Chapter Text
What is the hour
but a rotation by which we mark our grief- Amanda Gorman, “Lighthouse,” Call Us What We Carry
Tim realizes there’s nothing left to say when Flash stands, saying, “Let’s get him,” and exits the conference room at speed, followed with equal urgency but significantly less velocity, by Booster Gold. The other members of the Justice League file out after them.
Tim’s done it.
He’s presented his detective work, he’s made his case, the culmination of blood, sweat, and various other bodily fluids he’s left all over the world in his mad quest for evidence that Bruce is alive, just stuck in time being batted around the past like a leaf in the wind over the last eight months, and they believe him. They’re on their way, right now, to the Watchtower storage bay that is filled with powerhouse equipment suitable for wibbly wobbly timey wimey missions, and they’re going to get Bruce back.
All of the remaining arguments, the sheer dogged stubbornness, that has been powering Tim up to this point is draining, pooling down by his feet.
Tim absently notices Superman and Martian Manhunter haven’t left the room after the rest of them yet. J’onn is looking at Tim with an uncomfortable level of intensity, maybe still processing Tim’s impassioned presentation. Superman’s looking at Tim as well, and looking slightly physically ill himself, which is a strange sight on the man in the absence of any nearby kryptonite. He’s got a complex expression on his face that seems to be made up of hope, concern, and several other emotions that Tim can’t be bothered to investigate.
Tim does not remember when he last ate, slept, showered, or ingested anything that wasn’t mostly made of caffeine. He vaguely recalls someone handing him a power bar after he zetaed up and before he started giving his terse rundown of the facts, evidence, and coordinates needed for Batman-retrieval.
Tim thinks that he should be feeling happy. Or at least, relieved. But strangely, Tim isn’t feeling much of anything at all. The pool of stuff that’s been keeping him going has dripped all the way out of him through his toes.
Superman has moved closer to Tim, and is reaching out a hand like he’s going to put it on Tim’s shoulder. Kon’s given Tim the same gesture probably hundreds of times, his hand friendly and strong, grounding Tim with its warmth. Tim stares neutrally at Clark’s hand, a reminder of his friend’s comforting grip, which he’ll never feel again.
Tim turns to leave the room before Superman can make contact.
“Tim,” ventures Superman tentatively.
Within himself there is not a single solitary shit about what Clark has to say about where Tim intends to go and what he is going to do when he gets there. Superman didn’t feel like believing Tim wasn’t crazy when Tim first told him Bruce was alive, not until he’d spent the better part of a year traveling the world, alone, until he’d collected enough indisputable evidence to demand what should have been taken on faith. Seems fair that Tim doesn’t believe Superman’s worth listening to now.
Tim turns a corner, and J’onn’s voice follows him, oddly stern. “Superman, a word.”
Clark must quickly disentangle himself from J’onn, though, because he easily catches up with Tim by the time Tim reaches the large multi-purpose room that Flash, Booster Gold, and several other of JL’s science-focused teammates have retreated to. A few older models of cosmic treadmills are pushed up against the walls along with untidy piles of other, less easily identifiable equipment. There’s a low, focused hum of chatter between the people sitting by the floor to ceiling wall of monitors displaying waveforms, information sets, and various streaming images, and at least one of the Flashes present; at speed, it’s difficult for Tim to tell. Booster Gold has grabbed onto the back of someone’s chair and is pointing animatedly at one of the screens.
Tim lets it wash over him, this last piece of the puzzle he’s shoved into place through sheer force of will. It should be a relief, he thinks, that now his part is done. He wills himself to feel it, to feel something.
Nothing comes. He’s spent so long running, purposeful, one clue to the next, one fight to the next, and now that he’s reached the finish line he isn’t sure how he’s supposed to stop moving again. In the midst of the hive of activity he’s set in motion, not moving is now a thing that’s happening to him, instead of a conscious choice made by him.
There’s a short rush of wind next to him, and for half a second he thinks, Bart, and then remembers.
Tim finds that his right arm has been placed in front of him like he’s holding a microphone.
He isn’t holding a microphone. He’s holding the power bar someone handed to him earlier. He guesses that means he hadn’t eaten it after all. It’s half unwrapped and ready for him to take a bite. It’s also partially melted and a little squished from where he’s been holding it too tightly in his fist this whole time.
Tim considers it, and decides he’s never felt less like eating in his entire life. It gets tossed overhand, past his left shoulder and into a futuristic looking trash can next to one of the desks. The person sitting there looks over at the noise, briefly distracted, then goes back to typing.
Out of the corner of his eye, Tim sees Martian Manhunter also clock his trash landing neatly in the container. J’onn is nearby but, like Tim, carefully out of the way of the choreographed whirl of teammates with more expertise than he in time-related shenanigans. He is looming unhappily in a way that would be reminiscent of Batman, if J’onn were in the shadows that don’t exist in the ambient Watchtower lighting, and a less lurid shade of green.
“Several words,” Tim hears J’onn say cryptically to Superman. Superman flicks his fellow non-earth native a pained glance, and says, “Later, J’onn.”
Tim tries to parse this exchange, before deciding he doesn’t have the energy to care. His field of fucks, as they say, lies barren.
Superman looks like he’s thinking about doing something unpleasant, like trying to talk to Tim again. Clark’s a reporter. He’s both nosy AF and incapable of leaving well enough alone. It’s what makes him get along so well, and occasionally clash so fiercely, with Bruce.
To cut this potential course of action off at the pass, Tim moves further into the more chaotic part of the room, which is starting to smell forcefully of ozone.
Tingles that would pop and crack like thunder, if they were made of sound, start to skitter up and down his exposed skin.
There’s a lot of overlapping chatter, then, both in person and over comms, coming through the speakers hidden in the smooth metallic wall. Blinding light swirls, pulses, blooms into existence. Someone says, “We’re stable. Go.”
Tim blinks stars and colors out of his vision, knuckles his eyelids, tries to keep track of what’s happening. Fails.
Another voice says, “Got him.” There’s another loud rush of swirling light, a crack of lightning Tim can taste on the back of his tongue.
Tim squeezes his eyes shut, rubs a hand still sticky from the power bar over his face to blot out the light pressing through his eyelids.
He squints as it fades out, and Bruce is standing in front of him.
Bruce is flanked by Flash, who is grinning broadly and has a steadying arm hooked around Bruce’s bicep, and Booster Gold, who is looking self-satisfied but otherwise useless, which tracks.
Bruce looks, not to put too fine a point on it, like hell. It’s telling that he has yet to take the opportunity to remove his arm from Flash’s custody or say something cutting to Booster. However, he’s upright, and alive, and is canvassing the new surroundings he’s abruptly appeared in with a reassuringly alert and calculating Batman gaze, though more slowly than usual. He’s squinting like his eyes are still adjusting to the space-industrial ambiance from being dragged through the chaotic lightning storm of the speed force.
There’s some cheering from the corners of the room. Superman is politely elbowing Booster out of the way to bestow a gentle clap on Bruce’s shoulder.
Batman has not noticed Tim, which is …fine. Tim has grown roots, become still and quiet enough to return to his natural state of existence: being unnoticed and fading into the background of any given situation. It’s comforting, like an old pair of socks worn soft and threadbare. There are vanishingly few people who can actually see Tim even when he prefers not to be seen. Kon, Bart, and Steph are gone. They won’t ever be seeing anyone again, let alone Tim. Cassie, Dick… well, they saw what they wanted to see, when it mattered. Now Tim sees them clearly, too, and he won’t be making the mistake of giving them a close up view of himself again.
Tim sometimes wonders what it’s like for people who are constantly visible, whenever they’d like to be. It might be nice, Tim thinks. Or it might be way too much, in a not-nice way. Tim hasn’t decided.
Superman is one of those people. He’s in the foreground, bright colors and in perfect focus. Bruce sees him. Clark is smiling broadly, winsome and open like a true down-home Kansan. “Welcome back, Batman,” he booms heartily.
“It’s good to be back,” Bruce rasps, managing to sound simultaneously earnest, exhausted, and grumpy. He stumbles slightly, and Superman and Flash exchange a look over Bruce’s head, which is only possible because Bruce is drooping. Flash readjusts his grip. Superman hovers, looking like he’d scoop Batman up like a grim little kitten if he thought he could get away with it.
Bruce says, rallying, “I have questions,” in a way that strongly suggests what he’s actually demanding is a sitrep. Flash and Superman, however, are already hustling him down the hall in the direction of the medbay. Tim, still invisible, moves into step behind Bruce like he’s guarding the rear. Or like a ghost haunting the living.
“Let’s walk and talk, big guy,” says Barry, who, like all Flashes, would prefer to be moving while talking regardless of the necessity of circumstance.
Bruce grunts, but it’s at least an acquiescent grunt, which tells Tim how poorly he must actually be feeling. Tim is fluent in Bat-Grunt. Superman also seems able to interpret Bat-Grunt correctly, and uses the excuse of giving Bruce’s shoulder a friendly squeeze to move him slightly faster.
They reach the end of the hallway, turn into the medbay, and Clark manhandles Bruce onto a sterile cot. Flash hums a quick fire stream of welcoming words at Bruce, making sure the biobed is reading Bruce’s vitals, which pop into view on a screen above the cot. Appearing satisfied with what he sees, he pops off a “Glad to have you back, Bruce. Gotta go check how much you pissed off the Speed Force now,” like it’s a living entity capable of being irritated, and vanishes.
Bruce must reach the limits of his patience with not having the information he wants, because he doesn’t even settle back onto the pillows before grabbing Superman’s arm and asking intently, “The boys?”
“All accounted for,” Superman reassures. “Holding down Gotham, and Tim,” Clark hesitates. “Tim found your breadcrumbs. He brought you back.” Bruce takes a heavy, deep breath, closing his eyes, and the space between his eyebrows relaxes visibly.
For some reason hearing Superman say it makes what has just happened start to sink in for Tim. In less than a year, he has lost his closest friends. He’s lost the brotherhood he thought he had with Dick, his childhood hero, in the name of trying to save Bruce, his …mentor.
He’s lost a good portion of his identity so that Dick could use it like sandbags against a flood to shore up Damian, who turned up like Tim’s quiet desire for a younger sibling had been a wish made on a monkey’s paw: a sort-of pseudo little brother who hates Tim so intensely he’s tried to kill him as enthusiastically, if somewhat less effectively, than Jason, the last of the remaining sort-of-could-have-been brothers. Jason, whose posthumous mantle Tim had originally taken up to save the remaining Waynes, before Jason got better (questionably) and made it his mission in second life to murder Tim (definitely).
Of his own volition, Tim has renounced any claim to his adoptive family by emancipating himself in order to save Wayne Enterprises, which both supports Bruce’s family and finances the caped community writ large. He even came back to Gotham when Dick needed his help, and protected Bruce’s allies when they were in danger. And after all that? Tim’s succeeded. He’s lost just about everything else, but in the end it’s fine, because he’s saved Batman. He’s saved Bruce.
Superman has turned to point Tim out while Tim has retreated into his own head. Unprepared to find Tim staring past Clark’s shoulder at extremely close range, he gives what would be a startled jump in a being subject to the normal whims of mortality. Tim spares him a flat look, thinking uncharitably that it was perfectly typical that his existence had been overlooked by the Man of Steel until now. Superman appears, if anything, further unsettled, and quickly drops Tim’s gaze.
“You’ve got a lot to catch up on,” Clark says, a masterful understatement. “Bruce…you’ve got a lot to thank Tim for.”
Though true, this comes as a surprise to Tim, from someone who would have happily helped Dick walk him down the yellow brick road to Arkham for insisting Bruce was actually alive, just lost in time, a few short months ago.
Tim is a professional. He refuses to scoff or roll his eyes at Superman, but the heroic effort it’s taking to mask the disdain he’s feeling must get communicated somehow. Superman freezes, clearly thinking better of offering another hearty shoulder clap midway through the motion. He rubs the back of his neck like it was what he meant to do all along.
Kon would have mercilessly made fun of how awkward Clark is being, Tim thinks.
Tim thinks, it’s a damn shame that he’ll never get the chance to hear Kon clown on Clark again.
“Get some rest,” Superman says, though it comes out sounding like that wasn’t what he had originally meant to say. He sidles through the medbay doors, which open at his approach. “You’ve more than earned it.”
The doors slide shut.
Tim can’t remember when he last was alone with Bruce, but it’s actually happening. Here, now. The two of them, improbably, both alive, in the same room, at the same time. The Once and Future Batman, and Tim, who once was Robin.
Tim has had a lot of time, over the last few months, to plan out what he would say when he finally got Bruce back. He’s spent more time than he wants to admit on it, even in the privacy of his mind.
This is largely because every time he stopped to think about anything other than finding the next piece of evidence, a yawning void of what-ifs opened up wide in front of him. What if I’m wrong, what if they’re right and I’m crazy, what if Bruce really is dead, what if I’m on a suicide mission to save someone who’s already gone, what if I’m only doing this because I have nowhere else to go and no one left to go to.
Every time that impassable cliff crumbled further beneath his feet, he built his plan, plank by plank, over the void, and secured it under his feet with the triumph and relief he would feel when he got Bruce back again.
Batman would say, Report, Robin, just like they were on a normal patrol, and Tim would list it all out, his deductions on neat display like a photo gallery, with his failures carefully in a soft focus background, a shallow depth of field, and the worst bits of everything (losing his spleen, allying with Ra’s, getting his friends killed) out of frame entirely, for as long as feasibly possible. Preferably forever.
It was a childish sort of daydream, his little speech - like a kid figuring out a mystery and doing a boastful show and tell. Look how clever I am! I figured it out!
It was stupid.
It kept him going anyway.
Tim is a planner, and he sees his plans through. That’s his thing. It’s what he does. It’s who he is. If he’s got nothing and no one else going for him, what he does have are audacious plans that everyone else finds insane, and the raw, stubborn determination to make them work regardless, or die in the attempt.
But Tim didn’t die, and neither did Bruce. Tim saved him, and he’s right here. He’s staring at Tim, and he seems to be waiting for Tim to start talking.
Tim should be reassuring him, because it’s all okay now. In fact, now is really the perfect moment to start Tim’s long awaited and heavily to-be-redacted after action report, which will provide Bruce with plenty of evidence that in his absence, Tim has been doing well, getting shit done. Being independent. Completely sane, and totally adult. He’s even got the emancipation paperwork, now, to prove how legally adult he is.
Bruce is still sitting up against the white starched sheets of the medical cot. He is pale underneath a weathered tan that could be too much time spent outdoors with unprotected skin, or a caked on layer of dirt, or both. He looks tired on a soul deep level, skin and muscle stretched too thin over his bones.
Tim finally makes eye contact and realizes, with a rush of relief, that the older man’s familiar blue eyes are exactly as reassuringly sharp as ever. In fact, Bruce seems to be giving him the same look-over Tim has been giving him, noting differences and looking carefully for hints of visible and hidden injury.
Bruce’s eyebrows have come together in a deep crease that indicates concern, but one side of his mouth tilts up and the corners of his eyes crinkle ever so slightly. “Tim,” he says simply, apparently giving up on waiting for Tim to say something. “You found me.”
The carefully planned, professional report seems to have been secretly stolen away by Ra’s when Tim wasn’t paying attention. It’s probably stored in another jar, right next to Tim’s spleen.
Tim finally opens his mouth and tries to force himself to make sounds come out. Words, Tim thinks. Tim has definitely said words before. Tim, forming his tongue around sounds that when put together create words is an actual thing that has happened before, maybe even recently. He said a whole bunch of them to convince the Justice League to bring Bruce back. Tim can manage to say more words right now.
In the end, though, only one fights its way through his suddenly tight throat.
“Bruce,” Tim chokes.
Tim’s voice sounds unfamiliar and strange to his own ears. It’s embarrassingly young, and breaks halfway through. He presses his lips shut again, willing himself to get it together, but the air he’s just taken in is abruptly too big for his chest. His ribs are trying to crush themselves into his spine.
Tim tries to breathe, tells himself just inhale and exhale already, it’s not complicated. Newborn infants can do this. Tim has been doing this basically his whole life.
His lungs refuse to do as they are told. Everything feels numb, unreal, and his fingers are tingling oddly. The tingling spreads to the space behind his eyes, and suddenly he’s stumbling forward and reaching for Bruce, arms and legs feeling like overcooked noodles. Tim’s face is wet and too hot, and he’s heaving breaths that feel somehow too small and too big at the same time.
Bruce’s eyes have gone huge in his gaunt face. He’s staring at Tim, stunned, like he’s never seen him before.
Something complicated happens to Bruce’s face then. For a frightening heartbeat, Tim is absolutely sure that Bruce will pull away, will look at him with an impatient and pitying face worse than outright disgust, will roll off his hospital bed and swoosh away out the door into the shadows, leaving Tim behind. Tim is also sure that, when that happens, left-behind Tim will simply wither away into dust, his stretching fingers falling away like motes of sand, blowing away on the recirculated breeze of the Watchtower. First his fingers, then his hands, then his arms, faster and faster until the last thing he will see is the door closing behind Bruce before Tim is gone, too, floating away and forgotten.
The future vision of his dissolution into non-existence is so visceral that it takes him several moments to realize that right-here right-now Bruce has grabbed him with a strength belied by his now-thinner frame, and has hauled him bodily into a crushing hug.
Tim is now half on top of Bruce, legs awkwardly hanging diagonally off the medical cot. The angle is forcing the metal struts of the cot to dig into his hip and thigh.
Bruce’s big arms are locked around Tim’s entire too-slim torso, and it turns out that this is actually what Tim has needed to keep from dissolving away after all. Tim tries, dizzily, to tell Bruce this, an addendum to his planned report, but is horrified to discover hitching sorts of wails are all he can seem to manage. A distant part of Tim wants to die of embarrassment, but he’s too busy trying to both breathe and stop making awful blubbering noises to focus on that right now.
Tim doesn’t do this, he doesn’t just lose control like this, not since he was a small child, isn’t ever loud when he cries. He can iris open the release like a pressure valve, keep himself quiet if he can’t keep it in altogether, can package it up until he is safe and alone to ride it out, or more preferably, shove it into a mental storage closet to be looked at again never.
Tim supposes his storage must have gotten too full of boxes, and no amount of Tetrising will make them all fit anymore. He’s shoved in one too many at the top of an already tipping stack of boxes marked Janet and Jack and Steph and Kon and Bart and Owens and Z and Tim Wayne. The boxes are falling, tipping out pieces of Tim all over the floor for anyone to see, and pick at, and judge, and find him wanting. All the bits of Tim that make the people he loves turn away and ignore him politely are rolling away from Tim’s careful grasp. The heavy, fragile weight of the people he has failed to save, and the people Tim has loved who didn’t love him in return, are shattering like ancient brittle pottery.
Tim tries again to breathe, to gather them up inside again and shove the worst parts of himself back behind the door in his brain. He traps a breath, holding it for a second, but the broken shards are slicing him apart. He can’t keep a grip, and it feels like he’s cutting himself open, bleeding harder the tighter he tries to clutch them. His breath shudders out with a gutted keen into Bruce’s tattered shirt.
Somehow, astonishingly, Bruce doesn’t seem to mind that Tim is noisily coming apart at the seams, and all his Tim-stuffing is spilling out in wet wracking sobs all over Bruce’s front. Instead, Bruce has buried his face in Tim’s shoulder, and one of his hands is rubbing comforting circles along Tim’s spine. His gravelly voice is making soft vibrations in the crook of Tim’s neck.
It takes what is probably a long while for the overwhelming force of Tim’s emotional flash flood to scour through him, and drain enough for him to pick out some of the words Bruce has been murmuring in his rough, familiar growl. Time has escaped him somehow, and it feels as though he’s been lost in tears for months.
“I’ve got you, kiddo,” Bruce is saying, in a very gentle rumble next to Tim’s skin.
Annoyed at how helpless he is to stop crying, Tim wheezes instead, and loses some more time.
“Well done, Robin,” Bruce is still saying, steady and reassuring, when Tim can hear again. Blunt, large fingers are running softly through his hair. “You can rest now. Mission’s over, Tim. I’ve got it from here.”