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In Tim’s defense, he’d had a lot on his plate. Between figuring out how he and Steph still stood, his family jumping down a financial bracket or three, and, of course, the whole “Bruce Wayne accused of murder” thing, he had way more important things to worry about than doing recon on the new school his dad had enrolled him in. Look, he was just glad to be back from boarding school. No more roommates and no more sneaking past an overenthusiastic dog whenever he wanted to go out as Robin. He was going back to sweet, grimy Gotham.
That blissful optimism lasted up until the peppy upperclassman assigned to show him around (a girl named Jessica with dyed red hair and a ‘save the turtles’ t-shirt) looked down at her copy of Tim’s schedule and said “It looks like for first period, you have English with Ms. Bertinelli.”
“Huh?” Tim said, the pinnacle of eloquence.
Jessica didn’t seem to notice the fact that Tim’s brain was currently rebooting and kept talking. “You’ll like her, she’s cool.”
Tim did like her, just not as his English teacher. His mind was racing. He needed to get out of this situation. Maybe he could break his leg, but no, he’d still end up in first period eventually and he needed his legs for Robin. They were still walking down the hallway. He was running out of time.
“Here we are!” Too soon, they stopped in front of a door. Before Tim could come up with a plan to transfer schools or fake his death, Jessica was shoving him through the door. “Good luck!” she said, and then vanished, the traitor.
From the front of the room, Helena Bertinelli, English teacher by day, vigilante known as the Huntress by night, smiled at him. “Hello,” she said, “You must be Tim Drake. It’s nice to have you joining our class this year.”
Tim said something in reply, he wasn’t sure what, sat down in the empty desk she pointed him to, and took notes on autopilot through a lecture that went in one ear and out the other. Don’t act suspicious! screamed his brain. Helena couldn’t know who he was. If she recognized him as Robin, that was practically the end of the world. …Maybe he could talk his dad into sending him back to boarding school.
“—and please review chapter 17 of the textbook for tomorrow.” The class was almost over, Tim noted, glancing at the clock on the wall. He was actually going to make it through this.
Except Helena kept talking. “Mr. Drake,” she said. “Could I talk to you after class for a minute?”
Tim’s blood froze in his veins. Then, the adrenaline rush hit. She knew. A dozen different contingency plans began swirling through his head . “Uh, okay,” he said.
“Thank you.” The bell rang. “The rest of you are dismissed.” Students filed out until it was only the two of them. Tim braced himself and mentally pulled on Robin, ready for anything.
“Don’t worry Tim, I’ll keep this quick,” Helena said. “I just want to make sure that we’re on the same page.” This was it, the moment of truth. “Right now the class is working on their poetry project. Since it’s due this week, you won’t have to worry about doing it. The first major assignment you’ll turn in will be the transcendentalism essay at the end of this unit in a few weeks. Do you have any questions?”
It took Tim a moment to process that he had not, in fact, blown his secret identity on the first day of class. His brain slowly came out of panic mode. “No,” he said after a moment too long.
“Did you study any of the transcendentalists at your previous school?”
“No, uh, we were reading Steinbeck— Of Mice and Men.” Act normal. Everything was going to be fine, so just act normal.
Helena nodded. “Well, I’ll get you the notes packet next class and if you have any questions, feel free to ask. I’m here to help.”
“Yeah, I’ll do that,” Tim said, quietly resolving to never do that ever.
“That’s all I’ve got unless you have any questions.”
“No.”
“Then I’ll let you get to your next class, " Helena said with a smile.
Tim gratefully left. This wasn’t the end of the world. He was going to figure out a way to get out of this, it’d all be fine. Really.
—
Okay, so maybe Tim didn’t know how he was going to get out of this. His dad wasn’t going to let him transfer schools again, especially since Tim couldn’t give him a reason. What was he supposed to say? Hey dad, I can’t keep attending this school because my English teacher’s a vigilante. How do I know this? Because I’m also a vigilante and I don’t want her to find out my secret identity. Yeah right. Like he could say that. Though, transferring out now would probably be even more suspicious. There were only a couple of months left in the school year. He just had to keep his head down and make it through them. How hard could it really be?
Way harder than he thought, it turned out.
There were a dozen little things he did every day that could link Tim Drake with Robin. Now that he was looking out for them, he could see them everywhere.
Take his first assignment for example: It was a worksheet. Tim had half-heartedly filled it out before going out, only to be struck by a thought while swinging over Gotham. Did the Huntress know Robin’s handwriting? Had he ever left her a note? He lent her case files every once in a while, but did those have his handwriting on them? He couldn’t remember.
He ended up rewriting the whole thing with his left hand on the train to school in the morning just to be safe. It was a good thing he’d used a pencil.
Another thing: There was this other kid in the class named Pete Robins. He was the class clown and every time Helena snapped “Robins!” at him to get him to shut up, Tim could feel himself tense. Every time. It was a good thing they sat on opposite sides of the classroom so she didn’t actually notice. At least he hoped that she didn’t.
He spent as little time as he could get away with in the classroom, kept his head down, and didn’t his best to be inconspicuous. Of course, that didn’t mean he succeeded.
“—ake. Mr. Drake!”
Tim jolted to alertness, reflexively clenching tight the pencil in his left hand. “Um, yes?”
“Falling asleep in class again, Mr. Drake?” Helena asked.
There was a right answer to that question and a wrong one. “Sorry, Ms. Bertinelli.” Stupid B for not bothering to solve who framed him for murder which meant that it was Tim who had to go running around for Oracle in the wee hours of the morning.
She sighed. “Speak to me after class. Now, if you could start reading from the top of page 427...”
The end of class came too soon.
“This is the third time I’ve caught you falling asleep in class, Tim,” Helena said. “My lectures aren’t that boring, are they?”
Tim gave a nervous laugh. “No, just, uh, a late night.”
Helena hummed. She was studying him carefully. Tim found himself shifting under her attention. “I can tell you’re a bright kid, and I want you to succeed.”
Great, so it was one of those conversations. “I know, I know, I just need to put in the effort.”
“I understand that sometimes life gets in the way of you putting in that effort.” Or maybe it wasn’t. “Tim,” she said gently. “Are you having any issues at home?”
Shit. “What? No, everything’s fine,” he said quickly, maybe too quickly.
Helena was still looking at him. “If there’s something going on, you can trust me. I want to help you.”
Tim suddenly remembered the fading bruise on his chin he’d gotten a few nights before, a lucky hit from some two-bit Russian thug. He’d covered it up. You wouldn’t notice it unless you knew what to look for, which — Tim’s eyes drifted to Helena’s collarbone where he could see the edges of an injury of her own peeking out from under her shirt collar — she would.
Helena coughed. His eyes snapped back to her face. This called for damage control. “I mean, I guess there’s been some money stuff,” he said carefully. “My dad’s been taking it kind of hard.”
“In what way?”
“He’s just kind of depressed. I’ve been going out skating a lot more to get away.” There, that was an explanation.
Helena nodded. “I can see where that would be stressful. If there’s anything I can do to help, let me know.” Good, she was buying it. “That being said, I would appreciate it if you actually stayed awake in class.”
Tim laughed nervously. “I’ll try.”
—
Crisis only narrowly averted, Tim did what any self-respecting bat would do when faced with personal problems they didn’t want to acknowledge: he threw himself into casework. Babs didn’t need him for the murder investigation right now, and he’d wrapped up his last case, which meant that it was time to go looking for trouble.
If there was one thing Gotham was never in short supply of, it was trouble. There was always the powder keg that was the city’s ecosystem of organized crime, but Batman was working that case and, sue him, but Tim didn’t really want to run into him right now. There was something brewing down at the docks, but that was almost certainly mafia related, and that meant that the Huntress would probably be on the case. He was also avoiding her, for obvious reasons, which meant that was out of the question. He’d heard some rumors at school about what sounded like an illegal dog-fighting ring, which was promising, but if Helena had heard those same rumors… He probably shouldn’t risk it. What to do, what to do…
Scrolling through the batfiles, Tim found the perfect case: Some wannabe rogue calling himself the Bleach Bandit. He was running around, vandalizing places with bleach and white paint for some inexplicable reason. He was also robbing places so there was that too. He was just stupid and petty enough that Tim was almost certain not to run into anyone else while chasing after him. (Except maybe Spoiler, but he didn’t think he’d mind that much if he did.)
—
Of course, by thinking that, Tim was shooting himself in the foot. Most of the attacks had been localized to the upper east side; Tim had extrapolated a rough pattern and was staking out a potential target when there was the thump of somebody landing on the rooftop behind him.
“Robin, it’s been a while since I’ve seen you out.”
It was Huntress, because the universe hated him.
Tim turned to face her. “Hey.” He made the split-second decision to pitch his voice lower. “What are you doing here?”
She gave him a look. “Are you sick or something?”
“No,” Tim said. He coughed, “Just, uh, something stuck in my throat.” Note to self: the voice was stupid.
“Hmm, well, I’m here chasing after some bozo calling himself the Bleach Bandit.”
Tim was pretty sure by this point that he’d managed to tick off one of those higher powers that ran the universe (an unfortunate side effect of being in the cape game). “Sounds outside of your usual game,” he said.
She shrugged. “The bastard bleached my car. It’s going to take good money to get the paint job fixed.”
Tim winced in sympathy. “Ouch.” Another detail he’d missed.
“Yeah, well. What about you? Haven’t seen you around in a while.”
“I was, uh,” for some reason he was finding it harder and harder to lie on the fly around her; the truth slipped out instead. “Also chasing the Bleach Bandit,” he admitted. “But I’ll just leave him for you to take care of.” Tim started to inch towards the edge of the roof.
The look the Huntress gave Robin was uncomfortably similar to the one Ms. Bertinelli had given Tim Drake earlier. “Not going to stick around? So you are avoiding me then.”
Tim stopped. “I’m not avoiding you,” he lied.
“Is this about Killer Croc?” Helena asked. “Because I didn’t actually kill him. I followed all your little rules.”
“No! It’s just, uh, You don’t need my help. The Bleach Bandit doesn’t really need two vigilantes chasing after him and I could be doing other stuff.”
“Yeah, right. Like I ever need your help,” Helena said with huff. “It’s never stopped you before. I can’t believe you’re making me be the one to ask for a teamup.”
“You want to team up? Against the Bleach Bandit?” Tim wasn’t sure how to feel about her seeking him out. That was supposed to be his job!
“The last time we worked the same case, I thought you died. So, yes, I want to team up.”
And now he was feeling guilty. There was no way that he was getting out of this, was there? “Fine, we’ll team up,” he said. And then, trying to reclaim the flow of the conversation: “Because you clearly need my help.”
Helena laughed. “There’s the Robin I know.”
This would be fine. Tim was just being overly paranoid, and wasn’t he always getting annoyed at Bruce for that? It was some guy calling himself the Bleach Bandit , what could possibly go wrong?
—
Tim had no one to blame but himself for tempting fate, because the answer to that question was quite a lot actually. They did manage to apprehend the Bleach Bandit, but not before he blasted the both of them with bleach. He was going to need a new Robin suit; he was pretty sure that not even Alfred’s near-magical powers at laundry were enough to fix this one. That wasn’t even the worst of his problems, because it had also gotten into his hair.
What he should’ve done at that point was go to one of Gotham’s many shady 24-hour convenience stores and grab some hair dye. But no, Tim hadn’t thought about it. He’d been tired and focused on taking a shower and collapsing into bed. He continued to not think about it until Dana asked him what in the world he’d done to his hair at breakfast and by that point, it was too late. His fate was sealed.
He should’ve skipped school, but in another great decision, Tim had instead tried to hide his hair under a baseball cap instead. He’d been dress-coded before he even got to class. Helena took one look at him when he walked in the door, and just like that the game was up,
“Mr. Drake, could you speak with me after class?”
Yep, his secret identity was screwed.
Helena closed the door after the last of the other students had filed out.
“I like your hair,” she said. “Daring choice.”
“I like your haircut, too,” Tim said. Helena had been smarter than him. She’d cropped her hair short to get rid of the bleached parts. It suited her. Looked much better than his did.
For a long moment, neither of them said anything else, carefully weighing the other up.
Helena broke first. “So,” she said. “Robin.”
“Huntress.”
“Can’t believe you were hiding under my nose this whole time.”
“Well, I can’t believe I got stuck with you as my English teacher,” Tim retorted.
She snorted. “Punk. I should’ve realized you were hiding something like this.”
“I was getting away with it.”
“Nah, you were suspicious as hell.”
“Well, it still took you longer to figure out my identity than it took me to figure out yours.”
“We can’t all be creepy stalkers,” Helena said. “Does this mean you’re going to stop avoiding me now?”
“I guess,” Tim said.
“Good. Not that I missed you or anything.”
He smiled. “Of course you didn’t.”