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Tim had always figured that if he ever woke up in Vegas sans-memory, it would be when he was older than fourteen. But there were some things he couldn’t control, and apparently whatever had happened last night that he didn’t remember was one of them.
The first thing to do, he thought, was probably to get out of the dumpster.
He’d woken up plenty of places he didn’t remember falling asleep in before, but mostly that was just the floor of his own bathroom and mostly when he woke up he didn’t have a splitting headache. It was more like an axe than a hammer, a blade whacking chunks out of his skull while he pushed up to sitting and leaned back against the dumpster wall — the suddenly being upright made his vision swim, and he had to take a pause to lurch over into some trash bags and vomit, but all in all the operation was successful. He tumbled out of the dumpster into the alley, and —
The alley. The buildings on either side of him were pretty short, and he might not remember much but he remembered that him and his dad had been staying on the strip, where the buildings were very tall and a heck of a lot more glittery and glass-faced than this. All he could see beyond the mouth of the alley was sun-baked asphalt and low, concrete edifices. Some place with shopping carts out front, maybe a liquor store or a Dollar Tree or something, there was no sign on this side. No cars going by either, no pedestrians, which boded ill for getting help but also boded well for no one happening across him like this. Tim was Robin, and even if he weren’t he was still from Gotham — he knew what sort of things happened to kids who wandered the streets looking fucked up.
And he definitely, definitely looked as fucked up as he felt.
He braced himself against the alley wall and tried deliberately to remember what had happened the night before, but there was nothing there. It was a big empty space in his mind, like someone had ripped a bunch of pages out of the middle of a book. He remembered kicking around the hotel all day yesterday — Caesar’s Palace — while his dad was out in business meetings, remembered that it was like a giant game of the floor is lava trying to navigate a casino as a minor, he couldn’t go anywhere with carpet. He remembered his dad getting back to the room, he remembered talking about going out for dinner, he remembered putting on a nice suit, doing his tie in the mirror like Dick had taught him when he was ten, and then…
Nothing.
He was still partially in his suit — he’d lost the jacket, but he still had the tie. A cursory pat-down told him he’d managed to hold onto a wallet, but no phone. His cash was still there, and his credit cards, and the Rolex Bruce had given him was on his wrist, which at least ruled out the possibility that he’d been mugged. But fuck did his head hurt, and as he reached up to shield his eyes from the blinding sun, something tugged painfully behind his left arm.
It felt like a wound on his side, a wound that someone had sewn up.
Tim reached around to feel it out with his fingers, and sure enough there was a patch of gauze taped over the curve of his ribs. It hurt to breathe, but not too bad, not like ribs were broken and poking at his lungs, so he figured he could worry about it later.
What he had to worry about now was figuring out what the hell had happened, how he’d gone from getting ready for dinner with his dad to half-dead in a dumpster. Actually, now that he thought about it, the fact that he didn’t remember what had happened was a nice loophole, because the panic button on his Rolex might only be for Robin problems but he didn’t technically know that this wasn’t a Robin problem, so he could just press it and Bruce would come get him and maybe bring Dick or Jason and —
Tim froze, fingers hovering above the button.
His hands were covered in blood.
He snapped his hand away from the watch like it was on fire.
Well. There went the possibility of calling another Bat to come rescue him. Until he figured out whose blood that was, and how it had gotten on his hands — whether he’d done something awful — Tim was on his own.
That was okay. Tim was good at thinking on his feet. He was good on his own. He could handle this.
***
The issue was, of course, that Tim had been worried for a while he might kill his dad.
He’d never defended himself against Jack. Not once. Not when it was his fists, not when it was his belt, not when it was a glass thrown across the kitchen — he used to dodge instinctively, when he was little, but now he knew to just put his arm up and take it, because it was worse what Jack would do to him if he didn’t just take the hit the first time. Tim didn’t know why he couldn’t fight back, once he was Robin, but every time it was like something in him just froze. Something in him turned five years old again, and all he could do was cower and cry and weather it.
Tim was smart, though. He took pictures when it was over, marked them with dates and measurements like they did at the hospital on cop shows — he’d started when he was eight and saw his first episode of Law and Order: SVU, and for the past six years he had dutifully documented every incident, filing them in a safe hidden at the back of his closet, behind a false panel in the wall. He figured if he ever grew a backbone and tried to sue for emancipation it would be good evidence to have.
If he ever snapped and killed his dad, it would also be good evidence to have.
(Or if his dad went too far and finally killed him, well — Batman wasn’t called the world’s greatest detective for nothing. Bruce would find the safe at the back of Tim’s closet, and he would know what to do with the files. He might be disappointed Tim hadn’t been able to defend himself better, but justice was important to him, and he’d never liked Jack Drake. He would at least make sure he went to prison.)
Tim hoped he was wrong, but seemed like he might be needing that evidence sometime soon. Maybe the reason he couldn’t remember anything was because he’d gone into a dissociative rage, like Jason did back when he first reappeared. He didn’t have the Lazarus Pit in his head, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t happen. It happened to normal people all the time.
Something SVU had also taught him, though: no body, no crime. He had to find out for sure whether his dad was dead. And then…
Then he would figure out where to go from there.
***
Luckily, Jason had introduced Tim to The Hangover for the first time last summer, so Tim knew the protocol for this sort of thing. He had to do the same thing the Wolf Pack had done when they lost Doug — he had to retrace his steps.
To do that, though, he first had to figure out what his steps were.
Good thing he was a detective.
Unfortunately, he was also a fourteen-year-old kid in half a bloodstained suit, wandering alone through the bad part of town, so the real first order of business was to make himself presentable. He didn’t want to use the credit cards if he didn’t have to — he wasn’t sure whether he was on the run or not — and he only had a single twenty in terms of cash, which meant his options were limited.
In a stroke of good fortune, the concrete slab across the street turned out to be neither a Dollar Tree nor a liquor store, but a Goodwill. Tim washed the blood off his hands as best he could with a half-empty bottle of Sprite from the dumpster, prayed no one would ask too many questions, and walked through the automatic sliding doors. It wasn’t until he was inside, in the air conditioning, that he realized it was probably a hundred degrees outside in the shade. Yeesh. Vegas.
He made his way down the aisle, selecting clothes mostly based on size, price and color — small, as cheap as possible, and black to hide whatever blood leaked out of him. He figured his slacks were all right, since they were black already, and he wasn’t about to buy a new pair of pants if he didn’t have to. The shoes had to go, though. If he had to run from someone he wasn’t going to have much luck doing it in dress shoes — not when the soles were this slippery.
A t-shirt, a baseball cap, mirrored aviators and a beat up pair of Adidas ran him up to twelve dollars. After a moment of hesitation he added a Vegas guide book to the pile for another buck, then asked the teenager at the checkout counter if there was a bathroom he could use.
The guy didn’t even give him a second look, just pointed him towards the back.
“Thanks,” Tim said, and skedaddled.
It was clear, a few minutes later, that he’d been totally one hundred percent right about looking as fucked up as he felt. There were dark circles under his eyes, one side of his face was a livid bruise — he was pretty sure from the shape of his cheek that it was fractured, maybe broken — his hair was greasy and lank and he was pale enough he probably could’ve just evolved out of a cave for the first time in a millennia. Even with the fresh clothes there wasn’t much improvement. The t-shirt said One Casino, Two Casino, Three Casino, Poor, the hat just had a cartoon of a bird — ha, fitting — and the sunglasses might do the job of hiding his face but they also made him look super shady.
Staring into his own eyes, he started to doubt his plan. And only ten minutes out the gate.
He pushed down his doubt, washed his hands, making sure to scrub the blood out of his fingernails, then pulled up his t-shirt and twisted so he could see in the mirror while he peeled off the gauze. It probably wasn’t the smartest move, since if the tape didn’t stick back down he wouldn’t be able to replace it, but he had to see what it was, what had happened —
It was a bullet wound.
Someone had shot him. Someone had shot him, and he didn’t remember.
Distantly, Tim registered that he was on the floor. He was hyperventilating, curled into a ball with his arms over his head, and he was losing time again but now it was in a familiar way. Tim had panic attacks all the time, he’d been having them as long as he could remember and there was almost never anyone there with him when it happened, especially not anyone who gave a shit — except that one time him and Dick had been on patrol, Dick visiting from Bludhaven, and there had been strong gentle hands on his back, fingers carding through his hair, Dick’s low soothing voice saying Hey, baby bird, just breathe…
Tim wanted him. He wanted to press that button and bring them all here, he wanted Dick to call him baby bird and Jason to pull him up off the floor and Bruce to take him into his arms and carry him home, but he couldn’t, because if he called them and they found out he’d killed his dad, they would hate him. Bruce would take Robin away, and Jason would call him a hypocrite, and Dick would be so disappointed, and Tim couldn’t handle that. He couldn’t.
Slowly, he got his breathing under control.
This was stupid. He wasn’t some scared kid, he was Robin. Just because he was hundreds of miles from home in a city he didn’t know and someone had shot him — someone who was maybe still out there looking for him — didn’t mean he couldn’t handle things.
He picked himself up from the bathroom floor. He washed his hands again, then drank some water from the tap and used his ruined dress shirt to wash his face.
There. Now he looked human. Almost.
***
It was a five mile walk back to the Strip, and another half-mile from there to Caesar’s Palace, so by the time Tim made it, it was mostly dark. Out over the desert the sky was a faint, delicate blue, wavering on the edge of night, but on the Strip a million glittering lights blazed bright as day.
Tim kept his head down as he wove past a pair of cops on patrol, rounding up rowdy drunks. The nice thing was that it was pretty hard to be conspicuous in Vegas unless you were actively puking on a cop car, and since his headache had mostly faded Tim figured he was in the clear there. Besides, these cops weren’t on the lookout for underage runaways, not unless they were offering their services on the street corner — and even then, the only thing illegal about it was that they were minors and they weren’t registered with a state-approved agency. Vegas was a weird place.
There’d been no room key left in his wallet when he woke up, and he couldn’t exactly stroll up to the front desk at Caesar’s and ask for a replacement without leaving a record, so he had to take the sneaky way in. Part of his Robin training — from Jason, not Bruce — had involved pickpocketing, so it was no trouble at all to bump into a manager, apologize profusely, and walk away with a master key to the entire hotel. Up in the highest hallways, where the villas and executive suites were, it was quiet and very, very clean, like expensive places always were. It made the hair on the back of Tim’s neck stand on end.
He scanned into the room him and his dad had been staying in, stepped inside, and stopped.
Everything was exactly as they’d left it.
Or at least, he assumed it was. He didn’t know if he’d ever come back last night, if he was on any cameras, if they’d made it back to the room after dinner. But his paperback was still open face-down on the table in the sitting room, and through the door to his bedroom he could see his suitcase on the stand, and as he walked in a daze into his dad’s room he found that the usual mess was all there — dirty shirt hanging from the back of the desk chair, half-drunk glass of scotch sitting in a ring of melted sweat beside the TV, bed unmade. Tim didn’t find any blood — not in either of the bedrooms and not when he checked the bathrooms — which was a good sign but not necessarily conclusive.
His laptop was still in his backpack. Tim hovered for a minute, debating. If he was on the run from the law, it was probably best not to do anything the police could track, like log in to any of his accounts or use his own IP address — but then again, if they were looking for him they’d probably be staking out this room so he was already fucked anyways.
He decided it was a risk he’d have to take. His tech was a hell of a lot better than whatever they had down in the business center, and he needed answers.
Also, he needed to send the Bats a cover story.
As far as they knew, he was tagging along on one of his dad’s business trips to Las Vegas. It had been a surprise when Jack asked him along, and Tim had been half apprehensive and half excited, because being alone with his dad was never really great but at least Jack seemed interested, for the first time in a long time, in some father-son bonding. He’d even suggested turning it into a road trip, instead of flying. Tim had told Bruce he’d be gone for a few days, and Bruce had told him to have a good time and not to forget to check in. And Tim hadn’t forgotten — not until last night.
Again, he was assuming he hadn’t checked in with Bruce last night. But depending when he’d lost his phone he thought that was a pretty fair assumption.
All but holding his breath, which was stupid, Tim logged into his email and opened up a fresh message. He put Bruce, Dick, and Alfred all in the To: line — Jason didn’t have an email address, since he was an undead shadow of the night or whatever — and agonized over the wording for a while, trying to weed out anything that might alarm them, before settling on something suitably innocuous.
Hello all,
Still in Vegas, just wanted to let you know that I broke my phone. It might be a few days before I can get it fixed, so I won’t be checking in. No need to worry!
Sincerely,
Tim
He hit Send, then immediately re-thought that exclamation mark. Did it seem fake? Did it seem like he was trying to send a coded message? Had he ever used an exclamation mark in an email before? Was he possibly fixating on something small to ignore the larger problems in his life?
Yes to the last, he thought sarcastically, definitely yes, and closed out of the mail app.
It was time to focus — there was hacking to do. Tim bounced over to his second user profile, the one he used for Robin, hidden so his dad couldn’t confiscate his laptop and discover it accidentally, fired up a VPN and set about worming into the security cameras for Caesar’s Palace.
He might not have known where he ended up last night, but he certainly knew where he’d started.
***
The feeds from the security cameras taught Tim a couple things. One, that neither he nor his dad had ever come back to the room last night. Two, that someone else had. A whole bunch of someone elses, actually.
He didn’t recognize them, but there had to be about six of them, men in dark clothes. They filed down into Tim’s room, disappeared for a few minutes and filed out again. There were no cameras inside the room, so there was no way to tell what they’d done while they were inside, but Tim’s skin started crawling thinking about it. He was sitting on the edge of his bed. Had they been in here, pawing through his clothes? Looking for him, for his dad? What did they want?
Tim uploaded the video files to his cloud storage — in case he needed them later — then clicked back over to his Tim Drake user account to see if Bruce or the others had responded. They hadn’t, but there was a new email in his inbox. He clicked it.
It was from Uber, thanking him for ordering a ride last night and asking him to rate his driver. There was a tiny map at the bottom of the email.
Thank fucking God. It was the first break Tim had caught all day.
He committed the map to memory, then turned the laptop off and slid it back into his bag. He shoved in some extra clothes too, and the emergency flashlight he always carried with him, and his toothbrush and the corkscrew from the minibar. The corkscrew wouldn’t do him too much good in a fight, but it was better than nothing. Rummaging through his dad’s clothes didn’t turn up any cash, but it did turn up a bottle of prescription painkillers, which Tim popped two of gratefully. His gunshot wound was killing him, burning and tight and a little itchy. Probably it was getting infected. Probably from the dumpster.
Oh, well. That was a problem for another day. Another Tim, who wasn’t maybe a murderer.
Back on the streets, Tim headed toward the address where the Uber had dropped him off. It was a long walk, and on the way he had time to get worried again. He worried the police were onto him. He worried he hadn’t finished the job, that his dad was still out there somewhere, half-dead and furious, looking for him. He worried, most urgently, that whoever had shot him was going to find him and kill him, for real this time, and the worry was so potent that it made him feel like there were people watching him, hidden in every brightly-lit storefront, every loud bank of streetside slot machines.
Robin was better than that, though, stronger than that. He wasn’t supposed to be afraid of shadowy figures trying to kill him, so Tim couldn’t be afraid of it either. He slipped the corkscrew out of his bag into his pants pocket and reminded himself that he didn’t need Batman to come save him, that he wasn’t supposed to want that because he was Batman’s partner, which meant they were equals, and Tim had to handle his own problems.
He had to turn off of the Strip to reach his destination, and the streets got shady fast. But Tim spent most of his youth running around the streets of Gotham after dark, so he was old hat at keeping his head down and minding his own business. Skirting a cluster of streetwalkers on the corner between a liquor store and a deli, Tim got cooed at, got called honey and got his cheeks pinched, but it was kind of nice. He wondered for a second if he could pay one of them to give him a hug, before he remembered that he only had seven dollars in his wallet, so probably not.
Pretty soon, he was walking through the doors to the University Hospital. It was busy in the ER intake, but he guessed this place was probably always busy after dark, and anyway busy suited him fine, since it meant the nurse at the intake desk would only give him like 10% of her attention, and hopefully wouldn’t notice that he was an unaccompanied minor.
“We got no record of an Alvin Draper,” the nurse said, when Tim asked after his “brother” who’d supposedly been brought in last night. “You gotta move out of line, kid, we got patients.”
“Can you check one more name?” Tim asked, with his most charming gala smile. Something was screaming in muted terror at the back of his head, because surely he hadn’t — surely he hadn’t — but he couldn’t just leave without checking.
The nurse gave him an annoyed look, but asked, “What name?”
“Tim Wayne,” Tim said. “He goes by — he goes by Tim Wayne sometime.”
Only in the privacy of his own head, mostly when he was lying face-down on his bed with welts from his dad’s belt throbbing on his back, dreaming that Bruce Wayne would swoop in and whisk him away from all the pain and the fear like he’d done with his two sons, but Tim wasn’t Bruce’s son, he was his partner, and anyway the nurse didn’t need to know all that.
“We do have a Timothy Wayne,” she said, after a minute, “but looks like he split sometime around three this morning.”
“Can you tell me who treated him?” Tim asked, and when he saw her hesitant look added, “Listen, he’s sort of…off the wagon. If you know what I mean. I just want to find him and make sure he’s okay.”
Her eyes were tracing the shape of the bruise under the bill of his cap, his swollen cheek. Tim’s abdomen tensed with the instinct to run away, but he made himself stand still. He needed this. He needed to talk to the doctor who’d sewn him up.
“Alright,” the nurse said, after a long minute. “It was an intern. Dr. Nelson.”
“Dr. Nelson,” Tim echoed, to make sure he remembered. “Thank you. Is he here?”
The nurse gave him that same hesitant look, but at last she told him where to find his intern. Tim took the stairs up to the inpatient ward, where Dr. Nelson was supposed to be doing his rounds, because going into the elevator when you were running from bad guys only ever ended with the bad guys getting in the elevator with you and having to fight them in close quarters, and Tim was not interested in that shit tonight. He sped through the inpatient ward, not knowing who he was looking for, hoping he’d see a face and it would trigger something in his memory —
Rough hands grabbed him and yanked him into a closet.
Tim’s heart leapt to his throat. He was halfway to pulling the corkscrew before he registered the guy who’d grabbed him was a doctor — and that the badge on his white coat said DR. KENT V. NELSON. “Holy shit,” he said, without meaning to. “You’re the guy! You gave me stitches!”
Dr. Nelson clapped a hand over his mouth. “Keep it down, would you? I thought we agreed that I would never see you again, Tim!”
“Sorry,” Tim babbled, as soon as his mouth was free. “Sorry, seriously, I’m sorry, but I was hoping you could tell me what happened last night because I don’t remember literally a single thing that happened and you’re the only lead I’ve got. Sorry.”
Dr. Nelson stared at him for a long minute, dumbstruck.
Then he said, “Okay. I need to draw some blood.”
“What?” Tim squeaked. “Why?”
Dr. Nelson didn’t answer. He marched Tim back into the ward, down the hall and into a private room, where he started pulling needles out of drawers, muttering to himself and adjusting his glasses. “I had a feeling you were on something,” he said, and turned back to Tim with a stretch band and a rubber ball, “I knew that level of pupil dilation could not be normal, I knew you were bullshitting me — Here, hold this. Squeeze.”
He tied the band around Tim’s bicep, and Tim had given enough blood in the Cave, for the Bat blood bank, that he knew what was going on, but still his heart was rabbiting away in his chest. When he gave blood in the cave it was always Alfred taking it, Alfred’s gentle hands and kind eyes and his calm quiet way of saying, “Breathe, Master Tim. There we go. You’re doing beautifully — that, or Bruce, who maybe wasn’t as gentle but who Tim always felt safe around, like Bruce was big and the rest of the world was small, like there was nothing on Earth that could hurt Tim while Bruce was there.
Alfred and Bruce weren’t here now — just Dr. Nelson, who was neurotic and twitchy and missed Tim’s vein maybe seven or eight times, swearing under his breath, before he finally struck oil. “Normally I’d send this to the lab for a tox screen,” he said, while a vial was filling with Tim’s blood, “but since you’re a shady kid who walked in off the street who I’m guessing does not have health insurance — ” wrong, but Tim wasn’t about to correct him — “I’ll just do a dipstick.”
“Thanks,” Tim said, feeling sort of woozy. Probably because he hadn’t eat in maybe two-ish days.
“You can thank me,” Dr. Nelson hissed, “by never, ever coming back here. Please. Or I will stop ignoring the mandatory part of mandatory reporting.”
***
Thirty minutes later, Tim left the hospital with a box of Oreos stolen from the doctors’ break room, fresh gauze on his bullet wound, and the knowledge that he’d been roofied. It wasn’t heartening knowledge but it was useful. It at least meant, whatever he’d done last night, he hadn’t flown into a dissociative murderous rage while he did it.
The next thing to do was figure out where he’d come from — where the Uber driver had picked him up. On the roadmap that folded out of the back of his guidebook it was just an empty block, undeveloped land, but Tim needed to see for himself, so he started walking.
His watch read two a.m. by the time he made it to the warehouse. It was near a freeway — he could hear cars dopplering past in the dark, but he couldn’t see them, couldn’t even see the headlights. This area of the city was totally deserted. He crossed the street, used the corkscrew to bust the lock on a side door to the warehouse, and paused with his hand on the doorknob. He might be about to discover his father’s body, he realized. This could be the last moment he could ever claim innocence, or goodness, or justice. So he took a minute, centering himself, breathing.
Then he pushed inside.
There were no lights — at least none that Tim could find a switch to, even if he were willing to draw that much attention to himself, which he wasn’t — but luckily he had his emergency flashlight now. He let the beam rove over the concrete floor, the hollow industrial walls, the cantilevered metal stairs with shadows like spiders’ legs, and there was no body that he could see but there was —
Blood. A lot of blood.
Tim stopped dead in his tracks, standing at the edge of a rusty red stain. It wasn’t brown enough to be that old yet, which meant that it was either Tim’s or — or —
He sunk into a crouch, hugging his knees, hiding his face, trying to think. Faint memories battered him like a blustery wind. The rough feeling of concrete under his cheek, through his thin dress shirt. His hands tied behind his back, the burn in his shoulders. Worming his hands free, the finally-lurch of freedom, the bark of a gun. He remembered the bullet tearing into him and he remembered, also, the feeling of hot metal in his hands, the kick. He’d held the gun. He’d — he’d shot someone.
Hands shaking, Tim guided the flashlight over to the wall. There was blood there too.
Tim didn’t realize he was back on his feet, running, until he was outside. He collapsed on his knees in the street, hyperventilating, his head hot and dizzy with the force of blood rushing through it. What had he done? What the hell had he done? He dropped the flashlight and clamped his hands over his head, trying to keep it together, trying to think. Panicking wasn’t going to help anything. Crying in the street wasn’t going to help anything. He needed to think.
Blood spatter. The pattern. He could — They did that on CSI, right? Used the pattern of the blood spatter to figure out what had happened at a crime scene? He could do that.
All he needed was a consult.
There was a payphone a block back, he’d passed it on his way here. Tim didn’t have any change, but they didn’t call him the Boy Wonder for nothing — there wasn’t a device on Earth he couldn’t hack, outdated communications technology included. He held down the star and pound key for three seconds, hit the zero five times in a row, held star and pound again, hung up the phone and waited. Two quarters clinked down into the dish. It wasn’t much, but Tim figured this payphone probably didn’t get a whole lot of traffic, and if he needed to he could always pop the quarters out and use them again.
He deposited the first coin, heard the dial tone, and punched in one of the numbers he’d forced himself to memorize when he became Robin.
Jason picked up on the last ring. “Who the hell is this?”
“Tim,” Tim said. “Tim Drake. Hey, you’ve shot people before, right?”
“Tim?” Jason sounded alarmed. “What the fuck, did you shoot someone?”
“No!” Tim said, potentially too fast to be believable. “I just — I’m watching CSI!”
“You’re watching CSI,” Jason echoed skeptically.
“Yes.” The payphone creaked in Tim’s hand, plastic straining under his white-knuckled grip. Why oh why had he thought this was a good idea? This was not a good idea. “I’m just — there’s a scene where they’re, uh, analyzing the blood spatter, and I wanted to know if it was realistic so I called to ask, uh, how much blood can come out of a guy before they’re dead? Like how much blood should come out of a guy when you shoot him that he can still survive?”
“Tim,” Jason said, his voice suddenly very serious, like Tim had his full attention, “are you in trouble? I need you to be honest with me, baby bird.”
Tears sprang to Tim’s eyes at the endearment. He wanted to say Yes. He wanted to say Come and get me, please. He wanted to tell his big brother everything, because if there was one person on Earth who would understand, who might still be willing to talk to Tim after all this, it was Jason. But he couldn’t, because he was supposed to be able to handle this on his own.
“I’m okay,” he lied. His voice wobbled like it did when he was about to cry, and he was suddenly angry with himself — Why couldn’t he keep it together for one fucking phone call? Why wasn’t he better than this? “I’m just…watching CSI.”
“Timmy,” Jason said, softer.
Across the street, in front of the warehouse where Tim had fired the gun, a black SUV with tinted windows rolled up and four guys got out. Tim didn’t remember them, still, but he did recognize them. They were the same guys who’d come to his hotel room.
“Tim,” Jason was saying, “if you’re in trouble — ”
“Gottagobye,” Tim blurted, and hung up.
His heart was pounding. If those guys looked in this direction, there was no way they would miss him. The light in the phone booth was the only one on the block.
One of the guys climbed the stairs to the backdoor. The door Tim had picked with the corkscrew, broken in through, then run blindly out of…
And left wide open.
There was a shout, too far for him to make out the words. Guns were drawn. The men started looking around the dark street, eyes roving for the intruder.
One of them spotted the phone booth. And Tim, standing like a deer in the headlights.
“THERE!” the man yelled.
Tim shouldered out through the door, and ran.
***
Jason stared at the phone for a long minute after Tim had hung up. It was past four and he was still out on patrol, crouched on the edge of a roof high above Gotham, guns hot against his thighs, but he was thinking that it was about time patrol ended.
He made his way down from the roof, heading back toward his bike, already dialing the cave. Tim was supposed to be on a business trip with his father. Vegas, Jason thought, which was a weird place to bring a kid, but Jack Drake had suggested they turn it into a road trip and Tim had accepted. Their youngest brother had been excited — excited to bond with his dad, excited that his dad wanted to bond with him — and even though Jason knew the kid well enough now that he’d been able to see the apprehension underneath it, he’d figured it was just because Timmy and his dad didn’t always get along. But now…
Now it looked like it might be something worse. Because Tim was not watching fucking CSI. He was in some sort of trouble, and he was halfway across the goddamn country, and for some reason he wasn’t calling any of them for help.
“Jason,” Bruce answered, on the second ring. “Are you okay?”
Jason ignored the way his heart clenched at the concern in his dad’s voice. Even a year ago, he wouldn’t have let himself hear it, would’ve worked himself into a murderous rage instead of acknowledge the truth of Bruce still loving him, but now it just made him warm. There was no time to feel warm, though. They had business to attend to. A lost bird to bring home.
“I’m fine,” he said. “Listen, I just got a really weird call from Tim.”
Somehow, he could sense Bruce going very, very still on the other end of the line. “What sort of weird?” he asked. His voice was half dad, half Batman. They were hard to differentiate unless you knew him really well, but Jason knew him plenty.
Still, he didn’t have time to be gentle, so he said, “He was asking me about blood spatter.”
“Blood spatter,” Bruce repeated, tight and measured.
“Yeah.” Jason swung a leg over his bike, kick-starting the ignition. “He said he was just watching TV, but it was — I don’t know, B, it was really weird. I think he was calling from a payphone.”
Bruce breathed out. It was his meditative, don’t-fucking-break-shit breathing. “Okay,” he said. “Come back to the cave. We’re going to figure this out.”
“Yeah,” Jason said again. “On my way.”
He hung up, and peeled out into the night, burning rubber.
***
Tim was being rocked. Everything hurt, but it was okay because Bruce was holding him. Bruce was carrying him to bed through the cool dark halls of the manor, murmuring words Tim couldn’t make out, the low rumbling cadence of his voice soothing Tim to sleep. Dick was there, too, running his fingers through Tim’s hair, curled around him on the bed, his touch repetitive and soothing. It’s alright, baby bird, he was saying. No one’s gonna hurt you, we’re here. You’re safe. I’m here, B’s here, Alfred’s here, Jason’s here…
Bruce sat down on the bed beside him, his weight dipping the mattress, his hand on Tim’s shoulder. I’m so sorry, sweetheart, he said. I’m sorry it took me so long to realize. You’re never going back to him again.
Tim woke with a gasp.
He was alone.
Of course he was alone — that had never happened. That would never happen, because Tim wasn’t Bruce’s son, he was Jack Drake’s son, and Jack Drake didn’t carry his son gently and tuck him into bed, he kicked the shit out of him and left him on the bathroom floor. That was the father Tim had. It was the only father he was ever going to have, because it was the father he deserved, because he was, as Jack had always told him, greedy. He wanted things he hadn’t earned. He wanted things that belonged to other people. Dick and Jason were Bruce’s sons, and Tim was…
Tim was lying on top of an 18-wheeler, rocking down the highway.
“Ugh,” he said, to the wind. Predictably, the wind didn’t say anything back.
At least he remembered how he’d gotten here, this time. Running from those shady thugs, gunshots cracking out behind him, the thugs retreating to go back for their car, chasing him up an on-ramp to the freeway, Tim coming to an overpass and looking down and thinking I can make that and pushing out into thin air just as a truck sped below him…
Now, he pushed himself up to sitting, and took stock of the situation. His head hurt again, and his right leg was killing him — he peeled his slacks away from his shin to reveal another bullet wound, and an ankle that was swollen and tender to the touch. He’d probably gotten shot on his way over the edge, landed weird on the injured leg and fucked the ankle…Shit. His walking tour of Vegas was about to get a whole less pleasant.
The good thing was, it seemed like the truck was heading back towards the Strip. Tim pulled his extra shirt out of his backpack and made a tourniquet for his leg as best he could with a couple of pencils. Hopefully cutting off the blood to his calf wound would make his ankle go numb, too.
Once that was handled he pulled his guidebook out of his bag — wincing, as he did, to see that he’d landed on his laptop and the thing was shattered — and looked for the Las Vegas public library. It wasn’t exactly an A-list attraction, so it was way in the back, but it was there.
Speeding under overpasses like giant birds flying overhead in the night, Tim hunched in on himself and tried not to feel the cold. It was sort of neat, riding along on the back of a truck, when he put all the other horrors out of his mind. The cars passing by looked like beetles, their round shiny backs and the stumpy antennae of their sideview mirrors. Metal rattled under him, wind sliced past his ears like sheer cliff walls, and faintly he could hear that the truck driver in the cab below him was blasting Elvis, which was very Vegas of him, and it was sort of like being on patrol with Batman and actually it was possible Tim was concussed. The lights of the strip were dancing in front of his eyes like fairies in Peter Pan and it was totally, totally possible — even probable — that he was concussed.
Didn’t matter, though. He didn’t have time to be concussed. He had to find out who those guys following him were, and then he had to find his dad, and then…
Then he could take a nap. A long, long nap. Potentially in prison, potentially on a Greyhound bus headed for the Mexican border. Either way.
Getting off the 18-wheeler was not the most fun Tim had ever had. He was Robin, so he could do it, but still, the moving dismount from 12 feet up onto a rocky slope with a sprained ankle was not his favorite move. It was not a move he would ever be repeating, if he could help it.
He was so, so lucky that Vegas was such a crazy town, because he was pretty sure he looked like one giant walking bruise, in Gotham they definitely would’ve called the cops on him, but the librarian at the circulation desk at the public library didn’t even glance at him while he pushed through the turnstile.
Tim went straight into the stacks, towards the computers. They weren’t as good as his own laptop, but they were better than nothing, and his laptop was smashed. He would make it work.
What he needed was to know how he’d gotten to the warehouse, and for that he needed access to the city’s CCTV. He’d spotted a camera across the street while he was running for his life — it was a red light camera, not meant for surveillance, but there was still a chance that it had caught something. Tim set himself up as a system admin for the library, made himself a fresh user account that wouldn’t log what he was doing, then pulled up an access page for the Las Vegas PD and plugged in the key that he’d coded when he was nine — the username and password that could get him into just about any system in the country. Well, any state or municipal system, at least. Federal he hadn’t cracked until he was ten, so that was a different key. The log-in screen gave way to a search feature, and Tim sent a request for footage from the camera he needed — it was all automated, so it shouldn’t ping anything unusual.
While he waited for the system to work, he looked out the window at a librarian taking a smoke break out in the alley. Maybe Tim should take up smoking, he thought. People seemed like they calmed down when they were smoking, and Christ knew Tim needed to calm down. He knew about the lung cancer and all, but at this point it might be worth it.
Instead of continuing that line of thought, he clicked over to a browser window to check his email. There was a response to his earlier message — two responses, actually, one from Dick and one from Alfred. Alfred’s thanked him for letting them know he’d be out of touch, and told him that if he needed help acquiring a new phone he should contact them. Dick’s completely ignored Tim’s statement that there was no need to worry, because it had a lot of exclamation marks and was basically along the lines of What’s going on? Let us come help you Timmy, which made Tim cry onto the library computer, which really wasn’t helpful at all and he was about to click out of the browser when another email came in.
It was from American Express, and the subject line was We’re sorry to see you go!
Tim stared at it for a long minute, wondering how the hell his credit card company knew he was about to die. Then he realized what it meant, and it was like someone dumped a bucket of ice water on his head.
He logged out of his email and logged into the American Express site, just to be sure, and it was true — his card had been canceled. He checked his bank account next. That was empty too, really empty, $0.00, and Tim entered a sort of fugue state as he logged out. The plan had been not to use his credit cards, but still he’d been hanging onto them as a safety net, he knew he could use them if he really needed to, and now…now the seven dollars in his wallet was really all he had.
It was a dumb thing to get worked up over, he knew — especially with everything that had happened in the last two days. But he was just now realizing that the only food he had was a pack of oreos in his backpack. He couldn’t buy a plane ticket home. He couldn’t buy a bus ticket to Mexico, or an Uber to the hospital. He was really, truly broke.
The t-shirt he was wearing suddenly seemed fitting. One Casino, Two Casino, Three Casino, Poor. Tim had to smother the urge to laugh hysterically. That was probably the fugue state.
There was a ping from the LVPD portal. Tim clicked over, and scanned quickly through the footage from last night, and there was — there was nothing. Just empty streets, all night.
However Tim had gotten to the warehouse, he hadn’t passed under that traffic light.
He buried his head in his arms, and laughed hysterically.
Think, he bludgeoned himself, as the laughter got quiet and turned to hot, smeary tears. Think, Robin. This is pathetic. You can solve one little mystery by yourself. You were there, you should remember, you just need to remember. Think.
But he couldn’t think. He couldn’t remember. He needed his brothers. He needed his dad — not Jack Drake, but his real dad, the man who took care of him and patched up his wounds with gentle hands and never yelled or hit him even when Tim was wrong and awful and greedy — but Bruce was his partner. His partner, not his dad. Bruce didn’t want to have to take care of his partner. Tim wanted to go home to the Manor and crawl into bed and sleep for a week, but the Manor wasn’t his home, because he wasn’t Bruce’s son, his bed in that house was for Robin, not for Tim.
And if he ever wanted to be Robin again, if he ever wanted that feeling of belonging again, he was going to have to figure this out himself.
Tim raised his head, pulling the browser back up. He had an idea.
***
“Why didn’t he activate his distress beacon?” Dick asked, for the millionth time.
There were any number of reasons their little brother might not have pressed the button, but Jason wasn’t going to articulate them all again, because it made him sick to think about. Someone had taken Tim’s watch, someone had tied Tim’s hands too tight for him to reach it, someone had threatened to kill the other Bats if Tim called for help and he’d believed them…whatever it was, there was no way it was good. And there was no way the kid was just too busy watching CSI.
“Here,” Bruce said sharply, over by the Batcomputer.
Jason was at his side in an instant, Dick hovering behind his other shoulder, Alfred coming down off the last step and setting down a tray of coffee to join them. Bruce had security camera footage pulled up on one of the screens, from the lobby of Caesar’s Palace — he’d spent the last hour or so drumming up everything he could on Jack Drake’s Vegas trip, hotel reservation and valet ticket and the fact that his entire company was secretly flat broke, and while there was definitely something shady afoot there’d been nothing yet to suggest what might be going on with Tim.
Now there was. Because that was Tim on the monitor, head ducked under a baseball cap, face hidden behind mirrored aviators, wearing a t-shirt that was way too big for him, pickpocketing the manager.
“What the fuck,” Jason muttered. Bruce grunted, echoing the sentiment.
“Maybe he lost his wallet?” Dick suggested, confused. “He needed a room key and he couldn’t…”
“He couldn’t ask for one at the front desk,” Bruce finished for him. “Why not?”
Dick shook his head, wordless.
Jason’s phone rang.
It was just vibrating in his pocket, but everyone was wound so tight it was a miracle no one threw a knife. Jason was lucky he didn’t instinctively pull a gun. He pulled the phone out of his pocket, saw it was another unknown number with a 702 area code, and answered on speaker.
“Tim?” he said.
“Hey Jason,” came Tim’s small voice. He sounded just as bad as the last time Jason talked to him, but once again the reception was too shitty for him to tell what was wrong. “So, like, don’t freak out or anything—”
“That’s a really terrible way to start, if you don’t want me to freak out,” Jason told him, ignoring Dick’s Shut up glare. “Come on, baby bird, what’s going on? You know you can tell me anything.”
“Nothing,” Tim lied. “Nothing’s going on. I totally have a plan. I just, you know, in case my plan doesn’t work I wanted you to know that — “
“What do you mean, in case your plan doesn’t work?” Jason interrupted, because that sounded a hell of a lot like in case I don’t make it out of this, and judging by Bruce’s tense, alarmed look he heard it too. “Tim, just let me help you. Let us help you, please.”
“No, no, you can’t, it’s totally fine I have it handled I promise.”
“Tim,” Bruce cut in, strangled.
“B?” Tim blurted. He sounded like he was panicking, which was not good, he was going to hang up again and that couldn’t happen. “Why are you there? Why — I just wanted to talk to Jason — ”
“I’m here,” Jason reminded him. “You can talk to me, Timmy. Talk to me.”
There were a few deep breaths over the line, like Tim was trying to calm himself down. Like he was crying, alone somewhere in fucking Las Vegas and crying, his little brother, and Jason couldn’t be there to hold him and it wasn’t until Dick took his hand that he realized he was grabbing onto the back of Bruce’s chair hard enough to crack the leather. He met Dick’s eyes over the phone, and it didn’t make him feel better, but it made him feel less alone, at least, because Dick was hurting just as bad for exactly the same reason.
“Baby bird,” Dick said, voice cracking, “tell us what happened. Please.”
Tim was definitely crying now. “I can’t,” he sobbed, “I can’t tell you. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I don’t remember and I can’t — I can’t — I just wanted to tell Jason in case my plan didn’t work that there’s a safe in the back of my closet and the combination is Dick’s birthday please don’t look unless I’m dead okaygottagobye.”
The line went dead.
Jason stared at the phone in his hand, then looked up and stared at Dick, who was so pale Jason sort of had to wonder if there was any blood left in him at all. He didn’t look at Bruce. He couldn’t even begin to look at Bruce, because Tim had said unless I’m dead, and that was one of Bruce’s kids, and Jason had been the last kid to die and this couldn’t fucking be happening.
Alfred took a small, careful step forward. “I think,” he said, to Bruce, “you’d best be getting to Las Vegas, as quick as you can. I shall hold down the fort in your absence, sir.”
Bruce looked to Alfred — and Jason looked at his dad then, which was a mistake, because Bruce’s eyes were red around the edges, like he was holding back tears only through sheer force of will. “Thank you, Alfred,” he said, voice rough.
“Of course, Master Wayne,” Alfred returned.
Alfred sent word ahead to the airport to have the Wayne Enterprises jet ready, and for once no one made any smart aleck remarks about how bad it was for the environment. There was only one stop to make on the way — the mansion down the road.
Jason had faint memories, from before his death, of attending a few galas at the Drakes’ — the sort of small-scale charity benefits that rich people called “Christmas parties” but were really just excuses to guzzle Veuve Cliquot and force the caterers to work a holiday — but the house that he remembered was a far cry from the reality he walked into now. The halls were cavernous, dark and empty, furniture covered with white sheets, and for a minute he could convince himself that it was just because the Drakes were all out of town, but then he saw the copy of The Once and Future King he’d loaned to Tim lying face-down, half-read on the sheet on one of the couches, and he knew with a sudden cold certainty that this was what it was like all the time. Like Tim wasn’t even a resident in his own home, like he didn’t deserve to take up space here, and Jason had thought before that it was strange Tim didn’t live at the Manor, that Bruce had chosen not to adopt him, but he’d always accepted that it was because Tim had a parent, still.
Well, he wasn’t going to accept that anymore. If Bruce didn’t take charge of the situation after this, take their baby bird home, then Jason would have to take matters into his own hands. Tim could live with him. A few of his safehouses weren’t even health code violations.
Tim’s room was on the second floor, far away from the master — far enough that Jason doubted if Tim’s dad even would’ve heard him, if he called out for him. It made Jason’s heart constrict. It made him feel icy. There was the Star Trek poster Dick had gotten Tim last Christmas, hanging over the bed, there was a stack of familiar schoolbooks on the desk, Calc BC and Comparative Government and AP Physics, and it was eerie, being in here with the lights out, without Tim. Jason felt sick, and they hadn’t even found the safe yet.
Dick went into the closet, pulled the string to turn on the light, crawled under Tim’s hanging clothes. Jason heard the tiny beeps of an electronic keypad, the muffled thunk of a safe opening, the rustle of papers.
Then Dick made a quiet, choked sound.
“Dad,” he said.
Bruce went to him.
Jason sat down hard on the bed.
***
Tim’s plan was as follows. Some quick Googling on the library computers had turned up a psychologist in North Vegas who specialized, according to her website, in unlocking traumatic memories. That was perfect, it was exactly what Tim needed, except that therapy sessions cost a lot of money and he was betting that they cost even more money when you were a minor who wanted to pay under the table and also get your memories unlocked ASA-fucking-P. So he was going to need some cash, which meant he was going to have to gamble, which meant he was going to have to figure out how to convince the casino he was eighteen. The fake ID he’d made with the membership card printer in the back room of the library should hopefully take care of that, but it wasn’t his best work, so his heart was galloping like a racehorse as he walked through the front doors to the Bellagio.
It was daytime now, but inside the casino it didn’t matter because there were no windows. Tim had spent the rest of the night and most of the morning poring over every book the library had on card counting, hiding in the stacks and munching oreos. He was in a lot of pain and he was dead tired, but he’d spent two dollars out of his last seven filling up on coffee on his way here, so he was ready.
He was as ready as he’d ever be.
At the cashier’s cage, he presented one five dollar bill in exchange for five one dollar chips, stomach in his throat. He had to show his fake ID, like he knew he would, but he must’ve done a better job than he thought because the cashier barely looked at it.
“Enjoy the Bellagio, Mr. Wayne,” the cashier told him, sliding him his chips.
Tim would kick himself later for that choice of alias, but right now it made him feel trembly and maybe even a little safe, hearing someone call him Bruce’s name, so he just said, “Thanks.”
He puttered around the tables for a while, turning the chips over and over in his hand, a small part of him thrilled by the stunt he’d just pulled, getting on the carpet in a casino while he was fucking fourteen. His outer mind was all business, scanning the blackjack tables, looking for one that was well-placed and already hot, but his inner mind was wrestling with how bad this was, how freaked he was, struggling not to lose his grip and become a scared kid.
The call to Jason, he had to admit, had not gone as well as he’d hoped.
He’d been expecting Jason to be less concerned and he’d definitely not been expecting Bruce and Dick to be there as well, but that was in the past and he was trying not to think about it. If they chose not to respect his wishes, if they looked in the safe while he was still alive, well…Tim would deal with it. They’d be disgusted with him, and Bruce would take Robin away, but at least they’d understand, intellectually, why Tim might’ve snapped and killed his dad. They might even testify on his behalf, if this thing ended up going to trial. Jason might not, since he was still officially dead, but Dick. Bruce too, maybe, if it wouldn’t conflict with his Brucie Wayne image.
Tim was, he realized, stalling, kicking around feeling sorry for himself. Time to rip off the Band-Aid.
He picked a table, and sat down.
Counting cards, it turned out, was just as easy as they made it look in the movies. An hour later Tim was sitting with $5,000 dollars in casino chips stacked in front of him, trying to figure out how much a therapy session cost when you were planning to bribe an upstanding doctor. Probably $5,000 was enough, but just to be safe he figured he ought to double it.
Just as he was placing the bet, a heavy hand came down on his shoulder.
“Hey, Rainman,” the pit boss said. “Why don’t you come with me?”
Tim gulped, looking up at the man with wide eyes. He’d forgotten about casino security. How could he have forgotten? Stupid.
Stupid, stupid, stupid. He was so stupid.
“Uh,” he squeaked. “Why?”
The pit boss gave him a hard, unamused look. That look said Don’t test me, kid.
“Right,” Tim answered, even though nothing had been said. “Okay. Sure, lead the way.”
Tim had seen enough movies that he expected to be led to a windowless back room and beat within an inch of his life for stealing from the house, which he figured he could handle as long as they let him keep some of the money, but instead the pit boss took him to a very normal looking office and got right on the phone with the police. “Yeah,” he said, “I’ve got a minor here with a fake ID counting cards,” and Tim’s soul exited his body posthaste.
Think, Robin, he tried to tell himself, like he had a million times since this nightmare had started, think think think, but all he could think was that he was fucked.
He was fucked.
And he had to run. He had to find a way to get out of there and make a break for it and maybe — Mexico, maybe he could go to — but Bruce would be so disappointed, and Tim should stay and face the music, right? He should own up to what he did, whatever it was. He should plead guilty and go to prison quietly, he shouldn’t make a fuss, because aside from the fact that he was fucked the only other thing he could think was how it had felt to grow up down the road from the Waynes, knowing that they were the Bats, how they were larger than life, like a family out of a storybook, Dick the brave knight and Jason the Boy Wonder and Bruce the dark shadowy protector, defenders of the city, protectors of the innocent, and the first time Dick had talked to him at a gala Tim went home floating on air, didn’t even care that his dad backhanded him for failing to answer a question in the foyer, just floated on up to bed and went to sleep with his face throbbing dreaming of Bruce Wayne coming to save him.
They were — the Waynes, Bruce and Alfred and Dick and Jason — they were so much better than he could ever be, and they were so good, and so kind and warm, and Tim was just a stain. He was just a stain. So he should go quietly.
When the cops came, he kept his head down, and he didn’t say anything.
***
Alfred called while they were circling the airport, waiting for landing clearance.
Bruce answered immediately. “What is it?”
His voice was tense, like he was preparing for the worst.
“There’s been a development, sir,” Alfred reported. “A boy using the alias ‘Timothy Wayne’ has been booked by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police. The same alias was used at an area hospital two nights ago, but there are no available medical records. According to the hopsital computers, he checked in for no reason, checked out, and left.”
“Is it him?” Bruce asked, even though — Tim Wayne, Jason thought, running around Vegas checking himself out of hospitals AMA, there wasn’t really anyone else it could be.
“It is him, sir,” Alfred answered. “The mug shot confirms it. It’s Master Tim.”
“Thank you, Alfred,” Bruce said tightly.
“Of course, Master Wayne,” Alfred said, like he always did. “Bring him home.”
“I will,” Bruce said, and Jason believed him.
He watched his father hang up the phone and set it carefully on the table in front of him. His movements were measured and deliberate, like they were when Batman was trying not to break things. Like they’d been, in the past, when Bruce was trying to resist the urge to drink. Dick was watching him too. They were all in their civvies, suits stashed in their bags, because an impulsive trip to Vegas was easier to explain away when they were Brucie Wayne and sons, than when they were Bats. Jason didn’t like it, he wanted his guns, but for the first time in a while he was going to trust his dad.
Bruce would know what to do, here. He would handle it. He would make this better.
“When we get him back,” Dick said suddenly, voice cracking, “when we get him home — he’s never going to that house again. He’s never going to see that man again.”
Jason tried very hard not to think of the photos, but his grip tightened on his armrests so much his knuckles popped. Tim was so small. He was so small, and in the oldest photos he’d been even smaller.
“Yes,” Bruce said, his gaze far away. “Never again.”
***
The cops put Tim in an interview room and left him there, so in lieu of anything more productive to do, Tim leaned his head back and started counting ceiling tiles. There were only ten, so it didn’t take him very long, but then he started on the floor. There were more on the floor.
One, two, three…
A vague memory flickered at the edge of his awareness. His father’s face. A fancy restaurant. A glass of red cranberry juice tumbling out of his hand. The waitress, hovering, worried.
“It’s fine,” his father had said. “Don’t worry about it. I’m afraid the scamp got into the minibar.”
…four, five, six…
Streetlights shuttering past outside the window — like a flip book, like old film. Lying across the back seat, no seatbelt on, rolling into the footwell. His father’s voice, cursing. A sharp pain in his head, like an axe.
…seven, eight, nine…
Voices outside the car, Tim too woozy to make anything out. The door above his head opening, rough hands dragging him out onto concrete, into the echoing space of a vast warehouse.
“Ten percent,” his father had said, voice hard, like he was arguing. “You get ten percent of whatever Wayne’s willing to pay for him, that’s what we agreed.”
Shouting, scuffling, trying to lurch to his feet too soon, crumpling back down to vomit, a gunshot —
…ten, eleven, twelve…
His dad yelling, someone putting pressure on his wound, too much pressure, it hurt, but the guy had a gun in his holster, Tim could see it, and his hand was so close.
Then his hand was there, and the gun was in it.
…thirteen, fourteen, fifteen…
Too weak to hold his arm up, let alone a firearm, it kicked in his hand like getting hit by a car and the bullet took one of the thugs in the shoulder, Tim got knocked back and his head cracked against the concrete and he saw, for a split second, his dad silhouetted in the open warehouse door, running.
Running.
Tim hadn’t killed Jack. He hadn’t killed anyone.
The blood on his hands had been his own.
His hand flew to his watch so fast it gave him whiplash.
***
Tim’s emergency beacon went off while Bruce was walking through the doors to the police station. Even though he was already most of the way to his kid, his heart still jumped into his mouth. The Brucie Wayne persona went to hell in a hand basket — he yelled his way straight back to Tim’s interview room as Batman.
And even though he’d spent the whole flight here running over thousands of worst-case scenarios in his head, he still wasn’t prepared when he finally saw his son. It was just through the window first, the vertical rectangle on the door, but that was enough. Tim looked like hell warmed over. Half his face was a bruise, he was sitting with his shoulders held unevenly, in a way that suggested busted ribs, and he looked like he needed a shower, a good meal, and a week of sleep. Bruce was going to give him all of it, and he was going to give it to him soon, because there was no way he was walking out of this place without him.
He put his hand on the doorknob, pushed inside. “Tim,” he said.
Tim looked up at him, wide-eyed, then looked down at his watch, like he was trying to figure out how Bruce had gotten here so quick. “Holy shit,” he said. “Did Clark…?”
Bruce stayed quiet and let Tim figure that one out for himself.
“Right,” he said, after a minute. “You were already on your way, weren’t you?”
Bruce nodded.
Tim looked miserable. “You went in the safe, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” Bruce said.
Something in Tim seemed to give way. His shoulders hunched. “I’m sorry,” he said, voice thick and tight like it got when he was trying not to cry. “I wasn’t — I’m sorry.”
Bruce went over and knelt in front of him. They hadn’t handcuffed him, which was good, because if they had Bruce might have killed someone. He took Tim’s face in his hands — his red, snotty, miserable face — and caught his tears on his thumbs.
“You have nothing to be sorry for,” he said. He was bad at saying what he was feeling, so when it came to the important things he found it best to use the shortest, clearest words possible. “None of it was your fault. You didn’t deserve what he did to you.”
Tim’s tears spilled over his thumbs. Bruce wanted to cry with him, but he understood that it would be better for his son if he stayed strong right now, so he didn’t.
“I’m Robin,” Tim sobbed. That was okay, since Bruce had a scrambler in his pocket. Even if the cops were listening in, all they’d hear was static. “I should’ve been able to protect myself more.”
“No,” Bruce said. “This is different, sweetheart.”
Tim was shaking under his hands. Bruce went up onto his knees and pulled Tim in close against him, careful of his injuries. The ones he knew about, at least. Tim clung to him, hands fisting in the back of his shirt, and Bruce held him as tight as he dared.
“I’m sorry,” Tim said again, against his shoulder, snotty. “I’m sorry you had to come all the way out here.”
Bruce put a hand on the back of his head. Tim’s whole skull still fit in his palm, and it made something turn over in his stomach, like love but nervous. Love but terrified. “You have nothing to be sorry for,” he said again. “But Tim — can you tell me something? Can you tell me why you didn’t use your beacon sooner?”
Tim’s hands tightened in his shirt, like he was afraid he was going to be pushed away. Bruce held him closer, to assure him he wasn’t, and stroked his hair.
“I know we have,” Tim started, “a professional relationship — “
“No,” Bruce said. He didn’t like to interrupt, but he couldn’t let Tim say that. It hurt to hear Tim say that, to know that Tim thought that. His son thought that.
He drew back, never letting go, to look in Tim’s eyes. They were rubbed red, eyelashes clumped with tears, and he avoided Bruce’s gaze like he thought he was about to get rejected. Bruce pulled him down and kissed his forehead. “We don’t have a professional relationship,” he said, as gently as he could. “I love you. You’re my child. I will come any time you call. Any time you need me. For any reason.”
Tim stared at him with wide eyes. Bruce’s heart hurt to look at him and not be holding him, so he kissed his forehead again and then drew him back into a hug, tucked close against his chest. Sheltered.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” he said, chin resting on the top of Tim’s head. “I’m going to get you out of here, and we’re going to go home.”
Tim made a quiet protesting noise. “I don’t — “
“To the Manor,” Bruce clarified. “Not to your father’s house. You will never set foot in your father’s house again if you don’t want to. My lawyers are already working on custody papers. With the — the evidence you’ve saved there won’t be any argument.”
Tim’s skinny arms tightened around him. Tears caught in Bruce’s throat, thinking of the photos. He pushed them down. He would cry them out later, when he was alone with a bottle of scotch.
“Once the papers are signed,” he said, “there’s one more thing. I’d like you to have my name. If you want it.”
He hadn’t planned on that — not in his contingency, the one he’d started outlining years ago, when Tim first took up the mantle of Robin. But then he’d heard Alfred say Timothy Wayne, and he’d thought, there wasn’t really anything else on Earth that would make him happier, if it was what Tim wanted.
“Yeah,” Tim said, muffled into Bruce’s shoulder. “Yeah, yes. I want that. Thank you.”
“Sweetheart,” Bruce said, and turned to kiss his head again. His hair was very greasy, but fathers had to learn to overlook these things. “Can you tell me what happened?”
Slowly, Tim extricated himself from the hug. He looked shaky and exhausted, like a beach town after a storm had blown through, but he’d at least stopped crying. He grabbed one of Bruce’s hands and held on, and Bruce let him, grateful for the contact.
“I still don’t remember all of it, yet,” Tim said. “I was drugged. Roofies.”
Bruce’s heart lurched. He squeezed Tim’s hand. “Okay,” he said. “Tell me what you remember.”
Tim took a deep breath, and told him.
***
Once Bruce called and instructed them where to aim their investigation, it wasn’t hard to figure out what, as the saying went, had happened in Vegas. From the passenger cabin of the jet, Dick and Jason called Alfred — still in the Cave on the Batcomputer — and piece by piece, they put it together.
Jack Drake’s company was broke. Flat broke. Put-the-mansion-up-as-collateral, start-scrapping-the-place-for-parts kind of broke. Jack’s plan, it seemed, had been to facilitate the kidnapping of his son and ransom him back to Bruce Wayne for 20 million dollars. It wasn’t clear if this was because he’d figured out Tim was Robin or just because Tim spent most of his time at the Manor, with the Waynes, but either way it made Jason’s blood boil, because that was the man’s own son, and he was planning his kidnapping. Of course Jason had already seen the photos, so he knew, he knew what a shitstain useless excuse for a man Jack Drake was, let alone for a father, but still —
“Jaybird,” Dick said, voice level but tone serious, “take a walk.”
Jason looked down at where he was gripping Dick’s arm, hard enough to bruise. “Sorry,” he said, and made himself let go.
“Don’t worry about it,” Dick said peaceably.
Jason popped open the cabin door, waited for the stairs to lower, and took a walk.
It scared him, sometimes, how much he was willing to do for Tim. Even with his rehabilitation well underway, even though he could control the influence of the Lazarus Pit a little better every day, when it came to their youngest brother Jason had no limits. It wasn’t like it was with Bruce and Alfred and Dick — he’d do anything for them, too, of course he would, but Tim felt like his responsibility. Tim was someone he was supposed to protect, not the other way around, never the other way around, and it was killing him that Tim wasn’t here in his arms. He wanted to squeeze the life out of Jack Drake. He wanted Tim here. He wanted to burn Vegas to the ground. He wanted to hold his brother.
A car rolled over the tarmac, slick, dark. The same car that had picked Bruce up a few hours ago. It stopped by the plane. The door opened, and two figures got out.
Jason’s walk had taken him too far. Maybe a hundred meters.
He started running.
“Tim!” he called, when he was halfway there. The smaller figure paused on the stairs to the jet, hand on the railing, and turned to look to him.
“Timmy!” he called again, when he was closer, almost desperate, and then Tim was coming down off the stairs and running toward him, too, and he was limping a lot — why the hell was he limping? — but then he was there and it didn’t matter, because Jason pulled him up into his arms.
“Baby bird,” he was saying, his face tucked into the skinny swoop of Tim’s neck, soaking in the feel of him. “Jesus, Tim, don’t you ever fucking do that again. Don’t you ever do that again, you gave us all fucking heart attacks. What the hell were you thinking?”
“Sorry,” Tim said, sheepish, face buried in Jason’s shoulder. “I thought I killed him.”
Ice shot down Jason’s spine. The blood spatter, he realized, and held Tim tighter. “He would’ve deserved it, that piece of shit,” he gritted out, trying not to sound too angry in case he scared the kid. “He would deserve anything you wanted to do to him.”
“You saw what was in the safe,” Tim guessed, sounding small.
Jason hefted him up into his arms, koala-style, and put a hand on the back of his head. Bruce was watching them from the top of the stairs, something dark and very protective on his face, but this wasn’t for him. This was just for Tim, so Jason turned his mouth close to his little brother’s ear and said, “You want him gone, all you have to do is tell me.”
Tim didn’t say no. He just said, “Jason,” and clung harder.
Back in the jet, he had to relinquish Tim to Dick, because Tim was beat to shit and Dick was the one with the first aid kit. It was okay, though, because Dick was one of three people on Earth that Jason trusted with his little brother right now.
Still, he didn’t go far. Bruce didn’t go far either, not while the pilot pulled the stairs up and closed the cabin door remotely, not while they taxied for takeoff, not while they sped down the runway and into the sky, back towards Gotham. Not while Dick peeled Tim’s stiff pant leg up over a nasty, festering bullet wound and a shattered ankle, while Tim told them about jumping off a highway overpass, not while Dick gave Tim a warm smile and jabbed him with a local anesthetic, not while Tim just twitched and reached for Dick’s hand and let himself be lowered back on the reclined seat.
Jason met his dad’s eyes over his brothers’ heads, and for the first time in his life, he thought that if he decided to commit a violent murder…
Well, Jack Drake was one corpse that Batman wouldn’t object to.