Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Tim probably should have been scared, but he’d seen a lot in his life. Tim felt almost indifferent about his little follower, finding an apathy when he should be wary, but what was he supposed to do about it? Tim wasn’t equipped to handle being haunted, let alone an eldritch stalker, and Cassie had told him the creature was relatively harmless overall.

That's why Tim decided he’d just ignore the little thing.

That didn’t last very long.

No, it certainly didn’t, Tim inwardly huffed as he thoughtlessly patted his companion’s back. Five months ago, he wouldn’t have envisioned this. He wouldn’t have entertained any thought of letting a shadow-face, sharp-fanged, eldritch humanoid sprawl atop his body like a snoozing babe. His past self probably would have been bewildered at the prospect, but now he’d accepted every bit of it.

It was a lazy evening—the kind Tim rarely participated in. He’d usually be changing into gear by now, or somewhere private with his laptop open. He still had a lot of studying to do for their most recent case, but he didn’t have the heart to interrupt this moment with Damian. It’d be a sin to do so. A great cruelty, considering how rare it was for Damian to sleep. He didn’t require much of it to begin with, but that didn’t mean Tim was going to wake him up for his own convenience. Damian still needed this time to recover, and Tim wasn’t going to interrupt that.

“He’s incredibly devoted to you.”

Kori walked in to settle on the far end of the couch, running a towel through her hair. She gave Tim one of those serene smiles of hers—the kind that used to make Dick act all goofy. Now he’s the epitome of seriousness and stoicism. A shame—Tim would’ve liked to see his older brother make a fool out of himself.

Tim didn’t say anything to acknowledge Kori’s statement, but he knew there was truth to it. She was right. Damian was devoted to him, and he had no idea as to why. All he knew was that Damian had taken a liking to him, and that he hitched a ride in Tim’s shadow for the last five months. He popped out when things appeared threatening. The first time he’d swarmed out of Tim’s shadow, it had given him a good shock. He’d consumed Tim’s assailant whole, and then he’d showed Tim his shiny white teeth. Bright, even when the rest of him was dark and wispy. (How is this harmless, Cassie!? He’d thought that in the moment)

Tim had yelled at him after that—told him to never do it again—to which Damian had acted like a rebuked, hissy, cat. Yet he obeyed. That’s when Tim realized that Damian listened to most of his requests, if not all of them. A shaky relationship was built at that moment, somehow turning into an inseparable attachment. Tim gradually warmed up to Damian, especially after having the kid save his butt several times on patrol. Eventually, he even began to depend on his assistance. Damian had become an extension of himself. Tim felt as if he were another limb, surging out of the shadows to aid him in his times of trouble.

Kind of hard to believe we’re at this point.

“He hates me.” Kori stated. “He doesn’t bother to hide that he has a favorite.”

“What can I say? I’m charming. An eldritch magnet, one might even think.”

“That’s what he is, then? An ‘eldritch’ creature, or ‘abomination’ as Cassie put it?”

“He’s not really an abomination, but yeah. Eldritch; It’s just a way of saying unearthly or uncanny. Odd and unusual, for people like us. Which is saying something, considering what we do in our spare time.”

Tim paused when Damian made a soft noise in his sleep.

Man.

How could someone think he was an abomination?

Tim frowned but then recalled his own feelings upon the matter just five months ago. He also thought about what one might think if they were unaware of Damian’s personality. On appearances alone, one might think him a creature of horror. He was a humanoid mass of shadow, with sharp white fangs and white glowing slits for eyes. There was the general outline of hair on the top of his head, but one’s initial glance might misjudge it as spines. Tim only understood otherwise because he’d run his hand through the strands of Damian’s hair, realizing there was a person underneath all that shadow.

“Do you think we should make a membership card for him?”

Kori’s question snapped Tim out of his thoughts. He realized that Damian had accompanied enough missions to be considered a member of the Teen Titans. Almost every member was aware of his continued support, and they even relied on it at times. He was a good scout, and he was excellent at tracking down classified information. He could slip into cracks that Tim couldn’t, and he had a penchant for eating important evidence for later usage. He threw it back up for Tim’s benefit, which was always a ‘delight’ for everyone to witness.

“That might be a good idea,” Tim agreed after considering it carefully. “We haven’t separated recently but—” Actually, they’ve never separated even once. Unless Tim wanted privacy in the bathroom, but that didn’t count. “You never know. He might need it.”

He had a gut feeling that it might come in handy someday.

“I’ll have it commissioned then. I imagine Victor won’t be opposed.”

“Speaking of Victor,” Tim began, pausing only briefly when Damian’s fingers twitched in his sleep, “has he finished tying up loose ends on that rogue program—” He would have finished if Gar didn’t zeta beam into the common room and loudly announce his arrival.

“I’m home!”

Starfire floated off the couch to greet him, smiling wide, “You’re an hour earlier than you said you would be! How unusual!”

“Well, you’d be amazed at how fast I can be when it comes to food-eating contests,” Gar replied with a pat to his tummy. “I won like I said I would. Now we have a life-time supply of Digiorno!”

Tim wanted to tell him that winning a life-time supply of Digiorno wasn’t anything to be excited about, since it was just a frozen pizza (the worst kind in his opinion), and that there was no way Gar could live off it as he intended to. He probably would have voiced his thoughts if he didn’t feel Damian rouse on his chest, and he tensed up when an unmistakable atmosphere of kill-die-murder burst out of his person.

Gar, he had to say, did your big loud voice have to wake up the little murder machine?

Damian propped himself up to leap for Gar, perhaps to throw himself over the couch in the process, but then Tim acted before Damian could pick a fight. Tim threw his arms around him, pulled him back down, and auditioned for the acting role of annoying captor. 

“Come back here,” he growled playfully, “who said you could get up?”

Damian struggled against his embrace and huffed and puffed. He didn’t put up much of a fight. The longer Tim held him, the faster his fuse faded. The atmosphere of dark-stab-hurt turned into something mildly irritated—grumpy submission.

“That’s right, all bark, no bite,” Tim teased.

Damian smudged his cheek against his chest. Tim couldn’t read his face, but he imagined he would have looked annoyed. His mouth was invisible when it wasn’t open. His eyes also didn’t give much away either.

Gar was completely oblivious to what had nearly happened and leapt over the couch to claim a seat. He grabbed the remote and flicked the holoprojector screen on. “Feels like a good day to stream some movies! What do you say, Tim?”

Star retrieved her towel and wrapped it around her shoulders. “A movie? It’s been a long time since we’ve watched one of those together. Maybe I should invite the others?”

“I wouldn’t,” Gar sniffed. “They’re all doing their own thing. Tried to get them to join my pizza-eating contest, but did they want to witness my glory? Noooo. They’d rather play MMORPGs and catch up with the latest Warrior Realms update.”

“What? Even Raven?” Tim found himself asking with skepticism.

“Uh, well, I didn’t even try to approach Raven,” Gar admitted with the sheepish scratch of his neck. “She’s busy. You know—meditating.”

“Uh-huh.” Tim responded skeptically as Damian nuzzled the place over his heart with his cheek. He propped them both up so that he could rest his back against the arm rest. He kept one hand rooted to Damian’s back. His back was so small that Tim really wondered sometimes if Damian really was some ancient, elderly, eldritch creature that Cassie claimed him to be. It just didn’t fit right.

Tim gave Gar a flat look and Gar pretended to ignore him. “Hey, look at this? Thought this wouldn’t be out until December!” He flicked the remote and landed on a newly released movie. “Man, I’ve been wanting to watch it too! Let’s give it a go!”

“Gar, you can’t avoid Raven forever,” Tim said. “Don’t you think it’s about time you both made up?”

They rarely fought, but they got into disagreements sometimes. Tim didn’t know what this one in particular was about, but he knew it embarrassed Gar enough to have him skirt around his girlfriend.

“Bro, I’m trying to watch a movie here. I’m not going to talk about relationships right now.”

“I’m just saying.”

Gar huffed and ignored him. Star gave Tim a sympathetic look over Gar’s head, only opting to look away when Gar’s remote flicking was distractive enough.

Tim sunk back against the arm rest. Damian latched onto him like a cat. He even seemed to purr, vibrating silently and happily.

Well.

At least someone was free from all the drama involved in the tower. Damian didn’t care about any of it. Tim wondered if he even understood half of what was being said at times. He either ignored it, or genuinely lacked a knowledge of their language. Tim doubted the latter was the case, having observed Damian’s quickness to act upon Tim’s verbal requests.

Tim, on the other hand, couldn’t understand much of what Damian tried to say, which mostly involved strange, inhuman, noises. There was a communication gap between them. One that hadn’t stopped their relationship from developing into what it was now.

Tim plopped his chin atop Damian’s head.

“You really are a mystery. Aren’t you?”

Damian’s vibrating intensified.

Chapter Text

It wasn’t an ideal part of Tim’s day to fight a horde of miniature, robotic, dinosaurs, but he was worried about Victor.

Tim probably wouldn’t have had to inject himself into Victor’s mission to begin with, if the man would just respond to his communication efforts.

He wasn’t going to wait around to see if Victor was in trouble. That was how tragedies happened. He wasn’t willing to risk it. Not in this line of business. That's why he was here, fighting the defense system of an underground tunnel system. The robots were surprisingly tough. It was difficult to destroy them with sheer force, which led him to believe that he should have called for back-up a long time ago, but any notion of doing such died every time Damian protected his six. Tim wouldn’t even hear him. He’d just turn around with his bo-staff on the offensive, only to realize that his opponents were completely gone. Eaten by the void. Literally.

There was no Damian in sight. That’s how things usually worked. He was good at sticking to the shadow, particularly Tim’s.

“Thanks, Damian,” Tim let out a relieved sigh.

He stepped over the bodies of his enemies, pressing forward down the simplistic tunnel system. He’d been walking for over ten minutes now, and he’d yet to come across any turns. That was a happy discovery. The not-so-happy discovery is that he’d be trapped in here if the tunnel collapsed. There weren’t any emergency exits. Perhaps he should have brought Kori along. She would have blasted through the rock, no problem.

If it were to collapse atop them, that is.

Tim stared at the end of the tunnel, where a door lay at the very end. It only seemed to get farther, the longer that he walked.

It was a welcome distraction when his comm blared to life. Tim didn’t pause his journey, but he did raise a hand to accept the communication request.

“Red Robin speaking.”

“Red,” Dick sounded strait-laced and serious. “I need your help back in Gotham. You still busy with Titan business?”

“Erm—yeah.” He imagined himself just quitting here. Walking back to the exit, and then leaving Victor because his brother wanted him. Ridiculous. He had a lot to catch up on with all of his teammates. He couldn’t just leave because his brother needed his help. “I can’t just head off at the drop of a hat.”

“I get that, I do, but can’t you get someone to cover for you? This is a family matter.”

“What kind of family matter are we talking about here? It’s got to be really compelling if you want me to head back out there.”

Tim continued down the path, until he heard the sound of a mechanical whir, and he spun around and extended his bo-staff defensively. This time, he got to see Damian in action. The boy had lurched out of the darkness, and his whole entire being flew over the tiny T-Rex as if it were a blanket. Then it shrunk, eventually taking shape of a humanoid form. Where the T-Rex once was, Damian stood.

Tim let out a breath of relief and reached out a hand without putting any thought to it. He rested a hand on Damian’s head. He didn’t need to say anything to show his appreciation, and Damian didn’t need to say anything, either, to show that he liked Tim’s attention. He pushed his head into Tim’s head, not unlike a cat looking for a cuddle.

“Batman found a lead on that case he’s been mulling over for years, Red, and we can’t just let him get into it without support.”

Tim paused.

His adopted father was an interesting character. He was a man of few words, opting to remain quiet in favor of careful observation. When Tim came along, that didn’t change. He was still a quiet man, sometimes to the point of intimidation. However, Bruce was anything but intimidating. He was a gentle giant, exceedingly protective to all those he called his own. He was never scary—not unless he was immersed in his favorite, decade-old case.

His son’s case.

An unnamed child who’d been taken from him at a very young age.

Dick was right. There was no way Tim was going to let Bruce dive into this without back-up. He’d seen the man mourn over this unknown boy numerous of times, and he’d seen his pain too. He’d be there for Bruce. Just like Bruce had been there for him.

“I can ask Raven to take over things from here,” Tim decided, without any reluctance in his voice, “but I won’t be there for another day or two. I’m still in the middle of something.”

“I’m not sure I can hold him off for that long,” Dick said, “but I’ll try.”

“Don’t hold him off, just keep me updated,” Tim rectified. “I’ll meet up with you wherever the two of you decide to go.”

“Four,” Dick corrected. “Hood and Orphan will be participating.”

“Sounds like the whole gang is coming together,” Tim said.

Damian, tired of standing around, withdrew and sunk into the ground. Tim’s hand hovered over nothing until he let it fall to his side. He eventually turned and rooted his eyes on the end of the tunnel.

Time to start walking again.

“It’ll be a big reunion, that’s for sure,” Dick agreed, “and I’m sorry that it takes something like this to get us all together again.”

“I’m sorry too.”

They didn’t even celebrate holidays together anymore. There was always something wrong that needed to be fixed. A mission to be done. People who needed saving. Unfortunately, crime never waited for anyone, and it didn’t help that their family was made up of selfless vigilantes. People who originated from all sorts of backgrounds, intent on helping others avoid needless tragedy.

“Alright, I’ll keep you updated,” Dick promised.

“Thanks,” Tim said.

Dick hung up after exchanging a few more words and Tim let himself think afterwards. This was monumental, actually. Bruce, finding a lead on his kid? After a decade of investigating?

I hope something good comes out of it.

He’d hate for Bruce to find out that his son was dead. While Bruce was optimistic (which is a lot to say about a depressed, sullen man) about his son’s survival, there was always the possibility that he was gone for good. For Bruce’s sake, Tim hoped they’d find his kid intact. Then he could be the big brother he always wanted to be, way back when he decided to look into the case himself. Unfortunately, he didn’t find much. All he learned was that Talia wasn’t responsible. Their baby had been abducted by an unknown party. He was stolen from the hospital—a place Talia swore she wouldn’t give birth in unless emergency complications occurred (which they did). 

Bruce had been so angry after he’d found out his baby had been abducted, and he’d poured his whole heart and soul into finding him. That’s what Jason said, anyways. Tim hadn’t been there for that part, but he’d seen the fallout. He’d seen how defeated Bruce was—how quiet he’d become. A shadow of his former self, some might say. A man who’d gone through too many tragedies.

He broke up with Talia after that. He couldn’t handle relationships anymore, and she wasn’t in the mood to push it. She agreed and ran off to mourn in her own way. Tim had no idea where she was now, but he knew her anger hadn’t been squashed. The League had gotten to be more violent after she disappeared. He heard plenty of stories about their interference with various missions.

I really should do something about that.

Tim would have to, later, after he got everything sorted out, but who knows? Maybe this lead would do something about the League.

Tim stopped in front of the large metal door and realized there was no handle.

“Damian?”

Damian rose upward out of the ground without any further instruction, and then he swarmed the door with his shadowy mass. It was almost funny to see his body shrink, the door gone, and an empty space in its place.

Tim was going to compliment him, as Damian often reacted positively to such things, but then he saw the huge laboratory past his body.

“Great, another science-focused crime,” Tim murmured.

He brushed past Damian, and Damian didn’t like that. He followed after his heels and made several complaints and ghostly groans.

“Not now,” Tim said. “Later.”

Damian protested and bumped into Tim when he stopped. Tim stared at the cyborg restrained to a table, and for a good while he didn’t feel anything. Only shock.

“Victor?”

Victor didn’t respond, brain hooked up to a thick cable, and that’s when the hot rush of anger filled his blood.

“Oh, we’re going to pummel everyone in charge of this facility,” Tim growled. Damian was trying to nudge his head into his hand. Tim barely registered it until he turned to look down at him. “You can eat everything except for their bodies.”

Damian perked up. Everything?

Tim had given such orders before. It usually resulted in their enemies running around naked, and completely vulnerable.

“Take care of it,” Tim said.

Damian cackled and sunk into the ground. He didn’t need to be told twice. He’d make everyone within this facility question their sanity. Just like Tim had questioned his when he’d first met Damian.

Tim ran to Victor’s side and carefully took care of all the wires he was hooked up to. The man’s eyes were wide open, but he didn’t seem to be coherent. Not until Tim took the cable out of his brain.

Cyborg gasped and lurched up. Tim was there to steady him, a large frown on his face.

“Red?”

“You really got yourself into a mess this time, Vic.”

Chapter Text

Tim mumbled to himself as he piled his bed high with clothes, gadgets, and other possessions. He had a feeling that he wouldn’t be coming back to the tower for a while. That’s why he was putting together all the stuff he wanted to take home, and it just so happened that he had a lot of things that needed to be packed. 

“Okay, looks good,” Tim said.

Damian popped up from the ground, looking up at Tim expectantly, with that eerie expressionless face of his, and yet his body-language suggested he was eager to be of use. It was a better mood than he’d been in earlier. He was grouchy all morning, but that wasn’t unusual. Damian didn’t have the best attitude, especially around other people. The only one he was (mostly) nice to was Tim. The others might as well be walking mud balls. For some reason, Damian particularly disliked Gar. When Beast Boy complained about his stuff going missing, Tim knew Damian was involved.

Thinking upon it, Damian had never met his family. Would they get along?

Probably not.

“Do your thing,” Tim said.

Damian consumed the entire pile in one sweep, displacing each item of Tim’s belongings, and packing them away in a place that Tim couldn’t see. He had his theories, but he doubted he’d ever understand Damian’s abyssal structure. Sometimes he ate things, and they disappeared forever. Other times, he could pack them away like a suitcase.

“Nice,” Tim said. “Now we’re ready to go. Let’s say goodbye to the gang.”

Damian scoffed, turned his face away, and vanished into Tim’s shadow.

“It won’t be that bad,” Tim promised, though he’s not sure he should be making a promise, knowing how things could go wrong in the blink of an eye, considering Damian’s temper. “We’ll just talk a little and then we’ll go. Off on an adventure, out of the tower. Wouldn’t you like that?”

Damian didn’t respond. Tim expected it and continued on anyways. He trailed down the hall and said, “You’re going to love it in Gotham, Damian. If there’s anything like you out there in this world, it’d be in the sketchiest city on the planet. Maybe you’ll make some friends. There’s nothing but shadows there. You’ll have a field day.”

Once again, Damian didn’t say anything. Tim didn’t bother pushing for his conversation (even if it was mostly just inarticulate noises). He entered the elevator and waited to reach his destination. Once he stepped foot out into the common room, he realized that there was a lot more people than usual. He’d expected only a few to see him off. Kori and Beast Boy. Raven, maybe.

He hadn’t been excepting Cassie or Kon. They were lounging on the couch, engaged in conversation. Impulse was supposed to be off on vacation, but he was eating pizza on the kitchen counter. Cyborg was off in the corner, talking to Kori. Beast Boy was making leaning all of his weight into Raven’s person, a surprising sight when they’d been ignoring each other a day prior. When had they worked it out? How had he missed it?

“There you are.”

Kori was the first to notice him. Cyborg turned to look at Tim after she called him out, and a smile formed on his lips. He looked as if he hadn’t been strapped to a table. He was up and walking. The cable that had been attached to his head hadn’t done much to his system. Except for copying precious data that shouldn’t have been copied. Fortunately, that had been taken care of fairly quickly.

“Dude, you’ve been in your room all day!” Gar complained.

“Uhm—”

“Quiet,” Raven murmured, irritated. “You’re right next to my ear.”

“I didn’t know you guys were up here, or that you were waiting for me," Tim said, caught-off-guard. 

“Well, couldn’t let you go without saying goodbye,” Bart says with a mouth full of mush. “Also, we knew you’d worry about us. Better to see you go off in person, rather than leaving you to wonder about what’s going on with everyone.”

Tim stared at Bart for a good moment before traveling his gaze back around the room.

“Can’t help the worry sometimes,” he said. “You guys are really bad at staying out of trouble. Kori might be a bit of a mother hen but—"

“Huh?” Kori sounded.

“—that doesn’t mean she’ll be able to be everywhere at once. Do your best not to give her any headaches while I’m gone.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Kon said. He stood up from his spot on the couch. “Besides, I’d like to think I can take care of myself. When’s the last time you had to dig me out of any holes?”

“Last month.”

“Yeah, but what about this month?”

Tim gave him an unimpressed look.

Kon gave Tim a goofy grin. Kori seized the moment and interjected her own thoughts.

“Don’t hesitate to call upon us if you need any assistance, Tim,” she began. “We will go to your aid, no matter the circumstance. I wish your bro—erm—brother-in-arms,” she hastily amended, “would understand that.”

Tim almost wanted to laugh. His brother was so secretive about his identity, only sharing it with close friends. Unfortunately, Kori wasn’t the best at keeping secrets. She did her best though, and Dick knew it. It was a wonder his identity hadn’t been announced to the world yet, but he trusted her enough. She hadn’t outed anyone else. Why would do that to Dick?

“And tell him to call me while you’re there,” Kori huffed.

“Yeah, he’s been bad with the whole communication thing,” Vic agreed.

“Sure, I’ll tell him,” Tim said. “No guarantee he’ll do anything about it though. He’s occupied right now. That’s why I’m going home in the first place. He needs the support.”

Kori frowned. “Will you be alright?"

“Yep,” Tim popped. “We’re getting the whole squad together. No need for intervention or the like. Thanks for the concern though.”

Kori looked conflicted but she nodded her head in acknowledgment. Tim gave her a reassuring expression before heading to the center of the room. He couldn’t reach it without Kon stretching out to give him a friendly nudge. Cassie beamed at him, and Bart jumped off the counter. Gar was the only one who seemed to realize something was off.

“Are you going home without any of your stuff?”

Tim smirked.

“What’s the point in duffle bags or suitcases when you’ve got an eldritch pack manager?”

“Ah—Damian!” Kori realized. “He mustn’t leave before we exchange last words, too!”

“I’m not sure I can coax him out of my shadow.” Tim looked down. “Unless he changed his mind about this whole thing…?”

A faint hiss was his answer.

“Yeah, not happening,” Tim decided.

That didn’t stop Kori. “Well—” She smiled gently. “He’s just as important as any other member of this team. He’s always welcomed here, in your shadow, or without.”

“Yeah, he can jump in my shadow any day,” Vic said, “kind of owe him after he ate that copied thumb drive.”

The one that had been stolen from him again his will—yeah. Who knew what those researchers were going to do with it? Tim imagined it wouldn’t have been good.

“I’m sure he’ll think about it.”

He won’t.

Tim gave Vic a courteous head nod. He exchanged a few more words with his team before stepping onto the zeta beam pad and then vanishing away. They were ripped away from him in a single instant. 

It’s almost disconcerting how fast he ended up in Gotham. Tim had to take a moment to adjust to the humidity. It recently rained, as apparent by the wet sidewalk beneath his feet, and the resulting humidity was thick. It wasn't anything like the tower's-controlled environment. Tim swallowed and tried to get his bearings about him. He propped up a hand on the neighboring wall for temporary support. His shadow seemed to stretch out, as if something else was trying to emerge from it. 

"I'm okay," he promised. 

He took another minute to adjust before leaning off that wall. His shadow settled.

He fumbled for the phone in his pocket and then began texting his ride.

It was fruitless because said ride honked the horn before he could even get two words tapped out.

Tim looked up at Stephanie, sitting on the side of the street, arm rested on her door, and hand on the wheel.

“Get in loser,” she quoted, “we’re going shopping!”

“That’s a terrible movie,” Tim said as he exited the alleyway and rounded the vehicle. Tim hopped in and then buckled his seatbelt.

“Actually, it’s a masterpiece,” Stephanie disagreed. “Don’t diss the classics.”

“Are 90s movies classics now?”

Stephanie gasped. “It’s not from the 90s. It was made in 2004! What are you, a baby?”

“It has a 90s atmosphere to it,” Tim insisted.

“Early 2000s and 90s aren't even remotely similar.”

“So Mean Girls definitely isn’t a classic then since it was made in 2004.”

“It’s a classic because it’ll live throughout all of history and time as one of the best movies that represent American high school culture.”

“High school wasn’t anything like Mean Girls.” Tim shook his head. “Let’s talk about something else.”

Stephanie huffed. “Talk about something else? Like what?”

“Like… is there anything I should be careful about? You know. Around Bruce? I know you aren't participating in the case right now but-"

“Oh. Yeah. He’s a little sensitive right now. Rash, too. Try not to push too much. Jason doubted his lead and pushed too many buttons. Bruce wouldn’t talk to anyone for hours after that, and they lost his location once he went out on patrol.” Stephanie shrugged. “I’m sure you’ll be okay though. If anyone’s an expert on Bruce, it’s you.”

“I thought Dick was the ‘Bruce expert.’”

“After leaving him for a couple of years? Nah. People change. You were the most recent, erm, son so—”

Tim stared out the front window and watched the road pass by them. Stephanie cleared her throat. They might both be orphans, but Stephanie never really talked about adoption or parents. Always hit a sore spot, knowing that Bruce never brought her in officially like the rest of them.

Tim had been dating her at the time so… would have been awkward if it did happen.

“Can’t believe he’s finally found something about his kid.” Tim said. He sounded detached because he genuinely couldn’t wrap his mind around this whole event. Not properly. “I tried to track him down myself but...”

“You tried your best.” Stephanie murmured. “We all did. What that kidnapping did to Bruce—” She sighed. “I tried everything to give him some closure but… whoever orchestrated his baby’s abduction was untraceable. It wasn’t your fault, and it wasn’t Bruce’s either. For not finding anything, I mean. Wish he understood that, instead of killing himself over the guilt.”

Every year, around the baby’s kidnapping, Bruce wouldn’t sleep for an entire week. Wouldn’t eat or drink either. He’d just focus on the case. Obsessively. Never stopping unless someone sedated him and restrained him. It was always a messy process. Sometimes best avoided altogether. It was better if they had Alfred sneak from snacks in. It was all that could be managed to help the poor man and being sedated often led to more stress than anything else. It was better to let Alfred do his thing rather than intervene.

“I only hope his baby is still alive and that he’s not going to find a dead body," Stephanie whispered. 

Hot anger flashed through Tim. The detachment faded in an instant and he thought of a broken infant, gone before he could even live in the family that would have loved him. The baby might not be his, but Tim felt a certain amount of kinship with the little guy. Jason did too, although Tim wasn’t certain about Dick’s thoughts upon the matter (or Cass). They hadn’t talked about the incident much. That was something that happened before Tim had come along. He hadn’t witnessed the fallout.

“I hope so too.”

Stephanie hummed sadly, with a little smile that looked like she could’ve been comforted by Tim’s words, but maybe she was just faking it for his sake.

“Want some water?” She suggested. “It’s going to be another fifteen minutes before we get back to the manor.”

“Sure.”

Stephanie reached for the cup holder only to feel around for absolutely nothing. She paused and glanced briefly at the empty spot, glancing back up at the road to make sure she was still within the lines. “Huh. I swear—I had a bottle of water right here. Unopened and everything! It’s been in the car for weeks.”

“You were going to offer me car water?”

Tim looked a little disgusted—felt it too—as he turned his head to look outside through his window.

It didn’t hit him until a minute passed.

“Damian,” he cursed, “what did I say about eating people’s things!?”

Damian didn’t respond, not eager to pop out in front of a stranger, and Stephanie looked over at Tim with a raised brow.

“You talking to yourself?”

Tim ran a hand down his face and then rubbed the back of his neck.

"Yeah. Myself."

Chapter Text

Dick wasn’t sluggish on his way down the stairs.

It's time.

Dick was already tearing off his shirt in anticipation for his Nightwing suit. It was waiting for him in the cave, since he’d slept over at the manor for the past week, and he’d have to change quick if he didn’t want Bruce to leave him behind.

Dick wouldn’t have to worry about such a thing if Bruce didn’t need the support, but his father needed people right now. Dick didn’t want him to do anything stupid while he was out and about. Bruce might be determined to get this through with, sure, but there would be moments when his emotions got the best of him. Dick wanted to be there when that happened.

Dick was just one person though.

Dick whipped out his phone at the thought, nearly tripping over the last step, but he managed to recover himself enough to text Barbara.

I need you to be the coordinator for the rest of the family. Bruce is about to head out and I’m not going to let him go alone.

Barbara didn’t reply immediately. Dick wouldn’t have known if she did. His phone was stuffed into his locker before he gave it a chance. Barbara would have to communicate to him over an earpiece if she wanted him to hear anything important.

Dick hastily grabbed his suit and glanced around the platform.

Bruce was nowhere to be seen.

“Damn it,” Dick grumbled as he staggered his way to the railing. “Bruce!?”

Dick tossed off his pants and struggled to pull up his suit. It was too skin-tight sometimes.

Dick’s eyes quickly scanned the lower deck and landed on two pointed ears. It was enough to give him some semblance of relief, but not nearly enough as he watched Bruce adjust his gloves.

Bruce was done getting dressed.

Bruce was going to leave.

“Hey, wait a minute,” Dick yelled, “you’re not going anywhere without me!”

Bruce said nothing even though he most certainly heard Dick yelling at him. It was hard not to with the volume of his voice.

Bruce didn’t even bother looking up at him. He popped open the batmobile. Dick growled with frustration as he tried frantically to get his arms through his sleeves, snapping the fabric against his skin. He then traced his steps back to swiftly find an earpiece. He fumbled getting it into his ear. 

He swiped up the baton he’d left on the weapon’s lab counter, slapped a mask onto his face, and then jogged towards the stairs that descended to the lower deck.

“Bruce!” Dick shouted.

Dick was out of breath as he watched the batmobile turn, not because of the vehicle itself, but because the deck beneath it had a rotating feature. Bruce was already in it, behind the steering wheel, but Dick wasn’t going to watch helplessly.

Dick swore and ran for his bike.

He almost wished he didn’t care about Bruce. It would save him a lot of stress. But it would be against his nature. Bruce was a good man, twice the man anyone else Dick had met, and he needed someone to watch his back. Dick was ready to step up to the plate. Not out of obligation, but out of loyalty.

Dick grabbed his helmet that was sitting on the seat, pulled it over his head, and then swung a leg over his bike. Once he got it running, he didn’t waste any time. He shot off. By the time he exited the cave, he realized he couldn't even see the batmobile. He could hear it though, and hearing it was good enough of a sign. 

“Batman.” Dick spoke over comm. He wasn't letting him go without a lecture. “I’m going to be frank with you. I think you’re being too hasty right now.”

Bruce didn’t answer. That meant one of two things. Either Bruce didn’t have his comm on, or he was straight up ignoring him. Dick believed it to be the latter, so he kept talking.

“I know you’re eager to get your boy back, Batman, but we can’t head into a capricious situation without careful thought! Do you know what you’re getting into? Did you scope the lab beforehand?”

“I did,” came an apathetic tone over the comm.

It wasn’t a surprise to hear that Bruce had already scoped the lab without him. It made sense. Bruce had been disappearing days at a time without telling anyone where he was—a dangerous habit to be sure—probably because he was looking into more leads for his son. Dick was aware that only one yielded any results. Dot-Lab. It was an abandoned laboratory with a semi-clean history, save for an interesting peek into meta experimentation, but they were shut down early before they could make any progress.

It’d been put to a stop by the government.

I guess they’re good for some things.

Dick inwardly sighed as he thought over the research data that Bruce had compiled.

Bruce had been working non-stop, without any sleep, food, or basic conversation. Dick was worried about him a great deal, but could he blame him for putting his everything into this case? It’d been on his mind for years.

Dick swallowed.

It didn’t feel too long ago when he first saw a picture of Bruce’s little boy. Dick hadn’t been there for the birth, having had no idea it was even occurring at the time, but he eventually got a call from Jason at the hospital. Dick told him to send pictures. Jason did, sending him a photo of a wrinkly infant with fisted up hands, a head full of hair, and a face twisted in mid-cry.

Dick still had that picture in his phone.

It was hard to look at sometimes.

I can’t believe we’re closer to figuring out what happened to him.

It made him upset to think about how someone taking Bruce’s kid from his comfort—his family—for nefarious purposes that he didn’t want to imagine. Dick wanted to get his claws into the person who abducted him. How dare they? How dare they take advantage of a vulnerable infant? It was monstrous and evil. Dick didn’t only want to get his claws into them, he wanted justice for his family, and he wanted it now.

Bruce probably felt very much the same.

Dick cleared his throat.

“Batman, we’ll find him,” he promised.

Dick once again received radio silence, as was often the case in conversations held with Bruce, but his words encouraged his own determination. Dick didn’t know why he felt this way, but he just knew that Bruce’s kid was still out there.

Jason was the morbid one, believing he’d died, and that he’d done so horrifically (it most likely had something to do with Jason’s background on the streets). Barbara didn’t really have an opinion on the matter, and Cass refused to share what she thought for Bruce’s sake. Tim, like Barbara, was on a balanced middle-ground, but he’d watch Bruce’s back without fail. Dick knew he could count on him.

“Nightwing.”

Bruce’s voice nearly startled him.

“Yeah?”

“Thank you.”

Dick let the words settle in his heart before sighing out through his nose and smiling.

“I’d do just about anything for you, B,” Dick spoke, voice low, “don’t you ever forget that.”

Bruce fell quiet again, predictably, but Dick felt more confident this time about it.

It caught him off-guard when Barbara’s voice fled the comm.

“I’m sorry to interrupt. I just wanted to inform you that I went ahead and called in the calvary. Red Hood will join you shortly. Black Bat will get there as soon as she can, though she may be delayed, and Red Robin is already on his way.”

Dick couldn’t help the relief that ran down his back. It would be nice to have other people helping him. It was why he called them all in to begin with. Dick knew that, despite his best efforts, he wouldn’t be able to keep up with Bruce, and that he wouldn’t be able to cover all of his bases. It was fortunate that his family was willing to pitch in. Jason was the only one who was reluctant to join in, perhaps because he liked to avoid the talk of Bruce’s kid, but he eventually gave in after some discussion.

Jason had been looking forward to being a big brother, and he still became one when Tim came along.

It still didn’t make the pain any less easy to deal with. Dick knew that. Jason couldn’t talk about Bruce’s kid without thinking of missed opportunities, grief, and regret.

“I’m sending in a drone to offer air support,” Barbara continued. “Hood agreed that he’ll keep a look out on the perimeter, specifically the west, and Black Bat volunteered to take the east. Red said he’ll meet you inside the building.”

“Oracle, your organization is deeply appreciated,” Dick said. “I’m sorry. I would have kept everyone updated but—”

“Yes, you’re on Batman duty, I get it.” A pause. “Don’t let him slip out of your fingers. If there’s any chance of finding information on his son, it won’t come out of rash action.”

“Wasn’t planning to,” Dick said. “I’m going to be there with him, Oracle. Every step of the way. That’s the least I can do after all he’s done for me.”

“I’m with you there. I’ll be keeping an eye on him through his trackers, and I’ll be in his ear too. I’ve got a blueprint of the building laid out right in front of me.”

“We’ll probably need it,” Dick said. “Batman said he scoped the place beforehand, but it’ll be nice getting rid of even the slightest chance of getting lost. Who knows what we’ll find there. Labs are always filled with disasters waiting to be unleashed.”

“Hopefully it’s just an abandoned building,” Oracle agreed. “As in—no disasters, squatters, or the like. Best case scenario: everyone investigates the lab and then gets out safely. No distractions—no nuisances.”

“I’ve got a good feeling about this one. Something in my gut is telling me that we’re going to find something, and that it’s going to help us understand what happened.”

“Whether it’s a good thing or bad thing, that’s yet to be seen,” Oracle mumbled. “What will they have that we don’t already know? Were they so archaic that they left paper copies of their dealings?”

“It’ll give us some insight into what they were handling. I’m sure there’s things they’ve left behind that they neglected to throw away. Besides. Batman wouldn’t be heading in if he didn’t think there wasn’t something to be found.”

“What is he expecting? He hasn’t told anyone.”

“I don’t know. He hasn’t shared anything about that with me.” A quiet grumble, “And I probably would have figured something out if he didn’t keep taking off his trackers.”

Bruce would do everything alone if he could. Dick could tell from recent exchanges and actions that were made. Bruce, however, wasn’t one to turn down support, especially if said support was doing everything within his power to follow him around, but Dick found it was exhausting to keep up with Batman. It wasn’t out of a lack of skill or capability. It was because Bruce was working non-stop and leaving everyone else in the dust.

“I’m going to open channels,” Oracle informed. “No more Batman talk.” A pause. “Let’s hope this doesn’t turn into a tragedy.”

“Yeah.” Dick was grim. “If it does, be prepared.”

Chapter Text

Damian did not like this place.

Tim didn’t seem to understand even though he should. He didn’t know why he was acting like nothing was wrong, but everything was wrong. Tim might have promised his family that he’d meet them inside a building, but Damian didn’t understand the full implications until they were actually here.

“Damian,” Tim hissed once again.

Damian tugged back on his legs to stop him from walking forward. Tim had nearly tripped three times in the last two minutes. It was a fight that neither of them wanted. Tim especially.

“I have to go inside. I promised the others that I would.”

Damian tugged more insistently on his legs. Tim’s face looked like it wanted to move into something beyond a stoic expression, but having a costume on dictated how he would act at the moment. Tim kept his mouth in a thin, unimpressed, line that made Damian rethink his decision. It wasn’t as if Tim’s disapproval was capable of hurting him, but the mere idea made him want to cower back into the shadows. Tim’s opinion mattered to him a great deal. Greater than he’d like to admit.

“You can’t go,” Damian insisted.

Tim, once again, didn’t understand him, and narrowed his eyes down at him.

Damian clung to his legs like a petulant child but something in Tim’s face spoke that he would get angry about this. Tim couldn’t do anything to him, not really, but he could ignore him. Damian didn’t like being ignored. Tim had done that one for many, many, years, and Damian hated that he hadn’t been strong enough to get his attention.

He could only stand the weight of his glare for so long. He slowly released his legs and withdrew weakly. Tim remained in place despite receiving his freedom, considering Damian with eyes that could no longer be deciphered, especially underneath the white lenses of his mask, and Damian found that he could not quite look at him straight.

“I would ask why you’re acting so strange,” Tim began, sounding unamused, “but keeping me from an important mission is not the way to go about things. I have to support the people who are important to me, and I can’t very well do that on the sidelines.”

Damian wanted to protest but it died in his throat.

Why didn’t Tim see?

Why didn’t he know?

“Now,” Tim began, clearing his throat like a teacher in front of a class, “let’s try this again.”

Tim turned around and tried to move his leg forward.

It did so without a fight.

Damian watched Tim head towards a small office building that was sad looking all around. It had boarded up windows, broken glass, and guck-covered walls. Its appearance was further trodden down by the numerous tags of graffiti. It was a mess, Damian decided, but it was still dangerous. It didn’t have to be clean to not be so.

Why?

Why doesn’t he get it?

Damian reluctantly followed Tim to the entrance. Tim glanced over his shoulder once to make sure Damian was following after him, and his face smoothed out once he realized Damian was doing exactly that.

Damian wished his own emotions could smooth out so easily. It became clear to him that, once they reached the front door, he would not be going into the building with Tim, and that Tim would have to sort this one out without him. Damian melted into the shadows and traveled swiftly away from the building.

It wasn’t his intention to leave the area entirely, since he still wished to be with Tim once he emerged, but he wouldn’t be entering with him.

Damian instead decided to travel around the perimeter of the area, only stopping when he came across a strange man atop a roof, face covered with a red mouthpiece, and body covered in not-so-ordinary clothes.

“No, I don’t think I’ll be participating in a round of Potato Junkyard,” the man declared to the air in front of him.

It was a strange thing, seeing him talk to himself, until Damian realized he must be related to Tim, and that he was speaking to someone else in the field.

Damian traveled through what shadows were available until he got another good look at the man, and then he realized that this must be the perimeter-guard that Tim talked about.

“It’s a lame video game,” the man continued, speaking to someone that Damian couldn’t see, “and there’s nothing fun about getting smashed several times in a row.”

Damian examined him quietly and noticed that he had a foot upon a ledge. There was a pair of binoculars against his face. He used it to survey the surrounding area. Damian wondered what he could see through those binoculars. Countless empty streets, surely. Shattered lamp lights and sun-bleached signs.

“Look, defend it all you like, but I will not be playing. I’m going straight to bed after this, unless, of course, Batman is absolutely besides himself, and Nightwing demands that we all come together to ‘support’ him.”

Damian crept closer without being seen.

“Well, sorry for being of little faith, but it’s been years, and I don’t think we’re going to find anything positive. All this is going to do is—” He stopped as if interrupted. “What? No. I’m just saying, it’s better if we don’t keep our hopes up.”

There was a bitter tone to the man’s words. There was also clench of his jaw and a hard look on his face. His fingers tightened around the binoculars.

“I’m not being pessimistic. I’m just facing the facts and—” a pause, “oh be quiet. I know the others might think something will come out of this, but I’m the only realistic one here, and I won’t be breaking my heart over a case that’s already done with. The others will just have to deal.”

Damian listened to him talk for a little bit longer before hearing a roar down the street. It caught his attention alongside the stranger’s, putting a halt to his conversation, and then he was turning to zoom his binoculars in on two high-speed vehicles.

“Looks like it’s time for the first inning,” the man said. 

It was a little too quiet for Tim when he entered the reception room. Tim hadn’t seen Damian enter the building with him, but that’s because he assumed he’d sunken back into his shadow. Tim hadn't put too much thought about it until he'd looked around for a bit. He paused upon his own shadow slunk against the ground, covering piles of dust, debris, and glass.

“Damian, you know I wasn’t mad at you, right?” Tim asked the shadow.

It didn’t move.

“I was antsy to get this started. I’m sorry if I treated you poorly because of it. I—” Tim rubbed the back of his neck. “Is there something you wanted to tell me?”

Tim didn’t get any more answers from his shadow. It was a timely thing. Tim might have had a lot of explaining to do if Damian had answered him.

“Red,” Nightwing called out from the entryway, “good to see that you’re here.”

Batman had already snuck into the reception room, giving Tim a blank look that suggested he’d heard at least a bit of Tim’s talking, and Tim tried not to let his embarrassment show on his face. It was one thing to be caught talking to himself, even if it was actually Damian, but it was another to have missed Batman’s initial appearance.

“Uhm, yeah,” Tim answered.

It wasn’t the right answer because he was supposed to be a professional. Dick’s gaze seemed to hover over him for a few seconds, but he eventually removed his eyes to scan the room round-about. Whatever Tim was up to, it wasn't terribly concerning, apparently. 

“This place is a mess,” Dick observed.

Batman moved at that, footsteps light, and Dick followed after at a leisurely distance. Dick took his time looking at everything before following Batman past the reception door, and Tim was going to catch his attention before a tap against his head startled him. Tim whipped around to attack before he realized a drone had ‘playfully’ bumped against him.

“Oracle,” Tim grumbled.

“Someone’s not on top of their game today,” a voice echoed in his ear.

Tim grumbled again and ignored the drone. He followed after his other family members, content with the distance between them. Oracle’s drone hovered nearby, flying at his side with steady control. A normal drone would be bobbing up and down, side-to-side. Not Oracle’s drones. They were top of the line, and their master was an excellent commander.

“Looks like we aren’t the first people to have been here,” Tim said as his eyes followed along the walls. There was plenty of graffiti and destruction. Things had been torn off the wall, laid to the ground in crumbles. “Let’s hope I don’t have to sedate anyone today.”

Dick twirled a baton in his hand. One might almost think it was a carefree gesture. Tim thought differently. To him, it looked as if his brother was trying to cope with something. The tension in the atmosphere, perhaps. Or the uncertainty of it all. The low probability of finding something substantial.

“You won’t have to,” Bruce’s voice surprised them all.

Dick stopped twirling his baton. Tim stared at the back of Bruce’s head.

“You know where we’re going,” Tim deciphered. “You found something. Something specific.”

Bruce didn’t answer him there, but the glance Dick shot over his shoulder suggested that he agreed with his assessment.

“What is it?” Tim prodded.

Tim hated Bruce’s silent demeanor at that moment. His adopted father could be such a kind, patient man, but he could also be frustrating. This wasn’t the first time he withheld information. How was he supposed to help him if he didn’t even know what he was getting into?

As if he read his thoughts, Bruce spoke up.

“I’ll show you.”

They travel through the building, and Bruce led with a destination in mind. He knew where he was going, that much was clear from his direction. His path was purposeful and intent. There was no hint of hesitation. No wavering of confidence. He’d been here before.

They stop on one of the lower levels below ground. There were many doors that led into private offices, but they’d already been broken into. Whoever explored this place prior had left a disaster behind. Papers, chairs, and office supplies were scattered all over the ground. Desks were overturned and pushed up against the wall. He’d caught sight of a few broken vases and glass figurines. A splintered photo frame had made its way into the hallway, and Bruce stepped on it without regard. The action in itself was a strange thing to witness, knowing Bruce as he was. He didn’t like making noise if he didn’t have to.

Dick avoided the photo frame and Tim did too, though he let his gaze linger on it until it fell out of vision.

Bruce surprised them by turning into the last office, stepping over debris.

The office didn’t look different from the others, but the name plaque must have caught Dick’s attention.

“Hey,” he began, “didn’t I see a file on this guy down in the cave?’

Christopher Wiles.

Tim had never heard of him.

Dick picked up the name plaque to inspect it as Bruce stared at the wall. It only occurred to Tim, now that they were inside the office, that this office was different from the rest, and that was because there were no windows to be seen.

“Christopher Wiles,” Oracle began reciting in the open channel, probably extracting information off the bat-computer itself, “graduated from Gotham University to pursue a career in the medical field. A popular pediatrician until his practice closed. He was unemployed for two years following until he was offered a job by Dot-Lab. They gave him a large bonus pay for signing on. He has no living family. His wife died in a tragic incident five years ago. Carbon Monoxide.”

Bruce tugged out a device from his belt and held it upward.

“Why do you have a huge file on this guy?” Oracle asked.

“He came to me, after years of staying quiet,” Bruce said, “so I had to do some background research on him.”

Bruce scanned the wall and a green-layered grid appeared on the wall. It moved whenever Bruce moved his scanner, looking for something, but there was nothing on this wall to be seen. It was uneven in some places, according to the scanner, but that was about it.

Tim wanted to ask some of his own questions until the grid stopped moving. It hovered over a large structure that suspiciously resembled a door, and said door was perfectly concealed behind a layer of wall.

“That’s not on the blueprints,” Oracle noted warily.

It baffled everyone to find an entirely different facility.

It was in much better condition than the rest of the building, no doubt because no one had yet to discover yet, but that didn’t make it less unnerving. It was very white, after all, like a hospital room, but everywhere. Tim couldn’t see a hint of decoration in sight, not even in the few offices they came across, which were cold, unfeeling, and generally eerie.

Tim felt sick to his stomach when they found a room filled with test-tube embryos.

It wasn’t, apparently, Bruce’s goal destination, even though it was a horrifying discovery, so they continued on until the entered an office bigger than the others. It had a lone computer sitting on the desk, accompanied by a monitor on its right, but it wasn’t on because of the lack of electricity.

“This is it,” Bruce said.

Dick shared a glance with Tim as Batman rounded the desk.

“Wiles told me that everything we needed to know would be on this computer,” Bruce informed.

“There’s no electricity in this place,” Tim reminded him.

It might be painted the brightest white he’d ever seen, but that didn’t mean that it was sufficiently lit. Bruce’s flashlight did most of the illuminating. Oracle’s drone too.

Bruce momentarily put down said flashlight to run his hands over the top of the computer, effectively wiping off a layer of dust, and he squinted his lenses to look at the labeling on top. Dick was quick to pick up the flashlight in Bruce’s stead.

Its label was faded and impossible to read.

“We’ll have to take it back to the cave,” Bruce informed.

Dick nodded in agreement as he watched Bruce carefully unhook the cables from the computer, easily replaceable back at home, but Tim wasn’t as easily satisfied.

“Is that it?” Tim asked. “Is that all we came here for?”

It seemed ridiculous to have multiple people for an excursion that barely lasted twenty minutes.

“I guess so,” Dick answered optimistically. “I’m glad we didn’t run across any trouble.”

“It could have been worse,” Oracle agreed.

“I was expecting trouble,” Tim admitted. “I thought it would be tougher than this.”

“Be thankful for unexpected surprises,” Dick laughed with a playful pat to Tim’s back.

Tim had barely noticed that he crossed the room just to do so.

Tim didn’t smile because he was still caught up on the fact that nothing had happened. It might be because of his mission retrieving Cyborg, but he’d been expecting at least a little bit of opposition. It seemed his only opposition had been Damian.

Why?

“I think I’m going to stick around and investigate this place,” Tim decided.

“Cool,” Dick said, “I was going to do the same thing.”

“You should probably help Batman load that up into the batmobile instead,” Tim pointed out. “I know we wouldn’t want it to get destroyed by an accidental trip or—”

“I wouldn’t,” Bruce insisted.

Tim shrugged. “The possibility is always there.”

“He’s right,” Dick realized. “Better to minimize our chances. Oracle?”

“I’ll stay here with Red,” she confirmed. “At least, this particular drone will. Don’t worry about him. I’ll keep an eye out for him.”

“Good,” Dick felt better about that. “Let’s get this thing out of here.”

Tim watched them navigate around each other to get the computer out of the office and then he stuck around when they disappeared into the hallway. Oracle’s drone was the only light that kept the room bright. Tim was thankful she was sticking around with him. Even if she had multiple eyes in different places.

“Ready to get started?”

Tim nodded his head and followed through with his words. He began with the office and discovered there was nothing of note. The single computer had been the only object in the room. Asides from the desk. There wasn’t anything else to look into. Not unless one counted the shattered light bulb on the ground. Tim didn’t bother with that. He moved on and explored what he could. He revisited the baby embryo room and rediscovered his disgust.

“What were they even doing here?”

“No clue.”

He lingered in the room for a long time in inspection. There wasn’t a lot of information to go off on sights alone. Maybe the computer would have more to report.

He left the room in favor of investigating other rooms. The offices were easy to get into. He didn’t discover anything there. They were as empty as the other offices, only containing the barest of essentials. He left in favor of other discoveries, pausing when he came across a different hall. It was lined with heavy, thick doors.

He stood there for a second.

“Red?”

Oracle’s voice had him moving forward. He realized many of the doors had viewing windows in them. He looked through one and saw a bare room, but it wasn’t like the offices. There was a bed in this room. A thin, sad looking mattress tucked into the corner. There were white blankets, white pillows, and a discarded tray off at the side. There were also items splayed all over the floor, but the children toys stood out the most.

He felt sick. Worse than before.

“I don’t think I need the computer to figure out what these rooms were for,” he said.

Oracle said nothing.

The longer Tim stared, the sicker he felt. He had to forcibly pulled himself away until he stumbled across yet another door and—

This one belonged to a chaotic looking room with scratches. There were odd splotches of black, large puddles akin to ink. He stared at one particular splotch and something… something about it was familiar. One moment, he was standing outside the room, and then—

“Hi, I’m Tim.”

His mind snapped back into reality, and he stumbled backwards. He'd only taken one peek into the room and yet... what was that? What had he just seen in his mind's eye?

“Red?”

Tim ignored Oracle and braced himself against the opposing wall.

“Red? Is something wrong? Talk to me.”

Tim wasn’t going to tell her what was on his mind because it didn’t make sense.

He hadn’t been here before.

He hadn’t.

Yet he had the faintest sensation that he had been here before.

Chapter Text

Tim sat on the edge of his childhood bed and tried to nurse the headache that had appeared post-mission. Alfred had served him a big glass of water and sent him off to his room. Tim brought the water with him, but it didn’t seem to do anything. It might be something he’d have to take medication for, but he was reluctant to pop any pills right now. It would muddle his mind, and he couldn’t afford that right now.

He had a lot to think about. 

For example: Damian hadn’t been responding to him.

He had called for him multiple times after he’d left the building, and now he was worried something had happened to him. Damian hadn’t been this quiet since Tim had discovered him. It couldn’t mean anything good.

“I should just lay down,” he mumbled to himself.

He didn’t take his own advice.

No. In fact, he did the opposite. He got up and forced himself to leave the room.

He wasn’t sure what to do next. He thought about heading downstairs to check up on Bruce’s progress. Had he extracted all the data out of the computer yet? What had he found? While that would certainly be important to follow up on, he found himself doing something else instead.

“Damian?” He called out to the empty hallway.

No answer.

He traveled further in and called again. “Damian?”

He didn’t give up in the hallway. He tried the same tactic in the library. He then searched the living room and the drawing room. Then he was in the kitchen. He stopped himself before he could call out Damian’s. He was glad he did. Jason was here. 

His brother had knocked himself out at the breakfast bar. He hunched himself over and rested his cheek on the cool marble. The position looked uncomfortable. Tim ached to readjust him. He didn’t, only because he didn’t want to risk waking him. Readjusting him would just rouse him out of a much-needed sleep. That would be cruel.

Tim approached his brother to examine him at a closer angle.

His brother wasn’t just sleeping. He was knocked out cold. His position encouraged a loud snore that had Tim wincing. He hoped his brother would never fall asleep at stakeouts. He’d quickly give away his position by snores alone.

“He needs a blanket,” Tim voiced aloud.

He nearly recoiled when a blanket was pulled out of thin air and thrust out of the ground. The blanket plopped onto the tile and Tim gasped. He grabbed the blanket. Then he threw it to the side. Jason would have to wait. He fell down and pressed his hands against Jason’s shadow. “Damian?”

Jason’s shadow moved a smidge.

“Damian,” Tim pleaded, “get out of there.”

Damian did no such thing, remaining in Jason’s shadow, and then Tim realized that something else must be wrong. Damian must be mad at him.

“Damian,” Tim begged, “you can’t be in my brother’s shadow.”

Jason’s shadow moved as if to huff in disbelief. Tim was in disbelief too. Damian had never done anything like this. Not permanently. Not for this long. Unless it was for Tim specifically.

“Please,” Tim continued, patting down the shadow as if it would do something significant, “you have no idea how worried I was that you’d disappeared. I know we had a disagreement earlier but—” But what? Tim didn’t feel as if he was in the wrong. Yet he didn’t want Damian to draw away from him. He also didn’t want Damian to remain in his brother’s shadow. That sounded like it would spell out future disaster. Perhaps a call from Zatanna.

“You’re my shadow,” Tim insisted. “Nothing will change that.”

Silence.

His words eventually stirred something in Damian because a smidgen of a finger poked out and—

Tim was suddenly capable of fishing his hand deeper into the floor, grabbing hold of a wrist. He pulled Damian out and nearly fell backwards by doing so. Damian was pulled out so roughly that Tim gave his actions a second thought, but it was already too late. Damian crashed into him, and Tim was caught off-balance.

He had no idea why Damian’s proximity gave him such relief and comfort. It was like they were always supposed to be together. The feeling and sensation were frighteningly strong. He’d never felt such a thing before. Not ever. While he was always thankful for Damian’s presence, and he thought Damian was endearing, such a pull was new to him. There was something magnetizing between them. Something that couldn’t be explained.

“There you are,” Tim breathed out as the sensation washed over his body. He was holding onto the missing piece, but why was Damian the missing piece? And why was this even happening to him? He’d been fine the day before. Was it because he’d been worried about Damian? “Don’t scare me like that. I thought something had happened to you.”

Damian attempted to recover himself, but Tim held onto him tight.

Tim molded Damian against his chest and tried to calm himself down. Damian was compliant and didn’t make a hint of noise. Tim was the one who seemed to need Damian more than the other way around. The boy might like snuggling, but it wasn’t he who’d initiated it this time. Tim had. 

Tim can’t remember ever holding onto Damian this tight. Fearful that he might slip away.

“Don’t leave again,” Tim said.

Damian stirred again, emanating clear frustration that didn’t make sense to Tim, and then he melted through Tim’s arms.

Tim was alarmed as Damian merged himself back into the tile.

“Wait,” he began. His hands tried to catch him, to no avail. Damian faded away into darkness. Tim watched helplessly with a thousand questions on his mind. There was something other-worldly happening here. Right now, his headache was the last thing on his mind.

Jason’s words further alarmed him.

“Tim,” he began, “what the hell was that?”

Tim turned around in shock and saw his older brother sitting ramrod straight on his stool.

Tim struggled to find something to say. 

“I can explain.”

Jason stood up from his stool and took a step away from the scene he’d just witnessed. Tim wondered how much of it he’d watched. It shamed him that he’d even ignored the fact that Jason was in the room with them. It slipped his mind once he’d caught Damian in his arms.

“Yeah, that’d be a good start,” Jason said.

Tim pulled himself off the floor and looked down at the shadows that lingered. He knew Damian was still there. He hoped he’d chosen his shadow over Jason’s. He’d be able to keep an eye on him that way.

“Okay,” Tim answered because he lacked anything better to say. “How about we change rooms for this? It’s a long story.”

They did exactly that. Jason agreed to take their discussion to Tim’s room. Tim had locked the door behind him to make sure no one walked in on their conversation, and then he had Jason sit down on his desk chair. He took the bed and explained everything from beginning to end. Jason didn’t interject once. He listened and leaned back in Tim’s chair. Tim felt more uneasy the longer the storytelling went on, and the feeling only increased after the story ended.

“So, you found a strange entity following you around on your missions,” Jason summarized, “and you didn’t think to call anyone that specialized in magic to inspect said entity?”

“No, that's not right. I talked to Raven about him, and Cassie too. Did I leave that part out?”

Jason rested a foot on his knee.

“They think it’s fine having a hitchhiker in your shadow?”

“They were wary about him at first,” Tim admitted, “but they claimed he was harmless."

Jason looked skeptical.

“He’s harmless, ” Tim defended again. 

“Did you just call an eldritch entity harmless?" 

Tim ignored him and turned away from him.

“Come on, Damian, show him that you’re completely safe to be around,” he insisted.

“You gave him a name??”

“I—”

Tim fixed his brows together and thought about it. Yeah. He did give Damian his name.

But that didn’t sound right in his head.

He felt like he’d never given Damian his name, but that couldn’t be true. He remembered picking it out for him. He remembered Damian agreeing to it.

“Yeah,” Tim finally settled after some confusion. “I thought it fit him.”

It’d been the first name that had come to his mind when given the task.

Tim continued to reminisce on the subject until Damian’s form separated from Tim’s shadow and shot across the room. Jason rolled his chair back in surprise, probably because Damian had been so speedy about it, and he was half-standing on his chair while Damian stretched out a lone hand out of the floor.

“What the hell??”

Damian had a water bottle in his hands. The one he’d stolen from Stephanie’s car. It still hadn’t been opened.

“Oh, he’s giving you a gift,” Tim realized.

“A gift?” Jason repeated. “He wants me to take it from him?”

“Yeah,” Tim confirmed.

Jason looked disgusted for a moment and Tim didn’t appreciate that. In fact, he felt a surge of offense on Damian’s behalf. The longer Jason refrained from acting, the stronger his offense was.

“Accept it,” Tim demanded. He realized it had been a forceful command after the fact.

Jason glanced over at him. “No way.”

“Take the bottle Jason.” Oh well. Might as well commit to his conviction. 

“I don’t think so.”

“Take it.”

“No.”

Damian seemed to wilt a little and Tim went papa-bear mode.

“You’re hurting his feelings. Take it before I do and smack you with it.”

Jason fixed a stare on him. “No need to get riled up. I just don’t like accepting things from creatures that look like they’re straight out of a horror movie!”

Tim scowled and yet Jason didn’t want to waver. Damian finally withdrew his hand after a good while, leaving the water bottle behind. Then he pulled out another object. A man’s watch. Tim had no idea where he got that from.

“No thanks,” Jason said.

Damian tried again. He reached back inside his abyssal pocket and held out a ticket of some sort.

“A lifetime of Digiorno pizza?” Jason read aloud. “Uhm—yeah. No. That stuff tastes like soggy frozen bread.”

Oh. Beast Boy would not be happy about that.

Damian didn’t give up. He withdrew once more. Then he offered a leather wallet.

Jason opened his mouth as if to say no but then he closed it and frantically patted his pants.

“Wait a second,” he realized, “that’s mine!”

Damian waved the wallet around, taunting him. 

“Give that back!” Jason finally left his safe place to swipe the wallet away. He failed. Damian sucked it back into the floor before Jason could grab it. Then he popped it out of the wall. Jason took a leap for it but then he smacked his face against the surface. He growled and chased Damian towards the door. He swore under his breath.

“Tim, a little help here!"

Tim smiled and refused to do anything of the sort. Jason looked very displeased indeed.

Damian continued to mess around with him for the next five minutes, never tiring, and Jason tried to outwit him in any way that he could. It was unfortunate that Jason couldn’t melt away like Damian could. Damian was the one with the advantage.

Damian ended their game after he’d taunted Jason enough, tossing the wallet across the room, and Jason snatched out of the air while panting. It was crazy how much energy could be sucked out of someone after running around a enclosed area. 

“I—I hate him,” Jason decided in between gasps of breaths.

Damian climbed out of the shadows and joined Tim on the mattress. He sat next to him with glee. Damian always liked playing tricks on people. This was no different.

“He’s a menace,” Jason decided. “How am I supposed to act like he’s normal?”

It hit Tim, then and there, that Jason was even thinking about the concept of treating Damian like a normal person. He might not really like-like Damian, but he had enough humanity to entertain the idea. That was a good sign.

“Don’t take it personally,” Tim suggested. “He’s like this to everyone.”

“Except you,” Jason observed.

And that was quite the observation.

“Except me,” Tim agreed.

Why is that?

He’d never given it extensive thought before.

Jason ran a hand through his hair and tucked his wallet back into his pants.

“This is going to take some getting used to,” he admitted. “I’m going to need some time coming to terms with the fact that some kind of creature is in my little brother’s shadow, leeching off him like a—erm—leech.”

“He’s not a leech.”

“You should consider getting a third opinion,” Jason said.

“I’m not calling Zatanna,” Tim refused stubbornly. “I already talked to Raven and Cassie. If you want to do your own investigation, just give them a call. I’m sure they wouldn’t mind.”

“They’d hang up on me before I even get to the second ring,” Jason deadpanned.

“Not unless you called from my phone.” Tim dug it out of his pants. He dangled in the air. "What do you say?"

Jason squinted his eyes at the phone. He pretended to think about it deeply before marching over to Tim and snatching his phone out of his hands. 

"Stay here," he commanded. 

Tim held up his hands. 

"I'm not going anywhere," he said.

"And stop smiling," Jason hissed. "This isn't funny."

"I think it's very funny."

Chapter Text

Jason wasn’t 100% convinced even after he got a second opinion.

It was to be expected since their family had a penchant for wariness and persistent doubts. He was reluctant to leave Tim alone with Damian, pacified only a smidge when Tim told him he’d been dealing with this for a while now, but, after a lot of talking, he eventually managed to kick Jason out of his room.

Once Jason was out of the room, Tim used that time to think, and Damian’s rummaging around served as distant background noise. With Jason gone, Damian had no trouble taking proper form. He walked around the room and explored what was available. Distantly, Tim heard him digging through his sock drawers. Then he was messing with desk supplies and playing with an empty waste basket. 

Tim didn’t put all of his focus on what Damian was doing. He was still trying to figure out why Damian left in the first place. He had scolded Damian before, but it’d never driven him away. What had compelled him to follow Jason?

He didn’t want me to go into that building.

Tim plopped onto his bed and stared at the ceiling.

Did he sense something that I missed?

He could ask Damian about it, but that wouldn’t go anywhere. Damian refused to use the hand signs that Tim had taught him, and he was insistent on making noises that had no meaning. He also never caught on to texting. Tim tried to teach him how to use the phone for communication’s sake, but Damian had eaten every single model Tim had given him.

It wasn’t a dangerous mission. I mean, there was a lot of sketchy stuff down there, but we didn’t run into any problems. Why would he be opposed to going in?

Tim rolled onto his side to watch Damian walk around with the waste basket on his head. There were rolled up papers all over the floor. An empty pack of gum was squashed flat against the carpet.

There’s something he knows that I don’t.

Damian bumped into the wall and then lifted the waste basket up a smidge. He corrected himself and turned around. Tim’s eyes trailed after him as he wobbled towards the closet. He extended one arm out as if he were blind.

What is his connection to this investigation? Maybe he’s related to the lab itself?

Tim frowned at the thought.

That couldn’t be right.

Dot-Lab might have tried a taste of meta experimentation, but Damian wasn’t a meta, and Dot-Lab had closed down before they could really learn anything about metas anyways. Then again, what did he really know about Dot-Lab? Why would they have any interest in Bruce’s son? He hadn’t been a meta either.

Or had he?

As Damian tried on one of Tim’s shirts, Tim realized he could find out more if he went downstairs. Then again, who knew how much information that computer stored? Enough to take up weeks of their time? Months? Maybe he was being optimistic by thinking Bruce had already found something.

“Hey, wait a second,” Tim began, pulling himself off his bed, “you can’t wear that!”

Damian looked at him with his nose high up in the air, all full of pride, self-satisfaction, and smugness. He knew exactly what he was doing. He was forcing Tim to get out of bed because he was wearing one of his shirts, and soon, he’d be wearing zero shirts. Already, the shirt was being absorbed into Damian’s body. Once, Tim thought it was just the way of things because Damian was an eldritch creature, and maybe, like Kori, he couldn’t wear normal clothes, but now he was fairly certain Damian just liked to mess around.

“What did I say about taking my clothes?”

Tim tried to pull the shirt off of Damian’s body. Damian chose to fight against him, wrestling in a corporeal form instead of the opposite, and that momentarily surprised him. Damian was fully capable of phasing through people, sinking into the ground, and more. He could think of a dozen instances in which Damian used his abilities to get away.

This time, he was eager to test his strength against Tim’s.

“You little gremlin,” he said as he tugged the shirt over his head.

He probably would have withdrawn it completely if Damian didn’t grab onto it with a death-grip. All of a sudden, they were playing a game of tug-of-war, and maybe Tim would have been amused if the thin material didn’t rip like a piece of paper.

All of a sudden, he was stumbling backwards, and Damian plopped back on the floor with surprise in his body-language. He held the shirt up, examining it with those strange eyes of his. Tim did much the same, except he was staring at the part held in his own hand. He found himself at a loss of words, but that didn’t last long. He opened his mouth, having every intention to complain, but then he saw how small Damian looked, cowed and submissive as if he expected to be abandoned.

Damian meekly approached Tim, after getting up, and handed him the half of the shirt that he was holding.

Tim considered it and inwardly debated on how he was to address this issue. Freaking out wasn’t going to be an option, not when Damian was acting so timidly, and he wasn’t going to hand out a punishment for something that Damian had probably intended to make a game out of. This was an accident. What would the point be in bringing contention?

Tim took a breath.

“It was ugly anyways,” he said with a half-hearted shrug. He tossed the piece he held over his shoulder and pretended to be completely disinterested in its fate. Truth be told, he actually rather liked that shirt. Even if he hadn’t used it often.

Damian seemed to be a little hopeful as Tim grabbed the piece offered to him and did the same thing. Then he placed a hand on Damian’s shoulder and steered him towards the door. “Let’s get out of here. It was getting cooped up anyhow, don’t you think?”

Damian seemed a tad clueless as Tim ushered him into the hallway. He probably would have remained in his corporeal form if footsteps didn’t echo down the hall, the kind that didn’t belong to Tim or anyone Damian knew, so he sunk into the ground at record speed and hid in the closest shadow. Tim’s.

Tim inspected the newcomer and gave him a friendly smile. “Alfred.”

“Master Tim,” Alfred greeted, “I was just about to retrieve you. I’ve made a large dinner and I want everyone available to participate in it.”

“Awesome,” Tim agreed without giving it a second thought. “Is Bruce going to show up?”

That was a trick question. Tim doubted he would be there, but he wanted to hear an update on his adopted father’s condition. Was he still in the cave? Did he find anything?

“I’m afraid he won’t be joining us,” Alfred informed. “He’s engrossed in his research, and for good reason. I’ll be sending food down to him later. To be frank, I wouldn’t even dream of inviting him to leave. I know better than to think he’ll agree, or that he’ll abandon his search when he’s closer than ever before.”

Tim joined Alfred in stride as they headed towards the dining room together. “Can’t blame him,” he said after a moment of reverence.

“Yes,” Alfred sighed, long and drawn out. “I can only hope he’ll find good news. He may not have been the most excited man in the world to learn he was going to be a father, but he never shied away from it either. As time went on, I think he warmed up to the idea. When the babe was born, I know he fell in love the moment he saw him.”

“Really?” Tim had never heard about any of this.

“He’d been prepared for the little lad, but he didn’t think he’d make a great father. He had a lot of grievances with the idea.”

“But he adopted Jason, and he took in Dick, and me too,” Tim pointed out. “What sort of grievances could he have had?”

“He took you all because he has a big heart.” Alfred explained. “Despite what he might claim, he has a soft spot for children. He might not confess it, but he’s a very emotional man. He can’t find it within himself to stand aside when someone is in trouble, no matter the scenario. The baby he had with Lady Talia was different though. He’d suddenly become responsible of bringing someone into this world, his world to be exact. A cruel one, if he’s to be believed.”

“It can’t be that cruel,” Tim thought, but then he grimaced.

The kidnapping. Right. Talk about an insensitive reply.

“Sorry, maybe it’s not my place to say,” Tim immediately backtracked. “Call it a gut feeling, but we’re going to find out what happened to his kid, and then we’ll finally be able to put his mind at rest. Then he can heal. And I mean really heal.”

“I like your positive way of thinking,” Alfred said. “I feel much the same. I know Master Jason likes to think that the young lad is gone for good, but I have the suspicion that—”

“Best not to get your hopes up is why,” Jason snorted as they walked into the dining room. He was playing with a cup of water, tapping the rim, and tilting the cup side to side atop the table. “What are we going to do if the kid’s long gone and buried? It’s going to kill Bruce, that’s what.”

“Now, now,” Alfred said in pacification, “we mustn’t leap to such conclusions. We’ll deal with that when we get there.”

“Don’t try to dismiss it,” Jason said, grabbing his fork to point it lazily in Alfred’s direction, “you know I’ve got a point.”

Dick knocked Jason with his elbow and Jason dropped his fork to rub at the offended spot. His arm.

“Dude,” he complained.

“Stop talking like that, we don’t want Bruce to hear,” Dick hissed. “He’s already killing himself down there, so don’t add more to his plate.” Dick glanced around the table. Cass was present, sitting across from him, and Barbara had showed up too. “Let’s support Bruce with everything we’ve got, alright? He needs us, and he needs this closure. Whatever happens, we’ll be there.”

“Has he found anything?” Tim asked as he pulled out his chair.

“Nothing so far,” Dick admitted. “He’s just getting started. There’s a motherload of information in that thing. It might take him more than a few days just to get through it all. I’m planning on helping him out where I can.”

“With my assistance,” Barbara volunteered herself. “After looking deeper into Christopher Wile’s history, I have some questions I want some answers to.”

“What questions?” Dick asked.

“When Bruce questioned him, he couldn’t seem to remember much of anything about the lab he worked for. All he shared was that he knew something about Bruce’s kid, and that everything he needed to know was documented in the computer. Talk about suspicious, right? He claimed to have only ‘recently’ remembered it.”

“Maybe we don’t know the whole of what Bruce asked him, or how he answered,” Dick suggested.

“Bruce reported the whole interview and put it in the bat-computer,” Barbara said. “Why would he omit anything from his report? He’s not the type to skip out on details.” Barbara gave Jason a pointed look and Jason scoffed and then rolled his eyes at her. “There’s something off about this Wiles guy. It’s not just him either. I looked into some of his co-workers, and they all seem to have a rather large gap in memory.”

Tim felt sick to his stomach.

“Do you think someone tampered with their memories? Is that what you’re saying?” Dick questioned.

“I’m not ruling out the possibility but—”

Tim turned out Barbara’s next words as he recalled exploring the labs and then… that strange moment happened when he saw that room. His head had ached and then he’d heard those phantom voice in his head. His phantom voice. Like a distant memory waiting to come out.

Jason stared at Tim from across the table as Tim came to the revelation that maybe he had more to do with Dot-Labs than he originally thought. This couldn’t be a coincidence. He didn’t believe in such a thing.

“You okay?” Jason asked gruffly. He tried to hide his concern by sounding as grumpy as possible, but Tim could see through his poorly hidden care.

“Yeah,” Tim answered as straightly as he could. “I’m okay.”

Maybe he needed to go back to Dot-Labs.

Or maybe he needed to investigate Christopher Wiles himself.

No, Tim decided, looking down at his carefully prepared food, I need to investigate my own history.

Chapter Text

Tim sorted through his journals after eating and discovered he hadn’t been detailed as a child.

It wasn’t a surprise. Tim might have joined Bruce’s team at a young age, but it took him time to learn recordkeeping. Tim only took up journaling because he had nothing else to do with his time, before Bruce had put him into school, but he wasn’t happy with the results.

Couldn’t you have added more?

Tim tried not to cringe at on particular entry that was in all capitals, raging over something stupid that had really mattered to him at the time, but now it seemed insignificant in reflection.

HOW CAN BRUCE THINK I’M NOT READY? I WAS BORN READY!!!!

It didn’t help that all of his journal entries were small and sparse. Tim might have written in his journal to kill time, but that didn’t mean he’d done it very well.

“Wow,” Tim said as he flipped through more pages, “maybe I should shred these all up.”

Tim didn’t want someone coming across them in the future and then basing his whole life off of these pathetic things. Tim Drake, he imagined, was a child with severe mood swings and nothing ever made him happy.

Not true, Tim thought with a wince. I just never journaled unless I was irritated or bored.

There were a lot of doodles that proved that. Too many doodles. He wished he hadn’t covered almost every blank space with chicken scratch.

Tim tried to shift but then he felt a mass against his back. He twisted his head and remembered there was an eldritch creature curled up against him. Damian had been snoozing for the past five minutes while Tim had been sitting on his bed, running through journals with his fingers, and he’d probably gotten bored after being ignored for twenty minutes.

“Sorry buddy.”

Tim reached backwards and patted his leg.

Looks like I’m going to have to look at the bat-computer logs since this is getting me nowhere. There may be a report or two in there.

He frowned at the thought. If there had been a report worth notice, wouldn’t they have, well, noticed it by now? Something like that would have popped up immediately before they investigated Dot-Labs. Bruce must have searched every bit of information there was to search, but maybe he’d missed something insignificant?

If I want to get my hands on the computer, I’ll have to wait until Bruce is done with it, and that could be a while. How am I going to go about this?

Damian made a sleepy noise and Tim realized something. His hand rested on Damian’s knee.

Damian.

Tim stared at him quietly.

“Hey, kiddo,” he spoke, voice soft. “Sorry, but I need to talk to you. Think you can wake up for me?”

Damian made a stubborn sound before rolling over and throwing Tim’s hand off his knee. Tim was patient and tried again. “Damian, you knew something about Dot-Labs didn’t you?”

Damian froze in place.

“That’s why you tried to stop me, right?”

Damian rolled back over and looked Tim in the eye. It was hard to get a read on him, but Tim knew he had his attention. Tim turned himself around to face Damian properly, and he thought about what he would ask next. Now that he knew Damian had information on Dot-Labs, how was he going to go about pursuing said information? Damian was horrible with phones, and he refused to use sign language.

Damian made the next decision for him, sitting up and opening his mouth wide.

Tim scrambled backwards when something fell out of Damian’s mouth. He gaped at the crumpled-up envelope, but that was nothing compared to the next dozens of envelopes that Damian spat out. They were all trashed and stained. If they weren’t crumbled, they showed signs of having been wet at some point. Some had black spills of ink, but others looked as if they were on the verge of fading into ash.

“What’s this?” Tim couldn’t stop the confusion from slipping out into his voice. “Letters?”

They all were addressed to the same person.

T I M

Tim drew back when he saw his name on the envelopes and his eyes darted back up to Damian.

Damian said nothing. He only watched. Emotionlessly.

“Damian?” Tim’s voice was uncertain. “What—?”

He couldn’t articulate words anymore. A nervous hand reached for one of the envelopes, and then it pulled out the contents. Tim carefully unfolded a wrinkled sheet of copy paper. He stared at the drawing centered in the middle. There was a picture.

Tim’s shoulders slumped.

“Is this a joke?” He asked. It looked as if this was some kind of children’s drawing. Tim wouldn’t put it past Damian to conjure something like this up. He liked to prank, after all. “What’s this anyways? I can’t make it out.”

Damian growled and then snatched the paper away. He stuffed it back into the envelope and he was about to push it back into his mouth until Tim stopped him. “Wait! I—can I see it? Please?”

Damian contemplated his plea, visibly unhappy, but he inevitably relented and handed back the envelope. Tim gave Damian a grateful smile before trying again, this time with a different mindset, one that wasn’t so nervous, but collected and put together. Damian’s reaction had led him to believe this was a clue to the question he’d asked. Maybe there was something in this drawing that had an answer. Upon closer inspection, while poorly drawn, there were two humanoid looking figures standing in the middle of the paper. One was almost impossible to make out, scratched over with black crayon. The other was normal-looking and smiling.

Damian pushed another envelope into Tim’s space and Tim lowered the drawing.

“This one?” Tim questioned after putting the drawing down. “Alright.”

He opened it up and found a similar drawing. Except this one had variations. The two figures remained, but they were sitting together and holding hands.

Tim swallowed a lump down his throat.

Damian’s finger appeared in view and tapped the figure on the left. Then he tapped Tim’s chest.

“Huh?”

Damian did it again and Tim felt sick.

“That’s me?”

Damian nodded and then pointed to the figure at the right. Then he pointed to himself. He waited patiently for Tim to understand what he was implying.

“That… That can’t be right. When did you draw this? Recently?”

Damian huffed and ripped the paper away from Tim’s hands. Then he smashed another envelope into Tim’s grasp.

Tim opened it and saw one figure standing. There was no Damian. Only Tim. And he was smiling. Except there was scratches all over his person with black crayon. Just like the pictures that had Damian included.

What does this mean?

Damian took the picture from him, gently this time, and then he reached into his mouth and pulled out a new envelope. It was perfectly clean and well-kept. Tim was puzzled when Damian handed it to him.

“This one is different,” he noticed.

Tim turned it in his hands and saw a new name.

Damian.

It was written differently.

It was also written in a very familiar handwriting.

“When did I write this?”

Tim didn’t get an answer as his stomach flipped. He pulled the letter out carefully and realized this wasn’t a drawing. It was words. Except they weren’t normal words. Various symbols and shapes stretched across the page. Tim realized he was looking at an encrypted letter. One that he’d written.

One that he didn’t remember.

“This—” Tim lowered the letter to look at Damian. “This is a letter. A letter I wrote to you.”

Damian made a noise as if to say yes.

“Did we know each other before? Did we—Did we go to Dot-Labs together or…?”

Tim felt numb.

Had he been experimented on without even having remembered?

No way. That sort of thing left scars on the body. His body would have showed signs and—Tim closed his eyes and tried to regain his composure.

Damian reached over to pat him on the shoulder in an awkward way, probably because he didn’t know how to do it, but it helped Tim root himself back in the present.

“Looks like I have a code to crack,” Tim said. “If I created it, I should be able to break it down to its most basic components.”

Damian scooted closer to him and thumped his head against Tim’s side.

Tim didn’t think twice about wrapping his arm around Damian’s shoulders.

“So you’ve known who I was this whole time, huh? From the very beginning?”

Damian said nothing to that. Not even a sound.

“And I must have known you too,” Tim reasoned. “Were we friends?”

Damian nudged his head against Tim and Tim cracked a smile.

“Of course we were,” he said. “There’s no way that we weren’t.”

He let silence settle for a while as he thought about this situation. He wondered about a lot of things. First off, why hadn’t Damian approached him with this information before? What had held him back? Secondly, why didn’t he remember Damian? Why did Damian remember him? If everyone’s memories of Dot-Lab was taken away, why weren’t Damian’s missing too?

Which begged another question.

How had Christopher regained his memories?

Tim gave Damian’s shoulders a squeeze and then slipped away from him. He stood up from the bed and sat the letter down on his desk.

“I think we’ll have to pay Christopher a visit after all.”

Damian stretched himself out before agreeing with an inhuman noise and then sinking into the blankets. Literally. He was gone by the time Tim glanced his way again. A humanoid, 2D, shadowy mass was on his bad now. He watched it travel and surge across the floor until it settled in Tim’s shadow.

And the minute it merged with his shadow—hah.

How was he even supposed to describe the sensation that it gave him? It was different than all the other times. It was—it was like he was complete. It’s as if he’d been missing something he hadn’t even known was lost and—how long had he been ignoring this feeling? It was extremely subtle. He’d missed it multiples times until now.

Together, a voice echoed in his head, and he realized that, once again, it was his own.

Together? Tim repeated back. What does that mean?

He contemplated it until a knock on the door broke his train of thought. “Yes?”

“Tim?” Jason called out. “I invited someone over and I think you ought to meet with them.”

“You called someone over?”

Tim opened the door and squinted his eyes at Jason. Jason didn’t look fazed. He only looked pent-up. “They’re in the living room.”

“Who?”

Jason rubbed his right wrist.

Tim pressed his lips together into a straight line. That was nervous body-language.

“Who?” Tim repeated. “I won’t meet them if you don’t tell me.”

“You won’t meet them if I do tell you,” Jason complained.

“I’ll be the judge of that.”

“Just come on, won’t you? It won’t take long.”

Jason dropped both hands and groaned. He tilted his head back as he did. Tim was almost offended. He wasn’t being difficult. Why was Jason acting as if he were an irritating person to talk to? He was just setting boundaries.

“It's Zatanna,” Jason finally admitted.

The atmosphere thinned into a tense string and then snapped.

Tim shut the door in Jason’s face.

Jason pounded on the door. “Dude! It’s just for a couple of minutes! You won’t be wasting your time! She’s just going to check that eldritch creature and make sure he’s not bad mojo!”

“He isn’t bad mojo! I thought Raven explained that to you. Why would you need a second opinion!?”

“Because Raven likes that sort of stuff, so her judgment is questionable.”

Tim leaned his weight back against the door as Jason struggled to twist the knob and open it. Tim locked it before Jason could bust through.

“Tim, she’s not going to do anything rash,” Jason swore. “She’s just going to figure out what Damian is.”

“He’s an eldritch creature. We already know what he is.”

“Eldritch is a vast term,” Jason protested. “He’s probably more than that. Don’t you want to know what he really is?”

Tim hesitated because despite Raven’s observations, she hadn’t really looked into what Damian was, and neither had Cassie.

“And if I did?” Tim began. “If he’s something you don’t like, will you do something to him?”

“Well, if he’s evil, then yeah—”

Tim suddenly decided he wasn’t hesitant anymore and would not be seeing Zatanna.

“Then I’m not going.”

“But Tim!”

“Go away Jason.”

“If I promise we won’t do anything to him, will you consider coming out?”

“I know that any promise you make will be a lie,” Tim said. “You’re just going to do what you want if you think Damian is a threat, and he isn’t.”

“Then prove it,” Jason challenged. “If he really isn’t a threat, this shouldn’t be a problem to begin with.”

Tim swore when Jason started messing with the lock in an attempt to lock-pick it.

Together, the voice repeated in his head. No matter what.

“Let’s go,” Tim spoke to his shadow before leaving the door and reaching for the window.

It was, frankly, hard to believe he was deliberating this, especially since he’d come here to support Bruce, but no way was he going to give up Damian!

He unlatched the window and shook it open. Then he gauged the drop.

“Damian?”

Damian threw an object out of Tim’s shadow and Tim caught it. A grappling hook.

“Thanks buddy.”

When Jason finally got the door open, Tim was gone. He rushed over to the window and saw him propelling down. “Tim! I’m just worried about you! Wouldn’t you be worried if your brother was in trouble!?”

Something emotional was in Jason’s voice. Tim realized this wasn’t just Jason being worried about him. It was a flashback to something else. Another horror that was deciding Jason’s actions in the present.

I bet he really is worried about me, Tim thought to himself after landing on the ground, but with the topic of Bruce’s baby recently, he’s probably not as apathetic as he’s trying to make himself out to be.

“See you later, Jason!”

Tim ran from the premises as Jason shouted out after him. Tim hoped he’d reach the garage before Jason did. That would be unfortunate if Jason beat him to his getaway bike.

Damian made a noise akin to a childish laugh as they raced away. At least someone was having fun.

Chapter Text

Stephanie took a pause after swinging her front door open.

“Tim, not my chip stash,” she whined.

“Should have hidden it better,” Tim said.

Tim stuck his hand into the chip bag for another bite and removed his eyes from the television. Damian wasn’t anywhere to be seen, but that was because he’d melted back into Tim’s shadow. It was almost uncanny how good he was at avoiding people. Regardless, Tim squinted his eyes in Stephanie’s direction, and he stopped before he could pop a chip in his mouth.

“You look…”

Tim wasn’t sure how to finish his sentence without insulting his longtime friend, ex-girlfriend, and comrade in arms. It was like walking on thin ice.

“Like trash? I know.”

Stephanie hung her bag on a hook near the entrance and shut the door behind her. She then kicked off her flats and ran a hand over her head until she reached her ponytail. She tugged off the band and her hair flopped free.

She glanced down at her blouse. It was covered with a giant red splotch.

“Bad date,” she explained before approaching the couch.

Tim sat up so she could plop herself down.

“The waiter splashed wine all over me,” Stephanie stretched out her blouse for inspection. “There was this really annoying kid that was running around. He slammed into the waiter, and the waiter tripped. Then my date blew up on the waiter, and I defended him, and then we started to argue, and then I realized I couldn’t be with someone who loses their temper at a moment’s notice. Or with someone who treats waiters like garbage.”

Stephanie slumped.

“He was cute too. I’m kind of bummed.”

“Well, looks like you made the right choice,” Tim said carefully.

He handed the chip bag over in offering and Stephanie considered it. She stuck her hand in a grabbed a handful. Then she stuffed all of it into her mouth. Her cheeks puffed out like a chipmunk.

“What are you doing here again?” Stephanie questioned him with an inquisitive eye. “Did we have something set up? Did Bruce send you to lecture me? Who’s got a problem with me this time?”

“No,” Tim said, putting the bag to the side, “it’s not anything like that. I just need a place to crash for a while.”

Stephanie reached over him to grab the chip bag and then stuffed her mouth with another handful. As she chewed, she gazed at him thoughtfully. Tim deliberately avoided her gaze in favor of staring at the television. He wanted to act as nonchalant as he could.

“Did you have another disagreement with one of the bats?”

“You could say that.” Tim said, “It was mostly a difference in opinions.”

Jason wasn’t wrong to call in Zatanna to check Damian out. Tim probably would have done the same thing if he were in Jason’s spot, and that was because he’d been trained to double-check everything. It was within every Robin’s bones. No thanks to Batman. They rarely trusted things at first glance. That’s why they had a contingency plan for over twenty scenarios of different disasters.

There isn’t a contingency plan for Damian, Tim thought, but there will be once Jason talks to Bruce.

Tim didn’t think Jason would go blabbing anytime soon, not if he wanted to keep Tim’s confidence, but he knew it’d eventually slip. Bruce wouldn’t be the first to know because he was busy with his son’s disappearance, but he’d find out soon enough once everything was done with. Damian wasn’t going to stay secret for long.

“How’s the case going?” Stephanie’s question was no-nonsense and serious. “I assume it’s related to that,” she expanded. “The whole—” she gestured over Tim, “crashing at my place thing.”

“We’ve made a lot of progress. A lot,” Tim emphasized. “Bruce is looking over some files that might have information on his son. He hasn’t eaten or slept since he found it.” Tim tilted his head back and stared at the ceiling. “We can only hope he doesn’t find anything bad.”

“Yeah. I hope this won’t end in tragedy. I know I’m not on the case, but if he needs anything and no one else can help him out, let me know. Maybe I’ve got something up in this empty noggin’ of mine,” she tapped her head with her knuckles, “that might be worth something.”

Tim’s lips twitched into a smile.

“Even though you’re busy with keeping the city safe? Alfred told me you’ve been doing all the hard work while we’ve been running around like headless chickens.”

“It’s not like I’m the only one,” Stephane pointed out. “Duke, Kate, and Selina are putting in a lot of work too. I’m sure Gotham wouldn’t mind if I stepped away for an hour or two.”

“Selina?”

Tim hadn’t heard about this.

“Yeah, she’s been protecting the majority of Bruce’s territory, and no one even asked her to. Barbara mentioned what was going on and she stepped up without question. I really think she ought to look into a professional career in crime-fighting.”

“That’s not going to happen,” Tim snorted.

“Probably not,” Stephanie agreed, “but people can change.”

“Not diamond-thieving cat-ladies,” Tim said with the shake of his head.

Stephanie rolled her eyes at Tim’s quick dismissal and Tim ignored her in favor of standing up. He stretched out his arms and then grabbed the suit he’d stuffed into her cushions. Her apartment was small, and there weren’t many hiding places for a vigilante costume.

“Tim?”

“It’s nine-fifty,” Tim tilted his head towards the digital clock on Stephanie wall. “I’ve got an interrogation to get to.”

“An interrogation? About Bruce’s kid?”

Tim hesitated and tightened his grip on his costume.

Was he being selfish right now? Pursuing his own investigation instead of keeping it on track? What did Damian have to do with Bruce’s son? What did his potential self-experimentation have in correlation with an unrelated infant?

“No,” Tim admitted, “but it’s something important.”

He only said it that way to make himself feel better about it.

Christopher lived in a modest home with poor security, a loose back-gate, and two lazy dogs that didn’t care to bark. Tim hadn’t accounted for the poodles that might be lounging around on the back-porch, but they didn’t have any intentions on alerting their owner of potential intrusion. It seemed to be the last thing on their mind as they ignored him. Tim wasn’t sure what was wrong with them upon closer inspection, considering that they weren’t leashed, caged, or closed off from the backyard. They’d been so quiet that he’d almost missed them entirely.

O-kay, Tim thought, that’s a little strange, but they could just be mild-mannered.

Tim got into the house through the back with relative ease, popping out his lockpicking kit for a few minutes, and then stuffing it back into his belt. Tim kept his steps near silent as he crept through the house, keeping watch for security measures that he might not be aware of, but it seemed Christopher hadn’t installed anything for detecting intruders.

Tim didn’t peek into any rooms without taking a look around the house first. He wanted a gauge on Christopher’s history, but the house was slim with decorations. The kitchen had nothing of note, save for a pumpkin pie recipe hanging on the fridge. The living room had a couple of magazines on the coffee table, but there was nothing on the walls. The glass case in the hall had a few souvenirs from Germany, but the surrounding area was bare.

After inspecting a few bedrooms, Tim finally found Christopher’s hiding place. He didn’t bother hiding his invasion any longer, making a purposeful sound as he opened the door. He expected to find the man sleeping, but instead he found a room covered with trash and documents. Tim saw the man crouching on the floor, mumbling as if he’d gone mad. He was looking over a specific document, running his eyes down the same sentence over and over again. He didn’t notice Tim. He was too focused.

The man’s only source of light was a lamp on the bedside table. It would explain why he was squinting and holding the paper up close to his face. It wouldn’t explain, however, how he hadn’t noticed Tim’s purposeful crunching steps on paper trash, and why he didn’t look up when Tim stopped next to him.

“Christopher.”

The man didn’t pause in his mumblings. He kept up with his tragic condition.

Tim looked at him for a good long while, his concern increasing, and he realized that, instead of him catching Christopher off-guard, it’d gone the other way around.

Maybe I shouldn’t interrogate this poor man.

“Christopher?” Tim tried again.

The man continued to ignore him, and Tim watched him for a pitiful minute. Then he noticed the dark spots under Christopher’s eyes in addition to his sunken cheeks. This man hadn’t slept in days. His face looked terrible. He didn’t look anything like his pictures or photos.

Tim crouched down to look at the document in Christopher’s hand and realized it wasn’t much of a document. It was a bunch of incomprehensible scribbles, like the drawn-out signature of a doctor increased ten-fold, and the longer Tim looked at it, the more his head hurt, so he decided to look elsewhere. Unfortunately, all the other papers beneath them had the same incomprehensible scribbling, so there wasn’t much information he could absorb at first glance. He’d have to take one of these things home and study it extensively if he wanted even the slightest of clues to its context.

“Christopher,” Tim began, tugging the document gently out of his hand, “you need to go to bed.”

Christopher didn’t stop mumbling as Tim slipped the paper out of his hands and then pulled him upward. After wrapping one of Christopher’s arms around his shoulders, he helped him walk to his bed. Then he sat him down on the edge. After lifting up his legs to get them onto the bed, Tim had to spend more energy than he’d like just laying Christopher down.

“You need to take care of yourself, man,” Tim complained. “It’s not good to treat your body like this. Don’t you have a family to take care of too?”

A family he hadn’t seen any sign of. Tim realized how strange that was the minute it came out of his mouth.

He didn’t make any mention of it, but he had intended to. He only stopped because Christopher paused to crane his neck up. He stared past Tim, wide-eyed and pale faced.

Tim followed his gaze and realized, with some annoyance, that a shadowy figure was walking around the room and eating things.

“Damian,” he hissed.

That name startled Christopher into coherence because he grabbed hold of Tim’s arm tightly. It was as if he were on the verge of death. His fingertips dug into Tim’s flesh.

Damian turned to look at him at that moment. The atmosphere was tense, and the lamp dimmed. Damian’s presence felt more menacing than Tim could ever recall it feeling, and the silence made the situation all the more unpleasant. Christopher’s terrified shivering didn’t make it any better, but Tim supposed it was due to Damian’s unwelcoming appearance. Christopher’s reaction was normal if one were to remember he was an average civilian.

It didn’t explain why Damian felt so dark though.

“Get away from him if you want to keep your life,” Christopher’s eyes were suddenly on Tim’s. “It was a mistake. It was a mistake.”

“What are you on about?”

“He’s here for revenge. He’s here to kill me.”

“Kill you? Why would you think that?”

Christopher completely ignored him this time and directed his words towards Damian. It was as if Tim hadn’t been there to begin with.

“We didn’t know separation would cause you such pain, but we had to because we were going to be exposed, and Mr. Luthor would have killed us if we’d let anything slip. Your playmate sent out a distress signal and we didn’t catch it in time. Don't you understand what that would have done to us?"

Damian began to approach the bed, step by step, slowly, every-so-slightly, with all the time on the world on his side, and Christopher rambled on to keep himself distracted from the inevitable.

“I tried to fix what I did. I found one of my time capsules! I remembered a few things and immediately went about making amends! I’m a changed man! I’m trying! I want to do everything right by you!”

Damian opened his gaping mouth and smoke spilled out of it.

Tim wanted to reach over and clamp his mouth shut. Christopher was still holding onto his arm though, so Tim couldn’t stop Damian with his dramatics.

“I have his time capsule too! I can get it for you! I’ve been looking for it and I think I know where it is!”

Damian closed his mouth and stared blankly at the man.

“It has everything in it.” Christopher sounded more confident in himself. “Everything.”

Tim looked between the two as a silent conversation was held, more-so on Christopher’s side than Damian’s, and then Barabra’s voice decided to ring in his ear with some desperation.

“Red? Where are you?”

“Not now, Oracle,” Tim hissed through gritted teeth. “Damian,” Tim began, “what is he talking about?”

Damian looked over at him and didn’t reply. Tim didn’t know what he expected. Damian wasn’t one to speak to begin with.

“It’s urgent. We need you back at the manor. Now. We found information about B’s kid, but that wasn’t all we found. We found information on y—”

“Not. Now,” Tim interrupted before pulling his comm out of his ear. Then he finally managed to wrench his arm free with a sharp tug. “Christopher. Whatever you’re talking about, I need to know everything. Now.”

Damian agreed by melting into the shadows and then reappearing at Tim’s side. Christopher drew back at the quick shift and made a startled sound in his throat. He looked like a spooked deer. Damian genuinely terrified him. 

“Everyone in Dot-Labs… those that survived had their memories wiped after the experiment was ended. The others—they were eaten. By him.”

“Eaten?”

That didn’t surprise Tim, not knowing what Damian was capable of, but—this was more than just an irredeemable criminal. This was an entire organization. These were people with families and futures.

“Why did he eat them?’

Christopher looked away and gripped his blanket.

“Because we took away his dampener.”

“Dampener?”

“His friend.”

Tim didn't even need a few minutes to connect the dots. His mind did all the connecting for him in the moment Christopher had spoken his words. Tim remembered the letters Damian had shown him the other day, and everything else put itself into place. He'd been in Dot-Labs with Damian. There was no mistaking it now. He'd been connected to Damian from the very beginning. And that connection was far deeper than he anticipated.

He was his so-called 'dampener.' 

Tim narrowed his eyes.

"Tell me everything else you know."

Chapter Text

Christopher was only a little bit put together as he rambled on about how he started out with Dot Labs, using wide gestures with his hands, and frequently readjusting his crumbled-up pajamas. Tim followed after him and his poodles with a grim face. Damian was hard to look at right now, not because Tim believed 100% in the man’s words, but because he knew what Damian was capable of. Because he’d seen it. It was entirely possible that Damian ate a lab’s worth of people, but what was he supposed to think about that? How was he supposed to react? The vigilante in him wanted to do something about it, but Tim had no interest in straining a tight-knit relationship.

“That’s when I discovered the true purpose of our lab—creating metas.”

“What?” Tim regretted letting himself get distracted. His mind had been wandering. Had been, ever since he’d hopped off his motorcycle. They’d driven a long while to reach this place—a patch of land on the outskirts of Gotham. There were no buildings or anything remarkable to be seen. Only sad shrubbery and dead trees. They didn’t look all that much better with a light shined on them.

“I didn’t realize the extent of what we were doing until much later,” Christopher confessed, “but there was one high profile subject that was considered very dangerous to interact with. He could only be contained within his room, and that was because he had no control over his powers. To reign him in, we needed to bond him with something in the physical world. And I mean that quite literally.”

Christopher stopped and pointed at a dead log on the ground.

“There it is.”

Tim pointed his flashlight at the log and saw nothing out of the ordinary. He supposed that Christopher was talking about something he’d either buried or hidden within the log itself.

“What am I looking at exactly?” Tim asked.

Christopher decided that pointing wouldn’t be enough and approached the log. He nudged it a bit with his hand, and when that didn’t do anything, he attempted to wedge his hand underneath it. That also didn't work. He started digging at the ground. “The time capsule. For the dampener.”

“The dampener. The person you bonded with Damian,” Tim realized. “You said he couldn’t control his powers prior to that?”

“He had a hard time creating a corporeal form. He was a mass of shadows before the dampener was introduced. Only then could we begin proper experimentation.”

Tim swallowed as he watched Christopher work. It felt like there was a rock in his throat.

“How did you acquire the dampener?”

Christopher paused briefly.

“Well,” he attempted to recall, “if I remember it correctly, the dampener stumbled upon us.”

“Yeah?”

 “Yes, he broke into our facility, but he was eventually captured.” Christoper frowned in concentration. “I don’t really remember what we did to bond him together with ‘Damian,’ as you call him, but I remember that he almost escaped. I was the one who came across him when he was trying to flee. I couldn’t let him leave with everything he knew.”

“What did you do to him?”

“I took him to my colleagues, and we decided we needed to get rid of him.”

Christopher realized what he’d just said and immediately played it off with a nervous laugh.

“Safely, of course,” he remedied with a stumble.

It sounded like a big fat lie to Tim, and it must have sounded worse to Damian. Damian snarled and stepped loudly on a twig. Christopher flinched visibly.

“Look, I’m the reason they just erased his memories instead of killing him,” Christopher insisted. “I couldn’t handle knowing what I knew. I didn’t want to be responsible for killing someone. I didn’t sign up for any of that. If I’d known what I’d be doing, I never would have joined Dot Labs. I would have done something else.”

Tim realized then that maybe Damian hadn’t senselessly eaten a bunch of people if they’d been willing to kill him from the get-go.

“Once the dampener was removed, they took away the only thing keeping ‘Damian’ collected,” Christopher said. “A scientist pushed him too far and attempted to experiment on the strain of their relationship. That’s when—when—”

“I thought they killed you.”

The voice that Tim heard had him whipping his head around to stare at Damian.

What he’d heard was very clearly a little boy, and it didn’t sound like something from his memories either. He stared at Damian with open bewilderment, but then he furrowed his eyebrows. Had he hallucinated it?

“Damian?”

Damian opened his mouth and nothing comprehensible slipped out.

I couldn’t have just imagined it, Tim thought, I really did hear him just speak now.  

“There it is!”

Christopher squeezed out a crushed time capsule, a plastic tube that was caked with dirt, and it looked as if it were colored brown. Tim realized otherwise when Christopher dusted it off. It used to be green at some point.

“Liquid memories!” Christopher insisted. “You’ll have to find the dampener yourself, but once you locate him, have him drink this up!” Christopher got up and handed Tim the tube. His poodles trotted over to sit on each side of him. “He’ll know more than me, once he gets everything into his system.”

Tim realized he was holding his lost memories in his hands.

He was holding a piece of the puzzle.

“Damian?” Tim asked carefully. “Could you hold this for me?”

Damian agreed without question, grabbing hold of the tube, and then absorbing it into his skin. Tim knew he’d keep it safe.

“Why didn’t you reveal this information to Batman?” Tim asked. It was important information to understand, and he ought to know before there were any partings. “Why did you only give him information on Bruce Wayne’s son?”

Christopher answered without a waver in his voice. It was the most collected Tim had seen him.

“I have a son too.”

It implied everything Tim needed to know. Christopher had a son with his wife, who, despite being absent from the home, must still be involved in his life, and with the birth of a son, Christopher must now comprehend the pain of potentially losing one.

Tim puts a hand on Damian’s shoulder before he can think about it and then he squeezes it.

“Damian is Bruce’s son, isn’t he?”

Christopher’s momentary silence is all he needed to hear. Tim felt breathless and maybe, if he weren’t trying to keep himself on his feet, he would have fallen over. It had to be some kind of cosmic joke. Damian, his shadowy follower, wasn’t actually an eldritch creature, but a real human being. The very human being his father had been searching for as long as Tim had known him.

How the hell am I going to break this to Bruce?

After a few more questions, Damian melted back into shadow and Tim tailed Christopher home. Just to make sure he made it back securely. Then he managed to drive himself back to Stephanie’s, but he had a hard time even reaching her apartment. He had to pause and sit down on the stairs. Just to think.

He did think. He thought a lot before laughing nervously. A hysterical giggle told him enough about his mental state. He needed some sleep. There was no way he was going to process this all in a single night.

“That’s why—” Tim tried to finish an incomplete thought aloud. It was a difficult endeavor. “That’s why I felt connected to you. That’s why—that’s why it feels wrong when you’re gone.”

There was no answer from Damian. Tim knew he was listening though.

“Could you come out? Please.”

Damian didn’t reply immediately, but after a minute of waiting, he must have taken pity on Tim. He rose out of the ground and stood in front of Tim. A few steps below him, but close enough to keep eye-contact.

Tim swallowed.

There was a human underneath all that shadow.

A child.

“Gods, all the things they must have done to you,” Tim whispered hoarsely. “I don’t even want to imagine it. How did you—how did you become like this? How could Raven and Cassie have gotten it wrong?”

Damian stared at him.

“You’re my little brother,” Tim realized.

Damian said nothing, neither confirming nor denying the fact, and Tim wished that he’d say something. Even if it was just one those little noises of his. Tim opened his mouth to say more, to prompt some kind of reaction out of Damian beyond standing there, but then Damian jolted and looked over Tim’s head.

“What the hell did you just call that thing?” Jason asked.

Tim twisted himself around.

Stephanie poked her head out from behind Jason and pressed her lips together. She gave Tim an apologetic look. I didn’t invite him she mouthed. Jason stood imposingly before her, arms crossed, and brows furrowed.

Damian hissed at him, and Tim turned around again to see him melting into the shadow.

“No, no, no,” he pleaded, throwing his arms out to grab him, to keep him from leaving, but Damian melted away before anything could be done. Tim stared out at where Damian had been standing, heartbroken that he’d left so quickly, but his heartbreak turned into irritation when he remembered who’d stolen this moment from him.

“Are we going to talk about that creature we just saw?” Stephanie asked.

“He’s not a creature,” Tim snapped.

“No, he’s just an entity that you were forcibly bonded with,” Jason scowled.

Tim blinked. That took him aback.

“What—?”

“We didn’t find anything on Bruce’s kid, Tim,” Jason said, “but we sure found out a lot of information about you.”

Tim was at a loss of words.

“Come on,” Jason growled, “we’re going back inside Steph’s apartment.”

“Huh—” Tim was dragged off the ground and pulled upward by a hand on his arm. He stumbled up the stairs as Jason tugged him upward. “Jason?”

“You’re always getting yourself into trouble,” Jason lectured. “Why wouldn’t you say anything about your history with Dot Labs? Why didn’t you mention this before we had to pry it out of an old, dead computer?”

“Jason,” Tim attempted once more, “give me a chance to explain.”

“I’ll give you a chance after we get rid of that thing holding onto you.”

“What?” Tim’s heart raced. “Damian?”

“Erm, Jason,” Stephanie began, “maybe you shouldn’t be too hasty."

“Zatanna will let us know,” Jason said, self-assured, and that was when they entered Stephanie’s apartment. Tim was not happy to see Zatanna there. He was not happy at all. No, in fact he was very angry. How could Jason just grab him and drag him all the way to Stephanie’s apartment? How could he make a bunch of assumptions based on half-discovered data?

“You don’t know anything,” Tim snapped, slapping Jason’s hand away after a sharp tug, “and if you did, you wouldn’t be doing what you are now.”

“I know enough to figure out that you don’t have a choice in this ‘relationship’ of yours,” Jason snarled. “We’re going to get that thing out of you, and we’re going to make sure it doesn’t stick to you again.”

Tim was infuriated. He stepped into Jason’s space and glared at him. Jason might be taller than him, but Tim wasn’t intimidated in the slightest. He could take Jason on. And he would if he had to. He’d take down every person in this place. The mere idea made of having Damian removed made him vengeful.

“Whatever you found out on that computer, that’s only half the story,” Tim said with a venomous tone to his voice. “Damian isn’t whatever you think he is. He isn’t a—a—a parasite,” Tim spat that last part out as if it were poison. “He’s a living creature. He’s a human.”

Jason opened his mouth as if to retort but then he closed it. He seemed surprised. Only shortly. He was still defensive. He narrowed his eyes again and then challenged Tim. “Is that what it wants you to think? That it’s a human? After having it meshed into your very being without your say?”

“What makes you think I didn’t have any say?”

“The files, Tim! If you’d seen them, you’d question everything too! Why didn’t you say anything?”

“If anything, I did have a say,” Tim shouted. “Why wouldn’t I? It gave my brother a form!”

“Your brother—?” Jason laughed coldly. “What—”

Stephanie’s eyes darted between the two and then she gasped. “Tim?”

Stephanie might have connected the dots, but it was taking the emotionally driven dunderhead much longer, considering the fact that he was still arguing with Tim, but Zatanna, ever the peacemaker, forced herself between the two and pushed them apart.

“Hold on,” she said, keeping a hand pressed to both men’s chest, “how about we hear Tim out before we do anything else?”

Tim might not remember anything about his time in Dot Labs, so he doubted he could say much upon the subject, even if Jason believed he retained memories of it, but he did know what Christopher had told him. He could share what had already been shared with him.

“It’s Damian, Jason,” Tim said, voice strained with negative emotion, “he’s Bruce’s missing son.”

Jason looked hot-angry in the face.

“That’s impossible.”

“It’s not,” Tim said.

“You told me it’s an eldritch creature.”

“That’s what I thought, but I was wrong. I have amnesia Jason. I don’t remember anything that happened in Dot-Labs, but after doing some investigating of my own, it’s all very clear to me now. I didn’t go into Dot-Labs just for the hell of it. I went because I was looking for someone, someone very important to our family.”

Jason was not ready for whatever Tim was saying to him because he looked visibly upset. This was just as a sore subject to him as it was to Bruce.

“Damian isn’t an eldritch creature. He’s a human,” Tim insisted. “He’s Damian Wayne.”

“Is that what he wants you to believe?” Jason asked.

Tim almost groaned at how stubborn Jason was being, but then Zatanna mumbled something under her breath and surprised all of them. Damian was the most astonished, ejected out of Tim’s shadow without his consent, and he whirled around like a criminal on trial. As he attempted to crawl his way back into Tim’s shadow, he was blocked off by an invisible barrier. Distressed, he twisted and snarled at Zatanna.

Zatanna ignored him and reached out abruptly. She grabbed his arm and—

And shadow crept away for flesh.

Damian attempted to snatch his arm away as an entire arm was revealed, stopping only at his shoulder. Zatanna pressed her brows together as she focused, but the shadow didn’t creep away any further. Tim wanted to smack her hand away for handling Damian so roughly, feeling an inhuman urge to protect him, but his eyes couldn’t move away from Damian’s skin.

Damian wrangled himself around, but Zatanna was having an easy time of keeping him above ground.

“Looks like you have the right of it, Tim,” Zatanna said. “There’s a human underneath there.”

“How are you doing that?” Tim asked. “How did you make his arm appear like that?”

“Magic,” she deadpanned.

Jason seemed to have the strongest reaction, backing up to collapse against the wall, holding a horrified hand over his mouth, and Stephanie looked like she wanted to escape the room entirely. She was sick in the face.

“He—He’s really—?” Jason’s muffled voice wasn’t difficult to understand.

“Could you stop holding onto him so hard?” Tim snapped. “Let him go.”

Zatanna held her hands up in the air in surrender, releasing Damian, and Damian instantly attempted to leap back into Tim’s shadow, but he couldn’t. After several failed attempts, he scrambled to press himself into Tim’s side. Tim automatically wrapped an arm around him and squeezed him in. There were only enemies here.

“I don’t know if he really is Bruce’s son,” Zatanna began, eyeing Tim with interest, “but he’s not a monster or an evil entity.”

“Of course he isn’t,” Tim said with another snap, “is it that hard to believe me from the get-go? I’m a detective for crying out loud. Do you think I just came across this situation by circumstance? No. I deliberately sought it out. Damian is the baby we’ve been looking for, and he was experimented on, just like me.”

“Tim,” Stephanie said, sitting herself down onto the couch to collect herself, “are you being for real right now?"

Tim didn’t want to sit down himself, far too intent on keeping Damian in his side, but that didn’t mean he was incapable of providing context.

"Yes,” he said, maintaining only a little bit of cordiality because he was talking to Stephanie, “I am."

Chapter Text

A rescue mission gone wrong.

When Tim had first met Damian, the Teen Titans had been separated into various puzzle rooms. A villain nicknamed Key-Keeper, who must have been a fan of The Riddler, had trapped the Teen Titans into groups of two, but Tim might as well have been a solo-act. Beast Boy had been knocked out by a nasty blow to the head, the kind that’d usually involve a trip to the hospital, but unfortunately Tim wasn’t in the position to do any transporting. He was busy fending off flying drones who were trying to eliminate Beast Boy altogether.

“You really are running out of time, you know,” Key-Keeper had said over the speakers hooked up in the ceiling, “and at this rate the floor really is going to drop underneath you! How are you going to find a way out?”

Tim had been trying to figure that part out. Key-Keeper claimed the room was a puzzle to be solved, and that it wasn’t solved in a specific amount of time, the floor would literally drop underneath them into a bed of metal spikes. However, he wasn’t sure what there was to be solved because they were in a white room with no windows, doors, or vents. The only openings he had seen were minuscule, temporarily opened compartments for the drones. They closed as quickly as the drones came out, and they certainly weren’t big enough for him to fit through. Now, if Beast Boy was awake on the other hand, he could turn into a mouse, a spider, or something along those lines. Anything small and quick. Unfortunately, Beast Boy was knocked out cold, and Tim was left to pick up the pieces.

I’m running out of time.

Tim knew they had minutes left but it felt like seconds. His mind was racing for an answer. A solution. He was a detective, damn it, so why couldn’t he think of what needed to be done?

Unless this isn’t a puzzle at all and Key-Keeper is lying.

Tim knocked his brain for something, anything, fighting every drone off with his bo-staff, but time ticked without his say.

It wasn’t long before the promised result occurred. Tim had been ready for it though. Tim swept up Beast Boy into his arms, shot his bo-staff out, and stabbed it into the near-disappearing hole of a drone entrance.

It wasn’t the save he thought it would. As the floor opened to reveal the spikes beneath, the staff snapped in half like a toothpick (to add insult to injury) and he fell. Fishing for his grappling hook, Tim realized there wasn’t exactly anything to hook, which is why he’d used to bo-staff to begin with, but that meant—

“Beast Boy,” he yelped, “would be really nice if you woke up now!”

Tim could see his life flash before his eyes as panic raced through him. It wasn’t like him to be caught off-guard, to be unprepared, and yet here he was. Plummeting to his death with Beast Boy, his friend who he’d failed. He thought about a lot of things in that short moment. He thought about his family, he thought about his friends. He thought about the people he’d met in the past, those who’d assisted in his training. Then he thought about—

Damian.

His adopted father would have to add another tragedy to the family list.

With that very thought, something peculiar had occurred. White instantly was enveloped in darkness. The whole room was shadowed over, or rather, Tim’s perception of the room was obscured. There wasn’t even a room, on reflection. Just darkness. The abyss. He’d been swallowed whole by a never-ending shadow. It’d consumed any piece of light previously present in their environment. He might have as well been blind. Except the blindness didn’t last for long.

Because next thing he knew, he was on concrete. Outside the building.

“What?”

Tim had no idea what to think of it. What to register. One moment, he’d been in a white room falling to his death. The next, he was sitting outside. Next to Beast Boy’s unconscious body.

“I—I wasn’t here before—?” Tim shot up to his feet with a stumble. He reached for his bo-staff, only to remember it was snapped in half, and that he’d dropped the rest of it into the death pit.

He spun around to figure out what was going on. To wrap his mind around the situation. Perhaps Key-Keeper hadn’t been telling the whole truth. Maybe there’d been more to the floor opening. Maybe it’d been an illusion. He dealt with those before.

Valid thoughts, all things considered. Until his shadow seemed to stretch across the street. It reflected his own figure, except it was moving on its own, holding a hand up unlike himself. It then seemed to push something through the brick wall—an object manifesting into reality.

A bo-staff.

A fixed one.

Tim said nothing, only because he lacked any words. The bo-staff plopped down on the sidewalk. Then the shadow shrunk back to normal size, as if nothing had ever happened.

He’d been left contemplating that encounter for days before ever catching glimpse of Damian’s true form.

And now—

Tim gazes at Damian’s arm. Corporeal. Flesh. He holds it in his hand with a gentle yet firm grip.

Damian was upset. More than upset. The shape of his body was wobbling. Forming different shapes. Trying to turn into something that could melt back into the ground. But his arm was preventing him from doing so. At some point Damian had even turned into a pile of goop. Yet his arm stuck out like some sort of horror movie.

“What did you even do to him?” Tim asked.

“Well, I attempted to sever the connection you two had,” Zatanna admitted.

Tim didn’t know what to say.

What was he supposed to say to that?

Oh, I’m sure I can think of a few words, he thought as anger crept up his throat.

“You—you tried to sever our connection? Do you have any idea how that might have hurt Damian? He—He’s only able to take shape because we’re connected.” Tim paused. Wait a second. Damian was uncontrollable without someone dampening his powers. That’s what Christoper had said. So why—why had the only side-effect to Zatanna attempting to reverse it reveal a human arm?

I need more answers.

Tim looked around defensively and noticed the two others in the room with them. Jason was slumped on the couch with an unreadable look on his face. If one were to ask Tim what Jason was feeling, he’d assume he was replaying everything in his head. Analyzing everything. Investigating, like the whole family was taught to do. Stephanie, on the other hand, had more emotion on her face. Her skin had turned pale, and she’d been hugging herself. She looked sick.

“Damian, I need you to give me that vial I gave you earlier,” Tim said.

He turned back to look at him. Damian tugged his arm out of Tim’s hand and, without question, spawned a vial out of his other palm. The shadowed one.

“Thanks,” he said, patting Damian once on the head. “It’s going to be alright. I’m going to remember everything and then there’ll be no more questions. No more wondering.”

“Tim? What’s that?” Stephanie asked. “Are you going to drink something that—that um—kid spawned out of his hand?”

“Don’t try to stop me,” he returned coldly. He was sick of everyone right now.

“Well I—I’m not trying to frustrate you but maybe we should examine it before—”

Tim opened his mouth to retort but his older brother, Jason, surprised him. The last thing he expected from Jason was to defend what he was doing, especially with the huge fight he’d been putting up earlier.

“Let him be,” Jason said, standing up only to press a hand up against Stephanie’s arm. “If that—if that really is Damian and—” Jason looked at Damian’s exposed arm, “if Tim’s right about all this, then he knows what he’s doing.”

Tim stared at Jason, only because he wasn’t sure to make of the man switching sides, but he seemed genuine.

Perhaps it’s finally sinking in for him.

There was a flicker behind his eyes. Something quieter and calmer than the protective fury that had overtaken him earlier. Jason knew he’d been in the wrong.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen to me after I drink this,” Tim admitted, “but I do know one thing. It’ll give me my memories back.”

Jason’s jaw tightened, a message that meant he wasn’t too happy about what Tim said, but he was willing to hold himself back. Stephanie hugged herself harder and pressed her lips together nervously. Zatanna crossed her arms.

“So,” Tim said, a little awkwardly, “bottoms up.”

Tim wasn’t sure what to expect once he drank everything up. Usually, a thing of this sort would cause someone to black out, or to shake uncontrollably. Right? Maybe he was going to feel like his veins were on fire—maybe his heart would skip out of control.

But… that’s not what happened.

He drank the whole thing.

And then he remembered.

He remembered everything.

One moment, he had a huge gap in his life that he hadn’t even known he was missing. The next, it all set into place as if it had never left. His memories didn’t flood in. They didn’t rush into his mind like a river. They were just there, for lack of better terms. Back where they belonged.

“So?” Zatanna questioned.

“I had found a clue about his whereabouts," Tim realized aloud.

“What?” Stepahnie asked.

“Damian. I found a clue when I was Robin. I wanted to make sure it was legit before I brought it to Bruce, but then I ended up scouting a strange facility. Dot-Labs. I found several security weaknesses but then—” Tim looked down at Damian. “Damian. He wasn’t always like this. When I first met him, he didn’t even have a form. He was a stretch of dark mass. He was pure shadow. He had zero control over himself.”

“So, he’s really--?” Jason asked, hopefully.

“They had tried to turn him into a meta, but something failed. He couldn’t keep himself whole. I was keeping up with their research, eavesdropping for several days until I finally confirmed it was Damian. I then attempted to hack into their systems but—they caught me. They… they needed someone to help Damian be semi-normal.”

“What?” Jason sounded distressed. “You were kidnapped?”

“I—yeah.” How else was he supposed to put it? “But not at first. I spent many weeks scouting the facility and… and I’d met Damian before I was kidnapped. It was only until after I was kidnapped that he started looking human.”

Tim’s eyebrows dug downward.

“Actually, he’d been ‘human’ for a while after that, but I don’t know what really happened after they took us apart. I only remember having my memories extracted and then getting knocked out. So… I don’t really know why he’s the way he looks now.”

Damian should have looked like a little boy instead of a shadow pretending to be one.

“Well, since you two were connected, it’s only natural to assume that your separation causes somewhat of a reversion,” Zatanna reasoned, “although that wouldn’t explain why he hasn’t been able to turn back into a human after reuniting with you.”

“I don’t know either,” Tim admitted, “but what I do know is that this is Damian. It’s non-negotiable.”

“Matches up, a little bit, with what we found on the batcomputer,” Jason said. “But they never referred to him as Damian. They referred to him as the entity, and they said he was responsible for eating researchers in the past. And that they’d forcibly bonded him with you. They explained it as… as him eating off you. So could you blame me for freaking out about it?”

“Eating off me?”

“Yeah like—he was taking energy from you.”

“Energy.” Tim tried the word on his tongue and then it hit him. Right. This bond had neutralized Damian. Made it easier for him to be normal. “We had this… this sort of ritual between us. A thing we used to do.”

Tim gently wrapped his fingers around Damian’s wrist. Damian had been silent the whole time, but he’d been watching everyone’s body-language intently. Tim was what grabbed his attention away.

“If I hadn’t forgotten then—”

Damian wouldn’t have been the shadowy mass he’d known him as.

Tim released Damian’s wrist, dug into his pants, and then unsheathed the hidden knife hooked to his waist.

“But they have one thing wrong, Damian wasn’t taking energy from me.”

Tim held out his hand and sliced his palm. Stephanie gasped and Jason lurched forward. Zatanna dropped her arms and stretched her hand over as if to grab him. Tim’s look is the only thing that stopped her.

“I was taking energy from Damian.”

The open wound was held forward and Damian didn’t have to do anything. He stood there, a form amongst swirling shadow. The darkness sprouted out of him like tentacles. A scene that’d scare the daylight out of anyone. This was something one would conjure up in a nightmare, but Tim wasn’t afraid. He’d seen this many times before.

Sharp shadow, pointed at the tip to fit into Tim’s wound, slithered into his body. It was a slow process because there was so much of it, but Tim could see the form in the middle of the shadowed fury. Green eyes glowing in the dark. Radium.

Then it was all gone. The last bit slipped into Tim’s hand and there the boy stood.

Like a ghost that wasn’t supposed to be here.

“Damian?”

Tim fell to his knees and reached out. He tried to steady his hands, but they were shaking for some reason.

In front of him, there was a boy. A boy with black hair. Green eyes. A face shaped like his father’s. The frown on his lips was recognizable too. It was signature even.

Damian scowled.

“Idiot.”

Tim didn’t expect the jab to the stomach.

“Woah, woah, woah, hold on now,” Tim wheezed. He held out a hand to stop his brother, Jason, from coming any closer to his defense. “Is that how you treat someone you love?”

“You’re always, always, trying to get yourself killed,” Damian hissed as he jabbed him again. Tim wheezed once more and realized this wasn’t going to be a tender moment like he thought. “Do you know how many times I’ve had to pull you out of trouble? How many times I had to save your sorry butt? And how were you supposed to return my letters when you were caught—stupid butt face.”

“Letters,” recognition flashed over Tim’s eyes, “right I was slipping letters into your room and that’s how they found me. It wasn't just the hacking. It was the letters too.”

Damian tried to jab him again, but Tim caught his wrist.

“Hey, no hitting,” he scolded.

Damian gritted his teeth and struggled against Tim’s strength.

“No hitting,” Tim said, sternly.

Damian threw out his other arm and nearly smacked him, but Tim grabbed that one two. Then Damian continued struggling against Tim’s strength and—

And there were fat tears rolling down his face.

“Hey, c’mon now, it all worked out in the end,” Tim said, voice lowering into a soft tone. “You’re here now, aren’t you?”

Damian frowned deeply.

“They took you away from me.”

“Yeah.”

“I ate all of them.”

“I know.”

“You said—in one of your letters you told me I was your brother.” Damian looked up, strength slipping away from his muscles. “You really did mean it.”

“Yeah.”

Damian stared at him, possibly because he wasn’t sure what else to say, but Tim gave him an asymmetrical smile. The kind that tugged on the right corner.

“You look just like your dad,” he said.

Damian didn’t seem to like that judging by his facial features, but Tim would have to touch on the subject later. For now, there was some emotional catching up to do. He released both Damian’s arms.

Then a fierce hug was to be had. He pulled Damian in, and he didn’t let go.

“Damian,” his voice wobbled, betraying how collected he was attempting to be, “you’re never going to be alone ever again.”

Damian was stiff in his arms even though he was no stranger to Tim’s affection, but this seemed different for some reason. He felt more exposed like this. More vulnerable, in Tim’s opinion.

But that didn’t stop him from melting.

And it didn’t stop Tim from weeping.