Work Text:
Timothy Jackson Drake is not a baby. No matter what anyone might try and tell you, he will insist louder that he’s not. He’s eight and a quarter! Do you know what you can do in eight and a quarter years?
A lot of things. He is a very mature young adult, in all his years of wisdom. He’s even top of his class!
And so, when his parents leave for their Very Important Archeological Work, they leave a housekeeper to come over four times a week. That’s over half the week! And Timothy has had this arrangement with his parents for two years—a very long time. Practically an eternity. Long enough that he barely remembers his last ever babysitter (that’s a lie. Her name was Emily, she had come over while his parents were away ever since he was almost 4, and she would scoop him up and squish him close if he wanted a hug. Her favourite singer was Ed Sheeran, and they would blast his songs and attempt to bake animal-themed cookies on weekends. The chocolate-and-vanilla magpies were her favourite, and his was the red-velvet bats that they made for Halloween when he was 5.)
What he’s trying to say is that he can look after himself just fine. And so, on a snow day during the winter holidays, when it’s too stormy for the housekeeper to come, he knows he’ll be okay.
He starts the frigid morning off by running around the house (wearing two jumpers and a blanket cape), turning on all the heaters as fast as possible—heating bills are still a foreign concept when you’re eight and a quarter years old—and heating up hot chocolate for breakfast. Once he can feel his fingers again, and his breath is no longer visible, he counts himself accomplished. See, look at how good he is! Able to keep the big house (and himself) warm without anyone there to help or remind him!
He stews in his accomplishments for five minutes. By then the hot chocolate’s finished.
All alone on a snow day. What to do, what to do?
Once Tim finishes his hot chocolate, he heads to the back entrance of the house. He gets as far as opening the back door onto actual hypothermia-inducing Mr. Freeze-level can’t-see-your-own-hand-in-front-of-your-face snow before slamming it shut and counting out allpossibilities of Outside Time from his daily plans.
He turns back around sharply, stomping his way back to the main lounge room because he likes the way his socked feet stomp. One, two, one, two. There’s a pattern in stomping feet. Actually, there’s a pattern in anything if you look for long enough. Like Arkham breakouts! Did you know the villains take turns? There’s even a pattern to villain team-ups, but that one’s a little harder to nail down.
Tim’s parents didn’t believe him when he tried to tell them. (Emily did.)
Once he’s back in the lounge room, he flops down into an unceremonious (ooh, that’s a big word!) heap on the couch, tugging a blanket over himself. He turns the TV on. Maybe there’s a movie?
News channel, news channel, sports channel, Gotham Nightime news—why is that on during the day? Is it a recap from the night before, theories for the night to come? Maybe they’re sending secret messages to the villains and vigilantes for tonight!
After searching through the channels twice over, Tim comes to the conclusion that daytime TV sucks. Like, the only movie on was some old black-and-white one! Who watches black-and-white movies anymore? They’re practically ancient, you know.
He debates playing a video game, but he normally saves those for the afternoon. Sometimes, he’ll play video games after dinner and keep playing into the night, just so he can stay up long enough to watch the news for Batman and Robin sightings! Batman and Robin are his favourite heroes, y’know. He wants to be just like them when he grows up!
Not that he isn’t already practically a grownup. Because he is. He’s allowed home by himself, so that must mean he’s mature. His teachers like to call him mature, too. It’s a very good word to be called.
Abandoning the lounge room, Tim heads upstairs with his blanket cape in tow. Maybe something up there will be more interesting?
He opens the games cupboard in the spare room closest to his bedroom, and eyes all the games critically. Uno, monopoly, game of life…. Something in his chest hurts just a little when he realises they’re all multiplayer games. Nothing for him to do on his own.
What else, what else? It’s a snow day! Surely there’s something else he could do.
Oh! Oh, oh, oh. Yes!!! Tim has the perfect idea.
He runs, socked feet sliding and blanket cape abandoned in glee, to The Museum wing. It’s not actually called that, but that’s what Tim has dubbed it. There’s a locked door, to the west of the manor, leading to a small room with a long table along one side. Past that is a ballroom. They have two ballrooms—the other one being used to host parties every now and then—but this one is never used. Hence the locked door. Past the ballroom are a few smaller rooms, then the side entrance to the house.
Tim doesn’t have the keys to get into the ballroom, but he’s figured out that if you go to the old servant’s kitchen (because while his family might be new money, the house is old old), you can take a long corridor up to the second room between the ballroom and outside! It’s straight on for thirty steps, up ten stairs, three steps, a left turn for ten steps, up another set of five stairs, a right turn for twelve steps, and you’re there! The doors in the little rooms are latched but not locked, so a magnet to unlatch them with is all you need to get into The Museum.
Tim walks carefully into the middle of the ballroom, then stops to look around. It’s changed since the last time he was here!
All around him are tons of artefacts that his parents bring back from their trips. Stone tablets, pottery, jewellery, anything you can name and it’s probably somewhere in The Museum. Some of it is there for good, and occasionally Tim’s parents swap it out with other items that are on display around the mansion. Most of it changes, though. Tim thinks it’s like a grownup version of Pokemon cards. You trade with your friends to complete your own collection! And sometimes his parents have their friends over, in the Museum. Tim’s not allowed to come with them for those playdates, but no one’s told him he can’t be in the servant’s hallway. He likes hearing what the grownups do. It helps him act more grownup.
Actually, that leads him to what he’s here to do! He’s going to play Architect.
There’s lots of ways to play Architect. You can go digging in the garden, take a toy and pretend it’s a fossil, or—his favourite way—use The Museum to play.
Tim wanders around, looking at everything there is to see. There’s folding tables everywhere, filled with things. Sometimes, there’s a bigger thing (normally rocks) leaning against the tables. There’s a pattern to what goes where, which helps Tim put it all back when he’s done. Stuff from different dig sites goes in different places around the room, categorised by country. Then tables have specific things on them, like the weapons tables (so cool). Stuff from Egypt goes in Little Rooms 1 and 2, and things that are often swapped with items on display around the mansion go in the room with the long table between here and the rest of the house.
Carefully, he picks up a gold coin in the Roman area. He’s just started reading this book where they use Greek drachma as offerings to Iris so that they can send messages, so this is something he wants in his collection. Tim wonders if Roman coins are also called drachma? Hmm, something to research later!
He pretends to bargain with someone, offering to trade his ‘finest Arabian pottery’ for the coin.
Oh, take more than one! says the imaginary owner, so Tim looks around. Aha! Over there, more Roman coins. He picks them up, enjoying the way they all clink clink clink together in his hand.
“I’ll take them!” He grins at thin air, shaking its hand. Clink, clink, clink. A few more seconds of satisfying noise, then all the coins are put back in their place and he’s off, hunting for his next treasure.
What next, what next…. Aha! A giant rock from a pa-li-an…. Pay-lee-ann…. Paleontological dig his parents got to visit agessss ago (two years ago). It rests against a table right near the door to the long-table-room, and it’s got some sort of swirly pattern in the middle of it. An ocean fossil? He doesn’t remember the name of it—look, Tim’s proud he remembers the word paleontological, cut him some slack here!
He crouches down, and uses an imaginary brush to dust dirt off of the swirly thing.
“Ooh!” He gasps. “This one’s going to be perfect for the collection!” A nod. “Yes, I think I’ll be keeping it. Just look at the pattern! Incredible!” He giggles, rocking back on his feet. It’s been a few months since this piece was on display, so according to his parent’s normal pattern it’ll either be on display again soon, or traded away and gone forever. He hopes they don’t get rid of it.
A few more brushes and appreciative nods later, he’s up and wandering again. He goes through both Egyptian rooms, picking up a few cool things to look at (including a Scarab beetle that, the second his hand touches, gives of such bad vibes that he immediately puts it down again for fear of getting cursed). Nothing is worthy of fake-trading or digging up, though, so he heads back out to the main room of The Museum and continues his search.
Two laps later, he finds a pretty necklace and decides it’s dress up time.
A pretty cream-coloured beaded necklace gets put on first from the African section. After that, he has a look in an Asian jewellery box and finds a cool hairpin, which he (very, very carefully) puts in his hair. Lillian, the housekeeper, says that he needs a haircut soon, but Tim likes the way his hair swishes at this length.
After that, another necklace (also from the Asian area) gets added, then two Middle Eastern wrist cuffs—which are way too big, so he puts them on his upper arms over both his jumpers. The hairpin is then discarded for a Greek circle tiara thing, and another too-big bracelet goes on his wrist.
Tim’s outfit is almost complete, but it needs one more thing. What to wear, what to wear….
He backs up to survey the area, and—ah! Uh oh, uh oh!! He crashes into a table, and with all the grace an eight year old can muster, he turns around to frantically catch everything he can.
A pot, a box, and two stone tablets get caught and carefully, ever so carefully, eased back onto the table. Tim glances around—is there anything else about to—
One lone bangle rolls, and rolls, and tips onto the floor. Tim dives to his knees, arms out to catch it but—it falls with a resounding clang. He could almost cry (but he won’t, crying is for girls and babies, of which he is neither), if it’s broken his parents will find out and then they’ll know he was here and get mad and—and—
He tentatively reaches out and picks up the bracelet, inspecting it thoroughly. Luck seems to be on Tim’s side, there’s not a single crack on it! He heaves out a sigh of relief. Ooh, and hey! The silver and gold bangle is the perfect thing to finish off his accessories.
He slips it onto his left wrist. It looks like it should be too big, but once it’s on it seems to fit perfectly! It’s about the same width as his pointer finger, with thin silver threads and one lone gold threat looping around each other infinitely. The threads must be soldered together, because they all move as one on his wrist. It’s very pretty to look at.
All the emotions from almost breaking stuff from his parents precious art collection seem to hit him suddenly, though, and he sits down hard on the floor with tears welling in his eyes. Don’t cry, don’t cry. They won’t know. They aren’t even home often enough to really find out he was ever here! He’ll leave no trace and everything will be just fine. There’s nothing to cry about.
He doesn’t feel like playing dress-up, or architect anymore. He wants to go to his room and sleep through the rest of the snow day.
The greek tiara comes off first, then the Asian bangles and necklace, and finally the Egyptian necklace. Tim makes the slow trudge all the way back to his room, entirely unaware that one small silver bangle still sits innocently on his wrist.
——
Tim always thought that the phrase ‘falling asleep the second your head hits the mattress’ was fake, something made up in books to pass the time faster. He normally spends hours and hours trying and failing to fall asleep, staring at his ceiling and counting sheep and doing anything he can to pass the time until his brain finally slows down enough for sleep to creep up on him like fog in Gotham creeps over the skyline.
However, is proving him wrong. After his adventures in The Museum, he’s out the second his head hits the mattress.
Not to a dreamless sleep, though. His mind couldn’t be as kind as that.
First, he sees Robin. He’s looking in the mirror, and Robin stares back. The funny thing is, though, that he can’t pin down Robin’s features. For a second, he has his normal dark hair and tan skin. Then his hair is curly, or his skin in darker. Sometimes, in the swirl that is his favourite super hero, the boy wonder is a girl with long blonde hair. Sometimes, he swears he sees himself, staring back from in the suit.
Then it changes. He feels a deep, deep sadness that weighs down his soul. It would be unbearable, if it didn’t remind him of how he feels every time his parents leave (every time he’s not good enough to make them stay). He’s in a desert, then a warehouse. Robin’s there. Tim tries to move towards him, but it’s like he’s moving through mud. He has to warn him, something bad’s gonna happen. He needs to yell, to—
Boom.
He’s in an alley. There’s a couple there, and their son. Black hair, blue eyes, the kid kinda looks like Tim’s neighbour must have looked when he was young.
There’s a man with a gun.
Bang, bang!
The kid goes home to a too-big house with a kind butler.
There’s Batman. Alone, then with Robin, then with too many other heroes to count. Everything’s changing, a soup of colours and shapes and people, but Batman stays the same.
Then he’s gone. Tim feels an empty, hollow pit in his heart.
The world explodes.
He’s watching a baby be born (thankfully from an angle where he can’t see all of the action. He stands by the lady’s head. She’s screaming). Damian, someone says.
He’s watching a little boy emerge from a test tube. He has dark skin and black hair. Then, the child in the test tube changes. Same features, but on an even smaller girl.
He watches spacecrafts fly. He watches aliens invade New York. He watches people develop powers. People who think magic only exists in books. Old, ancient buildings teeming with life. Futuristic cities that are barren. He watches entire worlds collapse in on themselves, only for a new one to take their place. It should be, it is, too much. His head hurts just thinking about the scale of what he’s seeing. His chest feels hollow, like someone tore out his heart. Or maybe it’s too full of emotion.
He thinks of nothingness. Of his big, empty house. He wants this dream to end. He wants to go home—even though there’s no one waiting for him.
“So little” a voice in his dream coos. “Just a baby bird, aren’t you?”
“Let me out of here!” He yells
“I think I just might keep you. You’re mine now, birdie.”
——
Tim wakes up with a headache. Well, that’s an understatement. His head feels like it could burst. He stumbles his way downstairs, still in yesterday’s clothes (his parents would be so mad at that), eyes bleary. He finds his way into the kitchen, downs a glass of water and some children’s painkillers, and goes back to bed.
He doesn’t remember his dreams. Just the faint impression of a melodic voice.
“Oh, dearie.” He hears, sometime later. “What do we have here?”
Tim croaks, from underneath his verifiable blanket cave on his bed, “m’head hurts.”
Lillian, the housekeeper, sighs. “I’ll get you something to eat”
“Thank you.”
She brings him chicken noodle soup, which he really does try to eat, but… his body hurts, so it’s really hard. Tim feels pitiful, and not at all like the mature practically-an-adult he’s supposed to be. He hopes he feels better soon.
——
He’s dreaming again.
He sees someone—two someones—falling. Over, and over, and over again. He screams, but his yells are indecipherable from the crowd around him. He feels so, so small against the weight of this tragedy.
There are lights, blinding, highlighting the bodies as they arc through the air gracefully before beginning their final descent. He wants to look away, but his eyes always draw back a the final crack! of death.
Little bits of the lead up to death show themselves as he watches over, and over again, like the world’s worst groundhog day. The jump, before the fall. The flips. Acrobatics.
Eventually, there’s a boy. He’s doing the same acrobatics as his parents—and there’s no denying that the couple are his parents, he has their eyes and hair and grin of absolute delight as he soars through the air.
Tim can’t bare to watch what happens to the boy when his parents die. The kid would barely be older than him (if a lot taller and bulkier, Tim’s small for his age and the boy’s muscles are clearly on display when he flies). He won’t watch, he won’t, he won’t.
“I’m sorry, birdie,” a voice says. He knows that voice. He’s heard it before. Tim looks around, at the crowd around him, but everyone’s too enraptured by what goes on in the middle of the circus ring (and it is a circus, like the ones on TV). “You have to see this.”
No, no, no, no!
Tim yells, hoping to draw that voice’s attention. Don’t make him watch!
His eyes are drawn back anyway. The routine, from the top. Tim stares at the boy. Even though he can’t stop any of it, he wishes he could somehow tell the boy to stop and look away.
“And now, the Flying Graysons!”
Crack.
Make it stop, make it stop!
“Okay, birdie.”
——
Tim wakes up again. This time, he feels a lot better. His head’s stopped hurting, and the ache that had seeped into his bones is gone.
Huh.
Maybe it was like a 24-hour-flu or something? He’s heard that the flu makes you achey.
Well, whatever it is, it’s gone now.
(He tries not to think about the dreams, the awful crunch of bodies. They’re just fever-induced hallucinations, and nothing for him to worry about. He just needs to… forget them. Right.)
He shoves aside the fifty million blankets piled on top of him—seriously, where did Past Tim get all these blankets from?—and rolls out of bed. The cold air hits him like a ton of bricks, but he ignores it to the best of his ability and turns on the heater. Lillian always turns them off, something about saving money? Huh.
Tim makes his way downstairs, turning on heaters as he goes. Time to make hot chocolate for breakfast again!
He sits down with his mug of hot chocolate (with marshmallows, of course) and turns on the TV. Kids cartoons get boring real quick, so after a few minutes of them he flicks over to Gotham Nightime News (which he still doesn’t get being on in the day, but oh well). It seems to be doing recaps of last night’s events (hopefully not predicting tonight’s chaos, or else he will tell Batman on them), so he watches intently.
Aha! Finally, he spots Robin on some grainy footage, kicking butt with crazy ease. Tim wants to be just like him. Batman swoops in a minute later, taking down the last of the bad guys. He ruffles Robin’s hair—and the casual affection makes Tim’s scalp tingle at the thought—and the footage cuts out.
Sighing, Tim turns the TV off and pads back to the kitchen. His mug—from the Parthenon in Athens, a gift from his parents last year—goes into the dish washer, and he makes his way back upstairs. Time to finally get changed out of his two day old clothes! His parents would have a fit if they knew.
He changes (very quickly, because even with heaters on the cold seeps into his small body) into a pair of black jeans, a long sleeved tee shirt, jumper and a jacket, with socks that have Batman’s symbol on them. They were a gift from Emily, but he won’t think about that part. He won’t. It makes his throat hurt and his eyes burn.
Halfway through getting changed, he notices the bangle on his wrist.
Tim’s heart drops. Oh no, oh no… he has to take it off and get it back where it belongs! He pulls, moving his hand to try and get the bangle off, but it. Won’t. Budge. No amount of pulling or tugging works, and Tim’s chest does its level best to imitate a heart attack. Get off, get off!
He races to the nearest bathroom, and tries putting soap all around it. That does nothing, though, aside from make his hand feel weird (he’s never liked bar soaps. They make his hands feel… icky).
Tim does some research, because when in doubt check the internet! He tries butter, olive oil, he even tries to dislocate his thumb, but once that starts hurting like it’s on fire he quickly stops.
Three different bars of soap, seven Youtube hacks and two Robin bandaids on his still sore thumb later, Tim has given up all hope of getting the bracelet off. It feels more like the cuffs police put on criminals in movies than a fun accessory now, and Tim just has to hope that his parents don’t notice it’s missing (and maybe always wear long sleeves around them so they don’t see it). They won’t notice anything, right?
(Wrong, but Tim never realises that having a different housekeeper has anything to do with the ‘missing’ bracelet. His parents can never prove it was Lillian, but they fire her all the same.)
——
And so, life goes on. To apologise for the bracelet that’s stuck on his left wrist, Tim cleans up The Museum a bit. Not anything noticeable! Just a bit of dusting, here and there. It makes him sneeze and hurts his lungs a little, but that’s nothing any Gothamite isn’t used to.
School starts back up, and Tim’s excited to get back to learning! For the first week, maybe.
He attends a boarding school on the mainland, but he’s allowed to come home on weekends! Technically someone has to pick him up, but being two years above where he should and using his allowance to buy the school brand new computers last year has definitely skewed things in his favour. So he goes to school for the week, goes home for the weekend, and life repeats in a never-ending cycle that gets more and more boring. Not that Tim doesn’t like school! It’s just not fast enough for his brain sometimes.
Oh, and the dreams keep happening. He doesn’t really remember them after the one with the circus family (the crack replays in his head, and he taps his fingers against his pants in a repeated pattern until it goes away), but he definitely knows he dreams at least a couple of times a week. He always wakes up with this feeling of… of being really, really small in a really, really big world. You know when you look up at the stars, and you realise that you’re just one of billions and your planet is one in an infinite number? Yeah, like that. Tim takes to calling it The Feeling.
They were learning about the galaxy during science yesterday, and Tim likes how they talk about space. His class quickly got distracted asking about aliens, though, which is also interesting.
The dreams become comforting. The Feeling becomes comforting. Sometimes, it’s accompanied by a really really overwhelming sadness, which isn’t fun, but other times it feels like he’s being hugged. He doesn’t get hugged often, honestly even small touches feel a little overwhelming, but this feeling is…. Nice.
He’s started documenting all of this in a notebook that he bought online. It has a lock on it so that his dorm-mates can’t get into it, and the key sits on a chain around his neck.
There’s another feeling that he’s also documenting. One that doesn’t have anything to do with the dreams, and Tim thinks it’s related to school feeling boring.
There’s a constant tugging on his chest.
Well, not tugging, exactly. That implies it comes and goes. It’s more like when he was little—because he’s not little anymore, he’s almost eight!—and Emily would make him wear a cow backpack (named BatCow, because of course) with two buckles that went across the chest as well as the arm straps, and a leash on the back. That part didn’t feel weird, though. It was when he’d pull on it just enough, leaning away to try and see more around him and Emily would pull from the end of the leash just a little, applying a constant pressure until he stopped leaning to let him know he couldn’t run away. That felt like the tugging on his chest does now.
They used to go on the best adventures together, him and Emily. They would go to museums (actual ones! His parents would always promise to take him to the Gotham museum, but they never did), art galleries, playgrounds. Sometimes, they would go into Gotham Proper and just walk. Emily knew where to walk to keep them safe, and when Tim was too tired to walk by himself, she would tuck the leash into his backpack and carry him.
His eyes hurt. He has to stop thinking about her.
The tugging in his chest continues, and life goes on.
——
It’s an average Friday when Tim realises what the tugging’s been trying to tell him.
He’s just graduated Brighter Horizons Elementary. His parents are calling him sometime tonight—hopefully, you can never be sure with timezones—to congratulate him, and the new housekeeper, Mrs Mac, came to take photos of him. She’s already gone back home, though, so he’s now on the bus back to Gotham alone. How he likes it.
The summer holidays have officially started! And, he turns nine in a month and a half!
Despite all the excitement running through him, the bus ride is still long and boring. It always takes ages to get back into Gotham, let alone to Bristol (and even then it’s a ten minute walk from the bus stop to his front door), but it gives Tim time to cool down. He has sound calmand collected when he talks to his parents, as mature as possible.
He has to, if he wants any say in where he’ll be sent to for middle school.
Tim’s distracted from his musings by a pulling in his chest. He looks down, then around, wondering why the feeling’s changed. It’s intense.
Oh, and the accidentally-stolen bracelet on his wrist is glowing. Ooookay….
Someone near the front of the bus yells—screams. Everyone closer to the back, where Tim is, lean forward. What is it, what is it? The driver opens the bus door.
“Everyone proceed out in an orderly fashion! Wait at the side of the road, I can’t drive any further but I’ll get you somewhere safe.”
They’re just outside of Gotham City Central. It’s normally quiet here (safe here), what’s happened?
Tim’s chest is tugging, tugging. Frantic now, like a second heartbeat in his chest.
Everyone rushes out, panicking. Even those that don’t know what’s happening are caught up in the terrified energy. Tim stares out the front window the second he can push his way to the front of the bus. What is—oh.
The street is a wreck. A car is overturned to the left of the bus, and there are a few scattered people running back the way they came.
That’s not what catches Tim’s attention though. No. That would be the giant vines and plants overflowing down the street. The windows of buildings around them are cracking under the immense pressure of vines leaning on them, and at least 3 parked cars on the edges of the street have been caught in a vice grip.
As Tim rushes out of the bus, he spots Poison Ivy about a block away, standing on a giant leaf. Cool.
The bus driver’s rushing them all into a nearby café, but Tim feels deep in his core that he needs to get closer to Ivy. Surely no one will notice one small kid missing? And he knows how to look after himself! He’s not stupid enough to get in the way or, Gotham forbid, tauntPoison Ivy! He’s too smart for that.
So Tim slips away. Closer, and closer, to Ivy. He needs to know what’s happening.
His bracelet’s still glowing—hell, it seems to have gotten brighter.
“They’re almost here, birdie!” A voice says. If Tim is listening, if he’s able to distinguish the voice from the cacophony of sounds around him, it would have sounded familiar. Tim hasn’t quite learned to listen for it yet, though.
He hides behind a car, Ivy maybe ten feet in front of him. He can hear her, now, prattling on about how this area was developed on a forest. Honestly, if she weren’t a, y’know, evil supervillain, Tim might have even be on her side sometimes. She does raise some good points on the environment.
He’s also eight, though, and doesn’t want to think about the impending doom of the world thanks to humans and climate change. That’s just depressing.
“Don’t you know the consequences to your actions?” Ivy yells. “There are things greater than human greed!”
“Like me?” And oh, oh! Tim grins, looking through the car windows. That’s Robin!!! Robin’s on the scene, with Batman looming in the shadows right behind Ivy.
The tugging in his chest disappears, but Tim feels the urge to look up. So he does, and—Nightwing’s on the roof of the building across the street!! It’s a team up! Which is rare enough, let alone in daylight!! Tim feels honoured to watch it.
Nightwing does a scan of his surroundings, and Tim promptly remembers the fact that he’s close enough to a supervillain to probably concern others, so he ducks down low to avoid being spotted.
Tim figures out that he can watch everything happen by looking under the car, so he does that instead.
Robin throws a few more jokes, before being scooped up by a vine like a misbehaving cat. Batman throws a batarang, cutting his protégée (Tim refuses to say sidekick, because Robin’s too awesome for that) down, who drops into a roll once he hits the floor. The duo then get caught up in fighting giant plants, while Ivy laughs at them. Tim’s not worried—he’s not!—but he’s still glad when Nightwing calls out:
“Need a hand?” And flips down from the roof.
The vigilante flips once, twice, thrice, and—
Oh.
“The flip he’s about to attempt is dangerous!” The ringleader calls out. “Only four people in the world can do it. The three in front of you, and one girl in China whom, unfortunately, is not a part of my circus!” The audience laughs. “It’s called a quadruple backflip, and he’s going to have to flip four times before he lands! Will he do it safely?”
Nightwing lands right next to Poison Ivy.
“Well hi there!” He grins.
He had flipped in the air four times before landing safely. Just like the boy in Tim’s dream (one of the first, one that he had written off as a fever hallucination) had. Both had black hair, tan skin, and….
And the same blinding grin. The boy’s grin had vanished, though, like smoke in the air when his parents began to fall.
Maybe… maybe Tim’s dreams haven’t just been the creations of his brain. Maybe, there’s something in them.
That has to be impossible, though.
Right?
The fight finishes quickly after that, and Tim sneaks back to where his bus driver and the other kids are. His head’s not in the situation anymore, though.
The first thing he does when he gets home, almost an hour later, is turn on his laptop and bring up Google.
“How was the bus ride?” Mrs Mac asks. “Get caught in the fight?”
No response.
“Okay then, chulo. Dinner’s in the fridge. Buenos noches, adiós.” The front door locks behind her.
Flying Graysons. Tim types slowly, with shaking fingers. It feels like he’s on the edge of a cliff. One more step, and….
The pictures that appear show the same people from his dream.
The news report of their death has the same information (if in much less detail) as his dream.
The boy’s grin in the same as Nightwing’s.
Dick Grayson.
Tim thinks this situation deserves a swear word.
Holy shit.
(Tim’s bracelet has stopped glowing, but if he was slightly more in-tune with it, he would have noticed the self-satisfied and smug feelings radiating from it. As is, those will be the emotions he wakes up feeling after more half-remembered dreams tomorrow).
——
Tim’s start to the summer is…. Eventful, to say the least.
First of all, figuring out Nightwing’s identity? From a dream? Honestly the coolest thing to ever happen to him. From there, Tim works backwards to figure out that Bruce Wayne is Batman (!!) and Jason Todd is Robin (!!!!). He also has a mental mindmap (only mental, to avoid any supervillains somehow finding it) of other vigilantes and superheroes’ secret identities. Barbara Gordon as Batgirl was a little tricky to figure out, but made sense when you combine seperate romantic rumours from their civilian and vigilante identities with her staple red hair in and out of costume. Most of the Titans can be tracked down from their Instagram accounts, same with a few JLA members, and honestly? Glasses are not a good disguise, Clark Kent.
Secondly, Tim learnt how to cook Mac ‘n Cheese, which is just. An uber win, in his books. He’s eaten it for dinner at least three times a week since the start of the summer holidays.
He also decided to swap his term-time hobbies of piano, coding and public speaking (his parents said it would help him in the future, which he didn’t really understand but bringing home awards seems to make them happy so he went with it) to karate and parkour lessons. Once a week, he takes the bus down to a warehouse lovingly nicknamed Shortstack (because it’s a relatively short warehouse used to train kids) in Park Row. Parkour class happens around the back, where walls have been set up in levels of difficulty, and his Karate class is ten minutes after parkour and inside Shortstack. They also use the shed for a few other types of martial arts, streets self defence, weapons self defence, and gymnastics, depending on the time and day. They also have hand out bins of gas masks and first aid kits (courtesy of Wayne Enterprises, of course), which Tim thinks is a cool touch.
Finally, Tim begs his parents for a high-quality camera for his birthday. They give in pretty quickly to his “adorable, innocent child” voice and emailed slideshow of ‘Reasons Why Tim Desperately Needs a Camera’ (although that might have more to do with the fact that they won’t make it home for his ninth birthday than his detailed guilt-trip plan).
And Tim turns nine!!! Which surely makes him old enough for his new plan.
The aching, tugging in his chest came back, slowly but surely, after his first sighting of Gotham’s vigilantes. Tim’s desperate to go see them again. He can feel in his bones that that’s what he’s supposed to do. So, the day after his ninth birthday (because the housekeeper came over yesterday, but now she won’t be back until Sunday—four whole days!), Tim takes his new camera and new skills out into Gotham.
He wears a navy tee and his dark Parkour Pants, camera safely tucked away into it’s bag around his chest, and he follows the tugging.
It leads him across the rooftops, through Gotham Central (where he pauses to take some very cool pictures of the stone golems guarding the library), down to Park Row (where he gets a picture of the streetlights reflecting off apartment windows and the road), and finally to the Narrows.
Batman and Robin are hard at work when he finds them, fighting in an abandoned warehouse. They’re seriously outnumbered, but Tim knows they’ll win.
He takes a picture of Robin roundhouse kicking a goon.
Batman, cloak flared, fist raising to punch.
Robin, doing a handspring.
Batman and Robin, back to back, fighting.
Robin, fist pumping the air as Batman rounds up goons in the background.
So. Cool.
He follows them after that, writing their route in a notebook. Tim’s plan is to write down where he finds them and what time until he can figure out the pattern of their nightly routes—which he’s sure is complex, because his heroes are nothing if not smart.
The duo stop a robbery next, then Robin helps some girls getting harassed. They slowly work back up to the library, where Tim get an epicphoto of Batman and Robin meeting up with Batgirl. The three then split up, but Tim follows Robin. A few blocks later, Robin and Batgirl seem to decide to race! They swing from rooftop to rooftop, and Tim takes thousands of pictures from the shadows behind them.
He looses them after a few blocks, though. By now it’s almost 4am, and while Tim’s sure he could find a vigilante again by following his gut, he’s almost asleep on his feet. Time to call it a night.
He turns off his camera, zipping it into it’s bag. The wind—despite being summer—is cold now that he’s not leaping from rooftop to rooftop, so Tim tugs on the lightweight black jacket that he’d tied to the strap of his camera bag. Hmm….
Note for Future Tim: Bring snacks. His stomach gurgles unhappily. It has been a while since he had dinner.
Tim begins his careful descent from the office building (??? At least, it looks like an office building in the dark) down the fire escape. The gaps are almost as big as his foot to his knee, so he steps carefully.
He’s two floors above the ground when his foot slips. He trips, tumbles off the side. He flails. Tries to grab hold. Nothing works. Robin’s too far away, no one’s coming to save him. Tim closes his eyes. Braces for impact. For pain.
But nothing happens.
His feet touch the ground first, softly. His feet were most definitely not the closest part of him to the ground when he began his descent.
Slowly, carefully, he peeks one eye open. Then the other. There’s no one there. He looks around wildly. Who saved him? What happened?! Tim strains his ears for any clues to who saved him.
“Hush, birdie.”
“Who’s there?!” Tim yells. A bin tips behind him, and he turns—
Oh. Just a cat.
“Go home, sweetheart. It’s bedtime.”
“Who—who are you?” He asks, voice just this side of loud. “Why do you sound familiar?”
“I’m a friend, birdie.”
“Huh.” Tim’s eyebrows furrow. “Where are you?”
“Everywhere. All around you.”
“Oookay. That makes no sense!” He glares at the sky like it’ll give him answers. “Am I going crazy?”
“No, my little bird. Don’t worry, all will make sense soon.”
Tim decides that he’s obviously sleep deprived and hallucinating. Maybe he didn’t even fall!
“I’m going home now.” He says to nothing. “Uh… bye.” He hails a passing cab.
As he hops in, he swears he hears a sigh.
——
Gotham sighs, searching for her parent.
“There you are!” Her parent cries. “Look! Look what I have!”
They don’t have hands—both Gotham and her parent are interacting on an incorporeal level, so neither have anything much in the way of bodies right now—but Gotham still sees a little glowing light cupped in what could be called her parents hands.
“Isn’t it wonderful! Look, look!” Her parent’s joy is blinding. “It’s mine!”
Gotham sighs again, feeling the weight of all her experiences as heavy as the cape her Bat wears.
“He’s just a child.” She says.
“I know!” Her parent replies. “Plenty of time to learn everything I can show him!”
“No, no.” She leans towards the little light. “He’s still little. You’ll break him.”
“Oh.” Her parent looks at the light, now, something akin to sadness in their voice. “I’ve seen too many broken birds. I don’t want another one.”
“No. This one…. This one could fly.”
“Yes, yes!” Like smoke, their sadness is gone (Gotham’s worry isn’t, though). “My little bird! Oh, what magnificent wings he’d have.”
“You need to take care, though. Children need someone to look after them.” Gotham reminds.
“Oh.” Her parent studies the bird. “I want him to fly. He could learn so much from me.”
“Here,” Gotham says, “let me look after him. I’ll keep him safe, make sure nothing happens to the child.”
“You know his brother will die.”
Gotham sighs again.
“Yes.” She nods. “But… maybe he could change that. With our help.”
“How will he fly, then?”
“We’ll teach him.”
“Okay!” Her parent holds out their hands. “This birdie will be ours.”
Gotham accepts the little one, his light so bright and so full of potential.
“Yes. Our birdie.”
And so, together, Gotham and the Multiverse decide that this birdie will be special. They will teach him to fly.