Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Thursday, 10:00 pm.

“For the last time, it wasn’t me who broke the remote,” Stephanie’s voice echoed over the comms.

Tim rolled his eyes as he jumped from a rooftop to another rooftop. “You threw it at a wall,” he reminded her. 

Despite being alone, Tim could practically see Steph rolling her eyes, “The only reason why I threw it at the wall is because it wasn’t working in the first place!”

“You really are not the most logical, are you?” Damian joined in on the conversation.

A grunt was heard, “If I have to fucking suffer this same argument for the third time this week, I’m switching channels,” Jason said.

“No you’re not,” Babs chimed in. “You need information, and I’m not going to keep changing channels just to update you. Either you stay and suffer like the rest of us, or you’re on your own, Hood.”

“Fuck you.”

Tim sighed. 

It was a pretty slow patrol session. Not that anyone was complaining, of course. But it was strangely unnerving, like it was building up to something. Still, it was understandable. Gotham’s big name rouges were all locked up, and there had been no attempts of breaking out of Arkham Asylum. Granted, Poison Ivy was out there somewhere since she managed to slip away when they had confronted her two weeks ago. Even random gangs and criminals seemed to be steering clear of the streets recently. Overall, a slow patrol session. 

Of course, that doesn’t mean there weren’t things stirring up. Jason was investigating some rumor about a new drug. Cass was also online in the comms, she was just quiet with the occasional laugh, but she was out following up on a lead on Ivy. Tim has left Damian to patrol with Steph since he himself was following up on a case. 

Lately, there had been a spike in suicide rates. From what Tim had collected, a spike like this was really out of place. There had been no major events that could have triggered it, nor were any of the people involved connected to each other in any way. All he knows is that it’s suspicious. 

So here he was in Old Gotham, where most of the incidents occurred, whether it was in the confines of the people’s homes or out in public. He was mostly on the lookout for anyone standing on any of the high buildings. 

“Red,” Babs’ voice catches his attention. “There’s a guy getting real chummy with a couple of teens a few streets north of you.”

“On it,” Tim replied. He hurriedly grappled across the buildings, keeping an eye out. He spots two teenage boys backed up to a wall and an old guy leaning closer and closer to them. 

Tim dropped down on him, making the old guy slam to the ground. Tim stepped back, “You guys alright?” he asked, looking over to the teens. The two nodded, giving a quick thanks before running off. 

“Alright bozo,” Tim started, pulling out a rope from his utility belt, intending to tie the guy up, when suddenly the guy pulled out a baton from his jacket and jabbed Tim’s ribs before running away. Tim let out a groan, holding his likely bruised rib before chasing after the guy.

As Tim was chasing him down, the guy kept throwing a bunch of things like a garbage can lid, his own jacket, and his baton towards him, trying to slow him down. None of the things hit Tim, of course, but it did allow the guy enough time to disappear at a corner. 

Tim sped up his running and turned the corner, nearly tripping over a perfume bottle as he did so. Using a batarang, Tim prevented the guy from taking another turn. The guy backed up, dodging the batarang, and Tim was quick to apprehend him at that moment.

He tied the old guy up before dragging him out to the main road. “Let me go!” the guy protested as Tim was tying him up further to a pole. 

“Why do you guys always say that?” Tim asked, “Like, are you really expecting us to say, sure! Walk away now!” Tim rolled his eyes as he finished the knot. He inhaled deeply before letting out a small cough, clearing his throat. “Man, what is that? Your cologne or something? Might wanna change that. Anyway, see ya!” 

Tim hopped up to a building, “Oracle...”

“Yeah, I’ve contacted the police, they should be there to arrest the guy soon,” Babs said.

“Red, I love you and all, but you really need to sass your criminals less,” Steph commented. “It’s even worse over the comms.”

Tim was going to be honest, he completely forgot that everyone could hear him. He could feel his cheeks heat up a bit. “Well—well, at least I got a criminal, alright,” he exclaimed.

“Yeah, after he got away,” Jason commented.

“You’re not a part of this conversation,” Tim said.

“Seeing as I’m stuck here against my will, I say I am,” Jason said.

“Robin, Spoiler, there’s a drunk guy being destructive at the pub near you guys,” Babs interrupted. “Hood, I see a bunch of guys gathering at the alley at the end of that street you’re on. Not sure if they’re involved, but I think it’ll be worth checking out.”

The three gave out varying affirmations at the information before muting the channel—something Tim should really have done when he did that old guy in.            

“Red,” Babs called. “There’s another incident report that may be related to your case,” she said. “Woman in her 40s, no records of intoxication, no known motives, died by smashing her head against the wall.”

Tim clicked his tongue. 

He needs to solve this, soon.

Friday, 5:14 am. 

Tim swung by his apartment and got his laptop and files that he needed, before heading to the batcave. Normally, he’d deal with cases like this at his place, but having more resources available would likely make things move along faster. 

“Good morning Master Timothy,” Alfred greeted as he walked down the stairs. 

“Hey Alfred,” he greeted back. “I’m just here to work on this case I have. Did Steph bring Damian home?” Bruce was off-world doing Justice League stuff and Dick wasn’t visiting until the weekend, so technically Damian was Tim’s responsibility. So he had to check if the brat actually made it to bed at a reasonable time so he has something to use against him if he ever complains about being woken up too early. He was the one insisting on patrolling on school nights.

“Yes, Master Damian has gone to bed at 12 am. He doesn’t have classes until 9 am, so he can still fulfill his 8 hours of recommended sleep,” Alfred said.

Tim nodded along, “Good, good,” he took a seat in front of the batcomputer, hooking it up to his laptop so he could transfer the files. He could also spot a document sent by Babs containing the initial information about the incident she had relayed earlier. 

“Good indeed,” Alfred said, “Now I must suggest that you do the same. When have you last slept?” 

Luckily for Tim, he was ready for this question. 

“Yesterday,” he said. Technically he wasn’t lying, he slept yesterday, Thursday. Except he slept at 1 am, so it has already been a day since he last slept, but Alfred doesn’t have to know that.

“How many hours?” 

Unluckily for Tim, he did not anticipate a follow up question. “2 hours?”

Alfred let out a sigh, “That is not nearly enough sleep, I shall get your room ready.”

“Wait Alfred!” Tim called out, but the man was already on his way up the stairs. Tim sighed, slouching back on the chair. He knows that Alfred won’t stop pestering him until he got at least four hours of sleep, so he decided to complete the file transfer and finish up on updating his case while Alfred got his room ready. Then he’d sleep. 

At least, that was the plan. 

Tim stared at the ceiling of his room.

He’d been staring at it for nearly an hour now. He tossed and turned, and even succumbed to drinking warm milk at Alfred’s insistence, but alas, sleep won’t come to him.

So, Tim stood up. 

He opened the door to his room, carefully. He looked around for any signs of Alfred, and when he saw that the coast was clear, he booked it down to the cave once again.

If he wasn’t going to be able to sleep, he might as well be useful.

He opened the city map, as well as the access to all cameras, before taping his comm on. 

“Hello?” A voice called.

“Hey Signal,” Tim leaned forward, resting his arms and torso on the table.

“Red?” Duke said, “Shouldn’t you be in bed? You have a meeting later.”

Tim shrugged, “Couldn’t sleep, so I might as well give support,” he said. “Besides, your early patrol ends in like two hours, worst case scenario, I fall asleep here after, then wake up just in time for my meeting in the afternoon.”

“That’s not very good for your back,” Duke commented, “You have to stop doing that or you’ll do permanent damage to your poor old back.”

Tim rolled his eyes, “I’m not old, you’re literally only a few years younger,” he exclaimed.

“Yeah, but I’m not the one torturing my back.”

“You’re really making me want to send you on a wild goose chase,” Tim said, arms crossed on his chest. He hears Duke laugh at his statement, unaware that Tim was in fact, petty enough to do so.

“No you won’t, you’ll lose computer access,” Duke said.

“There’s a bunch of kids vandalizing public property at the park,” Tim said.

“...I’m not falling for it,” Duke said.

Tim shrugged, “Hey, it’s your call.”

Tim lets out a laugh when he hears Duke fasten his speed. Whether the report was true or not, he’d let Duke figure it out for himself.

Tim relaxed back on the chair, a yawn escaping him.

Sleep sounds really nice right about now.

Unfortunately for Tim, the universe really doesn’t like him.

Chapter Text

Friday, 5:47 pm.

Tim arrived home after a meeting at Wayne Enterprises. The meeting dragged on a bit longer than they anticipated, so they had to cut it short and continue tomorrow. In the meantime, Tim had enough time to work on his case before patrol later. 

He sat down at the batcomputer and opened up his files. He stared at them, mentally comparing the information. 

“What’re you doing?”

Instinctively, Tim’s arm swung back, but his attack was easily stopped by a hand swatting his hand away. “Geez!” Tim exclaimed, relaxing on  the chair when he realized who it was.

Cass let out a laugh, “Hello, little brother. What are you working on?” She asked leaning forward on the chair Tim was sitting on. 

Tim looked back at the computer, “Just a case,” he said. “There’s been a suspicous increase in suicide rates, particularly but not isolated to Old Gotham.” He scrolled through the incidents, looking at Cass as he explained them. “I feel like there’s something more to this, but I can’t find anything that links them up. No mutual friends for any of them, no common method, and since none of them are prominent figures, their cases are ruled as suicide and left at that. No autopsy files or further medical records that I can look into.”

“And there haven’t been incidents where the person’s alive?” Cass signed.

Tim shook his head, “None that I know of. A lot of these incidents happened in their own homes, but I do keep a look out for anyone during patrols.”

Cass hums, “Maybe the reason why it’s random is because it is random.”

Tim raised an eyebrow at her, “Like, say someone's targeting people, they don’t really care who it is as long as they can do their thing?”

She nodded, “It could be part of something bigger.”

Tim snuggled back on the chair, “It is a possibility, but that’s gonna make this whole thing a lot more complicated,” he said with a sigh. “Anyway,” he redirected the conversation, “How was that lead on Ivy?”

Cass shrugged, “I found nothing, it was either cleared or false.”

“Uhuh, is that—” Tim cut himself off with a yawn. 

She laughs, “You should go to bed,” she reached for his head and ruffled it a bit.

“We have a patrol in a bit,” he said. “Besides, it’s too early for bed anyway.”

“It’s not too early if you haven’t slept at all,” Cass said.

“It’s fine, I’ll sleep after patrol,” Tim assured her.

Friday, 8:40 pm.

“Geez, Tim,” Steph started, “Keep that up and maybe you’ll look like a panda enough that Damian would take you in.”

“Tt, don’t be preposterous, Brown,” Damian said, as he put on his Robin cape. “I do have a criteria.”

“I’d rather be left on the street than adopted by the Demon Brat,” Tim rolled his eyes. 

They haven’t even gone out of the cave to start patrol and these two were taking the mick out of him already. 

“If you three are done bickering, I’d really appreciate some assistance near the opera house,” Babs’ voice came into their comms. “There’s like two guys rampaging, both are armed with a knife. Possibly a gun, so proceed with caution. There’s another guy with an ax near Leslie’s.”

“We’re on our way.”

Steph separated from the two and headed for Leslie’s while Tim and Damian continued to the opera house, and as Babs relayed there were two guys, both with knives, and one of them had a gun. Seeing that it was still pretty early in the night, there were still a few people out. The ones with common sense had already evacuated the area, but there was also that woman who was taunting the armed rampaging guys even further.

Damian was quick to respond, and got the woman who was yelling wildly away from a swing of the knife. He kicked the guy away, but the woman he rescued only cussed him out.

That left Tim with the guy wielding both a knife and a gun. It seemed like the guy was too busy laughing hysterically at the moon, so Tim took this as an opportunity. He lunged forward and managed to kick the gun out of the guy’s hand. This caught the guy’s attention, making him swing his knife at Tim. 

“Look, just drop the knife,” Tim said. The guy ignored him and thrusted the knife forward. Tim backed up as he dodged the knife. “Okay, we’re doing this the hard way,” he muttered to himself. 

The guy thrusted the knife at Tim once again. Tim dodge to the left, quickly grabbing the knife wielding wrist. Tim tightened his grip on said wrist, enough for the guy to loosen his hold a bit and he quickly knocked the knife away. Tim then twisted his body so that his back was to the guy. He pulled on the guy’s wrist, before toppling him over. 

The fast movement made black take over Tim’s vision for a second. He had to close his eyes to rebalance himself.

“Red, behind you!” He hears Babs scream in his ear.

Tim whipped around just in time to see the woman Damian had saved earlier hold the gun out in front of her, aimed at him. A gunshot sounded in the area, and Tim narrowly dodged the bullet, only grazing his cheek. 

Damian quickly disarmed the woman, before pushing her to the ground and tying her hands behind her back. 

“Are you alright?” Steph's voice came through the comms, likely hearing the commotion from her end.

“Yeah,” Tim took a second, “Yeah, I'm fine.”

Tim tied up the guy he had apprehended before dragging him over to where Damian was tying up the others to a pole. 

“Are you sure, that was a really close one,” Babs asked. 

“It’s just a scratch,” he said.

“What was that?!” Damian exclaimed. ”You were the one who knocked the gun away. You couldn’t even keep track of where you threw those weapons?”

Tim sighed, closing his eyes. His head was pounding and the last thing he needed was a lecture. “Well sorry, I didn’t exactly anticipate the woman who you saved would get any ideas with the gun.”

“If you are not fully prepared for patrol, you might as well go back home,” Damian said. “It’s not my responsibility to watch over you because of your incompetence.”

“No one’s asking you to watch over me, brat,” Tim said. “And I'm fully capable of carrying out my patrol duties.”

Damian shook his head, “Please,” he scoffed.

“Okay, that's enough you two,” Stephanie arrived at the scene, dragging a man who was tied up behind her. “Seeing as I needed to hurry to make sure you two won't kill each other, I thought I might as well save the GCPD the trouble.” She threw the guy into the pile along with the others.

Tim had to close his eyes once again as the pounding in his head persisted. “Let's just go,” he muttered, walking away from the opera house.

“You're being a liability,” Damian pointed out, making Tim stop walking to look back and glare at the boy.

“What Robin means is,” Steph nudged the boy with her elbow. “You’re usually more aware of things. Are you sure you’re alright? If you're not feeling well I can just take Robin and—”

“I said I’m fine!” Tim snapped, before taking a breath, “I’m fine, okay? Let it go,” he said, more calmly, before grappling away. He hears two more grapples follow after him.

The patrol went on until 4 am and luckily, there hadn’t been any more life-threatening incidents.

Chapter Text

Saturday, 8:21 am

Tim was in the kitchen, getting himself some water when someone entered. “Hey Baby bird,” the voice greeted. Tim knew that voice, and he knew that tone. “Heard you've locked yourself down in the cave recently.”

Tim turned around, leaning back on the kitchen counter. He sent a glare towards Dick, “What do you want?” he asked. “Did the brat run his mouth already? What am I saying, of course he did.” Tim ran a hand through his hair, “The woman caught me off guard, I'll do better okay? I don't need a lecture right now.”

“Tim,” Dick started, “That’s not the issue here. I mean, of course it's bad that you got shot—”

“It just grazed my cheek,” Tim interrupted, gesturing slightly to his bandaged cheek.

“Either way,” Dick continued, “Damian said you were off the whole patrol. He said you kept closing your eyes—”

“Gee, what a normal bodily function,” Tim rolled his eyes.

“You kept spacing out, and despite what he says, Damian’s just worried because he's already clocking this in as something that could get out of control.” This earned a scoff from Tim. “And  now that I actually see you, you look dead on your feet,” Dick said, approaching the younger. “So, what's up?” He asked, placing both hands on Tim's shoulders.

Tim's glare softened, and soon enough, he was mostly pouting, “I just…I haven't been getting any good sleep,” he said. ‘Or at all really,’ he added in his mind. Tim shook Dick’s hands off. “But I'm fine, I've dealt with worse.” 

“Doesn't mean it isn't bad,” Dick said, as he watched Tim walk out of the kitchen, “Maybe try asking Alfred for melatonin gummies? They always help me when I can't sleep.”

“Yeah, sure, I will.” Tim gave Dick a half-hearted wave as he made his way back down to the cave.

When he reached the bottom of the steps, he spotted Alfred in the weaponry area, taking inventory. Tim looked over to the computer, then back to Alfred. He thought for a moment. Sure, he had stayed up for longer, but that has its quick naps in between. This time, he hadn't slept a wink, and his head was killing him for it.

Sighing, Tim turned to the weaponry area, “Hey, Alfred? Do we have any melatonin gummies?”

Saturday, 3:46 pm.

Melatonin production companies are taking advantage of sleep deprived students, insomniacs, people who just want a good couple of hours of sleep, and most importantly, Tim Drake. Whoever said these things were going to help achieve sleep was a fucking liar, because Tim had a total of zero seconds of sleep after taking the gummies. 

He closed his eyes on his bed and waited for the miraculous effects of the bite-size sleeping aid, only to be disappointed when his alarm rang and he had done absolutely nothing but stare into the never ending darkness.

‘Maybe I can convince Bruce to sue them,’ Tim thought.

“Mr. Drake-Wayne?”

Tim opened his eyes. When did he even close them in the first place? 

He was met by multiple eyes on him. In front of the meeting room was a graph where it showed something dropping ‘cause the arrow was going down, but Tim could not for the life of him remember what this meeting was about, not to mention the words on the slide were so blurred he couldn’t even make out what it was supposed to say.

“Are you listening?” Tim looked to his left and found Lucius talking to him. “If you’re not feeling well, we could always postpone the meeting.”

“No,” Tim started, before clearing his throat. “No, it’s fine. I uhhh, I…this meeting is important,” he slurred. “The sooner it's finished, the sooner we can umm,” he paused to think as the words were not coming to him.

“Do problem solving?” Lucius suggested.

“Yes! That,” Tim said, trying to put some energy in his tone. “Besides, there’s only an hour or so of the meeting left.” He looked back to the front where a woman was standing next to the slides. “Continue, please.”

He says that, but he continued to stare at the graph that he was sure was mocking him. It thinks it is so high and mighty because it knows things that Tim doesn’t. Well, it’ll see who’s better when he—

‘I’m arguing with a line graph.’ 

Tim had to close his eyes to recover from his own idiocy. 

Saturday, 9:06 pm.

Tim was running across the rooftops, keeping an eye out for any suspicious activities. A second pair of footsteps followed him. Tim turned around with a glare. “Aren’t you supposed to be patrolling with Robin?” he asked. 

Dick hopped down to the rooftop Tim was standing on, “You two aren’t exactly on good terms right now,” he said. 

“So?” Tim asked, “You could still patrol with him? Isn’t that mostly why you come here on the weekends?”

“Red,” Dick sighed, “I don’t feel comfortable with you running around on your own.”

Tim rolled his eyes, “I could have gone with Spoiler.”

“Spoiler’s not joining tonight’s patrol, remember?” Dick said. 

No, Tim, in fact, did not remember.

“So, what? Did the brat sit this one out so you can come with me, which I highly doubt,” Tim said, “or is he now allowed to patrol on his own?” 

“He’s with Orphan.”

“I could have gone with Orphan!”

“She had her own lead she was following, and according to Oracle you had your own case too, and I don’t believe you’ll miss the opportunity to get more information for it,” Dicks crossed his arms. “Look, Red, I’m not here to fight.”

“Just to play babysitter, got it,” Tim shook his head.

“I’m not. I’ll leave you to do your thing,” Dick started, “I won’t comment on you or how you're acting, I’m not here to scold or baby you. You’re skilled enough to take care of yourself on the field,” Dick took in a breath, “I just want to make sure that if anything does happen, you’ll be safe.”

“Fine, whatever,” Tim said, before grappling away.

The two went over the usual patrol routes keeping an eye on thing. They taken out a couple of thugs, some people who were being public disturbances, jailed some creeps, and reprimanded kids who were still out at the ungodly, unsafe hours. 

Time went by quickly and it was already nearly six hours since they started patrol when their comms beeped again. The two quickly raised their hand to their comms. Babs’ voice came through, “Nightwing, Red Robin, there’s a suspicious figure going through the alleys near the park.”

“Got it.”

The two quickly followed the information Babs had given them. In the corner of Tim’s eyes, he spotted a bulky guy wearing a dark hooded jacket scampering through the alleys. Tim carefully approached as to not give away his location, and judging from the footsteps behind him, Dick also spotted the guy.

They followed him, but at some point, the guy likely had felt their presence as he started to speed up. The two hurriedly followed him, and based on the path he was taking, Tim could deduce where he was going. They had to catch him before he entered Crime Alley, so Tim took out his bo staff and aimed it at the guy’s feet. He summoned all the strength that his aching muscles could muster and threw it. 

It hit the target right on, but Tim was far too exhausted to get to him before he was able to stand again. Luckily, Dick caught on quickly and immediately pounced the guy. “Must be new,” Dick commented as Tim approached, and Tim knew what he was talking about. The guy was knocked out immediately, unlike their normal criminals who are often very durable and are able to fight back.

Tim crouched down and started tying the guy up when he felt a presence behind him. “What did I say about being here?” a low voice asked, making Tim stiffen. He turned around and found Jason towering over him. Even with the mask on, Tim could feel the scowl that he had on his face. 

“Uhhh,” Tim trailed off, not knowing what to say to not set him off.

“Hey, hey, we haven’t even crossed in yet,” Dick started, with both hands up. “Besides, when we chased the guy we’re not even remotely close to the alley. What were we supposed to do, let him go?”

“That guy was supposed to be my lead for the night,” Jason growled at them. 

“Well how were we supposed to know!” Dick exclaimed. 

Tim nodded, “You don’t exactly tell anyone about your secret little mission here.”

“Oracle knows,” Jason argued.

Their comms tuned, “No I don’t,” Babs said. “You ask me things and I give you answers, absolutely no context.”  

Dick and Tim both gave him a look. Jason let out a deep sigh, “There’s talks about a new drug,” he gestured behind him. “It’s on the downlow here in the Alley, but it's prominent enough that I’m pretty sure it's being distributed right now. Likely not here though, I haven’t heard of any incident reports about a new drug present in any victims or recently detained criminals.”

Jason then looked down at the unconscious guy, “And he’s supposed to be my lead to their possible base of operations.”

“Guys!” Babs’ urgent tone made all three of them shut up. “There’s a woman on the roof of that tall building to your left!” 

The three looked up just in time to see the woman let go of the railing. Dick and Jason were quick to move into action. Tim pulled on his own grappling hook, and aimed it up. He stumbled a bit at the quick movement. ‘Shit,’ he cursed. His vision blurred for a second, he shut his eyes then opened them back, trying his best to focus before shooting his grapple. 

By the time he was in the air, Dick already managed to catch the woman mid-fall. Tim landed next to Jason, just as Dick came down with the woman. “Let me go!” She screamed. “Why did you do that?! WHY?! I WAS SO CLOSE!” She cackled into the sky as she struggled against Dick’s hold. 

Tim could faintly hear Dick saying reassurances to the woman, who ignored him and kept laughing maniacally. Tim feels like he’s seen this before, but he can’t tell where. 

Babs informed them that police were coming. Dick tied the woman’s hands together lightly, and just as the car turned the corner, the three of them disappeared. 

“I identified the woman to be in her late 40s, no other connection to the other incidents,” Babs told them.

Tim raised his hand to his comms, “Oracle, please keep an eye out for any news on that woman.”

“Will do Red,” Babs said.

“That your case?” Jason asked.

Tim nodded, “Yeah, been working on it for nearly two weeks now.”

Jason scoffed out a laugh, “And what? Mr. Genius detective can’t figure it out.”

Tim ignored his comment. Well, it was more like his vision was blacking out again, and he barely heard what he said, but they didn't know that.

“Red,” Dick said, catching the attention of the other two. “You need to go back and rest.”

“Why? I told you, I’m fine,” Tim argued.

Jason crossed his arms, “Didn’t seem that way. Who moves that slow in an urgent situation anyway?”

“See?” Dick gestured, “Even Hood can see that something’s wrong. You need sleep, Red.”

“I can handle myself just fine—”

“You’re going home and sleeping for at least eight hours, or you will be benched,” Dick taunted.

Tim gritted his teeth, “You’re not the boss of me.”

Dick’s expression shifted from concerned to commanding, “Stand down.”

Tim clicked his tongue, “Fine! Fuck you.”

He grabbed his grapple and swung away. 

Tim didn’t need rest. He didn’t need to go patrolling to figure this out. 

He will figure this out.

Chapter Text

Sunday, 3:17 am. 

When Tim arrived back at the cave, he immediately went for the batcomputer. The others won’t be back until at least another hour, so he has until then to do some work before Dick inevitably bans him from the cave entirely.

Tim opened his case file. Babs has already sent him the usual information like name, age, stuff like that about the woman from earlier. Tim added it to his compilation. He reached for his communicator, “Oracle, can you send me the—” 

“Sorry Red, but—”

Tim cut her off and removed his communicator, throwing it haphazardly on the table. He took a deep breath, “It’s fine, I can get the medical records myself,” he started typing away on the computer. He hacked into the hospital’s patient records and found the woman. He scrolled through her file, and at the end he found the most recent update which was only a few minutes ago.

He didn’t find anything odd with her physical condition, but it is noted that her blood pressure was high and she has been very resistant against any sedatives. Tim then scrolled down to the blood test. The results show that there weren’t any notable findings except for a hormone imbalance. Epinephrine levels were high, which was understandable considering the woman’s state when they found her. Probably why she was screaming when Dick got her to safety. Her body was too absorbed in her fight or flight response. 

‘Still’’ , Tim thought as he leaned back on the chair. “The way she laughed, I feel like I’ve seen that before.”

Tim reached for the keyboard again, he dug around the GCPD files for recent people that were sent in. He saw the guys that he and Damian took down, along with the woman who aimed a gun at him. He also saw the ax wielder Steph apprehended. He thought back to that day, ‘That guy…’ Tim hovered the cursor over the guy who originally had the gun. He clicked on him, and he scrolled for his medical records. 

‘ I knew that laughing was familiar,’ Tim thought when he saw the blood tests run on the guy. Both the guy and the woman had been laughing and thrashing and screaming. This could very well be coincidence, but remembering what Cass told him, maybe his case was part of something bigger.

So Tim opened the medical records of the other people who had been apprehended for destruction or being a public disturbance for the past week. He compiled them in a separate file, and the only thing he found in common for all of them is the heightened levels of Epinephrine. 

Once is an incident, twice is a coincidence, but fifteen times? Now that’s a pattern.

Even if his original case would happen to not be connected to any of these, this is still something worth looking into.

But what’s causing it? And why? 

The records show that they weren’t under the influence of anything. Tim opened another document but stopped when he heard a loud thump. He swiveled the chair around quickly, making him a tad dizzy. 

“Hello?” Tim called out. He stood up slowly, taking out his staff. He placed it in front of him defensively as he approached, slightly tripping over his own feet. The thump sounded again, this time to his right, in the direction of the medbay. “Who’s there?!” 

The answer should be no one. Alfred was upstairs preparing breakfast, Duke was still asleep, Bruce wasn’t coming home for at least three more days, and everyone else was out for patrol. 

Tim’s mind was running multiple possible scenarios all at once. He walked towards it slowly, trying to keep his breathing calm and blinking the fuzziness out of his vision. Tim immediately swung his staff as he turned the corner. Sound of glass breaking filled his ears.

“Shit,” Tim muttered as his vision cleared. He drew his staff back, and eyes the broken vials on the floor.  He crouched down and started picking the pieces up. Luckily, he’d only broken three of them that were on the counter and not an entire supply of it.

“Tim?” 

Tim stopped what he was doing and turned to see Dick hovering over him. “When did you get here?” he asked.

“Just now,” Dick replied, “We heard glass break. Don't touch it with your bare hands! Are you alright?” He offered a hand to help him stand. Tim feels like he’s forgetting something as he lets the glass pieces drop and takes Dick’s hand, who pulls him up to his feet.

“You said you sent Drake home so that he could rest,” Damian’s voice came from where the computer was. “And yet here he was, still obsessing over this case.” Damian was sitting on the chair with his arms crossed, with Cass standing next to him.

Oh yeah, Tim was mad at Dick. 

“Tim,” Dick started.

Tim shuffled past him, “I just needed to update the files. I’ll be out of your hair now,” he grumbled as he made his way to the stairs that lead up to the manor.

“We’re just worried,” Cass said as he passed them.

“Yeah, well don’t be, I’m fine,” Tim insisted.

Sunday, 11:21 am.

Contrary to popular belief, Tim was not fine. Okay, so it’s not exactly a popular belief since everyone in this household seemed to be against him, but you get his point. 

The fact that it has taken this long for Tim to realize was beyond him. 

He was not fine.

It’s been three days and a few hours since he last slept. At first he just thought it was insomnia acting up, then he thought he was just too engrossed in the case, then he thought maybe it’s because he’s just so used to staying up for long periods of time that his body has finally adapted. But all of those theories were wrong. 

No matter what he does, he can’t seem to fall asleep. 

He tried all the tricks he could find on the internet but none had worked. The only thing he hasn’t tried was bashing his head on the wall until he passed out, and the more time passes, the more appealing that sounded. 

Tim groaned from where he sat in the middle of his bed, hands pulling on his hair as an attempt to settle his headache. And it didn’t feel like a simple headache either, it was like all kinds of them had joined forces to torment him.

Tim took a deep breath and closed his eyes. Maybe he should take a walk, clear his head a bit. 

BEEPPP!!

When Tim opened his eyes he found himself in the middle of the road. He stumbled along, avoiding the different vehicles. ‘When did I get here? How did I get here?’ Another loud honk caught his attention, and to his right was a speeding truck coming towards him. Tim’s body hated him so much that it decided that it was too tired right then and there that his knees buckled.

He felt something wrap around his torso, and next thing he knew, he was being flung up to the sky. He landed in someone’s arms on top of a building. “You alright, Tim?” A familiar voice asked as he was placed on the floor.

Tim had to stare at the person for a second for him to finally recognize the person. “Duke?” he asked. “What—oh right, it’s day time,” he muttered to himself.

Duke crouched down next to him, “Are you alright? What were you doing in the middle of traffic?!” 

“I just…I was…” Tim looked down at himself, “Going to Wayne Enterprises,” he settled on that answer when he found himself dressed in his work suit and carrying a briefcase that likely contained his laptop. 

When did he do all this? He couldn’t remember. 

“Are you out of your mind?” Duke asked, “You look like a ghost! How are you going to work like that?”

Tim hasn’t seen himself yet, but based on how he was feeling, he could only imagine what Duke was seeing. “I have a very important meeting. We need to finish up today so we can move the business forward.”

That was a lie, he had no meeting. Hell, he didn’t have to go into the office today, it was Sunday! 

‘Sure, I can remember what day it is, but I can’t remember how I got here.’ And based on how his legs were aching at the moment, he had to guess that he walked. But that was the good outcome, luckily his sleep deprived mind had enough common sense not to take a car. 

Duke sighed, “Look, Tim, for the sake of both our sanity, I’ll drop you off at WE’s front doors, okay? It’s either that or you go home.”

Tim didn’t want to go home. 

“Sure.”

Sunday 7:58 pm.

Tim was still in his office at WE. He scrolled through the criminal reports of the past afternoon. Duke managed to capture three guys that fit the criteria of what Tim was looking out for. Hacking into the GCPD records once again, he managed to obtain their blood test results. 

Like he had expected, high concentrations of epinephrine.

Tim took note of this in a document, before turning his laptop off. 

He then reached for his briefcase, because apparently, his addled mind still remembered to pack his Red Robin uniform. He took it out and changed into it. This is riskier than going to the cave to do research and change there, but he just knows he won’t be able to do anything if he did go there. This office was secure though. He made sure of it the first time he was given it. 

The CCTV camera was being fed a video loop—of him working on some excel sheets earlier, and now, an empty office. There were very minimal windows, all are opaque on the outside, but Tim could still see the outside from the inside. He had a pinned lock —a mechanism he had insisted to be installed in the guise of a protective layer in case someone tries to kidnap his civilian self again—which he had rigged to scan his finger print. Tim had also made sure to alter the clock out logs to show that he had already left the office for the day. 

Tim finished changing and climbed up a vent. He crawled until he was at the end, which led to the rooftop of the building—that he made sure that there were no cameras that had a view of. 

Tim still had his comm on him, which he had modified so that he could still hear what the others would be talking about without them detecting him, as well as disabled the tracker in it. In fact, he disabled all the trackers on him. He placed the communicator in his ear, turned it on, but as he had expected, no one was on any of the lines. Understandable, ‘cause patrol doesn’t start for another hour.

But he can’t wait that long. He really needs to solve this case so that he can finally focus on figuring out what was going on with his sleep cycle. 

Tim pulled out his grapple and launched off the building. 

In all honesty, Tim had no leads at the moment. All he knows is he has to find anyone showing the same behaviors as the people captured before. Many of them were from here, in Old Gotham—much like his original case, which gives him more confidence that they may be connected. 

Tim carefully grappled across the buildings. He took his time everytime his vision went fuzzy, because even though it annoyed the hell out of him and made him just want to throw the stupid thing at a random window, Tim had already nearly fallen to his death way more than a person should have in a single lifetime. 

He stumbled as he landed on one of the buildings. Tim let out rapid breaths, he doesn’t know why he was so tired. He hasn’t been out for too long, he shouldn’t be this tired. 

That’s what he insisted to himself, despite knowing in the back of his mind that his body was aching all over, he hadn't eaten or drunk anything in a while, and he wasn’t feeling too hot. Actually, scratch that, he was feeling way too hot. 

Maybe…maybe he should sit down.

Yeah, yeah that sounds like a solid plan…

Chapter Text

Sunday, 9:22 pm.

Dick finished tying up his share of people and he rolled them over to where Damian had piled his group on. Before the patrol even officially started, Babs had already given them a task to handle these guys who were trying to break into a chemical lab. 

“So, are you guys gonna tell us why you’re trying to break into the lab or what?” Dick asked as he crouched down and raised one of the guys by his collar so that he could look at him. 

The man just scoffs, “For chemicals obviously.”

Dick strained a smile, “Of course, why didn’t I think of that?” He tightened his grip on the guy, “You're a smart alec, aren't’cha. I know it’s going to be hard for that one singular brain cell in that head of yours, but answer this, what chemicals are you after and what are you going to do with them?”

The man stayed silent, only glaring at Dick.

Damian stepped into the guy’s view behind Dick, “We can always do this the hard way,” he said, unsheathing his sword.

“Robin,” Dick reprimanded.

“What? It is the most optimal solution,” Damian said.

“You think that little toy of your’s is a big deal? Ha! Just wait, and you're gonna regret it,” the guy said.

Knowing a lost cause when he sees it, Dick throws the guy to the side. He picked up another guy, this one younger than the last. “Let’s try this again.” 

Damian once again taunted with his sword, and the younger man was easy to spill. “Nothing big, just some solvents and uh and that one equipment with the tube thing and bulb glass. I—I don’t know what they do with it, I’m just here to do my job man.”

Dick sighed, letting the man fall back into the pile, “Oracle, you can go ahead,” he said, signaling for Babs to call the GCPD now that they’ve gotten a motive. Making sure one last time that the perps were tied up nicely and have nothing to use to break out of their restraints, Dick and Damian grappled away. 

“The guy said solvents, but he did not specify what,” Damian pointed out. 

“It’s probably for extraction,” Dick started, “He mentioned an equipment which I’m pretty sure is a soxhlet extractor.”

Damian raised an eyebrow, “So we are likely dealing with a plant extraction. It is possible this is connected to Hood’s drug case.”

“Yeah,” Dick agreed, “We should probably inform him.” He was about to reach for his comm when he remembered Jason threatening to throw him in the river if he interrupts another lead of his, which he was going to follow tonight. “You know what, I’ll tell him about it tomorrow.”

He then looked back at Damian, “Speaking of tomorrow, it’s a school night,” he reminded. 

Damian nodded, “Yes, I still have until 2 am to patrol.”

“What?!” Dick exclaimed, stopping on top of one of the tallest buildings in the area, “No, you’re going home at 12 am.”

“That hardly seems fair,” Damian said, “I do not have classes until after lunch! I will still be getting eight hours of sleep!”

Dick crossed his arms, “That’s going to mess with your body clock.”

Damian scoffed, “You say that as if any of us have a functioning body clock.”

“Agent A does.”

Damian glared at him further, “Red lets me go as long as I get eight hours of sleep, and I do not see any major consequences to it.”

“Yeah, well Red is hardly a good basis of sleep schedules,” Dick reminded him, before letting out a sigh. “I mean, you’ve seen him lately.”

“Yes, but that is just the natural outcome when one is being idiotic and has not slept a wink the past few days,” Damian rolled his eyes.

Dick furrowed his eyebrows, “He said he was just getting bad sleep, not that he hasn’t been sleeping.”

“Tt, please, you and I both know Red can easily twist his words. Especially with his track record, such sayings are expected of him, so of course no one is going to question it,” Damian said. 

“When did this start exactly?” Dick asked.

“I do not have the exact timeline, but I believe that by Friday he has not slept for at least a day. Slow reactions and irritation are common signs of sleep deprivation, and of the many times Red has not taken sleep as a priority, it was only at this time he had been this agitated, enough to even yell at Spoiler.”

“Friday…this was when you two had that fight about you calling him a liability?” Dick asked, and he got his answer from Damian looking away from him and staring at the ground like it was the most interesting thing he has ever seen. “You know, you can be worried about him, right? Your relationship has greatly improved recently, it wouldn’t be weird or anything,” he assured the younger boy.

“I am not worried,” Damian denied.

“Looking out for him, having a rough timeline of events, giving a complete report of your observation of his behavior,” Dick listed, “Yeah, sure, you’re not worried. And I’m not Nightwing.”

Damian only scowled at him.

Their conversation was interrupted by their communicators beeping, forcing everyone to enter a single channel, “I hate to interrupt,” Alfred said, “But I would like to inform everyone that Red Robin has been confirmed to be missing at the moment.”

A series of “What?!”s echoed through the channel. 

“He has yet to return home, and the last anyone had seen him was when Signal brought him to work. I have checked in and his coworkers have confirmed that he has already left for the night. Signal went to his apartment and he was not there either. I have kept an eye at any ransom and kidnapping reports for his civilian identity, but have found none.”

Babs took over after that, “His trackers are currently disabled, but I am working to get them back online now. You guys look around and I’ll give you an update when I find him,” she said, the clacking of the keyboard loud against the communicators.

It took her nearly five minutes to get the tracker back online. “Red is at the docks,” she informed, “He’s not moving, nor am I getting any response from him. ETAs?”

“Fighting,” Cass answered simply.

“I’m not out for patrol right now, but I can change and follow if you need back-up,” Stephanie said.

Dick raised a hand to his communicator, “Robin and I are 20 minutes out,” he said as he and Damian grappled towards the direction of the docks.

“I’ve got his vitals,” Babs updated, “His temperature is at a high of 103. His pulse is going for 125 beats per minute. I’ve got cameras on him and he’s just sitting there, I’m not sure if he’s injured.”

“Is anyone else closer?” Dick asked.

The line was silent for a moment. 

“I see him.”

Sunday, 9:52 pm.

Jason was really starting to wonder if working with people for this case was a good idea. Well, he’s not exactly working with anyone else apart from Barbara who was feeding him information, but his point still stands that having people around when you’re trying to follow up on a lead is a bad idea. You’ll just never get around to following up on it.

Look, normally, he’d ignore the alert, but considering Babs’ description of the situation, it’d be dumb if he didn’t at least look into it. For all they know, the kid could be having a silent heart attack.

“I see him,” he said into the comms, before muting it, not wanting to be bombarded by worried questions. Jason dropped on to the roof Tim was sitting on. He furrowed his eyebrows as he cautiously approached him. 

Tim was slack on the ground, leaning back on the rooftop door. He was breathing heavily, and even with the mask, Jason could already see the far off look he was giving. “Red,” Jason called, crouching in front of him. 

No response. 

“Hey, you with me, kid?” Jason frowned and slowly reached forward, only for his hand to be flung away. “Fuck!” he cursed as his hand made contact with Tim’s metal staff. “What is wrong with you?!” he exclaimed.

Tim was muttering something that Jason couldn’t make out, “No…no, I...don’t. I know what I’m doing!” he stumbled as he stood up. “I just have to…I just…”

“Red! What are you on about?” Jason stood up after him, a hint of irritation in his voice. The brat’s not even acknowledging him! “Red, c’mon, you need to go back to the cave,” Jason called after him.

Tim started laughing to himself, as he walked towards the end of the roof, climbing the wall barrier, “I’m so close….just have to find something… ” Tim reaches for his grapple, which was not on his belt. “Where…” Tim muttered. “YOU THINK YOU CAN HIDE?!” He yelled into the air.

“Get down from there!” Jason exclaimed, tugging on Tim’s arm and pulling him back safely on the roof. 

Tim jumped from the contact and pulled himself away. “Get away from me!” Tim exclaimed, haphazardly swinging his staff back and forth. 

Despite Jason being the only other person on the roof, he has an inkling that Tim wasn’t talking to him. So he stepped back. Despite him being a good distance away from the kid, Tim continued to yell at and attack the empty space. Jason briefly considered this to be fear toxin, but ultimately ruled it out considering Scarecrow was still locked up. 

Before Jason could think of any other possibilities, Tim let out a yell of agony. “Just stop it already!” A loud thump can be heard as Tim hits his staff onto his head.

“Shit, kid, what the hell are you doing?!” Jason gripped Tim’s arm before the staff could make contact with his head again. He tightened his grip on Tim’s arm, enough for the younger’s hold on the staff to loosen before Jason grabbed the staff for himself and threw it to the other side of the roof. 

Tim was protesting against his hold, but Jason pulled Tim to his chest, a hand across the younger boy’s chest, trapping his arms and preventing them from doing any more damage. Tim struggled against his hold yelling and kicking.

“Calm down, Tim,” Jason whispered, “You’re alright. There’s nothing here,” he said. He kept whispering reassurance to him, and eventually, Tim then went slack against him. Despite this, Jason didn’t risk loosening his grip. 

It took a couple of minutes before Tim spoke, “What—where am I?” he asked.

“On top of a random building near the docks,” Jason responded.

“...Jay?”

“Yeah,” he said. “You back with me, kid?”

Jason could feel Tim twitch under his hold before settling down again, “Uhuh,” Tim said. 

He slightly loosened his hold on him, and after confirming that Tim wasn’t going to do anything stupid, he let go of him. He silently checked Tim for any injuries, but apart from the light bleeding of the side of his head that he had hit earlier, only found a few bruises and scratches, likely from the scuffle just now. 

Jason reached for his communicator and he hadn't even gotten a word in when Dick’s worried voice filled his ears, “Hood! How is he?”

“I’ve got him,” Jason answered as he applied first aid on Tim’s head. “I think he was dissociated when I found him, possibly delirious, but he’s doing better now so I’m bringing him to the cave,” he explained briefly.

“I shall prepare the medbay for your arrival,” Alfred said.

“Yeah, get some IVs ready too,” he said before turning the communicator off again.

Jason looked back at the kid and with the way he was staring up at the sky, he could tell that Tim was far from being alright. “Are you lucid enough to hang onto my bike while I drive us to the cave, or are you just going to fall off midway?” he asked.

“…I can…I can do it.”

“Alright,” Jason stood up, and grabbed Tim by the arm, slowly prompting the younger to stand and letting him lean on him.

“You better not fall off or I swear.”

Chapter Text

Sunday, 9:52 pm

Tim remembers sitting down on the roof, trying to calm down his breathing. He remembers having a small breakthrough on his case, and he remembers that he was on patrol trying to find more leads for said case. 

He doesn’t remember how long he has been staring off into the distance. If he had to guess, he’d say a while. 

Tim remembers his body aching but he doesn’t remember when that feeling went away. All he could feel is being floaty, despite being 80% sure that he was still sitting down at the…the…he doesn’t remember where. 

In the back of his mind, Tim knows he was thinking to himself, but all he can really hear is ringing. His head feels fuzzy and he couldn’t feel his arms…or his legs…or anything, really. 

That was until there was something that shifted on his shoulder. Instinctively, he reached for his staff and hit the thing away. He could hear a garbled yell, but ignored it. 

He was doing something, what was he doing again? 

“Are you even really doing something?” A disembodied voice asked him. Tim shot his head up but found no one around. “No…no, I...don’t. I know what I’m doing!” he stumbled as he stood up. “I just have to…I just…”

The garbled voice was yelling something again. He couldn’t clearly make it out, but he could hear the word ‘Red’ but he doesn’t know what that means! What’s red?! 

“Do you have time to think about that?” The disembodied voice taunted him. 

Tim started laughing to himself, he felt himself start walking to a direction. He recognizes that he was on the edge of a roof.  ‘Right, patrol,’ he reminded himself. “I’m so close...just have to find something…” Tim reaches for his grapple, only to find an empty slot. 

“Where…” Tim muttered. He hears the disembodied voice laugh. “YOU THINK YOU CAN HIDE?!” He yelled into the air.

He feels something pull on his arm, making him stumble back on the roof. A shadow circled his body, making Tim jump back. He hears the shadow giggling. “Get away from me!” Tim exclaimed, haphazardly swinging his staff back and forth. 

His legs feel like they’re twisted as he struggles to avoid the shadow. “NO! GET BACK!” The laughing only became louder and he could hear it slowly coming closer and closer. He kept swinging his staff, keeping the shadowed figure at bay. 

Tim could feel his head pounding as the disembodied voice continued taunting him. “Leave me alone!” He let out heavy breaths, as he struggled to keep himself upright. Yet the laughs don’t seize.

Tim gripped his staff tightly before he let out a yell of agony. “Just stop it already!” A sharp pain erupted on the side of his head, and he couldn’t hear anything but ringing. The disembodied voice stopped for a moment. He pulled his staff back, about to do the same thing once more, when it was ripped out of his hold.

He let out a shout, trying to reach for wherever his staff had gone, but he felt something wrap around his upper body, preventing his arms from moving. He yelled to be let go and he kicked his legs as he felt his body being lowered. 

Struggling against whatever had him, he forgets about the shadow and the laughing, and instead focuses on the deep rumble against his back.

“Calm down, Tim,” A deep, familiar voice said.  “You’re alright. There’s nothing here.”

Tim….that was his name wasn’t it? Then someone must be talking to him. Who was talking to him? Timmy wracked his brain for answers, so much so that he forgets that he was struggling. Finally, Tim felt something in his mind click.

“...Jay?” he asks, finally putting a name on the voice whispering assurances in his ear. 

“Yeah,” the voice said. “You back with me, kid?”

Tim involuntarily twitches in the person’s hold. He shifted his head a bit, trying to confirm this, and when he saw the red helmet Tim settled down, “Yeah.”

Tim felt Jason slightly loosened his hold on him, before fully letting him go. Jason lightly held Tim’s head, before looking the rest of his body over. Why was he doing that? Tim doesn’t know, but he lets him. He sees Jason take out a cloth and press it lightly on the side of his head. 

‘Oh. I must be injured then.’

He barely registers Jason talking to someone, only realizing it when he hears the conversation happen in his own communicator, not that he understood what they were talking about, just that he was going to a cave.

Why are they bringing him to a cave? ‘Batcave’ a sane portion of his mind clarified. 

‘Oh.’

“Are you lucid enough to hang onto my bike while I drive us to the cave, or are you just going to fall off midway?” he hears Jason ask.

Was he? 

Of course he was. 

“…I can…I can do it.”

“Alright,” Jason stood up, grabbing him by the arm. Tim’s legs feel like jelly, thankfully Jason doesn’t say anything as he leaned on him for support. 

“You better not fall off or I swear.”

Tim feels like that was a threat, so he holds on like his life depended on it, it probably does.

Monday, 2:47 am

Tim blinked. 

There was a bright light above him. Was he dead?

A monotonous beeping filled his ears.

Oh, he was in the medbay.

‘Medbay?’

Tim shot up from where he was laying down. He was supposed to be patrolling! What the hell was going on?

“Calm yourself, Master Timothy,” someone approached him, putting a gentle hand on his shoulder, and pushing him down to lay back on the bed.

Tim looked up, “Alfred, what’s going on?”

Alfred gave him a look, “That’s what we’d like to know.” He grabbed the wash cloth that fell on Tim’s lap and dunked it into a bowl of ice water before squeezing it and placing it back on Tim’s forehead. “You have quite the fever. It has gone down to a more manageable temperature, but you need to remain resting for the recovery to be effective.” Alfred then messed around with the bags of fluids that were attached to Tim using an IV, which he only realized was there.

“Now, how are you feeling?” Alfred asked him.

“’m fine,” Tim instinctively answered. He faintly hears a scoff to his side, but pays no mind to it. “I just…I dunno.”

Alfred nodded, “Rest then, my boy,” he said. “We’ll figure this out in the morning once you’ve had a decent amount of sleep.”

Sleep, ha! What a joke.

Do these people think he’s dumb? Of course he’d sleep if he could. ‘Then again, it’s not like they know,’ a reasonable part of his brain said.

But they don’t need to know. He has this case nearly solved. Just give him another day or two and everything will be back to normal. In fact, it would be better than normal. Once he gets back the luxury of sleep again, he promises to get a shit ton of sleep. 

Tim doesn’t realize that he was talking to himself in his mind until a new voice registered in his mind. “Is he doing better, Alfred?” The person asks as they enter the medbay.

Tim perked up in realization, “Woah, it’s Batman,” he whispered to himself. “What are you doing here?” 

Bruce raised an eyebrow, “I’m back from the JLA mission,” he explained.

Tim frowned, “Shouldn’t you be back next week?” he asked. He was pretty sure Bruce just left, why was he back already.

“Tim, I left last Thursday,” Bruce started, slowly, “I said I’d be back by the end of the weekend. It’s already Monday.”

Tim’s eyes widened, “WHAT?!” 

This wasn’t right. Tim looked down, trying to remember something. He…it…it’s not really Monday already, is it? He doesn’t remember the weekend passing. Wait, hang on, he does. He was working on…something.

“He had a case,” someone said.

‘Right, the case’. 

Tim’s head snapped up at the new voice. “Woah, whrd yu come fr’m?” Tim slurred, tilting his head as he stared at the girl standing next to Bruce.

Cass gave him a smile and a small wave before she led Bruce to the batcomputer. He could faintly see her signing something to Bruce then pointing to the computer, but he could not process what was going on.

Suddenly two new people arrived in the cave. Tim blinks slowly.

Hey, Tim knows who these people are. It was Dick and Damian! 

Tim realizes that they were wearing their normal clothes. Does that mean they’re not on patrol or did that mean they just got off patrol. Actually, you know what? Tim doesn’t even know what time it was. Some help these people are. He should install a big clock in the middle of the cave. Wait, they have a giant computer, shouldn’t that suffice? Maybe he should get a smaller one to put here in the medbay. Or, or, he could look at his watch! Wait, no, he doesn’t wear a watch. Or does he? He can’t remember. But he does know he has a phone!..Somewhere. He thinks Alfred has it. Where is Alfred? Probably with Bruce. But shouldn’t he be in Damian’s room, sleeping? Wait, no, that was the cat. The Alfred that should have his phone is human. Why would a cat need a phone anyway. Tim needed his phone. What for? He can’t remember. Should he know why? He feels like he should know this stuff.

“Tim.”

Tim snapped out of his inner monologue, his eyes refocusing at the sight in front of him. Wait, that voice didn’t come from either Dick or Damian, they were still talking to Bruce! Tim slowly turned to his side and found Jason still in his Red Hood clothes, minus the helmet, leaning back on the chair he was sitting on.

“‘bout time you realized I was here,” Jason comments. 

“H’w long h’ve you been there?” Tim asked, tilting his head as he tried to remember why Jason was here. He doesn’t normally come to the cave.

“Since I brought your sorry ass back here,” Jason answered.

Tim stared at him, furrowing his eyebrows. He briefly remembers the bike ride to the cave and how he nearly fell off if Jason hadn’t yelled at him to “Keep it together” because he was not going back for him if he fell off. Tim also remembers something happening in the cave that caused Jason to curse him out, but he couldn’t remember why.

“Oh,” he said.

Jason rolled his eyes, “Yeah, oh.”

“Shouldn’t you be resting?” Tim turns and finds Damian in front of his bed, hands crossed against his chest. “You already have a compromised immune system, the last thing you need is preventing yourself from recovering,” Damian comments.

Tim frowns, “Can we please stop bringing my spleen into this?”

“Your spleen?” Damian questions, “You mean the organ you currently do not possess?”

Dick placed a hand on Damian’s shoulder, stopping the kid from saying anything else. “Can we not provoc the patient?” 

“I dunno Dickiebird,” Jason started, “Seems like Timbo here can’t remember it for himself, so maybe he does need a refresher.”

Dick could only groan at this comment, “You’re supposed to be the older one in this situation,” he said. Jason only shrugs as if to say that he had nothing to do with this and that this was a Dick problem.

Dick shook his head before turning his attention back to Tim. He couldn’t help but fidget under his older brother’s gaze. Tim hated that look. It means that Dick was disapproving of something that he was doing, but Tim wasn’t doing anything wrong! Why was Dick giving him that look? A part of him just wants to cry. He was so, so, so tired.

“I don’t know why you’re stopping yourself from sleeping,” Dick started with a sympathetic look on his face, “You’ll be able to process your case better with a fresh mind. Besides, as Damian said, sleeping will help you recover from that nasty fever.”

Tim closed his eyes in irritation at the scolding. It wasn’t like he asked for this. “...not like I’m trying to stay awake, I’m not stupid. The universe just hates me ‘cause for some reason I am physically unable to sleep!”

Tim opened his eyes and slowly turned his head to scan the cave, only to realize that everyone was staring at him. Wait…

“Did I say that out loud?”

Chapter Text

Monday, 2:19 am

If there was anything Bruce would have loved after a long tiring mission, it was a nice bath and a good long sleep. So imagine his surprise when he arrived at the cave to Jason yelling up a storm of profanity as he held Tim, who was screaming, on the floor.

Jason let out a yell, “Did you fucking bite me?!” 

“Let me go, Jason!” Tim kicked at the older, but to no avail. 

“Oh so now you remember who I am,” Jason said, readjusting his grip on Tim’s hands which were behind his back. 

“I need to go…to go…” Tim slurred.

Jason clicked his tongue, “You don’t even know what you’re supposed to do! How the hell do you expect to go out like that?!”

“I can…go,” Tim said, slowly calming down, before going slack in Jason’s hold. 

“Geez,” Jason said, as he let go of Tim. “I do a good thing, and this is the thanks I get.” He muttered as he got his brother off the floor and back on the bed in the medbay.

Bruce could see that Tim hadn't passed out or anything, but he was staring into the distance. “What’s going on here?” he asked.

Jason looked up at him, “Oh hey,” he said. “Hell if I know, I found him like that.”

“I believe it is fever induced delirium,” Alfred said, appearing behind Bruce with a bowl of ice water and a washcloth. “Welcome home, Master Bruce. I suggest getting yourself settled. There’s hot water in the bathroom, and food in the kitchen.”

Bruce nodded, “Thanks Alfred,” he said, then looked backed at Tim. “Will he be alright?”

“I’ve lowered his fever earlier, but it keeps spiking back up, likely due to his compromised immune system,” Alfred said, as he put down the bowl and fixed Tim’s IV lines. “Nonetheless, I will be keeping an eye on his condition.”

Bruce nods and heads up to take a short bath. He went past his room and headed back into the cave. When he arrived, roughly thirty minutes later, Tim was back to talking again. His eyes weren’t as glossed over as they were when he left, but Bruce could tell that he wasn’t all present at the moment. 

“Is he doing better, Alfred?” Bruce asked, stepping into view.

In the corner of his eye, Bruce sees Tim perk up, “Woah, it’s Batman,” he hears Tim whisper to himself. “What are you doing here?” 

Bruce raised an eyebrow. He was pretty sure he had updated everyone on his schedule this week. “I’m back from the JLA mission,” he explained.

Tim frowned, “Shouldn’t you be back next week?” he asked. 

Okay, so Tim was confused. Not uncommon for sick people, let alone ones with a high fever like Tim’s. The only reassurance Bruce got was the fact that Tim wasn’t sent to Leslie’s or the hospital, meaning his fever was still treatable at home.  “Tim, I left last Thursday,” Bruce started, slowly, “I said I’d be back by the end of the weekend. It’s already Monday.”

Tim’s eyes widened, “WHAT?!” he shifted his gaze downwards and just stared. Bruce watched his son closely, he was processing the information that was given to him. It was as if it was the first time he’d heard of it, like it was a preposterous statement. Tim’s breathing hitched, and before Bruce could say anything, a familiar presence appeared behind him.

“He had a case.” Bruce turned around and found Cass, still in her Orphan attire.

Tim’s head snapped up at the new voice. “Woah, whrd yu come fr’m?” Tim slurred, tilting his head as he stared at the girl.

Cass gave him a smile and a small wave before she was tugging on Bruce’s shirt. Bruce allowed himself to be led to the batcomputer. “He had a case,” Cass repeated, pointing to a particular folder on the computer. He sees Cass signing things to him, “He’s been obsessing over it a lot. He’s bad at sleeping.”

Bruce couldn’t help but let out a sigh as he opened up the file Cass had shown him. If there was anyone in this household that was anywhere close to Bruce's record of stubborness when it comes to resting, it had to be Tim. Even after the many times he had reprimanded him about the importance of sleep, it doesn’t really do much, especially when the response is always “I’ll go to bed if you go”, and Bruce has never let himself fall for such a trick, thus ultimately encouraging Tim’s behavior (“Ha! That’s what I thought”, is what Tim’d say after.)

“How long has he been working on this?” Bruce asked as he scrolled through the neat compilation of suicide incidents. 

Cass shrugged, “One week?” She gave her best estimate.

Footsteps descended into the cave. Bruce looked up briefly and found Dick and Damian coming down the stairs. He doesn’t remember seeing them earlier, but as they were already in their civilian attire, it was likely they had just missed each other when he had arrived earlier.

“Bruce! You’re home,” Dick said, stopping next to the computer.

“Father,” Damian nodded in his direction.

“Damian,” Bruce started, “Shouldn’t you be in bed?” he asked. It was past 2 am and it was a school night.

“We’re just here to see how Tim’s doing,” Dick said, glancing at the direction of the medbay, with his eyebrows furrowed in worry.

“Master Timothy currently has a fever, but it isn’t life threatening,” Alfred said as he approached the group. “I’ve already given him fever reducers as well as fluids. You may check in on him if you desire to do so.”

Dick let out a sigh of relief, “Thanks Alfie.”

“What exactly has been happening while I was gone?” Bruce asked his eldest.

“Uhh, yeah,” Dick looked over to the computer, “The case has been taking up so much of Tim’s time.”

“I have reason to believe that Drake has not slept at all since he had moved here in the cave to continue his investigation on his case,” Damian added.

Dick nodded, “Yeah, and all of us have already told him to take it easy and get some sleep, but you know how Tim is. He got a bit mad, at me especially, and I don’t know how he managed to do it, but during tonight’s patrol, Alfred said that Tim has disappeared and the last anyone had seen him was at WE when Duke dropped him off. Babs managed to get Tim’s trackers back online, and Jason brought him back here. The whole time, we could hear snippets of his and Jason’s interaction through Tim’s comm, and he just, he wasn’t himself.”

Bruce nodded at them, and they took it as a sign that they were dismissed. He saw the two walk over to the medbay, and Bruce turned his attention to the case file. Bruce couldn’t think of anyone who could pull off something like this, but if Tim thinks these rates are suspicious, he wasn’t going to just dismiss it. Tim is a smart kid, he wouldn’t be obsessing over something like this if it was nothing. Yet, Bruce had nothing. There weren’t any breakouts from Arkham, so who could possibly have done this? A new villain? 

Then, he remembered something. Poison Ivy. She was still out there the last time he checked. She managed to slip past them about two weeks ago. “Any news on Ivy?” Bruce asked Cass who had volunteered to follow up on any leads that could bring them to Ivy.

“Not really,” Cass said. “There have been no sightings of her, but I’ve heard her name being said every now and then, so I think there’s something going on connected to her,” she signed. “Last night though, I found some guys near the area where Ivy was basing before we got to her. They had bags of something, but when I chased them, they left all their people to fight me while the truck with the bags drove away.”

“I’m sorry,” Cass apologized.

Bruce nodded, “It’s alright, it’s something we can go off on.”

“...not like I’m trying to stay awake, I’m not stupid!” Everyone’s attention shifted back to the medbay. Bruce walked over, with Alfred and Cass right behind him. He could see the irritated look on Tim’s face as he continued,  “The universe just hates me ‘cause for some reason I am physically unable to sleep!”

Bruce processed his words, debating if he meant that literally.

Tim opened his eyes and slowly turned his head to scan the cave. “Did I say that out loud?”

Well that answers Bruce’s question.

“What do you mean physically unable to sleep?” Dick questioned.

“Exactly what it sounds, genius,” Tim said, crossing his arms and sinking into his bed.

Bruce brought a hand to rub at the bridge of his nose. “Alfred, get the sedatives,” he said as he walked over to one of the drawers and got a needle and tourniquet. 

Tim stared at Bruce as he sat down beside him, tying the tourniquet on his arm. “What’re ya doin’?” 

“I’m going to test your blood,” Bruce said, as he prepared the needle.

“I’m fine,” Tim insisted.

“The fuck you are,” Jason started, “I thought your fever was just real high, but you were literally hallucinating when I tried to get you here. You're having lapses in your memory, and you can barely hold a conversation without zoning out or completely dissociating,” he pointed out.

“Tim, that is not alright,” Dick said. “Let us help you, okay? The more people working on this, the faster we can figure out how to stop all this. Then you can go to sleep, doesn’t that sound nice?”

“Why haven’t you started trying to figure this out then, Drake?” Damian asked. “I’ve seen the files you’ve been working on, and you haven’t even acknowledged this problem.”

“I…I had a case,” Tim started. “People are dying! I can’t just do nothing. Besides, I was going to do this after.”

Bruce poked the needle into a vein and started drawing out blood. “Your health should have been your priority,” he said. “There’s no point in trying to solve a case if the person trying to solve it can’t even process the information he was getting.

Tim only glared at them, “I’m perfectly…cap…capable,” he stuttered. He blinked slowly, before a glossed look took over his eyes once more.

“I believe whatever it is, is fighting off the sedatives,” Alfred, who had already administered the sedative, said. “He is certainly not asleep, however, it would hopefully at least allow his body to relax enough at a consistent rate. The more he tries to struggle against his current condition, the more his fever is prone to spiking once again.”

Bruce nodded at this before standing up. 

Monday, 3:45 pm.

The test results were back fairly quickly, and immediately, he had a bunch of heads staring into the results, trying to make sense of it. As much as Bruce wanted to send everyone off to their rooms and get some sleep, he knows that if he did this alone, there is a big chance of him missing some details, especially since he had not been around for the recent events.

But looking at the results, he couldn’t figure out anything wrong with it. There wasn’t any trace of drugs in his system, and all the other numbers seemed reasonable.

“Maybe magic?” Cass asked.

“It is possible,” Bruce agreed. “We’ll have Barbara check the cameras for any trace of magic in the past week.”

“Father,” Damian started, “This is an unusual level is it not?”

Bruce straightened up and looked where Damian was pointing. It was the hormones chart. Like Damian said, there is an imbalance, however, “Tim was visibly stressed during the time of blood collection, higher levels of epinephrine would be expected.”

Damian furrowed his eyebrows. 

“What is it, Dami?” Dick asked, “Something in your mind?” he prompted.

“It is just…” Damian shuffled to the front of the group, grabbing the computer controls from Bruce. He opened up the case folder Tim was working on, but instead of the suicide rates file, he opened a different document. “I saw Drake working on this yesterday, before he was banned from working here in the cave,” he said. “He compiled a number of recently apprehended people who were convicted due to behavioral problems. There is also an instance included in that list about a woman who had tried to jump off a building. All of them had high levels of epinephrine.”

“So you think what’s happening to the kid is caused by something related to this case?” Jason asked.

“I am uncertain, but there is a possibility,” Damian said.

Bruce nodded. This was something to go off on, that’s all he needed. “Thank you, Damian,” he said. “Now, all of you, to bed.”

As he had expected a series of protests followed this order. Bruce sighed, “I know you’re all worried, but at the moment, this is all the lead we have, and I am capable of analyzing this on my own. In the meantime, you guys are to rest. You will be able to help later during patrol to follow up on any further findings.”

Dick crossed his arms, “And you’re not going to bed? Haven’t you just arrived from a mission?”

“I’ll be fine,” Bruce insisted. “I will work on this and provide comms for Duke’s early morning patrol. I’ll rest afterwards.”

“Uhuh, rest, not cover for Tim at WE?” Dick narrowed his eyes at him. Bruce had to admit, Dick knew him too well. “I’ll go to bed, but I will come back once Duke’s patrol starts.” He then started ushering his siblings up the stairs. 

This of course earned protests from all of them, but Dick being Dick, he managed to wrangle them back up to the manor.

Bruce let out a sigh before looking back at the monitor.

Time to begin.

Chapter Text

Monday, 5:47 am.

When Dick arrived at the kitchen, he could see Alfred preparing breakfast “Morning, Alfred,” he greeted with a yawn. “How’s Tim?”

“Good morning, Master Dick,” Alfred greeted. “Master Tim is doing well. His fever has significantly lowered.”

“That’s good,” Duke said as he entered the kitchen with a yawn of his own. “Morning.”

“Morning.”

“Good morning, Master Duke, breakfast?”

Duke shook his head, “Nah, I’ll eat something before I go to school after patrol,” he said before grabbing a granola bar from the counter. “I’ll take this though.”

“I’ll eat later,” Dick said, giving a small wave before he started walking away.

“Oh!” Duke stopped walking to look back at Alfred, “But Steph said that she’d be coming over.”

Alfred nodded, “Thank you for informing me, I shall have a plate ready for her as well.”

Dick and Duke made their way to the cave. “Did anything else happen this morning?” Duke asked, “I wanted to stay up longer, but Alfred insisted that I went to bed.”

“Oh right, you wouldn’t know yet,” Dick started, “Tim’s actually unable to sleep, like he can’t no matter how much he tries?”

“What?!” 

“Yeah, that’s what we said,” Dick sighed as they went down the steps to the cave, “We don’t know the cause yet, but we’re looking into magic, and maybe something to do with Tim’s case since he showed the same unbalanced epinephrine levels as those people in his compiled incident list.”

They finally reached the cave, and as Dick had expected, Bruce was still hunched over the computer. He could also see Tim in the medbay playing around with his bedsheets. “Speaking of, how’s that coming along, B?”

“I have a couple of things, but nothing is determined yet,” Bruce said, leaning back on his chair.

“Morning, Bruce,” Duke greeted with a wave as he headed to change into his vigilante uniform.

“Good morning Duke,” Bruce greeted back, “I will be taking over on comms—”

“You mean you’re sleeping and I’m taking over comms,” Dick said. “You have a meeting at WE later,” he reminded the man.

Knowing he was right and the fact that he was not going to back off, Bruce allowed Dick to take over. “Fine,” he said.

“I’ll look into the cameras for magical activity and fill in Babs about the situation,” Dick added, “Also, look into all this hormone imbalance thing.” It was an indirect way of Dick saying ‘tell me what you learned and I’ll follow up on it. You’re not the only detective in this family.’

Bruce pulled up a document. “I did another blood test on Tim an hour after the first one to see if it wasn’t a fluke. It wasn’t. His epinephrine levels were still too high despite being calm, and even more suspiciously so as he was just coming out of the sedative effects. It’s likely that his sleeplessness is being caused by the high levels of epinephrine, which is keeping his body restless, too alert, too paranoid, and not to mention he’s been stressing about the case.”

Dick nodded, “So if Tim and those guys making a mess the past few days were high on epinephrine and weren’t getting sleep, then all that chaos was…”

“Yes,” Bruce confirmed. “Likely caused by irrationality, paranoia, and hallucinations due to sleep deprivation. The case with the suicides, the one incident that was found with high epinephrine levels could also be a result of the same phenomenon. But that is not a definite conclusion yet since for the suicide case, it is still a one off incident. It isn’t consistent enough to act as evidence.”

“Okay, we’ll look out for more possible suicide attempts,” Dick said. “If this is the cause, we still need to figure out where it came from in the first place. I don’t believe this is just something that happens, even if epinephrine levels are high, at a certain point, unless it is being done intentionally, when the body has had enough, its natural response would be to shut down.”

Bruce nodded, “That is the reason why we’re still considering magic as an option.”

“Alright, I’ll keep an eye out for anything related to magic,” Dick said. “Now, bed,” he said in a tone similar to Bruce’s tone last night. Bruce gave him an unamused stare, making Dick laugh. “Goodnight, B.”

“Good night.”

Dick watched as Bruce retreated up the mansion before pulling up the city map and camera feeds. Soon enough, Duke came out changed in his vigilante uniform, “Anywhere specific you want me to go to?” 

Dick scanned the monitor, “Nah, seems peaceful enough. Just go on your usual route, I’ll update you if anything changes.”

Duke waved goodbye as he left. 

Dick stood up from his spot at the batcomputer and went over to the medbay and saw Tim still absentmindedly playing with his covers. “Hey Tim,” he greeted. Tim glanced at him, then focused his attention back on the bed sheets. This made Dick sigh, “C’mon, don’t be like that,” he said.

“I dn’t get it,” Tim grumbled.

“What don’t you get, bud?” Dick asked, taking a seat on the edge of the bed next to Tim.

Tim turned his head to face him. “I can help with the investigat’n, ‘cause in case you forgot, this is my case.”

Dick frowned, “You need to rest, you—”

“What’s the point?” Tim exclaimed, throwing his hands in the air before settling them down across his chest,  “I can’t sl’p, so I might as well be doing someth’n to speed this along,” Tim said, slur still present in his speech.

Dick reached forward and brushed Tim’s hair back, “Because, one, Alfred barely got your fever to settle, you don’t want his hard work to go to waste do you? And two, you’ve already burned yourself out too much, you were having hallucinations, we don’t want you to hurt yourself any more.”

“It was one time,” Tim muttered before shaking his head. “I’m not a liability,” he insisted. “The world record for the longest time someone has stayed awake is like 11 days and 25 minutes. Pretty sure it hsn’t be’n a week yet.”

“And there’s a reason why they’re not taking in any more submissions,” Dick reminded. “Being awake for long periods of time can seriously damage your brain.”

“I can handle it,” Tim said with a look that Dick knows means that he wasn’t backing down from this conversation. “I’ve been handl’n it for days now, I’m so close to figurin’ things out, Dick. I just…I just need more time and, and this…” he let out a frustrated groan before leaning into Dick’s side.

Dick ran his hands across Tim’s hair in an attempt to comfort him.

Tim has always been independent being how he grew up, a complete latchkey kid. Hell, even when he came in to become Robin, he was doing everything to keep Batman together, and Dick certainly wasn’t much help. Tim learned to do things on his own, and he does them well. He doesn’t like asking for help because if he does, it’s like admitting he can’t do something and in his mind, that will throw away all the independence that he has. And if Dick knows anything about Tim, it’s that he likes to be in control of things. So at times like these, when Tim is being stubborn, there’s only one thing Dick can do.

Compromise.

“Look,” Dick started, “Once we have more information, when we’ve gathered enough that we aren’t running around blind, you can join in the discussions, okay? In the meantime, rest. I know that doesn’t mean much, but the last thing we want is you hurting yourself more, okay?”

Dick could see Tim wasn’t happy with the arrangement, but he also knows Tim was smart enough to know that this is the best deal that’s going to be offered to him, and if he wants anything to do with the case any further, then he should take it. 

“Fine,” Tim said.

Their conversation was stopped when they both whipped their heads to the direction of the stairs as two sets of footsteps could be heard coming down into the cave.

“Tim!” Steph appeared in front of Tim’s bed, with her hands on her hips and a glare on 

her face.

Tim blinked at her, “What?” he asked.

“What? What?! You didn't think not being able to sleep is something you should have mentioned?” She exclaimed, followed by a frustrated groan, “If you weren’t so out of it I would have strangled you by now!”

Tim rolled his eyes, “Please do, maybe then I’d be knocked out.” 

Steph continued to reprimand Tim on how stupid his priorities are, and Dick was on the side occasionally nodding in agreement. In the corner of his eye, Dick sees Jason heading to where their vehicles are parked. 

“You going out already?” Dick asked. 

“Yeah, maybe this time, I’ll actually be able to follow up on that lead I’ve been trying to get for days now,” Jason gave him a small glare, a warning, before waving goodbye.

“Well,” Dick started, “I better get on comms duty.” He stood up to go over to the computer. “Good luck Steph, Jason said he’s a biter.”

“Fuck you.” 

Dick laughed as he sat down on the computer’s chair. “Hey Signal, how is it out there?”

“It’s more or less quiet,” Duke said, “Most I’ve seen is just neighbors arguing about how loud the other’s car is whenever it needs to park.”

Dick nodded, “Good. That’s good.” He followed Duke’s blinking tracker and accessed the cameras in the area and began surveillance. 

It was a peaceful first hour. Duke helped an old woman carry a bunch of boxes into her apartment, helped a kid find her way home after she had apparently ran away and is now regretting doing, and of course, the occasional cat stuck in a tree. 

Dick was still on the lookout for anything suspicious, but seeing that it is as quiet as it is, he had decided to split his attention and has been looking into the information that they have gathered. Apart from the possibility of magic, Dick thinks this could be some sort of drug, poison or toxin, and there are two ways to handle those. It’s either they let it get flushed out of the system, or make an antidote for it.

And by the looks of it, whatever this was wasn’t getting flushed out of Tim’s system anytime soon. So, in the chance that this was caused by something that can be cured by an antidote, maybe he can do a deeper research into the blood samples and results, maybe do a couple of tests. 

But that was for later, once Duke’s patrol was finished. 

For now, Dick zoned back into the surveillance cameras. In the corner of his eye, Dick spots movement from a camera on the edge of the screen. “Signal,” Dick called with urgency. “I need you to go to the docks, now! There’s a teenager that just jumped in!”

A quick affirmative was heard from the other side of the communicator, and Dick immediately called emergency services to their location. Two minutes later, Duke checked in saying that the kid was on the way to the hospital, suffering a mild hypothermia. 

Dick let out a sigh of relief before remembering Tim’s original case. “Signal,” he called.

“Yeah?”

“You think you can do me a favor?” Dick asked.

“Of course.”

Monday, 3:24 pm. 

Steph was left in the batcave as she had volunteered to look after Tim since she wasn’t able to go out to patrol anyway because she had to study. Of course, that doesn’t stop her from still manning comms every now and then, especially now that Babs has been informed of the situation and is only half looking out and half finding magic related activity in the past week.

Currently she was sitting on the chair next to the computer with her legs pulled up to her chest with a book lying in between. She had a communicator to her ear and the cameras all around Gotham were displayed in the monitor in front of her. 

Turning her head, Steph also had a clear view of Tim who was laying on his bed messing around with his phone even after Alfred had told him to avoid screens to settle the headache he has. Tim has insisted that it was worth it, in his words “I can’t just keep staring off into the distance, I promise to put it away if my headache becomes unbearable”, and Steph couldn’t find it in herself to argue with that logic.

Steph turned her attention back to the cameras. Everyone else was out either taking care of their own cases—Jason with the new drug, and Cass with the Ivy situation—or were like Bruce, Dick, Damian, and Duke, trying to find any clues to help Tim’s situation.  

“Hey Steph,” a voice called out to her.

Steph sat straightened up in her seat, “Duke! You’re back early,” she comments as the boy usually isn’t home until past 5 or 6 pm since his afternoon patrol had only started not two hours ago after he got off from school

Duke, still in his vigilante uniform approached the computer, “Yeah, well everyone else is out, and I do need to do something, so…” he shifted the monitor to display Tim’s case folder. 

Steph tilted her head trying to see before rolling the chair to Duke’s side to have a better view of the computer. Duke was typing in information about a new suicide attempt case. “There was another one this morning,” Duke started explaining. “Dick asked me to tell commissioner Gordon to look out for things related to Tim’s case because one of our working theories is that whatever’s happening to Tim is connected to his cases.”

“Okay, Cass mentioned to me something about epinephrine levels being too high?” Steph said.

Duke nodded, “Yeah, and blood test results show that Milo,” he gestured to the screen as he typed out the information, “also has elevated epinephrine levels. I convinced the commissioner to try and talk to him once he had calmed down and ask him specific questions. Turns out, he’s not the only one acting like how he is, his friend Luke was also sharing the same behaviors. And a common symptom found between them is being unable to sleep.”

Steph’s head shot up, “That’s…Oracle did you get that?”

“Yes,” Babs replied from the communicators. “I’m looking into them two right now.”

“We should ask the commissioner to interrogate those other guys to see if they’re also unable to sleep,” Steph suggested, pointing to the other document with the apprehended criminals. “If they’re anything like when we captured them, they likely won’t talk, but if even one does, then we can have something connecting all three cases.”

Steph gestured for the controls, which Duke happily gave her. She copied all the names and sent it to Jim using a specialized email address for situations like these.

A small video screen then popped up to the right of the monitor. It displayed security footage of Tim jumping down on a man who was trying to get close to those teens, Milo and Luke. 

“I think I just found a crucial link,” Babs said.

Monday, 4:00 pm.

Tim watched as Duke and Steph kept on clicking keys on the computer. He doesn’t know what they were typing, let alone what they were doing. His eyesight hasn’t been the greatest these past few days. Tim grumbled from his bed. He should be included in these conversations, what if he knew something that they didn’t. 

If Tim was thinking rationally, he would have realized that this was the exact reason why Dick had offered to show him the information they have gathered once they have enough to go off on. Unfortunately, Tim wasn’t thinking rationally. 

Tim struggled to untangle himself from the bedsheets. He moved to walk forward when he found his hand stuck to something. He pulled on the IVs and threw them aside.

He has to figure this out. His head was already pounding so bad, his eyes sting, his body feels so weak and his muscles are aching. He just wants to get this thing over with. 

When he reached the more open area, he could see the screen displaying a video. There was a boy who was laughing like crazy before they had jumped into the lake. Then another screen appeared to show a woman laughing in the same way before she had jumped off the building. Another screen showed  the guy from before with the gun and laughing maniacally at the sky. Tim couldn’t fully process what Babs was saying as all he could hear was the overlapping laughter as the videos continued to play on loop.

Tim perks up as his ears pick up the words, “These incidents are connected to what Tim’s going through.”

‘No it isn’t’  Tim protested in his mind. “I’m not crazy’.

“Yeah, it—”

“I’m not crazy,” Tim cuts off Steph, making her and Duke whirl around. 

“Tim! What are you doing up?” Steph started walking over to him. “You should be resting.”

“Did you pull out your IV?!” Duke exclaimed. “Hang on, I’m getting Alfred.”

“NO!” Tim yelled, and he doesn’t know how he did it, but he managed to pass Steph and pull on Duke’s arm, throwing him towards Steph. 

He could see the two stumble into each other. “Tim, stop,” Steph exclaimed, regaining her balance. 

‘I know what those are,’ Tim thought as he flipped over Steph, using her shoulders to boost him towards the area where they kept the weapons. He stumbled over a crate of circular capsules. ‘Sleeping bombs,’ his addled mind provided.

Using every ounce of brain power he was capable of right now, Tim threw the crate towards Steph and Duke, making the capsules break apart releasing the sleeping agent. Sedatives weren’t able to affect him, and as Tim deduced, neither would sleeping gas. 

He ran across the cave, towards one of the exits. 

Tim will figure this out.

He just has to…

He needs to go to…

He’ll figure it out when he gets out of here.

Chapter Text

Monday, 4:04 pm.

The cameras were showing nothing but smoke. Barbara scrambled to access the cameras that were installed to show visuals of the intersection of the different cave entrances to see where Tim had gone. At the same time, she grabbed her phone and called Alfred.

“Alfred,” she started, still eyeing the cameras, “Tim knocked Duke and Stephanie out using sleeping gas, an excessive amount of it. I’m trying to track down where Tim went and will be asking help from the others,” she explained.

“I shall see to it that Master Duke and Miss Stephanie are attended to,” Alfred says, and Barbara could already see him making his way to the cave from another camera. 

“Thanks Alfred,” Barbara said before hanging up. 

Tim had not shown up in the camera she was watching, so it’s safe to assume he had already gone past that area before she could even access the cameras. She clicked her tongue when she saw that Tim did not have a tracker on him—understandable as Alfred had helped him change into more comfortable clothes when he had arrived earlier, as well as removed anything that could cause him even more discomfort. Downside is that now, she has no idea where he went.

Barbara accessed everyone else’s comms and pushed them all in a single channel. “What is it, Oracle?” she hears Bruce ask.

“Red Robin left the cave,” she said simply, which earned a lot of ‘What?!’s and ‘How?!’s. “He managed to knock Signal and Spoiler out with a bunch of sleeping gas. We discovered something and were a bit distracted piecing things together and didn’t realize he had gotten up, nor did we realize that he was planning to escape.”

“Point is,” she iterated, “I need you guys to split and watch the different cave entrances. Red left with absolutely nothing but the clothes on his back, and with his condition, I don’t think he has gotten too far.” Barbara pulled up multiple cameras littered throughout the cave system, trying to figure out where Tim might have gone. “I’m still looking for him, but in the chance that he reaches the exit before I do find him, it's better if there's someone out there. We don't need him getting out into the city.” 

It would be harder to track him down if he does. 

Getting affirmative responses, Barbara watched as everyone’s trackers scattered towards the cave entrances. She continued to skim through the cameras, and finally, she saw him.

“Batman, he’s heading your way.”

Tim stumbled as he walked. He was sticking to the wall as a form of support, as well as a weak attempt to hide from the cameras which placements he doesn’t remember nor sees because of his blurred vision. He dragged his body through the tunnel, though he doesn’t really know where it’s going to take him. Either way, he knows that if he follows the path, it will eventually lead him out into the city. 

In the back of his mind, there was a single brain cell screaming at him to turn around and stay in the cave, where he’s able to rest, feel warm, and most importantly, where it’s safe. But that voice of reason is being silenced by another form of screaming coming from the rest of his mind as it struggles to keep itself together and power through the splitting headache that has not left since this whole debacle has started.

Tim freezes before he whipped around, sending even more black dots into his vision. He scanned the path for something, because he knows that there’s something there. But there was nothing. Why was there nothing? Tim let out a shaky breath before closing his eyes trying to convince himself that everything was fine and that there was nothing there before continuing on his way. 

Not even five seconds later, his ears pick up on a whirring sound. Looking up to his right, he spots a blinking light. ‘A camera’ he thought. ‘Someone was watching him.’ Tim doesn’t think that’s a good thing. He crouched to the ground, a hand feeling around for something he could use. His pinkie brushed up against something rough, and Tim brought his eyes away from the camera and picked up the rock. When he turned his attention back, he could see the camera directly facing him. 

A spike of panic coursed through his veins and if the adrenaline already in him wasn’t enough, it had definitely elevated even more. 

Tim raised his hand and threw the rock at the camera before he staggered into a run. Well, as much of a run that a sick, sleep deprived, delirious, and hallucinating person could run. Tim had to put most of his effort into not falling flat on his face. Still, he managed. 

He ran into the tunnel, aware of the cameras that kept appearing at every turn, but he couldn’t do anything about them. Whoever was watching him already knew he was here. His priority right now is to escape.

‘Escape from what exactly?’ Tim found himself thinking, but he couldn’t find the answer.

Still, his body was telling him to run, to get as far from here as possible, so he’s doing the one thing that is currently making sense to him.

He hears the camera shift to follow his movements again. Someone was still watching him. Tim then turns to look behind him. The feeling of something there creeped up to him again. 

He…he has to run. 

Tim turned to face forward again, but before he could even take a step, the feeling of doom loomed over him. Something was waiting for him out there. 

He has to get out of here.

He has to escape. 

He has to go.

But there was nowhere to go.

“Leave me alone!” Tim screamed. “Leave me—” he collapsed to the ground. 

Everything was too much. The lights are far too bright, and his ears hear nothing but a high pitched ringing. The pounding of his head is apparent now more than ever before. He could feel his breaths come in shorter and shorter, and his heart was thumping hard against his chest. Tim feels like his body is frozen in place, but his hands shake nonetheless. 

Tim pressed his hands to his head, trying to take away the pain with pressure, and when that didn’t work he pulled on his hair. He just wanted it to stop, is that too much? Why can’t it just stop? Why won’t it leave him alone? Go away! 

He buried his head in his knees, unintentionally letting out a whine. 

Why is everything so hard? 

He tried his best but he couldn't sleep.

He tried his best but he still can’t solve that damn case.

He tried his best, but he couldn’t breathe. 

Oh god, he can’t breathe. He was gonna die here, wasn't he? 

A hand landed on his shoulder.

Tim flinched back, nearly hitting his head on the wall behind him. He looked up and found a man donned in cape and cowl who raised his hands to indicate he meant no harm before slowly lowering them. “...im, can you hear me?” 

The guy…Batman…that was…Tim was missing something here, but Batman was talking to him. “I’m gonna need you to breathe, bud,” he said. “You’re going to be okay, but you need to breathe.”

He was trying, really, he was. 

“Remember how we do it?” Batman asked, "Breathe in for four, hold for seven, then out for eight. Do you wanna try?”

Yeah, yeah, that seems reasonable.

He could do that. 

Tim tried to breathe as he was instructed, but he kept losing count, he kept breathing out too early, he couldn’t hold his breath for long, he kept inhaling not enough oxygen. 

He couldn’t do this.

“Yes you can,” Batman responded. “Follow my lead.”

Batman took in an exaggerated breath for Tim to follow, which he did as best he could. Both of them held it but Tim exhaled much earlier. He messed up again, he—his panicking was pushed aside by the sound of Batman taking in another breath. 

Tim followed his lead. 

Maybe it had been a few seconds, maybe it was minutes, it could even have been an hour, but finally, Tim let out a last breath before he felt his lungs allowed him to function properly again. 

Sometime during that ordeal, Tim had closed his eyes. He opened them back up and stared at Batman, and Batman stared at him.

Batman then held his cape before opening his arms, waiting.

Even though he barely understands what’s going on, Tim knows by pure instinct that it was safe. Training was engraved in him and one of the protocols calls for a safety procedure in which if a situation escalates too much for him to handle, head for a safe space. And there is nothing safer than Batman's cape. 

Before he could process what he was doing he had already dove into the older man’s waiting arms. He was engulfed in darkness, and as little as it was, Tim could feel a sense of relief. 

“You’re okay,” he hears Batm—Bruce, yeah, that’s right…he remembers now. “You’re safe, there’s nothing here. Just you and me.” Tim could feel him rubbing circles on his back, which made his body un-tense even more. 

Tim couldn’t stop the sob that forced itself out, and before he knew it, tears were falling from his eyes. He buried himself further into Bruce’s chest. “I’m so tired,” he whispered, his voice cracking at the admission before devolving into a blubbering mess.

“I know,” Bruce said, holding him tighter. 

“I'm not crazy,” Tim said. “And…and I’m not gonna go crazy, or, or violent, or…”

“I know,” Bruce repeated. “We’ll figure this out, I promise.”

It took a while before Tim calmed down and his crying was limited to the occasional sniffles. Tim feels Bruce shuffle their position around until there is an arm under his legs and another arm on his back. He was startled, but only for a moment, realizing what was happening.  Bruce stands up with Tim in his arms and the cape slides to the side. Tim whines before grabbing the fabric and covering himself with it. Bruce started walking back, and Tim only snuggled his head into Bruce’s shoulder, trying to make his headache go away.

He could feel himself drifting away. Not drift off in his sleep kind of way, because that would be too easy. But Tim could feel his mind slowly being silenced as his consciousness fell distant. 

He feels himself drift further away,

then further,

and further, 

and further…

Monday, 8:50 pm. 

When Tim’s vision refocused, he found his mind screaming once again. He doesn’t remember what he was doing, but if he could go back to that moment of silence he would. Shifting his eyes around, finds himself back in his bed down in the cave. New IVs were in place and another cold washcloth was pressed on his head.

There was a formally dressed old guy standing next to his bed adjusting something on the fluid bags that were attached to him. Tim looked at the guy curiously before registering that this was Alfred.

“Hello Master Timothy,” Alfred said. “I do hope that will be the last time you will be forced back into bed.” 

Tim stared at Alfred, trying to remember what he was referencing. Alfred stared back at him, “Do you remember what happened?” he asked. Tim only shook his head.

Alfred gave him a small smile, “That’s alright, my boy,” he said. “Rest.”

“But…” Tim protested. He has no idea what he is protesting against, but he continues. “I…I have…I have a case?”

“Of course that is what you remember,” Alfred said, “though that did sound more of a question rather than a statement. I would advise that you take a few more minutes to yourself, but—”

“Alfred?” Tim interrupted, his eyes trained on the curtains isolating him from the rest of the room, “I’m sup’sd to be doin’ somethin’,” he looked up at the man, “Wha…what was I doin’?”

Alfred looked conflicted, but ultimately decided, “If you are feeling up to it. I could bring you to the others?” he suggested.

Tim took a moment to wonder who the others were when a memory hit him, making him groan and press on his head, trying to get rid of the ache with the pressure of his hands. 

Dick said he could help. 

“Yeah…yeah, let’s go,” he said.

Alfred suggested wheeling the bed to the rest of the room, but Tim said he was alright, he didn’t want to take up too much space. Alfred insisted that it was no bother, but Tim insisted that it was alright. And so Alfred helped him up, supporting his weight, and rolling the IV pole along with them.

The curtain was pulled aside, catching the attention of everyone. Dick immediately walked over and took Tim from Alfred, slowly leading him to the computer’s chair.

“He insisted on joining the brainstorming session.” Alfred said. 

“I…I can help,” Tim said. 

He knows he’s right. 

They know he’s right.

Tim made eye contact with Bruce. The man stared at him for a moment before nodding his head. 

“Let’s continue.”

Chapter Text

Monday, 4:00 pm

Sometimes, Jason thinks he’s cursed.

Maybe that’s exaggerating, but screw you, he’s been at this lead for days now and every single time he’s getting somewhere, something just comes up. Don’t get him wrong, he’s concerned about the kid. But it also gets a bit frustrating, this drug case could turn into something big if it isn’t stopped early. 

Jason had followed a man, someone who was recently released after no one pressed charges against him. He was led to an abandoned warehouse, a classic. Jason had tacked on a mic on the guy and went to observe at a distance. 

What he heard was yelling. The—who Jason assumed was—boss was on about how the drug was working and that they were supposed to be mass producing them now that source has arrived, bags and bags of it, but they were apparently going to be delayed because of a failed retrieval of chemicals and equipment.

Jason would have swooped in to finish this operation off right then and there if there weren’t an absurd amount of people involved in this meeting. Normally he would, or at least Barbara would, force backup on him, but everyone’s pretty preoccupied at the moment, so he had to go for a plan B. Target the big bad and hope that the goons would back off or at least scatter. But before he could do anything, he heard a beeping pattern that he recognizes as someone forcing him into a channel.

“What is it, Oracle?” he hears Bruce ask.

“Red Robin left the cave,” Babs said simply.

Jason finds himself exclaiming a “How?!” of his own along with everyone else.

  “He managed to knock Signal and Spoiler out with a bunch of sleeping gas. We discovered something and were a bit distracted piecing things together and didn’t realize he had gotten up, nor did we realize that he was planning to escape,” Barbara explained. “Point is,” she iterated, “I need you guys to split and watch the different cave entrances. Red left with absolutely nothing but the clothes on his back, and with his condition, I don’t think he has gotten too far.”

Jason looked back to the warehouse, conflicted. 

“I’m still looking for him, but in the chance that he reaches the exit before I do, it's better if there's someone out there. We don't need him getting out into the city,” Barbara said. 

Jason clicked his tongue. Those guys would have to wait. 

He brought out his grapple and swung towards the nearest cave entrance to him. By the time he got there, Barbara was still going through the cameras trying to find Tim. From how long it’s been, Tim likely had chosen a tunnel that led into the inner areas of Gotham. It took Babs another five minutes to locate the kid. “Batman, he’s heading your way.”

Upon confirmation that Tim was not heading his way, Jason made his way back to the warehouse. He hadn’t left the main channel, keeping an ear out to what was happening in Bruce’s end. From what he had gathered, the kid was panicking and Bruce was helping him calm down. 

When Jason reached the warehouse, it was emptied. He warily enters to look for any clues as to where they have gone, only to find the mic he had planted on the guy, crushed on the ground.

‘Shit’, Jason thought. It means that these guys know that someone’s on to them. This makes things more complicated. 

He had to find more leads. 

Monday, 8:30 pm. 

Jason arrived at the cave at the time Babs had asked everyone to come. Apparently, they have found something that seems really important to help Tim, but they need all the information they have so everyone needs to be at the meeting. 

He got rid of his helmet as he approached the main area of the cave. He walked past the medbay just in time to see Alfred enter the curtained area. Jason pulled his attention away and found most of everyone present apart from Bruce and Cass.

Jason took a seat next to Dick, across from Stephanie who was next to Duke, and he could see the two were still recovering from the drowsiness brought upon by the sleeping bombs. “Told ya the kid was feisty,” he comments. “He fuckin’ bit me.”

Stephanie let out a groan, letting her head drop to the table, “Yeah, I heard,” she said. “He shouldn’t have gotten past us that easily.”

Duke nodded in agreement, “He caught us off guard. With his track record, we should have known he would have pulled something like this.”

“What’s important is that he’s back safe,” Dick said, trying to get rid of Steph and Duke’s guilt about the situation. “Besides, from what Babs said, it seemed like you guys caught some important information.”

“Yeah, there’s—”

Steph was caught off by Damian who was sitting on Dick’s other side. “We should wait for Cain and Father so we do not become redundant.”

It took about five minutes before Cass and Bruce entered the room. Cass took a seat next to Duke while Bruce sat at the head of the table. Bruce looks around before nodding, “So what have we got?” he asked.

Babs’ voice could be heard from the computer as a small screen projection appeared in the middle of the table. But before they could start the discussion, the curtain from the medbay could be heard being swiped to the side. All heads turned to the sound, and they found Alfred supporting Tim as he walked out into the room. 

Dick immediately stood up and took Tim from Alfred and led him to the chair that Steph had dragged from the computer to the other end of the table. Tim sat across from  Bruce.

“He insisted on joining the brainstorming session.” Alfred said. 

“I…I can help,” Tim said. 

Jason could see the small staredown that was happening between Tim and Bruce before Bruce eventually nodded his head, “Let’s continue.”

They turned their heads back to the projection. It showed two boys with their basic information on the side of their pictures. “The boy on the left is Milo Fernandez, he is the person Duke had saved from drowning in the harbor during his early morning patrol. His circumstances are akin to what Tim has been compiling for his suicide rate case. Much like what we have discovered from another victim in the same case,” another picture appeared on the screen, “Maya Haste, the woman Dick saved from falling off a building, both of them showed increased levels of epinephrine in their system.”

Jason glanced at Tim and he was nodding at the information—despite having his head buried in his arm—how much he really understood, Jason didn’t know. Kid has probably been awake for nearly five days now, drifting off but never really falling asleep, just dissociating. Despite himself, Jason pulled his attention back to what Barbara was saying.

“This allows us to form a more solid connection between the suicide rate cases with the aggressive public disturbance cases lately as they had also shown elevated levels of epinephrine.” Barbara said. 

“For this next part,” Duke started, “As per Dick’s request I asked the commissioner to ask Milo a few questions. Apparently, Milo has a friend, Luke Kingsley,” he pointed to the other boy in the projected images, “who wasn’t doing very good either. When asked how so, Milo responded that he has been feeling paranoid lately, his body feels restless and he could not fall asleep no matter what he does. These symptoms are also present in Luke.”

“I had emailed the commissioner about questioning the other people involved in these cases,” Stephanie took over, “And as it turns out, though they are experiencing things differently, a consistent factor for all of them is the inability to sleep. Which would mean the likelihood of these incidents being related to what Tim’s going through is very high.”

Barbara then spoke again, “I looked through footage of Milo and Luke this past week, and though they can be seen together a lot, this one stands out.” The other screens disappeared and were replaced by a clip of Tim saving the two teenage boys from a creepy looking man.”

Jason eyed the man in question and he couldn’t really make out the face, but he seemed familiar for some reason, but he let it go as Babs continued to talk. “Assuming that this is the instance that something unusual happened, then it gives us a rough estimate of how long this has been going on.”

“As the one who is most updated with Master Tim’s sleeping habits,” Alfred started as he stood behind Tim, “I can confirm that he has not slept for at least 4 days and 18 hours.” 

The time stated made some people around the table flinch. Jason was surprised that his guess wasn’t too far off. Still, he couldn’t imagine being awake that long. Even when he’s forcing himself with the help of caffeine, he’s never made it past a day without at least a 10 minute power nap.

“Oh Tim,” Steph said, sympathetically, running a hand through Tim’s hair, knowing that he finds comfort in it—audible from the small hum he lets out.

Tim then peaks up from his arms, “Can…can we go back a bit,” he muttered.

“Where to?” Babs asked.

“The umm, the clip…with the g’y,” Tim said. Barbara pulls up the footage once more, and Tim watches it intently. “Heyyy,” Tim slurred, “I know that guy,” he said. 

“Know him how?” Steph asked.

“You know him,” Tim looked over to Steph with a loopy grin, “He has the uhh cologne.”

“Cologne?” Steph furrowed her eyebrows, thinking. “Oh! You mean the guy you were sassing? Yeah, I know him,” she says in realization before looking over to the rest of them. “Tim was complaining about how his cologne was so strong, he started coughing.”

Babs hummed, “Hang on.” She played the clip again and followed Tim as he chased the guy. From one of the angles, they saw the guy kept throwing things at Tim. “There,” Babs stopped the video. On the ground was a perfume bottle. Tim passed this and only moments later, he managed to apprehend the guy.

“Is the bottle supposed to be suspicious?” Duke asked.

“It’s possible,” Babs said. “While waiting for this meeting, instead of looking into the magic stuff, I decided to look into the people involved in our incidents.” She pulled up multiple screens. “I didn’t think of it at first but, hang on, I noted it down somewhere here….Ah! I looked into instances where the people involved have come into contact with any suspicious figures dressed similarly to the guy Tim encountered. There are about seven instances that I found a perfume bottle near the people involved after the encounter.” Babs stopped the video clips and highlighted the perfume bottles, along with the suspicious person.

If Jason felt like he was onto something with the guy Tim was chasing, these other suspicious guys just made things a bit clearer. “This is a drug related case,” he claimed, making everyone turn to him.

“What makes you say that, Todd?” Damian questioned him.

Jason leans back on his chair, “The guy that Timmy was chasing seemed familiar, but I only realized why when I saw the other guys,” he explained. “I’m sure you know I’ve been trying to follow a lead.”

“Yeah, you d’nt sh’t up about it,” Tim slurred, eyes unfocused—Jason chooses to believe that he was out of it and doesn’t know what he was saying rather than him taking the mick out of him or else, Jason may be inclined to keep the information to himself.

“Anyway,” Jason growled, “I finally got to it earlier. The guy that Tim captured was my lead,” he revealed. “He recently got out from holding since there was no one who followed up on the arrest.”

“So what you’re saying is that whatever is causing this might be related to the new drug that’s being talked about in Crime Alley?” Bruce clarified.

“Yeah,” Jason confirmed, “It’s talked about in Crime Alley, but not many incidents happen around there so I have a hunch it was occuring in nearby areas. From what I gathered, there are people saying it was the experimental phase, likely occurring in Old Gotham.”

“Like the cases,” Cass pointed out. “Most suicide or aggressive cases came from Old Gotham, Tim said so.” Babs took note of this and pulled up the compiled files, and sure enough, most of the cases have people from Old Gotham. That was another confirmation to the new working theory.

“You said ‘was in the experimental phase’,” Bruce pointed out. “What’s it on now?”

Jason shrugged, “Delayed,” he answered. “Something about not receiving the needed chemicals,” he said. 

Damian then perked up, “Oh, Richard and I were supposed to tell you about that,” he said. “We found some guys trying to steal from a chemical lab.”

“Why didn’t—” Jason cut himself off with a sigh. “Nevermind, anyway, the boss of this operation was pissed about that cause apparently their source had come in time, likely yesterday,” he said. “From what I understood, the source was where they were getting the drugs from.”

“And based on the information, it is likely they are preparing the drugs themselves, and if they were breaking into a chemical lab for solvents, it’s likely a plant source,” Bruce deduced. 

“Can’t we just make an antidote?” Steph asked.

“Yeah, about that,” Dick started, “I did my own research with Tim’s blood and the epinephrine present, and upon further analysis, it isn’t actually epinephrine that’s heightened. It’s ephedrine, a very similar compound with similar effects, but it’s been altered to behave the exact same way epinephrine does, that's why normal blood tests just classifies it as normal epinephrine,” he explained. “It’s an altered compound so our database has no way of knowing what is needed to make an antidote. We need an actual sample of the source.”

“Altered plants,” Cass started, “hmmm, I think Ivy? The people I fought yesterday had bags of something. There was dirt so maybe it was a plant?” she suggested.

“Could be,” Tim said. “Babs, can you uhh, there’s a umm the thingy,” he muttered. “With the uhh bars and numb’rs?”

Damian raised an eyebrow, “A graph?”

“Yes! Th’t,” Tim said, “a gr’ph.”

Babs opened Tim’s case folder and opened up the graph located in it. It showed the people involved—at least the ones Tim was able to record—and the amount of time it took for them to ‘act out’. 

“It shows here that people in the suicide case and aggression case are averaging four days before they do something drastic,” Babs said. 

Tim nodded absentmindedly, “First case was umm, a week after Ivy’s uhh she went…away?” The kid was definitely struggling to describe what he was thinking, but of course despite everything, Tim was the one putting everything together. “Same time Jay’s n’ews.”

“The time the suicide cases started and the talk about a new drug lines up?” Dick asked, earning a nod from Tim, before he dropped his head back to the table, hard.

“Geez, kid,” Jason said, lifting Tim’s head slightly and placing his hand below, palm-side up, to act as a cushion.

 “It’s possible that these men are Ivy’s goons? Or maybe just people she had worked with, even if it was a one off?” Dick suggested. 

“Wow,” Tim slurred, “Our thingies are like ‘uzzles. I like puzzl’s.”

Bruce then stood up, “We should go and follow up on this new information. Jason, Cassandra, you two are leading your respective operations.”

“I’m taking Stephanie,” Cass said, “We need to talk to Ivy when we find her.”

“And I’m gonna need backup if we’re gonna hurry this along,” Jason said.

“Dick and I will go with you,” Bruce said, “Duke—”

Duke nodded, “I’ll take over the normal patrol routes,” he said with a soft smile, “Gotham isn’t the type to give us a break even if we’re having the monthly big crisis.”

Bruce nodded in appreciation, he then turned to Damian. “I will patrol nearby enough that I can easily return here,” Damian decided. Bruce sighs but nodded.

And with that everyone scattered to get ready.

“Wait!” Tim exclaimed, suddenly sitting up, “You’re leaving me?!” he exclaimed. 

Jason watches Dick as he signals everyone to carry on before going over to Tim and crouching next to his chair. “We’re not leaving you baby bird,” Dick said, reaching over to fix Tim’s hair and the kid all but crashed into Dick on the floor.

Dick settled them down on the ground, keeping his hands around the kid. “Alfred will still be here, we’re just going out so we can help you.”

“But I w’nt t’ h’lp,” Tim whined.

“You’ve helped plenty, kid,” Jason said.

Dick nodded, “Jay’s right. You literally solved the case, we’re just following up on it.”

“But I c’n f’llow up too,” Tim said.

Jason rolled his eyes, “What you need to follow up on is medicine or your fever’s gonna go up again.”

“Yeah, you are getting a bit hot again,” Dick said, feeling the kid’s forehead.

Tim let out a frustrated yell before moving away from Dick and turning to the chair he had fallen out of. “You’ll be here for m’ r’ght? You’ll let me h’lp?”

Both Jason and Dick stared at the kid in bewilderment. 

The way that this is the kid that was lashing out because he was fighting some sort of invisible demon, the kid who solved the case he’s been trying to while having a less than functional brain, and the same kid who is now talking to the chair truly baffles Jason. Sleep deprivation was something. He then thinks back to how many days it’s been since Tim has slept. 

“It’s been five days,” Jason said, catching the attention of Dick.

“What—oh,” Dick said in realization as he whipped his head towards Tim, worry visible in his eyes. Tim was still talking to the chair. “He’s probably able to hang on a bit longer ‘cause of how often he stays up.”

“Can’t believe we’d ever see the day that his lack of self-preservation actually manages to be useful,” Jason comments. “We can’t just leave him alone. You saw what happened the last time.”

Dick nodded, “Damian,” he called, to which the youngest complied. “I need you to stay here in the cave.”

“What?! But Father said I could—”

“I know you don’t like staying behind,” Dick starts, “But leaving Tim alone is really risky right now.”

“Pennyworth is not going anywhere,” Damian rebutted.

“But it’ll be safer to have a fallback,” Dick said. “You’ll still be helping,” he pointed out, “Even if you’re not in the field, this is a very important task because what’s the point of all this if before we can settle this Tim…” Dick didn’t finish the sentence but they all knew what he was implying.

Damian sighs, “Fine,” he said before turning to Tim. “Come on, Drake,” he said, tugging on Tim’s arm. “The chair is not going to respond to you.”

“W’ll at least it’ll ke’p m’ comp’ny,” Tim slurred burying his face into the seat.

“Oh for goodness—I am staying here so stand up already!”

Jason shook his head at the interaction. He sure hopes Dick knows what he’s doing leaving those two in the same room.

“I know what I’m doing,” Dick said.

“Uhuh, sure you do,” Jason said, standing up. “Come on Dickiebird, we have a drug ring to bust.”

Chapter Text

Tuesday, 3:20 am

Damian was staring exasperatedly at the scene in front of him. 

It has been a few hours since the others have left and through that time, Damian had been looking after Tim. If Alfred’s estimate was right, it would have been five days since Tim has slept. Dick had asked him to stay behind in case Tim does anything drastic.

But the whole time, Tim had done nothing but talk to the chair. 

Even after Damian had dragged him to the bed, Tim wouldn’t stop complaining until the chair was by his bedside, and Damian did not have enough patience to deal with that, so he brought the chair over. Next thing he knows, Tim has rolled off the bed nearly ripping his IVs out.

“Drake!” Damian went over to the other side and found Tim nuzzling himself on the chair. “Get back on the bed,” Damian demanded as he pulled on his brother’s arm. Thankfully, he did so after a lot of tugging. 

Still talking to the chair though. Damian thinks that he should be offended as he should be a delight to talk to.

Damian pulled out his phone to check the time. It was already past 3 am, the others should be heading back by now. Normally, Damian would be in bed by now, but he insisted to Alfred that he’d be fine, and that it isn’t going to be an everyday thing, now is just an emergency. Damian even pointed out the fact that Alfred would be going upstairs to prepare food and warm drinks for once everyone arrived and that would mean Tim would be left alone. So, as a compromise, Damian was changed into his sleep clothes, ready to go to bed the moment the others arrived. 

Tim then let out a loud laugh, making Damian look up in surprise. “Drake—”

“I am so tired!” He yelled, suddenly kicking the chair away. It rolled and crashed to the wall on the other end of the room. 

‘Mood swings’ Damian’s mind supplied. ‘That’s not good.’

Tim wobbled as he stood up. “Sit down,” Damian called. “You are not doing yourself any favors if you continue this,” he said.

Damian chased after him, grabbing his arm once again, ready to drag him back to the bed. He tugged once and before he knew it, Damian was thrown away. He let out a pained noise as he made contact with the meeting table followed by the loud clattering of the chairs surrounding the table as they fell down. He looked up and found Tim muttering to himself, shaking his head, before walking away.

Damian regained his footing and followed the older boy to the weapon room. He notes in his mind to suggest moving Tim up to the manor where he has no access to weaponry. Damian can see him eyeing the weapon case, particularly the Batarangs. Tim reached forward and managed to snag one before Damian tackled him to the ground. 

“Let it go,” Damian demanded. “You are a risk to yourself and should not be left with a weapon,” Damian insisted as he tightened his grip on Tim's wrist, trying to make him loosen his grip on the Batarang.

“But they’re after me!” Tim exclaimed, his hold on the weapon tightening even more as he struggled from under Damian. 

“There’s no one after you,” Damian insisted as he struggled to keep him down, still focused on making sure Tim doesn’t swing the weapon around. In the corner of his eye, Damian caught a look of realization in Tim’s eyes, before he felt an elbow on his abdomen. 

Caught of guard, Damian’s form faltered enough for Tim to regain his footing. 

Damian groans. Damn the compromise, he really regrets changing into his sleepwear rather than his robin uniform. Tim really has bony elbows. He looked up to see Tim’s analyzing eyes scanning the room. 

He stands back up, “It’s fine,” Damian calls out. “There is no one here. We are in the cave and you should know better than anyone that this place is one of the most secure places on this planet.”

Damian wonders if he has wronged Dick in any way the past 24 hours, because why in the world did he think this would be a food idea. Damian was in no way qualified to try calming down a delusional person, let alone Tim. 

Damian could see Tim contemplating and he used this opportunity to grab a wooden sword from one of the stands. He immediately launched himself at Tim who was slowly raising his hand that was holding the Batarang too close to his head for comfort. Damian thrusted the sword forward, hitting Tim’s hand and knocking the weapon out of his hold.

Tim stumbled backwards, trying to get away from Damian. Damian took this opportunity to tug on Tim’s arm, direct him towards the area where they stored the mattresses and training dummies and launched him towards that direction. At least there, there weren't any weapons he could grab.

“Drake, you need to calm yourself,” Damian started. “It’s just you and me here, and—”

“Stop it,” Tim spit out. “You’re not real,” he shook his head, repeating the words over and over as he walked around before settling next to the wall. “You’re not real!” he bashed his head onto the wall.

“Drake!” Damian exclaimed, and by the time he had pulled him away from the wall, he had managed to get another hit or two in. “Stop it! I am real!”

Tim laughed, “I’m going crazy, aren’t I?” 

“No, you are not,” Damian said, keeping his hold firm. “If I was not real, could you feel this?” Damian lowered his hold to Tim’s hand and gently squeezed.

Damian could briefly see clarity dawn upon him. “I am real, I promise. And no one’s here but us. And even if they were, I am here. I can take them and they will not get to you.”

Tim let out a small sob before falling to his knees. 

Damian sighs and holds his arms out. Tim immediately dives into it, shifting their positions so that Tim was leaning back against the wall with Damian in his arms and tucked under his chin. Damian relaxed his body, awkwardly patting Tim’s back. 

Tuesday 3:50 pm

Unfortunately, the guys Jason was after were likely tipped off that someone was onto them. The three of them—Dick, Jason, and Bruce—visited the warehouse, and those guys were pretty thorough for the small amount of time Jason had left and come back. And with the time they had between then and the family meeting, they managed to scrub all the cameras within the nearby areas.

They were basically back to square one. 

Fortunately however, Babs was able to scrounge up some footage. These guys had no actual defining features, like a common tatoo or something, but they do have similar get-ups. Babs looked through camera feeds in areas that were further away and were able to clock in two guys wearing coats with their faces hidden under a bunch of accessories at the estimated time they would have reached the area when they had fled the warehouse. 

So, they went after them.

They managed to track down where the guys were staying and interrogated them, but they didn’t know much since they were just called to do heavy lifting before being asked to scram when they found the mic. What they did know is helpful enough. 

They had another meeting on Thursday at 8 pm at an abandoned building at the far edge of Crime Alley.

Not ideal as they would have to wait two more days, they can’t possibly make Tim wait that long. Of course they’ll try finding other ways to locate the big boss, but in the meantime it was all they had.

Dick, Jason, and Bruce arrived at the cave in the Batmobile. 

Dick immediately went over to the main area and found a mess. “Guys?” he called out, worry etched in his voice. “Tim? Damian?”

He hears shuffling by the weapon room. He rushed over “What’s going on here?” he asked as he entered, and found more mess. In the corner, near the training dummies, leaning against the wall was Tim on the floor with Damian in his arms.

Damian glanced up at him,“Tt. Everything is under control—”

“Are you real too?!” Tim exclaimed, gingerly shuffling closer to the entrance.

Dick walked towards them and crouched, “Yeah…yeah, I’m real,” he reached over and placed a gentle hand on Tim’s head, smoothing his hair back, which earned a small whine. “Shit, you’re hurt,” Dick said, observing the patch of blood on the side of his head. 

“What happened?” Dick asked Damian.

“Drake was…having a moment,” Damian said. “It was likely hallucinations, but he did not realize when the hallucinations started nor when it had ended thus muddling his perception of reality. He felt like he was going crazy and had decided to bash his head on the wall.”

Dick frowned, “Come here, baby bird,” he pulled Tim towards him. Damian managed to wiggle out of Tim’s hold and Dick held him and carried him back to the medbay. He gently placed Tim back on the bed before gathering some supplies.

“Jeez kid,” Jason said from the end of the bed. “That’s worse than when you hit yourself with your staff,” he comments. 

Dick began treating the wound, “Thankfully it isn’t bleeding too badly, especially for a head wound,” he said. He worked on bandaging Tim’s head, and noticed that he was quiet again. Dick raised Tim’s head slightly to get a better look at him, and he could see he wasn’t all present again.

“We should move him up to the manor,” Damian suggested. “Then again, even without weapons in his reach, I am sure he will find a way to hurt himself, so I suggest we tie him up.”

Dick sighed, “We’re not tying him up,” he said.

“But it is for his own good,” Damian argued.

“Look,” Jason said, “he’s already finicky as is. Tying him up will only aggravate him more. And knowing his stubborn ass, he’ll find a way to still hurt himself even when tied up.”

Dick nodded, “I think it would be better if we just stayed with him and helped him differentiate what’s real and what’s not or answer his questions and stuff, especially since his memory’s not doing too well. Tying him up will just make him think he’s in even more danger.” He looked around the cave. “But, maybe bringing him up to the manor would be good.”

“Yeah,” Jason agreed. “This place is littered with stressors.”

 “I shall see to it that it is arranged immediately,” Alfred appeared by the foot of the bed. “In the meantime, you boys go get something to eat.” He gestured to the main area where a food tray was parked next to Bruce who was fixing the chairs and table.

Tuesday, 8:29 am.

Tim only now realized that he was staring at a different ceiling than he was used to. Different, but familiar. He shifted his head to the left and found a pole with bags of fluids hung on it.

“Hello little brother,” a voice came from the right. “Are you there?”

Tim used all his energy to look towards the direction of the voice. He finds a girl who looks a little older than him with short black hair and a small smile. She looked familiar but Tim couldn’t remember who she was.

“W—who?” Tim stuttered.

The girl pointed to herself, “Cass,” she said before pointing to Tim. “Little brother.”

So she was his…sister? He couldn’t remember. Why couldn’t he remember?

“Stop,” Cass said, holding his hand that had somehow made its way to his hair. “You’ll hurt yourself.” Tim allowed her to lower his hand and she started massaging it lightly. “How are you?” 

“Head hurts. Body hurts,” Tim said. “Tired.”

Cass nodded sympathetically, “I know. Sorry. But, we’ll figure it out.”

In the back of his head, Tim somehow doubts that, “How?” he asked.

Cass didn’t answer right away, confirming his suspicions. “I… don’t know yet. But, we will. Promise.” She reached up to his head, brushing his hair back. “For now. Rest.”

Tuesday, 1:20 pm.

Tim stared at his hand that Cass was still massaging. It was nice to stare at, it somewhat distracts him from the headache he was feeling. 

The door to the room opens and Tim makes the effort to turn his body to look at who entered. Tim stared at him, trying to place a name to his face. “Duke,” he hears Cass say. “Brother.”

“Hi,” Duke waved with one hand while the other balanced a tray with a bowl on it. “Alfred asked me to come by and see if you can stomach some soup.” 

Cass helped Tim sit up as Duke placed the tray on the bedside table before grabbing a small foldable table and placing it on the bed. The soup was then placed in front of him. 

Duke grabbed a chair for himself, sitting beside Cass, “It’s okay if you don’t finish it,” he said. “Or eat it at all, really. But maybe a sip? Just to see?”

Tim’s hand reached for the spoon. He scooped up a decent amount, but his hand shook as he tried bringing it up to his mouth, making the contents spill back into the bowl.

“Do you need help?” Duke asked, slightly rising from his seat.

Offended, Tim let go of the spoon, grabbed the bowl with both his hands and brought it up to his mouth and took a sip.

“...or not,” Duke plopped down back to the chair.  “You know it's okay to ask for help right? We wouldn’t think any less of you. I would be happy to help,” he said before looking over to the girl, “or Cass, I’m sure she wouldn’t mind.”

Cass nodded in agreement.

Tim sighed, as he placed the bowl down on the table before he lost his already slipping grip. Contemplating for a moment, he nodded. “Only help if needed,” he said, grabbing the spoon again. He wasn’t a baby. 

Tim attempted to take a sip, this time successfully. He took two more, before his grip started to falter. He felt Duke wrap a hand around his and acted as a support as he took another sip of the soup.

This continued until, finally, Tim had had enough of the food. He placed the spoon down before pushing the bowl away. Duke stood up, taking the bowl and placing it back on the tray on the bedside table before clearing the foldable table from Tim’s bed.

“That was a lot more than Alfred had anticipated,” Duke praised with a smile. “You rest up, okay?”

Tuesday, 2:12 pm.

“That’s it, you’re okay,” someone said as they rubbed their hand across his back.

Tim’s vision cleared and found himself hunched over the toilet. He let out another dry heave, before eventually falling down on his bum. 

“Must be a killer headache,” the girl—Steph, as she had introduced herself earlier—said as she handed him a glass of water. “Rinse and spit,” she instructed, to which Tim followed. Steph flushed the bowl and crouched down next to him, a damp hand towel in hand. She dabbed the towel along his mouth.

Once finished, she asks, “Do you still feel like you’re gonna hurl?”

Tim took a second to check himself before shaking his head.

“Okay,” Steph said, “You wanna go back to your bed? It’s all good, I promise. Alfred already changed the sheets and everything.”

Tim thought about it for a moment before nodding. Steph helped him stand, allowing Tim’s arm to go around her shoulders as she supported him by the waist. She led him to the bed where Tim found a pole with fluids. 

Steph must have seen him staring at it. “You kinda pulled out your IVs when you rushed to the bathroom,” she explained. “Alfred will be back in a bit to hook you back up. Especially since you’re not gonna be able to stomach anything. Dehydration is gonna be a way to go,” she let out a half-hearted chuckle before dropping him off on his bed gently.

Tim laid back down and decided to stare off into space for a moment before he remembered something. “The case—”

“Is being taken care of,” Steph assures him.

“My laptop…where?” Tim sat up, looking around.

Steph crossed her arms across her chest, “Nu-uh,” she said. “I was sympathetic before but using screens after you threw up because of how much your head hurts? Yeah, not happening.”

Tim frowned, but he knew that arguing would get him nowhere, so he settled back on the bed, facing away from Steph.

Steph let out a soft sigh before rubbing a hand on his shoulder, “It’s for your own good,” she said. “Once we figure this all out, you can stare into all the gadgets all you want. But for now, just rest.”

Tuesday, 5:52 pm. 

The next time Tim came back from zoning out, he felt a hand brushing through his hair. 

“You with me, bud?”

Tim turned to the voice and found an older man, familiar, like all the people from before. Except this time, he manages to remember his name before it was provided to him. “Br’ce?” Tim said.

The man nodded, “Yeah, it’s me,” he said. “How are you feeling?”

Tim didn’t know. He felt like every part of him was in pain, but at the same time, he couldn’t feel anything. He felt himself drifting away, when a hand caressed his cheek.

“C’mon Tim, I need you to talk to me a bit,” Bruce said.

“I…don’t know,” Tim answered.

Bruce nodded, “That’s okay. We’ll figure this out,” he said. “We’re going out again later, and hopefully this time around, it will be more fruitful.”

Tim doesn’t know why anyone was going out, but he just nodded anyway.

Bruce sighed, “You’ll be okay. Just…rest for now.”

Rest.

Rest.

Rest.

That’s what they all tell him. 

But he can’t.

Why can’t he?

Tuesday, 9:12 pm.

Tim found a sleeping head leaned against his bed.

“Master Damian has insisted on accompanying me to watch over you, but after yesterday, this is no surprise.”

Tim turned to the voice and found an old guy in a butler uniform. ‘Alfred’ his mind supplied.

“How are you feeling, Master Timothy?” Alfred asked.

“...lucid? I think,” Tim muttered. At least compared to every other time he could remember. Not that he remembered much.

“That’s great to hear,” Alfred said. “You’re still feverish, but nothing to worry about. Your pulse is still too fast, but it is to be expected.”

“Where…where’s everyone else?” he asked.

“Out for patrol or to follow up on the case,” Alfred filled him in with the other details such as who was where, and it seemed like the same setup as last night. 

At least Tim thinks so? He can’t be too sure. He could barely remember what happened last night. He remembers that Damian was there and that he was talking to a friend. He doesn’t remember the friend. Maybe there’s no friend after all? But again, he can’t be too sure. Anyway, focus. The case. Yes. He doesn’t know what happened to the case. Does the others have a lead or something? Last he remembers there was…there was a…woman? Dick saved her, he thinks. But he can’t be sure. Or did the guy with the knife happen first? He couldn’t remember. Still. He needs to…he needs to fix this. He has to go help. He has to…

“Lay back down, boy,” Alfred reprimanded. “You are in no condition to go out.”

“But I—” Tim started to protest. 

Alfred cut him off by running a hand through his hair. “The family is out there and they will do everything in their power to help you,” he said. “There is no shame in accepting help, Master Tim,” Alfred assured.

‘Accept help.’ Tim feels that this isn’t the first time someone told him that.

 “For now,” Alfred continued. “You need rest. You—”

Alfred stopped talking before placing a hand to his ear. Damian also stirred in his sleep before placing his own hand to his ear. Tim feels like he’s missing something important here.

Alfred then brought his hand back down before looking at Tim, a glimmer of joy in his eyes, “It seems like Miss Cassandra and Miss Stephanie have found Poison Ivy.”

Chapter Text

Tuesday, 9:20 pm.

Steph and Cass continued to trail Poison Ivy who they found lying low in a forest, hoping that she would lead them to where she was bunkering down in. Unfortunately, during this ordeal, Ivy had gotten wind of them.

Steph yelped as she dodged a vine that erupted from the ground below her. From the corner of her eye, she could see Cass do the same, making both of them visible to Ivy.

“Well, well, well,” Ivy started, “I didn’t expect any bats tonight, to what do I owe the pleasure?”

“There’s a new drug going around that sends people in a state where they resort to suicide and, or aggression,” Stephanie said.

Ivy raised an eyebrow, “And how do you think I’m involved in this?”

“The new drug, are you a provider of the source?!” Steph exclaimed, tired of her acting all innocent. 

Ivy scoffs, “Honey, I haven’t been to the city in weeks now. Whatever this is, I have nothing to do with it.”

“But the guys were saying your name,” Cass said

Ivy looked like she was contemplating something. “Here’s my proposal,” Ivy started. “You promise to let me go, and I tell you all you want to know.”

Steph glanced at Cass who was observing Ivy closely. She turned to her and shook her head. Steph looked back at Ivy, “You just said you aren’t involved. Why should we trust you to know anything about it?”

“First off, that little stunt of yours last time was uncalled for as I haven’t even been doing anything but research like a good botanist, so I think I have bounds to demand free roam.” Ivy tilted her head, “And secondly, do you really have a choice?”

They really don’t. If they can get this over with earlier, they would. Jason said they weren’t going to be able to do much until the meeting on Thursday and no one wants to make Tim wait that long.  So if this could help even just a bit, they should take it. They’ll hunt down Ivy later. 

“Fine,” Steph said, easing her stance.

“Great, to start off, what do you know about these druggies you’re tailing?” Ivy asked, conjuring up a vine behind her to act like a chair and sitting on it.

Steph narrowed her eyes, “You’re supposed to be the one telling us information, not the other way around.”

“Now what you need to know is that I had no goons last time since, again I wasn’t even doing anything,” Ivy started, “so whoever your little druggies are aren’t connected to me and I need to know why you think they are, apart from hearing my name a few times.”

“They were making drugs from plants,” Cass said.

“Well that’s where they usually come from, yes.”

“Altered,” Cass added.

Ivy raised an eyebrow, “What exactly are the effects of this drug?”

“Raised epinephrine levels,” Stephanie answered.

Ivy then laughed, “I know what this is. The guys you’re after got the plants I was developing before you and your little colony decided to mess with my research!” 

“So you know what we’re talking about then?” Steph asked.

“It’s a plant called Ephedra, which contains ephedrine,” Ivy explained. “Not exactly legal, but that’s besides the point.”

“Why were you making them?” Cass asked.

Ivy shrugged, “Plants are able to live off of stressors since they are used to make metabolites that help plants function, but as always too much stressors is bad and this causes the plant to die,” she then laughs. “I just wanted to give everyone empathy lessons! You know, put yourselves in another’s shoes. Get a taste of your own medicine. Whatever other saying there is.”

“So you’re making it so that people feel stressed all the time?!” Steph exclaimed.  

“Exactly,” Ivy said. “Ephedrine is easily detectable in blood tests so by altering the properties, I am able to mask it to be similar enough to epinephrine which is a natural body hormone.”

‘Which is why no one suspected anything’ Steph thought. “So what? the plan was to make people die from stress?”

Ivy waved her hand dismissively, “Of course not. That’s why I haven’t done anything. It’s still in development. They’re not supposed to be lethal enough that people would be dying from it, I was planning for the long game. It should only be enough to put people on edge, drive them a bit crazy until it wears off, you know eventually. I just haven’t decided how long yet.”

“Well as far as we know it’s not wearing off,” Stephanie said.

“Then you’ll need an antidote. I’m sure the Bat has the means to develop one,” Ivy rolled her eyes. “You just need a sample.”

“Can you make one?” Cass asked.

Ivy raised an eyebrow, “No.”

“But you said—” Stephanie was cut off. 

“Look, the deal was I tell you what I know. This isn’t telling,” Ivy said, making Steph scowl at her. “Besides, even if it was, I can’t recreate the one those druggies are using. I made a whole bunch of versions, I don’t know what you need, and I don’t even have my notes with me. Better to get a sample from them.”

She then stands up, the vine she was sitting on disappearing to the ground. “Well, I’ve told you everything that you need.” She started walking away.

“Wait, Ivy!”

“Oh,” Ivy glanced back at them. “The extract is slow acting which eases the body into the condition. You should probably do the same if you ever get your hands on an antidote. Wouldn’t want to shock the body into sleeping forever, now, would you?” She gave a small wave before vines shooted up from the ground blocking their view of Ivy as she retreated. “Buh-bye!”

Tuesday, 11:20 pm.

Barbara had different cameras displayed across the monitors. There were some of the city where Bruce, Dick, and Jason were patrolling as well as looking out for any leads on the drug guys. She also had cameras online for the areas surrounding the cave, its entrances and around the manor in case Tim manages to escape again. Thankfully that doesn’t seem to be the case as in one of the manor cameras, she could see Tim still in bed with Damian—who was now awake—telling him off about something that happened in their game of cards, meanwhile Duke and Alfred were bringing in a sofa bed into Tim’s room where Duke and Damian are planning to share so they can stay in Tim’s room while Alfred stays on standby in case they needed back-up in the cave. 

Leaning back on her chair, Babs pulled up the tablet once again, watching the video feed, frame by frame from Hood’s helmet as she tried to identify anyone from the meeting that he managed to infiltrate. Unfortunately they were either too blurry or too covered up to make up any faces.

Babs sighed leaning forward on the desk as she watched, before perking up. ‘Now this was something,’ she thought as she zoomed on the screen.

Displayed was who she believed was the boss of this operation. His face wasn’t fully visible, and it was still blurry, but enough that she can manage to unblur it.

Barbara ran it through a program.

The man’s eyes were visible, not a lot of information there apart from they were green, but she could see that there was a small, nearly faded but still definitely present horizontal scar by the inner corner of his right eye that stretches to the bridge of his nose.  

Barbara smirked, “Gotcha.”

Wednesday, 12:24 am.

“You can’t add a +2 card on top of a +4 card,” Damian said, looking down at the pile of cards he, Duke, and Tim are surrounding on the bed. 

“Says who,” Duke asked.

“Says the box,” Damian pointed out.

Duke rolled his eyes, “No one reads the box!”

“Then how does anyone follow the rules?!”

"The rules are anything goes as long as all the players agree to it.”

“We did not even discuss your altered rules.”

“Because that’s just how the game is! We don’t need to discuss it, it’s like a given!”

“Thomas, you are not making any sense, just admit that you are inferior in this game.”

“Go fish.”

Both heads snapped towards Tim who had his eyes closed for a moment, before he opened them back up. He looked down at the cards then back to the ones he was holding, then to the two of them. “What were we playing?” 

His body was swaying as it struggled to keep Tim sitting. Duke must have caught it as well as he stood up to support Tim by the shoulders and easing him down to his pillow. “I think we’ve had enough games for the night,” he said. “You need to rest.”

Damian started gathering the cards, placing them back in the box and on the bed side table. “You should also turn in for the night,” Damian said. “You have morning patrol, do you not?”

“Yeah, but…” Duke looked over to Tim who was staring at the ceiling.

Damian crossed his arms, “Do not underestimate me Thomas, I can handle watching Drake and making sure he does not get away.”

Duke placed a hand on his nape, “Okay, but wake me up if anything happens, okay?”

Damian nodded, “I assure you that will not be necessary, but very well. Worst case scenario, I feel tired and lie down on him so he does not escape.” 

Wednesday, 3:12 am.

Tim’s awareness came back to him and the first thing he noticed was that someone was lying on him. Looking down, he sees Damian laying on top of his legs with his arms crossed on his chest, asleep. Across his bed, he sees a smaller sofa bed was set up and on top of it was a sleeping Duke. He then looked back at the kid on his legs, confused.

Tim doesn’t remember why he was sleeping on him, though he has a feeling that he’d be reprimanded by Damian if he woke him up, but that doesn’t really look comfortable with his neck tilted back.

He was about to reach forward and ask him to move to a more comfortable position when the door to his room opened. Two girls entered and a small part of his brain became giddy when he remembered their names.

“Hi Tim,” Steph greeted with a wave.

“Hey, umm,” Tim sat up, at least tried to, before pointing at Damian.

Cass smiled and walked over to the youngest and pulled him into her arms. Damian’s eyes flew open before letting out a groan and closing them back again once he saw who was holding him. “Unhand me,” he yawned. “I was just resting my eyes.”

“Mhm, sleep, baby brother,” Cassandra said, as she carried the boy over to Duke's bed and laid him on the free space beside the older boy. “We’ll watch Tim,” Cass said. 

Once Damian was settled, Steph took a seat on the end of the bed with her legs crossed, while Cass sat on the space next to Tim.

“How did…” Tim paused, losing his train of thought for a moment. “Br’ce said ‘ou were uhhh, a case?”

“Yeah, we were following up on the lead on Ivy—”

“Ivy?” Tim asked.

Steph nodded, “Last meeting, we agreed that she’s likely involved with this?”

“Involved w’th what?” Tim furrowed his eyebrows.

He could see Steph and Cass look at each other before Steph reached for his knee. “You were exposed to a drug that prevents you from sleeping, remember?”

Tim stared at her dumb-foundedly, “Oh,” he said, remembering no such thing. 

“We’re just waiting for the others to come home for a little debrief. Babs said she found something important,” Steph said with a sad smile. “Hopefully we can speed this along.”

Tim nodded, “I uhh…what…what were we talking about?”

A hand brushed his hair back making Tim look to his side where she saw Cass frowning before she placed her palm on his forehead. 

“Fever,” she said.

Steph leaned forward, replacing Cass’ hand on his forehead. “Yeah, I’ll go get a cold cloth,” she stood up.

“It’s okay little brother,” Cass said as she leaned Tim back on the bed. “We’ll figure this out.”

Tim just nodded absentmindedly. 

Chapter Text

Wednesday, 5:40 am. 

Everyone was once again gathered around the meeting table in the cave, apart from Tim who was still in his room, and Alfred who was watching him.

“How’s Tim?” Dick asked as Cass, Steph, Duke, and Damian take their respective seats.

“We still managed to play a couple of card games with him to pass the time before he started swaying and feeling bad again. It’s definitely worse than last night,” Duke started, “When he zoned out, we can still sorta bring him back after persistently talking to him, but now, nothing.”

“Either that or he’s talking to furniture,” Damian muttered.

“His memory is bad,” Cass added, “and his fever went up.”

“We called Alfred and it was only brought down to a non threatening level, the fever is still very much present. His head’s still killing him, and he’s thrown up a couple of times.” Steph said. “Tim’s started muttering to himself again, and whenever we try to snap him out of it, he either lashes out on I don’t know what, or he just becomes completely unresponsive.”

“On the bright side, Alfred got him to eat a bit without him throwing up,” Duke said with a small smile.

Jason let out a sigh, a hand on his forehead, “We need to get this over with.”

A small window of silence fell upon them, “I’m sure you guys heard what Ivy said through the comms,” Steph prompted.

Bruce nodded, “That makes things more complicated,” he said. “But either way, all we have to do is synthesize an antidote for every version of the plant and match it with the one in Tim’s blood.”

“What if…” Dick started, “These guys were the leads you were following around for the past weeks, right Cass?” The girl in question nodded. “What if they got these plants in batches and the one they used on Tim was all used up. We won’t have a source to make an antidote with.”

Bruce let out a sigh, “We’ll hope it doesn’t come to that,” he said. “But in the chance that it does, it would be wise to gather soil samples. They may still have traces of the plant that grew on it and though that trace won’t be enough to make an antidote, we’ll at least know which one we need, find Ivy and make her grow a source for us.”

Cass nodded, “We’ll try finding her notes too,” she added.

“Hey guys, sorry to make you wait,” Babs’ appeared on a holomonitor in the middle of the table. “But I may have something.”

A bunch of screens appeared behind Barbara. “So, to start off. I went through Jason’s helmet feed and went frame by frame on the video where he was spying on those guys. This is what I got.”

A blurred image of a bulky man with a thick coat and a hat stood in the front of the room with his arm raised. The image was then zoomed to the man’s face then unblurred. It showed the man’s green eyes and an obvious scar from the inner corner of his eye to the middle of his nose. Beside that image, one of the screens from earlier moved next to it, which had an information sheet.

“This is Reginald Campbell,” Babs said. “A 31 year old man, who majored in Chemistry, but never got his license. His files say he moved to Gotham last year, but a bit of digging disproves that. He’s been here for at least five. Either he’s smart or has really good connections. He changed his name to Albert Hubert, and most of his birth information. All the data you can find of him on official government offices have been falsified to fit what he wants people to see.”

A newspaper clipping, an online news article, and a clip from the news all dated five years ago appeared next. “And here, we can see why that is. He was a leader of a big drug ring before it was busted down but he managed to escape to Gotham,” Babs continued. “He has been lying low since, still doing shady business though, but from what I gathered, this is his first big rodeo in the last five years. Either way, know that even if his guys are pretty amateurish, Reginald is a veteran in this business."

All the other screens disappeared, and was replaced by a bigger screen showing a map and two red markers. One was located near the Bowery, while another was near Chinatown. “I dug around and pinpointed two places that could be his home. He spends about the same amount of time on both locations so it’s hard to tell where he would be staying exactly.”

“Babs, you are so awesome,” Dick said as he scanned through the information on the guy as well as the location that was provided.

Babs smirked before leaning back on her chair and stretching her fingers, “I know.”

Bruce nodded at the information approvingly, “Do we know where he is currently?”

Babs shook her head, “Not at the moment. I haven’t seen him in any of the cameras since that time in the warehouse. I told you, he could be smart enough to hack into the cameras or he knows someone who can. But I am trying to retrieve those recordings. I just wanted to relay this information first in case you guys want to try and go after him now.”

“We should,” Jason stood up, ready to leave.

“Hold it,” Bruce said, making Jason roll his eyes before slumping back down on his chair. 

“What? You wanna wait till sundown for us to go?” Jason asked, sarcastically.

Bruce gave him a look, “Of course not. We need to get this over with as quickly as possible.”

“We still need to communicate where we’re gonna go,” Dick pointed out. “Right, B?”

Bruce nodded, “First off, we can’t all go out. We still need someone to stay with Tim,” he said. “Duke and Damian have classes, Cassandra’s getting soil samples, and Jason’s the one who knows most about the case.”

Steph raised her hand, “I’m already going with Cass. The area is pretty big so she’ll need help if she’s getting those samples fast.”

Everyone looked between Bruce and Dick. “I’ll stay,” Dick volunteered. 

Bruce nodded at him, “Cassandra, Stephanie, you two will collect the soil samples, cover as much land as you can. I’ll take Chinatown, Jason you go to the Bowery. Duke, you’ll continue your morning patrol. Damian, you can join Duke if you want.”

Wednesday, 6:22 am.

Jason had broken into the address that Babs had given him. The place had a ridiculous amount of security, but they weren’t anything special, most it did was slow down the inevitable.

The first thing Jason did was to see if there was anyone at home. Once he was sure he was alone, he reached for his communicator, “Place is clear,” he said, which was acknowledged by a grunt from Bruce.

Jason started looking around. So far, the place looked normal. 

He searched the rooms, the cabinets, drawers, under the bed, couches, all the places people would hide stuff in. He moved picture frames, tried finding a secret passage by the bookshelf, flicking all the switches and buttons he could find, but still, nothing.

Jason continued to walk around the house, trying to find anything out of place.

“Bingo,” Jason said, crouching down to see the small scratches on the wooden floorboards. He followed the scratches which led to the wall adjacent to it. Jason messed around with the wall until a spot shifted down. He hears something unlatched and the wall swings open. 

Jason entered and as he had expected, it was a secret room. It was small, but complete with a table at the end of the room where a bunch of pens, books, and a notebook. There was another table that had a set up of empty burettes each with a flask on the bottom. On the wall was a corkboard with a bunch of paper tacked on it. There was also a shelf filled with bottles of liquid and laboratory glasswares. 

Walking towards the table at the end of the room, he picked up the notebook and went through it. There were a bunch of records of trials, as well as computations and scribbles of notes to the side. Jason then looked over the paper on the corkboard. It had pictures and names, each having a small description of them.

He read through a few and found that those descriptions were detailing observed effects of the drugs. The board was divided into ‘batches’ and the descriptions had words like: Paranoia, aggression, hallucinations, sleep deprivation, suicidal tendencies, and insanity littered through them with varying levels. 

Jason looked back down on the notebook he had. “Looks like little Reggie’s trying to perfect his little concoction here,” Jason muttered. 

He looked back at the board and found a familiar name. 

Red Robin

Status: Unknown

Inhaled the drug. Showed tiredness, but no other observable symptoms during the time he was active. Has not reappeared recently, effects must be worsening. 

Jason tore his eyes away from the corkboard. 

He continued to look around for any hints as to how to find Reginald. Call it a hunch, but Jason has a feeling that waiting around wouldn’t do any good since he doesn’t think the man would be coming back here anytime soon.

This was only proven further when Jason found a burner phone stashed away in a hidden compartment by the shelf.

Jason reached for his communicator once again, “Those bozos really had the balls to fucking lie to our faces,” he said.

“What did you find, Jason?” Bruce asked.

He looked down at the phone where it displayed a message.

Meeting is to continue tonight at 10 pm. 

Wednesday, 9:41 am.

Life is agony. 

Tim could feel his entire body aching. His head was killing him, and the nausea was helping no one. Shadows moved around his spotted vision, their echoed laughter and hushed whispers in his ears. 

Faintly, Tim felt something touch his hand. He turned his head and stared. There was a shadowed figure sitting by his bedside. Tim tried to move away but it was no use, his body wasn’t listening to him. 

This was it, wasn’t it? Death has come for him. 

Tim could feel his stomach lurch at the thought.

Next thing he knows he was sitting up, heaving into a bucket.  

Tim wiped his mouth with his arm sleeve. The shadowy figure was speaking. Tim could only make out shushing and whispered words, “...okay…over…soon…” 

“No,” Tim slurred out, as he shook his head, repeating the word over and over, “No, no, no, leave…leave me alone…I…no.”

He doesn’t want to go yet.

Tim forced his body to move away from the shadowy figure. He scrambled backwards, until he hit the edge of the bed and fell down. The distanced laughter becomes louder against his ears. The shadow quickly stood up from the other side of the bed, and Tim struggled to grip on the bed and push himself to a standing position. 

High pitched voices echoed in his ear, “Get out. Get out. Get away.” He should. He needs to get out. Get away.

The figure was talking to him.

Get out. Get away.

Tim backed away as the figure approached. His back hit a wall, making him whip his head around. His vision was spotted, but he saw that it wasn’t a wall. It was a window. 

Get out. Get away.

Tim reached for the handle and pushed it open.

Get out. Get away.

“Get out. Get away.”

Out. Away.

Dick doesn’t know how the situation escalated this quickly. One second, he was scrambling to sit Tim up so the boy wouldn’t choke on his own vomit, and the next Tim was hovering by an open window. Normally, the open window would send alarms, and would not open, but Tim's fingerprints are very much still recognized.

They were trained vigilantes that operate from the rooftops. A fall from the second floor should be no problem for them, but Tim was in no condition, let alone in the right mind, to do so. 

“Tim, can you come over here, bud?” Dick said carefully, taking a step forward but immediately stopping when he saw Tim whip his head around to face him, panic in his eyes. “It’s okay, it’s okay, I’m not gonna hurt you,” he said. 

Tim made no movement. He was just staring warily at Dick, eyes scanning the room frantically, likely looking for a way to escape. Dick was thinking of backing up to give Tim a bit more space but he couldn’t bring himself to, he didn't want to risk it. “Please, can you come to me, Tim? I promise, it’s safe.”

Still there was no sign that Tim was going to move away, nor any indication that he could even hear him. Dick was going to call for him again,“T—”

The movement was subtle, but Dick caught it. 

“TIM!”

Dick dove forward as Tim leaned back.

Chapter Text

Wednesday 9:15 am

Jason was sitting in the Batcave comparing findings with Bruce. Duke and Damian were both in school, Cass and Steph were out collecting soil samples, and Barbara was looking into the information that Jason and Bruce have given her as well as keeping an eye out for Poison Ivy in case they do need her.

This Reginald guy was either smart or paranoid. He has notes written in the notebook that Jason found, but apparently it’s missing pages—or rather the guy was alternating pages between the notebook and a different notebook, which Bruce found. 

Like they suspected, the notebook notes started the week Poison Ivy got away from them. The notes were the different formulations of the drugs that they were testing, with adjustments and effects noted on the side of the computations. If Cass and Steph could find Ivy’s notes, they could combine it with these ones and hopefully, an antidote will be easy to make. 

Apart from that, if the notebook was opened from the other end, there were notes of the plans that Reginald had, complete with a timeline of events and locations that they are using. Based on the timeline, they’ve been slacking a bit due to the lack of equipment. The meeting that was happening tonight was to address that. They were lucky that Barbara managed to find Reginald’s hideouts ‘cause what those two muscle boys they caught said was an absolute lie. If they went there tomorrow instead, there’d be no meeting, and they’d lose the lead. Which would be bad news ‘cause according to the timeline, they wouldn’t be resurfacing anytime soon and instead will focus on production. 

For the locations, a few were just hideouts, some are just possible places that can be used but are currently empty, and of course, the locations that they need.

“There’s two of them,” Jason mutters before letting out a groan. “Of course it wasn’t gonna be that easy.”

Bruce looked over the coordinates, typed them into the computer and crossed the information with the ones written in the notebook. “The one in Crime Alley is going to be the meeting place, whether or not the plants will be there, I’m not too sure. The other location is in New Gotham, and most likely the storage area and the actual base of operations.”

“I haven’t heard of any chemical lab break-ins apart from the one Dick and Damian stopped a few days ago so I’m pretty sure they won’t have enough equipment to do bulk production,” Jason started, “But that doesn’t mean they can’t use the ones they already have. Which means it’s likely that there’s gonna be a bunch of guys still there now, making do with what they have.”

Bruce nods, “As much as I would rather we go to the storage and operations now, it's too risky with the chance of the plants not being there, or at least not all of them being there. An intervention would immediately tip off Reginald and we’ll be back to square one.” He looked back at the locations. “We’ll go later at the time of the meeting, and split into teams.”

Suddenly, two screens appeared on the Batcomputer.

“Tim fell out of his bedroom window!” Barbara exclaimed, and the video beside her screen showed exactly that. Tim falls backwards with Dick immediately following him. The older grabbed his wrist and pulled him close as he twisted their bodies around so that he was under.

“What the fuck?!” Jason exclaimed, already on his way out.

Wednesday, 9:50 am

Dick let out a groan. If his shoulder wasn’t dislocated, he feels like it really should be. 

He didn’t have much time to react, but he managed to grab hold of Tim and twist their position around so Dick was underneath. He wasn’t too proud of his landing, but it would have to do.

Dick opened his eyes, ignoring the pain from his shoulder, and looked down where Tim was tucked against his body. Dick shuffled to sit up. He slowly let go of Tim, holding the boy by his shoulders. “Are you okay?” he asked, before allowing his hand to move up to Tim’s head, trying to figure out if he hit anything. 

Tim looked at him, eyes wide open, confused still, “I—wha—Dick?” 

“Yeah, yeah, it’s me,” Dick said, still surveying him for any injuries. There were a few scratches on his knees and legs, but that seemed to be about it.

Tim looked around then back to him, “There was…there…uhh…a…” he stumbled over his words, panic evident in his tone.

“It’s okay,” Dick tried to console him, but to no avail. “It’s just us I promise.”

Tim looked behind him and was met by the wall, he followed it up until he caught sight of the open window. “Did I…?”

“You fell,” Dick said, subconsciously tightening his grip on Tim’s shoulder.

Tim looked back at him, “You caught me?”

Dick gave him a small smile, “I’ll always catch you.” He brought his forehead to Tim’s before letting out a sigh of relief, “C’mon.” Dick stood up.

“Can you stand?” Dick asked as he offered a hand to Tim. The boy took his hand, pulling himself up. Dick immediately saw the wobble in Tim’s stance and braced himself as he caught him before he keeled over. “Easy now,” he said. If it were up to him, Dick would have carried him already, but his shoulder might not be busted, but it was definitely tender.

What the hell, you two?!”

Dick looked towards the voice and saw Jason running towards them, “We were in the cave and Babs just popped up on the computer, frantic, about you two falling out a goddamn window!”

“Yeah that was…” Dick glanced at Tim.

Tim looked down, “S’rry.”

Jason looked up at the sky before letting out a sigh. “Don’t apologize, kid,” he said as he walked over to Tim. “C’mon, let’s get you inside.” He reaches for Tim, when suddenly the younger whips his head around, eyes blown wide. “Tim?” Jason called, “It’s just us here, kiddo.”

Tim scoffs out a laugh before turning to them again, “I’m going fucking crazy,” he muttered. “Holy shit.”

Dick could already see the panic slowly setting in. “Tim, it’s okay, you’re not going crazy,” Dick tried to reassure, but all he got was Tim looking behind them again, his breathing speeding up.

Jason grasped Tim by the chin and gently moved his head to face him. “There’s nothing there, Tim. Nothing’s after you. It’s just you, me, and Dickie. Breathe,” he said. It took a second but Tim eventually took a deep breath. Jason looked Tim in the eyes, “Just focus on me okay, baby bird?” Tim gave a singular nod. “I’m gonna pick you up, so try not to freak out,” Jason said.

Jason hefted Tim up in a bridal carry and brought him inside the manor. They decided to settle down in the main living room. Jason sat Tim on the couch while Dick took the seat next to him. 

Alfred emerged from one of the halls holding a first aid kit. “Are you both quite alright?” he asked, crouching next to the couch.

“Tim’s got a few scratches and he pulled out his IV again, but overall he should be alright,” Dick said. “And I uhh, I hurt my shoulder,” he gestured to his right.

Alfred immediately went to work, “It certainly experienced blunt trauma and will be tender for a while, but I am happy to report that it isn’t dislocated, sprained or broken.” He glanced at Tim, “I shall bring Master Timothy’s fluids down here in hopes to avoid similar incidents.”

“Should we give him sedatives again?” Jason asked, leaning forward on the backrest of the couch. “Kid’s pretty spooked.”

Alfred hummed thoughtfully, “Poison Ivy had advised to administer the antidote slowly so as to not shock his body. I believe that sedatives would bring forth risks that I am not confident to put him under. He has already been dealing with multiple and rapidly changing neuronal activity. A seizure is the last thing we want.”

Tim had been quiet this whole time, and it seems like his mind had just now tuned into the conversation, “...a what?” He looked up at Jason. 

“Don’t worry about it,” Jason said, bringing his hand down to Tim’s head. “Everything’ll be over soon, I promise.”

Wednesday, 7:07 pm. 

Once again, everyone was gathered in the cave. By which, this means Tim was also in the cave. Everyone is needed for the meeting and they can’t leave him upstairs, so now, Tim was occupying three chairs and laying his head on Dick’s lap as he stared into who knows what.

Dick was looking down at the boy, his hand running through Tim’s hair, an act to comfort the younger, as well as an attempt to try and ground him, bring him back. He was only half listening to Bruce as he spoke, but Dick had already gotten the rundown from Jason earlier. He had a good grasp of the situation.

“So we’ll split up,” Bruce said. “Jason, Damian, and I will go to Crime Alley, while Cassandra, Stephanie, and Duke will go to New Gotham. Try to minimize any damage to the equipment, and make sure to sweep the place after in case we’re missing anything.” He then looked over to Dick, “Dick, you’ll stay—”

“What?!” Dick exclaimed, looking up at them.

“You’re hurt,” Bruce started.

Dick scoffed, “Barely,” he said. “My shoulder’s sore but it's not like I can’t move it.”

“We need someone to stay with Tim and help Alfred encode the findings from the notebooks,” Bruce said. “This is just the most logical move.”

“Fine,” Dick said, “But I can’t encode down here and watch Tim up in the manor,” he pointed out.

“That’s why Tim’s staying down here,” Bruce said. 

“I thought after last time, we agreed that Drake is a walking hazard and should not have access to the cave,” Damian reminded.

“Encoding all the notes in the computer and analyzing results will take a long time,” Bruce said. “Tim’s been awake for nearly a week. We can’t risk making him stay up longer or there could be permanent damage.”

Dick’s hand in Tim’s hair stopping its motion and switching to holding Tim by his shoulder, “You guys do what you need to. I’ll keep Tim safe, I swear.”

Chapter Text

Wednesday, 10:10 pm. 

Dick was sitting in front of the computer encoding the notebooks that Jason and Bruce found. Bruce already started on it, but only made it half-way through, and Dick could understand why. Piecing together information from the notebooks that seemed to have their own system was time consuming. He let out a sigh as he finished with another page. Dick then reached over for the other notebook to find the next page, careful as to not to alarm the boy in his arms. 

Tim was lying down on two other chairs, and his upper body was sprawled on Dick’s lap, his head on his left arm, while his right was over his body, essentially trapping Tim in a hug. It was hard to type in that position, but when Dick had tried to coax Tim into a bed, it only made him panic. Dick didn’t mind though, if it provided Tim comfort, he’ll work around it. Besides, it’s easier to keep an eye on him like this. 

Dick started encoding the next page, already thinking about how much more he had to encode. He’s nearly done with these notebooks, but he still had to do Ivy’s notes—granted those were going to be a lot easier—that Cass and Steph found when they collected soil samples. Samples that Alfred was already working on, on the other side of the cave. Dick took a quick glance at the time. He wanted to finish everything by the time the others finished up with their things, so when the plant samples arrive, they can go into antidote making quickly. 

Dick shifted slightly, trying to wake his already stiff legs when he heard a sudden whine. “It’s okay,” Dick said, immediately settling down. “I’m not going anywhere.” He brushed Tim’s hair out of his face, then readjusting the wet cloth on his forehead. Tim’s fever spiked again after the earlier fiasco with the window. It’s gone down, but at this point having a cool cloth on him at all times has proven itself to be efficient. 

Despite his words, he could still see the panic in Tim’s shifting eyes. Tim has already expressed his discomfort of being left alone earlier when he had tried to get him on the bed. Even now, he keeps muttering to himself. He believes that something’s out to get him. “There’s nothing here, Timmy,” Dick said. “It’s just me, and Alfred’s a little over there,” he gestured his head to the direction behind him. “You’re safe,” he said.

The younger one settled down a bit, eyes still not focusing on anything. That was good. The last thing they need is Tim lashing out and getting aggressive again. Even when running a fever, hallucinating, and delirious, Tim can still hold out in a fight pretty well, especially with all that adrenaline running in him. 

Once he was sure that Tim wasn’t going to go running, Dick went back to the task at hand. 

Wednesday, 10:10 pm.

Infiltrating the supposedly abandoned four-story building in New Gotham was pretty easy with Barbara overriding every and all security measures that this Reginald guy put up. Right now, Steph, Cass, and Duke were hanging out in the building’s stairwell. 

“Alright, the first floor is basically empty, apart from a ridiculous amount of guards,” Babs said through the comms. “The second floor is filled with boxes that contain perfume bottles, glasswares, and chemicals, it currently has no one there. The third floor is guarded, and it has the lab and there are a few people working around. Careful with the chemicals in the second and third floor, none are harmful to the body, but they are very and I say this, very flammable. We don’t want to burn the plant samples, which are currently drying on the fourth floor, guarded, but there are also some in the lab.”

“Someone needs to get the plants. Mission priority,” Cass signed. 

“I’ll go get the ones on the fourth floor,” Steph volunteered.

Duke nodded, “I’ll go for the ones in the lab.”

They don’t really have the intention to fight. Bruce had told them that they don’t need to bring the operation down. Just to get the plants and go. These guys were the type who aren’t all that without their leader, so once Reginald was down, these guys were done for as well. If this goes with no complications, they could be in and out in fifteen minutes. 

But in case something goes wrong, it will be easier if these guys didn’t have a ridiculous amount of back up, “I’ll take down the guards on the first floor,” Cass signed. 

The three split up.

Sneaking up behind the guards on the first floor was easy. Cass had already knocked out the three who were slacking off by the side of the building. There was currently one who was going around the building, checking the perimeter and Cass went for him next. The guy managed to get out a yelp before he hit the ground. 

Apparently that yelp was enough to catch a bit of attention. “Who’s there?” someone called, followed by four sets of footsteps. 

Cass immediately hid up in the fire escape and watched the four men look around and try to wake the already unconscious one. Cass dropped down on the one next to the guy on the floor, before kicking a foot out and spinning, bringing the other surrounding men down to the ground. 

A gun was immediately pointed up at her, but Cass was faster than the finger pulling the trigger. The gun flew out of the guy’s hand and a quick jab to a specific nerve on the shoulder, the guy passed out. The other two tried to call for help but Cass took care of them as well. 

Once all were knocked out, Cass made her way to the front of the building where the other guards were none the wiser. She surveyed their position before making her move. 

Duke reached the door that leads to the third floor hallway. He used his powers to survey the area and he could see that there was a large room at the end of the hall, which was the lab. There were a lot of people in the hall, as well as the lab, but only three of them seemed to be operating the lab, so that must mean that the rest were guards. 

Duke doesn’t want to risk a fight with a bunch of guys in such a hazardous place with, you know, chemicals that can burn the mission objective. That said, he decided to play it stealthy. Hopefully these guys were as amateurish as they believe and wouldn’t even notice the plants walking away on their own.

Making himself invisible, he cracked the door open a tad before retreating back into the stairwell. Some of the guards noticed the door and made their way over, searching for what could have possibly opened the door. Carefully, Duke made his way around the guards in the stairwell, then the ones in the hallway, then eventually, he made it to the lab. 

He pushed the door open and went in. One of the guards noticed the door and approached it, examining and asking the guys outside if they were messing with the door again. Duke ignored the guards and scanned the room for the plants. By the looks of things, the people in lab gowns already had some of the plants going into the equipment. He was starting to think they’ve already used up all the here for the extraction when his eyes caught sight of dry leaves in boxes labeled as ‘to be powderized’. 

Duke made his way over to the far back corner and made note of where everything was before plunging the whole third floor into darkness. There were alarmed sounds coming from the people in the room. 

“Is it a black out? Someone get the generator.” 

“It’s just this floor, are the lights busted?” 

While they were figuring out what happened, Duke gathered the two boxes and carried them out, still trying to avoid the frantic people in the room. 

Meanwhile, Steph arrived at the fourth floor, rolled down capsules with sleeping gas into the hallway. The guards, curiously—and stupidly— approached the capsules just in time for it to spray out the gas. The guards immediately dropped to the floor. 

Once the gas had dispersed, Steph approached the door that she noticed was more heavily guarded earlier. She readied herself in case there were still more guards beyond the locked door, but when she kicked it down, she found the place pleasantly empty. Babs was right, these guys Reginald hired were amateurs! 

She finds the leaves on the floor which were drying, there were two boxes which were labeled ‘to be powderized’, and there were powdered versions in two more jars. Steph grabbed rolls of plastic from her utility belt and started gathering the ones on the floor. 

She’s nearly done with gathering the ones on the floor when the door opens. Steph was ready to throw a batarang towards the direction, but calmed down when she saw Duke. “Nice timing,” she said.

“I’ll go grab the other boxes,” Duke said, already walking over to said boxes. 

The door opened once again and the two were ready to attack again only to find Cass with her hands up. “I knocked out the guys coming up the stairs,” Cass said before walking over to the jars.

“What about the others?” Steph asked, tying up the two bags of plastics. 

Duke smirked, “They’re panicking about their busted lights, which aren’t really busted.”

Steph looked around the room, “There’s a lot here but you guys didn’t see the plot of land that Cass and I had to sample.”

Cass nodded in agreement, “There’s more somewhere.”

Steph reached up to her communicator to contact the others.

Wednesday, 10:20 pm.

Jason, Bruce, and Damian were standing in a building near the warehouse that the meeting is supposedly taking place in. They saw people walking into the warehouse earlier, and based on the time, the meeting was ongoing. The three had surveyed the area and found there to be a bunch of guys—as Jason had stated before. But with three of them, they’ll be able to take these guys down. Reginald may have escaped last time, but they’re gonna make sure he doesn’t this time around.

Cass, Steph, and Duke are already in position at the building where the operation was going on. They were just waiting for the go ahead signal from Barbara so that the two groups were coordinated, just in case these guys get a warning from the other.

“They’re on the move,” Babs said.

Jason, Bruce, and Damian made their way to the roof of the warehouse and dropped down a smoke bomb. They then immediately dropped into the warehouse, taking out as many guys as they could before the smoke cleared out. 

Jason made sure to not take his eyes off Reginald, and at the first sign of something wrong the guy was quick to try and escape. Jason knocked down the guy he was fighting and made his way to Reginald, shoving any and all goons to the ground on his way. 

“Going somewhere, Reggie?” Jason said, standing in front of the door Reginald was planning to escape out of, just as the smoke cleared. “Can I call you Reggie?”

“Y—”

“Yeah, I don’t care,” Jason interrupted. 

“What do you want from me?!” Reginald exclaimed.

Jason, despite wearing his helmet, raised an eyebrow. Was this guy stupid after all? “Gee I don’t know,”  he brought a hand up to scratch at his head, “maybe it’s the drugs, or you know, the drugs, or, or, get this, the drugs.” 

Before Reginald could respond to him, Jason brought up a finger to shut him up as his communicator beeped and Stephanie’s voice went through, “We’ve got the plants, but there’s bound to be more.”

Jason smirked underneath the helmet. “So, here’s how it’s gonna go,” he started. “You can tell me where the rest of your supply is and I can peacefully hand you over to the Bat once he’s done with those guys,” he gestured behind Reginald where Bruce and Damian were nearly done fighting the goons,  “or we can do this the hard way and you can enjoy some quality time with me,” Jason said, cracking his knuckles.

“So what’s it gonna be, Reggie?”

Thursday, 12:34 am.

Good news, Reginald wasn't as much of a tough guy as he likes to appear. Man broke after what Jason counted was twenty or so punches. There were henchmen that lasted longer than he did. That aside, it was revealed that after Reginald found out that Hood was onto him, he distributed the plants to different places, and since he hadn’t gone to either of his houses, there was no time to update the plans listed in the notebooks. 

They separated to gather the plans from the said locations, and about an hour later, they were back in the cave and Bruce was already an hour into running the plants through analysis and was in the process of creating an antidote.

But even with that solved, nothing can just be easy,

“Tim, please,” Dick pleaded, crouched down next to the bed in the medbay.

“No! Go away!” Tim yelled from under the bed. 

After everyone had come back to the cave, Tim got overwhelmed with the amount of people coming in and going around at a fast pace. Even more so when Dick led him to the medbay, sat him on the bed, and told him that the antidote should be ready in hopefully an hour or so. 

Tim perked up at the revelation of an antidote before hissing at Dick that he wasn’t sick and this was some ploy to poison him. 

So Tim had decided that the safest place right now was under the bed. Which they could easily get out of the way, but they don’t want to freak Tim out more than he already is. The more freaked out he is the more the drug is affecting him. 

“Please, I promise it’s not poison,” Dick reasoned.

“'xactly wh’t a poisoner says,” Tim slurred.

  Damian rolled his eyes at the childishness, “Drake, you have been in a pathetically vulnerable state the past week,” he said.

“Where exactly are you going with this?” Stephanie questioned.

“If we wanted to poison you, do you not think we would have already?” Damian continued.

Tim was quiet for a moment, in which they hoped was contemplation. Even in this state, nothing gets that brain thinking than presenting him facts. “I…no? Maybe? I don’t…”

“Tim, buddy, we’re not going to poison you,” Dick tried again.

“Oh my god you already have!” Tim exclaimed, followed by a thud and the bed shaking.

Jason sighed, with his arms crossed, “Get out from under there kid,” he said. “Last thing we want is a concussion.”

“C’mon Tim,” Stephanie started, crouching down and peeking under the bed. She finds Tim who was curled up at the end that was adjacent to the wall. His eyes were wide open, unfocused, with a hand up to his head rubbing at the part that had hit the bed when he exclaimed. “At least come up? I promise it’s safe.”

Tim immediately shook his head, “No no no,” he started muttering. “No, he—he’s there.”

Stephanie furrowed her eyebrows, “Who’s there?” She looked back up and the only ones across the bed from Tim were Cass and Duke. 

“We’re not gonna hurt you, Tim,” Duke said, “Look, we’ll step aside so that the surrounding is clear, if that'll make you feel better?”

“It’s safe,” Cass added as she and Duke went off to the sides.

Steph looked back under the bed, Tim was still shaking his head furiously. “No, no, he’s st’l…after me…been c’ming b’ck…h’s…nna take me…I d’nt wanna go…”

Steph frowned, not really understanding what Tim was saying, “No one’s gonna take you away, promise.”

Tim was quiet for a moment, before his stance shifted forward. “Are you coming out, I—” 

Steph was cut off as Tim scrambled to get out from under the bed. Once out, he immediately took off running, tumbling over his own feet as his weak body tried its best to keep himself up. 

“Cass!” Dick exclaimed.

Tim didn’t make it very far before he was held back by strong arms surrounding him, keeping his arms to his side, and easing them onto the floor. “It’s okay, little brother,” Cass said, keeping the boy in a hold slash hug as he struggled. 

“No, he’s coming I—” Tim turned his head in a random direction. “Help me!” He yelled at an empty spot. “No, no, no, l’t me go! I h’ve to…” his pleas were cut off by a sob. 

Cass looked up to the rest of them, eyes silently asking for help. 

Dick approached carefully, before sitting across Cass and Tim. He let out quiet hushes, “It’s okay Tim, it’s just us, no one’s going to take you away.”

Tim kept struggling, clearly not willing to listen to what any of them had to say. As much as it pains them to see Tim like this, their words aren’t really something that can help at this point. They try, of course they do, but Tim’s far gone into his own head that he was speaking to air and he doesn’t seem to realize that there were actual people surrounding him.

It took forty minutes of this before Tim started to calm down, still in Cass’ arms. 

Tim was staring off into the distance once again, catatonic. 

They had no choice but to wait. 

But finally, finally! After another hour, Bruce emerged from the cave’s lab with a vial in  hand. 

Chapter Text

Thursday, 2:57 am. 

The antidote didn’t work right away, after all, it’s being administered slowly to keep Tim’s body from going into shock. The first dose was administered while Tim was still out of it, as was the second dose, but by the time the third dose was due, Tim was starting to talk again. And once he was ready for the fourth and final one, Tim was getting antsy.

“You sa’d th’s w’s s’pposed to h’lp,” Tim slurred from his slumped position on the bed. “I d’nt fe’l b’t’r.”

“This is the last dose,” Bruce said as he prepared the needle. “After this, I promise you’ll be able to sleep.”

Tim narrowed his eyes at him, “y’r not lyin’ t’ me are y’u?”

“No, I’m not,” Bruce stated firmly as he injected the last bit of antidote.

Tim stared at his arm for a moment, “N’th’n’s happ’nin.”

“You’re going to have to wait for it to take effect, bud,” Bruce said.

Tim shook his head, “‘ur j’st lyi—” he cut himself off with a yawn. “Y’h ‘ur lyin’. It’s b’d to…to lie you kno’? Th’t has comti…comsi…consi…uhhh,” Tim wonders why he couldn’t get the word right as his eyes slowly blinked. They feel really heavy for some reason. “comsimeq—” a yawn, “consequen…” Tim didn’t get to finish his sentence as his eyes closed, and his breathing came down to a soft, steady rhythm.

Faintly, he feels a hand cup his cheek, and a lip pressed to his forehead. “Goodnight, Tim.”

The next moments of Tim’s life came by as a blur. 

The first time he had any semblance of consciousness, he didn’t even open his eyes. He felt something cold on his forehead and he could hear someone watching something by his bedside. Not clocking in any danger, Tim let himself drift away.

The next time he remembers being ‘awake’, the cold thing on his forehead was gone. Instead he could feel a hand holding his. He could feel his finger twitch, and then hand holding him tightened around his hand comfortingly. Tim didn’t make the effort to open his eyes. He was safe. 

Tim doesn’t know how long it had been since the last time, but he actually has enough energy to peek through his eyelids this time. Slowly he willed them open, before immediately regretting everything in his life and closed them again at the sudden brightness that greeted him.

He could hear someone call his name, “Tim? Are you awake?” a female voice asked, but Tim couldn’t tell who was talking, and he decided that he had enough of that for now and kept his eyes closed.

Tim wasn’t sure how many more times this happens, but the next one that he remembers, he managed to keep his eyes open for longer than a second. A whopping minute, if his internal counter was right. He was aware enough to recognize Alfred who was adjusting something on the fluid bags. 

“Hello my boy,” Alfred looked down at him with a smile. Tim stared at him questioningly, making the man laugh. “None of that Master Timothy, no need to worry yourself of anything. Everything is under control. What you need is some more rest.”

Tim let out a hum before closing his eyes at the assurance.

The next time, surprise, surprise, he managed to actually say something. Short as it may have been. 

“Hey Timmy,” Dick greeted when he saw Tim staring. “How are you?”

Tim wondered for a moment before giving Dick a shrug. Tim didn’t even know why he was in what looked like bedrest. He doesn’t even remember being injured. He was brought out of his thoughts by a thumb smoothing down the wrinkles between his eyebrows. 

“Don’t think about it too much,” Dick said. “We’ll explain everything after you get some rest, okay?” 

Tim hummed, “‘kay.”

Tim woke up, and it has been the most aware he has been the past however many hours had there been. This time, there was no one by his bedside. He shifted a bit, trying to get up only to be reprimanded. 

“Tt, you really cannot be left alone for long, can you, Drake?”

Tim looked over and found that no one was by his bedside, but that doesn’t mean no one else was in the room. By the window, Damian sat on a single sofa with a sketchpad on his lap and a pencil in hand. 

 “Are you actually lucid this time or are you going to fall asleep the moment you try responding?” Damian asked, not looking up from what he was drawing.

“I’m…awake,” he said. 

“That wasn’t my question,” Damian said. 

Tim blinked at him, “I am.”

Damian narrowed his eyes at him, “Stay where you are,” he said before setting his sketchpad and pencil on the sofa then walking out of the room. 

Not wanting to get reprimanded again, Tim stayed lying down. He closed his eyes for a moment, trying to remember what happened. He remembered that he was working on a case and he was…compromised? He couldn’t sleep? Was that it? 

The door to his room came bursting open, making him flick his eyes open. Damian had returned with Bruce and Dick. 

“Hey baby bird,” Dick greeted as he took a seat on Tim’s bed, careful of all the wires. “How’re you feeling?” He cupped Tim’s face, to which the younger leaned into. 

“Better,” he said. “But I don’t…I don’t really remember much.”

Bruce nodded from where he sat at the foot of Tim’s bed, “That’s understandable. The lack of sleep has great effects on how your brain forms memories. Maybe you'll gradually remember, or maybe you won't,” he said, placing a comforting hand on Tim’s leg, “You’ve been hit by a drug that elevates epinephrine levels to the point that your body is always on high alert, triggering the inability to sleep, paranoia, hallucinations, and aggression among other things.”

“Oh,” Tim said.

“You were awake for seven days,” Dick continued, “We managed to take down Reginald Campbell, the guy running everything, and the antidote was made.”

“Oh,” Tim muttered, he remembers bits and pieces from the past week. Mostly the times where he was being aggressive, not much for the hallucinating parts though. But he does remember everyone trying to help him by keeping him in the loop and calming him down, “Oh,” he repeated. “How long was I out?”

“Four days,” Damian answered, glancing at the clock, “Nearly five. Your fever broke after two days, and the first sign of any activity from you was when Cain reported that she felt you move your finger on the third day,” he reported.

“Oh,” Tim said. 

Damian raised an eyebrow, “You have said that word four times already,” he pointed out before looking at Bruce, “Are we certain that he does not have brain damage?”

“No,” Tim started, “I’m just…processing.”

“Leslie has already been contacted to do a check-up in a bit and Alfred filled her in with what has happened the past week,” Bruce said, “Leslie also suggested some scans to be done once you're feeling up to it, preferably within the week you wake up. Just to make sure nothing is amiss.”

“In the meantime, while we wait,” Dick started, “why don’t you go ahead and freshen up. Cleanse thy body and thy soul as they say,” he said.

Tim rolled his eyes, “You can just say ‘go take a bath, you stink’ like a normal person, you know?”

“Yeah, well I was being sensitive, thank you very much” Dick crossed his arms, “But yeah, go bathe,” he laughed. “Dr. Thompkins should be here by the time you’re done, and once she clears you we can go downstairs and hang out, maybe watch a movie or something.”

Tim was about to protest when Dick reached for both his arms and pulled him up from the bed. “Nuh uh, this is a non negotiable. Besides I already messaged the others, Babs is coming down cause she wants to see you in person, Cass and Steph are wrangling Jason, and Duke is downstairs setting everything up with Alfred.”

Seeing as Dick wasn’t going to take no for an answer, Tim decided he might as well. He took a well needed bath and dressed himself in some comfy sweatpants and a blue hoodie that is obviously way too big on him which means he isn’t the actual owner of it, but he for the life of him, could not remember who he stole it from. 

Just as predicted, Leslie arrived not long after he got out. She greeted him and started the check-up. It was just the basics, but focusing more on Tim’s reaction, reflexes, and awareness. Once Leslie determined that he was all good to go, she cleared him, told him to come for follow up at her clinic tomorrow, as well as reminded him not to fight any tiredness in his body, ‘cause even if he didn’t feel it now as he just woke up from such a long sleep, he will eventually as it come with recovery.

When Tim arrived at the main living room, he was greeted by Babs. “Oh how nice it is to finally see those eyes not blacked out,” she said as she held Tim’s face in her hands, thumbs brushing across his cheeks.

“Yeah,” Tim said, “Thanks for all the help.” Even if he didn’t remember everything, he does recall Babs being on the top of her game with all the information gathering. You know, as usual, she is Oracle. 

Tim joined Dick on the couch, grabbing one of the blankets draped across the backrest and wrapped it around his shoulders as he got comfy.

“I’m just saying, we better not be watching one of those cheesy, romance, coming of age movies, ‘cause if we are, I’m outta here,” Jason’s voice echoed into the room as he entered with Cass and Steph.

“Please, everyone knows you secretly like those,” Steph rolled her eyes. 

Tim felt the couch dip on the empty side, “Hello little brother,” Cass greeted as she reached in for a hug. Tim hummed, burying his head into Cass’ neck. 

Everyone settled in and Tim found the living room full. Babs was next to Cass, while Damian was on the other side of Dick sitting on the arm of the couch. On the floor was Steph and Duke, while Bruce sat on one of the solo couches on the left, and Jason sat on the solo couch on the right. Alfred came in with the snacks as everyone else fought on what movie they should watch.

“You know what, let's settle this,” Steph started before looking over to Tim, “Tim what do you say?”

“You guys don’t have to…you know, do this,” Tim said as he sunk deeper into the couch.

“That…was not what I meant,” Steph hung her head. “We’re not forced to be here, you know?”

“But you guys have been looking out for me for the past two weeks,” Tim protested, “Surely you have stuff you have to follow up on.”

“Don’t flatter yourself Timberina,” Jason said, leaning back on his chair. “Everything’s been pretty calm.”

“After the antidotes for the different formulation of the drug was made, the victims were tracked down and were given said antidote,” Bruce started, “that took two days, and so far, nothing unusual have presented itself.”

“Still,” Tim muttered, “take some time for yourselves then. I’ve already taken up so much. If only I’ve solved that case earlier.”

“Timmy,” Dick started, “Taking care of you isn’t something that just takes up our time, okay? We don’t mind taking care of you because we love you. I know you feel guilty about it, but trust me, we’d rather that we were around than if you were dealing with it alone.”

“Besides,” Duke added, “The cases would have taken forever to solve, but since Jason and Cass’ things were intertwined with yours, you practically solved everyone’s cases—which is really impressive given the situation, by the way. You just needed the pieces that you got during the meetings.” He then mutters, “It’s as if talking to each other is really helpful.” 

“Yes, yes, Drake is appreciated and all that, but what are we going to do about the movie?” Damian asks, making Tim smile knowing that the younger actually just wanted to say the first bit but is covering it up with a layer of annoyance.

Not wanting to actually pick a movie since he himself is indecisive, Tim suggested picking out a random movie from everyone else’s suggestions. They ended up with a feel-good, lighthearted, comedy suggested by Duke. 

An hour into the movie Tim let out a yawn. He really wanted to take a nap right about now. Tim hummed as he sunk into the couch, feeling the warmth radiating from his family that’s surrounding him. It hits him that this is the first time in the past week that he’s got a say to whether or not he’ll sleep. 

 His eyes drooped, head lolling to the side until it hit someone’s shoulder. Tim’s breathing evened out as he let his eyes close, darkness engulfing him. 

Yeah, a nap sounded nice.