Chapter Text
Tim hosts his tenth birthday out on the streets of Gotham. Out here, he has only the stars and the camera slung around his neck for company. He sits down on one of the rooftops, swinging his legs over the side. He squints, sticking out a tiny pink tongue, and aims his camera at the city below him. From this vantage point, he can almost get a perfect shot of Robin doing a backflip.
He thinks that this—watching Robin as he fights and twists and smiles with Batman’s hand comforting on his shoulder—is the closest thing to a real birthday present that he could ever ask for. Tim is ten—or he will be, in a couple minutes—and below him, he watches as a boy gets everything he has ever wanted and more.
Tim isn’t jealous. Even at this age, he knows that he doesn’t deserve something like that. After all, there must be a reason that Janet and Jack are in a different country; there must be a reason that he is alone on the cold rooftop counting the minutes to ten years old. Tim wraps his arms around himself, attempting to comfort his shivering body.
It doesn’t matter, really. He’s almost ten now; he is old enough to take care of himself. Like his father had always said, Tim is responsible. All the adults at the galas Tim attended had cooed at him with his perfect posture and practiced smile.
How grown-up, they had said, pinching his hollow cheeks with rough hands. How mature.
Tim will be turning ten sometime tonight. He will be alone; there will be no candles. No songs. No presents and no confetti; no wishes and no hope of a proud hand on his shoulder.
Maybe Tim should be more mature than this, but he is only ten. He is ten years old and all he wants for his birthday is a hug.
The cold night air swirls around him, dark and menacing. Tim doesn’t mind it; although he’s a Bristol kid, he hadn’t learned to raise himself in the quiet echoes of Drake Manor. No, he had learned it where nearly every other Gotham kid had to; in the haunting darkness of city alleyways and rooftops.
Tim is so absorbed in his combination of fleeting self-pity and retrospection that he nearly doesn’t notice the quiet footsteps behind him. But he does. He wouldn’t have survived this long if he didn’t.
“Hello,” the figure says.
“I have a gun,” Tim immediately responds, words smooth and practiced.
Tim does not have a gun. He is ten.
“Oh, goody,” the voice behind him says, and Tim knows that voice. Had grown up hearing that voice. “A child criminal in the making.”
Tim blinks, eyes wide, and then turns around so fast he thinks he might get whiplash. “Robin?”
“The one and only,” Robin says. He sits down next to Tim, and Tim thinks he maybe can’t breathe. His idol is sitting next to him, and though Tim knows he is only a few years older than himself, Robin seems so much taller than Tim will ever get.
(Little does Tim know, Robin—this Robin, happy and carefree—will never get any taller. He will die in Ethiopia, his too-small body hidden against the rubble. He will be buried, only inches taller than Tim now, and Tim will keep on growing despite the guilt burning his chest.)
Tim scrunches up his nose and pulls his bag close to himself. Robin is good— Tim knows this—but Tim has also learned that he does not always receive the same treatment that everyone else gets. Where others are treated like they deserve an inherent sort of kindness, Tim is cast away to the side. He understands it, sure, but it still makes him wary of those he hasn’t interacted with before. Besides, this caution has gotten him this far—there has to be a reason for it.
“Why are you here?” Tim asks, swinging his legs back and forth over the side of the building. He knows Robin is only just older than him; besides, he’s new, having only just replaced the first one. Batman still watches over him with a sort of caution that doesn’t often allow Robin to venture out on his own.
Robin laughs. Tim giggles a little too, although he doesn’t know why. Maybe he just wants to feel included, but maybe he also can’t quite push down the exhilaration building up in him. He is turning ten and the person he looks up to maybe more than anything is sitting next to him, and Tim can’t quite breathe right.
“Can’t I just check how a little shrimp like you is doing?” Robin asks.
Tim takes offense to that, but he swallows it down. He thinks he might agree to almost anything Robin has to say if it would keep him here. Instead, he shrugs. “You’ve never checked on me before.”
Robin goes quiet.
Tim glances at him, confused. Robin almost never stops talking. “What?”
“You’ve been out here before,” Robin says carefully. “Around us before?” His Gotham accent is more prominent than it had been a moment ago, and although Tim thinks really hard, he can’t quite put a finger to why it would be.
“Well yeah,” Tim says. “I’m out here all the time.”
Robin blinks. “We would have seen you, kid.”
At this, Tim finally puts words to Robin’s hypocriticism. “You can’t call me that,” Tim says, poking Robin’s shoulder, “You’re a kid too.”
Robin laughs again. Tim smiles. It’s nice; he’s never had someone to laugh with on his birthday before.
“I’m a lot older than you, tiny,” Robin says.
Tim frowns. He opens his mouth to protest, before shutting it again. He’s not sure how to argue without revealing that he knows more than he should, so he stays quiet. Instead, he resists sticking out his tongue and instead turns to the vigilante next to him. “I’m ten, mister Robin. That’s very old.”
It certainly feels very old. Tim glances at his watch—sees the hand point exactly at the twelve. It is midnight, and Tim is ten, and this is the oldest he’s ever been. That might sound like a given, but to Tim, who has only ever been forced to carry more and more until the pressure inevitably brings him crashing down, ten feels a little bit like a death sentence.
You’re ten now, he imagines his mother will say, you can take care of yourself.
She had said it at six and seven and eight and nine too, but the words feel a little more true now. It terrifies him.
Robin raises an eyebrow. “Right. Ten. You couldn’t pass for nine on a good day.”
Tim shrugs. “I’m small.”
“Tiny,” Robin says again, in that same almost-disbelieving way he had said it before. “Look, shrimp, you can’t be out here. It’s dangerous.”
Tim wants to tell Robin that he knows that. It has always been dangerous—when he was six and seven and eight and nine too. Ten doesn’t change that.
Some noise comes out of Robin’s comm, and Tim flinches. He had nearly forgotten that it wasn’t just the two of them alone in the world. Robin glances at him, thinking, before pulling the comm out and pressing it to his mouth. “Yeah, yeah,” Robin says, rolling his eyes. He waits for some sort of response, and then somehow rolls his eyes harder. “I didn’t get lost, B. I grew up here. How would I be lost?”
Another moment of silence, and then Robin’s face is softening. “I’m fine, B. Promise. I’ll be at the cave before you know it; just got a little side-tracked.” He looks at Tim out of the side of his eye, and Tim shrinks away guiltily. With all of the excitement surrounding him, he had nearly forgotten that this was Robin. Or—well—he hadn’t forgotten, not really, but he had ignored the fact that Robin was sitting here with him instead of out on patrol.
“Oh my god,” Tim groans into his hands. “I’m so sorry, mister Robin sir, I didn’t mean to make you talk to me.”
Something in Robin softens. “You didn’t make me talk to you, kid. Just wanted to see if you were okay.”
“I can handle myself,” Tim says, crossing his arms and pouting. “I’m good at it.”
Robin looks conflicted. He hovers there, before bringing a soft hand down on Tim’s shoulder. Tim stiffens all at once, both afraid to accept it and afraid to say no. “You might be good at it,” Robin says, “but you shouldn’t have to be.”
At ten, Tim looks up at Robin with wonder in his eyes, his idol’s words reverberating within the very synapses of his brain.
(At eighteen, looking back, Tim only laughs.)
“You can get home okay, right?” Robin asks, scratching the back of his neck. “It’s just—B might kill me if I’m not back soon.”
Tim nods. “I can get home by myself! I’m really good at getting around without being seen.”
Robin sighs, shaking his head. “ This fucking kid,” he mumbles under his breath, but then he’s taking his hand off Tim’s shoulder. “Good,” he says. “Keep it that way.”
Tim nods again. Robin smiles, and then his cape is waving in the wind and like a magic trick, he is gone. Tim sighs, clutching his camera close to his chest with a small smile.
This is the best birthday ever, he thinks, and he is ten and alive and happy on a Gotham rooftop.
(Jason Todd dies two weeks later.)