Chapter Text
Tim didn’t remember the walk home. His feet worked on autopilot, his body followed muscle memory, but where was his head? It was still stuck in that light-deprived alleyway, in the way your voice cracked and held steady at the same time. The moment the mask came off, something slipped. A part of him he kept sealed behind a dozen walls suddenly reached forward, trying to grab you. The fear gas never entered his lungs, but the paranoia did.
Tim’s still in uniform when he drops into the chair by his desk. His gloves are off, but the faint smell of chemicals still clings to his skin — that same acidic tang from the alley. Fear gas. He’s scrubbed twice already, but he swears it’s still there, sharp and ghostly. Senses could easily be shut out, though. That’s what he reasoned in his mind as he made his way to the Batcomputer.
Next thing he knew, the screen shone bright. It was a miracle how Tim didn’t get his eyes permanently damaged at this point. Multiple tabs opened, each one screaming a dead end.
At first, it’s just procedure. Time, location, chemical traces, body count. But as the words fill the screen, he hesitates at the next line: ‘Witness / Civilian Encountered:’ He types your name. Pauses. Reads it back once. Twice. Then deletes it.
He leans back, staring at the ceiling, jaw tight. You’d said you’d only stumbled across the incident. That you’d taken a shortcut. It sounded like a lie at the time. It doesn’t anymore. Or maybe it’s the opposite — maybe it was too honest, too ordinary, and that’s what bothered him.
In Gotham, nobody is just ordinary. Not for long.
He exhales through his nose, sharp and low, before turning back to the terminal. He types your name again. Searches this time. Just a reflex, he tells himself. A background check. The kind he runs on anyone connected to a scene.
The screen answers with nothing. No records beyond the bare minimum — an address, an expired license, a job history that fizzles out halfway through Metropolis. You don’t even have a criminal file, which in Gotham is almost suspicious by itself.
Tim frowns. Runs the search again under a different system. Still nothing.
He could stop there. He should stop there. Instead, he drags up satellite feeds, public cams, city archives — every angle that might’ve caught you on your way home. He doesn’t know why. Maybe he’s checking for pursuit. Maybe he just wants to make sure you made it home alive.
You were a ghost.
No records. No trace. No online footprint. Just a name that felt wrong in his mouth, like a lie that still managed to sound true.
He typed your name over and over, convinced the search engine(s) just didn’t understand. He dug into police archives, hospital records, social feeds — nothing. Just scraps. Bare minimum info a person could leave behind in the world.
At this point, most people would’ve given up on their search. Timothy Drake was anyone but most people.
Another sigh escapes him. This is getting stupid. He’s dealt with hundreds of civilians, dozens of witnesses. But something about this one sticks. Maybe it’s because you stood in the middle of fear gas and didn’t instantly break. Maybe it’s how you seemed so out of place in a hellhole like Gotham — too…ordinary. Maybe it’s none of that, and he’s just projecting again.
He rubs at his temple, groaning quietly. “You’re overthinking,” he mutters to himself.
He scrolls down to the final section of the report: ‘Potential Follow-up:’
His fingers hover over the keyboard. For a long time, he doesn’t type anything. Then, finally, he writes:
Possible re-evaluation — monitor for residual toxin exposure. Probability of immunity to fear gas.
Tim closes the file. Locks the system — unless he dares face the scolding of a paranoid bat. The room feels too quiet without the soft clicking of keys. He catches himself glancing toward the window, the city beyond it smothered in fog. If Dick or Jason walked through the entrance right this second, spotted Tim in the middle of all this mess, he’s sure they’d tease him endlessly.
He’s not obsessed. He’s just being thorough. That’s all.
And yet, when he finally stands to leave, his eyes drift back to the Batcomputer’s monitor one last time — the frozen frame of you walking home still minimized in the corner, half-forgotten. He doesn’t delete it. He tells himself it’s for safety. For documentation. For closure.
The city hums below, endless and restless. Tim turns off the light. The screen stays on.
꒷꒦︶꒷꒦︶ ๋ ࣭ ⭑꒷꒦
Before he even knew it, he was heading out the Batcave via one of the many hidden exits supplied. All he registered was the sound of footsteps against the wet, rain-covered pavement. When did it start to rain? How long had he been cooped up in the Cave, digging through half-corrupted databases and cross-referencing chemical traces? His shoulders were stiff, hands still tingling from hours at the keyboard.
Your address was open on his phone.
He hadn’t planned to go anywhere; he told himself he only wanted a clearer picture of the crime scene area, a sense of proximity — context. But the map had led him here (or perhaps his subconscious itself?), and the only context he had now was the quiet drip of water from a fire escape and the low hum of streetlights half-dead from neglect.
The phone vibrated softly in his hand, snapping him out of the trance. He blinked, glancing up. Which part of Gotham was this again?
A quick survey answered that question well enough. He was in the Narrows’ outer ring, where the buildings sagged under the weight of their own history. The air here smelled like rust and fried food. Neon signs sputtered and buzzed, fighting for life. A stray cat hissed from the mouth of an alley; something larger — a dog, maybe — knocked over a trash can farther down the street.
Tim had never come this way before. Being Bruce Wayne’s adopted son meant his experience of Gotham had always been… sanitized. Car rides down the Gotham streets.. Board meetings. Patrol routes that cut clean through downtown. He knew this neighborhood—on paper, in files, in the maps burned into his memory. Yet, he’d never walked it. Not like this. Not like how you must’ve experienced it.
The street was lined with cracked sidewalks, corners sagging with water. Apartment windows blinked with the dim light of televisions behind drawn curtains. Every so often, a passerby hurried by with their head down, wrapped in a jacket too thin for the rain. They didn’t look twice at him—at least, not more than anyone would at a stranger standing still too long.
He took a slow breath, letting the city’s noise settle around him. It wasn’t the kind of place you’d expect to find anything extraordinary. Maybe that’s what unsettled him most about it.
He told himself this was reconnaissance. That he was verifying data, not chasing ghosts. Still, his fingers itched toward his phone again. The address glowed faintly on the screen, steady and unchanging. A single dot on the map pulsed like a heartbeat.
He wasn’t sure what he expected to find. Evidence? Confirmation? Or maybe he just wanted to see for himself that you were real — that the nervous man in the alley hadn’t been another chance encounter. Why does he desperately need you not to be, anyways?
The rain picked up. Drops collected on his hood, sliding down in steady streams. He stayed where he was, at the edge of the block, the city breathing quietly around him.
He told himself he’d leave in a minute.
He didn’t.
Tim’s steps echoed softly as he turned the corner, the faint orange glow of a flickering streetlight catching on the dark edges of his coat — as he had enough decency to change out his Red Robin suit before heading out. The rain had settled into a steady drizzle, the kind that blurred everything into a muted haze — lights, sounds, thoughts. It smelled like damp concrete and old iron, the air thick enough to feel it linger on your skin.
When he finally reached the address on his phone, he stopped. The building was small, old — the kind of place that probably looked the same ten years ago. A neon sign from the diner across the street blinked on and off, tinting the rain puddles in alternating yellows and blues. A mailbox by the door had your last name, faintly smudged. He stared at it for a second longer than necessary.
“Pathetic,” he muttered under his breath. Not at you — he barely knew you enough to call you pathetic, but at himself.
He wasn’t supposed to be here. This wasn’t mission territory. There was no lead, no trail, no logic. Just that nagging itch in the back of his mind, that something about you didn’t fit.
A sound — laughter, like it at least — came from somewhere nearby. His eyes flicked toward the noise. Across the street, through the rain-streaked glass of a dimly lit coffee shop, he saw you. Still in your apron, wiping down the counter with absent motions, talking to a coworker. You looked... normal. The normalcy of it unsettled him.
Scarecrow doesn’t usually go for people ‘normal’. There were a few exceptions, but what were the chances you were one?
Tim adjusted his hood, stepping into the shadow of a lamppost. He watched the way you smiled — the kind that crinkled your eyes, the kind that belonged to a person who’d get chewed up by the wrath called ‘Gotham’. He noticed the way you tucked a loose strand of hair behind your ear every few seconds.
He told himself he was just verifying details. Just confirming patterns. Just-
You laughed again, and he looked away.
Maybe he’d been staring too long. Maybe someone could see him from the corner booth. His jaw tightened. The rain grew heavier, dripping off the edge of his hood. He exhaled, forcing himself to turn back toward the main road.
Tim shoved his hands into his pockets, muttering, “Just verifying details.”
And yet, when he got home later that night, the glow of his computer screen would once again illuminate your name.