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So, like. Tim knows that the family set-up is kind of weird, and he thinks (very quietly and only a little smugly) that despite it all, no one gets Bruce like he gets Bruce. He's not blood (whatever blood is worth), Bruce hadn't wanted him (had only needed him, or really, had needed Robin, and this fact has not!! had a negative impact on his sense of self whatsoever!!). He doesn't have the longest relationship with Bruce, or the most tumultuous, or the most interesting, or anything.
Middle kid through and through, not a definitive thing to his name! But he looks at Bruce across from him in this busy, overpriced airport café bustling with tourists sweltering in the unloving breath of subpar air-conditioning, and he is so so so damn sure that no one comes close to understanding the man like he does.
Bruce is speaking very gently to a very upset tourist who had dropped her entire lunch all down Bruce's front. He's covered in mashed potatoes and Fanta, and she's on the verge of tears while nursing a sunburn so severe it's a miracle drinks aren't boiling in her presence. All this, and he's doing his classic touching-not-touching thing, a very careful hold with a complete absence of skin-on-skin, thumb and index putting gentle pressure on her watch band as he says don't worry about it, here, I needed to get myself another cup of coffee anyways, let me get you lunch.
Tim jots this exchange down on his phone for his own notes. He's gotten pretty good at emulating the easy liquid smarm of Bruce in Charm On mode, helped along by good Drake bones and good Drake face and good Drake breeding, but this stuff? This stuff everyone misses and keeps on missing? He's got a lot left to learn. Bruce being so so bad at communicating is, like, a common family-wide refrain, but Tim thinks (Tim knows) that there's a deep mismatch here; it's wanting heated affection from, uh. A cold-blooded creature (this metaphor could use some work).
The thing is. Hm. Tim looks down at his watch, and tentatively holds on to himself like Bruce had held-not-held that woman, squeeze-release-squeeze-release.
The thing is, everyone wants a lot from Bruce and Bruce wants to give it all back, but there's. Like. It's.
Tim squeezes and feels little pressure and less warmth. Breathes. Bruce compiles and runs in Bruce-language, and there're compatibility issues when he tries to translate Dick-language and League-language and Gotham-language, and it feels one-sided and cruel and evil and almost malicious that this friction exists, and Tim would be Big Lying if he said he didn't feel bitter about it too, sometimes.
But people tend to forget, because it becomes so easy to forget, that a lot of people ask for a lot from Bruce, Bruce from himself worst of all. And sure, Superman and, uhm, Jesus, people like that, they're technically serving more people all the time, but one guy can fly and shoot laser beams and the other guy is the son of god. Bruce is just Some Guy, at the base of it all, and sometimes all he can offer is a touch so light you could barely feel it, and thinking that the lightness of the touch is an indication of the lightness of his feeling, well.
The plastic(?) strap of Tim's Casio calculator watch groans under his grip. It's stupid, stupid. Everyone's so stupid, and now Bruce has returned with two cups of coffee, one thick and milky just for Tim, and Tim kinda wants to throw up.
-
Here is the thing.
A gathering storm has come to a head; it's three days ago. There's a three-way blow-out fight between Dick and Jason and Bruce, because all three of them had gotten hurt pretty badly during an explosion at the fertiliser factory (Riddler's been acting like he’s got an org chem exam coming up like tf) and the source of all the anger is that obviously, the other two should have escaped when they were told to so only one of them would've gotten hurt (would've died).
These sorts of fights happen semi-regularly, at least once a fiscal quarter, and usually blow out and over pretty quick. Lots of shouting, accusations that hearken back to disagreements from, like, 2016 or something, and then everyone storms out different entrances in a great freakin’ huff. A brittle cold would set in after, and then in 2 to 4 weeks everyone's tentatively back on track, making sad-angry eyes at each other.
Tim's not a big fan of the raised voices; it's a little cringe to be whole-ass adults shouting ineffectually, but he likes to listen in and take notes. It's borderline the only time you get heat-of-the-moment confessions from them, and Tim's current hobby is constructing a diary where every day in a calendar year has an entry of ‘Thing That [Insert Name] Did To Upset [Insert Other Name]' featuring every member of the family.
For good-bad reasons, 2020 and the lockdown's looking like the year he's most likely to bingo.
This fight hasn't progressed as usual, though. Instead, the winds had shifted and Jason and Dick had joined forces to present a united front. Bruce was forced onto his back foot, but his back foot (literal) is his left one and his left one is the one with the freshly-shattered ankle. Bruce is great with conflict when it involves people he doesn't care about;
Bruce is generally real real bad at conflict.
Tim gets to his feet, waiting, watching. It's not much of a tell, because he's the Batman, but there's a wretched stillness that he gets, when things are bad enough to need intervention. A thing that's not anger and not frustration, a thing that's almost grief, and it's easy to miss because Bruce doesn't often let himself be seen grieving, but.
Tim's the number one expert in seeing Bruce that doesn't know he's being seen! Had watched Bruce the most quietly, the most closely, in the days After Jason (A.J.). And as much as he hadn't been able to tolerate Bruce's abject distress and Batman's dry-eyed despair as a kid, well.
Tim's only gotten worse with age.
Like. There is a dragon, in a distant tower looking over the whole kingdom. People come to make demands and shout and bang shields, and, like. You'd think, Bruce is the dragon, because of course, right? This massive powerful cold-blooded creature, this thing (this thing) that can commit miracles and harm and bring prosperity and destruction, and what an incredible force it could be if only the dragon would listen!
Tim's not an English major, doesn't read much beyond Stack Exchange, so all his metaphors are tortured, but. You shouldn't talk to dragons like that, shouldn't talk to any living thing like that, because it isn't Kind and it isn't Right (he's learned). And it's all all wrong anyways, because actually there's a princess in the tower, and actually Bruce is the princess, because the princess is the actual pivot point of the narrative, the one that gives the story meaning and gives the kingdom and the knights a reason for being, gives the dragon someone to defend, and being shitty to the princess means that narratively, the dragon's going to Get You.
And, like.
Well. Maybe Tim’s not named Drake for nothing.
Time to wade in and set things on fire.
-
A lot of hurtful things got said during the fight, because of course. Tim does some accusing and gets some accuse-d in return, and there're a lot of slammed doors. Jason shouts I-hope-we-all-die (a mere inevitability) and Dick says go-to-hell to everyone (rude) on their way out. Bruce, however, doesn't move (because he's bad at conflict and he has a shattered ankle). So Tim had come back down after 30 minutes (after checking the trackers to make sure the other two had left), and pretended to be huffy the way he'd pretended he wasn't blatantly on Bruce's side, and said, "I have a lead to track on the Ortiz case, and it's out of town."
Bruce had looked at him and had nodded, because it's not unusual for cases outside of Gotham to suddenly pop up right after a big fight. "Do you need back-up?"
Tim didn't, because it's a made-up case, but Tim had said "Yeah; can you slip away from Gotham for a couple of days?"
Bruce's considering hum is a bit of a surprise. It's hard to get Bruce to leave except when it isn't, and Bruce not turning him down immediately has Tim scrambling for a place to go on the spot. If he picks a random large city the odds of Bruce going 'yes I'm aware that's an issue' or, worse, 'Tim, Bamako is not a hub for alien tech. What's going on?' are too too high. Luckily! he's a determined liar, on account of having a scrupulous code of honour that's three shades more crooked than Bruce's (princess, meet dragon).
"Word on the street is that Ortiz is interested in World Engine tech, and there's a new broker getting his feet wet." He barely lets his eyes move as he looks around for inspiration; uhm. "The Javelin. A. The Javelina. Because he roots out. Stuff." He really isn't a creative genius. "Anyways, there's a chance he's transporting goods out via... cruise ship. In the." Pick a sea any sea- "Caribbean. At a port in the Caribbean. The Port... o' Rico. We know chunks fell in the area, but we assumed they were too inconsequential, but maybe we were, uh. Wrong.” And it's only a lifetime of practice that stops him from grimacing. Tim's lack of creativity in things not tech is hugely embarrassing in this moment, but Bruce doesn't call him out on it.
Bruce arches a brow instead. "I see. You're sure you need company for this?"
Tim shrugs. “Does it matter?”
This works to make Bruce grin the littlest tiniest bit(!), and nod, and this is how Tim's going to evacuate the castle (temporarily) with nothing but a single post-it note left in their wake.
-
The thing is, Tim's pretty brilliant at a lot of things, if he does say so himself. He's got some pretty hardcore technical skills, he's the only one minus Bruce that knows what 'amortization' means, he's not half-bad at rich-boy charm, and he's got faith he'll grow at least 2 more inches before he maxes out. Maybe even 5 (hope springs eternal).
He forgets, sometimes, that he does in fact have blind spots. Especially over, like. Normal stuff.
It's a little nice that this absent-mindedness had hit Bruce too, hits both them almost as hard as the face-full of 1000% humidity as they step out of San Juan Airport. Poor Bruce, already sticky from the Airport Soda Situation, is a study is Grave Forbearance. "I didn't think it'd be this hot," he says, tipping his cap back, and man, Tim hard agrees. It's Frigid back home in Gotham despite promised spring, snow and sleet coming down with a vengeance. Here, it's hot-hot-wet, thunderstorms looming in the distance offering no relief to the heat.
It's a little wretched. Tim shrugs a strap back up his shoulder, juggling all their bags and tech because he'd strong-armed Bruce into taking it easy and wearing a cast for his fucked-up ankle. Bruce had grumbled and all, but. Even Tim's aware that it's no good to go 'round letting an unwell dad do the heavy lifting. They're undercover as just a regular father-and-son, after all, even if it's. Mildly. Unsettling? Hmm.
Tim hardly ever left the house with Jack, and given the Robins that came before and after him, he's never really been the default for these sorts of set-ups with Bruce either, so it's a little hrmm. Squinting at the bus schedule and trying to remember what Thursday is in Spanish, Tim fears he's made a Terrible Mistake. In his haste to, like, spirit Bruce away, he hadn't really thought through what it means to take two workaholics with famously terrible social skills out on a work trip that's got no work in it.
Bruce comes up behind him, also squinting. Then he sighs and pulls out his reading glasses. Brian's allowed those, and same as with agreeing to come with, Bruce had relented on this awfully easily. It makes Tim's skin crawl (how bad must things be for real for real for Bruce to say yes so easy) even as it brings with it a little tinge of sweet smugness. "The bus should be here soon," Bruce says, a man who remembers what Thursday is in Spanish. "Where do we want to set up our gear?"
Tim's going to need time to figure that out (the wi-fi on the plane was shit), so he frowns thoughtfully at his Casio. "I have a few feelers out, we can move out once I know more. In the meantime, we should-." He blinks; he'd caught a drop of rain on a lash. "Uh. We should get to shelter."
Next to him Bruce has his phone out, glasses still firmly on. "Ah," he says mildly. "We're due thunderstorms every day this week."
They'd brought along amphibious suits, surely they'd brought along a travel umbrella? Tim digs into a side pocket, feels something cylindrical, and pulls it out with a flourish!, but it's just a knock-out gas canister masquerading as an empty water bottle. "How did we not check that?" he says, groaning.
A cap, still warm from where it had rested on Bruce's head, lands on his. Bruce is back to looking at his phone, determinedly not making eye contact. "It's nothing we can't handle, Tim."
And. Well. Tim tugs the cap down then again further down, and grins and grins and grins.
-
They're renting a little apartment in a little building barely three storeys tall. A ground-floor unit, of course. Bruce has walked many many marathons’ worth of miles on bad broken feet and ankle and shins, even if he's quick to bench others for injuries. Quite frankly, left to himself Tim would be worse.
It’s a consistent throughline if you ask Tim. ‘Like Bruce, But Worse’.
Well. He sets their bags down, trying to figure out if he can get Barbara to perform a little roleplay cyberterrorism on them if he asks extra nice and gets her 150 proof rum, but no. It's best to keep it a two man mission for now. “You should take a break,” Tim says, pulling out his phone to take a look at his checklist (for faking a weapons smuggling ring). “I’ll scout around.”
Bruce lands heavily on a crappy metal chair that creaks mournfully at his weight. “I can come with you,” he says, looking out at the rolling storm clouds. “Or. We can wait out the bad weather.”
Hah! Then when will Tim have time to plant evidence? He shakes his head. “You know I’m good at recon, and I’ll be quick. Uh. Get us something good for dinner?”
Bruce stares at him, a little cool and thoughtful, and Tim Suspects the jig is up, that quite likely the jig was never, like, down in the first place, but then Bruce just nods. “I’ll see what’s available. Tomorrow, though, we’ll work together.”
No room for argument there, unless Tim was in the mood for it, and he isn’t, since this is already a bigger win than he was expecting to get. He throws B a thumb’s up. “Cool. I’ll prep you on whatever intel I gather when I get back. Uh. Take it easy? Long flight.” It hadn’t been, what Tim means is long-fucking-week, but he’s too well-bred to say it, and it’s not like the meaning doesn’t come across.
Bruce nods. “Don’t push yourself too hard, Tim,” he says mildly, and God only knows which of the 2 dozen things Tim’s got juggling in the air he might be referring to.
Tim nods, tugs the brim of his cap (his cap now!) lower down, grabs his big bag of evidence, and heads out into the balmy bright afternoon, sun out of his eyes.
-
He returns 4 hours later, irritable and simultaneously damp and sun-burnt, grass-stained all over from burying trace amounts of radioactive alien material in the shadow of some type of uhhh fort? Castle?, and he is Profoundly itchy. Feels like his nose is peeling, possibly straight off of his face, but he’s also managed to very delicately sprinkle the port and her giant cruise ships with an electronic and paper trail indicating no-good behaviour (what are the odds Bruce will be able to tell that the Spanish is the standard set of the Bat Translation module and not specifically of Puerto Rican origin???) .
Admittedly, sitting on the walls of another fort? Castle? facing a sea so blue it's glowing while stray cats lovingly try to give him fleas beats his work station at home, even if the WiFi is substantially worse, so!
An awkward son even to a tentative-father, Tim brings home some coconut water still in their coconut bodies, and he’s got a little plastic bag cutting off circulation by his elbow filled heavy-like with empanadas stuffed with some manner of seafood. The grease has stained the paper bag within; the smell is rapturous, phew.
He enters quietly, because of course he does, and it’s to takeout of indeterminate origin on their little rickety table, plastic cutlery laid like it’s sterling silver set out for the Queen, and Bruce is asleep on the not-very-good mattress. It’s some Dracula shit, probably, that he’s so still with his hands clasped over his belly, and his breathing is so deep and even it’s like he’s barely breathing at all.
The crumpling sound of the plastic bag being put on the table is deafening, and Bruce cracks a singular eye to stare at him, Sauron style. They’re way way way too quiet for ages, until Bruce sits up. “All well?”
Tim shrugs. “Nothing I couldn’t handle. Dinner?”
Bruce nods. “I didn’t know what you’d like, so it’s burgers and fries, a lot of flan, and.” He clears his throat. “A whole fried fish.”
Tim looks at the suspiciously whole-fried-fish-shaped object wrapped in grease paper. “A whole fried fish.”
Bruce does not look at Tim. “The waitress was. Very convincing.”
Man. Tim grins. “You turned down an alien queen two weeks ago, but a waitress is where you hit your limit.” Like, like Cinderella, stalwart in the face of an evil stepmother but a pushover for mice, or something, this damsel ass man. Thank god the lady hadn't used her powers for evil (talking Bruce into 2 whole fish). “C’mon, let’s eat, I need to tell you about-“
-
The next day they make their merry way to Castillo San Felipe del Morro, where his 'scanner' had ‘pinged’ the presence of ‘Kryptonian metal’. Tim hadn’t had much time to create an illicit alien tech smuggling ring, so he hopes Bruce won't notice that he's effectively using a doctored-up phone to track a doctored-up GPS tag (that's only a little radioactive).
And for a second, when they go off onto the grassy knoll leading up to the castle, he thinks he really has fucked it all up, because his doohickey was not detecting the payload. He fiddles around on his contraption, checks that they’re within range of the location pin he’d saved yesterday (when he’d buried evidence), and confirms that the scanner absolutely should be picking it up.
“Tim?”
Tim frowns, smacking his phone. “I pinned this general area when I got a ping yesterday, but now it’s all quiet.”
Bruce just hums next to him, sunburned for real despite being sunburned for fake via the delicate application of a gallon of sunblock with too much blush on top. “Let’s walk around a bit more. It’s a beautiful day,” he tacks on, because it is, grass waving in the wind as the waves glint and glimmer in the sun, the castle a dark square mass with brilliant blue sky in the background. He has a sunhat on, and looks for all the world like a slightly downtrodden middle-aged man struggling with an orthopaedic boot, but he’s also standing juuuust far away enough from Tim that if Bruce were to pull out a Batarang to swing and stab, Tim’s out of range.
Both of them are on high high alert. “It was somewhere on this side of the hill,” Tim says, leading this careful charge, and they wander ‘round with false casualness for a couple more minutes before-
Oh man.
There’s a mound of upturned dirt where his planted tag should be, which means someone somehow found it, but they couldn’t have been using a scanner that was searching for Krypto-metal in earnest, because uhhhhh all of this is brass and made-up bullshit bits and bobs running on Pokemon Go software. Oh man. Someone isn’t tracking the fake World Engine;
someone is Tracking Tim.
Oh man, a real actual case. It’s got the potential to be scary, of course, but Tim would be lying if he said there isn’t a little thrill to it, some cat-on-cat violence.
Bruce is knelt by the hole in the ground, look on his face mildly curious, like a man wondering if he’s about to see a mole for the first time. “Wow, what animal could’ve done that?”
“No idea,” Tim says, happy to be honest for once. “Weird place for a, uh, creature to dig up.”
Bruce laughs before climbing back to his feet, ostensibly rolling his shoulders to get the kinks out, but really he’s fluffed up like a mother hen so he takes up A Lot more space than Tim. “Must be a nest or something, we shouldn’t hang around in case we scare it off.”
“Maybe I want to scare it off,” Tim mutters, and it’s only partially because he’s now realising that with a real situation at hand, the hours spent painstakingly planting fake evidence yesterday and being really embarrassing in broken Spanish were for nothing. He’s tempted to kick the dirt, but doesn’t (just barely). “Okay, okay. Let’s go.”
Bruce takes a ginger step back, casually looks around uncasually, and they strike off.
-
They don’t discuss it on the ambling walk they take close to the seashore while trying to spot a tail. Instead, Bruce points things out, cats and beaches and restaurants and trees and statues and side streets he’d read up on while resting yesterday, and Tim makes suitably interested sounds because it’s pretty fun to walk around with a man who consumes Wikipedia articles for pleasure. He knows they’re going to be skedaddling under the cover of night, but when he catches their reflection in the glass doors of a dark storefront, replete with matching sunburns, he finds himself thinking what if we took a holiday but for real.
Closer to their temporary home than not, they pass by a massive bakery that stretches and stretches and stretches, and Bruce nods towards it. “Coffee break?”
Tim looks at his watch. “Do we have time?” Is it safe?
Bruce frowns at the middle distance, deep in thought, considering contingencies and enemies and exits all at once, probably. “Probably not. But nevertheless.”
If the Batman thinks you have time for a break, how can you say no?
They head inside, met with casual disinterest by the staff. Bruce is mildly lactose intolerant and Tim in his heart of hearts suspects that he’s a leetle bit allergic to eggs, but flans are flans are flans and despite neither of them having much of a sweet tooth it’s become clear (by dinner-breakfast-lunch flans preceding this) that they’ll tough through much in the name of a good flan de queso (they're all good).
They don’t share, don’t even pretend that they’re going to share, and sit down with a dessert and a coffee each. Tim fiddles with his Casio while Bruce looks around, and they both set their right hands down on the table, fingers curled under with their thumbs sticking out (all's well, as best they can tell).
“What do you think, Tim?” Bruce asks mildly, eyes roaming the glass display cases but really he’s keeping a heavy eye on the comings and goings of people through the doors.
How to disclose what he knows in a way that doesn’t make it clear that all of this is Absolute Bullshit, uhhhh. “The timing’s got me weirded out. They might’ve been digging for treasure, but, like, I doubt anyone but me could’ve found trace amounts of. Stuff.” This is, of course, on account of him making the fake-evidence only findable by his fake-scanner. “I guess the stuff is anomalous enough you could spot it with, like, ground-penetrating radar, but still, for them to know where to look….”
“Means they were looking where you were looking.”
“Or they were looking at me,” Tim concludes.
Bruce’s grip on his little silvery teaspoon goes so so tight, and Tim feels kind of guilty. “All right. We should have been traveling undetected, so how were we caught out?”
There’s a logical answer, and there’s a real answer. The logical one is, “If someone else is interested in the Situation, then me walking by a bunch of hotspots might’ve triggered some sort of alarm. Which would mean we weren’t detected till I started doing the detecting. I thought I was being careful, but, like. It’s possible.”
And of course it isn’t, because no one’s set up alarms for a trafficking ring that doesn’t exist!! So more likely, someone is tracking them via some nefarious ass methods since god knows when, and they have eyes on Tim specifically!! Fuck!!
He should probably come clean with Bruce, since this is way, way more serious than Tim being careless enough to be found out, but, of course he’s not going to. Not until someone gets shot bad, at least, because having to put words to his Mind Map of why he’d dragged Bruce around like this would absolutely suck more than an average bullet excavation.
Bruce nods. “Then we extricate ourselves. If they think you’re an interloper that got scared off, then the tail should cool if we don’t follow up visibly.”
“Sounds good,” Tim says, knowing that they’ve got way bigger fish to fry, and, well. Given the level of sheer insane skill and luck a rando would need to be able to track him, he's beginning to have some suspicions re: the fish that need frying. “Should we head home?”
“Hmm." Bruce ponders over this for longer than you'd expect. "Yes. But. We can take the long way 'round.”
That's got Tim perking UP. “Any other requests?”
Bruce looks almost sheepish. “Wherever I'm less likely to get sunburnt.”
Hah! "I'll see what I can do."
-
Well. It takes 'em a week and a half, but they sure have lost the sun. Tim sneezes, and Bruce goes “Bless you,” from the driver’s seat. They’re driving down the lakefront, Chicago's skyscrapers in the rearview mirror, and it’s snow and ice and insane drivers everywhere. Next best thing to being home, just about. Bruce already looks happier, almost chipper in his trim black turtleneck.
“We must have lost them by now,” Tim suggests, given that they’d hopped across 5 different airports before making it to O’Hare. If their 'stalkers' were Puerto Rican, they would’ve been turned off of pursuing them because they'd be risking freezing their eyeballs solid in the Very Windy City. And if they're not dissuaded, well. Tim's made a hard job harder, put it that way. “I checked all the flight manifests and ran facial recognition on all passengers. I think we’re in the clear.”
Bruce nods in agreement, looking satisfied. “I'll be more confident once we cross 48 hours with no sign of a tail, but you did make us hard to track."
Tim tugs at his cap a couple of times before futzing with his Casio, Not Embarrassed and for sure not Shyly Pleased. "I'll double-back to PR when things are quieter and take another look 'round with more gear on me, but yeah, I'll eat my hat if anyone was able to track us through all of that." Three passports burned each, a brief stint in Nicaragua as single-propeller pilots, that Kerfuffle in the Canadian Rockies, their pathing looks equal parts like a vacation highlight reel and extreme evasive maneuvering, but.
Well. Tim's been having a good hard think about how on Earth he could've possibly been followed, when he's even more paranoid about his trackability than Bruce (he's not anyone's dad). He loves being able to find people, and Tim takes so much worrisome pride in making it difficult to be found in return. He'd come up with 3 distinct possibilities: it's Superman or some other meta with powers that lets 'em track people without a digital footprint (but! If Superman's feeling nefarious, why are they still alive?); some super super genius has been able to penetrate Tim's system to figure out their plans without leaving any trace of themselves in turn (but! His system's set up to self-destruct on a hair trigger because Tim would rather lose a lifetime of work than ever, ever render himself or his family vulnerable), and;
that damned post-it. It only said 'San Juan' and the date, but that's more than enough information to make them findable, and.
Uhhh. This is less of a reasonable supposition and is instead a profoundly unkind thing to think, but... who's as good at digging through solid ground as Jason is?
Esoteric suppositions aside, Tim knows it's a family venture, because:
- They're all a pack of fake lone wolves;
- He’s confident he’d be able to catch just one tail, even a (former) Robin, but multiple profoundly competent tails taking turns would be borderline impossible;
and, most damningly,
- Dick and Jason are so so much loosier goosier about going dark than Tim is. They'd left their locations visible to Agent A, and thanks to a backdoor so secret and sooooo disrespectful of other people's personal boundaries, Tim can see them too.
Bruce himself has, like, it's like a Final Destination tracker implanted into his upper jaw, and it makes him findable No Matter What in an emergency, because everyone's direst, worstest nightmare is that he'll die alone and unfound and they'll never never know what happened to him.
This actually works in their favour.
Bruce going dark is never as absolute as the man himself would like, and that's a good thing. Tim can't (won't) disable it, but what he could do was produce copies broadcasting the same signal But Louder and send 'em on their merry way through the Caribbean postal system to keep Jason and Dick company after they broke off. Babs would be able to parse 'em as fakes if she were looking, but she apparently hasn't, because Dick and Jason were still kicking ‘round Saint Kitts and Nevis when he'd last checked.
With that set and clarified, it became time for counter-counter-espionage.
While Tim's been figuring all of this out, Bruce has just been Going Along with it in an unprecedented manner, shockingly willing to spend days and days away from Gotham even though the absolute best course of action when in fear that their cover's been blown is to hightail it to the Cave as quickly as possible.
Instead they've, like. Gone ice-fishing! Under the guise that it'd be plenty easy to see if someone's following them when it's flat frozen lake for miles and miles. They've gone swimming in the sea, burnt through to the back of their knees! They've ooh'd and aah'd in petrified forests with a hundred other out-of-town tourists, and through it all they keep eating flans and flan-adjacent desserts as often as they can swing it!
Bruce keeps having women accidentally spill things on him and then getting starry-eyed when he very very gently touches-not-touches them to soothe, and every single one of them from the older lady and her sincerely evil cat in First class from Alberta to the cashier in the Bembos in Lima inevitably end up smiling at him like dawn's breaking, or something.
It's been, genuinely and astonishingly, kinda fun.
Tim's tried to discreetly get people to spill things on him too, to see if he's got enough of an idea of the Secret Bruce effect to put it into practice, but so far, no dice. Their tentative destination at the moment is a famous diner for some waffles and some planning. Tim's determined; he's gonna get a shirtful of cola or syrup if it Kills him.
And secondarily, stopping for lunch at Daley's is going to be the perfect time to turn off Fake Bruce so's the two losers can finally start seeing Real Bruce, even if historically Dick and Jason have been kind of bad at that. Bruce is doing better ankle-wise and spirits-wise (probably), and while Tim has truly enjoyed their weird little road(?) trip...
He glances over at Bruce, who seems so delighted at the horrible sleet that's started to come down, who's almost smiling as he has to swerve around a driver who's possibly very deaf and obviously Very Dumb who'd cut in front of them, and-
Well. Everyone knows princesses and dragons have castles they want to return to.
-
Tim does manage to make enough of a nuisance of himself that a frazzled waitress accidentally spills a cup of coffee on him, but she's so distressed by this that it kind of freaks him out, and in the end Bruce holds him by his Casio and her by the slim silver bangle on her wrist and talks soft and smooth and slow until everyone's breathing regular again, and she smiles at Bruce like he's the love of her life and Tim reckons he's looking at Bruce like he'd looked the first time he'd seen Batman right and real and true.
He needs to keep working on this secret secret skill. How sure are we it’s not some sort of mind control? Tim’s feeling dazzled, at least.
In between patty melts and peach cobblers and the lady calling Bruce 'honey' 12,000 times, Tim discreetly switches off his Fake Bruce signal, and settles into his squeaky banquette seat. Bruce looks over, and doesn't smile but doesn't not. "All good?"
Tim looks down at his hands. "Yeah, all good. Was just thinking, in spite of it all," and he makes a little face and gestures at the coffee stain on his shirt but really he means It All, "it's been, like. Really fun. We, uh. We don't do this sort of thing very often."
Bruce leans back in his equally squeaky seat, and looks at Tim consideringly. "We don't." He pauses, and rests one hand on top of the other, gently gripping the leather band of his own nondescript little analog(-passing) watch. Hmm. “It’s unfortunate that your operation in San Juan didn’t work out, but.” Bruce squeezes his wrist band, and Tim has to wonder if Bruce can feel the Bruce effect. “I’m glad you asked me to come with you.”
This has Tim fighting god to avoid preening, chest puffed out damn near 12 inches clear the way it’d been that first snap of Batman he’d got all those years ago (that camera is getting buried with him). “Seemed like you needed an evac. And, uh.” He can’t say a Robin’s always gonna (try to) come through and save the Batman when necessary because of civilian cover but also because he’s not quite Robin (though he’s not quite not). “I’m pretty good at figuring out when you need backup.”
Bruce’s grip on himself loosens. He smiles, almost. “Yes, Tim,” he says, not at all mildly. “You really are.”
-
Fair play to the two musketeers, they must have figured out what it meant for the Bruce they’d been tracking to disappear and then reappear at a more normal signal volume, because Tim’s immoral backdoor trackers inform him that Dick and Jason have landed at O’Hare just 10 hours after he’d flipped the switch. Bruce is conked out on the irredeemably soft hotel bed, and will likely wake up with a pretzel for a spine.
Meanwhile, Tim had spent a gruesome shower seriously considering if he should roofie the man, before the voice of reason had prevailed (Bruce's snore had been audible even from the bathroom).
They’re in a decent enough chain hotel, selected precisely because it's in a quieter part of the city, and has a rooftop perrrrfect for a showdown. He does take a sweet second (about 15 minutes) of puttering about the room when really he's surveiling Bruce to make sure he's asleep for real for real, and when he's 87% sure the man isn't just doing some wild Tibetan meditation tricks to fake sleeping, Tim heads for the roof with pleeeenty of time to spare. He just hopes they're at least a little efficient with making their way over; watching a man who doesn't usually sleep well sleep well makes you really really want to sleep, turns out.
He's fucking around on Tetris on his watch when they finally arrive. He hears the delicate little hiss-and-thud of grapnel lines disengaging followed by a soft landing (x2), and counts to five in his head before shrugging off the space blanket he'd used to hide his body heat and coming 'round the side of the massive air conditioning vent.
Dick screams just a bit at first sight, and it's very very gratifying. "Shh, it's just me," Tim says, plain and unadorned and chill because he's swept the area and made sure anything that might be watching 'em is having a little bit of a memory problem. "Took you guys long enough."
"What the fuck is going on," and that's Jason, who hadn't screamed and also hadn't shot him immediately, so really they're all off to a great start. "Are you on the run or something? Why the hell did you both just disappear off of Puerto Rico like that?"
Jason's also not keeping his voice down or sticking to the shadows, like maybe he trusts that Tim's done the scouting that needed doing, and that's a different kind of gratifying. Tim's would be smug as hell if he was less annoyed.
"I kidnapped Bruce for an impromptu vacation 'cos you guys were assholes," Tim tells him. "Why were you stalking us?" badly, he doesn't add.
Jason and Dick look at each othe, and do not wince. "It was weird for B to leave the country just 'cos we had a little fight," Jason says stoically, immediately negated by Dick going, "We were worried about him."
Tim frowns. "Why would you be worried? Obviously I was with him." Then he frowns harder. "Did you think I couldn't keep him safe?"
It's inarguable that Tim's not, like, the absolute best fighter of the family, but to be fair Dick sure isn't either, and Jason's only got a leg in the game because of his guns and the psychic damage he inflicts on B just by looking at him. He'd just thought that his commitment to keeping Bruce alive is beyond reproach, at this point. He is getting Pissed Off, which is bad because Tim knows he gets mean when he gets mad.
He grabs his watch band; squeezes, breathes. "What are you doing here?" he asks, again.
Dick's looking at Tim's hands, which is bad because it's kind of a hell of a tell. "The fight was worse than usual," he says, leading in gently. "And Timmy, you've never done this before. We wanted to make sure it wasn't something more serious."
"Plus you were acting weird as hell that first day, and when we found the hunk of junk you buried, we were like 'ah shit maybe Timmy's possessed and trying to set up some fucked up magic circle' again," Jason says, a lot less gently. "Barbs said it was emitting a weird ass frequency so we took it out, and then you both disappeared in the fucking night, without a note this time. 'scuse us for assuming some shit was going down."
Urhghghhghghhghghhg that's unfortunately so real and valid of them both. After that time Cass got got and nearly nuked Hong Kong because she'd placed 12 of the 14 ?magic? stones while under mind control, all of them get a little twitchy with mysterious objects in mysterious places. Nevertheless!! "It was part of the plan," Tim says irritatedly. "Not like B was just going to go yeah, okay, I'd love to leave Gotham to get some breathing room."
"I'm sure it was a good plan," and oh no, Dick's brought out his Big Brother voice; he probably thinks it's Warm and Indulgent but it is in fact a liiiittle bit patronising even at the best of times. "But you know it's not protocol to disappear without a trace, Tim. We didn't know what was going on, and then we lost you, but B's Final Destination tracker was pinging in places you guys were definitely not at. So, you know. There are better ways to make him take a break."
Tim barely holds back a truly righteous scoff, and Jason who's a little behind Dick is making a Hell of a face.
Dick is not an only child, but somehow has the most only-child personality of any of them, and it kinda shines like Crazy when he's trying to brotherise. "Dick, I'm not 12," Tim tells him tetchily. "Of course it was a great plan? I made it?? And, like. The purpose of the plan was to keep him away from you guys, the vacationing was just an unexpected side-effect." Underneath his hoodie is a shirt from Glacier National Park; Bruce has a matching one, which is contributing hugely to Tim not losing his temper. "You know I'm pissed off with both of you, right?"
Jason, a turncoat to all but himself, has moved so's they're all facing each other Mexican- stand-off-style, grinning like a wolf. "I mean, me to you both too, for sure. Hell, I'm pissed off with everyone I know in Chicago right now, so I'm happy to get us started. Dick, you gotta stop talking like you know what's best for everyone all the time every time. At least when I'm screaming at Bruce, I know it's bad for us both. I'm doing it for fun, or 'cos of unresolved ass issues, or both. But you get pissed off with him, then you get kinda bitchy and condescending, and like... the whole time I swear you don't realise that it takes at least two assholes to tango."
Dick, of course, looks fully taken aback and deeply betrayed by Jason (who is! a turncoat! to all but himself! This shouldn't be a surprise!)
But Jason is Not Done. He pivots and turns to Tim, and he's not mad and he isn't loud but he's so so scary because/in spite of it (actual actual big brother shit). "And you. It's a major asshole move to fake the Final Destintion tracker. I mean, we shouldn't have been using it, but you for fuckin' sure shouldn't have been spoofing it. You can tell me it's gonna turn itself off or self-destruct or whatever, but now there's some shit out there that's making the signal we set to find Bruce's fucking body. Does that seem like a cool chill thing to do, birdie?"
God. They don't even know he's been tracking their FD trackers too, alongside all of it. Tim feels cowed in a way he rarely ever gets, because Jason's not wrong, even if Tim's got 6 failproof plans to decimate Fake Bruce. It's so unlikely that this will ever come back to bite him on the ass, but it's not. Impossible.
Doesn't mean Jason's All Right either, though. Tim's making a hell of an effort to not raise his voice. "You're not getting away that easily. Every single time you pick a fight with him you say whatever the hell you want and you know he's incapable of fighting back in a healthy or reasonable way, and then you do it anyways! How many times are you gonna keep kicking that dead horse?"
Jason blinks, and then is grinning again (enemy of all men). "Until it comes back to life? Dunno if you noticed, but I died? Like, died as a minor under his fuckass watch, limp dead body in his arms type dead? Feels like that gives me a pass for most things."
"We're all gonna die some day," Tim says hotly. "You don't see me going ohhhh Bruce let me verbally abuse you for 25 straight minutes about how badly you parallel parked the BatMobile because death is a concept we're all gonna have to deal with!"
"Hmm, wow. Tell you what, maybe I'll listen to you once you've had some first-hand experience on dying real badly then coming back to find out B didn't avenge you, bud. You should get started on that, let me know if you need help."
Tim's imagining dosing Jason's next thousand breakfasts with the Malaria medication that made Jason hallucinate the Hat Man the last time they had to go out to the Amazon when Dick interrupts, also heated UP by this point.
"Both of you, just shut it!" Dick shouts. "Jason, if you hadn't barged in on that mission in the first place, then Bruce wouldn't have needed to push you out of the way to take that bullet, and you wouldn't have gotten your ribs broken taking that hit for me! And Tim, like, the favouritism is out of control! We have a little fight, and you're treating Bruce like he's a damsel in distress you needed to rescue from us!! We're all adults, I bet you B wasn't even that bothered, and you're out here like-"
"Like he's my dad and I stepped in 'cos I was worried about him???!?" Oh my god the people sleeping on the top floor might be hearing all of this but Tim is feeling a little Crazy so he just keeps going for it. "Like he's a middle-aged guy with a messed-up personality and a messed-up ankle that doesn't do so hot when he's got his kids screaming at him???!?!? Like what, Dick? Like what!"
Tim doesn't deny the favouritism allegations; who else in a dozen multiverses is as committed to Bruce 'Batman' Wayne as Tim has been since he first could pick up a camera??? It's not an insult when it's factual and real and true!!!
They're all kinda red in the face now, kinda gearing up for another round of screaming and shouting and accusing, but then there's a whisper of air moving, a quiet shift of careful mass, and suddenly they're all Very Very Aware of another presence.
Bruce doesn't look at any of them, staring fixedly at the a scrape of dried pigeon poop instead. "Boys," he says, mild as anything, like he hadn't just secretly rocked up on 3 insanely well-trained vigilantes. "Busy night."
And there's 50-50 odds on if this is going to restart the shouting match with a vengeance, or they're all going to scatter like dandelion seeds into the night to avoid addressing their feelings. Jason's quick to react, of course, hand already going to his grappling gun, but Bruce is quicker, and is very very gently holding on to the cuff of his leather jacket. "Wait, just a second. All of you, just."
Bruce exhales, slow and possibly a little freaked out. "It was kind of you two to worry, to try and come to find us. And it was kind of Tim to take me with him. And there were a lot of things that weren't very kind all around, and I'm sure we'll have another hundred fights before the end of the year, but." And he reaches over now, to delicately hold on to Dick's sleeve too.
Bruce doesn't say sorry, because he's no good at this. He doesn't say thank you, either, because he's even worse at that. But he's got his gentle hold, and he's in his matching Glacier National Park shirt that he'd worn to bed, and like, this is that princess power. Everyone is enthralled, and the vibe gets even crazier, even more I'm-going-to-bite-through-my-sneakers-in-emotional-agony, when he lightly shakes them both by their sleeves. "I called down and got the adjoining room. Stay. Rest. We'll have breakfast tomorrow." Bruce looks over at Tim, and almost grins. "Tim and I know a great place."
And Dick and Jason and Tim nod dumbly, and they're all shell-shocked because isn't that just the classic Bruce Effect, and Tim's kind of in awe and kind of pissed off, so all he manages is "I knew you weren't asleep."
That startles a huff out of Bruce. "I am the night, after all," he says primly, tugging along Dick and Jason like they're wayward kittens instead of occasionally monstrous men. "Come along now."
-
"Are you asleep for real?"
It's an hour or so after the Great Non-Confrontation, and Jason and Dick had been deposited into the room next door with minimal fuss. Tim has expected more of a shitshow, but he's Thinking about things now, and he thinks if he'd spent 10 days trying to fruitlessly to find a missing brother and father he would've been a lot a lot crueller than Jason and Dick had been.
The adrenaline crash upon finding said missing brother and father would probably take him out too, especially if said father magicked out more matching Glacier National Park t-shirts when upon hearing complaints about not having clean clothes.
He can hear Jason's snoring through the door; a dead septum that came back to life with the rest of you does that to you, probably.
Unfortunately, Tim's a little too antsy to sleep. He feels regret, but probably not enough? And he still feels a little angry, but like. At what? It's all got him a little jittery in the quiet dark.
"No," comes Bruce's voice from the other bed. "Are you all right?"
Tim shakes his head, even if he can't be seen. "Did you know the whole time? That it was all made up?"
It takes Bruce a moment. "No," he says after a little bit. "Maybe a suspicion, but not for sure, not at first. But. Tim, when you made the little spoofs, they, ah. They harmonised with my implant, somehow. A resonant frequency issue, maybe, but my mouth started vibrating that night. Once I checked the signal I found your fakes, and then it was easy enough to check on Jason and Dick's movements and make an educated guess on what the situation was."
Tim groans. In this way (yet again), Jason and Dick are morally in the right. Tim and Bruce are simply way way too disrespectful of privacy to ever be able to face 'em with a clear conscience. "Then why did you go along with it? I'm not a kid, you know, you didn't have to indulge me just because you felt bad for me."
There's another long, slightly embarrassed silence. "Well. The first time ever, you came to me because I needed help and you damn well knew it. And this time the stakes were lower, but it felt... nostalgic. You saved my life, that first time, Tim. It's easy to trust you when I remember to."
And, like. It's so So embarrassing, but Tim's so So proud of himself he kind of wants to explode, kind of wishes he had a camera in hand and take a picture of the both of them, the four of them in their matching park shirts, this kingdom of dumb dumb idiots he's gonna keep protecting for the rest of his dumb dumb life.
"Huh," he says, because otherwise he might burst into tears (it's been a long time all 'round, turns out).
"Huh," Bruce echoes, sounding amused. "Get some rest, we've had a really busy, really good few days. Good night, Tim"
"Yeah," Tim says, red to the ears, watch-less and forced to squeeze his own damn hand. "G'night, Bruce."