Chapter Text
The first thing Jason noticed was that his head was pounding. The second thing that he noticed was that he was lying in a puddle. The third thing that he noticed, after peeling open his eyes, was that he was in a vaguely familiar alleyway in Crime Alley—which happened to be on the other side of the city from where he’d been before getting hit with the energy blast from the Villan de jour ’s contraband ray gun.
Something must have gotten busted in the circuitry of his helmet in the blast because the built in comms were making an incessant, high pitched noise that only made the pain in his head sharper, and the internal screens were all wonky and illegible. A quick glance around didn’t reveal any company, so with a groan he pushed himself up and reached for the helmet, twisting it off and setting it aside. “Motherfucker,” he grumbled, rubbing a gloved hand against his temples. The pain was beginning to fade, thankfully, but unfortunately the gaps in his memory remained, and he had no good way to explain how he’d gotten here. Well, one of the others might have an answer, so he reached up to flick on the secondary comm he kept in his ear for when his helmet was off, and—
—nothing. Just the hiss of static that indicated a channel was offline. With a steadily growing frown, he kept flipping through, going through every single channel used by the Bats, and nothing. Nada. Zilch. Either Jason’s comm unit had been fried by the blast that took him out in the first place, or… something worse had happened.
A faint tinkling sound came from behind him and in a second Jason had twisted and rolled into a crouch, his hand flying to one of his guns as he scanned the alleyway. He didn’t see anything, but that didn’t mean shit. He narrowed his eyes and reached up to tap the side of his mask a few times, cycling the lenses of his domino until the thermal vision activated. And—aha! Huddled behind the dumpster was a small, human shaped heat signature. A child, then, and based on his read out, a cold one. Likely homeless, and hiding from the strange adult man who’d shown up in their alleyway. Since most of the alley kids trusted him to protect them by now, this one probably hadn’t gotten a good look at his helmet.
On the one hand he really should try to regroup with the others or at least figure out what the deal was with his comms, but on the other hand, fuck ‘em, his family could hold on for five minutes while he checked in with this kid and tried to see if he could find them a better place to spend the night. He straightened up but relaxed his posture and slowly approached the dumpster, making sure his footfalls were audible but not overtly menacing. When he was close enough to be heard without shouting, he cleared his throat and spoke in his gentle, talking-to-kids voice.
“Hey, it’s just me. It’s Red Hood. I’m not gonna hurt you.”
The kid didn’t respond, so with a sigh, Jason knelt down and slowly eased his head around the corner, trying to get a good look at what he was dealing with without boxing the poor kid in, and—
Oh. Oh shit . The kid was a painfully thin, grimy little thing, with greasy black hair plastered to his forehead and big blue eyes that had seen far too much for his young age and yet had not lost the barest traces of childhood innocence, but he would, Jason knew he would, because he knew this goddam kid because this kid was him.
What fresh time travel hell was this?
The first thing Tim noticed was the headache that felt like it was splitting his skull in two. The second thing he noticed was that he appeared to by lying on something like a bed of gravel. The third thing he noticed, after peeling his eyes open, was the face of an oddly familiar child peering down at him.
Since Tim was wearing his mask, the child wouldn’t be able to tell he was awake, so Tim decided to stay perfectly still and keep his breathing even so he could see what this kid wanted. Maybe he was just a fan who wanted a picture?
Weirdly enough, as soon as that thought passed through his mind, the kid took a step back and lifted up a camera to his face, training the lens on Tim’s prone form. And huh, Tim used to have a camera just like that when he was a—
Holy fuck. Tim bolted upright, causing the kid to yelp and scamper backwards, except his foot caught on some gravel and he fell backwards onto his butt. He started at Tim for a moment, but when Tim didn’t do anything but stare back at him, he started babbling.
“I’m so sorry, I was just checking to see if you were breathing ‘cause you sorta just fell out of the sky onto this rooftop and you weren’t moving so I thought you might be dead, but then I saw that you were breathing after all so I was gonna go and watch from behind the air conditioner to make sure someone came and found you or you woke up ok but then I thought you kinda looked like a superhero and I think superheroes are so cool so I just wanted a quick picture to remember what your costume was like but I didn’t actually get any I swear so if you just let me go we can forget about this it’ll be like it never even happened I won’t tell anyone I promise—”
“Tim,” Tim interrupted, causing the smaller version of himself to fall abruptly silent, before starting to stammer again.
“What? No, I don’t know who you think I am but it’s definitely not anyone named Tim. Nu-uh, no way, the name’s Alvin actually—”
Tim just snorted as he reached up to pull off his domino mask and slowly lowered it so he could smirk at his younger self. “Alvin Draper? I think I’ve heard of you.”
Little Tim’s mouth fell open into a perfect little ‘o’ as he stared up at big Tim before he breathed out, “time travel?”
Tim pursed his lips, considering. “Maybe. Or something cross-dimensional, I’m not sure. I’ll have to look into it,” he said as he considered his younger self again and reviewed his options. An exposed rooftop wasn’t an ideal place to do that, and he wasn’t entirely sure what the closest Bat safehouse would be in this era—judging by his own appearance, this was likely towards the end of Dick’s time as Robin, so it was well before he’d advanced to sleuthing out Bruce’s safehouses in addition to tracking their patrols. But there might be another option… “Mom and Dad home right now?”
Younger Tim hesitated, then shook his head looking resigned in a familiar, painful way. “Burundi,” he said flatly. “Big dig. Won’t be back for months.”
“Ah. Well, that works out for us, in any case, because there will be no one else asking questions about me,” Tim said with a shrug as he pushed himself up. His younger self scrambled up as well, all the while staring at Tim with a mixture of disbelief and awe. “Mind if I stay at your place for a bit while I figure out what’s going on?”
“Of course!” Young Tim nodded quickly, almost desperately, and wow was it a little painful to see just how eager for any bit of attention he’d been back then. Tim’s smile was halfway between nostalgic and bitter as he pulled his grapple gun off his belt.
“Now I know you usually would go grab the bus back to Bristol, but I think I’ll stick out if we do that, so… how do you feel about flying home?” he asked, waving the grapple for emphasis.
Young Tim looked like he might have just died and gone to heaven.
Things had not gone the smoothest with his younger self, but Jason had persevered, and in the end he had his very own mini-him following him around. And no, he hadn’t just copied Bruce’s baby Jason wrangling methods. The Batburger was a coincidence, it was the only food place still open that wasn’t also run by the mob and therefore safe to bring little Jay inside.
“So what’s with the dye job?” Little Jason asked, swinging his legs underneath the booth while munching on some fries and twisting the limbs on the Robin figurine that had come with his Bat Bite Meal™. It might have been adorable, especially with the way he was utterly swimming in Jason’s leather jacket, but Jason refused to be fooled by the cute exterior when he knew all too well just what sort of scheming mind lay beneath. The frequent kicks to Jason’s shins were definitely on purpose.
“Not a dye job,” Jason grumbled, shifting in his seat to try to relieve some of the pressure on his newly bruised ribs, thanks to little Jason’s tire iron that was also a coincidence. “It grows like that; it’s a side effect of… some supernatural bullshit. Don’t worry about it.”
Jay hummed thoughtfully as he tipped the fries container over to free the last few little bits at the bottom into his palm. “Supernatural? I get mixed up with magic?”
Jason sighed. “Sometimes. Don’t worry about it.”
“Some jackass falls into my alley and starts claiming to be some buff superhero version of me from the future, of course I’m going to worry about his questionable life and fashion choices—”
“It might be a different dimension, I told you I don’t know yet,” Jason said, rolling his eyes. “And I’m not a superhero, stop saying that.”
“Guy puts on a mask and fights against criminals every night, sounds a lot like a superhero to me.”
“I’m an anti-hero! I have guns, for crying out loud!” Jason snapped. Then he realized he probably shouldn’t be advertising that while he was with Jay in case someone decided to go after the kid later, but luckily they were the only diners and the teenager sitting behind the counter didn’t even look up from his phone. “Look, just—are you done eating? We’ve got to get going so I can start making a plan to figure this out.”
Jay blinked at him. “Since when am I going with you?”
Jason let out a long breath through his nose. “Look, Jay. I might be you, so I get why you are where you are. But I am also a… semi-responsible, semi-adult person. The semi-responsible thing to do for you is make sure you find a good home that’s not an alleyway and also not a trafficking front.”
Little Jason scoffed and leaned back against the booth, crossing his arms and glaring up at Jason. “Yeah? Where ya think you’re finding that?”
“I’ll bring you to my dad,” Jason said with a shrug. “Probably. I’ll have to have a talk with him first to make sure this version of him will do right by you. And in the meantime, there’s someone else I have to track down who might have the key to figuring out what I’m doing here. And even if he doesn’t, he’ll probably have some spare rooms in his house that we can camp in.”
Jay narrowed his eyes. “When you say your dad…”
“The guy who adopted me,” Jason clarified. “Assuming your life was going to line up with mine, you wouldn’t meet your version of him for like, six more months or something, but I see no reason why I can’t be proactive and introduce you sooner. Anyway, you coming?”
Little Jason stared at him for a long moment before he sighed and twisted to hop out of the booth while shoving the Robin figurine into the jacket pocket. “Guess seeing who adopted an alternate version of myself beats freezing my ass off in an alleyway for the night. I’ll come as long as I can keep wearing the jacket.”
Jason rolled his eyes as he stood as well. “I might need it back depending on what sort of ride we find, but I’ll figure out something else for you if so.” He took a moment to step over to the tip jar and fished several twenties out of his wallet, making brief eye contact with the teenaged worker and nodding once, hoping that would be enough for him to forget about anything he may have heard between the two Jasons. Then he led little Jason outside, gritting his teeth as he got a faceful of the chilly night air. His armor had a thermal under-layer, of course, but that didn’t do much for his exposed arms… but he wasn’t about to take the jacket off of Jay’s back and leave him with only a thin ratty hoodie that Jason knew for a fact was mere weeks from falling apart entirely when he tried to take it to a laundromat. He was fine, he was a grown adult, he could suck it up for his childhood self’s sake.
“What sorta ride are we looking for?” Jay asked after Jason had passed up the third beaten to shit sedan along the street without so much as a second glance. “I mean, you are gunna hotwire a car, right? I always swore I’d learn how one day. Gotta graduate from jacking tires sometime.”
His little self sounded so hopeful about his future ability to commit grand theft auto, it was adorable. Jason snorted. “If I have to, I will, but the reason these cars are left out here is because no one would even want to steal them. Nah, I was hoping for something a little… sleeker.”
“Hate to break it to ya, but if you’re looking for a ‘sleek’ ride, it’s gonna be a long walk to the Diamond District.”
“Not if this world’s version of my older brother is as predictable as my version of him.”
Jay was quiet for a moment before he asked softly, “older brother?”
Jason smirked. “Oh yeah. I’ve got an adopted older brother, and an adopted older sister, and a non-adopted older sister figure, and three adopted younger brothers and one non-adopted semi younger sister figure, not to mention all the close family friends we hang out with on the regular.”
“That’s. A lot.” Jason couldn’t resist glancing down at his younger self to see the look of utter shock and awe on his face, and well, yeah. Jason got it. It would have been hard for him at this age to conceive of a life as full of other people as his was now.
—And he hadn’t even told his younger self the other bit about his family yet.
Jason had led them towards the edge of Crime Alley and into what appeared to be another innocent, empty alleyway and strode through it with purpose in his step. Jay followed behind him even as he scoffed in disbelief.
“An alleyway? Shit, you coulda just left me where you found me if this is the best you’ve got!”
Jason rolled his eyes as he strolled over to what appeared to be a defunct electrical panel and popped it open. “Shush, I need to concentrate. If I don’t guess the passcode right, it’ll send an alert and we’ll be screwed.”
“Passcode to what? The dumpster?”
Jason chose to ignore the commentary in favor of adopting an overly serious expression. He was exaggerating because if this didn’t work he’d just scoop up Little Jason and hightail it out of there before anyone could show up to investigate, but he didn’t want to put this era’s Robin or even Batgirl onto his trail just yet, not when he had yet to figure out if he was in this situation alone or not. He flipped every one of the fake circuits to ‘Off’ before flipping every other one back ‘On’ again. Once he’d done that, a small panel popped open on the bottom with a numeric keypad. Jason was about ninety percent sure he remembered the first code Dick had shown him, back when they’d been on one of those few friendly patrols together after they’d started getting along and Nightwing had deigned to finally show him some of the Robin-specific secrets tucked around Gotham that Batman remained unaware of. He gritted his teeth and quickly entered the twelve digit string of numbers.
Jay gasped behind him as a portion of the wall popped out and then pulled itself down, revealing a small, secret “garage” hidden in the side of the building. It was almost empty, save for a small shelf of extra gear and the pair of gleaming motorcycles bearing well known insignias parked inside.
“Your older brother is Robin?” Little Jason whisper yelled, and Jason smirked. “No fucking way!”
“He’s not as cool as he seems, trust me,” Jason said with a grin as he stepped up to the shiny red Robin Cycle and knelt to inspect it. “Hey, do me a favor and look on the shelf over there, see if you can find their spare helmets.”
“I guess the stupid mask makes sense now if we got adopted by Robin’s family,” Jay mumbled as he did as Jason asked. Jason just chuckled and turned his attention to the bike. He made quick work of disabling the trackers and then rewiring the vehicle to run without Robin’s biometrics to unlock it. That part hadn’t been shown to him by Dick, but rather something he’d figured out by himself in a fit of jealous rebellion, well before Dick had given him permission to use his old special gear that Barbara had outfitted for him and him alone.
Once he had the engine purring quietly he stood back up and dusted his hands. “That oughta do it,” he said, throwing Jay a wink as he snatched the red helmet from his arms, leaving him with Batgirl’s spare.
“Hey, no fair, I don’t want a girl’s helmet!”
Jason smirked. “Batgirl is kickass and way cooler than Robin, I’m doing you a favor. Besides, red is my color,” he said as he plopped it on his head before unlatching the outer layer of his body armor and tossing it into a corner. Hopefully he’d have time to come back and grab it later, before Dick or Barbara happened to need one of their emergency bikes. He was already going to have to come back and grab his busted helmet from where he’d stashed it by Jay’s alleyway, anyway, so it's not like it would be an extra trip. Jason swung his leg over the bike and turned back to Jay. “Now give me back my jacket, I need it to ride.”
“But I’ll freeze ! And red’s my color too!”
“Best you start learning to share now, then. Gotta get you warmed up for all those siblings of yours. Timbo especially’s gonna want to get his grubby paws all over your stuff, and you can only maim him for it so many times!” Jason chirped. While he wasn’t usually such an asshole to children… this kid was him. He could take it, and more importantly, if he started being too nice to Jay, he might take it the wrong way, regardless of how much Jason had a head start to earning his trust by virtue of having the same face and a shared life experience. “Now, hand over the jacket. It’s mine.”
“Maybe you should learn to share,” Jay muttered as he slid his arms from the sleeves and let it drop to the ground. He crossed his arms and glowered up at Jason, making no moves to hand it to him, so Jason rolled his eyes and leaned over to scoop it up and slide it back on.
“I’m going to; put on the Batgirl helmet and hop up here,” he said, scooting back so there was space on the seat in front of him. Jay eyed him suspiciously but slowly complied with the request. Once he was seated, Jason wrestled with his jacket so that he could zip his tiny younger self inside of it with him. Between removing his outer layer of armor and Jay’s unhealthily small size for his age, they just managed to make it work.
“Hang on, Little Jay, you’re about to get a taste of hitting the road vigilante style,” Jason said before revving the engine with a smirk.
“I think if anything’s going to kill me, dying on something that belongs to the actual Robin is the way to go,” Jay said thoughtfully, and Jason just barely managed to suppress a full body wince at the painful irony of that statement. “Hey, you said you’re not kidnapping me and if you’re not kidnapping me you’re actually legally obligated to tell me where we’re going.”
Jason took a deep breath and wrested away the complicated emotions that liked to pop up whenever his thoughts turned too closely to his experience with death. “Bristol.”
“The fuck is in Bristol?”
“Lots of stuff,” Jason said as they pulled out of the garage and eased into the alleyway. “Some of your brothers, for one. And possibly, at least one of mine.”
“Well this sure brings me back,” Tim said with a smirk as his younger self presented him with a freshly brewed cup of “Midnight Wake Up Call”—double brewed coffee mixed with half a can of Zesti and a couple tablespoons of sugar for taste. “Think it’s been several years since I’ve made this particular concoction.”
“Don’t tell me you’ve got a normal sleep schedule now,” Timmy said, wrinkling his nose as if the very thought was distressing to him.
“Of course not,” Tim said, gesturing emphatically to the pile of gear he’d left on the table after he’d changed into some of his Jack’s spare clothes for the sake of comfort. “That keeps me up plenty. I just have people who get on my ass about keeping my diet balanced, getting enough naps in, and not overdoing it with the caffeine, and if I don’t placate them by making a nominal attempt at ‘self-care’ they can get super annoying.”
“Oh. So you… don’t want a Midnight Wake Up Call?”
Tim shrugged as he lifted the mug to his lips and took a sip. “No, I do. I don’t see any of them here, now do I? Besides, desperate times and all that, and I really need to keep my head in the game if I’m going to figure out how to get home.”
Timmy nodded before climbing onto the stool next to Tim on the kitchen island and taking a long sip from his own mug. Tim frowned and briefly wondered whether he should say anything to try to prevent his child self from continuing down his self-destructive path, before dismissing the idea in favor of picking his battles. He didn’t want to come off as a hypocrite, and it would be easy enough to make it this universe’s version of Bruce’s problem after he figured out how to get home and then tipped off Batman to his younger self’s living situation. Best not to rock little Timmy’s boat too much before then.
“So what are you working on now?” Timmy asked, peering at the laptop that he’d graciously loaned to Tim. Tim currently had about a dozen wikipedia tabs open to recent historical events, various models of cars, and likely most puzzling for Timmy, the plot synopsis for a popular children’s show.
“I finished corroborating my suspicions that I’m in an alternate dimension rather than having time traveled to my own personal history,” he said, clicking several of them closed now that he was satisfied with his conclusions. “I suspected it as soon as we met, because I don’t believe I ever had gloves like the ones you were wearing, but there’s enough that’s inconsistent with the other things I remember that makes sense only if I’m in a universe that’s like mine but slightly to the left.”
“Huh. Is that… a good thing?”
Tim shrugged. “Maybe. It at least eliminates any concerns I had about creating a paradox by interacting with you. It does open me up to the risk of miscalculating a decision based on the assumption that something will be the same as it was in my own universe, but now that I’m aware of the possibility, I’m confident I’ll be able to account for it by allowing for extra time for research in all my decision making.”
Little Timmy nodded thoughtfully as he stared at the computer again. “Ok, so you know this universe isn’t your own, and I imagine you want to get home. What are you going to do about it now?”
“There are a few options,” Tim said, lifting his fingers to count them as he spoke. “One, I could always go present myself to the Justice League and see what they have at their disposal that can send me back. There are a few drawbacks to this; I’d have to get them to believe what I’m saying, which might be difficult with some of the more suspicious members. And since I don’t know the state of their dimension hopping technology, it’s a big risk for an unknown level of reward, so this one stays rather low on the list.
“Another similar option would be going next door and appealing to Batman for help, but again—he’s rather mistrustful, and it would take some convincing before he fully believed my story and devoted his whole attention to problem solving rather than threat assessment. I do have my own version of Batman’s codes for dimension travel incidents memorized, but the problem with those has always been that there’s no guarantee the other Batmen will always have the same ones, and if I reveal myself and the codes don’t match up, then I’ve gotten detained for no good reason. So that’s not an ideal option right now either.
“I do have… let’s call them options 1-B and 2-B, where instead of directly asking either the Justice League or Batman for help, I infiltrate their systems and possibly their headquarters to try to find what information they have on dimensional travel. If I pull it off, I’ll sidestep any of the risks, but if I’m detected, I have the misfortune of being immediately perceived as a threat rather than having a chance to defend myself. I’ll think more on whether I should utilize these options, but right now overall I currently favor option three.”
“What’s option three?” Timmy asked.
“Figure it out by myself,” Tim declared, turning back to the computer and pulling up a new search tab to start poking through articles on quantum mechanics and the physics of wormholes and dimension transporting ray gun schematics. Well, ok, he probably wouldn’t find a handy downloadable diagram with the exact specs of the gun that had been used to send him here, but there was no harm in checking that some mad scientist hadn’t already done something similar in this universe. Why reinvent the wheel if he didn’t have to, right?
“You think you can… do that?”
Tim shrugged. “Probably. Can’t be any harder than time travel, and I have met several versions of myself who reportedly figured that out. I won’t know if it’ll take too long until I do some preliminary reading, which will probably take the rest of the night. Feel free to head to bed, or go start developing those photos I know you got of me passed out on the roof, or something,” he said, throwing Timmy a knowing look when the kid opened his mouth to protest.
Timmy gave him a shy, bashful grin, and was about to say something, but was cut off by the loud ringing of the doorbell. Both of them started at the sudden noise.
“Who on earth would come here at this time of night?” Timmy asked, sliding off his stool and making his way towards the door. “It’s way too late for deliveries, and also, I didn’t order anything.”
“Stay in the kitchen,” Tim warned before scooping up his domino mask from the pile of gear and snagging his collapsible bo staff from his belt. He strode past Timmy and slunk down the hallway towards the front door. He automatically traced the familiar path across the floorboards that he remembered as a child attempting to move through the house without making a noise, but cringed when that took him over a particularly squeaky board. Curse those minute unpredictable dimensional differences!
Once he’d reached the foyer, he crept along the wall until he could peek through the gauzy curtains that covered a front facing window, just barely able to make out a large figure standing on the porch. There were no lights on outside and it was cloudy, so he couldn’t actually make out any details. This was Gotham, it could be anyone! A kidnapper here for Timmy or maybe someone who’d seen him moving around the streets with his mask and grapple and followed them here or some run of the mill robber or thug, even! Just as he was weighing the risks of turning on the porch light and giving away that there was someone awake in the house, Timmy seemed to materialize out of thin air next to his elbow.
“It’s some sort of scary dude and a little kid,” he hissed out, shoving a tablet with a home security app pulled up at Tim.
Tim took a deep breath and decided to pretend his heart was not suddenly racing from being startled by his sneaky younger self as he took the tablet and examined the nightvision feed from the porch. The moment he registered enough details on the hulking figure, he thrust the tablet back at Timmy and lunged for the door. Tim made quick work of undoing the lock before yanking the door open and gaping at their visitor.
“Ja —Hood?” he gasped out, feeling a wash of relief as he took in the sight of his brother. His brother, because he was wearing the same shirt he’d had on under his jacket when he started patrol with them earlier that night and his hair was the exact right length and—
“Red. Thank fuck you’re here too. Can we come in? I’d rather not catch the attention of the neighbors just now,” Jason said wryly.
“Yeah—I mean, uh, Timmy?” Tim turned back to look down at his younger counterpart. “Are you ok with them coming in? This is actually a… colleague of mine from my own universe, I didn’t realize he was here too.”
“Thought you said you guys were brothers,” someone else said, and that was when Tim remembered Timmy had reported two visitors. He peered past Jason’s bulk to see a shrimpy little boy dwarfed by Jason’s comically oversized leather jacket, and he had ratty, curly black hair and sharp little eyes and Tim would recognize a young Jason Todd in any universe and holy shit he was so fucking cute—
Jason, older Jason, rolled his eyes. “We are, Tim’s just a weirdo. No need to keep your guard up, Timbo, I’ve been more or less forthcoming with Jay, and he’s been pretty well behaved in return. He did lift about $150 from my wallet earlier, but frankly, I’d be disappointed if he hadn’t. Now can we please come in? I’m freezing my biceps off because someone was so dramatic about needing my jacket.”
Everyone looked over at Timmy, who was staring up at Jason with an oddly blank expression—maybe it was hearing him casually refer to Tim as his brother? Then he blinked and shook his head before taking a step back. “Sure, they can come inside, I’m always happy to meet… the colleague-brother of my older alternate dimension self and also some random kid after they showed up on my porch in the middle of the night.”
“Well, I guess I’d better give a proper introduction,” Tim said once the pair of Jasons had come inside and Timmy had ushered all of them into the parlor, where they’d taken spots on opposite couches—the two Jasons on one, the two Tims on the other. “Jason, this is Timmy, he’s the younger version of me from this dimension, in case you couldn’t tell. Timmy, this is Jason Todd, from my dimension and… what appears to be Jason Todd from your dimension.”
“So it is dimensional,” Jason muttered, tapping his chin thoughtfully as he leaned back against the couch and popped his boot clad feet up on the Drake’s genuine Civil War era coffee table. “Guess that solves some problems. Anyway, yes, this is little me; I woke up in an alleyway that contained absolutely nothing of note but him, so since you guys were also caught in the blast, I assumed the first place I should check was with the younger versions of you all. Since I could assume that the Tim Drake here was likely in an empty mansion in Bristol rather than with fucking Batman or the League of Assassins, I figured I’d start here.”
Tim stared at Jason in horror as the realization crept over him. “Wait, do you mean to say that Dick and Damian— our Dick and Damian—were also hit with that guy’s dimension transporting gun?”
Jason winced. “Uh. Yeah. After he got you, but before he got me. Since you were first and I was last and we both wound up in the same place, I feel like we can reasonably assume they’re both in this dimension as well.”
Tim glanced at the little Tim and the little Jason before he popped up and started to pace back and forth around the room while crunching the numbers in his head. “Timmy’s nine, so Dick would probably still be Robin—Timmy, is Dick still Robin?”
Timmy’s eyes grew huge as he craned his head around the couch to meet Tim’s gaze. “Dick Grayson isn’t Robin anymore in your universe?”
Tim grimaced, but nodded. “It’s—fine. He moved on to another hero identity and other people gave the mantel a go. Anyway, if he’s still Robin then he’s either with Batman or with the Teen Titans. Hopefully Robin wasn’t on some high stakes undercover mission that Nightwing just crashed…” he muttered.
“Robin was out with Batman earlier, but they returned to the batcave early because Agent A detected some weird energy readings and it was a slow night anyway,” Timmy informed them helpfully.
Jason’s eyebrows shot up. “How’d you know that, kid?”
Timmy shrugged. “I’ve been hacked into their comm lines for months. It wasn’t hard.”
Jason raised a hand to his mouth, and Tim just knew he was covering up a smirk. “I see. And were you ever this much of a little stalker, Timbo?”
“No comment,” Tim said before resuming his pacing. “So it’s probably safe to assume that Nightwing was transported into the Batcave. I mean, I hope he was, and that he didn’t end up being thrown in front of the Batmobile while they were en route and then got run over by it.”
Jason’s expression turned uneasy. “Let’s… assume that didn’t happen, for now.”
Tim nodded. Best not to dwell on it until they got proof one way or the other. “So we go with the theory that he’s been poofed into the Batcave. I imagine this version of B would detain him immediately because from his perspective that would be suspicious as hell, but he also isn’t going to cause N any undue harm while he’s in custody, and given enough time, Dick should be able to get himself out or possibly win them over into helping us with getting home. Robin, on the other hand…”
“Would be no more than a toddler here, which means our version of him was probably tossed straight into a League of Assassins stronghold with no working comms, no backup, and in a compromised state,” Jason said grimly, voicing the troubling thoughts that had already been in Tim’s mind.
“What the fuck are you guys talking about now?” Little Jason said, sounding vaguely annoyed. “There’s a Robin in your timeline who’s an assassin?”
“He’s reformed,” Jason and Tim said in unison before looking at each other again.
“If I start looking now, I can hack the League’s database and probably find out which base baby Damian is being kept in by sunrise,” Tim said. “I already have a few ideas—assuming this dimension’s Ra’s and Talia operate similarly to our version of them—so it may even be sooner. You could start sourcing supplies for an extraction mission; you’ll have a better idea of where backup gear is cached at this time than I will.”
Jason nodded, standing up as well. “Sounds like a plan. I’ve already got an idea for how to catch a ride, but I’ll need to head back into the city to get the rest of what we’ll need. I have to swing back there to grab my armor and helmet, anyway, I just wanted to prioritize connecting with you and getting Jay somewhere safe.”
“Didn’t need your help,” Little Jason grumbled as he glowered at his older self. He then wiggled around so he could push himself up off of the couch, holding the leather jacket around his shoulders like a cape (a bit of ironic foreshadowing that Tim found delightfully adorable). “And who says I’m staying here? If you’re going back into Gotham, then I’m going back to my alley. I’m not going to stick around this fancy ass mansion with these two weird ass strangers!” He wrinkled his nose distastefully at the Tims. “What if they steal my organs?”
Jason rolled his eyes. “Tim’s my brother, you can trust him.”
“He ain’t my brother,” Jay snapped. “And I don’t even trust you, why would that mean anything? Take me back home!”
“Wait, if you’re going to go steal Batman’s gear, I can help!” Timmy said excitedly, hopping up off the couch as well. “I’m good at getting in and out of tight places and I’m super sneaky and stuff! And I have one of those really great heavy duty army backpack thingies we can use to carry everything!”
Jason frowned, looking between the two children with a disgruntled expression that was oddly reminiscent of Bruce when they were all ganging up on him and making him regret the decisions that led to so many children in his house. Tim smirked slightly and decided to help with some of the issue, at least.
“Actually, Timmy, I was going to ask if you happened to have another laptop somewhere in the house so we can both work. I have some things you could help me with if I show you the ropes.”
Timmy’s mouth fell open and his eyes practically glowed with excitement. “ Help you? Like, with important superhero hacking stuff?”
Tim shrugged. “Yeah, kind of. I’m going to try to get Jason’s and my comms working again so we can keep in touch, and since you’re apparently already familiar with how Bat comms work, I thought you could handle keeping the program running for me while I break into the League database.”
Timmy nodded enthusiastically before he bolted towards the door, heading out to the hall. “Ok! We can use my dad’s backup laptop, it’s in the safe in his office but I cracked the combination eight months ago, we just have to wipe our activity when we’re done just lemme go…” his words faded as he ran deeper into the house.
Jay scoffed and Jason and Tim both looked back at him. “So he’s a bit of a freak and easily manipulated. I’m not; take me home, or I’ll go back myself!”
“I will bring you home. To your new home, like I promised. But later,” Jason said, rolling his eyes. “Just give me the rest of the night to—”
“No!” Jay shrieked, and then suddenly bolted towards the door of the room. Jason swore under his breath and darted after him, throwing a quick ‘I’ve got this one’ over his shoulder on the way out. Tim blinked, but he figured that while he considered himself an expert on Robin-era Jason, the only one of them who really knew how to get through to a pre-Bruce Jason would be… Jason himself, and Tim following as well might just make things worse. He trusted his brother to take care of a child in need, particularly this child. Besides, there was another child out there trapped in an unfamiliar world that did need Tim’s help, one who was likely in grave danger at this very moment.
He decided to head back to the kitchen where the laptop was still set up. On the way there, he ran into Timmy in the hallway, toting Jack Drake’s spare laptop with an almost manic glint of excitement in his eyes, although it turned to confusion when he spotted Tim coming his way.
“Where’s Jason? And, uh, the other Jason?”
Tim shrugged. “Jay’s having some perfectly understandable issues with trust, and my Jason went after him to convince him to calm down. I figured we could get a head start on our tasks while they do that.”
Timmy agreed, and soon enough the two of them were back at their seats in the kitchen, each sitting in front of an open laptop with their half drunk mugs of coffee-Zesti blend beside them. It hadn’t taken Tim very long at all to modify Timmy’s existing comm-listening program into something that his and Jason’s comms could run on, and after walking him through the basics, he had taken the spare laptop and started the familiar game of ‘Hack The Secret Assassin Organization. But Timmy kept throwing him long, contemplative looks that were getting more and more distracting, so finally he let out a sigh and fixed his younger self with a kind but serious stare.
“Whatever it is, out with it,” he said firmly.
Timmy bit his lip. “Jason… Jay… he’s from Crime Alley,” he said slowly. Tim frowned.
“Yeah, he is, but I know you don’t have a problem with that.” Not unless he and this Tim really were different on a fundamental level…
“Oh, no, no I don’t,” Timmy said quickly. “I mean, I don’t. But you said he’s your brother. And, uh. Mom and Dad, they don’t, um… so, uh, how?”
“Oh.” Right. The whole ‘his parents were mediocre-at-best until they died and then Tim had gotten adopted into the same family he’d obsessed over throughout his childhood’ had not yet come up. Mostly because Tim hadn’t wanted to bring it up earlier when his younger self asked if anything he would find surprising had happened in Tim’s history. “It’s… a long story. I really have to get going on this hacking job, or I’d tell you more,” Tim lied as he gestured to the computer. “Just know that… you don’t need your Mom and Dad’s permission for someone to be family, ok? If they’re family to you, you’ll know. Or. I mean, I guess I didn’t know know for a while… there was some miscommunication, some ups and downs, but I got out of it mostly unscarred and I did figure it out eventually. Yeah—to sum it all up, you’ll figure it out eventually!”
“Inspiring,” drawled Jason from the doorway. “That make you feel any better, Timmy?”
Timmy shrugged and frowned. “I guess, kinda—wait, what do you mean by mostly unscarred?”
Tim just rolled his eyes. “Oh, like things with your mini self are going any better. Speaking of, where is he?”
“Young Jason and I have reached an agreement in which he will stay in Drake Manor while I am gone as long as he’s allowed to stay locked in the bathroom he found and you two promise to leave him alone and not try anything creepy,” Jason said airily. “If you don’t, he has my permission to stab you and run away into the night.”
Timmy gawked. “You gave him permission to stab us?”
Tim’s eyes narrowed. “Where did he get a knife?”
“No comment. Anyway, did you get the comms figured out?” Jason asked as he stepped over to the kitchen island and leaned down to look at their screens. Tim nodded.
“Yeah, I just need your unit to get it synched with the new channel we set up and you should be good to go,” he said. Jason nodded and handed him the comm, and Tim started fiddling with the buttons.
He was too busy concentrating on the delicate work of synching a comm unit to notice that Jason had reached for his mug of what he must have assumed was coffee until he casually took a sip only to spray it out all over the kitchen island.
“Timothy Jackson, what the fuck are you drinking?” he snapped, glaring first at Tim and then the mug. “This tastes like… radioactive ass!”
“And how do you even know what radioactive ass tastes like,” Tim said immediately on instinct, even as his mind raced to figure out what he could offer Jason to make sure this didn’t get back to Alfred once they got home. Blackmail on one of their siblings? A first edition of Jane Austen? A signed first edition of Jane Austen? Yeah, once he got them all home he’d just get on inventing time travel ASAP so he could go back to Jane Austen’s era and get a freshly printed copy of Pride and Prejudice and get it signed and dedicated to Jason, that would be enough!
“It doesn’t taste like ass, it’s delicious!” Timmy said, puffing out his chest indignantly. “It’s a special blend of coffee and Zesti and sugar that I developed for nights like these. It’s called ‘Midnight Wake-up Call’, and I’m considering filing a patent!”
“Is that so,” Jason said darkly as he inspected the contents of the mug once more. Then, in one swift motion, he swept over to the sink and dumped the entire thing out.
“Hey!” Tim exclaimed. “I was drinking that! We had patrol, then an unexpected villain fight, and now we have to track down our missing brothers in some alternate dimension that’s set way back in the past! I need the caffeine to deal with this shit!”
“You can have some of mine, if you want,” Timmy offered. Somehow, Jason’s expression grew even more severe.
“You’re letting a nine year old drink this crap?”
Tim threw his hands up in the air. “You’re one to talk, you gave the twelve year old a knife!”
Clearly, neither one of them was cut out for this. The sooner they figured this all out, got their versions of their brothers back and out of danger, and could dump the mini thems off on an unsuspecting Bruce Wayne who was about to become a father again multiple times over, the better.