Archive of Our Own ^beta

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Tim had made a joke about a case he and Helena had worked together that Dick had responded to with a quip about Azrael as Batman that must have sounded nonsensical to anyone else listening, which had somehow led to the two of them trying to explain to Damian (who just seemed more incredulous with every word they said) the complex shifting interpersonal dynamics of the extended web of vigilantes and morally grey crimefighters of all types that made up the "batfamily" over the years between Tim becoming Robin and Damian himself coming to Gotham.

"So did anyone involved actually like each other?" was all he asked when the explanation trailed off.

Tim and Dick exchanged a look because that really hadn't occurred to them as mattering much: liking each other was so... mundane and unimportant compared to the inescapable web of ideologies and old traumas and sense of responsibility that bound them all together like a blanket and a noose all at once.

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Dick finds him after just under an hour (and Tim is fairly certain he could have found him in half that time, so he must have been giving him space) but Tim was never really hiding from Dick, anyway; just from the rest of the world.

"Hey, little brother," Dick says, his voice soft and calm as he sits down next to Tim in the rafters, "I know you're capable, and I know how hard it is, but please let us—let me —help."

Tim doesn't answer for a long time, doesn't do more than lean into his brother's warm, strong presence, but just sits and thinks about his dad, about Stephanie, about Bart, about Kon, about everyone he's lost over the too-short and too-long last year, about everyone and everything Dick has lost... and he nods into Dick's shoulder, letting his full weight fall onto him as his brother wraps an arm around him and starts to softly hum.

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Sometimes, Bruce really regretted the life choices that had brought him to this point. "This point" being standing in the middle of a ballroom, holding his n-th glass of champagne (which he'd either have to drink, spill, or discreetly dispose of soon) and cheerily chatting with a journalist (who was either trying to seduce him or poison him), while his boys obviously (way too obviously) plotted their next attempt to get him to, in their words "break character," which Bruce called "letting the exasperation show through the cheerful idiot mask." The biggest problem was that in exactly the same way that Dick and Tim were currently trying to get him to break, Nightwing and Robin had been trying to get him to smile while in the cowl last night, and worst of all Barbara had gotten it all on camera and was never going to let him live this down.

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"Okay," Tim ducked behind the reception desk as he activated his comm, "nobody likes me; what now?"

"Good work, Robin," came Oracle's distorted voice, "now you need to very obviously make your way to warehouse H6 by the docks while looking like you're trying to be subtle."

"So don't be subtle, but look like I'm trying to be, while my horde of new enemies chases me thinking I'm some new kid from a rival gang... sounds like a Tuesday; make sure Nightwing saves me some pizza!" and then Tim had to run before O could reply, because his new friends were catching up to him.

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Bruce heard his oldest son yelp sharply from the other room and let out a long sigh; the last few days had been extremely trying, since one of his sons had been turned into a tiny kitten—and it wasn't the son that had just yelped.

"I was just trying to feed him," Dick pouted when Bruce finally made his way to them, somehow cradling both his injured hand and his temporarily-feline brother, "but he bit me!"

"Your brother is trying to sleep, Dick, and Tim doesn't appreciate being woken up when he's human, so why would you think he'd react any better as a kitten" — the aforementioned kitten growled — "small cat?"

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Nightwing touches down on the rooftop where Robin has paused his solo patrol for a quick snack and to choose where to go next. Robin dodges the obviously telegraphed strike and blocks the untelegraphed kick that follows and lets himself fall into the familiar and soothing rhythm of sparring with his brother.

"I'm not actually okay," he says a few minutes later, once they've finished sparring and are both preparing to continue their patrols, and it's a single quiet moment before his brother responds—"me neither"—and then they're off to continue the never-ending work of trying to save their city.

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"It'll pass," Tim says, his voice so calm and quiet that Dick doesn't realize what he's said for a moment, but when he does realize he rolls over to prop himself up on his arm and look down on his little brother—his little brother who has just dismissed Dick's all-consuming love for him as some temporary, fleeting fancy.

"I know it won't," Dick says, carefully but surely, as Tim continues to stare up at Dick's bedroom ceiling, refusing to meet Dick's eyes, "your love for me hasn't passed."

"It never does," Tim replies as though Dick has proved his point, and after a moment to parse that he pulls his brother close and lets him bury his face in Dick's neck while Dick plans how to prove to him that Dick will never stop loving him (because he knows Tim will not believe his words) and silently curses everyone who has ever let his baby brother think he can't be loved.

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Tim throws his head back and laughs , bright and open and not at all pretty, and Dick thinks he could live in this moment forever. There isn't actually sun haloing Tim in a golden glow, but it would fit, and Dick's mind keeps editing it in because with his messy hair and rumpled clothes and eyes showing signs of nights spent crying rather than sleeping, Tim is the most beautiful thing he's ever seen. His little brother is happy right now, genuinely happy after so long with barely a polite smile, and he's happy because Dick said something that made him that way, gave them this one perfect moment in a year (more) that beat them down over and over, gave them this one perfect moment that Dick would stretch out forever if it were in his power.

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Dick was pretty sure this was a bad idea—he was pretty sure that if Tim were here he'd be giving both Dick and Helena that 'are you crazy' and 'how have you survived this long' look that made Dick want to smack him—but Tim wasn't here to tell them how terrible of an idea this was, so here they were: Dick trying to get his dress shirt to sit right over the light armor and Helena fighting the laces of her kevlar-lined dress, getting ready to go out pretending to be newly-weds and hopefully attract the attention of the serial killer targeting newly-weds so they could take him down.

All of that was pretty standard, but where the really bad idea came in and what Tim would have been disapproving of, was that Dick had brought Helena into this mission to go undercover with him when basically anyone else would have been a better idea (he and Donna would have had a fun evening, or he was sure Babs could have called any number of heroes to help). Because whatever it was Dick and Helena had going on (that made Tim make faces and Babs give them looks), it wasn't healthy (not when it was about so much more than each other that it was barely about them anymore) and it was dangerously easy to fall into, proven by the way that after they left the serial killer for the police to find, Dick found himself pressed against the wall a few alleys down, knowing even as he let himself fall into this how bad of an idea it was and aware every second that this would only make things harder.

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So, Tim is pretty sure he's been spending too much time with Dick and his "little brother" and "our dad" because Tim is telling a story to some of his friends at lunch, featuring a highly-edited version of a prank he and Dick had played on Bruce the last week on patrol, when his friends start looking confused rather than amused. Tim quickly thinks back over his last few sentences, trying to find where he'd used a name they wouldn't know rather than a generic term, before realizing that his translations hadn't failed so much as his tongue had slipped. Because it turns out that for people who know him (and have met his dad and Dana and know he's an only child), "Dick and I teamed up with Babs to prank Bruce and we managed to get it on camera" doesn't get any less confusing when translated to "my brother and I teamed up with a friend of ours to prank our dad and we managed to get it on camera."

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Both of their lives have fallen to pieces in the last year—fallen to death and fire and hubris and hate and hurt—and they're hurting, all of them, but they're also still here; Dick and Tim (and Bruce, though he's off meditating in a cave) are still up and moving and living . And Dick... Dick isn't always confident he deserves to have lived, deserves to be on vacation with his family when there are so many things he's gotten wrong over the last year (over the last lifetime), but deep down he is glad to be here, not least because his little brother deserves all the support he can get.

"I would do... almost anything for you," Dick tells Tim, pushing his hair out of his face to better watch the younger boy, and then, at once uncertain and fully certain: "you know that, right?" and Tim stares back, nodding slightly, letting the moment linger.

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Over the last few years, Tim and Bruce had developed a habit of emailing each other updates on a weekly basis—case updates, life updates, injury updates, schedule updates—as a way of facilitating communication; it wasn't that they didn't communicate, they were actually fairly effective communicators on most topics, but they each had a habit of skipping what they considered the obvious parts of a conversation or of plotting out a conversation in their heads and never actually having it out loud, so the emails provided a good summary to make sure they were on the same page.

Tim knew Bruce was dead, okay, it wasn't like he was in denial or didn't understand that killed=dead=gone. But when he sat down to answer Bruce's weekly email and there wasn't one there, it hit him all over again with shocking clarity: his dad was dead.

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She wanted something to truly believe in, something to aspire to, something she could devote herself to, some heaven she could aim for, could climb the ladders to the sky and then let go and let herself fall into. When she was younger, she hadn't known anything but what her father had shown her—and maybe that simple hate and violence was something other people could live in and love and aspire to, but not Cass, never Cass—and then she'd left him and all she'd known was the wanting and the searching and the longing.

But now... something was coming together: she could see some ladder stretching out above her with paths to choose and hands to help her lift herself up—hands attached to people and faces (violent-bright hair and soft-clever-sharp eyes high in a tower with words flowing off her tongue and both power and gentle-love from her hands; two boys who fly like they're born to, white-out eyes and bodies that know violence but choose to be soft, offer her hands and wings and feathers to fly and brother-love to carry her home; purple and yellow and smiles and laughter and joy and friendship; dark billowing cape full of pain and hope and anger and soft-love and fierce-protective) who give her a reason to keep looking and the pieces to begin to answer her questions—and she's found a symbol she can fight under and a philosophy she can make her own and as she flies her way up the ladder, she thinks that maybe, just maybe, she could let herself fall from this ladder and into this heaven and not try to control the fall.

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The first time Tim calls Bruce 'dad' they're undercover and it's years before adoption is even a topic: it was all planned out beforehand, and Bruce had told Tim (clumsy, but earnest) that if it would make him uncomfortable they would find another cover—that it would be better, even, for them to find something that wasn't uncomfortable—but Tim had said he would be fine, and he wasn't lying, not in that moment, but when he tugs harshly on Bruce's sleeve, rolling his eyes and whining out "daaaad!" it jolts something deep inside him, something that knocks the rest of the breath out of him when Bruce's response is a warm hand on the back of his neck and a chuckled "son" (but Tim locks that all away in a box deep in his mind and successfully forgets about it for years and years).

It's not the second time—there have been covers and jokes and other parts to play both together and seperately—but it is important because it is the first time that Tim says "dad" to Bruce's face and neither of them are playing any parts but their own: it's late (or maybe early) and everyone else has gone to bed, leaving Tim and Bruce alone on the couch in the study, and they actually talk—for hours longer than they should—until the sky is starting to lighten and Tim has fallen most of the way asleep against Bruce. Bruce, who has so rarely gotten the chance to carry his children to bed when they weren't recovering from being shot or getting the plague, scoops up his son, and his son who barely trusts anyone anymore just nestles further into his hold, and Bruce can't look away from him, not when he's climbing the stairs, not when he's fumbling with the doorhandle, and definitely not when Tim blinks slowly and looks directly at him, eyes still hazy with sleep but clear and present, and murmurs "'night, dad" and Bruce... Bruce pulls up a chair and watches his son sleep until the sun has well and truly risen.

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"I am not on a crusade , and I think that might be the meanest thing you've ever said to me, little brother; this is a betrayal of the highest order and even worse coming from you, my beloved Robin!" Dick actually sounded somewhat betrayed, and while there was some of the played up drama in his voice, there was genuine shock in his eyes.

"What's wrong with a crusade," Steph wondered out loud, "like, I know the historical crusades were kinda bad and all, but why are you acting like the idea of a crusade is a personal offense to you?"

"Tim knows exactly what he said," Dick said, voice higher than normal and sounding like he might start hyperventilating, "and he knows how much that... that... Azrael offends me!" he yelled, and Steph decided that was probably enough for her, especially since it didn't seem like she was going to get any real answers out of them, not with Dick ranting and pacing and Tim holding his stomach laughing.

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This is not who I want to be Cassandra thinks, the taste of blood still in the air, her own small hands sticky with it, and so she decides to leave, to choose braving the unknown over staying with what she knows and knows she does not like.

This is not who I want to be Cassandra thinks, alone in a cold alley, alone as she has been for almost ten years, alone in a city that shook and fell and emptied and screamed with pain and still did not die, and so when she meets someone amazing and strong and smart and kind, Cassandra goes with her and stays with her and is not alone.

This, Cassandra thinks, standing on a rooftop with a mask over her face, short hair hanging loose around her shoulders, laughing with her brothers and her friends and her father and her family, the voice of that first amazing woman in her ear, this is who I want to be.

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Bruce was sitting alone on a ledge that overlooked the lobby of Wayne tower—it was his favorite place to hide because he could see most of the lobby from his seat, but no one could see him from the lobby unless they were in one of a few very specific spots, plus there were only two ways to get to his perch, one of which required you to be very small (which Bruce was) and the other very acrobatic (which Bruce was working on for when he gets bigger).

"Hey, Bruce," Bruce whipped around to find an older boy coming from the acrobatic path, "mind if I join you?" he asked, and Bruce surveyed him, taking in the nice slacks and dress shirt covered by a too-big black hoodie with a blue striped design, the messy dark hair and the friendly expression, before he nodded and shifted over, letting the other boy sat down next to him, which he did and then pulled out two candy suckers shaped like bats and offered one to Bruce.

Bruce took the candy and unwrapped it, and the two sat and ate their candy and watched the people down in the lobby together until the older boy nudged Bruce and gestured down at the lobby: "I think it's time for you to go," he said, and Bruce noticed Alfred down in the lobby, but before he made his way down he turned to look at the other boy and was about to ask him a question (which one? there were too many) but the older just smiled at him and pulled him into a gentle hug: "you're going to be amazing, Bruce, absolutely brilliant."