Chapter Text
It’s a little nerve-wracking, at the beginning. Tim’s a lot more used to keeping to as many shadows as possible on these nighttime jaunts, and only being on the ground long enough to get to one of his preselected rooftops for the night, one that has a good hiding spot and the high chance of proximity to previously observed patterns in Batman and Robin’s patrol routes. The rest of his deep dark nights out are spent staying mostly on that rooftop and in one place, hoping to either catch one or both of Gotham’s fabled vigilante duo traversing the rooftops, or get really lucky and catch the pair busting a crime close enough that he doesn’t even need to move rooftops to get some shots of it.
Oh, Tim has considered trying to tear after them on his skateboard before—more than once, in fact. He especially thinks about it whenever he’s had to watch them vanishing into the distance when he knows he got them on film in only one of his ten frantic attempts at a shot, and even that one was at a combined ISO and shutter speed that he knows it’s gonna come out blurry and grainy before he even develops it.
Besides, the board’s noisy rolling and clacking over pavement would seem three times as loud on empty, night-shadowed streets as it does in the daytime. He’s pretty sure if he tried it he’d attract unwanted, possibly criminal attention—or even worse, Bat attention—and neither of those had ever seemed like a good idea if he wants to keep being able to go out untroubled and unhindered.
Because for all the insanity of Gotham’s Rogues, and for as much as the Rogue regulars tend to devise their schemes with Bat-confrontation in mind, most of them still don’t pick to lie in wait or seek out a fight on rooftops under the open sky all that often. The “normie” criminals—the local mobsters, gangsters, petty thieves, and the like, are even more adverse to hanging out high up, generally not opting for it unless there’s already a “proper” roof access and roof-level deck space designed into the building. If you ask Tim—though of course no one ever has—it shows a real lack of creativity on their part, and a level of ambition weaker than those kinds of crooks usually claim they have. Like, are you really that ambitious if you’re apparently discarding your more creative options out of hand just because you think you’re above acting a bit abnormal?
Eh. Whatever. Tim’s certainly not gonna offer them tips. Not when it leaves him with nice and safe locations for photoshoots. There’s been more than one time that a vigilante (or vigilantes) had touched down on Tim’s chosen roof for the night, too, and never seemed to notice him in his hiding spot before they moved away again. Some of his best pictures have come from those moments.
And it’s no wonder that Batman and Robin choose to fly over the roofs so often, since it’s surprisingly safe—as long as you don’t pick a surprise explosion building to hang out on. Fortunately, they're very rare, and Tim’s only ever been close enough to feel the shock wave from it.
Tonight, though, he’s walking very openly down the sidewalk, making no attempt at stealth. It’s undoubtedly why he’s feeling unsettled. He doesn’t even intend to hit up a rooftop unless it looks like his most plausible option for escape from street-level trouble. He’s also still not entirely sure Nightwing is actually tailing him because he’s just sort of taking it on faith that Nightwing would notice him and follow in the first place, and if he is following Tim right now, it isn’t apparent.
Maybe he was wrong and it was a nearby house that the vigilante’s watching. Maybe the DNA collection incident was an unrelated matter of convenience, and Robin’s tail today, personal curiosity. Which would mean Tim’s taken both of those things to mean something about Nightwing’s presence that they don’t.
He shouldn’t feel faint disappointment at the thought. The whole letter scheme has been about putting feelers out on Mr. Wayne. Dick Grayson ultimately has nothing to do with that—the guy doesn’t even live in Gotham anymore, and Tim supposes there’s plenty of reasons for that that he should respect. More importantly, not getting in the way of the work of the vigilantes in Gotham has been something Tim promised to stick to ever since he realized exactly who Batman and Robin were and he started going out for vigilante-spotting; he has no business hoping for continuing attention from any of them. As things stand he’s already caused enough distraction that he’s gotta help solve.
He’s not a four year old with no concept of decorum or manners, after all.
For all they’d been around less and less in the last few years, the two older Drakes had certainly drilled into him the importance of those. And Mr. Wayne is old money, besides. He keeps a British butler, the same one since his parents were around, if the gossip magazine exposé Tim read that one time was right. These are all reasons to believe he might just care about formality and tradition more than what Tim’s already used to. He needs to get a feel for what the man himself really thinks about that sort of thing before he goes assuming anything too much about him.
Loud popping noises somewhere ahead interrupt his musings and make him freeze, feeling vaguely like some kind of prey animal trying to seem like an inanimate object—for all the good it does him to do that out in the open in the middle of a deserted sidewalk.
That sounded like gunshots.
It’s funny but he used to think noises like these were fireworks, at least until an incident had happened right in the middle of a daytime news report his mother had been watching. She’d turned it off immediately and avoided watching much live news reporting for a while after that, but the damage had been done, and Tim had found his brain recategorizing what all those “fireworks” in Gotham he’d ever heard most likely really were, too.
A similar recategorization would happen with an evening news report two years later, which had been about a lumberyard’s wide-angle security camera managing to capture Batman and Robin taking down a Rogue and his goons. The clip the reporters had been commenting on had had Batman in the foreground, doling out fist-shaped justice to faces left and right, but what had struck Tim had been Robin swinging to rebound off a really tall lumber rack, right into a quadruple somersault. Robin’s uncurling from the maneuver had ended with his feet hammering a crook that had been chasing him right in the solar plexus
The guys coming up behind the one crook had balked, stumbling to a halt, because at that moment everything in Tim’s universe had shifted a little to the left and clicked into place. While the fight had been short work for Robin and his huge grin after that, and the news had long switched to a different story, Tim had sat there overlaying the move in the security footage over of a memory of a young acrobat showing off his promised special trick under a big top, and realizing how well they matched, how few people in the world were said to be able to do a move like that—
The next few days had seen him come to a series of realizations: not just who Robin really was, but also who Batman must be, where they operated from, and even the probable reasons why they did what they did, all falling like dominoes.
He still hasn’t spotted Nightwing following him. How close is he going to have to get before he can be sure the vigilante’s shown up … or hasn’t shown up … to fight whatever crime is happening ahead?
But then Tim sees a lone figure darting ahead on the edge of the rooftops, and his sinking feeling turns to relief mixed with the previous giddy elation. He grins, picking up his pace. The figure pauses somewhere down the next block beyond the one Tim’s still walking on, before dropping to whatever he’s seen below, presumably in the alley.
… Had Nightwing thrown a glance back over his shoulder before he did that? It was hard to tell with the dark and that high collar obscuring the lower half of his head.
Blinking in a bid to keep himself from getting distracted, Tim glances up at the block ahead, then down at his camera several times. As he hurries on, he makes sure to take the lens cap off and double check the count of pictures left on the roll (and for all the past pictures lost to the darkness of the dreaded unremoved lens cap: a moment of silence between here and whatever scene lies ahead).
He can hear the sound of an ongoing fight by the time he’s approaching the mouth of the alley, though it goes strangely quiet as soon as he arrives. He notes the long row of newspaper dispensers lined up on the outer edge of the sidewalk nearby—their bulk will make for a good place to dart to the other side of, if he needs to hide quickly because someone decides to try to run out of the alley. They’re the only thing on hand sufficiently bulky enough to shield him from being immediately spotted in that situation. Giant question mark if something tries to come at him from outside of the alley, of course, but if all else fails there’s always running in Nightwing’s direction. As loath as he is to insert himself into the middle of any incidents where he doesn’t belong, he has no interest in being killed or brutalized by some creep or goon like some kind of afterthought, just because he’s gawking from an obvious location.
It would be such a stupid way to go. Also, Nightwing would probably be upset by something like that happening on his watch, if he noticed.
He’s all heroic like that.
At least Tim knows he doesn’t have to worry much about Nightwing being too thrown if Tim has to throw himself at him as a last resort. Both Batman and the current Robin deftly handle chaotic scenarios like that all the time without harming the hapless civilians mixed up in them, and there’s no way Dick’s worse at it, even if Tim never did get to see him in action to the same extent he’s seen Jason.
With a cautious slowness, keeping all of his body but what he absolutely needs to stick out in order to snap pictures hidden around the corner of the large dumpster near the entrance of the alley, Tim takes stock of the fight through his viewfinder. Or the tail end of the fight, anyway.
He’s lucky that the lighting is appropriate—near what’s happening are two different overhead lights over doorways, while the mouth of the alley is about equidistant between the nearest streetlights. This places his little bit of cover in a location that’s rather dark, at least comparatively. And as he had discovered in learning how to expose and develop his photography, the eye’s not quite like a manually adjusted camera. With the latter, one sets the shutter speed or aperture or even the ISO of the film in the camera depending on what kinds of lighting conditions you want to see more of the details in.
But with the eyes … their aperture, that is, the iris, automatically adjusts based on the totality of light reaching the eye at any given moment. If there’s too much light close to you, it automatically adjusts to greatly restrict how much light can get in, meaning you end up having a hard time picking out anything in the distant dark places. And you can’t do anything to change how much light your eyes are letting in, besides change how much light is shining. Comparing what his camera could pick up when pointed at shadows—when the camera was adjusted for them, anyway—compared to what his own eyes could see in any given lighting situation had made him realize that part of how Batman hides is not just through leveraging his own position in the shadows, but also considering how much more ill-adjusted everyone else’s eyes will be to seeing him because they’re sticking too close to the light. So, similarly to Batman, Tim knows he benefits from that effect by only ever peering down on areas that are either better-lighted or equally-lighted as dark rooftops.
In some ways it’s kind of weird, like the sensation of wiggling a loose tooth, seeing the scene from this angle instead of a roof.
There’s one guy cowering against the wall with an injury, one guy lying on the flat on the ground, completely still, and one guy that Nightwing’s already halfway through securing. Tim’s at a terrible angle to see whether the guy flat on the ground is even awake. Tim snaps a picture as Nightwing forces the arms of the guy he’s securing back with rough, brisk movements. The guy groans, slumping forward, head swaying like he’s trying to shake off a severe case of dizziness.
“Aw, look at it this way, pal, this experience just saved you a whole trip to Nevada,” Nightwing says with a condescending and false cheer as he cuffs the guy, “Which would have been very hard to pull off if you were doing a lot more time in Blackgate because I hadn’t stopped you. Plus, now that you’ve seen me, there’s no need to go to see The King all the way over there. That means you won’t need to find someone who’d be willing to go with you to his Chapel of Love, either. Of course, I’m sure that would have been the harder part for you. For multiple unfortunate reasons.”
The guy curses Nightwing out with a very rude and dirty word. Tim’s mother would have gasped. Tim snaps a few more pictures from several different distances to the ground, which are the only alternate angles really available to him. The one where he was basically resting the camera on the ground is going to be the most fun to see developed, he decides. The one guy lying flat is gonna look like little else besides the soles of his pair of shoes from that angle.
Withdrawing fully behind his cover, Tim scrunches his eyebrows as he plays back Nightwing’s words in his head. “The King” sounds like the name of some kind of mob leader—though what a mob leader from Nevada is trying to do in Gotham is a really big question.
Ah, well. That’s not Tim’s concern. And whatever “The King’s” intentions and connections with this incident were, the “Chapel of Love” is an objectively terrible name for what’s probably his mob headquarters. Yikes. It’s a good thing Nightwing was here to bust whatever these chumps were up to because they don’t need any weirdo mob leaders with bad headquarter names setting up in this city. What the themed Rogues native to Gotham come up with is already bad enough.
But it sure hasn’t taken very long for Nightwing to sort this one out. The fight had been over shockingly fast, before Tim could even hurry up and dash the rest of the way there, really. In Tim’s not inconsiderable observational experience, unless the ratio of goon to vigilante is more than six to one, or there are Rogues involved, the speed of this fight is pretty typical. So it shouldn’t be a surprise that the only thing that’s taking Nightwing longer on this one is giving first aid to the scared guy with the injury, and then questioning everyone still conscious. From the questions Nightwing’s asking, it sounds like the one guy was more victim than participant, though he was also apparently the friend of the guy that had cursed out Nightwing, so how innocent is he really? Hm.
Nightwing advises the guy to get better friends, but he doesn’t tie him up, only offers to help him to the curb to wait for police and paramedics.
“Don’t help your friend slip away before the police get here,” Nightwing warns as he watches the guy get to his feet after the offer of help is shrugged off. “I’ll know, so don’t even try it.”
It’s probably not even Nightwing’s sternest tone—Tim had heard Dick as Robin go harsher once—but the guy flinches anyway before grimacing and seeming to steel himself. “He was just mad that the dick shot me at all,” the injured guy protests weakly.
The mocking quotation marks are evident around Nightwing’s next four words. “‘I was big mad’ still isn’t an excuse for going way beyond neutralizing the threat. Even I couldn’t really get away with that, you know.” His frown is flat and unimpressed. He stays half turned away as the injured guy sags against the nearest wall and awkwardly shuffles as far away from the vigilante as he can get before he would have to start climbing over trash bags just to keep next to the wall supporting him.
“Well, sor-ry if I don’t feel particularly upset about a guy that shot me getting choked out half to death,” the injured guy mutters. “Was I supposed to invite him out for coffee and another six rounds?” There’s a heavy silence, before the guy adds petulantly: “And so what about what you couldn’t get away with? I don’t even know who the hell you are.”
The tilt of Nightwing’s head suggests he’s a bit annoyed by the comments, but the way he relaxes back almost immediately also suggests he’s decided to dismiss them. “The name’s Nightwing. F.Y.I. Not Elvis.”
Tim frowns at the lack of recognition. Someone clearly pays no attention to the news about the coolest group of heroes operating in NYC.
Sad.
Nightwing’s attention moves away from the injured guy as he raises a hand to one ear. “Hey, Penny One? Put in a call to emergency services for me, would you? Three injured. One with a GSW, one with an attempted strangulation injury. And the usual varied levels of blunt force trauma for all. Send ‘em to the alley on 23rd between Lennox and Bourdain.” A long pause. “What? No, none of those are, why—” Another pause, and his mouth pops open with a stiff dismay he rushes to say: “No! A, no, listen that’s not—this is—he’s not involved in it, I promise you. Everything’s fine. I’ve got eyes.”
Despite the fact that Tim’s in the darker place, and despite the fact that Nightwing’s head doesn’t shift one iota from its half-turned-away angle, Tim feels distinctly stared at, all the sudden. He sucks in a breath through his mouth (not his nose, he learned better than to do that when out and about in Gotham a long time ago) and ducks fully back behind the large garbage bin.
Uh oh. You know, he … probably should move away from here sooner rather than later. Just far enough that Nightwing can easily track him down again, but also somewhere far away enough, and low-profile enough, that no one but Nightwing would be likely to take note of him.
Since crossing the mouth of the alley seems like a recipe for getting spotted by the two perpetrators of the incident that are still conscious, and not just by Nightwing, Tim starts cautiously doubling back to the last cross street he’d passed, crossing his fingers that he can find some place suitable to linger down there. At least for just long enough that he can be sure Nightwing’s wrapped up the scene and has probably tracked Tim down again—if he really is out here following Tim, anyway.
Tim gets lucky and finds one of those big blue post office boxes around the corner of the same block. It’s even in good condition, being still properly attached to the sidewalk on all four legs, and suffering only one dent large enough to be noticeable in the dark of night. Most of the USPS logo is still visible on its sides, too, instead of being scratched up or scraped away or graffitied over. He squats down, tucked up against the side of the box facing the building, and settles one end of the lip of his skateboard down on the sidewalk in front of him. Alternating his glances up and down both directions of the street, he stays tense and ready to move again if anyone except one of the members of his favorite vigilante family seems to be approaching his position.
As he waits, he considers what to do next. He likes to imagine that secretly, Nightwing is really appreciating this chance to do something other than perch on a roof watching Tim’s boring neighborhood all night.
Except … that crime was pretty low stakes. And he’s confused why he didn’t see a gun anywhere when he was taking pictures, since he’d heard shots. Maybe since Nightwing was already tying people up by time Tim arrived, he’d already secured the thing somewhere out of sight.
Which is fine, really. Guns are more scary than cool. Even if he’s vaguely aware that his … that there’s one in his par- … in the master bedroom. Somewhere. He saw it once. Didn’t seem real, somehow. Seems like a distant dream, this far removed from it, even though there’s every reason to think it’s still around his house somewhere.
Anyway—that doesn't matter. What matters is that Tim didn’t get any action shots of Nightwing’s fight. He shouldn’t be so surprised and disappointed by it—of course Nightwing can take out a few regular chumps in like ten seconds flat. Batman and Robin have always sorted out these kinds of minor crimes before Tim can get there, too, unless it was happening right next to his hiding spot for the night. Tim did still get some amazingly angled closeups of the aftermath of this one that he never would have gotten under normal circumstances. He shouldn’t complain.
But clearly, if he wants action shots any time tonight, he needs a little bit of luck—and to try for more than modest little street crimes. He has to find Nightwing a bigger challenge.
Fortunately, his experience with these nighttime photoshoots means he’s peripherally aware—as a matter of his own safety and survival—of where some of the closest sketchy warehouses are, and conveniently enough, they’re only six blocks west of here. That means there’s time enough to check them out for suspicious activity before Tim should probably start heading back home.
Tim grins to himself as he looks at the little “14” displayed on his camera, the count of how many shots are left on his current roll of film.
It’s time for another great idea.