Chapter Text
Dick couldn't be completely at ease with him.
Timothy understood this .
He wanted to show solidarity with the duke's new little soldier, but he couldn't look at him without wishing there was someone else in his place.
But he smiled. It was a beautiful smile, and Timothy wishes he would smile more often.
Unfortunately, Dick's smiles were rare.
If they were alone, Timothy was lucky and it seemed like the sun had remembered to shine.
However, they were rarely alone: whenever the Duke and Dick were in the same room, tensions ran high. They didn't even try to hide it.
Tim would have loved to see him smile…
Even if they weren't meant for him.
(The Shadow of Gotham, vol. 5, Red Hood, pp. 50)
When Tim woke up again, he was alone in a large bedroom. He could hear voices coming from outside the door, but they were so muffled that he couldn't make out what they were saying.
“It wasn't a dream,” he thought, bitterly. This wasn't his room at Drake Manor. It was probably a guest room in the much larger home of the Duke of Gotham.
It was less flashy than he expected, but again, Duke Bruce wasn't exactly what everyone thought he was.
A crime-fighting anti-hero, a man once filled with love before breaking and picking himself back together to become a piece of shit.
Jason was still alive, so he was emotionally constipated at best. But it will get worse: Tim hadn't found Jason's biological mother, he hadn't convinced her to leave Gotham, he hadn't changed anything.
Jason will die because of his mother, and Tim was already on the Duke's radar. How long will it take for him to think oh look, this kid is smart, he could be useful in my personal crusade. Let's start training him to do the impossible now. What do you day? He's only nine? At nine years old I already knew how to cancel a hundred different types of curses.
Like hell he'll just be lying there passively accepting his fate.
Tim sat up, but felt dizzy.
He brought a hand to his face, and pressed his lips into a thin line. He was in no condition to escape. They would have taken him back immediately.
He couldn't leave Stephanie here. It wouldn't take the duke long to realize that she was amazing, and then it would be she who would have her life ruined.
Tim couldn't do it to her. He had to get both of them out of there…
“I am a nobleman, I have a housekeeper who looks after me. I'll tell her to contact my dad and… crap, I don't even know if he'll do anything, where the hell he is… okay, don't panic… I can…”
The sound of the door opening made him lie back down in bed. Tim lay on his side and pretended that he was still sleeping.
He was in no condition to talk to anyone! He still didn't have an escape plan!
A familiar female voice sighed, “I know you're awake. It's an old trick, boy."
"I'm sleeping. I'm not okay,” he groaned, pushing the sheet over his head. Of course it was Dr. Leslie. She was the best, highly sought after by the nobles but who didn't turn her back on the poor of Gotham.
Most importantly, she knew the Wayne family well. She had been friends with the previous duke, and she had helped Alfred, the family butler, raise Bruce.
He felt a weight next to him, and the woman continued, "You need to get better at lying."
Tim was a very good liar. He had managed to avoid getting caught by CPS in Gotham for years. He just needed more preparation with his lies.
Meanwhile Leslie spoke, "I know you don't trust strangers..."
No one who grew up in Gotham would do that, especially if you wanted to make it to sixteen. She continued, “And I'm afraid I gave you no reason to trust, as I underestimated the signs.”
He trusted Leslie. She was one of his favorite characters, who obviously had to die at the end of the fourth book to worsen Bruce's already precarious mental health. Then, what was she apologizing for? She wasn't the one who kidnapped him.
“I underestimated too many things, and I blame my haste for not asking how such a large house was run…”
At that point, Tim sat up, dropping the covers. Leslie smiled, “Ah, you're awake I see.”
Tim blushed, but didn't let the embarrassment silence him, "What were you talking about?"
Leslie sighed, “Timothy…”
“Tim,” he corrected automatically.
The doctor nodded, “See, Tim…I didn't ask any questions. I was greeted only by the housekeeper, I was only allowed to move in a certain area of Drake Manor. If I had been more attentive, I would have seen that things were not right.”
“It's okay,” he said, not liking where she was going with the conversation.
“Tim, a little girl has been living with you without your housekeeper knowing. And she didn't even notice the huge hole in your room."
“She knows I am self-sufficient.”
“You're nine.”
No, he was seventeen, and he had a lot of experience managing himself. Not that he could tell, but the point remained.
“So?”
“So, the standards of nobles are a little higher… I know the duke was only raised by Alfred, but he was bound by reasons of trust. And in any case Alfred can call specialized cleaning people once a week. Your housekeeper did everything: she cleaned, she cooked for you, she looked after security… not very well, by the way… do you see the strangeness?”
“No,” he lied, even though those were all things he had picked up already from reading when he was in his world, and he had related to Timothy a little too much.
“Have you ever seen anyone other than the housekeeper?”
“Why are you asking me this?”
“Tim, you're not in trouble…”
“It sounds like an interrogation,” she interrupted. "Am I in trouble?"
"Of course not. But we have to understand some things. Your father…"
“He's out of town, he'll be back in a few days. You can talk to him."
Leslie looked at him without looking impressed. After all, if you worked with the duke, you were used to the nobles' bullshit.
“Of course, but before you get there, I'd like to ask you some questions.”
“So this is an interrogation,” Tim guessed, trembling internally.
Shit, shit, shit! If they see a strange family situation, they will want to be good Samaritans and save him! It would be a hundred times worse for him to stay with the Waynes, because she already knew they hated him! Or, at any rate, they would have hated him. They might be sorry now, because he was a child, but given him an hour, they wouldn't be able to stand it.
That was it, he was in the script and nothing was fucking going to change!
“Tim…”
“I appeal to the fifth.”
“You what?”
Damn, he didn't know the laws of this world. That is, he knew some laws, but none that could stop him from saying things that could then be used against him in court.
He pouted, “I won't answer any questions until my father gets back.”
If she was disappointed, Leslie didn't show it. She simply murmured and stood up. She paid him a quick visit, then, just before leaving, she asked him, “Do you know if anyone in your family has magical powers?”
He frowned, "Not that I know of."
“Mhm.”
Did she have to keep making that expression? The one that said I know something but I can't tell you because I'm scared for you.
He was irritated.
When she was finally gone, Tim was tempted to move the nightstand and block the door, and then find a way to block the windows as well.
He would have been great not to let anyone in, but then he too would have been stuck. No, he needed a better plan.
It was lucky he was too lost in his thoughts to notice anything else: Leslie had left the door open, and none of the people outside thought to keep the volume down.
“I told you to rest,” Leslie frowned as she saw the Waynes complete. She should have expected it, Stephanie had been very loud when she called her. It made sense that she would get their attention too.
“We rested,” Jason defended himself. “What does the kid say?”
"Nothing."
"Nothing?"
“He said to wait for his father.”
They were all incredulous. Bruce, in a cold voice, said, “No one knows when Lord Drake will return.”
“For that matter, no one even knew that he had a literal child in his very grand manor.”
“Maybe he will really come back but in secret? I mean, it wouldn't be the first time a criminal did something like that,” Dick surmised, and no one thought to correct him when he said it.
“He'd come back to see if the job was done,” Jason spat, filled with disgust.
“We need to talk to the housekeeper again.”
“She doesn't seem to know much.”
“Her master must have told her something. Like, hey, I'll be back in two days, if the guy isn't dead, we'll have a lot to talk about.”
"I don't think he wanted his son dead..." Bruce began.
Jason interrupted, “Bruce, just because you're a total softie to your kids doesn't mean there aren't totally shitty fathers.”
The duke looked at him in wonder, as if the concept of not being a shitty father was foreign to him. Wow, what self-esteem.
Dick chimed in, “Maybe B's right. Maybe it was an experiment.”
“An experiment?”
“Yes, to understand how far Tim's self-regenerating abilities reached.”
The teenager grimaced, “Yeah, no. Still abuse. That piece of shit..."
He was interrupted by a loud cough. Alfred looked at them all without much expression, carrying a tray of pancakes and juice.
“Young Master Tim doesn't need to hear this talk. He should have breakfast. And not just him.”
Bruce and the boys had the decency to blush. A blonde head popped up from behind Alfred, “Is Tim awake? How is he? "
“He doesn't want to cooperate,” Leslie replied.
“Duh, obviously. You're all weird."
“We're not weird!” Dick protested, while Jason nodded. Unlike his brother, he had accepted the fact that he was a weirdo for years.
“If that makes you sleep better, pretty boy.”
Alfred ignored their nonsense, and entered the room, followed immediately by Stephanie, eager to see her friend.
If Tim had only seen her, it would have been fine. But she wasn't the only one to enter: Jason dragged Dick with him, and Bruce found himself following them to try to get them out.
Attempt failed, and Tim found his room invaded by people he absolutely didn't want to see.
The panic was understandable.
Less understandable was what happened next: the child disappeared before their eyes in a cloud of blue sparks.
When he was no longer there, the first to blurt out was Jason.
“What the fuck!”
"What the hell?!" Tim screamed, nearly slipping. He ended up on the roof. Not even the roof of his house, but of Wayne Manor.
He had no idea how he got there. The last thing he remembered was that, seeing all those people, seeing bloody Duke Wayne, he had a panic attack and thought, 'I want to be anywhere but here.'"
A god must have heard him. Too bad he had taken the everywhere part too literally, and now Tim was stuck there. How the hell did he get down?
To say they all panicked that their abused little magical resident was missing would be an understatement.
Leslie scolded them. It was unfair, because none of them would have imagined such a thing, and even she had to admit it.
They searched everywhere inside the manor. Then, Stephanie got the idea to look outside and Jason followed her.
He would have expected to take a wild ride to the cemetery. Not to find the child on the damn roof.
"What the hell…"
“Tim!” Stephanie shouted. “How did you end up there?”
“If I knew, I certainly wouldn't be here.”
Jason coughed out a laugh. Smart mouthed brat. He said, "Wait a minute, we're coming to get you."
“What? No!"
“Sorry kiddo, but the duke wouldn't look good on us if a random kid fell off his roof.”
The answer wasn't the kind taught to children of Gotham's nobility, and Jason was willing to bet his share of his inheritance that Stephanie had taught him that.
Tim didn't want to meet Jason. There were many things the kid didn't want – like, for example, being stuck on a roof – and among them was meeting his favorite character who would soon try to kill him.
He didn't want to owe him a favor, then he would remember it and somehow use it against him.
He didn't know how, but the morals of characters who died and then resurrected were always very messed up.
Therefore, like many other times in his life, Tim decided to go it alone, and look for a way to get down.
It didn't go well: he made a false pass and risked slipping.
“Damn. I'm about to die again..."
At least he won't have to endure years of abuse disguised as training. Because, let's be honest, that seemed to be the direction his second life was taking. He really had a lot of bad karma.
But Tim didn't fall. He was grabbed by the arm just in time by none other than Jason Peter Todd Wayne.
The best character ever written by an author. The person who will want him dead in the future.