Archive of Our Own ^beta

Tim didn’t need recognition. 

Tim didn’t want recognition. 

Tim couldn’t have recognition. 

Tim didn’t need recognition. 

Tim needed his family—his ex-family, his lost family, his former family, his family that never was—he needed them to be safe. Together. Happy. He also knew each and every one of them well enough to realize that if they ever figured out what he’d done, they’d become unhappy. With him, specifically. He’d broken every rule, after all, and while he didn’t care about that, he knew they would. Well, Bruce would, and the others would probably be upset about the situation for other reasons. 

He pictured how it might go, sometimes, on sleepless nights when the feelings of loss and abandonment from his previous life snuck past his carefully constructed inner walls of denial and filled him with a yearning that always tested the strength of his resolve. 

Bruce would be pissed about the risks he took, and it would be completely unfair because this version of Bruce couldn’t even begin to grasp the pain that Tim had spared him from. But he might try, and if he did… he might thank Tim, recognize his sacrifice. Which Tim didn’t need from him, but still. It would be nice to get. 

Alfred would be shaken by the news, but he’d cover it up by politely offering Tim tea or something while they talked it through, and Tim would be too desperate for the familiarity to not accept. He might even be able to pretend for half a second that it was just another afternoon chat with his pseudo grandfather, but the illusion would be shattered when Alfred had to ask him whether he wanted cream and sugar instead of just knowing Tim’s preferences like he knew his family’s. Tim would be an unusual guest, not a lost grandson. 

Dick would no doubt cry, and probably crush him in a hug, simply from the very idea of a lost brother, not because he recognized Tim. It wouldn’t actually be his big brother hugging him again, but it would be close enough to what Tim missed that he thought it might not matter in the moment. It had been so long since anyone had wrapped him up in their arms like they didn’t want to let him go, and he knew from experience that Dick’s hugs were as amazing when given to complete strangers as they were to family. 

Cass… might not recognize him, but she would no doubt see how much he cared about them and appreciate that. She’d probably be the nicest about it all, simply because only she would be able to see into the pain that was now an integral part of his being. It was a good thing Bruce had decided to homeschool her, actually, because if she’d started to attend Gotham Academy then Tim would have had to transfer lest he risk her figuring too much out by watching him. 

With Damian, it was hard to say how it would go. Out of everyone from his old family, he had changed the most from the original timeline, and despite that being Tim’s doing, it left him unable to predict how this new version of his little brother would react to the truth of their situation. Maybe if Tim revealed that he was the one who talked Pru into leaving the League early and encouraged her to give Batman the information about his son being raised by assassins so he would be brought to Gotham sooner, then maybe Damian would be grateful. Maybe. Regardless, Tim was pretty sure he would fail to recognize Damian just as much as Damian would fail to recognize him. But it might be nice to have a chance to observe this softer version of his baby brother up close rather than stealing glances from afar. 

With Jason… Tim’s powers of imagination always failed him here. To think about how Jason might react to the news that he would have died without Tim, Tim had to think about telling him that he would have died, and he could never bring himself to think through that conversation. He didn’t want to be the reason Jason became burdened with that knowledge. The entire point of all of this had been to lift everyone’s burdens, but especially his . Regardless, he was already plenty used to a lack of recognition on Jason’s part. They passed each other at least a couple times a week in the hallways at school, and not once had his former big brother ever done more than spare him a passing glance. Tim was nobody to him. And it had to stay that way. 

It’s not that he’d never been tempted to approach them, to find some other way to get into their lives. He knew enough about them that he would have been able to find some way to connect with Jason or Damian or even Alfred, if he’d tried. It would have been so easy, especially back before Tim’s parents had died and they’d been neighbors. Asking for a cup of sugar or kicking a ball over the fence, all perfectly innocent things he could do in order to ‘meet’ the Waynes. He never did, though. All it would do was create an unnecessary risk to the integrity of his plans. He’d given up so much that he couldn’t risk it all for his own selfishness, not now. 

Or maybe he was actually indulging in selfishness by staying away to spare himself the pain of no recognition. 

Either way, it was never really an option. He was determined to stick to his course and remain the lost Robin, the Wayne family’s silent protector, watching from the shadows for warning signs and doing what he could to eliminate causes of distress for his family with them never knowing how bad things could get. His biggest achievement was of course his first one—hacking Batman’s Justice League communicator and getting Superman and Wonder Woman on scene that day in Ethiopia. He might have gone there himself to make sure that was enough, but he was stuck in the body of an untrained twelve year old at the time, so that had seemed like a bad idea. It had been terribly nerve racking to wait back in Gotham and wonder if he had done enough, but when Jason had come out of Bruce’s airplane on his own two legs rather than in a coffin, Tim had known right then and there it had all been worth it. But beyond that, he’d done several other things with the ultimate purpose of helping his family. Once the dust had settled between Jason and Bruce and he thought they might be ready to meet another family member, he’d figured out where in the world Cass was and laid a trail of fabricated evidence that led Bruce to meeting her several years ahead of schedule. He’d gotten both Damian and Pru out of the League of Assassins before the worst of their experiences had scarred them forever. He’d also kept up his nighttime jaunts, although he didn’t follow the Bats anymore, just used his experience and knowledge to track down evidence and send the information in to Gordon, who would pass it along to either his detectives or Batman as he saw fit. All in all, he was doing fine on his own.

 Just. Fine. 

And then Jason was absent from school for three weeks. Hacking the office told him Bruce had called him out for mono, with a doctor’s note from Leslie backing it up, but Tim was certain there was more to the story, or even that it was a flat out lie. Jason was still Robin for now (although Tim had been making himself picture Damian becoming Robin III and trying to be normal about it because he was sure it was going to happen at some point in the future), and the last night he’d been seen out, Tim had been busy tracking a suspicious shipment that he was pretty sure was Fear Toxin down by the harbor while Batman and Robin dealt with some weird cult that had cropped up on the other side of town. His sources couldn’t confirm anything about what happened besides the fact that the two of them went into some creepy abandoned church that the cult was using as a base, but then a few hours later, Nightwing showed up to hand off the captured cultists to the cops while Batman and Robin seemingly vanished. Tim had originally figured Robin had been injured and been rushed to the Batcave for treatment, but the mono excuse had given him pause. If it were broken bones, Jason would need more than a few weeks to heal and wouldn’t necessarily need to be bedridden for that whole time, so Bruce usually constructed cover stories that would allow for the visible casts and a return to regular civilian life with accommodations for the injury. Nightwing hadn’t been around more than usual and Batman had been acting normally on patrols, and Damian kept going about his life as usual, so whatever it was Tim didn’t think Jason’s life was at risk, but a less severe injury that didn't involve a break wouldn’t need so long for recovery. It could have been a concussion, but… usually they’d just come up with some story to explain the concussion. 

He couldn’t come up with anything, and was getting ready to reconsider whether Jason might actually have gotten mono when he showed back up at school. 

And he was fucking ripped. And tall. 

He hadn’t been scrawny or anything before of course, since he’d had several years of a healthy diet and intensive training to keep himself in top physical form, but he’d still been on the leaner side and several inches shorter than he was in the last timeline, which had honestly helped Tim keep this Jason mentally separate from Big-Brother-Red-Hood-Jason-Todd. Jason told everyone who asked that he had an unexpected growth spurt, but most people still whispered about it and there was a rumor going around that he’d gotten some experimental mono treatment that involved steroids. Tim was not convinced, because this ‘growth spurt’ happened to coincide with a new ‘dye job’ that left a streak of white in the front of his hair. There was only one logical explanation, and it made Tim consider just how exactly he might go about throwing hands with the universe:

Jason had gotten dunked in a fucking Lazarus Pit. 

Again. 

His training as a detective demanded that he confirm this hypothesis before he did something drastic like decide to reset the timeline again, and the first step of confirming his hypothesis had been to see whether or not there was a Lazarus Pit in Gotham. No other family member had been traveling by his knowledge, and he didn’t think they’d let Jason go off alone to somehow break into one of Ra’s al Ghul’s strongholds and use his, especially not if he was in critical enough condition that the Bats would actually consider using a Pit on purpose. So the other explanation was that it had happened by accident on that last night Robin had been out. Tim had snuck into the creepy church that had been closed off as a crime scene and found evidence of tunnels leading deep under Gotham, but they’d been blocked by some sort of cave in. He’d been able to deduce that the cave in had been caused on purpose by Batman, likely to keep the police from discovering whatever it was the cult had been doing below. Which could easily have involved a Lazarus pit, but it wasn’t a sure thing. Tim couldn’t haul several tons of rubble away by himself and he definitely didn’t want to risk bringing down the remaining roofs on top of him by messing with it too much, so he’d abandoned that plan and turned to archival research instead, hoping to find some evidence in Gotham’s twisted history that would point to the presence of a Lazarus Pit. 

He was now several days into paging through the old local history books that were tucked into the dustiest corner of the Gotham Academy library, but had yet to come across anything other than a new shortlist of suspicious deaths he thought could reasonably be attributed to the Court of Owls. Tim wouldn’t give up though; it might take some time to find what he was looking for, but he had nothing but time these days. Time to himself to watch, to plan, to think, to dwell, to long for, to lie. And time to solve this mystery at a comfortable pace, so unlike the tense timelines he worked with in his other life. Because what did it matter if it took him an extra week or month to confirm that Jason had gone into a Lazarus Pit? If he had, and if Tim then ruled it would negatively impact the quality of his life in the long term, he’d just go back and figure out how to make things happen differently, and the extra time wouldn’t even matter. 

Sure it was risky to test the fabric of time and reality like that, but it was no riskier than it had been the first time, and that had turned out ok. Better than ok, even. Everyone was better off now. Happy, whole, and relatively untraumatized. Everyone except for maybe him, but he didn’t really think that mattered. Not when it was his choices that had led him to this…

Tim must have spaced out for a moment, because he didn’t hear the sounds of anyone approaching until the quiet thud of a bag being placed on the floor nearby drew him out of his thoughts. He looked up, blinking in confusion because no one ever actually came back here, and oh. That was Jason sitting at the table adjacent to Tim’s. 

—Wait, didn’t he have a class during this period? Tim knew he had to, because ever since starting school here he’d always preemptively hacked his schedule to make sure their off periods never coincided to lessen the chances of them interacting casually. Just to make sure he didn’t have a chance to give anything away. And the clock on the wall told him that he definitely hadn't missed the bell, so this was still Tim’s free period to hide in the library, thank you very much. 

Jason looked his way, and Tim abruptly realized that he’d been staring. He offered Jason a tight smile and then quickly looked back down at the old journal he’d been reading and pretended to become engrossed in it. It wasn’t really his business if Jason was cutting class, but did Jason have to come and cut class next to Tim? 

Despite resolutely not looking up from his research, Tim couldn’t shake the feeling of eyes on him for several minutes. When he did finally peek up through his eyelashes to see if he was imagining things, Jason was still looking right at him. For no good reason!

This was bad. Shit, maybe the Bats had figured out who had been leaving all those tips for the police. Or maybe someone had spotted him poking around the cult’s creepy church and found it suspicious. Or maybe—maybe Tim’s hair was doing something weird! Maybe—

“Hey, kid.” 

Tim looked up again to see that Jason had come over to his table and was standing over him. Tim swallowed thickly and managed to squeak out, “can I help you?” 

“I forgot to bring a pen, got a spare I could borrow?” 

Oh. Of course. All he wanted from Tim was a pen. Well, Tim had already given up an entire lifetime for his sake, what was a writing utensil on top of it all? He reached down to his own bag and fished around for a moment before coming back up with the requested implement. “Here you go. And I don’t need it back,” he said, keeping his eyes fixed on Jason’s chest so he didn’t have to make prolonged eye contact with a brother who was a stranger. 

“Oh, I bet you don’t,” Jason muttered. And that was weird enough that Tim furrowed his brow and looked up, finally locking eyes with him. 

There was something off about Jason’s gaze, and it wasn’t just the fact that his irises were an odd color you might expect from slapping colored contacts over Lazarus green. For the first time in years, Tim actually saw a flash of something echoed back to him in a family member’s face, something he’d committed long ago to living without—

Recognition. 

—So he bolted.