Work Text:
The clock on the cave wall ticked once, twice, then seemed to stop.
Or maybe Tim just stopped noticing it.
He had been staring at the same data stream for over an hour now, but none of it registered. The numbers bled together, forming nonsense lines that mocked him with their clarity. Everything made sense except him.
His fingers hovered over the keyboard, shaking slightly from too much caffeine and too little sleep. He blinked, forcing his vision to focus, but the world kept blurring at the edges. It had been days since he’d slept properly. Not because of missions or deadlines, but because sleep meant dreams—and dreams meant feeling. And he didn’t want that anymore.
He just wanted quiet.
But quiet wasn’t peace. Quiet was suffocating.
The Batcave used to be comforting. The hum of servers, the echo of boots on stone, the distant rush of the waterfall outside—it had once felt like home. It was a place of purpose, of belonging. He’d come here as a kid with something to prove and a heart full of belief that he could make things better.
Now it was just… hollow.
He looked up at the empty platforms where the suits used to hang. The glass cases gleamed faintly in the dim light. Dick’s old costume was gone. Jason’s, too. Even Damian’s current Robin suit had been moved upstairs after a recent maintenance.
Only Tim’s old one remained—the red and black he used to wear when he believed Robin meant something.
He’d left it in the case years ago, after Damian came along. Bruce had told him he was still needed, that there would always be a place for him here. But that place had slowly faded, like the yellow of the symbol on that chest piece—worn and forgotten.
He ran a hand through his hair, feeling the strands tangle around his fingers. “You’re pathetic,” he muttered under his breath. His voice echoed faintly, lost in the cave’s emptiness.
He laughed softly. A sound that didn’t sound like him.
He told himself it wasn’t jealousy. It wasn’t even anger. It was just… emptiness. The realization that he could vanish tomorrow and the world—the family—would keep spinning just fine. Bruce would brood, sure. Dick might send a text. Maybe Cass would notice. But life would go on. Patrols would continue. Gotham would still need saving.
He wasn’t essential. He was a spare part in a machine that ran perfectly fine without him.
The thought sat heavy in his chest.
He stared back at the monitor, trying to drown it out with data. His screen was filled with patrol logs—reports from Dick in Blüdhaven, Cass in the Narrows, even Jason’s half-coded pings when he wanted to rub in that he’d “handled” something before anyone else could. Everyone out there was doing something. Everyone except him.
He’d offered to take a sector last night. Bruce told him to “rest.”
He’d tried offering to help with casework. Oracle already had it covered.
He’d even gone to the roof to see if Damian wanted backup—but the kid had already left with a single glare and the words: “I work alone.”
Tim had laughed at that, pretended not to care. But it stayed with him.
Everything did.
He minimized the reports and opened a new tab—his old notes on the League of Assassins. There were hundreds of entries, timestamps stretching years back. His mind used to find peace in this. Research. Investigation. Patterns. But lately, the patterns only reflected him—circles within circles, loops that led nowhere.
He rubbed at his eyes and realized his hands were trembling. His heart felt like it was beating too fast for how still he was sitting. Anxiety. Fatigue. Maybe both.
He stood up too quickly and the room tilted slightly. The sudden wave of dizziness hit hard enough to make him grab the back of the chair.
“You need sleep,” he whispered. But he didn’t move toward the cot in the corner. He didn’t want to sleep.
He just wanted to stop feeling like this.
He’d tried distractions—missions, tech upgrades, even rebuilding an old Red Robin drone system—but the emptiness always came back. Sometimes it hit in the middle of the night. Sometimes in the middle of a laugh with Dick or a quiet meal with Alfred. It was always there, like a crack running through glass, invisible until the light hit it just right.
He didn’t know when it started. Maybe after Damian came. Maybe after Bruce “died.” Maybe after he came back.
It didn’t really matter anymore.
He used to think he had purpose because he was the one who noticed things—details others missed. That was what made him different. But now, noticing only made it worse. Because he could see everything wrong with himself, and he couldn’t fix it.
He saw how Bruce’s tone softened when he spoke to Damian.
How Dick’s texts became shorter, rarer.
How Jason, for all his chaos, never once asked Tim for help.
Even Alfred had stopped checking in as often. Maybe because every time he asked if Tim was okay, Tim lied. And Alfred, being Alfred, respected the lie.
He sat back down and stared at his reflection in the monitor—eyes tired, skin pale, lips drawn tight. A ghost sitting in the dark.
“Why am I even here?” he whispered.
The words sounded small.
Pathetic.
He didn’t expect an answer, but the silence that followed still felt cruel. The cave had a way of amplifying loneliness—it echoed everything you didn’t want to hear.
He picked up his phone. Scrolled through his messages.
Dick’s last one: “Proud of you, little brother.” Two months ago.
Jason’s: “You still suck at pool.” Three months.
Bruce’s? Nothing since last week.
Damian’s? Just a forwarded report.
Alfred’s? “Eat something, Master Timothy.”
Tim put the phone down, screen face-down on the desk.
He wanted to reach out. To text one of them.
But what would he say?
Hey, I feel like I don’t belong anymore?
Hey, I think I’m breaking apart inside?
No. That wasn’t him. Tim Drake didn’t break. He endured.
He kept moving, kept thinking, kept functioning. That was his role. The reliable one. The calm one. The one who always had a plan.
He couldn’t afford to fall apart. Not when everyone else already had their own cracks to manage.
He leaned forward, forehead pressing lightly against the cool metal of the desk. His breath fogged against it. He let his eyes close.
The Batcomputer hummed behind him, faithfully processing data he’d already forgotten. Somewhere above, the manor’s grandfather clock ticked on. He could almost hear Bruce’s steady footsteps, Damian’s soft footfalls, Alfred’s slow calm voice—each one a rhythm he no longer felt part of.
The world moved, and Tim stayed still.
He was supposed to be the detective, the thinker, the one who pieced together broken puzzles. But right now, he couldn’t even piece himself together.
Maybe no one could.
Morning came without sunlight.
The manor was shrouded in soft gray light, the kind that never seemed to warm the walls. Tim sat at the kitchen counter, staring into a bowl of cereal that had long gone soggy. The spoon rested in his hand, unmoving. Across from him, the sound of Alfred’s quiet preparation filled the silence—tea, toast, the faint scrape of porcelain against marble.
“You’ve been spending quite a bit of time downstairs lately, Master Timothy,” Alfred said gently, not looking up from the teapot. His tone was careful, deliberate—like he already knew the answer would be evasive.
“Yeah,” Tim murmured, eyes fixed on his bowl. “Lots of data to update.”
“I see.” The butler’s gaze flicked toward him briefly. “And sleep, sir? Have you had any recently?”
Tim forced a small smile, the kind that was supposed to reassure. “I’ll catch up soon. Promise.”
It was a good lie. Smooth. Believable enough that Alfred didn’t press—though the faint downturn of his lips said he didn’t buy it.
Tim shoveled a spoonful into his mouth and swallowed without tasting it. Every motion felt rehearsed. Routine. That’s what his days had become—a set of quiet repetitions meant to keep people from asking too many questions. He’d perfected the art of seeming fine.
When Alfred turned his back to pour tea, Tim slipped his cereal bowl into the sink, half-full. He grabbed his laptop bag and murmured, “I’ll be in the cave,” before disappearing through the hallway.
The cave swallowed him again.
The cold hit first—the damp, mechanical chill that seeped into his bones. Then came the hum of the computers, the distant drip of water echoing through stone. It was both comfort and cage.
He set up in front of the monitors again, fingers typing without thought. Case files, thermal scans, chemical reports—his screen was filled with purpose, but none of it meant anything. It was just noise. He used to love this—the rhythm of logic, of pattern-finding, of building order out of chaos. But now it was just something to keep him from thinking too much.
Because when he stopped typing, the thoughts came back.
And they were always cruel.
They’re better off without you.
You’re not Robin. You’re not Red Robin. You’re not anything.
Bruce never said it, but you know he doesn’t need you anymore.
He rubbed at his temples, trying to focus. He’d learned to ignore those thoughts the same way he ignored physical pain—by compartmentalizing, by pretending they weren’t real. But lately, it was getting harder.
He’d been making mistakes. Small ones, at first—forgetting to encrypt a file, misreading a thermal signature. But last night, he’d missed a pattern in the case data that Oracle had caught within minutes. She’d sent him a polite message: “Hey, Tim, you okay? You don’t usually miss these things.”
He’d stared at that message for a long time before replying, “Just tired.”
He hadn’t meant to lie. He just didn’t know how to tell her that his brain felt fogged, that even simple logic slipped through his fingers like sand. He’d always been the smart one. The reliable one. But now even his thoughts betrayed him.
The elevator in the distance hissed open briefly—someone coming down, then leaving again. He didn’t look.
It was probably Bruce. Or maybe Damian. It didn’t matter. No one stopped to talk anymore. Everyone had their own missions, their own goals. And he—he was just the guy behind the screen now. A background process. A support function.
He wondered if this was how Oracle felt sometimes. Except she had purpose. People needed her.
Tim wasn’t sure anyone really needed him.
He clicked to another tab—his own notes, his handwriting scrawled across digital pages. Psychological analyses of past cases. Mental breakdown patterns in vigilantes. He’d written these years ago after Jason’s return, after Bruce’s spiral, after Damian’s first death scare.
He read through one of them slowly, almost mechanically:
“Emotional fatigue manifests as disinterest, self-isolation, decreased initiative. Cognitive performance drops. Subjects exhibit detachment and self-devaluation.”
He paused. The words blurred together. He was reading about himself.
The irony wasn’t lost on him.
A sudden headache pulsed behind his eyes. He leaned back in the chair and exhaled, long and shaky. He should’ve taken a break hours ago. Maybe eaten something real. But the thought of going upstairs—of being seen—made his stomach twist.
He didn’t want to answer questions. He didn’t want pity.
He just wanted to disappear for a while. Not die—no, that wasn’t it. He wasn’t suicidal. Not exactly. He just wanted rest. The kind that didn’t end the second he opened his eyes again.
The kind of rest he hadn’t had since he was thirteen.
His phone buzzed beside him, snapping him out of his thoughts. A new message. He glanced at the screen.
Dick: Hey, just checking in. You alive down there?
Tim’s lips twitched.
He typed, Barely. You?
The reply came quick: Long night. Damian said you skipped dinner again. You good?
Tim froze. He hadn’t realized Damian noticed that.
He typed back, Just tired. Don’t worry about me.
Three dots blinked for a while, then vanished. No reply.
The silence returned, heavier this time.
Tim tossed the phone aside and stood, pacing slowly. The cave was so large, so open—and yet it felt suffocating. Every sound echoed back at him. Every movement reminded him of what was missing. He stopped in front of the old Robin suit again, staring at it through the glass.
He used to stand here as a teenager, heart pounding, waiting for Bruce’s approval after missions. Now, the reflection that looked back at him was gaunt, older, tired beyond his years.
“Guess you outgrew me too,” he whispered to the empty shell.
His reflection didn’t argue.
He turned away quickly, blinking hard. His chest felt tight. He needed air. He took the elevator up to the manor and stepped into the hallway, where morning light filtered through the windows. Everything smelled faintly of coffee and old wood.
He stood there for a long time, just staring out at the gardens. The leaves were turning orange, scattered across the lawn like fading embers. He remembered how Bruce used to rake them with Alfred when he was younger, how Dick used to jump into the piles and laugh, how even Damian had once joined in—grumbling but smiling faintly.
Tim had watched from the window then, too, laptop in hand, telling himself he was fine with it.
That memory hurt now. Because he realized he’d been alone even then.
He leaned against the wall, closing his eyes. The mansion’s stillness wrapped around him again—too big, too quiet, too cold. And somewhere deep in his chest, that same thought returned, soft but unrelenting:
You don’t belong here anymore.
The following week blurred together in fragments.
Tim barely remembered the days, only the rhythm of exhaustion that followed him everywhere. He’d wake up late—sometimes on the cave floor, sometimes at his desk—and drag himself through another loop of meaningless tasks. The only constants were the headaches, the hollow ache in his chest, and the endless hum of the Batcomputer.
He wasn’t on the official patrol rotation anymore, but he still tagged along sometimes. Bruce never said no outright—he just gave a curt nod and an extra sector, the way you might give a bored kid something to do.
And maybe that was worse than rejection.
The first time it happened, he’d been late. He didn’t even notice until he saw the clock flashing red on his wristband. The rooftops blurred beneath his boots as he sprinted through the Narrows, too far from where he was supposed to be. The others were already moving in on the suspects.
By the time Tim arrived, the fight was over.
Damian stood in the center of the alley, staff in hand, breathing hard but steady. Bruce was checking a cuffed criminal. Cass was already gone, melting into shadow. Tim hesitated at the edge of the streetlight, heart pounding. He wanted to help, to say something, but there was nothing left to do.
Bruce didn’t even glance at him when he said, “You’re late.”
That was it. Two words. No anger. No disappointment. Just fact.
But it cut deeper than anything else could have.
“I—yeah,” Tim muttered. “Sorry. I’ll handle clean-up.”
Bruce didn’t answer. He turned to Damian, handing him the encrypted drive from the suspect. “Run the data with Oracle tonight.”
Tim’s stomach dropped. That was his job. His specialty.
Before he could speak, Damian replied sharply, “Understood.”
And that was that. Bruce didn’t even look at him again.
He told himself it didn’t matter. That it wasn’t personal. But as the days passed, the weight of invisibility grew unbearable.
He stopped joining family breakfasts altogether. Alfred tried to insist at first, but eventually, even he stopped asking. Tim found that easier. It meant no forced smiles, no polite conversations that made his skin crawl.
When he did cross paths with the others, it was brief and surface-deep.
Dick: “Hey, bud, you’re working too hard. Take a break.”
Jason: “You look like hell, Replacement.”
Damian: just a glance—sharp, assessing, but silent.
They all noticed. No one really asked.
He could tell Damian was watching him though—subtly, in his own way. He’d catch him looking across the cave during briefings, eyes flicking over the growing shadows under Tim’s eyes, the way his hand shook when typing. But Damian didn’t say a word. He probably didn’t know how.
Tim almost wished he would.
That night, the cave felt even colder. He sat at the workstation, staring at a mission report he hadn’t finished. His vision swam, letters shifting on the screen. His eyelids drooped.
He blinked, fought it, then gave up.
When he woke up, the cave was dark except for the glow of monitors. His neck hurt from where he’d slumped forward. His hand was still on the keyboard. The report was only half written.
He groaned quietly, rubbing at his face. His phone buzzed somewhere near the desk. He reached for it, squinting at the screen.
Dick: Heard from Bruce you’ve been off lately. Everything okay?
He stared at it for a long moment before typing back.
Yeah. Fine. Just tired.
He deleted the next message he almost wrote: I don’t think I’m okay, Dick. I think something’s wrong with me.
He hit send on the lie instead.
At some point, the sound of the elevator echoed through the cave again. Tim didn’t bother turning. The footsteps were too light to be Bruce’s.
He already knew who it was.
Damian.
The boy moved with the same calculated grace he always had—controlled, quiet, deliberate. Tim could hear the faint tap of a staff against the ground. He didn’t say anything, didn’t even look up. He just waited for Damian to grab whatever he came for and leave.
But the sound of footsteps stopped halfway.
Tim frowned slightly, glancing over his shoulder. Damian was standing a few meters away, watching him.
“What?” Tim asked, voice rough from disuse.
Damian didn’t answer right away. His gaze darted to the empty food wrappers scattered on the desk, the stack of cold coffee mugs, the dark shadows beneath Tim’s eyes. “You haven’t slept.”
Tim gave a humorless smile. “Neither have you.”
“I’m trained for it,” Damian replied curtly. “You’re not.”
“Guess I should start training then.”
The boy’s brows furrowed slightly, but he didn’t push. Instead, he just crossed his arms and muttered, “Father said you missed another check-in.”
“Did he?” Tim looked back at the screen. “He has you to fill in now. Problem solved.”
“That’s not what I—” Damian stopped himself. His jaw tightened, and he exhaled through his nose. “Whatever. Just… don’t pass out at the computer again. It’s pathetic.”
Tim snorted softly, not bothering to defend himself. “Noted.”
Damian lingered a few seconds longer, eyes narrowing as if he wanted to say something else. But he didn’t. He turned sharply and walked away, the sound of his boots fading into the elevator’s hum.
Tim stared at the empty space where he’d stood.
“Yeah,” he whispered to the silence. “I know.”
Hours later, his hands were still trembling. Not from fear or anger—just fatigue, layered on fatigue. The kind that crept under his skin and refused to leave. He stared at the rows of unfinished code, and for the first time, he couldn’t remember what he’d been trying to write.
It scared him.
He shut off the monitor and leaned back, rubbing at his eyes until he saw stars. “Pull it together, Tim,” he muttered. “You’re fine. You’re fine.”
But the echo that came back didn’t sound like belief.
Somewhere above, he could hear muffled voices—Bruce and Damian, maybe. He caught a word or two.
“Performance.”
“Exhaustion.”
“Drake.”
He didn’t want to know the rest.
He just sat there, alone in the dark, listening to the hum of machines and the quiet pulse of his heartbeat. Both steady. Both mechanical. Both utterly empty.
And for the first time in a long time, Tim realized he was afraid—not of dying, not of failing, but of fading. Of becoming nothing more than background noise in a life he once helped build.
He was already halfway there.
Damian had never paid much attention to silence before.
He’d been raised in it—temples, mountains, the League’s cold halls. Silence was discipline. It was strength.
But lately, the silence in the manor felt… wrong.
It wasn’t peaceful. It was heavy. And most of it seemed to settle around him.
Or rather—around Tim.
At first, he thought it was nothing. Drake had always been the quiet one, the workaholic. Always hunched over a keyboard, running calculations, tracking coordinates. He lived in the hum of the Batcomputer. That was his role. His comfort zone.
But Damian was a creature of observation. It was part of his training—and though he rarely admitted it, he noticed everything.
And what he noticed now didn’t sit right.
The first thing was the food.
Tim had stopped eating properly weeks ago. Alfred still brought trays down to the cave, but they always came back half-full, untouched. Damian had started checking the trays himself before Alfred could clear them—half out of curiosity, half out of… something else. Something uncomfortable.
The second thing was the smell.
Not bad—just absent. The faint detergent scent Tim usually carried from freshly laundered hoodies was gone. He smelled like cold coffee and metal. A scent that lingered when people stopped taking care of themselves.
And the third thing—the one Damian couldn’t ignore—was Tim’s eyes.
They used to hold something sharp, always calculating, always alive with restless intelligence. Even when they argued, those eyes burned with fire. But now, that fire had dimmed. It wasn’t gone—but it flickered like a candle struggling for air.
He didn’t know how to deal with that.
He told himself it wasn’t his problem. Drake was an adult—older, experienced, capable. He’d handled worse. Damian didn’t need to play caretaker. He wasn’t built for softness.
But then he’d pass the cave and see Tim still there, hours after patrol, body slumped in the chair, face ghostly under the glow of the monitors—and something inside him would twist.
He’d never admit it aloud, but… he admired Tim.
Always had.
Drake was the one who never gave up, even when no one believed in him. He wasn’t born into this life like Damian, nor molded by tragedy like Grayson or Father. He chose it. Chose to step into chaos and make it his own.
He was the one who held the family together when it fell apart—when Jason died, when Father “died,” when everything fractured. It was Tim who kept believing, kept fighting, kept building even when the rest of them fell apart.
Damian remembered being twelve and hating him—resenting his patience, his composure, his quiet strength. But now, years later, that same composure felt… fragile. Like a mask that was starting to crack.
He wished someone else would say something.
Father, maybe. Or Grayson. They were better at this. They knew how to comfort.
But no one did.
Bruce was too buried in cases. Dick was busy in Blüdhaven. Jason, well—Jason wasn’t exactly the “heart-to-heart” type. And Alfred—Alfred noticed, of course, but he seemed to be waiting for Tim to speak first.
So it was Damian who noticed the night it almost broke him.
It started with a mission.
Tim was supposed to monitor the comms. A simple task. He always did it flawlessly. But that night, there was silence—no updates, no tactical calls. Bruce had to reroute through Oracle. They thought maybe Tim had fallen asleep at the console.
When they returned to the cave, he was still there.
Not asleep—just sitting motionless, staring blankly at a black screen.
“Drake?” Damian’s voice echoed through the space. No response.
Damian stepped forward, heart tight for reasons he didn’t understand. “Drake,” he said again, sharper.
Tim blinked slowly, as if waking from somewhere far away. “Oh. You’re back.”
“What happened?” Bruce asked. His tone was calm but distant, all business. “Oracle said your line went dead for forty minutes.”
“Yeah,” Tim said softly. “System crash.”
Damian frowned. “You didn’t reboot it.”
“Didn’t notice.” Tim’s lips twitched into a faint, humorless smile. “Guess I’m slipping.”
There was something in his voice—something small, broken. Bruce didn’t hear it. He just gave a curt nod. “Double-check diagnostics tomorrow.”
“Sure,” Tim said. “Tomorrow.”
And that was the end of it.
Bruce turned away, already halfway to another case file. Damian stood frozen, watching Tim’s hands tremble as he tried to type.
The boy prince of the League, trained to read weakness in enemies, had never felt so helpless in the face of it in someone he cared about.
That night, Damian didn’t go to bed. He stayed in the hallway outside Tim’s room, listening through the half-open door. He heard the faint scrape of a chair, the soft tap of keys, and then nothing for hours. No sleep. No movement. Just the low hum of electronics.
He hated it. He hated how wrong it all felt.
He thought of all the times he’d called Tim names—useless, unworthy, redundant. He remembered every word and wished he could take them back. Because the truth, the one he’d never say aloud, was that Tim had always been the best of them.
Not the strongest. Not the fastest. But the one who kept them whole.
He’d never told him that.
He’d never told anyone that.
He thought about it now, watching the faint blue glow of Tim’s laptop seep under the door. His chest felt tight, unfamiliar. He didn’t like it. But he couldn’t leave.
Because something in him whispered that if he did—if he walked away now—Tim might never climb back out of that dark place again.
And Damian didn’t think he could stand losing him too.
The next morning, when Tim stumbled back into the cave, pale and quiet, Damian was already there, sitting cross-legged on the platform.
Tim froze. “What are you doing here?”
“Waiting for you,” Damian said simply.
Tim frowned. “Why?”
Damian’s gaze softened, though his voice remained even. “Because I think you’ve forgotten who you are, Drake. And I won’t let you.”
Tim blinked, thrown by the words. “What are you talking about?”
Damian stood, stepping closer until they were eye to eye. For once, there was no sharpness in his expression—only something startlingly honest.
“You’re the one who kept us from falling apart,” Damian said quietly. “You’re the one who believed when everyone else gave up. You found Father. You brought this family back from the dead more than once. You… you made us better.”
His voice faltered slightly. “You made me better.”
Tim stared at him, breath catching. The words didn’t fit coming from Damian—they were too raw, too kind. His throat worked as he tried to respond, but nothing came out.
Damian continued, eyes firm. “So no, Drake. You’re not useless. You’re not invisible. You’re—” He hesitated, swallowing hard. “You’re the reason we still are a family.”
For a long moment, the only sound was the quiet hum of the computers. Tim looked like he might laugh or cry or both.
“…Thanks, Dami,” he whispered at last, voice breaking just slightly.
Damian nodded, hands clasped behind his back to hide their slight tremor. “Don’t thank me. Just… stop fading.”
For a long time after Damian left those words hanging in the air, Tim didn’t move.
He just stood there, feeling the weight of them settle like dust.
It had been so long since anyone had said something like that — something that didn’t demand anything of him. Something that wasn’t followed by a mission order, or a list, or a plan.
Just words.
Just truth.
He didn’t realize he was trembling until Damian’s hand — small but steady — rested on his sleeve.
“Sit,” Damian said softly. It wasn’t a command this time. It was an offering.
Tim obeyed.
The chair creaked as he sat down, the sound oddly loud in the quiet of the cave. His eyes burned, but he blinked hard, forcing the tears back. He’d cried enough when no one was watching. He wasn’t about to start again — not in front of him.
But Damian didn’t look away. He stayed where he was, arms crossed loosely, expression unreadable except for the faint crease in his brow. The kind of crease that said I care but I don’t know how.
And somehow, that made it worse.
“…You shouldn’t have to say that,” Tim murmured finally. “You shouldn’t have to notice. That’s not your job.”
“I disagree,” Damian said immediately. “It’s everyone’s job to notice when someone is drowning.”
Tim huffed a laugh. It was small, sharp, and full of disbelief. “Since when did you become the family therapist?”
Damian tilted his head, eyes narrowing, but not unkindly. “Since I realized you wouldn’t listen to anyone else.”
That pulled a faint, choked sound from Tim — not quite laughter, not quite sobbing. He scrubbed a hand down his face and muttered, “God, you sound like Dick.”
“Grayson is sentimental,” Damian sniffed. “I am logical.”
Tim’s lips twitched, but the humor didn’t reach his eyes. “Logical, huh? So what’s the logic in trying to save someone who’s already—”
He stopped.
His throat closed around the rest.
“—already what?” Damian pressed quietly.
Tim stared at the monitors, at the endless lines of data and coordinates, the meaningless flicker of code that used to make sense to him. He wanted to tell the truth. He wanted to say it out loud, just once.
He wanted to admit how tired he was. How every night, the mask felt heavier. How every victory felt emptier. How he’d stopped believing he had a place here — how the silence after patrols felt like punishment.
Instead, he whispered, “Already too far gone.”
The words hung there. Cold. Final.
Damian’s jaw tightened, but he didn’t speak immediately. He took a step forward — closer, but still careful, as though Tim might shatter if he moved too fast.
“You are not gone,” he said finally. “You are still here. Breathing. Bleeding. Existing.” His voice was firmer now, but still quiet. “You think that means nothing, but it does. It always has.”
Tim looked up, and for the first time, he saw no mockery in Damian’s face. No arrogance. Just raw, unguarded sincerity.
It was jarring.
It was beautiful.
It hurt.
“…You really mean that,” Tim said softly, more to himself than to Damian.
Damian nodded. “I do. You are not useless, Drake. You never were. You are—” He hesitated, the next words sticking in his throat. “You are the standard I measure myself against.”
Tim blinked. “What?”
“Father speaks of discipline. Grayson speaks of compassion. Todd speaks of freedom.” Damian’s eyes flickered briefly downward. “But you — you are the balance between all of them. You are what I aspire to be when the noise stops.”
The silence after that was absolute.
Tim didn’t know what to do with it. The words sliced through his armor with surgical precision, finding every place he’d buried doubt and shame. For a long time, he just sat there, trying to breathe.
Finally, something broke.
It wasn’t loud. It wasn’t dramatic.
It was just a quiet, shaking sound — a sob that slipped through the cracks despite everything he’d built to keep it out.
Damian didn’t flinch. He didn’t move to hug him or say anything more. He simply stayed, silent and still, the steady presence that Tim hadn’t known he needed.
And maybe that was enough.
Maybe being seen — truly seen — was enough to start healing.
Minutes passed. Maybe an hour. Time blurred, the cave lights humming gently overhead. Eventually, Tim spoke again, voice rough but steadier.
“…I don’t know how to stop feeling like this.”
“You don’t have to know yet,” Damian replied. “You only have to stop pretending you don’t.”
Tim exhaled shakily, a sound halfway between a sob and a laugh. “When did you get so wise?”
Damian’s lips twitched. “I live with too many fools.”
That earned a faint, genuine smile. “Touché.”
They stayed there for a while. No words, just breathing.
For the first time in weeks, Tim felt something warm flicker in his chest — faint, fragile, but real. Like the first hint of sunrise after an endless night.
It wasn’t over. He wasn’t suddenly okay. But maybe, for now, he didn’t need to be.
He leaned back in his chair, running a hand through his hair. “You’re not gonna tell Bruce, are you?”
Damian’s eyes flicked toward the upper stairs — just briefly. “He already knows.”
Tim frowned. “What do you—”
Before he could finish, he heard the faintest sound of footsteps above — slow, heavy, familiar.
Bruce’s silhouette passed by the railing above the Batcomputer, pausing for a moment. He didn’t say a word. Didn’t come down. Just watched them quietly — the faintest trace of relief crossing his face before he disappeared again into the shadows.
Tim stared after him, throat tight.
Damian followed his gaze, then said softly, “He worries too. He’s just worse at showing it than I am.”
Tim barked a faint laugh. “That’s a terrifying thought.”
Damian smirked. “You have no idea.”
When they finally left the cave, dawn was beginning to creep across the horizon.
Tim squinted at the light, blinking as if he’d forgotten what morning looked like.
Damian stopped beside him, hands in his pockets, cape brushing the floor. “Go upstairs. Sleep.”
“Bossy,” Tim muttered.
“Effective,” Damian countered.
Tim shook his head, still smiling faintly. “You really think I can come back from this?”
Damian’s eyes softened again. “You already are.”
And maybe — just maybe — he was right.
Later that day, when Alfred brought up breakfast, he found a note on the tray in careful handwriting.
“Alfred —
Don’t worry about the coffee. I’ll make it this time.
— Tim”
And beneath that, in a sharper, smaller scrawl:
“He smiled today. — D.”
Alfred didn’t say a word.
He just smiled, quietly, and added an extra plate of pancakes to the tray.