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With a gruff bark of laughter, Bruce reaches over to give Damian’s hair a playful, light-hearted ruffle as the young boy passes around the table.
A begrudging smile of his own dances over Damian’s lips as he departs the room, poking out his tongue, chased by Bruce’s reminder to clean his gear before they head out for the stake-out.
Outside, the storm rages on furiously. Rain whips wrathfully against the window panes, lightning accompanying the chorus of thunder.
Frankly, Tim doesn’t really want to stake anywhere out in such weather, but it would be selfish to admit that out loud. Besides, no one else seems to have an issue with it. Then again, they’re supposed to be sussing out the Iceberg Lounge tonight, and he’ll be the only one stationed outside for any meaningful duration of time.
Quietly, the smile starts to fade from Bruce’s face as he turns his attention back to the tablet set on the table, a Gotham Daily headline visible.
Distracted by the contentment in Bruce’s expression, he flinches when a steaming brew of coffee is set beneath his nose.
The chair creaks as he settles back into it, tense muscles uncoiling.
Alfred, ever observant, frowns as he pulls away. A gloved hand briefly reaches for his shoulder, before the older man thinks the better of it.
“Everything alright, Master Timothy?”
With a nod, he conceals the fleeting grimace and tries not to hunch.
“Yes, sorry, thank you, Alfred,” he says, tripping over each word like a pebble in his path.
The dining room lights up as lightning strikes outside, electricity blacking out the entire house for a moment before the generator kicks in.
It startles all of them.
“The weather has me on edge,” he lies.
Perhaps he should have just gone home.
The coffee fills the room with a rich, steamy aroma as Tim pulls it close.
Across the table, Bruce nods understandingly, face plainly growing more concerned about the weather with every passing minute.
It would be smart to call off the stake-out, but even if Bruce pushes ahead with the plan, it’ll be okay—he’s been out in worse.
Once, he distinctly remembers, he’d all but slid down the muddy hill to the Drake estate after patrolling in a blizzard so thick they’d barely been able to see. Plans for the warm shower he’d been banking on had been dashed when he’d learned there was no power. While he’d dragged his feet at Wayne Manor that night, no invitation to stay had come.
In those days, he’d understood. Welcomed, sometimes, the firm boundary Bruce put between them. Robin was Robin and Tim was Tim. Two separate entities. There was Batman and there was Mister Wayne.
Back then, there was no ‘Bruce.’
In those days, he’d understood. Bruce didn’t want a child around then, not after having lost Jason so brutally. Yet, Tim had forced his way in. Pried open the Batcave and cleaved to the Robin mantle despite the brusque training and harsh dismissals.
Many a time he’d wondered if things would have been different if he’d been Dick, or later, perhaps even Damian—Bruce would not have turned away his oldest or tossed his flesh and blood out into the rain.
In those days, he’d understood. Back then, he’d been a stop-gap, spackle to the cracks, a buffer, a pad between Bruce’s wounds and the world.
It had not mattered back then. Like a flower toward the sun, he’d soaked up what little affections Bruce had shown.
Retrospectively, he feels not much has changed.
Bruce’s faint bark of laughter rattles around his brain like a loose cog, Damian’s boyish smile following suit.
They’re father and son. Their relationship reflects that.
Another sound of thunder rattles the whole house and Bruce’s eyes shoot toward the closest window nervously.
What does the absence of that easy-going fondness mean for Tim’s relationship with Bruce, then?
“Bruce,” he blurts out of nowhere, the words tumbling out like the rain from the sky. “Do you think I made a good Robin?”
When he’d first arrived at Wayne Manor, he hadn’t known what he was to become. Invariably, the best he’d done was become little more than a test dummy. A ragdoll for grief.
Test dummies are designed to break, or at least it doesn’t matter if they do. That’s what they’re made for. So no one living, breathing, and bleeding gets hurt.
Surprise blossoms across Bruce’s features as he turns back.
“Excuse me?” he asks, looking a little bemused. The sudden question seems to have thrown him for a loop.
It hadn’t been reckless to protect the living. To protect Batman from the darkest recesses of himself. That was the tool he’d shaped himself into being. A tool that, unfortunately, seems to have now lived out its usefulness.
Damian’s smile swims into view again as the horrible realization dawns on him.
“Do you think I was a good Robin?” he asks again with a shrug. “Was I… useful?”
He looks up at the wrong time.
In an instant, the nervous concern Bruce had about the weather has sharpened into something with more direction.
Panic immediately sets in.
Why did he say anything? He wants to take back the question. Stuff it in a box inside his head.
“I’m sorry,” he tries, ducking his head again. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to put you on the spot. You don’t have to answer if… if you don’t want to.”
Batman no longer needs him and Bruce Wayne never did.
God, he feels so stupid. Somehow he’d tricked himself into believing he might one day be more than just the cuckoo in the nest.
The light-hearted teasing Bruce and Damian had shared earlier only proves he’s been right all along.
It’s about time he grows up. It’s about time he stops pretending he’s Peter Pan, a boy forever, always believing in magic.
Honestly, if he’d not tried so hard to help, the Wayne family would likely be better off.
In a flash, he’s up on his feet. The coffee goes down in one swift motion and Bruce stares up at him like he’s grown a second head. Now’s the best time to exit stage right.
Pasting on a stiff smile, he tries his darndest to look Bruce in the eye, though he’s not entirely successful.
“Sorry,” he apologizes again. “That was a weird question. Forget about it. Gonna head down to the cave now, I’ll see you down there.”
It starts to hail about halfway into the stake-out. Frankly, with the way this night has been going, he’s not shocked.
During the briefing, Batman had not spoken a word about Tim’s little dining room interrogation, but he’s glad for it. If nothing else, it would have earned him unwanted looks of curiosity from his siblings. At worst, used as ammunition.
So far, nothing has happened. Red Robin has been perched on this roof for over an hour listening to the radio chatter in time with his teeth, but nothing exciting has come out of the stake-out—except for, perhaps, the few moments it had taken Red Hood to pick the side door lock.
The hour he’s been up here has at least given him time to think. To mull over his earlier question to Bruce. Perhaps the fact he is on back-up tonight answers it; he wasn’t a good Robin.
Tim wants to hope he at least helped in some way. Sure, he didn’t have Dick’s athletic abilities, Jason’s hard hits, Stephanie’s problem-solving skills, or Damian’s entire upbringing as an assassin, but he thought he’d made an okay detective. Even if Batman would always be the better detective.
So, there was nothing he’d actually been good at, but that didn’t mean he was bad at all those things… right?
Although, maybe… maybe Bruce’s non-answer had actually been an answer in itself. If there really was nothing praise-worthy about him, he’d put Bruce in the most awful position; trying to find something nice to say without outright lying.
How had Tim not seen it earlier? If nothing else, he could compare himself to mold. Growing unwanted on surfaces, clinging desperately to anything, any sliver of kindness Batman or Bruce had ever pitied him, hoping to become penicillin when all he was capable of being was a noxious toxin.
How was Batman supposed to look into his adoring, eleven year old eyes and tell him he would never amount to anything, no matter how hard he tried. How was Bruce to tell him he could never love a moldy thing? How do you even tell someone who won’t leave you alone that they’re completely useless and unwanted?
“I’m… a terrible person,” he whispers to the wind before burying his face in his hands, but all the wind does is whistle her mournful song in reply.
What does he even do now? How does he step away without undoing his years of hard work? Or, worse, will stepping away leave any kind of gap at all?
That thought… kind of hurts. Even if he knows it shouldn’t. This was what eleven year old him set out to do. Except so much has changed since he was eleven. When he was eleven he went to school, had college plans, and two living parents who weren’t home much, but still loved him. Or… at least sometimes pretended to.
At almost seventeen, he doesn’t have any of that. No school, because he dropped out for Batman’s crusade, no college plans, because Batman had needed him more, and no parents because… because Robin had come first.
Now, he doesn’t even have Robin to show for his efforts. The mantle has already been passed on to someone who needs it more.
Except, stepping away feels like plummeting off a ledge.
Without Batman to catch him, what’s to stop him from falling forever? Who’s even going to care?
Without the ball and chain that he is, weighing Batman down, what heroic deeds will Bruce and his family manage to do? What bridges will mend themselves without Tim blocking their way?
Rain and hail hammering down on his back, drenching him through to the bone. Stuck between the howling wind and his own thoughts, he almost misses Batman’s sharp order.
Head whipping up, he reaches for his grapple with numb fingers.
Cobblepot’s got Red Hood cornered!
Self-doubt falls away as he grapples down to the side-entrance, bursting through without so much as a shred of self-preservation.
Several skimpily dressed people skitter to the side, the warmth of the club confusing his frozen senses as he leaps the railing and falls two floors, accompanied by several screams and two bullets that hit the bar behind him.
There’s no point in pretending this is a covert mission anymore.
Red Robin follows Jason’s beacon to where Oswold has him pinned down with several lackeys, though Red Hood has already taken several of them down with precision.
“Finally,” Jason huffs as Tim lands, sending a jarring shock of cold up his still frozen legs. “The odds are evening.”
A nasally laugh erupts out of Cobblepot.
“Unfortunately, I’m not Dent. Evens, odds? They mean nothing to me.”
The lackey’s pounce. Rushing them at once. Jason’s hand-to-hand is far superior to Tim’s, but he manages to take a couple down with only minor bruising. The third, unfortunately, smacks him square in the temple with something heavy and he goes down hard.
Consciousness immediately submits to pain.
For one, blissful moment, he doesn’t have to think about who he is or where he belongs. For one, blissful moment, it doesn’t matter.
“Fuck,” he hears Jason scream, voice modulated through the helmet.
Through what feels like waves pounding against his skull, he blearily watches as Oswold retreats.
Red Hood does not take off after him.
There’s a hand on his shoulder.
“Batman, I could really use some help by the bottom bar,” he hears Jason say, a tremble in his tone and a gentle squeeze to Tim’s upper arm. “Red Robin’s out—guy pistol whipped ‘im from behind.”
There’s a beat before Bruce’s familiar, gruff voice answers.
“We’re on our way,” replies Batman, tinny through the communicator in Tim’s ear. “Nightwing, Batgirl, go after Cobblepot. Robin, you’re with me.”
The hand on his shoulder moves to his hair, but it’s gentle and aware of the concussion he’s probably got.
“Stay with me, Red,” Jason implores quietly, but it’s the last thing he hears before he’s pulled under.
When he wakes it’s like Ivy has decided to grow a cactus in each eyeball.
He groans, then immediately regrets it.
“Easy,” says a voice that sounds like a thousand needles to his skull. “You got smacked ‘round good back there.”
It’s quiet, but for the sound of bats, chittering away.
The Batcave, then.
A chair creaks as Batman, sans cowl, eases himself into it.
“J’son?” he asks, turning his head in time to catch the furrow of Bruce’s brow.
“He’s fine, bud,” the man replies, absently scratching his wrist. “Everyone else is fine. Cobblepot is in GCPD custody.”
The mission was a success, then. Good. That’s good.
He slumps back into the pillows. They’re soft, but not familiar. The scent of sterility stings his nose. It’s the smell of a medical bay.
Two swings and he’s out for the count. Some back-up he is.
“Hey, it happens,” says Bruce, leaning over to tuck the covers more securely around him, alerting Tim to the fact he seems to have spoken aloud. “Sometimes they just get in a lucky shot.”
It’s kind to say, even if Tim knows it’s not true. It boils down to the fact he’s just useless in a fight. The worst Robin to have when you need solid help.
At least Batman is here with him. Bonus of being the only one knocked out, he supposes. He doesn’t like waking up in the medical bay alone, he’s done it enough times.
“Hey, B,” he begins, swallowing hard around the lump in his throat. “I’m sorry about what I said earlier, when I asked if I was a good Robin. I didn’t mean to… make you uncomfortable.”
Bruce’s eyebrows shoot up.
“Uncomfortable?” he parrots.
Perhaps it’s the concussion loosening his tongue, or maybe it’s just time to have a frank conversation. If Batman won’t rip off the bandaid, Tim’s going to have to do it, because otherwise he’ll keep clinging to fake hope and false idols.
When Jason returned from the dead to find a Robin suit in a glass case inscribed with, ‘a good soldier,’ he’d been furious, righteously angry. There’d been no mention of Jason being Bruce’s son.
And yet, a glass box and a memorial in Titan’s tower is more than Tim could ever hope to get if he died. Because he isn’t a good soldier and he’s certainly never held a place in Bruce’s heart the way Jason did.
“Yeah,” he sighs, barely above a whisper. “I guess I just wanted to know if you thought my run as Robin was… worthwhile. It was a selfish question, I’ve realized, I’m sorry.”
The sound of Bruce’s chair scooting closer against the concrete floor of the medbay frightens the bats in the back of the cave.
“Where is this coming from?”
The soft, baby blue threads of the blanket covering his legs hold Tim’s gaze. If nothing else, he’s a coward. For once, he’d like to pretend Bruce isn’t looking at him with disappointment.
He shrugs.
“Nowhere, really,” he says, picking at a cuticle. “Just saw you and Damian teasing each other after dinner and I realized you’re different, now. You’ve grown. Healed. And I… I’m just the same as I was back then.”
A palm finds his forearm, stilling his hands.
“You’re upset,” Bruce deduces, but the words still come out like a question. “Because you think you haven’t moved forward or grown up since you were Robin?”
Internally, Tim barks a sharp laugh, but it turns into a sigh before it makes it past his lips. “That’s one way of putting it.”
The palm on his forearm gives a squeeze.
“Well, how would you put it?” Bruce asks gently.
There’s a sudden ache in his chest. Tim rubs at the sore spot just by his heart.
“Well… how do you make a home, B?” he asks miserably, shutting his eyes. “How do you make people want to stay?” How do you hold a wave upon the sand.
He hears a quiet hitch in Bruce’s breath, but he’s started now, he may as well finish.
“When Damian first arrived I was selfish. All he wanted to do was make you like him, integrate into the family,” he says, the ache increasing tenfold as he flays open his heart and lays it out for Bruce to critically examine.
“And I saw him as a threat,” he admits. “After all those years, all that time and effort I’d done to earn the same, I didn’t want to give it up so easily. I was finally getting somewhere, finally earning… something, I don’t know what, recognition, perhaps?”
It’s almost cleansing, in its own way. To open up entirely. Have Bruce see him as the horrible, pathetic, parasite he knows he is.
“And then everything I’d worked so hard for just fell through my fingers no matter how tightly I grasped it. At first, I blamed Dick, for taking Robin from me. Then I blamed you, because you came back and acted like it was business as usual.”
In his lap, Tim’s fingers twist together painfully.
“But tonight, I realized I was the problem. Not Damian, or Dick, or you. I wasn’t a good Robin. You never wanted me in the first place, so I feel like such an idiot for hoping… for hoping that one day I would matter to you. That I would mean as much to you as you do to me.”
Palms shoot up, instantly pressed against his eyes, Tim does his best to staunch the flood of tears, but some spill out nonetheless.
It’s best this way. It’s time to cauterize the wound. Any longer and it’s going to grow infected.
A weight depresses the bed. Two arms wind their way around his shoulders and he’s tucked against Bruce’s broad chest, nestled just under his chin.
“It sounds like this has been weighing on you for a long time,” he begins thickly, voice cracking.
“It’s not your issue,” Tim sniffs in lieu of an apology. “The last thing I want to do is bring you more problems—you finally got your family back.”
Where Bruce’s hand has been stroking through his hair, it stops.
“Why do you say that like you’re not a part of it?”
Bruce sounds hollowed out.
Tipping his head up to squint at Bruce’s unhappy distress, the words leave his mouth with a tinge of hurt.
“Please don’t treat me like I’m stupid,” he breathes, curling around the ache as he allows his chin to hit his chest again. “You don’t see me like that. We both know the adoption was out of necessity—not like Robin could be seen sneaking out of a foster home. You kept me around to keep an eye on me, B. Not like anyone would normally trust a child with a secret like yours.”
To his surprise, Bruce sounds shredded when he speaks again, unexpected after the long pause following Tim’s admission.
“So, the reason you asked if I thought you were a good Robin, if I thought you were useful, was because you thought my affections for you never extended beyond that?”
Quickly, Tim mulls it over. It’s a fair enough assessment.
He nods.
“Yeah,” he whispers. “Robin was everything to me. It was worth it. I just wanted to know if you felt the same. If I was worth it.”
The arms encompassing him tighten to a degree that’s almost painful. They only release when he squeaks, but even then, only infinitesimally.
Bruce drops a lingering kiss to his crown before he speaks, a tone that’s bone brittle with unhappiness and trembling like a lone leaf in the winter wind.
“Let me start, Timothy Jackson Drake-Wayne, by saying that the name I gave you was never given out of necessity,” he says softly. “I gave you the name Wayne because it is my family name, a name I wish to share only with those most precious to me.”
One of Bruce’s hands comes up to smooth the bangs out of Tim’s eyes, a thumb absently wiping at the few tears lifelessly making tracks down his cheeks.
“You’re one of the most giving and selfless people I’ve ever had the privilege of knowing, Tim,” he says lowly, one hand cupping the side of his face.
Tim is half turned into Bruce’s chest just so he doesn’t have to look at the man while he speaks.
“And I’m sorry that I ever made you question your place here,” Bruce continues, razed raw. “You were a brilliant Robin, but more importantly, you’re my son; you have been since the day you first kicked in my heart.”
The words aren’t soothing like a balm. Instead, they’re like dipping frozen limbs into water that’s just a touch too hot. It’s painful and it burns, but in a way that’s good and soul cleansing.
Bruce smooths the hair away from Tim’s ear as he settles more securely onto the medcot, bunking down for the night, it seems.
“I love you, Tim,” he whispers out of nowhere. “If I don’t say it enough, please know that it’s true. If you need me to tell you it every day, I will. I love you, more than anything and above all else.”
Tongue heavy, he swallows around a fresh wave of lethargic tears.
“You never said anything,” he says. “After I moved in. You never…”
“I thought you knew,” Bruce replies in turn. “You were always so good at understanding my actions, my thoughts, my feelings. I took that for granted. I assumed you knew just how much I loved you. It’s only now I’m beginning to realize where I’m most lacking, and that I’ve hurt you because of it.”
There’s a long silence between them. Tim’s eyes feel glassy and he’s exhausted, both from the possible low-grade concussion and the emotions being wrung out of him.
“If you could do it again,” he mumbles, “would you change anything?”
After a moment, Bruce gives a low hum.
“Yes,” he finally decides. “There are so many things I would change if I could go back and re-do it all again. My words, my actions; but most importantly, I would start by telling you, Tim, just how much I love you.”