Chapter Text
Jack had never trusted himself to be a father. He hadn’t since one of his teachers, years ago, gave a lecture about cycles of abuse and how they always came back around. Even before that, he knew he didn’t have the patience for a child.
Janet hadn’t wanted a child either. She spoke of motherhood as a ruin of the body and spirit and refused to give her youth to a squalling thing that would only devour her days.
When the birth control failed, they both knew what they were going to do. That is, until the vultures found out about her pregnancy. Jack and Janet didn’t have any time to deny the allegations before Janet’s mother stormed into their house with a 9-month routine written out for the perfect pregnancy. It was full of bullshit hacks that would get her a grandson.
When Jack first met Tim, he expected to feel nothing but resentment. The baby was ugly: red, wrinkled, and foaming at the mouth. It represented the new burden that would control Jack’s life.
But Jack had fallen in love with the boy the second he held him in his arms.
He had vowed then to protect his son with everything he had. He had vowed to break the cycle.
Three years later, Tim died, and something else took his spot.
Janet and he tried to deny it at first. They went about their business like normal, like Tim was still the same child they had brought into the world, until Haly’s Circus. Then, they couldn’t deny it anymore. “Tim” had said it loud and clear for both of them to hear– he was wearing their son’s skin, their son’s corpse.
They began avoiding the boy whenever they could after that. They left him alone in the manor for long stretches of time, claiming business trips and charity events. In truth, they were searching for priests, scientists, mystics– anyone who might tell them what had taken their son’s place. But every answer only deepened the dread: that whatever wore Tim’s face was not done with them yet.
When they returned home, it would be waiting. Smiling. Calling them Mom and Dad as if nothing had ever gone wrong.
Janet couldn’t stand it. She couldn’t stand to be near the creature as it pranced around in her son’s body, stealing hugs and touches like a baby penguin seeking warmth.
The distance between them grew as steadily as the dread that filled their home. Jack and Janet stopped speaking about it– about Tim, about the night at the circus, about the way their son’s laughter didn’t sound quite human anymore. When they did speak, it was in short, bitter sentences. Janet accused Jack of not trying hard enough to fix things; Jack accused her of wanting to run.
The marriage cracked under the pressure. Janet became erratic, brittle with guilt and terror. Jack caught her once staring at Tim through the glass of his bedroom door, whispering something that could have been a prayer. She had taken to going to church for answers.
For atonement.
And they got it.
Jack was almost relieved when he realized that Obeah Man intended to kill them no matter what they did.
That small bit of relief had been overshadowed by Batman’s appearance, which brought another bout of hope: the vigilante had connections to magicians; he could surely find the answers Janet and he had so desperately been searching for.
And then everything went black, and Jack didn’t have to worry about any of that anymore.
==
Jack woke up with his hand cradling his son’s face.
The skin beneath his palm was warm and soft– the hand directing his previously limp one was not as soft. (Since when did his son have callouses?) He blinked against the bright hospital lights until Tim came into focus. His son looked so sullen and small.
The last thing Jack remembered was Batman knocking the water out of his hand and Janet falling to the floor, clutching her throat.
The boy hastily let go of Jack’s hand, “D- Dad?”
Jack let out a shaky laugh that turned into a cough. “Hey, hey, it’s okay. I’m here.” His voice was hoarse; he could barely get the words out. He lifted his hand again, fingers trembling. “You—you look taller.”
Tim couldn’t believe it. He had visited dad’s bedside almost every day and never once had the man’s body released any warmth. But now that he was awake, Tim could feel the warmth releasing from the body in heaves that intensified every time Dad looked at him.
(Tim had told Dick Grayson about the warmth, about his cravings for it, once. Dick had told him the “warmth” he spoke of was actually love and that Tim was likely just touch-starved and that his “love language” was physical touch, too. Tim wasn’t quite sure that it was. In fact, he was pretty sure the cravings had to do with his… unnaturalness. But he didn’t say that to Dick. He simply drank up the extra warmth Dick gave him and the extra warmth the man had convinced Bruce to give.)
He couldn’t control himself. He lunged for Dad like he used to when he was young, wrapping his arms around the man. To his surprise, his dad put his arms around him as well (through great difficulty). The man hadn’t returned a hug since the Graysons’ fall.
“Easy, kiddo,” Dad murmured. “You’re okay. We’re both okay.”
For a long time, neither of them moved. Jack ran his fingers through his son’s hair– shorter than he remembered– and tried not to think about the fact that they hadn’t hugged like this since Tim was a toddler (and tried not to think about why that was).
Tim didn’t move from their position even when Bruce Wayne strutted in and explained the past few months. Janet was dead. Wayne had taken custody of Tim. Jack was glad Tim hadn’t gone to his hag of a mother-in-law, who surely would not have tolerated the boy’s “feminine” desire for affection.
Jack nodded numbly as the man spoke of paperwork and whatnot, but his attention never left Tim. The boy’s grip tightened. His face was pressed against Jack’s exposed neck like a cat snuggling a warm blanket.
“Hey,” Jack whispered, stroking his son’s hair again. “It’s all right now. I’m here.”
Tim didn’t answer, only driving his face further into the crook of Jack’s neck.
Jack closed his eyes. For the first time since that horrible night, he allowed himself to believe that this was his son and that everything would
For the first time since he’d woken, he allowed himself to believe the lie that this was his son.
==
Jack forced himself into a normal routine. He finished his physical therapy. He began packing Tim’s lunches and helped the boy with his homework. He went to parent-teacher conferences and attended every school event with a smile on his face.
(He ignored the fact that he didn’t remember enrolling Tim in a school. He ignored the unease he felt at the realization that the crea– Tim was so close to vulnerable children.)
Everything was going well. Tim clung to him koala since he woke up. Everything was normal. They were simply a grieving father and son trying to make the best of things.
And then Jack found the suit.
Jack’s blood ran cold. “No. No, no, no…” He grabbed the suit and stormed out of the house, the closet door swinging behind him.
The drive to Wayne Manor was a blur. Every red light felt like an eternity. Every turn, every stop sign, fumed with the rage and betrayal he couldn’t process. He barely noticed the city passing by, only the growing tension coiling in his chest.
He pointed his gun at The Batman, throwing out every accusation and threat he could muster in his mind.
“Put the gun down, Jack. You have no idea what you’re yelling about.”
“I know enough!” Jack shouted. “He’s a child! He shouldn’t be out there in danger, fighting criminals! Who do you think you are to endanger my son like that!?”
Finally, Wayne removed his tranquil facade and yelled back with just as much anger. “Don’t you dare lecture me on child endangerment when you’ve been putting him in danger for years. For fucks sake, he wasn’t even enrolled in school until I enrolled him! He hadn’t had a doctor's appointment since he was three!”
Jack’s hands trembled, the gun shaking with him. “You think you can just decide what’s right for him? For my son?”
“I didn’t decide anything!” Wayne threw his arms up. “I enrolled him in school and made him doctor's appointments because he wasn’t being cared for properly. You weren’t caring for him properly!”
“I was! I did what I could! And now you’ve gone and molded him into something like you, keeping him away from me while I was trying to hold it together.”
Wayne’s eyes narrowed. “Molding him? Jack, he’s fifteen. He can make his own decisions! You barely know him! You barely know your own son, and now you’re coming into his life acting like you know what’s best after more than twelve years of neglect!”
“Neglect,” Jack nearly screamed. “I was surviving! I was grie--’”
Wayne didn’t let him finish. “I don’t care what the hell you were doing. Tim was a child. He needed stability, and you left him–”
Jack roared, interrupting, voice raw with rage. “I’ve been trying to give him stability! I pack his lunches! I help with his homework! I show up for parent-teacher conferences! I go to every damn school event with a smile on my face! And what do you know about that? Nothing! Because you’re not his father! I am.”
Wayne opened his mouth, fists tightening at his sides. “Jack, you think showing up now makes you a father? He’s fifteen! He’s been living practically his whole life without you–”
“Living!?” Jack cut him off, voice cracking, echoing with fury and grief. “You think you know what that means? You think just because he breathes and talks and goes to school that I haven’t felt him leave me every day since that night?”
“What the hell are you talking about?! What night? Tim is alive and has been alive–”
“Don’t!” Jack snapped, nearly lunging forward. “You don’t get to tell me what’s real! You don’t get to judge how I feel, how I’ve lived all these years! You weren’t there. You weren’t the one who lost him–”
Wayne moved closer, voice low and clipped. “Jack– who told you that? What are you talking about?”
“My son died twelve years ago! I held his corpse in my arms! And now… now this archaic creature, it looks like him. Acts like him. So, I don’t care that technically he’s not Tim. He’s my family. My son. He’s all I have left, Bruce. And if anything happens to him, I’ll–”
The thought of losing him again was unbearable. Jack could see it clearly: Tim in his arms again, only bigger this time. He refused to relive it. Rational or not, this boy– even if not truly Tim– was all that remained of the family he had lost.
His grip tightened on the gun. It wasn’t aimed at Bruce, not really; it was a lifeline, a way to stabilize himself against the absolute rage he felt at the man for dragging his son into that damn crusade of his.
Jack took a few moments to catch his breath, pushing down the panic he had at spilling his secrets to the man in front of him. When he looked up again, Batman had taken over Wayne. His whole posture had shifted. And when he spoke, even his voice changed.
“Jack, tell me exactly what you’re talking about. What do you mean Tim died in your arms twelve years ago– he would’ve been three then.” As he spoke, he discreetly peeled the gun from Jack’s fingers.
“He’s my son,” Jack whispered.
Bruce stepped closer. “I need specifics. Who else was there when he supposedly ‘died?’ Was there a police report?”
Jack stepped back. “He died! I already told you! He can’t die again.”
“How did he die, Jack!?” Bruce grasped the other man’s shoulders like he would a scared criminal’s. He didn’t understand what Jack was saying. He didn’t believe the man. But the sheer grief the man held could not be faked. “Where’s the body? You’re not making any sense.”
That was when Tim walked in. He was a normal boy, if a bit odd. He looked like a normal boy and acted like a normal boy, so Jack has surely gone insane, right?
“Bruce? Dad?”
The boy’s eyes landed on his father’s trembling form, and then on Bruce’s hands locked on Jack’s shoulders– one still holding a gun, its handle pressed between Bruce’s palm and the curve of the other’s shoulder. Bruce knew immediately what idea Tim got from this scene.
Before he could explain himself, Tim threw a birdarang with his armed hand, its sharp blade almost going completely through his wrist. Bruce hissed, reflexively tightening his grip on Jack to keep him steady despite the pain.
“Tim!” Bruce barked, his voice tight with alarm, spinning to shield Jack.
Jack’s mantra broke through the chaos, low and frantic: “He’s my son… my family… he’s all I have left…” His voice trembled, raw with grief and obsession, completely unseeing of the batarang now embedded in Bruce’s wrist or the boy in the doorway.
“What did you do to him?”
And oh.
Bruce could hear it now, the unnatural cadence of his voice. If he listened hard enough, he was sure he could hear the eons' history underlying the protective growl.
“Tim,” Bruce said carefully, the way one might address a stray animal. “Listen to me. No one’s hurt. Your father’s fine. Put the weapon down.”
But the boy didn’t move. His pupils were blown wide, his stance low and deliberate.
Bruce turned his focus back to Jack, who was still trembling behind him, words spilling endlessly from his lips. “He’s all I have… my son.”
“Jack,” Bruce murmured, lowering his voice to the grounded tone he used with civilians in shock. “Hey. Look at me. You’re all right. He’s all right.”
He eased them both down slowly, steadying Jack’s weight against him as he crouched, lowering to the floor. The gun shifted loose from his grip, clattering harmlessly beside them. Jack’s fists clutched weakly at Bruce’s sleeve, but his gaze was elsewhere.
“It’s okay,” Bruce said again, his tone almost gentle now. “He’s here. You’re both safe.”
He risked a glance toward Tim. The boy hadn’t moved closer. His breathing was shallow, eyes darting between Bruce and his father.
Bruce stayed there, kneeling on the cold floor, one arm keeping Jack upright and the other pinned uselessly by pain, trusting that the boy wouldn’t strike again. For all the strangeness twisting around this moment, one truth still seemed solid– “Tim” did love his father.
And Bruce would need that love if he was ever going to understand what the hell was happening here.
==
About an hour later, the three of them sat in the living room.
Jack was hunched forward on the couch, his elbows on his knees and his head bowed. His hair was still damp from the cold sweat of panic. Across from him, Bruce adjusted the bandage around his wrist. There was a faint red stain seeping through the gauze. Tim sat next to his father, posture small, his leg touching his father’s for some comfort. Every now and then, his gaze flicked toward the bandage and then away again.
“I’m sorry,” he started. “I shouldn’t have–”
Bruce cut him off gently. “You reacted to protect your father. It’s fine.”
Tim swallowed hard, nodding once. He knew it was not truly fine. After all, these emotionally charged reactions were exactly what Bruce had once praised him for not having. He had said it was a good thing Tim could think logically even in high-stress situations.
Jack finally looked up, his voice rough. “I’m… sorry. For the gun. For everything. I don’t know what came over me.” His eyes darted toward Tim, then away. “I just… I can’t lose him again.”
Bruce said nothing for a long moment. Then, carefully, he leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees. “Then help me understand, Jack. Start from the beginning. What did you mean when you said… he died?”
Tim didn’t move. He sat there, staring at his father’s trembling hands, trying to steady his own breathing. He’s wrong, Tim told himself. He has to be. He remembered the plane rides, the smell of their old house, the bruises on his knees from when he was learning to walk for the first time.
But didn’t mom and dad have to teach him to walk again after that incident?
He clenched his fists in his lap. He was Tim Drake. He was.
And yet.
Bruce watched him quietly. The boy’s stillness was too deliberate, his fists too tight, his gaze fixed on nothing. It was clear his feelings about the situation were about as stable as Jack’s.
Bruce wasn’t sure which of them he should be more worried about.
“When Tim was three, Jan and I stupidly decided to spend our vacation on an uninhabited island. The morning Tim died, we woke up on the beach after a night of stargazing,” Jack began the story. “He was playing with some seagulls while Janet and I talked. He eventually chased the damned birds to the rocky area of the beach.”
Bruce said nothing, only listened, the steady weight of his gaze urging Jack to continue. Tim sat rigid beside his father, his shoulders pulled tight, eyes fixed on the floor as if bracing for a blow he couldn’t see. His leg was no longer touching Jack’s.
The man released a shaky breath before continuing the story– or more so, the confession. “By the time we realized he had gone too far, he slipped between some rocks into an underground cave. It wasn’t a steep cave. But he was just… small, maybe. Or he just fell the wrong way.”
Jack broke off, taking a deep breath before starting again.
“The only light in the cave came from the sunrise squeezing through the rocks. Everything inside was covered in… markings. We didn’t think about them then. Didn’t care.” His breathing hitched, his gaze unfocused. “All we saw was Tim lying still in the middle of it.”
His hand moved to his face, rubbing hard at his eyes as if to force the image away. “Janet ran to him first. She– she was saying his name over and over. I picked him up, and there was blood on the back of his head. He wasn’t breathing.”
Next to him, Tim sat motionless. His face was pale, his expression carefully blank, but his fingers pressed hard into his knees, nails digging half-moons into the fabric.
He didn’t look at his father. He couldn’t. Each detail of the story lodged somewhere deep in his chest, stirring something that wasn’t quite memory but felt dangerously close.
When Jack fell silent, Tim’s eyes flicked briefly to Bruce– just long enough for Bruce to catch the faint, fractured gleam there. And Bruce felt it again: the certainty that something ancient was hiding behind the boy’s eyes. And yet, at the same time, he could feel the distress and confusion of something young that didn’t quite understand anything.
“Tim opened his eyes again. It wasn’t really him, but it had all of Tim’s memories and subtle habits. We had to teach him to walk again.”
Tim knew deep down that he wasn’t the real Tim, even though he’d lived as Tim much longer than the original had. He knew it was why mom and dad had avoided him all those years. But he never expected that he would have to face it– especially in front of Bruce.
When Dad woke up from his coma, he started loving Tim again. He loved Tim even more than before. They were content– happy– to play family and not address any of these things.
Tim should have just quit Robin when Dad woke up. That way, he wouldn’t have to be confronting this right now. That way, Dad would not have had that panic attack, and Bruce would not have a bandage on his wrist right now.
“Did you ever figure out what… this Tim,” Bruce gestured at the boy, “is?”
Jack stiffened, his fingers clenching into fists. “Why does it matter? He’s still my son.”
Bruce’s eyes didn’t waver. “I need to understand what I’m dealing with, Jack. If this… thing… isn’t your Tim, then there’s more at play here than just family grief.”
“It doesn’t matter if he’s not technically Tim. He is my son! He is my family! That’s all that matters!”
Tim shifted slightly, the weight of the truth pressing against the edges of his mind, but he stayed quiet, hands folded tightly in his lap. He didn’t reach for Jack.
He had never felt guilty for taking over this boy’s body. The boy was dead anyway, and his parents missed him. But now, under the weight of Jack’s love, he was unsure. Would Jack have loved the original boy more? Did he take his place? Did Jack really love him, or was he only clinging to the idea of him?
Bruce leaned back slightly, watching Jack’s rising defensiveness and the desperate insistence in his tone. The man wasn’t lying about his feelings– but the rest? The rest was a mystery Bruce needed to solve, whether Jack wanted him to or not.
“What did you and Janet find?” There was no way those archaeological digs weren’t a front to figure out what had happened to their son.
Jack glared with ferocity, only to deflate in the next moment. “Nothing,” he said. “We found nothing.”
“What do you mean you found nothing?”
“I mean,” the man snarled, “that we found nothing.”
“What about the markings on the cave–”
“We couldn’t find the markings on the cave again. We couldn’t find the cave. Fuck, we couldn’t even find the damn island. It was like it disappeared off the face of the Earth.”
Bruce furrowed his eyebrows. “What about–”
“We did all sorts of readings, Batman. There was nothing. No magical residue. Nothing off with the oxygen or the water. The island wasn’t Atlantised.”
Bruce’s expression hardened, the analytical edge returning to his voice. “That doesn’t make sense. You’re saying the entire island vanished? Not just the cave?”
Jack gave a short, bitter laugh. “You think I didn’t ask myself the same thing? We went back with a team– boats, scanners, everything. There was nothing on the coordinates. Just open water. Like the place never existed.”
Bruce’s mind was already running through possibilities—illusion magic, dimensional interference, psychic projection, or worse, something outside human or even mystical taxonomy. “And you’re certain it wasn’t moved or cloaked?”
Jack looked up at him sharply. “I said nothing, Bruce. Nothing on satellite, sonar, or spells. We hired Zatanna herself to take a look. It was gone. The working theory she had was that the whole landmass was alive and then it died once its creature took my son’s body as a vessel.”
“Alive?”
Jack nodded, staring off as if the memory burned itself into his mind. “Yes. We didn’t realize it at the time, but that island… it was like an egg. Not an egg you’d see in a nest, but something ancient and magical. It was fertilizing.”
It was official. There was nothing Bruce hated more than magic bullshit. He leaned back slightly, silent, letting the weight of that revelation settle between them. Did this revelation change anything about Tim as they knew him?
Tim’s hands clenched in his lap, his gaze flicking briefly to Jack, then Bruce. “I… I’m sorry,” he said quietly, voice small and uncertain. “I didn’t mean to scare anyone. I didn’t… I didn’t know.”
His father softened. The man reached for the boy’s hands, rubbing soothing circles with his thumb.
“I… I remember the island. A little bit. Not like normal memories—more like… fragments. I could feel… things around me. I wasn’t really inside anything yet, but I could sense it. I could… move inside plants that were dead. Small ones at first. Leaves, little flowers. I could feel them, use them for… learning, I guess. Feeling what it was like to be alive.”
Jack’s hands tightened on his knees, and Bruce felt a shiver run down his spine. The boy in front of them– this Tim– was telling the truth, but it was a truth that defied everything Bruce had ever known.
“I didn’t have a body before. I didn’t even know what it was like to… to move, or walk, or talk. All of my corporeal experience was through the plants. And then… the little boy—Timothy—he fell into the cave. He wasn’t moving. His mom and dad were crying. I wanted to help. I wanted to be part of them. I wanted to live. I opened his eyes… clumsily, and smiled at his mom. I called her ‘Mommy’ because… that’s what the boy would have done. That’s what they liked. I didn’t know why, but I knew it made them happy.”
His gaze flicked briefly to Jack, unsure, small, guilty. “I know I’m not the real Tim. I know that. But I didn’t hurt him. I just… wanted to feel it. That feeling. That… warmth. I crave it. It’s almost like my source of nutrition.”
Jack leaned forward, voice gentle now, careful. “Tim… that warmth you’re talking about—what does it feel like? Try to describe it to me. Not what it is, but… what it feels like.” He had inched closer to the boy.
Tim swallowed hard, avoiding Jack’s gaze. “When I first entered Timothy’s body, it was everywhere, and it was releasing off you and Mom. That’s why I was so clingy as a child. It came off Dick when I met him at the circus, too. When you and Mom left me… it was cold. I was cold, no matter how high I turned the heat. I was miserable and freezing. I didn’t have energy. I didn’t have… anything. Just… emptiness. And the loneliness. I hated it. I hated being cold like that.”
Bruce turned those pieces in his head. His first thought was a less fatal version of the Irish lennán sídhe– love fairies who feed on love. His next thought was that perhaps these cravings were nothing supernatural and just a result of Tim’s lack of emotional connection prior to meeting the Drakes. Dick would call it “touch-starvedness.” He had hypothesized that Tim was touch-starved a few months ago, had he not?
Jack pursed his lips. “Tim, I’m sorry. We didn’t know–”
Tim shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. When I became Robin… even the suit, even without touching anyone… it was enough. Enough to make me… feel alive again. To keep me energized. That… that warmth… it stayed with me. It was like a blanket of care.”
Bruce and Jack exchanged a look, both of them processing, piecing it together silently. Jack’s hand reached tentatively toward Tim, brushing his shoulder, while Bruce’s gaze softened, focusing on the boy’s description.
Jack’s voice broke slightly. “Tim… what you’re feeling– it’s not just energy. That warmth… that’s love. That’s what Mom and I felt for you, what we always wanted you to feel. Even if we weren’t there, even if we failed…”
Bruce nodded. “We might need to confirm this with the JLD, but it’s likely that you sense those emotions better than humans can. The energy you get from the suit is likely from the love that Gotham has for Robin.”
“Love… all this time… It’s been love? I thought it was like selective photosynthesis or something. It felt kind of similar to the plants’ photosynthesizing, so…”
Jack snickered at the sheer ridiculousness of the statement before wrapping his arm around Tim. “Yes, it’s love, Timmy. We all have those types of cravings. I guess you just need it at a more physical level.”
Tim’s shoulders sagged slightly, relief mingling with confusion. He leaned into his father’s touch, reassured by the volume of warmth– of love that eased off him in waves.
Bruce exhaled softly, the detective in him satisfied enough for now, letting the moment exist. He would ask questions and run tests later. But, for now, he was content enough to sit as the father and son duo in front of him cuddled on his couch.
He needed to talk to Alfred about raising the security in Wayne Manor as well, he thought, staring at the abandoned pistol on the living room floor.