Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

For three years, Tim was alone. For three years, Tim drowned under the weight of the consequences of his failure. Of all their failures.

In a world-collapsing event that the public labeled the Corruption, the Earth began to slowly decay. The land turned black, the sea raged, and nature turned in on itself. “It’s an invasion,” Babs had told him once, bags heavy beneath her eyes. She pushed back in her wheelchair, lips pursed as Tim silently watched her think. “Something is poisoning the Earth from the inside.

In a global announcement, Superman had stated that aliens were the cause. Privately, they were not so sure. It was an invasion without invaders, and no one knew what to do with that.

Then people began to grow sick. The darker the Earth turned, the more intense the waves of illness became. It took five days for the sickness to kill its host. In those five days, the victim would grow thin and frail, greying like the land. They lost the ability to speak by the third day, and then heart failure would end their life by the fifth.

You could fight monsters, bad guys, aliens come to kill. But you could not fight the world, and you could not fight sickness. That was up to scientists and doctors, and neither seemed to know what to do. For there to be an effect, there needed to be a cause. And the decaying of the planet had no cause.

Gotham didn’t go down easily, the filthy city that it was. It clung to life, and its people clung with it. Other cities locked down, mandated rules, tried to unite everyone in the face of death. Gotham rioted. Gotham pulsed, and for some reason, everyone turned to Batman.

Bruce withdrew into himself as he tried to figure out the issue. Tried to root out the cause so he could beat it black and blue. Batman was the world’s greatest detective, after all; there was no mystery that he shouldn’t have been able to solve.

The Justice League didn’t know what to do. The Green Lantern Corps didn’t know what to do. Aquaman was the first of the superheroes to die, and the ocean wailed for the loss.

Like dominoes, the world’s heroes fell. After Aquaman, it seemed there was no end to the blood that spilled. Aliens were no exception, either. When Martian Manhunter grew sick, people cried out in fear and outrage. For that meant Superman wasn’t safe. And if Superman were to fall, then nobody else would have a chance at survival.

Tim fought to keep Gotham together, even as his friends and family died around him. He remembered, with unbearable clarity, when Cass died. She was the first of his family. She’d cried as her life faded, and that frightened Tim as nothing else could have. That broke his heart like glass too easily shattered.

Bruce bent further and further with each death. When Dick first showed symptoms, he’d stared at the wall until Tim could guide him to his armchair, hand gentle on his back even as he shook. “B,” Dick had rasped out in his childhood bedroom, eyes bleary and confused. Cheeks concaved and skin grey. He reached out, and Bruce grasped his hand, face unmoving. “You have to stop this.”

Those were his last words. Kory died a day later, and it wasn’t from the Corruption. It was from a grief that sucked the life from her soul.

The Joker died. Bruce didn’t care. Tim did. This, as much as it all had been, was a sign that Gotham was going to die.

Tim flung himself into experiments and research and useless theorizing. The soil tests came back neutral. The dying trees held no answers. Even dissecting the Joker’s corpse yielded no results.

A third of the world’s population was wiped out within six months. Nearly all of the people Tim knew went with it. An unsettling, horrific truth began to settle amongst the general public; humanity wouldn’t survive this illness.

Then Bruce died, and somehow there was only Tim and Damian left. Just them, in a city as large and frantic as Gotham. Although it didn’t seem quite so large anymore. The streets were strangely quiet. Frightened.

“He’s failed,” Damian stared down at Bruce, almost in disbelief. Young eyes weary with grief and anger. He turned those eyes on Tim, who leaned against his bo staff, exhausted. “But we won’t.”

A month later, Damian died. For some reason, that was the only death Tim cried at. He sobbed like a baby, hiccupping and choking and gathering Damian’s small frame in his arms as the fight that had made him everything he was slipped away from his body. Left him a husk that weighed nothing.

“Dami,” Tim had always grieved quietly, but he felt perfectly undone as Gotham shriveled around him and Damian lay unmoving in his arms. Like there was a screaming in his throat that was clawing for escape. “Don’t leave me here.”

They all left him. Three years later, the planet was practically barren. It was an apocalyptic time, and Tim was unsure why he still lived. He’d waited for years for the sickness to reach him. For the Corruption to bring him unearned peace.

Instead, he lived. He lived as everyone else died, and this felt more unforgivable than anything else he’d ever done. The light had gone down on the world, and Tim still stood on it. Still watched over blackened land and dead bodies.

He stayed in the Drake Manor. Not out of any sense of nostalgia, but because he couldn’t bear living in the corpse that was the Wayne Manor. Its hollow halls and carved out rooms scared him. Weighted him down with all the people who had once lived in it.

It was a sunny afternoon when Tim was given a second chance. Not to save this decrepit world, but to leave it.

Would they all hate him to know that he’d taken it?

“Shit,” Tim stared up unfeelingly at his calendar. “It’s my birthday.” He was twenty, now. The same age Jason had been when he’d passed.

It was almost two in the afternoon, but he’d just woken up. It hardly mattered. Time meant nothing. Money meant nothing. It turned out that when humanity died, all of its social constructs died with it.

Tim walked out in his pajamas and picked up a watering can. He watered his potatoes, idly walking along the obsessively straight lines that he’d made months earlier. He liked his little garden, with its potatoes and vegetables and flowers that never lasted. It was a reason to get up in the morning when there was nothing else for him.

There was no more Drake Industries. There were no more industries, period. Companies, businesses, they all needed people. And Tim didn’t think there were many left to sustain them. Not that he knew the population count. He’d stopped keeping track when it dropped below a million.

That had been a while ago. Perhaps there was no one else left. It wasn’t like he’d seen anyone in the streets of Gotham in weeks. He also didn’t go out in Gotham. It was too painful to see the empty storefronts, the crumbling infrastructure. Everything was a reminder of what had been, and Tim didn’t need any more reminders.

Tim set down the watering can and went in to eat the carrots he’d been keeping stock of. They crunched flavorlessly against his teeth, and he devoured them within minutes. Still hungry, he ignored his stomach in favor of grabbing an old digital camera and climbing to the roof.

He took pictures of the still, dark world. Of the bright sky and endless dying land. It was a hobby that had never died. He captured Earth in its last, dying moments, and his only regret was that there would be no one around to ever see them.

A bird perched on a blackened oak tree, and Tim’s camera felt heavy when he raised it to his eye. Just as cruelly as the Corruption wiped out humanity, it also took the wildlife with it. Birds were a rare phenomenon nowadays, and when the bird flexed its bright blue plume, Tim thought of Dick.

His finger was coming down on the shutter button when the world flashed a brilliant white, and he was flung back so hard his head bounced against the roof’s tiles. Faint shock dulled the pain, and his last thoughts were dreadfully pitiful.

I was so lonely.

Then the white light consumed him, and he breathed no more.

***

So it ends, a voice whispered in Tim’s ear, quiet and genderless. It felt like a caress, and Tim wished he could lean into it. But he couldn’t move, or even open his eyes. He felt as if he were floating, and a shudder that never manifested slipped through his spine. Your planet’s suffering has come to an end. Nothing remains.

Tim couldn’t speak. If he were able to, he wasn’t sure what sorrowful noise would’ve escaped his mouth.

You and that bird were all that remained. The last that breathed. The voice shifted, as if whoever was speaking had approached him. For that, I am sorry.

Tim was faintly aware that he was crying. A pain of no peculiar source had rooted in his chest, and it felt like something heavy was sitting on his throat. Choking him.

The voice surrounded him. Pressed at his bones. Is there something you wish for?

The only thing that Tim wanted was another chance. Another way to save his family, his planet, his home.

Your world is gone. Your life is forfeit. Those are two things I cannot change, the voice warned him gently. I can give you another version of your family. But I must tell you, this world and the people you will see will not be the same. A silent death may be better than this fate.

What was this being? A messenger of death? Death itself? It offered Tim something very dangerous. Something Tim couldn’t turn down, not even for death.

Tim didn’t speak, and still the voice sighed. I see. I will choose a good world for you. You will fall in love with it. It will break your heart. It spoke with certainty that rang with great weight. Do you still want it?

Tim thought of family. Of loneliness. Of all that lay in between.

Forcibly, painfully, Tim parted his lips. Breath rattled free, and he croaked out, “Yes.”

Oh, child, it mourned, and then a hand pressed against his chest and a scream ripped free from his body. Like the howling of a beast.

Heat scorched through him, and then he was dying again and again and again. But that meant he was alive. For one to die, they must first have lived, and Tim clung to this thought as agony tore him to shreds he was afraid would never be pieced back together.

Life was not to be taken lightly. If only Tim had known it wasn’t life that he’d be given.

***

Tim woke up in a closet, and this confused him so profoundly that he lay there for nearly five minutes, just staring at the ceiling. Counting the wooden grains and starting over each time he missed one.

Slowly, he sat up. It was dark, but not pitch black, and when he looked down at himself, he saw that he was still wearing his pajamas. Plaid pants and a baggy t-shirt that had once belonged to Dick.

Only a few jackets and shirts hung on hangers in the closet, each of them sized for a young boy. He reached out to push the closet door open and let out a loud yelp as he tumbled straight through the wood. He blinked at the sudden light, startled to find himself on the floor. It hadn’t hurt or felt like anything at all to hit the ground, and with great trepidation, he propped himself up to look at the closet.

Half of his body was still in the closet, torso sticking out from the door like a sick magic trick. “Well,” he blinked. “Shit.”

He pulled himself the rest of the way out, carefully scanning the room’s interior as he got to his feet. This was one of the Wayne Manor’s bedrooms, he was certain, but it wasn’t one he recognized. It was sparsely decorated, which made it difficult to tell the owner of the room.

There was a singular twin bed pushed in the corner, and a barren desk was next to it. Beneath the desk, there was a cat bed that told Tim nothing of the room’s owner. A few notebooks were piled up on the floor, and half of a water painting was strewn out beside them. He wandered around, trying to pick things up and failing miserably. He stuck his hand through the window and felt only a flash of cold. He withdrew his arm and pinched himself. Nothing.

Was Tim a ghost, then? He tried concentrating on flying, but nothing happened. Sheepishly, he went back to prowling the room. He was trying to pull a book from the sole shelf on the wall when the door creaked open behind him, and there was the sharp sound of a blade being unsheathed. “Put up your hands before I skewer you, thief.”

Tim cringed as he turned around, a little bewildered that he could be seen. So, not a ghost then? A ghost that wasn’t invisible? All of his theorizing flew out the window when he saw who stood before him. “Damian?”

Damian looked younger than when Tim had last seen him. His cheeks were rounder, his body skinny rather than lean. His hair was spiked to the extreme, much like how he used to style it. He was dressed in a school uniform, blazer fluttering open to reveal where a sheath had been hidden within it. He held a knife out before him, scowling furiously at Tim with those familiar green eyes. “Do not call me so familiarly.”

Tim had held his body as Damian died. He’d been the one to lower his body into the ground. He’d witnessed his last actions, heard his last words. Had mourned him like he’d refused to mourn the rest.

“Damian,” he repeated, falling to his knees and staring at him like a madman. As if it hurt to look at him.

Cautiously, Damian approached him. He had yet to call for help, which meant he was either too prideful to do so or didn’t think he was worth the trouble of asking for help. Either option was viable.

“How did you get in here?” Damian stood before him, more angry than afraid that there was a strange person in his room. “What is this ridiculous outfit? You aren’t even wearing a mask.”

Damian didn’t recognize him. He thought that he was a robber wearing pajamas, breaking in where he didn’t belong. He didn’t know Tim, and some part of him recoiled at the fact. The rest of him was just in shock that Damian was alive.

“I’m not a thief,” Tim said faintly. He had yet to blink, terrified that if he did, this would all vanish. “I’m—" He stopped, unsure of how to explain himself. There was a voice, he vaguely recalled. It’d offered him something and he’d taken it. Without hesitation, he’d taken it.

“Are you going to cry?” Damian seemed horrified at the thought, taking an indignant step forward.

Tim let out a strangled laugh and stumbled to his feet. Damian kept the knife pointed at him, eyes narrowed. “Is Bruce here?”

“You dare break into the Wayne household and ask such foolish questions?” Damian scoffed, looking him up and down with disdain that was slowly shifting into something else. Something curious. “He is here. And if I do not put your head at the end of a blade, then he shall.”

“Bruce doesn’t kill,” Tim’s lips twisted, a fragile, horrific hope blooming in his chest. Bruce was alive. Nothing else mattered in the face of that fact. “You know that.”

Damian’s lips tightened like he’d said the wrong thing. “Father is weak in some ways. I am not.”

He lunged forward before Tim could come up with a response, and a spidery shudder flashed through him as Damian’s knife lashed through him. They both stared down at where the blade had split through his chest, and then Damian whipped the knife through him again. And again. On the fourth time, Tim awkwardly took a step back. “Okay, I think you get it.”

Damian stared at his chest and then up at his face. If Tim wasn’t still reeling from shock, he would’ve laughed at the look of bewildered frustration on his face. “What are you?”

Tim paused. He idly swiped a hand through the nearby bed, just to remind himself of what it felt like. “Um. Your imaginary friend?”

Damian looked utterly disgusted at that, and Tim winced at his mistake. “I am eleven, not stupid.”

Eleven. Tim couldn’t remember a time when he’d ever been that young. “A lot of eleven-year-olds have imaginary friends.” He hadn’t, but Tim had never had much of an imagination to speak of.

“I would hope that they don’t look like you,” Damian sneered, and Tim had missed his foul attitude so much that the diss hardly even bothered him. “No, I know what you are. You’re a specter.”

Tim raised both of his eyebrows. “A ghost?” A good guess.

“Damian?” Bruce’s voice startled both of them, and Tim found himself turning to that voice muffled by the door with such hope it burned. It’d been years since he’d heard that baritone, since he’d lost all dreams of ever hearing it again. “Alfred has prepared some snacks for us. Would you like to join me?”

As thrown off by everything as he was, Tim was still a detective to his core. He heard the awkward, stiff note in Bruce’s voice, reminiscent of how he used to speak to Damian but likely even worse. There was no warm familiarity in the tone, and the way Damian stiffened in front of him instead of sighing in annoyance was telling. Of what, he wasn’t quite sure yet.

There was something about this world that was off. The odd room, Damian’s uniform, his youth; it all spoke of a different universe, not an old timeline. Perhaps he was dreaming. Perhaps this was what came after death.

“In a second, Father,” Damian called out, and there was a shuffling outside the door as if Bruce was uncertain what to do with the dismissal. “Actually,” Damian said after a moment, eyes glued to Tim, who couldn’t stop staring at the door. Hopeful and terrified all at once. “Come in for a moment.”

There was no answer, and then the doorknob was carefully twisting and Tim found himself holding his breath. Not that he needed to breathe, he soon found out. It was just like closing his mouth and trying to hold something in that wasn’t there.

Before he could be too fascinated by this finding, the door was pushed open, and Bruce stepped inside. Like a zombie come back to life, Tim’s old mentor stood before them with concern and discomfort pressing his eyebrows into a slight furrow.

Bruce looked startlingly young. Tim hadn’t known him when he was this young. His skin was smooth, his hair a pitch black, and his dark blue eyes had a lightness to them that had faded over the years. He looked to be in his early thirties, only ten years older than Tim himself. Most notably, he wasn’t as scarred as Tim had known him to be. There were years of fighting missing from his skin, smoothed over as if they’d never been there in the first place.

“Damian?” Bruce questioned, and Tim felt like collapsing when his eyes swept through him. Unseeing. They focused on his youngest son instead, as if Damian was an odd creature he was trying to figure out. He didn’t seem all too bothered by the knife he was holding. “Did you need something?”

Damian’s eyes flicked from Bruce to Tim, and he waited for the kid to rat him out. Instead, Damian smoothly flicked his blade back into his blazer, jerking his head toward the door. “Apologies, my question has been answered. We can go eat the butler’s snacks.”

Damian hadn’t referred to Alfred in that way for years.

“Alright,” Bruce drawled slowly, shuffling towards the door. When Damian made no move to follow him, staring challengingly at him instead, he sighed. Then he left the room, leaving the door ajar.

“How come you won’t show yourself to him?” Damian wheeled on Tim, although his knife was lowered now. He looked more indignant than anything. “Are you haunting me?”

Tim felt his brain lag. “Maybe.” He was still looking at where Bruce had stood, memorizing his unlined face. He tried to rein in his confusion and grief and loss of composure. He dragged his eyes back to Damian, who was studying him carefully. “I think so. I died recently, so it’s confusing for both of us.”

“Great,” Damian huffed, sheathing his knife with vicious annoyance atypical for a child of his age. “I’ve been stuck with an incompetent spirit. If you threaten harm to either me or my Father and his household, I will find a way to destroy you.”

“I really don’t think there’s much I could do to harm either of you,” Tim said plainly, cocking his head. “Do you know someone named Dick? Or Steph?” He prayed that Damian would call him foolish. That he would snap at him that of course he knew who they were.

Any anticipation that had been building in him fled as Damian frowned in faint confusion. “Who are these people you speak of?”

A vague throbbing in Tim’s chest that had lived there for years stabbed at him painfully. “Nevermind. Just people I knew from when I was alive.”

“Master Damian?” Alfred’s voice called out from what sounded like downstairs. Tim recalled Alfred’s last, laboring breaths before he passed, and then his legs were moving before he could think.

“Where are you going?” Damian demanded, but Tim ignored him.

He walked straight through the door, shivering a little at the ticklish sensation. He practically ran down the hall, stumbling down the steps in his rush. He pulled to a stop at the threshold of the kitchen, which he hadn’t dared set foot in in years.

Standing at the island, organizing a plate of cookies, Alfred stood tall and unwavering. Nothing like the frail old man he’d been in the days leading to his death. Tim sagged heavily against the door frame, barely aware that he wasn’t falling straight through it. He clutched it like a lifeline, watching as Alfred bustled around the kitchen.

“He’s coming down now,” Bruce’s voice startled him with its proximity, and Tim lurched forward when he realized Bruce was standing halfway inside of him. It was an unpleasant feeling to have a living being pass through him, but Bruce didn’t seem to even register the fact that he’d walked into a ghost. “I can hear his footsteps.”

“I suppose he likes the sound of my voice better than yours,” Alfred teased, gently, and Tim missed him so fervently that it physically hurt.

Bruce huffed, half-amused, half-hurt. “I wouldn’t be surprised. He’s yet to warm up to me at all.”

“Give it a bit,” Alfred picked up the platter of cookies, and Tim and Bruce both moved out of the way as the butler walked out to the dining room. Trance-like, Tim followed him. “He’s had his whole life turned upside down. He admires you, but you are different from what he’d expected. Just treat him like the son he is.”

“I’ve never been a father before,” Bruce said quietly, and that struck such a wrong chord in Tim that he snorted aloud. He clasped a hand over his mouth, but neither of them looked over at him. He lowered his hand, feeling embarrassed and miserable by their ignorance. “It’s been months, Alfred, and we can hardly hold a conversation. I don’t know if I’m doing this right.”

“You are trying your best,” Alfred assured him as Damian’s pattering footsteps spiraled down the stairs. “That means you’re doing something right.”

Damian stomped into the room, eyes instantly zeroing in on Tim. Sheepishly, Tim shrugged. He waved his hand in front of Alfred’s eyes to demonstrate his continued invisibility to everybody else, and the boy grumbled something under his breath as he climbed onto his chair.

Tim closed his eyes to prevent himself from laughing at the sight of him struggling to get onto the chair. When he opened them next, Damian was devouring a cookie like he had something against it, eyes still drilling into Tim.

“Hey, Damian,” Bruce warily took a seat next to Damian, who begrudgingly turned his gaze to his father. “How was school today?”

Tim wandered around the dining room, noting how similar yet different it was from the one he remembered. The general structure was the same, but everything looked newer. Well-kept in a way it could never have been with so many vigilante children wandering around. The way Tim’s world had been.

Dick’s silly magnets were missing from the fridge, and the bloodstain that Alfred had never managed to get out of the wallpaper was gone. Tim wondered if it’d be there one day in the future.

Damian and Bruce continued their awkward, mostly one-sided conversation about Damian’s day. Bruce seemed to grow more and more exasperated with Damian’s short answers, smile straining unevenly at the corners. It was almost comical how bad at this he was.

Tim tried to float and failed spectacularly. Again. He walked up next to Damian, who pointedly ignored him, and stuck his arm through the table. He waved it around, and Damian loudly cleared his throat. Bruce’s eyebrow arched at the noise. “Yes, Damian?”

“What do you think about ghosts?” Damian asked abruptly. His eyes flicked to Tim and then back to his father. “Do you believe they’re real?”

Bruce appeared to take his question seriously as Tim frantically shook his head at Damian. He did not need to be exorcised by Batman and his entourage. He needed to figure out what was happening and he needed a plan. Most of all, he needed time.

“I believe that the dead have a way of lingering with us,” Bruce answered after a moment, and Tim thought of Martha and Thomas Wayne. Could he see other ghosts now? His mind travelled to an ethereal voice, and he wondered if he was a ghost at all. “What about you? Do you believe that they exist?”

“Yes,” Damian stood abruptly, cookie half-eaten on the plate. “I do.”

When he left, Bruce stared down at the cookies as Alfred let out a tut. “You did well, Master Bruce. Just give him time.”

Bruce sighed, shoulders slumping, and Tim felt pity stab at his chest. He walked over, hesitantly trying to put an arm over his shoulder. It slipped straight through him, and frustration welled up in him. Bruce picked up a cookie and bit into it, silent.

Tim sat down in the chair next to him and watched him sadly eat the snack. It took him an embarrassingly long moment to realize that he’d actually been able to touch the chair, and as soon as the realization hit him, he fell straight through it to the floor. He stared up at the bottom of the chair for a beat. Then he rolled over and crawled beneath Bruce’s chair. He curled up there, listening to Bruce breathe and Alfred bustle around.

He closed his eyes and felt his breath hitch. He willed himself not to cry, and then when it felt like the tears were going to spill over, nothing happened. He laughed, half-hysterical, half-miserable. Ghosts couldn’t cry, then. They could wail and float and haunt, but they couldn’t cry.

What a pitiful existence.

“I missed you, Bruce,” Tim whispered to himself, and it was like he was tearing out his own heart. Marveling at the bloody mess and tucking it back carefully in the cavern of his chest. “Everyone left me, but you weren’t supposed to. You weren’t allowed to, yet you still did.”

Tim could go through walls now, but he’d been a ghost for years. Floating through life surrounded by the dead. Wishing he could be one of them.

Bruce was young and different, but he was still Bruce in all the ways that counted. And that terrified Tim. Because it gave him hope.

Hope had never done much for Tim.

***

Tim could wander outside of the Wayne Manor, but he found that he had to stay within a certain radius of Damian, otherwise he began to fade. He didn’t want to know what would happen if he were to fade away entirely. He couldn’t risk that, not when he’d just been given this second chance.

He wasn’t sure what tied him to Damian. Just that in this upside-down world, Damian felt like the most familiar thing.

What he’d gathered was this: None of the other bats had been taken under Bruce’s wing. Not yet. Damian was trying to convince Bruce to let him out in the field, but Bruce had yet to be convinced. Tim wasn’t sure how Damian had come to be dropped off in Bruce’s custody, but he was certain that the boy had still been trained in the League of Assassins. He trained each night, stubbornly trying to prove himself to Bruce, who just watched over him silently. He’d been enrolled in school, which Tim had familiarized himself with by following along each day.

Damian barely spoke to him, intent on pretending that he didn’t exist. Still, he never tattled on him to Bruce, which Tim counted as a win. Even if it made him a little sad that Damian didn’t seem to think that he could trust Bruce.

The first time they had a real conversation was when Tim finally learned how to float. Damian was studying in the room right below the staircase, which Tim was throwing himself off of again and again, never really feeling the impact as he hit the floor. Damian ignored him, although Tim caught sight of the twitch of his eyebrow on his fifth jump, which he derived great pleasure from.

“Come on,” Tim grumbled to himself as he clambered the steps again. “I’m a ghost. Ghosts fly. Just think of light stuff. Clouds. Balloons.” He hunched over the railing, heart thundering in his chest as he peered over the edge. His body still clenched with fear every time he prepared to jump, despite the fact that he’d done it a dozen times now without feeling a thing when he hit the ground.

He was tensing in preparation to fall again when Damian finally spoke. “Think of a bird.” He sounded annoyed, and Tim glanced over to see him still hunched over his homework. Refusing to look at him. Still, the words resonated within him. Like something he’d forgotten.

He thought of Bruce flying across the sky. He thought of a bird pushing off from a branch, and then he jumped. He jumped and he didn’t fall. A laugh startled out of him, and he wobbled precariously in the air, arms windmilling gracelessly. He tried to control his movement, jerkily flying towards the railing. He gripped it like he was in a pool, staring down and laughing again.

“You look foolish,” Damian called out, and Tim looked at him to see that he was finally looking back. With a sneer, sure, but he was actually looking at him. Tim hadn’t realized how much he’d missed being seen until Damian’s critical eye was passing over him.

Tim made a wobbly, uncontrolled descent, arms still flapping as if that would help him. He landed clumsily next to Damian, who leaned away from him. Tim hardly cared, throwing his arms around him and exclaiming, “I told you I could do it! How’d you even think of the bird thing? I was thinking more of floating than flying, but you were right, thinking of a bird was perfect.”

“I had a dream,” Damian’s voice was stilted, disgruntled but subdued. He stared down at where Tim’s arms were wrapped around him. “There was a little boy in a ridiculous green and red outfit telling me to think of a robin. He reminded me a little of you. If far less obnoxious.”

Dick’s Robin popped into his mind, and he forced himself not to choke up. “A robin,” he murmured, pressing his cheek against Damian’s hair as his mind drifted. “Sounds like a good dream.”

“Would you like to explain yourself?” Damian’s voice was stiff, and Tim realized his muscles were as well.

“Hmm?” Tim absentmindedly peered over his head at the homework he was doing. It felt like Damian was always doing an absurd amount of work for a fifth grader.

“How and why are you touching me?” Damian asked derisively, although he made no move to push him away.

Tim’s eyes widened, and then he promptly fell through Damian and then the table. He sat up quickly, popping his head up through the table to gape at Damian. “I could hold you. You were warm!”

“Ew,” Damian wrinkled his nose, making a show of pulling his papers closer to himself. Still, his ears were red and he didn’t move away as Tim tried to hug him again.

“Aw, man,” Tim frowned as his hands passed straight through him. “It only ever works when I’m not thinking about it.”

He’d been able to ride in the car to Damian’s school all the way up to the point he’d realized he was able to sit in the car. Then he’d fallen through the bottom of the vehicle and had to hike the rest of the way there himself. Damian had laughed at him, which he hadn’t appreciated. He also hadn’t appreciated the fact that he had to walk to Damian’s school every day from then on to stop from fading, even if it was only a twenty-five-minute walk.

He could fly there now, though. The thought made him smile, even as his arms slipped right through Damian.

“You really are terrible at being a ghost,” Damian remarked, setting down his pen. “Or maybe you were slow as a human and that has continued into your afterlife.”

“Snarky,” Tim rolled his eyes, but he couldn’t really argue the point. He was bad at being a ghost. It was frustrating being so bad at something when he usually managed just fine on his own. He’d needed a child to tell him how to fly, and Damian wasn’t even the one who was a ghost.

“Why can only I see you?” Damian said after there was a beat of quiet. He was gripping his homework tightly in one hand, crumpling the paper. “Are you the manifestation of the sins I carry?”

The question was so out of left field and so jaw-dropping in nature that Tim couldn’t speak for a good thirty seconds. Was he really an eleven-year-old child? Had he really been thinking that all along?

Did he truly think he had sins enough to haunt him?

“No, I promise, I’m not,” Tim kneeled by him, trying to catch his eye. Damian just continued to stare down at his crumpled homework. “You have no sins for me to manifest from.”

“How do you know my name, then?” Damian looked like he might burn a hole through the table. His posture was perfectly straight, but it was easy to tell that he wanted to curl up on himself. “I never knew you when you lived. And why do you look at Father like that? None of it makes sense unless you are the consequences of the life I’ve lived. You haunt me for my wrongdoings and the violence I believe in. You call my name like I’ve done you wrong.”

Tim hadn’t realized he’d sounded like that. He pressed his hand against Damian’s knee and didn’t think about how the warmth scalded his coldness. “I call your name because you’re important to me. I know you, Damian, because I’m lonely. You’re right; you’re the only one who can see me. I don’t know why that is, I only know that you’re the reason I haven’t faded from here. I cannot exist without you, and I don’t mind that. I am not your sins.”

Damian’s eyes darted to him, then down to his lap. His hand hesitantly slipped down to Tim’s, squeezing his fingers tightly. Tim refused to think about it, afraid of becoming incorporeal to the touch again. “If you follow me around, you’ll hate me, too.”

“Damian, you’re the reason I can fly,” Tim insisted, terrified that Damian might let go. That this temporary warmth would flee him. “I can see the goodness in you. I’m a ghost, so you have to take my word for it. I know a lot.”

Damian’s lip quirked upward, so quickly that Tim thought he’d imagined it. Slowly, the boy lifted his head. He looked at him, really looked at him, for the first time. “What’s your name?”

Tim felt the question like a blow to the chest. You know me, Damian, he wanted to shout, he wanted to shake him by his shoulders. Don’t look at me like a stranger. We fought the end of the world together. We might’ve been family at the end. How can I be the only one to know all of this?

He inhaled shakily and exhaled steadily. Tempered himself without truly breathing. “My name’s Tim.”

“Alright, Tim,” Damian nodded, and it was all wrong coming from his mouth. He was Timothy or he was Drake, not this cold distance that Damian spoke his name with. But he’d given Damian a name now, and he couldn’t take it back. “Would you like me to help you move on?”

“No,” his response was so swift, so vehement that Damian looked taken aback. Then he narrowed his eyes at him, and Tim had to reel in a sharp breath. “I mean, I’m not ready yet. I want to stay here. With you.”

Damian’s eyes bore into him, small lips trembling slightly. “You want to stay with me?”

Tim could tell he was trying to ask the question with great dignity, but it was easy to see how vulnerable he was. How important his answer would be. “If you’d let me.”

“Hmm,” Damian straightened jerkily, as if this was a great responsibility that had been settled on his shoulders. “I suppose if you’re not ready to move on, I’ll have to accommodate your presence.”

Tim grinned, standing up to his full height and ruffling his hand through Damian’s hair. The strands tickled his fingers, and the second he registered that, they slipped right through him. He yanked back his hand, not wanting to make Damian uncomfortable with a ghostly hand slipping through his head. “Sorry about that. I haven’t gotten a handle on the whole tangible but not tangible thing yet.”

“A poor excuse for a spirit, indeed,” Damian snorted, but it was said more teasingly than cruelly. Tim thought of what they could’ve been if the mantle of Robin hadn’t been such a glaring point of conflict between them. If all the weight of being who they were hadn’t weighed on them so heavily.

“But I’m your favorite spirit, right?” Tim made a valiant attempt at poking his cheek, frowning when his finger passed through him. Again.

“Hilarious,” Damian looked unimpressed, both by his comment and his failed efforts to touch him. “Now, unless you can help me with my homework, I request that you find something else to do.”

Tim glanced down at the paper Damian was smoothing out on the table. It was wrinkled around the edges, but Tim could still make out the half-finished math problems. “I could help you, but isn’t this something you should ask your dad to help you with?”

It was not his most subtle line of questioning, but Tim was curious as to why things were so awkward between the father and son. Damian scowled down at his homework. “I don’t require his assistance. I’m not weak, and I’ll prove it to him. He’ll have to take me seriously then.”

“It’s not a weakness to ask for help,” Tim kept his voice light, but Damian still snapped his vicious gaze at him like he’d said something blasphemous.

“Asking for help from Father would be,” Damian was squeezing his pencil so tightly that his knuckles turned white. “I will not be a useless child to be viewed as a burden. I will do this on my own.”

Tim shoved his hand over the paper, blocking his view and causing Damian to snarl something unkind at him. “It’s a dad’s duty to help his children. Damian, he’d probably be thrilled if you were to ask him for help. Parents like to be needed.”

“He’s not my parent, he’s just my father,” Damian snapped, and then immediately shook his head in frustration. “I know that doesn’t make sense. Just go away.”

Tim stubbornly remained where he was. “Is that really what you want?”

“Tim,” Damian said shortly, and it was startling to hear that name. “I need Father to respect me. Would you respect someone who can’t do their own homework?”

“I’d respect someone who trusts me to play the role I was given.” Tim slowly moved his hand away, but Damian wasn’t looking at the paper anymore. He was glancing up the staircase where Bruce’s office was. Tim fought a triumphant smile. “I’d respect someone who told me I was needed.”

Damian went silent for a moment. Tim had years of silence worth of patience built up, and he waited him out calmly. “I’m not doing this because you told me to,” he said stiffly, pushing back his chair to stand. He refused to meet his eyes. “I’m doing this to show you that it’s a mistake. He likely won’t even exit his office.”

“Go ahead,” Tim waved him away as Damian stomped towards the staircase. Cheerfully, he called out to his retreating back, “Prove me wrong.”

Tim started floating again as Damian went to fetch Bruce. He managed to get a few feet off the ground on his first few attempts, and by the time Damian was back, he was wobbling towards the ceiling.

Damian awkwardly sat down at the table, Bruce eagerly sitting down beside him. They remained at a shy distance from each other, but Bruce had his body turned to Damian like he was trying to show him how involved he wanted to be. They hunched over his homework, and Tim stayed near the ceiling. He figured Damian might stiffen up if he eavesdropped, and so Tim beat back his itchy curiosity in favor of smoothing out his flying.

Damian and Bruce’s quiet, almost inaudible chatter flowed beneath him as he circled around. He flipped in the air, squeaking as he accidentally spun through the roof. He floated back into the manor, a grin pulling at his lips. He flew circles around the chandelier, confidence mounting as he grew used to being in the air. He pretended to swing from the chandelier like Dick once had, and then spun into a cartwheel followed by a series of stumbling flips.

He felt a little like Robin again. Adventurous and breathless all at once. Damian was right; he just had to think of a bird. Then flight came easily, like he truly was the bird that came to mind.

Bruce’s rumbling laugh startled him out of his sporadic flight. He glanced down to see that Damian was doing a poor job of holding back a smug smile as Bruce chuckled at something he’d said. That pride was what he’d been missing, Tim realized. This world’s Damian had an attitude that Tim was familiar with, but his ego was subdued in a way Tim was unused to. It was nice to see him proud of himself, and Tim floated down slowly to watch the father-son duo up close.

“You did well,” Bruce told Damian, who shrugged in false humility.

“This is not very difficult material,” Damian bluffed, even as he soaked up his praise with flushed ears. Perfectly childlike in a way that he should always be.

“Not for you, I’m sure,” Bruce was relaxed, eyes crinkling as he smiled, and Tim felt his grief rise once again. It’d been so long since he’d seen that expression. Before the Corruption and perhaps even further back. During gentler times. “Let me just go over the last of these answers.”

As Bruce leaned over the paper, muttering to himself as he went over the finished problems, Damian glanced up. He caught Tim’s gaze and mouthed, thank you.

Tim wondered how you could miss something you’d never had. He mouthed back, you’re welcome.

Wayne Manor had always been a place full of ghosts. It was nice, in a way, to be one of them. He could now watch the people he cared about fall in love with each other all over again. Even if that was a love he wasn’t included in.

Even if Bruce looked right through him like his existence meant nothing.

***

Tim fell into a friendship with Damian so fierce that it scared him. He’d thought it’d take longer, that neither of their trust was so easily won. That their personalities were too different. But Tim liked making Damian laugh, and Damian opened up to him in a way he didn’t even for Bruce.

The fact that they spent an inordinate amount of time together was probably at least partially the reason they grew so close. Tim couldn’t move too far from Damian, and Damian stopped telling him to go away after Tim showed him how his skin faded with every step he took away from him. He could’ve sworn he’d seen fear flash through Damian’s eyes, but he dismissed the thought almost as quickly as it came.

“This class is boring,” Tim whispered to him as the teacher droned on during school hours, and Damian would pretend he didn’t agree.

Tim was unsurprised but still disappointed that Damian made no effort to make friends at school. “I don’t need them.” Damian would scoff, the same response he’d give Bruce whenever he tried to ask him about school friends.

“But don’t you want them?” Tim insisted, and Damian would just scowl. Unwilling to concede.

“Betrayal comes from weak friendships,” he’d say, and that would be the end of the argument. Tim couldn’t find it in himself to push the subject when the boy got that painful look in his face, like he was recalling something grievous.

Damian started complaining to him about everyday things. He no longer just responded, and Tim was perhaps unfairly smug about that in the face of the fact that Bruce didn’t get the same treatment. Their relationship was slower-moving than his and Tim’s, and he should’ve probably pitied Bruce more for that.

But Tim had never been anyone’s favorite before, and so he savored Damian’s warming up to him more than he should’ve.

Still, there was a part of him that hated the way they got along so well. For that meant they could’ve been close a lifetime ago, when Tim had met his own Damian in his own world. It meant that the only thing that had prevented them from being friends was their egos and grudges that held no meaning in the long run. Damian would smile that feral smile at him, and all Tim could think about was how they should’ve had this so long ago.

Tim thought of his old world so often that it was like he was trying to carve the memory into reality. But he was also growing used to this new world. Where he had no responsibility, no obligation besides being there for Damian. His old universe had been full of strength and symbols and justice to be wrought, and now he had none of that. This universe revolved around Damian, and Tim couldn’t hate it for that.

Tim couldn’t hate Damian anymore, and it wasn’t until that thought flashed through his mind that he realized that he’d even hated him in the first place. He’d hated him for being young and violent, for unraveling the life Tim had once known, for dying on Tim and leaving him alone. For abandoning him like everyone else.

It wasn’t only because of this world’s Damian that his hatred fled him. His first Damian drained his anger through his memories of him. Everything Damian had once been, everything he was now, it all emptied him. Tim was no stranger to missing people, but his wistfulness took on a hollow note without his hatred to sate it.

Tim struggled to face this newfound emotion, just as he struggled to forgive himself for having hated Damian in the first place. He was no narcissist, but he despised the fact that he was so humanly flawed. It was unfair to have hated Damian, given all the boy had gone through and how he’d grown, yet Tim had still been angry with him. A simmering bitterness Tim didn’t like knowing he’d lived with.

Perhaps because of this guilt, Tim found himself overcompensating when it came to this universe’s Damian. He tried hard to make him happy, and as time passed, he slowly stopped doing it out of shame. He started doing it because he liked the smile that spread across Damian’s face when he made the right joke. He kept going because Damian was a child who deserved to be happy, and Tim so badly wanted to be a part of that happiness.

Tim rediscovered who Damian was, and it made something in him shudder when he realized how much he’d missed out on. How his first Damian was dead and nothing could ever fix a sorrow like that.

When Damian slept at night, Tim lay on the floor, staring up at the bed. Unable to fall unconscious himself and not as bothered by it as he’d thought he might be. He curled up into a ball and imagined he was protecting Damian. Casting a veil over the entire Wayne Manor to defend all those living within its walls.

One night, he knelt by the side of Damian’s bed and rested his cheek on the warm comforter. He closed his eyes and whispered, “I hope you hated me too.” He flickered in and out, shivering at the sensation. “Just a little.”

He knew, though, that Damian hadn’t. Tim was the only one who truly carried sins. And it seemed like he’d carried those sins to the grave. All the way back to Damian, who slept so soundly at his side.

Tim wasn’t the manifestation of Damian’s sins. He was the manifestation of his, and his only.

***

Bruce taught Damian how to ride a bike. Tim watched from above, biting back unfair jealousy.

“Are you ready to go by yourself?” Bruce asked him, and Damian tightened the strap of his helmet with grim determination. It was adorable, and Tim cooed at him from the sky. Damian did an impressive job of not reacting.

“I’m ready as ever, Father,” Damian’s tight grip on the bike’s handles said otherwise, but Bruce just smiled. Soft and endeared.

“Remember, it’s okay to fall,” Bruce patted his back, and Damian didn’t flinch away. Just straightened up with fierce resolve. “I’ll be here to catch you.”

Damian started pedaling, and Tim cheered him on as he followed from the air. Bruce jogged behind him as Damian sped up, confidence mounting as he kept going. Soon, Bruce was full-on sprinting to keep up and Tim was laughing as he zipped ahead of both of them.

Then Damian let out a yelp, and Tim turned to see him falling forward off the bike, the front wheel digging deep into a cracked part of the ground. Tim surged towards him, horror sweeping through him as Damian passed right through his arms.

He spun around as Damian fell through him, and then Damian was falling into a pair of firm, real arms. Bruce grunted as he caught his son, propping him up before he could hit the ground. “You’re okay, it’s fine. I got you.”

Damian clutched at Bruce’s arms, and Tim stared down at his hands. They flickered, and Tim grit his teeth. They’d failed him, these useless limbs. He was relieved that Bruce had caught him, of course, but he was also upset that he hadn’t been able to catch Damian himself. What was the point of always being around if he couldn’t become tangible when it counted? When his touch was needed?

“Father,” Damian breathed, and then he buried his head in the crook of Bruce’s neck. “Thank you.” His voice was muffled, but Bruce and Tim heard it loud and clear.

Bruce softened, hand coming up to pat his head with something like wonder. He rocked back and forth slowly, voice gruff when he spoke. “I’ll always be here for you.”

So would Tim. Wouldn’t he?

Damian pulled his gaze up to peer over Bruce’s shoulder, meeting Tim’s stare. He propped his chin up on Bruce’s shoulder and whispered, “It’s okay.”

Bruce hummed in reply, but Tim knew the message had been meant for him. Tim smiled, but it was a hollow gesture.

He was glad the father and son were bonding, truly, he was. But Tim wasn’t sure how to live an existence where he wasn’t relied upon. Where he couldn’t be relied upon. Tim was meant to protect, not to watch from the sidelines and do nothing.

So, it wasn’t okay. Tim didn’t know how to let it be okay. He wanted Damian to be happy, but he’d begun to realize that, more than that, he wanted Damian to be happy because of him.

Tim only had Damian. But Damian had so much more, and the thought shook him to his core.

Tim slowly floated to the duo, pressing his hand against Bruce’s back. The touch didn’t hold, but he still held it there. He pressed his forehead against Damian’s, uncaring that it was an intangible motion. “I’ve got you both.”

“I know,” Damian said, and Bruce made a questioning noise that he ignored. He closed his eyes, and Tim watched closely. “I trust you.”

***

Tim had done his best to learn about this world. He was fairly sure it was either an alternate or parallel universe, although he was a bit fuzzy on what the differences between the two were. He couldn’t write down notes, so he had to keep all the new information he gained stored away in his mind for now. He didn’t mind too much. That was where his best thinking got done, after all.

Most glaringly, Bruce had only met Damian so far. Tim had pieced together that Talia had still dropped off her son after he’d lived his entire life in the League of Assassins. Bruce was a first-time father when Damian came around, and this was clearly reflected in their strained relationship. It’d been seven or eight months since Damian had come into his life, and it was only now that the boy was starting to thaw.

Damian wasn’t allowed to take part in Bruce’s vigilante lifestyle yet. This felt odd to Tim, but it wasn’t the strangest thing this universe had in store.

Jim Gordon was still a staunch ally of Batman. Tim had followed Bruce enough times during his nightly patrols to know that much, pushing at his boundaries as he faded the further he was from Damian. Gordon had just had a daughter, reportedly, and the implications of Barbara being born so young horrified and fascinated Tim in equal measure. That was an eleven-year-old gap between her and Damian. That made Damian the older one.

Another unsettling discovery Tim had made was that he didn’t exist in this world. The entire Drake lineage didn’t exist. Damian had given him a blank look when he’d asked if they had any neighbors. He’d convinced the boy to look up the Drakes, only to be met with zero results in Gotham. There was an ex-con man with the first name Drake living in Texas, but Tim was fairly sure they had no relation.

“Who were the Drakes to you?” Damian had asked as Tim stared in disbelief at the monitor. Damian had always been scarily perceptive. “Your family?”

“Maybe,” Tim replied evasively. Damian just rolled his eyes, used to his mysteriousness by now.

Would Damian believe him if he told him the truth? That he was from another world that had died, where they’d all died. A world where Tim had been Robin and then Damian had been Robin and they’d never fully healed from what those roles had done to them.

Damian asked surprisingly few questions. Tim was both grateful and suspicious of this fact until he realized Damian didn’t fully believe that he was real. “I might’ve made you up,” Damian told him one day, sitting on the rooftop of the Wayne Manor as the sun went down. Tim was keeping a careful eye on him, but he wasn’t sure he would be able to catch him if he fell. The thought soured something in him. “You might be a product of my lonely imagination. If you are, Tim, then I’m sorry.”

He spoke so gravely that Tim had no choice but to treat his pondering seriously. “What makes you think that I might not be real?”

“Because you’re too perfect,” Damian squeezed his knees to his chest, eyes searching for Batman’s form leaping from roof to roof. A sight neither of them could truly see. “You understand me. You try to help my relationship with Father, even if it’s nosy of you to do so. You care, even when I tell you not to.” He tucked his chin on his knees, fingers gripping at his pants. “You’re like a brother to me.”

“Damian,” Tim said helplessly. Oh, god, Tim didn’t know how to be a brother. He didn’t know how to love enough, but how he wanted to try.

“I made you,” Damian turned to him, expression fierce and vulnerable in equal measures. “So, you cannot leave me. Ever.”

“I won’t,” Tim held up his pinky and he forced it to be real. To hold true.

Damian linked their pinkies together, and Tim thought fiercely about how tangible he was. He didn’t shy away from it, from the idea of being able to touch. Their pinkies remained hooked, and Tim could’ve sobbed with relief.

“You make me better,” Damian told him, and Tim reached out to hug him tight as the boy started to cry. Hiccupping sobs reverberated between them and Tim wished that he could never let go. That the sun would never rise, and they could live forever in each other’s belief.

Damian didn’t know him. Damian couldn’t love him. But he trusted him without a doubt, and Tim cradled that trust with fragile fingers. He would be his brother until he was needed no more, and then he’d watch on as Damian grew up into all Tim knew he was capable of.

***

Tim was lounging around in Damian’s room when the room’s owner came bursting in. “Tim!” He shouted, and Tim looked over from where he was practicing sitting on Damian’s chair. It was a fifty-fifty success right so far.

Damian was smiling far wider than Tim had known the brat capable of. He was twelve years old now, quickly reaching thirteen in a matter of months, and Tim disliked how fast he was growing up. He wanted to keep him safe and young, and he briefly wondered if this was how Bruce had felt about all of them.

“Father is going to let me join him on patrol,” Damian slammed his hands down on his desk in his excitement. “Alfred has already created my uniform and I’ve been declared ready.”

“Woah,” Tim didn’t have to fake his shock. A part of him had been convinced that in this world, Bruce didn’t give way to vigilante children. He quickly collected himself, grinning back at him. “You’re going to give those bad guys hell.”

“I’ll make sure it hurts,” Damian promised with vicious glee. He lifted his chin proudly, and Tim watched with unprecedented fondness. “Gotham will tremble at my might.”

Tim very kindly didn’t laugh out loud at that. “Aren’t you supposed to be protecting Gotham?”

Damian scrunched up his nose, flopping backwards on his bed as Tim floated beside him. The boy stared up at the ceiling, as if it held the world’s secrets. “I can be a protector, too. I’m not just a murderer.”

Tim’s smile faded, and he hovered closer. “I didn’t think you were, Dami.”

“I’ve killed people,” Damian said, and his eyes seemed to glaze over. Staring at something Tim wasn’t privy to. “Father has tried his best to curb these violent intentions of mine. I don’t want to let him down.”

“You’re going to do amazing,” Tim splayed down on the bed beside him, only falling partway through before rising back to the surface. Clearly, his solid form was a work in progress. “You’ve been working hard for so long.”

There wasn’t a day Damian didn’t insist on training. It took both Bruce and Alfred to get him to stay in bed when he was sick, and even then, Tim had to give him the silent treatment in order for the boy not to practice his forms in his room once the other two had left. Damian was good, quick on his feet and of mind, but he always thought that he needed to be better. Tim, too, had felt that urge when he’d donned the uniform.

The need to prove yourself never went away when you were Robin. When you felt you had to impress not just Batman but Bruce.

“This is an important mission,” Damian turned his head to Tim, gaze stony and firm. Unbreakable in his strength. “I will not fail.”

There was nothing Tim could say to convince him that Bruce would still love him if he failed. Instead, he asked, “So, what’s your vigilante name?”

Damian sat up at that, and Tim slowly followed. He was looking out the window now. “Robin.”

Tim found himself unable to speak for a long moment. Finally, he managed to croak out, “What led you to choose that alias?”

“The boy in my dream,” Damian answered, and Tim felt a twinge in his chest. Damian had been dreaming of a little boy in green shorts and red uniform for over a year now, and Tim had the growing suspicion that it was Dick who infiltrated his sleep. Tim wasn’t sure how that was possible; perhaps he’d brought other ghosts with him when he came stumbling into this universe. Only these ghosts lived in the mind and Tim could never see them like how he desperately wished to.

“He gave you the name?” Tim gently prodded. Damian liked to keep most of those dreams of the boy to himself, giving Tim little scraps that he eagerly devoured.

“He told me that he was Robin.” Damian’s foot tapped restlessly on the floor. “He told me that he was giving the name to me as well.”

That sounded like Dick. Kind and giving and dead. Tim pressed his hand to his stomach and imagined his grief as a tight ball that never unraveled. “It’s a good name.”

“I’ll do my best to honor it,” Damian clenched his hand into a fist, staring at it for a second too long. Then he pinned Tim in place with a stare far too old for a child of his age. “You’ll come with me, right? On my first patrol.”

“Dami,” Tim circled him, clucking his tongue. “I’m going with you on all of your patrols.  You can’t get rid of me.”

Damian visibly relaxed, although his voice was gruff when he said, “I figured. You are impossible to shake off.”

Tim was proud of him, obviously. But he was also nervous for him. Bruce had never fought with someone else before, not as a partner. He didn’t know that other people had limits, that you had to work together to work at all. Bruce was a good man, a great vigilante, but Tim had never been sure if he knew how to be all of that and a father as well.

That night, Damian went out on his first patrol. Bruce was just as uncomfortable with it as Tim had assumed he would be, but Damian reacted better to this than Tim had thought he would. He kept up and he took the brunt of Bruce’s poor communication with unexpected grace. He slipped through Bruce’s shadow like he was a part of him, and Tim realized that he’d underestimated him.

Damian cut through the Penguin’s goons, but he didn’t kill. He grappled across Gotham’s rooftops as if it were second nature. He didn’t flinch in the face of Killer Croc. He plucked a mangy cat from where it was drowning in a dumpster, and he looked at it with a gentleness Tim hadn’t known him capable of.

“Look at him, B,” Tim said to Bruce, who was already watching his son perch on the edge of the rooftop, cape fluttering in the wind. “He’s so good at this. He’s just like you.”

Bruce stared at Damian like he might vanish at any moment, and Tim wished he were alive. That he could grasp Bruce’s trembling fists or at least speak to him. Tell him that he was doing good.

Tim loved that he’d gotten so close to Damian, but he missed Bruce. Even when he was right there, he missed him. This was no reunion, after all. This was Tim watching from an outsider’s perspective as Bruce learned what it meant to be a father. As he struggled to be both Batman and a man.

Bruce silently made his way to Damian, who tilted his head in acknowledgment. He was still looking out at Gotham, as if trying to soak it all in. Trying to memorize this city that held so much terror yet so much beauty in its survival.

“You performed well,” Bruce hesitated for a moment, then settled his hand on Damian’s head. Damian, who usually hated having his hair messed with, leaned into the touch. “I’m proud.”

They were the perfect picture of father and son, and suddenly, Tim felt he was unwelcome. Unseen and unnecessary. Damian looked up at Bruce and Bruce looked down at Damian, and Tim sank through the building's roof, down and down until he hit the ground floor. He stood there for a moment, silent. At a loss.

He’d convinced himself, somehow, that Damian needed him. That Bruce needed him because Damian needed him.

But Damian would grow up, Tim realized. He would grow up and he would grow strong and he wouldn’t need a ghost that hardly had any control over their powers to keep watch over him. Damian had Bruce, and what was Tim in the face of that?

Tim went back to Wayne Manor, uncaring for how translucent his skin grew. When Damian arrived, he was still fighting back a smile. “Father has approved me for official night patrols.”

“I knew he would,” Tim smiled back, but Damian’s face had slowly settled into a frown.

“You left,” Damian said accusingly. He crossed his arms, and Tim wanted to wipe away the blood on his face. “So what would you know?”

“Sorry,” Tim shrugged, trying to keep things lighthearted. “I was just struggling to keep up. You two are fast.”

“Well, you must try harder to keep up,” Damian ordered, scowling. “I need you to be there with us.”

I need you. Tim hadn’t heard words like those in years. He finally folded to his urges, reaching out to smudge away the blood on his face. It stained his thumb red, and they both watched as it slipped through his finger moments later. “I wasn’t doing much, Dami.”

“I need you because it’s what I want,” Damian jabbed a finger at his chest, not seeming to care when it poked through him. “Not because I need help.”

Tim was needed. He was wanted. He smiled softly, and this time it was real. “I guess I’ll just have to keep up, then.”

“That’s right,” Damian appeared satisfied by his acquiescence. “Keep up.”

Tim did indeed keep up. Three days a week, Bruce allowed Damian to go out on patrol with him. Their chemistry that had at first been clunky started to smooth out, as they learned each other’s fighting style in the heat of battle. Bruce began to trust him more to handle himself, and Tim watched firsthand as Damian fell in love with Gotham City.

Most important of all, Damian searched for him every time they went out. After every battle, every close call, he would look to the sky for Tim, and Tim would wave. Damian never spoke to him on patrol, but Tim had slowly begun to understand how deeply vital his presence at each patrol was. Damian needed his silent support, and so every time he looked up, Tim would make sure he was there. Every time Damian struggled, Tim would press a hand to his back and keep him standing straight and true.

It felt good to be needed. To be an anchor Damian could rely upon. Tim never went back to the manor early after that, and the weeks slipped into months.

When Damian’s thirteenth birthday came about, Bruce gifted him a cat. “I know you’ve been wanting one,” Bruce had forgotten Damian’s birthday last year, and Tim had yet to fully forgive him for that. Even if Damian hadn’t told him when his birthday was.

“He’s beautiful,” Damian whispered as Bruce gently placed the black and white cat on his lap. Tim thought of the empty cat bed beneath his desk, and finally decided that Bruce had earned his forgiveness. “What’s his name?”

“You can decide,” Bruce looked happy with his reaction, shoulders relaxing. He’d become better at this whole parent thing, even if he still fell short in some ways. It wasn’t like Damian wasn’t the easiest first child to have, anyway.

Damian picked up the cat and stared it in the face. It meowed quietly, and Damian pressed his face against its fur. “Alfred,” his voice was muffled, and the butler took a step forward from where he stood behind Bruce’s armchair.

“Yes, Master Damian?” Alfred responded.

“His name is Alfred,” Damian declared, and Tim wisped a hand over the cat’s head. It meowed in protest, and Tim grinned.

“Oh, my boy,” Alfred’s eyes seemed to have a watery sheen to them. “I’m honored.”

It seemed some things were the same in every universe. Tim watched this happy little family, and a restless creature in his chest settled.

Peace didn’t always have to be pried free with bloody fingernails. No matter what came afterwards, Tim knew he would remember this moment forever.

***

If you were a ghost, were you still human? Or did only the living get to claim that title? Were spirits of an entirely different category?

Tim didn’t feel human anymore. He felt monstrously other.

He knew that some argued that living and being alive were two different things. Tim didn’t do either. He existed on the edges of reality, and even that existence he questioned. He had none of the fire left in him that had once pushed him to be all he was. He tried so hard to remember who he’d been, but his past self wisped through his translucent hands.

He stood in the in-between. He had to, otherwise he was nothing. And Tim feared being nothing more than he’d ever want to admit.

***

Damian’s thirteenth year flashed by, and he became more and more similar to the Damian Tim had once known. He was violent in action but gentle when it counted, and the streets began to whisper Robin’s name like he was a mythical creature. Batman’s shadow that didn’t hold back like how Batman held back.

Damian entered high school, and he hated it more than he’d hated middle school. “They speak down to me as if I am a fool,” he groused to Tim, who was still his go-to person for ranting. He flicked a blade across the room, watching as it impaled the target system Bruce had set up for him. “The other children are disgusting. Immature.”

Tim wanted Damian to have friends. He wanted him to be happy and loved, and for that, he needed more than just an awkward father and a ghost hanging off of his shoulders. “I think you just intimidate them.”

That had made Damian snort. As if he hadn’t inherited his father’s fierce stare and his mother’s unwavering pride. “If they were intimidated by me, then they would respect me.”

Despite the years that had passed, Damian still had much to unlearn about power and fear. About commanding respect without being the cruelest in the room. For now, Tim just shrugged. “People will want to be your friend. You just have to let them try.”

Damian pretended not to hear him, and Tim allowed it. He indulged Damian a lot nowadays, as he was slowly surpassing the age he’d been when he died. Despite how already different he knew this world to be, it felt strange to watch Damian grow past what Tim had once known him to be.

The Damian of his past never got to go through the Hell that was high school. Tim was all too glad to help this one out in any way he could. In each class, Tim would wander around the classroom and eavesdrop on conversations while Damian scowled at him from afar.

“Teresa seems nice, just in a bad friend group. Darrel would probably cry if you tried talking to him, so he’s a no-go. Evan likes to draw, so maybe you could bond over that,” Tim always reported back to an uninterested Damian about his potential friends. He wanted only the best for him, after all. “Claire really likes Batman. I’m not sure if that’s a pro or con in her favor.”

“Tim,” Damian told him one afternoon as they waited for Alfred to pick him up. There were a couple of other students around, so Tim was surprised that he was talking to him. He mostly ignored Tim’s blabbering whenever they were in a public sphere in order not to arouse suspicion. “I don’t need these people.”

“But having friends you can count on is such a big part of life,” Tim pressed, unwilling to relent. “I don’t want you to miss out on it because you’re afraid.”

“I don’t need other friends,” Damian didn’t look at him as he spoke, eyes focused straight ahead. His ears were a little red, Tim noticed. “I have you.”

All of Tim’s arguments abandoned him at once. A tight squeezing took place in his chest, and he found himself at a loss for words. He’d never been friends with Damian before. They counted on each other, sure. They trusted each other with their lives. But they’d never once been friends.

Tim looked at this growing boy before him and realized how important that component was. Trust without friendship was a cold, distant thing. What they had now was born of something bigger than faith, bigger than mutual respect. They had a deep friendship with one another that allowed them to care, and Tim hadn’t known how much he’d needed it until it sat heavy in his palms.

“You make a good argument,” Tim said after several moments too long. Damian let out a short grunt to let him know the conversation was over, and Tim grinned to himself. Things were good. Better than he could’ve ever dreamed they could be.

Then Duke dropped into their lives and all of Tim’s memories consumed him in relentless waves.

Duke killed the Joker in this world. Harley brought him back to life weeks later, but Duke had still killed him. Tim watched it all happen over Damian’s shoulder, watched as Duke’s anger and grief led him to do the unthinkable.

Because in this world, Duke’s parents weren’t sent into a comatose state. They were killed. Something in Joker’s gas went wrong, and they died, right before Duke’s eyes. Batman moved too slowly and then light and shadow consumed the room. Seconds later, the Joker toppled over dead, and Damian was staring at his body like he didn’t know what to do with it.

Bruce moved to catch Duke as he collapsed, and Damian gave chase to Harley, who’d picked up the Joker’s body with a strength Tim hadn’t known she’d possessed. She gave them the slip, and the ride back to the Batcave was tense and full of palpable concern.

Bruce took Duke to the medbay, and Damian grabbed him by the arm. “He is a meta.” Damian searched his father’s face for something, and Tim hovered anxiously over Duke’s unconscious body. Tracing his young face with awe and fear. “You do not like metas.”

“I won’t harm him,” Bruce gentled his voice, even as visibly shaken as he was. “I promise.”

Damian nodded haltingly and then allowed Bruce to take Duke away. Tim numbly followed Damian up to his room, where he slipped into bed, and he thought of the Duke he’d once known.

Everything was backwards here. Bruce wasn’t meant to find Duke second. Duke wasn’t meant to lose his parents so swiftly, and he most certainly wasn’t supposed to kill the Joker. Tim was at a loss, and when Damian drifted off to sleep, he found himself floating down to the medbay.

Alfred and Bruce were having a whispered conversation outside the room, and usually Tim would’ve wanted to be nosy. But all he could see was Duke’s dead body as the Corruption wilted his body, and so he went into the medbay without pause.

Duke lay on the cot. Like Damian, his first appearance was younger than Tim remembered it being. Baby fat still clung to his face, and Tim would put him in the ballpark of early middle school.

He twitched in his sleep, brow furrowing, and Tim rested his thumb against his brow. He smoothed it out soothingly, and Duke’s expression relaxed. Fell into something Tim was more familiar with.

“Look at you,” Tim whispered, and the room seemed to swallow his words. “So young.” So innocent.

Then he thought of Joker’s body crumpling and Harley’s scream and Bruce’s endless stare. Maybe Duke’s innocence never stood a chance.

Tim wasn’t surprised when Bruce only let Duke stay in the foster system for a week before signing the adoption papers. Bruce visited the boy practically every day for that week, unable to detach himself like he no doubt wanted.

“He’s got a big secret as a meta,” Bruce told Alfred. “I could help him learn to live with a secret like that.”

It was more than that, Tim knew. Bruce cared for Duke for more than his powers. He saw himself in that boy in a way even Tim’s original Bruce had not. Parents dead. Revenge sworn. A sorrow heavier on the mind than anyone else could ever know.

Duke joined the Wayne family and Tim couldn’t help but hover. He was diminished in a way Tim couldn’t recall him ever being, quiet at the dinner table and hesitant around anyone who wasn’t Bruce. He admired Bruce, Tim could tell. For more than being Batman. He looked up to him as an adult who took him in and promised him that he cared. He brightened whenever he saw Bruce, and Tim ached for him.

Damian wasn’t so sure about the new addition. “Father has taken to training him,” he told Tim, picking at a plate full of grapes Alfred had dropped off at his room. “He’s more willing to take him on as a pupil than he had been for me.”

“Duke needs it more,” Tim reminded him, careful to be gentle but not condescending. “You were already trained in many ways. Duke has powers he doesn’t know what to do with.”

“And I have anger I don’t know what to do with,” Damian spat, grape splattering his grip. “I have violence I don’t know what to do with. When has he taught me the proper way to deal with these things? Why is the blood on Thomas’ hands different than the blood on mine?”

“Damian,” Tim said sharply, composure slipping quickly. “He lost his parents. The blood on his hands is because he is grieving.” Tim wasn’t fully convinced that the Joker was someone who could bleed anyway.

“I lost my entire life to come here,” Damian retorted, eyes blazing with hurt and anger. “I pushed away all of it for my father, while Thomas has done nothing of the sort.”

Tim was worried Damian’s voice would be heard through the walls. “Don’t hate Duke.” Please don’t hate him like how you hated me. Because that hurt more than anything else ever could.

“Why are you defending him?” Damian snarled unhappily. He looked at Tim with betrayal darkening his gaze. “You’re supposed to care about me the most.”

“I do,” Tim bit out the words, honest and blunt. “But right now you’re really frustrating me.”

“Then leave,” Damian shoved a hand through him, and Tim jerked back like he’d been hit. Damian looked flustered for half a second, regret twisting his face. Then he rose to his feet and pointed at the door. “Get out. Go be with Duke.”

Tim silently dropped through the floor to the room below and then sat there and tried to calm his mind. “It’s okay,” he whispered to himself, burying his face in his shaking hands. “He doesn’t mean it.”

Tim hated being told to leave. He hated the look of hurt on Damian’s face. Most of all, he hated arguing with Damian. It was a rare phenomenon; they mostly just bickered harmlessly, faking at annoyance that now bled into real anger. Because Tim wanted Damian to care about Duke. He wanted them both to care about one another, but that was selfish of him.

How Tim longed to be selfish.

Tim crept back up to the room deep in the night when he was sure Damian was asleep. Yet, as he lay on his usual spot on the floor and tried not to think, a small voice broke the silence. “I’m sorry.”

There was a little cracking in Tim’s chest. Bleeding through everything. He whispered back, “I’m sorry, too.”

“Don’t leave." Damian’s back was turned to him, but his voice was loud and clear. Crisp in the silence of the night. “Even when I tell you to.”

“Alright,” Tim imagined the first time he’d met Damian, when the boy had brandished a knife at him and he thought he might collapse. “I won’t.”

After that, Damian wasn’t so cold around Duke. Tim told him not to be kind for Tim’s sake, but Damian had just scoffed at the idea. “When have I ever done anything for your sake?”

Tim almost laughed at that, but caught the serious look on his face and kept quiet.

Duke didn’t warm up to Damian quickly, but Tim hadn’t expected him to. His whole life had been turned upside down, and Damian wasn’t the easiest to get along with. Still, their stilted conversations had begun to smooth out and they were training together. Bruce was relieved at this development, and Tim saw the fond look in his eyes whenever he watched them spar with one another.

“You’re good,” Duke’s voice was squeaky, much like how Damian’s had once been. He was looking up at where Damian had him pinned to the floor, blade pointed at his throat. He didn’t seem afraid, which Tim had to give him kudos for.

“You’re not,” Damian replied bluntly, and both Bruce and Tim let out noises of dismay. He ignored them in favor of withdrawing his weapon and offering a hand. “But you have potential.”

Duke didn’t hesitate to grab his hand, and their height difference was more stark when they were standing. It pinched at Tim to simultaneously see how young Duke was and how fast Damian was growing.

“I’m going to be good,” Duke stated firmly, and Damian’s stony expression wavered.

“Maybe you’ll even be great,” Damian patted a rough hand against Duke’s head, and the smile the boy rewarded him was the largest Tim had seen on this Duke.

They’d both be great. Tim was sure of it.

***

Tim wondered when the others would arrive. With Duke’s appearance, he was certain the rest were to come. He just wasn’t sure when. The timeline was confusing, and the events were different than the ones he’d experienced.

He could recall each of their deaths with vicious clarity. Steph’s rattling cough, Jason’s silent undoing, Dick’s withered body. They played over and over in his mind at odd moments, prowling where they didn’t belong.

He so badly wanted to see them. Even if they were different. Even if they didn’t know who he was. For reasons that were all his own, Tim wanted to see them alive with his own eyes.

“I think you and Duke would’ve gotten along,” Damian once told him, and Tim had never been more grateful that he couldn’t cry. He’d never stop if he could.

For Damian shouldn’t be talking in hypotheticals, as if Tim and Duke hadn’t once been close. Hadn’t been part of something bigger than themselves that bound them to one another. Tim had memories upon memories that no one else held, and did that make them any more than delusions? Something he alone remembered?

There were terrible moments and good moments and all that had happened in between, but only Tim knew them. Everyone else who’d been part of those memories was long gone. Dead. Only Tim remembered, and only Tim suffered for it.

Tim loved this new family and all the new memories he’d made with Damian, but he still grieved the ones he’d once had. He still wished that Damian would know he wasn’t just a ghost. That he’d been a person, too.

Tim wasn’t lonely anymore. He refused to be. But sometimes he still looked at these people and remembered his own.

***

Duke was still the same in a lot of ways, despite the subtle change in demeanor. What gratified Tim the most was when he insisted on patrolling during the day. It felt like familiar warmth, that declaration. Like at the core, Duke couldn’t be changed by all the misfortune that befell him.

Bruce allowed it when he entered high school, and Tim bit back words of criticism that Bruce wouldn’t even be able to hear. He didn’t understand now how Bruce could look at these young children and allow them to throw themselves into danger. He looked at Duke, and all he saw was a baby. One that was quickly outgrowing Tim, but still. A baby.

Tim couldn’t remember ever being that young. That fresh with young exuberance. But looking at it from an outside perspective made him realize just how much they’d all put themselves through at such a young age. So desperate with their own motives.

Duke took on a different name, which startled Tim, although perhaps it shouldn’t have. This universe wasn’t his, in the end. He chose the alias Raptor, a birdlike name to match Damian’s, albeit with a much harsher edge to it.

“He wanted to be similar to me,” Damian confessed to Tim one day. He looked conflicted by this fact, his voice deepening in a way that Tim didn’t like. He was quickly broaching the age Tim had been when he’d shed the Robin mantle, and it was evident in his growth. Bruce had awkwardly sat him down for a long overdue talk about bodily changes, and Tim had been all too glad to flee the room once Bruce had started talking about morning wood.

“He admires you,” Tim shrugged. It was true. Duke looked up to him now, possibly even more so than he did Bruce. “That’s not a bad thing.”

“I’m not someone people look up to,” Damian said dismissively, eyebrows furrowed fiercely. He looked much more like his mother the older he got, although he’d inherited Bruce’s towering height. Tim had to float at all times to remedy their height difference, which bothered him to no end. “My methods are not like Bruce’s.”

Things had been shifting between Damian and Bruce again. Damian was building up a resentment that felt a lot like Dick’s, and Bruce seemed at a loss as to how to handle his growing son. He tried to give him independence, but it was far too much at once. Damian was pulling away and Bruce was letting him. You were never supposed to let them pull away. Not if you had half a heart.

Sometimes, Tim thought that history was doomed to repeat itself. Mostly, he just wanted things to be okay.

“Maybe he doesn’t want to be like Bruce,” Tim offered lightly, picking up the pencil Damian had dropped. He liked to think that he was getting good at being a ghost now. He could phase through things at will and yet become tangible when the time called for it. He barely had to think about it anymore, and the thought pleased him greatly. Damian noticed too, even if he never mentioned it. “Maybe he wants to be like you.”

Damian stared at the offered pencil. “I do not wish to lead him down the wrong path. He’s a good kid.”

“So are you,” Tim pointed out, frowning when Damian shook his head. “Don’t even try that with me. You took on the big brother role so quickly after Duke started following you around the manor. You go to literally all of his baseball games.”

“Enough, Tim.” Damian’s face was bright red, and Tim grinned triumphantly at him. “I am talking about our vigilante identities. I am the bloody Robin. He shouldn’t be a bloody raptor.”

Tim knew exactly what he was referencing. Bloody Robin was a nickname the streets had given Damian early on, when he was merciless and powerful with his attacks. When the streets ran red. It was a nickname that had died out now, but it still lingered for many. A forbidding omen.

As far as Tim was aware, Damian could’ve been a lot worse. He held himself back with strategic willpower, and Tim thought that no one else could have dared to go through what he did and restrain themselves nearly as well.

“Let him choose what he wants to be. He’ll only hate you if you try to push him away,” Tim was a little exasperated. Damian and Bruce were alike in more ways than he’d comprehended before. Their stubbornness, their unwillingness to ask for help, all of it paralleled in increasingly clashing ways. Tim loved them both for it, but it was difficult not to yank out all of his hair when they convinced themselves everybody was better off without them.

Damian was quiet for a moment. Contemplative. Slowly, he nodded. “I understand. I don’t fully agree, but I will keep all of what you say in mind.”

“Thanks, Dami,” Tim patted his head, a habit Damian had picked up and been using with Duke. “That’s all I ask for.”

The Wayne Manor felt warmer now with Duke around. Like it’d been missing something fundamental. A light to pierce the darkness.

Tim enjoyed watching Duke open up to the others. The hollow look in his eyes faded, even if he sometimes still had screaming nightmares about his parents’ deaths. Tim always shot through the manor to his room, brushing away at his tears as Bruce came thundering in.

Duke would sporadically talk about his parents and his life before, and the others had grown good at listening. A light returned to Duke as time went by, and Tim was proud whenever he saw what he was up to on the news. Gotham was normally skeptical about all things relating to Batman, but they liked Raptor. They even nicknamed him the Signal, a fact that had left him in shock for a good five minutes when he first heard it.

He was the city’s light and hope during the day, much like how the Bat signal allowed the citizens to breathe easier at night. He embraced the nickname wholeheartedly, and Tim thought of the Duke he’d once known. The one who’d been so sure he’d change the city, if not the world.

There was a hope in Duke that he prayed would never die. Even Damian could see it now.

“But I’m still your favorite,” Damian insisted petulantly, and Tim wanted to squeeze him until he popped.

“Unfortunately,” Tim would always respond. Smile betraying his true thoughts.

Tim had been in this alternate universe for years at this point, and it felt as much of a home as he was ever going to get. It felt a little bit like happiness.

***

Tim never slept, and this meant he didn’t dream. Yet one night, he dreamt of a voice and a blackened world. Of a world he’d once called his own.

Shall I put you back? The voice murmured, and Tim was in the plains of his Corrupted planet that had been killed so long ago. Shall I remind you of where you belong? The voice turned monstrous, echoing and warping hideously through the air.

Tim ran, searching for Bruce, for Damian. For any resemblance of the life he’d been so sure he had. “I don’t belong here,” Tim spun around, desperate and terrified. “I don’t belong here anymore!”

You should’ve died with this world, the voice hissed, and Tim fell to his knees and started digging through the Earth. His nails broke and bled into the dark soil, but he didn’t stop. He kept going and going as the voice began to laugh. Twisting into a Joker-like cackle that chased him down the hole as he dug straight through the Earth’s surface to its blackened core.

Dirt started choking him, the sun eclipsing as he sank beneath the soil. A faint voice cut through the devilish cackling, familiar and fearful. “Tim, wake up. Wake up!”

Tim came to with a gasp, rocketing up into a seated position as Damian jerked back. Tim cut his wild gaze around Damian’s room, searching for something he no longer remembered. He turned away from Damian, who hesitantly reached a hand out to him.

“No, no, no,” Tim sank to the floor, clutching his head. It wasn’t fair. None of it was. He was fading, he was sure of it. “Don’t take me back, don’t make me go back, please.” He was gasping for air that he couldn’t inhale, shaking apart as Damian watched in dismay.

“Tim,” Damian helplessly tried to grab at him, staring down at his hands when they passed through him. He’d begun to tremble, but Tim hardly noticed.

He was still stuck in that dream, still dying with that planet as he should’ve all those years ago. He didn’t want to die. Oh, how selfish he was to not think of dying with all those who’d already passed.

“I can’t,” Tim was curled up tight, forehead pressed against the cold ground. “I didn’t ask for this. I just wanted to be happy. I just wanted them back.”

They’d left him. That was right, they’d all abandoned him to a life of solitude and silence. They’d gone, and Tim was left with nothing.

Nothing.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Damian trying to gather him up in his arms. Trying to embrace him like Tim had done for him hundreds of times. Tim’s body flickered, and Damian let out a shout of frustration.

“Tim,” Damian snarled, but he was more afraid than angry. Teetering on the edge of wretchedness. “You must calm down.”

Tim groaned, and then something wet dripped onto the ground below him. For a bewildering moment, he thought that he was crying. But his eyes remained dry, and when he looked up, he realized Damian was still trying to wrap his arms around him. The boy was crying silently, tears wetting the carpeted floor, dripping right through Tim’s unstable existence.

“Stop it. Stop it!” Damian was shouting now, all composure slipping away. “You’re flickering, Tim, you’re disappearing. Don’t do this to me. Just let me hold you.”

Tim couldn’t. He could hardly think, as if he was still drowning through dirt. He clawed at the ground, skin turning a freakish white as Damian hyperventilated beside him. In the back of his mind, Tim knew he had to calm down for Damian’s sake. That it’d just been a nightmare.

But ghosts didn’t dream. And Tim never slept.

“Damian,” Bruce stumbled into the room, dressed in a night robe like he’d just been about to go to sleep. His gaze snapped to where Damian was sobbing over Tim, and he instantly was by his side. “Shh, shh, what’s going on, kiddo?” He was careful not to touch his son, hovering intently with concern and fear etched into his brow.

Damian ignored him, throwing himself at Tim again. And again. Until he was battering himself against the floor and Tim was trying to ground himself through his panic.

“Damian!” Bruce shouted, left with no choice but to grab him to stop him from hurting himself. He snatched him around the torso just as he was about to fling himself forward again, reeling him back. “What are you doing?”

Tim was dying again. He was watching everyone else die. He was the loneliest person on Earth because he was the only person left on Earth. He flickered, and this time he thought he saw a glowing light surround him.

With a growl, Damian yanked free of Bruce’s grip. He was stronger now at sixteen, as well as fueled by panic. Instead of throwing himself through Tim again, he grabbed Tim by the back of his neck and pressed their foreheads together. “I’m here. Please, Tim, I’m here.”

Tim gasped as their skin made contact. He could feel Damian’s hand on the back of his neck, could feel their warm foreheads pressing together. Grounding him. He reached out desperately and held him by his shoulders, and his body stopped flickering. His mind slowed, talking in his surroundings with slowing panic. “Damian.” He closed his eyes tight and refused to let go. “Damian.”

“Damian?” Bruce echoed him, but he sounded a lot more concerned. Tim opened his eyes to see him watching his son with horror and confusion. He didn’t try to grab him again, which Tim was grateful for. “Please, talk to me.”

“Nightmare,” Damian managed to shudder out, eyes searching Tim’s face as he slowly pulled his head away. As if to ensure he wasn’t about to disappear. “From my time in the League.”

Bruce hesitated. The League was a touchy subject, and a good excuse that allowed no further questioning. But it still must’ve seemed odd how Damian was acting, how violently out of character he was. “Can you look at me, Damian?”

“It’s okay,” Tim grasped Damian’s wrist and pulled it away from his neck as he started to come back to himself. Embarrassed at the disaster he’d created. Faintly, he still trembled. “Talk to him.”

Damian frowned, but still turned to Bruce. He grabbed Tim’s wrist as he let go, not looking at him as he held on. “I apologize, Father. I didn’t mean to disturb your night.”

Damian’s eyes were red, with faint tear stains on his face that served to ground Tim further in reality. Bruce took in his disheveled son and gruffly swept him up in a one-armed embraced. Tim pretended he was part of the hug, trying to shake off the last of his nightmare. Reminding himself that he was alive and real and present.

“It’s okay,” Bruce said gruffly, patting Damian’s back with an awkward hand. “You’re going to be fine.”

Bruce forced Damian to come down and eat some food, although he didn’t pressure him to explain what had happened any further. Tim followed, feeling more ghostlike than ever before. Damian kept glancing at him, as if to make sure he was there.

Bruce was reluctant to leave Damian by himself in his room again, but his son was insistent. He only left when Damian promised to call for him or Alfred if he had nightmares again. The second the door was closed, Damian was bearing down on Tim.

“What the hell was that?” He hissed, but he sounded more fearful than angry. He kept looking at him like he might vanish at any moment.

“I was sleeping,” Tim replied faintly, feeling drained. “I had a nightmare. Of the place I was when I died.”

Damian seemed to deflate at that, pressing his lips into a thin line as he sat heavily on the bed. “I didn’t know you could sleep.”

Tim’s laugh was humorless. “Me neither.”

“Tim,” Damian’s fingers scrunched tightly in the blanket beneath him. “What do you need me to do?”

“I don’t know,” Tim whispered, and Damian stared at the wall. Silent. “Just…tell me a story. Anything.” He needed to get his mind off what happened. He needed a reminder that this world was real.

“Alright,” Damian nodded jerkily, and then he started telling him a tale. It was a mythological tale with ghostly creatures and deities from above. Tim sat beside the bed and rested his head against the edge of the comforter. He listened until Damian’s words began to slur, and he drifted off to sleep.

When Damian finally stopped speaking, small snores taking place of his words, Tim stood up. He gently reorganized Damian’s limbs until he was tucked under the blanket, softest pillow propped under his head. He brushed his fingers over his brow and then floated out of the room.

He found himself in front of Bruce’s door, and for a minute, he just stared at it. This was the one room he’d yet to convince himself to enter. It was a terrible feeling to know Bruce was so close yet he’d never be able to see Tim.

To be a ghost was not unlike being forever unknown.

Tim slipped through the door and saw that Bruce was dead asleep in his bed. Tim glanced around the room, taking in the sparse decorations. Like father, like son. The only thing that stood out to him was the two framed pictures on his desk. One was of him with his mother and father, and the other was of him, Alfred, Damian, and Duke. It looked like they were taken at the same restaurant, and Tim swiped hesitant fingers over the second portrait.

Finally, Tim rounded the bed, sitting at the very edge as Bruce slept. “Bruce,” he whispered, and there was no response. He slowly, carefully lay on the bed, as close to the edge as possible. He brought his knees to his chest and looked at Bruce’s broad back. “Dad.”

Bruce slept. Tim did not. He twisted around so that he was facing the other way, their backs to each other. He still felt his presence, comforting and stable, and he closed his eyes and pretended to sleep as well.

He laid there for hours, slipping away only as Bruce began to stir in the early morning light. He made his way back to Damian’s room just as the boy was starting to sit up. “Tim.” Damian’s voice was raspy, but his gaze was clear. Steady as he looked at him.

“I’m here,” Tim smiled, a small thing. “I’m all good.”

“You’re not,” Damian didn’t smile back, but he appeared to soften a little. “You frightened me.”

Tim had been frightened as well. He knelt by Damian’s bed and held out his hand. When Damian just stared at him uncomprehendingly, he whispered, “I’m not disappearing. I’m really, truly here to stay. For as long as you’ll have me.”

Damian didn’t like being sappy. They both knew that. Yet Damian looked down at him like he just might cry again. “Then you’ll be around forever.”

Tim laughed, rising to hug him as he squirmed in protest. “I know you love me.”

“Whatever,” Damian’s voice was muffled against his chest, but a hand reached out to grab at his pajama shirt he always wore. He clung tightly, with a fierceness that surprised Tim. “Don’t you ever do that again.”

“Sure,” Tim dragged his fingers through Damian’s hair like he’d seen Bruce do thousands of times. “I promise.”

Thousands of promises lay broken at his feet. Dreary with lies. The shards made his feet bleed, and Tim just hoped that they would never reach Damian.

***

Tim never dreamt again. But it turned out that real life was not so forgiving either.

***

As Tim had always feared, Duke began to grow into his mantle just as Damian began to grow out of his. Bruce and Damian’s arguments were never as explosive as Bruce and Dick’s were, but Damian had a sinister sort of quiet anger that Bruce didn’t respond well to.

“You can’t keep going off on your own,” Bruce rumbled after a particularly rough patrol, and Damian slammed his katana into its sheath with vicious force. Bruce ignored the motion, a mistake on his part. “Not if we’re to work together.”

Damian laughed, a brittle thing. “Right, because you’re so good at working together. Father, you’re the one who keeps secrets and refuses to speak to me of the important things. I am no longer a child. I cannot be kept in the dark anymore.”

“I’m not trying to keep you in the dark,” Bruce pulled off his cowl, and Tim watched nervously as Damian aggressively tried to shoulder past him. Bruce caught him by the elbow, and Damian whirled on him furiously. Bruce kept infuriatingly calm, which Tim knew would grate on Damian’s nerves like nothing else could. “I’m making sure that you don’t get hurt.”

There were a thousand things Tim could see Damian wanted to spit back, but he never shouted. Not even when his hand gripped his hilt tightly like he might swing. “You do not have to protect me, Father. You just have to trust me.”

Tim hovered, uncertain. Wondering if he should leave. Bruce didn’t seem to understand what Damian was trying to say. “You are my partner, Damian. My son. Of course I must protect you.”

Damian tore away his arm with a sneer, but Tim saw the tremble in his hands. “Then maybe it is time you find a new partner. I know you’ve always wanted to replace me.”

“I haven’t,” Bruce looked taken aback at the mere thought, but Damian was already stomping out of the room, Tim floating behind him.

Neither of them spoke as Damian walked the long halls of the Wayne Manor, seemingly with no particular destination in mind. When Damian finally cleared his throat, his voice was rough. “You must think me immature.”

“Yeah, but not because you had a disagreement with your dad,” Tim raised an eyebrow, a smile slipping through when Damian snorted. Cautiously, he added, “You two are more alike than you think. In both good and bad ways.”

“I know this,” Damian’s shoulders drooped, but he kept his posture firmly straight. Unbending as he’d always been taught to be. “Tim, I think I’m growing out of this role I’ve always thought I was meant to play. I do not wish to just be Batman’s bird. I want to be more.”

For some reason, that statement sent an unsettling, fuzzy feeling throughout his whole body. Tim tried to shake it off, focusing on Damian as they moved aimlessly through the manor. “So, you meant it then? That you don’t want to be his partner?”

“That’s what I’ve always wanted,” Damian had a faraway look in his eye, and Tim wondered if he was there, too. Allowed in whatever distant dream Damian had. “But now I want more. And I do not care if this makes me greedy.”

“Well, then,” Tim wondered what this horrible sensation sliding over his skin was. “I’ll be all too glad to watch your greed come to fruition.”

Damian gave him a smile that let him know he’d said the right thing. Tim had learned Damian here far more than he’d ever dared to in his original universe. Now, he knew exactly what to say to get the reaction he wanted and how Damian’s mind worked. It was an intimate thing to know someone so deeply, like how he’d always wanted to be with Bruce. It was inevitable considering the circumstances.

Damian had the whole world in his hands. Tim just had Damian.

The next day, Duke surprised them by joining Bruce and Damian on patrol. He said he’d only be around for thirty or so minutes, and Tim took pleasure in watching the three of them fight. They were a well-oiled machine, quick to the punch and not obstructing each other as they moved.

After wrangling down Mr. Freeze, Bruce discussed something with Jim Gordon in low voices as Duke slowly sidled up to Damian on a rooftop. “So,” Duke was doing a poor job of acting casual, and Tim snickered as Damian stiffened in response. “Is it true that you’re going to stop being Robin?”

Usually, Duke had a bit more tact. But Tim could see how this situation required a lack of it. Damian didn’t look offended, but he still made a show of glowering at the boy. “Is it true that you’re changing your alias to the Signal?”

Tim, who had not heard this, froze. Duke looked sheepish at the turning of the tables, one hand scratching at the back of his neck. “It’s already what most people call me. And I kind of like it. Like I’m giving people hope or something.” He looked embarrassed at his own admission, but Damian just nodded seriously.

“We are both moving on in our own ways, then,” Damian looked old all of a sudden. Tim knew, logically, that he was hardly a child now. Still, it struck a harsh chord in him to see Damian being the one to give a younger person advice. Like he’d matured while Tim wasn’t looking. “I will still be around. I will just be operating under my rules, my own morals and beliefs.” Damian paused for a moment, stiffly looking away. “I will still be your brother.”

Duke didn’t move for a moment. Then he reached out and punched Damian’s shoulder, voice wobbly as he said, “Thanks, dude.”

As close as they’d gotten, they hardly ever spoke about their legal status as siblings. They were unconventional brothers, ones who had needed much time to warm up to each other. But they were still brothers. And this being spoken aloud seemed to heal an unknown rift between them.

“You’re welcome, dude,” Damian replied disdainfully, brushing off his shoulder like a gnat had hit him. Duke laughed and Damian pretended he wasn’t smiling and Tim thought that maybe this wasn’t so bad. That the itch under his skin would just go away if he willed it to with strong enough intent.

Duke walked over to talk to Gordon about his daughter who was growing up, a favorite topic between the daytime hero and the police commissioner. Normally, Tim liked to eavesdrop, curious as to how toddler Babs was doing, but he found himself feeling a little sluggish. Trying to concentrate on anything but the sudden, unbearable pressure pressing down on his chest.

“Tim?” Damian murmured, careful not to let anyone know he was speaking to a ghost. To this day, Tim wasn’t all too sure why he never told Bruce about him. Maybe he wanted to keep some secrets of his own. “You look pale. Even for a spirit.”

Tim managed to pull a weak smile onto his face. “I’m good. Just a little nauseous at your display of brotherliness with Duke.”

Damian’s concern immediately dropped away, and he rolled his eyes skyward. “You are not funny.”

“Sure. That’s why I make you laugh all the time,” Tim teased, absentmindedly scratching at the unbearable itch beneath his skin. It didn’t make it better.

“Hmph,” Damian cut his gaze to Tim, eyes narrowed. Stiltedly, he said, “You will always be my first brother, though. Even if I were to wish it wasn’t true.”

Tim wasn’t falling for his attempt at snark in the end. “Yeah, you’ll never be the oldest,” Tim said, even though that wasn’t true. He would always be stuck at twenty, while Damian would grow and grow until he died and then Tim would be alone. Wandering a universe that wasn’t his own. “I’ll always be the oldest, biggest brother.”

“I am not so sure about the biggest,” Damian smirked, and then he was making his way over to Bruce before Tim could formulate a response.

“Brat,” Tim called after him fondly. His skin pulsed, and he tried not to touch it.

He was happy now. And how every universe seemed to hate it when he was happy.

***

All the uneasiness, the itch beneath his skin, it’d begun when Damian had declared he was parting from the Robin mantle. Tim knew this. But he’d never expect it to hurt as fiercely as it did when Damian told Bruce what his new alias would be.

“You and I did good things together,” Damian was cordial, even as Bruce looked at him with forcibly distant, sad eyes. “But that is an era I no longer have need for. I will be my own hero, Father. Without you to make me what I am.”

Bruce just looked at him. His first son, who’d been dropped off with him so long ago. “What will be your name?” He asked quietly, and the tension seemed to ooze out of Damian.

“Demon’s Blade,” Damian straightened proudly, and Tim could hardly feel his own pride over the static buzz that suddenly seemed to be enveloping his entire body. “That is the new title the world will know me by. I will no longer be Robin.”

I will no longer be Robin. The words resonated in his head, forming echoes that threatened to burst his eardrums. His body felt like it was made of coarse, unfriendly material, and Tim looked down at his arms to see them disappear. Just for a second.

He had no heart, but it felt like it was stuttering. He had no breath, but it felt like his lungs weren’t working. Tim barely made out the rest of their conversation as he fled to Damian’s room, the boy ignorant of his departure as he established his new identity to Bruce.

He collapsed on the floor there, a ringing in his ears as his skin buzzed unpleasantly. Violently. He pushed himself to his feet with gritted teeth, swaying in place as his discomfort peaked.

Then, like a sharp blow to the head, it all went silent. His body stopped itching, his chest stopped breaking, and Tim felt a hollowness take form where it had never been before. He gasped, reaching out on Damian’s desk to steady himself.

He watched with fascinated horror to see that he could see straight through the faint outline of his arm. Right through to the carpet he’d become extremely familiar with. With mounting horror, he looked down at the rest of his body.

Tim was practically translucent, a truly ghostly tint that he’d never seen on himself before. He was still there, could just barely make himself out, but it was nothing like the feigned solidness he’d had before. It was like the lines that made him up were faded, leaving a faint smudge behind. He could feel a hysterical laugh building up in his throat. Behind him, he heard the doorknob creak as it turned.

“Tim?” Damian stepped into the room, and Tim turned to him in horror.

“Damian, I don’t know what’s going on.” Tim tried to reach for him, but Damian didn’t seem to notice.

“Where are you?” Damian cast his sharp gaze around the room, slipping right past him.

Tim stopped reaching for him. “That’s not funny. I’m right here. Damian?”

Damian took a step forward, and then another, and soon enough, he was walking right through Tim. Ignorant of his existence as everybody else was. Tim desperately spun around to watch Damian lean out the window.

“Tim, stop hiding away,” Damian huffed, doing a full 360 of the room as he withdrew his head from the window. Tim flew up to his face, waving a desperate hand in front of his unseeing eyes.

“Stop joking, Damian. I’m being serious,” Tim lifted an arm that went right through Damian, and he choked on a gasp that bordered on a sob. He reeled back his limb, but it was too late. He was afraid now. Afraid that this was no cruel prank.

Afraid that the one person who’d ever genuinely seen him had lost his vision.

Damian didn’t break character. He didn’t tell him it was all a big joke. He just scowled as he stomped through Tim, tearing him to pieces as he did so. Ripping apart his unbeating heart. “Where could that spirit possibly be?” He grumbled beneath his breath, and Tim wanted to wail. Wanted to beat his fists bloody.

“Damian!” He was shouting now, louder than he could ever recall being. He floated two, three, four feet in the air. “Look at me!”

He didn’t. The one and only person Tim had left looked right through him one last time, then left the room with the door slamming shut behind him.

Tim hitched on a sob, eyes unbearably dry. A lump in his throat he could practically taste. He didn’t go after Damian, didn’t demand that he stop with this cruel prank. There was a part of Tim that knew, undoubtedly, that Damian truly couldn’t see him anymore.

Tim was a ghost in every way that counted now, and he didn’t realize how much it would hurt.

For a long time, he just stood there. Perfectly at a loss for what to do. Tim only moved when Damian came back in to sleep for the night, unable to look the agitated teen in the eye. By now, Damian was probably furious that he was gone. They’d done everything together. Inseparable no choice of their own. To have this sudden independence would frighten Damian, and Tim had never wanted to frighten him.

Tim stayed in another room, hopeful that Damian might regain his sight the next day. Knowing it wasn’t true.

Tim stood outside his door for an unsettlingly long time in the morning. When Damian finally came out, his hair was a mess, and his face was fixed into a profoundly furious scowl. He walked right through Tim, and he stood there for a beat. Unable to comprehend what was happening.

Like the ghost he was, Tim trailed him for the next few weeks. Silent and faded. Damian grew angrier with each passing day, and everyone else noticed. Duke tried to talk to him once and got snapped at for his efforts. Bruce didn’t make any sort of attempt, likely aware that it would be like putting fuel on an already growing fire. It was only Alfred’s silent disapproval that had any effect on Damian.

It was worse when Damian’s anger slipped into confused mourning. As time went by and Tim still failed to show up, Damian seemed to let go of his rage. Tim followed him one day as he went out to a nearby graveyard and stopped and stared at each headstone. Looking for his name.

Tim could hardly watch. He just hovered, unmoored. Looking on as Damian finally, finally began to move on. He still looked at each corner of the room, at the ceiling, at the sky, as if he were in constant search of Tim. But he stopped being angry and he stopped mourning what was already dead.

Before he knew it, months had passed. Tim tried to detach himself from his emotions and failed miserably. The world moved on. Tim tried so hard to move on with it.

Bruce looked helplessly at Damian, who only ever spoke to Duke. There was a new grief in Bruce’s household that he knew nothing of, and Tim saw how it pained him. “Damian,” Bruce cornered him after a tense dinner, neither of them noticing as Duke eavesdropped from around the corner. Tim pressed his hands over the younger boy’s ears, but it was pointless. “Talk to me. Tell me what’s wrong, and we can try and fix it together.”

“This isn’t something you can fix,” Damian smiled bitterly. His eyes looked hollowed out. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

"I would,” Bruce said firmly, unfaltering. “I would believe whatever you told me.”

There was no argument to that. Damian looked away. “Then perhaps I simply don’t want to tell you.”

Tim was always this unspoken thing. Real only to Damian. Now, real to no one.

Damian was a good vigilante. Robin phased out easily in favor of the Demon’s Blade, and Gotham welcomed this new creature of the night with open arms. Damian ran the streets with an iron fist, but he refused to work with Batman at all. It made things tense at the manor, and it was only for Duke’s sake that they tried to be civil with each other at all.

Perhaps Bruce was always cursed to fight with his eldest. To learn from his mistakes only years and several children down the line.

Bruce was lost to his principles, Damian was lost to his grief, Tim was lost to his loneliness. They were anchored to nothing, and so off they floated. Veering away from each other and all they used to be.

“Damian,” Tim stood in front of this boy who was no longer a boy. “Can’t you see me?”

Damian didn’t reply, and that in itself was always the answer.

***

Tim tried to move on into the afterlife. He willed himself free from this realm that no longer held any meaning to him.

It never worked. He was trapped here, just as lonely as he had been on his original Corrupted planet. Floating aimlessly and quietly. Forgotten.

***

The summer before Damian was meant to go off to college at a nearby university, Stephanie Brown came bursting into their lives. With the help of her clues, Bruce managed to capture the Cluemaster, her father. He convinced her to allow him to support her as a self-made vigilante, and Tim watched over Bruce’s shoulder as twelve-year-old Steph poked around his Batcave.

“Is that real?” Steph pointed at the dinosaur before flitting off to the next display without waiting for an answer.

Bruce looked over at her with much trepidation, but Tim watched with a fierce ache of relief. He’d suspected she existed in this universe, but he’d never managed to find proof that this was true. Now she wandered the cave, so full of life that Tim could hardly stand it.

He followed after her, startling backwards when she suddenly spun around. For a brief moment, her eyes narrowed on him, as if trying to make out his shape. Then her gaze slipped away and Tim felt the tension in his shoulders release.

“Are we going to train in here?” She tried to poke the giant penny, pouting when Bruce guided her hand away. “There’s not a lot of room.”

“I’m not going to train you. I’m going to support you with supplies and keep an eye out for you during patrols,” Bruce looked tired, closer to the Bruce Tim had once known. He was a little rougher now with everything that had happened, and some part of Tim hated that he hadn’t been able to prevent that. “Since you insist on still going out during the night and I know I can’t stop you.”

“That’s right,” Steph lifted her chin, perfectly smug. She did one last survey of the cave and then turned back to Bruce. “But you definitely have to train me, too. I want to know all of your little tricks. I mean, you’ve trained some of the most famous vigilantes in all of Gotham.”

“I don’t mentor people,” Bruce’s voice was sharp, signaling the end of the conversation. “Not anymore.”

Unlike most people, Steph didn’t cower under his severe tone. “You’ll just have to make an exception for me.”

“No,” Bruce replied flatly. “I don’t.”

He stalked away, cape fluttering, and Steph just narrowed her eyes at him. “I’ll break you like a toothpick.” She whispered beneath her breath, and Tim had missed her boldness so much it felt a little like heartache.

Damian wasn’t a big fan of Steph, which was a shame considering how close they’d been in his original universe. But Tim was beginning to fully understand that this just wasn’t his world. These people wouldn’t be the same. Their relationships with each other wouldn’t be the same. Tim had to stop wishing they were, because they were people all on their own.

Damian and Bruce had unfriendly but quiet disputes over him half-taking Steph under his wing, and they always ended with no solution.

Duke was wary of Steph at first, but they clicked well once they got to know one another. It helped that Steph wasn’t a permanent resident of the Wayne Manor, only coming over for supplies or to bother Bruce about taking her on as a pupil.

He’d forgotten how relentless Steph could be when she set her mind on something. Day in and day out, she wore Bruce down, even using coercive means such as getting on Alfred’s good side. The older man was most definitely aware of her ulterior motives, but he allowed it with a gentle smile that crinkled his eyes.

“I won’t ever stop,” Steph informed Bruce during a late-night patrol. Tim tailed them from a short distance, trying not to think of Damian, who was leaping across buildings not even five blocks away. “I’ll keep on bothering you until you agree to train me. I want to be great, Bats. I know you can make me great.”

Maybe the patrol had put him in a good mood. Or maybe all of Steph’s determination had finally worn him down. Whatever it was, Tim already knew he was going to give in before the man even spoke. “You have to listen to everything I say.”

Steph lit up like a Christmas tree, glee in every line of her body. “Yes! This is the best choice you’re ever going to make in your life.”

“I doubt that,” Bruce grumbled, but Steph hardly seemed to care. Tim was happy for her, if not a little nervous. He knew firsthand how tough Bruce’s training could be, especially when he was missing a son.

To his surprise, their training didn’t seem to go terribly. Tim mostly trailed Damian around, not wanting to leave him in his last few months in the Wayne Manor, but he popped by the training room often enough to watch their progress.

Steph kept up with Bruce’s rigorous program, and in turn, Bruce seemed to begrudgingly accept her. She trained just as hard as Damian and Duke had, and Tim was proud of her efforts. The fruits of her labor showed up on the streets, as her fighting improved and she learned the usefulness of Bat tactics.

“Be careful what you show her,” Damian said lowly, and Bruce took the surprising initiative to defend her.

“She’s good. Smart, too. It’s what she does with my training that is impressive, not the training itself,” Bruce watched Damian’s jaw tense, and Tim hovered uneasily above them. “Damian, I am not replacing you.”

Damian recoiled, ears turning a fierce red. “I know that. I know.”

Tim wanted to comfort him. Wanted to speak with him and let Damian rant as he’d once had. But he’d never been in a reality kind to his wants.

“I wouldn’t abandon you,” Bruce reached out for him, and Damian jerked away. Expression shuttering closed.

“I know that you wouldn’t,” he took a step back and Bruce let him, jaw tightening. “But some people do. Just make sure you keep an eye on that girl.”

He whirled around, and Tim followed him. He trailed him up to his room, eyeing the neat boxes piled up on the sides. He was done packing for college, and only the bare necessities were left in his room. Tim tried not to grieve the room, but it felt stripped bare now. Hollowed out.

Damian stood in the middle of the room. Unmoving. Tim tried to lay a hand on his shoulder, withdrawing his offending limb quickly when it passed through. Even now, he was convinced that one day it would all go back to how it was. Damian would look at him and cuss him out for disappearing. Tim would be able to hold him with his ghostly arms. Then the ache in his chest would finally disappear.

“Tim,” Damian said quietly. He closed his eyes, breath shuddering out of him. “Tim. You are a liar. I won’t ever forgive you for this, unless you come out now.” He clenched his hands into fists at his sides, shoulders tight and unforgiving. “If you appear in front of me this moment, I’ll absolve you of this breach of trust. But you must come out here and now. If you do not, I will hate you forever.”

His voice trembled like a little bird, and Tim tried to cradle his face between his transparent hands. Tried at it harder than he’d ever tried at anything before. “Dami,” Tim whispered sorrowfully. He brushed at his bangs, feeling the sensation of the strands slipping through his skin. “Don’t hate me.”

Damian waited there for a long time. Far longer than Tim had thought he would. One hour slipped into two, and the sun dipped below the horizon. Damian didn’t look at his phone or speak to himself or so much as move. He just looked around his room for Tim and came up empty.

When Damian finally crumpled, it was with a choked sob. He fought viciously to keep his composure as he sank to the ground, pressing his fist to his forehead as he inhaled and exhaled forcibly. Crying silently as his shoulders shook.

Tim watched helplessly, agony pressing on his chest. He’d never meant to cause Damian pain. To become something he didn’t know how to live without, only to vanish without warning. But he had no way of telling him this, nothing left to give.

Tim left the room and left the manor and wandered the streets of Gotham like the ghost he’d convinced himself he never truly was.

***

For weeks, Tim wandered the city. Lost and detached. It was only rumors of a new Robin that snapped him out of his trance. Usually, Gotham talk was easily chalked up to nothing, but Tim knew this tale well.

There’d never been only one Robin, and a part of Tim had been waiting for the next partner Batman would pick up. Curious as to who it would be.

So, back to the manor he went. Picking at a wound he’d given no chance to heal.

He went down to the training room, unsurprised to see Steph already there. Bruce was nowhere to be seen, and Tim really should’ve gone in search of him if he wanted to glean any hint as to who the next Robin was. But he found himself unable to move, watching this younger version of Steph go through familiar movements made awkward by her status as a novice.

He crossed his legs beneath himself and watched her. Eyes tracking her movements as she trained. When she turned around, panting, she froze, eyes glued to something through him. Piercing him so thoroughly.

It was an out-of-body moment. Her eyes seared directly into his, no mistake about it. She looked at him, genuinely saw him, and Tim felt that like a spear through the heart.

She rose to her full, unimpressive height and pointed her baton in his direction with sweaty fingers. “Who the hell are you? And how did you get in here?”

Words crowded in his mouth, choking in his lungs. He couldn’t move, couldn’t blink, couldn’t dare hope.

Steph looked at him and he looked back and the universe laughed and laughed and laughed.