Chapter Text
For a moment, Tim wasn’t sure exactly what woke him.
Sensations came trickling in one at a time—first, the feather soft feeling of a small palm in his own, slender fingers curling around his wrist, then the familiar cadence of Alfred’s soothing tones as his voice echoed throughout the cave; too reverberant to be any place else.
The butler was not alone, he quickly deduced. A second pair of footsteps peeled away from the first and bent to his right, lighter than the first.
“Come now, Master Jason,” Alfred prompted quietly on his left side, eliciting only tired moans.
Dick’s chuckle was unmistakable. Questions chased each other round and round inside Tim’s head but went unanswered —Why was Dick here? When had he come home?— met with nothing but a cruel, empty silence.
Such questions were easier to wonder about, moreso given his mind was doing its best to shy away from the elephant in the room; the wrongness of his interloping presence didn’t hit at first.
As though untethered to his body, Tim felt he was on the outside looking in, or a wallflower unnoticed. The strangest part was that he could hear his own near silent breathing, but could hardly understand the rising and falling motion of his chest as he greedily took in air, in sync with the living.
To his right, Dick snickered over him, quietly amused. “Dead to the world, Alfie,” he said, the words accompanied by a single sonorous snore. Bruce, Tim assumed, feeling his heart flutter faintly against his ribcage, skipping a beat—out of hope, fear, the unknown? He wasn’t sure.
Alfred chuffed out a small huff of his own, a quiet laugh.
All was silent for a moment, before he heard a rustle of fabric and a faint whine of displeasure.
“Alright, Master Jason,” Alfred tried, barely audible, making more of a concentrated effort to wake the boy.
The butler’s endeavors were met with stubborn displeasure.
“...don’t wanna,” Jason grumbled from somewhere very near to him, the hand in his shifting. “...gotta stay until he… wakes up.”
It was Jason. Jason. Tim had succeeded. Here was proof that Jason was alive and…
The older boy’s words, hard fought against sleep, gave him more permission than anything else to let go and slip back under the veil of unconsciousness. Yet, he didn’t. Choosing to mulishly cling to what would possibly be the last few vestiges of domesticity he would be allowed.
… and Bruce would be overjoyed, but.
The gentle, rolling conversation continued over him, snippets and snatches at a time.
The elephant in the room shifted to loom over him, a threat, a weight ready to press down upon him and crush him into the dirt like a spring flower under the heel of a boot.
Somewhere close by, a machine beeped loudly, followed by several loud scrapes—chairs being shoved back on the concrete floor, if he wasn’t mistaken.
There was a loud yawn on his right, then a grunt as Dick roused his father from sleep, followed by a muted conversation between the pair which Tim caught very little of. There was more grumbling from Jason as Alfred continued to nudge the boy into waking, followed by a fond, albeit tired tone that Tim would recognize anywhere.
“Jay.” Bruce heaved out a sigh, voice still thick and gruff with sleep. “You need rest,” he declared, full of fatigue, making his way around Tim’s crown until he was by Jason’s side. The vague noises of movement were chased by the sound of rustling fabric, and he could picture the man rubbing circles on Jason’s back while tenderly plucking him from the chair. “And as loathe as I am to admit it, I do too.”
Jason was clearly too tired to put up more than a token grumble, because the protests did not last. To the chorus of departing feet, the opposition died.
Suddenly, Tim found himself alone in the big, empty cave under Wayne Manor.
Alone was a comfort. As well as a curse.
They all had a purpose, they all had a burden, he’d just hoped and wished for so long that his wasn’t to be forgotten.
Oh, he was so tired. There was much merit in going back to sleep, but anxiety and dread played a violent game of tug-o-war with his insides and refused to let him settle. The elephant by his bed loomed ever closer in the wake of silence the Waynes had left.
Reluctantly, he peeled heavy eyelids apart, grit in his vision like that from sleep. Tim sat up and scrubbed with balled fists, pressing knuckles to his eyes while hauling in several short, tense lungfuls of air.
A blanket fell away from his chest and plopped into his lap—almost a mustard yellow, just like his coat. Well, Jason’s coat now, probably. Although maybe the other boy wouldn’t want it. It was second hand, after all.
Just like him.
In the absence of anything else to do while he grappled with the emotions tearing each other apart inside his fragile chest, Tim blinked down at the soft, yellow blanket and curled his fingers around its edging tightly. It was enough to temporarily stymie the heavy press of tears against the back of his eyes, but it would not last long.
Still, the feeling of warm wool between his fingers grounded him enough to piece together some coherent thought, emotional as it was. Exhaling on a shuddered breath, he continued to stare aimlessly at the blanket while doing an admirable job of ignoring the pull of several wires on and in his arms.
The elephant refused to be ignored any longer.
Tim had died. He had died and given his heart to Jason so that Jason could live on for the both of them, so that the other boy could do what Tim was incapable of: bringing Bruce happiness.
Yet, the question that begged his attention still remained.
How was he alive? Why was he alive?
Of all things, this was the most surprising—and frankly terrifying.
Tim had not been expecting to reawaken; if anything, it probably would have been a gift to stay dead. Now he had to figure out why he wasn’t still unconscious and unfeeling .
Tim had made his peace, had come to terms with the fact that he would never get the opportunity to tell his parents he still loved them, even if they didn’t want him; had come to terms with the idea that he would never get the chance to hug Bruce one last time and tell him he was sorry—sorry for not being better, for not being Jason.
That was the other thing; Bruce had Jason back now— so how, and why, was Tim here too?
In favor of screaming out his frustration toward questions unanswerable, he simply dragged a hand over his face and tried his very best to bottle it up like he’d done so many times before.
Unfortunately, it had the opposite effect, loosing the last few threads of his remaining stoicism. The rock that held the torrent wiggled free and the banks of the river broke at last.
Tears poured out of him in stifled sobs as he shook himself apart, clutching at the blanket desperately, barely a half-hearted attempt at choking them back.
“You are not, nor will you ever be my child. You are not Jason and you are not Dick and you are not my son. You are a piece of equipment and your life here extends as long as your usefulness does.”
A broken record on repeat, Bruce’s words echoed in his ears, the needle jumping over and over again, hammering the truth home.
Why couldn’t Bruce have sent him back to the RCO when he was unable to laugh or cry, when he was unconscious, unfeeling, lifeless? A piece of equipment, a husk without a soul.
Didn’t the man think Tim deserved that small mercy at least?
Maybe the RCO had sent a temporary heart, one that would give two or three days worth of life—enough for Tim to pack his things, enough for Alfred to say goodbye. Not that Tim needed to do these things, what need did he have for possessions when he would likely be nothing more than ash and a memory in four days.
For all that he liked to believe someone would remember him—Janet, Jack, Bruce, Dick—he didn’t truly believe it.
Soft gulping noises gurgled in the back of his throat as he tried to smother the harsh noises with the blanket in his hands. They bubbled up and mutedly met the rug, the scent of Alfred’s preferred fabric softener finding his nose.
From the very beginning, Bruce had given him but one order…
… but god, he just couldn’t stop being afraid. And what was human if not to be afraid?
Maybe someone at the RCO could tell him how to turn off these subroutines, at least so he didn’t have to feel anything… at the end.
It was then, without any warning at all, that a soft and familiar click jerked Tim out of his fear and dread, back into the present.
It was the sound of the grandfather clock at the top of the stairs swinging open, it’s latch undone.
Half-broken sobs immediately desisted, though the violent shudders that wracked him did not.
Tim simply sat, trembling, as a cheerful but tired voice called back an answer to a question he never caught.
“I know, I know! I forgot something,” yelled a young voice— Jason , his mind determined sluggishly. “I’ll just be a minute.”
Light, hurried footsteps drew ever closer, finally rounding the corner only to stop dead in their tracks as emerald eyes glanced up to meet startled blue.
“Holy—!”
Tim flinched at the volume of Jason’s shriek, loud as it was in the cave.
“... Dad. DAD!”
A second pair of footsteps, slippers scraping over stone stairs, and a lightly chastising voice did not take very long to catch up.
“Jason, it’s time for bed, please whatever it is can wait until the—.” Bruce’s voice stopped in time with his shoes, scuffing hard against the concrete floor.
Under the weight of two disbelieving gazes, Tim shriveled up like a wilting dandelion.
Bruce breathed out his name like it belonged to something reverent; a whispered caress and a prayerful revelation. The man seemed completely incapable of saying much else, pupils blown wide in the darkness.
In almost as much awe as Bruce seemed to be, Jason loosed several expletives. “Holy shit,” he breathed, electric excitement an audible undercurrent. “It worked. It worked!”
However, Bruce didn’t seem to hear him.
Like a puppet on a string, the man took one shaky step followed by another. The closer he drew, the more thunderstruck he appeared, the more he shook and trembled like an autumn leaf in a wintry gale.
Finally, deciding he was close enough when his waist was brushing the edge of the rug still clutched in Tim’s hand, he gingerly reached out one palm and squeezed the other into a ball, resting it on the same table on which Jason’s body had lain for months. It felt a little ironic.
Cheeks damp with salt, tears still clinging to wet eyelashes, Tim did not dare move as Bruce’s thumb came up to brush them away.
“Tim,” he whispered again, faintly tucking flyaways behind his ear as his hand moved up into his hair. Shaking fingers hardly stilled as they came in contact with his fair skin, dividing their time between wiping at the few straggler tears and smoothing back dark locks.
Between parted lips, Tim sucked in a shuddering breath through his teeth then swallowed hard. It was a dream, it had to be.
Bruce didn’t look at him like that.
Maybe… maybe androids did go to heaven.
“Am I dead?” he croaked, voice raspy and hoarse, looking between the two.
Jason stumbled closer, finding himself a place right behind Bruce’s shoulder.
Bruce’s barked laugh might have sounded upset or relieved or a combination of both, but Tim really couldn’t really tell, because his master’s tongue sounded thick and coarse when he spoke again, cutting his own mirthless laughter off.
“You’re not dead, Tim,” he replied, wonder in his voice, rough and calloused palms never leaving his face. Bruce insistently pushed back his bangs time and time again when they flopped stubbornly into his eyes, his fingers wiping at one cheek and then the other.
A temporary heart it was, then.
Tim sagged, his strings cut.
In a small voice he spoke, hunching over as he dropped his gaze back to the rug over his knees.
“When do I go back?” he squeaked, tiny as a mouse. The truth was, he didn’t really want to know, but it was the lesser of two evils—he’d rather be prepared than for it to be sprung on him like a nasty surprise.
“Go back?” Jason prompted.
Tim drew his knees up to his chest and nodded.
“Back to the RCO,” he elaborated.
Jason pulled a face.
Bruce frowned.
“You’re… not going back to the RCO, Tim,” he said, so quiet it was almost a whisper.
An electric shock with too many volts zapped through him. The words were a live wire and Tim didn’t dare touch it for fear of electrocuting himself.
If not there, then where?
Biting his lower lip, he almost didn’t dare ask, but he was more scared of not knowing. If not back to the RCO, then what did Bruce plan on doing with him? The idea that the man would mine him for parts flashed through his head, but he dismissed it with a shudder—Bruce wouldn’t… he wouldn’t do that, right?
A chair scraped across the floor, pulling him out of his own head.
Bruce sat down, chest level with the table. “I’m sure you have questions,” he began evenly, his voice carefully devoid of emotion and stoic as they came. “I’ll answer them if I can.”
Tim nodded, a little numbly, confused and refusing to relinquish the rug between his fingers.
“I don’t understand,” he admitted softly, a long, silent minute later. Bruce was being patient with him. Moreso than he probably deserved. “Why am I… here?”
Why wasn’t he a heap of broken parts in the back of a workshop? Why hadn’t Bruce sent him back to the RCO? How was he…alive?
The elephant trumpeted loudly, but the burning questions went unasked and unanswered. It was easier to start small, less painful if nothing else.
“Tim, I—.” Bruce began, then stopped abruptly. The man dropped his gaze to the surface of the slab Tim sat on. He didn’t quite know what to make of the expression that rode up, twisting Bruce’s face like thorns.
“I owe you an apology,” he finally settled on, still pointedly refusing to meet Tim’s gaze. “No, I owe you a great deal more than that, but I need to start somewhere.”
A small smile turned the corners of his mouth. “You don’t owe me anything, sir,” he tried, feeling the pull at his lips. “You already gave me so much.”
Brusquely, Bruce ran a frustrated hand through his hair, pulling out a couple of loose strands as he went.
“No,” he shook his head, “I do, Tim.”
His master sighed loudly and the fight and frustration flooded out. He sagged in his chair, looking utterly defeated. Wetness threatened around the edges of his eyes.
Releasing the rug with one hand, Tim reached out to cover one of Bruce’s balled fists with his own much smaller fingers. It wasn’t much of a gesture of comfort, not as much as he’d hoped it would be, but it was enough to startle Bruce into looking up.
What Tim saw there broke his heart.
“I…” Bruce started, half-choked, shaking his head. Behind him, Jason had a hand on his shoulder, looking just as worried as Tim felt. “You have no idea how I felt, Tim. When I… when I came down those stairs three months ago to find Jason, sitting there with you and… and you and when I saw… you laying there.”
A raw, broken sob burst free as the man unballed one hand. With as much care as he might use to handle porcelain or some other fragile material, he wrapped his fingers around the hand Tim had left to rest atop Bruce’s.
“It was then that I suddenly realised what a fool I had been, what a mistake I had made.”
The words were strangled, pushed out between hiccups. Bruce’s tears prompted a fresh wave of Tim’s own.
“It was like my heart ripped out of my chest all over again,” he whispered, barely audible enough to be heard. “It was like I’d lost a son all over again, a son I hadn’t recognized I’d had until that moment.”
Two dark eyes darted up and pinned Tim down like a butterfly to an insect board; he sat, frozen under the weight of it.
“I treated you terribly,” Bruce continued, beginning to sound ragged and hoarse. “I made mistake after mistake after mistake. I pushed you away, I told you that you didn’t belong here, that this could never be your home, that I would never be your family… and I was wrong. God, Tim, I was so wrong and I’m so sorry.”
For a moment, it seemed as though nobody dared to breathe. Then, Bruce licked his lower lip and bowed his head against Tim’s sandwiched palm.
“I could only regret my mistakes after you were... gone,” he admitted, muffled by the table. “I was too busy trying to bring Jason back that I refused to admit to myself that I loved you just the same.” There was a long, pregnant pause as Bruce lifted his head again. “And I do, Tim. I love you.”
The air inside his chest felt suddenly stale. There was no oxygen to breathe, the room was so small, despite being a literal cavern.
Bruce slipped his own hand between Tim’s fingers and linked them together.
“I’ve had a lot of time to reflect,” he murmured quietly. “I spent a lot of time thinking about what I would make different between us when you… came back to us.”
Tears welled up unprompted. “Sorry,” he sniffed, apologetically repeating himself as he swiped at the tears with a single balled fist. “I’m sorry.”
Bruce caught his elbow. “There’s nothing to be sorry for, chum,” he replied gently. “It’s alright.”
He never was able to figure out how to shut that subroutine off.
Slowly, Bruce made to stand. With a kindness he rarely saw, Tim was pulled against a broad chest. It was easier to hide the tears in the broad expansive chest, the smell of clean linens and Alfred’s favorite washing powder still doing very little to stem the gasping, heaving sobs he was once again struggling to smother.
They stayed like that for a long time, but it was only when Bruce appeared sure he was done, that he peeled back to grip him lightly by the shoulder with one hand and tip Tim’s chin up with the other.
“I have a lot to make up for,” he murmured, moving the hand from chin to cheeks, swiping at the remaining wetness that lingered there. Upon Bruce’s brow, a crease all but knitted his eyebrows together. Under the weight of Bruce’s worry and concern, Tim felt heavy guilt settle upon his shoulders.
They both looked utterly wrecked, and behind Bruce, Jason didn't look too different.
“I have a lot to atone for,” he repeated, “but I will spend the rest of my life doing my best to make it up to you.”
Huffing out another shuddered breath, Tim shook his head.
“There’s still one thing I don’t understand,” he said, frowning so deeply that his eyes closed of their own accord.
Bruce ran a hand through his hair, a gentle motion that Tim couldn’t help relaxing into that doubled as a silent prompt.
“If Jason has my heart, how am I… how am I alive?”
The world swam with silence a moment, but it wasn’t too long before a soft voice piped up.
“I think I can answer that one for you,” Jason spoke, moving around the foot of the bench to arrive on Tim’s other side, stripping his shirt as he went. The boy’s chest cavity was open before Tim could protest.
It took Tim several length seconds to piece together what he was seeing.
It was a whole heart inside Jason’s chest, yes, but he would recognize his own handiwork anywhere.
“Half a heart,” the other boy explained quickly as Tim watched the Frankenstein contraption beat away in Jason’s chest. “Half is your original heart and half is—”
“—the mark seven,” Tim interrupted with awe.
Jason nodded enthusiastically and closed up his chest cavity.
A large hand curled around his shoulder. “The mark seven could not work on its own, but with your original model…”
“It would be enough,” Tim nodded thoughtfully. “Between them it would be enough to power us up and keep us functioning.”
Jason grinned. “Exactly,” he replied with a snap of his fingers. “You have the other half, obviously.”
Bruce squeezed his shoulder a little tighter and shot Jason a look filled with nothing but love.
“It’s fitting,” he said. “Because you both have my heart.”
This was new and it was fragile and it didn’t even feel real yet—somehow, one and a half months later, the sentiment still rang true.
For as long as he could remember, the silent counter in his head always ticked down; marking each and every second until his parents would come home, until Bruce would send him away, until he would be permanently deactivated.
Even still, after one and a half months, Tim didn’t quite know what to do with the new feeling that time was no longer sprinting down and out, but instead counting up and leading him forward.
He had a family now. A brother, two . Bruce saw to it that Tim was moved into the room beside Jason’s, which was entirely too overwhelming for him, so he stayed in the kitchen with Alfred and nervously waited for Jason to come bounding down the stairs, grin on his face, to tell him his new room was ready. The boxed set of The Chronicles of Narnia he’d found on his bed had been entirely Jason’s idea, he’d learned later, though he had stopped to wonder where the boy had gotten the idea from.
As unprepared as he was to face the upending changes, though, Tim couldn’t deny they were all good; at some point he dropped the Master to Bruce—earning himself many a smile and an accompanying hair ruffle each time.
It was closer to the end of summer when Tim found himself out on the back porch with Bruce, at ease, sipping fruity drinks with tiny umbrellas in them waiting for Jason and Dick to return from the pool shed with the super soakers.
Tomorrow would mark one year here.
The thought still sent a thrill through him, but the sounds of crickets chirping and cicadas humming put him at ease.
“One year ago I thought I wouldn’t live to see this,” he said past a straw, into the strawberry and orange sunset.
Beside him, Bruce hummed noncommittally, but Tim knew better than to think he wasn’t listening.
“Twelve months isn’t very long to someone with their whole life ahead of them, but it wasn’t until the day you took me in that I realised just how much I had taken for granted.”
Behind dark sunglasses, Tim caught the small frown from his peripheral.
“I was lucky to get a second chance,” he continued, placing his half-finished drink on the table before rolling onto his side, the lounge chair creaking in protest as he turned to face Bruce. “I always knew I wasn’t going to get a third.”
Tim took a deep breath and found more nervousness behind it than he’d anticipated.
“I guess what I’m trying to say,” he said, feeling small and just a tad apprehensive, “is: thank you, B, for giving me a second chance.”
Out of the many ways the scenario could have gone, Tim had entirely neglected to anticipate Bruce climbing off his own lounge chair and moving to the foot of his.
Without warning, Tim was yanked up against a solid, immovable mass. A squeak of surprise split the air, but Bruce hardly seemed to care as he carded his fingers through dark locks.
“Oh, my son,” he whispered. “You owe me no thanks. Your love has always been unconditional and now, I will spend the rest of my life giving you mine. I love you, Tim.”
One year ago, Tim had stood on the front porch of Wayne Manor, gripping his suitcase like a shield, ready to protect from whatever unimaginable horrors awaited him. One year ago, he had met the narrow, cold eyes of Bruce Wayne with nothing but fear.
Now, as his eyes filled with tears for an entirely different reason, he looked up to meet only truth, honesty, and love.
“Yeah,” he sniffed, reaffirming his grip around Bruce’s mid-section. “I love you too, Dad.”