Chapter Text
“Fuck,” is the last thing Jason gets a chance to say before the spell is aimed directly for his chest. It doesn’t hit, though. Instead, as if in slow motion, Tim lunges, and takes the brunt of the force right to his stomach.
The rest of the team continue fighting the wizard, but Jason freezes.
He never freezes.
But before he can stop himself, his weapons are falling from his hands and clattering to the floor, and he’s kneeling beside Tim, who is writhing on the ground.
“Red?” Jason asks softly, unsure how to help. Tim is groaning and shaking, but Jason doesn’t know what he was hit with, so he doesn’t know how to undo it.
“Got him!” Dick is saying in the background, and there is a yelp as Bruce and Damian tackle the wizard together. But Jason can’t focus on any of that. He’s too busy trying to hold Tim still, trying to make sure he’s breathing, trying to undo whatever curse he’d gotten.
Tim wasn’t even supposed to get hit! He’d been nowhere near the line of fire. It was Jason who’d been reckless, who hadn’t dived behind cover soon enough. It was Jason who should have gotten hit. And it doesn’t make sense why Tim had taken it instead.
Sure, everyone in this batshit family has a bit of a martyr complex. But Tim? Tim knows better than anyone that he is best served playing the part of the healer, figuring out what’s wrong and undoing it. Sure, if it had been a bullet, Tim’s actions could be explained. Annoying and unreasonable, sure, but at least there would be an explanation. But when it comes to magic, Tim and Bruce have both agreed that it’s best not to be self-sacrificial, because they’d really be helping no-one that way.
And, besides that, there’s the obvious: Tim hates Jason. And honestly, Jason can’t blame him. After all that shit in the tower, and the threats leading up to it, and the way Jason treated him for months after…
It’s honestly shocking Tim even wants to stick around. Damian tried to kill the kid too, and Dick defended him, and Bruce…
Well. Tim always seems to stay. And he always forgave everyone. Jason was pretty hopped up on green juice at the time but he’s pretty sure he remembers Tim forgiving him mid-beat down at the tower. (Of course, he’d also been antagonizing Jason. The little shit.)
But lately…Jason has tried. He has! It’s not enough, he knows that, he’s not dumb, alright? But he has tried to form some semblance of a relationship with the rest of the people in this family, no matter how weak that rope is and how hard it is to hold on to it.
That said, Jason and Tim are most certainly not at a place where Tim can or should willingly dive to save Jason from an unknown magic attack. They’re just not.
“Is he okay?” Dick exclaims, rushing to Jason’s side, Bruce close behind him.
“I don’t know,” Jason mutters. “Where’s the wicked witch of the west?”
“I have him handled,” Damian chimes in from behind them, and Jason turns slightly to see the wizard very tied up and very much at the pointy end of Damian’s katana. “What did you do to Red Robin?!”
The wizard laughs, a sort of hacking more than anything else. Damian kicks him, and he coughs some more. Jason’s gaze returns to Tim, who feels small in his arms.
Jason doesn’t know when he’d picked him off the floor, or when he held him to his chest like a child. He certainly hadn’t meant to. He was just…just what? Worried? Is he even allowed to be this worried about someone he tried to kill?
Guilt, maybe.
That sounds more like Jason. He’s always riddled with it, these days.
“I’ll call Zatanna. Get him back to the cave,” Bruce announces.
Dick and Jason nod, and Jason all but ignores Dick in favor of taking Tim out to the Batmobile, climbing into the backseat with the kid so he doesn’t have to let him go.
“Your bike…?” Dick calls out, jumping into the driver’s seat.
“I’ll come back for it,” Jason growls. “Now put your fucking foot to the pedal.”
Tim is still shaking, but only on exhales, now. It’s not exactly a bad sign, but not a good one, either. It looks sort of like he’s having a panic attack in slow motion.
Jason uses this time to look over the fallen Robin. Temperature seems normal, but his heart rate is elevated. The spell clearly didn’t pack any physical punch, because there is no swelling or bruising on his chest or ribs. Whatever it did, it was for his mind, or soul, or whatever else.
Jason fucking hates magic.
At last they arrive at the cave, and Dick must have warned him from the car because Alfred is already prepping the med-bay to run tests on the spell.
“Master Bruce in on the phone with Miss Zatanna,” he is saying, but Jason is kind of ignoring him because…Has Tim always been this fucking small? He looks…he feels…he’s too small. He should be seventeen—with Tim, that means he looks about sixteen—but right now, he looks even smaller. His cheekbones are more hollow than usual, and his wrist bones more pointy.
“What did she say?”
“She said,” Bruce interrupts, racing in on Jason’s bike because he’s the worst, “that this is a Robin special de-aging spell.”
Everyone groans, both in annoyance and relief. Nothing they haven’t faced before, and nothing permanent. Fucking hell, these wizards need to learn some new spells.
“Don’t get excited,” Bruce warns, “it will also affect his immediate environment.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Jason asks. Bruce looks at the ground.
“It means he’s going to temporarily regress into the very first time he ever wore the Robin suit, and his hallucinations of that day are going to be projected.”
“We’ll be able to…see what he’s seeing? What he saw?” Dick questions, eyes wide. There’s a strange tremor in his voice, and Jason narrows his eyes at the sound. Bruce nods, ticking his jaw, and Jason senses they know something he should, too. But Dick clearly disagrees. “We should go,” he says quickly.
“I’ll prepare dinner,” Alfred dismisses himself, leaving quickly.
“No,” Damian disagrees, for which Jason is eternally grateful, “he must remain under supervision.”
“Dami—”
“Damian is right,” Jason interrupts Dick. “Why the fuck would you hear that and think we should leave him alone?”
“He won’t be able to see us,” Bruce argues, “being here won’t be helpful for him.”
“No, but that’s not why you want us to leave,” Jason counters. Bruce swallows, looks down. “You know what happened on his first day…and you don’t want us to see it.”
“I didn’t know he was wearing the suit, and I wasn’t prepared to—”
“Bruce, it’s not your fault,” Dick interrupts unexpectedly. Jason’s head whips toward him.
“Since when is that something you say out loud?” Jason asks, incredulous. But Dick just stands taller, looking past him, gaze landing instead on Tim’s small body tucked safely atop the medical bed.
“I wasn’t here, but I can guess what happened. It’s probably all the same stuff I said to him when he came to see me in Blud, and begged me to come back to Gotham and re-debut as Robin.” Bruce nods, eyes set on the floor.
“And you don’t want us to see this?” Damian questions, but there’s a pout in his voice. Jason can tell Damian wants to stay just as much as he does.
“I wish I could undo it—tell him that he is a good kid, just doing what he thinks is best. But I didn’t. And it’s already bad enough that he’ll have to relive it…” Bruce trails off, and Jason’s eyes shift back to Tim.
He’s always been small, but laid out like that…he looks…well. Actually— “Is he supposed to be that small?” Jason asks at last, because something about it doesn’t look right at all.
“What?” Bruce questions, taking a few steps toward Tim.
“Wasn’t he twelve when he started with you?” Jason pushes, because Tim looks tiny.
Like, baby-tiny.
Well, okay, not baby. But still too small. Not twelve, certainly.
“He’s supposed to de-age,” Bruce mumbles, but it’s unsure and hesitant.
“I remember him looking, like, ten, when he showed up in Blud,” Dick chimes in.
“He looks seven,” Jason replies, irritated.The room falls silent as everyone can’t help but agree. Tim, even lying down, couldn’t be more than four feet tall, and certainly not more than fifty, maybe sixty pounds soaking wet. The ever-present crease between his brows is the same, but smaller on his less sharp and angled face. Still bony and thin, but oddly soft.
“Eugh,” Tim groans, and Jason watches as their surroundings fade and flicker. It looks sort of like projecting a movie on a brick wall—it’s easy to see the new details, but you know there’s still a wall there. As Tim shifts into consciousness, his memories shift with him, seeping into the room like shadows. Like ghosts.
At last, he blinks his eyes open, and everyone quiets in anticipation. They were supposed to leave—but Jason was right. He really is too small.
Tim sits upright quickly, a smile on his face as he reaches up. Jason knows Tim isn’t actually wearing a uniform, let alone the Robin one, but it’s been projected on him, and it’s easy to watch as Tim pats the mask around his eyes.
“Eek!” He exclaims, a huge smile on his face.
It’s a foreign smile, to Jason. He had no idea Tim could even make that face.
Tim launches from the bed and they step back to give him space, but he doesn’t go far. They are clearly in his room, mirages of a perfectly neat desk and spotless, clear floor flood the cave. Tim walks to a wall—currently camouflaged as a mirror—and does a little pose in front of it.
Big smile, hands on his hips, eyes lit up behind that black mask.
“I’m Robin!” Tim squeals, but it sounds nothing like him. His voice matches his size and demeanor, high pitched and soft and…happy. He lets out a giggle, flexing his arms in the mirror. “I’m Robin,” he repeats seriously, in a much deeper, very exaggerated voice. He gives a kick and a belated hi–yah.
“That’s not a Robin uniform,” Bruce points out belatedly. It’s not the part Jason was noticing, but he’s right. It’s thin cloth, and too loose. The right colors and shapes, Jason supposes, but still something off about it.
“Well, that and he hasn’t met us, yet,” Dick points out. “He’s not old enough.”
“But this is supposed to be his first day as Robin,” Damian argues.
Tim stops his motions suddenly, straightening up. Whatever he’s hearing is too far outside the mirage to echo to them, but then he’s moving. It’s mostly in a tight square, down two hallways and then stairs that don’t exist. Jason finds himself grateful that the spell seems to work like virtual reality—Tim doesn’t actually need much space to reenact his day.
”Wait!” Tim screeches. He rushes out the imaginary front door in front of him and nearly throws himself in front of the car that had been pulling away. “Wait, no!”
A car door opens. Jason recognizes the man from the old days when he had to know everything about the boy that replaced him—this is Jack Drake.
“Father,” Tim gasps, out of breath from his run. “Where are you—I mean, where are you going?” Jack lets out a long sigh, slamming the car door. The passenger side opens to reveal his wife. Janet is the picture of calm elegance, while Jack seems unreasonably upset about something.
“Timothy,” she greets, “We did tell you we had booked a site.”
“For next week!” Tim argues, and his father huffs again. Jason realizes somewhat belatedly that the Drake’s had planned on leaving without saying goodbye.
“What is that ridiculous thing you’re wearing?” Beside Jason, Bruce bristles for the first time. Jason can’t blame him. He doesn’t like that tone at all.
“I…made it. Remember? You…” For the first time since waking up, Tim sounds like the boy Jason knows. A little more unsure than unusual, but also quiet and gathered, which is very time. “You promised we’d finally go trick-or-treating tonight. Together. As a—”
“Timothy, for God’s sake, you are not a child,” Jack scolds. “You are nearly eleven.”
“I’m nine,” Tim mumbles. Jason barely has time to register his shock—he’d guessed Tim was seven, at most.
“Excuse me?”
Tim freezes.
“Nothing,” he swallows, eyes downcast. “Sorry, sir.” Jack rolls his eyes, but looks placated.
Nope. Jason does not like that at all.
Janet at last steps away from the car door and toward her son, a moment of empathy on her face.
“Oh, sweetheart, you do understand we have a company to run, yes?”
“Yes,” Tim says, and he slowly takes the mask off his face, looking down at it.
Both adults seem set on returning to the car, but Jason catches the change in Tim’s face. The sadness hardens, and he whispers to himself. “Robin is brave.” It’s so quiet Jason nearly misses it, but no-one could miss the fire in his eyes as he looks back up.
“No, you promised.” Tim’s words are firm, and Jack doesn’t hide his surprise. “I’ve never gotten to go trick-or-treating in my whole life, and you promised. You can…” He stumbles a bit on his words as Jack steps toward him, eyebrow raised. “Can’t you just wait to leave until tomorrow?” His question gets softer and shakier on each word, near a beg by the end, and Jason is once again reminded just how small Tim is.
That’s all he has time to think about before Jack Drake is backhanding him across the face. The slap echoes around the room and Jason steps back in surprise. Dick’s hand rushes to cover his agape mouth. Out of the corner of Jason’s eye, he catches Damian’s hand reaching for the handle of his katana. In fact, in their odd line-up, Bruce is the only one that didn’t flinch, only standing even straighter and more still.
“You insolent brat,” Jack spits. Janet remains by the car, and a roll of her eyes is the only reaction she gives to the display.
Not surprise.
She isn’t surprised.
And when Tim looks up, Jason can see plainly that he isn’t surprised, either. There’s just this…defeat. Something dim etched across his features that hadn’t been there before.
“It’s happened before,” Jason mutters aloud in a horrible realization.
“Do we not give you plenty? Do you not have enough?”
Tim doesn’t respond, and Jason knows why. Hell, he remembers those trick questions even now. In fact, he’s a little shocked at just how much Jack reminds him of Willis in this moment.
“Sorry,” Tim squeals out, but Jack wraps a hand around his throat anyway.
“Sorry, what?”
But Tim is too busy gasping for air to respond. Jason instinctively steps forward; to protect Tim, to murder his father, he’s not sure. But Bruce lightly wraps a hand around his wrist, holding him in place.
“It’s not real,” he says quietly, and it sounds more like a reminder for himself than for Jason. He is right, though. What they’re really looking at is Tim standing on his tip-toes, choking on nothing, foggy images showing them only what he is seeing in this moment.
“S–sir,” Tim croaks out at last, “I ‘m s’rry, sir.”
Jack lets him go at last, and little Tim collapses in a heap on the ground.
“Honey, we’re going to be late for our flight,” Janet speaks, glancing at her phone. She spares Tim one more glance, head tilting slightly. “Goodbye, sweetheart. Stay out of trouble, and don’t forget to complete your chores. I’ll have Jack’s secretary email you the itinerary so you’ll be notified of our return.” Tim nods, but he doesn’t look up.
“I swear, Janet,” Jack mutters as he opens his car door once again. “I don’t know where we went wrong with him. It’s like we’re raising some sort of faggot.” Dick audibly gasps at the word, more of a reaction than he’d had even with the physical violence.
Then the door shuts again, and Tim has to pick himself off the ground to get out of their way so that they can speed past him.
He watches them go, and their car fades from the magic into nothing.
Tim goes back inside, shuts the door behind him, and crumples to the floor once again. Back against the door, facing his too big, too empty house.
“Who is taking care of him?” Bruce wonders aloud, and Jason realizes that there has been no sign of a nanny or babysitter in Jack and Janet’s stead. Who takes care of Tim while they’re gone?
“I wish Robin was here,” Tim mumbles, pulling his knees to his chest as he cries. “Jason would never hurt me.”
The words cut Jason so deeply that he has to grab onto Bruce once again to keep from falling. An instant replay of their ‘battle’ on the Tower flashes through his mind. Tim will always have those scars, will always carry the proof that he had been wrong.
“I wish I was Jason,” Tim cries out, louder, though there’s no-one to hear him. “I hate Tim. I hate Tim!”
He sobs for a while after that, and Jason has to excuse himself to go sit in the chair at the Bat-computer because he no longer feels strong enough to stand. Little Tim’s cries follow him, though, and Jason finds himself crying silently along with him.
He’d known, distantly, that Tim had figured out their identities at nine years old. But he had always just pictured…Tim. Not this soft, hopeful, tiny fucking child. This kid who made his own costume and wanted his parents to take him trick-or-treating.
Eventually Jason forces himself out his undeserved pity party, returning the med-bay section of the cave with red-rimmed eyes. Dick and Bruce lean against a wall, watching as Tim seems to be making his own lunch sans the mask and cape. Damian, however, sits in a far corner, sharpening his batarangs. For some reason it’s him that Jason approaches.
Damian doesn’t look up as Jason sits beside him.
“Whatcha doing?” Jason questions after a minute. Tim is in the background, eating his pasta at a very large, very empty dining table, staring at nothing.
“Preparing,” Damian replies coldly.
“For…?”
Damian hmphs, but doesn’t answer.
“You know they’re already dead, right?” Jason has been thinking the same thing. If Jack Drake wasn’t already in the ground…fuck. Jason would have left by now to track him down and put him there.
“Not dead enough,” Damian mutters angrily, putting even more effort into sharpening his weapons.
“What are you gonna do, dig ‘em back up and kill them again?”
For the very first time, Damian looks up, and it feels like he’s glaring right into Jason’s nearly nonexistent soul.
“I can try,” he promises. Jason nods, and even though they are the least touchy-feely pair in the family, Jason can’t help reaching over. His actions are slow—they all know better than to move quickly around one another—as he takes the batarang and knife sharpener out of Damian’s hands.
The truth is, Jason is probably the only person in the world who knows exactly how Damian is feeling right now. The pain, the regret.
The guilt.
“We’ll be better,” Jason promises, lightly covering Damian’s small hands with one of his own. Damian surprises him by grabbing Jason’s hand in return, grasping it tightly.
Damian nods, just once, shaky and stern. But he doesn’t speak, and he doesn’t let go of Jason’s hand.
“Hey, B,” Tim says quietly, looking at the empty head chair of the table. “What is Batman’s favorite type of exercise?” Tim gives an exaggerated, deep sigh, then says, “What is it, chum?” Jason instinctively looks up to Bruce, and finds the man’s worried expression already looking back at him.
“Acro-bat-ics!”
Tim had finished his joke with a big flare, and a huge smile, but the minute the words leave his mouth his face falls. He still chuckles, a little, but then he slumps.
“I wouldn’t make a very good Robin,” he decides aloud, despite still wearing half the suit. “I’m just not funny like Jason is.”
“I don’t even remember telling that joke,” Jason mumbles.
“If it helps,” Damian replies coolly, “I don’t find you particularly funny.”
Jason nods, the world’s tiniest smile flashing across his face for a moment.
“Thanks, Dami.”
“Shut up, Todd.” But they’re still holding hands, tightly, as if it’s the only thing keeping them anchored.
Tim gets up from the table—which is really just him sitting on the med cot like it’s a chair, eating imaginary food at a projected table.
Then, just to continue being unpredictable, he sits down at a piano (which is actually just one of the cave’s sitting chairs), taking a deep breath.
Then that little shit starts to play.
Jason is pretty sure every single mouth in the cave drops from surprise. It’s beautiful.
There’s a piano just upstairs—Martha’s, which Alfred always makes sure is in tune—that has absolutely never been touched, especially by Tim. Jason, despite all his stalking, had never even known that Tim could play.
“Nocturne in F Minor,” Damian comments, and Bruce nods. “Op. Fifty-five, Number one. Chopin—a respectable choice.”
Jason has no idea what any of that means, really. But at the very least, he knows it’s hauntingly beautiful.
And also, he kind of misses it being three hours ago when he was safe in the absence of all this knowledge about Tim. Little baby Timbo, alone, sewing and cooking and playing haunting ballads on the piano. Tim, afraid of Jack the same way Jason was afraid of Willis. Tim, idolizing the Robin that would later try to kill him.
“I still don’t understand,” Dick says as Tim plays. “This is supposed to be his first day as Robin.”
“Well, he’s in a Robin costume,” Jason suggests.
“Yeah, but by that standard this spell would have worked on anyone who’d ever dressed up as Robin for Halloween.”
Eventually Tim’s hands slow, then go still. They watch as he cleans the house, then returns to his room to work on what seems to be homework. The latter takes him nearly no time at all.
Meanwhile, Jason can’t help but notice just how…empty the room is. He’d noted it being clean, earlier, but now that he’s paying more attention it looks almost sterile. There’s nothing personal about it at all, no books lying around, no posters on the wall. The carpet looks recently vacuumed and the desk is spotless. If they hadn’t just watched Tim clean and dust the living and dining rooms, Jason would assume they had a housekeeper.
Then Tim sighs, and opens a secret compartment under his desk. He pulls out several full manilla folders, and Bruce steps forward to look over his shoulder and what’s in them.
“It’s gibberish,” he announces. Not for the first time, Jason wonders what the fuck they’re all doing, invading Tim’s privacy like this. But he also knows he won’t leave. It’s selfish and absolutely unfair, but this is the most he’s ever learned about Tim and he’s unwilling to let the chance to learn more go.
And, to be fair, Jason is one-hundred percent sure, without a doubt, that if the roles were reversed Tim would sit and watch the shitshow, too.
“No,” Dick disagrees, joining Bruce at Tim’s side, “it’s encrypted. He’s writing in code.”
Jason can’t help the curiosity that floods him, and he and Damian naturally creep over to Tim. Peeking over his shoulder is easy, what with him being so small. Dick is right—Tim is not only writing in code, but is seemingly translating it in his head. He’s also got a computer in front of him, and he seems to be typing furiously there, too.
“What’s this, then?” Damian questions, nodding at the screen. Jason watches as Tim reroutes his searches through several different countries—like a firewall and a VPN on steroids. He does so in a matter of minutes, too, like it’s rote.
Eventually Tim deems his computer secure enough, and starts actually typing and researching. Pictures, reports, codes and files all pop up and he scans through them as quickly as anything.
“News on the diamond robbery on fourth—eighteen casualties,” Bruce sums up aloud.
“I remember it,” Jason replies without really thinking. He does, a sort of scratch at the back of his brain. The case had been tough, and five months long, and the break-ins were happening so often that Bruce and Jason barely had time to catch their breath. Then one day, the case sort of…
“Tim is solving it,” Bruce realizes slowly. “Five months and we hadn’t made any headway at all. The case ended because Gordon gave me a file—he would get anonymous tips sometimes, helped us out when the work got too overbearing.”
“And this was one of the tips?” Dick questions. Bruce nods, something hard and maybe a little afraid crossing his face.
“It wasn’t just a tip. This solved the case for us—all I had to do was fact check, make sure it wasn’t a trap, and arrest the people it led me to.” A moment of quiet as Tim types away at his computer. “Tim solved this case.”
“Tt,” Damian replies automatically. “A nine year old managed to solve the case that you hadn’t broken in several months?”
More quiet. Tim translates everything he finds to his encryption.
“HA!” He exclaims, surprising Jason, a little. “Gotcha! Knew it was you, you slimy little jerk.”
First day as Robin, huh? Well, he certainly sounds like one.
Then Tim puts on gloves, pulls out a new paper, and handwrites a translation of his encrypted notes. It’s clearly time consuming, but it’s also the most…alive he’s been all day. Like he’s actually excited to exist.
Jason and Damian return to their respective spots in the corner, and Dick returns to his wall. But Bruce just stands behind Tim, watching. His back is to Jason now, but he can tell by Bruce’s tense shoulders that he’s upset.
“B?” Dick asks, even though it’s moot. Who wouldn’t be upset, at the things they’ve seen today?
“I didn’t know…I just assumed…” Bruce trails off. “Gordon never had any leads on the anonymous tips. Always avoided surveillance, dropped his notes off at different times, on different sides of the precinct. I just…I figured it wasn’t important. One less person trying to be a hero on the streets, helping in their own way without risking their life.” He exhales shakily. “But it was…”
“Tim,” Dick finishes.
“A kid,” Bruce corrects. “It was just a child, looking at brutal images and reading horrific reports and solving the murders of eighteen different people.”
Eventually Tim logs off, carefully relocking his computer and supplies away into the cabinet beneath his desk. Then the scene shifts as Tim leaves the room, moving to the library with his notes in hand. He lights up the fireplace carefully, then takes his English Notes and puts them in a simple manilla folder. Then he takes the coded notes and rips them up into tiny, unrecognizable pieces, tossing them into the flames unceremoniously.
“Got him,” Tim whispers to himself. Then back to his room he goes. The sun has begun to set, and for one hopeful moment Jason thinks Tim goes into his closet to change into his pajamas. Instead, he grabs a black hoodie and black pants.
But then Tim passes the mirror. He stops. Stares. Looks down at the clothes in his hands, then back up to the mirror.
“This is not a good idea,” he decides aloud, and Jason wonders what he means. “But it is Halloween…”
Tim drops the darker clothes, and for a moment he looks like he had that morning, posing and pretending with a childlike hope. But then his face falls into something far more determined, that ever-present crease returning between his brows.
“This is such a bad idea,” he mumbles again, grabbing the folder, a camera, and a small black backpack. “Just tonight. Just tonight, I’ll be Jason.” He tucks the prior two items into the bag, opens his bedroom window, and climbs out of it.
“What—What’s he doing?” Dick questions, and Jason genuinely has no idea. The projection shifts as Tim lands on the ground outside his house, and even more so when he walks (in place) to the bus stop a half-mile away. Tim puts on the mask just as the bus pulls up.
“Oh, sweetheart,” the driver coos, “you look great.”
“Really?” Tim asks, more shyly than Jason would like. Like he really isn’t sure of the answer, or like she’s setting some sort of trap.
“I could almost mistake you for the real deal,” she swears.
“I made it myself!” Tim replies, excited at last, flushing at the praise. He sounds like the nine year old he should be.
“What?! Can you patch up some things for me, too? You’ve got a real talent, darlin’.”
Tim preens, smiling softly at the ground.
“Go on and take your seat, sweetheart,” the driver reminds him, and he nods, moving to a secluded place at the back.
The bus ride is long, and Jason is increasingly worried because he knows the way into deep Gotham by heart—which is definitely where the bus is headed. What the fuck is a nine year old doing, going into Gotham, alone and at night?
“Surely he won’t try to go ‘trick-or-treating’ by himself,” Damian complains incredulously. Jason shakes his head. No, he knows Tim. And he knows, sure as anything, that Tim never cared about the act of trick-or-treating. He just wanted to be with his parents, pretend for one night that they were the family he so clearly didn’t have. Halloween activities…it’s just not something he’s going to do on his own.
But if he’s not out trick-or-treating, what is Tim up to, out in Gotham in a Robin costume?
To everyone’s general surprise, the minute he’s far enough from the bus stop, Tim all but launches himself up the nearest building.
“What the…” Dick trails off, and they all watch with open mouths as Tim climbs up a broken fire escape like he’d done it all his life. Once he’s atop, he steps right up to the edge, and Jason’s breath catches in his throat. Silently, he begs Tim to step back onto safe ground. It’s hard to remind himself that Tim is already, in fact, on safe ground.
“Careful,” Damian scolds, so quiet that Jason is sure he’s the only one who caught it.
Tim looks over the city, ignoring their silent pleas, and smiles. Really, really, smiles. It’s the first time all day that he looks…happy. In the morning, when he’d been showing off the costume he’d slept in in front of the mirror, his expression had been something close to this. But not so free. Not so relieved.
And then he jumps.
”NO!” It’s Bruce that reacts first, rushing toward Tim, even though there’s no real need. It’s just instinct, and Jason can’t blame him. But then Tim is landing safely on the next building over, in a perfect roll so he wouldn’t get hurt.
“Motherfucker,” Jason swears. His heart races and stops and starts again as Tim leaps, building to building, perfect form and perfect landings. But they’re still terrifying jumps, and unlike Tim now, he doesn’t have any protective gear. This high up? If Tim falls, he dies.
But he doesn’t.
And then on a seemingly random building, Tim finally stops, and Jason catches Damian releasing a relieved exhale. Tim looks around on the skyline, gasping when he seems to find what he’s looking for.
Then he dives behind an air conditioning grate, and Jason finds himself surprised once again as Tim melts into the shadows, like he’d never been there at all. Then he’s in for an even worse surprise, because one quick grapple sound later, Batman and Robin are landing on that very same rooftop.
“Holy smokes, Batman!” A very young Jason, a Robin, is saying, and Current Jason can’t help but roll his eyes. “What a night!” Neither notice Tim, despite his bright colors—though Jason can’t blame them; even knowing where Tim is sitting, he can’t even make out the lines between him and the shadows.
“Hey, hey, hey,” Robin says with a laugh, stepping a little closer to Batman. “What is Batman’s favorite type of exercise? Acro-bat-ics!”
Batman gives an almost unintelligible chuckle, and conceals a just barely-there smile.
“Pretty sure you told that one last week, chum,” he points out, and Jason’s world freezes.
“He’s always been remarkably good at stealth,” Bruce mumbles, and Jason knows he’s come to the same conclusion he had.
Of course. Of course. Fucking Hell.
The practiced jumps and rolls, the confidence of the fire escape. Knowing which rooftop to wait on. The way he escapes even Batman and Robin’s detection. The black clothes at the house. The joke he’d told, an echo of Jason’s.
This isn’t just one night out, dressed up like Robin.
Tim had done this before.
In fact, Jason thinks horribly, he’s probably done this a lot.
“He’s only nine years old,” Jason mutters, unsurprised when his eyes become watery.
“I don’t understand,” Damian admits, which is a rare thing. “How does he…how did he…”
“I never had to train him on Gotham streets,” Bruce continues aloud. “I was surprised—no-one from Bristol should know every road and every building the way he did.”
“And you never thought that was strange?” Dick growls, and it reminds Jason of the fights they used to have when he’d first arrived at the manor. “You didn’t think to check?” But, as always, Tim doesn’t hear them, and Jason has to squint in order to make out Tim slowly unzipping his backpack and taking the camera out of it.
When Batman pinches his nose, eyes closed and a smile on his face, and Robin tilts his head back to the sky, Tim snaps a picture. A flash goes off, but he’d timed it perfectly—neither trained detectives noticed.
“Motherfucker,” Jason repeats, more a snarl than a whisper. How had he never noticed? How had Bruce never noticed? Tim was on the same rooftop, fifteen feet behind them, using a real, actual, flashing camera. And he’d done it before. And they’d never fucking noticed.
“You two need to be retrained on your situational awareness,” Damian announces. “I will gladly volunteer.”
Jason can’t help but agree.
Batman and Robin launch off the roof, grappling, Robin doing so with a loud whoop.
Jason finds himself missing that. And from the way Bruce glances over at him, meeting his gaze with eyes that feel a thousand miles away, it seems like he misses it too.
Tim follows them. It’s just as horrible and gut wrenching as it had been before, and Jason has to remind himself several times that they are all still just in the med-bay—that none of this is real. Tim takes more pictures, too, always expertly hidden. But after several hours, he stops. Batman and Robin are off stopping more crime, but Tim doesn’t follow. Instead, three building jumps later, he climbs down a fire escape. Jason finds himself more relieved than he’d thought. It’s nearly eleven, now, based on the position of the sky, and he knows Robin at least will be forced to go home soon. But Tim drops carefully to the ground, just by the far east window of Gordon’s police station, sticking to the shadows once more, nearly impossible to spot. He drops the folder carefully on the windowsill, knocks loudly three times, and slinks back two steps, covered completely in darkness.
“How does he do that?!” Dick exclaims. “Do you know how hard those traffic-light colors are to hide?”
“Yes,” Damian and Jason reply at the same time.
Meanwhile, the window slides open, and a young looking officer finds the folder, looking around for who dropped it. Finding nothing, he opens the folder a little, but doesn’t bother flipping through.
“Commissioner!” He calls, disappearing from the window, “we got another one!”
Tim sneaks away from the building with a tiny smile that Jason knows is pride. It’s a hard one to spot, he’s learned, and Jason is increasingly worried that it’s because of his asshole parents.
Tim walks carefully back through Gotham, clearly heading for the bus stop. He is mostly in the shadows, but it’s a little hard to stick to them down on the streets. Everyone once in a while, he is forced to cross through the light. And it’s on one of those rare moments that a woman in distress rushes up to him, grabbing his arm.
“He’s after me!” She rushes to explain, “He’s after me—oh, thank God I found you, you have to help me—”
“Oh,” Tim tries, “I’m not—”
A gunshot is heard, and Tim stands in front of the woman automatically, whipping his head around.
“I wanted out, please, Robin, you have to help me—”
“Let’s get you out of here, first,” Tim rushes to say, grabbing her wrist and taking off. She follows him, and Tim looks even more little to Jason than before. But he doesn’t stop, winding through the streets of Gotham without looking back.
Then another shot fires, and the woman topples to the ground, very nearly taking Tim down with her.
“No!” He drops to the ground. She’d been shot from ahead of them, and fell onto her back. “No, no, no,” Tim mumbles, pressing his hands to her stomach desperately. “Batman!” He screams immediately, looking around, desperate. Whoever had fired didn’t do so again—but he clearly knew he didn’t have to. There’s already too much blood.
“Robin,” the woman gasps out, blood pooling at the lips.
“No, no, I’m not—I’m not, I’m sorry,” Tim shakes his head, and she blinks dazedly. He rips apart his cape, uselessly trying to slow the bleeding. “What’s your name? Just—he always asks for the name—”
“I wanted—I wanted to get out—” She chokes.
“I’m sorry, I don’t,” Tim cries, looking around again, “Batman, please!”
But no-one comes.
“No, no, no, no, stay with me, stay with me, what’s your—please, I—”
“Robin,” she mumbles once more as she dies. Tim’s desperate tears turn to inconsolable sobs.
“I’m not, it’s not me, I’m not—” he sobs harder, bending over her, trying hopelessly to help someone past saving. “BATMAN!”
Tim wails over this woman, a girl he’d never met but who’d died in his arms.
“I’m not Robin, I’m not, I’m not,” he repeats as he cries. Blood has covered and ruined his once sweet, homemade costume. Eventually Tim calms down enough to call nine-one-one. “I’m not Robin,” he says again, and it sounds more like a promise. “I’ll never be Robin. I’m not Robin and I never have been and I never, ever will be.” Tim looks down at the dead body in his arms, “I swear.”
Distantly, the clocktower strikes midnight, and Jason remembers.
Yes, the magic had been very right. This was most certainly Tim’s first day as Robin.