Chapter Text
The weather had been uncharacteristically nice for this time of year. Instead of the usual flash freezes and nasty thunderstorms typical of Gotham in March, the weather had been relatively clear. The occasional light rain. A bit chillier than what the average citizen would be comfortable walking around in, but refreshing for those of them who wandered around in alternating layers of leather and kevlar.
It was pissing Bruce off.
The winds should have been whipping past them hard enough to burn. The temperature should have been cold enough to turn their lips blue. The harbor should have been raging, crashing up against the sea wall with the wrath of hell. Anything but this… pleasantness.
Didn’t the sky know that his son was gone? Wasn’t the universe aware that his whole life was shaking on its foundations?
It felt like a spit in the face, this nice weather. It was the kind of weather Tim would have loved. A sign of the coming Summer. Tim hated Winter. He always complained that his body just wasn’t built for the freezing rain and incessant flurries the cold months brought. He would stick hand warmers in the toes of his boots and beg Alfred to make hot chocolate every time they got back from patrol. Every time the thermometer dropped below 20° he swore up and down that he was going to switch out the cowl for a helmet like Jason’s so his lips would stop getting so chapped.
It had been 47 days since Tim had disappeared.
47 days since Tim dropped into an alley just out of view of the nearest security camera and never came out.
Bruce looked down at his watch, counting seven little blinking dots scattered about a tiny map of Gotham. The closest:
Purple. Stephanie sitting in the waiting room of Gotham General with a teenager while they waited for her parents to show up.
Pink. Cass doing reconnaissance near Chinatown even though no one had found anything the last 19 times it had been scouted over.
Yellow. Duke back at the manor. Sleeping, hopefully. None of them were getting much sleep these days.
Red. Jason in Park Row. His dot hadn’t moved in a couple hours, but Bruce knew there wasn’t a chance it was because he was sleeping.
Gray. Barbara working diligently from her apartment, directing traffic and following up on every lead that was mentioned in passing, even though none of them ever went anywhere.
Blue. Dick, recently returned from a debriefing with the Titans and burning a trail down 31st St closely followed by-
Orange. Damian. By day 23 everyone was whipped into a frenzy by Tim’s disappearance and the complete lack of evidence related to the mystery. All his adult children were too stubborn to agree to a buddy system, but Damian was never alone. It was something all of them seemed to have agreed on without having to talk about it.
Smothering their youngest bat wouldn’t bring Tim back, but it gave them something to do; it made them feel a little better.
Tim’s disappearance had opened a dam of regret and guilt, a festering virus that fed on unspoken apologies and old conflicts that had never been truly resolved. Everyone had something to say to Tim and was terrified they’d never get the chance to say it.
Bruce counted the dots again, in lieu of anything else to do. Crime was scarce the past couple weeks, what with every active vigilante roaming the streets and annihilating any whiff of injustice in a vain attempt to feel useful, to work out their frustration, to chase away the creeping grief.
It was something Bruce refused to feel. Grief. There had been no body, no blood. No evidence of foul play. No evidence of anything, and that made him seethe, made him want to cry and scream and rip the city to pieces, wanted to curse the universe for taking something so wonderful and precious away from him like this, just when everything was starting to feel safe again.
But no evidence of anything included no evidence of death. Bruce held onto that knowledge as his lifeline.
The little dots blinked; small comforts. What he wouldn’t give to see Tim’s green speck reappear on the screen just as easily as it had vanished, there one second, gone the next. A lost signal. 13 seconds after Tim dropped into the alleyway and out of their lives.
Barbara had been the first to notice it, tapping into a comm line filled with nothing but static before alerting Batman and Robin to the location Red Robin had last been seen in. Bruce had expected to find a smashed tracker, signs pointing to an abduction maybe.
They had found nothing but litter and dread.
Technically, Conner had actually been the first person to notice Tim’s disappearance. He’d appeared at the mouth of the alley maybe a minute after Bruce and Damian had, hair wild and eyes wilder.
“Where is he?” Conner had demanded, on the verge of a panic attack. His pajamas were damp, probably from flying through clouds on his way here. The moment he’d appeared, frazzled and distraught, his eyes darting to and fro, Bruce’s stomach dropped.
“Where is he?!” Conner asked again, almost shouting.
“We don’t know,” Damian had snapped back, obviously distressed about the situation, but trying to hide it.
“Why did you come here?” Bruce asked Conner. He already knew he wasn’t going to like the answer.
Conner’s hands were buried in his hair, tugging at the locks and turning in circles like he was looking for something important he’d lost.
“His heart stopped,” Conner answered after a moment.
Everything went cold.
“Everything was fine, but then it just stopped,” He continued. “Where is he?” But it sounded more like a plea than a question. “We have to find him.” On that, at least, they all agreed.
They cased the entire block. They combed through the security footage, then checked it for tampering and combed through it again. They ran every trace, sketched every potential path through the blind spots of CCTVs, tracked down every vehicle caught on camera in a 5 mile radius. They ran tests to uncover any secret bunkers or basements or anywhere large enough a kidnapped 20 year old could be stashed in. Then they inquired about the current whereabouts of every known adversary with a possible interest in holding a bat hostage. When none of that bore fruit, they hacked into Tim’s laptop and scoured every shred of data there for clues.
By day 4, every member of the family had been informed.
By day 6, Bruce was desperate.
On day 7, Stephanie suggested that Tim had left on purpose, dropping off the map for some kind of covert mission that no one could know about, for some reason. Every person at the meeting agreed unanimously that that theory was unlikely. There was nothing to support it. There were dirty dishes in Tim’s bedroom and open cases he’d been working and a planner full of lunch dates and meetings and deadlines. And it didn’t explain why Conner couldn’t hear his heartbeat anymore. Besides, none of them wanted to believe that Tim had dropped off the face of the Earth without telling a single soul a crumb of information, not even to let them know not to look for him.
By day 12, they were on the verge of a mental group breakdown. It wasn’t so much the amount of time Tim had been gone so much as the fact that even with close to a dozen highly trained detectives pouring all their resources into this, they had found absolutely nothing.
By day 17, the Justice League had been involved. Bruce was a proud man, but he would have gotten on his knees if it meant someone - anyone - would find his son.
It was maddening working on other people’s timelines when it came to something like this, but Bruce couldn’t force any of his colleagues to work on this any faster.
The only person outside of the family who seemed appropriately freaked out about the whole situation was Conner. His visits were so frequent, he even had his own tiny green star on the map that popped up whenever he crossed city limits.
Even before the whole ordeal, Bruce had begrudgingly accepted Conner’s consistent presence. He tolerated the alerts of a foreign presence zipping into Gotham and the notifications of a window being opened on the second story shortly after. He even tolerated Conner’s intermittent attendance of family brunches, mostly because Bruce liked the fact that Tim still lived at home and didn’t want to test his independence.
After almost 3 years, Bruce had to come to terms with the fact that Conner was probably going to be in his life for a very long time.
It was strange though, being around someone so unaccustomed to losing a loved one. Bruce had wondered, watching Conner these past few weeks, if that had been what it was like for everyone else after Jason had died.
Beep.
Speak of the devil.
Bruce saw the little green star only moments before the wind sent his cape fluttering and suddenly there was someone else on the roof with him.
Conner looked manic in the dim light of the moon. He was dressed in full uniform - jumpsuit and jacket and big, black boots - the way he always was these days, always out looking.
“Where is he?” Conner asked, breathless; Bruce knew it had nothing to do with whatever distance he’d traveled to get here.
“What do you mean?” Bruce replied, full attention suddenly zeroed in on the young man in front of him. There were few reasons Conner would ask a question like that. Something that felt dangerously like hope filled his chest.
“ Tim,” Conner said, sounding desperate. “His heart, I-I can hear it, it started again-”
“Where?” Bruce demanded.
“ Close, I don’t know, it’s-”
Suddenly, Cassandra’s voice filled his ear, and even from several feet away he knew Conner could hear it too.
“ Red Robin spotted at my location, on Locust and 14th, approaching now.”
Like a shot, Conner was off, Bruce not far behind. On his wrist, five dots and a star began closing in.
***
Kon felt like he was going insane.
The day Tim's heart had stopped, he’d understood all of a sudden why Tim had spent several months trying to clone him.
There wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do to get Tim back.
He’d been in Metropolis harassing Clark about contacting some deep space allies when it had started again.
There were a few things Kon kept constant watch over. Cassie and Bart. Ma and Pa.
And Tim.
For weeks, his soul had suffered a boyfriend shaped hole carved into it. There’d been a deafening quiet spot in the back of his brain gathering dust in Tim’s absence, a space left empty without the comforting cadence of Tim’s heartbeat.
And then, in a moment, that space was full again. Tim’s pulse was a little faster than normal, but strong and steady and there. For a second, he almost hadn’t believed it.
Faster than Clark could say “Think about this rationally,” Kon was across the bay, skull rattling with the force of Tim’s heartbeat. It drowned everything else out. The proximity scrambled him, focusing on the sound so intently he was having trouble zeroing in on where exactly it was located.
He saw Batman lurking on the ledge of a high rise and struggled not to crash through the roof in his haste to figure out what was going on.
Then he’d heard Locust and 14th and he was gone again.
And then.
Then.
There was Tim. Alive and breathing and alive. His vision tunneled with Tim at the center, a world warped around him with one thing is focus. One person in focus.
At the back of the alley, Tim stood tall in his Red Robin uniform, just like when he’d disappeared, though now it looked in desperate need of a wash. Two black bags were slung over his shoulders, one on his back and the other on his front.
For a moment, Kon was caught suspended in the air several stories above the alleyway, so overcharged with relief and longing that he could do nothing but stare as Tim took a tentative step forward, taking in his dismal surroundings. One arm was wrapped around the bag on his front, keeping it secure against his person.
It was Cass who moved first, a shadow dropping from a nearby roof onto the asphalt several yards from Tim. Suddenly, Kon was overcome with an undeniable need to hold him and he dropped like a rock, cracking the ground underfoot to Cass’s right.
But before either of them could move forward or speak Tim was holding up the hand not pressed to the bag palm out at them.
“Stop,” Tim ordered and Kon could have fallen to his knees just at hearing Tim’s voice again. His head was filled with the drum of Tim’s heart and the rush of his lungs filling and the weight of the unbearable loss that had haunted him for weeks. “What day is it?”
Kon blinked. His neurons sparked weakly, refusing to comprehend the question. It didn’t feel like there was room in him for questions anymore, only pleas.
Please be real please don’t leave me again please be okay please let me hold you again please please please
Fortunately, Cass didn’t miss a beat before she answered, “March twenty-second.”
“When was I last seen?” Tim asked next, his tone all business, shoulders tight like he was bracing for bad news. Kon muddled through all the emotions engulfing his higher reasoning capabilities to try and understand the conversation going on. The hyper-concentration faded a bit allowing the rest of the world to seep back in.
Wind whistled between the high walls of the buildings on either side. Cass was so still her apprehension was only betrayed by the racing of her heart. Voices flooded through her comm, demands for updates, answers, anything. It wouldn’t be long before all of them were here.
“February third, ten fifty-four PM,” Cass replied. “You disappeared on patrol. Gone, no trace.” There was a hint of strain in her voice, a sliver of the urge she was no doubt feeling to sweep forward and hold onto Tim and never let go. Kon was feeling it too.
At that answer, something in Tim loosened. His shoulders dropped. The hand held up moved to join the other supporting his bag. “Okay. Okay, good.” His voice was weaker now, showing a bit of his exhaustion. Now that his higher brain functions were returning in the wake of Tim’s appearance, his mind flooded with questions and possibilities, theories on where Tim had gone and what had happened and why his first question was about what day it was.
“That means this is probably the right Earth.”
The puzzle pieces clicked together.
That means this is probably the right Earth.
That had been one of the leading theories for the past several weeks and the reason the JLA had gotten involved. It explained a lot.
Tim’s tension, his uncertainty. His entire being vanishing without a warning and without a trace, then materializing just as quickly.
“You got sent to another universe,” Kon spoke for the first time. “That’s what happened, you- why we couldn’t find you.” Tim’s head didn’t move but he knew what that gaze felt like when it was fixed on him. Without thinking about it, Kon x-rayed straight through the flimsy barrier of Tim’s domino so he could see his eyes.
Oh, how he’d missed those eyes.
Relief and yearning hung in the wetness clumping his eyelashes together. He looked at Kon, really looked at him for the first time and something broke and something else stitched back together.
“Yeah,” Tim whispered.
“You’re okay.” He wasn’t sure if he was asking or telling or reassuring himself.
Tim nodded. “I’m okay. I’m here.”
The pressure broke. Kon surged forward, taking just enough care not to body slam Tim into the concrete. A noise escaped him when their bodies connected, maybe a sob, maybe a gasp, maybe a sigh, it didn’t matter he didn’t care because Tim was here and he was alive and he was okay and Kon would never let him go ever again. The bags were lumpy and the bulk of their uniforms got in the way and someone was crying then Cass was throwing herself around them too, a little bundle of people deliriously relieved to see each other again.
They stood there like that long enough for Kon to hear the thwip of a grapple line releasing and boots pounding the pavement. Bruce pried them apart just enough to get his hands on either side of Tim’s face, tilting it up to get a good look at the watery smile there.
An emotional “Oh,” was all Bruce managed to breathe out before they were all crushed together again in a big hug with Tim trapped in the middle.
“I’m so glad you’re back,” Bruce murmured into Tim’s hair. Kon knew Batman had a reputation for being detached and even downright cold, but he couldn’t for the life of him remember why. Not when a wealth of bursting emotions sung from every line of his body as the lot of them rocked gently back and forth. “I’m so glad you’re okay. Are you okay? Where have you been? What happened?”
Tim took in a breath to answer and that’s when Kon felt it.
Squished this close together, he felt every move Tim made. But this was something… else.
The bag on Tim’s front, the lumpy sack pinned between their abdomens, started to move.
Kon felt it wiggle against his stomach. He felt stupid for not noticing it earlier. The extra warmth, the supple but firm weight of something other that definitely wasn’t clothes or equipment. The quieter heartbeat that had been drowned out by Tim’s.
He took a step back and Bruce seemed to notice it just after he did.
“Got something there?” Bruce asked, fond and amused and so, so tender. They all knew about Tim’s tendency to pick up strays, whether he was out as Red Robin or as Tim Drake. Too many times to count, Tim had smuggled some small animal into the folds of his clothes or one of his bags to deliver to Damian for care and tending.
The bundle squirmed back and forth while Tim struggled to get a good grip on it from the outside. Kon waited for the inevitable paw or tail to peak out, some unwitting critter transferred across time and space after getting caught up in Tim’s adventure.
Then a head popped out of the bag and that-
That was definitely not an animal.
That-
That was a baby.
Nestled into what Kon saw now was more of a sling than a bag was an entire human child with a head full of mussed black curls and chubby cheeks. They fussed a bit, no doubt disturbed by the affectionate reunion, until Tim rubbed at their back through the fabric of the sling and cooed, “ Shh, sh, it’s okay, baby, everything’s okay now.”
“Who’s this?” Kon asked, eyebrows raised. Bringing an abandoned kitten or sickly baby squirrel from another Earth for rehabilitation was one thing, but never had Tim acquired a whole entire fucking human child.
“Umm,” Tim hesitated, looking like a deer caught in the headlights. “Our son?”