Chapter Text
Timothy Jackson Drake is 12, and sitting on a cold wooden floor at a safe distance away from his parents bodies, for fear that he may contaminate the evidence. Or maybe just do something reckless. What, he isn’t sure, but emotions are volatile, especially when your parents are found dead on the living room floor.
It’s strange. Everything else in the living room is normal. Well, the lamp is on the ground, the bulb shattered into pieces, and the stand is wonky, with blood on the corner. But apart from that, everything else seems too normal for it to be the scene of Timothy’s parents’ deaths.
Janet Drake is in an awkward position, sort of crouched faced towards Jack Drake, clasping his hand in hers. Jack Drake is laying there on his back, and if Tim didn’t know better or had checked his pulse, he might just imagine that his father was just sleeping. This is probably the most peaceful that he’s ever seen him.
Tim almost doesn’t try to call the police. He figures that he could just go over to the fucking Batman’s house, it’s not that long of a walk, since even though all of these houses are ridiculously far from each other, they are technically next door neighbors. Like a couple miles.
Then Tim regains common sense and realizes that if he talked to Batman in Bruce Wayne’s home, he would get suspicious, and even if he tells him that he just went to the house nearby, it’s probably for the best that Batman not get involved in this at all.
Finally, it registers in Tim’s mind that he should probably call the police. At least try. While there is a significantly lower chance of them actually doing anything than is comfortable, he should just try and call them so he doesn’t seem suspicious. Who knows, maybe one of the more competent cops would pick up the case. Well, upon thinking about it, Tim doesn’t really know of that many competent cops.
He glances at the time in the top left corner of his phone. He realizes that he should have looked at the time, probably. Tim’s mind is too addled to come up with a reason why, but it seems like it would have been a good idea to know the time.
Tim spares one last look at the bodies on his living room floor before dialing 911.
“911, what’s your emergency?” the person on the other end of the phone says.
Tim doesn’t even notice himself speaking until he hears his own voice.
“My parents are dead.”
***
It’s ruled as an unfortunate accident.
The reasoning for the death is as follows. Apparently the amount of pills on the prescription was mistyped, and with how much they were drinking that night, well… Jack never stood a chance. Janet’s death is a little more unclear, with it apparently being that Jack fell upon being overdosed and Janet hit her head on the lamp stand due to her grip on Jack’s hand.
Except no they didn’t.
Tim obviously doesn’t voice this opposition to the police, they would just think that he was grieving and his reasoning for why the ruling is inaccurate is something that Gotham high society would snatch their claws at and never let go.
Them dying in the first place is going to be treated as some sort of scandal in the first place, but there would never be any real venom behind the words that would be hissed behind Tim’s back, just pity. Tim might get some looks that say Oh, you poor dear, but those are better than the looks directed to whoever had the misfortune of doing anything that could be scrutinized by others.
Janet would roll over in her grave if she knew that the fate of the Drake name would end up being treated like… that.
Having the ruling be accurate is not worth sullying the Drake name.
And on another note, Tim ends up having to make up a fake uncle. Not to help the Drake name, just to help him.
His parents didn’t have anyone in their will, and so when Tim got asked, he just made up this fake uncle that’s apparently been galavanting across Europe for some time now.
Tim goes on a couple of sites, most of them for people who are in dire need of a job and kind of shady, and puts up a couple ads about an acting job that would require someone to work for long periods of time and live somewhere else. He also adds in some features that he would need to have and some skills. Tim also says that he would pay for living expenses and the place that he would be living is pretty nice, so there shouldn’t be any problem with finding someone.
So now Tim has to forge correspondences, a birth certificate, and just in general make up a whole new person.
The emails are pretty easy, with how Tim already has his dad’s password for his email. All he really has to do is make his uncle (Eddie Drake) say that the whole cell service situation can be iffy at times, and so it would just be easier if they talk over email. Then Tim writes out numerous conversations dating three years back. (When Eddie began touring Europe.) It takes a bit, but Tim’s able to do it.
He even includes a reason for why Eddie hadn’t really been in the public like Jack was. The reason that he came up with was that Eddie had always been a private person, and his life goals were so different from his parents and from Jack, so he would end up standing out too much. So far, Eddie has visited Spain, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Germany, and Russia, in that order. He spent around six months at each place, and now was coincidentally when his trip to Russia would be ending.
The last message that he had sent was about how he wasn’t sure where he wanted to go next, and so he was wondering if Jack knew any places from the numerous archaeological sites that he had visited in Europe. Tim also writes in a couple times when Jack and Eddie had met up when Jack was visiting some site nearby him. He also makes sure to not make Jack sound too nice, since anyone who had met him in real life would definitely know that somethings up if Tim makes him sound like a saint.
After Tim finishes all of the emails, he gets started on more legal documents and such. He creates a birth certificate, his will, some medical files. (Eddie had childhood asthma. Tim doesn’t include any allergies, and he figures that it’s fine since Jack didn’t have any allergies either, Tim’s shellfish allergy came from Janet’s side of the family.)
Next for Tim to do is forge records of Eddie living in Europe. This is a little trickier, since Tim hasn’t lived in Europe before. Tim starts out with just putting in records of Eddie paying rent for places. Then he has him do monthly checkups at the nearest doctor to wherever he is living. Afterwards, he just searches up random places that are tourist attractions and has Eddie go there. Most of the time, Eddie will just take the bus to wherever he needs to go. Tim also makes fake credit cards in Eddie’s name for each country.
All in all, Tim spends a shitload amount of time forging shit.
But the thing is, he also has to check out why the fuck his parents died, so… yeah. Tim isn’t going to sleep tonight, huh?
Tim gets up out of his chair and walks over to Jack’s office. He has more stuff to do.
It’s kind of eerie walking to Jack’s office. It’s not like Tim isn’t used to being home alone, but he doesn’t really go many places except for his room and maybe the kitchen if he needs to.
Tim’s footsteps are quiet on the hardwood floor, but in the silence, they seem deafening. Tim has always been a bit sensitive to noise like that.
He finally arrives at the office, and walks over to Jack’s desk before sitting down in his chair.
It feels wrong.
Jack was weird about his office in a similar way to how he was weird with everything, so Tim wasn’t really allowed here.
Tim shakes his head to clear out the distressing thoughts, and gets to work on trying to figure out what the hell Jack had been up to.
***
Drake Industries was going under, and apparently Jack Drake had decided that the best way to rectify that wasn’t to root out the numerous corrupt workers, and instead to go and ask for help from the fucking Court of Owls. Jack had talked to one of his drinking buddies who had been boasting about how he was in with them, and was able to get in touch.
Jack Drake had made a deal with the Court of Owls, and the evidence was all on his computer. All Tim had to do was hack into the computer. The only protection Jack had on his computer was the password. Tim has had more protection than just a password since he was eight. What the fuck, Jack? Tim’s downloading all of this information onto a USB and throwing this computer into the harbor.
Tim leans back in Jack Drake’s creaky chair and looks at the ceiling, collecting his thoughts. When that doesn’t work, Tim gets up and looks around Jack’s room.
Tim looks at the bookshelf filled with books that Jack never actually read, and… sees something strange.
On a bookshelf with books that haven’t ever been read, in a room where only Jack is permitted to enter, and even he doesn’t really ever go in for any reason other than to go onto his computer, there is a singular book with no dust on it.
Tim pulls it out, and the bookshelf, in true movie fashion, slides to the side to reveal a vault with a giant wheel to turn in order to open it.
The whole thing is metal, except the wheel is a slightly darker color than the rest of it is. It kind of looks like those bank vaults, except this one is in the shape of a bookshelf, and not a giant square. Either way, it’s way too much.
Tim reaches his hands out and holds onto some of the spikes before turning. After he loosens it enough, he opens the giant vault to find…
Kryptonite.
Blinking at the glowing stones, Tim vaguely thinks in the back of his mind that he should make a clue board at this point. In Latin. In the code that he’s used since he was little.
Actually, Tim has many things to do.
***
Jason is grounded from being Robin for a little while because his teachers decided to load on a shit ton of homework all at once. That’s not really the problem, even though Jason is kinda upset about that. Bruce is acting weird. Like, weirder than usual. These things don’t have any causation, but they do have correlation, so it’s worth mentioning both of them in the same sentence.
Upon realizing that Bruce is acting weird, Jason asks Alfred about it.
“Hey, Alfred, what’s up with Bruce?” Jason asks, tilting his chair at the dining table. Bruce didn’t bother showing.
Alfred replies after a moment used to gather Bruce’s food that has long gone cold. “It appears that Master Bruce is preoccupied with an event that has happened in close proximity to us.”
“Like, in Bristol? How close to us? Crest Hill?” Jason stuffs his mouth with the last bite.
“Yes, in Bristol. It was our next-door neighbors.” Alfred takes Jason’s plate and moves to wash the dishes in the sink.
Jason swallows. “Damn. Okay”
“Language.” Alfred scolds, stopping mid rinse just to say that.
Jason hums. “What was the crime?”
“Jack and Janet Drake are dead.” The sink handle creaks as it’s turned on, and afterwards, in the awkward silence, the sound still goes.
“Oh.”