Chapter Text
The first few weeks of Tim’s imprisonment were filled with anxious anticipation.
He spun theories about why he was being held there. There seemed to be a larger plot going on. Something sinister, something to wreck the Batman using him. Tim was determined to stop them, or at least cause so much trouble they’d regret ever capturing him.
That proved very difficult to do from a dark cell.
His weapons had all been taken away but he was still in his Red Robin costume and Robin always had something up his sleeve. He fashioned a makeshift tool from his empty belt thinking that maybe if he could engineer the right kind of sustained tension on the glass and then suddenly release it the shock might be enough to shatter the surface. It probably wouldn’t have worked anyway, but he never got to find out because within hours of starting the project he was sedated and this time all of his costume was removed and he was left in only his thin underclothes.
“We will put you back in it when the time comes.” his hooded captor told him.
Tim filed that away. Spent the next several days constructing theories about what that could mean for his purpose here. The lack of clothes made him feel vulnerable and unrobinly. More like a unremarkable nobody. Tim shook that off and meditated for a while until he could shake off the feelings and not care too much about it. Still, it was a little cold. He scratched formulas for different escape methods he would make if he had the supplies into the metal of his cell with his fingernails.
Bruce was the greatest detective in the world. Surely soon he would find him and take him home. Would make the people who’d done this to him regret it. Sure he thought right now tim was dead, but that kind of falsehood couldn’t last forever. Tim wasn’t being harmed, he was just bored. All he had to do was be patient.
Even with Jason, the truth eventually came out. But Tim’s situation was different so it was unlikely to come to such extremes.
There was no way to tell the passage of time in the cell. It was dark save for a steady dim blue glow. He was fed, but he knew it was the bare minimum of what humans could survive on and it didn’t happen particularly regularly. His ribs started to show after a while but there was nothing Tim could do about it except eat the little food he was given.
There were two other cells in the room that were identical to the one Tim was in. They were each blank little rooms with nothing on the walls and no furniture that Tim might be able to leverage. There wasn’t even a toilet. That had actually caused a surprising amount of stress where Tim tried to hold it as long as he could, convinced he’d be given something or at least taken out to somewhere. He’d tried to ask, but either no one was surveilling him or they didn’t care.
Tim was more inclined to believe the latter.
At last he was forced to just use the corner of the cell and pray the waste wouldn’t breed sickness. He didn’t think his immune system already wasn’t worth much because of his missing spleen but with how little he was being fed… it was a real danger.
This lasted until the festering stink started to get to worrying levels. Then his food was drugged one day and when Tim woke up he was in the cell next to his damp from being hosed down. His previous cell was being cleaned thoroughly by robots and Tim watched with interest. If he could just get his hands on one he would probably be able to rewire it into something that could help him escape.
He was never in the same room as them though even when he was given food.
His hooded capture came to visit him occasionally and take pictures and measurements but even those visits were becoming less and less frequent. Tim tried to wheedle while the man was there, to get any information, but his captor seemed to take delight in keeping him in the dark. Apparently figuratively as well as literally.
It was a good thing, Tim mused, that it was him in this situation and not someone like Dick. He was pretty sure the sheer isolation would have already gotten to the older vigilante. Tim was actually having a bit of a hard time with it as well, but at least he had more practice with such things than Dick did.
Being left alone in a great big house over and over again while his parents went traveling all over the world had made him resistant these sorts of things. But at least then there had been books and games and the internet and chasing after Batman and Robin at night time. Here there was nothing. Tim wondered if this was his captors plan: a psychological torture by deprivation of simple kinds of needs and stimulations. But unfortunately that didn’t even seem to be the case. Tim being here didn’t actually seemed to have much to do with Tim at all but virtually everyone else besides him.
He’s had 312 meals in captivity when he starts thinking more and more about what might happen if he just… died here. Nothing, he realizes. Everyone else already thinks he’s dead. They’ve probably come up with ways to compensate for his absence already. Tim wonders if they had a funeral. What story Bruce gave to his father and stepmother. If he even cared or just went right back to business as usual.
Hopefully Bruce is doing alright. Tim knows he doesn’t handle grief well. The man had made a lifetime devotion after his parents death. Tim became Robin because of his inconsolable grief and anguish after Jason’s death. Damian’s death wrecked him and made him irrational and his own brand of pain filled madness till he’d resurrected him. It’s… tim doesn’t know what he expects or hopes for in response to his own death.
Tim mostly sits on the floor of his cell now. He’d rather pace, but standing makes him dizzy with hunger these days and he doesn’t want to fall. He tried to talk to the camera at least as an exercise to keep him more mentally stable, but talking too much makes him extremely thirsty and he’s only a certain ration of water. Tim knows he’s fainted a few times but everything looks exactly the same when he wakes up again that he has no idea how long he’s unconscious for.
Why hadn’t anyone come for him? If they’d even looked at his death even a little bit there would have been signs and inconsistencies that would have pointed to him possibly being still alive. If it had been anyone on Tim’s team he wouldn’t have let it alone until there was absolutely no loose ends or factor left unexplained. That’s how he had found Bruce when everyone thought the man was dead.
Even as his rational mind kept reeling trying to figure out why why why… the rest of him was unsurprised. There’d always been that little voice that said that no one really cared about Tim. That he was an inconvenience that people would rather just not think about. He’d been learning to keep that voice at bay, with the love of his new family and the Titans. But here in the dark… there was nothing else.
There was nothing else.
The Hooded man stopped coming. Stopped coming for so long. There was no one but the robots. He wondered if even his captors had forgotten him. He wouldn’t be surprised. Sure enough the robots shut down as well after another 50 meals or so and the lights finally flicker completely out.
Tim wonders if he’s already dead. Would he know? But he’s still in pain, so maybe not. He’s so thirsty. If he’s not dead yet, he won’t last more than a day or two more at most. The thought is a bit comforting: at least it’ll all be over then. It will be-
“What the fuck, it smells like sh- I’m gonna kill that fucker, there’s someone down here. Shit he’s still alive- Hey kid, can you hear me?”
There is only darkness.
Tim wakes up to pain- well, everywhere.
He doesn’t consciously decide to open his eyes but he knows when he does because there a sharper pain all of a sudden and he’s flinching and squeezing his eyes shut but even then it’s too much-
“Ah, I should have known the lights would be too much for you given where they were keeping you Replacement.” and it becomes easier to breathe as the lights are turned off even if a part of them wants to beg because he doesn’t want to be in the dark anymore, he doesn’t-
Replacement. Only one person calls him that.
Tim cautiously opens his eyes again and this time everything is in shadows. Specifically, one man shaped shadow next to him. Tim himself seems to be hooked up to a number of machines monitoring his vitals and giving him a steady drip of fluids. He might think that this was an elaborate hallucination brought on by his deteriorating psyche but… never once did he ever consider the person to rescue him would be-
“Jason.” Tim croaks and winces both from how raw his voice is from disuse and from the harsh sound of it.
“I honestly don’t know if you’re incredibly lucky or unlucky,” Jason muses, “The fucker who was keeping you locked up? We caught him a couple of months ago. You really ought to be dead for real. You would be except that I was going through all of his old hideouts making sure he didn’t have anything dangerous or problematic hidden away. I don’t care much for the surprises this guys has managed to pull out so far.”
“What-” Tim tried to ask, swallowed and swallowed and tried to work up enough spit- talking shouldn’t be this painful but every sound felt like literal shards of glass we being dragged against his the inside of his throat.
“Didn’t even recognize you till I had you all hooked up and was cleaning you up. Don’t know what I would have done if I had- called Golden Boy? I don’t know. You don’t exactly look like Tim Drake. But somethings…”
Jason’s fingers traced lightly over the scar that he put there. Tim flinched and tried not to whimper. It had been so long since he’d been touched by another human it almost hurt. It felt a bit like being electrocuted.
“Somethings can’t be faked all that easily. And some other things are so fucked up that you kinda just know they must be true.” Jason finished.
“How- lon-?” Tim croaked, not sure how he felt about- anything.
“You’ve been with me a week. You’ve been going in and out of consciousness and I actually wasn’t sure you’d even make it.” Jason commented, “How long were you down there? I’m not sure, but you’ve been gone for almost two years now.”
No. No.
“You should probably sleep some more. You need it and the horrors of life will still be right there waiting for you. Trust me, I have experience with this sort of shit.” Jason said.
“Don’ want…” Tim frowned, tried to explain that he didn’t want the darkness that he could already feel creeping into his senses.
Could he ever be free of it?
“I know Replacement, I know.”
When Tim next woke up he was more clear headed then he’d been in- frick, apparently almost two years. Tim couldn’t believe it. He couldn’t- nobody really would have come for him. Bruce- he couldn’t think about it.
He wasn’t sure what to make of Jason continuing to take care of him either.
“I don’t like you.” Jason had told him pretty early on, “You’re still the fucking creepy stalker and the pretender that stole my name twice . But I know most of that was on fucking B. I know that, but it still doesn’t mean I’m gonna like you. I’ll take care of you because I’m not a monster, but it won’t change anything.”
Which had made Tim cringe with old guilt. Even though he’d still do it all again in a heartbeat. Still though, he guessed they were even there: he hadn’t exactly forgiven Jason completely for what he’d done to Gotham or Bruce as the Arkham Knight, even if he had made some progress in his transition to Red Hood.
He would probably die without the uneasy truce though.
Jason immediately put him on a strict diet. It felt both like it wasn’t enough and was far too much. Tim hadn’t been much of a big eater before, he’d always seen food as something that he did to live and not much more now- Well, he had a new intimate appreciation for it but he couldn’t say he looked forward to mealtimes since Jason insisted on feeding him until he felt bloated 4 or 5 times a day even though he knew that the amount he was eating was still relatively small.
“Have you told Bruce I’m alive?” asked Tim at last.
“Hell no. This place would be crawling in Bats if I had.You can tell them yourself if you want to.” Jason made a face in the dim light. Tim still couldn’t do full lights, but they’d worked their way up to little Christmas lights Jason had found and blacked out windows. Candles would have worked too, but Jason made a comment about not wanting to smell like a perfume store all the time.
Tim was feeling stronger everyday, even if he didn’t quite feel like himself yet.
It was quite a shock then when on a day he was feeling particularly better Tim had tried get out of bed and his legs had refused to hold him.
“I figured it’d be something like this.” Jason sighed when he’d found Tim on the floor after he’d come back from a bloody patrol.
“I don’t understand, I feel so much better-” Tim started.
“Aren’t you supposed to be the fucking smart one? Accepted to an Ivy college and all that?” Jason snorted.
“I- what? I got accepted?” Tim blinked. He still hadn’t heard back from them at the time. Two years later and possibly legally dead that wasn’t much of an option anymore. He shoved those thoughts away.
“Look, you were in that tiny cell for more than a year and it looked like you hadn’t really been moving around all that much. When that happens? All those nice pretty muscles you weren’t using started to deteriorate.” Jason tapped his legs.
“Right… Atrophy, I-” Tim tried to raise himself even slightly and shook like leaf. He wished Jason wasn’t there to see it.
“Look, there’s stretches and exercises you can do that will get you back onto your feet. I can’t say exactly what you should expect since I was held for a shorter amount of time but was tortured by the fucking Joker the whole way. Still, for me it took almost a year of physical therapy to be walking around without a cane after being tied to that fucking chair-” Jason cut himself off and muttered something under his breath before grabbing one of Tim’s legs and shoving up the loose sweatpants he was borrowing to massage the muscles there.
Tim bit back a sound of pain but Jason was unsympathetic, kept working the knots in his calves till at last the tension Tim hadn’t even realized was there suddenly gave. He held back a sound but Jason ignored him and continued up his leg then repeated the process on the other. The feel of being touched , well, once Tim was slightly more used to it felt like a drug.
He he felt desperate to be touched all over and not particularly in a sexual ways just- for two years there’d been nothing. Nothing . And now-
“You’ll probably need to do that everyday even after we get you on your feet.” Jason said finally seeming satisfied with his work.
“Ok.” Tim answers not entirely sure how he felt about the whole ordeal. Frustrated, he decided, that his road to recovery would be even longer than he’d thought.
“I’m sure B will have even fancier toys meant to help get you back on the streets faster once you go running back to him.” Jason said his lip curling ever so slightly before fishing around in his pocket, “You’re strong enough for travel anyway so go ahead and call him up whenever.”
Tim stared at the burner phone Jason dropped into his lap.
All this time, all that silence and pain, and he could be back home . He might not be able to walk yet but like Jason said, Bruce would help him get stronger and there were plenty of things he could do to help with the Mission while he healed. Things could go back to how they were and this would just be another near death experience to add to the pile.
Tim frowned. There was a… resistance in him at that. An unpleasant taste in his mouth at the idea of calling his adoptive family. He ought to. And he ought to want to go back, and be happy about the prospect, or closing this chapter of his life… but the thing was Tim Drake Wayne still seemed like an odd dream he’d made up in that dark. Oh he remembered everything, had a clear concept of what kind of person he was and how he’d thought and felt about things. But everything felt detached.
He knew trauma wasn’t just some blanket that was shrugged off with a little effort. His life was filled with people who’d been transformed by trauma. For better or for worse. And some people like Jason who… Tim really wasn’t sure about.
Tim felt changed, but he wasn’t quite certain all the ways how. He was sure that he didn’t like the prospect of finding out about those changes at the Manor where if it turned out he had developed less than attractive emotional scars… maybe they wouldn’t really reject him if he didn’t fit the mold of the old Tim, but honestly he didn’t have a lot of faith in that which was a little worrisome.
He wouldn’t call them. Not yet at least. Not until he had a better sense of… everything.
“Can I get onto the web somewhere?” asked Tim at last. Jason glanced at him, though Tim doubted he’d ever taken his attention off of him. He quickly explained before Jason could say anything, “I’ve learned to never go into a conversation with Bruce blind because… well, you know how he is.”
“Everything important is in the context and not shit that he says?” Jason drawled slightly crossing his arms and looking generally unhelpful.
“I need to know what’s happened while I’ve been “dead” before he makes it so I can only see his version of… everything.” Tim said uncomfortably. Maybe it was a lifetime of practically worshipping Batman and Robin, but admitting more problematic things about Bruce had always been… hard. Especially when no one outside the family understood and everyone inside… well, they were in the same situation.
The look Jason game him for that was openly assessing. Then he simply nodded and went to grab Tim a laptop. Tim didn’t want to think about what it meant that this was the first time Jason hadn’t looked at him in some sort of disdain.
Tim lifted himself with shaking arms back onto the low bed. Even that small movement had him short of breath. Had him wanting to start the most punishing of physical training. Jason came back and dropped the computer next to him. For a moment, it looked like he might want to say something then his mouth hardened into a thinline and he simply took a seat on the other side of the room, absent of his usual barbed snark. Tim knew he was watching him very closely even so.
Ignoring his audience, Tim began to catch himself up to date on everything that had happened while he was gone.
The fiasco in Gotham had been resolved soon after he’d been taken out just like he’d known it would. There was no mention of anything happening to Red Robin though. Tim told himself that was better, that he was a symbol and symbols weren’t allowed to die. It was less easy to deal with the fact that Tim Drake Wayne had never had a funeral. That his father hadn’t even checked in the whole two years he was gone to realize something was wrong. Tim had always suspected that he was the only one maintaining their relationship- but no, Tim had chosen his real family a long time ago.
A real family which… also was pretending he never existed or died.
It got worse when he stopped reading the newspaper articles and hacked into the Watchtower reports. He’d expected them to adapt to his absence eventually. But this didn’t feel like adapting this felt like…
Replacing, a voice inside him that sounded an awful lot like Jason said.
The most significant effect his death seemed to have was that Stephanie seemed to have broken away from Bruce after it in a fit of anger. She was now in a relationship with Cas though and seemed to be moving on quite completely. Tim swallowed and tried not to begrudge her that. She was the only one though. The only one who visibly reacted to his death. The others went on business as usual.
Damian was expected. He hated Tim and he benefited most from his death. He was now the heir to the Wayne fortune. The Drake one too. He had Robin. He’d even been given Tim’s Titian’s. He had Tim’s family. Everything that had once belonged to Tim seemed to have just been handed over to Bruce’s blood son.
Dick was a sharp betrayal as was Babs. They ushered Damian in as if Tim had never existed. Quickly becoming caught up in their own drama and forgetting all about him.
Bruce was perhaps the most painful though. His partner, his father, his friend. Tim’s memories of what Bruce was like in the aftermath of one of his Robins being killed were stark and frightening. This though, there was nothing. No rage, no extra aggression, no altered behaviors as far as Tim could see how ever so slightly. Just raising Damian and playing happy families with the new Superman and his son. Did you even grieve for me at all?
There was nothing nothing NOTHING and Tim could feel the chill and darkness and emptiness of his cell closing in around him.
“How could they do this?” Tim said after searching and searching for something.
Jason’s focused was laser sharp on him and tim wondered what sort of face he was making.
“They can’t just- It’s not even like I died it’s like they erased me. Pretended I didn’t exist and gave everything to that murdering brat. And nobody came- I don’t understand why nobody came !” Tim choked. He told himself to calm down. This was premature. He needed to do more research. A few hours wasn’t enough to- He took several deep breaths. It didn’t do anything to calm the chaos inside of him. The creeping numbness around the edges.
Jason stared at him a long while after his outburst before huffing out a small laugh.
“You know, some part of me really thought the old man would have learned his lesson about declaring a Robin dead without a body. Guess not.” Jason said humorlessly.
“He likely thought the high temperature of the explosion destroyed my body.” Tim said stiffly, unable to help but try and defend his - their- mentor.
“Oh yeah?” Jason raised an eyebrow, “You and I both have found enough patch job serial killers to know that bones don’t burn so much as become extremely breakable and easily crushed. And unless you were wearing some cheap knock-off of a costume, most of it should have been left since B always made that shit practically fucking lava proof because of all the metas and crazies with flamethrowers Gotham’s got under her skirts. Unless those baddies stripped you naked when they took you and left the costume?”
“...They only left my staff.” Tim admitted, and- this is what he’d been telling himself over and over in his cell. That they would come because there were so many clues, that- “I don’t understand. Bruce- all of the- they’re detectives Jason. If anyone, anyone , had looked even a little bit closer it would have been obvious that I hadn’t died there. Or at least that someone had taken my body. I don’t- It doesn’t-”
Tim gave a tiny growl of frustration and firmly didn’t look at Jason.
“Ah but kid, you’re forgetting one tiny detail.” Jason snorted bitterly, and Tim looked up because, well, “ kid” not “replacement” or “pretender” or anything else deragaty, “You see, the thing about Bruce is he is fucking brilliant, but he can’t fucking make himself see shit that doesn’t add to his Mission. I realized that when he left me to rot under Arkham. Sure, Joker had covered a lot of his tracks, but there were still so many obvious loose end and B just decided after a bit to stop looking. Because you see, alive we’re actually a barrier to the Mission, something that would distract his attention from the real evils that needed to be fought. But dead…”
“We become symbols.” Tim closed his eyes around the pain, “Something to punish Bruce and drive the Mission even further.”
“And there are always more soldiers.” Jason said looking right at him and-
“That…” Tim shook his head slightly, but he couldn’t dislodge the idea. He’d always been a little sympathetic to Jason’s viewpoint, but he had also been so sure he was ultimately wrong in all his conclusions. Still wrong on some, Tim firmly reminded himself thinking of the havoc the other had wrecked on Gotham. He’d thought it a childish temper tantrum at the time. Now he could see a little bit more how it made sense. How Bruce had to be forced to see how fucked up what he was doing was. But there had to be another way other than what Jason had tried.
“They’d been sidelining you for a while.” Jason noted, “They clearly wanted the demon brat to come into his his own and they knew he couldn’t do that fully with you around. Can’t live into his potential with you around. Even Goldie wanted it. They were all to polite to push through.”
Jason didn’t know, Tim realized, didn’t know why tim had become Red Robin. That he’d been forcefully pushed from his place as Robin, not because he was failing in anyway but because they decided they wanted Damian to have it. Tim had thought he’d gotten through his bitterness over that. He liked being Red Robin, albeit it was something else he’d stolen from Jason, but apparently the older wound had just been sitting. Waiting to be infected by something like this.
“It’s always nice to know how disposable we are to them, isn’t Replacement?” Jason said with a sharp grin that promised pain to someone.
“Jason?” Tim tensed.
“Don’t worry though, we’re gonna prove them all wrong again.” Jason said with steal in his eye.
“...We?” Tim almost laughed even though this was far from funny.
“I’m going to. And you telling me you’re going to go crawling back under their shoes after all this?” Jason said his tone daring.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I can’t go back just yet, no.” Tim admitted.
“So you do see.” Jason’s grin was triumphant and already calculating.
“This isn’t my villain origin story Jason.” Tim shot back glaring.
“Nah, who need that?” Jason said, “It is the beginning of something though, don’t you think?”
Tim covered his face with his hand and laughed humorlessly.
“Yeah,” He admitted, “Something.”