Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The most important thing about this entire situation was that it really was, under no circumstances, in any way, Tim’s fault.

Reality shifting devices were defined as out of scope on the official Robin scope Venn diagram Bruce kept in the batcave. They were not Tim’s wheelhouse, they were not any of the Bat’s wheelhouse really. The general protocol for when one ended up in Gotham was to call Zatanna, or Raven, or even John Constantine if you were really desperate and willing to risk it. Because then they’d show up and take a look at the completely baffling device and go “Ah yes the classic Mumbo Mac Carumbo Teleportation Remote, been a while since I came across one of these.” and then they would take it away from Gotham and out of the hands of the relieved bats.

Tim knew this. Tim did not want anything to do with magical artifacts with unknown abilities. But unfortunately for him, sometimes they ended up very visibly in the middle of Gotham city. And while Tim knew better than to press random buttons on unknown mystical objects, the average Gotham citizen… well it was fifty fifty really. Maybe they’d get super powers or maybe they’d die but either way they wouldn’t be powerless next time there was a bunch of costumed villains on the loose. For some downtrodden citizens that was enough to take the risk and poke the magical buttons.

So when Tim found this device, after a tip from Duke who was too busy stopping a bodega store robbery to swing by himself and get it, Tim knew that despite really, really not wanting to pick it up, he had to get this device away from the general public.

The device itself was around the size and width of an iPad, if a bit chunkier. It was the height of a laptop from five or ten years ago, before they all started coming out so thin you’d think they were squashing them with a giant hammer in the factories. It was gray metal, and the only thing that gave away the magical element were the tubes running along each side of it. Both tubes contained…something.

No really, it was hard to describe it any other way. It wasn’t quite a gas, a liquid, or a solid. It looked similar to plasma and also to gel, while clearly not being either. It was translucent, but also seemed to eat the surrounding light. Looking at the tube Tim could see right through to the other side, but he could also see flickers of electricity running through it.

On top of that, the device was covered in sigils in a language Tim didn’t recognise. Always a good clue that the sparks he saw were due to some kind of magic.The other clue was that it was currently nestled in a smoldering crater that used to be the ground floor of an abandoned apartment block.

“Hey Signal,” Tim flicked his comm on. “Any chance you could give me more information about this device?”

“Look Jasper, just take the diapers and go. Your kid needs a dad, and no one should go to jail for something as dumb as this.” Tim waited patiently as Duke finished talking down the would-be robber. “Hey Red. Sorry but I have no clue. I saw a light falling out of the sky but had to prioritize so I called you in. That’s all I’ve got, you need any backup now?”

“Nah.” Tim picked up a nearby twig and carefully poked the device with it. “It seems pretty durable but it’s currently not doing anything evil. I’m going to take it back to the cave and then call in the experts.”

“In that case I think I’ll take an extra long patrol,” He could hear Duke’s grin through the comm. “And if the manor is shrunken or exploded by the time I get back then I get to claim plausible deniability.”

“You’re such a lovely little brother. Really making me miss working with Damian right now.”

“Damian’s hilarious,so I’m taking that as a complement.” Tim wanted to joke that it wasn’t meant as one, but Duke kept talking. “Gotta go, this guy still isn’t giving up. Text you later, please don’t die.”

“Don’t jinx me.” Tim sighed, but there was a beeping sound that meant Duke’s had left the channel.

Tim squatted down and squinted at the device. He really did not want to pick it up, or touch it in the slightest. But he signed up to be a hero, and sometimes that meant risking your life to get the weird magical device away from all the civilians it could potentially harm.

Eh. He had gloves on. It would probably be fine.

Remembering his training and focusing on lifting from the back, Tim reached down and carefully grabbed the device. It wasn’t that heavy, lighter than expected actually. Gently bouncing it in his arms, Tim estimated it was around the weight of an actual Macbook. After a bit of shuffling, he found that he could hold it under one arm without any difficulty.

Now for the fun part. Carrying potentially volatile magical items while swinging across rooftops was strictly against the bat safety code. Bruce had made a video about it that they were all forced to watch, after someone (Cass) stole Klarion’s cat familiar last time he tried to fight in Gotham, and then proceeded to crash through three sheets of glass and into a swimming pool when the cat grew bigger and began to fight back mid grapple swing.

The point Tim was getting at here was that swinging with unknown objects was not the wisest move. So instead, he followed protocol and called for backup.

Fifteen minutes later, the batmobile screeched to a halt in front of him, opening up the driver side door so that Tim could take over. He grinned, setting the device down in the passenger seat beside him.

Technology was so cool. Tim was never getting rid of the self-driving batmobile, even when it inevitably got corrupted and went evil and tried running them all over. He could fix it, it would be worth it.

He made it back to the cave with no issues, but when he opened the door to get out, that’s when everything went to hell.

The device began beeping.

Tim pushed himself out of the car, scrambling away while switching his comm on to the main channel.

“Oracle? Hey I’ve got some sort of magic device that’s just started acting funny and I’ve no idea what it does so could you please call-”

That was as far as he got. The device stopped beeping and instead began screaming and flashing white, blinding Tim and leaving his ears ringing. He could feel a strange sucking sensation on his skin, like gravity was shifting around him. Then everything went black.

When Tim shot up, he was lying in a bed. A familiar bed, in a familiar room. His old room back at Wayne Manor, which used to be Dick’s room and would soon probably end up being one of Damian’s pet’s rooms now that Tim had a nice independent murderboat to live on.

Only… something was off. The curtains were closed so Tim couldn’t see clearly, but the room looked a hell of a lot neater than he remembered leaving it. The only one who ever tried to clean other people’s rooms had been Alfred, and unless he was back from the dead Tim couldn’t think of anyone else who’d bother. Not to mention, there were a bunch of things Tim definitely didn’t remember owning that were scattered amongst items he recognised. Rows of unfamiliar pens, notebooks and school supplies on his familiar desk. An unfamiliar fancy looking blazer hanging off his familiar chair. Had someone moved in without telling Tim?

He stood up, frowning at how light he felt. Not good, he needed food and water and probably a bunch of blood tests, if Bruce hadn’t done them already while Tim was knocked out. He went to move and his foot clanged against something hard and cold. He glanced down and scowled.

The device. Perfectly dormant and innocent looking, like it hadn’t rendered Tim unconscious only a few… hours ago? Days ago? How long had he been asleep for anyways? 

Tim opened the curtains and walked over to the desk, looking down at the notebooks. His sense of unease grew, because they were his notebooks. His handwriting marking each notebook for a particular school subject, only it wasn’t Tim’s at all because the handwriting was neater and his math notebook was blue when Tim distinctly remembered it being orange back when he’d been in high school. So why had someone written his name on these books and filled them up with eerily similar handwriting? He flicked through the math notebook, the English notebook, the geography notebook. All innocently filled with classroom notes and homework attempts. Some seemed familiar to Tim, most were not. 

What the hell was going on?

Tim stepped away from the desk and let his gaze roam around the room to investigate further. His eyes landed on a mirror, and he felt a terrible shock go through his system. It was like looking at a ghost, and not just because of how much paler he looked.

Tim carefully reached up to feel his neck, his shoulders, all lankier and leaner without years of muscle he’d been building up. Still well toned, still in shape for being Robin, but younger. His cheeks had a tiny bit of baby fat on them that he hadn’t seen in years. But he remembered what age he’d been when he looked like this, and suddenly he understood why there were high school notebooks on his desk.

A hysterical laugh bubbled out through Tim’s lips.

He was seventeen again.

The cursed age Tim thought he’d never escape, all his life really was one big circle. At least he had some idea of what the device was capable of. Namely, that it had blasted Tim back in time. Not great, but knowing that was a start.

Only… something was still off.

Tim walked over to the desk again, this time analysing the wall next to it. There were at least twenty post it notes stuck to the wall, all in Tim’s familiar messy scrawl. Much less neat than his school books. More evidence that he’d traveled back in time, and his confusion about the handwriting and the color of the notebook was just Tim’s memories not being fully accurate.

Or at least, that’s what he would have assumed if he hadn’t decided to actually read the post it notes.

30 minutes high bar 30 minutes rope ladder.

Feed Jason dinner. 7pm. Half portion.

Send Bruce the report on Cass.

Lines, 50 pages on why you can’t stoop to Stephanie Brown’s level.

Boost up batcave security, ensure last Oracle hack completely wiped from system.

Out with Bruce tonight. Exemplary performance required. Cowl footage will be incorporated into Damian’s training.

250/500 laps down. Get it finished by the end of the week.

Those notes confirmed that it wasn’t Tim’s memory that was wrong. He was one hundred percent sure that he’d never written any of those sticky notes. Feeding Jason? Oracle hacking the Batcave? What did any of that even mean?

The more he read, the more it hit Tim with sickening certainty that the machine hadn’t pushed him back through time. It had pushed him into another dimension, one of a different seventeen year old Tim. A Tim who liked blue over orange and for some reason was in charge of feeding his older brother and had to… write lines about why he shouldn’t fight with his ex-girlfriend?

“Well gosh darn it Toto.” He whispered to himself. “It looks like we’re not in Kansas anymore.”

Dick would have grinned at the joke if he was there, but unfortunately Tim was alone. All alone in an alternate universe he knew barely anything about. In his seventeen year old body and with a device he couldn’t control or figure out.

Yeah, next time Duke needed help with magical devices, Tim was going to switch his phone off and watch bad daytime soap operas with Bernard on his boat.

Footsteps sounded outside his door. Tim tensed, then took a breath. Until he’d assessed this new universe and figured out if these people could be trusted, he needed to play it cool.

“Tim?” A familiar voice, younger than Tim’s own version. “Are you awake?”

No matter what happened, at least Tim would get some answers. He swung the door open and smiled down at his ten year old little brother, the same brother who he’d seen as a fourteen year old just yesterday.

“Hey Damian.” He drawled, with a casual tone he didn’t feel in the slightest. “What can I do for you?”

Chapter Text

Right off the bat, Tim could tell that there was something different about this Damian. It took him five seconds to figure it out, studying the boy’s face carefully as listened to him speak.

“It’s almost time for patrol. You overslept and didn’t feed Jason, so Father fed Jason your dinner instead. He’s not pleased.”

The stilted formal tone was familiar, but Damian’s expression was all wrong. Ten year old Damian had always been grumpy as hell interacting with Tim, as if the mere act of being forced to speak to Tim was a chore. But this Damian didn’t seem irritable. He just seemed… careful. His face was deliberately blank, giving nothing away.

It was almost as if he was scared of Tim. Which was baffling to Tim because even when Tim had been fighting him back when they were younger, he never remembered seeing Damian display actual fear. Pain yes, frustration yes, actual fear? The kid had been too proud and stubborn for that. And yet Tim couldn’t think of another reason for the kid’s wariness, the bland mask and toneless inflection as he spoke.

Right, Damian was speaking. Tim needed to say something back in response.

“What time is it anyways?” He yawned, stretching his arms out wide and hiding his amusement at Damian’s tiny eyebrow raise.

“1 am. You’ve been asleep for approximately ten hours.”

“Huh.” Tim scratched the back of his head. “Is it weird that I don’t feel well rested?”

Damian frowned, clearly confused by something. Tim thought it was a pretty innocent question to ask, but his brother looked as if Tim had just asked him if the moon was made of cheese.

“Perhaps you should speak to Father about your health and diet.” Damian said, still in that careful neutral tone. “I must go and prepare for my second patrol with Cassandra now. Goodbye.”

His walk was almost as stiff as his voice. But Tim would have to investigate that later, because that short conversation had made an even bigger emergency stand out:

Cass was here. Cass was here and this world was unsettling and Tim didn’t know if this version of his family could be trusted yet. He could fake it with Damian, Jason, probably even Bruce. But if Cass saw him she’d know something was wrong, even if she wouldn’t know specifically what that thing was. The jig would be up, and for all Tim knew he’d had the bad luck of falling into the dimension where the Bats were evil cannibals who ate their enemies. 

So priority number one was now to avoid Cass at all costs. Priority number two was to figure out if this Batman could be trusted to help Tim get home. Priority number three was to actually get home. Priority number four was to get some food on patrol because he was actually pretty hungry and from the sound of it Bruce wasn’t going to give him dinner. Maybe Alfred would, if he was around in this dimension.

Only four tasks. Simple. He could do this.

He made his way over to the grandfather clock and stepped up so that his eye was level with the scanner. The beep it made as it opened was familiar and reassuring. A dimension similar enough that the batcave security operated with the same mechanisms? Yeah he could handle this.

Entering the batcave, Tim couldn’t help but immediately start analysing what was the same and what was different. The size was the same, but the dinosaur was gone. Instead there was a tower of what seemed to be computer servers, sleek and futuristic. Tim could only see the top level, but there were stairs to lower sections he didn’t recognise. The Robin case was there, with the same inscription for Jason. So Jason had died and was now alive but on good enough terms to be fed by the family? Seemed strange, Tim’s Jason had taken much longer to stop antagonizing the family and learn to work with them. Maybe this Jason had been seriously injured during a fight and it had calmed everyone down. Maybe he was still dead and they had all just named a family pet in his honour. Tim couldn’t tell yet.

The lockers, the spare costumes and weapons, the computers and file cabinets, they were all similar to Tim’s batcave. But still, the whole place felt more unsettling despite not being super different. Tim hadn’t realized how much the dinosaur added to the vibe but it definitely felt more grim without it there.

Bruce was sitting in front of the main computer, closer to the batmobile than all the other servers and monitors and keyboards. He swiveled around as Tim approached, and Tim did his best to not appear nervous.

He looked like Tim’s Batman. Not the gun Batman future Tim, he meant his own version of Bruce. The costume was quite similar, although it seemed a little bit more heavily armoured. This Bruce had a nasty glare through the cowl, but so did Tim’s Bruce on his bad days. He couldn’t judge this Batman without more context.

“Hey,” Tim scuffed a shoe against the floor. “Damian woke me up. I’ll get ready for patrol now.”

“You overslept.” Oof, Tim recognised that cold tone. This Bruce was not pleased. “You didn’t do your homework or your chores.”

“Sorry,” Tim said hesitantly. “I don’t know why I was so exhausted. Rough night yesterday I guess.”

Tim knew exactly why he was so exhausted. A reality jump was a tiring process, but he couldn’t exactly explain that to this grumpy Batman yet.

“We’ll run a medical scan before we leave, but if you weren’t feeling well it was your responsibility to make me aware of that. If you get detention you know what will happen.” Tim actually did not know what would happen, but that sounded highly ominous. “As for your chores, you missed dinner so I am willing to consider that punishment enough. You’ll be allowed to eat again at breakfast tomorrow.”

OK yeah, definitely not a good Batman. Tim’s Bruce could be a jerk sure but when he was angry at Tim he either lashed out loudly or shut everything down and tried pushing Tim away. He never withheld food because that was just… well he’d heard of some parents doing it but seeing as they were vigilantes it felt unsafe to Tim. Calories were important when you burned through as much energy per night as he did.

Still, this wasn’t his world and he definitely didn’t feel comfortable admitting that to this version of Batman. So if this was Bruce’s idea of normal discipline then Tim would roll with it. He’d just picture it as dealing with an angry Bruce on the anniversary of his parents’ death right after receiving news that Dick had been injured on a mission. Lots of appeasing and kid gloves needed.

“Yes sir.” He nodded, and then turned and headed for the lockers. 

He was a bit curious what his costume would be, and slightly disappointed when he opened his locker (which thankfully had the same passcode in this universe as his own did back home) and saw the original Red Robin suit looking back at him. On the bright side, this Tim had gotten rid of the cowl and replaced it with what looked like the mask he’d worn in the Unternet. Bigger than his usual domino, but the mask draped down his cheeks and covered his nose in a beak. He liked it. Less Batman, more Nightwing. Good for you, alternate universe Timmy.

Tim got dressed quickly, not wanting to push his luck with cranky, strict Batman. His eyes darted around the cave every few seconds, unsure if Damian and Cass had already left or were upstairs. The priority was still to avoid Cass, so getting out on patrol fast was his best option.

Once he was dressed he walked over to Batman, who instead of heading towards the batmobile walked over to what seemed to be the medical section of the cave.

Right, health check.

This had the potential to expose Tim, but honestly he was curious himself what the results would be. He was in his alternate self’s seventeen year old body, so everything should come back normal. But did this machine detect possession? Was Tim even possessing this other Tim or was it just a brain swap? Was the other Tim in here with him?

He frowned and concentrated. Nope, his head was quiet. He was alone up there, thankfully.

“Get in.” Bruce growled, opening a glass door into what looked like a contamination shower.

Jeez, this guy didn’t seem to have a nice mode. Tim did his best not to look unsettled and stepped into the shower. To his surprise, he didn’t instantly get soaked in water. Instead there were beeping sounds from above him and a line of red light scanned its way down his body.

Well that was one plus for this universe: The bat tech seemed slightly more advanced.

“Your musculoskeletal system seems fine but your brain scans look different from last time.” Funny, Tim almost thought he detected a note of concern in Batman’s voice. “There’s been changes in the brain tissue. It’s similar to the symptoms of a patient weeks after they’ve had a stroke.”

Uh oh.

“I don’t remember having a stroke, sir.” Tim said, trying for light and funny.

Batman’s glare made it clear what he thought at Tim’s attempt at levity.

“Are you sure you have no idea what happened? Nothing out of the ordinary other than exhaustion earlier today?”

“Yes sir.” It felt weird calling Batman sir all the time, but this Bruce seemed to find it normal which... Yeah, another not great sign. “That’s the only symptom I can recall.”

“And do you feel alright now?”

“Yes sir, I feel completely normal now.” Other than years younger than he should be, but hey, small potatoes.

“You should have told me earlier.” Batman didn’t growl, but Tim found this coldly clinical voice worse than his anger. “I expected you would be fully ready to patrol. Now there’s a chance your condition could worsen and our patrol could be jeopardized, and because you didn’t tell me I have no one lined up to cover you.”

Tim was suffering signs of a stroke, and this asshole was trying to make him feel bad for throwing a wrench in patrol plans? Was this Batman even a hero? If Tim went on patrol were they going to save people, or do a bunch of crimes?

Tim’s blood ran cold. What if this Batman was a murderer? What if he expected Tim to kill people tonight?

No, Cass was here. Cass would never be here if this Batman killed people. That was one variable Tim felt absolutely certain gambling on.

Oh shit, Bruce was still glaring at him.

“I’m sorry sir.” Tim mumbled, trying to appear contrite and not disgusted. “I was just so tired. I was asleep before I realized it was happening.”

“Pathetic.” Bruce said, voice even icier. “I taught you better than that, Red Robin.”

OK cool so he was definitely Red Robin here. Thank you asshole Batman for that confirmation.

“I can still patrol sir!” He tried carefully to make his voice more desperate, eager to please. “I won’t let you down again, I promise.”

“Hm.” Bruce grunted, so familiar and yet it made Tim’s gut twist. “Very well. Get in the Batmobile, we’re covering Old Gotham first tonight. Patrol route seven.”

Tim hadn’t the faintest notion what patrol route seven was, but screw it he was already in this deep. Might as well bluff for his life and blame brain trauma if he messed up. He rushed over to the batmobile, vaulting over the side to land in the passenger seat.

Whoops, judging from Bruce’s scowl that wasn’t an appropriate way to get into a car in this universe. Tim should probably start writing all these rules down in case he forgot.

An hour into patrol, he was seriously considering the rulebook idea. This Bruce was ridiculously strict. If Tim didn’t swing directly from building A to B he glared at him. When Tim jumped to help in a fight he got yelled at. If Tim tried speaking when they were in the middle of investigating a crime scene, the glare he got was downright venomous. He soon got the impression that all this Batman wanted from Tim was a silent sidekick who stood next to him and only did exactly what Batman ordered. The one bright side to that level of micromanaging was that Tim never had to worry about not being familiar with patrol route seven. Bruce never even gave him the chance to go off on his own and get it wrong.

Damian’s odd behaviour made a lot more sense to Tim now. He couldn’t picture this Batman tolerating any sort of sarcasm or recklessness. But it worried Tim a little, knowing how stubborn Damian could be. How strict did Bruce have to get with him in order to turn the brat Tim knew into the careful and polite kid Tim had seen this morning? Especially with that weird withholding food thing, Tim could easily see some sort of hunger strike scenario occurring back when this Damian first arrived at the manor. A battle of wills between father and son, one which Bruce had clearly won in the end.

He couldn’t worry about it too much, because it turns out they weren’t bad guys in this universe after all. They were still vigilantes, and busy ones at that. The dynamic duo stopped two muggings, a bank robbery, and an attempted extortion by Killer Moth of all people, before Bruce finally led Tim back to the batcave. The batmobile’s clock read 7am as they pulled into the cave and parked the car. Tim got out quickly, using the car door this time. He’d accomplished what he set out to do: avoid Cass and learn more about Bruce. And primarily what he’d learned is that he really didn’t want to spend any more time with this version of Bruce. 

“Tim.” Bruce called as he tried walking away. “We need to talk about tonight.”

“Oh,” Tim winced internally and spun around to face his not-father. “Sure, let’s talk.”

Bruce stared at him. It wasn’t a glare or a curious look, he just stared. It made Tim start to squirm.

“Your behaviour tonight was unacceptable, Tim.” Bruce said, quiet and calm. “You broke ten rules, I haven’t seen such a disrespectful attitude from you in years.”

Shit, what the hell had Tim done? He tried to think of any disrespect but other than the small slip ups like not following Bruce’s grapple swing exactly the same or trying to help him fight the last mugger, Tim couldn’t think of anything he’d done wrong. He’d even said yes sir and sorry sir whenever Bruce spat out orders or yelled at him.

Was that really all it took? How strict were these rules that Tim’s small mistakes counted as breaking ten of them? He needed to talk his way out of this fast, or else Bruce might start to realize he wasn’t dealing with his usual straight-laced Red Robin.

Heh, straight laced. Did this Tim know he was bisexual yet? Probably not, nothing about this environment screamed Be your whole true self!

“Sorry sir.” Tim put his hand to his head and scratched the back of it sheepishly. “I guess the brain issue is affecting me more than I thought. I didn’t mean to be-”

Bruce marched over, quicker than Tim could react, and seized Tim’s hand. He squeezed it firmly, not enough to hurt but enough that the threat was there.

“Don’t you dare lie to me Tim.” Batman hissed. “You think just because you’re almost an adult I won’t spank you like you’re Damian? Making excuses and not accepting responsibility for your mistakes is beneath you. Keep going with this immature behaviour and I’ll start scheduling discipline sessions for you as well.”

Alright. What the actual fuck. There was so much wrong with what Bruce had just said that Tim didn’t know where to begin. He felt mildly sick, staring up at Bruce with his mouth half open, waiting for Bruce’s expression to lighten and for him to hug Tim and tell him that this was all an elaborate joke.

Bruce just squeezed Tim’s arm tighter, then released it and shoved Tim backwards, disgust etched into every line of his face visible underneath the cowl.

“You’re coming to that age where it’s natural for teenagers to start to seek more independence. We both know this can end one of two ways. Either you thrive like Dick and Cassandra, or you fail to mature like Jason and remain stuck lashing out at me instead of truly growing up. Neither of us want you to end up like Jason, wouldn’t you agree?”

Alright, so Jason was alive, and Tim’s task of feeding him was suddenly ten times more concerning than it had been before. Cool cool cool Tim was definitely not considering making a run for the elevator right now.

“Yes sir.” He said instead, bowing his head slightly. “I apologize for my behaviour.”

“The important thing here is that you’re still seventeen Tim. You still follow my orders and treat me with the respect a father deserves. You didn’t do that tonight, you thought you could be disrespectful and defiant. Well if you want to be an adult who can ignore his commanding officer, then I’ll punish you like one.”

Bruce stepped back, and then Tim’s stomach sank right down into the floor as he put his fists up.

“You want to defy me? If you’re my child then I discipline you, but if you’re an adult soldier who disobeys, then you’re an enemy. So come on Tim, fight me. Show me you deserve to be the one giving the orders.”

“I don’t- I don’t want to be the one giving the orders.” This was insane, this was so ridiculous Tim couldn’t even think of a clever way to respond and calm Bruce down. “I’m sorry if I gave you that impression but-”

“And you’re still trying to make excuses.” Bruce tutted, and god Tim didn’t want to fight him but he really did want to punch him in the face. “If you ever want to be treated like an adult then you have to learn to accept your punishment like a man, not try and wriggle away like a scared little boy. We both know you’re better than this Tim.”

You’re asking me to fight you. I’m your seventeen year old son and you’re asking me to agree to let you beat me up. How is that a mature response to me not following your every order to a T?

There was really nothing Tim could do except go along with Bruce’s crazy idea of a punishment. Clearly this version of Tim was used to stuff like this, because Bruce spoke with the absolute confidence and conviction of someone who knew he would be believed. Tim would either have to admit he was not the version of Tim that this Bruce knew, or put his fists up and try to fight Batman. 

It was a terrible choice. But one option had the potential to be so much worse than the other. If this was how Bruce treated his son for minor missteps, then how would he react to Tim claiming he was from another universe after lying to Bruce all night?

Honestly, he seemed crazy enough to strap Tim down to a table and perform brain surgery on him if Tim confessed. That or torture a confession out of Tim detailing his true nefarious intent. They both most likely knew that torture almost never produced good intel, but it would tell Bruce what he wanted to hear and Tim was getting the distinct impression that that was what mattered most to this version of Batman.

He put his fists up, took a breath, and charged. Bruce ducked under his punch and hit Tim with an uppercut that sent him reeling. He had sparred with Bruce plenty, but his Bruce had always held his punches back. This Bruce… this Bruce was definitely treating Tim like an actual enemy combatant.

All over a grapple swing, being too eager to join a fight, and talking out of turn. Yeah, this universe was definitely not making it onto the Young Justice turned Teen Titans Multiverse Vacation list.

Bruce went for another punch, and through blurry eyes Tim moved to avoid it, already knowing that he wouldn’t be fast enough. But suddenly there was a blur of black between Bruce and Tim, and the punch never landed. A black cape stood between father and son, attached to a figure Tim recognised instantly.

Cassandra Wayne in her Batgirl uniform sans mask. Shit this was bad . Tim’s cover was blown for sure.

Only, Cass didn’t turn to face him. She just stared up at Bruce, who glared down at her with furious eyes.

“I thought we’d gotten rid of this childish impetuousness.” Bruce snapped. “We both know your brother does not want or need you to fight his battles Cassandra. This is a matter for Tim and I to settle. He wants this, don’t you Tim?”

Just how brainwashed was this universe’s Tim? The worst part was that Tim could see exactly how the threads of manipulation could perceivably work on him. Under ordinary circumstances he didn’t want Cass fighting his battles, not his battles with Bruce anyways. But he also didn’t want to get the shit beaten out of him and currently she was the only one standing between him and round two of Bruce’s fists.

Why wasn’t she saying anything? Clearly she knew that Tim didn’t actually want this, which was why she had gotten in the way. But why wasn’t she telling Bruce that? Why wasn’t she blowing Tim’s cover?

Cass looked back at Tim, her eyes softer than he had anticipated. The age difference was less noticeable than with Damian, but it was still surprising to see her look like a teen again. If Tim was seventeen then she would be nineteen at this point, right?

Maybe that’s why she was looking at him so soft and curious, as if waiting for his answer just as much as Bruce was. She could tell this wasn’t the Tim she knew, but for whatever reason she wasn’t going to expose him yet. Why? He could be a body snatcher or a mind controlled Tim. Even if she could tell something was wrong from the body language she wouldn’t know what exactly was going on with Tim. Just that he wasn’t moving right. And yet she still didn’t say anything, just looking expectantly at Tim. She was going to give him the choice.

Either tell Bruce this wasn’t what he wanted and admit he’s not their Tim, or lie and take the beating.

One beating vs whatever twisted torture this Batman could come up with for someone pretending to be his son. Still a sucky choice, and unfortunately still a no brainer.

“It’s fine Cassie.” Tim said softly. “This is between me and Bruce. I’ll talk to you later, OK?”

She studied him more carefully now, and he could practically see the detective work going on in her head as she analyzed his response alongside his body language. Whatever conclusion she came to about who he was, Tim couldn’t tell. But she did step back, walking away and leaving Tim to his fate.

“Wait for me over by the post Cassandra.” Bruce called out as she left. “We’re going to whip this nasty habit out of you once and for all as soon as I'm finished with Tim.”

Ah, so he hit his adult children too. And his daughter as well as his sons. At least he was an equal opportunity abuser.

Tim’s attempts at jokes were starting to fall flat in his own brain. Especially when his head was still ringing from that single punch. With Cass gone Bruce moved closer, and Tim put his hands up hoping to block another swing. Instead Bruce grabbed Tim’s head and shoved him onto the ground.

“Is this what you wanted Tim? Is this the equal respect you were looking for with your disobedience tonight?”

Tim scrambled to his feet, only to be sent reeling again as Bruce slapped him hard in the face. His head was ringing loudly now. Bruce grabbed him by the arm, this time squeezing hard enough to hurt, and yanked Tim to his feet again. One punch to the stomach, one slap to Tim’s other cheek, and Tim was back on the ground.

“You want to be my equal? You want to get away with the level of disrespect you showed me tonight? Well here’s a lesson for you son. Either you get strong enough to earn that or you accept the fact that you are the child and I am the adult.”

“I accept it.” Tim gasped, struggling to breathe after the stomach punch. “Please, I accept it. I’m sorry. You’re the adult and I’m the child.”

“No no, you’re not getting off that lightly.” Bruce gripped Tim by the hair, pulling him up and shoving him onto his feet. “I had to tolerate your behaviour for hours, you’re going to put in the work and earn my forgiveness.”

What else could Tim do but try? Bruce looked ready to spout some more supervillain nonsense, so Tim used the distraction to throw his own uppercut, feeling a sick sense of satisfaction when it landed. The satisfaction was short lived as Bruce retaliated immediately, a punch to the face this time. Tim fell back on the floor, tasting blood in the back of his throat.

He couldn’t say how long the beating continued for. Either Bruce would drag Tim up or watch as Tim pushed himself up. Tim would try to fight, Bruce would hit back and hit harder, Tim would fall on the ground again. Again and again like an endless loop from hell.

Tim knew that if he really wanted to win he needed to run, to improvise. He needed to look around the cave and see what he could use to bridge the gap in combat ability between them. But this wasn’t about winning. It was about surviving until Bruce was satisfied he’d suffered enough.

Eventually, something changed. Tim’s nose was broken, he had a black eye, the muscles in his arms ached and his legs were covered in bruises. But when Bruce grabbed him by the arm he didn’t drag Tim up this time. He just held him there.

“Are you ready to sincerely apologize to me Tim?”

Tim nodded, too exhausted and in too much pain to utter a single word.

“Good.” Bruce pressed down on Tim’s arm, pushing it so that he was kneeling with his head on the ground, bowing towards Bruce. “I’m ready to hear it.”

“I’m sorry.” Tim croaked, flecks of blood spraying out of his mouth as he mustered the last few drops of energy he had to speak. “I’m sorry for disrespecting you sir, and I’m sorry for disobeying. I’ve learnt my lesson, I swear it won’t happen again.”

He felt Bruce’s hands on his head, and Tim couldn’t help letting out a tiny sob as he prepared for more pain. But instead Bruce just cupped Tim’s face and lifted his head so that he was looking up into Bruce’s eyes. He’d removed the cowl during Tim’s speech, and if Tim had the energy left he would have marveled at how serene Bruce looked after brutally beating his own child.

“I forgive you Tim.” Bruce kissed Tim’s forehead with a frightening gentleness. “You’re my son and I love you. You took your punishment well. It’s over now.”

And almost as if his body had been waiting for Bruce’s permission, Tim’s eyes rolled back into his head and he fainted.

Chapter Text

When Tim woke up, he let himself dream for five beautiful seconds that it had all been a bad nightmare. The aches and pains he was feeling all over his body were simply from the magical device explosion. He would open his eyes and be back in his own batcave with his normal not-evil Bruce monitoring his vitals and exhibiting normal Bruce levels of constipated concern. Bruce would react to the explosion at worst by trying to get Tim benched for a while and at best with genuine emotional honesty about how scared he was about losing Tim. There would be no need for Tim to fear that Bruce was going to punch him in the face or beat him until he bled.

Then he opened his eyes, and he was in his room that wasn’t actually his room, in the Wayne Manor that wasn’t actually his Wayne Manor. And if that wasn’t bad enough, he wasn’t alone.

Cass, not his Cass but this strange other Cass, sat at the end of his bed. She was still wearing her Batgirl uniform, another sign that this wasn’t Tim’s reality. Suits shouldn’t be worn in the manor, only in the batcave. 

She smiled at him when he caught her gaze, and he was confused at how relaxed she seemed.

“Does Bruce know?” Tim croaked out.

“That you’re not my brother?” Cass’s lips twitched. “No. But… I’d like you to tell me who you are now. No cameras or bugs here, you can be honest.”

Hm. She didn’t seem hostile which was good. But after the Bruce experience Tim wasn’t massively hopeful. Still, his only option to avoid getting punched in the face by a second Bat was to tell the truth.

“I’m Tim Drake, just not from this reality.” It sounded so silly even as he said it, he’d cringe if his ribs weren’t aching. “Yesterday I found some sort of magical device that exploded and brought me here, into your Tim’s body. The device is under the bed if you don’t believe me.”

Cass’s head ducked down for a split second. Then she popped back up into view and nodded for him to continue.

“I woke up with no idea where I was or how safe I would be in this reality. So I just faked it and hoped to avoid you until I could figure out if I could trust you.”

“Have you figured it out?”

No. Was the honest answer, but not what Tim wanted to say. It didn’t matter, because Cass could clearly see the answer in the way his shoulders hunched. Stupid body reading lie detector abilities. 

Then again, her confidence in her body reading was most likely what stopped her from ratting Tim out, so he should probably be grateful that he apparently didn’t appear as a threat to her despite the whole body swap thing. A lot easier to make such a crazy sounding story be believed if you had someone convinced they could tell the truth from lies just by watching you talk.

“You went out with Batman, yes?” Cass asked.

Tim nodded.

“So you know we do good. Do you… do you also have a Batman?”

“Yeah.” Tim pushed himself up slightly, ignoring the screams from his body as he moved. “I have a Batman and a Dick Grayson and a Cassandra Wayne and a Jason Todd and Damian Wayne and Duke Thomas. All vigilantes like you guys, helping Gotham as best we can.”

Cass frowned at that. Tim wondered what he’d said wrong.

“Do you have all of them here too? Bruce mentioned Dick so I assumed-”

“Yes.” Cass cut in firmly. “We have all of them. It’s just… Duke is not family. I know of him but he has his own group.”

“Oh yeah.” Tim tried not to sound too relieved. “Makes sense. He had his own group originally back in my world too. I’m uh, I’m not actually seventeen. I’m twenty one. So I’ve known Duke for longer.”

Of course the part he didn’t say was that Duke would never be a member of this world’s family. If there was one of his siblings he knew wouldn’t put up with this Bruce’s bullshit it would be Duke. He didn’t put up with regular Bruce’s bullshit either, no way abusive asshole Batman could reel him in to whatever fucked up mess was going on here. 

Truth be told Tim didn’t quite understand how Bruce had managed to reel this universe’s Tim in either. Dick and Jason were orphans with no one looking out for them, Cass had no baseline for normal parenting and Damian was Bruce’s biological child. But Tim? He didn’t understand, and part of him really didn’t want to figure it out. Dealing with Bruce had already painted a pretty ugly picture.

Speaking of, Tim had some concerns.

“In the cave earlier, he mentioned something about whipping you?”

Cass smiled, which did nothing to alleviate Tim’s concerns. She tugged up the back of her top and Tim had to swallow down the wave of nausea that overtook him looking at the bloody mess of whip marks covering her back. He tried looking for a section of skin that wasn’t inflamed or bleeding, and couldn’t find a single inch.

“He was in a soft mood today.” Cass grinned. “Only a hundred, barely tickled.”

Oh man, Tim was so in over his head it wasn’t even funny. 

“And he does this with…all of you? Because he mentioned something about hitting Damian.”

“He only uses the whip on me.” Cass sounded like she was trying to be reassuring. “I need something… stronger. Never on the rest of you. Just regular punishments.”

If what Tim had gone through was a regular punishment then that did not reassure him in the slightest.

“My Bruce uh,” Tim wasn’t quite sure how to phrase this. “He doesn’t do that. Hit us, I mean. Not as punishment anyways.”

“Oh,” Cass frowned. “Is it not normal in your world? Parents spanking kids?”

“Well… it kind of is but it shouldn’t be. There’s a bunch of studies done that say it’s bad for the kids and most people frown upon it, including Bruce.” God this was so awkward to explain. “He’s only ever hit me once and it was an emergency secret code thing, not him trying to punish me. He just… benches us if he’s mad. I think he made an obstacle course for you to run when you were younger but that’s as physical as it gets.”

“Makes sense.” Cass nodded. “Why you didn’t want to get hit, it makes sense. But if Bruce knew you were not his son, he would not have punished you like our Tim. You don’t have to be scared of him. It was a mis…misunder- a mistake.”

“Right.” Tim tried and failed to hide how unimpressed he was by that ‘mistake’. “I do believe you. I patrolled with him, I know he helps victims. But the thing is, I don’t trust him with you guys. I don’t think what he does is OK, even if it’s normal here.”

“Oh.” Cass frowned. “I see.”

“Maybe I’m wrong.” Tim put his hands up, then quickly dropped them as his shoulder muscles screamed in agony. “I’m open to being wrong. But right now I want to stay undercover and learn more. Because if I’m not wrong, if the way he punishes you all isn’t actually cool just because it’s normal in this universe, then I want to stop him. And I’m telling you this because I want you to know my intentions. I’m not trying to hurt any of you, I just want to help if it’s needed.”

Cass stared at him. Tim stared back. He meant every word so either she saw that or she didn’t. With the way she leant backwards after a moment, he assumed he’d been believed.

“I tried to help. When I first came.” Cass curled up, tucking her chin under her legs. “Bruce was punishing Tim and I got angry. But then Tim got angry with me, because he said I was babying him. And Bruce explained that he wasn’t… It’s not abuse. I know abuse. It’s… normal discipline. Maybe not in your world but it doesn’t hurt us here. Tim was more upset at me than at Bruce.”

“How did he show you?” Tim leaned forward. “How did he show you the difference between abuse and discipline? I know about David Cain. How is what Batman does any different?”

“I’m a detective.” Cass gave a wry smile. “He let me… investigate. Proved that it was normal for families. I got confused because of my father, but Bruce showed me everything. Cartoons, comics, social media. Everyone… they joke. About getting spanked as a child. It’s different. I can show you if you want.”

“Whipping you like this, that's a regular spanking?”

“I’m different.” Cass rolled her eyes. “Adult now. It has to be eff- effic- effective .”

Alright so, a single conversation wasn’t going to convince this Cass that Bruce was an evil freak. But on the bright side she didn’t seem angry at Tim for his opinion. He could work with that.

“I want to trust you.” Tim said. “Believe me, getting home would be a whole lot quicker if I didn’t have to keep this a secret. But I need to see for myself that it’s not all bad. Best case scenario, you’re right and Bruce is good and I figure that out and tell Bruce the truth and go home. But if I’m right, if what he’s doing isn’t OK just because it’s normal… wouldn’t you like to know? If not for you then for Tim and Damian? Because if his version of discipline really is abuse then I’m not willing to let him keep doing that.”

Cass studied him sharply, dark eyes glinting as she tracked every muscle movement in Tim’s face. It was a risky proposition, Tim knew that. If she turned him down he couldn’t exactly stop her from telling Bruce the truth. He could only hope that she saw his logic.

“OK.” Cass said in the end. “I believe you. I will help you gain trust in us. And then, when you’re ready, we tell Bruce.”

“Great.” Tim let out a sigh of relief. “Wait, won’t he be pissed at you when he finds out you hid this from him?”

“Yes.” Cass rolled her eyes playfully. “But I mean it when I say I trust him. I’m not scared. He’ll be mad but he’ll understand in the end.”

Right after he whips you into a coma it seems. Tim thought but had enough tact not to say out loud.

“Alright then.” Tim brought his hands to his face and scrubbed his eyes to freshen up. ( Ouch , not the best idea when they were so badly bruised.) “First things first, I need to find Tim’s phone. I want to see for myself what this world is like and who his friends are.”

Another moment passed where Cass analyzed him, looking for hints of ulterior motives. She clearly found none, because a second later he had a sleek gray phone in his hands. He went to ask for the passcode then paused, and typed his own in.

The screen unlocked. Kind of freaky, knowing this Tim was similar to him in so many ways while also being vastly different in others. He glanced up and smirked at the excited look on Cass’s face. Probably glad she had more proof that Tim really was an alternate version of her brother and not just a body snatcher who could fake lying with their body language.

Tim debated over what to search first, his thumb hovering over Google. But in the end he went into his texts and searched for Dick Grayson. A chat popped up, and he scrolled through the messages. They were frequent enough, at least once a week. Usually the conversation seemed to be initiated by Dick, but Tim always seemed cheerful when replying.

Hey Tim, Bruce told me you did great work talking to a reporter and convincing him to bring down Ben Rolling’s gang. So proud of you Timmy, looking forward to hearing all about it next time I’m in town.

Thanks Dick! Hope all is going well with the Titans. Heard Dr Light attacked your HQ, had my fingers crossed that no one got badly hurt.

It was… sweeter than Tim was used to. He and Dick loved each other obviously but there was usually more banter involved in their texting. ‘Proud of you Timmy’ felt like something his Dick would say to mock Tim after he spilled an energy drink on Bruce’s batsuit. In contrast these texts seemed more formal, with Tim always polite and Dick always supportive and genuine.

But the most disturbing pattern of all that emerged the further back Tim scrolled was how most of the conversations started. Dick would say “ I heard from Bruce -” or “ Bruce told me-” or “I heard that you-”

There was very little reference to them actually interacting in person, and that just didn’t sit right with Tim.

“About Dick,” He questioned, still scrolling through the messages. “Do we see him a lot?” 

Cass seemed surprised, but gave a casual shrug before answering.

“He visits during holidays. He has his own life, so not really.”

So Dick wasn’t here, and he wasn’t in Bludhaven either. He was with the Titans, in New York from what the texts said. And he didn’t have much contact with Tim that wasn’t filtered through Bruce. Other than Bruce being a violent asshole, it was the biggest deviation Tim had seen so far.

The other differences began piling in the more texts he read. There was no contact number for Barbara, no Stephanie, no Helena. No Alfred either. No Gotham based vigilantes at all outside of Bruce, Cass and Damian. He did have a group chat with Young Justice, but even that seemed off. The others all sounded the same, but this Tim was… quieter. There was a huge set of texts that was just Cassie and Cissie debating if Wonder Woman or Big Barda would win in a fight, with everyone else egging them on, and then a lone message from Tim saying he couldn’t be at HQ that weekend and that he’d see them another time. They all responded in typical Young Justice manner, dramatically and unseriously, but Tim didn’t banter back. He just… made weak attempts at showing he found them funny. A laugh emoji here, a “haha” there. It was just… different. And Tim didn’t like it.

It was strange that the teams were so intact in a world where everything else was so wrong. In his own universe, Dick’s generation of Titans had been solo heroes for the most part by this point, and Tim’s own Young Justice had either left or joined their own version of the Teen Titans. Here Dick and the Titans were still going strong, as were Tim and Young Justice. It wasn’t a bad thing, but considering the grim nature of the rest of this world it was surprising.

Tim’s final search was good old Google. He looked up corporal punishment, only to find the Wikipedia page exactly as he would expect. The studies showing it harmed children were all there too. He could see what Cass had been talking about when he searched up keywords on various social media, people memeing the physical abuse their parents had put them through as children. But it didn’t seem more or less excessive than Tim’s world at all. Certainly not normalized and accepted the way Cass made it sound.

Was she in on it? He glanced at his alternate universe sister, who just stared back curiously. It was possible this was all one long mind game by this version of Bruce to teach Tim a lesson for daring to steal his son’s body via accidental reality jumping. Tim wouldn’t put it past the man. But call him optimistic, he just couldn’t see Cass going along with it. Bruce manipulating her into believing his abuse was normal and acceptable parenting was a far more likely option.

“Did this universe’s Tim talk about his parents much?” 

“Not to me.” Cass sounded a little sad at that. “He loved them, I know that.”

“What about punishments? Did he ever talk about how his parents disciplined him?”

“Yes, once. When Bruce was trying to show me what normal parents were. He said they’d never hit him but his dad had threatened him a few times. That what Bruce did was normal, he’d just been a good enough kid to never earn it.”

That… actually lined up pretty much with Tim’s own experience. Not the Bruce part but the Jack part. Tim loved his dad but Jack Drake was a typical conservative. He probably would have spanked Tim as a little kid if Tim had acted out enough to annoy him. Or rather, if his dad had caught him acting out. And there’d been a few times as a teenager where he’d gotten real angry at Tim, back when he was Robin but couldn’t reveal it. Once or twice Tim had wondered…

Ugh. He didn’t want to be thinking about this at all. The point was, this Tim’s experience with Jack and Janet seemed to match up with Tim’s own. A Janet who loved Tim and would never hit him, and a Jack who loved Tim and wasn’t perfect, but was nowhere near this version of Bruce’s level of evil. Which meant the abuse had started under Batman. How had Bruce managed that?

Tim tried to picture it in his head, back when he was thirteen years old and desperate to get Batman and Robin back together. He found Dick and Dick panicked and brought Tim to Bruce? It seemed likely. A random child that knew your secret, something you know your abusive dad would be furious about… Bring Tim to Bruce, lessen the damage. Bruce wasn’t looking for a Robin after Jason died but Tim begged him to reconsider. Would Bruce have snapped at him?

He remembered this Bruce’s smile, remembered how he kissed Tim’s forehead after beating him. No, this Bruce would have used manipulation. He would have picked up on Tim’s idolisation of the first Robin, and given him a trial run using Tim’s fear of disappointing Dick as leverage. He wouldn’t have hit Tim right off the bat, he probably spent months molding Tim, using praise from Dick as a reward and Dick’s disappointment as a subtle threat. The strict standards Tim saw last night had probably still been in play, but Bruce wouldn’t have jumped right into beating Tim senseless for mistakes. Let him go out as Robin, let him feel like he might succeed, and then once he let down his guard, come down hard on him for a mistake.

With a sickening clarity, Tim started to see exactly how he could have fallen into this Bruce’s twisted web. He would have had to have been tricked into thinking it was his idea, something Tim consented to at the time, not that a child could actually consent when being abused and manipulated by a grown adult. After a significant mistake, Bruce would sigh and say how disappointed he was in Tim, how if Tim was his son he’d know how to punish him but since Tim wasn’t his son, just his Robin, he really didn’t know what to do.

And Tim, so young and desperate not to disappoint Batman and Nightwing, to not dishonour the Robin mantle, would likely have begged Bruce not to fire him. To punish him like he punished Dick and Jason if that was what it took. That would have been the first domino to fall. It wouldn’t have been a punishment like last night, probably wouldn’t have even been as harsh as the average spanking a 13 year old boy would get from strict parents. But it would have been enough to cement what their dynamic would look like from there on out.

How many years did it take to get to this point? To the point where Bruce could punch Tim in the face over and over again until he was sobbing and begging for mercy, and still trust that Tim would come running back to him like a loyal dog? Had it increased in severity after Jack died, or had it built up steadily over the years? His dad had been alive when Cass joined the family, so he must have already been far down the rabbit hole by that point if he’d been used by Bruce to prove how acceptable the beatings were. 

Tim really, really hated this universe.

Right, OK. He had some theories and some answers, that was something. Bruce was a manipulative bastard, this version of Tim and Cass were fully bought into his bullshit, Damian also got hit it seemed and Jason… Yeah it didn’t sound like this universe’s Jason was having a good time. 

So. Priorities. Tim still needed to get home, but he was fairly confident that his real family would be working on that too from the other side. True he had the device that actually transported him here, but he also had faith in them to overcome that challenge. He could work on getting home while also helping fix this version of his family. Because boy did they need a whole lot of fixing.

Priority one: Get food. Priority two: Find out how bad things are with Damian and Jason. Priority three: Try and convince Cass that she’s a victim and to help him get the others out of here. Priority four: Investigate other allies. Priority five: Investigate ways home.

And at all costs, avoid getting on Bruce's bad side again. Just because Tim couldn’t see properly out of one eye due to swelling was no guarantee that Bruce would take it easy on him. He was pretty sure this Bruce didn’t have any version of an easy mode.

He threw back the covers, stood up, fell to the ground as his legs buckled, then got back on his feet with help from Cass. Not the triumphant burst of determination he'd been hoping for but still.

Watch out evil universe, Tim Drake was here to do what Child Protective Services probably should have done years ago: Get these children, adult or not, far away from Bruce Wayne. How would he do that? No clue yet. 

For now, he’d start with breakfast.

Chapter Text

Breakfast was a surprisingly pleasant affair, compared to what Tim had been anticipating anyways. When Tim made his way to the kitchen Damian was the only one there, steadily eating cornflakes while reading the morning paper. Tim poured himself some cereal of his own and sat down opposite him, while Cass just took the box and sat on the counter, eating out of it with her hands.

Tim almost grinned at the sight. It was nice to know that not even hyper abusive asshole Bruce could instill table manners in his sister.

If he was going to find allies and take down Bruce, he needed to know exactly how bad things were. Damian was sitting right in front of him, so the kid seemed like an obvious place to start. He’d tensed up slightly when Tim had sat down, but once Cass had sat too he’d relaxed. So he didn’t trust Tim, but trusted Cass. Tim wondered how that had come to be. He was mildly annoyed at his other self, because gaining insight into Damian would be easier if he had his trust. But whatever, Tim could do this. He didn’t know this Damian but he knew his own version, that had to count for something right?

“What’s got you looking so glum today?” He kept his voice light and casual.

Damian glanced up at him, then quickly looked back down at his cereal, stirring it pensively.

“Father has announced that it’s time for another discipline session.” Damian’s voice was still carefully controlled, but there was an undercurrent of nervousness that Tim didn’t like at all.

Also this whole “discipline session” thing? Another big what the fuck moment. Tim needed to get more information from Cass about that as soon as possible. 

“What did you do this time?” Tim grinned, even as his stomach churned. “Forget to announce a grapple swing to him? Didn’t clean your Robin boots well enough?”

Damian frowned thoughtfully, still stirring his cornflakes.

“I think the worst thing these past few weeks was the fight with you. There were a few incidents on patrol that I’m sure we’ll cover but I don’t think I was too badly behaved.” He suddenly looked up at Tim in alarm. “Why? Is there something big I’m forgetting? Please tell me, I promise I’m not lying, I genuinely don’t know what I forgot.”

“Woah, hey.” Tim held his hands up at the sudden panic. “I was just asking. Nothing big stands out to me either.”

“Oh.” Damian slumped back in relief. “I’m glad.”

“So uh…” 

Tim really had no idea how to ask someone how badly they were being abused. In the end he just gave up and said what he was thinking.

“How bad do you think it’ll be?”

Might as well be direct about it. Not like Damian would accurately be able to deduce Tim was a variant from another universe even if he seemed a little off.

Damian seemed to give that question serious thought as he finished the last of his breakfast.

“The belt, I think.” He answered at last. “I’m prepared to accept the switch if I pick incorrectly, but I do not think my actions warrant anything harsher than that.”

Jesus fucking Christ. Tim never thought he’d feel so sorry for Damian Wayne of all people.

“Seems like a solid guess.” He managed to get out, although judging by the confused look Damian shot at him he didn’t manage to hide all the distress from his voice. “Well if he does go overboard just let me know and I’ll talk to him about it. Convince him to lighten up.”

Damian’s confused look turned into pure bafflement. Tim glanced over at Cass, who shook her head subtly. Alright then. This version of Tim apparently did not stick up for Damian, not if it meant going against Bruce. To be fair, Tim didn’t really stick up for his own Damian, but their version of Bruce wasn’t a monster so. He kind of expected better from his other self. Cass was still Cass, so why wasn’t Tim brave enough to stand up for what was right?

Maybe he was being too hard on his other self. He hadn’t experienced whatever conditioning had turned him into such a loyal son to this Bruce. But still, hearing Damian talk about getting beaten with a belt with such nonchalance made Tim so incredibly uncomfortable, he couldn’t fathom any version of him not knowing at least deep down that this was wrong .

“...Thank you. For that.” Damian bowed slightly before standing up. “I will go now. Father will not be pleased if I’m late.”

“See you later.” Tim waited until Damian was gone before turning to Cass. “Alright. We need to talk.”

She nodded and stood up, moving out of the kitchen. Tim kept quiet, following her lead. Bruce must have bugs or cameras or something in the house, and only Tim’s room so far was known to be secure. Tim wondered if this other Tim had secured it or if Cass had done so the first time she decided to talk to him privately.

They entered the bedroom and Cass turned to him expectantly. It was then that Tim realized he had so many questions he didn’t even know where to start.

“Damian.” He decided in the end. “What’s his story? How did Bruce find him? How long has he been here?”

“He came here two years ago, same as me.” Cass sat down on the bed. “His mother had hidden him from Bruce, she was raising him to be evil. A killer. Bruce found out because of Jason. In your universe was Jason…”

“Dead?” Tim nodded. “Yep. Died in an explosion. Came back a few years later. I know Talia had something to do with helping him during the years he was alive and hiding. Is that what happened here?”

“No.” Cass shook her head. “The explosion, yes. But not Talia. Bruce found Jason. He was in Gotham. A hospital. He was in a coma, badly hurt. Nothing was working, so Bruce went to Ra’s al Ghul. He wanted the Lazarus Pit to help Jason, and Ra’s wanted him to find Talia.”

“Wait, what?” Tim blinked curiously. “Ra’s didn’t know where Talia was either?”

“No.” Cass shook her head. “He knew about the baby but she had hidden away from him as well. He couldn’t track her, but he believed Bruce could. That was how Bruce found out she had lied to him about the… the baby death? Miscarriage, that’s the word.”

That… was different from Tim’s universe alright. He didn’t know Talia very well but the worst things she’d done had either been when she was brainwashed or trying to please her father. If she’d taken Damian and ran from both Bruce and Ra’s, then had she really been trying to make her son an assassin? It sounded to Tim like she’d just been trying to shield Damian from both sides of his fucked up family tree.

“So Batman found her? What happened then?”

“They fought. He won. He took Damian back here, where he would be safe and would learn to be a hero.” Cass smiled, and Tim wanted to shake her by the shoulders and scream but he knew it wouldn’t do any good. “He has a parent who loves him like he deserves now. Not someone who would… use him. To hurt other people. He will never be a weapon that kills. Bruce will protect him from his mother.”

Oh boy, the projection was off the charts. Tim never knew how to break through when his own Cass got like this, he definitely had no chance of getting through to this version. At least now he had some context, although not everything added up.

“What did Ra’s get out of it? Jason gets thrown in the pit and Bruce gets two sons back. But it’s not like Ra’s will see Damian either, right?”

“Monthly video calls. Progress reports. Yearly visits.” Cass ticked them all off on her fingers. “He will never control Damian, but he will get to have a connection with him. More than he had when Talia ran and hid.”

So Ra’s likely wouldn’t be helpful to Tim’s plans. But Talia could be, if he could find a way to contact her. More importantly for the moment, he needed more information. He’d gotten Damian’s past, now he needed to know just how bad the boy’s present life was. Two years of living with this Bruce was enough to explain a lot of the obvious differences in Damian's demeanor from Tim’s own little brother. But he would need more facts before he started making moves.

“Alright then. About these discipline sessions.” He sat down on the bed so that he was face to face with Cass. “What the hell are they and why does Damian have them?”

“They are sessions. For discipline.” At Tim’s irritated look Cass gave a helpless shrug. “It’s the truth. Bruce schedules time to sit down and talk about behavior. It’s a routine they do. They talk about what Damian’s done right, what he’s done wrong, he’s punished for mistakes and then hugged and forgiven.”

“And it’s only Damian that has them?”

“No, Jason had them too when he was Robin.” Cass flapped her hands, as if she was struggling to explain. “Back when Damian came he was… Angry. Loud. He lashed out a lot and threw plates, screamed for his mother, screamed that he hated us. He was in so much pain, and he didn’t know he could trust us. This was Bruce’s way of showing… steadiness. Damian needs the routine, it helps him better than instant punishment.”

“So what, instead of getting slapped every time he makes a mistake Bruce just schedules regular beatings to keep him in line?”

“It’s not like that!” Cass snapped. “It’s reassurance! There are so many of us, and Damian is the youngest. It is a reminder that Bruce cares for him, that he loves him and is paying attention. It’s a promise that Bruce will never ignore him or give up on him.”

There was an interesting quirk this Cass had that Tim’s Cass didn’t, where whenever she was clearly parroting something Bruce had said before it showed in the tone of her voice, the way her enunciation got clearer and her voice grew deeper. It was unsettling, to say the least. And it made Tim feel sad even though he couldn’t pinpoint why beyond the general pity he felt towards all of Bruce’s kids in this universe.

“Right.” Tim didn’t bother trying to pretend like he agreed with her. “Is there any way for me to see for myself what goes on in these sessions?”

“Not see, but you can hear.” Cass seemed disheartened by Tim’s clear disgust, but she was still helping him which was a good sign. “They happen in Bruce’s study. The wine cellar under has a grate in the ceiling-”

“-That directs air between it and the study.” Tim knew exactly which cellar she was talking about. “And you’re sure he doesn’t know about it?”

“He knows it exists.” Cass frowned. “Why would he care? There’s no rule against listening in if we want to.”

Of course not. If the kids could hear exactly what happened at the discipline sessions it would make them more eager to avoid them. Tim didn’t want to listen in either, it wasn’t going to be a pleasant experience.

But he had to know. He had to know how bad they were, how badly this Bruce could treat his ten year old son.

“Thank you.” Tim said. “For the information. I appreciate it.”

“Don’t do anything stupid.” Cass replied, and there was a hint of the sister Tim knew and loved in her grin. “Please.”

“Believe me.” Tim grimaced. “I’m not planning on making Bruce mad again any time soon.”

He left Cass and made his way down to the cellar, surprised at how easy it was to access. For some reason Tim thought this Bruce would have Wayne Manor all locked up, with only access to certain areas allowed. But it seemed like all of them could go anywhere they wanted in the manor, except for maybe the study? That seemed to be Bruce’s base of operation in the house. He wondered if Bruce’s bedroom was as open as every other room. He could check that tonight.

For now he walked over to the metal grate and tilted his head to listen. It was surprising how clearly he could hear both Bruce and Damian, as if he was standing in the room next to them. They were in the middle of a discussion, but it was fairly easy to follow along. Mostly due to it being less of a discussion and more of an interrogation.

“What then, Damian?” Bruce’s voice had the same low, cold tone he’d taken with Tim yesterday. “After your brother refused to change the channel, what happened?”

“We argued.” Damian sounded a lot more nervous than he had earlier. “He called me whiny. I yelled a bad word.”

“What did you say exactly?”

“I said ‘Fuck you’. ”

“And is that sort of foul language and disrespect allowed?”

“No Father, I’m very sorry.”

“I know, son. And I appreciate that you apologized to Tim as soon as you said it. But it’s still unacceptable that you said that to him in the first place. Now, what else did you do?”

“On patrol with Cassandra this week, I jumped ahead without waiting for her command.”

“You did. You also insulted her, implying that she was old.”

“I did. I’m sorry Father, I shouldn’t have done that.”

“It’s not entirely your fault Damian. Cassandra didn’t reprimand you for either of those instances, and I heard her laugh through the comms when you disrespected her. She should not be sending you such mixed messages about what behaviour is acceptable or not. I’ll be having a conversation with her to ensure it doesn’t happen again.”

“...Yes Father.”

“So for these three instances of bad behaviour, you think the belt will suffice?”

The room fell quiet. Tim felt his heart clench in fear for Damian. He had no idea what the right answer was. There probably was no right answer, just a sick mind game Bruce was playing.

“Yes Father.” Damian had never sounded so timid before, it made Tim want to be sick.

“I agree.” Bruce said calmly. “However we’ve been using the belt for four sessions now. I’m proud that we’ve reduced it down to this, but I’d like to see some further improvement from you. You can do better Damian, I believe in you.”

“Yes Father. I will do my best, I’m sorry.”

“That’s alright son. That’s what these sessions are for. You made mistakes, you’ll take your punishment, and we’ll move on with a clean slate. Now, bend over.”

Tim really didn’t want to hear this. Every part of him was screaming to walk away. It was bad, he knew it was bad, he didn’t need to sit here and listen to every second of Damian’s abuse.

But at the same time something compelled him to stay rooted next to the grate. There was no one else in the manor who thought what was happening was wrong. Damian deserved to have someone bear witness other than Bruce, someone who could tell him later that he hadn’t deserved any of it. Even if every sound grated on Tim’s nerves, even if he felt a sort of queasy he’d never experienced before. He needed to be able to say the truth. That he’d heard what happened and it was wrong, all of it was wrong .

“Forty strokes today. Count them for me Damian.”

“Yes Father.”

The cracking sound made Tim jump. Fuck, this was really happening. He needed to go up there and get Damian out and-

And then what? Get beaten up by Bruce again? What could Tim do right now, alone and without allies in another universe?

“One, thank you Father.”

He wanted his own Bruce. He wanted Batman with him so badly. He wanted his own Cass who would deck this Bruce in the face, not defend him. He wanted someone who could walk into that study and protect Damian knowing that they’d actually be able to beat this evil Bruce in a fight.

Another crack. Tim cringed.

“Two, thank you Father.”

Forty lashes. It didn’t sound like Bruce was holding back at all. 

Another crack.

“Three, thank you Father.”

That was his son. His ten year old child. How could this Bruce have turned out so twisted, so utterly broken that this was how he chose to live his life?

“Four, thank you Father.”

He couldn’t do it. Tim began to pace up and down the cellar, resisting the urge to cover his ears with his hands as the beating continued. He couldn’t just stand here and listen. He needed to stop this somehow. What could he do?

“Ten, thank you Father.”

He could make up some bullshit emergency to get Bruce away from Damian. But then what? Eventually Bruce would come back and the punishment would resume. All that would accomplish would be to drag it out even more for Damian.

“Twenty,” Damian sobbed out. “Thank you Father.”

Why the fuck was that sadistic bastard making Damian thank him after each lash? What was that supposed to accomplish other than making Bruce seem like a total supervillain?

The logical part of Tim knew the answer to that. Obedience and subservience. To make a child thank their parent for abuse was sure to make it harder for them to say what was happening to them was wrong. From what Cass had said earlier it seemed that Damian had literally been kidnapped from his mother against his will. The discipline sessions, the harsh rules, the thank you after each lash… did it count as brainwashing, what Bruce was doing? Either way it was awful, but this level of relentless discipline was something Tim found even more disgusting than what he’d seen Bruce do to himself and Cass. It was as if he wanted to make sure Damian’s will remained broken, and these regular beatings were a way to grind him down and ensure he never got any ideas about disobeying Bruce the way he had when he’d first arrived.

“Thirty.” Damian was fully crying now, Tim could hear him choking on tears as he spoke. “Thank you Father.”

He’d get Damian out of here. He would. Tim vowed there and then that getting Damian away from Bruce was the one thing he’d definitely accomplish before he went home. He never in a million years thought he’d feel so much hatred towards Bruce on Damian’s behalf, but for the first time Tim truly felt like a protective older brother to the kid. 

“Forty, thank you Father.”

It was over. Tim had done nothing but listen and cringe, and even though he knew there was nothing he could have logically done he still hated himself a little for being so helpless. But it was over, and he was relieved.

“You did well Damian.” Bruce sounded so gentle now, so nauseatingly caring . “If you keep this up we might look at making the sessions monthly instead of biweekly. I’m proud of you, son.”

“Tha-” The boy gasped out another pained sob. “Thank you Father.”

Tim had heard enough. He needed to get out of here right now. He raced up the cellar steps, raced all the way outside into the manor grounds. The sound of the leather smacking Damian’s flesh was still ringing in his head, and all he could think of were the whip marks on Cass’s back, and Bruce’s own anger as he’d beaten Tim black and blue. The pain in Damian’s voice, the way he’d grown shakier as the beating went on, the way Bruce had sounded so happy and proud at the end of it all, the fucking “ Thank you Father ”s  repeated perfectly every time, even when he was sobbing so hard he was gasping for breath.

Tim threw up. Spewed his breakfast cereal onto the neatly trimmed lawn until he was retching up nothing but bile.

He would never kill anyone, he would never dishonor Batman and Robin like that. But this version of Bruce Wayne needed to be brought to justice. He needed to spend the rest of his life rotting in jail. He needed to be smacked on the chin with a bo staff, beaten with a belt until he realized just how much pain and terror he’d been inflicting on his own innocent children.

Ten. Damian was ten years old here. Ten years old and he was getting regularly beaten with a belt and made to thank his father for the beatings.

Tim didn’t know why it was hitting him so hard, he’d dealt with his fair share of abusive parents during his time as a vigilante. But maybe it was how clinical Bruce’s abuse was compared to the rage Tim was most used to from investigating drunk parents. This wasn’t just an angry scumbag taking his fury out on the nearest victim too small to fight back. This was routine, almost ritualistic. Anger being controlled and funneled into sadistic punishments, organized with a reason behind every response. Bullshit reasons, but reasons nonetheless.

And it was Bruce doing it. Batman. Tim’s hero, his father. The man who had in many ways guided and shaped Tim’s morals in his own universe, and yet here he was… This.

Tim wiped his mouth and stood back up, ignoring how his hands were shaking. He couldn’t fight Bruce right this second. There was no doubt that Bruce and Batman could manipulate the police better than Tim could, so calling them in and telling them what had happened wasn’t an option. Tim had Young Justice, but would the hero community believe them? His friends would, he knew that much. If he told Young Justice what was happening they’d be on their way over here to beat Bruce Wayne’s ass within minutes. But there were other heroes outside his team who would possibly defend Bruce, especially when it was only Tim’s word against Batman’s. Cass wouldn’t back him up, Damian could probably be intimidated by Bruce into obeying, Bruce would manipulate and lie to the Justice League, and Dick… Tim didn’t know how Dick would respond. Would he side with Tim or would he rally the Titans to Bruce’s side? 

There were too many variables at play and Tim couldn’t afford to be wrong. It wasn’t just about what Bruce would do to him if he found out Tim was moving against him. It was about how Tim was the only one with the advantage of being on the inside. There was no one else who could help that was as close to Batman;s inner circle as Tim was right now, and if he blew that advantage he might never get another shot to rescue Damian.

As disgusting as it was, he’d accomplished one of the goals he’d set out to do. He now knew exactly how bad things were with Damian, and he had more information on how Bruce had gotten him in the first place. That was progress, even if Tim felt like there was a hollow pit in his stomach growing every time he remembered what he’d just heard.

And more importantly, his conversation with Cass earlier had given him hope in a future ally. Talia was still out there, and right now if they were face to face Tim would hand Damian over to her and tell her to run as fast as she could. He didn’t even know the Talia of this universe but if she was against both Bruce and Ra’s and Damian clearly cared for her, then for now she was his best option. 

So Dick was with the Titans, Cass was fully under Bruce’s thumb (But maybe not fully? She’d gotten between Tim and Bruce and she clearly wasn’t as strict as Batman was with Damian), Duke was out there somewhere free of Bruce, and Tim could start working on a plan for Damian. But that left one other variable he needed more information on right now. Someone he still hadn’t seen or heard from since landing in this universe, but who was clearly wrapped up in this family somehow.

It was time for Tim to find out more about this universe’s Jason Todd.

He just hoped his situation wasn’t worse than Damian's. It couldn’t be, right?

Ah hell. Tim had totally just jinxed it, hadn’t he.

Chapter Text

Tim made his way back into the manor, deep in thought as he considered his next move. He could just ask Cass about Jason, which would lower the risk of him doing something out of character and catching Bruce’s attention. On the other hand, he could figure out this Jason thing on his own, and avoid learning about it through Cass’s filtered lens. More risk in exchange for more accurate information. 

He was so lost in thought he didn’t realize he wasn’t alone until Damian came stomping down the corridor ahead of him. The boy was still clearly crying from the pain he’d suffered, but as soon as he saw Tim he frantically began scrubbing his face, trying to hide any evidence of tears.

Tim wasn’t sure why, but none of his possible guesses painted this other Tim in a favourable light. If he wanted to avoid being suspicious, the best thing he could do would be to simply ignore Damian and keep walking.

But the crack of that stupid, evil belt was still echoing in Tim’s ears. So instead of just walking by, he marched on up to Damian and pulled him into a hug. The boy gave a tiny surprised squeak, body tense, but he didn’t fight back the way Tim’s Damian probably would have. He just stood there stiffly as Tim squeezed him.

“Timothy… what are you doing?”

“Giving you a hug.” Tim replied calmly. “Because you’re a very brave and strong kid and you deserve one.”

Damian seemed to stiffen up even further. He still made no move to pull away, but he clearly wasn’t enjoying the hug so Tim let him go. He was surprised at the look of pure resentment Damian shot him once he’d stepped back.

“What do you gain from mocking me?” Damian snapped. “I’ve seen you cry before too.”

“I’m not… Damian, I'm not mocking you.” Crap, this was not what Tim had wanted to achieve. “You’re my little brother, Bruce can be a hardass sometimes. Let me give you a damn hug.”

Damian still glared suspiciously up at Tim, which funnily enough made him look pretty similar to Tim’s actual little brother. He tried to think how he usually went about making things right with his own Damian. Unfortunately the only two options that sprung to mind were to ignore him or make a sarcastic comment. He had zero experience actually comforting Damian, and he hadn’t really paid much attention when Dick and Cass did it. What could he say to make things right?

“Can I not just give you a hug without it meaning I’m mocking you?” He tried to keep his tone light instead of accusing.

“You can.” Damian acknowledged coldly. “But you never have before.”

Damn. Other Tim was making it way harder than it should have been to be a normal person here.

“Yeah well,” Tim shrugged. “Maybe I’m growing up. It was just a hug Damian, I won’t do it again if it upsets you.”

He walked off before Damian could grow even more suspicious. It was a stupid thing, giving him a hug in the first place. He needed to do a better job of convincing everyone he was their Tim, especially since he was planning on poking around wherever Jason was.

Right now his only clue was a Post It note saying that he needed to feed Jason. This implied that Jason couldn’t feed himself. Was he horribly injured? Stashed away in one of the bedrooms?

Half an hour later Tim had checked every room in the manor. He’d found an old bedroom that clearly had belonged to Robin Jason, along with Alfred’s room which had a few things Tim recognised. Interestingly enough Jason’s room was almost like a shrine, books lining the shelves and clothes in the wardrobe, all fit for a much smaller boy than Tim but one bigger than Damian. Alfred’s room meanwhile was mostly empty, only one or two items remaining. There was a photo of the man and a young Bruce on the bedside table. They had their arms around each other, but neither man was smiling.

Was Alfred dead here? Had he quit due to witnessing Bruce’s child abuse? Another thing for Tim to investigate, maybe another potential ally. He’d look into that later.

Right now his goal was still to find Jason. It was possible he was in a hospital or in jail, but Tim didn’t think so. If he was in a public institution they would have people there to feed him, not rely on Tim and Damian to give him food. His next best bet if Jason wasn’t in the manor was the batcave.

He had a cover story ready for if Bruce asked him about wandering the manor, something about paranoia and remaining vigilant. Tim felt confident he could make it sound insane and soldiery enough to satisfy this Batman. The batcave was a bit trickier. There were a lot more areas that were likely to be out of bounds for him, and probably a lot more rules he didn’t know about. The smart thing to do would just be to ask Cass.

But after hearing how she talked about Bruce and Damian and then hearing the actual reality of the situation, Tim just really didn’t want to go through that again. This Cass was on his side, technically. Tim didn’t want to hate her. And whatever was going on with Jason, he had a feeling that if he had to hear her downplay it he would find it very hard to hide his emotions about that.

So instead of seeking out the one person who would happily tell him where Jason was, Tim entered the batcave alone.

No Bruce, which was great. Tim doubted he’d fully be able to hide his disgust if he had to look that man in the eye right now. Everything was the same as last time he’d been down here, the monitors and the shower and the lockers. And the stairs to lower sections.

Into the belly of the beast. If Jason was here, he was on one of the lower floors.

The first lower floor was similar to what Tim knew, minus the dinosaur and the giant penny. There were still memorabilia and trophies from various escapades, but they were all neatly tucked away in glass cases. Nothing huge stood out.

Tim wandered around that subfloor for a good few minutes, cataloging all the things that were the same and all that was different. The cases, the lab, the computers, nothing caught his attention as being suspicious. No secret levers or hidden rooms revealed themselves to him. In the end, he had to conclude that Jason wasn’t on this floor either.

Down to sub level three he went. Instantly he could tell that this was not like the one back home. The stairs he’d taken should have led only to the batboat and the extra fuel storage, but there was an entire other door attached to the cave wall. A door with a retinal scanner attached to it.

Shit. He could pass the scan but knowing Batman it wasn’t the only lock on this door. There was likely a passcode for voice recognition, and it wasn’t one Tim knew.

“Your stealth needs work.”

He almost jumped three feet up in the air with shock, spinning around to come face to face with a grinning Cass. She winked at him playfully as if she hadn’t just terrified the living daylights out of him, before walking over to the door and putting her eye against the scanner.

“Watership.” She said.

The door slid open. Cass turned and bowed dramatically towards Tim.

“...How long have you been following me?” Tim asked.

She smirked, and reached over to pat his head. Tim let her, still trying to figure out where the hell she had popped out from.

“Have fun.”

“That’s not an answer.” Cass ignored him, climbing up the stairs and vanishing into the shadows. “Cassie, that's not an answer!”

No reply. Typical. 

Alright, so this Cass shared the habit of being a creepy little lurker with his own. If it was anyone else he’d be concerned, but Cass was just like that. It was probably fine, even if it did give him a little shiver down his spine thinking she’d been watching him the whole time he walked around the cave.

But the important thing was she’d opened the door for him. Tim stepped into the room, surprised at how well lit it was. It seemed to be the size of an average school gym. Half the room was visible and open, with tiled white flooring and cleaning equipment. The other half was made up of what Tim recognised as holding cells. State of the art, bulletproof glass doors and smooth walls. Six of them in a row filling out the right side of the room. Tim’s batcave had two back home, for when they needed to keep someone like Joker temporarily restrained. 

The first three cells he could see were empty. He walked slowly past them, and his eyes widened once the remaining three came into view. There in the last cell, curled up on a plastic bed, was Jason Todd. Tim recognised him instantly, even though he was wearing a thin gray cotton top and pants as opposed to his usual leather. The cell itself had a metal toilet, a sun lamp high up on the ceiling and… nothing else. Just the bed, the toilet and the lamp.

Jason looked up as Tim walked closer, and Tim found his steps faltering. This Jason looked… gaunt. He was thinner than Tim’s Jason, not starved but not quite as muscular as his own. And his face looked haggard, hollow eyes staring up at Tim. They were sunken into their sockets, red rimmed with dark circles.

Tim had seen Jason in prison before. He’d seen him look crazed, cocky, angry, But couldn’t remember ever seeing eyes this haunted on Jason. Bruce might have, back when Jason first revealed himself as the Red Hood. Maybe Dick had as well, during his time in the cowl. But this was Tim’s first look at this type of Jason. One with no masks, no persona, just a bare face and trauma etched into every line.

Then Jason’s expression warped, a hateful sneer contorting his face as he stood up and moved closer.

“Wonderful, it’s the empty shell today.” He spat, flecks landing on the glass between them. “Tell Bruce whatever game he’s playing, I'm not interested.”

Tim said nothing, still going over all the differences he could see. Jason’s hair was greasy, lighter than Tim’s. He looked clean shaven, but his jaw kept twitching. It was disconcerting, the more Tim focused the more he realized that Jason couldn’t stay still. The muscles in his lower face were constantly moving, never settling on a single expression. Not like the Joker or anything, just… weird.

“I’m not here because of Bruce.” he said at last.

Jason barked out a laugh, turning to sit back down on his cot.

“Please, you don’t even shit without that man’s permission. Just fuck off Timmy, I’m not in the mood.”

“He didn’t send me here. I just wanted to talk.”

Jason went abruptly still, his jaw no longer moving. The transition shocked Tim, how every inch of Jason that had been so frantic a second ago was now focused on Tim with sharp, quiet intensity.

He didn’t know how long Jason had been down here, but Tim didn’t need to be a Cass level genius of body language to see that the man was clearly not well.

“Alright.” Jason said, still absolutely frozen on his bed. “Talk.”

Great, OK. Tim could get answers now. Except there were most certainly cameras in this room and Tim couldn’t expose himself as being from a different universe. So he’d have to play this delicately. 

“How are you?”

Jason stared at him and said nothing. It was like looking at a statue, the way he lay motionless on that bed.

“How long have you been down here?” Tim tried.

That got a reaction from Jason. His mouth opened, slowly morphing into a large grin. Then, all of a sudden, he burst into motion again. His fingers tapped against his thighs with no discernible rhythm, his eyes darted up and down Tim’s body without ever staying at a single spot, and his legs bounced up and down relentlessly.

“Is that what the test is today? How well have I been able to keep track of time?” Jason let out a short cackle. “Well tough shit, I haven’t got a clock so I don’t fucking know! You tell me Timbo, how many weeks, months, years have I been trapped down here by your psycho dad?”

The fact that years seemed to be a strong possibility was not a good sign. Tim kept his face carefully blank, despite how uncomfortable he felt watching Jason’s erratic behaviour. 

“Do you think you’ll get out any time soon?” He asked.

When Jason froze this time, Tim wasn’t caught quite so much off guard. But he didn’t manage to contain his startled jump when Jason suddenly slammed himself against the door to the cell. Jason didn’t seem to be trying to break out, he just pressed his fists against the glass and stared out at Tim with wild eyes.

“I’m never going to be like you, little robot.” Jason grinned with all his teeth. “I’m never going to be his good little soldier again. And we both know he’s too insane to accept that. We both know I’m going to be in this cell until he dies. He can keep me locked up here, control every aspect of my prison life, but I will never, ever give him what he wants. So you run along and tell him that now, OK? He’s never going to break me, no matter what angle he tries or which one of you little minions he sends. Even if he keeps me in this cell until the day I die, he won’t break me.”

Personally, Tim thought Jason already seemed pretty damn broken. But that would be a rude and unhelpful thing to say, so he tried to think of something else. Another question, something useful. What did Tim want out of this Jason anyways? To find out what exactly Bruce had done to him, and to find out if he could be an ally.

The answer to the first question was right in front of him. Bruce had kept Jason locked up, possibly for years. Why? Jason said he wouldn’t be a good little soldier, but why go to such extremes? Why did Bruce not just beat him the way he did the others?

He could ask, of course. But this felt like the kind of thing Tim should already know. He tried to think of his own Jason and map him onto this one. Cass had said that Bruce found him, used the Lazarus Pit to restore him, and then… what? Brought him back home and continued on, business as usual?

If this Jason was anything like Tim’s, he wouldn’t have been able to accept that. Wouldn’t have been able to accept his death being brushed off like a temporary setback, wouldn’t have accepted the Joker continuing to live and breathe.

The no kill rule. That had to be the reason. Jason must have rebelled, and rebelled hard. And in return Bruce had locked him up and thrown away the key.

There was a lot that was still hazy, a lot of specifics he’d probably need to ask Cass about later. But this combined with Damian had to be enough proof for anyone with a normal moral compass that Bruce was not a good man. Keeping his own son locked up and isolated for… years? Tim really hoped not, but he wouldn’t put it past this Bruce. Either way it was undeniably evil. It had to be breaking a law or two regarding treatment of prisoners, right?

So, on to question two. Could Jason be Tim’s ally in bringing Bruce down?

Unlike Tim’s first question, he didn’t have to think too hard about it. He just needed to ask.

“What would you do if I let you out right now?”

One interesting thing about this Jason was that so far he never looked confused or surprised by Tim’s questions. None of his reactions were… normal. This time he acted like he didn’t even hear Tim, just pressed his face against the glass and stared blankly at the wall. It took a full minute before he spoke.

“You know what I’d do.”

“I don’t.” Tim replied calmly. “That’s why I’m asking.”

“I’d kill you.” Jason said, no longer grinning. “I’d kill you and then I’d kill Damian and try to get Bruce too before that little bitch of a Batgirl realizes I’m free and takes me down. Even if I can’t escape for good, there would be at least two less of your pathetic miserable faces I’d have to see staring at me from the other side of this fucking cell.”

Alright then. Not exactly what Tim had been hoping for.

“Why Damian?” He asked. “I mean, I understand why you’d want to kill Bruce. But going after the kid just seems cruel.”

“Cruel?” Jason snorted, and suddenly he seemed tired again, no energy left as he slumped against the glass. “Cruel is letting him suffer under Bruce. I can’t free him, but if I kill him before Bruce manages to warp him into an empty little doll like you then that’s something.”

“Then why not just kill Bruce first?”

Jason shot him a familiar look, one Tim was ironically delighted to see still existed in this universe. The scorn on his face spelled out dumbass so clearly it was as if he was beaming the word directly into Tim’s brain.

“Oh yeah, let me just kill the fucking Batman like it’s nothing. Like he hasn’t carefully been monitoring my food and exercise to make sure I don’t have a chance in the world at overpowering him. I’ll get right on that, you fucking-”

“You could run.” Tim pointed out. “You could just try and escape, get out of here and get your strength back, then come at Bruce with a proper plan. No one else would need to get hurt.”

“True.” Jason tapped a finger against his chin with mock thoughtfulness. “But you’re forgetting one simple fact Timmy.”

He sat back on the cot again, a smirk on his face as he watched Tim. Tim appreciated the smirk and the cursing so much more than the weird, half crazed Jason he’d been at the start of this conversation. The more familiar and recognisable Jason was, the easier it was for Tim to focus and not get unsettled.

“What am I forgetting?” He asked.

“That I’m the bad Robin.” Jason drawled, every syllable seeping with sarcasm. “I’m evil. I’m the failure, rotten to the core. I don’t have to kill Damian, but I want to. I want to see the look in Bruce’s eyes when I take his son from him. I’ll go after Dick too, I think. Kill the kid first, then Dick, then blow up a building on Cassandra, bury her under it and hope she doesn’t claw her way out. It’s not enough to just kill Batman, not after everything he’s done. I need to make it hurt, you understand me? I need to see him lose all his little soldiers he’s carefully molded into his legacy. Then I’ll kill him.”

Tim swallowed, hoping that his nerves would be chalked up to Jason’s unsettling speech instead of disappointment.

“You forgot about me.” 

“I did.” Jason’s smirk grew. “I think I’d leave you alive actually. It would be the better revenge. Out of all of them, you’re the one he’s broken the most. You’re his little puppet, no thoughts or actions unless he tells you how to think or what to do. I take away everyone you could possibly ask for orders, and what would you do Tim? Just stand in the batcave waiting for daddy to come back from the dead? Or would you go on a revenge quest, try to kill me?”

Ew, gross. He could go his whole life without hearing Jason say the word daddy again.

“I think I’d keep fighting.” Tim said. “Even if you killed them all. I wouldn’t kill you, but I’d throw you in jail. After that, I like to think I’d find a way to help people, regardless of how much I’d lost.”

Jason stared flatly at him. Tim stared back.

“Fuck.” Jason slumped down onto the bed and closed his eyes. “You’re so fucking boring. It’s like talking to a computer with programmed responses. Go be the perfect Robin somewhere else, you’re starting to piss me off.”

The feeling was mutual. Here Tim was, ready to help Jason, and he had to throw a wrench in that plan by talking about murdering Damian. Now Tim didn’t know what to do.

Even if Jason wouldn’t help him, Tim still felt massively sorry for him. It wasn’t his fault he’d become so unhinged after all. This Jason wasn’t a threat, even with all his promises of death and violence. He was just… pathetic and lonely.

“I want to help.” He said loudly. “Tell me what I can do for you right now and I’ll do it.”

One eye peeked out at him from the cell. Tim stood there and kept his face impassive. He was getting good at that, plus it seemed to be working so far in terms of making Jason respond. Honestly even if Tim could react without trying to maintain his cover he didn’t know what he would do. Probably let himself look as horrified as he felt.

“I want a cheeseburger.” Jason said at last. “Cheeseburger, fries and milkshake. Haven’t tasted them since I was fucking fifteen.”

Well, that wasn’t what Tim had been anticipating. But it seemed like a perfectly reasonable request. Tim took his phone out and scrolled to the delivery app, ordering what Jason had asked from the nearest fast food joint, which happened to be BatBurger.

“I’m guessing you don’t want your fries jokerized?”

Jason glared at him. Tim grinned.

“I hope whoever gave you those black eyes does it again.”

“It was Bruce actually.” Tim finished paying for the order. “Burger is on its way. Should be here in fifteen minutes.”

“Damn.” Jason whistled. “Bruce must really be desperate if he’s changing tactics. Last time Cassie tried to sneak me food he whipped her so badly she couldn’t move. Best day I had in ages, watching him get so pissed and the rest of you scurry around so scared and miserable.”

Hm. So perhaps ordering Jason food was not something Bruce would approve of. Oh well, the order had already been sent. If Tim couldn’t break Jason out of his cell, the least he could do was buy the guy a decent meal. Even if he did seem really happy talking about Bruce brutalizing them. To be fair, they were all kind of accomplices to his kidnapping, so Tim could understand the hate.

Tim left without saying goodbye, heading up to the manor to get the food and tip the delivery guy. No sign of Bruce, which was good. No sign of Cass or Damian either. 

Jason looked genuinely surprised for the first time when Tim walked back in with the paper bag full of food. It was a little bit satisfying after all the robot and puppet comments, even if it was probably a bad idea to do something this Tim never would.

“One burger, fries and shake as requested.” Tim set them down on the ground, then squinted at the panel he knew controlled the cages.

Back in his universe, there was a way to change the panels so that instead of a sheet of glass they morphed into bars. Tim really hoped the code was the same here, because if he accidentally unlocked the cage and got murdered by Jason Todd he was never living that down.

Thankfully, the code worked. The glass began to shimmer, then morphed into transparent bars. Jason’s hands shot out immediately, snatching the burger off the ground. He retreated into a corner of his cell, shoving it into his mouth like he’d been starved for weeks. Tim quietly pushed the fries and vanilla milkshake through the bars, then closed up the cell.

There. Good deed done for the day. He’d leave now to try and get more information from Cass on how exactly Jason had ended up like this. Then he’d start to explore outside the manor, see if anyone in Gotham could-

“Tim! What are you doing? Why are you interfering with Jason’s diet?”

Shit. Bruce. Bruce standing in the doorway, looking even more furious than he had last time Tim had seen him. He wasn’t even wearing the batsuit this time, but the pure rage emanating from him felt suffocating. Tim needed to think fast, come up with a good excuse before Bruce got violent.

“He asked me for a burger.” He pointed into the cell, where Jason was devouring the fries. “So I gave him one.”

Fantastic work brain. Witness the genius and quick thinking of Red Robin, everyone. 

At this point Tim was about ready to make a run for it, but before he could someone darted past Bruce and placed themselves between him and Tim. Cass, one hand out to stop Bruce from getting closer. This was getting to be a familiar sight and Tim didn’t like it.

“I asked him to.” She said, stumbling over her words in her haste to get them out. “I told him this was your new plan. Tim was following orders. He is not to blame.”

That was a lie. Why was she lying for him? To stop Bruce from attacking him, probably. Tim hadn’t realized she was willing to lie on the spot to Bruce’s face like this in order to help him keep his cover.

The room fell quiet, the only sound being Jason still eating those fries. Bruce stared at Cass. Tim couldn’t see the expression on her face, but the stony look in his eyes was terrifying.

Then Bruce moved, and Tim yelled in shock as he grabbed Cass by the neck, slamming her against the wall. Jason stopped eating to start hooting and hollering in delight, but Cass remained calm even as Bruce’s fingers dug into her neck.

She was letting him do this, Tim realized. Why? Why wasn’t she fighting back?

“This is unacceptable.” Bruce snarled at her. “First I hear from Damian that you’re not disciplining him properly, giving him mixed signals on what behaviour is allowed. And now you disobey me in order to mess with Jason’s diet? What makes you think I would ever tolerate such behaviour in this house?”

“Come on Bruce!” Jason yelled from the cage. “Give in to the darkness! Crush her windpipe! We all know you want to!”

Cass didn’t seem scared at all, even as Bruce cut off her airflow. She glared and lashed out with one foot, kicking him in the ribs. Judging by the grunt Bruce let out it was effective, but not too painful. He loosened his grip on her throat enough for her to speak.

“You left me!” She spat out. “I was alone with Damian! I didn’t know how… how to parent! I am his sister, not his mother! If he jokes, I laugh. If you wanted me to be different with him then you shouldn’t have died !”

Tim’s head was spinning a mile a minute trying to comprehend what was happening, and Jason constantly egging Bruce on wasn’t helping. Bruce had died? Was this like Tim’s universe, where Dick had been Batman and Tim had traveled the world to get Bruce home? Clearly things had been different here if Cass had been given custody of Damian.

Bruce squeezed Cass’s neck again, tight enough that she began choking. Just as Tim was going to rush in and shove him away, he let go. Cass fell to the ground, gasping for air.

Jason booed in disappointment, then went back to finishing his fries.

“I’m sorry Cassie.” Bruce’s voice was so soft and gentle now, Tim wanted to kick him in the head before he could say another word. “You’re right, I shouldn’t have left you. But I’m here now, and I’m trying to make things right. Damian needs consistency and structure. He needs you to follow my rules, to set a good example. I know you can do that when it comes to crime fighting, and I know it’s not your fault social skills don’t come easy to you. You’re older than him, but you don’t have the maturity of an adult, do you? Cain stunted your growth, ruined your chances of having a normal brain. You need guidance just like Damian does.”

Oh hell no. Tim waited for Cass to deck Bruce in the face for daring to insult her intelligence. His own Cass would never tolerate that kind of disrespect, she’d hold a grudge over that for a solid month.

But this Cass just nodded, tears in her eyes as she leant up and hugged Bruce tightly. 

“I’m sorry too.” She mumbled. “Shouldn’t have lied to Tim and gotten him to feed Jason. I just… I don’t understand why.”

“Why I’m so careful with his diet?” Bruce asked, and Cass nodded. “Well it’s simple Cassie. Out of everyone here, I’m the only one who knows exactly what Jason’s allergic to. For all you know, Jason asking Tim for that burger was a plot to trigger anaphylaxis. He could have used you two to try and commit suicide, all because you wanted to do something nice for him.”

Bruce looked up and made eye contact with Tim. Tim felt his whole body go cold at the calculating look in Bruce’s eyes.

“Do you understand now?”

“Yes sir.” Tim nodded. “I’m sorry.”

“Not your fault Tim.” Bruce patted Cassandra’s head as she snuggled into him. “You did the right thing following orders. This was Cassandra’s mistake, not yours.”

If only that was true. But this was Tim’s mistake, and now he had to live with the fact that the bruises on Cass’s throat were because of his choice to get Jason a burger. Not that he was ever going to tell Bruce that.

“We’ll discuss this further upstairs.” Bruce moved towards the door, and Cass let him go, looking disturbingly serene despite the tears on her face. “Cassandra, clean Jason’s cell and then meet me at the post. Tim, I want you to think about how you could have deduced that Cassie was lying to you. Look through the old training logs for guidance.”

He marched out of the room, and Tim finally felt like he could breathe again. Jason was laughing in his cell as he finished the milkshake, but Cass ignored him, focusing on Tim with concern.

“Are you alright?”

“No.” Tim admitted. “No I’m really not. He just choked you out and Jason’s in a cell. How long has Jason been there?”

“A few years.” Cass frowned. “Why?”

“Why?” Tim threw his hands in the air. “Because that’s fucking insane! Why- How is that OK?”

He knew he should be worried about cameras and bugs picking up what he was saying, but fuck it he was at his limit. He’d just watched Bruce choke his sister and found out he’d been keeping Jason locked up alone for years. He couldn’t keep pretending like any of this was fine.

“Jason…” Cass looked back at Jason sadly, who blew her a mocking kiss. “Jason needs help. Help no one else can give him. I understand why you are so…”

She waved her hands around wildly, a pretty decent metaphor for Tim’s stressed mind.

“...but I promise.” She smiled at him. “Bruce only wants to help him. He is good”

The contrast between the conviction of her words and the finger shaped purple marks on her neck was too much for Tim. Judging from Jason’s hysterical laughter, he wasn’t the only one. He put his head in his hands and took a deep breath.

Tim had achieved his objective of learning more about this family, but the answers had been ultimately disappointing. Damian was a scared child wary of Tim, Jason was murderous and potentially insane, and Cass was willing to defend Bruce less than five minutes after he’d almost choked her unconscious. Tim now knew for certain that if he was going to fix things, the help would definitely have to come from outside the family.

He looked up at Cass’s comforting smile, comforting him even though Tim was the reason that Bruce had strangled her. Cass may not be his Cass, but she was still self-sacrificing to a fault. Any mistake Tim made she would take the bullet instead of letting Bruce hurt him, and Tim knew by now that the bullet in question would be brutal every time. Which meant when it came to getting help from outside the house, he would have to be very, very careful.

Because if Tim had to see Bruce hurt his siblings one more time, he was taking a baseball bat to that man’s skull, consequences be damned.

Chapter Text

He had to maintain his cover. Tim knew this now, he’d seen how high the price was for messing up. Bruce told him to look through old training logs, so that’s what he did. At least he could console himself that he was doing valuable research instead of just bowing to the authority of a madman.

The training logs were actually pretty useful when it came to helping learn more about this other Tim. He watched the videos closely, taking special notice of how Tim acted around Bruce. Every little quirk and mannerism was something he would need to copy convincingly if he didn’t want to get beaten more. And there was no way he was letting Cass get hurt again because of him.

This Tim was more… solemn. That was the best way Tim could describe it from watching the videos. He was always serious in them, no smiles or jokes. Always watching Bruce, always at least a little bit wary. Quiet and professional. 

It was interesting, and a little trippy, watching another version of yourself training in a batcave similar to your own. But Tim didn’t understand why Bruce thought they would be helpful though, at least not until he reached a video titled Respecting the Chain of Command.

The video footage opened to Cass and Damian standing in the center of the training floor. They stood completely straight, eyes down on the ground. They were younger in this video, if Tim was to guess he’d say Cass was around seventeen. Damian was noticeably trembling, and Tim wondered if it would be better to skip this one.

“We have two soldiers here who lied to their superiors.” Evil Bruce’s voice came from behind the camera. “One who lied to his older brother about whether he was allowed to see Jason, and one who covered for him and lied to Tim.”

Oh boy. This was not going to be pretty. But just when he was about to skip his other self came into view, and Tim found himself too curious to look away.

“As Damian’s older brother, Tim has the right to discipline him. For attempting to lie to you, what do you think the appropriate punishment is, Tim?”

Other Tim walked forward, and Tim sucked in a breath as his alternate self smacked Damian hard in the face. Damian let out a tiny whimper, but didn’t move. Alternate Tim smacked him again, then a third time. Then he paused, and looked over at Bruce.

Whatever passed between them Tim couldn’t see from watching the video, but it was enough for the Tim on screen to turn around and hit Damian again, harder this time. Damian fell to the ground and curled into a ball, shaking. Tim felt that strange sick sensation again as he watched his other self kick Damian with the toe of his boot, disgust clearly written on his face.

His alternate self was an asshole. Fantastic.

“As for you.” Bruce walked onto the screen, heading right over to Cass and pulling her up by the hair. “You lied to Tim when he is supposed to trust your word as his older sibling. All to stop Damian from facing appropriate consequences for his misbehavior. That is a far more serious offense.”

Cass nodded calmly, seemingly unruffled even as Bruce wrenched her forward by her hair and threw her on the ground. 

“ Since physical punishment does not have the same effect on you, we’ll have to try something else. Twenty hours in the black box should give you plenty of time to rethink your choices.”

That got a reaction. Cass closed her eyes for a second, lips trembling slightly. For anyone else that was the equivalent of a full blown sob of despair. 

It was enough to make Tim shut the video down. He’d done enough research. He didn’t need to watch more.

Instead, he went upstairs to talk with Cass. He needed to understand how she was OK letting Jason rot in that cage. She defied Bruce for Damian, defied him for this version of Tim she barely knew. Why not defy him and let Jason go?

It was probably the murder thing, wasn’t it. That was Tim's biggest concern too. He wanted to help Jason, but he didn't know how to without putting Damian in even more danger. Tim was confident he could hold his own against a malnourished and half crazy Jason Todd, but Damian was ten. If Jason meant what he said and really did try to kill the boy once he was free, Tim would never forgive himself.

Upstairs things were quiet. He’d never realized how creepily silent Wayne Manor could be until he came here. After a short bit of wandering he heard voices coming from Cass’s room. Making his way over there, he poked his head in curiously, and immediately regretted it.

Cass was lying on the bed, face down and shirt off. Damian stood next to her, carefully applying some sort of medicine to her wounds. Or maybe it was one giant wound, it was hard to tell at this point. Her back looked like it had been rubbed with a cheese grater until not a single bit of skin was left.

They both looked up when Tim came in. Cass with a smile, Damian with a glare.

“Haven’t you done enough?” Damian growled at him.

Tim raised an eyebrow. He was pretty sure by now that Bruce would not approve of that tone. Interesting that Damian was so angry he didn’t care, especially on Cass’s behalf. 

“Dami.” Cass said gently. “It’s OK. Let me talk to Tim for a moment.”

Damian looked back at her, and whatever silent conversation they had completely eluded Tim. He suddenly remembered the interesting fact Bruce had dropped in the cave while choking Cass, about how she’d been in charge of Damian when Bruce died. Maybe that was why they seemed to trust each other more than anyone else in this manor.

Damian left, shouldering Tim slightly as he walked past. Tim didn’t take offense, mostly just felt bad for the kid because Bruce was probably going to beat him for that at some point. 

Fuck. He hated this universe so damn much.

“Cute kid.” He said, once the two of them were alone. “You guys seem close.”

“He was my Robin.” Cass replied, still smiling as if she wasn’t bleeding all over the sheets. “I take it that it was not the same in your world?”

“When Bruce died, Dick became Batman. Took custody of Damian. Did that happen here?”

“No.” Cass frowned thoughtfully. “Dick stayed as Nightwing. With the Titans. I was Batman. Why was I not Batman over there?”

“It’s… complicated.” Tim sighed, sitting carefully down on the corner of the bed. “Look, I appreciate you covering for me but you don’t need to do that if it ends like this. No offense but you don’t seem to have much skin left for him to whip.”

“I can take the pain.” Cass shrugged. “Better than you can. And I have plenty of skin left, he only covered half my legs and my stomach for the burger thing.”

“That’s not OK.”

“I don’t mind it.”

“Doesn’t mean it’s OK.”

“My Tim thought it was.”

“Yeah I saw some videos. Not sure I like the guy.”

“Funny.” Cass’s lips twitched. “You are very similar to him in many ways.”

“Well we are the same person. Technically. I think. Actually, I don’t really know how alternate selves work in terms of like, having the same soul or whatever. But that’s not why I came to talk to you.”

She sat up, and Tim winced as fresh blood dripped onto the bed.

“About Jason.”

“Yeah.” Tim wasn’t going to dance around it. “About Jason.”

“You don’t approve.”

“I don’t understand why you do.”

“Because it is the best option we have.” She stared at Tim with heavy eyes. “If we just let him go he will kill. You heard him say he would get Damian.”

“And normal jail?”

“Too well trained. He would escape. Or reveal everything to the public.”

“So… what? He just stays here until he dies?”

“No!” Cass shot up. “No. Jason is hurt, and he needs help. But he is not doomed. He can change.”

Tim thought of the wild man he’d seen earlier, frantic and twitchy and a grin full of spite.

“He doesn’t seem too fond of that idea.” He said carefully.

Cass slumped slightly, unable to deny that. 

“I have to believe. He will not always be so set on killing.”

“How did he end up like this?” Tim switched tack, because he understood now that there was no way Cass was helping him free Jason. “What did Bruce do?”

“Nothing!” Cass looked puzzled at the accusation. “The Joker killed Jason. Bruce tried to stop him from getting hurt, but Jason wouldn’t listen and the Joker caught him. We don’t know what brought him back, but Bruce healed him. Jason just… couldn’t handle being back. He wanted to hurt Bruce for failing him, so he kept sneaking out and trying to kill. He got worse and worse until Bruce had to lock him up, to keep everyone safe.”

“Uh huh.” Tim wasn’t sure which parts of that story were bullshit, but he was sure at least more than one part didn’t match reality. “Were you there for this?”

“No.” Cass admitted quietly. “I came in afterwards. But… I saw. Bruce’s grief, his pain. He will never forgive himself for letting Jason die. He wants his son back.”

“How do you know he isn’t lying to you?”

“Tim and Damian say the same thing. Jason says the same thing. It’s just… with a different spin. Joker hurt Jason. We are trying to make things right.”

Well you’re failing miserably. Tim thought, but had enough tact not to say out loud.

Instead, he just turned around and left. There was nothing else he could do to convince her what was going on was fucked up and wrong. Cass, or rather Bruce, had an answer for everything, backed up with two or more sources thanks to the other kids he manipulated.

“I’ll let you and the kid keep talking. But I meant what I said Cass, don’t put yourself between me and Bruce again. I’ll handle him if it comes to that.”

“He doesn’t know you’re not his Tim. It’s not fair to you or him if you get hurt because of that. But I know, so I’m making this choice.” Tim scowled at her firm tone. Stupid stubborn older sisters. “Also you have school tomorrow.”

That caused him to almost trip out the door, and Cass’s laughter followed him down the hallway towards his own room. School huh? He thought he’d finished with that years ago.

Well on the bright side, school would get him out of the house and away from Bruce. Less temptation to just chloroform the man and hide him in whatever that black box he mentioned was.

School was a surreal experience. He walked through the halls of Gotham City High seeing all his old classmates, teachers and friends. And yet not a single one of them noticed him. Ives, Jared, Zoanne. Everyone else he used to be friends, or at least friendly with. They weren't cold or rude to him, they were just… indifferent. Like Tim was just another classmate.

So Tim didn’t have any friends at school. That sucked. Not a massive surprise though, considering his current home life. 

There was one other person he was hoping to see. Tim didn’t know how much surveillance Bruce had in this school, but this was his best chance of getting the ball rolling. So when he saw a flash of blonde hair heading to the bathrooms after third period, he followed immediately. He slipped inside the girl’s bathroom, relieved when he saw no one else but her. She looked good, long blonde hair tied back and humming softly as she washed her hands. This year had been tough for both of them back in Tim's world, so it was nice to see her looking... normal.

“Steph.”

She turned around, and just like his other friends in this universe her face was cold. Or rather, her eyes were cold. Unlike the others he’d seen today, she was grinning. Not friendly, but threatening. 

Alright, so they definitely weren’t on good terms in this universe. But she knew who he was, which meant there was hope.

“Your daddy has you stalking the girl’s bathroom now?” She sneered at him with fake peppiness. “I’m flattered and creeped out at the same time.”

“I’m not here because of Bruce.” He glanced around, confirming that they were alone. “Is this a safe place to talk?”

Stephanie’s eyes narrowed.

“Bit too obvious an attempt to find out Oracle’s safe zones. So what’s the angle Timbo?”

So Oracle was out there, and she wasn’t working with Bruce. It sounded like they didn’t get along, and also that Steph was working with her too? That made two potential allies. Despite the way she was glaring at him, Tim felt more relieved than he had since stepping foot in this hell world.

“I need your help. You and Barbara. But Bruce can’t find out.”

Steph’s gaze was unimpressed, but Tim didn’t bother saying anything else. It wasn't like he could dump the full story on her first thing without sounding like a crazy person.

“Come sit with me in the canteen.” She said at last, skepticism on clear display. “Too much noise there for Bruce to pick up on it.”

Canteen wasn’t actually a bad idea, Tim was starving. When they reached it he made a beeline for the hot food section and loaded his plate full of suspicious looking meatloaf, ignoring Steph’s calculating gaze. He really had no idea what their dynamic was like in this world, but he doubted she’d beat him up if he made one wrong move so he was more relaxed than with Bruce.

“So,” Steph began once they were sitting firmly near the center, surrounded by chattering, loud voices. “Talk.”

Tim took a moment to savour the meatloaf. With all the drama he really hadn’t been eating as well as he should have been.

“Do you trust me?”

“Not in the slightest.”

“Cool.” Tim took another bite. “Do you have like… a lie detector or something?”

“Maybe. Why?”

“Because I really want you to trust me, but given everything I’ve learned about Bruce I don’t think that’s going to happen easily. Everything I say could be one big manipulation tactic right? Just Bruce trying to use me to… actually I don’t really know that part, how bad is your relationship with him?”

Steph stared at him. Tim took another bite of meatloaf. It wasn’t actually half bad compared to how he remembered it being in high school. Or maybe hunger made it taste better, who knows.

“Tim.” Steph said, one hand tapping her fork aggressively onto her plate. “Are you trying to fake amnesia right now? Very badly, I might add?”

“Worse.” Tim grimaced. “Which is why I want the lie detector, because the full story is so stupid I doubt you’ll believe me.” 

“Well you should probably tell me. Because I’m very close to thinking this is all one big waste of time.”

Decision time then. Big secret or little? Start with little, see what the reaction was.

“I want to get Damian out. Away from Bruce.”

Steph froze, fork dangling above her chicken. Then she snorted and shook her head.

“Bullshit. You hate Damian.”

“Bruce is abusing him.”

“Bruce is abusing all of you. Last time we argued over this you said Damian had it coming.”

Of course he had. Jeez alternate Tim, could you not be such an asshole? Was that too much for Tim to ask?

“So you know.” He said.

“Of course I know. I just don’t understand why you’re finally admitting it.”

“Because I’m not the Tim Drake you know.”

She stared at him again. This time, he stared back. It wasn’t his Steph, wasn’t the girl he’d been in love with once upon a time and now loved like a best friend. But it was still a version of Steph, a version not corrupted by this Bruce but still a vigilante. That was the best case scenario Tim could have hoped for and he refused to mess up this opportunity.

“Explain.” Steph said at last, stabbing her fork down into her chicken.

“I’m Tim Drake from an alternate universe. Some weird magic device swapped me into this Tim’s body a few days ago. I know a Bruce and a Cass and a Steph and a Damian. But not like this, my Bruce is nothing like this psycho version. I’ve been lying to him to try and figure out what to do, so far only you and Cass know about me. But I’ve decided I need to get Damian far, far away from that manor, and no one inside that house is going to help. So here I am, telling you this whole ridiculous story and really hoping you have a lie detector you trust so I can prove myself.”

The more he spoke the more desperate his voice became. Steph looked somewhere between confused, horrified, appalled and pitying. Once he finished, she put her head in her hands and let out a deep sigh.

“That’s a lot to process Tim.”

“I know.”

“And you’re right, it does sound ridiculous.”

“I know.”

“Why has Cass not told Bruce?”

“That one I don’t know. I asked her not to, and said I didn’t trust him. She thinks I’m wrong, but is willing to let me figure it out for myself.”

Steph hummed thoughtfully. After a moment she nodded, as if it made sense. Interesting.

“And what have you figured out?”

“That Bruce is a piece of shit." Tim replied instantly. "And that Cass is a good person deep down but she’s also so wrapped up in Bruce’s web of bullshit, I’m not sure she’s ever going to break free.”

“Yeah.” Steph’s smile was sad, and spoke of a history Tim could only guess at. “That sounds about right.”

There was silence for a minute. Tim finished his lunch, letting her process everything he’d said. It was a whole lot to drop out of nowhere, especially since they seemed to be kind of enemies in this world.

“Why do you care?” Steph asked suddenly. “Why not just focus on getting back home?”

“I want to.” Tim replied calmly. “Believe me, I hate it in this universe. But that house is a nightmare, and there’s a terrified kid in there who’s walking on eggshells to avoid getting beaten every damn day. I can’t just ignore that. That’s not how my Batman and Robin operate.”

“So get Damian out and get home?”

“Pretty much, yeah.”

“What about Cass? And Jason?”

“I mean. Ideal situation Bruce is in jail and everyone is free. I just don’t know how to accomplish that, so I was trying to keep my goals realistic.” It was Tim’s turn to stare, intense and calculating. “You think you can free all three of them from him?”

“Been trying for years with no success.” Steph grimaced, and Tim was pleasantly surprised that she seemed to be accepting of his story for now. “But we’ve never had a man on the inside before, so who knows?”

“You’re saying you believe me?”

Moment of truth. Steph eyed him cautiously, and Tim really had no idea what she was thinking. She could walk away right this second and he’d be back to square one. But he had hope. If she really was opposed to Bruce, and cared about the abuse going on but couldn’t stop it, then it would be near impossible to walk away from such a tempting offer

“I’m saying that after school, you’re going to let me kidnap you.”

Tim grinned, swallowing the last bite of his lunch victoriously.

“I’ll be the best hostage ever.” he promised.

Steph smiled at him. It was almost genuine.

Stephanie wasted no time in kidnapping Tim. They left the school at the end of the day, rounded a corner, and then Tim felt a bag being thrown over his head. He didn’t protest, letting two new sets of hands drag him into a car.

“Steph?” He called out. “You still there?”

“Right here, Boy Virgin.”

“Heh.” He chuckled through the bag. “My Steph called me that too.”

“ My Steph ?” Another familiar voice, hell yes they had Helena on their side too! “What’s that all about?”

“Crazy story.” That was Steph again. “I’ll let him give you the whole sales pitch once we reach the warehouse.”

It took them another five minutes to get there. Tim let them escort him inside before taking the bag off his head. Unsurprisingly, Barbara Gordon sat in front of him. The sight of her monitors and desks and wheelchair and six empty cups of coffee made Tim’s heart ache a little. He missed his universe so much. The familiarity of this setup compared to the fear from the unfamiliar manor made him miss it even more.

Tim glanced left and right, taking in the rest of his surroundings. Along with Babs and Steph there were two other women standing in front of him, both of whom he recognized. Huntress and Onyx weren’t bad allies to have if things turned violent, but he was a little disappointed there weren’t more. Hopefully Oracle had other operatives and just hadn’t brought them along in case it was a trap.

“Hey.” He grinned. “I don’t know how much Steph told you, but I come in peace.”

Barbara studied him coldly, and Tim squirmed a little. Babs rarely got mad with him, he didn’t like seeing her usual friendly smile replaced with flat apprehension. 

“Forgive me if I have some trouble believing you Tim.”

“No, I get it.” He shrugged. “From what I’ve gathered Bruce is pretty manipulative here.”

“From what you’ve gathered?”

Steph crossed her arms and sighed, but there was a playful smirk on her lips.

“Tim here has gone a little bit cuckoo and claims he’s from an alternate dimension.”

Barbara leaned forward and studied him, her glasses gleaming under the bright warehouse bulb.

“Bruce must be getting desperate to destroy us if he’s resorting to this as a tactic.”

“Look,” Tim raised his hands. “Bruce probably has some kind of tracker on me, I’m guessing a microchip in the back of my neck like a cat because that’s the kind of dehumanizing control freak he is. Which means we don't have much time. But if this conversation is going to go anywhere you’ll need to at least hear me out. So do you need me to take some kind of lie detector test for you to believe me? Or will you just accept what I’m saying is true until we’ve finished talking?”

Barbara looked at Helena, then Onyx, and finally Steph. She seemed to have a lot of faith in Steph, which was weird. Back in Tim’s world they’d just started trusting each other again at this point, but here Steph’s perspective seemed to be valued by all of them.

Weird. Not bad-weird but weird all the same. Tim wondered if this was what Steph had felt every time Batman and Robin had judged her competence back in the Spoiler days. He didn’t really like being on the other side, having to prove himself like this. But he didn’t have a choice. He’d lay it all out for them and just pray they didn’t reject him.

The silent communication seemed to end. Barbara turned back to Tim and nodded.

“I’ll pretend for now that I believe everything you’re saying. Make your case.”

Tim nodded. Then he took a breath and began:

“I need you to help me kidnap Batman’s child.”

Dead silence. You could hear a batarang drop. Then Steph let out a small laugh, a playful sparkle in her eyes.

"Told you he was crazy."

Chapter Text

Barbara took a deep breath, steepling her fingers together. The action was achingly familiar to Tim, and he desperately hoped he’d been convincing enough. If he was going up against Batman, Oracle was a massive asset to have as an ally.

“So your story is that you’re Tim Drake from an alternate universe where Batman is actually a good father, you fell into this universe and are horrified by what you’ve found, you’ve convinced Cass to not tell Bruce that his son has been swapped with someone from a different world, and after living in the manor for a few days you’ve decided that before you find a way to go home you need to get Damian out and away from Bruce?”

“Ideally I’d like to get Damian away while also working on a way home, but yeah that pretty much sums it up.” Tim nodded. “My Bruce wasn’t like, perfect or anything. But he seems like Superman compared to this guy, and he was good enough for you to consider him an ally instead of an enemy. I mean the two of you pretty much raised Cass together when she joined the family, which is kind of funny looking back at it, coparenting with your ex-boyfriend's dad.”

“Ex boyfriend?”

“In this world you and Dick never…?” Tim blinked at the confused faces all looking back at him. “Right, OK. Makes sense I guess considering how this Bruce seems to love isolating his kids from any type of potential support system.”

Another round of baffled looks. Tim had the feeling none of Bruce’s kids had ever spoken so candidly about their father’s abuse and manipulation. Hopefully it made him more convincing.

“This is almost insane enough for me to believe it’s true.” Babs chuckled. “If you are faking it, you’ve certainly put a lot of thought into this alternate universe. You said that your Bruce was better than this one, how so?”

“He doesn’t use corporal punishment for one.” Tim said immediately. “Biggest difference right off the bat, this Bruce is practically addicted to violently hitting us whenever he can. First night I came here I didn’t know how strict he was, made a few minor errors on patrol. He beat me so hard I passed out. Not a pleasant experience.”

“I’m sorry you went through that.” Despite Barbara’s caution, Tim could see genuine sympathy shining in her eyes. Another good sign that not everyone in this world was evil like Bruce. “I suppose if we accept what you’re saying as true, the most important question I’d have is what do you expect from us ?”

“Bruce doesn’t know about me and I intend to use that to my advantage to sneak Damian away from him. The problem I have is what comes after that.” Tim was conscious that Bruce was probably aware of his fake kidnapping by now, so he’d have to talk fast. “I don’t know this world, I don’t know who I can rely on to take care of this kid. You seem to be good people, just like in my world, and you know this universe better than I do. If I dumped Damian in your lap, how would you keep him safe?”

Barbara looked at Helena, who nodded. Then at Onyx and Steph. Tim wished he could be a part of their silent communication. He missed having his friends with him so badly. 

“Talia.” Barbara answered in the end. “Damian’s mother. She’s been trying to get him back ever since Bruce took him, even worked with us on a few missions to try and break Jason out of the cave and get Damian away at the same time. She managed to hide from Bruce and Ra’s for years, with our help we can get her off the grid completely and keep it that way. Or at least, it’s our best chance.”

“And you trust her?” Tim questioned. “I don’t want to get Damian away from Bruce only to land him in another abusive situation.”

“I talked with Damian a few times on patrol, back when Cass was Batman.” Steph was the one to speak up this time. “He was terrified of opening up when Bruce was alive, the asshole’s practically placed a gag order on any talk of Talia in the house. But when he thought Bruce was dead he felt comfortable chatting a little, and he missed her so much. It broke my heart hearing him talk about what his life used to be like, how he used to go to art classes and she’d hang his drawings on the fridge of their apartment, how they had their own unique language to communicate, how one time they found an abandoned birds nest on the balcony and they nursed the babies until they were old enough to fly.”

That did sound a lot better than Bruce alright. Tim almost felt bad for his own Damian, knowing that he never got such a life at all.

“I can’t say with full certainty that she’s perfect, because I wasn’t there for any of it.” Steph continued. “But if Damian had a choice he would want to be with his mother. And I do believe she loves him, and cares for him more than anyone. She defied Ra’s al Ghul and Batman to keep Damian hidden and safe from both of them. So yeah, she has my vote.”

“Alright then.” Tim nodded. “Obviously I can’t reach out to Talia, but if you guys could let her know what I’m trying to do that would be appreciated. In my universe your main base was the old clocktower in central Gotham. When I get Damian out I’ll take him there. After that it’s over to you. I don’t know how this brain swap works, it’s entirely possible Tim gets all my memories from my time here when I go back home. So wherever Damian and Talia go, I can’t know about it. It’s too much of a risk.”

“What about Cassandra?” Helena chimed in. “She knows you’re not Tim. If she catches you kidnapping her little brother do you think she’ll let you?”

“Unlikely, which is why I’ll have to wait until she’s not around and act fast. While also not giving her any clues to what I’m planning. It’s probably going to be the hardest part of this, I’m not going to lie to you. When it comes to stealth and fighting skills I don’t have a chance against her. And Bruce has her right under his thumb, nothing short of him trying to kill me will get her to budge.”

“You think you can handle all that?” Steph grinned.

“Don’t really have a choice.” Tim grinned back, enjoying the almost familiarity. “The other big issue is that my own family is probably working on getting me back, which means I could be swapped out at any moment. I don’t really have any solutions for that one, because I don’t even know why I ended up here in the first place. So the only idea I have to counter this is to get the kid out as quickly as possible.”

“Agreed. And speaking of time constraints, Batman’s sent people to search for you.” Babs looked down at a screen Tim couldn’t see. “I never thought I’d say this, but it was a pleasure talking to you Tim. We’ll be in touch.”

Someone threw a bag over his head. Tim didn’t jump, letting them lead him into the same vehicle they brought him in. He stayed quiet as they drove off, his mind digesting all the new information. It was a big leap of trust to rely so heavily on people he barely knew, just because he knew them in his own world. But if they were evil like Bruce they hid it a whole lot better. He needed someone to take Damian once he got the boy out, and he didn’t have many options or much time. It would work. It had to work.

They dropped him off on a random street corner, and less than a minute later he saw Cass sprinting over rooftops in full civilian garb towards him. She jumped down to the ground, ignoring the wide eyes of onlookers, and cradled his face gently. The concern in her eyes almost made him feel guilty for worrying her.

“You are unharmed?”

“I’m fine.” He nodded. “I wanted to talk with Steph. We’re friends in my world. I wanted to get her opinion on everything, and she offered to take me to the Birds.”

Cass’s eyes clouded over, and she let out a derisive scoff.

“Stephanie is blind.” She spat out. “She only sees what she wants to believe. There is no truth to anything she says, not about Bruce or me or the family.”

“Sounds like you two have history.” Tim remarked mildly.

Cass shot him another look. He kept himself looking as relaxed as possible.

“What relationship do we have in your world?” She asked sharply.

“You and Steph? Best friends. Maybe more but I try not to pay too much attention to that considering… you know.”

Cass stared at him. She clearly did not know.

“...How Steph and I dated?”

“ You dated Stephanie?” Cass looked more floored by that than anything Tim had said since he first revealed himself to her. “When? Why?”

“For a few years as teenagers. As for why well… we were young, dumb, and smitten.” Tim gave a one shouldered shrug. “Same reason as everyone who dates at that age.”

“Huh.” Cass said, still looking as if she’d seen an actual ghost. “I see.”

“Guessing that didn’t happen here?”

“No. You two were always rivals. Enemies.”

“Yeah I got that impression when I first talked to her. Part of the reason I let her kidnap me. I wanted to know everything I could about that.”

“Why?”

“Why not? It’s interesting stuff, seeing all the things that are the same and all the things that are different.”

Cass squinted at him. Crap.

“You had another reason.”

“Yes. To get her opinion on Bruce.”

Not a lie. Cass relaxed, and Tim sighed in relief.

“What are you going to tell Bruce?” She asked.

“That she saw how beat up I was and used it as an opportunity to kidnap me for information. But I was loyal and brave and didn’t give them anything. You think he’ll buy it?”

Cass frowned thoughtfully. Then nodded.

“Cool.” Tim grinned. “Then let’s go home. I’m starving.”

Cass left Tim with Bruce after dinner. If he wanted to make mistakes that got him punished and expected her not to intervene, then she needed to be away helping somewhere else. Hopefully he would lie well enough to convince Bruce. She understood why he didn’t want to tell her father the truth, and she was willing to help him lie. Despite his fears, she didn’t hold the same terror he did about what Bruce would do to her when he found out.

She had her reasons for keeping the Tim swap from Batman and she stood by them. Bruce would understand that, and wouldn't hold it against her. He’d punish her for lying, then she’d be forgiven and they’d go back to normal. The way they always did.

Tim, this strange other Tim who was far less nervous than her brother, seemed ridiculously squeamish about the punishment part. But he didn’t understand how little it mattered to Cass. Her biological father had shot her for fun. Pain was meaningless. It was why Bruce had to get so intense, whip her so hard. If he just gave her a few smacks it wouldn’t count, not the way it did with Damian and Tim.

This Tim didn’t understand that, which was fine. Cass didn’t really understand him either. But he was genuine, and he didn’t want to hurt any of them. Except maybe Bruce. She could understand that part, even if it was misguided.

The things he said were interesting too. Not just today’s bombshell about him and Stephanie. One of the first things he’d mentioned was that she had another brother in his world, one she barely knew here. Duke was one of Barbara’s newer operatives, and he mostly worked with a gang of kids who called themselves Robin. Bruce and Tim hated it, Stephanie seemed delighted by it, and Damian didn’t care.

Cass hadn’t cared much either. But now she slipped in through the bedroom window of his foster home, and dodged as he threw a book at her. He had a red jacket on with a yellow R stitched onto it. It suited him.

“What the fuck do you want?” He put his fists up, scared and resentful.

Cass just sat down on his bed, examining him closely. How had he become her brother in this other universe? What had that Bruce seen in him that her own Bruce was missing?

“Tim said you were my family. In his world.”

Duke put his fists down, still tense and cautious.

“Right.” He rolled his eyes. “The big news, Babs told us about his visit. Tim’s either pulling a massive con or gone crazy. Still doesn’t explain what you’re doing here.”

“I got curious.” Cass leaned back against the wall. “I wanted to know why.”

“Well sorry, but I don’t know either.” Duke sneered. “My other self must be a massive fucking loser to become a Batman bootlicker like you.”

“Maybe.” Cass wasn’t interested in arguing with him, not when Barbara had him so convinced Bruce was evil. “Or maybe he sees something in you. I want to know what it is.”

“I really don’t. Get out.”

Cass sighed. So hostile. They were all on the same side, but sometimes it felt like she was the only one who understood that.

She stood up, ignoring how Duke flinched back. She had no interest in hurting him. Maybe if she left peacefully he would see that, and understand that Barbara was wrong.

“She misses you, by the way.”

Cass froze, halfway out the window.

“Who?” She asked, keeping her face away from him.

“Babs.” Cass relaxed slightly. “Says she never should have yelled at you that night.”

“Don’t know why she misses me.” Cass couldn’t keep the bitterness from seeping into her voice. “She has all of you. Smart people who can read, and know what’s good for them. Ones that aren’t too stupid and damaged to know when they’re being abused.”

“See, she regrets saying all that.” Duke’s voice was cold in response. “I think she was completely right and should have been meaner. Especially now that you’re an adult. You know everything he does to Damian and Tim, everything he does to Jason, that’s on you too right? You’re an accomplice to all of his crimes.”

“What does he do?” She turned to face him, still half hanging out the window. “Since you know my family so well. Tell me Duke, what does he do?”

“Hit them.”

“A father spanking his children? Scandalous.” Her voice dripped with sarcasm. “You grew up normally, not like stupid little me. Did any of your friends' parents hit them? Did you do anything about that? Or did you accept it as normal?”

“It’s not the same.”

“Because Barbara and Stephanie told you? Or this new Tim from another world? I live there, Duke. So does Tim, the real Tim. And Dick used to. We all know that it is the same.”

Duke tilted his head, studying her. Cass didn’t like it, it felt too much like what she did to everyone else around her.

“You know you sound like him?" Duke said in the end. "When you start justifying his abuse, your speech patterns change. He has you so brainwashed he’s even telling you how to think.”

“Excuses. Because you know I’m right.” She turned back around. “Goodnight Duke.”

She dropped from the window before she could hear anything else. Her stomach felt like it was churning, but she chalked that up to disappointment. 

This other Tim’s Duke must be a very different person, because Cass couldn’t see any future where her own Bruce would want to foster this child.

Bruce bought his excuses. Or at least, he seemed to buy it. Tim explained that Stephanie had noticed his injuries (injuries that Bruce had given him but he didn’t point that out) and decided that he was weak enough to kidnap after school. They’d tried using his injuries as proof that Bruce was evil, to sway Tim to their side. But Tim was loyal, a good soldier who understood Batman’s cause. So he argued back until they gave up and let him go.

Tim tried to sound flat, clinical. He still didn’t know enough about how this other Tim spoke to know how to convey sincerity, so he figured a blank incident report would be the safest approach. Bruce questioned him on the warehouse, asking for specific details. Tim told him everything he remembered, because he knew full well that none of the details would be enough for Bruce to find them. He mentioned that they’d talked about Talia, that they tried to convince Tim Damian would be better with her. Bruce’s reaction didn’t disappoint. His nostrils flared at her name, and he grew noticeably angrier for the rest of Tim’s explanation

Part of him expected Bruce to punish him for getting kidnapped. But maybe he wasn’t in the mood to beat his kids that night, because he dismissed Tim without even trying to blame him for his own kidnapping. It raised Tim’s hackles more than if he’d slapped him, making him wonder if Bruce had noticed something off about him.

He had no proof for the moment, just anxiety and paranoia, both understandable given the situation. So he resolved to just be more careful, and continued on with the next step of his plan.

Mentioning Talia to Bruce was a risk, it meant he was likely to keep a closer eye on Damian. Tim hadn’t done it just to see Bruce’s reaction, he also needed it as a cover for what he was going to do now.

“Damian.” He found his little brother sitting in his room, doing homework. “I need to talk to you for a moment. Follow me.”

Damian obeyed quickly and obediently. Which still felt deeply uncomfortable and wrong to Tim. At the very least there should be an eye roll and a sarcastic comment. 

He guided Damian to Tim’s room. It was still the only place in the house he knew wasn’t bugged. He’d have to ask Cass for a full list of safe places to talk, in case it became obvious to Bruce what they were doing.

“I got kidnapped by the Birds of Prey today.” He began as soon as they were inside and the door was shut. “They mentioned Talia, and I wanted to make sure we were prepared in case she tried to move against us. What can you tell me about her?”

“My mother is an evil villain who wanted to use me as a weapon and tried to turn me against my father to become a tool for evil.” Damian didn’t even try to sound convincing, just talking as if he was reading from a script. “I am grateful to my father and siblings for saving me from that fate and teaching me how to be a good person.”

“Right.” Tim tried not to sound sarcastic. “And I know all that Damian. But I’m thinking I need something to use against her, something to lure her in. What’s a happy memory you two have together?”

Damian hesitated, fear written openly all over his face. Fuck, Tim hated this stupid Bruce so much.

“Look,” Tim sat down on his bed. “I understand that Bruce doesn’t want you talking positively about her. But I need this information. As your older sibling you’re supposed to respect my authority, which means that if Bruce decides this is a punishable offense I’ll take all the blame, alright? You’re just respecting the chain of command, as you should.”

Damian chewed on his lip, eyes darting all over the room. Tim waited patiently. He could probably use Damian’s fear of him to force him to talk, but that would make him feel like a massive scumbag. He’d only push that far if Damian didn’t give him enough to confirm that Talia was the right choice to get custody of the kid.

“She taught me how to draw.” Damian said quietly at last. “She said I used to love scribbling with crayons as an infant. And as a toddler colouring books were my favourite toy, I became obsessed with colouring accurately between the lines. I used to cry when I went over a line and she had to move to a new page to get me to stop.”

Tim couldn’t help but smile, picturing cute little toddler Damian intently colouring in a flower.

“When I got older she bought me coloured pencils. She showed me a photo of a sunset and then used the pencils to draw it. It was like magic,” Damian shook his head, a small hint of a smile on his face. “I kept bringing her pictures and asking her to draw them. Then eventually she asked me to draw her portrait. Looking back it was terrible, my lines were shaky and I didn’t even get her eye colour correct. But she kissed my forehand and told me it was the most beautiful painting she had. It was still stuck to the fridge the day Father came for me. I wish I’d gotten to take it with me.”

Damian’s voice grew softer, his eyes more damp as he spoke. Then at the end he seemed to realize the weight of what he’d just said and his head shot up in panic.

“To bring it here and tear it up! To show my loyalty to Father, that’s the only reason why I’d want to take it with me.”

“Damian, relax.” Tim waved at him with one hand. “That was exactly what I asked for. You did what I ordered and you did it perfectly. There’s not a single part of that you need to feel bad about, and if Bruce disagrees he can take it up with me. There’s just one more thing I need to know. Did she ever hit you?”

“No.” Damian’s eyes flared with unexpected defiance, and for a second Tim could see his own little brother staring back at him. “The only time she put her hand on me was to comfort and cherish me. If she had the chance I know my mother would cut Father’s own hands off for what he has done to me.”

There was a pause. Tim waited patiently.

“Which is bad of course.” Damian tacked on at the end. “She must never be allowed to injure Father, who only punishes me for my own good. Her cutting his hands off would be bad.”

“Very bad.” Tim agreed easily. “You can go now.”

The tension eased from Damian’s shoulders. He nodded, still quite stiff, before turning and leaving.

Tim let out a long breath once he was alone. That confirmed it then, he was definitely getting this kid back to his mom. The next step was to figure out how exactly he was going to do that without either Bruce or Cass catching on. He probably couldn’t even tell Damian his plans, just have to order him to follow when the time was right and bullshit excuses as to why until the boy was back in Talia’s arms.

His thoughts turned to the device that brought him here. With Cass’s help he’d hidden it under the floorboards of his bedroom, but there was no guarantee this evil Bruce wouldn’t randomly do a room inspection. Tim did want to get home, but he had a feeling that with all the drama of this world, his friends and family back home would be doing most of the heavy lifting with that one.

“So…” Twenty two year old Steph of Earth Zero spun idly around in the batcave’s chair. “This Tim is super fucking weird.”

“I still can’t believe he tried to discipline me.” Damian grumbled from beside her. “Not even a genuine attempt to attack, he just wanted to spank me like a child for ‘disrespect’. Utterly bizarre.”

“Yeah his version of your family sounds really messed up. He seems really brainwashed by them too, kept insisting we were all weak and pathetic even as we locked his ass up.” Steph took a sip of her energy drink, staring at the photo on the screen, showcasing a very angry Tim glaring at the camera. “Hope Tim’s doing OK with weird super violently patriarchal Bruce. Regular Bruce is bad enough.”

“You say that like you aren’t sitting in his cave.”

“Because his chairs are comfier than Oracle’s.” Steph kept reading through the file. “Any word from either of them by the way?”

“Still looking through options with Zatanna.” Damian let out a small sigh. “It is frustrating. How successfully this stupid amateur magician is evading us.”

“Eh. I give them twenty four more hours tops before Oracle and Batgirl get them.” Steph shrugged. “They’re in Gotham, we know that much. Can’t hide for long here, I’m more worried they’ll end up dead before we track them down.”

“Either way I hope we find a solution quickly.” Damian stood up, stretching as he moved towards the training mats. “I doubt Drake will last long against an evil version of Batman. They probably have him locked up under torture right this second.”

“You think so?” Steph hummed thoughtfully. “Knowing Tim, I feel like he’s probably unionized all his siblings against Batman.”

“You have far too much faith in him.” Damian smirked. “If anything I bet he’s loving it. A universe where he gets to hit me whenever he likes? Where Jason is locked up and it’s just himself, Cassandra and Grayson? It sounds like Drake paradise to me.”

“Except for the part where Bruce is violently abusive to all of you.”

“Yes. Except for that.”

There was silence in the cave. Steph switched to the profile on their mysterious magic user behind the Tim swap, scrolling through all the data they had so far.

“Do you really think he’s doing alright?”

Steph paused. Damian almost sounded worried, which coming from him was practically a confession of deep concern over Tim’s wellbeing.

“Of course he is.” She grinned at him, hiding any doubts of her own behind the smile. “Let's face it, Tim’s probably having the time of his life coming up with elaborate plans to defeat evil Bruce.”

Tim looked down at the paper in front of him. An hour of writing, he was so close to being done. There was just one last question left to solve, and he’d be free.

Suppose a 6 ft tall man has a shadow of length 4 ft on a sunny day.

Suppose, also, that a tall building has a shadow of length 30 ft.

How tall is the building?

Yeah, he really had not missed high school math at all.

Chapter Text

Tim knew the whole fake kidnapping thing would have more consequences than just angering Bruce. There was no way Bruce would be content to simply… let that happen. He just didn’t expect the consequences to be quite so immediate. 

But when he walked into the canteen on day two of redoing high school, he saw that it was no longer just him and Stephanie. Cass was waiting for him at a table with Duke, both glaring at each other.

“So just to be clear.” Tim set his lunch tray down beside his sister. “Neither of you go here, right?”

“I’m your bodyguard.” Cass said, as if that explained everything.

“And I’m here as Steph’s backup.” Duke responded, arms crossed.

Tim wondered why on earth Duke was considered decent back up against Cass when he was fourteen and didn’t even have his powers yet. He had a feeling the decision to send him was primarily about who could pass as a student, which ruled out most of the Birds of Prey. 

“You make it sound like Steph and I are going to start punching each other in the middle of the cafeteria.” Tim tried for a laugh which instantly fell flat. “Seriously, this is overkill from both Bruce and Babs.”

“Careful about criticizing him.” Steph took a sip of her soda, deliberately not making eye contact. “He’s definitely going to be spying on us using any available camera, probably trying to lip read everything we say. Don’t say something that will give him an excuse to beat you.”

“How do we know this one won’t just narc?” Duke nodded at Cass with disgust, who stared back impassively. “We all know she worships the ground he walks on.”

“This is… sad.” Cass replied, turning to Tim. “Why even try? They have already decided how they feel. About me. About you. About Bruce.”

Tim took a bite of his burger, chewing it slowly. Despite the tension in the air both he and Steph were doing a pretty good job enjoying their lunch.

“Cass,” He brought his hand up to his mouth, pretending to wipe some sauce away. “How can I speak without Bruce seeing?”

He watched her eyes dart around, taking in every available camera.

“Turn your chair. To the left. Just a little.”

Tim did so, waiting until she gave a subtle nod. He grinned in thanks, watching as everyone followed suit.

“So Duke, fun fact: You actually have superpowers.” Tim popped a french fry into his mouth. “In my universe they get triggered when you’re seventeen. I wasn’t actually there for it but apparently the Joker triggered your power and then Bruce used it to accidentally unleash a dark multiverse.”

There was a stunned silence at the table. Tim ate another french fry.

“Believe it or not he is actually a good Batman. That was just… not his finest moment.”

“How do I get superpowers here?” Duke leaned forward, staring carefully at Tim. “What triggers it?”

“Specific metal. In our universe it was a dagger belonging to the wizard Shazam. You touched it and boom, light powers.”

“Light powers, huh?” Duke had a familiar grin on his face, one where he wasn’t sure if Tim was bullshitting or not but was willing to play along for the fun of it. “That’s one hell of a bombshell to drop.”

“Well I won’t be here forever.” Tim shrugged. “Once my other self is back you’ll still have to keep fighting the good fight. So you’ll need all the advantages you can get.”

“Wow.” Duke’s grin grew a little wider. “I think I like you Tim. If you’re evil, you’re at least being fun about it. The rest of your family should take notes.”

Cass let that slide with a simple shrug of acceptance. Not towards the family being evil, Tim assumed, but towards her own inherent evilness. It irked him, just how badly this Bruce had reinforced the unhealthy self loathing that had driven Tim’s own Cass to attempt suicide once upon a time.

“So is this going to be a permanent thing?” Tim turned to ask Cass, trying to keep his tone free of judgement. “Bruce sending you to shadow me at school in case Steph decides to kidnap me again?”

Cass shrugged. Which Tim took to mean that it wasn’t up to her.

“Great.” He sighed. “Well there could be worse bodyguards. You, at least, know my big secret. And you won’t tell, right?”

Cass nodded.

“How badly do you think he’s going to beat you?” Steph cut across abruptly, eyeing Cass with surprising intensity. “You know, once he finds out that you’ve been lying about Tim? Because the longer this goes on for, the more pissed he’ll be when he finds out.”

Cass hummed thoughtfully, reaching over to steal some of Tim’s fries.

“I think…” She said slowly. “He will either use a suit to make it hit harder than usual. Or just… endurance. Wear me down until I cry.”

An uncomfortable silence fell on the table. Tim felt a knot of tension grow in his stomach. Cass ate another fry, entirely unbothered.

“Either way I can take it.” Her eyes flashed with something Tim didn’t understand as she looked at Stephanie. “You know I can.”

“That’s the fucking problem Cassie.” Steph’s laugh was utterly devoid of joy. “That’s the whole fucking problem.”

They finished their lunch with civil small talk, careful not to say anything that actually meant something. Cass and Duke both disappeared immediately afterwards, apparently not under orders to shadow them for the rest of the day. But even with them gone, the knot in Tim’s stomach didn’t lessen at all.

Tim hated it when his instincts were right. 

Standing outside the school grounds in front of an Aston Martin, wearing a suit and a bright fake smile that had all the mothers swooning, Bruce Wayne’s eyes zoomed onto Tim the second he emerged from the school entrance.

Behind him, Steph froze.

“Stay calm.” Tim said quietly. “Just smile and act normal.”

He led the way over, matching Bruce’s fake grin with one of his own.

“Hey dad!” Tim cringed internally as he spoke. “What brings you to my neighbourhood?”

“Had some free time.” Bruce’s self deprecating chuckle was so well acted that Tim found it creepier than angry abusive Batman. “Thought I’d check in and get to know your new friend a bit more. This must be Stephanie, right?”

Stephanie, who had been slowly moving in the other direction, stopped and sighed. But when she turned to face Bruce it was with the same angry cheer Tim had seen directed at himself during their first meeting.

“It’s been a while, Mr Wayne.” Her grin turned slightly vicious. “Bet you thought you’d seen the last of me, huh?”

Bruce’s eyes flashed ice for a second, but his relaxed grin never wavered.

“I’m happy you’re still around Stephanie.” He sounded so sincere, if Tim didn’t know any better he’d believe Bruce meant it. “You know, seeing you move on from my daughter right to my son, many folks would have some unsavory things to say about you. But I know it’s not like that, you’re a good kid.”

The sharpness in both of their fake smiles could cut through pure steel. Tim tried to take his own advice and stay calm. He was supposed to be on Bruce’s side here, he couldn’t defend Steph or Bruce would grow suspicious. The best thing to do would be to shut up, let it play out, and trust Steph to handle herself.

Maybe this was how his other self always felt. Just quietly watching Bruce do his thing, unwilling to actually stand up to him. Tim really did not enjoy the sensation, even though he knew his plan with Damian was too important to risk over something like this.

“Thanks Brucie.” Steph said in the end. “You know it’s funny, when I was little Jason was the one I had a crush on, such a tragedy how these things work out right? So sad Timmy and Cass never got to meet him.”

“He would have been a wonderful brother.” Bruce agreed, facade not cracking in the slightest. “But anyways, I was wondering if I could give you a lift home?”

“Oh geez, that's really nice of you to offer.” Steph said, hooking one thumb into her backpack. “But I was actually going to get Batburger with Tim after school, right Tim?”

“Uh…” Tim glanced at Bruce, who moved his chin down slightly. “Yeah, that was the plan.”

“Well no problem then.” Bruce grinned, light and breezy and utterly fake but convincing to anyone who didn’t actually know him. “I’ll just join you!”

The knot in Tim’s stomach tightened even more.

Bruce’s cheer faded slightly once they were actually seated in the booth, his gaze growing intense. Tim was relieved it wasn’t focused on him, in fact he may as well have been part of the wallpaper for all the attention Bruce was paying to him. His ire was focused entirely on Stephanie, who slurped up her milkshake seemingly without a care in the world.

“Do you know they sell the blonde girl Robin here too?” She grinned, and Tim watched as Bruce’s jaw tightened. “Apparently collectors don’t consider it the full set unless you’ve got all five. Personally I think they should add the We are Robin kids in as limited edition Robins, but it might be harder to make an action figure of them considering half of them don’t wear masks.”

“You must really love that Robin.” Bruce said coldly. “Such a shame Batman never actually endorsed her. Reckless kids like her and the We are Robin lot will probably meet an early grave without proper supervision.”

“Actually, Robin’s not my fave.” Steph waved her straw casually in Bruce’s direction, and Tim shrank further into the wall. “It’s Red Hood.”

Silence, and not a pleasant one. Tim thought he was doing a really good job pretending to be his alternative, nervous self. It helped that the fear he felt was genuine.

“Red Hood.” Bruce raised an eyebrow. “The criminal?”

“The vigilante.” Steph corrected with a nasty smirk. “Shows up, messes up all of Batman’s shit, pokes holes in his logic and actually gets things done. My theory is Batman grew too scared of becoming obsolete, so he took Red Hood out before he could overshadow him.”

“Red Hood is a murderer.”

“He kills criminals.” Steph leaned closer, and Tim was terrified for a second that Bruce would slap her. “Other murderers, drug dealers… abusers. I mean, who wouldn’t want to see abusive pieces of shit dead and buried? I just wish he’d gotten Batman too before disappearing.”

Tim grew conscious of how isolated they were. The diner was near empty, and their table was far away from all other employees. No one was around to overhear their conversation, or to sweat alongside Tim as Bruce’s glare grew sharper.

“I don’t like your attitude.” Bruce sounded both condescending and furious. “In fact, I don’t want you around my children at all anymore. Not with views like that. Tim is a good child, and while I’m sure your drugged up whore of a mother is fine letting her daughter cheer on mass murder, I want better for my son. Stay away from him, or there will be consequences.”

“Calling someone else a whore when you’ve slept with how many women?” Steph snorted. “I mean, where’s Damian’s mom? How’s she doing these days? Seems like you’re throwing stones in glass houses.”

“Enough.” Bruce’s voice dropped an octave, and Tim resisted the urge to get more distance between them, his bruised left cheekbone aching with the memory of Bruce’s fury. “You almost ruined my daughter, and now you kidnapped my son in order to try and fill his head with lies. You are a reckless little fool who confuses justice with personal anger, no different from a common criminal apart from your arrogance. You think Oracle can protect you? Keep pushing and you won’t make it home tonight to your mother. You’ll spend the rest of your days rotting in a cell, and I’ll personally ensure they throw the book at you.”

He was serious too, Tim could tell. He didn’t know if Bruce fully thought through the consequences of his threat, but he meant it regardless. It must not have been the first time Steph faced his wrath though, because she just gave a tiny little smirk and raised her eyebrow.

“Again with the hypocrisy. So you want to try and what, arrest me for kidnapping? Because kidnapping is bad, right? That’s what you’re getting at. So maybe since I saw the error of my ways and let Tim go, you could practice what you preach and let Jason go too? Because if you do arrest me I’ll have to repent and tell them everything I know, including how my good friend Tim’s dad is a fucking scumbag of a man who has his own son kidnapped in the basement like a perverted horror movie villain.”

“Mouthy little bitch.” Bruce hissed, and that actually did make Tim jump slightly. “You may be able to say what you like about my family now, but Batman will remember this. Seeing as there’s no parental guidance in your life willing to step up and smack that nasty grin off your face, no one willing to teach you respect , he’ll have to do it in their place.”

“Charming.” Steph grimaced, and Tim would almost buy her breezy act if he couldn’t see her fists clenched under the table. “Well I’ll let you guys pay the tab, seeing as you’re rich and also you made me listen to all that bullshit. See you around Tim.”

Tim waved goodbye, carefully keeping his eyes on Bruce. The man took a deep breath. Then another. Then a third.

“Let’s go.” Bruce stood abruptly. “You have homework to do.”

If this was Tim’s Bruce, he would speak up, would call Bruce out on his anger and tell him that he’d crossed several lines.

But this wasn’t Tim’s Bruce, so for obvious reasons, he stayed quiet and did what he was told.

The sun had set when Stephanie Brown’s phone buzzed with a new text.

Unknown Number (08.11pm): I meant what I said. Stay away from my family. Oracle will not be enough to protect you next time.

Stephanie Brown (08.12pm): And I meant what I said. Go fuck yourself you hypocritical sack of shit. Let Jason go and stop trying to bully me. Grown man texting a teenager, it’s pathetic. 

Unknown Number (08.15 pm): You really have no fear of me. Criminals should not be so confident when it comes to Batman.

Unknown Number (08.17 pm): I don’t think I punished Cassandra enough for emboldening you like this. It seems the consequences are worse than I thought.

Stephanie Brown (08.19 pm): You’re a monster. An actual animal who should have been put down years ago.

Unknown Number (08.23 pm): It was her responsibility to discourage you and yet look at this sort of language. Yes, I definitely wasn’t harsh enough on her with the initial punishment.

Stephanie Brown (08.30 pm): Whatever you do to her, just know that one day I will pay you back for every single lash, slap and act of violence you’ve inflicted on her. Your power over her won’t last forever and when it crumbles I will be there to make you reap every bit of misery you’ve sown.

Unknown Number (08.45 pm): Goodnight Stephanie. Think long and hard about whether your behaviour today was worth it.

Stephanie blocked his number. She screenshotted the texts and sent them to Barbara. Then she lay down and tried very hard not to think about what he was probably doing to Cassandra right that second.

She had school in the morning. Crying herself to sleep would make her face all puffy.

Homework actually wasn’t that bad to Tim. He’d never made it this far back home in terms of the high school curriculum, so it was kind of fun testing himself and seeing if he could answer every question well. Like fun little low stakes riddles.

He got so engrossed in completing all his work he only noticed how much time had passed when his stomach began to growl. Stretching in his chair and wincing at the aches, he stood up and made his way into the kitchen.

His plan was just to go and grab some ramen noodles, but that changed when he noticed Damian curled up under the table. He didn’t look injured, but alarm bells started ringing in Tim’s head all the same.

“Hey kid.” He crouched down. “What’s going on?”

Damian looked up at him, tears in his eyes and anger on his face.

“They’re fighting in the cave again.”

Well shit. That didn’t sound good.

“Bruce and Cass?” Tim questioned, panic increasing as Damian nodded. “Fuck.”

He stood up, surprised when Damian scrambled out after him. Together they raced towards the cave entrance. Tim felt a buzzing behind his eyes as he rode the elevator down. He didn’t know what Cass and Bruce ‘fighting’ meant but he was going to find out. And if it was as bad as he feared then maybe he’d have to push the timeline on his Damian escape plan forward, throw in a little improvisation involving his bo staff and Bruce’s head.

The elevator doors opened. Tim heard Cass’s voice immediately, desperate and begging. He saw them a second later, Bruce’s hand around her throat once again. 

Tim saw red. He was halfway towards the locker containing his staff before it actually hit him what was going on. Bruce wasn’t strangling Cass, not this time. His face was unsympathetic, distant. He kept trying to pull his hand away, but Cass kept it pressed there, eyes frantic and teary.

“Please.” She kept saying, over and over. “Please I’m sorry, don’t do it. Let me make it right.”

Tim paused. He glanced at Damian, who was still shadowing him, looking both incredibly uncomfortable and ready to cry again.

“I’ve given you chance after chance Cassandra.” Bruce’s voice wasn’t full of rage as Tim had expected, instead it was cold and calculating. “You told me you could handle Stephanie Brown. Now she’s worse than ever. I’ve punished and forgiven you over and over again because I do believe we share the same values, but at this point I’m wondering if I’m deluding myself.”

“No!” Tim felt nauseous as Cass pressed Bruce’s fingers tighter against her throat. “No please. Punish me. All the anger you’re feeling, it’s my fault. Take it out on me.”

“Maybe Stephanie is right.” Bruce wrenched his hand away. “Maybe you’re just not made for this life the way I thought you were, and the best thing I could do would be to let you go.”

“Please.” Cass sobbed, and Tim stepped closer, ready to jump in and stop it. “Please don’t give up on me. Please. I can do better, be better. Just… give me the chance. Hit me, teach me. I can learn to be good, I promise.”

Bruce inhaled slowly, staring at her contemplatively. Tim had no doubt he was aware his two youngest children were watching now, but he kept his eyes solely focused on Cass. He would expect Tim and Damian to stay out of the way, as they always did. That gave Tim the element of surprise, so if he could just-

Something hit him in the side of the jaw, silent and quick. He felt his body go numb. His eyes darted to the side to see Damian there, looking both scared and determined. Had the kid just nerve striked him? Why?

Damian began pulling Tim away, and Tim let him, not really able to fight back with his limbs mostly dead. That was a Cass technique, he hadn’t known Damian was capable of it in this world. 

“Very well.” He heard Bruce say. “That Brown girl is going to get herself killed, and we both know it. Her blood will be on your hands, and every time I see her drifting closer to the edge and growing more reckless, I will punish you for it. If that doesn’t sound right or fair to you, tell me now. If you agree with Stephanie Brown that this is abuse, and not a mutual understanding between a parent and their child, then say the word and I will never touch you again.”

Say it. Tim thought desperately, unable to speak thanks to Damian’s blow. Tell him he’s being manipulative and evil and that Steph talking shit to his face is not something he should take out on you.

But it was Cass, who’s self worth issues in both worlds ran to levels so deep and twisted that Tim had never been able to fully understand. So instead of telling Bruce to shove it, she smiled in relief. Grateful tears in her eyes as he grabbed her by the neck and threw her against the wall, shouting about incompetent children being encouraged by bad influences. Tim felt himself try to scream as Bruce backhanded Cass hard enough that he heard a crunch. And still she looked up to their father with a smile, nodding in encouragement for him to let his anger out even further. Damian flinched with every blow, but he kept determinedly dragging Tim back towards the elevator.

“You’re an adult Cassandra.” He heard Bruce say as the elevator doors opened again. “So for your actual punishment I will give you the respect you deserve and offer you a choice. Flogged until you fall unconscious or a week in the box. Decide now or I will choose both.”

Tim made one last attempt to run back, in his mind he pictured himself jumping on Bruce’s head, biting and scratching until the man couldn’t see or speak anymore. But Tim’s limbs remained numb and unmoving, and the elevator doors shut before he could hear Cass’s reply.

“I’m sorry.” Damian said quietly. “Cassandra told me to. She said you might try to intervene and ordered me to stop you if it came to that.”

Of course she had. Stupid body language reading older sisters, too protective for their own good. Tim tried moving his jaw. The muscles hurt slightly, but he was able to feel them again which was good. With the elevator shut and Bruce and Cass no longer in front of him, the pounding in Tim’s ears was easing, and he could feel himself thinking clearly again.

“It’s alright.” He rasped out. “It was a good call on her part. Trying to get in the way of that would have probably made it worse.”

Damian studied him carefully, and Tim was reminded that for all his youth and stature, Damian was highly intelligent in many ways. Maybe he should be trying to sound more like an asshole, like other Tim.

“Why did you try to intervene?” Damian questioned him sharply. “You never have before. Was this somehow your fault and is she shielding you again ?”

“Yes and no.” Tim sighed, slouching down against the elevator wall now that his arms were working. “Not exactly my fault but I felt guilty about it. I didn’t want to see her get hurt.”

“But… interfering in a punishment? That’s not like you.” Damian frowned suspiciously. “Nor is your acceptance of me hitting you, even if I was following orders. You should be demanding I let you punish me right this second, not acting so… calm .”

“Well maybe I don’t want to punish you!” Tim snapped. “Maybe I’m tired of all the violence, OK? Hitting you just doesn’t bring me the joy it used to, I guess.”

Damian fell quiet, still studying Tim carefully. When the elevator opened he followed Tim out, then trailed him all the way back to Tim’s bedroom. Clearly, he wasn’t going to just let this go. Tim used the walk to his room to decide just how much he wanted to tell Damian, how much he was willing to risk. The boy obviously was not a Bruce fan, but he couldn’t hide his emotions as well as Cass could when needed.

“Alright.” He sat on his bed, looking up at his little brother leaning against the wall. “You want to know the truth Damian? I’ve been feeling off ever since that night a few days ago when I overslept.”

“The one where Father punished you for acting out on patrol.”

“Yep, that’s the one.” Tim grimaced at the memory. “He actually ran a scan on me, said that there was weird activity in my brain, almost like a stroke. He didn’t seem too worried about it so I’m assuming it’s not fatal or like, mind control or whatever. But yeah, if you think I’m acting weird that’s probably why. I don’t like seeing Bruce hit you or Cass, and I definitely don’t want to hit you myself. Don’t ask me why I suddenly flipped like this because I don’t have a good answer. I just know the thought of what’s going on downstairs right now makes me want to throw up.”

“You and me both.” Damian scoffed, but his stare was less suspicious. “So what are you saying, Timothy? You’ll never punish me again?”

“I can’t promise that.” Tim never would but he didn’t know about his other self. “But I’m going to try and do better. Try to be better. You deserve a decent big brother, and the more I think about it, the more it feels like I’ve been failing you.”

Damian swallowed, looking torn between hope and fear.

“You understand why I find that hard to believe.” He responded at last. “You do sound highly mind controlled right now.”

Tim laughed, flopping back against his pillow. He’d mixed as much truth as he was comfortable sharing into his explanation. If it got Damian to stop acting so jumpy around him, he’d take a little suspicion of brainwashing. It wasn’t like the kid was exactly wrong about Tim sounding different. Just wrong about the cause.

He’d explain everything soon. He just needed to get Damian to safety first, and then he could tell him the whole story.

Soon. It had to be soon. 

Because Tim wasn’t sure if he could take another day of this family horror show.

She and Tim avoided each other at school the next day. It was for the best. Anything he said about what happened at the manor would just make Steph angrier, and she had no useful update to give him that was worth risking more of Bruce’s evil bullshit.

She expected radio silence from the whole fucked up family. But in the evening her phone once again rang with a text from an unknown number.

Unknown Number (08.45 pm): Hello this is Damian. I am sorry to bother you but I don’t know who else to ask. I don’t trust the internet and I know your mother has medical knowledge. How long can someone be unconscious before it turns into a coma?

Stephanie Brown (08.50 pm): First of all, if this is Bruce pretending to be Damian to fuck with me, I will genuinely blow you up on your next patrol. I don’t care if Oracle kicks me out of the Birds and sends me to jail. I will blow you up and scatter the ashes.

Stephanie Brown (08.51 pm): If you are actually Damian just ignore that. How long has she been unconscious for?

Unknown Number (08.53 pm): Approximately twenty three hours.

Unknown Number (08.54 pm): I was not there when she initially fell unconscious but I found her moments afterwards and carried her to our medical bay. 

Stephanie Brown (08.57 pm): I’m not going to sugar coat this kiddo. If she’s actually unconscious and not just sleeping that’s a bad sign. Normally more than 30 minutes unconscious is a sign of bad brain injury. A full day means severe head trauma. 

Stephanie Brown (08.59 pm): But as much as I hate the guy I don’t think your dad would risk giving her brain injuries like that. My guess is it’s a freaky Cass thing where her body deliberately put itself into a coma to heal.

Unknown Number (09.05 pm): I see. So if this is outside the norm for the human body then I assume you don’t have any idea when she might wake up.

Stephanie Brown (09.07 pm): I’m sorry Dami. If the coma wasn’t medically induced then I don’t think anyone but Cass knows when she’ll wake up.

Stephanie Brown (09.10 pm): But listen, if things get bad without her there then don’t hesitate to come hide at my place. It’s what she would want.

Unknown Number (09.12 pm): Thank you. I apologize for disturbing you.

Stephanie Brown (09.15 pm): Anytime kid. I mean that. You’re most certainly not the one who needs to apologize for this.

Unknown Number (09.17 pm): It’s not your fault either. No matter what Father says. 

Unknown Number (09.18 pm): Goodnight

Well. At least Stephanie knew she definitely wasn’t talking to Bruce. Even as a ploy he wouldn’t be willing to admit that.

Fuck, she really hoped this Tim was genuine about being from another universe. Because if something didn’t change soon, Bruce might really end up going too far and killing one of those poor kids. 

And given everything she knew, Damian was one most at risk. 

So. Things weren’t going as smoothly as Tim hoped. Cass was unconscious and not waking up, Bruce was snapping at Damian a whole lot more without her there as a buffer, and Tim wasn’t even sure he could ever talk to Steph in school again without Bruce somehow finding out and using it against him. 

But there was one good side. One positive in this whole grim situation that he did his best to focus on. 

(Because if he thought of Jason locked away, of Cass lying silently on the fold out bed in the cave, of Damian curled up on the chair next to her and flinching every time Bruce came close, well then Tim would simply scream until he had no more energy left. And then cry. And neither of those reactions were productive.)

Bruce announced after school that Tim was officially cleared for patrol. His injuries were deemed sufficiently healed. Tim doubted Bruce had any actual medical authority and most doctors would not be on board with his assessment but for once, Tim agreed with the bastard. He was ready to get back out and patrol. 

With Cass still unconscious and also completely brutalized, something Tim should have found a way to stop but- No. Don't go down that path. As unhelpful as crying right now. 

With Cass out of commission Bruce was patrolling with Damian and letting Tim fly solo. Which meant for once, he had a chance to really make progress with his scheming. Not as civilian Tim Drake, but as Red Robin. All the tech, weapons and camouflage he could hope for.

Taking Bruce Wayne down was one thing. Taking Batman down was a whole other kettle of fish. But he wasn't alone here, not anymore. The Birds of Prey were in Gotham too, and tonight with entire city at his disposal, he'd be able to find ways to reach out to them that not even Bruce could detect. 

“Alright you weird unsettling version of the city I know and love.” Red Robin twirled his bo staff, eyeing the bustling streets below him. “Let's see what you can do for me.”

Chapter Text

For the first two hours of the night, Tim focused on patrolling normally. From what he had pieced together, Bruce gave more leeway to those he trusted enough to patrol solo. This meant Tim could choose his own patrol routes and make snap decisions, hopefully without getting punched in the face by his father once he was back in the cave.

With Cass unable to patrol, Damian was with Bruce, which made him the one expected to adhere to Bruce’s strict standards tonight instead of Tim. It was a bittersweet relief, that Tim would have more leeway to sneak around but it would come at the cost of Damian being more at risk of his father’s violent ire.

Even with the freedom, Tim knew he couldn’t deviate too much right away without drawing suspicion. So he stopped a robbery, a mugging, another robbery, and then took a short break on top of a skyscraper to think about his next move. 

He knew the dead zones of his own Gotham, areas Oracle and Batman had been trying to get consistent surveillance of for years only to find security cameras constantly torn down. He didn’t know the surveillance layout of this Gotham though. Some areas could be Barbara’s, some could be Bruce’s, without some sort of map he would have to assume nowhere was safe.

Luckily, Tim did have a map.

Due to the lack of Oracle, the bat tech was run by Bruce and Tim. This meant that on Tim’s Waynetech batpad, he had access to all the usual data Oracle in his world would handle. There was a lot to shift through, and Tim was mildly surprised by how much this Bruce seemed to trust him with, but after a few minutes of poking around he found what he was looking for: An interactive map of the city with every surveillance feed they were currently tapped into labelled. Some were coloured a familiar green on the interactive map, a warning that they weren’t the only ones looking through those particular eyes. Some were pure black, which Tim assumed meant that they were exclusive to the Bats. 

And there were also blind spots. Exactly what Tim was looking for. 

His first attempt was between the river and Gotham University, a bunch of run down apartments that were mostly empty. He wandered around there for a bit, but when nothing happened he came to the conclusion that this was a blind spot for both sets of vigilantes.

His second attempt was deeper in what he considered Bat territory. Across the river down south and near to the Beacon Tower. There was a small blind spot on the map Tim had, and if he knew Barbara Gordon she wouldn’t hesitate to use such a valuable spot to her advantage.

He entered a warehouse, jumped up on a random crate, and kicked his legs idly. It took two minutes, but finally Tim grinned in satisfaction as the speakers in the roof came alive.

“Hello Tim.”

“Hey Oracle.” It was so nice to hear Babs' robotic Oracle voice again while in his Red Robin costume. He missed having her just a phone call away. “Thought I’d take a break from the bat patrol and see if there was anything I needed to know.”

“Talia is in town.” Well that was a surprise, Tim hadn’t expected them to make contact so quickly. “ She wants to talk to you, face to face. She’s waiting in the abandoned water tubes between the city and Wayne Manor.”

“Do you think I should go?”

 “ I have the Birds distracting Batman right now and a rumoured Killer Croc sighting in the area that you can use as an explanation if he asks you what you were doing.”

“Perfect.” Tim was so, so grateful that this universe still had Oracle. “Alright then, I’ll head over there and talk to her. Thanks, Babs.”

Silence. Tim winced. Right, his other self would probably never call her that.

“You’re welcome.” It was probably a delusion, but Tim imagined her robotic voice sounded a bit softer. “Keep yourself safe, Tim.”

“I’m a vigilante.” He pushed himself off the crate, twirling his staff as he moved towards his motorcycle he’d fondly christened Redbird 2.0. “Safety is kind of hard to come by.”

He couldn’t see it, but wherever she was based right now, he liked to imagine Babs rolling her eyes fondly at his bravado.

Tim’s on his way. Time to do what you do best.

Steph chuckled at the text Babs sent her, firing back one of her own before jumping to the next rooftop.

Annoying Batman isn’t what I do best. It’s just something I do exceptionally well.

Babs sent a reply, but Steph didn’t have time to read it. She’d reached her destination, and she had to have complete focus now if she didn’t want to end up bruised and in a cell. Batman and Robin were on the roof opposite her. Batman’s ugly glare was visible from this distance, while Robin just looked carefully neutral. It was about what Steph had expected, given the pointed bat ears and purple and black uniform she had on right now.

“Hey B.” Steph grinned and waved. “You like my costume tonight? I figured since your Batgirl was going to be out of commission I’d fill in. Harder to get away with hitting a random kid who has other adults looking out for her than your own isolated daughter, right?”

“Stephanie!” Bruce barked. “Do you really care so little for Cassandra that you would provoke me so soon? I thought your entire foundation for your hatred of me was presumed care for her wellbeing?”

The fury was burning inside her, itching to charge over and knock his teeth out. But Oracle’s cool voice was also in the back of her mind, reminding her to stay focused. They were counting on her to bait him, not the other way around.

“I can see why you spend most of your time abusing lonely kids!” She yelled across the rooftops. “Your manipulation tactics suck! They have to be pretty damn detached from any normal person to fall for that bullshit. Newsflash Batbitch, I didn’t make you beat your daughter, you chose to do that because you’re a villain! Hypocritical scumbag, do you think your parents would be proud of how you turned out? Did your daddy smack you around too or is that something you learned all by yourself?”

Shit, definitely went a little too far there at the end. Bruce leapt across the roof towards her, and Steph took off, sprinting away from him. He was faster, but she was more agile, and she knew this area better. Damian caught up to her before Bruce did, and she jumped over him with a quick pat on the head. It was all the comfort she could give without slowing down or drawing Bruce’s suspicion.

“Oracle?” She tapped her ear. “Back up time. ASAP please.”

An arrow shot past her, halting Bruce as he attempted to swing down onto the fire escape she was currently parkouring down. On the street below, Helena had her crossbow out, one leg on the ground and one leg carefully balanced on her motorbike. Steph jumped down onto the back of it, and they took off.

“Reckon he’ll still follow me?”

“You brought up his dead parents.” Helena replied, eyes on the road. “It’ll be a miracle if we get him to stop chasing us before the sun rises.”

Steph glanced behind her, and sure enough, Batman’s silhouette could be seen swinging towards them, with Robin a smaller dot slightly behind.

“I better get extra bat hazard pay for this.” She grumbled.

“We don’t get paid at all.” Was Helena’s reply, before she took a sharp turn to the left in an attempt to shake their tail. “Unless it’s something big, anyways. Are you in the mood for a Markovian mob heist after this?”

“Absolutely fucking not. I’ve got school tomorrow.”

It was probably just the dim lighting of the pipes, but Tim’s first impression of this world’s Talia was similar to Jason in some ways. Gaunt, haunted eyes, still elegant and with perfect posture, but with an air of sadness around her that hung heavy enough to lessen the charismatic beauty Tim was more familiar with. She was still gorgeous, but she looked so desperately in need of a hug that it wasn’t an intimidating kind of beauty like his world’s Talia.

On the bright side, she didn’t seem anywhere near as unhinged as this world’s Jason.

“Red Robin.” She greeted him. “Oracle has told me quite a story.”

“It’s all true.” Tim placed his bo staff against the sewer wall, a small gesture of trust to get them started. “I’m from another dimension, Bruce doesn’t know, and I want to use that to get Damian away from him.”

She lit a cigarette, throwing more light into the dark tunnel while also increasing the sharpness of the shadows around them. Tim didn’t know if his own Talia smoked, but it definitely suited the general bleak aura of this world.

“You understand that it is hard to believe.” She said. “I have been fighting and failing to free my son for over two years now, and suddenly you have this fantastical story and claim you can do so.”

“I know it’s ridiculous. But it’s the truth.” Tim shrugged. “And you’re here for a reason. We both want Damian away from Bruce, what have you got to lose by letting me try?”

She studied him closely. It felt a little like Cass, only less fluent reading of body language and more general assassin reading of little tells and hints of deception. He kept his posture relaxed. Talia was deadly when she wanted to be, but he had nothing to fear from her right now.

“In this other world you’re from, does Damian exist there too?”

“He does.” Tim nodded. “My Bruce is… better. In many ways. You brought him to Bruce when he was ten, and he’s been living with us ever since. You do see him though, whenever you want to really. You just move around a lot for work, so Gotham is more stable for him to live in.”

Tim knew he was oversimplifying pretty much everything about the al Ghuls of his world, but there really was no point getting into how she’d given Damian up for adoption, how Ra’s had taken him back without her knowing, how she’d found out when Damian was older and already a part of the League, how she’d broken free from Ra’s and taken down Lex Luthor only to be brainwashed by her sister and end up right back in charge of the League, and how Damian had eventually ended up caught in the crossfire between Batman and Leviathan, and died as a result. That was only like, the first eleven years of Damian’s life, and it already felt like something Tim needed a PowerPoint for complete with a timeline and photo references.

“I am… glad. To hear that.” Talia flicked her cigarette onto the ground. “It is a relief to know there is one universe where my love for Batman is not a curse, but a blessing.”

Tim nodded again, not trusting his voice to respond to that. He kind of felt slimy now for all the oversimplification, because his world’s Bruce and Talia were anything but sunshine and rainbows. But they were still better than this universe, and that was all that mattered in the end.

“How did you end up with him?” He asked. “I mean, I’ve only known the guy for a few days and he’s already shown himself to be a monster. I get how in my universe you fell for him, but how did that happen here?”

Talia mirrored his posture, leaning against the wall. There was a slight hint of wistfulness in her gaze that Tim didn’t know what to make of.

“Back when I first met him, he was very good at being a hero.” She started. “I wanted freedom from my father, from his ideals that I no longer fully believed. I do not know what Bruce saw in me, but I know what I projected onto him. Every time he went up against my father I ended up helping him, and the more it happened the more things between us grew… intimate.”

Tim grimaced. Gross.

“My father respected Batman’s strength. He pushed for marriage, Batman negotiated, in the end they agreed. In part because my father wanted a suitable heir, in part because he wanted Batman’s assistance against his enemies. Either way, they put aside their differences and we got married. I let myself believe for a little while that this was what true happiness was.”

Running the calculations in his head, Tim tried to place Talia’s story against the timeline he was familiar with. They’d met in his world back when Dick was Robin. Was that the case here too?

“I moved into Wayne Manor two weeks after the marriage. It was not just myself and my beloved there, he had a son. That was when things changed, or rather, when I saw the truth.”

“Dick Grayson.” Tim whispered.

“Indeed.” Talia sighed. “You must understand, the Batman I knew had been passionate and burning with a desire for justice, full of righteous fury that he doled out to deserving enemies. But with me he was nothing but tender, loving. He was gentle and kind, I assumed he would be that way with his children too.”

Tim’s hand went to his face on instinct, tracing the bruises from his first night in this universe.

“I soon realised that it was not the case. He was harsh with the boy, stricter than the assassins that tutored me as a child. Robin was fourteen when I first moved in. Bruce had a room in the manor with shackles on the wall, and whenever he got displeased with the boy, even if it was for something as simple as backtalk, he would bring him to that room and make him kneel with his hands in those shackles. The first and only time I saw what was going down I almost fled right there and then. The whipping he gave that poor boy, the way he just left him in the room afterwards to “Think about what he’d done.”... When I realised what those punishments consisted of I understood that he was not the man I thought he was. I had married a monster, and to make matters worse I was pregnant with his child.”

“So you ran.”

“I knew I needed to get away before he realised he had another son. I wanted to take the boy with me, but he believed in Bruce. Every punishment he gave him, Dick thought it was fair and earned no matter how barbaric it was. If I told him I was fleeing he would have turned around and warned Bruce. I would have done it if it was just myself, but Damian… I needed to protect him.”

“I understand.” Tim said, and he meant it too. How could he not, when he was planning on doing the exact same thing and prioritising Damian over Jason and Cass? “Thank you for telling me this. I don’t really know much about this universe’s Dick Grayson. I’m just glad he got out in the end, somehow.”

In a twisted way, Tim was almost relieved to hear that Dick had been Bruce’s first victim. A tiny part of him had been terrified that Dick was actually just as evil as Bruce in this universe, and that he’d been an accomplice in roping all the others into Bruce’s web. Tim could sort of handle an evil Batman. An evil Nightwing would break his heart. Or even a Nightwing that had never been abused, and could see the signs in his younger siblings but refused to believe that about Bruce. An extreme enabler, who would prioritize Bruce above all the kids suffering under him. Tim didn’t want to believe that Nightwing could exist, and thankfully he had yet to be proven wrong.

If Talia’s version of events was to be believed, and Tim had no reason to doubt her, then Dick had gone through the exact same thing Cass, Jason, Tim and Damian were currently going through. The only difference was that he had somehow managed to move away from Gotham and live with the Titans without Bruce going ballistic. Maybe it was the fact that Jason had come along to give Bruce a new kid to groom, or maybe it was because Dick sounded like he’d been pretty similar to Cass regarding loyalty.

“He’s not fully out from what I understand.” Talia sighed. “If Bruce asked him anything he’d come running. But I think his team members are good for him. Even if he won’t acknowledge what Bruce did to him as bad, they’re helping him adjust to a healthier home, one where love doesn’t go hand in hand with pain.”

“How do you know so much?” 

Tim didn’t mean to sound so suspicious, but it was kind of weird. Talia didn’t appear offended. She just gave Tim a sad smile.

“I failed him when he was a child. Looking out for him every now and then is the least I can do. I may not have the influence and power Batman and my father do, but I have enough of a network to learn about things I need to. New York is easier to infiltrate than Gotham, believe it or not.”

“That’s… actually pretty believable.” Tim gave his head a tiny shake. “Alright look, I think it’s time we discussed an actual plan. I’m running on a risky timeline here, because while I have the device that brought me here my family are definitely trying to get me back. So I need to get Damian out of here quickly before I get zapped back into my own world, but I also need to make sure Bruce won’t be able to get him back. That part, I have to leave to you. If I get Damian to you, can you disappear?”

“Yes.” Talia said immediately. “Ever since he was taken from me I have been planning what to do if I ever manage to get him back. I have places to hide that not even Superman could find. If you bring him to me, I will make sure that Bruce and my father never see him again.”

“Perfect.” Tim clapped his hands. “In that case, I just need to make sure I can get him away without Bruce finding out. It shouldn’t be too hard to just grab the kid and lead him here, but I want to make sure I have the best plan possible. Give me a week to figure things out. We’ll meet here again, same time same place. I’ll bring Damian, you take him and run.”

Talia lit another cigarette. She studied Tim closely, and this time he had no idea what she was searching for.

“You understand that once you do this, there is no going back.” She said at last. “Bruce will be furious. He won’t be able to find Damian, but he will still be able to find you. If you are to go against him you need to have a plan for yourself as well, otherwise you’ll end up in a cell next to Jason. Or worse.”

“True. Worst case scenario I smack the device that brought me here a bunch of times and hope it gets me home before he catches me.” Tim tried for levity, but Talia’s expression remained serious. “Look, I can handle myself. I know Bruce is terrifying but I’m not planning on sticking around long enough to experience him at his worst. The plan is lots of fucking around, and then zap back home before I can find out.”

It was, perhaps, not the best and most thought out escape method. Judging by Talia’s skeptical gaze she felt the same way. Tim didn’t understand why it mattered so much to her. Maybe she found it harder to believe Tim was telling the truth when his scheming was more about helping Damian than saving himself.

“I don’t know this Bruce.” Tim shrugged helplessly. “I’ve spent a few days with him, but that’s not enough time to fully figure out how to take down the freaking Batman. I want to get Damian out of there because I can’t stand what’s going on in that house, but my main focus beyond that is surviving long enough to fight effectively rather than immediately going on the offensive. As much as I want to just go in guns blazing and burn it all down, I’ve had a taste of the difference in strength between me and Batman. I need to be realistic and practical about this or I won’t be able to accomplish anything at all.”

“Running and hiding would be easier if Batman had less resources.”

Tim squinted. It was hard to make out in the dim light, but Talia’s eyes seemed a little brighter.

“What are you saying?”

“The reason I haven’t been able to get Damian back is because both Bruce and Batman wield massive amounts of power and influence. It’s true that you being on the inside means that you can get Damian away without raising alarms, but it also means that you can do damage to him that no one else can. Take Wayne Enterprises for example. Not a single spy of mine has been able to infiltrate or do damage to that company. But you could probably get any information you want on it. My advice to you for the upcoming week is not to focus solely on this escape plan, but also on how to weaken Bruce when it comes to retaliation.”

“That’s… not actually a bad idea.” Tim hummed thoughtfully. “I was CEO of W.E. back in my world for a bit. Barely understood what was going on half the time, it was mostly jargon and stupid marketing stuff. But you’re right that it could be a way to hurt him. Go big or go home, you know?”

“Indeed.” Talia hesitated, then seemed to steel herself. “Tell me, before we part: How bad is it? What is he doing to my baby?”

Oh. The abrupt subject change caught him off guard, but he probably should have seen this coming. It had most likely been on Talia’s mind ever since they first started talking.

“It’s… not good.” Tim didn’t see the point in sugarcoating it. “He beats us all. A lot. With Damian he’s got this routine scheduled once every two weeks, where he just takes him to his study and whips him for whatever ‘bad behaviour’ he’s done since their last session. And honestly even beside that, I’ve never actually heard him say one nice thing to the kid. It’s just constant walking on eggshells around him. No child deserves to live the way Damian’s currently being forced to.”

Talia closed her eyes. The hand holding her cigarette trembled, shadows flickering dramatically up and down the tunnel walls.

“Thank you for telling me this.” She said at last. “I appreciate your candor.”

“I’ll get him back to you.” Tim said. “I promise. Unless they yank me back into my universe before next week, I’ll get Damian out of there.”

Talia gave a short jerky nod. She pushed herself off the wall, her fingers still shaking as she threw the second cigarette down into the water. Tim watched quietly as she began to walk away. Just before she faded out of sight, she hesitated. Then she turned back around, brown eyes boring directly into Tim’s blue.

“I was a doctor, back when I was raising Damian.” She told him. “I ran a small clinic, it was enough for us to be comfortable. Being a doctor required taking an oath of ethics, a promise to do no harm. Despite my upbringing I am not a violent person, I do not enjoy killing. Before Damian, back with my father, I had to do so more than once in order to defend myself. But it was never easy, never pleasant.”

Tim nodded slowly, unsure where this was heading.

“When my child was ripped away from me, I made a promise to myself: That I would only break that oath and kill when I finally got the chance to make Bruce Wayne pay for everything he’s done. I still wish to uphold that promise, there is no one else I despise enough to break that oath for.”

Makes sense. Tim nodded again.

“However,” Talia’s voice grew colder. “In the event that you are lying to me, that this is all a ploy by Bruce to break my spirits even further, I cannot promise that such a reveal would not push me past the edge. I understand that you are a child, a victim of Bruce just like Damian. But today for the first time in years you have given me hope. If your story is not true, if you betray me, rip away that hope and doom my son to a lifetime of abuse from his father, I will kill you. It will not be pleasant, I will not enjoy it, but I will do it.”

Tim swallowed. That… that was rough. Talia was the best option, but she was still dangerous in her own way. He needed to remember that.

“I understand.” He replied. “I can’t guarantee that I’ll still be here in a week, and if Tim does come back and gets all these memories then he’ll probably tell Bruce and ruin everything. But I guess that’s a risk we’ll both have to take.”

She stared at him for a few seconds longer. Then she vanished into the shadows.

Tim let out a slow, deep breath.

“Alright.” He said to the empty, echoing tunnels. “I think that went well.”

A heavy silence. Two cups of tea, both of them drinking in perfect sync. Tim wondered if it was down to Bruce’s training, or just a little quirk they’d picked up after working together as Batgirl and Robin for a solid while now.

Tonight’s mission had been rough. He was still trying to process everything that happened. Having to fight Cass to get free of the Penguin, going so far as to shoot her to fake her death. She was so calm about it now, as if he’d merely pinched her and not put bullets in her.

“It felt good, didn’t it?”

“What?” Tim looked up from his tea.

“Beating me.” Cass clarified. 

“Uh… I didn’t beat you. It was rigged, remember?”

“No.” Cass looked at him with far too much understanding, and Tim needed to get out of there right now. “I mean beating me. It’s okay-”

“No.” Tim cut across quickly. “No. It’s not okay. It’s not okay to feel good about hurting someone else.”

“Why not? If it’s… justified.”

“Violence is a tool-”

“ Tool.” Cass repeated . “ You called me that. And you…meant it. You meant a lot of what you said.”

No running from it now. Tim wondered why he ever thought he could.

“I… I’m sorry. But yes, I did.”

Cass didn’t look upset. Just contemplative.

“You might not want to be Batman, to take over from him when he’s…done. But I do. It’s the only thing I’ve ever… wanted to be. Is that…wrong?”

“No.” Tim stood up, making sure she could see how serious he was. “That’s not what I’m saying. Look, Batman’s mission, his unrelenting devotion to protecting and saving innocent lives is a heroic ideal. But it’s just that. An ideal. Something to live up to, to strive for. It’s not reality. The reality is we all fall short of it. No matter how hard we try. Even him.”

Cass glared at him now, not angrily, but with a stubbornness in her eyes that he’d seen in Bruce’s more times than he could count. 

“But all we can do is… try.”

And on that point, they could agree.

Tim sat beside the cot, looking down at his comatose sister. He didn’t know why that particular conversation from years ago had suddenly entered his mind, but the more he thought about it the sadder he felt. He could remember that it hadn’t ended there, they’d gone on to argue about how Bruce handled the gang war that killed Steph. But it was the first part of their conversation that was stuck in his mind.

“Why not? If it’s… justified.”

“I’m sorry.” He said. “I know you probably won’t fully agree with everything that happens. And I hate that. I hate that every bit of poison you could have absorbed was beaten into you. But I have to do this. I have to try.”

Silence. Cass almost looked peaceful, if you ignored the bruises on her face and neck.

“If you’re going to stop me, speak now. Otherwise I’m just the crazy guy talking to his unconscious sister from another dimension.”

He’d turned off the cameras and mics before sitting down. He’d blame it on Oracle if Bruce asked. Tim didn’t care, he needed this.

“I know I’m only one person. I know this is a huge risk. But Dick’s not here and Jason is broken and you’re… You’re all the parts that exist in my real sister that I don’t like to think too hard about. I’m not scared of you. I know you could kick my ass, but I’m not. I’m scared for you.”

Silence. One cheekbone was swollen and discoloured, the other cut and bleeding. He reached out and brushed her hair off her forehead, careful not to touch any of the bruising.

“I can’t fix everything. But I can do my best. I don’t know if you’ll stop me or help me when you wake up. But either way I’m getting Damian out. I can’t let Bruce dig around in his head, break him beyond repair. Break him the way he’s done to Jason, the way I’m scared he’s done to you.”

No response. Tim stood up, walking over to the computer. On it was a list of all Wayne Enterprise financials, including exactly how much of the budget was going to which area.

“Whatever you decide to do, I can’t worry about that right now.” He sat down at the computer terminal. “I have work to do. And a week to do it.”

He opens the Wayne Enterprises sustainability reports and begins to read through. His world’s Bruce would make sure the company was as ethical as possible. This world’s Bruce? Maybe, maybe not. There was bound to be some dirt here somewhere, even before he touched on the part of the budget that was stolen for Batman tech.

Behind him, the cave remained silent.

Tim got to work.

Chapter Text

He worked on the computer for as long as he dared, and once it got close to Bruce’s return from patrol, Tim downloaded any remaining files he thought looked relevant and restored the security cameras to the cave. He added the camera blackout to his mission report, blaming Oracle. It would seem suspicious not to mention it at all.

The investigation into Wayne Enterprises had been illuminating. There were a few key differences that stood out instantly to Tim, and he was surprised how easily accessible the information was. It was hidden from everyone who didn’t have access to the batcave, but the ease with which he was able to access the files still had his hackles raised. Part of him wondered if Bruce was on to him and this was a trap, but part of him figured this Bruce was just so comfortable showing all his dirty business decisions to his kids because he had full confidence they wouldn’t snitch.

The main thing that caught his attention was how closely tied W.E was to his work as Batman, much closer than in Tim’s universe at this point. It wasn’t even official like Batman Incorporated, it was all carefully worded projects that the stakeholders and relevant employees were given vague and misleading information about. Documents detailing Bruce’s spending on Bat equipment, his effort into finding a Lazarus Pit for his own use, and some terrifying mind control prototypes marketed as ways to reduce criminal aggression… The details were usually in private files while the official documents to the company had enough smoke and mirrors to make it all seem innocent. Research into new innovative drugs, technology, natural resources… all harmless enough unless you knew exactly what Bruce was referring to in the project plan.

So that was one obvious area Tim could hit him on. Expose all the files to the world, let investors see exactly what kind of innovative solutions they were funding, and hope that it would be enough to at least hurt him. 

Tim had been hoping for more Lex Luthor pure evil, but unfortunately (or fortunately for this universe maybe) a lot of the good programs from Tim’s universe were still running here. The charity work, the grants for students, the jobs for ex cons, the high starting salaries and the sustainability projects.

It just didn't sit right with Tim. That Bruce could genuinely care about the world in these more abstract, huge project ways, and then hurt the people closest and most powerless to him. It made his gut twist for reasons he didn’t fully understand.

It took a little more digging to uncover the dirtier side of things beyond the big secret projects. It took some reading between the lines and some extra research in the form of local news, but soon enough a pattern began to emerge when it came to the environmentally friendly work W.E did. Oh the work was legit, farming and resource extraction done with the boldest most environmentally friendly methods possible, but the more he read the more Tim began to notice that most of the land in question hadn’t belonged to the company in the first place. It seemed that whenever a farmer or other material provider was unable to switch business methods due to the risk being too great, Bruce and W.E simply took their land and cut them out of the process. They received some money in compensation of course, but the payouts didn’t look too impressive to Tim. The message was clear: Either jump when Bruce says you jump, or lose everything. No debate or compromise allowed.

Legally, it was all technically in the green. Morally, not so much, hence the large folder detailing all the various ways W.E could sue you for libel, breach of contract, discrimination, ownership of product and breach of fiduciary duty. Sometimes they would even use your own board members against you. It was probably why Tim hadn’t seen a word about any of this in the press, and every interview he could get with past business partners had them vaguely dance around the subject. Combining their words with the internal data, he could piece things together. But to the average civilian or future business partner, Wayne Enterprises was as clean and good as it was in Tim’s universe. 

Two angles to attack Bruce with. It would have to do for now. If he had more free time he could try and recreate some of Babs’s algorithms, scan through the number-heavy finance files looking for any red flags. He’d send it to this world’s Oracle if he thought he could get away with it, but right now that felt like pushing his luck.

It was interesting that despite Bruce's controlling nature he seemed far more confident in his hold over his children than Tim’s own Bruce. All this information was guarded with various bits of security software protecting each file from anyone outside of the cave’s network. But within the cave itself there was so much Tim could just… open and look through, even download it onto his own batpad. Bruce would obviously have questions, and Tim had an excuse already thought up of wanting to plan ahead for his future after school. But compared to Tim’s own Bruce this man seemed highly confident that everything within the cave would stay within the cave, that not a single one of his children would ever leak anything. Tim had no doubt that if he actually sent the files to Oracle from his batpad Bruce would know, but his own Bruce would never let that happen in the first place. He trusted Tim sure, but there were levels to that trust that simply didn’t seem to exist here. Tim checked the security clearances before he left the cave. If you were this Bruce’s kid, he had complete confidence in your subservience to him.

It was as if by upping the strictness he’d reduced his own paranoia, or at least found a more violent outlet for it. As far as coping strategies went Tim gave it zero out of five stars.

But whatever. He only had a few hours left before he had to go to school, and while he probably should be trying to get some sleep there was simply too much in his mind for him to relax. He was brainstorming ways he could convince Bruce to let him patrol with Damian next week, while also wondering how best to leak the documents he’d found to create the biggest explosion for W.E, and finally wondering if he should start looking into how to get home.

The magical device was tucked safely under the floorboards, somewhere Cass had assured him Bruce wouldn’t find back when they were first figuring out what to do. Apparently this universe’s Tim had successfully hidden things there before, which combined with the lack of cameras and bugs in his room gave Tim hope that his alternate self still had a little bit of fighting spirit left in him. 

The easiest way to start planning his journey home was to go back down to the cave, pull up all files on interdimensional travel, and take it from there. But unlike with the W.E files, Tim couldn’t think of a good excuse as to why he’d be interested in them. He was planning on subtly asking Steph at school tomorrow if she could get Oracle to look into it, but outsourcing the whole thing didn’t feel right to him either. His weird reality hopping device, his responsibility. 

He’d start by fully exploring his bedroom, see if this universe’s Tim had any fun devices knocking around that could help. Who knows, maybe he was a secret rebel and Tim would find a stash of weed hidden behind the bookshelf. 

He grimaced as he remembered the video he’d seen of Tim hitting Damian. Yeah, not likely.

His bookshelf turned out to be disappointing, with it mostly being full of high school textbooks. There was a copy of King Lear which he assumed was also for school. The bottom row was the most interesting. There was a collection of Wendy the Werewolf Stalker comics and a copy of The Witcher and that was… pretty much it. But honestly the comics and fiction were a pleasant surprise, Tim had plenty of fantasy books back home but obviously this Tim had less free time to read about a magical dude slicing monsters. Tim was glad his other self had at least some joy beyond the physics and maths and english textbooks.

He tried the drawers next. This Tim didn’t seem like the kind of guy to have anything in there but clothes, but it couldn’t hurt to check right? 

Tim pulled out the first drawer and gave it a quick root around. Basic underwear and socks, nothing else to notice. Second drawer was a bunch of sweaters, third drawer the same but with t-shirts.

Only at the very back of that third drawer, his hand hit something metal. Tim pulled it out, studying the device curiously. It was like a tiny cage, oddly shaped, why would-

Tim dropped it as if it had burned him.

Don’t panic. Don’t. There might be an explanation. It might not be as bad as you think.

He’d never actually seen one before, but Tim was fairly certain he was looking at some sort of chastity device. And the theories his mind was throwing at him as to why this universe’s Tim Drake had one hidden in the back of his drawers…Tim could feel a familiar sickening feeling in his throat.

Calm down. Focus. Analyze.

He was ninety per cent certain what he was looking at was a chastity device. One possibility was that this universe’s Tim had bought it himself, for personal reasons. Maybe he was kinkier as a seventeen year old than Tim had been. Was that a likely possibility? Not really, but it was the nicest one.

The other possibility that stood out to Tim, the one that had him feeling nauseous, was that Bruce was somehow behind this. This would be the point where he’d just find Cass and demand answers, but Cass couldn’t help him right now. 

Luckily, Tim was a detective.

He started with the other Tim’s phone, searching all his contacts for the word “kiss”. The results showed a few conversations from the Young Justice group chat where they’d played kiss marry kill, but more importantly it showed a discussion between Tim and Kon in private, dating back to a year ago:

Tim (02.55 am): So… That thing that happened yesterday. At the base.

Tim (02.56 am): What if I said I liked it and wanted it to happen again?

Kon (02.58 am): You mean when you kissed me? That thing?

Tim (02.59 am): Yes that thing, don’t be a dick.

Kon (03.01 am): Relax Tim. I liked it too. I’d be open to doing it again sometime

Kon (03.02 am): ;)

Tim (03.04 am): Did you seriously just winky face emoji me.

Kon (03.05 am): I’m flirting with you. It’s flirty. You’re charmed.

Tim (03.06 am): So charmed. You can’t see me but I’m swooning right now.

Kon (03.08 am): I know you’re being sarcastic but it doesn’t work when you were blushing scary shades of red yesterday and couldn’t talk without stuttering for like, an hour.

Kon (03.09 am): Which is totally understandable by the way. I’m hot, you’re new to this. It’s cool. I’ll be your Yoda.

Tim (03.10 am): You’ll be an ancient shriveled green alien? Super hot. I’m blushing again just picturing it.

It was wild reading those texts. Not for the actual content, that was just average awkward teen flirting. But the way this universe’s Tim seemed so… normal. It didn’t add up fully with the mental image Tim had in his mind of the nervous wreck who was gung ho about Bruce’s rules to avoid getting in trouble. This guy seemed… functional . Socially speaking, anyways.

Also he’d apparently discovered he was bisexual five years earlier than Tim. There was a lot to process here.

Tim took a breath. Sat down on the bed and stared at the wall with unblinking eyes. 

The bisexuality, the kiss with Kon, he’d have to unpack that later. The primary focus was still determining why the fuck this Tim had a chastity device. He picked the phone back up and kept scrolling. There were a few more days worth of harmless flirty texts and then… finally. A message about Bruce.

Kon (04:36 am): So uh. Your dad knows. How screwed am I on a scale from one to the phantom zone?

Tim (04:38 am): Dude relax. He’s really not as scary as you all think. I’ll talk to him, don’t worry about it. He won’t do anything except maybe give you a Don’t Hurt My Kid speech.

No further mention of Bruce. Tim scrolled through the texts, fascinated. There was another week’s worth of flirty banter and then suddenly a break for a few days. The text after that was much less fun.

Kon (04:40 pm): I have to ask.

Kon (04:40 pm): It’s not because of Batman right.

Kon (04:41 pm): He didn’t force you to break up with me right?

Tim (05:00 pm): He didn’t force me. It was my choice to end things with you.

Kon (05:04 pm): But he had something to do with it?

Tim (05:06 pm): It was my choice to end things with you.

Kon (05:10 pm): Just say the word and I’ll break his face.

Tim (05:12 pm): You wouldn’t last 5 seconds.

Tim (05:13 pm): But I appreciate it.

Alright so there was a lot in those texts that Tim had not expected to find. But more importantly the texts pointed to Bruce finding out that Tim was in a relationship with Kon and interfering to the point where Tim broke it off a week later. This plus the chastity device would be enough for Tim to craft a plausible theory, but he figured there was an easy way for him to find more proof. This Bruce did love his video logs, especially ones where he could detail the various ways he abused his children.

Back down to the cave Tim went, no longer caring that it was close to when Batman was scheduled to return from patrol. He went over to the computers and pulled up the training logs, scanning through them until he found the day that matched Kon’s text about Bruce finding out about them.

There was a video right on that day, with the very on the nose title of “Romantic entanglements with other heroes: Robin III”

Out of curiosity Tim searched for other videos with that title, and found one that was dated years ago, back when Dick would have been Robin. Interesting. He parked that thread for later and went back to the video about Tim.

The video opened with Bruce in full batgear talking to the camera. His gaze was flat and tone neutral, as if he was talking about the weather.

“ Today I discovered that Robin has begun a romantic relationship with Superboy. The fact that he is bisexual is a variable that I had not encountered before this, but I believe that things should proceed as they did with the first Robin regardless of the gender of his partner. Romantic relationships come with a lust that should not be a part of vigilante work. It makes you sloppy, unfocused. I’m going to recommend to Robin the same preventative measures I did to Nightwing. I have no doubt he’ll be resistant at first, but hearing that Nightwing went through the same thing and ended up in a happy fulfilling relationship with Starfire should ease his concerns. The chastity device isn’t permanent, it just saves young hormonal boys from making mistakes until they find the one they’re truly ready to commit to. Fooling around with civilians is one thing, fooling around with fellow vigilantes is simply too dangerous for me to allow without taking precautions. Even though pregnancy is not a risk in this sort of relationship there are still plenty of other risks that make chastity the correct option. Robin will understand. This is for his own good.”

The video ended there. Tim sat back, head spinning and hands shaking.

One thing about this Bruce, he didn’t beat around the bush. Made it real easy to do detective work when he recorded all his horrendous crimes like this.

Alright. So Bruce had made Tim and Dick wear chastity devices when he discovered they were in relationships with fellow vigilantes. He was a huge abusive control freak, big news. Why was this throwing Tim for such a loop considering everything he’d already witnessed? Maybe it was just how invasive it felt, like a whole new angle of disgusting he hadn’t considered before.

The nonchalance about Tim’s bisexuality also probably contributed to how utterly thrown off Tim felt. If he’d just used this device on Tim that would be one thing, because this version of Batman being a homophobe would be massively unsurprising. But instead he seemed… fine with it? Uncaring at the very least. He’d acknowledged Tim’s bisexuality and then gone on to treat him the same way he’d treated Dick with Kori. Nasty and controlling and invasive and abusive but not specifically bigoted towards Tim for his sexuality? It was weird. The same way Bruce’s W.E policies that were actually helpful made Tim uncomfortable. This version of Batman was such a mustache twirling bad dude in so many ways, why couldn’t he keep it consistent? He’d force his teenage son to wear a chastity device but not attack him for being bisexual? It was just plain frustrating to Tim, and he had no good reason as to why it bothered him so much. It just did.

He scrolled through the videos until he found the next date of interest to him: The date Tim and Kon broke up. There was a video there too, once again helpfully titled as “Romantic entanglements with other heroes: Robin III Update One.”. Bruce again opened the video in his Batman uniform, same flat tone and stoic expression.

“ Robin has informed me that he has ended his relationship with Superboy. I have no reason to believe he is lying to me, nonetheless some close monitoring will be required for at least a month until I can confirm that their dynamic is back to being strictly platonic. Robin requested that I let him remove the chastity device and promised that he would not need to wear it. I was tempted to let it remain on longer just to ensure he does not get side tracked elsewhere, but I feel like he understands the weight of his decisions and removing it will go a long way to show trust. I agreed to take it off with the understanding that should he enter another relationship like this one with Superboy, he would be expected to inform me and the device would go back on. He agreed. Both Robin and Nightwing understand how important the mission is, how certain aspects of normal life must be sacrificed in the pursuit of justice. I can only hope that when my youngest son gets old enough he will have the same grace and understanding they do when it comes to such delicate matters.”

It was as if he was reading from a boring diary and not saying some of the most horrifying things Tim had ever heard. He felt a sudden overwhelming wave of pity for this version of him. This Tim wasn’t perfect but he didn’t deserve any of this.Was there anyway Tim could somehow remove himself from this household while also getting Damian free? Maybe if he burnt the bridge deeply enough the other Tim wouldn’t be able to repair it even when they switched back.

Tim downloaded the video onto his batpad, still somewhat surprised when it went through without any issues. Out of everything he’d seen so far, this felt important to expose. Bruce could no doubt come up with a million and one excuses for any of the physical abuse caught on tape, but this type of abuse? Tim knew it would hit harder, rock the Justice League and the Titans and the whole superhero community. Batman being a paranoid freak, no big deal. Batman getting so angry he hit his kids? As long as it wasn’t a recurring pattern they’d have some serious talks with him but ultimately a fair amount would let it slide if he gave a solid enough excuse. Batman controlling his kid’s sex lives? Including invasive monitoring of an underage boy’s love life? It had to be enough, no matter what kind of sway he had in this world. He couldn’t claim mind control or that it was a one time accident when the video had him admitting this was something he’d done years ago to Dick as well as to Tim.

He’d get this to Oracle before he left. She could let Dick know, discuss how best to handle it. Dick… did Dick know this had happened to Tim? Probably not. Hopefully not. 

He didn’t want to think about it anymore. He wanted to sleep, and wake up focused back on his initial agenda. Get Damian out, destroy Bruce, get home. Don’t think too hard about what you’ve just found or you’ll throw up again.

Did Kon know? No, there’s no way Tim would have told him. Young Justice definitely didn’t know about the abuse, although judging from the texts they had their suspicions that Bruce was kind of a hard ass. But if they knew how deep it went they would have raised hell, Tim was certain of it.

Should he tell them? At some point yes. But not until he needed their help, and he was certain they could win this. Once he got Damian out of the crossfire, he’d expose Bruce and let his friends know. Even if Batman somehow got out of this clean with Tim branded as a deranged liar by the majority of the superhero community, it would be worth it to try. Kon, Cassie, Bart, they’d all be able to punch Bruce in the face at least once before the older heroes came to stop them. And even if this universe’s Tim couldn’t appreciate it, he deserved that kind of fury on his behalf.

Maybe he did appreciate it a little. The texts still confused Tim.

They ran through his mind as he lay in bed, hand twitching to get his phone out and scroll through more. But he’d need sleep if he was to stay sharp enough to pull this all off, so he let himself get pulled into an uneasy slumber.

Despite managing to get some shut-eye, Tim still felt like he was half asleep as he shuffled through his classes. Steph shot him a concerned look in the cafeteria but didn’t sit next to him, letting him eat lunch alone. Tim appreciated it. He couldn’t really deal with another Bruce interrogation without snapping.

His thoughts kept turning to Jason and Cass, the two he was essentially leaving behind. Yes they were both adults but they were still very much victims of Bruce’s abuse, and Jason had been a prisoner since he was a child. If he could get Jason to team up with him somehow… They could take Bruce down once and for all.

The main problem was that there was nothing Tim could say to Jason that Bruce also wouldn’t pick up on through cameras and bugs. The second problem was that Jason so far seemed less than trustworthy, which meant that if Tim did tell him the truth he couldn’t be sure Jason wouldn’t just turn around and rat Tim out in order to watch the fallout and laugh.

That concern had kept Tim from adding Jason to his rescue plan. But after the discovery yesterday of just what Bruce was capable of, he felt less certain than ever about his decision to leave Jason behind. If shit like the chastity device and beating you into a coma was what he did to the kids he favoured, then how bad did it get for the biggest rebel child?

Once school was over and he was home in the manor, Tim made his decision. He was going to see how much he could trust Jason, with a very simple test: Put him and Damian in the same room and see how it went. If it went well, maybe freeing Jason wouldn’t be such a bad idea?

“Damian.” He found his youngest brother doing homework in the kitchen. “Come with me. I want you to visit Jason with me.”

Damian shot up immediately, a wary look in his eyes that was growing depressingly familiar to Tim.

“Did Father give new orders?”

“Nope.” Tim tried to sound firm and confident. “My decision. He’s your brother and I feel like we need to bond more.”

Damian frowned, suspicious. It was a good sign he felt comfortable showing that in front of Tim.

“Is this to do with your brain stroke incident?”

“Probably.” Tim shrugged. “But either way there’s no harm in making small talk. He’s not in isolation at the moment so why not try?”

Damian’s frown didn’t lessen, but he didn’t protest either. Tim had a feeling he didn’t want to go, but also wasn’t ready to test Tim’s promise to be a better brother with open defiance. It was a strange sort of power, and Tim didn’t think he liked it. But for now he’d use it for the greater good.

Down to the cave they went, thankfully empty other than Cass’s still body lying on the gurney. Bruce was away at W.E for the afternoon, although he’d no doubt be reviewing this footage to see why they were in the cave. Brotherly bonding wasn’t breaking any rules as far as Tim knew, and if it was then that was so deeply stupid he couldn’t find it in him to care. He’d take the fight if it happened, probably swing at Bruce harder than he had the first time when he’d barely known anything about this fucked up universe.

He wasn’t sure what mood they’d find Jason in today, but when they entered he seemed calmer than last time. There was less frantic energy and erratic movements, he merely raised an eyebrow from where he was sitting at the front of his cell.

“Hey Jason.” Tim did his best to sound cheerful. “I brought Damian down to say hi. We haven’t really had a chance to just chat lately, you know?”

Jason’s flat stare called bullshit. Tim kept his smile on, powering through the awkward silence as Damian scuffed his shoe on the floor with his head down. 

“Where’s Bruce?” Jason said dully at last. 

“Doing business stuff at W.E.” Tim waved a hand dismissively. “You probably won’t believe me but whatever. He’s not behind this, I am.”

“Tim wants us to bond.” Damian spoke up, voice stiff. “He says we should catch up.”

“He said that, did he?” Jason’s gaze was intense, but Tim kept that fake smile plastered to his face. “I wonder why.”

“You’re brothers.” Tim moved them closer. “You should connect more. I know it’s not a normal situation but what’s the harm in trying?”

“We’re not brothers.” Jason snorted, tired instead of angry. “His sperm donor kidnapped both of us and now neither of us can leave. That’s as deep as it goes.”

“Still something worth bonding over, no?”

The matching skeptical looks almost made him laugh. But no, he had to take this seriously or neither of them were ever going to do the same.

“Damian, how’s school going?” Tim prompted.

“School?” Damian frowned. “The tutors are… fine. They still struggle to understand how much I learned back in France and keep giving me work that’s too easy, but it’s fine. I have hope that perhaps next year Father will allow me to attend a school here in Gotham.”

“Yeah good luck with that.” Jason snickered. “He’s keeping you in this house until you’re as broken as Timmy over there.”

“You think so?” Damian pouted. “I’ve been doing my best to be a good son. I like to think I can be trusted outside the manor.”

“Maybe you can, but you’ve got too many people who care about you out there. They’d snatch you up in an instant, keep you away from Bruce forever. Same reason I’m stuck in here, he can’t let me out or he knows I’ll run free.”

“I won’t run. I like it here.”

“Sure you do kiddo.” Jason suddenly looked very, very old to Tim. “Sure you do.”

“The library is very diverse. I keep thinking I’ve read every book there and then I find more.”

“Yeah?” Jason gave the kid a careful side eye. “What’s your favourite so far?”

“I don’t know that I have a favourite.” Damian admitted. “Maybe something like-”

Jason shot up suddenly, hitting a corner of the door. The door shifted, going from flat glass to bars. He reached his hand through and grabbed Damian, slamming the boy forward against the bars. He laughed with glee as Damian struggled against his grip, slamming him against the bars again and again and again.

By the time Tim managed to wrench Jason’s fingers off Damian, the younger boy’s face was covered in blood. He pulled Damian to the other side of the room before checking the controls, ensuring that the door to Jason’s cell was still locked. Whatever Jason had done had only shifted the door from flat to bars, not opened it. A small mercy.

Damian curled up on the ground, cradling his bloody nose and breathing heavily. Tim tried to assess the damage, but Damian angrily batted his hands away and Tim let him.

“You know what Timmy?” Jason leaned back, a manic grin back on his face. “You were right. We really did need some brotherly bonding time.”

Tim put his head in his hands and let out a deep sigh. 

It seemed The Jason Dilemma was going to require a lot more thinking and headaches before Tim found an actual solution.

Chapter Text

Tim managed to avoid Bruce for the rest of the night, patrolling on different routes. He knew he’d have to face the man eventually, but at least he’d get one good patrol followed by a decent amount of sleep before that happened. And despite his nerves, he did end up sleeping well, peaceful and undisturbed until morning. It added to the paranoia he felt when he woke up, but he’d felt that way since he first arrived, so there wasn’t much to be done about it.

Even though he was prepared for it, when he walked into the breakfast room the following morning and saw Bruce standing there, Tim’s stomach sank.

“Morning sir.” He said, carefully making his way to the other side of the table.

“Tim.” Bruce smiled at him, polite and artificial. “How are you?”

“I’m good.” Tim hesitated, then sat down. “I want to apologize for what happened yesterday. With Damian. It was my fault Jason got close enough to hurt him, I take full responsibility.”

“Jason was the one who attacked.” Bruce’s tone was too calm, it unsettled Tim more than if he’d been angry. “Thanks to you and Damian, we’ve discovered and fixed a fault in the containment unit door. The injuries aren’t life threatening, Damian will recover.”

“I’m glad to hear that.” Tim wondered if he should let it go, but if he didn’t explain himself Bruce would probably draw his own conclusions. “I brought Damian down there because… I feel like I haven’t been doing enough. As a big brother. I want Damian to feel more connected to this family, and I thought if he and Jason could bond it could maybe help them both. I’m sorry if I overstepped. I just wanted to help.”

Bruce hummed thoughtfully, taking a bite of his toast. Tim’s stomach churned as he waited for the man to pass judgement. At least if Bruce decided to beat him again Tim wouldn’t have any food to throw up.

“I can see the logic. What brought on this change in you?”

His eyes were sharp, too sharp for Tim’s comfort. He needed to sell the shit out of his next words, or Bruce would be on to him.

“I’m almost an adult, and our last argument really got me thinking about what that means.” His body buzzed with nerves, but Tim kept himself perfectly still. “I need to do better. To be more deserving of your trust. Making more of an effort with Jason and Damian felt like the natural first step to self improvement.”

Bruce hummed again, and Tim grit his teeth as the man stirred his coffee. He was ready to bolt, but thankfully, in the end Bruce just smiled at him.

“I’m glad that you’re trying to take more responsibility. With Cassie currently recovering that boy needs all the guidance from you he can get.”

Don’t call her that. Don’t you dare call her Cassie when you’re the reason she’s in a fucking coma you bastard.

“I’ll do my best sir.” Tim focused on his nerves, letting the smile on his face appear shaky due to anxiety rather than rage. “I best get moving, don’t want to be late for school.”

Bruce let him go with a small wave of his hand, his attention drawn down to the morning paper. Tim poured his cereal and tried to eat his breakfast at a normal pace. He wasn’t sure how comfortable this world’s Tim was in Bruce’s presence, so he did his best to seem as calm as possible. It felt like the safest bet.

School was uneventful, if frustrating. Tim knew he should probably be focused on the work, because it was clear that this Bruce took Tim’s studies very seriously. But he had enough on his plate, trig and calculus just didn't seem worth his attention. He spent most of his time trying to go over everything he knew and could use to take Bruce down, along with who he could trust to carry out said toppling of the mighty Batman.

It was so very tempting to reach out to Steph, just to feel like he had someone on his side. But at this point it just wasn’t worth the risk. He would do what needed to be done, and then when the time was right, he’d call in the cavalry.

Tim’s head was so full of plans and calculations, that when he got back to the manor he nearly ran right into a frantic Damian.

“Damian?” Tim crushed the guilt that brewed within him at the sight of the kid’s black eye. “What’s going on!”

“Tim!” And boy did it still feel weird not to hear his little brother calling him Drake. “Come down to the cave! I think Cassandra is waking up!”

Tim didn’t need to hear any more than that. He took off in a sprint, Damian hot on his heels. Instead of waiting for the elevator down, Tim headed right for the fireman’s poles hidden in the library. He and Damian swung down, in perfect sync as if they’d been doing it all their lives.

The cave was empty when they arrived, save for the lone figure lying still on the cot. At first Tim couldn’t understand why Damian had called him, but then he saw it. Cassandra’s eyes were twitching, her fingers shaking slightly.

“What’s happening?” Damian’s voice was loud and panicked. “Is she alright?”

“I don’t know.” Tim admitted, moving closer to get a better look. “Did anything happen that might have triggered this?”

“I don’t know either!” Damian sounded borderline hysterical. “I was just talking to her! The same thing I did yesterday!”

“It’s alright.” Tim forced his voice to sound more soothing, joining Damian in his panic wouldn’t help anything. “It’s Cass, she’s probably just fighting her way back to us.”

As if his words were a prophecy, Cass’s eyes suddenly snapped open. She shot up, drawing a heaving breath. Tim put his hands on her shoulders, steadying her as she inhaled and exhaled rapidly.

“Hey, hey you’re alright.” It was honestly a miracle he was able to sound calm and confident right now. “You’re safe, it’s just me and Damian here now. It’s over.”

Cass’s eyes were foggy and clouded, but as her gaze sharpened on Tim he saw recognition grow. When she began to grin softly, he knew she was back.

“Cassandra!” Tim was suddenly knocked aside as Damian charged over and threw his arms around her. 

Tim was worried for a second that Damian would bowl her over, but Cass merely clutched him back just as tightly, her face softening instantly into a tender smile. It was that smile he’d never seen his own Cass give their Damian, a smile that spoke to the very different dynamic these two had cultivated.

“I’m sorry.” She said, as Damian squeezed her with the tightest hug he could. “Didn’t mean to leave you for so long.”

By the shaking of his shoulders, Tim could tell Damian had begun to cry. He looked away, suddenly feeling very awkward. This was a moment between siblings, but he wasn’t one of them. Not really. His own siblings were a whole universe away, and for a second Tim was hit with a deep longing to be back home. 

Then he shook it off and focused back on the scene in front of him. He’d get home, he just had a job to do first.

“You’re not allowed to do that again.” Damian pulled back, and even though there were tears dripping down his face he had fire in his eyes. “I don’t care if you’re older than me, I’m making it an order. No matter what, you’re not allowed to leave me like that again.”

“I’m sorry.” Cass repeated, reaching up to brush his tears away with her thumbs. “I didn’t mean to leave. I promise it won’t happen again.”

Tim smiled, and tried not to worry about Bruce inevitably punishing Damian for loudly breaking rank in the middle of the cave. It would definitely kill the moment if he brought it up.

So instead, he stayed quiet, and let the two siblings have a moment of peace and joy in their house of horrors.

The relief he was feeling that Cass was awake lasted all the way up the elevator and to the foyer, he and Damian both carefully walking on either side of Cass in case her legs gave out. Tim was so caught up in the euphoria of having this version of his sister back, that he didn’t realize why Damian had frozen until the sound of footsteps made his head jerk up.

Bruce was pacing the foyer frantically, and Tim tensed, ready for a fight. But when his eyes landed on them he just nodded once, and went back to pacing.

“Good, you’re awake. I need to talk to all of you.”

That was it. The daughter he’d beaten into a coma was awake and that was his reaction. Tim wasn’t surprised, but it didn’t stop the anger from sparking in his chest. Neither Cass nor Damian looked particularly shocked at Bruce brushing over her recovery, but they did seem wary at his panicked pacing.

“Alfred has announced that he’s stopping by in a few hours for dinner.” Tim stiffened at that, trying not to look too shocked. “Why he decided to drop in instead of planning in advance I don’t know, but you must all be on your best behaviour. You will not embarrass me in front of him, or there will be hell to pay. Understood?”

“Yes sir.” Tim mumbled, hearing Cass and Damian echo him.

Bruce seemed to relax a fraction at that. He let out a breath, his shoulders lowering slightly.

“I’ve got to get dinner ready. You three get presentable, you have two hours.”

Well. That was a curveball.

Tim’s first instinct was to get Cass alone and demand all the information he could on what this universe’s Alfred was like. But there was no way Damian was going to let that happen, he’d just gotten Cass back and even with Tim’s recent efforts they still didn’t have that level of trust. So he stayed quiet for now, watching as Damian pulled them down the hall towards Cass’s bedroom.

“Have you gotten any new dresses since he last came? If you wear the same thing twice you know he’ll comment on it.”

“I think I have a dress he hasn’t seen before.” Cass seemed much calmer than Damian, but given how she’d been calm even while getting beaten into a coma, Tim was inclined to trust Damian’s reactions more. “Don’t worry, it’ll be fine.”

Damian snorted angrily, not even dignifying that with a comment. He shoved Cass into her bedroom and slammed the door, announcing that she had ten minutes to try it on. It was kind of adorable, Tim thought, the way she let him drag her around. Clearly indulging him as an apology for the whole getting knocked into a coma thing.

Damian raised an eyebrow as Tim stood next to him, both waiting outside the bedroom.

“Do you have a suit ready?”

“I think so?” Tim grinned as Damian’s expression grew even more unimpressed. “I’ll go get changed.”

Tim learned very quickly that Alfred’s arrival carried expectations. Once they were all dressed, Tim and Damian in grey suits and Cass in a long black dress, Damian and Cass immediately began tidying the main rooms. The lounge, the kitchen, the big dining room Tim had never used, they worked with the coordination and efficiency of well… Batman and Robin. Tim did his best to keep up, with Cass giving him helpful nudges every now and then when he missed something obvious, like where the tablecloth was or that his books apparently weren’t allowed on the coffee table anymore.

It took a full hour before he got the chance to speak to her, cornering her in the bathroom after all three had decided on a water break. She didn’t seem surprised that he wanted to talk, but she did look more tired than before. Tim chalked that up to the coma more than annoyance at him for all the questions.

“So. Alfred.” He got right to it. “What’s his deal?”

Cass glared at him, but Tim grinned, unrepentant. Sure, the hallway was probably bugged, but it was a harmless question.

She pulled him along to the safety of his bedroom, the one place Tim knew he could talk freely. Once the door was shut, she began to speak.

“He raised Bruce. Bruce respects him a lot. He visits a few times a year. He likes you, but says mean things about Jason and Damian sometimes. Very… old.”

“Old?” Tim frowned. “You mean like, he’s old fashioned?”

“Yes. That.”

“Alright.” Tim blew out a breath and sat down on the bed. “So that sounds similar enough to my world. Although my Alfred is still around, or was around... Anyway. Why did this one leave?”

“He was gone before I arrived.” Cass shrugged. “Before you arrived too. I asked Bruce once, he said that Alfred is a man with his own life. He raised Bruce, and it would be weird for him to share the same house now that Bruce is an adult.”

Huh. Odd. Tim didn’t really know what to make of that. He didn’t want to judge before actually talking to this Alfred, but if this was the man who raised this version of Bruce, then Tim wasn’t expecting good things.

“Is there anything big I should know? Anything that would give me away? Do I call him Alf or Alfie or something?”

“No, always Alfred.” Cass grinned a little at his question, which made Tim smile in response. 

It was nice, having her back. Seeing how Damian was bolder and louder around her, more lively and similar to his own Damian. Those two were the closest Tim had found in this house to anything resembling an actual family.

“No slacking!” Damian hammered on the door, almost as if Tim had summoned him with his musings. “Don’t set a bad example for me, otherwise Father will disown us all.”

“Perish the thought.” Tim opened the door. “You? Disowned? What a tragedy.”

Damian smirked at him, and for a second Tim was filled with hope. Beneath all the stress and fear and careful planning, there was something here worth fighting for.

Two hours after Bruce’s announcement, the three of them lined up at the entrance to the manor. They stood in age order, Bruce in front of them. This meant that Tim’s view was almost completely blocked, but he had an inkling that asking Bruce to move wouldn’t end well.

A black SUV pulled up to the manor, gravel crunching as it drove towards them. Bruce’s fists were clenched, his back ramrod straight as the car came to a stop. It was the closest Tim had ever seen to this version of Batman getting nervous.

Alfred stepped out of the backseat, and Tim squinted through Bruce’s left arm to get a better view. He looked…very similar to Tim’s Alfred, actually. Bald, dark black hair on either side of his head instead of grey, wearing a tuxedo suit and with a grim expression on his face. The one big difference Tim instantly registered was that this Alfred’s demeanor seemed sterner. Alfred always had that stiff upper lip, but there was a coldness in this man’s eyes that Tim’s Alfred lacked.

Also Alfred. Alive. Standing in front of Tim. Holy shit.

Tim focused inwards as Bruce and Alfred shook hands, gathering up all the painful emotions related to Alfred and death and grief that he was currently feeling, and shoving them as far back into his mind as he could. This Alfred wasn’t Tim’s Alfred, Tim’s Alfred was still dead. This Alfred was probably evil, so Tim really needed to stop that hopeful skip in his chest every time he looked at the man, because it would only make the inevitable disappointment that much worse.

“So these are the children.” Alfred stepped past Bruce to look all three of them up and down, starting with Cass. “You’re looking paler than usual.”

“Cassandra has just recovered from being in a coma.” Tim tried not to look confused, but it was hard to avoid frowning at how proud Bruce sounded of that. “She was acting up recently I’m afraid, so I had to be quite strict with her.”

“Well,” Alfred’s smile held none of the warmth Tim was used to. “I’m glad you’ve finally stopped coddling her. Even though you clearly went too far, your heart was in the right place. You can’t stay your father’s spoiled princess forever, can you Cassandra?”

Cass shook her head, face deliberately neutral. Tim did his best to match her expression, despite the rising nausea he felt. Safe to say, his hopes were sufficiently dashed. Alfred moved on to stare at Tim, and Tim gave a small, weak smile.

“Timothy.” Alfred’s demeanor seemed to soften slightly. “Looking excellent as always. Have you grown since the last time we met?”

“I’m not sure.” Tim grinned, reaching a hand up to pat his head even as he longed to step away and hide from Alfred’s gaze. “I hope so!”

Alfred chuckled, reaching out to ruffle Tim’s hair. Behind him, Bruce was doing his version of a beaming smile, which is to say not smiling at all, but looking considerably more relaxed than usual. Out of the three of them here, Tim was clearly Alfred’s favourite, and that bought him points with Bruce too.

Then Alfred moved on to Damian, and that stern look in his eyes came back tenfold.

“And you.” Alfred looked down his nose at the boy, who stared back, expressionless. “I hope you’re not giving your father any trouble these days.”

“No sir.” Damian said flatly. “I’m doing my best to be good.”

“Glad to hear it.” Alfred reached down and gave Damian a rather awkward pat on the head. “Shall we head inside? I’m curious to see what your father has whipped up for dinner.”

“You know my cooking skills leave a lot to be desired.” Bruce almost sounded as if he was laughing . “Rest assured, I got the finest gourmet chefs to prepare and deliver our dinner, without my hands touching a single part of the food.”

“Excellent.” Alfred winked at Tim. “So we shall be safe from food poisoning tonight.”

Tim laughed along, and hoped they couldn’t tell that his smile didn’t reach his eyes.

Dinner was tense, more tense than usual. Damian was tense, Bruce was tense, Cass was tense watching them, and Tim was tense from everyone else around him being tense.

Alfred was the only one who appeared unaffected, eating his steak at a leisurely pace with hearty hums of approval between bites.

“So tell me, how were the holidays? I’m sorry I couldn’t be there this year, the photos Master Bruce sent were wonderful.”

“Our most peaceful year yet.” Bruce did actually smile, and for once it looked genuine. “Jason even let us feed him without any incident.”

“How is he?” Alfred almost sounded genuinely concerned. “Any improvement?”

“We’re trying our best.” Bruce’s smile flattened, his lips thinning into sharp lines.

“It’s not your fault Master Bruce.” Alfred sighed, taking another bite of his dinner. “The lad was determined to disobey you.”

“Yes, well. What’s done is done.” Bruce pushed his steak around his plate. “All we can do now is learn from our mistakes.”

“Indeed.” Tim grit his teeth as Alfred’s gaze zeroed in on Damian. “Speaking of that, I hope young Damian was better behaved this year. None of that ridiculous starving himself anymore?”

Tim watched as Damian’s grip tightened around his cutlery. He glared down at the table and stayed silent.

“Of course not.” Bruce filled in the silence smoothly. “None of his mother’s cult nonsense this year, he’s recovered from that, haven’t you Damian?”

One second. Two. Tim begged Damian to just nod silently. He could see the warring emotions flicker in his little brother's eyes, before Damian eventually inhaled, and set his cutlery down.

Shit.

“First of all,” Damian said, low and calm. “Ramadan involves fasting, which is different from just starving yourself. Second of all, my mother didn’t force me to do that, because you’re not meant to start it until you turn twelve. And also neither of us are Muslim. I simply grew up with many Muslim friends, so fasting for Ramadan was my way of trying to keep the memories of that warmth and community alive while trapped here. It had nothing at all to do with Ra’s al Ghul or his cult.”

Bruce’s glare could melt steel, but Alfred merely scoffed and dabbed at his face with a cloth.

“Quite the silver tongue he’s got there, Master Bruce.” Alfred’s sneer was something Tim would have gladly gone his whole life without seeing. “His mother’s impact I assume. Do you really expect us to believe that your rebellious little hunger strike when you first arrived here was anything other than a spoiled child throwing a tantrum?” 

“It doesn’t matter what you believe.” Damian’s voice trembled slightly, but he spoke clearly. “You can’t brainwash me into denying the happy memories I have. My mother loved me. We hid in France, but she deliberately sought out people who shared her own mother’s culture, so that even hidden from you and grandfather I would grow up secure in my own identity. You got to me too late Father, I’ve known who my family was for years and it never included any of you. No matter what you do, you won’t break me.”

Bruce’s hand slammed down on the table. Damian and Tim jumped, and Cass put an arm in front of both of them. Alfred remained entirely unfazed, his face a cold mask.

“She may have gotten her hooks into you boy, but your father loves you too much to stop trying to remove them.” He was the only one still eating as he spoke. “You’ll appreciate that one day, when we’ve finally tamed that nasty wildness she cultivated in you. When you look back and see the harm she did to you, you will weep in shame at how you treated us today.”

“The harm by loving me?” Tim prayed that Damian would stop, but the boy was incensed now. “The harm by raising me away from both you and Grandfather and all this misery? The harm by letting me be a child even though she could tell I wasn’t like my peers? Letting me go to school and make friends and learn and play? Should she have locked me up inside her house and kept me isolated from everyone, beating me whenever she felt like it? Is that treating me well, by your standards?”

“Look at you, boy.” Alfred sighed, and it made Tim’s stomach curl. “She has you snapping and snarling like this, so devoted to the lies she fed you. You think she cared about you? Loved you? Let me tell you the truth clearly, since you’re so blatantly trying to hide from it: Your mother was a temptress, who played the part of the perfect wife long enough to trick Master Bruce into fathering a child. Then as soon as you were born she ran away, raising you to be a weapon against us. All those nice memories you have? Ploys to keep you loyal to her.”

“You’re lying.” Damian’s hands shook as he gripped the table. “You can’t prove any of that and you know it.”

“Can’t I?” Alfred’s eyes gleamed. “It’s been years since we rescued you, and where is she? If she loved you so much, cared for you like an actual son and not a pawn, then why hasn’t she swooped in to take you back? I’ll tell you why boy, you were only ever a tool for her. Now you’re with us she won’t risk her own skin to save you. So throw all the temper tantrums you want, keep repeating her lies until you’re blue in the face. We’ll be here for you whenever you’re ready to accept your real family.”

The tension in the room was borderline unbearable. Cass looked ready to throw herself between Bruce and Damian, while Damian seemed entirely uncaring of his father’s existence for once. His glare was focused solely on Alfred.

“ Va te faire foutre! ” Damian spat out. “ Wáng bā dàn. Tozz Feek. ”

Tim’s French and Arabic were rudimentary, and his Chinese was pretty much nonexistent except for like two phrases. But he got the general gist of what Damian was saying, and it definitely wasn’t respectful. Bruce stood up so quickly his chair fell backwards, slamming on the ground and making the entire table jump. Damian flinched, ready for a slap, but Alfred’s hand in the air froze Bruce before he could step towards his youngest son.

“Calm yourself, Master Bruce. There’s no need to spoil dinner just because one child is in the mood to be a badly behaved hellion. I’ll take care of this, you just sit back and enjoy your meal.”

Alfred stood then, and the man had never looked so tall and terrifying to Tim before. He marched over and grabbed Damian by the ear, yanking the child out of his seat. Tim half expected Damian to fight back, but his furious expression had cooled into grim resignation. He’d reached the limits of his defiance for now, and his priority was clearly surviving whatever the hell came next.

Tim should move. Tim should stop this. Tim should grab Damian’s ear from out of Alfred’s fingers and run. 

But if he did that now, he’d be on the run with nothing but his word against Bruce’s. Bruce would chase them, Bruce would catch them, and then both Damian and Tim would suffer horribly. He’d get the kid out of there, but he needed Damian to hang on until the time was right. Until Tim could get him safely to Talia, and then use everything he’d gathered to destroy both Bruce Wayne and Batman’s reputations, limiting his resources so he couldn’t track them down.

And that meant right now, he had to maintain his cover, and let whatever was about to happen occur.

His steak felt like vomit in his throat. Cass was glaring down at her own plate with tears in her eyes, and for a second Tim felt a spout of irrational anger towards her. She could fix this, could fight both Bruce and Alfred with one hand behind her back. Damian had been so relieved and happy to see her awake in the cave earlier, and yet nothing had really changed for him. Both Tim and Cass were still going to sit there and let Alfred do whatever horrible punishment he had planned.

The rest of the meal was eaten in silence. Tim knew beyond a shadow of doubt that Bruce was the person he despised most at the table. But right now, Tim himself was tying strongly with Cass for second place.

His mother wouldn’t have wanted him to do that, Damian knew this. His mother would have wanted him to stay quiet, to let his father and Alfred sling all sorts of insults and accusations about her without jumping in to defend her. She was practical like that, and valued survival over pride.

But when it came to pride, Damian was his father’s son unfortunately. And when it came to defending his mother he couldn’t find it in him to regret it. Alfred was certainly about to try and change that, but Damian knew he wouldn’t. Even if he reduced Damian to tears, even if he forced Damian to call her all sorts of insults with a whip in his hand. He could never take those memories away, could never taint them with his pathetic words.

“I can hear you sulking.” Alfred bustled around the basement, getting things ready. There was a single wooden table with straps around one side and two of the legs. Damian could tell what it was for already, but he’d yet to experience it. “You’re worse than your father, I didn’t have to use this on him until he was thirteen.”

“I’m honoured to have broken his record.”

Alfred chuckled, then shoved Damian over the table and put the straps around his wrists. 

“I’m sure you think you’re the first naughty boy to ever spout off like that to your family, but you’re far from it young man. Mark my words, a good dose of the cane and the strap will set you right.”

Damian closed his eyes, feeling Alfred slip the second set of straps around his ankles and pull his trousers down. He was completely immobilized now, stretched out so that he couldn’t escape a single one of Alfred’s blows.

“It’s been a while since I’ve had to tan a petulant child’s hide.” Damian heard the whoosh of a cane behind him and his stomach clenched. “But I reckon I can still make you a very sorry little boy.”

The cane swooshed again, and Damian let himself drift. He wouldn’t give Alfred the satisfaction of jumping in fear. Instead, he thought of the clinic back in France, the school nearby where he played football with the other children, and the smell of the beef noodle soup his mother always cooked whenever he brought friends home. She didn’t cook most days, but whenever they had company she did her best to make that meal for all the kids Damian brought home with him from school. 

He missed it. The taste, the smell, the noise from the kitchen and the view into the garden. He missed his mother’s laugh and her smile and the way she held him whenever he felt sad. Cassandra was the only one who ever hugged him nowadays, and it wasn’t the same. It just wasn’t.

When the first stroke of the cane landed, Damian told himself that the tears were from the pain, not the aching in his heart.

Cass disappeared after dinner, clearly distressed by what had occurred. Tim wondered if he should do the same, but when Bruce handed him a book and walked towards the lounge, the implications were clear. He was to sit and read with his father.

So he did.

Initially he went to sit down opposite Bruce, but the man’s raised eyebrow made Tim freeze in his tracks.

“Surely you’re not acting petulant as well, are you Tim?”

“No sir.” Tim hesitated, unsure where to sit.

Bruce, thankfully, helped him out by patting the seat next to him. And so Tim sat down where he was told, and read the book he’d been handed. It was on Chinese exploration in the middle ages, and would have actually been a pretty interesting read had he not felt like he was reading it next to a highly volatile grizzly bear. 

If Bruce noticed Tim’s discomfort, he made no mention of it. He just focused on his own book, and together they read for what felt like hours. Tim’s eyes began to droop, but he kept going, determined not to give Bruce a reason to attack him.

He nearly flinched when he felt Bruce’s hand on his head, but the man just stroked his hair gently. Tim breathed out through his mouth, forcing his body to stay relaxed as Bruce ran his fingers through Tim’s shaggy black locks.

“Tim.” Bruce crooned. “My good boy. My good son. I’m so proud of you, you would never disgrace me the way Damian did today.”

Tim swallowed, and tried to think of how to respond. This was brand new territory, and Cass wasn't in the room to help with hints. He had a feeling Bruce wasn’t fully sober, Tim had noticed him drinking more than a few glasses of wine at dinner.

“I try my hardest, sir.”

“I know you do.” Bruce sighed. “You’re a smart boy. A good boy.”

Tim said nothing as Bruce continued petting him. Maybe Bruce would grow bored and go back to his book in a moment. 

“I don’t know what to do about Damian.” Bruce admitted quietly. “Even Jason wasn’t this bad as a boy. The only child I had as young as Damian was Dick, and Dick was so obedient in all the ways Damian isn’t.”

Tim tried to picture Dick Grayson being obedient to the standards this Bruce set. It was difficult to imagine. 

“I think… I think Damian is more unhappy than Dick ever was.” Tim phrased his words carefully. “I’ve been trying to be kinder to him, to give him more reasons to improve. Carrots as well as sticks, right? It’s like with Jason. If you keep trying new tactics, eventually you’ll find the right one. I believe in you.”

Bruce looked thoughtful, and Tim hated how hope flared up in his chest. He’d seen just how evil and depraved this man could be, but he was wearing the face of Batman. Batman, who Tim and the family had brought back from the edge time after time. Who always proved Tim right, that Batman needed a Robin. Maybe in this universe he could-

“Thank you Tim, I think I see the problem now.” Bruce gave him a fond head pat, then leaned back. “You, Cassandra and myself are all setting different standards and boundaries for Damian. Neither of you are as strict with him as I am, and it’s generating too many mixed signals. I’ll have to draft some new rules to rectify that."

Bruce smiled, a genuine smile, and clapped Tim on the shoulder.

“What would I do without you son?”

Tim forced one edge of his mouth to tilt upwards, mimicking Bruce’s smile as best he could.

You sick old man, he thought to himself, feeling the rage bubbling right underneath his skin. You’re about to find out.

Chapter Text

With the escape plan formulating in Tim’s mind, there was one thing he was very clear about. Tim knew he couldn’t take down this Bruce if the man was at full strength. Even if he got Damian out, even if he exposed all the shady dealings from Wayne Enterprises, he knew Bruce well enough to know that he would fight back hard. So Tim would have to make sure he was already recovering from one fight before he began toppling the real dominoes.

Would injuring this Bruce also bring Tim joy? Yeah probably. But Tim liked to think he’d earned it after surviving this house of horrors.

His go-to strategy to get help would be to slip Steph a note in school, but since it was Saturday that wasn’t an option. If he waited until Monday there would be less risk of being caught, plus Bruce would be more badly injured on Wednesday when Tim finally got Damian out. But if they could hurt Bruce sooner rather than later it would move his focus elsewhere, and stop him from hurting his kids too badly until Tim could stop him for good. More risk that Tim’s scheming would be found out, less risk to Damian and Cass.

When he weighed the options like that, of course he was going to try and attack Bruce sooner rather than later.

He’d make the first move at night, using the day to plan for it. Bruce was in a better mood now that Alfred had gone, and Cass was busy hovering around Damian trying to protect him from further injuries. A useless endeavor in Tim’s opinion. If Bruce wanted to make Damian hurt she could only distract him for so long, and she wasn’t willing to actually protect the kid if meant truly going against their father instead of just deflecting. Luckily Bruce seemed satisfied that Alfred had hurt Damian sufficiently, and from the way Tim saw the boy limping he would agree that the damage was extensive enough to satisfy even Bruce’s violent nature.

Tim kept out of Bruce’s way, for fear of letting his own rage and disgust slip through. He sat in his room, pretending to do homework but focusing on his plans. He wasn’t going to write anything down that Bruce could understand, his notes were carefully written in code that wouldn’t make sense to outsiders. Code that his own Bruce hadn’t taught him, just in case.

Even with the precautions it was still a risk, but Tim was a planner. He liked having some sort of structure in place, and writing it down helped him keep track of the pieces moving around his mental chessboard. There were variables he couldn’t account for of course, or pieces that would only become clear in the future, but writing what he knew still helped.

The Birds of Prey had specific routes they tended to use for patrolling. They varied them enough so that Bruce couldn’t trap them, and tended to operate in groups so that he couldn’t overpower them in a random encounter. This was all from Bruce’s threat assessment files on the batcomputer, and Tim couldn’t think of a reason why he’d falsify that information.

The first step to attacking Bruce involved overwhelming him with numbers. For that to happen, Tim would need the Birds, and he’d need them at a specific place and time. He had the plan all ready, he just needed a way to get it to them.

There was also the tech aspect of the plan, but that was something that depended entirely on Tim, which made it feel less daunting. He could just sit in his room and work away on his little device, no problem. But communicating with the Birds meant actual sneaky time shenanigans, which meant more overthinking on Tim’s part.

The easiest option would probably be to do what he did last time and find a zone in the city that only Oracle had access to. But doing the same thing twice was risky, there was no way Bruce wouldn’t notice if Tim deviated into Oracle’s territory twice in such a short time limit. Instead, he would have to find a way to run into the Birds, pretend to fight them, and slip them a note detailing everything he needs from them. All without making Bruce suspicious in the slightest or irritating him enough to earn Tim a beating.

Easy peasy. Tim had this in the bag.

Or at least, that’s how he felt right up until it was go time, and he was down in the cave with his Red Robin suit on and the note burning a hole in the secret pocket in his left glove. It was always the tension of secrets that got him second guessing. Was the plan too simplistic? Too obvious? Bruce didn’t seem to have caught on to the fact that Tim wasn’t his Tim, but what if he had? He was Batman after all. He could be waiting until Tim fully exposed his plan before pouncing.

He swallowed all the nervous energy down and nodded calmly at Bruce, dressed in his Batman gear. Cass was next to him, also suited up. That didn’t surprise Tim in the slightest, even if Bruce broke all her limbs he had a feeling his sister would still find a way to go out patrolling.

What did surprise him was Damian dressed in his Robin uniform. Bruce sending out an injured Cass, sure fine whatever. It’s not like he could stop her anyways. Bruce forcing his injured ten year old son to patrol? That was a level of idiotic that bothered Tim.

“Robin, you’re patrolling with Red Robin.” The sinking feeling in Tim’s gut got worse with Bruce’s words. “Yesterday’s disrespect has shown me that you still have much to learn. Your brother is disciplined, loyal and respectful. Red Robin understands what is expected of him, and makes sure to obey. No recklessness, no foolishness, just a boy following his father’s guidance. Learn from him tonight.”

No pressure then. Tim really didn’t appreciate being used as the pillar of goodness in Bruce’s eyes. It felt more like an insult than a compliment, although maybe alternate Tim would actually be happy hearing Bruce praising him. But Tim couldn’t fake that level of happiness, so he just nodded again and kept his face expressionless. It seemed to satisfy Bruce, his mouth tightened up in a semi smile.

“I’ll be tracking Croc through the water district tunnels, he’s involved in a recent string of murders. Batgirl, you're on the north side tonight. There’s rumoured to be an increase of gang activity around Burnley and Robbinsville. Red Robin and Robin, that leaves the lower half of Gotham in your care. Do your duty. Protect the innocent.”

“Yes sir.” Tim said, Cass and Damian echoing him.

Alright, so he had a companion tonight. First wrench in his plan, but not a terrible one. There were ways of pulling this off even with Damian tagging along.

Honestly, Tim’s main concern was if his little brother would last the night jumping across rooftops. He could barely walk around the house today without wincing in pain.

Maybe that was the point of it all, an additional punishment for Damian’s outburst at dinner. Tim still thought it was stupid and risky. He wondered if Bruce had done something like this before, if that was why he was so confident Damian could survive a night in Gotham while badly injured. The thought of this being a familiar thing made Tim even angrier.

Soon. Very soon, he would get to unleash that anger. He just had to be patient for one more night, and set the trap up with no mistakes.

He made a mental map of the Birds' routes before he left, memorizing each thick green line covering Batman’s map of Gotham into his brain. He couldn’t afford to look at the map during patrol, it would be far too obvious. But he knew that enough of the green lines covered the southside of Gotham, there was a good chance he could run into the Birds if he timed it right.

“Get your bike.” Tim ordered, and didn’t smile at the relieved look on Damian’s face. 

They would probably need to run and jump at some point, but if he could spare the kid some pointless pain he might as well. Sitting on the bike would probably still hurt like hell, maybe even more than walking. Enough to satisfy Bruce hopefully.

They drove through Newtown, crossing the bridge into Coventry. Damian’s grip on his bike was tense and tight, the pain clearly getting to him. Tim kept his eyes peeled, looking for any excuse to stop the bikes and give the kid a rest. A glimpse of the Birds would also be fantastic, but Tim didn’t expect his luck to work that quickly.

It took two hours of driving around stopping minor fights and attempted crimes before he finally saw something. He and Damian were standing on a roof, watching the GCPD round up three attempted robbers they had stopped, when out of the corner of his eye he saw a flash of purple.

Bingo.

Without explaining himself to Damian, Tim turned and ran. He leapt across the rooftops, racing in the direction of that purple blob. As he got closer, the blob materialised into the figure of Huntress. Black Canary stood beside her, her dark outfit harder to pick out from afar.

Well. This might be trickier than Tim would have hoped.

They both saw him coming, and paused to let him catch up. There were matching looks of confusion on their faces, but thankfully they didn’t seem hostile. They understood that Tim was on their side.

Tim’s cowl had a camera that recorded everything he said and did. But if he kept his arms out of sight of the camera, he could hopefully clue them in to what was going on. He prayed internally that all the hours he’d spent back home communicating with Cass in nothing but body language would pay off tonight.

“Illegal vigilantes.” Tim announced, reaching out his left hand and waving it out of sight of his cowl cam. “You are active enemies of Batman. Turn yourself over to the police now or face the consequences.”

The confusion increased. Tim wished he could wink at them behind the cowl, but he had to hope his hand waving was enough for them to realise there was something more going on here.

“Yeah we’re uh… we’re not going to do that.” Helena said, flat with a hint of bewilderment. “Turn around kid. Go back to your own patrol.”

“I can’t let you continue to cause chaos.” Tim deliberately pointed to the secret pocket in his wrist, over and over again while keeping his hands out of sight on the cowl cam. “The only thing I can do now is subdue you by force.”

Dinah actually grinned at that, fully understanding now that Tim wanted to pick a fight he had no intention of winning. She stepped back and gestured at Helena, who sighed and rolled her eyes.

“Fine.” She grumbled. “Let’s fight.”

The complete lack of hostility might ring as suspicious to Bruce, so Tim would have to make the fight actually good. He reached into his secret glove pocket and pulled out the note, making sure both women could see it as he slipped it into his hand.

“Red Robin? What’s going on?”

Shit, Damian caught up to him. Tim’s hands were in front of him, so Damian’s cowl couldn’t have caught sight of the note either. But still, he’d have to make the fight that much more convincing now that he had an audience.

“Robin, we’re taking down Birds tonight. You go for Canary, I'll handle Huntress.”

There was a stunned silence from Damian. Tim understood why, it was like asking him to swing into a brick wall. But he couldn’t explain himself, so he just waited patiently as Damian swallowed down his horror and desire to refuse.

“Yes sir.”

Tim didn’t wait any further. He launched himself at Helena, and Damian did the same at Dinah. Helena used her crossbow to block his first strike with the bo staff, not hard but not too soft either. She was testing how serious and convincing they’d need to be.

Let me get closer. Tim telegraphed his grapple with such slowness that she had time to see it coming and decide how to respond. It felt like less of a fight and more like an improv acting session. Helena let him grab her, and Tim used the chance to slip his note under one of the straps on her thigh. She then grabbed him under the waist and flipped him before he could tackle her properly.

Tim landed, bounced, and jumped up again. Mission accomplished, now all that was left was to make it convincing. He circled Helena, wondering what the best next move would be. She’d already grabbed and hidden the note, because she was awesome like that. Over on the rooftop next to theirs, Damian was doing his best to fight Black Canary while also looking like he’d rather be anywhere else, and Dinah couldn’t stop laughing as she fought him. Tim didn’t even think she was trying to win, which was good. Damian deserved a break, like being around an adult that didn’t actually want to cause him pain.

Unfortunately, a little bit more pain was on the menu for both of them tonight. If Tim called the fight off and ran, it would be way too suspicious. Bruce would question why he started the fight in the first place. No, he’d have to plough ahead with the full confidence that he would win this, and then get his ass kicked. Bruce would still yell at him, but Tim could bullshit something about wanting to set a better example for Damian on how there was no excuse to allow criminals to roam free.

Hopefully Helena would go easy on him. She wasn’t his Helena, but she was a version of her. And Helena was very protective of kids. Tim may be seventeen and kind of a jerk in this universe, but Helena was still the Huntress. And the Huntress was the kind of vigilante he could trust to be gentle about this. Tim told himself as much as he jumped up and down, bouncing to build up energy. Helena watched him with narrowed eyes, observing how his attitude changed. He could see her analysing him, trying to understand what direction he needed her to take this skit in.

He swung at her, full speed and power. He could tell she was surprised, because her reaction time was much slower than he expected. Still dodged, but only by an inch. Understanding settled over her face. She moved forward, ducking when Tim swung his staff and twisting under it to grab his hand. He yelped in pain as she disarmed him, but he nodded firmly when he saw her concerned look. Helena’s eyes hardened in resolve, and she kicked him in the stomach for good measure.

They were selling it. This was a good thing. Tim reminded himself of that as he wheezed for breath on the asphalt.

“Surrender peacefully now.” He coughed out. “This is Batman’s city. You shouldn’t be out here.”

Helena snorted.

“Fuck Batman.”

Tim got to his feet, grinning in agreement. 

“How dare you disrespect him!” He put as much convincing outrage into his voice that he could, and swung at her again. “This is his city! Our city! No Birds allowed, you’re all too reckless and violent!”

“Aww, how cute.” Helena’s tone turned mean, the sort of attitude he normally heard directed at Dick or Babs. “Is that why you’re picking this fight? Desperate for Daddy’s approval that you’re a good little soldier? Suit yourself kid, it’s your head that’s going to hurt tomorrow morning.”

Her acting was actually pretty impressive. Better than his own over the top boy scout lines. Tim wondered if he could rope his own Helena into some sort of real two man play for fun back home. Probably not, but if he annoyed her enough about it…

Oh right, the fight. Helena swung, and Tim let her fist connect with his jaw. It hurt like hell, but that was kind of the point. The more bruises, the less suspicion from Bruce.

“I won’t let you get away with this.” He rasped up at her.

Helena raised an eyebrow, which… yeah. Fair. Tim leaned a bit too hard on the melodrama with that line.

“You won’t be letting me do much of anything, time for a nap little Robin.”

Oh thank fuck. Tim closed his eyes and waited in relief until the blow came. When it did, he had one second of feeling his head hit the asphalt before everything went dark.

Mission accomplished. Hopefully no permanent head trauma obtained.

He woke up to Robin glaring down at him. It was oddly cute. Tim called Damian many adjectives in his head over the years, the majority of them unflattering, but he’d never thought of Damian as cute before. This Damian just made his heart ache in little ways that kept surprising Tim. The concern he could see in the kid’s eyes as he guarded Tim’s body was sweet. Wholly unnecessary, as Tim had never been in danger to begin with, but still. Sweet.

Maybe this was what it felt like having a normal little brother. One who’s first meeting with you didn’t involve throwing you off a dinosaur and leaving you for dead to steal your job. Or maybe Tim had just forgotten how adorable Damian could be at ten, due to all his memories of ten year old Damian being filtered through that lens of distrust and disdain.

Maybe he hadn’t been totally fair to the kid back then. 

Ugh. Not the kind of self reflection Tim was in the mood for. He sat up before that train of thought could continue, causing this Damian to jump.

“Red Robin!” Damian went in for a shoulder pat, hesitated, faltered, and stepped back. “Are you alright?”

“Never better.” Tim grimaced. “But I think we should head home for the night. I’m in no condition to patrol after that and you were roughed up before we even began fighting. Batgirl can handle the city for a few hours.”

“I…” Damian’s hesitance wasn’t a good sign, it probably meant Bruce wouldn’t appreciate that they took an early night. “...Yes sir. Do you need assistance getting to the bikes?”

“Nah, I think I can manage.” Tim pushed himself up, wobbling slightly as his body adjusted to a bunch of new aches. “Just do me a favour and catch me if you see me falling off the side of a building.”

Damian said nothing, his confused stare adding to Tim’s worries. If he was acting odd to Damian then what chance did he have of fooling Bruce? He’d need to work having a convincing reason for taking on the Birds before Bruce came home from patrol. At least Damian hopefully wouldn’t get in trouble, he was supposed to follow Tim’s orders and had done that all night, regardless of how stupid they seemed. Bruce had no reason to be mad at him.

Then again, Bruce didn’t need a reason. If he wanted to find one he could. But thinking like this helped Tim feel more in control of the situation, less helpless. Was that a good thing?

Tim thought he might just be beginning to understand why Cass was always trying to justify Bruce’s actions. If there was a system in place Tim could work within it, play the game. When he failed, there was hope that he’d just done something wrong and could do it differently next time. But if there wasn’t a system… then his well-being rested on the whims and mood of a violent man, and there was nothing he could do about it.

Tim didn’t like buying into that fake system, didn’t like that he was trying to predict Bruce’s abuse. He’d been here too long if he was relying on the illusion of Bruce’s predictableness for comfort. But the alternative was to just sit nervously waiting for the worst, so Tim found himself coming up with lies to counter Bruce anyway.

They drove back to the cave in silence, Tim going over ideas for what to tell Bruce in his mind. Damian glanced at him occasionally, but Tim just kept his eyes on the road. Whatever the kid thought was prompting Tim’s weird behaviour, he probably wouldn’t guess that his older brother had been body-swapped. At this point, Bruce was the only one Tim was worried about that might put two and two together. 

The cave was empty when they arrived. Damian got dressed and out pretty quickly, clearly not wanting to be around when Bruce showed up. Tim hoped the kid would get a good night’s sleep. After tomorrow, Bruce wouldn’t get the chance to hurt him ever again. Just one more night, and Damian would be safe. Four more nights, and he’d be free.

Tim wanted to undress and go to sleep too, but his body ached a lot . Helena had gone easy on him for sure, but she’d still made it look convincing. Exactly what Tim had hoped for. Didn’t make the results any less painful.

He curled up behind a pillar in a dark corner of the cave, taking deep breaths as he relaxed his muscles. Nothing was broken, but his abdomen and tailbone were bruised for sure. The muscles in his hand injured in a way where it hurt to flex them, and his face felt like it was full of cotton wool. Given that he may have a concussion, sleep was not advised. But the adrenaline was fading the more he sat on the ground, and trying to stay awake proved harder than he thought. Without meaning to, Tim ended up dozing off against the pillar.

He jolted awake in the darkness to the sound of hushed voices. Bruce and Cass, talking. He’d been asleep for a few hours then, if patrol was over. He should probably make himself known instead of hiding and eavesdropping, but that would require dealing with Bruce. And Tim was so, so tired. If he just sat here, maybe he wouldn’t have to act like he was somebody else, just for a few more hours.

“Anything happen on patrol?” Bruce’s voice was neutral, but it still made the hairs on Tim’s arms stand up.

“I saw Stephanie.” Cass replied, careful and quiet. “A few rooftops away. We didn’t interact.”

“You didn’t stop her?”

“She wasn’t doing anything for me to stop.”

Bruce sighed. The sound of it caused Tim’s stomach to sink.

“It’s good that you stayed away from her. But I still don’t like the influence that whore has on you.”

“Don’t.” Cass sounded tired. “Don’t… call her that.”

A cracking sound made Tim flinch. He was getting far too accustomed to hearing the sound of Bruce’s palm hitting Cass’s cheek.

“Do you want to try that again?”

“You’re Batman.” Cass sounded angry now, not cowed in the slightest by the slap. “You’re supposed to be good , better than the bad guys who use words like that! When you say it, even if it’s someone you hate, you are failing the mission.”

“They say it as a derogatory insult.” Bruce’s voice was surprisingly calm. “When I call Stephanie Brown a little harlot it’s a simple factual statement. She had a teen pregnancy, she’s slept with many men despite only being eighteen, she even strung you along in her web too… It may not be money but she gets something out of it every time.”

“Stop it.” Cass snarled. “Catwoman, Talia, Vicki Vale, Silver St Cloud, Zatanna. Out of all of them you have only married Talia, and she left you. Does that make you a whore? A harlot? A slut ? Would you let me call you those words without punishment?”

An icy silence. Tim wrapped his arms around his knees and squeezed. 

“I see your point.” That wasn’t the response Tim expected, but Bruce sounded sincere. “Thank you Cassie. You’re right that I let my hatred blind me. I won’t use those words anymore.”

That was almost an apology. Tim scooted out quietly, the urge to see Bruce’s expression stronger than his fear. Was he lying? Was he angry? Tim couldn’t tell from the voice alone, so he peeked out to see what was happening.

Bruce had one hand in Cass’s hair, stroking it gently. There was a proud, gentle smile on his face. Cass had her eyes closed, leaning into his touch like it was the only comfort that existed in the world. It was so bizarrely soft and tender Tim wondered for a second if he was hallucinating.

“You’re my compass Cassandra.” Bruce stroked the cheek he’d hit less than a minute earlier. “Whenever I stray from the path, I can always trust you to see the truth. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“Probably… call Dick home.” Cass’s lips twitched into a smile, and Bruce laughed in response.

“In some ways you’re not wrong. Nightwing has my heart, and he’s a better man than I am. But by virtue of being that better man he can’t be Batman the way you and I can. He’s on a different path, and I wouldn’t change that. Not when I have you here to be my mirror.”

She smiled up at him, all faith and hope like Tim’s own Cass. It hurt to see it, hurt to look at the bruise on her face and the joy of companionship and understanding in her eyes. It wasn’t real . It couldn’t be. Tim refused to accept that this Bruce was sincere in any way. It was just another manipulation tactic, like last night when he’d told Tim he was a smart, good boy while tipsy. Moments of calculated vulnerability and kindness to keep them loyal, that’s what it had to be.

Tim stayed quiet as one pair of footsteps left for the changing room. Maybe if he just waited here he could sneak out later and get changed himself.

“Timothy.”

Or not. Fuck everything. 

Tim pushed himself up the pillar until he was standing, his joints stiff. Bruce watched him as he walked out, eyes tracing over every inch of him, cataloging all the pain he could see in Tim’s movements. He sat on the chair in front of the computer like a God passing judgement, watching silently as Tim walked forward until he was standing in front of the chair. If the aim was to make Tim feel small and intimidated, he succeeded. Jack Drake had sat like that, once upon a time, whenever he wanted to lecture Tim. He didn’t like that his brain conflated the two of them, but he couldn’t deny the images matched up in his mind.

“Report.”

“Robin and I patrolled until we encountered Black Canary and Huntress near Gotham Superior Courthouse. We attempted to subdue them for arrest however they fought back and we failed to capture them. We both suffered injuries that would have led to increased risks while patrolling, and so for safety reasons we retreated to the cave. Robin is upstairs sleeping, but my injuries left me too fatigued to get out of the costume and I fell asleep down here.”

“Sloppy.”

“I know. I’m sorry, sir.”

They studied each other in silence. Tim wondered if he should seem more afraid, more meek. But he was just too damn tired.

“Why did you decide to take on the Birds?”

A question he’d planned for. And Bruce would know he’d planned for it, so Tim didn’t have to worry about sounding scripted. 

“You spoke yesterday about wanting to instill more discipline in Robin. I wanted to show him how important it was to fight for control and structure, even if the odds weren’t in his favour. He didn’t think we would win but he followed my orders perfectly despite that.”

“A test.”

“Of a sort. The Birds shouldn’t be out in the city, and I was hoping that if Robin could distract Black Canary I could do significant damage to Huntress as a warning. Use the element of surprise and our underdog status to my advantage.”

“And did you succeed?”

“I landed some heavy blows. I’m hesitant to pass final judgement on whether or not I succeeded until you review the footage.”

Bruce hummed, leaning back against his chair. Tim stood ramrod straight, refusing to let his nerves show on his face no matter how his stomach churned. 

“What about Robin?”

“Successfully followed my orders with respect throughout the night. No issues whatsoever.”

“Good. Alfred got through to him it seems.”

Tim grit his teeth, and nodded.

Bruce studied him again, like a bug under a microscope. Then he sighed.

“You made mistakes that led to you being injured. Avoidable mistakes. I should discipline you for them, but I’m too tired to do so properly.”

Tim nodded, and said nothing. Even if he wanted to, he couldn’t think of a single thing to say in response to that.

“Hold out your arms. Palms up.”

Not ominous at all. At least it didn’t sound like Bruce was going to force Tim to fight him again. Tim held out his arms, and watched as Bruce walked over to another part of the cave. When he returned, he was holding a fucking whip. 

Oh this was not going to be fun.

“I was hoping to avoid using these on you entirely.” Bruce had the gall to actually sound sad about it. “I thought Cassandra would be the only child of mine for which such punishments would be necessary. But you’re too old to go over my knee, it just wouldn’t be effective anymore.”

He looked at Tim. Shit, he wanted a response.

“I understand, sir.” Tim lied, straight faced with his arms held out, as if he understood or agreed with a single bit of this.

Bruce stepped forward, grabbing Tim’s left arm and pulling the cloth up so that the skin underneath was exposed. He did the same with the right arm. Tim did his best to remain stoic, but he couldn’t stop himself from trembling as Bruce stepped back. The whip was more of a crop than a full bullwhip, short with a wooden handle and one leather strip. Tim didn’t know enough about whips to know what that specific type was called, but it looked like it stung like hell.

Selina would probably know its name.

The thought almost made him giggle hysterically, but he swallowed it down. Bruce raised the whip, and lashed it down on Tim’s left forearm.

Tim’s initial impression had been correct. That thing stung like hell . Tim bit back a scream, clenching his fist to stop himself from pulling his arm into his body and shielding it from more hits. Bruce didn’t give him a chance to breathe, lashing it down on his right forearm and then his left again. Tim’s arms trembled openly now, his shoulders straining to keep them raised when every instinct told him to protect them from further pain.

Again and again, Bruce rained down lashes. He was careful, methodologically marking up and down Tim’s forearms until they were an even shade of bright red from wrist to elbow. Tim began whimpering around the fifth strike, and crying openly around the tenth. Thankfully, that seemed to be allowed. Bruce didn’t criticise Tim’s crying, just focused on hitting him again and again until finally, he stepped back and put the whip down.

Tim remained in position, arms out and shaking with pain and fear.

“You may go.” Bruce turned away, sitting back down and facing the computer. “No more reckless fights you can’t win, even if you’re trying to test your brother.”

“Yes sir.” Tim croaked out, swallowing down the tears that fell into his mouth.

He got dressed and left the cave as fast as he could, not wanting to stick around in case Bruce suddenly decided he had the energy for a “full” punishment. The fact that the whipping he’d just received was apparently Bruce going easy on him? The man could take that whip and shove it up his ass. Fuck him and fuck his stupid, archaic discipline.

When Tim got back to his own Gotham, he was starting a public campaign against child abuse. Anything to get rid of this feeling of smallness and fear and distress he was currently experiencing in every cell of his body. He’d been in bad fights before, got roughed up and been near death, but there was something different about standing there and letting someone hit you, over and over again. He wished suddenly and irrationally that Janet Drake would rise from the dead, drawn by the sound of Tim’s sobs. His mother would take one look at him and get a gun to shoot this Batman herself. 

He needed to focus. Tim had a plan. This should comfort him. He should go to bed and not cause any more fuss. But his arms hurt, and he was still crying, and his feet took him in a different direction than the elevator.

When he entered the containment cell area, he wasn’t sure who was more surprised, him or Jason.

His brother looked tired. About as tired as Tim felt. He straightened up from his slouch against the cell wall as Tim walked in.

“What are you doing here?” Jason grinned. “Come to bond again?”

An excellent question. What was Tim doing here?

“You like seeing us in pain.” Tim replied dully, the words spewing out of his mouth without thought. “Well Bruce just punished me, so here you go.”

Jason whistled, low and long. He glanced at Tim’s red, welted arms in fascination. Tim stepped closer, holding them up for Jason to see. He wondered why he was doing this. Maybe because Jason knew that it was wrong, even if he taunted Tim about it. He knew it was abusive and fucked up, and he’d say as much even if Tim couldn’t.

“And you let him do that to you?” Jason said, the judgement and derision soothing something in Tim’s soul.

“Of course.” Tim replied flatly. “I was in the wrong.”

Jason titled his head, and Tim knew the bullshit reading meter was ringing loudly in his mind. He probably thought this was a new trick, a new angle to try and make Jason submit. Truthfully, Tim didn’t have a clue what he was hoping to gain from this. Maybe because he still didn’t know what the hell he was going to do about Jason, and showing him Tim’s pain was as close to an apology Tim could give for that.

They stayed like that for a minute, Tim staring into space and Jason staring at Tim.

“You’re slipping.” Jason said at last. “The mask is cracking, isn’t it? It’s getting harder and harder to justify and defend him.”

“Not really.” Tim replied. “He’s the same man he’s been since the day I met him.”

“An abusive asshole?”

“I don’t think he’d agree with that assessment.”

“But you do.”

“Do I?”

Jason studied him again. Another game, Tim was playing games with everyone in this damn manor. Playing along with Bruce’s abusive parenting, pretending to be the Tim he knew. Playing along with Cass, taking what he could from her without pushing too hard in case she ratted him out. Playing along with Damian, trying to protect him as best he could while still acting like the other Tim. He was so tired of playing, of acting. He wanted to go home and just be himself. Not this broken, other Tim who let Bruce hit him and thanked him for the blows. 

“I think you do agree.” Jason grinned. “I think you came here because you finally realised I’m right.”

“Right about what? Killing Damian? I still think that’s a pathetic way to get revenge on a man.”

“Yeah, of course, killing Damian.” Jason leaned back against the wall of his cell, grin growing wider. “That’s what I meant.”

“You have a lot of opinions.” Tim mirrored Jason, sitting down in front of the cell. “I want to hear them.”

“Anything in particular? I’m a pretty harsh critic of the Gotham Knights, just to warn you.”

“About me.” Tim replied. “I want to hear all your opinions about me.”

“You sure? You know a lot of this already, and it ain’t very flattering.”

“I’m sure.”

“Alright then.” Jason grinned like a hyena feasting over a carcass. “Let me tell you something about the pathetic, spineless little worm known as Tim Drake.”

And so he did. And Tim listened.

When he left an hour later, he felt a little bit more stable, his heart a little lighter. Jason had been harsh, and cruel, and dug into every wound and insecurity he’d seen in this other Tim. But all of it had been honest, and when he spoke of Bruce and his impact on Tim, he didn’t pretend it was anything other than abuse.

“Thank you.” Tim said, pausing at the door before he left.

Jason’s demeanour had changed throughout the hour, going from malicious joy to anger to confusion to anger again and then to this careful blankness once he realised nothing he said was getting a response from Tim. Now he stared at Tim, unblinking. Tim wondered if he was fantasising about killing Tim, hurting him like he’d hurt Damian. Or maybe he was just wondering if he could get Tim to order him a burger again.

Tim stepped into the shadows and closed the door behind him. Jason’s unblinking gaze stuck in the forefront of his mind all the way upstairs into the manor.

He still didn’t know what to do to help his most unstable brother. But at the very least, he knew Jason would enjoy what Tim was going to do to Bruce tomorrow. For now, that would have to be enough.