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Chapter 7: Totum (the Family Bond)

Summary:

Mysteries unravel. Everything unravels. Some of it comes back together, though.

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

“You love me!”

“Shut up.”

“But you love me!

“Shut the fuck up.”

“You loooooove me!”

“Oh my god, Nightwang, shut the fuck up or I will belt you one,” Jason snapped already regretting letting Nightwing tag along.

It didn’t make a jot of difference, as usual. Dick beamed like it was his last chance to do so, totally immune to the thundercloud hovering over Jason’s head. Jason glared out from where he sat on the guardrail over the promenade where he’d first met Tim, waiting for the kid to arrive.

It was now three days post Flores Incident. A lot of shit had happened.

There had been questions asked – but B could make a lie on the spot that sounded totally credible. Turns out the peyote that fucking bitch of a Guide had procured had been from a common source with the Bogatagon designer drugs; thus, Batman neatly explained his and Nightwing’s presence in the Drake Estate. He even explained the hole where the window had been – they’d been on surveillance only until a young Guide had been in danger of being fed a psychotropic against his will and against all common sense.

Jason had just been the slightly hapless neighbor who had come to play video games with the only other kid for miles around. Jason had copped to punching Catalina but sometimes being seen as nothing more than a feral street rat was useful. Jason wasn’t expected to have any self control. The uniforms all bought it. Jim Gordon didn’t, but then again he was Commissioner for a reason. He didn’t seem overly motivated to tease out the truth of it.

So Catalina Flores was now incarcerated and, if Jason knew anything about Barbara Gordon’s bottomless well of carefully crafted vengeance, she wouldn’t see daylight for a long time.

Jason couldn’t give a fuck about any of this, because the unintended side effect of the whole mess was that Tim Drake was now, in effect, a ward of the state. Commissioner Gordon had not been pleased to learn that an eleven year old had been left with only nominal supervision from what had turned out to be an abusive caregiver. He was even less impressed when he’d been informed by Tim that his parents didn’t have a satellite phone, Skype or any other means of contact that could be used at any time. The straw that broke the Commissioners back was Tim’s reluctant admission that this had been more or less the way of things since he was eight.

Papers to remove Tim Drake from the custody of his parents because of criminal negligence had been filed within the hour.

What had really burned Jason at the time was the one time they could have used Brucie Wayne bumbling onto the scene would have been right then. Bruce Wayne was a rare animal in social services – a fully accredited Sentinel and Guide trained foster parent with a proven track record. But Batman had been on the scene first; having Bruce Wayne show up right after Batman left would have been too neat, even with the protection offered by the Clypeus.

Jason got it; B’s partner had dropped whatever they were discussing (fighting) about, geared up and then run hell bent of leather over the horizon. Batman had suited up to follow him on the not unreasonable assumption that some mass event had sparked the Golden Boy’s Sentinel imperative. But fuck, the one time they needed Bruce more than Batman, all they had was fucking Batman.

Jason was forced to watch, helpless and angry about it, as a miserable Tim was loaded into Jim Gordon’s sedan. He managed to get his phone into the kid’s hands, so he had a line of connection with him but it hadn’t been much fucking consolation.

The sympathica proved a godsend in the next few days. Jason knew that Tim didn’t go to bed hungry, that he was warm, that he had access to a computer, though probably not to the coffee that was his lifeblood. He was an unbelievable caffeine fiend in training, the little brat.

That’s why he had a coffee can tucked into his utility belt, waiting for said brat to show up.

Fortunately, Tim had a window where he could slip his well intended but overly smothering caregivers and get to the complex; or so he’d told Jason over the phone.

Unfortunately, Jason wasn’t waiting alone. Dick wanted to meet Tim.

“Try not to fume too much over B,” Dick advised him ruefully, clad in his stupid fingerstripes and still grinning like a loon. “He does actually have the ability to pull his head out of his ass. It just takes him a minute to get there.”

Jason scowled behind his mask. “Fucking paranoid asshole,” he muttered under his breath. He currently wasn’t talking to Bruce because Bruce was being an asshole. He hadn’t raised his hand to take Tim in yet. Jason had already had a knock down drag out fight with him over it.

“Yep. That’s practically his twitter profile,” Dick agreed cheerfully.

Jason could admit it was kind of… useful to have someone to commiserate with over Bruce’s terminal Bruceness. He wouldn’t let Tim get close to the family until they found out who was teaching the kid. Catalina Flores sure as shit didn’t teach him the evanidus or anything else. She was, as BG had succinctly stated ‘a one-tenth of a trick pony with the emotional perception of a dead slug’.

But that left the question – who the hell had taught Tim techniques out of the League of Assassin’s manuals?

“But,” Dick continued while Jason glowered. “He’s not totally doing nothing. He pulled some strings to get the kid under the care of Jim Gordon. That’s a hell of a lot better than a Centre halfway house or a group home.”

Jason knew that; it was pretty much the reason Batman wasn’t walking around with a broken nose. It wasn’t enough though. “I can’t believe he fucking thinks that kid might still be League,” Jason growled angrily. “Is he fucking blind? Was he even looking at the same kid we were?”

Dick shrugged. “Sometimes I wonder just how bad the League fucked up B. I mean, they did train him; he has to, in a sense, think like them. He understands their world view, sad as that sounds. They take ‘em young. So does B, if you think about it.”

Jason made a face. That little parallel hadn’t occurred to him and yet here he was, too young for sex (ha!), too young to smoke (double ha! Though the intensity of his training had cut that habit back to zilch since he needed every inch of lung capacity to survive gaining his level of fitness) and too young to drink (yeah, Jason’s not admitting to anything there) but still old enough to take on guys with guns, walk murder scenes and profile serial killers. For all his distaste for what the League stood for, Bruce was still, in a sense, indoctrinated to their ways.

“They taught him to view the world like it has nothing but enemies,” Dick sighed. “Usually he logics his way out of that mess, but it does take him a minute. Be patient. He’ll get there. And, I hate to play Bats Advocate here, but the case is still ongoing. We still have to find out who trained the kid.”

Fuck the stupid case  Jason wanted to say, but couldn’t. B was all Mission and Dick was a cop. They didn’t think like that. “I’ve been in that kid’s life for weeks. I’ve cloned his phone, I’ve put telltales on his computer and bat bugs just about anywhere they’ll fit. I’ve profiled all his school teachers and checked out all the students who show the remotest bit of interest in him. I’ve sat in on every one of the overachieving little brat’s extracurricular classes and ran checks on his teachers too. I haven’t found evidence of squat. If there’s League in his life, I’m not seeing it. Maybe I’ll never see it. Maybe it’s not fucking there.”

“That doesn’t mean the case is closed, Robin,” Nightwing gently pointed out.

“Fuck you, I know that. I’m just saying that it isn’t the League. Fuck only knows what it is. Maybe it doesn’t matter. I’ll find out and then case closed. Then we can focus on the real problem, like him needing—” Jason stopped and frowned down at his hands. They were shaking.

Nightwing blinked in surprise. “Little Wing?”

“Case closed,” said a flat voice behind them. They jumped and spun, ready for a right.

“Babybird?” Jason had a sinking sensation in his chest and it wasn’t sympathica related.

Tim was there, as white as a ghost, pressing his shaking hands to his chest. “Nobody taught me,” he continued in the same flat tone. “I taught myself. My parents gave me an old document from their collection for my birthday when I was six. I discovered hidden writing on it. All the old techniques that Guides used to know. That’s how I learned it. So… case closed.”

Jason was surprised by the wave of misery that hit his chest like a tidal wave. Jesus, Babybird was so upset he was projecting. “Tim, wait a minute—”

But Tim was off and running in the opposite direction, trying to get as far away as fast as he could.

Fuck,” Jason cursed.

“That,” Dick summarized sadly. “Did not go well. How much do you think he heard?”

“Not the fucking right bit, that’s for damn sure,” Jason snapped before taking off after the kid. “Tim, wait!”

Dick kept apace with him and they were both stretching with their senses, but the minute Tim had rounded a corner…

“What the...?” Dick skidded to a halt in shock. “I lost him!”

“Evanidus,” Jason explained tersely. “Shut up for a second, let me concentrate.”

His senses were stretching out, but this time Jason was looking for the place they couldn’t grasp. The sympathica made him feel like his lungs were burning and his feet were pounding on a hard surface. The kid was still running.

There was a ghostly wetness in his eyes and cheeks. Fuck, he was crying too.

Jason found a blank spot in his senses heading deeper into the amusement park where the rides had all been set up. Cursing up a storm, Jason told Dick to hang back in case the kid rabbited back towards the entry gates and then went full tilt sprint in the direction of the Ferris wheel. He closed on the kid easily; Tim still wasn’t up to optimal yet.

“Tim,” Jason hesitated when he got near the old novelty stands, now empty and decayed. “C’mon babybird, I know you’re here. Look, I dunno what you think you heard but—” Jason heard a slight rattle as the kid took off again. “Tim, wait!”

Darcy had appeared beside him sometime in his run. He was now sniffing around Jason’s feet. “I don’t guess you can find him?” Jason was getting some psychosomatic input from his hands now, but he couldn’t parse what it was. There was a phantom pull in his shoulders. Was the kid climbing something?

Darcy didn’t immediately dart off, which was frustrating. He did calmly look upwards.

Towards the Ferris wheel, now a half rusted wreck.

Circling it was a small bird whose shape Jason absolutely recognized.

“Fuck,” Jason went for the wheel like mad dogs were chasing him. Tim must not be thinking clearly. Babybird was afraid of heights… well, not heights, exactly, because he tracked Batman and Robin across rooftops readily enough. But he didn’t like looking down from a height at all.

Sure enough, Jason found him locked up at the top of the Ferris wheel maintenance ladder, unable to go further and too terrified to go down again. The ladder was as rusted as the rest of it and rattled ominously when Jason put his weight on it. Tim let out a high pitched sound of fear.

“Don’t move, babybird,” Jason yelled up to him. “I’m coming for ya!”

Robin seized his grapple gun and hefted himself up the first arm of the wheel, clambering up on it with undignified haste before grappling to the next. He made his way up the wheel that way, fighting his way through a mass of crisscrossing struts and beams towards the centre, listening all the while to ominous noises that the ladder Tim clung to was making.

He hauled his way to the middle where there was a kind of curved platform that could be stood upon in the hub of the wheel and a service hatch which Robin yanked open to reveal a frightened Tim who had been reaching for the hatch himself. Robin could see why; the ladder was starting to peel off what was left of whatever was bolting it to the inner stanchion.

Robin reached in and snatched at Tim’s hand, unceremoniously yanking him out of the tube and onto the relative safety of the platform. “Gotcha!” Jason cried as the ladder gave way in a series of deafening clangs and screeches that made him grit his teeth.

Tim accepted the arm around his shoulders for a moment or two while he recovered, but then pushed Jason away – though stuck where he was for the moment, all the kid could do after that was stubbornly flop down on the platform with his knees drawn up to his chest and not look at Jason at all.

Jason sighed and sat down next to him. “You okay?”

“Fine.”

Jason grimaced. “Look, Tim—”

“It’s alright,” Tim cut in, still not looking at Jason. He started out over the vista of the ruined park, eye bleak. “I get it. You had to investigate me. It wasn’t personal. You don’t have to pretend.”

“Oh, fuck that, babybird,” Jason protested vehemently. “I wasn’t pretending to be your friend!”

Tim shot him a look of such cold disbelief that Jason drew up. “It doesn’t matter,” Tim told him flatly. He was doing his best to be dignified about this, but he’d still clearly been crying and his eyes were empty. “You don’t have to hang out with me because you feel sorry for me either. You’re behind the Wall. I don’t even know your name.”

Jason cursed Bat paranoia in his head. “Okay, yes, I was ordered to investigate you but fuck, babybird, I’m a fucking Sentinel and you’ve got zero sense of your surroundings unless you’re really focusing. If I wanted to watch you from a distance, I could have done that easily. It would have been safer for me to do that. I didn’t. I didn’t because I liked hanging out with you. I don’t feel sorry for—okay, full disclosure, I do feel sorry for you because your parents are fucking lousy but that came after I was your friend, not because of it.”

 Tim hunched inward. “It’s okay. It’s okay if you’re not. My friend, I mean,” he said in a small voice. “I told you I can’t make people happy. I’m used to that, it doesn’t bother me. You don’t have to pretend to make me feel better.”

“Well I’m glad it’s okay if I’m not your friend,” Jason’s tone dripped with unmistakable sarcasm, which pricked enough to make Tim look at him. “Is it okay if I am your friend too? Look, I get it, kid. People don’t stay. You think I don’t get that? Being alone and there’s no one there to turn to, no one who’ll listen to you, who thinks you’re vital? I thought that too, once. Still do, really. I’m a lousy Robin. Everyone knows it; everyone can tell.”

Tim opened his mouth to protest this but Jason talked right over him.

“I absolutely believed that. I thought I was just the stupid guy trying to fill shoes that weren’t his, that would never be his. I was sloppy seconds, the cheap substitute for the real deal. I never felt like a Robin should feel about being Robin,” Jason took a breath. “And then I met you. You who, despite a fucking Wall the size of a skyscraper, really saw me. And you liked me. You liked me even more than the first one and you laid out your case for why and it all made so much sense. You really believe that I’m not just doing the job, I’m doing a better job. I never felt like a hero until someone actually pointed out to me that I was one to them, like you did. You have no idea how much that meant to me.”

“Oh,” Tim looked uncertain again, but at least he was looking at Jason. Then he blurted. “But… why me? I’m just Tim. Just…Tim.”

“No one’s ever…” Jason swallowed, because this kid was breaking his fucking heart. “I’ve spent my life around people who make excuses as to why they won’t fucking act when they see something wrong in the world. ‘Oh we would but’ what-the-fuck-ever. Or ‘someone should’, as if they’re not included in being fucking someone. All those people who would and should? Nobody does and nobody will. Except you. You can and you do and even where you can’t you try. That makes you fucking special, kid. Why shouldn’t I like you?”

Tim didn’t seem to have an answer for this. His cheeks were bright pink. Jason decided to let that sit for a while, but he did sidle closer to Tim so they could watch the sunset over the horizon.

Unbeknownst to them, they were being watched.

Batman and Nightwing watched from the top of the rollercoaster, hidden from direct sight.

“And?” Batman asked Nighwing tersely

“They’re cute together,” Nightwing grinned at the pair, who were sharing coffee.

“Nightwing ...”

Dick rolled his eyes. “Relax B. Of the two subjects involved only one is producing any kind of sex steroid and given that Robin II is nearly as tall as I am now it shouldn’t be a surprise he’s jonesing on testosterone. It’s in line with his somatotropin levels – that’s growth hormone in case you’re rusty on your biochem. He’s going to be a big boy, so that’s about what I’d expect from him at this age. His levels don’t go up when he’s around the kid and neither of them are secreting a single pheromone between them – no androstenol, androstadienone or androstenone. They are producing scents in synch which lead me to believe they’re producing oxytocins and dopamine.”

Batman grimaced. “Trust hormone and pleasure receptors.”

“Don’t say it like they’re bad words, B,” Dick replied dryly. “When people who like each other interact with each other, they feel happy and safe. Just take a minute to digest that, I know it’s basically a foreign concept for you.”

Batman continued obstinately. “If the bond is nascent it could be manifesting without the sexual element because of their ages. Puberty is required to pass before the brain has the chemical and neurological infrastructure required to support a bond.”

“So... what exactly is the problem here?” Nightwing cocked his head. “If they do have a nascent bond, so what? A) we’re sure as hell aren’t going to find it and B) you’ve pretty much just said nothing is going to happen until they’re both on the same page development wise anyway.”

“Being past puberty is not the same as being of the age of consent, officer,” Batman replied pointedly.

Dick threw up his hands, exasperated. “So sit ‘em down and show ‘em the sex talk powerpoint – you know, the one I’m still in therapy about – make sure they understand how fucked up their brain chemistry is going to make their decision making process. Make sure they understand that they’re not required to do anything about it until they’re both ready and until then there are bond suppressants a-plenty. Jesus B, you’re acting like dealing with an oversexed and underaged teen is like virgin territory for you. Pun intended. After you dealt with my sexual awakening,” he smirked as Bruce flinched. “This will be a cakewalk. Come on, they’re smart kids, they’ll follow the chain of it if you lay it out. And I’d also like to point out that unless you’re planning on cutting Jason off from the kid and locking him in the Wayne Ivory Tower – which I’m as sure you have as I’m sure you won’t be able to keep him, by the way – whatever this is, you’re stuck with it as is. You might as well suck it up and deal.”

Brooding silence, which was practically B’s native language.

Dick sighed. “Have you considered the possibility that this is all in your paranoid little bat-brain? Come on, you’re a detective – show me the evidence. All I see, smell and hear are two boys who light up around each other. There’s no proof it has anything to do with Sentinels and Guides but I see plenty of evidence that they’re both pretty goddamn lonely souls. Maybe, just maybe, he’s made a friend who he, against all odds, likes to hang out with. I’m sorry B, but maybe they only problem here is you’ve gone and got yourself a Real Boy.”

“There’s something there, I can sense it,” Batman sounded frustrated.

“Yeah, but that doesn’t automatically make it bad, B.”

“The unknown tends to bite us when stop looking its way,” Batman retorted grimly. “Robin is my... my responsibility. I can’t afford to take a risk.”

“He’s your son,” Dick corrected him gently. “You can say it, you know.”

Batman said nothing, but he didn’t disagree either.

“Let it be,” Dick advised him. “Let them be. You heard what Little Wing said. He still doesn’t feel like he’s welcome, even nearly three years in. We’re both fucking lousy at making him feel like a part of the family. You learn to love by loving. Let him love the kid. Let the kid love him back. Jason needs this. They both need it.”

Batman listened to the two boys on the Ferris wheel laughing about something; for all that one was armoured and masked, they still sounded like two totally normal kids.

He gave in. “Very well,” Batman sounded like the soul of grudging.

Beneath the cowl, Bruce Wayne smiled. His son had made a friend.

The End

 

Notes:

Aaaaand that a wrap. Hope you enjoyed. A couple of quick notes and explanations about this story:

Universe Weirdness: Aside from the whole Sentinel/Guide business, obviously, it should be worthwhile to note the when I did this fic I was writing for the DCEU movie 'verse. There was a companion story between Batman and Superman that I also wrote for the challenge.

So in case you were wondering why Jason Todd was packing a Robinata where Jason Todd of the comics wasn't in any way a staff bearer, that's why. The uniform in the display case in the movies very clearly showed a staff with a hook blade - hence, the Robinata. He also (though it was never explicitly stated in the fic) was not wearing the famous green-panty uniform. Ahem. #letallrobinswearpants2k19

 

Tim and the Wall: Just to clarify (all kudos to redrobinfection for spotting it), Tim has, in effect and very *crudely*, built a his own Clypeus to cleave the knowledge of Batman & Co's identities, only his is inside his own head, to try to keep from slamming into Bruce's, which is everywhere but his head. He's trained himself to think 'Batman' when he sees Bruce Wayne and any unconscious connection he tries, with his Wall, to *keep* unconscious. It took him a long time and a lot of fainting and migraines to get to the point where he could get through a day of Batman watching. His brain built parts of it subconsciously as a defence system while it was still developing. Unfortunately his Wall is full of holes since it's extremely difficult to cleave your own mind in two from the inside. Lizzy tries to buffer him from the effects to the point where her presence helps him recover from a faceplant faster, but it also helps that he doesn't really get to meet Bruce Wayne & Co in person very much either. He has hit the Wall at more than one gala, so his parents stopped taking him to them.