks and stood on his bed. Kes watched in interest as he unfastened the register from the vent above his bed, then slipped the notebooks inside and closed it back up.

When that was done he flopped down on the bed with a breath that felt like it came right up from his toes. “Holy, crap, Kes!” he said again, and rolled to look at her. He held up his fists and punched the air. “Pop pop pop! You took out three guys in like two seconds flat!” His excitement faltered a little as he remembered exactly how Kes was such a fighting machine, but before he could make himself depressed she stood up very straight and smirked. She held up her fists and looked very satisfied with herself, then gave him a thumbs-up. 

“Hell yes,” he said grinning again. OK, it might suck how she’d gotten her skills, but her skills were awesome. 

He showed her that she was to hide under his bed if anyone came to the door, and then he took a long minute to think. He should be exhausted but the adrenaline had made him feel as awake as he ever did. “Well,” he said briskly, “Might as well be productive!” He patted the mattress and Kes eventually hopped up to sit beside him, looking a little stiff and awkward. He smiled at her and patted her arm. “Don’t worry, Kes.” He frowned as she hesitantly put her hand on the mattress and pushed down, seemingly fascinated at the squishyness of it. “I’m going to find a way for you to have a safe place to stay, Kes," he said quietly but fiercely.  "Someday. Hopefully soon. With a soft bed and all the food and water you could need.” She didn’t understand him, but he said it as a promise anyway. 

The sign language book was on his bedside table: he opened it where he’d last left off and Kes leaned in to look at it beside him, curiously. “I’m trying,” he sighed. “To learn. Since you have the thing where you don’t recognize words and stuff. I figured that if you haven’t learned to speak at all despite how much I talk to you that’s probably kind of a lost cause.” Not that he’d stopped talking aloud to her. It felt rude not to, and besides it was nice to have someone to talk to. Talk at. “But since some gestures work I’m gonna keep plugging away at the ASL and hope we make some progress there someday, huh?” He found where he left off and studied the next word. 

After he practiced the sign for ‘Same’ a few times he started to turn the page but Kes stopped him. She was looking at the book with deeply furrowed brow. She tapped the picture in the book and looked at him expectantly. He hesitantly made the sign again, and she copied him looking from her hand to his to the book. She nodded, looking satisfied. “Do you understand the word?” he said, excited: she blinked at him and he wilted. Oh. She was just copying, like it was a hand game. Tim shook himself and deliberately cheered up. “Still, practice is practice, it will be good that we’ve both practiced the shapes!” He turned the page and decided to just enjoy this precious extra time with his friend until the day began and they had to go back the normal routine. “The next word is ‘Sand’. That’s much less useful.”

Chapter Text

Kes watched his back as she always did while Tim carefully picked the lock. This was their third time here, but he wasn’t going to take their safety for granted and he was glad Kes thought the same. The door unlocked with a click, and he opened it the bare fraction that was necessary to slip his bit of wire through the seam and run it all along the edge of the door—as usual Kes dropped to her knee so he could get on her shoulders, and lifted him up so he could finish the check around the top of the door. The wire didn’t snag on anything so there probably weren’t any new security measures, thank goodness. (he had gone in through the window the first time, which was less convenient but the window’s security system was clearly visible from the outside and it was the kind easily defeated with a fridge magnet, so this wasn’t a high-security operation…but still. Better safe than sorry!) He gently pushed the door open, and Kes grabbed his backpack off the ground and went in with him still on her shoulders, only letting him down when the door closed behind them. He wobbled on the way down and she grabbed him to keep him from falling. “Thanks,” he said quietly, smiling at her to be sure she understood the thanks.

They heaved the chair at the desk around to prop under the doorknob for an extra layer of security. The back door opened into a small office, and as always Tim longingly looked at the computer, just itching to mess with it: but he’d selected this place because it was a front for something, and even though people rarely came and went and certainly no one really used the gym equipment out front, that didn’t mean there wouldn’t be some kind of alert to tampering on the computer…especially if it had anything related to the place’s true purpose. Whatever those guys were using this business as a front for, it had all the necessary things a normal gym would-–including lockers and showers. 

Kes, used to the procedure now that they had done it every other week three times in a row, was scrambling out of her clothes as soon as she got near the showers: same as always Tim decided that wasn’t a battle he wanted to fight. Instead he did the same as he’d done last time, and took off his own clothes out of solidarity—and because Kes had teasingly refused to touch him (not even a pat on the shoulder) the first time around once she was clean and he was still grubby and sweaty. This place had separate shower cubicles anyway, and it was nice to go ahead and get clean instead of getting his sheets and pjs at the dorm all dirty because he couldn’t shower until it was officially morning. He dug around in his backpack where he’d dumped the contents of his bath caddy last night, and held out the baggie with Kes’ washcloth and bar of soap as her hand insistently waved at him from her side of the divider. Tim glopped shampoo on his own head quickly so he could pass her the bottle, and for a while the only sound was the running water and various splashes of two smallish kids getting clean. 

Tim shut his shower off before Kes was done, also extracting the towel from his bag so he could quickly dry off before Kes needed it. Sure enough, as soon as he was no longer dripping her own shower cut off and her hand made insistent grabby motions at him from her side. Tim dressed in the clean set of clothes from his pack and shook out the laundry bag from inside to hold the dirty set: he also picked up Kes’ dirty clothes to put in with his to wash when he got the chance. He startled when a frustrated growl wavered out from Kes’ side of the shower divider. “Kes?” he asked hesitantly, “You okay?” She grumbled, dropping the towel on the floor and making a beeline for her bag with the clean set of clothes inside. He was pretty sure she still didn’t have a problem with him seeing her naked, but of course she could sense that he preferred to see her with clothes on.

He busied himself packing the wet towel away with the dirty clothes, and in record time she stomped over to stand in front of him. “What?” he asked, looking her over to see if maybe she was hurt somewhere and the soap had aggravated it. She impatiently waved his eyes upwards, and when he was looking at her face she tilted her head forwards and shook it so her hair fell over her face. She tried to run her fingers through it and they snagged on a big knot: she waved the hand in the tangled strands and gave the frustrated growl again. “Oof,” he said sympathetically. “Yeah. Let me see if I—” he really had dumped his entire bath caddy in his bag in the evening, running behind schedule, and after digging though it for a second he emerged triumphantly with a comb. “Here we go!” He ran it through his own hair demonstratively, because he’d decided by this point that it was easier on both of them to start by explaining rather than wait and see if she struggled. “Like that, that’s what I’ll do to your hair.” She tilted her upper body towards him, holding out the knot flat on her palm, and he giggled a little and shoved her gently back. “No, no I’ll sit behind you! Or, well.” He pointed at the sink and mimed scrubbing gestures. “You wanna clean your undies while I stand behind you and comb?”

Kes nodded and went to her pack to pull them out. On spring break Tim had gone to the public library to do some research on their computers: he’d found, among other into, a really really helpful blog post about ‘surviving homelessness’. (it would have been so much easier if he could research in the computer lab at school, but everybody knew that an upperclassman had been busted two years ago for using them to look up porn, so clearly there was something on the computer that tracked searches and stuff and Tim just didn’t want to open that can of worms.) One of the things it had recommended was that since hygiene was so important, even if you couldn’t wash your clothes every time you wore them, if you could at least scrub your underwear and socks in a sink that was better than nothing. Kes stoppered up the sink and sprinkled in detergent from the little plastic tub of it that Tim had stolen from the rec center laundry room. As she started scrubbing, Tim stood on his tiptoes behind her and began carefully running the comb through her hair.

He figured out pretty quick that he needed to start at the ends rather than the scalp. He picked away at them slowly, working through tangles. Kes’ hair was shoulder-length…ish. He guessed that she sawed at it with a knife when it got too long, because it was extremely raggedy and uneven. The back of her head was where it was longest, and it was there that the biggest rats’-nest had formed. “You really got this one in there good,” he commented. Kes hummed tunelessly, scrubbing two socks against each other in the soapy sink water. It was weirdly peaceful, despite the circumstances, and Tim let himself zone out for a while until the comb moved through her hair in smooth uninterrupted strokes. (ok, at one point he had to get nail clippers from his bag and physically cut out some of the tangles, but given the aforementioned choppiness of her haircut he doubted it would bother her.) When he was done, Kes was finishing up too: he silently took up a position at the sink beside hers and she passed him socks and panties as she finished scrubbing for him to rinse out. When it was all done and they were draped over every sink edge to drip dry Tim braced himself and stood formally in front of Kes.

He planted his chin in his fist, and she waited patiently. Her brow was furrowed, and he decided she was probably picking up on his nerves. “OK,” he breathed finally. “OK. So. Tim and Kes are together right now, right?” He stepped to stand beside her, linked their arms. “Together.” He stepped away, all the way to the other side of the room. He gestured between them. “Apart.” Kes gave a thumbs-up. “Okay. We see each other on certain days?” He mimed ‘Tim and Kes together’. “On Tuesday.” He stepped away and acted out falling asleep and waking up three times, then stepped back. “Together on Friday night.” Sleeping and waking once. “Saturday night.” Three more ‘nights’. “Tuesday again. You understand?” Kes gave him thumbs-up and did her own little pantomime of leaving and going. “OK.” Tim tried to act out ‘now, today’. He mimed sleeping and waking three times, then looking uncertain and shrugging. Once more, then shrugging. Three times, then shrugging. He looked at her anxiously to see if she was making any sense of it.

She looked upset. Slowly, she gave the most unhappy thumbs-up Tim could ever imagine, and he couldn’t help himself but to stumble forwards and grab her in a tight hug. They hadn’t done a real proper hug more than once or twice, and Kes froze in surprise a little before relaxing and hugged him back. Kes’ hugs were kind of boney and awkward, but they were the best hugs ever because she enjoyed them as much as Tim did and he could feel how much they liked each other through their arms. After a minute, he let her go and stepped away. He counted out three fingers and shrugged, four fingers and shrugged. “It’s summer break next week, and I’ll be going to the new house. My parents will be there almost two weeks so I won't be able to get away like usual.” Then he flashed all ten fingers three times and strongly shook his head. Two times, and another head shake. Finally he held up all ten fingers and shrugged. “Do you understand?” he asked anxiously. “You won’t see me like usual but I’m not ditching you. I’ll come back, I just don’t know exactly when.” Kes nodded slowly and did a thumbs-up. Then she glared at him. “What?”

She flashed her ten fingers twice and mimed looking around but not finding something. She then held up her fists and punched at the air before stabbing him in the sternum with her pointer finger.

“I get it,” he said, thumbs-up and laughing. “I better not be gone as long as twenty days or you’re gonna fight me!” 

Kes nodded, satisfied, and gently pretended to bite his ear as he squawked and tried (not very hard) to squirm away.

Chapter Text

*****

As exciting as it was to be on vacation, and to get used to the new house and its big cool yard, and to spend a full week with his parents, Tim was about at the end of his rope. He may have tried his very very best to explain to Kes what was going on, but Tim’s best wasn’t always good enough. 

After the first couple of days in which there was a lot of family togetherness, Tim’s parents mostly went back to normal with house stuff and business stuff and preparing-for-vacation stuff. (They called it a vacation but really they were doing an archaeological dig: they did one every other year and Tim was pretty proud of it. Most of the other kids’ parents had lame hobbies like wine tasting and golfing and racing horses and stuff.) Tim had presented them with a full plan because they didn’t like him asking for things that then made them do the work of figuring out the steps needed to get it, which was why he was currently riding his new bike to the bus stop nearest what they were somewhat pretentiously calling ‘Drake manor’. (Tim hadn’t had to ask for a bike. It had been there waiting at the new house, which explained why his parents had texted him to ask him to measure himself last month—they’d wanted to make sure it was the right size. At the condo and at boarding school Tim hadn’t had a bike, but he assumed his parents decided that in the countryside a bike was Just A Thing A Boy Has). He had told his parents that he wanted to test the bus system while they were still in town, just in case something went amiss and he needed to call to be picked up. The plan was for him to stay the night at his friend Nick’s house, then make his way back to Bristol in the morning by himself: a straightforward and safe plan that they signed off on immediately.

Nick wasn’t technically his friend, but they were in the same class and they’d done favors for each other before. Tim had written three papers for him over the past year (and got paid fifty bucks a pop), and Nick had covered for him on their last school trip when Tim slipped away to buy something. Nick had assured Jack and Janet that Tim was welcome, and in turn Tim was prepared to swear Nick was with him if he ever needed an alibi.

At the bus stop Tim chained up his bike and waited, shifting from foot to foot. His backpack was mostly empty, but there was a thermos full of hot soup that the new housekeeper had made last night. Mrs McIlvane had greeted him a little stiffly, which could be for a number of reasons: because she was ‘the help’ and he was technically her employer, because the job was new and she was afraid of making a bad impression, or because she didn’t like the thought of having to take care of a kid on top of the responsibilities like cleaning that had been in the job description. Tim couldn’t do anything about the first two possibilities, but he had tried to reassure her that he wouldn’t really need any looking after. Unfortunately that made her look uncomfortable in a different way, but when his parents weren’t looking she had patted his head and told him to please just call her Mrs Mac, so he figured it was all good. 

The bus when it came was a little smaller than a city bus, though it had luggage hatches underneath and the seats inside were bigger and cushier. Well, if it served Bristol it had a clientele with higher average income by far, and it was almost an express bus: it did a short loop of a half-dozen bus stops in Bristol, then made a straight shot south over the bridge into Gotham city proper where it dropped everyone off at the city terminal in Uptown just by Sheldon Park. Most of the people from Bristol probably then took another express bus straight to Downtown, City Hall or Fashion District, except for the people who had Bristol money from less-than-legal sources who probably had plenty of business in Uptown. Tim took the bus on the Gotham U route and got off in Midcity in an area he was familiar with…though it looked very different in the daylight. Honestly, he probably should take this opportunity to learn his way around Uptown a little, since the roughest part of Gotham was moderately safe in the middle of the day, but he had all summer for that. Today he was doing some shopping . 

He had money from his allowance and that he’d earned doing stuff at school, and from one of his father’s emergency hard cash envelopes. (Jack has six such envelopes, that Tim knew about, and he was banking on his father thinking it had been misplaced in the move if he went looking for it later.)  The first thing he had to get was food. A bunch of granola bars and protein bars, and some Flinstones vitamins—he’d explained to Kes about taking just 2 a day and he was pretty sure she’d stuck with it, so she was probably nearly out. From a camping store, a sleeping bag, a metal latching box, and a couple boxes of water purification tablets. And from a general goods store, a child-size gas mask with three spare filter packs. That was just about enough to wipe him out, but he still had enough for a couple of diner meals even after his last stop at the toy store.

He donned his ratty nighttime hoodie before entering the 24/7 diner to hide his rather expensive shirt. The waitress who took his order was no more alert and interested than the one who worked the night shift, so as long as he wasn’t disruptive, bought stuff, and tipped, he could probably be safely left alone as a (admittedly weird) little kid doing homework. And he did have homework! Not schoolwork, but he had two Gotham newspapers as well as the Daily Planet, a small stack of tabloids, and two scientific journals. He laid out an envelope for clippings and his general notebook for, uh, general notes, and got to work.

The waitress (she hadn’t introduced herself but her nametag said ‘Mindy’ with a smiley face sticker that had seen better days) brought him his fruit salad and soda, and about half an hour after he finished that he ordered a small milkshake, and in that way he spent four very productive hours. When it was finally really properly dark outside he paid with two twenties and told her to keep the change: the fourteen dollar tip earned him the first smile he’d seen from her all evening. “Hey,” she said as he got up, “You sure you’re safe out there kid? Is someone picking you up?”

“My older friend,” he said cheerfully. “Don’t worry! She knows kung fu.”

Mindy actually snorted, but nodded at the new gas mask that swung from the bottom of his backpack as he shouldered it. “Well, I can see you’re prepared.”

“Dying is for chumps,” Tim said firmly. Mindy snorted again, and waved him out with an indulgent eye roll and muttered,

“Get me outta this fucking city with its morbid damn toddlers.”

“I’m ten,” Tim said, which was almost the truth, “--and it’s better than Bludhaven!”

He was mortified to realize that he was almost skipping down the road, and he took a moment to stand in the shadow of a dumpster and get back into serious mode. Then he went on, more cautiously now, through a maze of streets and alleys he knew like the back of his hand. When he reached the building he was aiming for, he had to again repress his exuberance and climb up the fire escape much slower than he’d wanted to so it wouldn’t make noise. On the roof he walked around the whole perimeter, looking around the whole block. This early Batman wasn’t going to be around here, so he decided to keep walking around the roof so that Kes would be able to see him if she looked. It was a Tuesday, and this was a Tuesday observation site, so he could only hope that she would check here at some—

He almost hit the ground as a weight slammed into his left side, but Kes caught him by the arms and hauled him back upright and into a crushing hug. “Kestrel!” he said happily, “You came!!” He hugged her back just as tightly, horrified to find tears forming in his eyes. How had he missed her so much in just ten days? When they finally pulled apart, she grinned at him and waved. He waved back, laughing. “Hi, Kes! I told you I’d come back!”

She inspected him thoroughly and he did the same to her. She looked about the same as always, which meant too dirty and wary and thin but, also, perfect. He let his overburdened pack thud into the roof and she looked at it with eyebrows raised. “Oh! I got you some stuff!” He pulled out the sleeping bag, eagerly unrolling it and showing her how it zipped up. “For sleeping, see? It’s not as cold at night right now since it’s summer, but that just means you can sleep on top of it and it will be squishier. And, look—” he pulled no fewer than six boxes out: “---granola bars! And this box, you see, you can keep the food in it so bugs can’t eat it.” He dumped out one of the boxes of protein bars in the metal box and latched it. “You can hide this away, wherever you can reach that is hard for someone else to. So you can travel light but still have a stash! Cool, right? And here—” he pulled out a film canister, into which he had painstakingly transferred all the water treatment pills from their blister packs. “You put these in your bottle—” he mimed it, “---and add water and it makes it safe to drink!” He stopped, suddenly self-conscious. “Sorry. I’m not trying to be annoying.” 

Kes rolled her eyes at him, and made a ‘blah-blah-blah’ hand gesture, but he could tell that she was just teasing and she didn’t mind his babble. 

“And this thing.” He was a bit more hesitant to pull this one out in case she didn’t care for it. Kes was very grown-up and practical, so maybe she would think it was useless. “It’s, um, it’s called a Rubik’s Cube.” He held it up and she plucked it from his hand to look it over in interest. Tim reclaimed it and showed her how it turned. “So you just, click, click—” he’d partially solved it at the diner, and it didn’t take many moves to solve two of the sides. He held it out for her to take again, and she looked at it with great interest. “See, you’re trying to make all the sides solid colors.” He took it back, and with his eyes closed mixed it up. He then pressed the unsolved puzzle into her hands. She accepted it much more carefully now that she knew it was hers, and he knew it had been a good choice when she instantly started clicking it around herself. She made very deliberate moves not much different from the ones he would have made. Tim hugged his knees to his chest and watched her in deep satisfaction. Someone as smart as Kes deserved to use her brain for more than just staying alive, and it wasn’t like he could leave books with her. “Cool,” he whispered. “I’ll have to think of other things you can enjoy. Though there’s plenty of puzzles at my house.” Five more days until his parents were out of the house, and then on God he was bringing Kes home. 

Chapter Text

*****

Tim dragged the rolling suitcase off the bus and winced as it thudded against the asphalt. His parents had gotten new luggage for this summer, which was good because it meant Tim had been able to reclaim this one from the trash rather than having to buy new: however it had been around the world a time or two and he was a little nervous about breaking the wheels if he mistreated it. It rolled well enough over the pavers but he was already dreading trying to move it when it was full and heavy. He got it to the corner of Corbin and Skyview and waited anxiously, trying to look casual and unconcerned. Fortunately he didn’t have to wait long before a low whistle called him back into the alley where Kes greeted him with a wave and a blatant inspection of the rolling suitcase. “Hi Kes,” he said, waving back. “I’ll try and explain the plan later, but first—” he pulled out his wallet and showed her the bills inside, then mimed eating. “Together?” 

She was wearing her backpack, as always, but the sleeping bag wasn’t attached below it: he hoped that it would be safe wherever she had left it. With a gesture he asked her to follow him, and he led her to a diner that was grodier and therefore cheaper than his usual. The menu was not a picture menu, so Kes couldn’t pick out what she wanted: instead Tim selected both a burger and a soup and salad, while Kes looked around the diner in interest. (when she had to go around in the day she wore a ballcap, and with her hair tugged through the ponytail hole in the back she looked quite different.) When the food finally came, along with two waters, he lined them up in the middle of the table. “Which do you want?” he asked, and waited. She looked over the options, and after sniffing each item she pulled the salad and the burger closer to her side. “OK, that’s fair,” Tim laughed, and claimed the soup. “It’s not like there’s anything to prove the soup and salad are meant as a set.”

Kes usually ate like a machine, deliberate and unstopping: in this setting she kept pausing to make small pleased sounds, and looking up to smile at Tim so he knew how happy she was. Tim smiled back, and ate his soup, and when they were both done put in a request for a milkshake. While they were waiting for that he got up and nudged Kes to scoot over enough for him to sit beside her on her side of the booth. When they were next to each other, he pulled a small binder out of his backpack and laid it out in front of it. He opened it and she looked in great interest at the pictures inside.

“My parents got me a digital camera,” Tim told her, “Since I won’t get my real one until my birthday and this is a good opportunity to practice. I printed these out on Dad’s office printer, so sorry for the quality.” The first shot was a picture of Gotham City: he pulled out the camera from his pocket and showed her the same shot on the preview screen. Kes gave him a thumbs-up, looking intrigued. He flipped through several other snapshots of the city on the camera, then set it down and went back to the binder. He showed her pictures he’d taken of the road, and the bus, then on the camera preview screen he showed her the ultra-quick, slightly blurry shot he’d grabbed after putting the rolling suitcase in the bus luggage compartment and before closing the door. She leaned into him more heavily, inspecting the shot of the luggage compartment thoroughly before she let him move on. “This is the important part,” he told her quietly, and turned the page: this picture was of Drake Manor. She also inspected this one in detail. Finally there was the shot he’d gotten with the tripod and timer, of him standing in the open door of the manor and beckoning at the camera. “Do you get it?” he asked anxiously. He made the sign for ‘Tim and Kes together’ and tapped the picture of the manor. “I want you to come for at least some time.” “He held up ten fingers and nodded, twenty and nodded, thirty and shrugged. “I don’t know for how long, but for now.” 

Kes nodded eagerly, with two thumbs-up. She barely even inspected the waitress as their milkshake was dropped off, patting Tim’s arm with near-bruising enthusiasm. She tapped her chest and Tim’s, then the picture of the house: she then mimed sleep.

“Yeah!” Tim grinned, sticking two straws in the milkshake triumphantly. “Yeah! You can sleep at my house. It will be super safe, just a little boring. I’m still working out how to get us both back into the city for our usual patrols, and what to do after summer is over, but—isn’t it exciting!”

Kes closed the binder decisively and pushed it into his arms. 

“Wait, hold on, first we gotta finish dessert!”

***

Lunch finished, Tim led them to the closed-off building a few doors down that had been a store until last month. The back door was easy to pick, and he let them both in without the caution he used at the fake gym, since this place had only ever held a small home goods store. Inside he let Kes do her perimeter check, sweeping around the edges as Tim looked carefully in all the corners for security cameras. None, fortunately. Kes returned after a minute, and held out her closed fist, motioning for his hand: when he held his palm out she dropped a quarter in. “Oh, nice,” he said appreciatively, and stuck it in his pocket. “Here’s the plan….” He rolled the suitcase around and lay it flat on the ground. He pointed out to her the small slits cut in both sides near the top, which she stuck her fingers through to see that they went all the way through. Then he unzipped the suitcase and laid the lid out. He stepped gingerly into it, then curled up on his side in the fetal position. He made sure she was looking, then touched the holes in the fabric and made exaggerated breathing sounds. Then he sat up. “You get it?”

Kes didn’t give him a thumbs-up, but instead she shed her backpack and chivvied him out of the suitcase to take his place and curl up herself. She pulled the lid over top and was still and quiet for a while before sitting up straight. She half-crawled out of the suitcase, making grabby gestures at him that he was slow to understand: after a second she just reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out his camera herself. “Oh, yeah, duh!” He showed her the power button and she looked at the picture on the viewfinder—the picture of the suitcase in the bus luggage compartment. She turned the screen to him, and he nodded with a thumbs-up. “It should work! I tested it myself last night…obviously I couldn’t completely zip it up from the inside, but I lay in there for about two hours to make sure I could breathe through the slits the whole time. You’re a couple inches taller than me but it should be OK.” He grabbed her backpack, checking in case she objected, and rummaged through the clothes inside until he found her hoodie. “The only concern is it will maybe be kind of a rough ride.” He tucked it in the suitcase like a pillow and she nodded and lay down again, adjusting the hoodie to make sure it would help. It seemed like it would, and she sat up and pointed to her backpack with a look of concern. Tim held up a ‘wait a second’ finger and pulled out the small binder from his backpack before rolling it up and tucking it in her pack along with the binder. It took some squishing before it would zipper up but it made it eventually. When he looked up Kes was once again working herself into position in the suitcase. He zipped it up, and then after a moment of testing the weight, tipped it back up on its wheels with a grunt. He rolled it around a little, testing the movement, then laid it back down and unzipped it. Kes blinked at him when the light hit her again, and Tim tapped her shoulder to make sure she was paying attention. He held up all ten fingers and did the two-second count to show he was counting down time. He then flashed all ten fingers six times, shrugged. Eight times, shrugged. “Do you understand? I don’t know exactly how long you’ll be in there.” He put his face by the air holes and quietly said, “Kes!” before knocking three times on the suitcase and miming unzipping. 

She nodded, putting on her narrow-eyed determined look, and with a final thumbs-up folded herself into the suitcase. “I kind of wanted to go to the library while I’m here, " he said sheepishly, “But you’re right. Why wait?” Pulling the loaded suitcase upright wasn’t any easier the second time, and he started to pull it to the door carefully. “Actually, my credit card is just for essentials but transportation counts, so I’m gonna use that for our cab to the terminal, and then it’s off home!”

Chapter Text

*****

Tim winced as the suitcase thudded into the ground. A kind older man had helped him put it in at the terminal, but the only other ones getting off at this particular Bristol stop were a couple of teenage girls who had less than zero interested in a kid: they ran straight for the bike rack and were off before Tim even pulled the suitcase all the way to the shelter. This is good , he told himself. It’s heavy because Kes is eating better now that she has me to help her. It’s a good thing. Even if it did result in a pulled muscle or two. 

The bus took off and Tim waited for it to be fully out of sight before laying the suitcase down. “Hi, Kes!” he said to the side of it, and unzipped it as fast as possible. Kes scrambled out of it as soon as it was fully open, grimacing. She tried to get to her feet but stopped and clutched at her calf, kneading it firmly with her hands. “Oh, hell,” Tim said repentantly. “A cramp, huh? Bad one.” He briefly left her to roll the suitcase over to the back of the bus stop, shoving it under the bushes. He’d hopefully be able to pick it up later, but if not he could always go back to the original plan of buying one if they needed to do this again. When he came back Kes was carefully testing her leg, walking in a slow deliberate circle: Tim hissed on seeing that her right arm, the one that had been against the back of the suitcase, was already darkening in a bruise. He’d just known that the big pothole had rattled her too much in there! “Oh, man, I’m sorry,” he fretted, inspecting that whole side of her body to see if there were any more injuries. “I don’t…I mean, there’s ice packs at home at least. I’m sorry, I wonder—”

Kes cut him off with a wave of her hand. She thought for a second, then turned so they were face-to-face and picked up both his hands in hers. Then, to his horror, she tilted her head back, lifted his hands to her throat, and closed her eyes. 

Tim’s brain, that could take a heap of disparate facts and turn them into a single theory, and Tim’s heart, that knew Kes, understood that she was trying to tell him that she trusted him with her life. The rest of Tim was horrified to the point of nausea—which, of course, was when Kes opened her eyes. The faint smile vanished off her face as she took him in and read the emotion off him: she dropped their hands and started to back away before Tim caught her. He wavered, hesitating, but really there was only one thing to do. He lifted her hands in mirror to what she had just done and put them around his own throat. 

Kes looked touched, but also conflicted, and also something he diagnosed as an ‘oh, shit’ kind of emotion. “Yeah!” he said, more than a little indignant. “Yeah! We don’t want that to be the ‘I trust you’ sign, that is terrible.” He mimed holding his own throat, then made a throwing-away gesture. Instead he stepped beside her and linked their elbows, their own personal sign meaning ‘Tim and Kes together’. Then, without giving himself enough time to think about it, he kissed her cheek. 

Kes actually squeaked, jolting away from him until their linked arms fetched her up short. “Better?” Tim said. She stared at him, then hesitantly stepped back close and kissed his cheek in return. Tim just knew he was blushing, but there was no point in doing so so he tried his best to stop. “I trust you with my life, because you would never hurt me. Just like I am not going to hurt you. OK?” 

He didn’t know how much she got from that, but she kissed his cheek one more time before gently unlinking their arms. She looked around in interest, seemingly fascinated to see the tallest things in view were trees. He led her to his bike, and let her inspect it. He hopped up on it, frowning, and pedaled a circle around her in case she’d never seen one in Gotham to know how it worked. “I dunno how we can ride together, I’ve seen on tv where someone rode on the handlebars but honestly I don’t know how well I’d balance with it. I’m still kinda new at this.” Kes did test the function of the handlebars before making a decision. She sat down in the dirt and pulled off her boots and socks (the socks were green with tiny rainbow lollipops), balling the socks up in the boots and tying the laces together. She hung them around her neck, then smoothly mounted up behind him somehow: he looked down and saw that her bare feet were firmly planted on the part of the frame that came down from the seat to hold the rear wheel. She squatted, holding him by the shoulders for stability, and he got the hint to get moving. 

When they reached the house, Tim had Kes hop off so he could also dismount. He wheeled the bike around back as she looked over the house like she was casing it. When they were at the back door, where there was a little patio and an overgrown garden that no one had bothered to do anything about yet, he let her in the back door. “Welcome!” he said brightly. Kes looked around as he kicked off his shoes by the back door: she started to put her boots down as well but he indicated that she should keep hold of them. “We’re trying to not let on you’re here,” he said wistfully. “Though it sure would be easier if it were just you and me! Here, let me show you—” he led her just down the hall to the kitchen. He let her look around, including showing her the fridge and the pantry. (after he did she also opened the oven and the dishwasher, then was clearly without a clue as to their purpose. Tim wasn’t allowed to use the oven and he hadn’t studied up on its safe operation yet so he didn't try and show her.) Then he pulled out the digital camera, and clicked through the last few days' photos before holding it up for her to see. In the surreptitiously-taken picture, Mrs Mac was standing at the sink doing dishes. Kes looked from the camera screen to the sink, clearly recognizing the location. “She’s here three days a week,” he told her, doing his best to explain in pantomime at the same time. “When she is, you have to hide, OK?” 

With a thumbs-up, Kes went to the door and waited for him. He led her back out, unable to stop himself babbling as they went: “It’s way too big down here, the bedrooms are upstairs-–there’s four of them, one for my parents and one for me and two guest bedrooms. Down here is the kitchen and dining room, office, and family room. There’s also a sitting room and sunroom at the side.” They went to the office, and Tim pulled out his lockpicks to quickly let them in to look around. “I’ll be in here a good bit, to use the computer, but I’m not supposed to be. Only Mrs Mac has a key, to dust once a week, so otherwise we will keep it locked.” He made sure she saw him engage the lock button before pulling it to. “This is the family room.” Kes again thoroughly went over the perimeter. She stopped in front of the tv, and madea kind of flash-flash gesture in front of it: Tim grabbed the remote and turned it on. Kes nodded when it turned on, and he guessed that she’d recognized it from shop windows—or maybe she’d seen them in people’s houses. Not like Tim had a leg to stand on to criticize her if she had. She watched the screen for just a moment, where some soap opera was on, but quickly lost interest. Tim turned it back on, and pulled her to the bookshelf in the corner. Kes wrinkled her nose at the books, and he rolled his eyes. “I know, I know, what did words ever do to you. That’s not the cool part.”

He opened the cabinet at the bottom of the shelves to reveal the stacks of boxes within. He pulled out the top one and showed her the colorful cover. “Puzzles!” He brought it over to the big coffee table and brought it out, then dumped out the pieces as she looked on in fascination. “See on the box, the picture on the front?” Flipping it over, the back showed the same image with several puzzle-piece-shaped holes in it. After she’d looked at that, he dug through the pile of pieces, flipping over several that were upside down so the colors were visible. “You see?”

Kes gave two thumbs-up, and tugged him around bossily to dig in her backpack that he was still wearing. After a minute she came out with the Rubik’s Cube, which he was delighted to see had three sides currently solved. She pointed to it then the table. “Exactly, they’re both puzzles. Cool, huh?” He set the box down, grinning. “My mom has a ton of them. These days she liked to take a glass of wine and do them herself, but back in the day we’d do them together. I was in charge of finding the edges. It will be fun to do it together!” Kes looked ready to sit down, but shook herself a little and went back into business mode. He led her to the other rooms on the ground floor, including both bathrooms—the appearance of which she met with delight. (the first one, she actually shoved him out the door and did her business. Tim was just glad she’d closed the door.) 

Upstairs, he very briefly showed her the master bedroom though they didn’t go in. Then the guest bedrooms with their shared toilet. “I’m sorry,” he said a little sadly, “I don’t think it’s safe for you to sleep in a guest bedroom even though I wanted you to have a bed to yourself. If you overslept or something and Mrs Mac found you we’d be done for.” Instead he took her to his door, which looked exactly like the others. He’d kind of wanted to hang something on his door like kids did in tv shows, but didn’t bother asking because he was sure his parents wouldn’t go for it. “And here is home sweet home!” He opened the door with a flourish. He went in first, dropping the backpack by the door, and stood in the center, rocking back and forth on his heels with excitement. “What do you think? Not bad, right? No one comes in here but me, so it’s safe! It’s usually kind of a wreck, so I cleaned up for you.” Kes wandered around, at first with the same investigatory prowling air, but after just a minute she seemed to relax and look at things more casually. She greeted his notebooks where they sat on his desk like they were old friends, then clicked his desk lamp off and on curiously. Next she inspected his comforter, stroking its softness gently, and his curtains, which were stiff and green. Tim hadn’t chosen them, but they were fine, he guessed. She inspected his dresser, pulling out the drawers and looking at the clothes, and the closet. She stood on his bed and inspected the air vent, which here at home was empty of contraband. Finally she looked up close at all the posters on his wall. She stopped at the one over his desk, a Monet print that Janet Drake had chosen but Tim actually kind of liked. Kes started smiling as she looked at it, and turned to smile at Tim, pointing at it. He smiled back, though he didn’t know what she was trying to say. 

Kes put her chin in her fist a bit, then went to her backpack and dug around again. She came up with two of her pairs of panties, the yellow one with the flowers and a purple tie-dye one. She held them up for him to see, pointing between them and the picture. “Oh!” Tim said, “--pretty! You mean the picture is pretty.” He tried the sign language gesture for ‘beautiful’, but Kes was already looking away, satisfied that he understood why she liked the picture.

Tim finally flopped down on the bed. “And the best part! A nice soft warm bed.” He pulled out the pillow and mimed sleeping. Kes experimentally squished the pillow, looking at the bed in interest. Tim scrambled across the big bed on his knees, leaning over its other side to grab the other pillow he’d squirreled away. “And one for you!” He gave her the pillow, deliberately closing her arms around it so she knew he was giving it to her. (Right now it just had a green pillowcase like his, but Tim had plans to get her some kind of bright flowery one when he could.) Kes beamed. Tim lay down, straight as a corpse in a coffin so show her where he usually slept, then scooted around to lie on the other side, head to foot-board. “You can sleep here! Head to toe, that’s how kids sleep at camp.” Tim had gone to summer camp once when he was six, and regrettably caused such an uproar (over things that weren’t even his fault) that he had never been sent to camp again. Kes hesitantly climbed up on the bed, looking at her knees as she sank in and leaning her right fist into it to watch it compress down. Tim linked their elbows. “What do you think?”

Kes actually laughed, out-loud like a normal kid, and lay down flat beside him. Tim squawked as their linked arms dragged him down, then laughed too. “Nice,” he said. “This is gonna be the best summer ever.”

Chapter Text

*****

Tim woke up to the rattle of his soundless alarm clock under his pillow. It was midnight, and he didn’t have any plans to go on any major excursions tonight but it was good to stick to a schedule—which was why he’d gone to sleep at six pm, even though Kes was then still sitting at his desk chair quietly solving her Rubik’s Cube. (Tim had been in charge of self-regulating his bedtime since he was six, which he had initially abused terribly and suffered from for about a month until it got through his thick head that if he had stuff to do the next day, he had better get to bed at a proportionally reasonable time. Presumably this had been his parent’s plan from the beginning.) When he woke up, Kes grumbled and popped up at the other end of the bed. Her bedhead was spectacular. She scrubbed sleep sand out of her eyes and shrugged at him. “We’re not going anywhere,” Tim told her lightly, “But since I wanna keep up a schedule anyway, I was gonna take some time to plan.” He rolled out of bed with a grunt, and Kes exited the other side much more gracefully. 

When they were downstairs, Tim headed to the family room but was stopped in the hallway as Kes instead tugged him towards the kitchen, miming eating. “Oh, sure! There’s packaged and microwaved stuff, and Mrs Mac comes in three times a week. She came in yesterday and made dinner and some extras. Let’s have some soup.” Kes had really liked the soup Tim had brought her in the thermos before. It didn’t take long at all to warm up, and Kes watched the microwave like someone who was used to them as a tool to prepare food; Tim made a mental note to add that fact to his Kestrel-Info notebook. When the soup was piping hot, Tim carefully poured it into two big mugs and pulled Kes to follow him into the family room. “Wanna work on the puzzle?”

Kes did want to work on the puzzle, though she never forgot to take regular sips of her soup. Tim drank part of his soup, then forgot about it because he got kind of into the puzzle: then it was lukewarm and he didn’t want to eat it. He stood up and Kes started to do the same before he waved her off. “I’m going to do stuff you’ll find boring.” He pointed to the bookshelf and mimed reading, an activity that Kes had so far been completely unable to understand the value of. “I’ll be back.” She understood, in general if not the specifics, and returned to the puzzle. Tim went to his dad’s office, grumbled to realize his lockpicks were still in last night’s pants, went up to get them, came back down, unlocked the door. Maybe he should get an extra set and hide them in the family room for easy access?

The computer booted up smoothly, and Tim plugged in his thumb drive and digital camera. For a while he fiddled in the graphics program to get what he wanted, arranging pictures in order, looking up some on the internet—although he tried not to use the internet on this computer too much, just in case something would track it and tip him off to his dad. He wasn’t too worried, because he diligently cleared the history and Jack did most of his work at the office, but still. Better safe than sorry! When he had everything as he wanted he hit ‘print’ and watched the laserjet chug to life. (He was kind of burning through the ink at an accelerated rate, but he was pretty sure there were several stores near Gotham U that sold office supplies where he could buy some with the ‘essentials’ credit card without making the exact nature of the purchase clear. Tim was really betting on his parents to not track those things too closely, as long as he didn’t spend money like water. He was pretty sure he’d bet right.) After the second page Kes appeared at the door, apparently drawn by the noise of the printer, and Tim waved at her. “Hi, Kes! Just printing off some stuff for us to plan with.” She investigated the printer and saw the pictures coming out: when the last one did she pulled out the whole set and passed them to him. “Thanks,” he said cheerfully, loading everything on the flash drive, wiping the history, and shutting down the computer. 

In the family room, he pulled out the box with his scrapbooking supplies. His parents had no interest in his habit of cutting out articles from newspapers, but they’d encouraged it (as a quiet and unobtrusive activity) by making sure he always had supplies. They were subscribed to six different newspapers, and when they were away Tim didn’t have to wait his turn to get at them! From the box he pulled out scissors, and spread out the papers to show Kes. “See everywhere there’s a white line in between pictures? That's where I’m gonna cut them apart. Wanna help?” She nodded and took the pages and scissors he gave her to the coffee table that didn’t have a puzzle all over it. Standing to join her, Tim stopped for a moment to enjoy the sight: the previous nights since his parents left had been so quiet that it was kind of creepy, but with Kes in the house the darkness in the corners of the room that lamplight didn’t reach felt cozy rather than suspicious. He sat down across from her, and in about half an hour they cut every piece out. And Kes drank the lukewarm remains of Tim's soup.

When everything was cut out Tim spread them out on the carpet as Kes lay on her belly and watched intently. “OK. So I did these for day and night.” He tapped the two half-sheets of paper, one with a photo of a bright sunny sky, and another of a dark cloudy night sky sprinkled with stars. “Day. Night.” He gave a thumbs-up to check for understanding and she returned it, nodding with what he thought was approval. He guessed that if, like Kes, you saw words as meaningless, it must be nice to have someone say things with nice sensible pictures. “Right, cool.” Underneath those papers he lined up all the smaller day/night images he’d printed out. “OK. We’ll call this one today…well, Tuesday. Technically it’s Wednesday now, but I’m not about to try and make you understand a clock and midnight.” He tapped the small day/night paper and pointed at the ground, then signed ‘Tim and Kes together’. She nodded and showed she understood. He carefully folded in the left side of the day/night paper, hiding half of ‘day’. He signed ‘Tim and Kes together’ again, then flipped it so only the folded half-day was visible and signed ‘Tim and Kes apart’. He looked anxiously as she puzzled that one out: he really needed her to get that he was representing half a day with half of the day papers or this was going to be way harder. If she got that they had only met when the day was part-way through…. 

After a moment of thought, she flattened out the paper, then folded the night side in half. She tapped the visible part, day and the first half of night, and pointed down at the ground. ‘Now’. Tim gave an enthusiastic thumbs up. “Yeah!” He lined up three day/night papers, and gestured. “Before. Now. Later. Got it?” She did get it, and she looked at the papers and at him with an interest that was nearly hunger. He lined up ten papers, and indicated the ‘today’ paper, then counted back seven days and signed ‘together’ again. He found the picture of a gas mask and the picture of food that he’d printed off, and put them above the day/night paper. “Right? Seven days ago, the previous Tuesday, I came to visit and brought you stuff.” Kes nodded, and mimed turning her Rubik’s cube over the gas mask and food pictures. “Yeah! Including the puzzle!” Tim had to get up on his knees and pump his fists in excitement. “Yes! We can talk about timelines and schedules now!” He beamed down at her and patted her shoulder rapidly. “You are so smart, Kes, we can totally make this work. You are getting it!”

She blinked at him, and dropped her eyes with a smile that he thought was almost shy. Tim thought he understood: if Kes ever told him that she was proud of him he might just evaporate into a fine mist. 

He cleared his throat and got back to work. He swept all the papers away to make a clean slate, and lined up seven more. He tapped the third and showed her that it represented today, and she gave thumbs-up. He found the small pictures of Mrs Mac and placed them over the second, fourth, and sixth ‘days’. “OK, so Mrs Mac comes Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.” He found the picture of his school and placed it over the seventh day. “I have Judo on Saturdays.” Kes indicated that she didn’t understand that one. He thought, chin in fist, for a moment, then stood up and pulled a small paperback off the shelf. He set it on the picture of his school and tapped his own chest then the book. She indicated understanding this time, though he was pretty sure all he’d gotten across was ‘Tim does something on that day that Kes has no use for in a building she doesn’t know’...but there was no helping it, because he was pretty sure if he tried to explain ‘judo classes’ she’d just think he was going to fight someone. Moving on. The pictures of Batman and Robin, which were semi-accurate artist’s renditions because there were sadly few clear pictures of either of them. (The news footage that had given Tim his big revelation had been retrieved from the security cameras in one of Two-Face’s abandoned lairs, and after the story aired some terrifyingly competent hacker had erased it from every possible database. Unless someone had it recorded on tape somewhere physically in their house.) He held the Batman-and-Robin pictures in his hand and shrugged, looking over the schedule. “When do you think we should do our expeditions?”

Kes mimed watching with binoculars to make sure she understood what he was asking, and he gave her a thumbs-up. She examined the schedule with a critical eye, and after a moment took one of the Batmans. She tapped the picture of Mrs Mac, and held up the Batman and shook her head no. “Right,” Tim nodded, “I have to be here when Mrs Mac is here.” He acted that out and Kes nodded absently. She found the picture of a bus in the assorted papers and indicated ‘Tim, Bus, Watching, Batman’. He gave her two thumbs up. He grabbed an unused day/night paper, a ‘Drake Manor’ paper, and a ‘Gotham City’ paper, and by folding ‘day’ to indicate the second half of the day he tried to show her that he had to ride the bus in the afternoon or evening to watch Batman at night. Kes looked even more thoughtful.

“So I can’t leave on days Mrs Mac is here. I thought maybe we can both go on Tuesday and Thursday, you can come late and meet me on Saturday after my classes? And Sunday we can just do stuff at home. In each case we can stay out all night and take the first bus home in the morning.” It took a bit of maneuvering to get that plan across with the various papers, but when he managed it Kes gave an approving nod and thumbs-up. “Great!” He slumped. “Now I just need to figure out how to get you there. Maybe disguises? Dropping you off with my bike at a further stop? I can’t be seen coming and going with you multiple times a week, if someone says something about it to Mrs Mac or my parents the cat is out of the bag. They say people are really nosy out in the country.” He let his head drop into his hands. “I have to keep you a secret from my parents. And, to be honest, I want to keep you secret overall—something tells me that as much as I wish that all the…” Tim may have had polite language drilled into him but there was only one appropriate word: “...the assholes who hurt you were dead and gone, you are probably still hiding for good reasons. The cap makes it hard to catch your face on cameras if someone is looking for you specifically in Gotham, but still. If me figuring out Batman’s secret taught me anything, is that it takes just one slip for a whoooooole lot of dominoes to fall into place, and I am not going to be the one to get you caught.” 

Kes made her ‘blah blah blah’ hand gesture and hauled him upright. She kissed his cheek noisily, and started herding him back to the table with the puzzle, and Tim laughed. “Yeah, yeah, okay. We’ll get there when we get there. It’s not even three am yet, we don’t need to go back to sleep until four. I bet we can finish the puzzle by then.”

Chapter Text

*****

The alarm went off for the second time at 7am, and with a total of nine hours of sleep under his belt he felt positively swimming in energy. He sat up, yawning, then squawked and flailed and fell out of bed. 

Kes, like she hadn’t caused this problem by staring at him fixedly from six inches away, chortled. Tim dug his way out of the fallen coverlet and glared at her. He stuck his tongue out at her, then gave up the grudge, stretching. “Fine, fine. Time for breakfast.” Cereal for breakfast: Tim had frosted corn flakes and Kes had a bit of every type in the kitchen. When they were done eating, Tim carefully washed and dried both bowls and spoons and put them away. “C’mon, Mrs Mac comes at eleven so we’ve got a few hours.” In the family room, Kes admired their completed puzzle while Tim dug around in the bookcase. He found the big folded map of Gotham without too much trouble, and Kes looked over it with interest. She traced her hand all over it, then shrugged at Tim. “Where are we?” He found the right spot on the map in Bristol, and tapped it for Kes to see. He made grabby hands at the envelope of pictures from last night, and she brought it over: he found the bus picture and traced the route they’d taken the previous day to get here. She looked closely at the map, and found a spot. She looked at him to make sure he was paying attention, then mimed curling up and closing the lid of the suitcase over her. Tim nodded furiously. “Yeah! That’s where you got in.” He peered a little closer and whistled, impressed. “That’s exactly where. Dang. Adding ‘map reading’ to your skills immediately.” Once she had those points memorized, Ked unerringly found and pointed out all their observation sites. After those she pointed out the location of his school and shrugged at him. 

“My boarding school,” he told her, and found the picture of it in the envelope. She indicated her understanding, and then used the day/night papers and the bus papers to ask him if they were going to ride the bus there tomorrow. Tim winced.

“That’s the part we have to decide. I’m not sure if it’s safe for us to just ride my bike to the stop together and ride the bus together, you know?” She got something out of that, though he didn’t know how, and her narrowed eyes scoured the map again. After a minute she tapped and traced another series of lines in the map. 

“Oh those are train tracks!” Tim dug through the envelope to find the picture of the train—he’d printed all kinds of landmarks related to Gotham, from pictures of the docks to the boats to the Clocktower to the gated bridge to Arkham Asylum. Kes checked to make sure he was saying that the lines were tracks for the trains, and tapped the train picture then her chest, then the bus picture and Tim’s. “You’ll take the train and me the bus?” Tim frowned. “It’s not a passenger line though, Kes, it’s for cargo. That’s why it runs near the docks. And you still have to be sneaky.” 

Kes shook her head, and he was pretty sure she was a little frustrated because he wasn’t understanding her. After a moment of thought, chin in hand, she pointed to the train picture and the couch. She waited for his nod then melted into the background of the family room. After a moment, she snuck up on the couch super quietly and then hooked her hands over the arm of it, planting her feet against the side and hanging off.

Tim got it, though it was kind of a scary thought. “You think you can hop the train?” He tried to think of the course the train took. He had seen it in the distance once at the beginning of summer, riding in his parent’s car to go to a restaurant: he did remember that it didn’t go very fast when it crossed through residential areas. His dad had actually complained about getting stuck at a crossing if he left for work at this or that hour. And of course Tim knew when it arrived in Gotham since Batman accounted for it in his patrol routes: Wednesday through Saturday, around ten in the morning. Trying to picture Kes hopping even a slow-moving train still made him feel kind of terrified, but he tried to think of things objectively. He looked at Kes, who was staring at him pointedly. “You really think you can?” Kes drew herself up straight. She flexed her arm to show the wiry muscles in it, then boxed the air a couple times. Then she stood up, pulling him up with her, and put her hand on top of her head before gesturing forward with it to indicate the two-or-three-inch difference in their heights.

“Hey!” Tim groused, but it did make him feel better. “OK, OK, you’re older and tougher than me and you know your own strength. Message received.” He frowned at the map. “Now we gotta work out where to rendezvous. Is there maybe a branch library between the docks and the bus terminal?”

(There was)

**

Tim sat on the bench outside the library and picked yet another leaf out of his hair. He and Kes had found a good route through the woods to get to the spot where she could hop the train, but going both there and then to the bus stop had been a lot more nature than he was used to. It had been really cool seeing Kes hop the train though, and even though it had made Tim more than a little nervous he had also had the thought while on the bus that it had been a really good sign. If Kes had experience hopping trains then she was probably not from Gotham originally, and maybe the people who had hurt her were far far away. Not a reason to stop being careful, but definitely a load off his mind. 

A pebble was kicked into his shin, and Tim started. “Oh! Hi!” Kes grinned at him and plonked down on the bench next to him. “I’m glad you made it in safe.” Looking at her still gave him a moment of pause: he'd tried to trim her hair more neatly yesterday, and cut too much on one side and then the other and then the other until her hair was barely past her ears and he gave up making it perfectly even lest she end up with a buzz cut. It looked cute, he guessed, especially under her ball cap. He jerked his thumb towards the library. “Wanna go inside?” 

It was a smallish branch library in Uptown, so it was nothing to write home about: but it still had a better selection than Tim would have thought. (Probably soon to be even better, since just this month Bruce Wayne had made a big library donation in honor of his new ward, who was apparently a big reader.) Kes looked around in interest, and Tim held her hand because an odd thing he had realized over the past year or so is that a pack of unaccompanied minors is suspicious, and a single one is suspicious, but two together somehow seemed to disarm concern. “It’s mostly books, but they have CDs and movies and stuff too,” he told her quietly. “And it’s air-conditioned, feel? It’s a good place to be if you don’t have money. I should point out libraries on the map for you so you know where they are.” The customer service desk was right in the middle, and Tim stepped up and stood on his tiptoes to see better over the counter. “Hello.”

“Hello,” the librarian greeted after a moment. He was a stocky older Asian man who looked at them over his glasses like a stereotypical librarian. “Can I help you?”

“Yessir,” Tim said. His palms were prickling with sweat as he dug his notebook out from his bag and pulled the postcard and money from it. “You need $5 dollars and a piece of mail with your name and address on it to get a library card, right?”

“You sure do.” The librarian picked up the postcard and flipped it over. “Timothy Draper?”

Tim nodded, his heart in his throat. “Yessir.” When he’d started thinking that it would be good to not go around introducing himself as Timothy Drake he’d tried to figure out a way to get a fake ID. His first thought was to sneak into the school office and fake one up, but one with the name of his school wouldn’t exactly make him hard to find, even if it had a different name on it. It was a moment’s insight like a flash of lightning that had made him check some of the postcards from his parents that were in his school books, and one of them had been sent to the dorm simply addressed to ‘Timothy’. Tim was still working on being able to effectively forge signatures–he figured if he could really master it it would be a pretty good racket, signing slips and things for other kids who were willing to pay him money–but he’d given a good try at faking his father’s handwriting in order to add a last name. 

If only the librarian would buy it.

“Okay,” the man said easily, turning to his computer with the postcard and five-dollar-bill and beginning to bring up a program. “Everything looks good, Timothy, let’s get you a card.”

“Oh, Tim is fine,” Tim said, so gooshy with relief that his voice sounded overly bright to his own ears. “Thank you, mister!”

Chapter Text

After Tim got over the mingled triumph—at acquiring his ‘fake ID’ library card—and humiliation—for calling someone ‘mister’ like he was a newsie in a pageboy cap from the 40s—he sat down with Kes at one of the study tables and pulled out his envelope of pictures. Last night, in their waking midnight hours at home, he’d printed more pictures and they’d cut them out together and ‘laminated’ everything with packing tape, so now Tim and Kes each had a set. He used the computer and book pictures and the day/night pictures to tell Kes that he was going to be here until it got dark (so another seven or eight hours), and then tapped her breast bone and shrugged, asking what she intended to do. “You’re welcome here,” he said, hoping that she would understand. “Like I said, it’s a free place to be with A/C, you can just hang out near me and nap if you want to.”

Kes thought for a minute before miming an unfolding action. Tim dug out the big map of Gotham and spread it out over the table as best he could—about a third of it rode up against the wall. Kes located the branch library near Sheldon park and tapped it and Tim, and he gave a thumbs-up to confirm. Then she carefully looked over the whole map, then tapped her own chest and…the sewage treatment plant? 

“Why on earth would you want to go there?”

She dug out the picture of Drake Manor, and tapped Tim, then gestured between herself and the map and mimed sleep. “Oh!” Tim blurted. “You sleep there! It’s your home base, or whatever.” He thought about it for a second, because a sewage treatment plant would have been nowhere on his list of places to sleep if he was homeless but Kestrel was too smart for it to be a bad choice. Well, the fact that it wasn’t an obvious choice was already a point in its favor for going unnoticed—the people who slept under overpasses and bridges got cleared out with depressing regularity. He supposed that with Kes’ ability to climb, maneuver, and hide she could get into spots most people couldn’t. Then the real genius of it hit him and he slapped his own forehead. “Oh! Kes, you’re the smartest!” Gotham’s rotating cast of thugs and rogues held nothing sacred, and churches and schools were as much at risk as banks and power stations: but as Tim thought about it, the only person who would potentially mess with the sewage treatment plant was Killer Croc. Even villains gotta take a dump, and surely nobody wanted to live in a hideout with toilets that didn’t flush. He’d have to try and look up later if the plant had ever been attacked, but if so it wasn’t in the last couple of years.

Tim stared at Kes in pure admiration. “Kestrel, I want to be you when I grow up.” Kes gently hooked her arm around his neck and gave him a noogie, which was new, but he still saw her shy, happy smile. When she let him go she had schooled her face again, but he could still tell she was pleased. “When will you get back?” He did a time countdown on his fingers and shrugged, and Kes shrugged back, before using a day/night paper to show him that she would be back before dark. “OK,” he agreed, and impulsively hugged her. (These last few months with Kes as a friend had had more hugs in them than the last few years. Tim was getting kinda spoiled.) She hugged back just as tightly. She pointed at the plant again, and acted out picking up different things and putting them in her pack: then she traced out a route through Uptown and Midcity that ended back here, showing him that she would be looking around. Tim nodded a final time. “Have fun, I guess!”

First things first: time to reserve a computer. They were available in hour-long time slots, and as Tim added himself to the digital list he saw that the first slot was almost an hour away. In the mean time, he took a quick glance at the directory to remind himself which segments were where each topic was. He got another sign language book, first. He had kind of given up on it being the key to talk to Kes, and it was too complicated for him to learn it fluently from books, but he figured memorizing a bunch of vocabulary wouldn’t hurt anyone. Then a couple of computer science books, and a few on architecture and building codes and the like. Kids’ library cards had a limit of ten books at a time, and he was thinking about getting some comics when he took a second glance at the list of subjects on the endcap and stopped. Under the Dewey Decimal number 362, there was half a shelf full of books about abuse. Tim hesitated over them, picking up one and putting it back without even reading the flap, putting another back when a brief scan revealed something like a college textbook. But right in the middle was a book in dark blue, whose plastic cover crinkled when he opened it, called “Healing Hearts: Helping Your Foster Child Recover From Abuse”. He read the inner flap and almost lost his nerve, but shoved it on top of his small stack of books and left the aisle before he could change his mind. 

It was still a while until his computer reservation opened up (the library had buzzers like some casual restaurants had, and it was supposed to buzz when his slot was free) so Tim went to the front desk and sat his stack of books down along with his brand new library card—“Timothy Draper” it read in the librarian’s neat handwriting, the ink protected with a strip of clear tape. The librarian greeted him distractedly and started scanning his books. She stopped when she got to the dark blue one and Tim mentally winced. “This is…ah, this isn’t really a kid’s book, honey.”

Tim firmed his jaw. In the walk up here he’d made up his mind and now there was no way he would give it up, even if it risked making him look suspicious. “I have a new sister,” he said to the ground. “You know. Her old place was, you know, really bad. I want to help. I have a high reading level.” When he chanced a peek up the librarian’s stiffness had faded, and she simply looked old and tired.

“If you’re sure.” She scanned them all, and passed them back to him. “Hey,” she added, when he started to step away. “I think it’s really cool that you want to help your new sister, sweetheart.”

Tim nodded and paused. “Do you know…I mean, I’m interested in architecture.” He held up one of the books to support his point. “How do I find stuff like blueprints and building plans and stuff? Like, if I had them for my school I could compare what they look like on the plans to real life and understand them better.”

“Oh,” the librarian said, looking pleased. “You can’t find blueprints for every building, but both plans and building permits are found at the Municipal Clerk’s office.”

“Is it hard to get them?”

“Not necessarily,” she said. “But it costs money to pull them—and like I said, you can’t get everything.” He wilted a little at that, and she thought a second. “There’s actually a…oh, what’s it called. There’s a website for the Gotham Historical Society—I think that’s literally their name, or maybe there’s a part I don’t remember. But you should be able to search for them on the internet and they will usually have blueprints for some of our landmarks and historical buildings.”

“Thank you!” Tim said sincerely. “That is very helpful.” He knew plenty of basics from his nighttime expeditions, but he really wanted to learn more details that would help him navigate the city…and of course, he had to find somewhere for Kes to stay for once the school year started. In an example of beautiful timing, his buzzer lit up, and he waved it for the librarian to see. “I know what I’m looking up first!”

***

“The library will be closing in fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes til the library closes. Please, bring all your selections to the front desk and check out now. The library will—”

Tim jerked awake in the chair with a flail that sent the book on the table thudding into his lap. He blinked, wildly disoriented, and saw Kes in the seat across from him also waking up reluctantly. The clock on the wall said a quarter to eight and Tim groaned, scrubbing at his head and trying to wake up fully. Last thing he remembered it was five or six, he’d just eaten a granola-bar dinner and started reading one of the computer science books: clearly at some point he’d dozed off. He was gonna have to work out the schedule for sleep, when it came to these all-night summer observation trips. “Hi Kes,” he said, clearing his throat when it came out kind of garbled. “Hi. You good?”

She pulled her backpack up onto the table and unzipped it partially, showing him what was inside. Tim gasped, and physically covered his mouth until he was sure he could be quiet. “Holy crap,” he whispered. “Those are some of Batman’s, right? Or maybe Robin’s!” Inside the pack were two grapples, each with a frayed bit of cable at the base that looked like it had been sawed off. Usually Batman and Robin’s grapples would return to the grapple gun as they retracted them at carefully timed points of the swing, but one time Tim had seen something go wrong that made Batman instead detach the cable from the gun and fire a new line from a backup grapple gun. The fact that he had a backup indicated that that was just something that happened sometimes, but somehow it had never occurred to Tim to try and find one of those shed pieces of equipment. People did collect stuff when they could—every now and then some street seller would have one or a couple batarangs for sale—but usually Batman and Robin cleaned up after themselves very well. “You have two of them?”

Kes thought for a moment, then held up five fingers. 

“You have five?” Tim hissed. This was fantastic. “What do you have them for, climbing?”

She dug in her envelope of pictures and came up with the bus picture. She did a motion with a cupped hand indicating first the top and then the bottom of the bus, and hooking her fingers she mimed laying back and holding something above her head.

“You are going to hang under the bus to ride home at the same time as me,” Tim said. He sighed, kind of delighted and kind of resigned. “Of course you are. Mission Impossible Kes.”

Kes gave him a thumbs up and stood, zipping up her pack and shouldering it with a pointed look at him. 

“OK,” he said, shoving the architecture book in his pack with the others. “Let’s get a move on!”

Chapter Text

***

After taking the first bus home Friday (with Kes clinging to the underside, like, Tim was starting to lean towards the idea that she had powers other than empathy) they collapsed into bed and slept until Mrs Mac called up the stairs that she had arrived and Tim had to pretend that he hadn’t just woken up. (he still wasn't sure Mrs Mac liked him very much, but she’d been impressed at his early bedtime and he didn’t want to wreck the one thing he had going for him) He had eaten the lunch she made for him, then pretended to need her advice on something to get her out of the kitchen so Kes could slip in and grab the leftovers for herself. He’d gotten away from Mrs Mac when she pulled on big flowery gloves to trim the bushes out back, and then set himself to the task of entertaining Kes in his room without making any suspicious noise. 

He had never realized how much stuff that you could do for fun was dependent on understanding and reading English. Kes had no interest in books, even if he read aloud, which of course made sense. She did like puzzles, so Tim grabbed one on his way up the stairs for them to work on. His parents played board games sometimes, so there were a couple in the family room: if he could figure out which ones didn’t require reading maybe Kes would like the strategy. (there was also a really nice chess set in the sitting room, but Tim’s mom had tried to teach him chess when he was six and given up when he just didn’t get it. He probably could figure it out now but it kind of had a stink on it after that.) Tonight they could use the tv, maybe, and see how she liked that: there were some movies on disc if there was nothing good on. What Tim really wanted to have was a game console. He’d asked his parents for a Playstation when he was six, and they had said no: Janet explained that too much video gaming rotted kid’s brains, but if he proved his maturity and good sense then he could ask them again when he was 12 and they would reconsider. If he had a gaming system, something told him that he and Kes could play MarioKart or Smash Brothers for hours.  

He did have a Nintendo DS, that his parents let him have since it was a quiet individual activity. They had given it to him with a curated selection of educational games, and at school Tim had traded four of them for Dragon Quest and then bought someone’s copy of Pokemon for two History papers. There were still some puzzle games, and after he showed her how to play it Kes was absolutely absorbed in Tetris for over an hour while Tim studied one of the architecture books. She did get bored of it eventually, and announced that fact by dropping the DS on his back where he was reading on his bed. “Hey!” he protested. She rolled her eyes and sat on him. “Gerrof,” he growled, then they both froze at a knock on his bedroom door.

“Tim, dear? Do you have any laundry in there, I’m about to start a load.”

Silently, Kes rolled off him and hid behind the far side of the bed. “Yeah, just a second!” Tim called, and picked up last night’s clothes from the floor. He opened the door, not too far, and stepped out, handing her the clothes. He caught her curious glance into his room, but she didn’t pry: Tim’s parents had been very firm that their son’s room was his private space and not to be invaded. (It was one of the things he was most grateful to his parents for. He had heard horror stories from the other kids at school about their parents going through their rooms and investigating their stuff all the time, while Tim’s parents had left his alone since he was old enough to dress himself, except for occasional visual inspections from the doorway to make sure there wasn’t any abandoned snacks attracting ants or anything. He did have to clean it himself, but he considered that a fair trade-off.) “Mrs Mac, I’m thinking of going out back to the woods for a while before dinner.”

“Of course you’ll be making more dirty clothes just as I’m washing them,” she sighed, but she looked oddly pleased. “Still, playing in the woods is a good and natural thing for a little boy to do. Don’t go too far to hear me calling you for dinner, Timothy.” 

“Sure,” he said, and went back into his room. “Kes!” he hissed, and her head popped up from the other side of the bed. “Come on, let’s go outside!”

He preceded her all down the stairs and out the back, making sure Mrs Mac was safely occupied in the laundry room, and then she smirked at him and sprinted for the treeline. Tim wanted to yell about what an obvious cheat that was, but choked it back so the housekeeper wouldn’t hear. He ran after her as fast as he could, but of course when he got into the trees she was there leaning against one and affecting an exaggerated bored look. “You suck,” he told her, kicking a spray of forest debris at her. She laughed silently, then looked at him and shrugged. Tim shrugged back. “I dunno, I’ve been in the woods a couple of times for camping and stuff but I don't really know what to do. Let’s just look around.”

It was a little hot, but nothing unbearable while under the shade of the trees. Tim wandered, and Kes wandered after him. Honestly he had to admit that the environment was interesting. Not as interesting as Gotham, but better than the house. Kes stopped him to point out a snake: they both hung back and watched it in fascination. It was swallowing something—a mouse or chipmunk, maybe?--and the lump traveled slowly down its gullet. “Cool,” Tim whispered, grossed out but in a fascinated way. He didn’t realize at first, but when he turned to look at her he saw that Kes watched it with her stony blank face on. He didn’t know what that meant, if she was just thinking or feeling sorry for the mouse or fascinated by the snake, but he didn’t say anything else until she blinked and stepped away, going in the other direction from the snake and its meal. Tim followed her this time, her path a lot more deliberate than his. He did get distracted though by a tree that looked extremely climbable, and Tim had his foot up on the lowest branch before he hardly realized what he was doing. Kes watched him, and he pulled himself up, looking for the next foothold. After he was about six feet up she joined him in the tree and they climbed together, high enough that if Tim hadn’t been acquainting himself with rooftops on a regular basis this year it might have made him a little dizzy. 

Then he did get dizzy as Kes, a little bit higher than him, shifted her weight deliberately to make the entire top of the tree start to sway back and forth. “None for me, thanks,” Tim said, and started climbing down. In a flash she was descending, opposite him and twice as fast, and his competitive side surged up until they were both almost falling down the tree with how fast they went. They landed at almost the same time and Tim thudded onto his butt in the dirt. He laughed. “That was like the scene in Jurassic Park.”

Kes laughed too, then picked another tree in the area: this one was not perfectly designed for climbing, since branches didn’t start until about fifteen feet up. Undaunted, she started to scale it like a monkey as Tim watched in admiration. He approached a similar tree and tried to copy her. “How…do you make this….look…so easy!” He got about a foot up and slid down. “Hell.” Kes laughed, but she scrambled back down her old tree and came to pat him on the head. She pointed from herself to the tree, then from him to herself, and made a sweeping gesture that he didn’t really understand. “You’ll teach me?” he guessed, and stood up, brushing leaves off his butt. “Okay, professor, I’m ready to learn!”

He had been right about this being the best summer ever, and they were just three weeks into it!

Chapter Text

****

The first week of Kes living with Tim had admittedly been a little hectic, what with all the schedule complexities and new routines and habits, but the second had gone so smoothly that when Tim fell into his bed at 6:30 am Sunday morning after taking the first bus home it was with a smile on his face. He woke up peacefully around noon, mostly because he was hungry, and sat up and scratched his head and smiled at Kes where she sat across from him in the green-striped pajamas that used to be his. “Good morning!”

Kes waved at him, but also straightened the coverlet between them and pulled out her envelope of pictures. Tim sat up straight. She laid out seven day/night pictures, and used the pictures of Mrs Mac and Batman and Tim’s school to lay out the schedule like they had been following. Tim nodded and gave her a thumb-up. Kes then wiped that out and reset it. She used the Mrs Mac and Batman and school pictures like before, but then set out the train and Gotham city pictures above the days of the week. After checking to make sure Tim was paying attention, she held the train and city pictures together in two fingers, slightly spread like a hand of cards. She tapped her own chest, then the pictures, then the fourth and sixth days.

Tim felt an uneasy crawl down his spine. He repeated her motions, but tapped all the days Wednesday through Saturday, which she gave a thumbs-up to. “OK,” he said slowly. “OK. So you want to go to Gotham on all the days the trains run there. OK.” He then tapped his own chest and shrugged.

Kes replaced the train picture in her hand with a bus picture. She tapped Tim, the pictures, and then the schedule on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. 

“Oh,” Tim said, a little roughly. “I mean, of course, you can do what you want. Will you watch Batman on those two extra nights?” He asked the question with the papers, and Kes nodded, shrugged, and shook her head in quick succession. She found the paper with a picture of binoculars and held it over Wednesday and Friday, then to the side where there were no pictures she traced long winding paths on the coverlet. He nodded. It made sense. She was probably bored here compared to being able to look at everyone and everything in Gotham, so it made sense for her not to be here on the days he had to stay in because of Mrs Mac. “Will you be okay?” he asked when he was sure he could do so without doing something stupid like tearing up (for no good reason! It wasn’t like she was ditching him!). He mimed ‘Tim and Kes apart’, touched the picture of Gotham, pulled around his pillow and squished it and mimed sleep. Kes snorted. She tapped Tim on his breastbone, almost bruisingly hard, and then folded the Tuesday-Thursday-Saturday papers so only night showed. She pointed at him again and mimed throwing away the pillow.

Tim had it in him to laugh a little. “Yeah, yeah. I don’t exactly sleep comfortably through the night on those days either. Point taken.” He looked down at the pictures, nudged the train picture absently, then made himself meet her eyes. “I’ll miss you on those days, is all.”

Kes looked at him evenly for a moment. She neatly packed away her pictures, and gestured for him to scoot closer to her on the coverlet. When they were nearly knee-to-knee she lunged at him and his back hit the mattress with an oof. “Kes!” She squirmed on top of him into a more covering position, squishing him down into the mattress like an extra-heavy weighted blanket. She linked their elbows, tricky to do with her lying on top of him, and kissed his cheek. She presented her own cheek to be kissed and he did, feeling a little teary but also smiling. She gently head-butted him then rolled over and elbowed her way upward (completely ignoring his protests) until her butt was planted firmly in his gut and her back squished his head. “You are so weird,” he complained. 

He didn’t actually try to move her, though.

It was weirdly peaceful, lying in bed with nowhere to be, with Kes’ weight gently holding him down. He talked himself through his unreasonable upset, and tried to remind himself that it was good, actually, for them to not be together all the time. When he was five, and he had woken up from deep sleep shattered by a nightmare of how red the dirt had been at the circus that day, he had tried to crawl into his parent’s bed. Janet had led him down to the kitchen and made him warm milk with cinnamon: and as he drank it she had gently and patiently explained to him about codependency, and how dangerously it could sneak up on people and ruin their relationships, and how she knew her bright and independent boy could stand on his own two feet. The next time he’d had a nightmare he’d warmed milk in the microwave himself, though he couldn’t reach the cinnamon: and even though he had forgotten to put the mug in the sink, when his mom saw it in the morning instead of scolding him she had kissed his head and made sure there were extra blueberries in his pancake. So it was good, honestly, to be sure that he and Kes weren’t always together. 

Besides, even though they hadn’t been friends for that long, he knew Kes better than he had known anyone else in his whole life. When he really thought about it, with his brain and not other treacherous chest-dwelling organs, he could not think of any logical reason to be worried. Kes was tough, and smart, and while Tim did his best to help her she didn’t need him, not really; but she kept coming back to him anyway. He decided to trust that that was something that wasn’t going to change.

Chapter Text

Kes’ first Wednesday away stressed Tim out so much he did more pacing than studying. He got some stuff done, including risking a bit of research in his dad’s office, and he carefully planned and packed food to bring since Kes probably wouldn’t have had anything but protein bars—he’d given her some of their remaining cash, but he didn’t think she’d try and buy food without him. On Thursday, he left on the very first bus to Gotham rather than the one after lunch. Kes had explained that she would meet him at the secondary Thursday site after dark, so Tim had…quite a few hours. More than enough to do what last night’s research had been about.

Getting off the bus at the Gotham U stop was easy, but actually finding the library was a bit more of a struggle. The campus was maze-like, but eventually he found it: you needed a guest pass or student ID, so Tim went straight to the front desk and politely waited to be acknowledged. When the staffperson looked up, Tim smiled at him guilelessly. “Hello. I’m supposed to meet Mandy Talwar here for tutoring? Is she in? I was afraid I had wrote the day and time down wrong.”

“Well, Mandy is here, but she’s on shift, so you probably did write down the time wrong,” he said, already pulling out a guest pass and handing it over the desk to Tim. “She’s shelving over in Foreign Language if you want to say hi and ask her when your session will be.” He looked pleased. “Good for her starting tutoring. Mandy doesn’t get out enough.”

Right! That was partly why Tim had picked her. “Thank you!”

In the Foreign Languages section there was only one book cart, being pushed by a stout young woman with brown skin and very long dark hair in a single sleek braid. Her eyebrows raised when she looked up and saw a kid, and she said, “Can I help you?”

“I hope so,” Tim said. He stood with his hands politely folded in front of him like his parents had taught. “I go to this really strict boarding school. I am gonna take computer science in the fall semester so I’ll be able to access the computer lab, and I want to be able to use the internet and other programs without them tracking everything. I was hoping you could teach me how.”

Her arms sagged, the book in them resting back on the cart. “...excuse me?”

“Gotham U posts their grades publicly,” Tim said diffidently, “And yours were in the top ten in all the computer-related freshman classes. They also list the staff at their facilities so I saw you worked here. It’s not rocket science.” Their SNS also posted snapshots from all club activities, and she wasn’t in any of them. He’d scrolled through the whole last year to check, since someone who was busy was sure to turn him down.

Mandy stared at him for a second longer, then put the book back on the shelf. “...it’s still kind of creepy, kid.”

“I’m Tim,” Tim offered.

“If you don’t want people to know what you searched, delete your browser history. I’m not gonna teach you how to sneak-view porn on your school computers, Tim.”

“Ew,” Tim said sincerely. “No. Ew. I want to write SCP articles and read Lord of the Rings fanfiction. And self-study making my own programs. I know how to clear history, but if they’ve got…what do you call it…a keylogger or whatever, I’m hosed. And they try and control our everything.”

Her head slowly thudded against the bookshelf in front of her.

“I’m not asking for a favor!” He continued hastily. “I looked up the going rate for tutoring and it’s $15 an hour. I don’t get my allowance until next week but I have an extra bus pass with $50 on it.” He held up the pass to show her: he’d bought it originally to give to Kes before he decided it was safer for her not to ride the bus with him. “So that’s good for at least a couple hours, right? I promise I’m a quick learner.”

“Why do I not doubt that,” she muttered, and crossed her arms as she frowned at him. “Why me,” she said abruptly. 

“You were the only girl in the top ten and college age guys are assholes,” Tim answered promptly, and Mandy spluttered a surprised laugh.

“Ah, hell.”

She still looked a little uncertain, so Tim said, “The guy at the front desk was really happy to hear that you were tutoring a kid. You could build goodwill with your supervisor by helping me.”

“You are a weird freaking kid, little man,” Mandy said, but she sounded more amused than annoyed now. “OK. Sure. How could I turn down some extra money to corrupt the youth into lawbreaking hackers, I guess.”

“I don’t need to be a hacker,” Tim said. He kind of did, but now was not the time. “I just need to be able to do things without Mrs Redfern saying my soul is in danger and calling my parents to report me.” He frowned belatedly. “But if you’re gonna call me ‘little man’ you gotta give me a discount. A guy’s gotta have some dignity.”

“Sure, Short Round,” she said dismissively. “Now scoot your boot. I work until three, then I guess we can do a lesson if you really want.” 

“Awesome,” Tim said brightly. “I’ll just read something while I wait! Where is the ‘local history’ section, please?

***

The ragged curtains in the window of the derelict restaurant fluttered, and Kes was standing in them. Tim resisted the urge to shout, and instead just waved furiously at her. She danced over to him and stood at his side, linking their arms. “Hi, Kes!” he said quietly. “I missed you!” She knocked her head against his, and he was pretty sure she had missed him too (at least a little). He tugged her over to the un-windowed wall—away from the center of the floor because that was the part that was collapsed—and plunked down. “Show me what you’ve been up to?”

When he unfolded the map on the floor she looked pleased and focused. She traced a full route through Uptown and Midcity, at one point circling her finger around the sewage treatment plant (probably to indicate that she’d slept there) before finishing the route. “Cool,” he said. “Did you see anything interesting?” He found and pulled out the Batman picture and shrugged. She shook her head, and just mimed looking around with mildly interested expressions and more shrugs. But after that she unshouldered her backpack, and digging around in it for a minute she presented him a broken radio. Tim was briefly confused, but said “Thanks!” sincerely and began poking at the piece. After a second it occurred to him that Kes had remembered him finding the broken cell phone under the railroad tracks last week, and had decided that he liked small broken electronics. 

Fortunately, Tim did like broken electronics! It was fun to poke around inside them, and he’d been banned from doing so at home when he took apart a hand-cranked flashlight several years ago and broke it permanently. He spent several enjoyable minutes fiddling with it, trying to see what went where and which wires were broken, while Kes watched over his shoulder. 

At some point she tapped his shoulder to get his attention and moved back to the windows: Tim had no idea how she mentally tracked time without having a clock to read, but she was usually really accurate so it was probably time for Batman to pass by here on patrol. It was a little cloudy tonight, so harder to see than usual, but they still were able to see him as he swung up onto the top of the old church across the street. Tim looked through the binoculars, carefully holding them as Kes had taught him to make sure no reflection of the lens would be visible, and was relieved that Batman appeared to be moving smoothly, with no sign of injury or other issue. He was more careful than he had been right after Robin left Gotham, so Tim guessed he had gotten used to the new normal of patrolling by himself. Or maybe Jason didn’t know he was Batman, so he had to be extra careful not to have suspicious injuries? Either way, it was a relief. After a minute of carefully observing the area Batman ran easily across the peak of the roof before jumping off and grappling away. As soon as he was out of sight it was time to move on to the next spot, and Kes slipped out of the window and clambered down the wall. Tim should have darted straight for the stairs but he leaned out a little first to watch her go down: he really needed to learn to do that. It was cramping their style that he always needed a ladder or fire escape or something. Maybe they could practice by trying to climb the walls of Drake Manor?

“Add it to the list,” Tim said to himself, and darted for the stairs. 

Chapter Text

*****

After his restless night and early morning Tim’s tank was running on empty before the night was through. Usually Batman patrolled between 11pm and 4am, more or less depending on the night and what else was going on: Tim crapped out around 2 and he and Kes holed up in one of their safer boltholes in Uptown’s Burnley—a very clean basement space with a very pickable lock under a burned-out husk of a bank. Tim turned on his phone to set an alarm, and he and Kes curled together like a Yin-Yang symbol, heads resting on the other’s legs and quite cozy and comfortable. Tim’s alarm went off around seven and he woke up quickly. He had until the 9:30 bus to get back to Bristol in time to not tip off Mrs Mac, so he took a little while with their map and communication-pictures to get an outline of Kes’ plan for the rest of Friday and arrange their meeting for Saturday after his judo class. He left more than three meals worth of food with her, and with her friendly face at his back he scurried off to the bus station. (It would have been quickest to cut through Crime Alley but Tim was confident, not stupid. He took the longer way around.)

He got back to Drake manor in plenty of time and took a quick shower. When Mrs Mac came he was in the living room, lying on the rug with the tv on in the background and a book open in front of him. It was an old coffee-table-book size hardback called ‘The Busy Boy’s Activity Book’: It was older even than Tim’s parents, and he had always enjoyed looking through it and its red-orange ink illustrations. He had never really been able to use it before, because most of the activities were outdoor things (like making a dugout canoe, or a tree house) and the indoor things were mostly messy crafts that his parents didn’t much go for. He lived in the countryside now, though, so he was kind of hoping there would be something he and Kes could do. “Timothy!” Mrs Mac’s voice called from the kitchen, and Tim looked up. Had he done something wrong?

“Yes?”

Mrs Mac came out of the kitchen, already in her apron and with her hands parked on her hips. “You have eaten every last scrap of food I made for you on Wednesday already?”

“Yes?” he said hesitantly. Kes had eaten half of it, or a little more than half. “Is that bad?”

“It’s bad for a growing boy to go hungry!” she cried, looking genuinely aggrieved. “Why haven’t you told me you get hungry for more than I’ve been making, my lad?”

“It was fine,” he hurried to reassure her. “There’s freezer stuff and canned stuff like ravioli I can make easily. I didn’t go hungry.”

“You won’t, not if I have anything to do about it,” she sniffed. “Those parents of yours may be lacking in an area or two, you didn’t hear me say that Timothy, but they are. But they have given me leeway with the household budget and I am going to use it to buy cheaper detergent and more food, see if I don’t. And I don’t take you for a picky child that would turn down a good old tuna casserole or rice and beans, if it comes to that.”

“Thanks, Mrs Mac,” Tim said earnestly. He was always worried about Kes being hungry, so it was a real relief to think of enough food for them both to have plenty. “I’m really grateful.”

“Of course you are,” she muttered, already going back into the kitchen, “Such a fine polite boy and still—” her voice trailed off as she got farther away.

Mrs Mac had brought the mail in with her, so Tim took the newspapers into the dining room along with the grilled cheese sandwich she’d made him so he could skim as he ate. It was a slow news day superheroics-wise: an Arkham orderly had tried to kill the Joker again, and both of the Gotham papers had that as their front page story. They’d tried for a deliberate overdose, same as the one last year, and apparently they’d either picked a better drug or done more because the papers said the Joker was actually in kind of bad shape afterwards. By all accounts he was just really resistant to drugs and other chemicals, which figured. Even the Daily Planet had a brief article about the incident, though it wasn’t front page, and that was actually the one Tim clipped for his scrapbook. He really liked Clark Kent’s articles: they were clear and didn’t use complicated words for no reason, and while he had a sharp sense of humor he never was mean to someone who didn’t deserve it. 

A few other articles weren’t worth clipping but had bits of info that Tim copied diligently into his ‘general’ notebook. He was just folding up the last page when Mrs Mac stuck her head in the dining room. “I’m going out back to take another hour to beat those roses into submission, Timothy. Sing out if you need me—or if the pot on the stove boils over.”

“You got it,” Tim agreed, beaming as he closed his notebook and ferried the papers to the recycling bin. A whole hour was just what the doctor ordered, and when the back door closed behind her he trotted straight to his father’s office and unlocked the door. He made a note to print off some lock cutaway diagrams if he could find a good online source: he meant to teach Kes to pick locks now that she was exploring Gotham half the time without him, and it would be so much easier with pictures to show her. He booted up the computer confidently, since his first lesson with Mandy had made him pretty sure that he could avoid leaving any traces that could get him in trouble later. Speaking of Mandy, he had to withdraw more cash at some point to pay for more lessons, and his parents had said he would be getting an allowance at the end of the month, he just hadn't had time to check yet. He logged onto the online banking portal and then his brain went staticky with shock.

“Holy crap,” he whispered.

His mom had kept her end of the deal: the difference in wages between a full-time nanny and part-time housekeeper was apparently $2,000 because that was the amount sitting free and clear in Tim’s checking account. 

“Holy crap!” he said again. This changed everything. While he was on the computer he went ahead and printed the lock diagrams like he’d wanted to, and a few other reference pictures besides, but he hurried through the process and was out of the office in twenty minutes flat. The elegant wooden stairs thudded as he ran up to his room, and he skidded on socked feet around the hallway corner before darting into his room and slamming the door behind. His notebooks were in his desk, and he pulled out the one his parents had given him for Christmas: ‘My Five-Year Plan’ read the gilt letters embossed on the cover. If his parents ever asked to see it he would have to pretend it was lost because the contents were absolutely not what they would want to see.

The first few pages were a timeline, divided into five years of twelve months each, and Tim found the line two years away that said “Get Kes her own apartment” and drew a line through it. Instead he wrote it on the current year, just a few months away. “Two thousand dollars,” he said with quiet glee. “Times three months! Some apartments in Uptown or Midcity go for $500 a month with utilities included.” (He’d already done a little bit of research for this when he’d added it to the five-year plan originally) “That’s enough for her to make rent the whole time it’s not summer where she can stay here!” He next flipped to one of the tabbed sections in the back of the book, ‘Knowledge/Skills’. Under the ‘Kes’ subsection he put ‘lockpicking (teach)’. Under the ‘physical’ subsection he put an asterisk next to ‘parkour’ and added in a footnote, ‘Scale brick walls in Gotham like Kes’. Next he thumbed the pages until he found the ‘tech’ subsection and added an asterisk to ‘hacking’, connecting it to a new brief footnote about Mandy and his planned lessons. He also footnoted the ‘forgery’ entry with ‘papers for apartment rental??’. The last subsection he turned to was ‘knowledge-Gotham rogues’, and added a brief note that it would be good to research and cross-reference chemicals as related to the Joker’s tolerances, not just what he made himself. 

Next he was going to use a little bit of that $2000 to subscribe to whatever New York newspaper most often had news about superheroes, because all he knew about Robin was that he was with the Titans now and probably going by ‘Nightwing’. Tim wiggled happily in his seat.

“And if I have any left over,” he said triumphantly, “I will buy a new space pen.”

Chapter Text

After his judo lesson on Saturday Kes met Tim while it was still light outside and he treated them both to dinner at Benny’s diner. Afterwards they wandered the streets, practicing how to hide even when the sun was out—though as usual for Gotham, even a sunny summer day wasn’t all that sunny. Crossing the bridge from Midcity to Uptown, they started to turn into Burnley before realizing that it was louder than usual, with the occasional distant crack of gunfire, and most people on the streets seemed to be hurrying to get off them. “Uh-oh,” Tim said. “There were rumors of some new boss moving into Burnley, and the Ventriloquist is out again so there is probably going to be more than a bit of heat if the two gangs clash.” Kes didn’t answer, of course, but her gaze was sharp. 

They swung east instead, going through the Bowery. Far from the safest neighborhood in Gotham, but the devil they knew sounded like a great idea right now. Buildings were crowded together here, older and not as tall as the skyscrapers that clustered towards the center of the island: easy to travel above street level for at least part of it, and fun too. At one point Kes and Tim froze on a dilapidated pedestrian bridge that was probably not rated for anyone heavier than them as shouts and revving motorcycles passed below. When the worst of it had passed they both peeked over and looked: some stragglers were trotting down the street, looking like they had just about had their fill of running. One of them swerved away, and Tim was worried to see that he was heading for a homeless man who had appeared to sleep through the whole commotion. The gang member had violence in his stance, and Tim shifted, wanting to help but having no way—

Kes pried loose a broken chunk of brick from the walkway and executed an absolutely devastating fastball pitch that caught the guy square in the head and had him drop in place. Tim yelped, then ducked back in case someone looked up to see them. Kes smirked at him. “Heck yeah,” he told her brightly. “No evil shall escape thy sight.”

It still wasn’t quite dark, though it was headed that way, and going up near the east coast sent them right by the train yard. They took the opportunity to find some train cars parked on a disused side track, and Kes showed Tim the proper technique for hopping a train. By the time it was fully dark, she had him sprinting at the back of one and blindly leaping up to grab finger- and toe-holds that locked him into place, although Tim still wasn’t sure that he’d have the guts to jump onto an actually moving train.

One good side effect of the ramping-up violence in the Bowery: Batman mostly stayed in one place, and Kes and Tim got to watch him subdue over twenty gangbangers before three am.

**

On Sunday, after sleeping in Tim dragged several of the heaviest blankets in the house outside and threw them over the bushes at the side of the house. Kes caught on to what he wanted as soon as he hesitantly hooked his fingers over the windowsill and started pulling himself up: she scaled the wall, using windows and decorative brickwork and awnings, until she was up on the roof. She moved slowly, so he could watch her, although some moves apparently had to be done with speed. Tim imitated her, much more slowly. After a while she carefully descended to hover beside him, pointing out places to slip his fingers and occasionally making him adjust his stance. 

Tim did not make it to the roof, but he got to the second-story windows and back down twice, and only had to fall into the padded bushes once. (once was enough. He was not permanently injured but holy hell that hurt.)

After lunch Tim showed Kes the most promising activity he’d identified in the Busy Boy’s Activity Book: it had several diagrams for games of cat’s-cradle to be played with two people, and Tim had several old shoelaces to tie together in big loops. He wasn’t sure if Kes understood that it was just for fun at first as she switched her gaze from the diagrams in the book to the strings wrapped around their fingers with laserlike intensity, but after a while she seemed to realize that it was more like a puzzle than an exercise, and they had honestly a lot of fun doing that for a while. (Tim, who had always been more interested in video games or tv or skateboarding than this kind of game, was surprised at how much fun he had…but then, anything would be more fun with Kes.)

When they got tired of cat’s-cradle Tim hauled the sofa cushions off and lined them up alongside the outer side of the staircase in a much softer crash pad than the blanket-covered bushes outside, and stood alongside the stairs at the point where the banister was a good ten feet above their heads. He was four-foot-four(and a quarter) and Kes a little taller, so they were more than eight feet tall together. Kes caught on to this exercise right away and they had another hour of happily concentrated exercise as they practiced various combinations of standing on each other’s shoulders and hauling each other up. (The best method they found was for one to stand with the other standing on their shoulders until they could reach the stair tread and hang on, while the person beneath them jumped to grab onto their foot and basically climbed them to reach the top.) 

**

On Monday, Tim saw Kes off to her train, watching closely as she took a running start and grabbed on to the back. She gave him a little salute as it moved quickly away, and while Tim didn’t make it back before Mrs Mac got in she was easily persuaded to believe he had just been playing in the woods. 

It was boring, without Kes. The only thing going for it was that Tim could watch tv without feeling like he was leaving somebody out. While Kes seemed to find animation pretty, she had very little use for most of the tv shows Tim wanted to watch: she would watch for a little while, then dismiss it with something like contempt in her face. It made sense when he thought about it, with her empathy—seeing people on tv when she couldn’t read their emotions probably sent the whole thing into uncanny valley territory. 

(she was a little more willing to watch documentaries and news channels than regular shows, which was a bit of a head-scratcher, but Tim reasoned that he knew she could also interpret body language, so maybe real people’s real body language was more interesting than that of actors)

**

On Tuesday, Tim did not let himself take the first bus so he could sleep in. He still had plenty of time before meeting Kes to return most of his library books and get a couple more, then when she met him a little before dark they took advantage of the day’s observation sites being in Downtown to do a little dumpster diving. The richest part of town had the best junk, Tim was finding out, and while they weren’t the only people trying to take advantage of that they were quick and sneaky and Tim was interested even in broken gadgets.

**

On Wednesday, Tim spent every hour he could not be noticed by Mrs Mac on the computer in his dad’s office learning more about computer programming. The stuff he’d read and what Mandy had already showed him gave him enough of a head start that he made fifteen full pages of notes in his general notebook.

(he also did laundry, as soon as Mrs Mac left, washing the blankets that had been thrown in the bushes and any of Kes’ things that she had left lying around. ‘Lying around’ was the right term too, and while the laundry machine was going Tim was moved enough by shame to introduce a little bit of order onto his bedroom. Both he and Kes were slobs, it turned out, each as bad as the other. Tim’s urges to let his room be a comfortable mess and to be a good example for Kes warred.)

**

On Thursday after his hacking (“I’m not teaching you hacking , half-pint!”) lesson, he and Kes bit off more than they could chew and nearly got pasted by some guys in green bandannas who were not happy to find them poking through their boss’ territory. Kes took out four guys by herself, naturally, but Tim was very proud that he’d kept his cool (even after booking it) enough that when a guy got in his path and Kes was already occupied Tim planted his foot like sensei had taught him and rammed an efficient kick right into the guy’s family jewels. 

It was another fascinating night watching the Batman work, and he and Kes didn’t kick off their early-morning sleep until after four. They slept for almost five hours, and when they got up Kes showed off a shiny new bruise where someone had clipped her a lucky swing on her shoulder. “Ouch,” Tim said sympathetically. Kes shrugged, then pointed at him and raised her eyebrows. “Me? Oh, I’m fine, not hurt at all.” She shook her head and stood. She pointed at him and imitated a kick in midair that Tim thought was supposed to be a recreation of his very minor triumph last night. She pointed at him and boxed the air, then shrugged.

“I can fight just a little,” Tim said humbly. He stood and went slowly through several of the basic forms they taught in first year karate. He was embarrassed to find that he had half-forgotten a couple: clearly he needed to practice. When he finished he realized that Kes was looking at him with something like pure bafflement. “What?” he tried.

Kes came to stand at his side, a few feet away. She made sure he was looking at her, then took up the first of the stances he’d gone through. “Oooooh,” he said ruefully, and imitated her. He saw what he’d done wrong. “I got it.” He practiced moving into and out of it a couple more times until Kes gave a brisk nod. She did the same with the second and the third, as he carefully and diligently followed along.

The problem came with the fourth stance. It was one Tim had always had a little problem with and he tried to copy Kes several times as she looked increasingly confused and frustrated. Eventually, she turned to face him and watched him try to do it, slowly, one last time. But this time, when he did it wrong, she jabbed her fingers into a point on the back of his right shoulder that must have been a cluster of nerves, as it sent a jolt of fire through Tim’s whole arm and side. He flinched away from her and clutched his now numb and tingling arm as he looked at her and indignantly shouted, “Hey!”

Kes’ eyes went as wide as he had ever seen them and the blood drained out of her face. She stared at his arm.

“What the hell, Kes,” he said, already getting over it but still kind of pissed. “That hurt.” 

She looked at her own hands then at Tim. Her breath was coming a little short and the last of his indignation drained out and was replaced by concern. “Kes? I’m okay, really, it barely even hurts now. I’m sure you didn’t do it on purpose.”

She wasn’t listening. Well, Kes never listened to his words, but she always paid attention to him: now she seemed to be looking right through him. She made a jerky motion as if to reach out, then snatched her own hand back. Without a single backward glance, she sprinted for the ledge and dropped off it. 

“Kes!” Tim yelped, not being nearly careful enough to avoid attention, and bolted over to look over the edge: he saw her just make the final drop to the ground and then she was gone. He tried to follow, but his numb arm held him up: he started to run for the nearest fire escape and stopped. 

He did not have enough time to both look for Kes and take the bus home in time for Mrs Mac’s arrival. Tim groaned and kicked his backpack across the roof. It fetched up next to Kes’ backpack: she didn’t even have her things. “Shit!” Tim hissed venomously, and after a moment of thought grabbed both their bags. He was going to find Kes, and explain that he wasn’t mad about her hitting him, and give her bag back. 

He was going to do all that tomorrow . Tim swallowed tears. “Shit.”

*****

Chapter Text

Tim was upset enough that Mrs Mac actually noticed something was up and asked at lunch. He tried to look a little embarrassed and said, “I’m sorry, I couldn’t remember if I already told you…I am planning to take the last bus into Gotham this evening because I’m staying at a friend’s house, could you possibly move dinner a little sooner?”

“I don’t see why not,” she said, then frowned a little. “Are you sure you’ll be safe, lad?”

“I take the bus all the time to go to the library and stuff,” he said. “I’m good.”

“Hmm. Still, how about this: it wouldn’t be much out of my way to swing into the city myself, if we’re moving things up and you want to get there around six. Would that work?”

“My friend’s mom is going to pick me up at the bus terminal,” he said, “---but if you can drop me off there that would be nice, actually. Thanks Mrs Mac, you don’t have to do that.”

She sniffed. “I know that, Timothy. Dinner will be at four-thirty so there’s time for dishes, then.”

He thanked her and hurried upstairs, only stopping himself from slamming his door closed at the last minute. Their backpacks were on the floor, and he knelt down to rearrange them. (maybe he should try and keep their floor a little clearer. After him tidying it Wednesday this was a lot easier than it would have been otherwise.) He had to prepare for the worst case scenario, which was Kes staying away…permanently. The thought of it made his chest a little tight and his head a little dizzy, but there was no point in not being realistic. Because that was a possibility, he had to set her up for success and drop her filled backpack where she would grab it. He emptied it out and sorted through it: Kes dug through his things without checking for permission, and he felt free to do the same to hers. The pack had a set of clothes, two grappling hooks, some protein bars, and her gas mask. “Why would you leave without your gas mask,” he said, almost tearing up. “You need to be safe.”

He repacked it with all the same items but added two more sets of clothes from her side of the dresser (tightly rolled to save space). He would sneak into the pantry for some more food when Mrs Mac wasn’t looking and put that in too. He put in her Rubik’s Cube, and a pretty chipped glass paperweight that she had scavenged and set on their dresser. Finally, after squishing the rest of it down ruthlessly, he took his newest sneakers and put them right on top. They wore almost exactly the same shoe size, and her boots wouldn’t last forever. 

He also took all their cash, $237, and put it in the outer pocket.

The next thing required a good three minutes to rewire his brain. He usually took care to be as inconspicuous as possible when he went out into the city, but he needed the opposite tonight. He wore his second-nicest shoes, not the ones for black-tie but leather ones with smooth soles and expensive laces. His tshirt was still one of the worn thrift store ones, but today he put a nice expensive button-down on top, and black slacks in high-quality drapy fabric. He looked at himself in the mirror and combed his hair carefully, then inspected the results head to toe. Kes’ backpack would be mismatched, but he looked rich and extremely muggable. He could bring his leather satchel as well, with some stuff in it that he could afford to lose…Tim fidgeted nervously. He had seen plenty of muggings in his time people-watching in the city, and often the crooks that did it were not gentle. Obviously he didn’t want to get hurt, but putting himself in harm’s way was the best chance he probably had.

(he wasn't stupid. Clearly the majority of Kes’ brutal childhood had been spent fighting or training to fight, and now that he thought about it it was so obvious that she would not have been taught with careful kindness: he was the one at fault here for being bad enough at karate that she fell back on the only way she’d ever known to teach it. She had run away because she felt bad for hurting him, and was afraid she would do it again. It was his best bet to catch her by putting himself in a position where she was the one to prevent him being hurt.)

He pored over the map for a while before deciding that the east edge of Burnley was his best bet. It was near her main hideout at the sewage treatment plant, and right where the current gang dust-ups were probably happening on a nightly basis. She would be confident that he wouldn’t be able to catch her, and besides, Kes cared about the people they watched. Think of the hurled rock to defend the homeless man, and the almost hungry way she watched Batman do his work: Kes wanted to help people, and he thought it was likely she would hang around there where action was thickest. And it was a good place for Tim to put himself at risk, too. 

Kes was going to be so mad at him. But that was okay: he was kind of mad at her, too, for running away because of a stupid mistake and leaving behind her gas mask and her Rubik’s Cube and her friend. She could be mad as long as she was here.

**

Tim skirted around the east side of Crime Alley and the Bowery with all his senses on alert. It would do no good for him to get assaulted where Kes couldn’t rescue him. He cut through the Bowery on one of the small cobblestone roads that crisscrossed Gotham, remnants of the earliest pavement and now too narrow and bumpy for anything but pedestrians. It was quiet right now, edging into true darkness out of twilight, and he unconsciously held his breath and hurried as he passed by a couple of alleys that were bad news. There was shouting several streets away, and Tim tried not to look like he was hurrying as he got closer to Burnley. 

The shouts cut off, and at the next intersection Tim peered in all directions anxiously in case violence had already spread to the Bowery…or, well. Spread more than the Bowery was usually violent. He was listening carefully enough that he actually heard the chunk and whirr of a grapple line being deployed, but he still jerked violently in shock as he whipped around and saw Robin behind him.

“You lost, kid?” Robin said brashly. Tim couldn’t even be offended at a twelve-year-old calling him ‘kid’, he was so shocked. He stared at the boy in the yellow cape, jaw dropped. “I can clearly see you’re not from around here.”

“Robin,” Tim squeaked, mortifyingly. He realized with a jolt that Batman was lurking on a rooftop just up the road, where someone who didn’t watch him for a hobby probably wouldn’t see him. Robin was being carefully observed. “I, um…” he belatedly remembered the question. “I’m visiting family in Burnley,” he said, more confidently, because ‘looking for’ was basically the same as ‘visiting’ and ‘Kes’ was basically the same as ‘family’.

“Uh-huh,” Jason said. “How about I escort you there, huh? This is not a good night to be wandering these streets.”

“OK,” Tim managed. He pointed, a little shakily, and named an apartment building three blocks away that had short-term rentals—he’d found it while researching possible places for Kes to stay. Robin made an ‘after you’ gesture, and Tim stumbled into motion. 

As they walked, Robin watched the streets around them cautiously. They were empty right now: probably Batman had been observed swinging through and anyone who had reason to worry was laying low. Tim tried to look at Robin without being caught. He didn’t look much like Jason Todd, which was good! Good for protecting their identities. He had looked really tiny in the press photos, but that was probably just because he was standing next to Bruce Wayne who was stupidly big because up close he was normal sized, taller than Tim. There were freckles faintly visible under the bottom edge of his domino, but that wasn't something that most people would be able to see. And his hair, which Tim distinctly remembered as being reddish-brown in the photos, was currently as ink-black as Tim’s own. That was a little confusing at first, but Tim logicked out that if Batman could manufacture antitoxins and smoke bombs, he could surely make temporary hair dye in service of a disguise.

Jason caught him looking and raised an eyebrow sardonically. If Tim hadn’t spent the past half-year learning to communicate with someone who didn’t speak, he might not have caught a twinge of nervousness under the other boy’s veneer of confidence. “I got something on my face?”

“No,” Tim said hastily, and then like an idiot, “It’s just, um, I’m just, it’s good you’re here? That there’s a Robin again.”

Robin actually stopped at that and Tim almost tripped over his feet stopping as well. “Say what now?”

“I just, I mean, it’s good that Batman has a Robin,” Tim blurted, since apparently he was completely out of control of his bodily functions and couldn’t stop talking oh god holy crap oh no. “After, you know, the, um, original one. You know. Isn’t around now.”

“How the hell—” Jason started, and Tim hoped to God that Batman couldn’t clearly hear what was being said.

“It’s just, um.” Tim tried a smile. “I saw Robin in real life once? Not up close, but he was. Um. Taller?”

Jason snorted and relaxed all at once. He nudged Tim onto motion with his elbow. “You calling me short? He that lives in a glass house got no business with those kinds of stones.” He smiled a little. “Yeah, no. Don’t go spread it around, for God’s sake, but. Yeah. I’m the new guy.” His head tilted like he was rolling his eyes under the mask. “I’m on probation, or whatever.”

“You’re an apprentice,” Tim said, relieved beyond belief that he hadn’t completely blown it. “That’s cool. It’s awesome.”

“Nothing very cool about rescuing kittens from trees and leading lost ducklings home,” he said, which, hey. “But I guess gotta start somewhere.” They walked in silence for another block, although they both flinched when a car backfired several streets away. “He’s fine, by the way,” Jason said abruptly. “The other guy. The original. You know.”

It took all of Tim’s mental energy to stop his traitorous tongue from saying I know! which left him with nothing to stop himself from saying, “He ditched us, huh.”

Robin huffed. “Yeah,” he said after a minute, kind of rueful and a little bitter and a little annoyed. “He sorta did. That’s why you get the direct-to-video sequel here.”

“Shut up,” Tim said indignantly, because not even Robin had any business badmouthing Robin. “You can be, like, Robin 2.0.”

Jason laughed, muffling it in one gloved hand. “Thanks, kid,” he said eventually. And then: “Here is your stop.”

Tim walked up to the lobby door and tried to smile. “Well. Thanks.” Robin didn’t look like he was leaving, and when Tim looked at the keypad he was extremely relieved to see that four of the buttons were very obviously worn down, and since they were ‘1’ and ‘2’ and ‘6’ and ‘9’ and he knew birthdates were the most common passwords, he confidently punched in ‘1962’ and tried to not look triumphant as the door opened. He waved goodbye to Robin and went in, even though he really really wanted to look out and see if Batman came down to join his apprentice. When he closed the door, he leaned against it and tried to catch his breath. He hid his face in his hands and groaned. Now he had to wait until the coast was clear to try and look for Kes, and if she ended up following Batman and Robin she wouldn’t see him.

“Hell,” he said, disgustedly. He adjusted the backpack higher on his shoulders. This was going to be a long night.

**

It was fully dark when Tim ventured back out, and the streets echoed with noise from many directions. He embraced himself, and made sure it would be easier for someone to snatch his satchel than Kes’ backpack, and set off down the street. He walked down eight or nine blocks and felt eyes on him for most of it from various windows. There were a couple of alleys lit by firelight, homeless people scattered around discarded barrels with trash fires inside. Tim pretended to watch the street while trying to watch the rooftop, to hide if Batman appeared and to give chase if Kes did. At one point he stopped to get his bearings in front of a store—the schedule on the door said they were open until nine but it was locked up tight. It wasn’t more than a couple minutes that he was standing there, but the door opened a crack, as far as it could get while still chained, and the muzzle of a shotgun stuck out. “Make tracks, kid,” someone growled from inside, and he hurried off. He hurried off in such a rush that he didn’t check before turning a corner and walked almost into a cluster of young-looking guys in the green bandannas that marked…what was the new guy calling himself? Tim didn’t think he was a mask, just a normal mob type. 

“You lost, kid?” One of the older guys in the group said casually, and much less kindly than Robin had said it a couple of hours ago. He was playing with a switchblade, and his eyes flitted from Tim’s satchel to his belt to his shoes.

“Just passing through,” Tim said, trying for ‘reasonably nervous but non-threatening’. One of the younger guys, maybe only fifteen or so, laughed.

“Yeah, sure. This is a toll road, runt. Put up or shut up.”

Tim looked them over, weighing his chances of being let go if he gave them something valuable. Then he bolted.

He heard a clatter behind but judged that only three or four of the gang members were giving chase. This was near a patrol route from alternate Tuesdays, so Tim angled himself towards the familiar intersection of Parker and Dancy, thinking of a building a block down that would be hard for someone bigger than him to get up: as he skidded around the corner he leaned down and snatched up half a broken paver. “Kes!” he gasped, just in case, even as his pursuers turned the corner just a few yards behind him. He needed his air for running, and turned briefly to hurl the paver at the first person in the pack before turning back without trying to see if he’d hit. He got to the right block, where there was a row of buildings with apartments above and shops below: the building at the end was condemned and the former Chinese restaurant was abandoned. The fire escape was broken off with only half a staircase still clinging to the top of the roof so if Tim could just get from the street to the awning and pull himself up the windowsill—

His stupid rich-person shoes slipped and only a desperate grab at the broken window prevented him from being street pizza. There was still part of a window in the frame and he yelped as he felt a thin slice through his left forearm. His feet kicked in empty air, trying to find purchase on the brick, and he frantically toed off one shoe in hoped that his socks would have just enough traction; the sound of it hitting the ground was covered by a triumphant shout from his pursuers, and then a very different kind of sound.

Tim twisted as well as he could, losing the other shoe and finally getting a toehold into the mortar-line, and saw that a small dark shadow was taking down all four pursuers with great prejudice. “Kes!” he gasped. This plan to put himself in danger had worked all too well, he admitted as his sweaty hands slipped a little. “Kes!”

She took out the last guy with a flying scissor kick like something out of a movie and didn’t even look to see where he landed, just darted to the building and came up underneath Tim. His unanchored foot found purchase on her shoulder, and they both made it onto the narrow ledge around the building. They shuffled sideways around it until they were almost under the broken fire escape, and Kes tried to boost Tim up. He resisted, afraid she would get him to safety and disappear. “No! Nope! You first.” 

With a frustrated growl, she climbed him, from hip to shoulder, and with a small lunge reached the fire escape: just like they’d practiced, he reached up to grab her foot and climbed her in turn. After he hauled her onto the remaining scrap of fire escape, he linked their elbows and held her hand, weaving the fingers together so it would be hard for her to jerk away without hurting him. “We are talking about this,” he growled. With his elbow he leaned forward and busted out the window nearest the fire escape, not having time or energy to try and break in more discreetly. The building was abandoned anyway, and any squatters who might usually spend the night were no doubt hanging in a neighborhood that wasn’t heading into war zone territory. Unlatching the window through the broken hole, he hauled up the sash and pushed Kes towards the interior. She went in, her face blank but lips pressed tightly together.

Once they were inside Tim gave a quick scan of the room to make sure it wasn’t gonna kill them while they had this talk, then spun to Kes. He scowled at her and took off her backpack from his back, shaking it. “You left without your stuff!” The pack he moved to his left arm, the one trickling blood from the glass, and he waved his right arm. “Look! It’s fine! You didn’t damage me!” Kes didn’t meet his eyes. As he watched, she carefully pulled their hands apart and moved to stand a few feet away and take up the at-ease position with her gaze focused on the floor.

Tim sighed, some of his indignation leaving him as the adrenaline faded. “I’m sorry, Kes,” he said. “I didn’t mean to shout.” He stepped closer and was relieved when she didn’t back away: a slight tremor ran through her body. He dropped her bag and without giving himself time to think about it, stepped beside her and hooked his arm through hers. “Hey,” he said softly, and kissed her cheek. She didn’t look up but a tear ran down and dripped off the end of her nose. “I’m fine. I trust you. I forgive you.” He manipulated her arm and she let him: he moved it in front of her lowered eyes and pushed back her sleeve. “I saw these, you remember that,” he said to her bowed head, tapping one of the scars on her forearm. He rotated her arm and touched another faded gouge near her elbow. “I know. I get it, Kes!” He kissed her again and then poked her in her side, more and more annoyingly, until she finally jerked away and looked up with narrowed eyes.

“I get it,” he said again, sternly. “I may not be a really good example to you but you have had a lot worse. You didn’t know any better. I get it.” He pushed and prodded her into a new stance, the second karate pose he’d done with her…God, was it only this morning? When he thought she was going to keep it he stepped away, and took up a deliberately bad version of the stance. “Go on, imitate me.” She looked at him hesitantly, and carefully mirrored him, looking confused and sorry and miserable, but at least that awful blank look was gone.

He gave her a thumbs-up and then acted out an exaggerated thinking face. He reached for her and she did not flinch, but her deliberate stillness somehow made him think she was braced for pain. Instead he gently touched her elbow, nudged her arm a little higher. Her loose fist he carefully manipulated, moving the thumb to the correct position. When he was done he stepped back, looked over her exaggeratedly, and nodded with a smile, also doing the correct version of the pose. “There, see? You can teach without hurting. I’d like you to teach me, you’re a badass. And I know you can do it. We’ll learn together. OK?”

Her lip trembled but she gave him a shaky thumbs-up. Stepping back into his space, gingerly she laid her head on his left shoulder. Tim patted her hair. In a moment she stepped back, sniffing,  and Tim had a thought. Making the sign to show he was trying to communicate something, he put his hands around her head and mimed pulling off something with a little shhp sound effect. He ‘showed’ her the invisible contents of his hands, and mimed putting them in his own head. As he did, he acted out anger, fear, misery. He ‘pulled’ the imaginary handful back out of his head and checked to see if she was following. She was. He did the wiping-out gesture they used to restart a thought, and again mimed pulling from her head. This time he pretended to drop the invisible thing in midair, then shadow-boxed it angrily. 

Kes huffed, the slightest bit of a laugh, and Tim beamed in triumph. “Screw your bad thoughts, Kestrel. I’ll fight ‘em.” He linked their elbows again. “Tim-and-Kes-together forever, all right?”

She held up her free arm and shook her fist at the same spot in the air, then ‘wiped’ it away. She very gently stroked his right shoulder where she’d hit him before.

“Apology accepted,” Tim said, delirious with relief. “Let me just put on these sneakers and we’ll find somewhere a little safer to hang out. I don’t know about you, but I’ve about had my fill of tonight.”

Chapter Text

***

After their stressful Friday-Saturday, Tim and Kes did very little on Sunday. Each was as clingy as the other, and they sat next to rather than across from each other and did puzzles for six hours straight. On Monday they ran around in the woods for several hours while Mrs Mac was at the house, and after she left Kes lay on the floor of the office flipping through a coffee-table book with glossy art inside while Tim first messed with the safe (somehow he thought that you needed like a stethoscope to listen to it?) then spent some time on the internet. He set some things downloading before they went to bed and on Tuesday he took an earlier bus than Kes so that he would have extra time at the library.

The whole thing with Kes running away had made it very clear that Tim needed to prepare better. He went to the actual main library, instead of a branch like he would normally, and went through all the options in the section dealing with abuse, book by book. He got five different books from that section, though he didn’t know how well he’d be able to parse the two more dense ones. A couple books on general psychology and interpreting body language rounded out the selection, and one on language learning that he grabbed on impulse with the thought that it might help with communication overall. (then, since he had room on his card for two more books, he grabbed a couple about bank robberies and the history of anti-theft technology…you know, for safecracking research)

He put his stack of books on the counter after almost dropping one several times, and dug in his pockets for his wallet as the librarian started scanning. She stopped after two scans and her firm voice made him startle.

“Kiddo. I am a mandatory reporter: do I need to be worried about your reading selection?”

Tim gaped like a fish, because sitting at the checkout desk was freaking Batgirl.

(this less than a week after Robin! If Batman or Bruce Wayne crossed his path before the month was out Tim was gonna enter the lottery)

She was still looking at him over her glasses, though she had resumed scanning. Tim blushed and hoped that someone as pretty as Barbara Gordon was used to boys losing their cool in front of her for reasons other than knowing of her secret identity. “Oh. Um, no ma’am. It’s just….” the usual cover, he realized suddenly, was a bad idea. If Batgirl really worried that he needed help, she might do a background check on him, and she would find out that Tim Drake didn’t have a sister and be all the more suspicious because of the proven lie. Dammit. “...my friend,” he finished heavily. “She grew up with, um. You know.”

“A bad home?” Barbara offered, reserved but not unsympathetic.

“The worst,” Tim said. “Assholes times a hundred. And I just, you know. I want to help.” He tried not to grimace and looked at his toes. “Or at least not make things worse.”

She hummed and nodded, briefly looking at the inner cover flap of one of the books. “Hmm. I hope things are better now? Her current guardians are good to her?”

“Yeah, I guess,” Tim mumbled, since of course Kes had no guardians, but that was still better than whoever she had before. He was usually so much smoother at lying, but he had so not expected freaking Batgirl.  

“You know,” she continued more gently, “...taking care of your friend is the responsibility of her guardians. You can leave this to the adults, kid. All you need to do is be there for her as her friend.”

“I guess,” Tim said again. He should have left it there, but he kind of wanted to say it in words to someone since Kes would not understand him: “But she’s my…my ride-or-die. You never know, you know? Especially in Gotham. People turn bad all the time. I gotta be in her corner and be prepared for everything, no matter what. Just in case.”

“Huh.” Tim wasn’t sure what the expression was on Barbara’s face—it was complicated—but he thought at least part of what was there was approval. “Who am I to speak against that, I guess. Library card?”

“Oh!” Duh. Tim dug for his wallet again but stopped, realizing again that Batgirl could run a background check on him if she wanted, so he could not hand her a library card that had an alias on it. He tried to just look flustered from embarrassment, and dug in his bag too before looking up sheepishly. “I think my card’s in my book bag at home. Can you look it up? Timothy Drake.”

She looked it up by his address, which was still the condo: good to remember that he could still use the new house’s address for another alias, if he wanted. As he fit the books in his backpack, Barbara dug up something from behind the desk and held it out where he could see. “A pamphlet?” he said. It didn’t have a title, just a blue heart on a green background. 

“This is a resource for foster parents and for educators helping children who have suffered from abuse. There’s a list of several books and websites inside,” she said, and he looked at it with new interest. The book aimed at foster parents had been the most useful of the ones he’d checked out that first time. Barbara clicked her pen and turned the pamphlet sideways, writing a long line of cramped text along the edge, then held it where he could read it. “It sounds like you have limited trust in your friend’s caretakers. I can tell you’re a native Gothamite: I’m not going to blow smoke up your ass and try and tell you that I’m sure her new guardians are good. The first thing you’ll see on here is the address to a website that is a resource for mandatory reporters, to help them recognize signs of abuse. If you’re worried that you won’t notice and your friend won’t tell you if they ‘turn bad’, maybe that will help.”

Tim nodded eagerly, already memorizing it. 

“This other one is a book that you might not have seen today looking in the section you were in because it is in the self-help section: it is aimed at people in romantic relationships specifically to help them recognize signs of non-physical abuse, so it would be helpful to you in that regard.” Tim nodded again and reached for the pamphlet, but she pulled it out of his reach and held up a warning finger, looking at him very sternly over the rims of her glasses. “That last book is aimed at adults and focuses on partner abuse. I cannot recall the contents in detail off the top of my head, but you have to swear to me that if there are sections on sexual abuse you will skip them. If I read you right, and I think I do, you’re not a kid who needs coddling: but there’s coddling and there’s reasonable age restrictions.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Tim said humbly.

“You swear?”

“I swear.” He crossed his heart, licked his first two fingers and held them up solemnly. “Cross my heart and hope to die. I will skip any gross sex stuff.”

“Don’t call sex gross, you’re making it hard for me to trust in your maturity,” she said drily, but she handed him the pamphlet. 

“Thank you,” he said earnestly, and if he meant her work as Batgirl as well as this help she had no way of knowing.

She looked around and leaned forward a little, lowering her voice. “Hey. If worse comes to worse, running away is not the first choice. OK? We have resources. Here at the library, for one. And if you really need serious help, you can trust my dad—Commissioner Gordon. Not all the police are trustworthy, but he would help her.”

Tim nodded. “And there’s always Batman.”

“Sure, if you want the least subtle solution,” she said with withering dryness, before shaking her head and laughing a little. “But I guess sometimes that’s what’s needed.”

“Sometimes bad guys just need to be kicked in the nuts,” Tim said confidently. “Subtle isn’t always king.”

“Far be it from me to downplay the power of a kick in the nuts,” she agreed, and nodded at him with a half-smile. “All right. Oh, wait—” she held her hand out for the pamphlet and he reluctantly handed it back: she scrawled on it one more time, and he saw that it was a phone number. “I’m one of the resources you have,” she said. “If worse comes to worst.”

“Thank you,” he said again, and having Batgirl’s phone number in his pack gave him a sense of security, like he was wearing one of the bulletproof backpacks most public-school kids in Gotham used. “I’ll only use it in an emergency.”

***

Chapter Text

Tim paid for his lesson on Thursday with a gas mask, because Poison Ivy was at large and Mandy was from Bludhaven and didn’t know her ass from her elbow sometimes. The lesson was a little less than two hours today, and by taking a shortcut and sprinting Tim made it to the correct city building in time to retrieve the building plans he’d requested for his school. (they hadn’t even asked for proof of age or ID or anything—Tim had looked up the company that designed his school and trawled their website last night, and apparently if you used the right professional terminology people just gave you stuff like that. Or maybe it was just people in Gotham who did.) Most of the people he passed on the streets had their own gas masks with them, either hanging around their necks or attached to their bags, and a few people even had theirs on. Not a bad idea if you had the resources to burn through filters like that. 

He met up with Kes around six, so there was still plenty of light. They took the opportunity to climb one of the taller buildings in Midcity, one that was packed in close to enough others to do so both easily and without being obvious about it. The small observation deck about twenty floors up was closed at this hour—this building was mostly offices, and they had climbed up here once or twice before and seen that the door to this deck was actually chained shut, with a padlock rusted enough that it had probably been closed for years: part of the railing around the deck was broken, which was probably why, but that just made it easy to get up there from the walkway that joined that building fifteen floors up. Tim and Kes sat on the side of the deck that faced the setting sun, their legs dangling freely between the bars, and Kes pulled out the digital camera.

“Right!” Tim said. “Everything go smoothly?”

She held up the camera and nodded, smiling. Before leaving early Wednesday, Tim had showed Kes the surreptitious picture he’d taken of Barbara Gordon at the library and did his best to ask if she could find out where she lived and check it out briefly. He’d made sure to warn her, using the picture of a security camera, that anywhere she lived was sure to be secure. He’d also tried to tell her that Batgirl would be much more observant than the average librarian.

“Let’s start with where, then!” Tim said, pulling out the small thick stack of mini-map they’d made, cutting up a more detailed one so they could leave the big one at home when they needed. Kes paged through the map pieces carefully, and showed him the Old Gotham neighborhood, indicating a spot near the top of it. Tim frowned. “Isn’t that where Wayne Tower is?”

Kes turned on the camera and on the preview screen showed him a snap, clearly taken from a distance and from hiding, of Barbara Gordon getting into her handicapped-accessible vehicle. Then a shot, darker enough that it had probably been at least twenty minutes or so, of the same vehicle pulling into an underground parking spot. Then a wider shot of—

“Oh, the clocktower!” That was so cool. Batgirl had the literal coolest home base in Gotham.

Next was a series of photos taken of the clocktower from all different angles: after the third or fourth one Tim realized that they were of both possible entrances and security measures. Kes had cased the joint as thoroughly as a thief. After all the perimeter shots there were a couple of closer shots that appeared to have been taken from a skylight. Batgirl wasn’t in them, and Tim was glad that Kes hadn’t taken creeper pics of her showering or something awful like that. The inside was dim, things just lit around the edges by the various outside lights from surrounding buildings and the remaining touch of skyglow. One picture made Tim catch his breath in excitement though, since it caught just the corner of what looked like a big bank of monitors and computer equipment. 

“Yes,” he hissed, and dug around in his picture stash to pull out the ‘computer’ image to show Kes. (she was much faster at finding the right picture than him, and he’d realized a couple weeks ago that she’d snipped various notches in the edges of them so she could feel them out at a touch. Tim had tried to do the same but could not feel the difference enough to be helpful. Yet.) Kes looked from the picture to her snapshot on the camera and nodded with a thumbs-up. “That’s a great thing to have seen, Kes! I knew that Batgirl wouldn’t have just quit the hero game like that. She’s still keeping tabs on things from home. I wonder if she runs comms for Batman? Maybe she can hack security cameras! This is fantastic.”

Kes looked pleased, and swayed to bump shoulders with him. He did the same to her, grinning. “A successful mission. If you ever decide to be a superhero can I be your sidekick?” Which reminded him of his contribution to usefulness for the evening: he pulled out the file of building plans. “I’m gonna go through these thoroughly to see if there’s anything to help us. Not that I think there’s going to be secret passages or anything.” Though that would be sick. “But if there’s a little unused corner somewhere that you can hide out, you can be out of the weather and close to where I am, especially for the winter!” 

All his research had come to naught as far as getting Kes an apartment of her own. Even the most sketchy, run-down studios in Uptown were out: they all seemed to have in-person application. Tim had been hoping he could apply for her over the internet and make up some sort of story, maybe that Kes had a single mom who worked nights or commuted to Bludhaven or something, but all the leads had run dry. The best hope he could think of was if he could hire someone to act as Kes’ mom or dad, just to get into the apartment and then maybe to make some phone-calls here and there, but he didn’t know where to find an actor cheap enough for them to afford but not so unscrupulous that they’d screw it all up. That was still a possibility for some time in the future, but in the mean time they had to be realistic. 

Kes looked at the plans over his shoulder with interest, confirming with him that they were for his school. Tim nodded, pointing at the laminated school picture and then flipping to the plans to show the front. Kes understood. He pored over them carefully, paying extra attention to the dorms. Not with much luck, though: it looked like the dorm attics were not finished and would just have beams filled with fiberglass fluff insulation. Not a great place to live. The school wasn’t at 100% capacity, so it was potentially possible for her to squat in a disused room in the girls’ dorm, though she’d be at risk there from periodic cleaning staff discovery. The rec hall was where they finally struck gold. The main gym had a big vaulted ceiling, and the roof-line continued straight across: however the showers and locker rooms had standard nine-foot ceilings. The plans showed an empty space above. “It would already be pretty warm,” he murmured, “Because of the pipes…there’s roof vents too…maybe….” 

Kes acted out a door with a knob, shrugging. 

“I dunno,” Tim frowned. “There must be maintenance access. Or, ooh!” He stabbed his finger down over the storage room. “Here! I’ve been in a few times to fetch things for coach.  There’s just a drop ceiling in there! As long as the space above is contiguous, I don’t know why it wouldn’t be at least in part, you could pop through the drop ceiling and stay above the showers!” It might get a little noisy when gym class was happening, but Kes knew how to be flexible with her sleep schedule. And he was going to give her a present soon that might help. “I’ll have to check if there’s an outlet in the storage closet. There’s lots of big racks and shelves up against the wall so it would be pretty easy to hide an extension cord. We could even get you an electric blanket or something then!” He beamed, pumping his fist. “Hell yeah. I love it when a plan comes together.”

Chapter Text

Tim convinced Kes to stay at the manor with him on the Friday that was the last day of summer vacation. They packed in the early morning, making sure to grab anything from the common areas that they would need before Mrs Mac was around to see them. Even though Kes was as much of a slob as Tim as far as their shared living space went, she packed with a single-minded efficiency that was almost military-like. Several times she gave him a deeply unimpressed side-eye and pulled out everything he’d packed, making him do it again to her specifications. Tim still had stuff in his dorm room, so a duffel and a rolling suitcase were all Tim really needed to pack everything he’d need.

After lunch, they avoided being seen by Mrs Mac by going out to run around in the woods. And run around they did: Tim’s endurance had already gone up over the summer with the drill-sergeant type approach Kes took to their outings. He might tell Mrs Mac that he was going out to play in the woods, but it felt more like boot camp. It was good, though! Even just the few times he’d had to really run in his city explorations had taught him that the longer he could run full-out, the better. He and Kes ran-walked-jogged to where the land got hilly. A lot of this area was technically property of the Wayne Estate, but his parents had introduced themselves to the various neighbors when they first moved in and been told that as long as no one trespassed through clearly marked boundary lines, Bruce Wayne never minded people hiking or kids running around. 

The ground was good here for what Tim optimistically thought of as ‘parkour practice’. He and Kes marked out spaces as far apart as various buildings in Gotham and practiced jumping back and forth. Kes could make it, or at least knew down to the inch which distances she could and could not jump: Tim, meanwhile, doggedly tried them all even though half the time he fell short enough that he would have been street pizza if the gap was from rooftop to rooftop. 

Today, Kes took it upon herself to make his life harder by pelting him with acorns at random intervals. She would tuck herself away between rocks or behind a tree and let him lower his guard then pop up and fling one or more at him. After a particularly unending shower left him covering his head in the middle of the marked-off gap, he dropped his arms and scowled at her. “Hey!” He said.

With narrowed eyes, she picked up a pinecone, much larger than an acorn, spiky and green. She tossed it up and down in her hand and cocked back her arm.

“Wait, no, I didn’t mean it!”

She pitched it at him and he dodged. It clipped just the tip of his ear and he yelped. She mimed a gun and made a gunshot mouth sound, then picked up another cone. 

“I get it,” he said repentantly. He was glad they’d come to an understanding that training didn’t have to be as cruel as hers had been, but the fact of the matter was that her training had left her very skilled. It was silly to protest against a pinecone or two if that was what might prevent him from getting shot someday. She didn’t make him jump the gap any more, though, instead letting him use the entire territory to his advantage. He got hit a few good times, some of which would leave bruises, but it was challenging and fun. 

At one point Tim’s foot slipped on the side of a boulder and he fell off the side, only barely catching himself before falling into a dark hole. At his shout Kes materialized beside him and helped him up, then they both peered into the hole. It was actually blocked off with a grate like a sewer a foot or so down, and a rank aroma drifted out of it. “Not big enough opening for a bear or something to fit in,” Tim murmured. “Maybe it’s bats!” Kes shrugged a question and Tim pulled out his pocket notebook, quickly sketching a bat. It looked more like Batman’s symbol than the animal, but he thought he got the point across. Kes’ eyebrows flew up and she pulled out the pictures of Batman and Tim’s house, shrugging again. “I doubt Batman lives there,” Tim said. They were a long way from Wayne manor, and surely Batman’s lair would be in Gotham city proper. Kes, with her pictures and charades, asked him why Batman was called Batman if he didn’t live in a cave with bats. “Because he goes around at night?” Tim offered, with the appropriate pictures as illustration. “And bats are scary.” 

Kes indicated that she found the latter point doubtful.

“Weeeeeeell,” Tim hedged, “you’re not wrong. But what would be a better one to name himself after?” He snorted and nudged her eagerly. “Hold on, when we get home I’m pulling out the animal encyclopedia. Think we can pick a better identity?”

*

Once he got across to Kes what the animal encyclopedia was for she was all-in. She actually tried to find properly intimidating and/or spooky animals that fit Batman’s persona: panther, crow or raven, cobra. Tim picked the scariest animals that would make the stupidest costumes: grizzly bear, moose, hippo. He drew a little mock-up costume of 'moose man' that made them both need to half-smother themselves in pillows to muffle their laughter. In one of Kes’ turns to make a pick, his phone buzzed in his pocket and he startled before pulling it out. No one usually called him, Mandy had his number but would usually text do it had to be—

“Hello, Tim!” His mother’s voice came across the phone. “Enjoying the last day of summer?”

“Oh, yes!” He said, surprised but pleased. “Hello! It’s good to hear your voice. Thank you for calling.”

“I was going to call as soon as we saw your text but the time difference is killer.”

“Is that Timmy?” His father’s voice hollered somewhere in the background. “Tell him the good news about the rodeo, Janet!”

After a brief pause, his mom said drily, “Well, unless you’ve gone deaf in the past few months I trust you heard your father?”

“Yes’m,” Tim replied. “The rodeo?”

“We’re coming home a little earlier than planned, so you and he will be able to attend the traditional annual rodeo.” Her voice was sarcastic but fond. “You may have noticed that he’s excited.”

“I’m looking forward to it!” Tim said honestly. He didn’t like the rodeo nearly as much as his father did, but it was certainly more fun than the ballet or a business meeting: and if he exaggerated how much he enjoyed the rodeo, just a little bit, it was one of the best opportunities to spend time with his dad (without the slightly stiff awkwardness that had been a hallmark of their relationship ever since Tim was old enough to have preferences and interests but too young to know not to show how little those matched his parents’). “You’re leaving early? I hope there weren’t any problems with the dig.”

“No problems as such, no, the site just turned out to be a little lackluster. This way we can handle some business matters in person that were going to have to be done remotely.” She snorted, and finished: “Besides, the cities here are lovely but there aren’t nearly enough gargoyles.”

“A big shortcoming,” Tim agreed soberly. It was like the thing he’d heard her say a couple times at business dinners or parties: when it came to big cities on the east coast, if you wanted clean and modern you picked Metropolis; New York was cosmopolitan and hip; Bludhaven was cheap; but Gotham had history and character. 

“What did you want to speak about, Tim?” She said in a getting-back-to-business tone. “Your text just asked for a call when convenient.”

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “Um, I’ve been taking private lessons in computer programming over the summer? From a Gotham U student. She agreed to still do a couple lessons a month. I also got in the habit of going to the public library at least once a week over the summer. So I was wondering if you guys could authorize with the school for me to go out on Saturdays? Lots of kids do, either to visit family or take extracurriculars off-campus. They have a program for it and everything.”

“That is the kind of initiative that will take you far in life,” his mom said warmly. “I’m glad that our trust wasn’t misplaced and you’ve been using your resources, including your time, well.”

“I did just kind of fart around in the woods a lot too,” Tim confessed in lieu of confessing all the places he had just kind of ‘farted around’. 

“Perfectly normal for a growing boy, and half the reason we bought a country home. Consider it done, Tim. I’ll contact the school as soon as I’m off the phone with you.” There was a background murmur and then she said, “Your father reminds me to tell you to look in the closet of the green guest bedroom. The rest of your birthday presents will come in the mail but you’ll need this one for the start of the semester.”

His camera! Tim pumped a fist. “You got it. Will I see you guys when you get in?”

“Probably not immediately after, but we’ll pick you up for dinner some weekend soon after—send us your schedule so we can coordinate.”

“And the rodeo, of course,” Tim added.

“Ah, yes,” his mother said, tone very neutral but with just a tinge of amusement. “I’m not sure the exact date for that but I have a suspicion that I will be unavoidably detained.”

Chapter Text

His window slid open and Tim beamed. “Hi, Kes!” he whispered, waving. Tonight wasn’t an activity night for Tim, but he’d asked Kes to stop by in the middle of the night. She had clearly been out and about, since her clothes were grubby and her boots squished when she landed in his dorm room on the carpet. She waved back and looked over him with a a considering glance and shrugged, apparently asking why he was so excited. Tim looked at the clock on his bedside table: not quite midnight yet. “In a bit,” he said softly, with the general sign they used for ‘later’. “What about you?” He gestured to her and shrugged himself. “Anything interesting tonight?”

Kes lit up and nodded rapidly. She dug in her pack for her communication pictures, and pulled out the one for Batman and Robin. She made sure he was paying attention as she laid the picture face-up on the carpet. She held up one finger on her right hand and tapped Batman with her left. Two fingers, and tapped Robin. Then she held up three fingers and tapped the empty spot on the carpet beside the picture.

“What?” Tim said, strangling the word down to quiet halfway through. “What?? A third cape? Really?”

Kes tapped the empty space very pointedly.

“Wow,” Tim said brightly. “That’s great! Jason is still in training and Batgirl’s been retired for a while, so he needs someone else around helping out. That’s great.” He pointed to his eyes then to the blank space, shrugging. “What were they like?”

Kes rested her chin in her fist for a moment. After thinking she tugged at a lock of her shaggy black hair, then made a gesture that seemed to indicate long hair.

“A girl?” Tim wondered. He mimed an hourglass shape, a little embarrassed. Kes, completely unembarrassed, mimed a shape much more, uh, buxom than Tim had suggested. She then stood and held out her hand to indicate a height, decently tall for a woman. Probably an adult then. “Cool.”

Kes made a finder gun and ‘fired’ it with a soft pfft sound. “A gun?” Tim wondered: but of course Kes could imitate a gunshot perfectly, so this must be something else. A tranquilizer gun maybe? Oh, that would be so handy for a superhero to have. “Batman hates guns, though,” Tim said with a fair bit of confidence, and tried to tell Kes that with charades. Kes shook her head, finding the handgun picture and flipping it face-down to negate it. After a moment more of thought she acted out their sign for ‘trust’ and then strongly negated it, pointing between batman and the blank spot with an angry face.”Batman doesn’t trust her? Or just doesn’t like her?” Kes didn’t have an answer for him. They were both lost in thought for a moment before Kes brightened again and sling her backpack into her lap eagerly digging through it. She pulled out a fat yellow envelope held together with a rubber band and presented it to Tim like a trophy. 

He opened the envelope and dropped it in his lap, squeaking in surprise. After a shocked second he picked it up again and began to page through…God, there were twenties but mostly fifties…”Where did you get this?” Tim said nervously. 

Kes acted out Batman and the unknown hero, back-to-back, with a circle of opponents around them. She explained that after defeating the bad guys they had argued and then left. Kes had then taken the money from the unconscious bad guys.

“Huh.” Tim sat back on his heels and tried to figure out how he felt about this. It was kind of stealing, but he didn’t think stealing in concept bothered him that much, unfortunately. Obviously taking candy from babies was wrong, but after dumpster diving or scavenging with Kes enough times, and lying awake some nights thinking about how he and Kes would get by if they ever had to just drop everything and run, the concept of personal property had gotten a little blurry for him. And those were bad guys, indisputably so if Batman had been fighting them. He extra did not have a problem with stealing from bad guys. And what were the options if she hadn’t taken the money? The cops could have confiscated it. Other bad guys could have reclaimed it. A civilian in need could have taken it. The last made him feel a little bad, but he reminded himself that he and Kes were civilians in need.

Well, he had talked himself around to it! He smiled at Kes and nodded at her. “Nice! Do you want me to keep it or you?” He offered her the envelope back and she gently pushed it back towards him. “I’ll keep it safe,” he swore. “This goes right into our emergency fund.” He’d gotten Mrs Mac to teach him basic hand-sewing partly so he could hide evidence of damaged clothing and partly so he could hide things in the lining of his pack and re-sew it closed. He set the envelope on his bedside table and grinned to see the time. “Oh!” He pulled out the packages from under his bed and carefully separated them into two small heaps, pushing Kes’ towards her.

She picked up the box, just wrapped in the funny pages, and looked confused. 

“It’s presents!” Tim whispered excitedly. “For our birthday. Well, it’s my birthday, but I don’t know yours so I decided we should share.” He pumped his fist jubilantly. “I’m ten now! Officially double digits! And you’re a couple years older than me so we’re gonna say you’re twelve, OK?” He selected a likely-looking box from his pile and demonstrated tearing the wrapping paper and opening it up. “Nice! My lenses.” He tried one on the camera and looked through it happily. “Sweet.” He set them aside and pointed at the other stack of boxes then at Kes. “Ok, now you!”

Kes hesitantly picked up the biggest box on her side. She tore off the paper just like Tim had done and then popped open the box. She gasped quietly and upended the box, sending a shower of wrapped custard buns across the dorm carpet.

“I take it you like it?” Tim said happily. Kes was already tearing open a packet and shoving the contents in her mouth. Tim grabbed the next box in his stack and opened it, finding that this one had the notebooks and pens. A good selection of notebooks, from standard size to pocket-size Moleskines, and several very nice pens (though no space pen). Kes was watching him as he went through the notebooks and he nodded at her pile. “OK, your turn!”

Kes shoved the remaining half of the bun in her mouth and chewed with her mouth open as she ripped into the next box. Ew, Tim thought fondly. In this box was a pair of yellow over-ear headphones with daisies printed on the ear pieces. Kes looked them over, then hesitantly set them over her ears. “See?” Tim said, and watched her notice how much they muffled sound. “I thought they might be helpful!” Too excited to wait, he nudged the last package on her side towards her. “They go with the next one!”

With an unimpressed look, Kes unfurled her right leg and pointedly swept his last box towards him. 

“I know, I know, it’s my turn,” Tim said. This box had a smallish wooden crate in it with a latch, and opening it revealed an array of snacks. There was a note on top telling him that his real present was being signed up for a snack subscription box that would come every month. ”Nice,” Tim crowed quietly, and tore open something green with a label in Japanese. He offered one to Kes as well, and she traded him a custard bun for it. “Your turn,” he said, swallowing first because he should probably show her a good example about not talking with your mouth full. 

Kes opened the last package on her side and her brow furrowed in evident confusion at the blocky electronic device inside. 

“It’s a portable DVD player,” Tim said eagerly, showing her how to open it and fold up the half that held the small screen. He popped open the disc compartment to show her one was in there, then showed her how to plug in the cord of her new headphones as he turned it on. After moment the screen lit up with a menu that made Kes’ face light up. The only thing she had really had interest in tv-wise at the house was Tim’s mom’s dvd of the Russian national ballet performing the Nutcracker. Kes beamed and actually wriggled in place slightly, pointing at the screen and tapping the disc compartment, giving Tim three thumbs-ups in a row. “That’s not all,” he said smugly, and pulled one more soft-sided case out from under his bed. He opened it to show her the row of DVD cases inside. “There’s the case for the one in the player. Then we’ve got other ballet recordings, Riverdance, Stomp….” he pulled out another one to show her. “Cirque du Soleil! That was Mandy’s idea. I’d asked her for suggestions for a friend who couldn’t really understand English but loved dance. She also made me buy Cats.” 

Kes paged through all the dvd cases, looking at the covers in intense interest. 

“Since we can’t do puzzles together as much as we used to,” he said ruefully, “And I had to leave Tsuro at home with the other board games. Now you have something fun to do any time you want, right?” He went on to point out the battery icon at the corner of the device’s screen, showing her with a series of little sketches that when the battery ran out the player would die, then showing her how to plug it in. 

After taking it all in, she carefully took off the headphones and leaned forward to hug him tightly, their cheeks pressed together.

“You’re welcome, Kestrel. Happy birthday.”

Chapter Text

When they got out of the car Tim’s dad tried to hold his hand and Tim had to gently explain that he was ten now, and if anyone he knew saw him holding his dad’s hand he’d have to change his name and move to Brazil.

Jack had looked kind of offended and kind of embarrassed, but in the end had neither scolded Tim nor apologized. Instead he just started telling a story from a trip he’d taken to Brazil before Tim was even born. Which was fine, it was a funny story. As usual, Janet walked too fast for them. The click of her heels only stopped when she realized how far ahead she was, and she waited for them to catch up, sliding out the keyboard of her Blackberry to respond to a text while she waited. When they caught up and she could hear the story being told she gave her husband an unimpressed stare. “Really, Jack? That’s not exactly an appropriate story for a child.”

“I wasn’t offended,” Tim offered.

“Hmm,” she said, and pinched his cheek lightly. “How about you tell us what you’ve been up to instead? You’ve been ‘farting around’ outdoors a lot, you said.”

Tim tried to find something about it that made a good story, but after telling them he was good at climbing trees now he ran out of material. Instead he told them about his lessons with Mandy, tactfully glossing over the aspects of what he was learning that they didn’t really need to know. That was easy to talk about, and he did so enthusiastically for a couple of blocks before they reached the restaurant door and his mom raised a finger to her lips. “That’ll do, kiddo. I’m glad you’re having fun but it’s not very good manners to talk for so long when the adults around you aren't interested in the topic, and you know your father and I don’t know more about computers than what is needed to use them.”

Tim dropped his head and mumbled an apology as his dad ruffled his hair. Despite his show of contrition, what he was mostly feeling at the moment was surprise. His mother had been actively disapproving just now, and it…hadn’t bothered him? Well, it had bothered him a little, but only a little. With his parents gone so much for business and the like, when they were around Tim had always felt himself on a tightrope of their approval. He tried to puzzle out why he was so unbothered as his dad let the host know they had arrived. All he could figure was that it was down to the fact that he had someone else, now. Kes approved of Tim: he was pretty sure that the only things she would disapprove of were things that would make Tim ashamed of himself anyway, whereas his parents were so different from him that they were frequently bothered by things that made no sense to him at all. They were cool and interesting people, and it would be good if they spent more time together, but he couldn’t help but remember that if that were so Tim would have less time to spend with his best friend.

“Alright, Timmy?” His father whispered as Janet once again outpaced them on the way to their table. “Sorry for not being interested in the computer stuff. At least we’ll get to spend some time together on something we both enjoy soon, right, sport?”

“Sure, Dad,” Tim said easily. “I hear they have some really good bullriders this year.”

"And remember," his mom said as they sat down, "We promised that if you get three or more A's on your final report card this year you'll get your own home computer."

Tim was pretty sure they hadn't actually promised that but he was hardly going to turn it down, so he gave her two thumbs up. He felt weirdly relaxed: who knew that what would make it extra easy to spend time with his parents was to not need them as much any more?

*

“Hey, Drake!”

Tim kicked his skateboard up and grabbed it, avoiding Lacey as he walked over to the fence. The school had a pretty big parking lot that was usually not at all full, and Tim and the other kids who liked to skateboard or roller skate had free run of the back corner. When he was close enough to not have to yell, he said, “Hey, Collins.”

Robert Collins held up the roll of newspaper. “Done with today’s Gazette, it’s all yours.” As Tim took it, he also passed over his thumb drive. “And got the paper for Higgins’ class,” he said more quietly.

“Thanks, man,” Tim said gratefully, and gave him the twenty that he’d stuck in his pocket for just this occasion. “Once it’s graded, just drop by my dorm room and I’ll give you the rest.” Going rate was $40 for a B, $50 for an A, and a refund for anything below that. Collins, round-faced and dark-skinned and quiet, made an absolute killing writing multiple papers a month. In previous years Tim had been more likely to sell an essay than to buy one, but he was busy doing more important stuff these days and didn’t have time. “I reserved a spot to have you edit my midterm, right?”

“You got it, Drake,” he said. “You’re a good kid, and hella discreet: you get priority.”

“Aww, thanks,” Tim said. “Hey, if there’s any left when you come to my room I’ll give you one of the weird Japanese snacks my parents gave me for my birthday.”

“You got a deal.” They shook on it, and Collins left Tim. He zipped the drive into a pocket and climbed the fence to sit on top of it and read the paper. The front page was about the latest disaster in Central City, and Tim read it with interest even though it didn’t have enough about The Flash for him to want to clip it. But just below the fold there was a local story that he definitely had to clip: a breaking story from a reporter (un)lucky enough to be caught up in the recent gang violence in Burnley, reporting on the appearance of a new masked vigilante. There wasn’t a photo with the article, unfortunately. The description matched the one Kes had given, dark-haired white woman in her late twenties or early thirties. The gun-type thing Kes had expressed was apparently a hand crossbow, and her costume was purple with no bat-adjacent iconography. Apparently she had initially started to just leave the scene after beating down some gangsters, but the reporter had called ‘Batgirl!’ after her and gotten a response that wasn’t suitable for print, but included that her chosen name was ‘Huntress’. 

“Oh, good name,” Tim murmured. As far as he was concerned Kes was already basically a superhero, but if she ever decided to go the mask and cape route she would need a good name, so Tim liked to look for ideas. 

The fact that her costume was purple was good information. He might need to print some kind of color wheel for Kes’ communication file as well. Not only could he use it then to ask her preferences, for example if the yellow headphones had been good or if another color would be better, but if she or he needed to warn the other about somebody it would be super helpful to be able to identify clothing color. The first night out of the new semester had only had a brief Batman sighting (still no Robin, so he was probably only out for short training flights on quiet nights) but they’d found some good stuff, including a kind of electronic hearing aid (that Tim thought he could use to listen to the tumblers in a safe) and a fanny pack the perfect size for Kes’ picture stash. She had her backpack for most things, but the fanny pack was quick and easy to draw pictures out from. 

Tim patted the pocket where the thumb drive was and reminded himself to review the budget again. The money Kes had brought back gave them some wiggle room, and he might have enough to make a donation to another soup kitchen. (It was much harder to feed Kes good food now that he was at school, so he’d looked up reputable soup kitchens and made donations at several to indirectly pay for Kes’ lunches. Her fanny pack also had a packing-tape-laminated index card that said “Hello / I don’t understand English / (my friend wrote this for me) / Please feed me :)” and that had worked like a charm)

So much to do, so little time. He dropped his skateboard back onto the asphalt and kicked off in the directions of the dorms.

Chapter Text

Tim allowed himself a good, long sixty seconds of mortification.

After the minute was up, he straightened in his chair and pulled out the five-year-plan notebook, trying his best to embody his mothers most stone-faced down-to-business attitude. He flipped to the section on ‘Knowledge’, and found the subheading for ‘Kes’: under that he wrote ‘women’s health’ and then buried his face in his hands for another ten seconds of embarrassment.

He was hardly the only one. When the teacher announced that health class today would be talking about menstruation half the girls had instantly turned pink and hid behind their books. When the teacher started to explain what menstruation was, the remaining students one by one joined them in hiding their burning faces in their books or desks or hands—except some of the boys, who said “Gross!” or made disgusted sounds. (Martin Black also made disgusted noises but Tim could tell they were admiring and fascinated disgusted sounds: after all, in art class two years ago the art teacher had had to special-order extra red crayons because Martin liked nothing better than drawing bloody battle scenes.) The teacher stopped the lesson to yell at them five or six times, telling them that this was perfectly natural and half the planet experienced it and, what, did they intend to not know this kind of stuff all the way until they got married?

Tim had done his best to listen professionally. He had imitated the girls, some of whom were still embarrassed but most of whom had taken on coolly disdainful looks, and just tried to write down detailed notes.

“OK,” he said with a steadying breath, and flipped through his health class notebook to find the notes from today. “OK.” 

It probably wasn’t an immediate concern: he’d seen Kes wash her panties in a sink plenty of times and he was sure he would have noticed bloodstains. According to the statistics the teacher had listed, 12 was a pretty normal age to start, but things like stress and malnutrition could delay it. Under the ‘women’s health’ note he added ‘?Supplies?’ and let his head thunk into the desk again. Apparently all the girls’ bathrooms had baskets of pads, so Kes could get those if she needed them. The teacher had shown one and it looked straightforward. The problem was…ugh. The problem was tampons. The thought of trying to explain those to Kes made Tim want to move to Metropolis and live with the sewer mutants. “Maybe there’s a book,” he said mournfully. “With illustrations.” He added ‘Diagrams?’ to the notebook. It would really help if Kes could read! Tim’s dad had done a god-awful job explaining ‘the birds and the bees’ to him, but Tim had just gone and looked up ‘sex’ in the encyclopedia afterwards and gotten the low-down quite efficiently. 

He made himself a note to look for a book like that at the library: he still had to go and get the abusive-relationships books that Batgirl had recommended, anyway. 

With a sigh, he let himself slump down in his chair and closed the notebooks. Times like these, he really wished he knew an adult who could help him with Kes. Maybe Mandy would help? But no, she’d ask why a kid didn’t have parents to tell her that stuff and probably report Kes to social services. And Tim really needed Mandy to keep working with him: he’d had a couple computer science classes at school so far and it was such basic baby stuff still. As long as he toed a careful line with what he asked her for and what he tried to do, he didn’t think Mandy would ever try and narc on him. (she had said once that she hoped he’d spare her when he became a supervillain some day, which was kinda hurtful but also weirdly complimentary?? It had broken his brain a little) The ultimate goal was to be able to forge documentation for Kes, with a name and birthday and fake guardians and everything. 

And it would be cool if he could hack into security cameras, too. 

**

Just as he predicted, only ten minutes after lights-out Johnny did a bed check. Tim mumbled slightly like he was asleep when the light from the hallway fell over his face, and the RA whispered an apology as he quietly re-shut the door. Tim hastily set up his fake-Tim in the bed for just in case, but he would be safe for the rest of the night. He stomped into his sneakers and slung his pack over his back and snuck out of his window.

This wasn’t his normal night to be out and about, but he had plans. He just hoped that Kes had really gotten what he’d tried to ask her earlier, because the plans kind of hinged on her sticking around past nightfall like he’d tried to ask her to. He got to the rec hall safely and unlocked the door easily. (Kes might have taken to lockpicking like a fish to water, but it was a point of minor pride that Tim remained faster at it than she did, and less inclined to leave marks) As he crossed the gym movement made him startle and he looked up: high high up on the wall, past the basketball hoop, was the maintenance hatch to the quasi-attic space where Kes was staying, and the movement was a rope unfurling as it fell down the wall. Kes’ face poked out the hatch and she beckoned him up, looking impatient. “Aw, man,” Tim said, and started climbing the rope.

At least he could brace his feet on the wall and half-walk up. He was still a little winded when he reached the top and Kes hauled him the last foot in by his backpack. “Thanks,” he wheezed, and she patted his head.

After he’d taken a second to look around the space—quite bare and a little drafty, but Kes had a cozy little nest set up and there was light both from the roof vents and from her hand-cranked flashlight—she caught his attention and shrugged. “Oh, right!” he said. He kept quiet by habit, but the first night back at school he’d broken into the administrative office and gotten into the computer (he couldn’t say ‘hacked’ into because they kept the username and password on a post-it right there by the monitor) to check the night watch rotations. He and Kes both knew the safe times to move around, and Kes even had three days a week when it was safe to shower and one when they could do her laundry. Tim lined up his pictures into their schedule, and she gave a thumbs-up. He tapped his observation nights, and acted out watching and following Batman, tracing his patrol route on their big map. She understood that too. Finally he tapped on the day-night card corresponding to today, and acted out the same watching-and-observing but pointed to Kes instead of Batman and Robin.

She reared back slightly in surprise and her brow furrowed. She separated out the Batman-and-Robin picture, and did what she’d done the other night to indicate the third cape—Huntress, as Tim now knew. He shook his head, and repeated her motions except he tapped out a fourth space and pointed at Kes. “I wanna watch you, Kes! I’d like to know what you’re up to when I’m not around. Only if you want, though.” He tried to act out two scenarios, Kes letting him follow and Kes telling him ‘no’ and him going back to bed, to show her that he would be OK to do either. 

After a moment of thought Kes gave a single decided nod. She reset the schedule and tapped the card for today, Monday. On the big map she traced out a route and he carefully watched. It mostly avoided Batman’s patrol routes, though it crossed over them at several spots that were hotspots for criminal activity. It also made a straight shot down Crime Alley. Her route pivoted at various points, and several of them Tim recognized as branch libraries or soup kitchens. When she was done tracing, her finger returned to the boarding school and she looked up at Tim and shrugged. She grabbed two day-night pictures to indicate that they would be back closer to morning of the next day than midnight, and Tim gave a thumbs-up. “I can manage it. I can skip breakfast now and again without raising any alarms, and my first class will be computer science and I can sleepwalk through that.” He did a time-count on his fingers, indicating a minute total, and tried to ask her how many minutes it took her to get from point x to point y in her route. It took a couple tries but she got it, and then she diligently counted off minutes for each leg of the trip.

Tim winced at one particularly fast stretch. “Hmm. I dunno if I can make it down 22nd that fast.” He frowned at her. “Hey, how do you get down it that fast? Do you have a grapple-line?” He mimed swinging on a line like Batman did and she shook her head. She put her first two fingertips against the floor and walked them along, then ‘jumped’ them back and forth. “Are you part-squirrel?” Tim joked. “Or perhaps a lizard?”

Kes tapped him and indicated the stretch of 22nd he’d been concerned about as well as three other places, shaking her head and making the ‘jumping’ motion again before negating it. She then tapped him again and traced alternate lines on the map, giving him intersect routes like they used on nights when they actively tailed Batman. 

“Got it,” Tim said, determined, and memorized them with narrowed eyes. “I won’t slow you down, Kestrel. This is gonna be fun, right? Like the next level of running through the woods!”

Kes snorted and made him give her his pencil and notepad: she drew a rough but identifiable pine cone and pointed at Tim, mimed throwing, pointed at herself, and ended with a smug little ‘bring it on’ hand gesture.

Tim laughed out loud, clapping his hand over his mouth to muffle it. “No, no,” he gasped, chuckling, and negated the drawing before shuffling onto his knees and looking up at her with an attentive gaze. “No, you’re the master, I’m just the apprentice. I’ve got no place trying to train you.” He bowed slightly and then grinned. “Except in like, table manners and interacting with people and stuff.”

Chapter Text

Kes was probably slowing down at least a little so Tim could keep up. 

They still made a pretty darn good pace, starting from the school and heading up the streets along the lee side of the buildings. The first point where Kes stopped, mysteriously, was a small restaurant near the main library. She circled it, diligently examining its surroundings from all angles, before moving on. Tim resolved to look it up later. Once they crossed the bridge to Midcity they took to the rooftops. Kes set a quick pace here, leaping from roof to roof where the gaps were narrow enough: Tim trusted that she would not lead him somewhere he couldn’t safely follow, and so didn’t let himself think about it before jumping behind her. There were a couple of slightly scary moments, but it was also exhilarating. 

Her pattern was slightly different from a Batman patrol pattern. Where he swung through his route at a mostly steady pace—making himself visible as much as anything, an efficient way of making plenty of petty criminals reconsider their chances—Kes rapidly traveled from point to point then spent ten to twenty minutes at the points, watching the streets around it with unwavering alertness. 

At first Tim tried to keep silent and just observe her, to be of as little trouble as possible: but after the first couple of stops, he noticed that she was casting him occasional confused or unsettled looks. When he started adding a quiet but pretty consistent commentary, like he did on a lot of their normal nights, the unsettled look disappeared and she oddly appeared more rather than less able to focus. “Let nobody say I’m not good background noise,” he murmured at one point as he held on to her backpack so she could lean far out and peer into a dark alley corner.

In their fourth stop (near a soup kitchen in Midcity) she seemed to freeze, almost like hunting dogs did on tv. Tim shut up and aligned himself with her to see where she was looking. Her eyes seemed locked onto a man walking down the street, and Tim tried to work out what she saw there that alarmed her. The man wasn’t obviously a gang member, and certainly not a costumed rogue: he was big but pretty average-looking, with a cheap suit and no bag or pack on his shoulders. There were no obvious weapons that Tim could see. He didn’t know if he’d see a concealed handgun, perhaps on a shoulder holster, though—he should probably learn what that looked like. The man wasn’t weaving down the street like he was drunk or high and he didn’t seem angry or upset…but after watching for a bit longer, he and Kes moving to the other side of the roof to keep him in sight, he noticed that the man was walking unusually slowly. There were a decent number of both people and cars on the street right now, close to 10pm. Most of them walked quickly and with great purpose, radiating the traditional Gothamite ‘screw off’ or ‘don’t start none won’t be none’ attitudes. There were noticeably more men than women on the streets at this time of night, and the women rarely walked alone: a couple of the women who were walking alone carried WE-brand tasers conspicuously in their hand.

The man Kes was watching, though, was casting casual glances around as he walked slowly. His hands were in his pockets, and the more he looked the more Tim was sure that he was deliberately going slow enough that most pedestrians overtook him, and when they passed his seemingly aimless eyes scanned them from head to foot. “He’s casing people,” Tim murmured. “A thief, maybe?” He wished he’d brought his digital camera: it wasn’t super good at seeing in the dark, but the street lights were probably enough to take a useful photo, and it sure would be handy to be able to take snapshots to study or refer to later. 

The man started to turn at a corner up the street, and Kes silently dropped off the roof. Tim yelped, and leaned over to see that she’d landed, catlike, on the crossbar of a lightpost beside the building. She slid halfway down the pole and jumped away, then disappeared into the shadows in the direction the man had gone.

Tim said a word that he was pretty sure was a Punjabi curse, based on the context he’d heard Mandy say it in, and made himself think for a second. He could jump from this roof to the one to the side there, which was in the wrong direction to give chase but had an extremely descend-able drainpipe. After that he would just sprint through the alley and hope he could catch up on an intercept angle. 

It worked too well, actually, because he skidded out of the alley into the street a few blocks from Kes’ observation site and almost collided with the man in question. They both froze and Tim said, “Um.”

The casing was a lot more intimidating this close up, and Tim swore at himself when the man’s eyes fell on the gas mask dangling from his pack. “Nice model, kid,” the man said, and pushed the edge of his jacket back just enough to show that there was indeed a gun tucked into his trousers. “How about you step back into that alley and we have a friendly pow-wow?”

Tim swallowed, eyes unable to leave the gun. “Yessir.” As he backed up two, three steps the man followed him into the alley: as soon as he was out of the ring of light from the street lamp Kestrel dropped on him like her namesake on a mouse. He was out before he hit the ground, and Tim squeaked “Hi, Kes! Sorry!” as she relieved the mugger of his gun and somehow had it into three different pieces in about two seconds flat. (Note for the ‘skills’ to-do list: Tim needed to learn how to break down guns, clearly.) She threw part of it down the alley and tucked the others in her hoodie pocket. After looking at the man for a second in thought, she carefully reached down and with efficient, sharp motions broke both his thumbs and pointer fingers with four quick snaps.  

“Holy shit,” Tim said. He got it, though. If all she did was knock him out he could get up in an hour or two and still knock some innocent pedestrian over before he went home. Probably hard to beat up or shoot someone with broken fingers. Still… “Hardcore.”

Kes looked at him, hands on her hips. She seemed conflicted. “Don't worry,” he said sheepishly. “I wasn’t being bait on purpose. Although if you want a sidekick I can definitely make that part of my skillset.” After a minute, Kes made a ‘whatever/moving on/erase that’ gesture and jerked her head to tell him to follow her back up to the rooftops. “It’s cool that your patrol is a legit patrol, though,” he managed even as she stood on his shoulders to grab the bottom of an awning. “Bet they never see it coming.”

It was a little weird, when he thought about it…Kes had been suspicious of that guy before he even stuck anybody up. Tim wondered how often she took down someone who hadn’t, technically, done anything yet. But after chewing on that for a minute, Tim dismissed it: Kes was a good person, and she was supernaturally insightful. If she thought it was a good idea to knock someone out, it was.

**

Over the next couple hours Kes took down a total of three wannabe muggers and a drunk guy that had his hands around a prostitute’s throat. Most of them she just silently knocked out and then left with broken fingers, but the last guy she also dislocated a knee and a shoulder. As soon as the prostitute was free she had run away, which was good because Tim was pretty sure Kes didn't want to have to deal with people, even grateful people that she had just helped. Another reason why she was mostly taking down people who hadn’t actually attacked someone yet. A little after midnight the skies opened up in a downpour that drove most people off the streets, and after a couple more stops Kes indicated to Tim that she thought they should just go home. At that point they were even being extra careful, which made it extra offensive when on the way down a fire escape Tim's feet slipped, the rusty railing snapped, and Tim fell over head-first.

Maybe it was an example of dramatic irony that the same broken railing that tried to kill him also was what saved him. Of course the way it saved him was by stabbing him in the thigh with a rusted piece of metal, but beggars can’t be choosers. Tim couldn’t even scream as the air was punched out of him when he swung around the pivot point of the stabbing bar and slammed chest-first against the edge of the fire escape. Before he could even try and regain his breath or move Kes was there, grabbing him by the backpack and hauling him bodily upright. Tim instinctively clamped his arms tight to his chest to make sure the straps couldn’t slip off his shoulders. As she yanked him onto the platform the knife of metal ripped from his leg and he really did scream as the world went dark and fuzzy.

He regained his senses probably only moments later. He blinked the rainwater out of his eyes and trembled as he tried to lever himself up on his elbows and see the damage. Kes, beside him on the fire escape platform, was stripping off her dark t-shirt and shoving it against the wound in his leg hard enough that he choked and faded out again. 

The next time he roused it was to find his Kes back in her hoodie, his belt holding her shirt in a tight wad against the deep wound. “Thass ba’ news,” he slurred in alarm, and she swapped around her backpack to hang against her front instead and pulled him up to carry him piggyback. He swayed as the change in position left him lightheaded and she clicked her tongue in the way she sometimes did when she wanted him to pay attention. “Sorry,” he managed, and hooked his arms around her shoulders, twisting his fingers together in hopes that they’d stay that way even if he faded out again. He was leaking tears at a steady rate, and he would have apologized if they weren’t both already entirely rain soaked.

Kes made it down the fire escape smoothly, though when she dropped down from the ladder to the ground the jolt sent another line of fire through Tim’s leg that squeezed a high yelp out of him. Kes made a few shushing sounds and took off running through the street.

Tim buried his face in the back of her neck and put all his focus into taking breaths as steadily as he could. A sense of despair was creeping over him that this was going to ruin everything: this wasn’t a little scratch or bruise he could hide with a bandaid and blame on skateboarding. He was pretty sure he’d be dead by now if it had torn an artery, so death was probably not in the cards, but it would need stitches and stuff and he had no cover story. If it had happened during the day he could have blamed it on a skateboarding accident or something similar, but by morning it would be clear that the injury was hours old even if he could tolerate bleeding that long. He could pretend that he’d tried to sneak out and hurt himself somehow, but then everyone would be on high alert for him—his best cover was his reputation as a quiet rule-follower, and that would be ruined. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he whispered, and it wasn’t just the pain that was making him cry.

It took Kes nearly an hour, carrying him piggyback, to make it back to the school. Tim was feeling light-headed and halfway disconnected from his body, but the half that wasn’t disconnected couldn’t think of anything but the red-hot shrieking pain of his thigh. She had to let him down to crawl through the hole in the fence, and she prodded him into position lying on his back and hauled him through by his backpack straps rather than try and make him crawl after her. He realized once she pulled him back up onto her back that she was taking him to the rec center, and he tried desperately to remember if they would be safe from the night watch. They made it in okay as Kes picked the lock in record time, and he distantly worried as he realized that they were leaving a clear trail of rainwater across the atrium. Kes carried him into the girls’ side of the showers and set him down gently in the tiled corner closest to the locker room. He kind of spaced out again as she ran and turned on the light in the locker room, leaving the door cracked just enough to throw a little light into the showers. She came back quickly with several towels in her arms and brought one over to him. She again made comforting shushing noises as she unbuckled the belt and pulled her soaked t-shirt off his leg: the renewed rush of pain made him black out even before she started to wash it with soap.

When he came back to, Kes was gone. All her soaking-wet clothes were heaped on the tile floor a few feet away, and Tim watched with sick fascination as a steady trickle of watery red ran from the crumpled t-shirt to the drain. He zoned out watching it, and was startled when Kes burst back through the door and dropped to her knees beside him. She’d changed into a pair of sweatpants that used to be his, and water trickled from her wet hair down her bare back: the analytical part of Tim’s brain that (for better or for worse) never shut up realized that she must had ditched her wet clothes so she could climb up through the drop ceiling to her stuff without leaving an obvious dripping trail. She set down a big white-and-red first aid kit that Tim recognized from the wall of the gym, and a little battered leather case that he didn’t recognize at all. “Stupid,” he muttered, angry at himself, “Of course we need first aid kits...why didn’t I think of that…all I have is stupid damn bandaids like some kind of—” his voice cut out in a whine when Kes untied the towel from his leg and briskly opened an alcohol wipe from the first aid kit. He was too shaky to sit up like he wanted to at first, but after a few attempts Kes paused in her ministrations just long enough to help him into a sitting position.

The wound, he saw, was deep but not terribly long—maybe a few inches. The edges were swollen and a violently purple bruise was already blooming across his whole leg. Kes briskly wiped it down with the alcohol wipe as Tim gritted his teeth on a shout. When it was clean to her satisfaction, though it still oozed blood, she snapped open the little leather case and several shining needles glinted in the dim light.

“A suture kit,” Tim said, managing to be amazed even in these extreme circumstances. “I think it’s not just cash you’ve been grabbing from bad guys' lairs, huh?”

Kes paused just a moment and linked their elbows, pulling his face until his lips touched her cheek. ‘Trust me’, Tim interpreted. She demonstrated taking deep slow breaths until Tim imitated her, then she bent over his lap to start stitching the gash in his thigh. 

Tim trembled through it. He slumped, resting his head on her bent back, the ridge of a scar under his cheek, and thought Something has to be done . Thanks to Kes they would get through the night with their secrecy intact, but what if she hadn’t been able to fix him and Tim was left basically on house arrest? Or worse, if he had fallen straight down five stories and splatted like guano on the pavement. His parents and Mandy would be bummed, he was sure, and even some of his classmates might miss him, but where would that leave Kes? Alone again, without her one friend and interface with the rest of the world? He didn’t know how long the ‘feed me’ note would hold out before someone at a soup kitchen called social services on the clearly-alone homeless girl. What if she got in over her head on patrol and needed someone to back her up? What if she got her first period, for God’s sake, and thought she was dying because she had no idea what was happening? What if she got hurt, and needed to hole up, and had no one to bring her food and water and make sure she was okay?

What Kes needed was to be able to ask other people for help: and for that, she needed to be able to communicate better than their charades and pictures allowed her.

It was time, Tim decided, to call in the big guns. 

Chapter Text

When Tim had picked the disused airfield just south of Bludhaven to use as a meeting point, he hadn’t realized just how open and exposed the area was. He and Kes tucked themselves up beside the rotting small hangar and waited. Kes, no doubt picking up on his nerves, prowled through the area in tight circuits.

Before Tim even had a hint of movement, Kes’s head shot up in alarm and she sprinted to stand protectively in front of him, body tense and ready to strike: Tim gulped as the reason for this meeting settled serenely into the cracked asphalt a dozen yards away.

“Timothy Drake,” The Martian Manhunter stated. “I would be very interested to learn how you got my contact information.”

Tim swallowed, even as he patted Kes’ arm, trying to tell her he was safe. He hadn’t put his full name on the email, but of course that was something one of the strongest telepaths on the planet (as far as he knew) would be able to pick up immediately. Martian Manhunter was a member of the Justice League—even if he was mad at Tim, he wouldn’t hurt him. Hurt either of them. Tim was pretty sure, anyway. “Yessir. Well, um, the first place you showed up as, well—” Tim gestured to all of his intimidating, caped greenness: “---you know…was Middleton, Colorado. You took the superhero name Manhunter so I figured your, uh, day job was something like a bounty hunter or P.I. or police detective. I found information about a John Jones working at the police station who started around the same time. The Justice League has referred to you as J’onn on camera a few times, so, um. It seemed like a safe bet?”

“Hmm.” Martian Manhunter tilted his head to the side, looking them over once more. In front of Tim Kes relaxed slightly. “Intriguing. This is my first time seeing a Bat in its larval form.”

That was an extremely (intriguingly) strange statement that Tim really wanted to dig into, but they had come here for a purpose and he needed to get on with it before he lost his nerve. “You see, Mr. Manhunter sir, we’re here because my friend Kes needs help.” He stepped out from behind her, and she permitted it, though she didn’t let him step any closer to the League member. “Kes is super smart and skilled and tough but someone really did awful things to her when she was a kid. Well, a younger kid. She has all kinds of scars and stuff and she’s really really good at fighting and, like, ninja stuff. But she can’t talk.” Kes looked at him. He linked their elbows and continued. “Like, she can make sounds, and she can hear, but she can’t talk. And no matter how much I talk to her she doesn’t understand, or even seem to know that it is understandable. And, it’s not like, I mean. I lo—I think she’s wonderful just how she is.” Tim stuttered but continued valiantly, “But, um, it would make her life a lot easier and safer if she could understand speech and talk herself. And, um, I also considered asking someone on the magical side of things, but Zatanna seemed a bit more of a risk, and also I think Kes is probably an empath, so maybe you would be the best…” he was running out of breath. “...and, you know, Batman doesn’t allow metas in Gotham so. We had to, um, meet outside it, and I didn’t want him to know about Kes.”

“Batman’s oft-repeated restriction on meta activity in Gotham is, primarily, to keep the likes of myself and his other teammates out,” Martian Manhunter began with. “To reduce unwanted interference. He bears no ill-will towards normal citizens who happen to have some special ability.”

“If you say so,” Tim said doubtfully. One of the older girls in his school had started being able to see in the dark a couple years ago and the whole family had quietly packed up and moved to Metropolis, so clearly Tim wasn't the only one who thought powers in general weren’t welcome. 

“As for your request: this is a grave wrong that has been done your friend, if what you say is true, and if she permits me I am more than willing to investigate.”

“How can you ask her?” Tim asked tentatively. There was a moment of silence as the superhero looked at Kes and she stared right back, then Kes flinched away so hard and fast that Tim was dragged a step back by their linked arms. “Oh!” he blurted, and patted Kes’ arm again. “Like that, I guess.”

“It is not uncommon for your species to reject a telepathic inquest,” Martian Manhunter said gravely. “I can of course force entry, but the goal here is to undo harm, not cause more.”

“Yeah.” Tim already knew what he had to do, and it kind of made him want to die but… for Kes, for Kes, for Kes, he told himself. He gently let go of her arm and stepped away. She grabbed at him in alarm, and he put his chin in his fist to tell her he was trying to communicate something. Reluctantly, she let go. Tim hurried over the intervening distance, and she followed a yard or so behind him. He stopped and looked up (and up and up) when he got within a foot of Martian Manhunter. “Can you, um, take a knee, sir? So I can reach?”

The martian raised a hairless brow, but did so, with great dignity, sweeping his cape out of the way as he knelt. 

Bracing himself, Tim stepped up beside him and faced towards Kes. He timidly linked elbows with the hero, and as Kes’ eyes widened, he leaned over and lightly kissed the green cheek. He let go immediately and scurried back, his face absolutely flaming. “That’s the sign we use for trust,” he said hurriedly, “---so she knows I trust you.”

Martian Manhunter huffed a quiet laugh and waited, looking at Kes with the same level undemanding gaze. Kes wavered, but eventually stepped forwards. She took on the at-ease posture, her face stone-stiff, and Tim fretted to see it. “Will it mess you up if we’re touching?” He asked, and got a shake of the head in response. He linked his elbow with Kes’ again and nudged their shoulders. “Tim-and-Kes-together,” he said to her, hoping that she would understand and not be afraid. “He’s here to help you, I swear.”

From his kneeling position Martian Manhunter’s head was only a little taller than Kes’. He didn’t raise a hand or touch her or otherwise make an obvious sign, but Tim saw Kes’ eyes slip shut as she shuddered slightly. “I am explaining to her my intentions,” the telepath said in a regular conversational tone. “I will let her know that I mean to briefly skim her memories, and to look for certain things in particular. I will communicate the goal of enabling her to understand spoken language: I will convey that you believe it would benefit her future health and happiness, and that I agree with your estimation.” Then he was quiet for an awfully long time. Kes was silent, though occasionally she jolted or trembled slightly. She was breathing in a careful meditative pattern. 

When Martian Manhunter spoke up next Tim, to his mortification, jumped and yelped. “I have examined the shape of the issue and devised a course of action. I am making sure she knows the risks involved.”

“There are risks?” Tim couldn’t not say. The superhero looked at him and his pupilless red eyes were somehow kind.

“Just like a tree can be trained from seed to take on a permanent shape, her mind has been shaped by her upbringing. What I attempt is more surgery than first aid.”

“Oh,” Tim whispered almost soundlessly. His left arm was hooked through Kes’ elbow, so now with his right hand he clasped her hand tightly. 

This pause was even longer. Kes trembled constantly now and part of her weight leaned against Tim’s shoulder: the telepath’s brow was furrowed slightly. Finally after what must have been half an hour (Tim’s arm was numb and thigh where the stitched wound was ached harshly), Martian Manhunter lifted one big hand and rested it gently on Kes’s head. She sighed and stopped trembling, drooping into sleep or unconsciousness. Tim yelped and tried to catch her, but fortunately Martian Manhunter was already gently guiding her into a resting position on the ground. “Is she okay?” Tim said, heart in his throat. 

“I believe she will be,” he answered, and smiled at Tim. “I am very hopeful that you will get your wish.”

Tim sat down in the dirt too, now holding Kes’ hand in both of his, and felt tears of relief prickling at his eyes. “Oh! Really?”

The telepath nodded. He looked serious again. “Her upbringing was as cruel as you said. Or perhaps more so.” He looked Tim over thoughtfully. “Do you wish to see him?”

Tim’s breath caught in his throat and he nodded. Martian Manhunter’s form rippled and he took on the shape of a man, tallish, fit, caucasian. “This is her…captor. Owner and trainer.” 

“Oh! Oh, let me—” Tim let go of Kes just long enough to unpack his camera. He’d brought the film camera, on the vague thought that it would make a better cover, but now he wished he had the little digital one. He stood up carefully and took a full-body shot of the shapeshifter, then a more close shot of his face. “Do you mind turning, sir?” With a very slight smile on the stranger’s face, Martian Manhunter turned so that he could get pictures from every angle. When he had them all he scowled at the unfamiliar face. “Who even is he?”

“I do not know,” Martian Manhunter said heavily. “He was extremely diligent that your friend not be exposed to language at all. The voice I am using for him may not even be very accurate. I would have had to go through every moment of her memories in hope of finding a small slip here or there, a phonecall not quite out of earshot or a hushed meeting around a doorway after he was already confident she could neither learn nor understand. It would be incredibly invasive, and difficult for me as well.” He turned back into himself again and Tim relaxed. He didn’t like to think what would have happened if Kes came to and saw that. 

“OK,” Tim said, trying to suppress his disappointment. Maybe he didn’t succeed, because he also got a huge green hand rested atop his head. 

“I am sorry, Timothy,” he said quietly. “I am not the greatest of my people…merely the last.” With a single gentle pat he withdrew his hand. “I was able to find in detail a very pivotal memory: the day your friend escaped.”

Tim perked up, almost bouncing with excitement. “Oh! How? When?”

“The when I cannot tell you: some years ago, I think, but she has not tracked days and months.” He looked extremely grim. “It was…the first field test. Her owner visited such brutal treatment on her in efforts to shape her into a weapon. He took her to a meeting, and directed her to kill a man. She did, with her bare hands.”

He no longer felt any bouncy feelings at all. Tim swallowed, feeling sick. “Oh.”

“It…to say that it horrified her is not enough,” Martian Manhunter continued. “Your friend is in truth no empath, but her training left her with no language but body language: when she ‘reads your emotions’ it is your body language she is reading, to a depth of detail and precision I have never encountered before. With that language, perceiving the death of the man she was directed to kill vested in her a deep and primal revulsion. She fled immediately, suspecting that she would be killed by her master but unwilling to risk being ordered to do such a crime again. I think he was simply shocked at what he thought his perfect tool severing himself from him: she escaped, and despite much hardship has not seen him since.”

He could feel tears on his cheeks, and Tim savagely scrubbed them away, getting back on the ground as quickly as he could with his injured leg and pulling her head up onto his unwounded thigh. “Of course she did,” he said fiercely. “Kes is a good person. The best. She is not a tool, she is a person, the best person I have ever met.”

Martian Manhunter took a knee again. “Here is one more thing I got from that memory,” he said, a little more lightly. “The man called her by name as he introduced her at the ‘meeting.” Tim’s head jolted up and he listened hungrily. “He called her ‘Cassandra’.”

“Cassandra,” Tim said softly. He looked at her face and tried to fit the name to it. “Cassandra. How pretty. We don’t know the last name, but that doesn’t matter. Cassandra. She can be ‘Cass’! That’s so close to ‘Kes’, how lucky.” She stirred, her brow furrowing, and Tim leaned down until he was almost nose-to-nose. Her eyes slowly slid open and he said, “Cass?”

She sat up with jerking motions, as though her whole body was sore. For a second she just stared blankly at her own hand where Tim held it, and he squeezed her palm lightly. 

“Are you OK?”

She jolted, and looked at him intently. 

“You OK?” He tried again.

Her lips shaped a circle. “Ohh…oh…” Tim’s heart almost stopped as she scowled furiously and tried again, “Oh–dey? Ohhhh…ghey. Og—” she scowled even deeper and stopped. Tim patted her back and looked anxiously at the Martian Manhunter.

“Is she OK? She was trying to say something, wasn’t she?”

“The tongue is a muscle like any other,” the telepath said. “Like any, it must be trained. Speech requires a remarkably complex coordination of tongue and lips and throat.”

“But you can understand me?” He asked her anxiously. “She can understand me?”

“It is not so simple,” Martian Manhunter said, and his voice was compassionate if not soft. “You can think of language as a garden that must be planted, raised, tended. Her abuser paved over all the fertile soil because he thought concrete more useful to his aims. I have…broken up some of the pavers, and levered cracks between others, and still more moved aside or wholly removed. But I cannot bring full-grown plants into being from thin air.”

“Oh,” Tim said.

“But,” he continued, smiling, “There are many seeds already. You have given them to her over the months of your friendship. I have nudged them into places where they might take root, and your friend is indeed as intelligent as you say. With time and patience and tending, I do think she will in time have a garden as fine as any other.”

Tim beamed, and patted Kes on the back over and over. “Good! Good news! That’s fine then, that’s completely okay. She has plenty of time, and I’ll help her. Can you please tell her the same thing?”

“I have been communicating everything I say in front of her telepathically,” Martian Manhunter assured him. 

“Good!” Tim shifted into a slightly more comfortable position. “That was a really helpful metaphor. Were you a teacher back on Mars?”

Martian Manhunter gave him that same long, searching look he’d done when Tim explained how he’d gotten his email, but didn’t answer.

“Sorry,” Tim said, not at all let down. “None of my business.” He patted Kes’ shoulders again, noticing that she’d once again gone a little distant in the eyes. “Can you please tell her everything you told me before she woke up? I don’t want it to be like we were talking behind her back.” The superhero nodded, and Tim added, “And please tell her that I will definitely help her learn and I don’t mind at all? And tell her—”

“Perhaps,” Martian Manhunter said dryly, “We might streamline my role in this.”

Suddenly, even though he couldn’t see anything different or hear anything with his ears, Tim felt a sensation like a click and realized that his and Kes’ minds were linked. “Oh!” he gasped, even as she jolted and stared at him with her jaw sagging. “Hi, Kes! Hi!”

Her mind was a swirl of color and sensation. He felt his voice echo overwhelmingly, and it was like the tip-of-your-tongue sensation when you can almost but not quite remember something. Tim squeezed his eyes shut and tried to concentrate on getting across his meaning without words. As he focused and sank deeper, though, he felt bile rise in his throat at the low but violent current of panic that had most of her mind in a grip. For a moment it was as if he was Kes, and he realized with horror that he could feel hot blood hit his face as his stiffened fingers were stabbing and tearing —he pulled back from what had to be the memory of that ‘pivotal moment’, and imagined that he had ephemeral fingers that could pull her away from it too. “No, no,” he heard himself say distantly. It was almost like…God, was that her emotions? Under a precise structure of discipline and consciousness was a swamp of something like…disgust, misery, revulsion. Disgust at herself. Mentally Tim braced himself and ‘stepped’ right back in. “No,” he growled, and imagined himself turning a spotlight away from the swamp and onto all the other good and shining parts of Kes that he knew. She twitched, and he clamped his hands tighter on her shoulders in the real world. He imagined negation, redirection, Tim-and-Kes-together. He pictured his thoughts and emotions pouring into hers and showing her just how much he believed that she was deserving of nothing but good things.

The ephemeral Kes-sense shifted and she tentatively responded. Even as tentative as the ‘reaching back’ was, it knocked Tim for a loop. He knew full well he loved Kes, he had done so for months. He was confident that she liked him, and thought that maybe she probably loved him too…but apparently ‘love’ was hardly the right word. To Kes, Tim was a part of her, as much as her legs or her lungs. He tried to reach out still farther—and was abruptly yanked back between the bones of his own skull. 

“That,” Martian Manhunter said in an incredibly dry voice, “Is quite enough of that. I invited you to communicate, not to dive into an abyssal trench with no breathing apparatus. Your…your sister does not need that done to her, larval Bat.”

“Sorry,” Tim coughed. Kes’ arm wound through his and she squeezed him tight. The blank look was gone from her face, though in its place was the evidence of tears: she looked vaguely shell-shocked, but she punched his shoulder in a faint imitation of her usual friendly thumping. He patted her back. “I think we understand each other though, right, Kes? Or, I guess, Cass?” He grinned, still a little giddy. “We learned so much! We accomplished so much! There’s still a lot to do but I can work with this.” He elbowed Kes until she shoved him, and he made sure she was paying attention as he mimed the action of taking something out of her head and punching it in midair. “Nope! This is going to work perfectly.”

Cass sighed, but gave him a thumbs-up. She got to her feet carefully, and in two short steps she was close enough to Martian Manhunter to lean up slightly and kiss his cheek.

“You are most welcome, Cassandra,” he said warmly. “Your brother can contact me if you need my aid again. And I will inform you both at once if I learn anything more of the one who held you captive.”

Chapter Text

Martian Manhunter insisted on dropping them off. 

Tim tried to protest at first, but was firmly overruled. “Your leg hurts: Cassandra would have to carry for at least part of the walk to the bus station. You are worried about me bringing Batman’s attention to you: you don’t have to be.”

“Really?” Tim squeaked. 

“I will drop you at the station immediately outside of Gotham. If he does realize that I was through there, I will simply tell him that I was following a lead for a case that did not pan out.” He smiled, and though the expression looked different on his alien face Tim thought it was a little wicked. “Batman does not own Gotham or her inhabitants. This was a personal favor for a private citizen.”

“Thank you,” Tim said, touched. He’d tried not to think about the possibility of him narcing on them to Batman, since there was nothing to be done if he did, but this was another relief after an encounter full of it. “We’ll stay out of trouble, I swear.”

“I will do you the kindness of not taking that bet, Timothy Drake,” he replied drily, and picked them both up easily.

Getting a ride put them well ahead of schedule. By the time they were back in Midcity Tim had a couple good hours before he had to make it back to school and he was inclined to celebrate. He tugged Kes’...tugged Cass’ arm until she followed him up Kane St. “We can go to American House of Breakfast,” he told her eagerly. “It’s usually closed when we’re out together.” The 24-hour breakfast place was Pancake House, and both times Tim had tried to get a late-night pancake there had been knock-down drag-out brawls going on inside. AHOB was only open five-to-ten but it was still not the kind of place Jack and Janet Drake went to eat.

Even better was that the menu ended up having big pictures for almost everything so Cass could pick out what she wanted easily. When their orders were in and their drinks (orange juice for Cass and chocolate milk for Tim) were delivered, Tim dug out three day-night communication pictures and lined them up to represent yesterday-today-tomorrow. Cas nodded. She was still tense after the craziness of the day, so Tim had sat down in the bench seat first and had her slide in to sit beside him, because he had noticed that it made her relax a little when she was between him and the room. “I think we should stay in tonight,” he told her, as he first laid down then negated the Batman picture. He tapped the picture of the school and mimed sagging with boneless relaxation. “To rest. Today was kind of a lot”

She sighed, but didn’t protest. 

“I’ll use the time well,” he promised, pulling out his pocket notebook as he spoke. “Now that you can learn talking I gotta step it up. I’ll make plans for…well, not lessons, but things you need to know. I’ll figure out the best way to help you learn, just like you help me learn the sacred arts of punching. If I just….” he trailed off, realizing that her breath was coming a little fast. “Kes?” he said softly. “You ok?”

At first she didn’t look up from where her hands were knotted together under the table, but a shout from one of the cooks to the waitress made her flinch and she looked at him so helplessly that he couldn’t stop himself from twisting on the bench seat to hug her. Her lower lip trembled before she froze her face.

“What’s wrong?” He asked anxiously. “Does your head hurt, or something?” He mimed holding his head and wincing, then shrugged. 

She also shrugged. She didn’t try to get out of his hug. One of her hands came up and nudged at one of the papers on the table, almost wistfully. She made a blah-blah-blah hand gesture at her ear, and tapped the side of her head with her fist. “Nnnnn,” she voiced, sounding miserable.

“Hey, hey,” Tim soothed. He let go of her so he could tap the three papers on the table in turn, yesterday-today-tomorrow. He made sure she was looking: he tapped his chest, signed blah-blah, and tapped the ‘yesterday’ paper. He did the same for the next two. Then he made a face at her. “I talked at you yesterday and I’ll talk at you tomorrow. Don't worry that you still don’t understand me.” He tapped tomorrow and made a more and more and later kind of gesture, then pointed at Cas and flapped his hand in one more blah-blah-blah. He shuffled the pictures pointedly.“You’ll get it eventually, and until then we still have the old way. OK?”

Cass sighed and rested her head on his shoulder. She gave a thumbs-up and very quietly said, “Ohh-ay.”

“See, you’re already getting it,” Tim said proudly, and moved the pictures to make room for their breakfast-for-dinner. 

The food was really good, and they tore into it eagerly. Tim still commented on things, pointing at her foods and labeling them and doing the same for his own, idly recounting the fight he’d seen at Pancake House. Cass finished her plate sooner than him. A couple had sat down just a couple tables away from them, and she kept twitching a little when one of them said something. Eventually she wore herself out with it and let her face drop down on the table.

“I clean these tables but I dunno that they are ever face-safe,” the waitress said when she came to refill their drinks. She nodded at Cass and asked Tim, “She OK?” Cass twitched at the OK.

“She’s trying to learn English and it’s overwhelming,” Tim said. 

“Damn if that ain’t a mood,” the waitress said. “My baby’s daddy is Vietnamese and he got some sh…some stuff to say about our language.”

“Let me ask you this, then,” Tim said, flipping open his notebook again. “What would you say are some of the first words a person should learn?”

The waitress—she wasn’t wearing a nametag and hadn’t introduced herself—stood hip-shot with the pitcher of orange juice resting on the table. “Huh. Guess yes and no is a good place to start, right? Short and easy too.”

“She can nod and shake her head, so I didn’t think those were as important….”

“What, it’s never dark?” The waitress said, which Tim had to concede to. “She’s gotta be able to ask questions. Where and how and stuff. Ask for help. Please and thank you.”

“Really?” Tim said doubtfully to the latter. “I’m trying to prioritize.”

“Take it from someone in customer service, kid,” she said, and took Cass’ empty plate. “Manners go a long way.”

“Point,” Tim said. He had to consider how much more willing adults were to listen to a kid that spoke politely. He would hope that if Cass went up to someone and said ‘Help’ that they would just do that, but he could think of more than one case when he’d ran to his parents for help with something and they’d made him start over and not even listened to what he needed until he said it with manners. 

(One of the times what he’d needed help with was a broken faucet flooding the sink. He’d kind of decided they deserved what they got with that one by not listening to him first.)

Chapter Text

Tim and Cass parted ways nearly an hour before he had to get on the bus. He was pretty confident in his ability to tell when someone was getting sick and tired of him, and he judged that Cass was well and truly ready for some alone time. Maybe it worried him a little, given, you know, the circumstances, but it wasn’t an unreasonable need. With his hour he shelled out for a taxi to get to a street with shops that he suddenly found himself in need of.

First off, two prepaid phones—burner phones! Tim had never felt so legit. He programmed their numbers into each other, labeling the number in the one phone as ‘Kes’ and the other with the geeky-face emoji. Next he trotted down the street to the big pawn shop that sold a lot of bootleg DVDs. He’d bought a couple seasons of Star Trek there in the summer, and he browsed the selection with new goals now. They had a couple discs of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood and a couple of Reading Rainbow; he hoped it wouldn’t seem condescending to Cass, but he had a strong lingering fondness for both of them himself and maybe they would help her out. The only cartoons they had at the moment were Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Powerpuff Girls, and Tim snagged them both, remembering Kes’ vague appreciation for the aesthetics of animation. They had three documentaries, something about the ocean and then two about World War II, so Tim only bought the ocean one. 

He made it back to the boarding school just before they would have started calling him, so he called that a win.

After making an appearance at the dining hall briefly, just grabbing prepackaged stuff he could give to Cass later, he went to his dorm room and set his camera down very carefully on the bedside table. He had to find a way to surreptitiously develop the pictures of Martian Manhunter impersonating the asshole…they were supervised during dark room time because of the chemicals and stuff, but Tim was pretty sure he could sneak it through, especially if he could get Sam Harrington and Sahara Neece arguing about something when class begun. Those guys could fight for days.  

Tim punched the number for the Gotham Public Library into his flip phone, and as it rang he programmed a second number into his burner as an afterthought. A female librarian answered the phone politely, and Tim suppressed his initial instinct to sound cute and harmless because he needed to be taken seriously. “Hello, I’m sorry to bother you guys, but I need some information. My sister didn’t learn to talk like most babies, and my parents have a…dammit, what’s it called, a doctor to teach you to talk?”

“A speech pathologist,” the librarian said, “Sure.”

“Right! That’s what I needed to know. OK. Does the library have books about speech pathology? I want to learn so I can help her.”

“We certainly do. How old are you?”

“I’m ten,” Tim admitted, “But I have a high reading level. I couldn’t read, like, professor-level stuff but I can understand a lot. Surely there’s speech pathology books for normal people, right? Or, I dunno, books about language in general, and how people learn language?”

The librarian hummed, and there were a lot of typing sounds in the background. “Sure, I get you. Do you want a list of suggestions? I could even put the books on hold for you, if you would like.”

“Could you?” Tim said gratefully. “Timothy Draper. And if you are grabbing the books is it possible to make sure that at least one has diagrams of how to make different sounds? The speech pathologist said, uh….” How had Martian Manhunter framed it? “...'talking requires complicated coordination of tongue, lips, and throat'.”

“Hm! Yeah.” She sounded interested, and Tim thought he recognized the sound of someone enjoying a research rabbit hole. “I know there has to be something like that. I am sure I’ve seen tongue position diagrams in ESL books for adults, if worse comes to worst.”

“Oh, yeah,” Tim said eagerly, already thinking of the foreign language books in his school library just across the quad. “Yeah! I remember my french book having descriptions about how you make the french ‘R’ sound and stuff like that.” He frowned. “Hey, having pictures would have been so helpful for that! What the hell.” 

“Costs more in ink for illustrated books,” the librarian said sagely. “Looking at your card it says you have three books out—out and overdue, in fact.”

“Oops,” Tim said. He had been a little slow in going through the abuse books when he realized just how much they relied on talking, at the time useless for Kes, but he had made good notes on them at least.

“Bring them in and we’ll call it square. After searching up which ones would be the most use I’ll put as much as ten books on hold for you then, okay? You’ll get an automated call when they’re ready.”

“Sweet! Thanks!” 

**

A jaunt to the school library did indeed reveal at least one promising target, and then it was already getting dark outside so Tim hurried back to his dorm. He closed the door gently, and when he turned around couldn’t help the squeak at seeing Cass standing in the middle of the room.

“You’re worse than Batman!” he laughed when he got over the shock. He looked her over to make sure she was unhurt: she had changed clothes from earlier, now in her comfiest sweatpants and oversized t-shirt, feet bare. “Are you OK?”

Cass sighed for what felt like five minutes, and then pointed at his dresser. 

“You want me to get changed?” It was barely a quarter to seven, but when he thought about it Tim realized that he was probably tired enough to sleep. “Yeah, sure.” He deposited his ill-gotten gains by the bedside table and changed into his jammies quickly. Cas was already sitting in his bed with the covers by the wall invitingly open. He crawled over her, deliberately sticking his pointy knees in her guts and getting an elbow to his back in return. “You stole my pillow,” he sighed as he started to inch around so they could lie head-to-foot like they did at home, but she stopped him and pulled him down to share the pillow instead. Tim was briefly worried at the thought of a bed check showing two people, but when Cass lay with her back to the door she pretty much covered him even without the blanket. If a fake Tim with a wig could trick the eye then Cass’ shaggy black hair on the pillow had to be just as good.

It took a second for them to get comfortable in the new position as Cass figured out what to do with her arm that was on the bed side of things, but eventually they slotted together neatly, Tim’s head under her chin. He remembered watching some dumb Christmas movie where a character told her kids that she and her sister used to sleep ‘nestled together like two spoons’, and Tim finally understood what it meant. “S’nice,” he said drowsily. “You’re a good big spoon.”

Cass knocked her chin into his crown, but gently.

“Bossy,” he complained, and then he was out like a light.

Chapter Text

***

Tim hadn’t set his alarm, but he still woke up a little before eleven anyway. Cass woke up quickly after him, but just sat in bed and scratched her head for a while as he started working.

He pulled out the book that he’d stolen from the school library. It was a ‘learn Spanish!’ book for little kids, and what he wanted out of it were the pictures. The pages were two-sided but each page was arranged in a two-by-three grid of pictures, so the resultant cut-outs would be two-sided. After watching him for a bit, Cass joined him on the floor to help. He handed her the book to continue tearing out the pages one by one as he started carefully snipping apart the pictures. They each had the Spanish vocabulary word underneath them, of course, so he cut that away too. At one point, when all the pages had been torn out, Cass flipped carefully through the pictures as Tim cut them out. “I figure these will help,” he said quietly to her as he cut ‘water’ away from ‘sand’. “Not all of them will be super useful, but maybe they can help us bridge the gap, you know? Between the old way and the new way for us to communicate.”

When they were all cut out Tim diligently sorted them into categories. “We’ll probably start with the practical stuff,” he told her, “Like the lady said, yes and no and stuff. The basic basics. But then I thought maybe we can do emotions?” There was a whole stack of little cartoony drawings of people making exaggerated expressions. “This only has a dozen or so, but we can do others as they come up. Like, when I’m worried I can teach you ‘worried’ so you’ll know what it refers to, since you can read it off my body language.” He smiled at her a little timidly, anxious to please, to not mess up. “It’s just, you know. It seems important. You can tell how I feel precisely but I can’t read you that well.” Yet, he thought firmly. On God he was gonna get as good at it as someone who wasn’t raised by an abusive language-denying asshole could be. “So I want you to be able to tell me how you feel.” All the abuse books had sung the praises of sharing how you feel to the point that it had given Tim a bit of a complex. They all said it, so it was probably accurate, but it sure didn’t feel like a universal truth.

(he’d also gotten a new and exciting different sort of complex from the list he had compiled that suggested that his parents consistently, clinically,  emotionally neglected him. And sometimes verbally abused him. And sometimes gaslit him. Thinking about it had messed him up and it wasn’t like there was anything to be done so he simply tried not to think about it)

Cass huffed a breath and straightened her back with a determined nod. She mimed drawing in her palm and before Tim had time to say or do anything she nodded and unerringly found his pocket notebook in his bedside table drawer. (She had gotten that from his body language? How? Was Martian Manhunter sure that she didn’t have any mental superpowers?) She flipped back through it to her pinecone sketch and tore the page out. She presented it to him and gestured to herself in her ‘bring it on’ way. “You want—-” She made the blah-blah hand gesture. “Oh! Training in speaking.” He scratched his head. “Um, sure. Uh.”

Well, might as well start simple. “Yes,” he enunciated clearly, nodding his head: then, “No,” with a shake.

“Ehh—” Cass tried, brow furrowed. “Leeeh—eee-eh….” she slumped and Tim made a wiping-out gesture. 

“No, no, new plan.” He held up one finger, and with his other hand mimed blah-blah at his ear, then held up two fingers, moving the hand slightly across his chest, and mimed blah-blah at his mouth. “Step one: listen and understand. Then you can worry about speaking after.” He gave a hopeful thumbs up. “Sound good?” Cass nodded slowly, also giving thumbs-up. “Nice!” He said Yes and No several times, nodding and shaking his head, and then held up the pinecone picture and pretended to throw it at her. “No?” he asked, shrugging. Cass tentatively shook her head. “Yes.” She nodded. 

Tim beamed, nodding furiously and giving both thumbs-up. “Yes! Good!” Oh, there was an idea. After a moment of thought he did an elaborate pantomime of eating. First he pretended he was eating something super nasty, and clearly said “Bad. Bad.” Then he acted out eating something delicious. “Good! It’s good.” He scrambled to get his notebooks, and flipped to the rogue’s gallery at the back. “Bad,” he said, frowning. Then he pulled out the generic-female-superhero and generic-male-superhero pictures that they’d added to their communication file after the Huntress thing. “Good,” he said approvingly. Then he stood up and did a karate form terribly. “Bad.” He did it correctly. “Good.” He sat back down and shrugged at her. She gave him a thumbs-up. “OK! Quiz time, then. Bad?” Cass thought, then mimed scowling and punching him hard in the arm. “Good?” She then smiled and gently stroked his arm instead. He nodded at her, then checked that she still remembered ‘yes’ and ‘no’.

Ok, now for something a bit more abstract. All his late-night infomercial viewing had prepared him for this. He flopped down on the floor and pitifully looked up, holding up his arm. “Help,” he said, “Help!” He looked at her expectantly. After a minute in which she just looked confused, he tried something else. He dragged over his backpack and pretended to struggle and struggle with unzipping it. Eventually he presented the backpack to her and with pleading eyes said, “Help?” Slowly she reached over and unzipped it for him. “Thanks,” he said, since he had to get manners in here somewhere too. Next he pretended to look around the room and get frustrated when he couldn’t find something. He mimed opening and closing the pocket notebook and said, “Help me look?” She gave him the notebook from her pocket and he nodded with a smile. “Got it?” She indicated that she understood. “Good,” he said approvingly, and her eyes narrowed in recognition.

Cass was so smart. So so smart. If Tim ever met that ‘trainer’ asshole…well, he had trained Cass, so if he ever met him Tim would probably die. But maybe he could puke in his shoes or something on the way out. 

They got through about twenty words, and Tim would have done more but Cass signaled that she was done by picking him up and unceremoniously dumping him in the bed. “You suck,” he said lightly. Cass had grown two or three inches in the past few months while Tim’s shrimpy-ness was unchanged. Very much not fair. “You’re right, though,” he murmured drowsily as she clicked off the lamp, “Gotta get in our z’s. I’ve got lots of plans for this week.”

Chapter Text

All his holds were in at the library by Monday, so Tim got Nick to cover for him and snuck out to get them after classes ended and before dinner. (He’d covered for Nick last week so it was all good.) While he was there he looked up the number for the pawn shop with the bootlegs: he’d remembered that they had a sign saying that they took requests, though those discs cost double, and he really wanted to get a couple more things for Cass…and something for himself, maybe. About half the books were doorstoppers, but he was mostly glad that the librarian had actually taken him seriously and not restricted him to books at a kid’s reading level. The holds were under Timothy Draper, so he made sure BEFORE he brought them to the front desk that it wasn’t Barbara Gordon sitting at checkout. 

He got  them safely back to school, though it was a bit of a chore to get through the hole in the fence while being careful about the books: he really needed to work out an alternative route for just this kind of situation. When he got the books to his dorm (and let Nick know he was released from duty) he looked through the summaries and indices of them all. A couple he put at the end of the priority list because he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to understand them enough. The general linguistics book was actually the same one he’d checked out back when Kes first came to him and he hadn’t yet realized that her lack of speech was such a deeply ingrained issue. He decided to take that as a reinforcement that he’d chosen well, and to use the opportunity to review it. The most promising books were an adult ESL pronunciation book that included a CD, and a relatively small book on the International Phonetic Alphabet that had diagrams. He flipped through that one, admiring the cutaway drawings, and resolved to start here by brushing up on how to interpret IPA. It would do little good if he didn’t know what he was demonstrating when he went through it with Cass.

Cass went on her own patrol that night as usual, and Tim used his midnight awake hours half for studying and half for sneaking into the school office to practice on their safe. The old-fashioned hearing aid worked really well for hearing the tumblers, once he got used to how to hold it, and he spent a good hour fiddling with it until he finally managed to pop it open. He did a little victory dance on the office carpet, then wilted as he realized that he had to be a lot quicker than that. Could he even practice on this safe anymore, now that he knew the code? “Oh, yeah,” he whispered to himself as he realized: he could just close his eyes and give it a spin, then listen and turn with his eyes closed. He could also keep an eye out for safes when he and Cass were out in Gotham so he could practice on those! He wondered if he could ask Cass to keep an eye out for them on his behalf, or if that would be too much given just how much was on her plate right now….

On Tuesday, Cass snuck into Tim’s dorm room when his classes were done and insisted on more ‘training’. He had planned on doing more verbs, but she had several of their communication cards set aside already that she wanted him to teach her and he want through them slowly: Batman, Robin, Superhero (she was confused that the word stood for both male and female), Home, Train, Bus, Gun, Knife, Food, Clothing. She also grabbed his notebook and made him identify every villain in the rogue’s gallery, and every hero on the cover of the Justice League trapper keeper he’d won in French class by getting the top score on the last test. Tim had already learned from the linguistics book that at the time in their lives when kids learned the most words—eight to twelve years old—they learned an average of twelve a day. Cass seemed to be holding onto a lot more, which was a huge relief. Maybe it was what Martian Manhunter had done, the ‘seeds’ of language that he’d said? Either way, Tim was not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. She did stop presenting cards for him to label at some point, and Tim showed her the ESL book with its CD. “You put it in your DVD player,” he said, miming the action and putting headphones on his head, “And it talks to you.” He mimed pushing play and said steadily. “Hello. Goodbye. Up.” While pointing at the lines of pictures and words on the page. The confusion cleared from her face and she nodded with a thumbs-up, immediately claiming the book and CD.

He tried to ask her to stay until he came back from dinner, since he hoped to sneak her some food: the commissary had boxed lunch options every other day, and while Tim couldn’t grab two he could get one and they could split it and make up the difference with snacks. (Mrs Z at the line did let him grab two orange juices though, because she thought he needed more nutrients to grow big and strong. Tim tried not to get his hopes up on that subject.) He was relieved to find her still in his room when he came back, emerging silently from the closet when he closed the door behind him. “Bon appetit,” he said, then felt a rush of vicarious horror. Oh no. Cass was going to learn at some point that there were many different languages and she was gonna be so mad about it.  

She ate faster than him, as usual. At some point Tim was going to have to try and convince her to slow down, both for manners-reasons and because it was apparently good for your health to eat more slowly. Although, when he thought about it, that could be a lie adults tell to make kids eat politely…more research was required. When she was finished she poked around his room, which Tim ignored. “What’s mine is yours,” he mumbled, and finished his orange juice. A shoebox appeared in front of his nose that rattled when she shook it pointedly. Tim paused in thought long enough that Cass gave him an unimpressed look and did the blah-blah gesture before pointing at the contents of the box and shrugging.

“I know,” he said, because he was trying to determine what word to use for the box of scavenged small electronics and mechanical things. Junk? Electronics? Salvage? “...gadgets,” he decided after a while. “Gaaaaah-jets. Gadgets.” She did a thumbs-up and put it away.

When he was done eating he told her goodnight, expecting her to slip away as lights-out was starting to be called: instead she pointedly grabbed his pajamas from under his pillow and held them out. “Now?” He said, and sighed. “Some day I’m gonna have to teach you about appropriate levels of body-shyness that are socially required in Western culture.” He changed his top, but when he kicked off his jeans she stopped him from going further, squatting down to inspect his stitches. “Ooooooh,” he said, as she pulled off the oversized bandaid that was hiding them. “Duh.'' She looked them over for a while, at one point gently touching a couple points at the borders of the wound and pressing down only just until he hissed. Eventually she nodded at him with a smile. “Good?” he offered, and she nodded more strongly. “The internet says we should take out the stitches after two to three weeks,” he sighed. “So we’ll still be grounded for patrol tonight.”

She tapped her temple and mimed taking something out of her head and holding it up in a way that Tim interpreted as ‘I have an idea’. She found their big Gotham map and pointed at Tim’s leg, where he was reapplying a new bandaid, and the ground. She quickly traced a normal Tuesday route and held up a single finger: she then held up a second finger and began tracing a different route, more slowly. 

“Thanks,” he said, leaning over to carefully memorize the plan. “I’ll be back scaling buildings before you know it. It will be good to have alternative routes, anyway. For lots of reasons. I wonder if Robin will be out tonight.” Her head came up, tilted, and she found and displayed the Batman and Robin picture, covering Batman so only the sidekick was visible. “Yeah,” Tim agreed, pleased. “Robin.” He traced the new route and pulled a thinking face. “I wonder,” he said, taking the picture from her. He covered the other side of the picture. “Only Batman tonight? Only? Or—” he held the border of the picture to show them both. “Or Batman and Robin?”

Cass squinted in thought, then covered Robin. She mouthed ‘only’, and nodded decidedly.

“I spent all my fun money for the month commissioning DVDs of Gargoyles and Junkyard Wars,” he sighed, “So I can’t bet on it. Guess we’ll have to wait and see.”

***

Chapter Text

It was with enormous effort that Tim made himself get up early enough for breakfast on Saturday. If he skipped often enough Mrs Z always commented and he was trying to fly under the radar. He compromised by eating breakfast but then returning to his dorm room to sleep for another couple hours. He got back up at ten-ish and made sure his backpack had everything he would need before reporting to the bus stop where the transportation monitor signed him out and confirmed his curfew. He got off just two stops later and did his level best not to jump when Cass materialized out of the shadows. (she laughed at him, so he probably wasn’t entirely successful. Unless you were talking about getting a laugh, in which case he was a roaring success.) He had pointed out their destination on the map during yesterday’s after-dinner vocabulary practice, and they walked in that direction together. Cass’ head was on a swivel the entire time, her eyes narrowed as she listened to the people around her. They were about halfway down the block when she slowed to a stop. “What’s up?” Tim said. He could tell she was doing her surveillance stare and he nudged her in the side. “Day,” he told her quietly. “Eyes. Day. Not night. Shhh.”

She obediently switched to a more casual appearance, slipping over to stand under an awning so she could look without staring: Tim followed her sight-line and saw a pair, maybe father and daughter, having an energetic signed conversation. “Sign language,” he offered. “ASL. Probably. I am not sure.”

Cass frowned thoughtfully. She did a blah-blah gesture and shrugged. 

“It’s a way to talk,” he agreed and got her to look at him. “Yes,” he said carefully, then nodded, then ‘nodded’ his fist in the ASL sign for ‘yes’. He tried to think of another good example. “Eat,” he said, and did that sign as well.

Her eyes lit up and she nodded. She flapped her hands demonstratively, smiling, then flapped her mouth and frowned. 

“I’m sorry,” he said heavily. “It’s gotta be easier for you to shape your hands than to learn to shape sounds, but I am not helpful with that.” He tapped his chest and did the blah-blah gesture over his mouth, and said “Big.” Then he flapped his hands like she’d done, and sadly said, “Small.”

Cass wilted.

“I’m really sorry,” Tim said, and meant it. “ASL is a whole other language with its own grammar and stuff. I would need classes and stuff to really get it, and even then if we only learned that you would have a similar problem with communication, you could communicate with some people like those people over there, but not most of the population you encounter.” He tried to convey with gestures that not everyone could sign. “I still think that’s the goal, getting you to communicate with most people to keep you safe.”

“Ohhh-ay,” she said after a moment, resentfully.

Tim patted her arm. “Hey! Um…” he thought about how to say it. “I—” he patted his chest, then opened and closed his hands, saying “Sign language, not big. Not many.” He held his hands wide apart and shook his head. “But—” he closed his hands into a clap. “Not zero.” He held his hands a couple inches apart. “Small. A little.” 

She perked up slightly. 

“Sign language, only —” he made sure she got that, and she nodded with a thumbs-up: “Only, no.” He opened and closed one hand and flapped the other near his mouth. “Talk. And sign. Together. A little. OK?”

“Ohh-ayy,” she said more cheerfully than before. She shrugged, holding up her hands.

“Oh yeah, I know that one,” he said brightly, and signed ‘OK’. 

They made it to the destination and Cass’ head tilted up as the looked at the red-blue striped pole above the door. “You remember how I explained?” Tim said. “A person will cut our hair with scissors and clippers until it’s neat. So we can look nice and people won’t look at us funny. OK?” She nodded, already peering with interest through the big glass window into where there were multiple people in chairs getting haircuts. Tim let her watch for a while, but the appointment time was coming up and eventually he tugged her towards the door. She looked up in interest when the bell over it tinkled. 

“You got an appointment?” One of the hairdressers called, her Gotham accent thick as tar, and Tim said, 

“Yup! Timothy and Cassandra Drake?”

“Next person free will grab you,” she said, and then returned to blow-drying the blonde head in front of her. 

Tim and Cass sat down in the cracked plastic chairs and he shuffled through the catalogs with worn-fuzzy corners until he found the one with short hair styles for women. “You can pick,” he said quietly, flipping though a few pages and pointing at various styles before shrugging. “For your hair.” He tugged her shaggy locks demonstratively, and she retaliated with a wet willy that she must have learned watching the kids at school. He stuck his tongue out at her and she grabbed at it, which made him jerk back until he almost fell off the chair. She did her quiet huff laugh and he rolled his eyes at her. “Yeah, yeah. A real wise guy.”

“Alright, kid, you’re up!” Tim jolted upright. 

“Yes ma’am!” Cass followed right behind him and the hairdresser gave her a slight stink eye. “Can my sister please watch what you do?” He asked humbly. “She’s, you know. She gets nervous in new places with new people. But if she watches you cut my hair then she should be cool to get hers done after.”

“Long as she don’t touch anything,” the hairdresser decided, and pointed at a spot on the floor by the mirror. “Stand there, girlie. Outta my way.”

Cass did just that, and watched with interest as the hairdresser draped the cape around his shoulders, and he showed her the school picture from last year with the haircut he needed. She followed a careful distance behind as Tim was directed to a wash station to have his hair wet down, then brought back to the chair. Tim thought she looked a little impressed at how fast and precise the hairdresser was with her scissors, even though she wrinkled her nose when the clippers came out and buzzed unpleasantly. Looking at her as his nape was clipped short Tim was embarrassed again at how rough of a job he’d done when he trimmed her hair over summer. 

When Tim was done Cass consented to get into the chair and be draped, though she breathed carefully and put her stone face on when the hairdresser experimentally dragged her fingers through her hair. “Who the hell cut this? Did they use a weed whacker?” 

“She did it with a knife,” Tim tattled, then honesty compelled him to admit: “...and I tried to make it better with scissors, after, but didn’t actually help that much.” He could tell Cass was uncomfortable with having to lie back against the wash basin, so he held her hand. “It’s cool, Cass,” he told her softly, “She’ll have you looking sharp in no time. Just relax.”

When they went back to the chair with Cass’s hair now wet, the hairdresser nodded at the book in Cass’ hands. “Well? What’s your poison?” Cass startled, looking at the book, then made a dismissive gesture. She instead pointed at Tim’s head and then her own, nodding.

“You sure?” Tim asked, repeating the gesture. “Same haircut? Same?” She did a thumbs-up and he echoed the gesture towards the hairdresser. “Alright, she knows what she wants.”

“You kids are too cute,” the hairdresser complained, but got to trimming without further issue. 

When the hairdresser finished and released Cass from her cape, she stood beside Tim in front of the mirror and looked at the picture they made beside each other, a boy and girl with nothing physically in common except their haircuts, and grinned. She linked their elbows. “Yeah, we pull it off,” he told her, and went to pay. (with the ‘essentials’ credit card, because he was sure a trip to the barber shop would pass muster if his parents audited him)

“We can walk from here to Gotham U,” he told her when they were back outside on the sidewalk, elbows still linked. “My lesson isn’t for another hour and a half, so we can grab sandwiches or something on the way. It will be good to—” he cut himself off as a tinny rendition of the Doctor Who theme rang out from his pocket. He dug his phone out hurriedly and flipped it open with a formal, “Hello?”

“Hey, Timmy!” His dad’s voice came over the phone. “Keeping out of trouble?”

“Oh, hey,” Tim said. “Yeah, I’m just on the way to my computer programming lesson.”

“Good, good. If you put as much into your regular classes as you did into your hobbies you’d be valedictorian.”

“Yeah, sorry,” Tim said, because that was undeniably true. It was just so hard to care about most of the stuff they taught in class. “What’s up? Everything OK at home?”

“Oh, just fine,” Jack Drake assured him breezily. “Enjoying the country life—when we can get away from the office! Which is why I’m calling, son, your mother wanted to make sure you’d gotten the message that we were having to postpone our plans to see a movie together from tomorrow until next week. We got invited to a business dinner that is just too good of an opportunity to pass up.”

Tim hadn’t gotten the message. There probably hadn’t been one. “That’s fine,” he said, because it was. He could use the time better anyway. “Just let me know when you have the new schedule worked out.”

“Good man,” Jack said approvingly. “Janet is right, you are growing up. I love this positive and adaptive attitude you’ve had lately, son. Proud of you.”

“Thanks,” Tim said, feeling a confused warm glow in spite of himself. “Oh, while I’ve got you…the Gotham Historical Society has a tour planned for next week. They’re gonna take a van to a couple of historically important buildings on Wednesday, and I want to go but you guys would have to excuse me with the school. I’d have to leave by ten but it’s just gym, computer class, and English after that.”

“That last report card suggests you shouldn’t miss English,” he sighed, “But you know we think architecture is an excellent interest for you.” They’d subscribed him to Architectural Digest when he told them about his recent interest in blueprints, which he thought was their way of apologizing for not caring about the computer stuff. 

“Thanks, dad. If the tour is good I’ll let you guys know, mom would probably like that kind of thing.”

“You’re gonna be a ladykiller, Timmy,” his dad said, already sounding a little distracted. “You know just what the girls want. OK, I’ll approve it first thing Monday with the school.”

Tim thanked him, and with the usual pleasantries hung up. “Oh, hell yes,” he said, pumping his fist. “Two tickets to Wayne Manor, coming right up for Tim and Cass!”

Chapter Text

Cass tagged along to his lesson with Mandy and Tim tried not to show that he was bundle of nerves. (Cass could tell, of course.) It was stupid, but he was really anxious for them to get along. “This is Cass,” he told Mandy as soon as they were close enough that he wouldn’t have to yell: his tutor looked her over curiously. “She’s my best friend. She doesn’t talk and she only understands some words, but don’t treat her like she’s dumb.”

“Wow, so little faith,” Mandy teased. She stood and held her hand out to Cass like she was a fellow adult. “Nice to meet you. I’m Mandy. I teach your friend here about computers so he doesn’t go off and apprentice to a supervillain to learn.”

“Hey,” Tim protested, and was ignored by all parties.

Cas shook her hand in what looked like a firm and businesslike grip. Maybe she’d gotten something either from Mandy’s words or body language, because she tucked her arm over Tim’s shoulders and rolled her eyes as she squeezed him to her.

“Damn, Tim,” Mandy said, going back to the terminal they used for their lessons, “How did a dweeb like you get such a cool friend?”

“Yellow pages,” Tim said. “Why are you such a dick?”

“To keep you humble,” Mandy said sweetly, and got right into the day’s lesson.

Saturday dinner didn’t have a boxed lunch option but there were oranges: Tim stole five of them, and was very pleased with himself for having become so quick and light-fingered. Cass was waiting for him in his dorm room and he presented them to her proudly. She tried to split them half and half with him, but he convinced her that he was full from lunch and she was eventually convinced to eat all but one of them. Dammit, he’d forgotten to go somewhere he could buy chewable vitamins again…maybe Tim could leave campus for a few hours tomorrow and get some of that kind of shopping done. His parents had told the school they were taking him out after lunch on Sunday, and with the last-minute change of plans he doubted they’d updated the school to retract permission. He could call a cab and just take it a couple of blocks out. (Cass and he had snagged some more cash off of drug dealers, two that she took down and one that Batman had done, so they were ok on cash right now.) 

“OK,” he said when she was done eating and had wiped her hands clean. She sat up attentively, reading his seriousness. “I think it’s time to work on speaking. Pronunciation.” He held up one finger and signed blah-blah at his ear, then two fingers and tapped his mouth. He pointed at Cass with the two fingers.

She grimaced, but nodded both her head and her fist. She settled in, seated tailor-style, and waited. Tim pulled out the IPA book and flipped to the page he’d marked with a yellow post-it tab. (during their lesson yesterday they had gone over colors, and one of the things he’d asked Cass was which was her favorite. She’d picked yellow, which was excellent information to have and made him feel good about possibly reading her better than he’d hoped) He sat beside her and spread the open book across both their laps while she looked over the page intently. “They’re diagrams of tongue position,” he told her, pointing to the parts of the drawing and parts of his mouth to clarify. “This one is /L/.” They were starting there because he had experimented a bit and found that it was one of the least ambiguous sounds as far as tongue position went. “Llllll,” he showed her, exaggerating the sound so she could see the way his tongue was pressed behind his top teeth. “Lllllluh.”

She imitated him. After a few tries she made the sound come out nice and clear. He nodded encouragingly when she got it, and used examples from words they had already done. “Low. Light. Long.”

She nodded, eyes narrowed.

He demonstrated /o/ and /e/ next, trying to show her that the only thing that changed was the shape of his lips. She got that after a bit of experimentation, and he could tell from how closely she inspected the diagrams that she was trying really hard to relate them to what was going on in her mouth. Tim could sympathize: it had taken him a hot second to really see the diagrams properly, especially because he had always kind of thought of his tongue as a flappy thing attached at one end, whereas according to the diagrams it was more of an amoeba-like blob. After she got those two vowels he tried for /k/ next since he thought she would find it really encouraging to be able to say ‘OK’ clearly. She tried, she really did, but after a minute of frustration she growled and flipped the book closed.

“It’s—” Tim started to say, then stopped because she had slipped three of the fingers of her right hand in his mouth. He spluttered and spat them out, leaning away, and said “Cass! What the hell!” She flipped the book back open and stabbed her finger down on the diagram for /k/, then tried to put her fingers in his mouth again. “Aw maaaaan,” Tim moaned, but he could see her logic. “Gross,” he muttered. “Your hand tastes like sanitizer.” But he let her do it again, and once her fingertips were between his teeth (ew) he did his best to say /k/ enough times while she felt the shapes his tongue made (EWWWW). After a few iterations she pulled her fingers out and he only just stopped her from putting them in her own mouth. “Nope!” he said strongly. “No! Nope! I am totally cool with most of your ways of doing things and I know you were raised by wolves or whatever but I am putting my foot down on this.” He grabbed the hem of his button-down and dried her hand while she rolled her eyes. “We are basically family,” he said firmly as she put the newly-dried fingers in her mouth and started trying /k/ again, “And family do not swap spit. They just don’t.”

They worked on about half a dozen sounds, Tim focusing on ones that would allow her to say words she already knew: low, like, off, food. Cass stayed focused and determined the whole time, and Tim endured the gag-worthy feeling of her fingers in his mouth with dignity. Eventually they looked at each other during a pause and realized that they were done.

“I wanna give you something,” Tim told her, and went to his closet to pull out the burner phones he’d put in there. Cass looked them over curiously, and held one up to her mouth and ear, looking at him for approval. “You’ve seen em used before, right?” He showed her how to turn it on, the battery display, the volume control. Then he went to the contacts and showed her the entry with the emoji he’d chosen for his number, and made the call. His phone buzzed in his lap, and he picked it up and showed her how to accept the call. “Hi, Cass,” he said softly, and she held the phone to her ear again on realizing where the sounds came out. “We can communicate through these: just for emergencies, now, but in the future even more.” He showed her how to hang up the call and waited for questions.

Cass hesitated. She touched her mouth and gestured blah-blah, then shook her head. She gestured ‘later, later, later’, and looked at him like she was worried she’d disappointed him. 

“No, no, see, I thought of things,” he assured her, grabbing the big Gotham map and spreading it out. “This will let me find you. Look.” He lined up the schedule pictures, and pointed at her as he said, “Patrol,” pointing at the applicable day and tracing her basic routes. He then pointed at himself and tapped the picture of the school.

Cass nodded.

“OK, now here’s what you do.” He pointed at her and then at a couple points of the map then gave a slightly dismissive wave. “Wherever you are. If you need help. Help?” She gave a thumbs-up. “If you need help you call me.” He tapped her phone, then his. “You don’t have to talk,” he continued when she looked likely to interrupt, “If you need help:” he held her phone to his ear and mouth and made the tongue clicks she sometimes used when she wanted his attention. He mimed something traveling between the phones, and at the other end he flapped his hand at the earpiece of his phone and said “Help! Come!”

“Ohhhh,” Cass said, sitting up on her heels and staring hungrily between the phones. “Oh. Ohhh-kay.”

“And I will need to know where—” he waited for her to indicate she remembered ‘where’: “---so you will use our minimaps.” He pulled the thick stack of pieces of Gotham city map that they each kept in their bags. Cass pulled her own out of her fanny pack, nodding as she followed along. “You see the dots I added?” Tim asked her, showing the red ink dots at the corner of the pieces opposite where the ring held them together. She checked and saw that hers didn’t have them. “I drew them,” he said, acting it out, “We can do yours too.” He picked up her phone again, and after making the tongue clicks he waited a second, then tapped the mouthpiece once. He pointed at the one dot at the top of the map piece. He them made a reset gesture, and did the tongue clicks and then two short and one long tap. He flipped through the pieces until he got to the one with two dots and a dash up top. 

Cass looked very pleased. She traced out the faint blue grid lines on the map and traced across and down, landing on a particular building. Tim gave her two thumbs up. “Yeah! So, after we have the page, we can do taps to number across and down. It would work, right?”

She sat back on her heels and looked at him with an odd sort of smile. 

“What,” he said, a little embarrassed to have been babbling.

Cass mimed pulling something out of his head and pointing to it. She put her hands far apart. 

“Big?” Tim interpreted bashfully.

She stroked his arm. 

“Good?” he offered. His face was hot. “Thanks, Cass. That means a lot, coming from you.” He cleared his throat, determined to keep his cool, and after patting her hand he went to his book bag to grab the papers he’d printed off from the Historical Society website. “OK. I’m gonna tell you the plan for Wednesday. Then I have, uh…” he looked at the clock. “I have half an hour before lights-out in which to introduce you to the concept of secret identities.”

Chapter Text

Explaining secret identities to Cass had reminded Tim sharply that he wasn’t doing a good job of protecting hers. Sure, she was careful and sneaky: he was pretty sure she usually only took people out when it was possible to do so without being well seen. But still! They should be more careful. He had told her that as best he could. It had been hard to get her to understand secret identities at all to start with, as apparently it hadn’t occurred to her that Batman was ever not Batman, so Tim had explained with both pictures and words that if bad guys knew who Batman was they might come to his house and destroy it. She’d understood that that was bad; the problem was that when he tried to introduce the concept as related to her, she had conveyed that since she didn’t have a home it wasn't a problem. Tim frowned at her and stabbed an insistent finger down on the picture of Drake Manor, then pointed at himself. “Yes, you do. They might try and come for me, and my home. Since I’m yours. You get it?”

Cass thought furiously for a second, then said “I…” before doing their sign for ‘protect’.

“I know you’ll protect me,” Tim assured her, “But It would be good if you don’t have to. Just being careful. Cautious. OK?” She’d surrendered eventually, and now any time she was out at night patrolling she wore a dark cloth face mask. It wasn’t even something that would make her stand out: lots of Gothamites had them, since while you really needed a gas mask for most things a simple cloth face cover would help against Ivy’s pollen. And the general Gotham stink. The air was already getting autumn-nippy, so the face masks were actually a nice accessory for that reason alone.

Also for the reason of identity protection, Tim had gotten her some new clothes when he ran and got vitamins and stuff on Sunday. Tim had different clothes for going out during the day vs at night, and some that were nicer: Cass wore pretty much the same dark, rather worn clothes all the time. She wore a ball cap in the daytime, but that was about it. So for the tour, he bought her a t-shirt with the Powerpuff Girls, a yellow-and-black flannel button-up, and a yellow hat with a bee motif. (She didn’t understand the bees at first, but when Tim explained they were what made honey she was all in. Cass loved honey flavored things.) For his own part Tim wore nicer clothes than usual, almost as nice as what he would wear for going out with his parents.

He and Cass made it to the historical society office just in time, with everyone else already outside waiting for the van to be prepared. “Sorry!” He gasped as soon as they were close enough. “Sorry! Bus was running slow.”

There was only one person in the group without gray hair, a possibly college-age white kid with sandy hair and glasses. He was one of only two men, with the other seven people being women. “Not a problem,” One of the women said: she had frizzy white hair and a very neat gray pantsuit. “You’re in time! Timothy and Cassandra, I presume?”

Tim shook her hand when she offered it, trying to stand very straight. “Yes, ma’am.”

“You’re the youngest pair I think this tour has ever seen,” she said frankly. “Are you sure you won’t be bored, honey?”

“I really like architecture,” Tim said. “Building plans and stuff. And art. Cass is not as interested in it as me, but she always gets left out of things because she can’t speak, so I made sure to invite her and she wanted to come with me.”

“Well you are both welcome,” she said, offering Cass a handshake too. “My name is Cassidy Nichols, I’m the coordinator for this tour. Over here are some more of our society members: Svetlana, Nancy, Mary June.” She pointed them out as she introduced them. “Then there’s Mrs Anne Shirley and Mr Martin Shirley, they’re visiting from out of town. Ms Adelaide Fisher and her sister Roberta, who work at city hall: Mr Tyson Bandy, who’s a businessman: and young Mr Wyatt from the university.”

Everyone chorused hellos, then the bus was pulling up and they got herded into rows. Tim realized that Cass had stiffened during the introductions, and he looked at her in concern. He tried to subtly shrug, and she shook her head slightly and made a ‘later’ gesture. She probably would look normal and reserved to someone who didn’t know her, but Tim was on high alert because to him she looked all of a sudden stressed. He sure hoped that no one here had nefarious intentions, or something. “Timothy and Cassandra!” Ms Nichols suddenly called, “Do you kids mind being the ones to crawl to the back-most seat?”

“No, of course not!” Once they were back there and the van was in motion, Tim turned to Cass and whispered, “What’s wrong? Did you see something?”

Cass, her eyes wide, shook her head. Then she pointed at him, insistently. 

“I saw something?” He tried, confused.

She huffed, frustrated, and dug around in her pockets for her communication pictures. She pulled out the one of Batman and Robin and pointed at it instantly. When Tim still didn’t get it, she covered Robin and pointed at Batman, then did the blah-blah gesture. “Batman?” Tim whispered, and she nodded furiously, and pointed at Robin. “Robin,” he said again. She nodded and pointed at Tim again.

“...oh!” Tim said, feeling like the world’s biggest moron. “Oh!” He flinched at his own volume and glanced over the seat, but the more forward rows were engaged in a loud and lively conversation about the street they were currently driving down. “My name is Tim,” he said as clearly as possible. He pointed at himself then at her. “Tim. Cass.”

“Ddim,” she enunciated carefully, and beamed at him. “Tim,” she tried again, and reached out to pump his hand.

“Hi, Cass,” he laughed, “Hi! Nice to meet you—again!”

It was a good hour drive to Wayne Manor, and it turned out Cass had brought her portable DVD player in her backpack. He hoped she hadn’t misunderstood that they were only visiting, but he wasn’t gonna turn down the entertainment. They shared the headphones, and when she turned it on it started playing an episode of Mr Roger’s Neighborhood straight away. “Oh, I’m glad you’re watching them,” he said. She skipped through multiple chapters, stopping when she got to what must have been the fourth or fifth episode on the disc. “What’s special about this one?”

She pulled out the generic-male-superhero picture, and on her color wheel tapped red and blue.

“Ohhhh,” Tim said, pleasantly surprised when he got it. “Oh, Superman must be the guest in this one! I think he has been on, like, every PBS kids show.” Tim vaguely remembered an episode of Sesame Street where Superman gently explained to a puppet about what it was like to live somewhere you hadn’t been born, and how they should be patient to people who were new to the city. He and Cass watched the whole Mr Rogers episode, even the parts without Superman—he appeared about halfway through, when Mr Rogers was trying to explain to a neighborhood kid about how he should be more gentle playing with his friends because when you are strong you have to work hard not to accidentally hurt those who are weak. Cass watched the whole scene intently, and when it was about to end she hit pause with both Mr Rogers and Superman on screen. “What’s up?” Tim asked quietly.

“Good,” Cass pronounced carefully. The ‘d’ still sounded kind of like a ‘t’ but it was perfectly understandable. She gently touched the screen, making it ripple, over each of them men frozen in the still frame. “Good,” she said again, approvingly.

“Yeah, you can tell,” Tim mused. He leaned against her side, feeling weirdly happy. It’s not like he’d thought that Mr Rogers or Superman might be secretly not so good, but it was somehow nice to have it confirmed anyway. “People joke that he’s a meta. Mr Rogers, you know. With a niceness superpower.” 

They watched the whole episode and part of another before they made it to the gate of Wayne Manor and after the driver spoke into the intercom, the gates swung open. “Cool,” Tim whispered. He didn’t know what was cooler, getting to see Bruce Wayne’s house or Batman's house. 

They were greeted at the door by a formally-attired older white man, with thinning hair and a neat mustache, who stood incredibly straight and tall. Cass carefully didn’t stare at him in a way that usually meant that he was more dangerous than he looked: he supposed it made sense that even Batman’s butler would be able to handle himself in all kinds of situations. “Welcome to Wayne Manor: I am the butler, Alfred Pennyworth,” he said in a proper British accent that made Cassandra’s head cock to the side. Dammit, Tim had been hoping he wouldn’t have to introduce her to accents until later. He hoped she wouldn’t be too annoyed about it. 

“Thank you so much for having us,” Mrs Nichols said brightly, already tilting her head back to admire the brickwork. “What a magnificent building. We are so grateful to Mr Wayne to allow us to experience this piece of Gotham history.”

“It was no great imposition, Mr Wayne seemed to think,” Mr Pennyworth said politely. “He did have the east wing cleaned especially, since that has been mostly disused for some years, but he said that since he intended to be gone most of the day anyway it would be no trouble at all for you all to be given the tour.” Tim wondered if that meant Jason would be here after school: he kind of hoped not, just in case he remembered encountering Tim as Robin. He didn’t want it to seem like he was stalking them or something.

“It’s been a couple of years since the last tour, so I had hoped it would be so,” Mrs Nichols replied. The rest of the group had lined up behind her like school kids, and Tim hid a smile in his hand. “They used to happen several months a year when Dr and Mrs Wayne, god rest their souls, were around: it is so generous of Mr Wayne to continue that tradition.”

“Quite,” the butler said, and opened both of the double doors with a precise, understated flair. “Shall we begin?”

“I am prepared to give the tour,” she told him as she climbed up the rest of the stairs, “Though I am sure you know everything much better than I if you would wish. Whatever is the least inconvenient to you.”

“I will be escorting you, so it will be no trouble to discuss what we see,” Mr Pennyworth said. “Though I am sure there are some things on the technical end you will be able to discuss even better than I.”

“I will admit, I already have thoughts,” she said cheerfully, “But my first thought is about the provenance of those lovely hinges—which I hardly think is going to be anyone else’s priority.”

As they filed in, the out-of-towners actually gasped at the massive, ornate foyer just beyond the doors. The Gothamites tried to play it cooler, but more than one jaw involuntarily dropped as the sheer scale of the place became clear before them. Tim tilted his head all the way back to gape at the sparkling chandelier that hung from the arched ceiling. How the hell did they change the bulbs? Where would they even put a ladder big enough? Could Mr Pennyworth fly? “Holy cow,” he said out of the corner of his mouth to Cass, and was glad she was holding his hand. “Talk about big.”

“Bbig,” she agreed quietly. Mr Pennyworth began pointing out features they could see even from just within the door: the carved banisters, apparently made of some wood that Tim didn’t even recognize: the design of the tile floor, apparently repaired twice in the last fifty years: the design of the chandelier, something that Tim hadn’t even thought of there being named designs for. 

“How the hell do you change the bulbs?” The college student marveled, and Tim held back a laugh with all the power within him.

(apparently, they brought in a company a few times a year. They used scaffolding, and got the high bulbs and any corner cobwebs at the same time)

There was a whole wing they weren’t taken through—the family wing—but even with that they walked for more than two hours without Mr Pennyworth or Mrs Nichols ever running out of things to say. Tim missed some of the details, but he still enjoyed himself thoroughly. Maybe it hadn’t been an innocent interest in architecture, like his parents thought, that had initially gotten him started reading building plans: but he found himself being fascinated anyway. There was a ton of great art too, sculptural pieces and hanging prints and originals, some of which he recognized from his dad’s subscription to Art World Today. As they walked through the different rooms and halls, Cass squeezed Tim’s hand every time she spotted a camera and he absently kept count. No less than he’d been expecting, really. He didn’t know how much Cass was getting out of the tour, but she did look around in apparent interest, her pointy face alert under the brim of her yellow hat. 

After going through the massive (it needed ladders!) library, Mrs Nichols got a text that made her frown as she read it. There were a couple of books lying out on the table and Tim tried to read the titles, curious what Mr Wayne or Jason or My Pennyworth might be reading. Dracula, was all he could make out. “Mr Pennyworth, I present you with a conundrum,” Mrs Nichols said. “The catering company just sent word that there is a big pileup on the bridge and they expect to be nearly half an hour late. It’s about the time we had set aside for luncheon: would you like us to continue the tour while we wait? Get out of your way somewhere until they make it? Your wish is our command.”

“I vote for sitting down,” Mr Shirley offered, the first words he’d spoken all tour. “Maybe you young people are still going strong but I am an old fart and my titanium knees are reminding me of that fact.”

“You and your knees may rest easy,” Mr Pennyworth said smoothly. “Half an hour is no great inconvenience. I will be happy to see you all to the back patio where your luncheon will be held, and bring some tea and perhaps light refreshments while you wait. The foliage is just starting to turn so I suspect you will enjoy the view of the gardens.”

Mrs Nichols told him he was a jewel, and they did just as he had suggested. They ended up all sitting at three small tables on the patio, but while the adults comfortably dropped into conversation right away Tim felt himself fidget with indecision. His feet didn’t quite touch the ground in the patio chair, and he swung them back and forth as he thought. It was all well and good for the others to just sit, they were adults and most of them were older even than Mr Pennyworth. But Tim and Cass were kids, and kids were supposed to do things at home like set the table and then put the plates in the dishwasher afterwards. Getting served at a restaurant was one thing, but this was a house. The other people at this table aside from Tim and Cass were the college student and Ms Svetlana. It was to the later that Tim cleared his throat and hesitantly asked, “Do you think, um, do you think it would be OK if I offered to help Mr Pennyworth? To set out the cups and things?”

“I don’t see why not,” she said, smiling at him slightly. “He pointed out the kitchen as we passed just by it coming out here, yes? Good boy.”

“Thanks,” Tim said, sliding down off the chair and tugging Cass’ hand. “Come on, Cass, let’s go help.” This was definitely a very basic level of manners, so he had to make sure Cass knew what was expected. They went inside and just after the first door there was indeed an open door with the kitchen and Mr Pennyworth beyond. He looked up sharply before they said anything, and Tim remembered that the man was probably dangerous. “Hello, Mr Pennyworth,” he said humbly. “We were coming to ask if you need any help? We can carry dishes and things to the tables for you.”

The eyes that looked them over were very sharp indeed, but the butler seemed to approve of what he saw. He unstiffened, just a little, and halfway smiled at them. “What a thoughtful lad. I suppose you would not offer if you thought you might drop the china?”

“I will be very careful,” Tim said. He frowned. “Um. We just jinxed it. I will be super careful. But, uh, these aren’t priceless heirlooms or anything, right?”

“Certainly not,” the butler said, amusement now clear in his voice as he turned and took down a tin of tea leaves from the cabinet. “Merely what is appropriate for guests.”

“The riff-raff,” Tim said cheerfully. “My parents have money but this house would make anyone feel poor! It’s really cool, Mr Pennyworth. I’m grateful Mr Wayne let us look around. I feel like I already learned a lot. And the stuff you told us about provenance and stuff was really neat.”

“Why, thank you,” he said. He turned after getting sugar down from another cabinet and raised an eyebrow at seeing Cass right close to him. “Yes, young miss?”

She spun her hat backwards so her eyes weren’t hidden by the brim and smiled at him hopefully, pointing at the cabinet he had just opened. “Hhhoney?” she asked tentatively.

“But of course,” My Pennyworth said gravely. “How could I possibly forget the honey. Thank you, Miss Cassandra.”

“Cass,” she corrected him carefully. She held out her hand. “Hi.” 

They shook hands as seriously as politicians, and Tim held back the urge to do a little shimmy of happiness. Everyone who was good to Cass was OK in his books, and now Mr Pennyworth had two endorsements—Batman trusted him and Cass liked him. If they ever had  an emergency during the summer when they were at the estate next door, Tim knew just who to call now. 

Chapter Text

******

So maybe the time healing from the leg wound had been a blessing in disguise. 

For three full weeks Tim had been extra careful with it, even though they took the stitches out after just two weeks: he didn’t want it to reopen and undo all Cass’ hard work. They’d had to adjust their nighttime plans to accommodate his limits, even as he slowly got back his strength and flexibility. A lot of days that otherwise would have been for patrol were instead used for something more like surveillance and Tim had learned so much. Not just about Batman’s movements, but those of the people on the streets—regular Gothamites and criminals alike. Burnley especially was a veritable fount of good info. Watching the movements of the gangs, who went where when, how guns were smuggled in and people smuggled out, the way invisible lines shifted when this or that building was claimed or fought over…it was fascinating. Just last week they had even seen a standoff, like something out of a western, with a dozen people on either side.

Cass had apparently even seen the Ventriloquist/Scarface on one of her own patrols, which was pretty cool. And they had both seen Huntress once when she swung through tracking somebody. Tim didn’t quite have the guts to try and get her attention even though he was desperately curious how someone not affiliated with Batman had ended up with what seemed like a grapple that worked much the same. 

It was getting to be cold enough, now that they were in early November, that the crime rate had dropped overall. Poison Ivy had even busted out of Arkham a few days ago but was still lying low to the extent that no one has word of her. Tim and Cass, after several hours of getting reacquainted with the rooftops now that Tim was fully healed, were now just hanging around the Bowery almost into Robbinsville. From a sixth-story walkway between two office buildings they had a great view of Sprang Bridge and the way its lights reflected in the river below. They were bundled up in their new-old (aka, from the thrift store) coats and matching maroon knitted beanies, though Tim’s face was cold since they had slid down their cloth face masks to share a bag of jellybeans between them. It was the cheap kind of jellybeans that had flavors like ‘red’ and ‘blue’, but it was fun to eat them anyway. 

Unfortunately, Tim almost choked to death on one when a muffled whirr of cable was all that preceded a brash voice saying, “Hah! It is you!”

He coughed on the candy while Cass pounded on his back until he finally hacked it up with a gross noise and squeaked, “‘scuse me?”

Robin perched comfortably on the railing of the walkway, grinning down at them. “You’re the dumb rich kid who tried to get himself mugged in the summer. The one who called me two-point-oh. I recognized your backpack—Black Canary, right?---and your stupidity.”

“I’m not taking that from someone wearing a leotard in winter,” Tim coughed, trying desperately to keep his cool. Betrayed by his weakness for superhero merch….

“Hah,” Robin said smugly, sticking out his leg and waggling his foot in its green bootie almost right in Tim’s face. “Thermal tights. Find a better diss.”

Tim considered his options and just stuck up his middle finger at him. Cass instantly echoed the gesture, and as Jason cackled he said, “It’s good to see you. How’s the, uh, apprenticeship going?”

“Well, I’m out here,” he said gleefully, “And I have punched like three wannabe rapists and two muggers so far. So things are going great.”

“That’s awesome,” Tim said brightly. “So you’re, what, off probation?”

“I am still supposed to head for the hills if there’s a big bad, and the big bat is most definitely watching me like the world’s spookiest helicopter parent right now, but other than that? The training wheels are coming off.” He threw a paranoid glance off to the side, so Tim guessed where Batman was lurking currently. “But, you know. If anyone asks I am a pro. Doing this for years. You know.”

Tim tapped his nose and pointed at him. “Yup.”

“But,” Jason continued, hopping down onto the walkway and standing with his hands on his hips, “I was speaking of your stupidity….”

“What are you, my mom?” Tim groused. “I’m fine. And my cousin’s with me and she kicks ass.”

“That so?”

Tim put up his dukes and Cass obligingly did the same, though from the laziness of the movement he judged that she didn’t find the kid hero any kind of threat. “Yup,” he said again. Seeing where her eyes were, he said, “She digs your cape. Yellow is her favorite color.”

“You let him talk for you?” Jason said to Cass, and Tim bristled at the hint of condescension in his voice.

“Speech pathologists are expensive,” he said stiffly. “Unless you have a bat-speech-aid in your belt you can get off her back.”

“Shit,” Robin said repentantly, “Yeah, sorry. That was an asshole comment. My bad.”

Cass looked him dead in the eye, sticking out her tongue and then dropping several jellybeans on it, which she chewed with her mouth open.

“Gross,” Jason said. He sounded admiring. “Well, since someone’s on the job I’ll tell B you aren’t in danger and piss off.” He hopped back up on the railing. “Since I’m pretty sure you aren’t up here to jump off. But if you are, no, don’t do it, we love yoooooou.”

“Do people do that?” Tim asked. He leaned back forwards and looked through the bars of the railing, past where his feet dangled and waaay down to the street. “That’s….”

“Please try not to be street pizza. It takes our time away from real work.” He gave them a little two-fingered salute that Cass returned, and flourished his grapple gun. “Try not to stay out too late, eat your veggies, et cetera, parting is sweet sorrow.” Then he jumped off the ledge with a pfff of the grapple gun firing and swung away.

“Robin,” Cass observed when he was gone, and Tim laughed out loud. 

“It sure was. What do you think of him?”

She thought, eating another handful of jellybeans. “Soft,” she said eventually. Consonant clusters were her enemy so the final ‘t’ was mostly missing. “Loud.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Tim said, and toasted her with a purple-flavored jellybean. 

When he got back to his dorm room Tim took a few minutes to update Robin's profile in his patrol notebook, putting in his new more active-duty status--though odds were good that he would stay in on most school nights, and would probably have a pretty limited set of permissions for a while yet.

The next day he had to update another profile, because he got an email from the Martian Manhunter.

Timothy, the email read, his name is David Cain. Tim had to exercise all his control not to let the teacher see that he wasn't doing the assignment on the lab computer. He is an assassin with ties to the eco-terrorist organization League of Assassins. He is not on many international watchlists: that means he is very, very good. I will continue to look for news of him. If you or your friend should encounter him, I would ask you to contact me immediately. He is not a person to be trifled with. -John Jones

David Cain. He already had a place in the rogue's gallery, just past Mr Freeze, with the photos that Tim had taken covered by flaps of paper because he never wanted Cass to see them unexpectedly: now there could be a name to the face. And, just in case, the email address of a member of the Justice League. (as insurance policies went, that was a pretty good one)

Chapter Text

The gang war in Burnley finally came to a head right before Thanksgiving break. Tim and Cass decided to patrol no further north than the reservoir while it was going on. Tim had a lot of fun getting to know all the nooks and crannies in Old Gotham and Chinatown, and took lots of aesthetic shots of the old buildings there because he had played himself and was now obsessed with old Gotham architecture. He knew so much about gargoyles now, which made it harder to watch the cartoon but easier to talk to his mom. They found lots of neat gadgets in the dumpsters, as well as the first six volumes of Case Closed! (A couple of the volumes had missing pages, but Tim found unauthorized scanlations online and printed off replacement ones.) After much agonizing Tim had decided that he really needed to work towards getting Cass able to read as well as speak. They could read the manga together, and give her a nice middle stage with the pictures and words together. She was learning English at an astounding rate, although she still had trouble speaking it, and he was optimistic. 

(There were loads of things that she could do if she could read: read out of order signs on restroom doors, text back and forth with Tim, read the Case Closed volumes by herself. He had also found a really helpful book in the library called “The Care and Keeping of You” from the American Girl company and he would reeeeeeally like her to be able to read it herself so he didn’t have to explain all the mortifying bits.)

When Tim’s mom came to pick him up on the Saturday before Thanksgiving week, he had two suitcases and one of them held mostly Cass’ stuff. He’d seen on the administrative office computer the work orders for deep cleaning and maintenance of both the classroom and the rec hall, so all signs of life had to be cleared out of the rec hall ceiling until they were done. Cass’ bedding and some of her other stuff could go in Tim’s dorm, but the rest he brought with him.

As usual, his parents worked all week except Thanksgiving itself. On Sunday they went to see a play together as a family, but then after that Tim only really saw them at breakfast before they left—they didn’t come back till after his bedtime, most nights. Thank goodness! That meant Cass and Tim had the run of the house except for on Tuesday, when Mrs Mac came for three hours, and even then they just watched Junkyard Wars on Cass’ portable dvd player in his room, snug as bugs in rugs. It was the best Thanksgiving holiday Tim could ever remember. When Mrs Mac was in on Tuesday she did a whole bunch of chopping and measuring and prepping: she didn’t stop even while Tim ate lunch at the kitchen table, watching her in fascination because she was like a machine. “On Wednesday I won’t be here to prepare because I will be volunteering, dovey,” she told him, chopping green beans with careless competence. “I go to the Thomas Wayne Memorial soup kitchen and help do ingredient prep for their big meals for Thursday.”

That was one of the soup kitchens Cass used! “Oh,” Tim said, eyes wide. “If my parents give me permission can I go with you and help out? Would you have any use for kids?”

“That is very thoughtful of you,” she said warmly, and dried a hand on her apron before smoothing it through his hair so gently it made his cheeks warm. “If they say ‘can do’ I’ll come and pick you up first thing and we’ll have a grand old time!”

His parents didn’t understand the request, but when he explained he would be with Mrs Mac they had no objections to it: Cass actually smuggled herself in the back seat of Mrs Mac’s sedan like a friggin ghost ninja and ‘met’ him there, and they had a glorious time running around fetching and carrying and otherwise helping about twenty different grownups. Four different people recognized Cass and guessed that Tim was the friend who had written her ‘please feed me’ card, and they all praised her effusively for her hard work when she and Tim practiced her vocabulary for most of the six hours they were there. It made Tim puff up with pride to have someone other than him appreciate Cass properly, and it had him reconsidering his dismissal of the possibility of her being fostered—the Martian Manhunter was already looking out for her by keeping his ears out for word of Cain, so maybe he could get her in the system with a fake name and help screen foster parents? Or if Tim worked on the more potentially underhanded side of computer wizardry with Mandy, maybe he could forge papers himself within the next year or so? More analysis was needed, so at their midnight awake hours, while Cass watched the seasons of Hey Arnold that Tim’s bootleg guy had got him, Tim tried to start breaking down a list of…call it job requirements.

He was so focused on it that when Cass hooked her chin over his shoulder to look he might have jumped a mile high if his training didn’t take over. As it was he just squeaked faintly and she snickered and pretended to bite his ear. “What?” she pronounced carefully. “Quotes?”

“Oh, no, your quotes paper is still in my notebook,” he assured her. Even though her vocabulary and understanding was advancing by leaps and bounds every single day, her ability to speak and especially to speak full sentences was not advancing nearly as quickly. Tim had taken inspiration from his French classes, where he’d found it much easier to memorize a selection of quotes from plays and movies than to create new sentences, and he and Cass had pulled out a bunch of sentences from things she watched for her to memorize and use as needed. (It was all written in capital letters, because while Tim had hopes of teaching her to read he was postponing her inevitable rage at the existence of lowercase letters and cursive for as long as possible) 

“What you up to?” she said, making use of one of the quotes already. She tended to say them in a kind of sing-songy way but Tim was all for making things easier and did not consider that a major downside of the technique. 

“List of requirements,” he said. “Re-quire-ments. Things-you-need. Requirements for parental figures.”

Cass made a questioning sound.

“I think it would be really good if we could get you to have someone to help take care of you,” he tried to explain. “You need an adult. Someone who can help with adult things, like putting you in school, driving you places, buying you things you need. Someone like Bruce Wayne, though I think it would be better for you to have a woman.” Tim tapped the first section of the paper. “I put the necessities up top. Things you need, things that are very important. Like: gives Cass good food. Makes sure Cass had enough clothes. Makes sure Cass had shelter. Takes Cass to the doctor if she is hurt. Those kinds of things. Like my mom and dad do for me.” The next section was longer, and he knocked his head gently sideways into hers. “These are wants. You don’t need them, but they’re good.” Tim’s own parents met everything in the top section, but not everything down in the second, because Tim’s expectations for Cass’ guardians were really high. “Things like…notices when Cass feels sad and tries to help. Helps Cass learn things she is interested in. Lets Cass have clothes she thinks are pretty. Supports Cass in being a superhero. …that last one isn’t a requirement, I dunno if we can hope for a parent for you who knows about that, but this is a wish list, so.”

Cass hummed in his ear. He angled his head away so he could see her face and saw that she was frowning thoughtfully.

“What’s up?”

“Hmmmmm.” She sat across from him cross-legged, clearly still thinking. “...’need an adult’” she quoted him. “Why?”

“Why?” Tim blinked. “Well, because of all the reasons on the list! To help take care of you, and do things for you, and protect you and stuff.”

“Adult,” Cass said dismissively, waving a hand as though to brush the word away. “Eh.” She patted his arm. “Need an Tim.”

“Aww,” Tim said. “But if you had an adult you wouldn’t need me as much. That would be a good thing. An adult could teach you to read and stuff so much better.” Tim had learned to read when he was three, so his parents must have done something right. He had special ordered a ‘teach your child to read’ book but it wouldn’t be at his dorm until next week.

Cass pointed from Tim to herself, and said, “Teach:” she ticked off on her fingers: “Buy clothing. Eat medicine. Talk words. Open lock. Be gentle. Help. Watch superheroes. Watch people. Wash clothing. Do money. Find gadgets. Do hugs. Watch cartoons.” She waved her hand in a sarcastic 'on and on and on'. “‘Need adult’, stupid. Pff.”

That was the most words she’d ever said at once, and Tim lunged across the paper between them to hug her so hard her back crackled. “Cass! That was amazing! You are so good! Oh, wow, I can’t believe....”

She hugged him back, then pushed him far enough away to sign ‘understand’ and shrug. “OK?” She pointed at the paper and gestured between the two of them. “Adult. Tim-and-Cass. ‘Good work’. OK?”

“Someday you will understand stuff like driver's licensees and birth certificates and we will revisit this,” Tim said, “But yeah, OK, I understand.”

Chapter Text

Cass had staked out the place for a couple hours last night while Tim was back at school getting in some practice, but Tim still insisted that they wait and watch for another hour after they ended their birdwatching. 

The whole place might still be a bust, although Cass had agreed with Tim that this site was used by mostly paper pushers associated with the leader of the green bandana gang. He was trying to keep his hopes low and just treat it as practice. For that reason he still made sure to approach the entry point as invisibly as possible—even though he agreed with Cass that the place was abandoned, with most of the high-level people in the gang organization cooling their toes in Blackgate as of last week. They slipped around to the back door in the alley, which had a much more degraded version of the sign out front: ‘Lady Liberty Tax Preparation Services / By Appointment Only’. The locks on the door were easy, and in thirty seconds flat Tim nodded to Cass and whispered, “Done.” She crouched beside him as he ran his wire around the bottom edge of the door, then as he stood up to continue tracing the edge she came up between his feet and stood smoothly with him on her shoulders. His wire hung up at a spot a couple of inches from the top, along the side. Tim held it in his fingers so lightly it almost fell and judged that it was a magnet.

“Go?” Cass whispered, and he hissed back,

“Wait, wait…” as he rummaged in his pocket. He pulled out the roll of flat circular magnets and spun two of them off the end of the roll. He said “Slow, OK?” and put his left hand in front of Cass’s face to start a countdown. When the silent countdown ended Cass ever so carefully eased open the door and Tim slipped the first of the magnets in as soon as the edge of the magnetic piece in the door frame became visible. As the edge of the door cleared the doorframe he neatly slid both magnets into place and held his breath as he listened for an alarm to go off: none did. “Yay,” he cheered quietly, and slid off Cass’ shoulders he pointed out to her the halves of the sensor in the door and the frame, each covered by a magnet, and explained in gestures that they couldn’t fully close the door behind them or the magnets would be knocked loose and the simple alarm would be kicked off. She grimaced, which he had to agree with—Burnley at four am was not a very good place to leave a door open behind you. But needs must.

They explored quietly, finding several offices as well as a bigger bullpen-style area. He’d kind of hoped that there would be some computers abandoned there, but no dice. In the biggest office they struck jackpot, though: under the desk was a sizable safe. “Let’s just hope this was worth all the trouble,” he breathed, and got to work on it.

He moved slowly, knowing that doing it cleanly was gonna be faster than trying to rush. The earpiece of the hearing device was a little crackly in his left ear, so he closed his eyes and fully concentrated on listening to the wheels as he turned the dial. He had the first two numbers and was working on the third, maybe fifteen minutes later, when he felt Cass stiffen and lunge to her feet. Even though the earpieces he could hear the creak of the door hinges, but he was confident that whoever it might be Cass could handle it and he was almost done…!

The final wheel clicked into alignment and Tim beamed as he swung open the safe door. From the other side of the office, an amused female voice said, “Wow, Gotham rats are getting bigger every year.”

Cass stepped backwards, back to where Tim could see her from where he was crouched behind the desk, and used the sign for ‘villain’. “Ah, hell,” he said, sticking his head around to check if this was how Poison Ivy was finally gonna poke her head up, only to see… “Catwoman?” he squeaked.

“He squeaks,” she laughed. She looked incredibly out of place in the plain little office, standing hip-shot with her whip coiled casually in her right hand. Compared to Tim and Cass’s plain dark clothes her purple suit was like night and day. “Hey, rats. Fancy meeting you here.”

Tim glanced at Cass, and saw that she was tense and alert but did not look overly concerned. She met his eyes without turning her face away from Catwoman, and when he raised his eyebrows fractionally in question she smiled ever so slightly before slipping back to stonefaced neutrality. ‘Yeah, I can take her’, Tim interpreted, so he scowled at the doorway and ducked back down to look in the safe. There were a couple guns in there, so he passed those to Cass to break down (which she did without ever taking her eyes off the intruder) before opening one of several green bank envelopes. “Sweet,” he whispered to the ratty green bills inside, and stuck the whole thing in his backpack.

“I can’t say I have ever been ignored like this under these kind of circumstances,” Catwoman complained. “Who are you with, kid?”

“I would think a thief would like being ignored,” Tim said, hoping his nerves didn’t show in his voice but knowing that they did. Cass could take her, he reminded himself bracingly, and popped up over the top of the desk to glare. “I’m with nobody but my friend there. There’s some manila envelopes in here with what looks like contracts and shipping invoices and stuff. That what you are after? We don’t need it. You can take it, if you leave, please.”

“What a polite little rat,” she said, sidling a little closer. Cass straightened and took a step forward and Catwoman stopped, looking her over with sharp eyes. “Hmm. Why do I think this rat has teeth?”

“This wasn’t your stuff,” Tim blustered, tucking the last of the cash in his backpack and shouldering it. “Why do you care? Why are you even here? I thought you did bigtime stuff, like, museum heists and whatever.” He reminded himself that Catwoman was a rogue, technically, but she didn’t have a body count and Batman never prioritized stopping her over other crimes. 

She looked at him with the same analyzing stare, then smiled. Cass, weirdly, un-tensed a little. “None of your business, kid. You new in the game? A junior bank robber in the making? Will I see you in a year with a mask and a gimmick?”

“None of your business,” Tim returned mulishly. 

“Fair enough,” she laughed, and went to sit casually on the desk, leaning gracefully backwards to peer down into the safe. “I am simply bored, baby thief. Curiosity killed the cat, you know, and on spotting your slinking selves I could not guess what two tiny tots could possibly have to do in what was Zerilli’s territory until about five days ago.”

Zerilli? …oh, yeah, green bandanna head honcho. Tim mentally weighed the benefit of just making a break for it vs sticking around, and decided that it wasn’t worth antagonizing her. The claws of her costume looked very sharp. “...I’m not a thief,” he eventually said. “Not, like, professionally. Or even usually. But my friend needs new boots and I need a computer.” And speech pathologists are expensive, but he had no reason to share that. 

“Tiny violins, kid, tiny violins,” she purred. She spun around on the desk and kicked the safe shut with her heel, looking over him with very visible amusement. “Not a thief, he says, so judgmentally.” She wiped a fake tear with her shining metal claw. “Owwie.”

“I am not taking any shit from a criminal who wears a purple catsuit,” he snapped as his temper frayed from stress, stepping behind Cass like she clearly wanted him to do. “Either you’re crazy or you just have really bad taste and I’m not listening either way.” He knew from how they talked about her in the papers that her whole shtick was a femme-fatale, seduction thing, but all he could think about was the way there was nowhere to hide any damn armor or gear. Cass would have a much better outfit when she was a mask.

“...anyone ever tell you you are a presumptuous little twerp?” She asked. Cass re-tensed in front of him.

Tim refused to be baited. “Whatever. Can we go? I left the non-cash stuff in the safe.”

“...hm.” She slid to the floor like she was made of liquid and tapped the safe. She closed it decisively and spun the dial to reset the lock. “Maybe I am crazy, mouse, because I kind of think I enjoy your attitude. This is Gotham, so you’ll probably die before you’re twenty, but I am not bored by you and that is worth something, you might say.” She tapped the safe again and moved to the side so they could see the front of it. “See the model? PYL 500. All you have to do is lift the dial just a tiiiiny bit—” she cupped her left hand, fingers sharply arched, over the dial and slid the tips of her claws under the edge at five evenly spaced points. “And that repositions the wheels just enough that you can easily do it by feel alone.” So saying, she spun the dial with her right hand and had the lock open in under a minute.

“...huh,” Tim said, trying to figure out how he’d do it without the same kind of sharp metal claws. Maybe he could slip a fine wire under it at both sides? “Thanks for the tip,” he said, a little grudgingly.

“You are welcome,” she said, so overly serious that he was sure she was mocking him. She carelessly swept up the safe contents and tapped them on the desk to even up the stack. “One night only, I’m not looking for a sidekick but this is weirdly fun. I love being a bad example. Anything else you want to learn? The magnet trick is not bad but it only works on dead-simple security like this. You got about eight hours to learn how to defeat more advanced security? Not that I have that kind of time.”

Tim did want to learn how to get by more advanced security systems, but that was pretty low on the priority list, and he already had some ideas about how to learn it on his own time. So he should have just turned her down but without his leave his mouth decided to say, “Could you show me how to hotwire a car?”

She cackled out loud, rolling backwards over the desk and smoothly wandering back to the door as Cass adjusted her position to keep herself between Tim and the her. “Oh, you are a hot mess. Please keep going down this dark path, kiddo, I would pay five million dollars to see the Bat have to deal with a knee-high supervillain. Can you even drive?”

“Nobody’s gonna teach a twelve-year-old to drive,” he said defensively. “Hence the need to get in a car without permission. You know, for emergencies.”

He laugh trailed behind her as she moved away into the darkened hallway. “Have fun, kiddies,” she said, voice already getting fainter. “Oh, and I’m going to set off an alarm as I leave do you might want to run.”

Tim swore and pulled Cass’ arm. “Time to go!”

“Weird,” she crisply summed up the whole interaction, and led him down the hallway towards a window. 

****

Chapter Text

Winter had Gotham in a full grip as Tim picked his way carefully through the alley. He’d known it was going to be like this when he got the call from Cass summoning him to the corner of Newtown and Burnley: this was where the big showdown with Ivy had been last week, and she’d effectively made the Botanical Gardens boil outwards another six blocks. It was supposedly stable around here, though predictably the city was dragging their feet on spending money to repair the poorest parts of Gotham. Several buildings had come down fully or partially in the initial battle, and Tim reckoned that there would probably be more over the next couple of weeks as the plants going around and through them died off with neither Ivy’s magic or good deep dirt to sustain them. (some of them would stick around, if their roots went deep enough to find good pockets of earth, and would have to be either destroyed or worked around. There was a bank in Upper East Side that was quite proud of the massive oak tree that grew through their atrium) He had often kind of wondered what Ivy’s thought process was with this kind of thing was, creating new plants to die when it was plants dying she was mad about. But then again he supposed that she would be in Blackgate rather than Arkham if she was able to think clearly like that. Or maybe she was just super optimistic about her chances no matter how many times Batman and Robin foiled her plots.

(Robin had been there! His first big fight! There was an interview in the paper from a sanitation worker who’d been trapped in the middle of the mess, and according to him Robin had taken a broken tree branch and whacked her right in the back of her head like he was going for a home run. Even though Tim had nothing to do with it, he was really really proud of Jason for that one.)

A soft whistle snapped his head up and he smiled in relief to see Cass in the empty doorway of one of the busted-out shops. “Hi, Cass,” he said. “What was it you needed help with?” He hurried over to her, trying to quash his curiosity and not look around too much. A couple days after Ivy’s recapture he and Cass had explored this area as part of their patrol, but cut it short when they found a body that had been…well. Tim had technically seen his first dead bodies when he was three, but his memories of that night at the circus was just of the fall and the screams and the afterimage of blood before his mother covered his eyes. He’d seen another when he was six, because that’s just how Gotham was sometimes, but that had been a nice normal corpse that could have been mistaken for sleeping. The one in the basement of a vine-strangled bodega, some poor cop who hadn’t been found by the cleanup crew yet, had been impossible to mistake as sleeping. He was in about three pieces, to start with. Tim had puked his guts up while Cass patted his back and made shushing noises, her own face blank and stiff. She wouldn’t have brought him here to see something like that again, so if he just stuck with her everything would be fine.

“Help,” she sounded out carefully. The ‘L’ was still kind of half-swallowed but she was basically perfect otherwise. She pointed to the building. “Boy.” She made a face, chin in hand as she looked for another word. Tim tried to help her, holding a hand far above his head then lower, shrugging—’tall or short’? She held her hand out slightly above her own head. Five-foot-something, then. “Bad,” she said, but tempered it with a see-sawing hand. Bad-ish. She mimed tying something around her upper arm and Tim got it, given how close they were to Burnley. 

“A gang member,” he said, “A young one—” if he was about Cass’ size and she said ‘boy’ instead of ‘man’: “---and he needs help.” He frowned, confused. “Help I can give but you can’t?”

Cass did the word ‘Afraid’ in sign language, then said “I, not good—” and finished with a frustrated rendition of the blah-blah gesture.

“You think he’s afraid, and you can’t reassure him with words,” Tim interpreted. “Or, sorry. This is you. You know he’s afraid.” 

“Tim,” Cass said, and patted his shoulder. “Do good—” ‘blah-blah’, with a very faint smirk.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m a chatterbox,” he sighed, though she would be able to tell it was good-natured. “As my parents have complained my whole life.”

“I, com…com-beu…” she stopped trying it and instead gestured imperiously. 

“Complain,” he sounded out carefully for her.

She pointed. “That. Not.” She gestured blah-blah and patted him again, approvingly. “Good, talk words.”

“Thanks, Cass,” he said, and followed her carefully up into the building. It was one that had stores on the bottom floor and offices above: this store had evidently sold small appliances of some kind, and Tim stopped himself from exploring through it. Cass led him through the door into the back office, knocked askew, then through another door to the short corridor that led through the middle of the building. There were no lights in here, though faint light shone from cracks here and there in walls and windows: the snow outside reflected moon- and streetlight quite brightly. When they got to the end of the corridor it met a tiny atrium with two elevators and a stairwell, and Tim sighed. “Well, we definitely can’t trust the elevators,” he said, and followed her without complaint to the stairs. He did pull out his penlight and click it on, though, once the stairwell proved to be as dark as he was afraid of. It was the third floor where Cass led him, and as soon as they stepped out of the stairwell Tim shivered in a noticeable drop in temperature. “Is the structure safe?” He whispered, looking over the walls thoroughly. Each floor had two small offices on each side of the hallway, and the first door they passed was fully askew and showed dying vines in open air beyond. 

“Not strong,” Cass admitted, knocking a wall gently with her knuckles. “OK. Small time.” She frowned. “Small time? Little time?”

“‘Short time’,” Tim told her helpfully. “If you say so.” The second door on the right was where she stopped them, and she pulled open the door carefully, ducking to the side like she expected something to come flying out of it: but all that came out was a muffled, grinding series of coughs. “Injured?” Tim asked, and edited himself to an easier word: “Hurt?”

Cas did the ‘ehhhh’ see-sawing hand again, and led him inside. It was a small bull-pen style office with evidence of broken furniture and two doors to the side that were almost certainly a bathroom and a break-room. One of those two doors was their destination, and Tim deliberately ignored the tempting bits of broken electronics scattered throughout the bull-pen. The coughing sounded even worse up close, and Tim felt a little zing of fear at what they might find. He had steeled himself for something terrible, someone with a crush or impaling injury, but when he peered through the doorway what he saw was a perfectly-intact person in insufficiently warm clothes, sitting slumped with their back against the wall. 

The person looked up quickly, then wavered like he would have fallen down if he wasn’t sitting. “F’kkoff!” he rasped, then coughed some more. He looked Asian, and he had the typical sort of clothes of one of the green bandana gangsters—cargo pants, oversize leather jacket with the bandanna tied around the upper arm, ball cap, sneakers. He had on fingerless gloves but no scarf, and his face was sickly pale but with violently red cheeks and a pink nose. He scowled at Cass blearily. “Tol’ y…f’koff!”

“I see what you mean,” Tim said to her in an aside, and hurried over to the boy. He was probably fifteen or so, but skinny as a rail and not at all intimidating: if the big jacket was supposed to make him look more impressive it had backfired. Even when the kid’s coughing slowed and he caught his breath, the heaving breaths were audibly rough in a way that made Tim wince. “Hey, man,” he said clearly, making sure he could be heard even though the cloth face mask, “You sound like crap. We can help take you to a doctor, OK? Don’t freak out, we aren’t going to hurt you or anything.”

“No…hosp’tl,” the kid gasped out, scowling as furiously as possible with what had to be a frozen-numb face. “F’koff.”

Tim frowned, thinking. “...Doctor Thompkin’s free clinic, then. We should be able to get you there ourselves, no ambulance or anything.”

“Just…” he coughed again, then hacked and spat a phlegmy wad off to the side. “Ge’ lost.”

Tim looked him over, calculating how likely he was to live long sounding like that, calculating his condition, accounting for the fact that Cass wasn’t worried. He stepped forward until he was standing right in front of the guy and leaned down so their faces were less than a foot apart. “Make me,” he suggested. The guy snarled and tried to lift his arms, but couldn’t even manage that without setting off another barrage of nasty hacking. Course of action decided, Tim started by untying the bandana from his arm, then unwrapped his own scarf to wrap around the guy’s neck even as he strangled out a garbled protest. “Shh,” Tim said firmly. “Don’t be stupid. Do you want to die?” 

The gang member didn’t reply, but he didn’t argue any more either. His face, half-buried in the scarf, was sullen. 

“How?” Cass said quietly at his back. “I carry?”

Tim thought about it. “I think I should, at least at first. You should have your hands free in case you need to fight someone.” 

She nodded, and started pulling his backpack off and adding it to her own back. “OK. But…I carry, together. Stair. OK?”

“We’ll carry him down the stairs together?” Tim confirmed. “OK.”

It was nerve wracking, getting him through the office and down the stairs. Cass dragged the boy around until his back was to her chest and hooked her elbows under his armpits, hefting him up with little apparent effort, and Tim grabbed around his knees to help carry the weight. They almost banged him against the stairs a couple times, and Tim could only mumble apologies around the penlight from where he had it held within his teeth. When they were finally on the ground floor, Cass stopped and set him down gently in the middle of the corridor. It took some maneuvering to get him on Tim’s back, but they persevered, and he was silent except for his rattling breaths when Tim grunted and heaved himself to his feet. “Holy crap,” Tim huffed. “You definitely weigh more than me.”

“Good job,” Cass said quietly, tugging Tim’s knit cap down more snugly around his ears. “I, front. Tim, hand. Hand not, stop. Talk. OK?”

“Agreed,” he huffed as they stepped out the door into the white snowy street. Cass, in front of him where she would help break a path through the snow, held her hand out behind her back to grab the front of Tim’s coat. If she let go he wasn’t gonna move a step, how humiliating would it be to get lost in Gotham? “You will hear me whimper for aid. Lead on.” This was about to be possibly the longest hour of Tim’s life…or at least the longest since he’d torn his leg up and Cass was the one carrying him to safety. 

Cass made a short questioning noise, and asked him. “Batman come, hide?”

“If Batman comes we will take the help,” Tim wheezed, hiking the semi-conscious gangbanger up higher on his back. “But I would suspect he has bigger fish to fry.”

**

Chapter Text

***

It was a good thing the weeks before spring break were kind of dead crime-wise because school-wise Tim was drowning. He actually had to beg off two separate patrol nights with Cass to study. She was confused though not upset, and one of those nights she actually stayed in his dorm with him and watched him study. She was still very intimidated by the concept of reading and writing, but he thought that she was beginning to understand just how useful they were. All things considered, he felt pretty good about his midterms: he doubted that he had any As except in Computer Science and maaaaybe History, but his English had actually made a near-miraculous upswing. Well…not miraculous. But diagramming sentences no longer seemed like the most useless torture in school when it actually helped him clarify some grammar things that he could then explain to Cass later, so. Silver linings. 

The start of winter break found him in a taxi to go back to the house, since his parents were not going to be back from their ski trip until the 23rd. Thank God! He wanted to hang out with Cass without having to worry about avoiding them—she had actually agreed to spend almost the whole of winter break at the house with him, with just a patrol here and there. The first day back at the house Mrs Mac was there cooking up a storm, so he and Cass had to sneak around her. The food was well worth it, though. But after that they were free to enjoy the snow. Tim taught Cass how to make a snowman: as expected, once he’d introduced her to the concept she was much better at it than him. He let her do the big snowmen while he made an army of little ones Calvin-and-Hobbes style. She didn’t get the appeal of snow angels, but she definitely understood snowball fights and somehow didn’t overwhelmingly crush him. He found great success in kamikaze runs, holding giant snow-mounds over his head and charging her while ignoring the snowballs she pelted him with, since she lost a lot of her maneuverability in the snow-over-grass terrain. 

When his parents arrived on the 23rd he was equally happy and annoyed to see them. As usual they wanted all of his attention for a couple of hours in the evening before he would be cut loose, and since they had come back from a ski trip instead of a dig or overseas adventure they didn’t even have any good stories to tell. They made up for it on Christmas Eve though because they took him to see the Nutcracker, and Tim told Cass where they were going and bought her a ticket so she could see the ballet in real life. (apparently she ended up sneaking in and hiding up near the rafters anyway, but she glowed with residual delight over the whole experience right up until they fell asleep in Tim’s bed together close to three in the morning. It made him feel kind of guilty for how little he himself was interested in the ballet, and he resolved to develop more of an appreciation for her sake)

On Christmas, Tim would be expected to stay in bed until he smelled the cinnamon rolls his mom put in the oven whenever she got up. For once this wasn’t an issue, because he and Cass had already done their Christmas around midnight. The presents were already all around the tree—his parents had never tried to lie to him over something as pointless as believing in Santa Claus, so Tim had always known where his presents came from. He didn’t expect to see his parents in the middle of the night because they were still a little jetlagged, but he kept the tree between them and the door anyway. He made Cass and himself hot chocolate in the microwave, because Mrs Mac had promised to teach him how to use the stove but it hadn’t happened yet, and then they sat down on the living room rug and Tim eagerly dragged out the packages he’d hidden before. “Merry Christmas, Cass!” he whispered happily, pushing the presents in her lap and setting aside the one with his name on it. “For you! Open, open!”

Cass obediently tore off the wrapping on the first package, and made interested sounds at the stack of cases that was inside. “Mostly musicals and Disney stuff,” Tim explained. “I told Mandy you liked Cats and she suggested some more! And, you know, it will help give you quotes and stuff.” She nodded, diligently looking through each, and then opened the next package. This one made her gasp quietly in delight and Tim wiggled in the satisfaction of a good gift idea. “Socks!” He said, as though she couldn’t recognize them. “For winter! Aren’t they pretty?” They were a riot of colors and patterns, and Cass brushed her cheek with one to feel how soft it was and grinned at him.

“Pretty,” she said approvingly, “Soft, fun. Thanks!”

“You are welcome,” he said breathlessly, and tore into his own package. The contents made him laugh, and he muffled the sound in the new-with-tags sweatshirt. Cass pushed at him to see, and he held it up: “'Gotham U Mad Science Department',” he read the printing on it for her, and snickered again. “Mandy is making fun of me again. Unfortunately, I kind of love it.” He dragged the sweater over his head, still grinning, but he felt himself become serious at seeing Cass’s furrowed brow. He shrugged in question.

“Tim, Cass,” she pointed, indicating her presents: then, “Mandy, Tim,” while pointing at his. She sat up straight and crossed her arms. “Cass, Tim no present.” She made a gesture with her hands like unbalanced scales.

“No, no, don’t worry about it!” he reassured her earnestly, patting her knee. “It’s OK! I don’t need a present. You came here with me, that is the best present already. It’s fine!”

Cass frowned deeper, then her face lit up with an idea. She held up a 'just-a-sec' finger: “Short time,” she informed him, and darted soundlessly upstairs. He finished his hot chocolate while he was waiting. She came back with her backpack, and she dumped it out on the rug while Tim tried not to yelp at the sudden avalanche of Stuff. “Gadgets,” she said triumphantly. “Cass, Tim. Gadgets present. Thank you.”

“Woah,” he said, sifting through her normal supplies and spare clothes for all the little electronics bits. “Dude! There’s, like, fifteen thumb drives in here. And is that a motherboard?” Several of the computer bits were so damaged that they would be useless to him, but of course there was no way for her to know that…and hey, one of the presents to Tim from his parents under the tree would hold the soldering kit he had asked for, so maybe he could salvage more than he thought. “This is so cool, Cass! Thanks! When did you even get this stuff?”

She winced apologetically, and did a little flicking gesture near her head that he interpreted as ‘forgot’. 

“Don’t be sorry,” he said, “That just made it a cool surprise present. Thank you, Cass. I am really happy that you thought of me.”

“Yes,” she said. She looked him over and nodded firmly, satisfied. “Happy Tim, good.” She scooted next to him and linked their elbows before kissing his cheek. “Tim-Cass-together good, presents good. House good, food good. Thanks, Tim.”

“You are welcome,” he said, kissing her back. “Come on, we can sneak at least five snickerdoodles without my dad wondering where they are in the morning.”

Chapter Text

His parents being at home limited Tim’s ability to patrol, but he got permission from his parents to stay ‘With his friend Nick’ for two nights during the last week of winter break. He and Kes took the opportunity to spend three days worth of daytime hours on top of the night shifts exploring Gotham in winter. Tim had his Christmas money as well as the cash they’d, uh, salvaged from the criminals, so Tim brought a rolling carryon-size suitcase with the goal of them packing all their purchases in it. Cass’ new boots were secured in good order, and she picked ones slightly too big so multiple pairs of socks could fit underneath: he also convinced her to get some sneakers, and got some for himself as well. After the bulk of their shopping was done they went to the library and slept for three or four hours, then Cass found a good place to stash their suitcase while they went on patrol. In the hours between end of patrol and morning they slept curled together on a catwalk in a warehouse, surprisingly cozy and comfortable even though by sixish Tim dearly wanted a hot bath. They ate protein bars for breakfast but after a serious discussion over their money they agreed to get a hot chocolate to share before heading towards Chinatown.

“This was such a good idea,” Tim said smugly to Cass as he accepted the hot cup with the hand that wasn’t dragging the suitcase. She nodded in agreement, pulling her face mask and scarf back up now what she wasn’t drinking. “There’s a couple buildings in Chinatown I want to look at, since I have their blueprints from the Historical Society, and then I figure we can eat lunch and hop the bus to one of the branch libraries. I saw a flyer about adult ASL classes so I want to find out if there’s anything that you would—” he almost spilled the rest of the cup as Cass stopped suddenly. “What’s wrong,” he asked her quietly, urging her to the side of the walkway so they wouldn’t get flattened for just standing there.

“Look,” she hissed, and he followed her glance to where there seemed to be some kind of family spat happening outside a store. A little girl in a very poofy purple coat was crowded against her dark-skinned mom’s leg while a white man yelled at them. 

“He’s probably the woman’s husband,” Tim said regretfully. He hated when his parents fought, though these days they only did it when they were stuck at home for long stretches at a time: he really felt for the little girl, whose face was hidden in her hood. “It’s mean of him to yell but there’s nothing we can do. That’s why everyone else is ignoring them, to be polite.”

“Angry,” Cass said urgently. Tim abandoned the last of the cocoa with only a fraction of hesitation.

“Do you think he’s gonna hurt them?” Tim hissed. “Really? God…I mean, it’s not like we want to call cops or…are you sure?”

“Angry man, body talks,” she replied harshly. “Want hurt at woman and baby.”

“Shiiiiit,” Tim said, and made up his mind. “Hold the stuff, you can’t go over there and beat him up, people will notice a kid beating up a big guy like that.” Cass might could pass for a grown woman if someone didn’t see behind her scarf—she’d shot up six inches in the almost-a-year they’d known each other, and there were plenty of five-foot-tall women out there—but even then she would draw attention. “I got this. Trust me?”

“Man hurt Tim I break fingers,” she said ominously, but she didn’t stop him as he hurried over across the street. This early on a winter Wednesday the streets weren’t jam-packed, but there were enough people for him to slip through unobserved until he was right by the shouting man.

“Excuse me!” He said clearly, sliding in between the woman and the man with his arms spread out and a scowl on his face (even though all that was visible were his eyes). “Excuse me! You are scaring this lady and her kid. Get lost.”

“Baby, you shouldn’t–” the woman started saying to him in a quiet, strained voice, but the man just shouted louder.

“Who the hell are you to tell me how to speak to my own fucking wife!”

“Ex-wife,” the lady said sharply, overlapping with Tim saying,

“I’m a cute undersized white boy who is gonna start yelling about bad touches if you don’t beat it,” Tim said coolly, hiding his nerves with vicious control. The man drew himself up and pulled back a hand like he was really gonna just hit one of them in broad daylight in the middle of the street, but he stopped himself as Cass materialized beside them. Maybe that made him think about who else might be watching because he stepped back and pointed at the woman with a nasty sneer on his face.

“Watch your back, bitch,” he snarled, and left with several more shouted curses that made the little girl flinch.

“Bad man,” Cass put in coolly, and patted the girl’s shoulder-–though she probably couldn’t even feel it through the puffy coat.

“You should not have got in his way, baby,” the woman fretted even as she squatted down to make sure her little girl was okay. “It was a kind thought but not a smart one. Lily’s daddy wouldn’t hurt her.”

“Would hurt you,” Cass said with absolute certainty. She picked a knit hat off the ground and brushed it off, handing it back to the lady who pulled it down tight over her close-cut coily hair. 

“Do you have a restraining order or something?” Tim said anxiously. “I know most of the cops in Gotham are crap but…you should go to the main library. The librarian there told me they have resources for people, and one of the librarians there is even related to Commissioner Gordon so you know they must know what’s up.”

“We’ll be fine,” she said. She was very dignified as she picked up the little girl and carried her on her hip, but her eyes were red. “I thank you for trying to help, but you mind your own business, OK? No one wants a child getting caught up in something that could hurt them. Let me hear you say you understand.”

“I understand,” Tim said, a little wobbly, and he saw Cass’ head bob in the corner of his vision. “But please promise you’ll be careful.”

“Now that I can do,” she said, a little more warmly, and tugged on his earlobe. “You kids get out of the cold, you hear, your mommas have to be fretting right about now.”

“Yes ma’am,” Tim said politely, and they watched as she left. “Is she really ok?” he whispered to Cass. She sighed.

“Scared. Tired. But…” she groped at the air for a word, and eventually did the ASL sign for ‘familiar’. “Stand up, keep moving. ‘Two for flinching’.”

**

When it was lunch time Cass took charge and insisted on dragging him to a spot at the edge of Chinatown that he was unfamiliar with but she had clearly been before. The restaurant was creatively named ‘Japanese Noodles’ in peeling paint but the smells drifting even through the closed door were heavenly. “Woman give food,” she said carefully. “Before. Name ‘Jackie’. Kind. Loud. Good food.” She grinned and poked the pocket where Tim was holding their remaining cash. “Now, give Jackie money. Food.”

“Sure,” Tim said brightly, “We can buy food here. She sounds cool.”

As soon as the bell over the door jingled a raspy voice bellowed out from the back, “One second!” Right, ‘loud’. Tim and Cass waited patiently, pulling down their scarves and masks, and the curtain to what was surely the kitchen flicked open and a brightly-clad Asian woman with white hair burst through. “You can sit—” she stopped, her mouth dropping open, and stared at Cass.

“Hi,” Cass said. She sounded almost shy, and Tim worked hard to not stare at her because that was almost a first. 

“...Mouse!” the woman said, bustling forwards and looking over them with eyes and hands both. Since Cass bore it with dignity Tim felt like he had to too. “I haven’t seen you in months! I was worried! You couldn’t even tell old Jackie that you were alive?”

“Sorry,” Cass said contritely, then put her arm around Tim’s shoulder and smiled. “Tim! Best friend. Tim help, teach. I talk words now.”

“So I can hear!” Jackie said, and laughed a big laugh that tilted her head back. “Well, best friend Tim, nice to meet you!”

“Me too,” Tim said, a little overwhelmed. “Oh, she’s Cassandra, by the way. Cass. Um, she said you have good food?” He held up a couple of their crumpled bills and blinked in shock as the woman’s face drew down in a thunderous scowl.

“I told Mouse…uh, I told Cass that she eats here free anytime. Put that crap away.”

“I’m not Cass,” Tim offered hesitantly as they were being herded towards a booth back by the kitchen.

“It extends to Cass’ friends,” she sniffed, “Fine print. Sit down and shut up.”

“Yes ma’am,” Tim said meekly, and slid in the booth so Cass could slide in beside him.Jackie blinked a little to see them sitting on the same side of the booth, but accepted it a moment later. 

“Allergies?”

“Mango?”

“No mango in noodles, you’re fine. Mouse, you run off I will skin you, understand?”

“Yes, Jackie,” Cass said cheerfully. 

Tim waited until the restaurant owner had disappeared back into the kitchen before turning to Cass with eyes wide. She laughed at him and he rocked sideways to buffet her with his shoulder. “Shut up.”

“Tim, surprise,” she snickered. “Jackie loud, right?”

“Yeah,” he agreed, laughing a little. “But, I mean, she apparently fed you when you had no money, so she’s good in my books.”

When she came back out just a minute later, bringing them steaming cups of herbal-smelling tea, Cass told her, “Jackie loud!”

“Jackie is loud,” she corrected her, and very lightly thunked Tim on top of his head with her fist. “Are you helping you learn or aren’t you?”

“Cass is doing incredible!” Tim protested. “She is learning so much! She just hates helping  verbs so we aren’t worrying about those right now.” He couldn’t argue with her on it. When you think about it, ‘to be’ becoming so many different versions (is! are! was!) was really annoying, and it wasn’t like Tim couldn’t understand her as it was.

“The whole language is stupid,” Jackie sniffed, sliding into the other side of the booth, “But you should learn it correctly. Don’t slack off, tiny mouse.”

“Yes, Jackie,” Cass said.

“Now.” She folded her hands together and rested them on the table, looking at both of them with a pinning sort of stare. “Who is going to tell me how you two met and what Cass has been up to?”

***

Chapter Text

****

On their second winter break day in Gotham, Tim spent the four hours between breakfast and lunch in the library doing research. His parents had sworn that they would consider letting him attend a different school if he could give a convincing enough presentation on the topic, and Tim needed to look up the past fifteen years worth of stats from about thirty different schools—both public and private, though he would prefer public because he hoped that his parents would be able to give him part of the difference in tuition like they’d given him the difference in housekeeper and nanny wages. That was potentially a lot of money, and the downside to switching from boarding school was that he worried Cass wouldn’t want to live in Bristol full time because it would interfere with her patrols; so hiring someone to act as her guardian was back on the agenda. 

After lunch Cass, who had spent the same four hours diligently studying ASL signs, didn’t let him go back towards the library. “What’s up?” He asked her. “Something you want to do?” Her lips pressed together but she didn’t answer, and Tim felt sure that she was thinking about something really really hard. “We can go to the botanical garden?” He suggested hesitantly. “Some of the stuff that bloomed when Ivy was out is still supposed to be around, and they have lots of evergreens and some sculptures and stuff too.”

Her jaw tightened, but she nodded in agreement. They had left the suitcase in a supply closet at the library—it should be safe there, he’d had to pick a lock to get in. It was a short bus ride to the gardens, and Tim paid their way in with his essentials credit card. He had made a habit of pushing the limits of ‘essentials’ with a few purchases here and there, nothing big, but just small things like this to test just how closely his parents watched the statements. So far he hadn’t been interrogated on anything, so he was going to wait until February and buy a computer with it to see if that was considered too far. The gardens were pretty, though not as much as they would be in the summer, and Tim and Cass walked through them together with their hands linked. It was Cass who had reached out and taken his hand, so clearly something was wrong. Tim tried not to worry about it, and instead chattered lightly about the things around them, the things they’d bought yesterday, her (language) lessons with him and his (karate) lessons with her. Eventually they came to the greenhouse and sat down on a stone bench. It wasn’t a terribly comfortable seat, but the air in the greenhouse was warm enough that Tim pushed his scarf and mask down with a sigh of relief. He looked at Cass, stiff and stone-faced, and worried. 

“Hey,” he said gently. He reached out, not moving too fast, and rested his hand on her shoulder. He tried to channel the careful and steady gentleness Batman used to comfort victims. “What’s wrong? Is It something I can help with? Did something happen, or are you thinking about something in the future?”

Her mouth twisted and she looked firmly down at the ground. She was silent for maybe a couple full minutes, while Tim absently pushed at his latest loose baby tooth with his tongue and practiced patience. “...superhero,” she started slowly. “I, superhero. Tim says.”

“You totally can be a superhero,” he agreed, with a pat pat pat of worried reassurance to her shoulder. “You basically are one already, because you have crazy skills and you use them to help people. The only reason you aren’t 100% a superhero yet is because they’re supposed to have code-names and costumes and stuff. And since you’re not a metahuman it would be really good if you could have armor and gear and things, like Batman.”

“Hmm,” she said, her mouth twisted in unhappiness that made Tim even more concerned. She fumbled for her fanny pack and shuffled through the communication pictures. She didn’t use them nearly as often these days, with her language skills having advanced so much, but Tim thought it made sense for her to fall back on them if she was having a hard time saying what she was thinking. She pulled out the generic-male-superhero figure and her color wheel, and indicated green on the latter. “M…marsh….” she gestured sharply, and Tim filled in, 

“Martian Manhunter.”

She nodded. “That.”  She shifted away from him on the bench so his hand fell away, and he dismissed the pang of hurt that caused him. He shouldn’t be clingy: Cass deserved her space if she needed it. “He. I, head, thoughts. Tim. Remember?”

“How could I forget,” he said, trying to be light and easy with it. “He worked on your mind to make it so you could use language, and he linked us so we could talk before you could ... .You know. Talk -talk.”

Cass gave a sharp chopping-off gesture and said, “No. Link, not…before. I, thoughts. Superhero. Talk to Tim. Understand?”

“He told me about what he saw in your thoughts?” Tim confirmed, feeling his brow crease sharply. “Yeah, of course I remember. It made me really sad and angry that someone had treated you like that, had hurt you so bad. I asked him to make sure to—” he waggled his fingers near his temple: “---you know, let you know that I knew.”

“I know,” she said heavily. She looked strained and anxious and Tim realized with horror that her eyes were wet. He flailed a little, desperate to have some way to help, and pressed his water bottle on her. She took a sip mechanically, then sniffed. Tim scooted closer on the bench, making up the distance she’d moved away, and told himself that if she backed off again he’d let her: but she didn’t. She leaned against him instead, and rested her head on his shoulder. “I, Cass, bad,” she said quietly.

“Never!” he cried, holding himself still so as not to push her off even though he wanted to make her look him square in the eyes. “Not in any way! You are good, both in the talent-and-skills way and in being a kind and good person. Who told you you were bad? Surely not Martian Manhunter!” He suddenly remembered, sickeningly, the swamp of misery in Cass' mind, the one that had been washed out in his memory by the overwhelming sensation of her care for him. 

"Did kill," she said stiffly. "Kill…is bad." 

“Aw man,” Tim said, suddenly about a hundred times more stressed. He was not qualified for this! “I am not qualified for this,” he told her fretfully: but who else was there? “OK. I want to try and…explain. You aren’t wrong but you’re not right either.” She lifted her head to glare at him and he shoved it back down on his shoulder. “No, no, I promise. It’s not as simple as ‘because you killed, you are bad’. Let me…just give me a second to think.” 

“Bad,” she repeated stubbornly, but let him think.

Maybe he should start at the absolute basics. “OK,” he said, more calmly. “You know about…well, death in general, right? That everyone dies, even if they aren’t murdered?”

“Mr. Rogers says,” she replied after a moment's thought. “Short time only.”

“He talked about it just a little? Yeah, sure,” Tim said, encouraged. “And like…even if nothing bad happened to a person their whole life they would eventually die once they were old enough. Our bodies just wear out, like…like my sneakers did, from wearing them all over for months and months. And people can die of other things too, injury, illness. So…death isn’t, you know. Good or bad. It just is. Make sense?”

After a longer pause this time she nodded, though he thought she did so reluctantly. 

“OK. And, like, I think most people in the whole world agree that killing is bad. There are awful people out there, and I’m sure some people just like killing because they’re, I don’t know, sick in the head. But I believe almost everybody thinks…you know, if we all got to choose between the world staying like it is now, or the world changing so no one ever got killed violently, I think everyone would pick to change it. Understand?”

“Yes,” she said more quickly. She drew back and looked fixedly at his face. 

“Superheroes especially. Most of them don’t kill; either they don’t kill at all, ever, or they just try really hard to avoid it. And for some of them it might just be because of like, legal stuff, you know, to avoid the worst potential consequences under the law—”

“What means, ‘the law’,” Cass interrupted him and he winced.

“Ah. Something that would take a really long time to explain, so we will have to do that another time. But the main thing is, they don’t kill. They think killing is wrong.” Even the editorials or hostile newscasters who hated Batman had to admit that he never killed anyone. Since Tim knew who it was behind the mask and his story, he would be willing to bet that it wasn’t just due to the legalities of vigilantism. “But some superheroes do kill.” Cass’s face froze and she stared at him with her eyes going wide. “I don’t think any of them enjoy it, or want to, but like…Wonder Woman has killed plenty of times. Now, to be fair, she fights gods and monsters more than humans and mutants but…still, thinking beings. As far as I know.”

“Really?” Cass said. She sounded wounded, and Tim pulled her hands into his lap and patted them. 

“It’s like…” he thought furiously. “OK, it’s like…people have lots of ways of hurting each other. Right? Like how Cain hurt you. Injured you. You patrol because you want to stop people from being hurt, right?” she nodded in response, and he squeezed her hands and smiled to soften his next statement: “But, Cass, you hurt people on those patrols. You break fingers and knees and you punch people.”

She reared back, though his grip on her hands kept her from going far. “But…!” she managed, and about twenty different emotions flew across her face. “Not…not….”

“It’s not the same,” Tim finished for her, nodding earnestly. “Right! It’s not the same. Those bad guys on the streets are hurting people for money, or for fun, or to look tough, or whatever other bad reason. They are hurting innocent people for no good reason. But you hurt them only so they can’t do that, to protect innocent people. So it’s different, right?”

She hesitated for a long while, brow pinched as she thought a mile a minute. “...yes.” Having said that, she firmed her jaw and straightened her shoulders, giving a much more confident nod. “Yes. Different. Protect, not….”

“Yes, definitely.” Tim shrugged helplessly. “So when Wonder Woman kills a bad guy, that is the reason. To protect. She thinks, ‘ah, this is different from murder. I only kill this thing to protect innocents’. You understand?”

“But…” Cass shuddered, and looked at him with confused anguish. “But…how? Kill, bad. I see, I feel, I know…kill bad. How maybe kill any not bad? How?”

Tim freed one hand to make a fist and rest his chin in it, and she let him think of how to say it. “It’s like...the people we saw yesterday. The woman and her daughter, and the angry man who yelled at them.” Cass nodded to indicate that of course she remembered. “OK. Imagine if…the man wasn’t yelling at them in the street. If he was in their house instead, yelling. And no one who heard did anything, because they were like me and they thought he was only angry but would not hurt them. But the angry man wanted to hurt the woman and her daughter. OK?”

She made a face to tell him just how little she liked this thought exercise. 

“I know, I know. It would be awful. But if that happened…if the man tried to hurt the little girl. The baby, you said. The woman wasn’t a fighter, was she?”

“No,” Cass said with absolute surety. “Man big, fight not lot but some. Woman not fight.”

“So in this imaginary event, the man is trying to hurt the baby. And the woman wants to stop him but she can’t fight him, but there isn’t anyone there to help. But she has a gun, and she can shoot the man in the head to protect her baby.” Cass looked so upset by the imaginary scenario that Tim impulsively leaned over and hugged her tightly. “If all that happened…is the woman bad?”

Cas was silent for such a long time that Tim pulled back and poked her in the shoulder with his finger.

“Hey. Is the woman bad because she protected her baby, but didn’t know how except to use a deadly weapon and kill him?”

“...protect,” was all she said after a minute, but her face screwed up again. “But, Tim! Kill bad! I hate! No, please, if….”

“I think it is cool and awesome that you hate killing so much,” he said, the words almost tripping over each other. “It is amazing. You never want to kill. You never chose to kill, you did what the asshole made you do. You didn’t even know what killing was. As soon as you knew what it was you hated it and said ‘no’ even though it meant you were alone and in danger and hungry and everything for years and years. That is…” he swallowed hard, and when he blinked he felt tears break free from his eyelashes. “That’s incredible. That’s why you’re my hero. That’s why you’re good: because when you choose what to do, you choose to do good things. I think you can decide that a person who has killed is not bad because of it, and at the same time you can hate killing and want to never ever kill. I think that is wonderful. OK? You understand?”

“...OK,” she said in a moment, patting his newly-damp cheeks. “OK, Tim. I love you too.”

He was suddenly struck by a thought, and he saw her see it: she narrowed her eyes as he carefully sat up straight and let go of her hands, folding his own together instead. “Um, Cass, I think…I think I could kill. I think if, I don’t know. I think if the only way to protect you was to kill someone, I would do it.” He met her eyes and it was one of the scariest things he had ever done to ask: “Does…does that make you hate me?”

“Stupid,” Cass said immediately, very gently punching him in the hip. “How? Never.” She linked their elbows. “I, more lessons. Tim fight good like Cass. Protect, kill not only way.”

He sniffed. “But what if?”

“If Tim kill?” She sighed. “Not hate. Never.” She made a face. “Don’t know. Sad? Angry? Hurt? Maybe. Hate, not never. ‘Go away, Tim!’ never. Hmm. I understand.” And then reluctantly: “Maaaaybe ‘Cass not bad’. Maybe. Thinking. Feel wrong. But…maybe.”

Tim mimed taking her bad thoughts out and punching them. “I do love you, you know.”

Cass rolled her eyes. “Yes, duh,” she scoffed, and shoved him off the bench.

Chapter Text

*********

Becoming ambidextrous would be a smart thing to do.

Tim’s right hand was occupied by Cass’: he had herded and pushed and bullied her up onto the back of the toilet so if anyone looked there’d only be one pair of feet in the stall, then entwined his fingers with hers so she couldn’t easily get away without hurting him. He didn’t like the look in her eyes one bit. But that meant he had to use his left hand on his burner phone, and it was a good thing he had the number in the contacts or he’d have a hell of a time typing it in accurately under these circumstances. Plus even though summer had just begun it was hot as hell and the air in the bathroom was like warm soup: his hands were sweaty for more than one reason.

The number was listed under ‘BG’, which was a tiny little private joke/pun, and he pressed the contact and raised the ringing phone to his ear with his heart in his throat. She’d given him the number, but it was so possible she’d changed it—

“Hello?”

Tim slumped in relief. “Miss Gordon?”

Her voice was cool and neutral. “Who is this?”

“Tim, that is, Tim Drake, ma’am, you probably don’t remember me but I was at the library almost a year ago and you checked out my books and you gave me a pamphlet about resources for victims of abuse because my friend…but you probably don’t remember me, I’m sure you do that all the time, but I thought—”

“I don’t give my number to just anyone, kiddo,” she cut him off. Her voice was a little warmer now, a little more gentle. “Now that you say it, yes, I remember.”

“He’s here,” Tim blurted. There was no one but him and Cass in the bathroom but he dropped his voice anyway. “The man who hurt my friend over and over, he’s here, in Gotham, I saw him just now.”

“What?” There was a rustling sound, a metallic creak: most of Tim was panicking but a little part of him felt guilty because of course she’d probably been sleeping, it was a Saturday morning and she’d probably been doing computer vigilante stuff all night. Another creak, then she continued, “Where? Are you in danger? Do you know where your friend is?”

“She’s here with me,” Tim babbled, relieved to the point of trembling that it didn’t all rely on him to protect Cass, that an adult was willing to help, and not just any adult but Batgirl. “She saw him first, her breathing went funny and I think she had a flashback or dissociated because her eyes went all blank and she held my hand so hard something cracked. I really don’t think he saw her though, so I just took her into the boys’ bathroom and we’re hiding.”

“Good. Good work, Tim. Is her breathing ok now?”

“Yeah, but she’s not responding to anything I say.” Tim sniffed and tightened the hand that was woven in hers despite the little spark of pain that caused in his pinkie. “I’m worried because if it comes down to it I think she’ll worry mostly about protecting me when she should just run.”

“Okay, deep breaths, kiddo. Where are you?” He rattled off the intersection and the name of the diner they were hiding in, and he heard a background clatter of keys as she clearly looked it up as he said it. “Okay. Does he have a record? Is he out of jail, or is there a warrent for his arrest for child abuse? I could send the cops—”

“No!” Tim yelped, and Cas shook herself a little behind him. She pressed against his back and felt a little more present. “No, you can’t send police! He’s an assassin.”

“...he is what?” Batgirl snapped.

“He’s an assassin named David Cain. He owned my friend and treated her like an experiment. He was trying to make her an assassin too.” The silence from the other end of the phone was deafening, and Tim panicked. “I’m telling the truth, this isn’t some kind of crank call! You can ask the Martian Manhunter, he’s the one who told us Cain’s name!”

“Why the hell do you think—”

“I know you’re Batgirl,” Tim blurted frantically. “I figured it out. And Batman and Robin and Nightwing. Cass wants to be a superhero too and I follow all the superhero news. Please, Miss Gordon, please, if Cain finds us he’s going to hurt her or take her away or both, and Cass is a really really good person and —”

“Kid,” she cut him off, her voice hard but also kind of resigned, “You are gonna have a hell of a lot of explaining to do to a hell of a lot of people. But I just found a person who looks suspiciously like internationally infamous assassin David Cain on surveillance footage so I think I believe everything you just said. I’m watching the area through cameras: stay where you are, I’m going to get Robin to come in his civvies and escort you to the batcave.” There was a hiss of static in the background. “And it’s Oracle now, not Batgirl.”

“OK. Please tell Jason to knock an S.O.S on the bathroom door so we know it’s him.”

“Cave,” Cass said quietly to the back of his head as he hung up. “I said. His home.”

“You’re almost always right, Cass,” he told her. He untwined their fingers but leaned against her and let her hug him. “But so am I. So let me tell you —Oracle is going to help you, and Batman and Robin too .”

Cass scoffed “‘You’,” she said in disgust, with a wiping and throwing-away gesture. She linked their elbows and kissed his wet cheek. “ Us . Or no. OK?”

“The most dynamic duo,” he agreed, and kissed her cheek right back. 

******FIN*********

Chapter Text

*In the whole excitement with David Cain (let’s say he ends up extradited to somewhere so he is NOT in prison in Gotham) Tim is like. So. Mr Batman sir. I know for a fact that your house has 27 unused guest bedrooms. They said it on the tour. Nice collection of Whitefriars art deco glass vases btw. ANYWAY. I have not yet found an actor to pretend to be Cassandra’s parent so I can rent an apartment for her so how about you let her stay in your house. You won’t even know she’s there, my parents have never noticed her and they’ve shared a house for two holidays. I will miss her terribly but I want her to have a bedroom with a bed please. 

*Bruce’s HUD is just flashing UNO reverse cards. He is struck dumb .

*Jason is like…this is absolutely karma Bruce. You earned this by scavenging me like a jawa scavenges droids. You have made this the Home of Freaks and now all the freaks are coming home to roost. I’m keeping them both forever btw and you can’t stop me.

*Anyway Cass does live at the manor. She gets like a full year of not being there officially as she gets education and training and such, but when she’s almost 14 Bruce Wayne adopts a daughter out of nowhere. (a horribly shy but very sweet, delicate, girly daughter who loves dance and hardly says two words in public. Because she is shy, you know)

*Tim alas is with his parents because they have done nothing that legally justifies removing him. But he does convince his parents to do a school besides boarding school the next year, and when they aren’t at the house either he’s constantly either having sleepovers with Cass or she is with him

*(Drakes eventually both die because the way only Janet was fridged in the comics was BS. I’ll be sad not to have Dana around later bc she’s awesome but otherwise Jack can eat it and get the most lukewarm taps ever. Rest in pieces, you get the wonky yellow ‘u tried’ star but u didn’t actually try hard at all.)

*for the first while after the Reveal, Cass’ time is mostly divided to With Tim(Without Bats) and With Bats (Without Tim): during the latter, her most-used phrase is ‘Tim says… ’ and it gives them an absolutely unhinged impression of the larval bat. (not an inaccurate impression. Incomplete, but not inaccurate)

*wait, if Cass wants to be Tim when she grows up…and Tim wants to be Cass when HE grows up…then who's flying the plane??? 

*Cass is taller right up until Tim gets his final growth spurt at 16 and surpasses her by a crucial inch. 5’6 Tim truthers where u at.

*So Cass experiences with training/teaching are a) abusive, all-controlling commanding officer, and b) mutual, reciprocal peer-to-peer. For this reason she takes instruction very well, almost no ruffled feathers…but she will give it right back to Bruce. Like, he tries to walk away from an argument with Jason with just a grunt and she’s there like “No. Feelings-words are important. Tim says. Say words. Go.” bc on GOD if she’s gotta use the mouth-sounds-language he has to also.

*Jason does NOT die. Whether because he simply does not run away because his sister (for 1 year officially but 2 altogether) is either like “Dad, dummy, he is not lying about killing the guy. I am gonna sit here and make you talk to each other because Tim has taught me about the importance of emotional honesty, he learned it in a book. If someone tries to yell or storm out they get a vulcan neck pinch that paralyzes them for thirty seconds.” OR maybe Jason still runs away but she is like “Guess who’s coming along in your suitcase, it’s me, your conscience” and then he doesn’t die because she can tell Sheila is lying and also she can totes beat up the Joker.

*Even before being officially adopted Cass gets a superhero identity. Bruce knows he cannot stop her (yes, it’s karma) and he wants her to have ACTUAL armor so here it is happening again. Her identity is Kestrel, and her costume is vaguely bird themed, in black-gray-browns but with a yellow outline bat symbol like her batgirl costume. Tiny Tim is ABSOLUTELY up in everyone’s business immediately even though Bruce is like “of course this non-orphan isn’t going to be a vigilante”. Tim is Kestrel’s main man in a chair, working from both the Batcave and from Oracle’s Clocktower, and sometimes he goes out on the streets with her: he has a copy of her costume in all black. 

*Jason will be graduating from Robin, but not til he’s eighteen. When it DOES happen he’ll become Hood—not like the Joker, but like Robin-. 

*I can’t decide if Bruce still gets snapped like a twig by Bane. I hate that whole Knightsfall storyline bc Azrael is a tool, so I don’t remember all the details. Let’s say if it does happen, some combination of Dick-Jason-Cass-Clark-J’onn keep Batman in the eye of the criminals. Tim starts occasionally filling in as Robin in this time, alternating with filling in for Kestrel when Cass is being the Bat. 

*when Damian appears things go pretty differently because Cass takes NO shit and no prisoners. Don’t start none won’t be none but if you start it she’ll finish you. At the slightest hint of aggression to her family she puts him down HARD, every time. Little man gonna eat humble pie on the daily. 

*he appears early BTW, let's say in canon Jason dying made Talia hesitate but in this au Bats has proven to her just how good he is at mentoring baby heroes 

*When Jason does graduate Tim takes on Robin full time. With Cass more integrated into the Batfamily she doesn’t need Oracle as a mentor as much, so I see Babs taking Spoiler under her wing and eventually offering her the Batgirl mantle, though Cass fills in on that sometimes too.

*If Bruce still gets lost in time I think things will still run like a well-oiled machine. Cass is Batman, with Clark or Martian Manhunter filling in sometimes to muddy the waters—but at that point Gotham is pretty used to the Bats apparently swapping roles periodically. Maybe Dick is sometimes Batman and Cass is Nightwing. Damian is asked to fill in as Kestrel in her absence. Cass would obviously support Tim to the hilt as far as finding Bruce, and if they do any of the world travels Jason and Steph would fill in as Batman and Robin: though instead Dick and Damian might be the ones acting as their agents overseas. When Batman comes back Cass takes Kestrel back but invites Damian to be her black Shadow like Tim used to be. At some point I think Steph might want to go back to her roots and be Spoiler, in which case Cass can be Batgirl and Damian Kestrel. (I don’t like Damian as Robin because Robin is supposed to be the light to Batman’s darkness.)

*Even though Robin wasn’t Tim’s goal, I think he fills the position just as masterfully as he does in canon. I think he will be Robin as long as Bruce is Batman–as Bruce gets older he is not as confident in his abilities to protect his partner, so he would not be interested in a new child taking that role again. 

*Duke/Signal and Steph/Spoiler as the day shift? Yes please.

*(the Joker dies fukkin, i dunno, falling down the stairs one day. Fuck that guy. What a boring loser.)

*and they all live HAPPILY EVER AFTER DAMMIT