Chapter Text
He never fit in; he knew that even from the beginning.
All the other Bats were warm, not just in a body heat way. Just what they are. Warm and enticing. Bright and brilliant.
Dick is a bright warm spotlight, always boring down on him with everyone’s attention turned solely on him. He pulls you in and keeps you in that spotlight with him. The more time you spend the more artificial heat you feel and it both doubles his comfort and discomfort. All eyes on you.
Jason was a raging flame, never going out, never dimming. It would eat everything in its path, and would destroy anything in its way. Flaring up and burning in an uncontrolled manner. It’s protective but won’t hesitate to burn you. It surrounds you in it’s sweltering heat, and you know you're safe from everything but it.
Tim wasn’t fire, he was ice, and since the death of his predecessor, Batman had followed him into the freezing fire. Unforgiving and relentless.
But that wasn’t Batman, Batman wasn’t a cold flame, he was a blazing inferno. Powerful and dangerous and brilliant. Consuming all the bad guys in it’s bright glory.
No one knew how to deal with Batman’s freezing anger. No one, except Tim. Batman was never meant to be cold, brutal vengeance. Batman wasn’t meant to be frigidly uncompromising. Who does he think he is? Janet Drake? Tim was used to freezing fire, he is freezing fire. Tim knows what freezing fire is, he grew up with it and it is unnatural for both Batman and Bruce Wayne. So maybe relentless is what he needed.
It was a natural look on Janet Drake, how she managed to put up with Jack’s sizzling enough to procreate with him, Tim will never know. He’s glad he inherited her cold quiet revenge and not his popping hot fury.
But this wasn’t about revenge, it was about helping Batman. Help him thaw out for the next Robin. For Gotham.
Kind of ironic, since Tim didn’t know how to do warm.
Tim was used to cold shoulders and frigid dismissals. He’s been used to it all his life and didn’t expect it to be any different with Batman. So when he gets harsh reprimands and brutal training, snapped demands and impossible orders, Tim takes it all in stride.
He’s used to accepting harsh, unforgiving words. He’s used to untensing under brutal, sharp hands. He’s used to handling snappish fury. He’s used to fulfilling impossible expectations. No one thinks twice of it. What he isn’t used to is the far away concern in Alfred’s eyes, or the easy joking with Dick. He’s spent enough of his life to know not to be lured by those though; those were just distractions.
Robin was a job, not a station. No emotional attachments, that was the contract. He had one priority, and once that is fulfilled he will either go to the next task or be relieved if he cannot be useful elsewhere.
But still, Tim had the misfortune of time. He would begrudgingly admit, he was still a kid in the biological sense. Which means that he has unreasonable expectations for other people; luckily he doesn’t have the audacity to voice them. He treats his bouts of expectation by trudging back from patrol to an empty mansion and instead of going to bed he closes himself in his closet and looks at pictures of his predecessors smiling and goofing off and Batman begrudgingly allowing it with a secret fond smile.
The details of his amusement in the pictures are more apparent now that he is Robin, and Batman decidedly lacks them when now that he is more close to witness. He is closed off, and while Tim doesn’t have the right to joke, he does sometimes get a little excited when he knows he’s done something correctly. Unlike with the previous Robins, however, Bruce does not acknowledge his accomplishments, instead reprimands him on his shortcomings. Tim takes the criticism, just like he does with mother, and corrects himself accordingly.
It shouldn’t bother him.
But sometimes it does.
Stupid expectations.
He doesn’t have the privilege to be a child around Bruce, and certainly not on patrol with Batman, like his predecessors had. He most certainly isn’t allowed to be a child with Janet, and by extension Jack. He doesn’t even think he’s allowed to be human around them.
Tim is fine, he’s used to it. He’s spent his whole life perfecting the art of secretly being a child with his nighttime hobby pre-Robin and the skateboard hidden under his bed. With the stupid cartoons that he puts on as white noise when he’s absolutely sure that no one is around (he still uses headphones regardless) and the flash light as he’s reading scientific articles and translating roman poetry under his bed. He knows how to turn all of those things off when he’s around people, so he’s fine. It’s kind of thrilling, in fact, like he’s living a (second) secret life.
But… it’s lonely.
OoO
So he made a friend.
It’s name is Franklin.
Tim has been able to patrol as Robin for 3 months now, after brutal amounts of grueling training that left him bruised or throwing up or struggling to get out of bed in the morning. Most of the time it was all three.
That part was a little harder to get used to, because Janet was good at cutting into his soul without ever touching him. In fact, she preferred it that way. Tim has seen her completely destroy an empire with a conversation, and unravel a person with a sentence. He watches with awed fascination and learns how to do it. It’s only later that he realizes that it wasn’t fascination, but knowing fear.
Physical training wasn’t his strong suit and Bruce didn’t hesitate to tell him, in less kind words. It was also harder because he can’t correct his mistakes immediately, like he can when he’s asked to sit up straight, go get an A in English, or compliment Mrs.Frotia but only the once and no more. He had to train his muscles to move the way that Batman wants him to, and that takes a lot of work. He doesn’t think he should be this sore, but then again, one of Bruce’s methods to get rid of him was to show him that Robin was going to hurt, so he sped up his training and demanded he be a certain level at an impossible time.
Tim is used to impossible. Besides, he didn’t go to school much anyway. There really wasn’t much of a point since Ives went abroad for leukemia treatment.
It’s been months, Bruce is still cold. Tim is sort of wavering. Bruce isn’t as rigid and foreboding as Janet so he’s slipped up a few times, like accidentally telling Bruce about the gym leader he couldn’t beat? How stupid was he? Bruce wasn’t Janet, but he could still make Tim’s life hell; not that he already doesn’t, but giving him any excuse to drill into him about being professional, which he already knew he just forgot for a second that he wasn’t a ki-...
Needless to say, Bruce didn’t appreciate that.
He appreciated the skateboard that Tim accidentally brought to get to the manor because he was running late even less.
Tim corrected himself quickly, but those incidents still got him a harsh scolding on private-lives and ten extra reps of strength training, respectively. Tim didn’t talk back, just took the lecture and did as he was told. He was in the wrong, he knows how much grown ups hate being reminded that Tim isn’t legally an adult. He shouldn’t be doing those things in the first place.
Tim was doing better as Robin, at not being a kid on patrol, but he still had his patrol friends in Franklin and Einstein, who sat upon the designated rest spots that Batman wasn’t with him for.
They listened to his rambles and mindless chattering about random devices he picks apart behind dumpsters when he’s supposed to be in English and sometimes even shows he watches in the dark recess of his closet at witching hours when all of Gotham is slumbering. He made sure no one was around to hear him and spoke quiet enough that his voice would bounce off the asphalt. He didn’t know why there was a loosening in his chest when he vented to them. They didn’t scold him or tell him to be quiet or looked disappointed when Tim talked to them. He could say anything, useless things, they’d still listen.
Who cares if they were statues?
OoO
Tim quickly realizes that he has friends everywhere .
It’s been 5 months and Tim has accepted that Batman scolds him for no reason sometimes. Or maybe that was the teenage rebellion kicking in, if so it was a bit early. But seriously, his mentor would berate him for little things, like kicking too high, landing too hard. And he gets it, small details are the most important, he was a better detective than fighter, that principle was engrained into him. But as a detective, he also understood that time is everything and there is a time for everything. Urgency and patience were both virtues and it was critical to know when and where to use them - something he’s mastered through his mother, not Bruce.
He doesn’t find it productive that Batman makes small criticisms into a ten minute reprimand which is useless and a waste of time. However he has stopped putting petty thieves into comas so he guesses that is progress. He guesses the fact that he can find the time to waste means that Tim is getting better at fighting, because he seems to have no other comments. Still a reevaluation of priorities are in order.
But this scolding was not of any note, he already got the main message so Tim zones out and has a mental argument with Langley who thinks that mint chocolate chip tastes like toothpaste which is blasphemy, it was heaven and the perfect blend of-
He wishes Batman waited until 54th street to reprimid because he and Tesla were going to talk about the latest episode of Ninjago, though he was a Loid fan which he’s been slowly trying to ease him out. Green Ninja was kinda OP in his opinion.
Batman notices that he’s not paying attention after 8 minutes and 23 seconds, and starts growling more aggressively so he now has to listen to him, because the lecture changed.
“Sorry.” Tim says, because he never responded to Langley, who didn’t reply because he was a petty bitch.
OoO
He was going through cold cases.
That was his punishment for not paying attention and he was benched until he solved at least one. Which wasn’t really fair cuz the only thing injured was Batman’s ego, but again that must be the teenage rebellion speaking.
He hated being benched.
That’s not to say he didn’t like cold cases, he loved them. He fears the day Bruce finds that out, because as much as Bruce doesn’t want him to be Jason, he sometimes treats him like that.
Jason hated cold cases with no leg work, he hated staring at a screen for hours with no hints to go off of. So in Bruce’s mind, it’s a sufficient punishment for Tim, although he had overheard Alfred mumble that Bruce did help when his other children got stuck.
Bruce didn’t help him, not that Tim minds. He doesn’t need it. Unlike Jason and Dick, Tim doesn’t see a blank screen, but the whole world. He can find anything he needs because he has every resource available. Then again, Tim could find his way around programming and can discreetly flit his way around the dark web before he could properly speak.
He’s better at the detective thing than he is at the fighting thing, and Bruce did double down on Tim’s training when he was benched like this because he likes to capitalize on Tim’s misery.
He hated the training part and strongly disliked the not-being-able-to-talk part. Not that the latter was a concrete rule, but it was implied if he had nothing useful to input he was not to speak. Which is just the way it was. As always.
But still. The Wrights would let him ramble about camera lenses for days. Ah, the dream.
In order to solve this case, he had to open a few closed cases to get a solid background on the guilty party. Which he was trying to do but he got confused when he read “the perps were officially picked up by the GCPD with Octavia Butler”. He tried to reference that name but only got a sci-fi short story writer who died 8 years ago.
Tim accidentally got infused in her work while trying to get an interpretation of how she wrote for a clue about why she was in the case report, when Batman arrives back at the cave and snaps Tim out of it with a growl.
“What are you doing?” He nearly demands and Tim jumps a bit and spins around. He feels like he got caught, which he kind of did, even if it was an accident. Accidents are excuses for the incompetant .
“I just…sorry, I’m …” his eyes roam to the time, shit he’s been reading for two hours now. On the clock. Oh he was in deep shit.
Bruce’s eyes glaze over the screen, and his eyes went far away for a second. The way they do whenever he’s remembering-
Oh no .
Tim tried to be as still as possible, hopefully Bruce will walk away. He does that sometimes and that’s Tim’s queue to fuck off and not come back until Alfred texts him a surreptous message that doesn’t explicitly address that he was kicked out or that he should come back but means he’s allowed to which means he is expected to come back without any word of complaint.
Bruce comes back and zeroes in on Tim with a deadly glare that Tim was too used to to be afraid anymore. It just made him anxious now. Especially when he didn’t know how he messed up. Bruce wouldn’t tell him the rules, just had let him figure them out by punishing him after he made the mistake.
Oh, it was one of those nights.
“If you had to do homework, do it on your own time, not mine.” Bruce growls and Tim holds back a scoff cuz he hasn’t been to school in three weeks so he doesn’t know if he has homework. He doesn’t tell the older man that; Bruce doesn’t care, but Alfred does and Tim’s not risking the butler’s wrath for anything.
Bruce then steps forward threateningly and Tim is glad that he was sitting down cuz he didn’t know if he’d step back if he was standing. Another thing he’s learned, Bruce is a lot more physical than Janet, and he may not hit him outside the training mats, but sometimes he handles Tim a lot rougher when he was mad. Which is always. Whatever, Bruce didn’t touch him much outside of training and medical anyway.
“It’s not. I was reviewing an old case to solve the Forbes one, it referenced Octavia Butler.” He says with wavering confidence and shows the offending file. Bruce’s eyes go far away again and Tim double checks the report for triggers.
Report by: Robin II
Shit on a dipstick. He just kept messing up.
“I can-“
“That’s a reference to fifth avenue.” Bruce answers roughly and walks away. Tim only blinks at him.
Tim never brought up the reference again.
The files from Jason’s tenure were all edited the next day.
OoO
Franklin was dead.
A casualty to one of Penguins attacks. He was shot down by a reign of bullets and smashed on the pavement into a million crumbley pieces.
The night ended with Penguin having a bruised back and a silent secret mourning.
Batman was dealing with Riddler anyway.
OoO
The thing is, Gotham is Gotham.
Shit gets blown up and that’s the way it is. It’s the way it always was and the way it always will be. A fundamental about being a citizen there, is knowing that fact and taking it in stride.
That being said, it doesn’t fair well when your friends that are actually in your state are all statues.
Gotham is very good about rebuilding though, which means the pedestal that Franklin was on was soon taken up by another gargoyle. It was just as grusomly intricate as any gargoyle in Gotham, never let it be said that they didn’t have an aesthetic besides batshit crazy.
But…
It wasn’t Franklin.
It felt wrong to call him Franklin, because he looked nothing like Franklin.
But still he was lonely.
Virgil wasn’t a bad conversationalist anyway.
OoO
Cass came along with the breeze and was gently beaming sunshine.
She couldn’t talk, but she could tell. She could understand. Better than anyone Tim has ever met, in fact, including Alfred.
“Speaking?” She asked one night when he was zoning out with a conversation with Upidacles about a new robotics project. He knows that isn’t what Upidacles is interested in but the loss of Edison was still a little fresh. Oh well, it’s not like he minds.
Batman wasn’t around right now, but it was still a bad night so he gritted reprimids at Tim all night until they finally reached the point where they seperated patrol routes.
He’s cut back since adopting Cass, but he thinks she still knows.
“I wasn’t talking.” He told her, confused and she just tapped his head. There was nothing getting past her. Tim couldn’t help but smile, even though he was a bit embarrassed. Cass doesn’t really get it though, so he guesses she could know. It might be fun to share the secret, not like Cass would tell anyone, even if she could. “Upidacles” he gestured to the gargoyle and Cass cocks her head.
“Who?”
OoO
Steph was a spitfire.
Sure, dating her didn’t work out he should have guessed that from the moment he threw a brick at his face. The thing he had with Ariana didn’t work out either, but it could’ve, even though they hated each other for a long while before they realized it wasn’t hate. Okay, before Steph realized, which must have hurt. But Steph was great and Derek was…Steph liked him.
He started going to school again, public this time. Since Ives was back and he met Ariana.
Ariana was his ‘academic rival’, which was mundanely dramatic and probably the sole reason Tim came to school because Tim has never had trouble getting valedictorian even though he never went to class, but Ariana bustled in and… well Tim doesn’t even care about the title but Ariana was so haughty about it.
Tim’s never been competitive before.
It was different from Conner though, because Conner was just so fucking arrogant. Like seriously, so full of himself. At least Ariana could actually back it up. Conner can back it up too, but Tim doesn’t want to think about that or his stupid face or dopey sunshine smile and the fact that he’s dating my sister-
Still, Gotham was Gotham and as soon as Scarecrow attacked the school, Ariana’s parents high tailed out of there, taking her along, not even finishing the semester. It was a loss Tim didn’t quite know what to do with, but it oddly hurt.
Batman was doing way better, since Cass and now with the addition of Steph and Babs settling into her role as Oracle.
He would soon not be needed. That hurt oddly too.
It confused him, so he confided in Aristotle.
“Who ya talkin to?” Making Tim jump out of his skin.
“No one. Myself.” He quickly said and reprimided himself for not paying attention to his surroundings. Batman would’ve benched him with two cold cases and triple training if he found out. Hopefully Steph doesn’t tattle.
“Nah you were definitely having a conversation.” Steph teased airly, Tim blushed “secret girlfriend? Jeez ex-boyfriend wonder you sure move fast.” She grinned, there was an edge though. He wanted to tell her that he didn’t even know if he and Ariana were dating cuz they never established it and she only kissed him goodbye on the cheek and then ran and he’s been turning it over and over in his head and-
“Aristotle.” He mumbled.
“Didn’t quite catch that.” She leaned closer.
“Aristotle.” He said louder, cheeks coloring. It was easier with Cass, she didn’t judge. He doesn’t think she knows how to judge.
Steph knows how to judge, she does it very well and in a way that reminds him of a Janet Drake with morals. It’s scary sometimes.
“The dead guy?” Steph asked confused. Tim doesn’t look at her as he groans and presses his hands into his eye sockets.
“No, ugh-“ he then vaguely gestured to the gargoyle next to him with his elbow and it was quiet for a minute.
“You name them?” Steph asks, he’s still not looking at her as he peels his hands away from his eyes and stares longingly at the ground.
“Yeah.” he whispers, and he hopes the next question isn’t why. Cass didn’t ask why, but he has the feeling she already knows, cuz she just knows things like that. How are you supposed to tell your ex-girlfriend/current best-friend whom you share a mentor with that said mentor used to be so cold that you had to make friends with decorative architecture just to not lose your mind? Or that you had to be a secret child until you met a bunch of super teens that were low to high key ostracized by their respective mentors as well but we don’t talk about that , and a sort of sister that doesn’t know how to speak full sentences but still knows all his deep dark secrets.
“All of them?” Steph asks instead and Tim blinked at her which seemed to be answer enough because she squealed in delight “oh my god show me!”
Tim’s lips twitched a bit.
OoO
Titans Tower was no longer safe.
He was no longer Robin.
His leg was busted up so bad that he couldn’t even go out.
His parents are dead and Tim is useless.
Steph is Robin, she’s the only one he trusts with it besides Cass but Cass is Batgirl which is so much better than Robin. It’s not like he had a say anyway.
Jason is angry and not dead and painting the town red with mafia blood.
Tim fakes an uncle and skips school and watches as Ives transitions into stage 3.
He doesn’t get out of bed.
He just stares out the window and chats with Socrates.
OoO
The thing is: he never told Cass and Steph that the naming-gargoyle thing was a secret from Bruce.
It’s not that he forgot, because he didn’t; in fact it keeps him up at night that they’ll slip and he’ll be kicked to the curb - it was a slippery slop, he knows.
It’s just that if he did then he’d have to explain why , which would lead to an explanation of Bruce that would lead to him having to defend his mentor and it wasn’t a big deal because he was used to it and that’s just how adults are supposed to treat Tim anyway because he wasn’t supposed to be a child and then lead to a conversation about Janet and-
… Tim doesn’t know how to feel about Janet anymore. He’s not sure that he has ever known in the first place.
He knows Jack is dead, that’s understandable. He isn’t stupid enough to believe Janet is dead for a second. Not until he sees a body and even then he probably will doubt.
Yep, that’s the kind of kid she raised.
Point was, Bruce was less cold now, a sort of burning ember now mixed with almost thawed ice. Cass helped a lot with that, but Tim still kept him in line. Steph managed to coax a bit of a sense of humor out of him. Tim never would’ve guessed it had to be a team effort, but here they were.
Bruce did let Tim stay at the manor once he realized Tim was tricking him about his fake uncle, but that was only after he healed enough from the Bane incident and Steph had already given the mantle back to Tim after the Derek incident. Well technically it was Alfred who found out he was lying and essentially living alone with a box of Oreos because he couldn’t access his trust fund until he was 18. Stupid legal system.
It was better though, he smiled secret smiles again, even if it wasn’t as much as before. Steph and Cass didn’t know how it was before, where he was freezing and they certainly didn’t know before before, where Batman openly-ish showed affection to his kids and wasn’t afraid to express it.
He thought that living in the manor would be cold, but between Cass and Alfred, it was pretty warm. Cozy. Hot chocolate and movie nights and knitted blankets and star gazing. Cass and Tim would trade clothes so often that Alfred didn’t know who’s was who’s at some point because Cass liked wearing boxers sometimes and Tim liked wearing crop tops sometimes. And they kept sleeping in each other's room to the point where they just ended up moving all of their stuff to a bigger room with two beds at the end of the hall. Alfred let them, because they were joint at the hip at this point. Cass told him about her feelings for Steph, and Tim told her about his maybe-feelings for Kon and they both plotted to make Derek’s life hell.
The problem was Bruce didn’t quite realize that Tim was a kid yet.
“Wanna meet near Plato after patrol?” And the entire cave froze, well not entire, just Tim and Bruce seemed to stand straighter. There was an electric tension in the air between them that was chilling.
“Uhm.. I…” he had to keep his eyes from darting to Bruce, who looked on expectantly. When Bruce wasn’t getting any answers because Tim was frozen, Steph was looking at him oddly.
“What’s Plato?” And it must have only sounded dangerous to Tim because Steph happily supplied the answer.
“The Gargoyle on 7th, near the Insomnia Cookies. Tim’s a sucker for them, I swear it’s like he’s never had Alfred’s cookies before.” He hasn’t had Alfred’s cookies before, he never made them before Steph and Cass and he feels like it’s something that he’s not allowed into. Besides, nothing could beat Insomnia Cookies, no matter what the Bats say.
“You…named them?” Bruce choked out, it sounded like he does when the press used to ask about Jason but rougher. More raw. Oh fuck.
“Tim did.” She says, unknowingly throwing him under the bus and he makes the mistake of having eye contact with Bruce. Something wounded flashes behind his eyes then something like righteous fury and Tim hasn’t been this scared of Batman in a while. That was the look he gave Tim when he crossed a line, like when he was being a kid. He hadn’t had that look in a while, which is funny cause he’s never been as open as he was about being a kid before a couple of months ago.
Fuck Dick honestly, for encouraging him be open about his nature and all that bullshit.
“Who Plato?” Cass asks and the tension quickly lessens and Tim tears his eyes away and focuses on Cass.
“He’s the one who wrote the Republic which is a shitty idealistic utopia thing called The Republic . It like says that basically this is what the world would be like if it were perfect but it can only be perfect if we are perfect but it’s also why we can never be perfect. It sucks and I hate it because it basically says people should be what they were born to be and that’s the only way to have a perfect world.” Tim quickly says and glances at Bruce, who’s fury died and he just looked mystified and detached and…he’s never seen that look on Bruce’s face so he steadfastly ignores it and turns back to Cass who was drinking everything he said in and he gave a forced chuckle “Aristotle was better.”
“And hotter.” Steph chimed in, and honestly yeah, true.
OoO
Tim has a theory.
Cass loves the gargoyles.
That’s not the theory but Tim has a feeling it’s not for the same reason he does, because everytime they come across one that they didn’t know she’ll ask him, even over comms sometimes and then ask who they were named after. If she does know who they are, she proudly recites the facts she knows even with Batman around - to which he give a sad but happy smile that Tim can’t decipher - and sometimes Tim will quietly add to her knowledge, which she will always accept eagerly.
Anyway, his theory is that Batman allows Tim to have this childish token because it is teaching Cass. Which might be flimsy because Cass is smart she just can’t speak well or write or read quite yet. But Cass learns quick. And the information was a bit useless anyway. Cass had no interest in history, besides the gargoyles, so Tim doesn’t even know why she keeps asking.
But that’s not the point, the point is that Bruce perceives this is helping her education in a fun way that he allows to his kids, so even though it was Tim’s system, and Tim wasn’t allowed to be a kid, Cass needed to be so Tim’s system served to help Cass.
He kind of hated it, because this was his thing and now that people know about it, he can’t enjoy it the way he was supposed to be. Well he can but it was now serving a useful function which the whole point was for it to be useless and childish and-
But then Cass smiles and asks “Homer?” And Tim is in love with his system because his sister is smiling and so eager to learn anything that isn’t combat.
“Yeah, he spoke the Iliad and Odyssey.” He told her and didn’t say much more because Batman didn’t like him rambling but then Cass asked.
“Spoke?”
“Uh.. yeah” a quick glance at the stoic Batman that was a few feet away, crouching as he observed the mafia run restaurant they were staking out. Batman really didn’t like talking on stake outs, Cass barely talked but she prompted and if Tim got going, he got going and did he really want to risk that? But also Cass wants to know and he doesn’t want to make Cass sad but Bat-
“They didn’t write it until later, in Ancient Greek. They are stories, long ones called classics. But some interpretations are different because of changing languages.” Bruce explained in a somewhat gentle baritone never taking his eyes off the target and Tim was floored. He couldn’t pick his jaw off the ground as he stared at Batman who gave him a neutral side glance. Cass was beaming at him, like she accomplished something.
Damn, she had been scheming.
“I’m surprised you picked the name, considering he may not have existed.” Bruce said in the same tone with no growl…to Tim . There wasn’t a reprimand and Tim was floundering. Did he know he was talking to Tim?
“Not exist?” Cass asked and Tim waited a second, but it seemed that Bruce was letting him take the reins now.
“Uh yeah.” Tim said still mystified “it’s like a pen name, er uh a code name I guess. Something writers do to like have a secret identity, ya know?” Cass cocked her head a bit.
“Us?” And Tim’s shoulders relaxed and his face went soft as he whispered.
“Yeah, like us.”