Chapter Text
Timothy Jackson Drake was five and he had just seen two acrobats fall to their deaths after taking a picture with them not half an hour earlier. Timothy was five, watching the Dark Knight of Gotham himself trying to comfort a sobbing, orphaned boy that gave him a hug and a promise just a few minutes ago. And Timothy was five when he stepped through the shadows for the first time in a panic and tried not to get trampled by adults as he ran crying through the herd of circusgoers. Tears still rolled down his cheeks after his parents found him huddled in the dark corner of a carnival booth, then dragged him out by one arm to the car all the while berating his running away.
The next nights were disturbed on an uncertain schedule by nightmares and screaming and flashing police sirens replacing the spotlights of a circus. Waking up in a panic the child would stumble out from tangled sheets only to fall, quietly sobbing through the soft shadows formed by moonlight and looming furniture. Landing on the floor and opening blurry eyes to the irritation of his father, only overshadowed by the disgust of his mother.
Such a pattern was unmistakable even to one as young as Timothy. And if that much as true, then certainly his parents could see… yet they were content to ignore it as long as it was contained to the dark of night. Until little Timothy came tripping through the shadow of Janet’s desk in the middle of the day with such a proud smile on chubby cheeks and the slightest tinge of black staining his fingertips.
He very quickly learned his mistake. Five years old was so young to awaken a metahuman gene and so young to start on suppressant pills.
At age nine, Timothy Drake was running across Gotham’s rooftops and hiding in her shadows without melting into them the way he wanted to but wasn’t allowed. His medication – restocked monthly somehow, though he knew his mother kept his nature from any records – only prevented him from using his powers. It didn’t stop his so-called instincts or any desire.
Either way, Timothy still slipped from corner to corner silently, unnoticed by the subjects he came to photograph every night he could. The bat and bird who flew across cloudy skies and flitted through the shadows that Timothy knew like the back of his hand. Sometimes he thought he knew Gotham’s dark places even better than them. Then the boy remembered he was only nine and forcefully yanked his mind out of the shadows it retreated to even though he couldn’t.
Bright colors flickered across the viewfinder, startling him out of his thoughts. Timothy grinned widely. Robin darted between buildings like he was born to be in the air, trading the lead with the darker, larger shape of Batman. The former’s laugh echoed across the street and their watcher swore the night lightened just a shade. A yellow and black cape flapped behind Robin as he launched himself off a roof to flip once, twice, three and four times—
Timothy nearly dropped his camera when he toppled over on the top of a corner store, remembering the acrobat boy from four years ago who dedicated a quadruple somersault to him. One of three people in the world who could do it, two of which had died that same night.
Dick Grayson was Robin. Dick had been adopted by Tim’s neighbor, Bruce Wayne. The rich, airheaded playboy – was he really, though? – Gotham’s White Knight, enough money to buy anything and hide it.
Bruce Wayne was Batman.
The shadows jumped at his realization.
When Tim Drake was thirteen, Bruce Wayne was knocked bodily out of a grief-filled haze by a yet another boy in traffic-light colors, who ran in and socked Two-Face in the jaw. He wasn’t sure what it was about him that kept attracting black-hair, blue-eyed boys with sad backstories – he ignored the fact that he fit that description quite well himself – but he was in no way ready for another one. Ever. Not after Ja—
Bruce couldn’t even think his name without wanting to cry.
But Timothy Drake, though he was told very explictly to call him Tim, was… unexpected in every way. For starters, the boy had apparently been following him around Gotham for years without him noticing, which would’ve been enough to give Bruce a heart attack on its own if he hadn’t been so wrapped up in his own loss. Then he’d figured out Robin’s identity from a few words said to him as a child and gone onto figure out Batman’s from that, and more from there. Yet Tim had kept quiet about all of that. Until now, after the death of Bruce’s son and at the exact moment he least wanted any of this.
But the boy wouldn’t leave him alone.
No matter how many harsh words were tossed or at what volume he yelled. The worst Tim would do was flinch or jump, but he wouldn’t leave. Hours later, Bruce would feel guilty for it all.
He sent the boy overseas for training with a Tibetan master and Tim came back with a bo and a story involving the takedown of King Snake and training with Lady Shiva. How he’d managed that was something Bruce would very much have liked to know, but all he got was some brush-off about showing potential. Something about impressing her. The man was at a loss, to be frank.
Then they started in the field. The Dynamic Duo, Batman and his new Robin, however much Bruce’s heart hurt to call anyone else that name. And… maybe he could understand what Shiva saw in the youth. There was a reason the Bat was only known as an urban legend for so long. He knew how to hide, how to stalk through the night without a single sign he’d been hidden in the shadowed corners of his city. He knew how to find those that did the same. But Timothy Jackson Drake…
Bruce found his eyes skipping over the brightly clad form on the darkest nights of stakeouts or hidden in the alleyway shade. Never for more than a split second, though when he looked back, he wondered how he could ever miss him. Even with the modifications to Tim’s Robin uniform, it wasn’t dark enough to blend into the shadows that much. The way they clung to him when running across buildings and swinging from a grappling line with a smile that Bruce was becoming reluctantly fond of.
But of course, there was a logical explanation. Tim was trained by martial arts masters, an assassin, a rogue government agent, and an assortment of Bats. Bruce hadn’t noticed he had a tail for four years at the least. He had experience, as young as he was.
Everything was explained logically.
Tim looked in the mirror and saw Robin. And his brain whispered: Not you. Placeholder.
What a strange life he led to come to something like this. It was entirely unbelievable. He even had two more Rules to add to the ones his parents taught him. No Killing, which he thought should be obvious anyway, and No Metas In Gotham. The latter was problematic, something he would disobey just by being, though the reasoning behind it made sense and it easily fell in line with Don’t Let Anybody Know you’re powered and Don’t Use Your Powers. Sometimes he wished though—
No.
Tim’s life was an impossibility. A meta hiding in the city where they weren’t allowed, hiding underneath the cape of the main enforcer of the rule. Working for that man in somebody else’s shoes. A rich kid with everything and nothing, who watched a little piece of that nothing fall away through the window of a hospital room.
“I know how you must feel.”
“Do you?” Tim didn’t think he felt the way he was supposed to. He should have taken his suppressants fifteen minutes ago, yet the little angular pieces of darkness cast by harsh fluorescent lights didn’t twitch at all. When his eyes refocused on his own reflection in the glass, they looked a little empty. That seemed right. No anguish, no tears, just empty. His parents were always either gone, fighting, or both; and now nothing had changed but the connotation of those terms. His mother was gone, and his father was both fighting and gone.
No more yelling and screaming.
No more crashes and breaking.
No more huddling into the corner with eyes shut tight and hands over his ears.
No more big, ever-deserted house – though he wasn’t sure where he’d go instead. He’d figure it out for himself, as always.
“Yes.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
Tim took his next dose when he got to the house without a problem, noting the slight adjustment he’d have to make in the schedule.
Tim needed a freaking nap. He was in his room at Titans Tower, on the phone with Bruce, telling him he’d be back soon and feeling like he wanted to pass out. The duffel bag was packed… he could afford to take a power nap for a few minutes before finding Cyborg… his sleep schedule was perfectly fine, shut up Cassie.
The scuff of a boot. Work boots, nobody currently in the tower wore them. It was way too quiet.
“H—” The voice seemed to expect someone to be there – he was still there, right? Shit. Tim was awake now, very awake. Awake enough to pull himself out of a shadow he’d sunk halfway into because his stupid sleep-deprived brain had decided that was the best plan and dammit what were the pills good for if not stopping this? The next breath caught in his throat, his mother’s timbre in his ear like ice even as he shot to his feet.
“Timothy, stop that nonsense at once, it’s degrading.”
“Hey, Tim.” No, this tone was male, deep and rough. Harsh in the opposite way his mother’s was – the anger was blazing, like fire. “I was here first.”
And then the helmet was coming off and it was Jason Todd and the rest of it was red, red, red and Tim staying in the best-lit areas of each battlefield before everything went black with a final burst of scarlet pain. Don’t go. Don’t fall through, stay in the light, please.
He did, somehow. He stayed, not succumbing to the urge to drop into his own shadow before falling unconscious – such nice way to say getting knocked – and woke to Starfire’s light. God, everything hurt. But he had to tell Bruce, he had to…
The medication clattered into the smaller bottle as Tim poured it, each pill making a multitude of little tapping noises. From the white bottle, label wrapping around in plain text and the information he used to adjust his doses a while back highlighted, to the orange one, labelled for a mild anxiety prescription. He probably needed that too, but the suppressants were the only ones he ever took. Was that really so long ago, or did it just seem short? Things happened so quickly, as they always did. One after another, after another…
Kon was gone.
Bart was gone.
Steph was gone – then not, and was that worse?
Cassie might as well have been gone.
Tim almost lost it, his control. The shadows roiled at the edges of his vision, twitching even in broad daylight like aftershocks in the earthquake that was how high they jumped every time someone else was chipped away from his meager pile of the everything that rich kids were supposed to have. He had to keep a tighter schedule with the meds, taking them early practically every other day. Kept a lid on all the emotions that caused patches of darkness to spike or flinch or spread or blacken further. Kept a hold on everything with fists clenched so tight they bit into his palms, drawing blood lest something slip. If something slipped, he’d slip. If he slipped, someone would get hurt. He would fall apart.
Tim did not slip. Tim fought, solved, picked up the pieces of things to fix them for everybody else. Unfailing, he survived Damian’s introduction, held out his hand in hope of a younger brother, and was met with the sharp edge of a blade over and over. Don’t mention it. Tim never slipped.
Damian never snuck up on him after that, he never could. The older boy kept a neutral face whenever he was around and didn’t give the shadows the chance to twitch the way he tried to hide. It wouldn’t do to be jumpy around a sibling, despite the fact he’d tried to kill him – just a few times really, and so many people had tried so what was the difference? – before.
But then Bruce was gone too.
What was that saying? About straws breaking backs?
Tim stumbled into a room in the Manor, falling to his knees as the shadows roared in time with him. Growing, stretching, up, up, up – towering across walls and ceiling, darkening to the deepest pitch black not even Gotham herself could dream of without Tim’s help. His hands grasped at the ornate rug and sunk into the dark patches like oil that had spread over it, shadowy stains climbing farther up his limbs than they had in years.
He couldn’t breathe. They might as well have been his oxygen and they were gone.
Everything was roaring in his ears despite it all being so quiet. Tim was always so quiet. Quiet because his parents wanted him to be, quiet so he wouldn’t get caught by the heroes of Gotham, so he wouldn’t get caught by his opponents, so he wouldn’t bother anyone with his problems. It made the teen want to scream just to get rid of it—
A painting dropped softly to the floor with no more than a muffled clunk. Everything froze… then dropped, the room suddenly back to normal as Tim’s pale eyes locked onto the subject. The portrait was old, as in expose-it-to-too-much-sunlight-and-it’ll-crumble old. Some Wayne ancestor surely, the frame said “Mordecai,” but holy…
That was Bruce.
This was not here before. Tim knew this house, had explored its every nook and cranny over the years. This was not here before.
Bruce… not dead, but…
Perhaps time travel was in the realm of possibilities.
Tim took the suppressants ten minutes early with shaking hands that were eager to get to work.
He was right. Tim was right, he knew he was right. Bruce wasn’t dead – how could he be, the man was too bullheaded to die, why didn’t he notice earlier – he was lost in time. So why…
Why did no one believe him?
The evidence was right there! He had logic to back him up! But no one would even listen to him past “I have reason to believe Bruce isn’t dead.” It wasn’t like he didn’t have previous casework that proved he was trustworthy; Tim was one of the best detectives in the hero community with a streak of solved cases a number higher than anyone cared to count. So why, this time, did everyone think he was crazy?! Grief? Yes, he had lost so many in such a short time, but where did that factor into his trustworthiness? His mental health had nothing to do with the facts behind his theory.
Nevermind that. He could do this. He could do this all by himself if he had to, to bring Bruce back.
Tim’s footsteps echoed off the walls of the shadow-swamped cave below Wayne Manor. Very carefully sticking on the path made by the light, he didn’t trust himself even with the latest pills still in supposedly full effect. Dick sat in front of the computer in the same chair and wearing the same suit Bruce did only a few days prior. The younger man didn’t quite cut the same imposing figure though. There, on the very edge of the shadows was—
Damian, wearing his the Robin uniform – or a dark version of it, mocking the light Robin was supposed to be.
Tim was stripped raw. He was bones and air, nothing left after everything was gone. Stripped, torn, to shreds with his life, who cared? That was the last small fragment he had left. It was what he clung to, his hope of hopes, and the final piece that gave him the… something to keep going. Anything. Now nothing. Tim wasn’t even bones anymore. Just air, just nothing.
Dick Grayson was trying his best, alright? His adopted dad was dead, one of his brothers kept trying to shoot every criminal in Gotham – which was a good portion of the population – the youngest was just as prone to murder, and Tim… Tim had lost so much that Dick was ready to add his mind to the list. He tried to hold everything up, to keep what was left from falling to pieces around the leftover members of their family. It was all so things could work out in the end. It was the right choice to make.
Looking at the teenager now, it was about enough to make him waver.
This was the lightest Dick had ever seen him – that was a good thing, it was definitely a good thing, right? Chalk white, bleached out with not a shadow in sight. As if they’d all just suddenly decided to be affected by gravity and dropped away. Tim was the most exposed he’d ever seen the boy, who was sometimes better than B at the high-stakes hide-and-seek they played across Gotham each night. Vulnerable.
No, no, lighter was a good thing. No more shadows under his little brother’s eyes from lack of sleep. The eldest Wayne sibling ignored the doubt trickling down his spine, the unnaturalness of the unshaded creases in the younger’s clothes, the emptiness plain.
It was all for the best.
Tim remembered walking out of the cave but honestly not much else. He just hoped nothing weird had happened. He should probably have been more concerned about all this, but among all the more important things were his hands throwing everything into a duffel bag and slipping the last bottle of suppressants into a zipper pocket. It would last him a while, longer if he rationed them.
But the point, what was the point?
Tim was in Madrid.
Toledo.
Paris.
Berlin.
Tim was no one, he had no name after Robin and that was fine. It was fine, it made him harder to track when he hopped from city to city, crossing the borders of countries like they didn’t exist. They might as well not have, for all the attention he gave them. He had his mission: bring Bruce home. He knew what he needed. More evidence, more clues. And he’d get them, no matter what it took.
Tim was in Baghdad and barely taking his meds twice a week. The League of Assassins had offered, and he shook the devil’s hand even as the other sunk blackened fingers into their every weakness. He was a shadow among shadows, leaving dark footprints behind him as he ghosted through the hallways that never led to him. Inky darkness crept up the side of his neck one day only for him to shove it down the next. There was a growing collection of knives in his temporary quarters from the assassins he kept startling when he pulled himself from the shadows – metaphorically, mostly – to speak. It probably wasn’t a good idea, but he was past caring. It paid to be underestimated by your enemies, though when that wasn’t an option, feared was the next best thing.
Ra’s swept by without warning to tell him of his new nickname with an amused, smug smirk; that one that made Tim want to punch him. Alzilu Almutdarij. Arabic, the Stepping Shadow. The almost proud tone made the urge to slip the bladed end of his staff smoothly between the ribs of the so-called Demon’s Head just that much stronger. It wasn’t like it would be a permanent death.
Tim tore the assassin’s garb Ra’s so kindly gifted him to shreds. Anything that could even possibly be a symbol of the man was burnt to ashes with extreme prejudice and the rest shoved in a vat of black dye for good measure. Tim stitched his new suit from shadowed cloth and blood-red thread even while his brain churned out a dozen different ways to maim the beast whose belly he sat in.
The worst months of his life culminated in explosions and threats and all kinds of relief. There was heat at his back and blood in his eyes under a scorching sun. There was a name on his lips and a burning something in his heart, but his dead-not-dead best friend was in his arms so everything was edging back into okay.
There was wind in his hair and no one to catch him until there was. And a nameless vigilante beaten to hell and back fell into the arms of Nightwing-turned-Batman with the smallest spark of hope.