Chapter Text
Silence and shadows had been his companions for far more of his life than his parents ever had, but Tim wasn't as sure as his parents seemed to be that this life was what he needed and deserved.
Tim had heard their all of the reasons they'd given for their decisions: it would foster independence in him, he had more than enough maturity to handle it, having unnecessary personnel around the house without adequate supervision would be asking for their artifacts to be stolen, vetting servants was a burden on the company's resources that the board wouldn't approve of, etc. All of these were logically sound and significantly important factors in their choices, Tim understood that. He did!
He also knew every single thing he'd done to deserve this life. The many misbehaviors that they spotted him commiting would be impossible to hide with even one extra pair of eyes in the house. His failures would only be encouraged if they coddled him. He got that! Really, really, Tim knew it all!
It was just...
There was just that...
Well, the thing was that...
Tim was so lonely. He was so, so lonely, and it somehow got worse when his parents came home. At least he could listen to the news on his headphones when they were out of the country. It wasn't good behavior. He got that. But the voices of Gotham, with all of their accents and opinions, were better company than the fear that dogged his heels whenever his Mother and Father were staying in the same space that he was.
They didn't even try to keep up a conversation with him. The news couldn't, and that was a comfort he clung to like he clung to the memory of the night at the circus.
Hugs were a novel concept at the time, but now that he knew about them, Tim didn't think he could live without them. He could get by with the fantasies he let play out in his head very time he was measured for a new suit (it had been two years since the last fitting), the stiff and fake performances of the Mall Santas (his parents weren't taking him for those photo ops now that he was old enough for the news outlets to believe that his Jewish parents had told him "the truth"), and the cold comfort of the ancient statues that graced the house and crowded the basement (he hadn't risked one since Passover).
No, that night at the circus was the only time that Tim had ever felt a hug, and the power of those hugs was the reason he knew, without a doubt, that the Robin that had been spotted last night during Man-Bat's rampage was none other than Richard "Dick" Grayson, the ward of Bruce "Brucie" Wayne and the only person still alive that had ever given Tim a real hug.
There were only four people alive in the world today that could perform a quadruple somersault. One was an older man, one nearly at the end of his career, who had refused any and every offer to perform anywhere outside of Russia. Another two, a mother and daughter act, had been touring Asia for the last ten years. The final person who was on record as having successfully performed that nigh impossible move, and he lived less than three miles away from Tim.
Dick Grayson could do the move; Tim had seen it himself in a "secret preview" that was the last time any of the Flying Graysons flew in Haley's Circus.
Even through the shaky, low-res cell-phone footage, Tim could see Robin pulling off the move exactly the way Dick had!
Tim's only real hug came from Robin!
Hiding himself from sight was becoming a surprisingly normal part of Tim's day lately. He had always been something to be hidden away when he wasn't needed. Tim knew what his purpose was; Drake Industries was a family company, and no family would be complete without an heir. He existed to increase the net worth of his parents' company. When being seen with his parents would be detrimental to that purpose, Tim did not need to be seen at all.
Living that life--one built only of shadows and spotlights--had given Tim practice at being unnoticed. He had been taught that he had to stay in the background, even in a crowded room, if his parents didn't need him to be noticed and seen.
Now Tim was using those skills for his own purposes, and it was wonderful.
Another pair of stiff grey slacks and shiny black shoes walked by him without so much as a pause. Tim didn't smile to himself--smiles drew attention in a place like this--but oh, did he want to. That made seventeen WE employees that had passed by an almost nine-year-old kid in the past hour! Seriously, you would think that at least one of them would have noticed a child wandering around a high-clearance area like this, but nope! Tim was all but invisible, sliding neatly past the forefront of their attention and into their mental blind spot.
They must have been better behaved as children than Tim was if they had been able to get used to living like that.
If he wasn't hiding in plain sight right now, Tim might seriously have considered asking them for tips. Then again, his parents hadn't been able to afford to pay the heating bill this year after he'd asked Mr. Sjogren's granddaughter about the correct etiquette for dining in school lunchrooms at the last gala, so perhaps asking questions of strangers should be put on hold until he could test his parents' rules about it when they came back from their excavations in Mongolia, Somalia, and Uzbekistan seven months from now.
Two more employees passed by him. They were debating which of the Italian restaurants in the Diamond District were mob fronts, and Tim made a mental note of the three names that both could agree on. Lorenzo's was already under investigation, but Tim would put the other two names on his list of places to look into further. Keeping track of the potential investigations that Batman might be working on, along with where he might be getting his information, was a part of Tim's strategy to confirm which of the departments at WE was directly involved in the Bats' business.
Not all of the employees in those departments had to be aware of it, but Tim had already used this method to rule out the majority of the marketing, fashion, and, surprisingly enough, software development groups. Tim would verify that later; he knew he wasn't smart enough to get it right, but cross-confirmation would give him a little more confidence in his deductions.
Just a little, though.
The program he'd started writing yesterday hadn't passed his final testing process yet, but he only needed to figure out the last two edge cases before he felt comfortable setting it to work on implanting a duplicate retrieval destination for him to access every time that one of the computers on the WE accessed the database of authorization codes he'd discovered last week.
When he'd hacked into the Justice League's financial accounts, Tim hadn't expected that it would be as easy as it was to single out the bank accounts that provided the majority of its funding. Tracking those back to their sources was even easier.
(and really, Green Arrow's identity was simple enough to figure out after he'd followed the more volatile accounts back to Queen Industries; that company was a mess)
From there, Tim stumbled upon a way to access the code behind the entire system. He was a good coder, yeah, but not that good; he must have gotten lucky. It was terrifying to think of the possibility that getting in was really that easy, so Tim just.
Wasn't.
Now Tim was building a picture of the network, here in Gotham, that Batman had direct contact with. He was surprised by how much of the communication was electronic. If Tim could find all of this information, how much more must Batman be hiding away? Every day now, Tim was discovering more and more about how his heroes did what they did.
...
Maybe Tim could lend a hand? For years now, Tim had been filling out the paperwork for his parents that came up whenever he was noticed.
From forging their signatures to copying their handwriting and writing styles to manufacturing enough evidence to convince the authorities that his parents actually wasted their time and money on him, Tim had picked up some things. Could he spot it when others did?
There was no way he would be as good at it as Batman was, but surely he could be of some use... maybe not directly to Batman, but there were others he could help. Tim had confirmed the identities of several of Batman's helpers to his own satisfaction. Jim Gordon was one of the easiest; the Commissioner of the Police would know what to do with it if Tim sent along information, right?
After his duplicate retrieval program was up and running, Tim would be able to tell more about what investigations Batman was actively working on. He could help the Commissioner out with some of the others! That would be good; Gordon always looked so tired whenever Tim saw him at a gala.
Batgirl's dad didn't need to be so tired.
Tim might not be worth much, but if he could help him out, even a little bit, then it would be easier for Barbara to be good enough in her dad's eyes to be allowed out of the house at night. Tim's parents were always stricter after an exhausting trip.
The Commissioner seemed nice, as far as Tim could tell, so Barbara might not need to be as perfect for her dad as Tim needed to be for his parents for her dad to be happy.
Maybe Tim could even solve a few cases for him! That would be a good thing, right?
Commissioner Gordon did a lot for the citizens of Gotham.
Tim wanted to help his city, too.
Since he'd figured out Robin's identity, Tim had gone by himself into the city proper many, many times. He'd fallen in love with the city. Her many voices had kept him company in Drake Manor for years, but the news anchors couldn't do justice to just how loud and full Gotham was. People were everywhere! Even at night, Tim could always find someone to just exist near if not actually talk to.
Tim was never alone when he came down here from Bristol, and that was why he was always trying to find new ways to explore her, to learn her secrets, to learn Batman's secrets. Batman was the reason he'd left Drake Manor in the first place; if Tim could understand Batman, maybe he'd understand what the world needed him to be.
Gotham needed Tim; he knew that. He couldn't have explained it to anyone. There were no words for this feeling of his, but that didn't make it any less real. Maybe thinking like that was a bad thing, but...
But Tim couldn't deny something this real. Gotham needed Tim. For what? He didn't know yet. Why would he? His city wasn't exactly known for her honesty and transparency.
She was known for the tangled dark alleys and jaded stories that Tim had fallen in love with. She was known for her curses, her crimes, and her chemicals. Gotham was known for a lot of things, but above all else, she was known.
Tim had never been known; his parents always said that he wasn't supposed to be. He was just another piece in their collection and not a very valuable one at that. They were sure that that was true.
His city didn't think so.
Gotham's twisted soul had found him in the silence and shadows of Drake Manor. She'd found him there, in the place where his parents had hidden him, and she'd decided that she'd found something she could use. Gotham took him out of there and gave him a reason to learn about her.
Now Tim was letting his curiosity take him wherever it did. Getting to know her, getting to know her people, was making him feel like... like a person. Like... like he might actually matter for more than just the money he made for the company.
It scared him; Tim wasn't supposed to be more than a tool for his parents. He couldn't. That was all he'd ever been.
But if his city needed Tim for something?
If Gotham needed Tim like it needed Batman?
Tim would learn everything he could about what Batman did because maybe that would help him figure out what Gotham needed him to do for her, and then he could figure out how to be perfect at it.
Jim Gordon, Commissioner of the Gotham City Police Department, had only just sat down at his table in the back of Tony's main dining room when the buzz came. He sighed. At this point in his life, he really should know better than to think that just turning off notifications on his phone would keep a certain someone from interrupting his dinner.
At least the kid had the courtesy to stick to silent mode. Tony's wasn't the kind of place where anything louder should be going off.
Whoever had taught this kid their manners hadn't thought that privacy was important, but the different levels of dignity that different restaurants expected were. He should add that to the notebook he'd started keeping after the third time that his little canary in the coal mine had forced an email through to Jim's personal email address.
Jim still wasn't sure what had made him keep quiet about this kid.
At first, he'd just thought that they were just another anonymous informant, like any of the hundreds of anonymous informants he'd dealt with in the past. They'd used his public account the first time, the email address that anyone could find through GCPD's website; all of the information in that email was for the Morelli case, and he'd been grateful for the leads it gave him. That case had been stumping him for weeks. It only took 32 hours for him to solve it after that, and he'd had the whole thing wrapped up before the end of the day on Friday.
That was just the first email, though.
He didn't notice the pattern until the fourth email came. He'd get stumped on a case, and he would just start thinking about whether it was worth turning on the Bat Signal when an email would come in giving him everything he needed to close it before the week was up. They all came from the same account. The format was identical.
It was nothing like what Bats would give him.
He'd sent an email back--one that wasn't just the automatic thing-y Barbara had set up for him--and he'd thought that that was the end of it. That email account went silent, and he had three days for that belief to sit.
Then he got the next.
After that, Jim couldn't figure out what kept him from asking Batman to look into it. Maybe it was stubbornness-- after all, Batman wasn't the only one who was a detective. Maybe it was protectiveness--the Dark Knight had gotten some good informants hurt by sticking his cowl where it didn't belong. Maybe it was respect--whoever was sending these emails, they were good.
Terrifyingly, horrifyingly good.
There hadn't been a single mistake in what Jim had gotten. Every single name, every single number, every single time was accurate. Even the spelling mistakes in anything that had been written by the criminals, Jim found, had been picked up, analyzed, and included for him. Honestly, whoever it was would skew the curve against Batman.
With all that, he'd been expecting someone older, someone old enough to be able to legally get a rental car. It wasn't until the first time he'd thanked his mysterious helper that Jim realized he was dealing with a kid.
No adult he knew would react like that.
He'd redoubled his efforts to stop the whole thing at that point, but all it did was make the kid do it even more. Jim really should have seen that one coming; he had raised Barbara all on his own, after all, and she was the same way. Still, he'd hoped that such a thorough and precise investigator would see reason.
Jim should know better than to hope for anything in Gotham.
Now, Jim had resigned himself to it. Whoever this kid was, they weren't going to stop. They were too eager to be helpful. He'd at least cajoled the kid into communicating with him about more than just crime.
How? He still wasn't sure. But he thanked Gotham that he did because it was clear that this kid was starved for praise, attention, and even basic social interaction.
The first two were far too common for the kids around Gotham.
The last thing wasn't. Typically, even the kids who'd never seen a sewer rat had their guardians (it would be more accurate, in Jim's opinion, to call them the people who fed them; the law didn't agree). Jim's little canary in the coal mine, on the other hand, didn't seem to even have that much. It worried him, but there wasn't much he could do about it other than give the kid someone to converse with.
Times like right now were when that upset him the most.
Another buzz in his pocket made Jim groan internally. If the kid was texting him again so quickly (Jim didn't know how they'd found his cell number, and he wasn't sure he wanted to), then something big was going to happen very soon. The kid might have no idea what privacy is, but their idea of urgency was spot on.
Jim shot the man across from him a wry smile. "Sorry, Bruce. You know how it is with kids."
"Oh, yes," his friend chuckled. "My two boys have interrupted more dinners than I can count. They certainly love causing trouble, don't they?"
"That they do," Jim agreed with a sigh.
Barbara's antics had worried him enough; Dick and Jason's weren't any better. This kid, though, was warning him about trouble brewing more often than not. That's where the idea for Jim's nickname for them had come from. His little Canary in the Coal Mine knew when problems were coming before anyone else did; they hadn't hesitated to warn him for a while now.
That change was when Jim's notebook was born. No kid should worry about "bothering" an adult, especially over something as dangerous as a herd of e coli-ridden cows being driven into the city before an auction. He'd told them as much; redirecting the delivery truck wasn't enough.
For the sake of his sanity, Jim didn't ask how the kid was planning to do that.
He did that a lot with his little coal mine canary.
A third text came in. Jim blanched. The kid had never texted him more than twice in ten minutes. Whatever this was, it was big. He dug out his cell. Jim had never unlocked the thing faster in his life. What he saw terrified him.
Coal Mine Canary: Robin's in danger. He's in Ethiopia.
Coal Mine Canary: The Joker broke out. He's headed there.
Coal Mine Canary: Nightwing's off-world. Batman's in Gotham.
Before he could do more than think 'the kid knows all of their identities,' another text popped up on the screen.
Coal Mine Canary: They won't listen to someone like me. You have to tell Bruce that Batman needs to hurry!
Jim gulped. The kid had never panicked. Not during Arkham breakouts, not over gruesome serial murders, and not even during a plague of demonic possessions! If this scared them... If the kid was begging for Jim to do something...
The only thing that would scare him more was if his little Coal Mine Canary ever went silent.
Jim Gordon, Commissioner of the Gotham City Police Department, looked up at the uncharacteristically confused and concerned face of his friend. Steeling himself, he prepared for a conversation he couldn't mess up. This was more than a matter of life and death; it was damn close to being more important than a world-ending threat.
With how much they'd already done, there was no doubt in Jim's mind that they'd save the world someday. There was a good chance that they might have already. For such a sweet, smart, caring kid to do that for people they never seemed to have met... For someone so young and afraid to take up space... For someone Jim had grown so fond of...
If he screwed this up, then there was no way that his little Coal Mine Canary would trust anyone else ever again. Jim Gordon wouldn't be the one to do that.
It hadn't been nearly long enough since Jason died for everything to have fallen apart so badly, yet here Tim was, hacking into Mercy General in Gotham proper again. Again. It was the thirteenth time he'd had to transfer some of the funds he had *ahem* acquired from Bruce's accounts to pay off the medical debt of a mugger that Batman had beaten into the hospital. How that man still hadn't noticed the discrepancy was beyond Tim.
He was practically an entire health insurance company on his own at this point!
With all of Bruce Wayne's charities, didn't it make sense to set something up for the thugs and goons he pummeled so brutally as Batman? For Gotham's sake, the two last night were still in surgery! If Tim hadn't called the ambulance when he did, they'd be dead! There was a chance that the anesthetics would do them in now, of course, or an accidental mistake of some sort would do the job, but at least those weren't immediately and undeniably Batman's fault. The fractured ribs, shattered foot, punctured lung, and cracked skull were. The muggers, two pre-teens desperate for food, would be coming out of this short a foot and an eye, respectively, but there was at least a chance that they would come out of it.
...
If Tim didn't do anything soon, Batman would kill someone. Anyone could follow patrol routes like Tim, stem the worst of the blood flow, brace spine injuries, drag drowning Gothamites out of their putrid harbor, and call 911; heck, they'd be better at it than one 11-year-old suffering from delusions of usefulness.
No, Tim was doing the bare minimum of what he knew anyone else would. But what else could he do?
His algorithm was already set to scan through police channels, public (and some not-so-public) cameras, and the hundreds of blogs dedicated to Batman-watching--all of that information was processed and, after a great deal of scrubbing and analysis, cobbled together into nightly maps covering the most likely places for Batman to do serious damage. Commissioner Gorden had stopped trying to block Tim's emails and alerts over a year before Jason's death, but those maps Tim sent him could be generated by anyone, really.
Tim wasn't fast, not like Nightwing (the hero that three-year-old Tim had gotten his only real hug from and his eight-year-old self had recognized flipping on the news). He wasn't smart like Batgirl (he hadn't seen her on the streets after her Joker-arranged accident, but Tim was 98.337% certain that she was now the Oracle he'd run across in the logs of the Batcomputer and the Justice League's servers). He wasn't strong, either, and he certainly wasn't brave.
No, Tim didn't have anything to offer that someone else couldn't do better. But he shouldn't just sit back and watch the Black Knight of Gotham fall apart through the telescope on his roof! Except...
He eyed the telescope thoughtfully. Then, slowly, he followed its directions to the house with its deeply missed star next door. These days the neighboring patch of space was almost as empty as Drake Manor had been Tim's whole life. Now, though, two-point-eight kilometers wasn't looking nearly as far away as it had even six months ago.
Maybe, just maybe, Tim Drake had something that he could do.
After all, Drake Manor was the only house within 10 kilometers of Wayne's ancestral home, and there had only been one person living there for years. His parents and Mrs. Mac might visit, but if they hadn't noticed him sneaking out to pick the locks of Mr. Wayne's office at WE and stalk the nightlife across all the streets and alleys of Gotham, why would they care if he walked over to the neighbors' house to show them his picture collection?
Mother and Father had certainly never asked to see it.
Tim was a fairly cruddy photographer, but he had a feeling that even his pathetic attempts at catching pictures of the local fauna in flight would be interesting to his fellow enthusiasts.
All he had to do was pretend that he, Tim Drake, would betray his heroes if they didn't listen. Easy!
Tim had mastered the art of lying to adults and authority figures before he'd ever had a real hug.