Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Robin should have died with Jason, but now it was going to die with Timothy Drake.

Jason had been planning for months, decided how, decided when, but it had taken him weeks to decide where.

A vicious part of him wanted to drag the Replacement to an abandoned warehouse with a crowbar and let Bruce find one Robin exactly how he’d found the other, but he wasn’t sure he’d be able to handle a warehouse without a panic attack.

The Titans Tower had a vindictive allure to it. A part of Jason seethed and wanted to pick the Tower just to spite the Titans who had shunned him for daring to wear Goldie’s costume after he’d abandoned it, but who’d embraced his replacement with open arms. He wanted to turn their beacon, their fortress, into a house of horror they’d never forget. Still, there was too much risk of being interrupted. Jason didn’t intend on making it quick.

Wayne Manor? He’d considered it, considered dragging the Replacement up to his old bedroom, gagging him, and torturing him until he died of shock or blood loss. Bruce would be gone most the day with business, Dickwad would be out with friends, and Alfred wouldn’t be near the bedrooms most of the day, so he would be able to be a bit loud. Pliers to the fingernails, cattle prod to the eyes, crowbar to the ribs… He was rather fond of the idea of snagging the boy from his bed and teaching him what happened to people who took things that weren’t theirs. It would be a lesson that Drake would learn briefly, but Bruce would never be able to forget. He could even pick up his old copy of Pride and Prejudice while he was at it. Maybe Replacement would even like to hear him read between sessions. The thought of them not even thinking to check Jason’s room until the Replacement’s corpse had started to rot and stink was nearly enough to override his better judgement.

Wayne Manor had beautiful potential, but if he ran into Alfred somehow, he knew he’d lose his resolve.

The Batcave had appeal. A lot of appeal, since the Replacement would frequently train by himself in the cave while Bruce was at work. Jason nearly did it, but he wasn't sure how the security may have changed, and using his own codes to get into the cave would have given him away. The poetry of beating the bird in the Batcave, proving that Batman was completely and utterly incapable of protecting his Robins, though, was enough that he was sorely tempted to push back his timeline just so he could clip Replacement’s wings in the shadow of the bat.

But no. He’d been planning things to long, too thoroughly, to jeopardize his revenge for the sake of poetic—extremely poetic, giving fucking Frost a run for his money—justice.

So Jason decided to go with the next best option: the Replacement’s own house.

Green pulsed in his vision, bringing a vicious grin to his face. It still proved just how pathetic the new Robin was, but with the personal touch proving that nowhere was safe from the Robin he’d replaced.

Though, seriously, Replacement’s house wasn’t safe from anyone. The security was shit. Working girls wore clothes more secure than Timothy Drake’s fucking mansion. All Jason had to do was pull a wire, and presto, no alarms. No police. Most the windows weren’t even locked, probably courtesy of Tim’s night job.

Jason went straight for the Replacement’s room, climbing up the tree outside to be able to push open the window with a nearly silent hiss.

The place was an absolute wreck—that little part of Jason trained by Alfred screamed—of abandoned clothes, papers, books, everything. The flickers of green that had been pulling at him all day coalesced until he couldn’t even see the mess anymore. Not only was the Replacement a pretender who stole Jason’s place before his body was even cold, he was also so incompetent that he could even keep his room clean. Still, he seemed to be oh so obedient to Batman, and wasn’t the man just drooling. He’d finally gotten his perfect little Robin. So much better than Jason ever could have been, probably even better than Goldie.

Not for long, though.

Jason chuckled, the green fog clearing with intent but still tinging his vision. Jason was going to make him suffer, and before the end of his revenge, Bruce Wayne would regret giving away Jason’s costume—his fucking death shroud—and his place in the family. He would regret lying to Jason and acting for years like he actually gave a damn what happened to Jason. Would regret that he wasn’t the one who was shot, and the Replacement would regret ever being born.

The bedroom and attached bathroom were empty and dark, despite the fact that Jason’s cameras had caught Drake’s return, so he slipped soundlessly into the deserted hallway. His gloved fingers trailed over the textured hilt of his favorite knife as he imagined plunging it through Drake’s hands. Maybe cut off a finger or two. Or all of them. He could keep them and send them in the mail over the course of months, maybe years. Drive home the point when the whim struck him. Yes, that was definitely going on his to do list, the green hummed to him.

The hallway light was off, and all the doors were dark. It was late, though, Jack Drake would most likely be sleeping unaware as his nocturnal son stalked the halls, also unaware as Jason stalked him. Did Jack know about his son being Robin? Probably not. No sane parent would let his kid run around the city with a strange man to fight crime, even if the costume wasn’t panties anymore. Jason grinned at the idea of telling him, but not yet. Maybe later, but that would also disrupt his plans, and he wouldn’t let that happen.

There was light bleeding up a staircase, and the distant hum of voices, so Jason quickly followed it.

The lower floor was just as pitch as the upstairs except for a single room with an open doorframe. He wouldn’t be able to get close enough to see inside without risking being seen, but he could hear fine.

Though he wasn’t sure he wanted to.

There was clearly a fight going on, and not just an argument. Both the Drakes were awake, then, and Jack Drake sound furious even before Jason could make out the words. There was a repetitive snap-slap followed by small whimpers that Jason would have found immensely more enjoyable if they were being caused by him.

“YOU FUCKING BITCH!” Jack screamed suddenly, and there was an even louder snap!

Tim cried out in pain, and to hell with not being seen. Clearly, the Drakes were occupied with something, and Jason was going to find out. Even if he was seen, it wouldn’t take much effort to tie Drake to the pipes in the kitchen and take Tim upstairs for their fun time. Jason stepped to the side, enough that he could see into the room without drawing obvious attention to himself.

Jason looked in just as the blow fell right between Tim’s shoulder blades.

Jack Drake stood above his son in the living room, his face red and the belt fisted in his hand already rising for the next blow. Tim was on his hands and knees, stripped to his boxers, his profile to Jason at an angle that let Jason see the panic in his face as he stared at the ground, tears streaming down his face as he panted in pain, and his back, raw and bleeding from welts, black and blue with old bruises. As Jason was watching, Jack whipped the belt against Tim’s neck, causing the boy to choke a scream of pain.

“Shut up!” Jack snarled. “Shut up, you fucking whore.”

“I—I’m sor—” Tim tried to gasp, but Jack lurched forward and seized a fistful of his hair to yank his head back savagely.

Jason was frozen.

“I said shut up!” Jack slammed Tim’s face sideways into the sharp edge of the coffee table.

Replacement went limp, and for a second, Jason thought he was dead. Killed by his own father, right there in the living room, in front of the man who’d come to torture and kill him but could only watch with a dropped jaw in frozen horror.

Tim groaned and struggled weakly, but his father slammed his head down again. Tim went still, but this time Jack had turned enough for Jason to see Tim’s dazed eyes as they tried to look up at his father.

Not dead yet.

Another blow like that, and maybe.

Jack pulled Tim up to his knees by his hair.

“Who were you with, Timmy,” Jack demanded, giving his hair a sharp yank that made Tim hiss. “Why were you sneaking back in?”

Tim’s face crumpled from pain to utter devastation. “N-no one, Dad. I—Please, I promise, I was just on a walk—”

“At four in the morning?!” Jack screamed directly into Tim’s ear, making the boy wince hard at the sound, then again at the way the first wince had pulled his hair. “You were out fucking, weren’t you? And you’re going to have some bitch turn up on my doorstep with a fucking bastard and who’s going to raise your kid then? Well?”

Tim’s face screwed up with such hurt and anger that Jason thought he was going to attack, put some of that training to work, but then his brow loosened and his shoulders slumped in defeat.

“Or maybe you’ve been out fucking boys, eh?” Jack shook Tim’s head. “Gonna get AIDS and die like a fucking bitch before you’re fourteen. And how will that look to the shareholders, my own son dying like a fucking whore.”

Timothy Drake was nearly fifteen.

Jason only knew that from his murder research, and he still knew Tim better than his father did.

Jason was there to murder the Replacement. His world had glowed green for days with the thought of torturing that little body that trembled uncontrollably just feet away, of seeing that face all drawn up and devastated just like it was, with those baby blue eyes overflowing with pain and betrayal and that little lip quivering in terror. Jason had no right to be mad at someone for doing exactly what he’d planned, unless he was going to be mad that Jack had already started, but that wasn’t why the Lazarus Pit roared in his ears.

“You couldn’t even get a damn pack of cigarettes?!” Willis hurled his empty beer bottle at Jason’s head.

Jason dodged, but not fast enough, and the bottle clipped his ear as it sailed past him and hit the wall with a loud crash. It took everything the seven-year-old had not to back away, but he couldn’t take his eyes off his dad, and he couldn’t walk backwards in his bare feet without knowing where the glass was.

“Th-they stole the money, Daddy,” Jason stammered, still clutching a hand around the long gash on his arm the muggers had given him when he’d tried to fight them for the ten dollar bill. “I—I couldn’t—”

Willis surged to his feet, and hell, Jason was stumbling back without even thinking. He stepped on a large piece of glass the sliced another gash along the heel of his foot, but it was better than getting a dozen tiny pieces embedded in his skin. His back hit the wall, and then there was nowhere to go.

Willis’s eyes glittered darkly as he stalked forward. He smelled of beer. He smelled of a lot of beer, and he always hit worse when he was drunk. Jason swallowed hard and tried not to cry.

He failed.

Willis smacked him so hard he flew sideways. He laned on his hands and knees, thrown so far the glass wasn’t even near him in a small mercy.

Willis seized a fistful of Jason’s hair and shook him. “I bet you stole it. I bet you used that money to buy yourself a candy bar, didn’t you? Didn’t you?!”

Jason choked on a sob and shook his head. “N-no, Daddy, no! I didn’t steal it! They took it from me!”

Daddy was going to kill him. Jason’s dad was going to kill him the same way he bragged about killing that store clerk. No one was going to catch him, and he was going to brag about killing Jason too.

Willis slowly pulled Jason to his feet by his hair. Jason stood as soon as he could get his feet underneath him, hoping that he hadn’t done something bad his dad would hit him more for.

Willis took Jason by the shoulders and turned him around to face him. Calloused fingers took Jason’s chin in their grip and squeezed painfully. His eyes were dark pits of hatred and alcohol.

“You go get those cigarettes, boy, and don’t come back until you have them,” Willis warned, then shoved Jason at the door.

Jason’s back hit the doorknob hard, and he was sure it would bruise. It did. “Wh—How?”

Willis shrugged dramatically and dropped back onto the sofa. “Hell if I care. Steal ‘em. Steal the money. Whore yourself out like the useless bitch you are. Just get me those cigarettes.”

Jason barely had the presence of mind to grab his shoes before he ran out the door.

He got the cigarettes.

Jack kicked his prone son’s ribs hard, hard enough to bruise, maybe even break, and Jason was jolted back to the present. To the hallway outside a living room in a Bristol mansion where his Replacement was being abused as bad as Jason ever was in a shitty apartment in Crime Alley. There, nearly naked and humbled on the floor, Timothy Drake wasn’t Robin, he wasn’t the Replacement. He was just a hurt kid Jason had been planning to hurt more. Why? He could barely even remember around the pulsing green in his mind that screamed for Jack’s blood.

“Maybe,” Jack started, a cruel lilt to his voice and tip to his lips as he lifted his foot and dug it into Tim’s neck, “we can put that libido to good use,  don’t you think?”

Tim’s whimper was muffled by the floor his face was being ground into.

“I know a few other fags like you,” Jack said, so low Jason almost couldn’t hear, “who would pay quite a bit for a fuck like you.”

Jason didn’t even hear the end of the sentence before the green rage had engulfed him. He felt pressure on his fist, heard screaming, but it wasn’t until his vision cleared that he realized that he was on top of Jack, plowing his fist repeatedly into the bloody mess that had been a face.

“NO!” Tim screamed again, grabbing Jason in a blood choke from behind and trying to pull Jason off his abusive asshole of a deadbeat father. “Get off my dad!”

Jason grabbed Tim by his scrawny little neck and suddenly rocked forward, flipping the smaller boy over his shoulder.

Tim landed with a sharp cry of pain that brought Jason back to his senses. Jack made a wet gurgling sound that was so satisfying, but Tim whimpered and was trying to roll onto his stomach. Jason had flipped him without thinking, meaning that the kid had just landed hard on all of his whip lashes and gaping wounds.

“Dammit,” Jason swore, grabbing Tim by the arm as he stood.

Tim yelped in fear as Jason dragged him out of the room and up the stairs to his bedroom where the window Jason had crawled in through was still open. Jason threw the switch on as he went.

“Let me go!” Tim screamed, pulling as hard as he could against Jason, but Tim was an injured little kid, and Jason was thrumming with adrenaline and magical rage.

“What, so you can go get your ass handed to you some more?” Jason snapped, turning on Tim suddenly and staring him down. “You’re fucking Robin, and you let him treat you like that?”

Tim gasped and stumbled back. That time, Jason let him.

“How do you know who I am?” Tim demanded, his voice strong but his eyes wide and terrified and his almost bare body shaking and covered in goosebumps.

Jason walked over and closed the window to block out the draft, then turned to look Tim dead in the eye. Blood was seeping from a cut on his temple where his dad had hit him against the coffee table, leaving one half of his face a bloody, sticky mess. He wondered, did Drake know anything about him? Or had Bruce just swept his existence under the rug as soon as he was out of the way?

Tim’s reaction gave the truth away.

Spindly fingers covered a shocked mouth. “J-Jason? But you’re dead!”

Jason spread his arms in a here I am gesture that Tim did not interpret correctly.

Tim surged forward so fast that Jason didn’t even have time to block him before he slammed into Jason’s chest.

“Jason!” Tim bawled, tightening his grip, leaving Jason blinking.

The hell was going on?

“Replacement?” he asked tentatively.

“You came for me!” Tim sobbed in relief. That was a lot of relief, leaving Jason feeling wrong-footed, what with the whole ‘only having shown up to brutally murder the kid’ thing. He felt kind of bad about that now, and figured he could at least kind of make up for it.

“Yes?” he said weekly. What was he supposed to do with his hands? He awkwardly clapped one on the back of Tim’s head, which was pretty much the only thing he could reach that he was pretty sure wasn’t injured. It wasn’t much for comfort, but the Replacement sobbed harder and leaned farther into Jason’s chest, so Jason ran his fingers over that silky black hair again and again until the sobbing petered out to hitched breaths and lots of sniffling.

Tim shuddered and clenched his trembling fingers into the stiff leather of Jason’s jacket. “Is my mom here?”

Jason looked around the room, like she might pop up from anywhere, but he was pretty sure he’d read that the kid’s mom was dead. “No?”

Tim sniffed hard and nodded against Jason. “Th-that’s good. I didn’t want to go to hell.”

Jason choked and pushed the kid back by his shoulders. “What did you say?”

Tim looked up—god, the kid was short—at Jason with the slightest frown. “I’m glad I’m here. I thought…I was never as good as you, so I never thought I’d go to heaven, but then you came for me, and—”

Something in Jason’s heart twitched. God, the kid had wanted to be good like Jason? Had he not heard anything about Jason? …Had he not heard anything bad about Jason?

“You’re not dead, stupid.”

Tim’s brows drew together in confusion, then his entire expression shattered into grief. “You’re not here?”

Jason flicked his forehead. “I’m not dead either…anymore. Trust me, not as fun as the punk bands make it out to be.”

That didn’t help anything. Tim’s eyes welled with more tears, but he stepped past Jason to his bed, where he promptly collapsed face first into the pillows for another round of sobs.

Jason hesitated, then sat on the edge of the bed.

The wounds on Tim’s back were bad. There were at least twelve gaping wounds, about half semi-congealed and yellowish like they’d been closed over and reopened just with the latest beating, and several scars and bruises. His stomach twisted at that. Not only had Jack managed to beat his kid without Batman finding out—because for all his faults, Bruce would have smashed Jack’s face in himself—he’d done it frequently.

The older wounds also looked like they were starting to get infected. Understandable. It was hard to treat wounds on your own back, and Tim clearly hadn’t wanted anyone to know about this. Jason understood that too. Hiding any weakness to keep Bruce from seeing it, in case it would mean losing that intoxicatingly fulfilling love. Meant losing Robin.

Jason stood wordlessly and went to the bathroom to find the first aid kit. He returned a minute later, poured some rubbing alcohol to a cotton ball, then hesitated.

“This is going to hurt a lot, Tim, but you’ve got to let me do it, got it?” Jason said.

Tim’s shoulders shook with another sob. Jason took that as a yes, please save me from a slow and feverish death by infection because my dad is an asshole.

Tim’s body flinched hard from the alcohol at the first brush, but Jason heard a deep breath against the pillow. The second touch, Tim only winced slightly.

Jason moved as quickly and gently as he could while still being thorough over each wound. Tim didn’t react beyond hissing and flinching, but Jason found himself mumbling meaningless reassurances anyway until he’d finished.

Jason dropped the cotton ball in his hand onto the floor with the rest of the blood and pus stained cotton balls he’d already used. Not like it could make the room any worse, and Replacement wasn’t coming back anyway except maybe to pack.

“Are you still awake?” Jason poked the side of Tim’s head.

Tim didn’t move, so Jason poked him harder and prodded his head to the side. Tim stared forward with unfocused eyes, looking utterly defeated. Hell. How had thinking about that expression been so exciting earlier? He’d give anything to be anywhere else. Emotions were the devil.

“Hey…kid. Little wi—baby bird, what’s wrong?” He’d liked the hair touching thing, so Jason started petting him again, only barely drawing back from scratching behind his ear. That was for dogs, he remembered, not for small teenagers.

Tim’s face screwed up like he was going to cry again. His eyes were glistening. If he did start crying, one of the two of them was getting tossed out the window, and Jason didn’t even know which.

“You’re not real,” Tim sniffled.

Jason frowned, then flicked Tim’s forehead. “Pretty sure I am, baby bird.”

And Tim was crying. If it weren’t for the hand that came to rest on his, Jason would have defenestrated himself then and there, but Tim’s hand was so small and cold, digging into his like a corpse desperate for life. Jason knew a thing or two about that.

“You died,” Tim mumbled.

Jason nodded and rolled his hand over so he could give Tim’s a brief squeeze. “And I came back. Surprise.”

Tim shook his head in denial and buried his face again. Jason sighed and put his hands under Tim, pulling him up until he was sitting. He didn’t have time for an emotional breakdown. Jack, if he wasn’t dead, was eventually going to wake up and call the police, and Jason needed to have Tim wrapped, dressed, packed, and gone before the cops arrived. If Tim was in denial, then he’d just have to stay there.

“This is a dream. You’re dreaming, and you have to let me take care of you, okay?” Jason said, grabbing the gauze from the first aid kid and waving it where Tim could see.

Tim frowned, then nodded slowly. He looked tired enough to believe it—a long patrol, a long beating, and a lot of crying must have wrung him out.

Despite how carefully Jason worked, Tim still hissed and flinched in pain every time new gauze touched a wound.

“Yeah, I know. I’m sorry, kid, that hurts like a bitch. You’ll be safe soon, though, okay? We’re going…” Where? Jason tugged at his lip with his teeth for a moment. Not Wayne Manor. He wasn’t…he wasn’t going over there. “To my apartment. Would you like that? We can hang out for a while before you wake up.” Or go to sleep. The kid had dark bags under his eyes and exhaustion etched into every line of his frown.

“There we go,” Jason said as he tucked the gauze in and started to lean back. “Nice and snug. It’ll last for a bit, till I can get you in some real bandages.”

Tim tracked his movement with his eyes, his expression hope and glum reluctance in equal parts. Jason thought he was about to say something, but Tim just silently raised a hand and laid it against Jason’s cheek. Jason inhaled sharply at the touch—the gentlest he’d received since even before he’d died. It wasn’t…bad. And it was helping baby bird, so…Jason leaned into it just a bit.

“I wish you were alive,” Tim whispered, and wasn’t he going to be thrilled once the shock wore off. “Bruce would be so happy if you were alive.”

…Maybe not thrilled, because there was no way that was true.

Jason scoffed. “Bruce doesn’t want to see me.”

Tim swiped at his nose and sniffled pathetically. “Bruce nearly killed himself because you died, Jason.”

Water cold like death ran down his spine. “…what?”

Tim stopped talking after dropping a helluva bombshell and started looking around. “I’m cold.”

Jason stood, his mind racing, and his mouth said without him really paying attention, “I’ll get it for you. Stay put.”

Jason hunted around for a minute before finding a pair of sweatpants, and loose shirt, and a hoodie to throw over it that would hopefully cushion the wounds a bit in case they got bumped. He dumped the clothes by Tim’s side, but Tim just stared at them blankly until Jason grabbed the shirt and forced it over his head, then the hoodie, and then pulled him up to stand with his hands braced against Jason’s shoulders so Jason could put the sweatpants on him, one leg at a time.

Packing was going to be impossible with Drake as useless as he was. They could come back for stuff later, but Tim was fading fast, from shock or sleep deprivation, it was unclear.

“I’m going to pick you up, alright?” Jason asked, still on his knees.

Tim paused a moment, like he was buffering, then nodded once. Jason put an arm under his knees and an arm under his back and lifted him into the air. He weighed almost nothing, despite the muscles Jason had seen. He was so small, even smaller than Jason had been at his age.

Tim lolled his head against Jason’s shoulders as Jason started walking. It was more trust than he deserved, being Tim’s pillow, but he still found himself leaning his head against Tim’s in reciprocation.

It occurred to him that the kid might want shoes later, but Jason mentally shrugged. He’d give Tim a pair of socks later and hope the kid was smart enough to not try to run in Crime Alley once he’d come back to himself.

Oh, well. Jason would just have to hold onto him to make sure he wouldn’t do something that stupid. What a pain.

Despite himself, Jason smiled as he carried Tim down the stairs. Jason took a bit to check on things—Jack Drake was still breathing, unfortunately, but passed out, more fortunately. No police yet, then. After that, it was a few more minutes to track down a set of car keys, and a couple more to find the garage. There was a cherry red sports car in there, but when Jason clicked the fob on the set of keys he’d snagged, the lights flickered on a nondescript black car. It was still nice, nicer than anything anyone in his neighbor had if they weren’t selling drugs, but not as eye catching. Not as fun either, but at least they’d be less likely to get caught.

Jason put Tim in the backseat. Tim mumbled blearily, then rolled over and went back to sleep. Jason smiled and went back into the house to find a blanket. There was one he’d seen in the living room that looked perfect to offer comfort and conceal the technically kidnapped child in the back of the car. And if Jason got to kick Jack one more time, well…he’d deserved it.

Jason deserved it too, but he was making up for it in other ways.

Jason returned to Tim, covered him up, then climbed into the driver’s seat, turned on the car, opened the garage door, and pulled out, taking his ill-gotten baby bird with him.

Batman would worry eventually, maybe. Maybe he’d even worried for Jason…

He nearly killed himself, Tim had said.

Well.

They’d be talking about that.

And maybe his revenge could wait a bit.

Chapter Text

Bruce woke to a sharp rap on his door before it was flung open so urgently that he was rolling out of bed before he even registered that it was Alfred standing with his hand white-knuckled on the doorknob and his eyes intense and ablaze with fear in a way Bruce had never seen before.

“What happened?” Bruce didn’t waste time asking questions, just went straight for the dresser and started throwing on clothes.

Alfred’s voice was composed in a way his eyes were not. “There are police cars and an ambulance at Drake Manor, and an officer stopped by to ask if we had seen Master Tim.”

Bruce’s blood ran cold, and he froze with his shirt halfway tugged on. Tim was missing. Jason was missing. Jason was missing, and then he was dead, and Tim was missing.

Bruce pulled his shirt down so hard he heard something snap faintly above the roar in his ears. What could have happened? An ambulance, that meant that someone had been injured, Jack if Tim was missing. What would be the point of kidnapping Tim straight from his house, though? A ransom? Or something more sinister? Even if it were a ransom and the ransom was paid, though, there was no guarantee that Tim would be returned alive. Bruce had to find him, fast.

Alfred followed him quickly, grabbing Bruce’s coat as he yanked on his shoes at the garage. It wasn’t actually cold enough to need a coat, and the efficient, terrified part of his brain screamed at him that he didn’t have a few seconds to spare, but the look on Alfred’s face was enough to have him snatching the coat and pulling it on as he went. Jason’s loss hurt Alfred just as much as it had hurt Bruce, even though Alfred was so much better at managing his emotions, and the same panic rushing through Bruce’s veins was undoubtably running just as cold in Alfred. Alfred needed something to do, some way to help, some way to take care of people when he was upset.

“We’ll find him, Al. Go down to the cave and see if you can find his tracker, in case he tried to follow the attacker as Robin,” Bruce told Alfred firmly as he grabbed the keys to a car. Bruce doubted that Tim would have done that, especially since they’d been coming off of a long patrol and he must have been exhausted, and doing so could jeopardize their identities, but it would give Alfred something to focus on for at least ten minutes so Bruce could focus on finding Tim. “If you can’t find that, try to track his phone.”

Alfred nodded and walked quickly away. Bruce pretended for his own sake not to see the way his nearly-father’s hands were shaking, pretended that his own weren’t just as bad. He couldn’t afford to get distracted worrying about Alfred, and vice versa. They were leaning against each other like two cards at the base of a house of cards. If either one of them went down, the other would follow, and everything would collapse on top of them.

It was barely a minute by car to the Drakes’ house, and Bruce normally walked the few times he went over there during the day, but he needed speed. Seconds counted. Seconds, and he would have saved Jason.

There were three police cars outside the house, crime scene tape over the door, and an ambulance hanging open with no gurney inside. They must have still been loading Jack up. Unless he was dead.

Bruce ducked under the yellow tape and followed the sound of voices through the house. To hell with regulation, he had been more a father to Tim the last year and a half than Jack Drake had been for Tim’s entire life, and if Jack was hospitalized, then Tim would be coming home with Bruce anyway. He had the right to know.

There was a police officer standing in the doorway of the living room, but Bruce kept walking.

The officer glanced up and noticed him, holding up a hand to stop him. “You can’t go in there, sir. This is a crime scene.”

“Where’s Tim?” Bruce said, gritting his teeth to keep from snapping or growling or breaking down completely. “What happened?”

The officer frowned. “Who are you, sir?”

Bruce took in a deep breath and ran a hand down his face. They were wasting too much time on formalities when he was clearly the most qualified to track down his son his Robin his son, but he needed allies, or they would kick him out, and he would have to waste more time hacking into the files later—the files that wouldn’t be written for at least another hour.

“I’m Bruce Wayne. I live next door and take care of Tim when his father is gone. He’s like a son to me; please, where is he?”

The officer winced and his expression filled with pity. He thought that Tim was dead, Bruce could see it in his eyes, but there was no way, not yet. Tim had only been home a few hours, three at the most, and even if he’d been taken immediately, that was hardly any time to so much as be taken to a secondary location. No matter what the kidnapper had taken him for, whether for a ransom or for… Whatever they wanted, they would want him alive for at least a little while.

“Mr. Drake was attacked in the living room. He passed out while on the phone with the dispatcher, so they weren’t able to get much information from him, but he said that Tim had been taken by the person who attacked him,” the officer said delicately. “I’m afraid that’s all I can tell you right now.”

“Was anything else taken?” Bruce asked quickly.

The officer shook his head. “Not as far as we can tell. The Drakes seem to have been the targets of the attack. Do they have any enemies that you know of?”

Enemies. Because this wasn’t how a ransom kidnapping would go. It would have been easier for the average thug to nab Tim while he was at school, or at the very least from his bedroom instead of risking a confrontation with his father. Jack Drake may have had business rivals. He could have done something to upset one of them, could have tangled with the mob and gotten into trouble, prompting Tim to be taken as a hostage. Even though Tim could have fought off most thugs, and had martial arts training on the record to cover for that fact, he would have gone willingly if it meant saving his dad. If Jack was so badly injured that he was passing out, though, then it was very possible that the intruder didn’t care if he lived or died or was mentally capable to meet demands—like they would have if they were trying to use Tim as a hostage—which would imply that Tim was the primary target. And while Jack Drake had enemies, Tim Drake did not.

But Robin did.

If Bruce had gotten another Robin killed just for being associated with him, Bruce didn’t think he would live with himself.

“I can’t think of anyone,” Bruce forced himself to say. “Can I have a look around? Please, I might notice something out of place. I’ve been here before.”

The officer frowned again at that, then turned to look into the room. “Stay here. I’ll ask the detective in charge.”

With that, he stepped into the room and finally out of Bruce’s way.

Bruce stepped into the doorframe, not going any farther to avoid antagonizing the people he frustratingly needed, and did a cursory scan of the room.

Jack was on the gurney, with one of the medics shining a penlight into his eyes. He was unconscious, but a quick glance showed that he looked like he’d been beaten to hell and back. His face was a bloody mess. That let Bruce know several things about the person he was dealing with right away. First, it was unlikely it was a meta, judging by the fist-shaped bruises forming and the lack of splash damage; second, the attacker was likely trained in physical combat if that had been his primary weapon and he’d been able to take Tim; third, Jack’s survival had not been a high priority—the number of facial blows could have easily killed him or rendered him brain dead—so it was not a ransom or blackmail kidnapping. Robin, almost certainly then, was the target.

There was blood splattered on the carpet near the fireplace, right next to the gurney, which indicated that that was where Jack had been beaten. Looking around the room quickly, he saw nothing else out of place. There were valuables on the shelves, Tim’s phone—dammit, that had been far more likely to yield results than the suit—on the coffee table, but nothing had been taken. The coffee table itself, though, about ten feet from where Jack had been beaten, was off kilter, and—

“There’s blood on the table,” Bruce snapped. He felt a rush of ecstasy at the clue, an indication to who had taken Tim.

He didn’t wait for permission, just marched into the room, stopped a foot or so from the table, and pointed at the blood smear on the edge. The wood was cherry red and the blood was drying, but it was still sticky. It hadn’t been there long, another indication that Tim hadn’t been gone long enough to have been killed.

The head detective, a stocky man with a balding scalp and fierce scowl, turned on him. “Who are you?”

“The neighbor,” Bruce said, a little more impatiently than he should have dared, but he had already explained that. “There’s blood on the edge of the coffee table, and it’s been shoved out of place. It might be the attacker’s blood.”

Please, please, be the attacker’s blood. If the intruder had committed a violent crime before and been caught, his DNA would have been registered, and it would take the Batcomputer minutes to get a name, and only a few more minutes for a last known address and list of known associates. If the intruder was good at his job, though, he might have never been caught and the blood would be a red herring. It could also be Tim or Jack’s, which would be even more useless.

Please don’t be Tim’s.

The detective scowled harder, but he looked closer at the table, then nodded to one of the photographers.

Bruce stepped a bit closer into the room. He needed to assert himself as useful without making himself a nuisance when he had no legal right to be there. He hated playing personal politics at the best of times, but with Tim—his son, whatever claim Jack might have to him—in danger, it was all he could do to not launch into his own investigation right there.

“Tim stayed with our family when his father was hospitalized before for several months,” Bruce said. If he wasn’t careful, he’d end up looking like a subject. “Please, I want to help find him. If there’s anything I can do…”

The detective looked up at Bruce with a frown, a calculating expression tugging his lips this way and that before he finally grumbled, “Would you know if something’s missing?”

Bruce nodded quickly. Even though Bruce would bet his fortune that this was not a robbery gone wrong, it would give him the excuse to look for his own clues. “Likely.”

The detective nodded and marched out the room, waving for Bruce to follow him. “We don’t know where the point of entry is. The doors are locked, but half the windows are unlatched. The wire on the security system was cut, though.”

If Bruce got Tim—When Bruce got Tim back, he would not be returning him to Jack until there had been a serious upgrade to their home security. He couldn’t believe that Tim would be so lax. No, he could. Tim had likely left the windows open so he could be sure his father wouldn’t unknowingly lock him out, and Jack had been oblivious enough for it to work.

“Their bedrooms and the safe are upstairs,” Bruce said instead of the long stream of curses he wanted to hurl at the semi-conscious man being wheeled toward the door.

As soon as Jack had been driven out into the hall and out of his way by the medics, Bruce walked briskly for the upstairs, resisting the urge to run. Did Tim keep any Robin related items in his bedroom? If he did, how well had he hidden them, and had the intruder found them? He wasn’t meant to take those kinds of things out of the cave, apart from his panic button, but Bruce knew he sometimes got caught up in cases and took them home to work a bit more.

He went for Jack’s room first, since it was the first one, and did a short sweep. He’d never been in Jack’s bedroom, though Tim had pointed it out to him one time when he’d been carrying the slightly queasy boy back to his house when he’d caught a stomach bug and Bruce wouldn’t let him patrol despite his fervent protestations. There was no obvious sign of ransacking, though. Nothing had been pulled out of the drawers, nothing indents in the carpet indicating something had been moved, and a wallet and car keys sat untouched on the dresser.  

He left the room without a word and went next to Jack’s office, leaving Tim’s room for last so he wouldn’t be rushed along from what was likely his best source of evidence. He walked straight over to the hidden safe behind a painting and tested it, then opened it for good measure, just to be safe. If it had been a robbery, then seizing Tim and forcing him to open the safe would have been a decent enough move. They might have decided after they’d beaten Jack and gotten the money from the safe to take Tim hostage. Bruce couldn’t decide if it would be better or worse for the kidnapper to be a common thug. On the one hand, it meant that retrieving Tim  would be easier, but on the other, it meant that Tim was in the hands of an impulsive fool. A villain might just kill him, though, or reveal his identity.

He opened the safe quickly, remembering that the combination was Jack and Janet’s birthdays put together and reversed.

“How do you know the combination?” the detective asked, another glimmer of suspicion in his tone, and dammit, Bruce had nearly forgotten he was there. He knew well enough that very helpful, over-cooperative people were very often suspected of trying to remove themselves from suspicion, but he didn’t know what else to do. He had to find Tim, but he couldn’t do that at the cost of being brought down to the station and wasting so much time.

“Tim lived with me for several months after his mother was murdered and his father was put into a coma,” Bruce said as he swung open the safe. Judging by the wads of cash and a box of Janet’s old jewelry sitting right there, it was not a robbery. Who would know Tim’s identity and try to take him? One of the Rogues? Or another villain? “He sent me once to get his birth certificate for his passport.”

For the trip to France, where he’d met Shiva. Would she have kidnapped him? No, that seemed unlikely, unless she was being paid for it.

He tightened his grip on the safe door, then shut and locked it and rehung the painting.

“Tim’s bedroom is this way,” he said, turning and leaving the room before he could be asked any more questions.

Tim’s room didn’t seem out of the ordinary either, but Bruce heard the detective inhale sharply.

Bruce frowned and turned to the man. “What is it? Did you see something?”

“It’s been ransacked!” the detective exclaimed.

Bruce snorted in grim amusement and shook his head. “Have you ever met a teenaged boy? I would have been worried if it was clean.”

Dick had never been tidy either, but Tim took messy to a whole new level. He claimed that spreading everything out made thing easier to find, but Bruce suspected Tim just got lost in his own mind as he frequently did and had no time for menial tasks like tidying his bedroom.

Jason had been tidy, though. Meticulously. At first, he’d had so little, and he’d crammed it all into one little backpack he kept by his window just in case he had to make a hasty retreat, but once he’d calmed down and settled, he’d become such a neat freak that he organized his sock drawer by color and material.

The memory struck a chord deep within him, and Bruce had to clench his fists tightly to keep from breaking down. He couldn’t lose another son, he couldn’t lose control, he couldn’t lose time, not when it mattered so much.

“Sir?” the detective asked gruffly as Bruce started walking through the room with trembling hands.

Bruce swallowed hard and didn’t turn around. God, he was being so suspicious. As far as the world was concerned, Tim Drake and Bruce Wayne had almost nothing to do with each other. He’d shown up out of nowhere, barged into the crime scene, and was now getting overly emotional in the boy’s bedroom. He would think that he was suspicious.

“My son,” he said thickly, “was killed when he was fifteen. I—I know he’s not my son, but he’s...Tim is in danger. We have to find him.”

There was a long silence before the detective finally said, “I’m sorry for your loss.”

At least he sounded less suspicious, Bruce thought in bitter relief. Jason’s death had brought him Tim in the first place, and now it was diverting suspicion from Bruce so that he could maybe do for Tim what he couldn’t do for Jason.

“It—We—” Bruce choked up and couldn’t find the words. Detachedly, he was conscious of the fact that he was only further strengthening the ‘grieving father worried about a kid matching his son’s profile’ image while distancing himself from the ‘probable kidnapper’ by getting so upset, the way a man who loses a leg is conscious of the fact that at least he doesn’t have to go on that diet to lose weight anymore.

Something on the windowsill caught his eye, and he quickly picked his way through the piles of clothes and random camera equipment—maybe an intervention was need please let an intervention be possible—until he could see it clearly without being close enough to disturb the scene.

“That’s a footprint,” the detective breathed.

It was, a muddy footprint of a boot, carelessly dug into the wood enough to have chipped the white paint. Tim might have been messy, but he wasn’t stupid enough to leave proof that he’d snuck out just sitting on the windowsill, and he wouldn’t have chipped the paint. He wouldn’t have been heavy enough to chip the pain, and the print was much larger than Tim’s foot  would be. If the man the print belonged to was proportional in size to his foot, then he was likely over six feet tall, and heavy as well judging by the scuffed paint, likely muscular.

“The point of entry,” Bruce said, cold confirmation settling on his chest like the weight of a casket. “They were after Tim.”

Bruce had excused himself after Tim’s room, feeling confident that he’d found all the clues he would be able to with the police breathing down his neck and absolutely terrified of how little he’d found. He had narrowed down the list of suspects to “men larger than Tim,” which was already most of Gotham. The man who’d snatched Tim could be anything from a supervillain to hired muscle who’d gotten lucky by threatening Tim’s dad.

He was so caught up in his worry that he nearly missed a major clue as he was walking out.

“The garage door is ajar,” he snapped and started toward it without waiting to see if anyone was following him.

Bruce nudged the door open the rest of the way with his toes to avoid corrupting any potential fingerprints. He could hear someone yelling at him, that he wasn’t supposed to be over there, Bruce was pretty sure, but it was just background noise.

The garage was missing a car. Jack’s car.

His heart hammered against his chest with fear and victory. They had a lead.

“Jack’s car is missing,” Bruce said tightly, barely biting his tongue in time to keep from telling them how to find it. He wasn’t doing well at playing the ‘airhead billionaire’ act at the moment. “The kidnapper might have stolen it. It’s a…I forget, it’s black though. Not very distinctive.”

It was a good choice for a kidnapper if he wanted to lay low. The red car would have been easily located, but a black car of any variety could blend in far better. Perhaps the attacker wasn’t as impulsive as he’d thought.

Bruce breathed out heavily and brushed his way past the gaggle of police officers in the door. “I need to call my ward—let him know what’s going on. He’ll want to help join the search.”

Dick was still upset with him, but they were doing better. Much better, and even if they weren’t, Dick would never leave Tim to suffer just because he was mad at Bruce. He should have called Dick earlier, given him a head start on the drive between Blüdhaven and Gotham, but it had entirely slipped his mind. If something happened to Tim because Bruce had been too scatterbrained to call for help….

Bruce ran a hand down his face as he nearly ran through the halls of the Drake house and down the front steps back to his car. He pulled out his phone and dialed Dick’s number, just hoping that his oldest son would pick up. He might be sleeping, injured, or mad at Bruce for some new hamartia he’d noticed.

Dick picked up on the third ring and Bruce released a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding as he backed out of the driveway and took off toward the manor like a Bat out of hell.

“B, if this—”

“Tim has been kidnapped,” Bruce interrupted. He’d been trying to be firm, but his voice shook despite his best efforts. “From his house. His father has been beaten, but Tim appears to have been the main target. Please, I need you in Gotham.”

Dick’s breath rattled sharply on the other end of the line, and his own voice wobbled when he spoke. Dick might have not been there for Jason’s death, but it had rattled him as well. He wouldn’t lose another little brother if he could help it, Bruce was sure.

“I’m leaving now,” Dick said. “I’ll be there in an hour, tops. Do you know who—”

“No. I have no idea who did this, but I have a lead. I need to call Barbara now,” Bruce said, leaving the provide any urgent information now or hang up unspoken.

“We’ll get him back,” Dick promised, but he didn’t sound as confident as he seemed to have been aiming for.

Bruce hung up before he could try to match Dick’s promise with a lie he only hoped would be true, then called Babs.

Barbara didn’t pick up, so Bruce waited until he was sent to her voicemail and tried again. This time, she picked up halfway through the first ring.

“Who the everloving fuck is calling me at six in the morning? Where are my fucking glasses? Who the fuck is this?” Barbara snarled groggily.

Bruce would have been quietly amused at any other time or sadly reminded of Jason. It was a tossup these days.

“Tim’s been kidnapped from his home. The kidnapper stole Jack Drake’s car. I need you to find it for me, now,” Bruce said, speaking slowly even though it grated at his already frayed nerves. She sounded like she’d just woken up, though, and wasn’t up to speed yet. Speaking slowly was better than repeating himself, but only just.

Barbara inhaled sharply and a creaking of her bed in the background sounded like her pulling herself out of it. “I’m on it. Any idea who took him?”

Bruce shook his head before realizing she couldn’t see. “A man, judging by the boot print, probably six feet to six foot four. Heavy, too, likely with muscle if he was able to beat Tim. I don’t know if he’s leaving town or going to ground, or why he went after Tim. Check the—”

“I know. I've got my programs primed and ready to go, just tell me which car. Black BMW or Red Ferrari?” There was a clacking of computer keys for a minute.

"BMW."

"Have you called Dick?"

"Of course."

A relieved sigh on the other end. "I'm hanging up now. I'll call when I've got a hit. Don't distract me unless you've got new details that I need to know."

The call clicked to an end as Bruce pulled into his own garage. He parked and hopped out of the car, making his way toward the cave with single-minded determination. Adrenaline was buzzing in his veins to the point of stiffness, and his arms felt heavy with a remembered weight, wet with blood he'd washed off long ago. 

Not this time. Not to Tim. Losing one child had been his greatest failure, losing two would be…

It wouldn’t come to that.

Even if it cost Bruce his life, Tim was coming home safe.

Chapter Text

Tim didn’t notice the rumbling purr of an engine or the smooth feeling of movement until they stopped.

He blinked slowly and rolled onto his back—only for every nerve in his body to come alive with pain.

Tim gasped and shot up, immediately regretting that decision too. His head spun so fast he thought it was going to drop straight off his shoulders. He collapsed straight backwards, landing hard on the very wounds he’d been trying to protect, sending the burning pain screaming through his body so sharp that Tim sobbed and nearly passed back out.

Tim was only barely aware of a slight shake of the bench he was on at the edge of his perception as wave after wave of agony coursed through him.

A hand grabbed him and flipped him quickly onto his stomach.

“Goddammit, Replacement!” the person snapped, but Tim couldn’t do more than sob in desperate relief.

He didn’t know where he was, he didn’t know why he was hurt, he didn’t know who had him or even that they weren’t the person who’d hurt him in the first place, but he could feel the firm pressure being kneaded into his shoulders, above the wounds, that grounded him and brought him back to himself. Tim closed his eyes and focused on his breath until his breathing even out from ragged gasps to just slight shuttering.

There was an exasperated sigh above him that made him flinch from reproach. “How the hell did you forget that you were whipped, Replacement?”

Whipped? That sounded right, but his head felt like it was being filled with cotton and lead at the same time, and thinking was too hard. Still, situational awareness and all that.

Tim groaned with the effort it took to turn his head to the side and open his eyes to look up. The light, dim as it was, still hurt his eyes and he clenched them shut with a gasp. That was enough situational awareness to know that his situation sucked.

The hand on his shoulders stilled, then moved to his head and the fingers wove gently through his hair, teasing out tangles and only snagging a little.

“Hey, baby bird. How are you feeling?” the voice asked, softening a bit.

Everything hurts and my head feels like cotton and I don’t know what’s going on and where I am and I want Bruce and Dick and Alfred, and I want Bruce to make my dad stop hurting me every time he’s mad at me, and I wish I was good enough for him, and I wish that people didn’t always leave me, and Bruce will leave me eventually because he doesn’t even really like me because I’m horrible, Tim tried to say. “Urrangh” and heartbroken sobs is what actually came out.

“…And here I thought you were supposed to be the smart one,” the person said. “Do you remember what happened tonight?”

Tim frowned, which pulled at a wound on the side of his face, making him wince, which hurt his back. He bit his lip nearly enough to make it bleed in order to distract himself, then shook his head slightly when the pain felt less like red hot irons and more like really, really hot irons. He hoped he hadn’t been kidnapped by a villain, because he wasn’t going to be able to defend himself at all.

The hand kept carding through his hair, though, and it felt so nice. There was no way someone that kind could ever hurt him, so he relaxed and let the gentle touch continue.

“Your dad caught you coming home from patrol,” his caretaker told him, and now that he thought about that, yes, Tim remembered that. He’d vaguely remembered it before, at least that his dad had whipped him, but it had been all blended in with all the other beatings his dad had given him with no sense of chronology to separate it out as being the most recent. That particular beating being the latest explained the fire of whip lashes on his back and the throbbing pain where his head had been hit…once? Twice? Hard.

Tim nodded his understanding, and the man went on. “I beat him up for you, but you stopped me before I could kill him.”

The man’s fingers curled into what was nearly a fist, pulling on Tim’s hair just slightly by accident. He sounded very annoyed at Tim for that.

Tim inhaled sharply, not remembering…his head was bleeding, his dad was furious, his dad was gonna whore him out, there was someone attacking his dad and he felt such mind-blowing relief before he realized that the new person was going to cave his dad’s face in right there, and he was trying to pull the person off, and then…

Tim’s eyes shot open, despite the stabbing pain, just to find that face he’d seen a thousand times behind a mask, through a lens, but so much smaller and softer.

The face that looked down on him was older, older than Jason ever got to be, hard lines and sharp features with none of the lingering baby fat that gave his face that impish quality that he wielded like a psychological sledgehammer when he was Robin. No matter how much Tim tried, he could never humiliate anyone as badly as he’d seen people humiliated when Jason destroyed them with a childlike little smirk. His eyes were…green, and there was a tuft of white in his hair.

Tim’s heart sank a bit.

He was still dreaming, then.

He sighed wearily and closed his eyes. People didn’t come back to life, no one had saved him from his dad, and he couldn’t even remember Jason right. It would explain how…off everything felt, how heavy and swishy and stuffed his head felt all at once. He felt like Alice, in Alice in Wonderland. Everything was too big or too small, nonsense and surreal.

At least if everything was a dream, then his dad hadn’t really caught him sneaking in through the living room window so he could grab a snack from the kitchen on his way to his room. His dad hadn’t slapped and kicked him around while screaming for ten minutes before throwing him to the floor and demanding he strip. The jangle of his dad’s belt buckle hadn’t made his stomach twist in dread as he heard his dad work the belt loose of his pants. His dad hadn’t slammed his head onto the coffee table and made plans to use Tim as a piece of meat he could throw at his business partners to butter them up.

Unless that had all happened and Tim had just passed out from head trauma. Jason had said that he was dreaming, but maybe Tim was just dead. He’d heard something about people getting a new body in Heaven, which would explain why Jason looked so off.

But if…if his dad had really been planning to whore Tim out like that, and Tim was going to actually wake up, then…then he might really have to tell Bruce. He’d thought about it before, plenty of times, but he could never quite…

Bruce didn’t really want him. Tim was just a placeholder, a useful annoyance who’d muscled his way into a grieving father’s life and demanded that he risk reliving his recent trauma because the man would rather fight himself into an early grave beside his son than go to therapy. Even if Tim’s dad did lose custody of him, it wasn’t like Bruce actually wanted Tim around forever. Sure, he’d taken Tim in before, but they’d known his dad was going to wake up, so it was obviously not going to be permanent, and even then, it was just because Batman needed a Robin, and Tim couldn’t be Robin in foster care. It had mattered so much more, then, that Tim be there, though. But Bruce was steadier, happier. Dick was around more, even if things were still a bit tense, they’d figure things out. If Tim got taken by CPP now, Bruce would probably be annoyed at first to lose all that time and money if Tim went away, but he’d be more than willing to toss Tim aside and find himself a new Robin.

Tim couldn’t deal with that.

Tim could have dealt with that, maybe, in the beginning, when he’d just wanted Dick to go back to be Robin again in the first place, but he couldn’t deal with it now after getting to know the Wayne. He couldn’t lose Dick Grayson’s octopus hugs that wrapped so much around him that the counted for three hugs at once, or the way that Dick would just sit and talk with him like Tim wasn’t just some stupid little kid, or the way Dick sometimes called Tim his little brother, even if Tim didn’t think he really meant it. He couldn’t lose doing homework in the kitchen as Alfred bustled around and asked him about his day, or the weird looks Alfred gave him when he thought that Tim should eat more but didn’t want to say anything, or Sunday mornings when Alfred made crepes and actually sat down at the table to eat with them. He couldn’t…

He couldn’t lose Bruce. He couldn’t lost the way Bruce watched out for him, even if he…probably…didn’t really like Tim, like when he’d taken Tim in when his dad was in a coma, or when he’d arranged his mom’s funeral when people kept asking Tim questions he didn’t understand, or when his dad went on business trips and Bruce ordered Tim to stay at the manor even though Tim would be fine alone, or the countless times that Bruce had been so attentive to Tim’s physical health that he’d nearly found out what his dad did. He couldn’t lose those nights when Bruce was injured but wanted Tim to come over anyway so he could eat dinner with them and maybe watch a movie or just hang out. He couldn’t lose those rare little hugs Bruce gave him, tentative like he was worried his arms would fall off if he put them around Tim. The way Bruce touched Tim was so different from how his dad touched him. Bruce…maybe he didn’t like Tim, but he did care. Yet again, Tim wished that Bruce was his real dad.

Even if Tim did get taken from his dad’s care, that didn’t necessarily mean that he would go to Bruce’s even if Bruce did want him to keep being Robin. CPP didn’t like placing kids with single men. They hadn’t even liked placing him with Bruce the first time, but that had only gone through because his mom had just died and Bruce had played up how important it was for a boy to be around someone who understood what he was going through at such a time in his life. Not that Bruce really got it, because he’d known exactly what to feel when his mom died, unlike Tim, who still didn’t know how he felt about the fact that the woman who’d birthed him and then ignored him for thirteen years was rotting in a box somewhere in the ground.

If Tim got take from his dad because of child abuse, then it was highly unlikely that he would be placed right next door unless his dad actually was in jail. It just wouldn’t be safe, they’d think, not knowing about Wayne Manor’s insane security system. And it wasn’t even that bad. Not like how other Gotham kids got beaten. Certainly not enough to risk facing the unfettered jaws of the Gotham foster care system as a Bristol outsider. Besides, it wasn’t like his dad wouldn’t probably be able to buy Tim back no matter what, and then he’d be even more mad at Tim.

No, it was better to just take the beatings and slaps and yelling when they came so he could still pretend, even if just for the few hours and days at a time that he could snatch with the Waynes, that someone cared about him in a way that really mattered. That he was more than what he did. He loved Bruce, and he never wanted Bruce to realize how much better his life would be without Tim in it to screw everything up.

If his dad was going to whore him out, though…That was too much. Bruce would at the very least stop Jack. He might even get the CPP to let Tim stick around until he could find him a foster home that wasn’t going to traffic him for his organs or sexual potential.

Two hands, feeling warm and real, reached under Tim’s arms and pulled him slowly up against a chest that felt sold and corporeal. It was so strange how real the body felt felt, even through the surreal haze that thinking was at the moment.

Jason pulled Tim the rest of the way out of the car and up against his body. He splayed one hand on the back of Tim’s neck and supported Tim’s legs with his other arm, then started walking. Tim knew he should help, be something other than deadweight, but his body felt like lead, and he couldn’t twitch his limbs enough to wrap them around Jason. Dream physics applied, though, so as long as he just wished for Jason to be able to carry him, then he should be able to manage it without too much trouble.

“Dammit, you’re tiny, shrimp,” Jason grumbled in his ear, but Tim sighed and nestled his head against Jason’s shoulder. Dream physics worked like a charm.

Normally, Tim wouldn’t have dared be so clingy and pathetic, but since it was a dream, surely that meant Jason wasn’t going to leave him. He would have already left Tim if he was going to leave. And Dream-Jason was so warm and comfy, even though his shoulder was a bit bony. He felt really strong, though, and he’d definitely protect Tim from any punishments his dream-dad could throw at him. He kind of felt like Bruce, but his hug was more confident. Jason’s face, Bruce’s body, and Dick’s hugs. An amalgamation of his heroes, there to rescue him. A smile tugged quickly at Tim’s mouth before exhaustion melted it off his face.

Of course, when he actually died and met Jason, he was going to be cool for their first meeting. Maybe beg forgiveness for taking his place or ask for his autograph or something like that, but he definitely was going to make a better first impression than being beaten up and sobbing his eyes out on multiple occasions. This was just a practice run, to get all that stuff Bruce called “touch starvation” out of his system before he could embarrass himself in the afterlife.

Jason was certainly helping with that goal, rubbing his bare hand up and down Tim’s neck, into his hair, then down to his collar again. If Tim were a cat—which had nearly happened during a run-in with a magician a few weeks ago—he would have been purring in happiness. Dream-Jason…it must have been Tim’s subconscious, putting his hero’s aged-up face on a body so much like Bruce’s. Bruce didn’t hold him often, because Tim wasn’t his real kid, but when he did, when he forgot that Tim was just a fake, his hugs felt solid and secure just like that.

Tim closed his eyes, not passing out, but not caring enough to follow what was happening. They must have been going up stairs at one point, because Tim bounced slightly with each step, and then Jason’s gait evened out until it stopped suddenly. There was a click of a key in a lock—and then again and again and again, because apparently there were a lot of locks—and then they were moving again.

“I’m going to put you on the bed, shrimp,” Jason said as he carried Tim farther into the…house? Apartment? Into another room. “You had shitty bandages and no ointment, so I’ve got to get those off you and wrap you back up before those bandages start to stick.”

Tim whined in incoherent annoyance. That sounded like it was going to hurt, and Tim was having a mostly good dream, and good dreams weren’t supposed to hurt so much. His head was already throbbing and felt like it had been stuffed with cotton. Jason just sighed and sat Tim down on the edge of a creaky mattress.

Jason tried to pull back, but Tim clung to him stubbornly. No, this was a good dream, and Jason was going to cuddle him if it meant he had to spend the rest of the dream wrestling his subconscious into submission.

His stupid dream gave Jason super strength and Tim noodle arms.

Jason lifted Tim’s arms carefully from his shoulders, then flopped Tim onto his stomach, making his head bounce against the pillow.

Tim groaned in pain when his brain felt like it bounced against his skull. He is eyes were clenched tight, but he could feel how the world was spinning around him so fast that he nearly threw up.

“Tim?” Jason asked hesitantly, poking the back of Tim’s head with a finger.

Tim groaned again and pulled away. He couldn’t move far before he felt like he was going to throw up again, so hopefully Dream-Jason got the hint to not do that.

“…Your head hurt? Your dad hit it pretty hard,” Jason said slowly. His hand touched Tim’s head again, carding through his hair but also pushing his face into the pillow, striking that exact balance between well-intentioned and extremely annoying.

“Unnngh,” Tim moaned as he flopped a hand out to try to find Jason’s arm so he could pull it into his own where it would actually be comforting and not painful.

“You sound pretty out of it,” Jason mumbled, more to himself than to Tim. “Stay put, baby bird.”

The bed creaked and shifted as Jason stood, and Tim groaned again, reaching out without looking for his hero. He couldn’t leave! Tim could be good!

Tim’s fingers brushed Jason’s sleeve, but he didn’t have time to grasp it before Jason stood up.  Jason’s heavy retreating footsteps rattled in Tim’s head and his eyes prickled with tears of pain and rejection as his dream quickly spiraled into a nightmare. His head hurt, his back hurt, his dad hated him, and Jason was leaving.

Tim pressed his face deep into the pillow, wondering if he’d just wake up in the real world if he were to suffocate. Or maybe he’d just fall asleep. Even if he didn’t, at least the pillow numbed the pain of the light and sounds as it molded around his face and ears.

Just as he was beginning to despair never waking up and being stuck, pained and alone in that dreamscape forever, Jason’s footsteps slunk back into the room, quieter before, with the hiss of socks on woods instead of the clunking of his boots. Tim relaxed with a slight sigh. Maybe it wasn’t a nightmare after all.

“I’m going to sit you up so I can get those bandages off you and check you for a concussion,” Jason warned Tim when his feet stopped in beside the bed.

Concussion? Jason thought Tim had a concussion?

He didn’t wait for another one of Tim’s extremely eloquent responses that time. He scooped Tim up, propped him against the head board so that his uninjured neck and shoulders could bear most of his weight, then stabbed Tim’s eyes with a stupid blinding light.

Tim blinked and looked away with a betrayed cry, and Jason whistled.

“Hell, kid. That’s gotta hurt. Might need a head scan…” Jason sighed, then his deft fingers pulled off Tim’s sweatshirt and shirt and brushed up against Tim’s sides as they slowly unwound the bandages.

Jason had been right, and a bit too late. The blood from his cleaned wounds had started to congeal and dry in the fibers of the bandages, wrapping into them so that pulling the bandages off felt like pulling a layer of skin with them. When the bandage started to catch, though, Jason placed a warm wet washcloth against the spot for a few moments until the blood had been loosened and Jason could pull the bandage away with ease.

“He do this to you often?” Jason asked after a long silence. The bandages were almost halfway off.

Tim nodded slightly, enough that he didn’t have to talk, but not enough that it would hurt his head, then yawned. His dad did beat him fairly often, though it was much more now that his mom was dead and his dad was in town more often. Bruce had gotten close to noticing several times in the last few weeks.

Jason growled under his breath. “Bastard. You should have let me kill him, Replacement.”

Tim whined in protest, giving the slightest shake of his head. “Not ‘placement.”

Jason snorted and kept unwinding the bandages in silence for a few moments. “How long was I dead before he found you? Before he gave you my costume and my place at the table?”

There was bitterness in that voice, pain and betrayal that Tim knew very well himself.

“Bruce didn’t…” Tim had to gasp for breath at a catch. Jason hissed and pressed the washcloth onto it, making it sting even worse. Everything hurt, and he was so tired from that little taste of sleep he’d gotten in the car. The concussion felt like it had settled in, and none of the adrenaline…was it adrenaline in dreams?…from before was helping. “…find me. I…knew. Made him take me.”

“You knew?” Jason scoffed and pulled back the washcloth so he could give the bandage a cautious tug. “You mean you just walked up and told him ‘I’m your kid now and I know you’re Batman’?”

Tim frowned heavily and opened his eyes with great effort, because Dream-Jason was being stupid and needed to know that. “I’m not his son.”

“Me neither,” Jason chirped, but he didn’t sound happy. He sounded sad and angry, and that wasn’t even true.

“Bruce loves you,” Tim argued. “Nearly killed ‘imself…”

Jason  paused as he pulled the last of the soiled bandages away. “What do you mean? He nearly killed himself? B seems more the type to take any pain he might have felt out on everyone else.”

“Kept getting hurt. Reckless. Too much. I made a powerpoint.” Tim closed his eyes again and leaned forward into Jason’s shoulder. Talking was hard. Balance was hard. Thinking was hard. “Tt’s why…’m Robin. Batman needs a Robin.”

“So he replaced me,” Jason scoffed, even as one of his hands came up and wrapped tightly around Tim’s shoulders. “Might not be your fault, but he still replaced me months after I died.”

Tim groaned in annoyance and pain. “Nooo, don’t be stupid, Jason! ‘m tired and my head hurts and I don’t wanna talk so much. . Bruce needs a…Jason. Not a Tim. Bruce ‘sn’t Batman, Batman is…My head hurts.”

Jason tensed under his body, and if he said anymore stupid stuff, Tim was going to—he didn’t know what, but he was going to.

Jason sighed and leaned Tim forward so he was lying on his bare stomach on the scratchy comforter. He didn’t say anything more, which wasn’t good, but it was better.

Jason unzipped something, probably his first aid kit, which was a weird thing for a dead boy to have, but oh well. After a few more moments of silence, Jason used his fingers to massage what felt like antibiotic ointment onto each of the gashes. Tim did his best, but he still hissed and bit his lip at every touch.

“There,” Jason said at last, and Tim was hoping that meant done.

It did not mean done, and maybe Tim preferred Jason when he was dead and not being a jerk.

Jason placed gauze pads on each of the wounds, using the ointment to glue each pad to Tim’s back. Even the light pressure on the welts hurt, and he was sure his entire back that wasn’t bleeding was bruised.

Next, Jason sat Tim up again, the gauze pads pulling awkwardly as they slid down his back at a glacial pace. Jason quickly began to wrap Tim up again in new bandages that felt thicker and better quality than the ones he had in the first aid kit Steph had given him for Christmas.

Still, being upright hurt his head, and the new pressure on his back hurt the cuts and bruises there. At least Jason was letting Tim keep leaning into his arm for comfort and support.

Finally, Jason was apparently satisfied, because he shifted Tim off his shoulder and helped him  lie down on his stomach again.

“There. Get some more sleep, baby bird,” Jason said, petting Tim’s head again, gentler that time. It wasn’t shoving Tim’s head into the pillow or making his head hurt worse. It was just…nice.

Tim hummed in approval as Jason carded his hands through Tim’s hair. He was so warm. So present. So not dead. Everything Tim wanted to leach from Bruce or Alfred or Dick after a bad beating, but there he was, even if it was just a dream, being pet and cared for by Jason.

Tim yawned and nestled farther into the blankets but didn’t actually get under them. That seemed like way too much work, even if he was cold. Jason’s hand left his head and returned a moment later to pull a throw blanket up over Tim’s shoulders. It wasn’t actually very warm, but it was very kind. He closed his eyes and every muscles in his body turned to lead like a switch had been flipped.

The bed shifted as Jason stood up, but instead of getting into the bed and staying, he started to walk away.

Tim cried out before he could even process it. Jason couldn’t leave. He’d just done that, and he couldn’t leave again.

Jason turned back at his whine, and Tim forced his eyes to open again so he could scowl at Jason properly.

“What? Are you dying?” Jason was frowning, but then something seemed to occur to him, and his mouth twitched up into a smirk. “Don’t worry. I know a guy.”

“Don’t go,” Tim tried to order, but it came out as a mumble.

Jason snorted and moved to stand up. “You’ll be fine. Just get some sleep. I’ll figure out what I’m doing with you later.”

Tim’s eyes welled with tears. He was being too clingy. Even in his own dream, he couldn’t get what he wanted without it driving everyone away. His own hero, resurrected just to save Tim, metaphorically, couldn’t stand him.

“…Why are you crying?”

Tim’s breath hitched, and he had to fight back the sobs. “No one ever stays. It’s okay. You can go. I’ll be fine here a—a—alo—”

Tim broke down, turning his face back into the pillow so that maybe Dream-Jason wouldn’t see how completely pathetic he was and then never come back.

A hand was set on his head so fast it was nearly a slap, pushing Tim’s head farther into the pillow.

“Please stop crying.” Jason sounded a bit choked. Just like how he’d probably choked when he was dying, alone in Ethiopia. Where even was Ethiopia? Was that in Brazil? Or Rhode Island? Jason was blown up in Rhode Island!

“You died and now you hate me,” Tim cried harder, but the words were muffled by the fabric his face was being shoved into.

“…I don’t…hate you.” But he hesitated because he did hate Tim and was just being too polite to tell him because everyone was always too polite to tell Tim what it was that made them hate him so much, so he could never fix it, so everyone was just going to hate him forever.

“Yes y-y-yaaAAHH!” A massive yawn took him off guard, and when it was done, he didn’t have the energy to fight anymore. It was already too late.

“…You know…I’m a bit tired. And this is my bed,” Jason said after a moment.

He wanted Tim to move? Tim could maybe get up if he left most his internal organs behind to lighten the ship, but then Jason would have a liver in his bed. And a spleen. And Tim liked his spleen.

Jason grabbed under Tim’s shoulders and pulled him up against his body. Tim melted into the hold, soaking in every last drop he could before Jason dumped him on the floor or carried him to the couch.

Jason used his other hand to push back the blankets, and Tim didn’t understand what was going on until Jason sat down on the bed and laid back with Tim lying on his broad chest.

Jason was staying. Tim was staying.

Jason wanted him.

Jason pointedly did not look Tim in the eye as he bent forward to pull the blankets over them. Tim just stared at Jason and his reddening cheeks in stunned awe. Mustering more strength than even Superman had, Tim wriggled a hand free of the blankets and poked Jason’s cheek. It was hot.

Jason Todd was blushing.

Tim snickered and sniffled, ignoring Jason’s grumbling, and snuggled down so he could pillow his head on Jason’s shoulder.

“You got snot on this pillow,” Jason accused as he lifted his head and flipped the pillow over, but he couldn’t have been that mad, because he put his hand on Tim’ head and pet him, giving him a brief scratch behind the ears before flinching and going back to petting. “I hope you’re happy.”

And Tim was.

Tim was very happy.

Chapter Text

There was a weigh pressing Jason’s body down against the bed, growing heavier with every breath, and blankets hampering any movement of his limbs.

Wall trapping him in, satin all around him, the air was running out, splinters in his hands, dirt on his face, Bruce, Bruce, Bruce, BRUCE.

No. Jason took a deep, shuddering breath and forced himself to focus on the differences. It would do no good to save the kid from his asshole father just to kill him in a Lazarus Pit-heightened panic attack.

In for four.

The coarse weave of the blankets and sheets around him now, as different from the satin as he could manage. The room around him, brightly lit and wider than the few square feet he was occupying.

Hold for seven.

A soft hiss of breath every other second, brushing warm against his neck.A widening patch of wetness seeping through his shirt on his shoulder. A small chest expanding and contracting slowly against Jason’s. His own fingers, threaded through sweaty black hair.

Jason only managed five seconds of breathlessness before he was breathing out just enough to gasp down another breath.

Again.

In for four.

That was the easy part. Counting as his chest rose slowly in proof that he was alive.

Hold for seven.

The Replacement wasn’t… It wasn’t….that hard to breathe with his body draped over Jason’s, even though most his weight was on Jason’s chest and stomach. He was—he was a shrimp, really. How Bruce ever let him out the door to fight was beyond him, but Bruce— No, Jason wasn’t going to think about Bruce. Where was he?

Six, seven.

Out for eight.

Jason flexed his trembling fingers in Tim’s hair. His chest twitched violently with the need to breath, but he counted up as slowly as he could manage. It was still rushed, but it was the best he was going to be able to do.

He carded his fingers gently through Tim’s hair and mouthed the last few numbers.

Good job, Jaylad. Let’s do it again.

In for four.

The tension in his chest loosened slightly, making it a bit easier to breathe.

The kid snuffled in his sleep and rubbed his nose into Jason’s shirt, probably wiping a shit ton of snot into the fabric because apparently he’d been replaced by a three-year-old, but it gave him something else to focus on. Jason pet his hair a bit more insistently to try to settle him, but then Tim started to roll. Jason sighed and grabbed his shoulder—loosely, not even trying to hurt him—to keep him from rolling off Jason or onto his injured back. Either would wake him, and the kid clearly needed sleep after the night he’d just had.

More than that, Jason needed Tim to stay asleep.

What the fucking hell was he going to do with the kid?

Eventually, Bruce was going to come looking for him. Probably. No, definitely, because his replacement was tiny and adorable, and all the research he’d done had shown that Timothy Drake was an obedient little duckling who’d somehow imprinted on a bat. Bruce would definitely come to find Tim, which meant that Jason couldn’t be around when he did. Unfortunately, Tim was concussed and probably dissociating besides his other injuries, and Jason didn’t trust him being alone for long.

“You know, you’re cute, but you’re trouble,” Jason grumbled, ruffling Tim’s hair. “I had a plan. A big plan. There were explosions and shit involved. And a bit of murder. But nooo, you just had to be—”

Jason sighed. The Replacement just had to be an abused little kid. The Replacement just had to be human. No wonder Bruce fell for him enough to completely forget about Jason.

….except, apparently, he didn’t forget Jason. Apparently, he’d nearly gotten himself killed being reckless because he missed Jason. Maybe Tim was wrong, but…

Bruce needs a Jason.

…Maybe Tim was right.

But Talia wouldn’t lie to him…would she?

A tinge of green and a dull whine of old memories playing in the back of his mind forced him to stop. He could….deal with that later. Everything. He just…

All the strength and tension left him like he’d been hit by a crowbar. His hand stilled in Tim’s hair. It was all too much to think about, and he wasn’t going to manage it without getting furious at someone. With the kid as helpless as he was, it wasn’t the time.

 Normally when he was trying to avoid all his troubles, he would go for a walk or do something to occupy his mind—generally punching shit—but since it wasn’t like he could go anywhere with Timothy Drake on his chest like the world’s largest cat, he had only one escape.

It was only once he’d closed his eyes that he realized how tired he’d been the whole time. It had been a long night, and it was going to be a longer day. He’d never been able to sleep very heavily, courtesy of his time on the streets and having Willis Fucking Todd for a father, but with the gentle rise and fall of Tim’s chest, the sound of soft breathing, his own personal space heater…

Ha ha ha hahahahaHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAHAAAAAAAAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!

Jason’s eyes flew open in a blaze of green—he was alive, he wasn’t supposed to be alive, he was dead dead dead, where was he, why couldn’t he move, what was on him, he couldn’t breathe—before it all crashed back down and the green glowed brighter.

That fucker beating his kid, planning to whore his fourteen-year-old out, and Tim perfectly able to fight him off but forced to take that shit because he couldn’t trust his own fucking father with the truth that he was Robin.

Jason forced himself to take a slow, deep breath and push the Lazarus Pit’s influence off as much as he could. If he went off the deep end at Drake no. 1, his rage was certain to run wild until it circled back around to Drake no. 2, and Tim was in no fit state to fight or run.

It would be so easy, though, to slip out from underneath Tim, who was stirring but not truly awake yet and still seemed to think everything was a dream, and go back to that house,  or maybe the hospital if Jack Drake had called for an ambulance. How hard would it be to slit his throat and leave him bleed out while drowning in his own blood? Or maybe he’d let Drake live, but since he clearly didn’t like his offspring, Jason could make sure that he wouldn’t have anymore.

That would be nice, the rage in him purred, and the vengeful side that had come so close to pushing Garzonas off that balcony purred along with it.

Tim chose that moment to yawn dramatically and smack the back of his head hard into Jason’s cheekbone.

“Shit, Replacement!” Jason snapped, his fingers curling into a fist. Robin wanted a fight? Then Jason would—

Robin did not want a fight, Jason reminded himself with gritted teeth and a growing headache. Ro—Tim was sleeping on top of Jason because Jason had put him there, and being smacked by unnaturally hard heads was an occupational hazard of being a self-inflicting martyr.

Tim shifted again, then flinched and drew in a sharp breath. His spindly fingers twitched a moment in warning before curling tight, his nails digging in and dragging across the leather of Jason’s jacket with a muted screech like nails on a chalkboard. Jason winced and tried not to be mad, because, again, his fault, but there was no way he was getting those marks off, and he’d liked that jacket.

Jason forced himself to take deep, level breaths even as Tim’s breathing picked up erratically and his little body trembled with whimpers of pain.

“Shit, Timmy,” Jason groaned.

He hadn’t thought of that when he went to bed, but Tim must have been in horrible pain already, and bashing his head into Jason had definitely hurt him more than it had hurt Jason. Jason didn’t keep pain killers in his safehouse on principle, but that principle was dependent on Jason not bringing wounded birds back to them.

Worse, while the lime green tint in his vision had faded, it wasn’t gone, and it might come back. Hell, he had not thought any of this out. No, fuck that, he had though extensively about what he was going to do the previous night, and his plan had been completely tossed out the window the second he found out that Robin #3 had a bit of a sob story.

Tim shifted and tried to get up, digging his bony elbows into Jason’s ribs as he did and briefly making it even harder to breathe. It was only through sheer force of will that he didn’t throw Tim off him and roll off the bed in the opposite direction. God, he had to get out, he needed—

Jason grabbed Tim’s shoulder and guided him as gently as he could—which was pretty abrupt, but not painful—off of Jason and into a sitting position that would keep any pressure off his injured back.

Tim whined incoherently and grabbed Jason’s wrist, but it was a simple twist to get his hand free.

“Not right now, baby bird,” Jason breathed, kicking off the blankets and standing up.

“Who—?” Tim rubbed at his eyes and blinked blearily up at Jason, then squinted and gestured vaguely at his own bangs while staring intently at Jason’s. “No. No skunk. Just Robin.”

…It was easy to remember why he’d wanted to punch the kid.

Too easy.

He needed to get out.

“Go back to sleep, Timmy. I’ll be back when you get up, okay?” Jason tried to sound as soothing as possible, but it was hard to do so while actively clenching his teeth against magical murderous rage that whispered that Timmy’s head would look a lot better if it was pointing the opposite direction.

Just his head.

Tim’s face screwed up into that goddamn needy pout that he’d been so weak against…shit, he didn’t know how long he’d been out. It looked like it was at least noon through the window, so maybe five or six hours. That could be enough time for Bruce to have tracked them down…but no, Jason had been careful. Ish. Carefulish. He’d kept away from security cameras, and no one would be able to see Tim in the backseat covered with a blanket through traffic cams. Even if he were caught on camera…well, his face had changed a lot in the nearly two years he’d been away. Even Oracle wouldn’t immediately think Jason Todd upon seeing his face, and Babs was the smart one, whatever shit Bruce spouted about being the World’s Greatest Detective.

“I’ll be right back, kid,” Jason promised, placing his hand on Tim’s shoulder and slowly pushing him down until his face hit the pillow right where Jason’s head had been.

For the first time, Jason became aware of how sweaty he was and how the pillow probably stank, but Tim didn’t protest. He barely turned his face so that he wouldn’t suffocate, and there were tears glistening in the corners of his eyes.

Jason sighed and ran a hand through his hair before running the same hand through Tim’s hair. The green faded just a bit more with Tim’s next pathetic sniffle.

“Hey,” Jason said quietly, “I know it hurts. I’m just going to get you some pain killers. I don’t have any in the apartment.”

Tim’s shoulders shook in a repressed sob. “B—but you’re leaving!”

Jason flinched. Was that seriously more important to the kid than the actual physical agony he must have been in? Jason had to get out, though, and clear his head before he hurt the kid or someone else. The green was faded, but it was still there, and it would come back if Jason didn’t deal with it. There wasn’t an option to just stay with Tim and cuddle some more, but that didn’t change that the kid was clearly devastated.

Jason moved his hand from Tim’s head to his uninjured shoulders and massaged gently at the tension growing there. Tim resisted a few moments before he gave in and let Jason work out the knots of muscle.

“I promised I’d be back,” Jason reminded him.

Tim sniffed hard and turned to swipe his nose against the pillowcase, meaning that both sides were now smeared in snot, and Jason was going to have to do laundry.

“That’s what everyone says,” Tim whispered, tears streaming from his eyes.

Jason’s hand stilled a moment before he gave Tim’s shoulder a firm, grounding squeeze. “This is a dream, isn’t it?”

Tim nodded wordlessly, helplessly.

Jason sighed again. Playing up the delusions was probably going to shoot him in the foot, but he could deal with that later if it meant the kid stopped crying now.

“Then you can just dream that I’ll be back, silly.”

Tim frowned, his face getting all drawn up like he was about to argue with Jason on the point of dream logics, but then he snapped his jaw shut and glanced up at Jason to meet his eyes. Jason tried to look as sincere and not murdery as he could.

Tim must have seen something there that he could trust or something that he couldn’t, because he lowered his eyes and slumped into the pillow.

“Okay,” he said, more defeated than believing.

Jason ruffled Tim’s hair and stood up. “Stay put. I’ll be right back, Tim. Bi—” he bit his tongue, then cringed and finished the sentence that would probably calm Tim a bit more. “—bird’s honor, kiddo.”

Tim mumbled something in reply, but Jason couldn’t make it out and didn’t try. He just grabbed his wallet from the nightstand drawer, threw it in his pocket, and all but ran out the door.

Chapter Text

“We have a lead,” Oracle’s voice crackled in his comm.

Bruce’s heart stopped, and he practically slapped the comm button in his haste to connect. It had been almost four hours, and that was only since they’d found out about Tim’s disappearance. Who knew how long it had taken for the police to arrive. Who knew how long Tim had been in the hands of the violent criminal who’d taken him? Or what had been done to him in the hours he’d been missing?

The Joker had had Jason less than two hours. 

Four hours running around the city as mad as the men they threw in Arkham, checking under every rock, checking every mob hideout they knew of, even going as far as to check the chop shops to see if anyone had pawned Jack’s car, and they had found nothing.

Until now.

“What is it?” he snapped. A small voice in the back of his head, sounding suspiciously like Alfred, tutted at his lack of manners, but he would apologize later, when he needed friends instead of answers.

Barbara took it in stride. “Jack Drake’s car was spotted outside an apartment in Crime Alley. One of the residents called it in. I’ve put the address into your GPS.”

His frozen heart leapt into action, and he spun the car back toward Crime Alley. He glanced quickly at the screen that displayed the address of the apartment. He could be there in ten minutes.

He would be there in five.

“Are you sure it’s real?” Bruce Wayne had publicly offered a substantial reward for any information that could lead to recovering Tim, and Oracle had gotten the message on every radio, social media platform, and news station in Gotham and Blüdhaven. There was a substantial incentive to lie.

“They texted a picture of the back of the car. It’s not photoshopped, as far as I can tell, and it has an archeological association’s sticker on the bumper. It’s real.”

“I’m half an hour out,” Dick said, the roar of his motorcycle loud in his comm.

Traffic parted in front of him as he gunned the engine, the drivers probably assuming that he was on his way to stop the latest Rogue attack, not knowing how much more important it really was.

“I’ll be there in four minutes.” Four minutes. He might have his son in four minutes, and heaven help anyone who tried to stop him. “Do you have the security footage?”

Barbara patched back in, keys snapping in the background. “Almost. Give me a—”

Her line went dead, but that was a good sign.

A few moments later, she was back. “I’ve got them. There’s one man, five ten to six foot, dark hair, white skin. I’m running his face through my programs, but the resolution is very low and he’s hiding his face.”

“And Tim?” Dick rushed.

“Alive when he was taken in at about five this morning. He looks very out of it from what I can tell, drugged or injured, but definitely alive. I’m tracking them through the building now.”

“Only one kidnapper?”

Three minutes.

“There might be more inside the apartment, but there was only one person in the car.”

The comms lapsed into silence for two agonizing minutes. It was all Bruce could do to not snap at Barbara to work faster.

“They’re in apartment 2B. Good luck.”

Jason’s fingers trembled with restrained and aimless rage as they closed around the cold metal door handle. It took a solid three seconds for Jason to manage the muscular control it took to pull the door open.

Why was he even here? Just because that damn Replacement—

The whip snapped in Jason’s ears, today and years ago, and Jason shuddered.

He was here because Timmy Drake needed the help that Jason had needed but never got.

He was here because there was a hurt little kid in his apartment who was in horrific pain because his own father had beaten the shit out of him.

He was here because he couldn’t be trusted not to snap that little kid’s neck.

Jason practically fell into the gas station, clenching his hands into tight fists and scowling at the floor. He had to stay focused, get the pills, and then…and then he’d get them to the kid once his vision wasn’t swimming in Lazarus Pit rage.

Painkillers, his mind thrummed. Painkillers. Pain. Killers.

Shut up.

Jason bit the inside of his cheek until the pang of iron snapped him back enough to let him take control again.

The store wasn’t very big, so he only had to stumble around a minute before he found the small medical section. There wasn’t a very wide selection of medicine, so you’d be in trouble if you had pretty much anything but mild allergies, a cold, or an upset stomach, but Jason grabbed a bottle of the overpriced Tylenol—ignoring the green twist in his stomach and the memory of his mother—and headed for the counter. These pain killers were different, and he would be keeping tight control over them anyway.

The cashier, a pot-bellied middle aged man with bushy eyebrows and a twirled mustache, gave him a look. Jason didn’t even bother to scowl and slammed the bottle onto the counter.

The man took the bottle and his eyebrows raised high enough that Jason wondered if he was going to catch them before they escaped. He glanced up at Jason, giving him a once over, before he scanned it and whistled. “Looks like you’ve had fun.”

“What?” Jason looked like hell. He couldn’t even see himself, but he knew that he looked like hell.

The man just chuckled and shook his head and the bottle of pills. “Must have been pretty rough.”

Jason’s frown deepened, because what the hell—Jason ran his still-shaking fingers through his sweaty hair at that exact moment and realized how he must have looked. Sweaty, dazed, flushed, and shaky legs. He looked like a fucking idiot—literally.

Jason bit back a groan and mumbled a vague affirmative as he fished his wallet out of his pocket. The sooner he could get out of their, the better.

The man didn’t drop it. Instead, he gestured at Jason’s jacket with a knowing smirk.

“She couldn’t wait for you to get it off?” the man teased.

Jason looked down at his coat, the long scratches running down the front from Tim’s fingernails. He forced back a scowl at the reminder. He’d liked this jacket, but there wasn’t going to be any saving it. “I was sleeping with my brother.”

Jason froze.

The words just…came out.

Brother.

They weren’t brothers, though, because Tim wasn’t Bruce’s kid, and neither was Jason. He almost wanted to take it back, but then he’d have to explain so much shit just to not sound crazy—

The cashier was looking at Jason in utter horror.

Jason blinked and glanced behind him. Were they being robbed or something? What had he—

OH GOD.

“Wait, no, I didn’t—we weren’t—he’s not—”

There was no recovery. There was no way to take that back.

Jason slammed a five down on the counter, grabbed the pills, and ran out of the store. Every flicker of green was completely swallowed by his furious blush.

Bruce grappled up to the second floor outside the third window on the right, which would, according to the blueprints Barbara had brought up, take  him right into apartment 2b’s living room.

He did a quick visual check, but the living room was empty, so he started on the window.

The window was not only locked and alarmed, but it was also trapped. Bruce had to spend an agonizing three minutes to get the window open without setting off an alarm or triggering the high-voltage shock wired to run through the entire window frame. Luckily, no one came into the room and saw him, or spotted him from below and started firing.

The still apartment was as worrying as it was convenient. He could sneak in more easily, but that also increased the likelihood of Tim being held directly by the hostile or hostiles. Anything could be happening to him while Bruce was finagling the window. Interrogation, torture, mur—

No. Tim was going to be fine. His son was going to be fine this time. The universe owed him that much. He was going to incapacitate the intruders, retrieve Tim, and take his son directly back to his home unless he needed immediate medical attention. It wasn’t like Jack would miss Tim, at least not initially, and Bruce could make up a story for police that Tim had asked Batman to be dropped off at Wayne Manor instead of the police station because he wanted his friends.

Finally, he pushed, and the window whispered up, and Bruce slipped inside. It was a tight fit, as most windows weren’t meant for men of his size to climb through, and he’d definitely have to go through the door when he carried Tim out.

A quick scan of the living room showed nothing. The room was completely bare, with no personal touches to clue him into who had taken Tim or why. The kitchen, similarly, was empty, but he would have expected that.

There were four more doors in a tiny hall just off the living room, and he crept to them one by one.

The first room, a bedroom, was completely empty too. No Tim, but no sign of anyone having cleaned up a crime scene, either.

The next door was a small linen closet, stocked with a liberal supply of deadly weapons. Bruce’s heart stopped at the sheer number of weapons that had been crammed into one closet. Most of them were guns, mostly handguns, but a few semi-automatic rifles and at least one highly illegal fully automatic rifle, but there was also a sword, several dozen knives, a veritable mountain of ammunition, and what looked to be a torture kit.

There weren’t any empty places, though, which might indicate that any of the weapons had been removed to be used on Tim, and the box of torture supplies was tucked into the corner at the very back of the closet. They hadn't needed it yet, hopefully.

Unless they’d just killed him.

Bruce’s throat tightened at the same time his stomach churned hard enough that he nearly threw up. Images of his other missing Robin flashed in his head, and even years later, he could still feel the shift of bones in a tiny body.

No. He was getting Tim back if it killed him.

The next room was the bathroom, which was clear as well. That left just one more room.

Bruce forced down the bile and approached the last door on silent feet. He couldn’t hear anything from behind the door, but—

“Batman,” Oracle said in his ear, her voice tight.

Bruce tapped the side of his comm twice to send the silent signal of acknowledgement so she’d continue.

“I have the kidnapper leaving the apartment fifteen minutes ago without Tim.”

Cold grief ran down his spine.

Whoever had taken Tim must have known that he was Robin, or they wouldn’t have taken him in the first place, and no one would be stupid enough to leave even a restrained Robin without supervision.

Unless he was dead.

Either there was another person in that room guarding Tim, or his son was dead again, and the room was silent.

For what felt like an empty eternity but couldn’t have been more than a few seconds, Bruce stood there, terrified to open the door.

But—but maybe Tim was only injured, badly enough that Bruce could save him, or maybe he’d have time to resuscitate Tim, or—

Forgoing subtlety in he desperation, Bruce kicked the door down and rushed inside.

For a moment, he couldn’t even see Tim through the dissonance of what he’d been expecting to find and what his eyes told him he was seeing.

There was no blood. There were no weapons or restraints. There was no guard.

The first thing he consciously processed as a positive fact was the slow rise and fall of the blankets over Tim’s chest. Then he processed the next fact. Tim was face down on the bed, his delicate features relaxed more than Bruce had ever seen them.

Drugged, Barbara had suggested from seeing the security footage.

Fresh terror welled in his throat, and Bruce rushed to Tim’s side and threw back the blankets, but the split second of relief at the sight of Tim’s seemingly untouched pants and a clean bed was instantly shattered when he realized that the white cloth over Tim’s body wasn’t a tank top, but enough bandages to nearly swallow Tim whole. What had they done to him? How badly had Bruce—

Tim groaned and turned his face, nuzzling into the pillow with a kitten-like mewl. Bruce forced down the guilt and tapped the button on the side of his comm to call in to the others.

“I’ve got him,” he breathed to Barbara and Dick, ghosting his fingers almost reverently over Tim’s cheekbone. Tim turned his head slightly in a sleepy attempt to shake him off, but Bruce wouldn’t let him. “I’ve got him.”

Dick’s breath hitched. “Is he—”

“Alive,” Bruce whispered hoarsely, his voice thick with emotion. “He’s alive.”

He was injured, but he didn’t look that badly injured. Bruce could take him back to be treated by Alfred, let Alfred see him and be sure that he was right and just have Tim home for a little bit before they had to hand him over to the police. He could also run a blood test and start on an antidote if Tim had been drugged with anything new.

“Oracle, tell the police that Batman has recovered Timothy Drake alive and will bring him to Gotham General Hospital as soon as it is safe.”

That would give him a near-infinite buffer and would let him take care of the kidnapper before letting him out of their sight risking placing civilian Tim into a public area where they couldn’t defend him.

 “I’m still twenty minutes out,” Dick reported.

Bruce shook Tim’s head to wake him up since he didn’t want to potentially hurt him by touching his back or shoulders. “The apartment is still empty. I’ll remove Tim to the Batmobile and send it home, then we can take down the kidnapper together once you arrive.”

The police were going to have to remove the man in pieces by the time they were through with him.

Tim half groaned, half whimpered at Bruce and pressed his face deeper into the pillow.

“Noooo,” Tim mumbled like a disgruntled toddler.

Despite himself, Bruce chuckled and brushed his fingers through Tim’s hair indulgently. “Tim, you have to wake up.”

Tim whined something incoherent at Bruce, but finally turned his head to look up at Bruce. He blinked, once, twice, then sighed in contentment and closed his eyes.

“Mmm, Bruce,” Tim slurred.

Bruce smiled at him and knelt in front of Tim, pressing his lips to Tim’s forehead. It wasn’t a kiss, not completely, but he could feel the warmth of Tim against his skin, proof that after every nightmare and those torturous four hours, he’d made it. This one, he’d saved. This one got to grow up.

“I’ve got you, Tim,” he promised. Always. “You don’t need to be scared.”

Tim yawned and started to roll onto his back, but then gasped and flopped back to his stomach with a pained cry. The injuries were on his back, then, so at the very least, Tim hadn't been injured on his stomach and then lain on those injuries in some sick torture, but someone had taken Tim, tiny little Tim, and hurt him while he couldn’t’ protect himself. And for what?

“Who hurt you?” Bruce growled.

Tim raised his head with painful slowness and squinted at Bruce for a long moment. Bruce immediately noticed that one of Tim’s eyes was far more dilated than the other, and he could see the edge of a bruise peeking out along the side of the face pressed into the pillow.

Perhaps not drugged, then, but that looked like a nasty concussion.

Tim whimpered and closed his eyes, wordlessly reaching out with one hand and flopping it around until Bruce laid his hand on the bed and let Tim catch it. Tim threaded their fingers together and held on tightly, like he thought Bruce might leave him if he didn’t.

Tim was always so sensitive, though, and as concussed as he seemed to be, Bruce would need to take a gentler hand and more time to help Tim understand and give Bruce the answers he needed.

“Tim,” Bruce said, softer than he had before. He combed his fingers through Tim’s hair, and Tim shuddered. “I need to know who hurt you.”

Tim groaned and shook his head. “No.”

Bruce sighed. “Tim—”

Tim suddenly lunged for—Bruce didn’t even know what Tim had been trying to reach, but he missed everything, and his hand sailed past Bruce before flopping back down to the bed bonelessly.

It was hopelessly adorable, and Bruce was very glad that his cowl footage had caught it. He would be even more glad later, when Tim was safe and in his own bed in Bruce’s house.

“It’s my dream—” Tim’s breathing picked up. “You can’t—I want—I—”

A dream? Was it the concussion, or was Tim drugged or dissociating? Either way, Bruce was unlikely to get anything from Tim without playing into Tim’s delusion.

“What do you want, Tim?” Bruce asked.

“I need you to hold me!” Tim begged, reaching for Bruce again. “Please! P—please, it’s my dream, and—and—”

Bruce inhaled sharply at the panic in Tim’s face and grasping fingers, and he couldn’t deny his son anything in that state. Bruce slipped his hands underneath Tim’s chest and lifted him up enough for Bruce to slip underneath him and sit down on the creaky mattress. Tim was so worryingly light—they’d need to feed him more once they got back—but he was so alive in Bruce’s hands as Bruce lowered Tim carefully so that his head was resting on Bruce’s leg.

“Please don’t leave,” Tim pleaded, digging his bony little fingers into Bruce’s leg so tightly that it would definitely leave bruises even through the Kevlar.

Bruce pet over Tim’s head. “I won’t leave you, Tim, but I need you to tell me things.”

Tim looked up at Bruce with those watery blue eyes that he was so weak against, but he needed to know who he was dealing with, especially if the man might have friends or superhuman abilities.

“Who hurt you, Tim?” Bruce repeated.

Tim sniffled and shook his head. “’m not allowed to tell.”

That was…worrying. “You’re allowed to tell, Tim. I’ll protect you if anyone tries to stop you.”

Tim shook his head more urgently, his face screwing up in distress. “No, he’ll beat me more if I tell, and—and they can’t take me away. Can’t tell.”

Something in Tim’s word sent ice prickling down Bruce’s spine, even though he couldn’t pick out what it was. Something was wrong, and the urge to get Tim home immediately was only strengthened, but he needed answers if Tim had them.

“Tim…” Bruce considered. Tim was scared. He wasn’t just going to tell Bruce this piece of apparently terrifying information straightaway, though, so Bruce was going to have to continue to play the game. “This is a dream, Tim. You’re dreaming, remember?”

Tim nodded in perfect certainty, not even for a moment questioning the validity of Bruce’s claim. If it weren’t for the situation, Bruce might have laughed.

Bruce did huff a chuckle, though. “Tim. Who did this?”

Tim hesitated. He waited so long that Bruce thought he wasn’t going to answer or had just fallen asleep, but then, in the barest of whispers, Tim breathed, “My dad.”

Chapter Text

Bruce’s blood ran cold.

Jack.

There was no way. Even a horrible father couldn’t have done this to his son, especially not when Jack’s son was Robin and able to fight back. Besides, even if Jack had had someone kidnap, beat, and possibly drug Tim, what would be the point? What possible reason could Jack even—

…Insurance fraud.

Drake Industries hadn't been doing well the past several months, even though Bruce had offered his (reluctant) assistance. Like anyone in the upper class in Gotham, surely Jack had kidnapping and ransom insurance on Tim. If Jack had to pay an exorbitant “ransom” to get Tim back, he would be reimbursed for his money, and the kidnapper could keep the ransom.

But Jack had been beaten nearly to death, so surely…

Unless that had been part of the plan.

If Jack had truly wanted to sell the kidnapping scheme, the best way to do it would have been to have himself be attacked as well. Things could have gotten out of hand, and Jack could have been hurt worse than intended, which would have made making a “ransom demand” more difficult. Jack couldn’t very well pay a ransom while unconscious.

Tim whined loudly in protest, and Bruce startled. Was Tim hurt? Ah, no, he’d stopped petting Tim’s hair, and the boy was offended.

Bruce took a deep breath and forced himself to take every possibility into consideration. Tim could have meant something else entirely, confused by drugs or a concussion.

That was…probably more likely. There was a kidnap for ransom plot, but Jack wasn’t involved, and there was no fraud. When Jack had fought back to protect Tim, he’d been beaten too badly for the kidnapper to demand a ransom.

The insidious suspicions festered in the back of his mind, but he ignored them. There would be a full investigation by the police, and, more importantly, by him, to find out what had happened and how to keep Tim safe in the future. First, he needed to get Tim to the Batmobile.

“Tim,” Bruce said gently.

“’s my name, don’ wear it…” Tim pouted as the ending of the phrase got away from him.

Despite the circumstances, it still forced a smile to his lips. “I don’t think it would fit me, son.”

Tim frowned in thought, then nodded. He looked so cute with his face half-buried in the blankets and one hand flapping around aimlessly till Bruce took it in his free hand and gave it a gentle squeeze.

“You’re too fat.”

Well. Bruce raised an eyebrow beneath the cowl. “Too fat to be a Tim?”

Tim nodded again. The little brat. He was going to be so embarrassed when Bruce showed him the recording.

“Okay, Tim. We’re going to go home now.” He still thinks this is a dream. “We’re going to go get cookies and hot chocolate and watch some Star Trek, okay?”

Tim sniffled. “Deep Space Nine?”

“Of course.”

Tim frowned and looked up at Bruce with deep concern. “What about Jason?”

Bruce’s arms were suddenly full of burned skin and shifting bones, his nose full of smoke and blood, and his son was dead, dead and all his fault, gone—

Tim abruptly sat up and just as abruptly collapsed like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Bruce caught him before a harsh landing could make any injuries worse, but Tim barely noticed. Gasping down panicked, wheezing breaths, Tim tried his best to look around the room.

“Where’s Jason?” Tim cried, hysteria rising every second no Jason appeared. “Where’d he go? He left me!”

“Tim...” For a second, Bruce thought he meant…Grief made Bruce’s voice thick and vision hazy, till he realized that Jason was probably the name of the kidnapper. Just his luck that the man who kidnapped his son and beat Jack Drake within an inch of his life would have the same name as Bruce’s lost son. Gotham certainly loved her irony, didn’t she?

Bruce sighed, trying to collect himself. The day had been trying in the extreme, and all he wanted to do was go home. First, though, he had to make sure they knew who they were after. He wouldn’t be surprised if the man had realized that Jack Drake wasn’t fit to pay any ransom and wouldn’t be for a while. With Batman and the police on the chase, the smartest move would be to cut town and his losses, but Bruce wasn’t going to let him get away that easily.

“Jason who? Can you tell me anything more about him?”

Tim wrinkled his nose and lolled his head to one side. “’m thirsty.”

 “In a little bit, Tim.” Bruce ran his fingers through Tim’s hair again, holding him less like the gangly teenager he was and more like an overgrown cat. “Do you know Jason’s last name?”

“Todd.”

And every rational thought fled him.

“What?”

“Jason Todd,” Tim mumbled.

His heart pounded wildly. It’s a common last name too, maybe he--

“Our Jason,” Tim clarified, leaving all doubt behind.

A shapeshifter, telepathy, hallucinations from the concussion, some form of drug. Any one of those reasons was fraught with danger: someone knew who they were, or Tim had suffered severe brain damage, or an unknown toxin was causing him to hallucinate.

“Tim, Jason’s…”

“It was Jason! He was here, he saved me, and he—” Hysteria rising, Tim started to hyperventilate. Tears ran down his face. “—and he—he left me!”

“It’s okay, Tim. Let’s get you out to the Batmobile, get you some ice for your head…” Run some blood tests and figure out what he dosed you with, maybe a CT scan…

 “No!!! Jason is coming back!” Tim struggled weakly to get away from Bruce. “He promised!”

“Tim…”

“Everyone always promises they’ll be back, but he…he promised, he promised he’d be back!”

Tim had, in his own delirious way, grabbed a hold of the knife of guilt perpetually lodged in Bruce’s metaphorical gut and twisted it a full three-sixty.

Objectively, Bruce knew he should get Tim to the Batmobile immediately. Tim needed medical attention, and this “Jason Todd,” whether he was truly claiming to be Jason or Tim had just misinterpreted the situation due to his injuries, was extremely dangerous.

On the other hand, if the kidnapper was planning to come back, then dragging Tim from the building kicking and screaming could tip him off. They had such little information, and if the kidnapper did know who they were, they needed to find him.

Besides, the case was already growing more bizarre the longer he had to take stock of the situation.

Despite being so dangerous, “Jason” had tended to Tim’s wounds with more care than Bruce would expect from any average kidnapper or thug. If all “Jason” was after had been ransom money, he would only need to make sure that Tim wasn’t in danger of bleeding out, not that Tim wasn’t in danger of getting an infection. A normal kidnapper would have left Tim handcuffed as well.

Dick would be there soon. He must have been ten, fifteen minutes away by now. Bruce would wait for Dick to arrive before making the decision.

Tim snuggled closer, contented, and Bruce hugged him tight.

They would wait together.

Brother.

The word echoed in his head, replacing the usual seething rage with resonant guilt.

My little brother.

Jason’s feet were taking him back to the apartment in a roundabout route without him consciously making the choice, like his subconscious had assessed the situation and decided that injured teenager and emotionally distressed mass murderer were not a good combination. Hell, he was a ticking time bomb, and Robins and time bombs didn’t go well together.

They weren’t brothers. They barely knew each other, and Jason was the only one in their relationship who didn’t believe the other person was a figment of his imagination. They weren’t close enough to be friends, let alone honorary brothers. The only way they could be considered brothers would be if Jason were Bruce’s son and Tim were also Bruce’s son.

For all Bruce’s faults, there was no doubt that he was going to adopt the Replacement if and when he found Tim, and then Tim and Jason would legally be brothers. Of course, Jason was ‘dead,’ but that didn’t make Jason not Bruce’s son.

A flare of green rage sparked in his chest. No, Jason might legally still be Bruce’s son, but he Bruce was not his dad anymore. Bruce had betrayed him, abandoned him, let him die, then replaced him.

He nearly killed himself when you died.

Jason growled and punched a brick wall, hardly caring as the ragged edge tore his already bloody knuckles.

Jason had always wanted a little brother or sister. When he was little, he used to imagine his mom leaving his dad. In the day dream world he fell asleep to every night, she’d marry someone who’d be kind and loving, like she deserved, and Jason could have new siblings and a new family and feel safe for once in his life.

Grief, hot and wretched, burned in his eyes as he stormed down the sidewalk. Could she have taken him with her if she’d left? Would she have had custody, since she wasn’t his real mom?

But she had been.

Sheila had abandoned him when he was a baby, tricked him for her own gain, and led him to a brutal death. Catherine, for all her faults, had loved him, and for whatever reason, she had stayed. In the good years, she had taken care of him the best she possibly could with her resources, and once the years got bad, once the needle was the only release she could find…Even then, Jason knew plenty of kids who paid for their guardians’ drug habits, unwillingly and horrifically. Mom had always, always kept him safe, even when she was at her worst. She wasn’t his blood, but she was his mom.

He'd ended up getting that fresh start, that new family he’d always wanted, even if it had been without her. It had been so good until the end, almost too good to be true.

Memories of those years, of the good food and a safe bed, of the library and his own room, of Alfred and tea, of Bruce and belonging, struck him with a longing, as fierce as it was unwelcome, to go back in time and be that kid again.

He took a deep, shuddering breath. He couldn’t go back in time, and he couldn’t…

Jason kicked a glass bottle against an alley wall. It shattered in a spray of glittering shards that fell to the concrete where they would sit for months or years, until rain or a broom or the bottom of someone’s shoe carried away the last few shards.

Shit. He’d cut himself many times on glass and rusty metal during his time on the streets. One particularly nasty infection had been so bad he’d had to drag himself to Leslie and escape out the back window before she could put him in a foster home. He was no better than all those drunks and crooks who walked around with a chip on their shoulders that had to become everyone else’s problem.

Swearing, Jason dropped to his knees and started picking up the shards. He shoved them in his pockets, not caring about cutting himself even more. No one else should get hurt because he couldn’t keep a lid on his temper. No kid should have to suffer like he had, not because of Jason.

This is why Bruce took away Robin.

He couldn’t go home. Bruce wouldn’t want Jason back, and it was all his own fault. Even if Bruce had missed the Jason he lost, the Jason that had come back was a dark, twisted façade of that child, too tainted by the blood on his hands and the poison in his mind to ever be anything Bruce could love again. Jason was a sick bastard who had wanted to kill an innocent kid for the crime of being loved by Jason’s dad. By his not-dad. By his—

Jason growled in frustration. Why couldn’t things just be simple? Why couldn’t Jason just take his place as one of Batman’s Rogues and be done with it? Either kill Bruce or get tossed in a cell in Arkham like the rest of them? Hell, maybe he and the Joker could be cellmates! Even that might be preferable to the hellish not knowing.

No. He did know. Not about Bruce, but about Tim. Jason clenched his fists, squared his shoulders, and turned back toward the apartment. Whatever else Jason needed to do and figure out, he had to take care of Timothy Drake, the ridiculous kid out of his mind from denial and a concussion in a shitty safehouse Jason had dumped him in. Who knew the kind of trouble he could get into alone?

A rare sense of calm filled him as he made his way back to the apartment complex. For the first time in a long time, he had some idea what he wanted to do, and it felt like him. Not like the Pit, like Jason Todd had made a decision and was going to see it through.

Jason jogged up the stairs to apartment 2B—2b or not 2b, that is the question—and hoped that he hadn’t been gone too long. Sometimes, when the Pit had him really frothing at the mouth, his sense of time was a bit off. Most likely, the kid would be asleep again, but Tim was still…Robin. And Robins, unsupervised, were truly hellspawn.

Jason used his phone to deactivate the alarm and trap around the front door with one hand as he fished the key out of his pocket with the other. With one more deep breath to settle his nerves, he strolled inside. There wasn’t really much to settle for once, though. Calm was such a foreign feeling these days, let alone peace—WHY IS THE WINDOW OPEN THAT STUPID KID HAS FLOWN THE COOP I WILL LITERALLY MURDER HIM.

Peace be damned, the living room window was wide open. Tim had probably recovered enough sense to realize how insane the situation was and had run off to find Batdad.

Or worse and more likely, Tim had not recovered enough sense to realize how insane the situation was and had instead just run off to find Jason because the little gremlin was the clingiest creature alive.

Was this how Dick felt when Jason ditched him any time Dick had taken him out on patrol? If so, Jason understood Dick’s frustration so much better. The seething frustration was not Pit Rage; it wasn’t even truly directed at Tim, it was directed at how absolutely stupid the kid was being.

Shit. He’d need his guns, for moral support if for nothing else.

He ran a hand through his hair, grumbling under his breath about how if this is how being a big brother is going to be, I am done as he pushed open the bedroom door.

He had already taken several steps into the bedroom toward his gun belt when two things became very clear: 1) The window had been opened from the outside, and 2) his safehouse had a bat problem.

“Jason!” Tim flopped a hand at him in greeting. “You came back!”

Bruce was completely still on the bed with his arms full of Timmy, staring at Jason in shock so evident that Jason could read it even with the cowl down over half Bruce’s face.

Jason’s heart slammed against his ribs like a crowbar. The last time he had seen Bruce, he had been the injured Robin cradled in Batman’s arms. The last time he’d seen Bruce, he had died, and Bruce had promptly stuffed him in a box, stuck him out of sight, and replaced him with the newest model.

Jason clenched his fists and set his jaw. What did he care? He wanted Tim to be taken care of and safe, and Bruce would make sure that happened.

When you’re both stunned, whoever recovers first wins.

It was an old lesson that Bruce had taught him when he was first starting out as Robin, a versatile lesson in that it applied both to surprise and electrocution, and it was a lesson Jason was using now.

“Well, finders keepers. Kid’s yours now.” He quickly crossed the rest of the distance to his gun belt, picked it up, and turned to walk out the door.

Bruce was already in his path, looming silently between Jason and the door. There was no way around him. He could only hope that Bruce hadn’t put the pieces together yet. Sure, Tim had squealed his name as soon as he walked in, but there were lots of Jasons in the world, and Bruce’s specific Jason was supposed to be dead. He might still be able to talk his way out of the situation.

Tim mewled unhappily, and Jason sighed, buckling on his gun belt and sitting heavily on the bed beside the morose baby bird. Tim preened under the attention and leaned against Jason.

“If you let him go back to Jack, I’m going to have to kill you and him, though,” Jason commented, absently running his fingers through Tim’s hair and not making eye contact. “You and Jack, that is. Tim and I will run away, won’t we?”

Tim mumbled something vaguely affirmative and yawned. He seemed to be ready for another nap. Jason felt more than a little envious; he wanted a quick and easy way out of this situation too. Maybe he could just shoot himself. He’d probably come back, and temporary death was preferable to just about any version of the conversation that felt doomed to happen.

“We’ll go to Alaska or something, won’t we?” Jason continued. Why won’t Bruce just say something?

Be careful what you wish for.

“Jason?” Bruce’s voice was hoarse with emotion. Anger? No, that didn’t sound right. Fear? No, not that either. It sounded suspiciously like grief.

In no world did that voice not mean that Bruce knew exactly who Jason was. There was no getting out of this without something drastic, like pretending to be Clayface or a fear gas hallucination. As soon as the ideas occurred to him, he knew he couldn’t do that to Bruce. It was too cruel.

He scoffed bitterly. How far he had come in a day: from wanting to dismember Bruce’s replacement child to punish his former father to petting the replacement child’s hair while trying to answer a question without causing any more damage.

Jason shrugged, still not looking up. “You sound surprised.”

“It can’t be you.”

Oh shit. That was a very sad voice. Like, Batman dangerously close to falling apart kind of sad. Jason frantically tried to make any sense of the reaction. Bruce must be nearly in tears over finding Tim. That explanation fell apart quickly since Bruce hadn’t seemed choked up while sitting with Tim. Bruce must be crying out of disappointment. That made more sense, didn’t it?

It did not. Bruce crying over being disappointed in Jason made literally no sense at all.

Maybe he got a hangnail?

There had to be an explanation for why Bruce sounded like he was crying or close to it, because otherwise that would mean that Bruce was on the verge of falling to pieces because Jason was here, which would imply that Bruce had cared that Jason was gone in the first place—Bruce nearly killed himself because you died, Jason—and Jason wasn’t sure he could deal with that. Tim being his brother, that he could maybe handle. Bruce being…Bruce still being his dad was a whole different ball game, one he wasn’t sure he was ready to play.

Jason scoffed. “Want me to recite the first five chapters of Pride and Prejudice? Sorry, Dad, you didn’t get rid of me that easily.”

Jason stood up abruptly. He had to leave. He had to get out of there before Bruce could push any further or—worse—actually cry, because Jason didn’t know how to deal with any of that.

He didn’t look Bruce in the eye as he walked forward, trying to elbow his way past Batman. Fear curled tight in his chest, fear of what Bruce would do or say if Jason didn’t get—

Bruce caught him by the arm and stopped him in his tracks before he could get past the doorframe, and Jason swung a right hook in instinct. The fear rose to familiar panic at being caught, caged. He tried to wrestle his arm free, but Bruce’s grip was just as unyielding as it had been the night he’d caught Jason the first time.

Jason reached for his gun, but Bruce pulled him off balance into a tight grapple before he could get the weapon free. Jason writhed against him, but Bruce’s hand tangled in his hair, pushing Jason’s head against Bruce’s shoulder.

“Jason,” Bruce whispered, his voice shaking.

Jason froze outwardly, but his mind was reeling. It’s a hug.

For the first time in more than two years, his dad was hugging him.

“Let me go.” He tried to say it as a demand, but it came out as a choked whisper.

Bruce hugged him fiercely and shook his head. “Never. Never.”

Jason’s eyes burned with unwelcome tears he tried to blink away. He clamped his mouth shut; if he said a word, Bruce would hear how close he was to crying, and Jason wasn’t about to cry in front of Bruce of all people.

The Pit flared with indignity. Why was he getting sappy? Bruce wasn’t his dad. He had no right to touch Jason or keep him from leaving. How dare Bruce think was allowed to act like a dad after all he did and all he didn’t do?

A soft cry distracted Jason before the rage could take root. Jason glanced over his shoulder to see—

He lunged back towards Tim, barely able to wrestle free of Bruce in time to catch the kid as he tumbled off the bed. He hit his knee hard on the floor, but the pain was nothing compared to the stab of guilt when Tim turned his watery blue eyes up to Jason.

“You’re leaving?” It was a question, but it sounded like begging. Tim’s spindly fingers clutched Jason’s jacket, like that could stop Jason if he tried to leave.

Before Jason could fumble an answer, Bruce was on his knees and swept them both up into another hug.

“No, he’s not,” Bruce promised.

Jason tensed, but Tim melted with a contented sigh. He tucked his chin on Jason’s shoulder and grabbed a fistful of Bruce’s cape so he could hold both of them.

I am leaving, Jason meant to say, but the words that actually escaped were, “Bruce doesn’t want me here.”

Bruce made a sound like he’d been stabbed, and Jason winced. There was something viscerally unsettling about hearing Bruce sound pained.

“I just got you back,” Bruce croaked. “You’re never leaving again.”

Bruce nearly killed himself because you died, Jason.

The hug was claustrophobic, and Jason blinked quickly to maintain his composure. It was totally unfair that Bruce got a mask for all this and Jason got nothing to hide behind.

“Why?” Jason whispered. Why won’t you let me go? Why do you think this changes anything?

 Why do you still care?

“You’re my son,” Bruce whispered back.

It shouldn’t have been enough, but somehow, it was. The simple statement slotted into a hole in Jason’s heart, filling it perfectly. I’m his son.

Jason wriggled an arm out from between his chest and Bruce’s, wrapping it around his father and holding him back.

“Sorry I’m late, Dad.”

Bruce had been broken so many times in his life.

He had been broken apart the night his parents had been gunned down in a senseless act of violence. The pieces of him that Alfred had managed to recover and cobble together into some form of a young man had not truly come together until he broke again at the sight of a little boy at the top of a trapeze platform and the broken bodies beneath.

He had been broken when his son had stormed out of the house, screaming the Bruce was ruining his life, and the broken pieces hadn’t healed till he broke again at the sight of a tiny scrap of a kid stealing the tires off his car.

He had been shattered, beyond earthly repair, when he’d felt the last shuddering breath leave his son’s brutally beaten body, and even though so much of him had been rebuilt by Tim’s stubborn determination to fix him whether Bruce wanted him to or not, there was a missing piece that Bruce always felt whether as a dull ache or stabbing pain.

He'd been broken again this morning, terrified that he was going to lose another son, but now, on his knees with his two lost boys in his arms, he felt more whole than he ever had.

His arm, wrapped tight around Jason’s chest, rose and fell with the rhythm of his son’s steady breathing. Bruce remembered the feeling of holding the same boy, much smaller at the time, two years ago. He remembered the gurgling of blood in Jason’s throat and lungs, he remembered lifting his son into his arms only for Jason’s ribs to shift at his touch. Those memories that haunted him for two years didn’t have the same oppressive weight to them anymore somehow. He remembered what he’d lost, then he hugged his son till Jason wheezed dramatically in protest.

 The suspicious, untrusting part of him that made him Batman whispered that his previous concerns were still valid: “Jason” could be a shapeshifter, or the result of some drug- or telepathy-induced hallucination. The part of Bruce that was Jason’s dad knew he was holding his son. He knew it like he knew the world went around the sun. This was his kid.

“Bat—Batman?”

Bruce looked up from his two youngest sons to see his oldest standing in the door in full costume with his escrima sticks drawn. Dick looked from Bruce to Tim to Jason in confusion.

“Jason,” Bruce whispered hoarsely.

Dick frowned, which was fair because that made no sense at all, and looked back at Jason.

“Batman, Jason is dead.” Dick tensed, lighting up his escrima sticks. “That’s not him.”

Bruce fumbled mentally. How could he convince Dick this was Jason? What if Dick thought he’d gone crazy and tried to run Jason off? Bruce couldn’t lose Jason a second time.

Jason took a deep, shuddering breath and raised his head. Bruce squeezed Jason’s arm to keep him from running away or worse, lunging at Dick.

Jason stared at Dick, his face unreadable for several long seconds before he cracked a grin—impish and arrogant in a way Bruce thought he would never see again.

“Guess again, Dickiebird.”

Dick faltered, but didn’t lower his escrima sticks. “If you’re actually Jason—”

“How am I alive?” Jason scoffed like his miraculous resurrection was a parlor trick. “I don’t really know, but Talia helped.”

Bruce didn’t know if he wanted to kiss Talia or never speak to her again. She knew his son was alive? And said nothing?

“How long?” Bruce croaked.

Jason stiffened, then shrugged in a performatively relaxed gesture. “I don’t know. I was out of it for a while. Maybe…a yearish?”

A year. His son had been alive for a year, and Bruce hadn’t been there for him. He should have been keeping a closer eye on Talia and the al Ghuls, they’d been so quiet. He should have known they were up to something.

Dick stepped closer, his expression somewhere between hope and disbelief. “You can’t really be Jason.”

Jason scowled. “Still not good enough for you?”

Dick inhaled sharply and recoiled like he'd been burned.

Bruce could see the wave of guilt wash over Dick. The boys had such a terrible relationship for so much of Jason’s stay with Bruce. It wasn’t all Dick’s fault—Jason was too insecure in his place with Bruce to be kind, and Bruce hadn’t been helping at all—but Bruce knew Dick regretted how he’d ignored Jason all those years. He’d tried to do better with Tim, and he had been so good for Tim, but Bruce still saw the guilt from time to time.

Dick closed the distance and threw his arms around Jason, Tim, and Bruce.

“Never mind,” Dick said, his voice muffled against Tim’s hair. “You’re too whiny to be anyone else.”

Dick yelped at what Bruce assumed was Jason jabbing him in the ribs, but Jason didn’t struggle when Dick hugged him tighter.

Bruce didn’t realize this kind of joy was possible: Tim’s hand was tangled in his cape, Dick was curled around his little brothers, and Jason was tucked right in the middle. For the first time ever, Bruce had all his boys in his arms.

All his boys, alive.

Bruce rested his nose against the top of Jason’s head and took a deep breath before chuckling. The chuckle turned to a laugh, and Jason gave him a look—that judgy, bratty look Bruce thought he’d never get to see again.

“What are you laughing about?” Jason grumbled, but there was no heat to his tone.

Bruce shook his head, still grinning. His son was bigger now, sharper around the edges, but it was still him. Bruce had lost time, not his son. Nothing in the world could ever steal that joy.

Bruce ran a hand through Jason’s hair, marveling that this was real. “Let’s go home, Jason. Let’s go home.”

"Yeah, whatever." Jason rolled his eyes and ducked out from under Bruce’s hand, but he couldn’t hide a ghost of a smile. "Let’s go home.”