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28.8 million Americans will have an eating disorder in their lifetime.
Every 52 minutes someone dies from an eating disorder, it’s the deadliest mental illness after opioid addiction.
These are facts. Tim knows them, has looked at them, studied them.
Eating disorders are suspected to be hereditary. Men make up 20% of all people with anorexia. About 25% of all people with eating disorders have PTSD.
Facts make up most of his live. Facts and twisting statistics until they fit into what he wants to achieve. Facts that might as well be fiction.
Hunger is a good feeling. Being bony is a good feeling. Pulse racing from simple exercise is a bad feeling. Bruising from simple hits is a bad feeling. These are also facts.
Loneliness is a non-feeling. (Except for when it burns and freezes and swallows him whole)
Touch is a non-feeling. (Except for when it burns and freezes and swallows him whole)
Batman doesn’t ask questions. Tim doesn’t know why. He has been watching him for years. He has made statistics out of his moods and routes and the final injury counts after a night on patrol.
Batman never looks at him for long. Tim learns to stay in sight, but not in the corner. Because then Batman will mistake him for another child, his child. And then the injuries will spike and Tim will be at fault.
Alfred doesn’t say anything, wraps Tim’s knuckles sometimes and gives him band aids. Alfred does not interfere. Tim knows that too.
Dick is Nightwing, is Robin and is Batman’s child. He fights 78% of the time he is over but the number is slowly decreasing. If Tim joins him on patrol after two a.m. he will get a pinched look and buy Tim ice cream.
Jason would get Batman to smile approximately 2.3 times an hour. Tim is lucky if he manages 1.2 smile per week. With Jason at his side, Batman arrested 4.5 more rapists a week than without him. Tim sees it as his duty to continue this tradition. He averages out at 3.7. It’s more than without a Robin.
Tim is 5’1, 13 years old and weighs 80 pounds. He is clinically underweight, short for his age and stubborn. Tim has slight control issues, is afraid of abandonment and determined to stop Batman from being suicidal.
They never ask how he hides the injuries he gets on patrol. Truthfully, he never really has to hide them. He is used to wearing long sleeves and nobody waits for him at home. Tim has been on certain forums since before his eleventh birthday. He doesn’t think he is anorexic. He does know that what he does is not normal.
He has learned to master concealer at the age of eight. His father had been home and he had accidentally knocked over a glass. His father had been angry. That had been the first contact he had with his parents in four months. He wakes up with a black eye the next day. His parents are gone.
He calls himself out of school and makes his way to the bus stop. He buys a ticket, gets on the bus and to the nearest pharmacy. The cashier looks at him with pity, but this is Gotham and it is not unusual for a preteen to go and buy concealer all on his own. They do nothing. No one ever does.
Tim goes home, sits on the couch, cools his eye though he suspects it’s already too late. He watches a YouTube tutorial from a woman that wants to hide a nasty bruise on her ankle for a wedding. It does not work quite the same on a face but it is enough. Tim practices, color corrects, blends and eventually, he thinks he can go back to school without the teachers pulling him aside. He stays home another day out of caution and practices his long division instead. He is pretty good at it.
The school says nothing and later that night Tim eats a TV dinner all alone with a stupid sitcom on to pretend someone else is with him.
When he is nine, it gets harder to hide injuries. Theres no good reason for a broken nose and his parents don’t answer the phone when the nurse calls. He tells her he likes going out on his skateboard. She accepts the lie with a painful looking smile. Tim pays in cash. He does not go to the free clinic because he has money.
Two days later the skateboard he ordered arrives. It turns out to be a fantastic investment. It explains all bruises he might have, skater clothes are usually baggy and hide his form and he has never done anything more fun. Tim busies himself at home with his camera, his darkroom and his skateboard. By the end of the month he can do most tricks that don’t require a ramp.
He goes out to a skatepark where troubled teens smoke in the shadows and watch him. Tim does not own protectors, it hurts when he falls. A boy, maybe two years older, watches him intensely and wordlessly presses some knee pads into his arms. Tim tries to pay him but the boy shakes his head. There are bruises peeking out below his sweater, Tim knows the feeling.
Tim learns how touch starvation can hurt when he turns 10. He has been going out to take photos of Batman for a while. He gets in the way of some stray pollen. Colloquially, it’s known as cuddle pollen. Tim learns painfully why that is. His skin burns and prickles and feels cold and Tim crawls into his closet, beneath all his soft clothes and shivers in a ball. No one asks him why he didn’t go to school. Tim emerges two days later, eyes swollen and red, hair oily and with the distinct knowledge that he can deal.
He tells his parents he would like to skip a grade. He tests two above his level. He changes schools. It’s fine, he didn’t have any friends anyway. At the new school, he is an outcast. He sits with other outcasts. One of the girls has criss-cross hatching scars up and down her arms. She is thin and does not want to eat. Tim does not question her but he does look it up.
Health class should’ve mentioned eating disorders at some point. Tim had not been there for that lesson. Tim learns about bulimia and anorexia, about binging and purging. No one is there to tell him that research can be a slippery slope. Tim is fascinated by the concept.
Generally speaking, Tim does not like to eat. He finds little enjoyment in it and it is a chore. He does it anyway, when he remembers. He doesn’t remember often enough.
An account on a website he is too young to visit seals his fate. He finds company in lone people, meets others in situations not unlike his own. He is careful not to reveal too much. He does not have a problem with his body. Many people think anorexia comes from vanity. It can, but it often doesn’t. Many take it up because of control issues. Eating disorders can be addicting. No one ever mentions that. Websites seem to miss the point. Yes, it can be a cry for attention and help. But it just as well can be a way to hide, to melt into shadows. Hunger is addictive, starvation is seductive.
Tim comes across content he never should’ve seen. He relates to things he has no business relating to.
Eating disorders are often competitive. It’s why so many post their stats online. It's a way to measure each other up, to see who can be the thinnest, the prettiest, the best. Tim is not particularly competitive. He cannot tell that this is something lethal. He tries fasting and quickly realizes he cannot risk the inattentiveness when he’s out. He does not fast anymore.
He does not gain weight between his tenth and eleventh birthday. He grows two inches. He applies concealer more often. Now, the bruises join dark circles and sunken in faces. He is very good at covering up.
Robin dies, Tim’s biggest passion goes with him. He makes statistics about Batman without Robin. The numbers don’t lie. Batman needs a Robin. Dick refuses to go back. Tim is nothing if not stubborn.
He becomes Robin through sheer force of will. He does not eat Alfred’s food, he goes back home and studies. He calculates how many calories he burns fighting and training and ups his intake. He knows he needs to bulk up to take down criminals. Tim is thirteen and about to go out at night. Dick was 5’4’’ and 130 pounds as Robin and he was the leaner of the two after Jason grew. Tim needs to get to a net of at least 100, more like 110 pounds before he can realistically do much in the field. He resolves to purely gain muscle because it weighs more than fat anyway.
He eats plain rice and chicken and broccoli every night for months. He squeezes a lemon into water so he won’t get scurvy. He gains weight, but is still thinner than the other Robins. He hides his body behind huge sweaters. Batman doesn’t look at him outside of uniform.
Tim goes home at night and posts on forums. He gets tips on how to cope. He doesn’t think he’s anorexic, he doesn’t care much about his looks. He knows something is wrong. He says nothing.
Years down the line, Tim will weigh 120 pounds sometimes 125, will be 5’5’’ and no longer Robin. Tim will be seventeen and on the run and he will be 18 and a solid 110 pounds, a body fat percentage of less than 7% and he will rummage through his file. He is trying to update it to include his asplenia and the treatment for it. Nobody had asked about the large gash across his stomach. He will see a note in his file.
Suspected eating disorder, (anorexia nervosa), recovered.
Tim will stop everything, will look at the note left as if it was a reminder to take vitamins and he will not know if he should laugh or cry. Batman had noticed. Had purposefully said nothing. Tim had stunted his growth, had significantly increased his own likelihood of death and Batman had said nothing.
Recovered, the word spins in his mind. Is that what Bruce thinks? That you can just recover from something like that? That he is better? Without any help at all? Who looks at an underweight thirteen year old, sees their eating disorder and does not mention it?
What was wrong with his family to think he was just ok? He had dealt, that much was true. He’d been watchful, since he hadn’t wanted to die. He’d been ever so careful, had calculated, made himself crazy in his head over the approximate calories of a banana and the stats of a cup of yoghurt. He had been active on the forums until last year when the lack of an internet connection severely inhibited his options. He had posted body checks, had exchanged helpful advice with other teens, had talked people down from a suicide. Wether the advice he’d received on any given day was about how to properly hide chewing and spitting or how to mitigate the feeling of stomach acid burn in the back of his throat was a gamble.
He’d not recovered, not really. But he had so many other things on his mind, so many more important things. He’d put it on hold. Not that he could ever look at food and not estimate the calories in it. Not that he could look at a person on the street and estimate their BMI and weight at the drop of a hat. Habits so ingrained in him he will never forget.
And now, looking at his file, all the trouble all his struggle reduced to a single line.
Suspected eating disorder, (anorexia nervosa), recovered.
Tim is half tempted to erase the note. Bruce didn’t get to write it off like this. But this is a medical file and it might one day be important for treatment.
Tim adds Aquired Asplenia (last year).
He adjusts his weight slightly downwards and watches as the computer calculates his new BMI. It’s not underweight anymore, hasn’t been in a while. But considering the amount of muscle he has, it’s probably not healthy either.
He enters his antibiotics and his new found allergy to carrots. He does not know why he got it or how. His basal temperature is lower.
Tim closes his file. Recovered, yeah. Tim imagines throwing this in Bruce’s face, asking him what the fuck was wrong in his head. Statistically, he is the least likely to argue with B’. That is not because he does not want to, but he has run the number. Arguments lead to a 7.6% reduction in productivity, 6.2% increase in unnecessary injury and only 1 in 5 times leads to improvement in behavior. It is not worth it. Jason obviously does not understand this data set.
He looks at the clock, 5.30 a.m., it’s not worth it to go to sleep. He moves to the training room and goes on the treadmill for half an hour. He catches up on his emails during. He sends out reminders and commands because he is still the acting CEO.
He showers and changes and its 6:30. Enough time for his new (old) ritual. He makes himself a coffee, goes to his room and pulls out his makeup bag. He applies color correction, concealer, makeup, a bit of contour to hide the lack of shadows he’s created. He looks for all intents and purposes like he slept through the night. He has a headache. He has to tighten the watch on his arm again.
He should not be drinking coffee without a spleen, he ignores that advice. He greets Damian on his way out the door. He does not greet Bruce. Serves him right.
He eats a salad for lunch and leaves the croutons at the bottom. He has a board meeting, talks to Jenny from HR and sends a memo off to Japan. He eats a protein ball at three. He’s bone tired.
He comes home, sees that Alfred has cooked and for the first time in a long time wonders if he had to hide his habits at all. It seems Bruce had caught on anyway. He hadn’t done anything. Logical conclusion, it does not matter.
He eats a bit of salad, precisely 132 grams of salmon and three walnuts. Bruce doesn’t even look at him.
Tim goes down to the cave, makes another coffee and starts on his night job. He ignores the sound of training behind him. Damian never had an issue with his weight. It was already at an acceptable level when he arrived. Tim is not jealous.
Violent injuries increase by 11.3% with Damian as Robin. Drug overdoses decrease by 0.4%. Children are reunited with their parents 16.5% more times than with Tim as Robin. Logically, Damian is a good Robin. Tim is still envious. He thinks he understands Jason better now.
His intake lowers, his headaches grow, his productivity increases by 3.9% but his activity in the field decreases by 8.2%. He does not offer an explanation and Bruce does not ask.
Recovery is not something he ever thought about, he might have to, though, since he is not suicidal. This will not be his death like it was someones every 52 minutes. He knows the facts, the statistics, and he thinks he might have to stop hiding from them.
(Dick will discover the innocuous note two months later when Tim gets knocked out cold in a fight. He will stare at it, stare at his little brother who’s bony wrists poke out in a way that seems unnatural. Will look at the weight and height and will think to himself that the Drakes had been tall people. When Tim wakes up, Dick is a mess, has been crying for a while and there are cookies on his nightstand. It’s a start.)