Work Text:
Timothy Drake was once eight years old.
He was eight years old and he couldn't cook or tie a knot, and he barely reached the kitchen’s polished countertop during nighttime suppers. He was eight years old, alone in a cold house and bleeding from a scrape on his knee—crying his heart out to anyone who would listen. He was eight when he burned his hand attempting to cook an egg, starving when the kitchen was bare and no one was around.
Tim was eight years old, kneeling on the cold gravel ground with blood staining his hands and knees like sticky syrup. It was cold that night, the rain battering down on him like hard bullets, petrichor and dew filling the air.
The muggers had already run, terrified of the sirens approaching closer and closer like a leering beast. Until the police arrived, all that was left in the isolated alleyway was Tim, and the two dead bodies leaking blood into the open floor.
Timothy Drake was eight years old when he witnessed the concept of death.
It had been a whirlwind afterwards, a flurry of running, training, confusion, and the hovering feeling of loss.
Then there were the Bats.
He’d assumed they liked his company, but Tim was fairly smart and he knew that that was rarely the case. Occasionally. Spontaneously.
Tim liked to pretend that he lived a perfectly normal and plain life sometimes, where he lived in a picket white-fenced house, had a diverse friend group, and was the son of understanding, emotionally-available parents (a violent contrast from reality where his parents were brutally slaughtered in front of him).
When that failed, he liked to imagine that his life had been a calm walk in the park. This was rarely the case for most Gothamites, but Tim liked to pretend. It's a daily ritual for him and it's a helpful coping mechanism when the insides of his heart felt like it was going to spontaneously combust. Red Hood implied that he should get that checked at the doctors, but Tim implied back that he couldn’t offer any advice when his ass is legally dead.
“You know what? You make a great point,” Hood had said afterwards. “I sometimes forget that you have your occasional, sporadic, moments of genius just like everyone else.”
“Um, fuck you,” Tim said intelligently back. “And your total would be a hundred and six dollars.”
“I’m buying a single chocolate bar,” Red Hood splutters. He points at the candy shelf in rightful indignance. “It literally says right there that the price is a dollar and sixty cents.”
“Yeah, and it also says inflation. Cough it up, Frank Castle.”
“Real fucking mature of you.” Hood deadpans. The voice modulator in his helmet distorts his voice into a tone flatter than disappointment.
“A hundred and six dollars.” Tim continues, because he is a bitter and petty man. Red Hood stares at him.
“What the fuck, the money isn’t even going to go to you.”
Well, my dear outlaw, Tim thinks, it’s not the money that matters—it’s the vindication and pettiness that Tim harbours deep down in his dark and bitter soul. Those feelings are held in higher regard than cash.
“I can literally walk out of here with this chocolate bar without handing over a single cent.”
“That’s breaking the law, Hood.”
Red Hood stares at Tim with eyes that are really just the soulless white blanks of his helmet.
“Tim, you do know that I'm a wanted crime lord, right?”
Yeah, duh. He doesn’t actually live under a rock, and Tim does watch the GNN occasionally.
“My freedom is breaking the law. I break the law. I’m breaking the law, like, constantly.” Hood continues.
Obviously.
“Well, do you want to break the law more?” Tim asks the man with a serious face, serious eyes, and a tone that suggests the dead-seriousness he is being at that moment.
“What? I- No? Well—” Red Hood fumbles for a bit. “Fucking—fine.” He violently shoves a hand into his pockets and pulls out a few wads of cash, slamming the money on the counter. Tim doesn’t even flinch.
As a matter of fact, Tim didn’t even expect Red Hood to pay. Maybe lots of cursing and swearing, yeah—but he generally assumed the man would slam the chocolate bar back on the shelf and storm out of the shop.
“Happy?” Red Hood asks Tim through his teeth.
As much happiness as he could possibly experience, Hood.
He relays that to the man in question and that was the end of that particular interaction. If Tim was feeling particularly delusional, he’d say that Red Hood paid the hundred and six dollars because the man liked him—which he obviously doesn’t, which is fine, because Tim hates Hood too with an equal passion.
Tim hates Nightwing more.
The man in question is currently sticking his head in the freezer where the ice cream tubs are kept, rummaging through the products like a raccoon in a dumpster. Red Hood stands at the door, leaning against the Slushy advertisement banner with his arms crossed.
Tim types away on his computer—his manager never bothers to show up because Mr. Weasley is well aware of Tim’s capability and reliability, thus having full trust in him—so Tim can do whatever he wants during his shifts as long as he gets the job done.
Stephens Sebastain Edwards, father of two, divorced. Ex-surgeon with a criminal background. Charged with second-degree manslaughter but was let off with a light sentence due to his actions being influenced by his respective conditions and disorders. Cyclothymia bipolar and IED. He has questionable ethics but does have—
“Why do you guys have no blueberry vanilla left?” Nightwing half-yells, face still shoved in the freezer compartment.
Apparently blueberry vanilla is a popular flavour amongst the youth or something. Don’t ask Tim.
He goes back to his work.
—a strong moral character and is a hard worker. Risky to hire as he is explosive and unpredictable—
“You’re technically still a youth, Timmy.”
He doesn’t have any more youthful energy left in his body to be considered one, Nightwing.
A pause. “Yeah, uh. Are you alright, Tim?”
He’s peachy. Also—“Can’t all of you go to another store? I like my nights to be as peaceful and as silent as it could possibly be in this city.” Tim barely looks up from his computer, one hand typing away as the other scribbles down a few words on a sheet of paper.
“Nah. This shop’s the closest to our patrol route,” Tim knew that years ago. “But you probably already know that, don’t you?”
Irrelevant. Tim finding out was…mostly a mistake. He didn’t deliberately try to involve himself in the vigilantes’ messes.
“Are you trying to change the topic? I bet you guys only visit to torment me.” Tim says to Nightwing.
His life is already as difficult as it is and he wished that the bats didn’t thrive on some epicaricacy in watching him suffer.
…However, he really hopes that the bats are doing what they are doing just because they're mad sadistics—trying to make his life hell—instead of attempting to adopt him, or rope Tim into their manic, crime-punching, insane family of rich vigilantes. Tim doesn’t know which is worse, and he’s in denial, so he’s stubbornly insisting on the former.
“Torment? We’re just customers, Tim.”
Barely.
“Wing, please just leave Tim alone and get your goddamn ice cream so we can leave already!”
“They don’t have blueberry vanilla.”
“Then buy the Neapolitan or something!”
…What did he just say?
“Okay, wait.” Tim cuts in, finally looking up at them. “Hood, Neapolitan is boring and disgusting. You are boring and disgusting for eating it—”
“Oh my god it’s not that bad, it’s a classic—shut up Oracle, you’re not part of this conversation—”
Both Nightwing and Red Hood pause, and Tim wonders what they are hearing in their earpieces for half a second before deciding he doesn’t have any shits left to give.
Red Hood makes a face at something Oracle probably said, and Nightwing snickers.
“Well, B’ eats rum raisin ice cream, so—”
“He what."
Tim tunes them out.
Maria Castillo-Lopez. Single and unmarried. Charged with tax evasion—
“—won’t be arriving. Hey Tim, are you coming for family dinner tomorrow?” Nightwing asks.
Tim pauses in his work, mind grinding to a stop.
Family dinner? Will Tim be coming for family dinner? They’re trying to turn him into a Wayne. Tim won’t be converted, he won’t be lured into Bruce Wayne’s cult-following-adopted-family pyramid scheme.
“Oh, and Alfred is making that carbonara spaghetti combo thing that you really like.”
Food won’t tempt him, Wing.
“With tuna in it. And barbeque sauce. And pickles, just like you like it.”
…Well, why didn’t he say so earlier?