Chapter Text
"Master Tim, your meal will not eat itself, and poking at it will not make it disappear more quickly."
"Yes, Alfred."
Alfred always chided him for pushing his food around on his plate. He told him he had to eat it and not just play with it. Told him pushing it around didn't fool him into thinking he'd eaten some of it.
Which. Fair. He didn’t like to eat and Alfred was just trying to help. J hadn't given him a lot of food. He was too skinny still, he knew that.
But he wasn't playing with it because he was trying to trick Alfred—no one could trick Alfred—he just liked it better when he arranged it so that the food was all split in half on the plate.
Alfred must have figured that out because he'd started serving Tim's food on one of those brightly-colored little divided plastic plates. They were for babies, he was pretty sure, and he wanted to be humiliated by that, but he couldn’t deny that it worked. He was less anxious when he didn’t need to split it, so he ate more.
Except times like now when he was having a Day. The kind of Day where he couldn't focus on the present much and kept getting lost in his own head.
So he just pushed the food around. Split the halves into more halves.
A lot of days were Days. He thought he probably had more Days than days, but he tried not to keep track.
He couldn't help the perpetual duality that seemed to stick in his head. Things like needing his plate split or needing the pens and pencils separated into two different cups on his desk.
Maybe it was because he was half JJ and half Tim now. Maybe it was because he spent too much time with Two-Face when he was still in that malleable Play-Doh stage that he'd been in in the beginning. Mush the brain into whatever shape you like.
Harvey wasn't bad. He played chess with JJ. No—with Tim. B told him it wasn't good to call himself JJ. He was Tim. And he was, he knew that...most of the time, but he had been JJ then. Wasn't it more accurate to refer to himself that way given the context?
Du-al-i-ty. Four syllables, two and two.
J made JJ wear a domino when they played with Two-Face and his other friends. Considerate. Or maybe he just wanted B all to himself—couldn't let his comrades make any guesses if they recognized Timothy Wayne.
Was he a third when he wore the mask? Or was JJ the mask?
He was Robin with the mask, too. Fourths, maybe. Fourths was better. Even numbers could be split. Two and two.
Definitely too much time with Two-Face.
Harvey liked chess because it had two sides, two colors. JJ liked chess. Did JJ like chess because of the twos? Did Tim like chess because JJ liked chess? Did Tim like chess before he was JJ?
He couldn't remember. He couldn't remember a lot of stuff before JJ.
— —
He was bored a lot. He still wasn’t allowed out of the house without supervision and lately he'd been thinking about chess. He missed playing it with Harvey, even though he wasn't supposed to miss anything about being JJ. And really he didn't, but there were still a few things. J couldn't be with him all the time and he didn't trust him to be alone either (Why didn’t anyone trust him? He was 18, he was a grown up. Or…he had been. Was he still 18? He couldn’t remember.), so that meant he got things like chess with Harvey, helping Ivy with her garden, helping Eddie come up with new riddles. It wasn't all bad. Not after he'd finally stopped trying to be Tim.
Chess. He wanted to play, but he didn't know if he should want to. It reminded him of being JJ, and that was bad.
"Alfred." Alfred was sitting in the den with him, patching a cushion that Titus had accidentally torn a hole in with one of his big claws, even though Damian kept them trimmed. He couldn't help it, he was just big. Big like Bud and Lou. Except Bud and Lou would have ripped the pillow to shreds on purpose. They liked to shred things. Especially flesh-things. J fed them cats sometimes. Tim hoped Selina never found out about that.
"Alfred," he repeated. He'd forgotten if Alfred had already acknowledged him.
"Hmm?" He didn't look up from his work. Alfred was always distracted when he was sewing. He got really into it. Tim wasn't sure if that was because he liked it or because he didn't so he worked extra hard to get it over with. Or maybe Alfred had Days too.
"Am I allowed to play chess?"
Alfred looked up then. "Of course. Why wouldn't you be?"
Tim frowned. "Because Harvey liked chess."
"I'm afraid you'll have to elaborate on that, my boy, I don't quite follow.”
Tim chewed his bottom lip. Even before he was JJ he'd always had a hard time un-mixing his jumbled thoughts to articulate them in a way other people would understand, and they were even more scrambled these days.
"I'm not supposed to do JJ things anymore, and I used to play chess with Harvey. Two-Face. It was fun. I want to play again, but I don't know if I should."
Alfred poked the needle into the pillow and set it aside to put all of his attention on Tim.
"Your concern is an understandable one, Master Tim."
"Did I like chess before?"
"I am not sure, to be honest, but neither does that matter. You are different now, dear boy, there is no mistaking that. Master Bruce may believe that you should try and put that time behind you, but that is neither possible nor healthy. There is nothing wrong with being changed. You are not the same boy you were, and that is something we must all learn to accept. There are certainly limits on what you should keep with you, of course, but do not let that stop you from doing those things which make you comfortable. Do whatever it is that makes you happy, we are here to guide you along the way should you begin to stray down the wrong path. I have faith, however, that you will not. Do not doubt yourself. We will love you however you turn out in the end."
"So...yes on the chess," he confirmed.
"Yes on the chess, my boy."
"Alfred? Do you wanna play chess when you're done sewing?"