Chapter Text
Tim, unintentionally, ends up in the Justice Cave Thursday night. Well–Robin does, anyway. There's some hard files Bruce needs that he left here last weekend, because Bruce never tells anyone he needs anything until he is literally physically incapable of avoiding it and so he didn't know not to leave them here.
Tim didn't get into being an emotional support sidekick expecting much aside from a less-vengeful Batman out of it, obviously, but it'd still be nice to occasionally get communicated with. Like, just for the novelty factor, if nothing else.
He collects the files, and while he's double-checking that he's got them all, a cloud of beige smoke spills into the room and materializes into Suzie before he can grab his rebreather. Tim knows, factually, that Suzie is gaseous and therefore not always in an obviously human shape, but after growing up in Gotham, land of fear gas and Joker gas, there's some instincts that are a little hard to shake.
“Robin!” she says delightedly while he's calming his heart rate, flying over to him with a surprisingly excited expression. He feels a brief flash of guilt remembering that she's probably been alone most of the week. Really, Suzie isn't in an ideal living situation either, but she also doesn't have any physical needs and can't pass for a normal human and is being actively hunted by a dubiously moral government organization, so . . .
Fuck, Tim thinks, because that thought process is the thought process of an asshole.
. . . maybe he can move Suzie into Kon's future cul-de-sac later, if he gets him one in a quiet enough area. Or maybe it'll be time to burn down the world as a supervillain before that and then she can just live wherever she likes because the DEO will be nothing but scrap metal and unemployment checks. Just–she's on his to-do list now, either way. And now that he’s thinking about it, maybe Cissie would be better off with a place to live that wasn’t either a boarding school or her mother, and–
Maybe he can just buy a whole neighborhood and move everyone he knows into it. Maybe that's an option.
He'll start some soft plans and go from there, Tim figures. Once he’s got things settled with Kon, at least, since Kon’s the one currently in the shitty cloning lab. At least Suzie’s not in a lab anymore.
God, why is this a concern in their lives, whether or not any of them are in labs or not? Also why was he not more concerned by this sooner, all things considered?
Or, like, why don’t any of the damn adults in Kon’s life care about him in any way that is even remotely visible from an outsider perspective. Or that.
Tim’s pretty sure any relevant “caring” wouldn’t even be visible from Kon’s perspective, given the way he talks and how sure he was that Robin wouldn’t think there was anything weird or wrong or straight-up ethically appalling about him professionally risking his life for a shitty cloning lab for room and board and literally nothing else.
“Hey, Secret,” he says, thinking longingly of Superman-appropriate death-traps. “Sorry I didn’t call ahead, I didn’t think you’d be here.”
“That’s okay, it’s just nice to see you!” she says, beaming brightly at him. Tim, unfortunately, is reminded of Kon for literally no reason except that he really is just down that bad for the bastard, apparently. God, he’s going to embarrass himself so much over this situation, isn’t he. Just so, so much. “What are you doing?”
“Just picking something up quick,” Tim says. “I’ll be out of your hair in a minute.”
“Oh,” she says, looking disappointed. “Um, okay.”
. . . Tim is possibly an asshole, he recognizes.
“Thought I might do a few security checks first, if you don’t mind the company,” he attempts, and Suzie immediately lights up again.
“No!” she says excitedly, clasping her hands together. “No, I don’t mind! Do you want some snacks while you work? I’ll get you some!”
Tim might be an asshole, yeah.
“That’s okay, I already ate,” he says, and smiles at her. “Just keep me company for a little bit, maybe? Running the diagnostics gets boring, sometimes.”
“Okay!” Suzie says, still beaming at him.
Tim runs a bunch of unnecessary diagnostic checks and also checks the hardware connections, and Suzie tells him all about the places she’s been visiting. She sounds pretty excited about most of them, so that’s good, he figures. Of course, Kon didn’t sound bothered by the Cadmus thing either, so . . .
Yeah, they need to work on getting her completely off the DEO’s radar and into a more sustainable long-term living situation as soon as possible. And maybe figuring out . . . he’s not sure, exactly, but some way to help her look enough like a normal human to pass for one. A holo-projector, maybe, or an illusion spell. Something like that.
Why does he have a friend in this situation? Why does he have multiple friends in this situation?
Maybe he'll pick a cul-de-sac in an area he can just, like, take over once he goes supervillain. Just lock it down and make it his territory first thing. Hell, just buy up the local buildings one by one and make it all nice and legal and a pain in the ass for the local government and whatever cops survive the GPCD getting blown up to argue with, even.
Unfortunately that might technically make him a landlord, which is a little more evil than he really wanted to go, but desperate times and all.
“So are you, um . . . seeing anyone right now, Robin?” Suzie asks, twisting a whorl of her smoky hair through her fingers and biting her lip. Tim isn't sure why she's asking, so can only assume she's run out of conversation topics and is fumbling for small talk.
“Well . . . kind of,” he says as he fakes his way through another entirely unnecessary hardware check, because he can't actually tell her any real details about his life, no, but dating Kon is not actually a part of his life that Bruce has any idea about, so . . . well, there's nothing to tie back to him if he does, is there? And–well, he'd like to talk about it a little, maybe. “Or I just started seeing someone, I mean. It's a recent development.”
“You–are?” An odd expression flickers across Suzie's face, and he's not sure what it means, but then she smiles brightly. “Oh, um–congratulations! That's–great, yeah! Is she . . . nice?”
“Not even slightly,” Tim says wryly.
“. . . is she a supervillain?” Suzie asks, looking a little worried.
Tim doesn't even want to know where she got that idea. Maybe he's giving off the fifteen-year-plan vibes a little too early again, though.
He's really gotta work on that.
“No,” he says, shaking his head. “She's just a stubborn, arrogant brat with a bad temper and enough attitude to power half of Gotham. And kind of an attention whore, too.”
“And you’re dating her?” Suzie asks, frowning in confusion. Admittedly, Tim could’ve made that sound better. And Suzie’s still a little confused about . . . literally everything, sometimes, so it’s not like he can blame her for being confused about him technically insulting someone he’s dating. He doesn’t mean any of it insultingly, just as objective observations, but . . . well . . .
“Yeah,” he says, pretending to check a few more connections. “She's really cool, actually. I mean–people are complicated, obviously. She's all that other stuff, but she's also brave and determined and never quits, and she wants to help people. Like, you know–just with her life, I mean.”
“Oh, like, um–us?” Suzie says, biting her lip again. “Is she a vigilante too?”
“No,” Tim says, because technically a superhero is a different thing from a vigilante. Barely, but still. He’ll ride that technicality all the way to the bank, if he’s gotta. “I can’t really tell you anything specific about her, sorry, just–”
“Secret identity stuff, yeah,” Suzie says, looking a little sad for a moment. Tim feels bad about it, a little. Suzie doesn’t even have an identity, secret or not. Like–“Suzie” isn’t really her name, it’s just a hand-me-down from Cissie, and she got it even more recently than Kon got “Kon-El”. Not much more recently–which, considering how long Kon’s been in the community and how long Suzie’s been in the community is a goddamn crime, in Tim’s opinion, especially since Kon’s been a public figure from day one and Suzie is literally a secret–but still more recently.
“Yeah,” Tim says, and gives her an apologetic smile. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Suzie says. “I understand. If, um, I had normal friends or a family to protect, or anything like that . . .”
She trails off, then looks embarrassed. Tim feels increasingly like an asshole.
“Robin is my responsibility,” he says. “Not anyone else’s. It’s not fair to drag other people into my secrets.”
His dad . . . he doesn’t even know how his dad would react to any of this, really. He’s Robin because it’s necessary, and one day he’ll be a supervillain because it’s necessary, but he doesn’t have any intention of ever actually telling his dad about either of those things, even once Bruce is dead. It just seems . . . unwise, maybe.
Or really, really stupid, more accurately.
Also, really awkward as a conversation starter. “Hey, Dad, three guesses how bad you were at parental supervision when I was growing up, and the answers are definitely all illegal . . . ?”
Definitely awkward, yeah.
“Um . . . right,” Suzie says quietly, and . . . well, he just thought it: she's a secret herself.
Tim definitely needs to just take over whatever neighborhood he buys Kon a cul-de-sac in. Or maybe just, like, the entire tri-state area. Get Suzie a little place of her own, maybe, with an actual living space in it. She doesn't have physical needs like the rest of them do, no, but that doesn't mean she shouldn't have anything. Like–he doesn't know, whatever girls like. Stuffed animals and her own TV and a place to keep, uh . . . okay, Suzie doesn't need batarangs or a place to store smoke pellets and caltrops or grappling lines or work on her equipment or anything like that, but still. It's, he doesn't know–the principle of the thing, or something.
He's gonna have to work on his trust fund budget a little, maybe. Ridiculous as it is, buying an entire tri-state area would definitely put a significant dent in it.
“Suzie,” he says. “Are you . . . alright here? When the rest of us aren't around?”
“Yes?” Suzie says, looking confused again. That was probably an unfair question on his part, Tim thinks. It's not like she really knows what he means by “alright”.
Kon didn't either, after all.
“I mean–it's not too lonely?” he asks.
“Oh,” Suzie says, then bites her lip. “Um . . . I mean . . . I'm fine, yes! You don't need to worry about me!”
Maybe this is a Bat thing, but absolutely nothing has ever worried Tim more than hearing “you don't need to worry about me” from someone.
“Okay,” he lies, and smiles at her. “But you know you can call us if you want to make plans sometime, right? You don't always have to just wait for us to show up.”
Suzie looks at him for a long moment, then–well, she doesn't turn pink, exactly, since that would require blood and veins and actual skin instead of smoke, smoke, and more smoke, but he's pretty sure she blushes all the same.
“Oh,” she says. “Um–right! Yes. Yeah. Yes.”
Tim smiles at her again, trying to be–he doesn’t know, reassuring, maybe. Something to the effect, at least.
“Good,” he says. “It’s good for the team to spend time together outside of emergency situations, anyway. We can’t only hang out during crisises and expect to work well together, you know? So it’d be helpful to have an extra excuse to, really.”
“Right!” Suzie says, beaming at him, which hopefully means that implying she’d be doing something good for the team by asking for attention when she feels isolated or lonely worked. She would be, so it's not like it's a lie or anything. Using the truth to get results is one of the better manipulation techniques in his arsenal, in his experience, since it’s easy to remember and can't really blow up on you the same way later.
At least, it makes it a lot harder to hurt the feelings of people whose feelings he's not trying to hurt, if nothing else.
Tim really doesn’t know why he didn’t think more about Suzie's living situation before this, but to be fair, he also thought about literally no one’s living situation before Kon just casually announced that he lived in an ethically-dubious cloning lab that wasn’t paying him over Netflix and not-chill, so . . . yeah.
Definite oversight. Definitely a thing to pay more attention to in the future. Just–definitely.
Several kinds of definitely.
“Um–I guess you’re gonna be busy with your girlfriend, though . . .” Suzie says, wilting a little. “Especially since you just started dating . . .”
“I’m not going to be too busy for the team,” Tim promises, because being a superhero is literally Kon’s entire identity and there is no possible way the guy will take that much time off from it, much less be that interested in him. And also, like . . . his own priorities still exist. He took on the responsibility of being in charge here; he’s not going to abandon the rest of the team to just fixate on one single member’s problems.
“But we can’t meet her, so . . .” Suzie trails off with a little frown. Tim smiles at her reassuringly.
“She knows I’m a busy guy. She’s busy too,” he says. “Though I’m sure you guys would get along if you ever did meet each other.”
. . . actually, well . . . Kon and Suzie do get along. At least a little, anyway. Like–they don’t seek each other out, necessarily, which in retrospect is maybe a little weird, given some of the very specific overlap in their very specific life experiences that the rest of the team very specifically lacks and also Kon’s tendency to hit on at least eighty percent of the girls they meet? But Suzie’s grateful to him for helping save her from the DEO and he protects her in fights as the more experienced superhero, and she protects him in fights as the less-corporeal body, and they don’t seem to avoid each other, so . . .
Hm. That’s . . .
It occurs to Tim, possibly, that he doesn’t necessarily have to figure out a way for Suzie to end up in a cul-de-sac of her own, because if he does this right, he can get Kon to ask Tim Drake to let her move in with him or something, or at least she’ll have the option of staying at Kon’s when she wants to be somewhere more settled. There’s not going to be an adult around who might be bothered or be a problem about it, so . . .
That’s an option, yeah. Suzie is even worse at secrets than . . . well, Kon and Bart, probably, so Robin cannot be involved in getting her a place of her own. But if Kon offers it to her, then it’s not Robin doing something that might look strange to the rest of the team or Tim Drake acting suspicious; then it’s just one lab kid looking out for another. Robin isn’t involved at all. And it might give Kon cause to be more open to the cul-de-sac idea, and also involve Kon asking Tim Drake for something expensive, which is the ideal precedent to set here.
Yeah, Tim can work with that.
And if he pulls that off, then it’s like an established thing, and at that point he could totally find Kon a place with a spare room for Cissie to crash in just in case, while he’s at it. At least for the summers, anyway.
. . . he just, uh, also can never meet her as Tim Drake, because keeping up his secret identity in front of Kon and maybe Suzie is one thing, but Cissie’s a lot more observant and analytical and suspicious than either of them are. And also, uh . . . less naive about normal human behavior, definitely.
. . . he’ll workshop it, he figures.
Or whatever.
“You really think we’d get along?” Suzie asks hesitantly, tugging at her hair. “Even though I’m not . . . normal?”
Tim really needs to get to the supervillainy stage of his life already. But he doesn’t want Bruce dead, obviously, so it’s still gonna take a minute.
Ideally, anyway.
“I wouldn’t date anyone who I thought wouldn’t get along with my friends over something as unimportant as not being ‘normal’, even if she can’t meet you,” he says. “I’m not normal either. None of us are.”
“Mm,” Suzie says, looking away. Which, well–Tim can pass for normal, and if he just changed literally everything about himself, he could live normally. Suzie doesn’t get that option. So it’s–different, obviously.
But it’s still true he wouldn’t date anyone like that. And Kon’s definitely not like that either way. Actually, Kon’s probably the most used to people with inhuman appearances of any of them, after Cadmus. Tim doubts Suzie even really registers on his radar as “not normal”, given she looks almost exactly like a standard baseline human, aside from being made of smoke.
. . . maybe his perspective is also a little bit skewed there, admittedly.
Still.
“I mean it,” he says. “I really do think she’d like you. And I think you’d like her, too.”
Suzie keeps her eyes off him and bites her lip; twists her fingers through a few of her smoke whorls. Tim wonders how solid they feel to her, but it doesn’t seem like the time to ask.
“You’re always right, Robin,” she says, and smiles a little weakly. Tim smiles back at her and mentally draws up an expansion or five for his cul-de-sac plans. Just because she doesn’t need the same things the rest of them do doesn’t mean she shouldn’t have them. And anyway, there’s more benefits to having things than just the immediate physical ones.
There’s more to living a normal life than just surviving it, he means.
If there wasn’t, he wouldn’t have even blinked when Kon had told him about Cadmus. He wouldn’t be Bruce’s emotional support sidekick or be working on all these plans to make Gotham and maybe the whole stupid world a better place when the time comes. He wouldn’t be doing any of this. He wouldn’t be Robin at all.
He’s not sure he’d even be Tim Drake, if it came to it.