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The thing is, Tim knows it’s dumb before he even does it.
He’s not a gymnast by nature. The closest he’s ever gotten is the beginner's tumbling class his nanny took him to when he was five, after his parents read an article about the benefits of progressive learning via structured physical activity.
(Tim never did find out if the research was true. Two days into his class, another kid accidentally kicked him in the face while attempting a cartwheel and his parents filed a lawsuit. Tim never went back.)
Anyway, despite his short-lived gymnastics career, Tim’s always been interested in the sport and he’ll do anything to weasel in more time in the Batcave. So for the past few months, he’s been following the others down to the Cave after dinner for some basic training.
He soon learns that Bruce is an absolute stickler for fundamentals. He won’t let Tim attempt so much as a handstand until he can prove he understands the proper form and has first demonstrated sufficient strength and flexibility in all the drills leading up to that point. And like, fine, Tim gets it—it’s better to learn something correctly the first time than to spend hours building up incorrect muscle memory, only to have to fix his technique later on—but it still makes for some pretty tedious gym sessions.
He just wants to actually try stuff, you know?
That’s where Dick comes in.
Dick’s instructional philosophy could’ve been taught by Nike: just do it. He’s of the mindset that the best way to improve at something is to simply give it a shot and then troubleshoot what didn’t work. He’s got endless tips for fixing Tim’s wonky cartwheels and roundoffs, and he’s always ready to give either of his brothers’ flips an extra rotation or snag them out of mid-air to keep them from landing on their heads. He really is a great teacher—patient, kind, and encouraging—even while reminding Tim for the thousandth time to ‘stay tight’ and ‘open his shoulders more’ (whatever the heck that means).
But Tim’s favorite part of Dick’s lessons is that he is fully on-board to give Tim a taste of whatever crazy stunts his little heart desires.
Freerunning wallflips, for example.
Bruce might grumble about ‘inappropriate skill progression,’ but Dick just whips out his ‘I’m sorry, B, which one of us has been doing this stuff since they were in diapers? Which of us literally teaches tumbling classes for a living?’ card and that’s that. Tim’s grinning like an idiot, racing two steps up a vertical wall before throwing his head back and launching into the air while Dick finishes off the flip for him and Bruce just sighs heavily from the computer station.
But regardless of who’s leading Tim’s training, there are two non-negotiable rules: he has to be on the appropriate mats, and he can’t try anything new without someone spotting him.
That’s why he knows this is entirely his own stupid fault.
He’s lying flat on his back on the gym floor, breathing through waves of pain and cursing himself for being such a moron. Ten minutes ago, he’d been killing time with Jason before patrol, playing some convoluted hybrid of tag and the floor is lava on the Cave’s gymnastics equipment, when the emergency signal lit up. Jason—who’d been hopping between the balance beams—hollered at Bruce that he’d be right there, then dismounted off the side with an effortlessly cool backflip. He’d landed perfectly on the floor below, knees slightly bent to absorb the impact, and moments later he and Bruce were zooming off down one of the underground tunnels towards the city.
That of course just left Tim, who’d managed to avoid getting sent back upstairs like usual by volunteering to put the training gear away.
The thing is, Jason’s flip just looked so easy—even easier than a wallflip, and Tim’s been making pretty good progress with those! On his last attempt, Dick said he’d barely even had to spot him. Backflipping off a beam doesn’t seem all that different in the grand scheme of things. If Tim nearly has the one skill down, he could probably also do the other…
He still isn’t sure exactly what went wrong, only that he’d somehow failed to get any momentum going. One second he was standing on the edge of the beam and the next his half-twisted body was slamming into the ground, sending fiery jolts of pain shooting across his upper and mid-back.
(His only consolation is that at least he didn’t land directly on his head.)
For about a minute, he just lies there, breathing heavily as waves of pain reverberate through his body. He feels like an absolute idiot. Why didn’t he at least drag one of the crash mats over first? Did he really think he could just back tuck off a four-foot beam and land it on the first try? In all these months, he hasn’t landed anything on the very first try—not even his freaking cartwheels!
He’s an idiot. An absolute moron. And for once, he’s sure everyone will agree.
Eventually, he works up the courage to try turning his neck from side to side and is relieved when that only results in minor pain. Pushing himself up off the ground is a different story. His back spasms before he makes it to his feet, and he has to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from crying out. He doesn’t think anything is broken, but he definitely pulled something. Maybe multiple somethings.
Steeling himself with a deep breath, Tim pushes away from the support of the wall and forces himself to start hobbling over to the stairs. He needs to get up to his room before Alfred comes down to start monitor duty. It’s not so much the scolding that he’s trying to avoid—he knows he more than deserves one of those. It’s the cold refusal of sympathy that he’s found always follows stupid decisions like these.
“It’s called a natural consequence,” his parents would say, while rolling their eyes and refusing to do anything that might lessen their son’s suffering. After all, if he didn’t face the results of his own actions, how would he ever learn from them?
“We told you to wear sunscreen for a reason, sport,” he can still recall his father saying as Tim lay shirtless facedown across his bed, his entire torso as red as a lobster. “I’m not going out at ten p.m. to buy you aloe just because you decided you knew better than your old man.”
“But I hate that kind of sunscreen,” Tim whined, feeling oddly shivery despite the heat radiating off of his skin. “It smells really bad and it makes my head hurt.”
“It’s coconut, Timothy,” his mother cut in, exasperated. “It’s a perfectly normal scent. You’re going to have to get over this ridiculous aversion if you’re ever going to function in society. What will you do one day if your client shows up wearing tropical perfume, hm? Send them back home to shower?”
Eventually Tim had just dragged himself to the bathroom and sat in a tub of cool water all night until the shivering grew more uncomfortable than the burning.
(To his parents’ credit, he had learned his lesson; he didn’t ask them to take him to the pool again for two whole summers.)
He wants to think that Alfred would be a little kinder—that he’d at least help Tim back upstairs, and maybe even pause his lecture long enough to get him an ice pack or something. But he’s also seen the way Alfred rolls his eyes and sighs whenever Dick complains about not feeling well after knowingly consuming dairy products, and that little flicker of doubt is enough to keep Tim silent as he slips past the kitchen and up to the second floor. The Waynes might be nicer about things on the surface, but they still give him rules for a reason.
“You’ve made your bed,” his mother would tell him. “Now you have to lie in it.”
He can’t even count the number of times he’s heard that phrase over the years—first from his mother, but then his father picked it up, too. If at six years old, Tim chose to watch that scary movie with the alien ripping open the guy’s stomach that Jack told him he was too young for, then he could change his own sheets later that night when he wet the bed from nightmares. If at eight, Tim broke a window playing with his new slingshot too close to the house, then he could pick up all the shattered pieces of glass himself and pay to replace it from his birthday savings. If at twelve, he was irresponsible enough to forget to request more funds on his school lunch account before his parents traveled to the remote mountains of Nepal, then he could go hungry for a few days until they returned to cell service range.
His parents rarely ever punished him, per se, but they’ve always been big believers in letting him feel the full weight of his natural consequences.
Tim knows better than to expect any help.
So, rather than telling Alfred what happened and risking the disapproval of one of the few people who’s always been kind to him, Tim just pops a few ibuprofen from the secret bottle he keeps under his mattress (that children’s strength stuff the Waynes give him really doesn’t do shit) and gingerly eases himself down onto his mattress for what he’s sure will be a miserable night.
Maybe he’ll finally learn his lesson this time.
Knuckles rap against Tim’s bedroom door for the second time that morning.
“Tim. Dude. We gotta leave in like, five minutes. Are you even up?”
“Yeah, I’ll be right out,” Tim calls back, sucking a sharp breath in through his teeth as he carefully tugs on his socks. He’s so stiff and sore this morning that it’s taken over half an hour longer than usual to drag himself out of bed and go through the motions of his morning routine.
He barely got any sleep last night. The pulsing pain had kept him from finding a comfortable position for the first few hours, and then once he finally did drift off, he’d woken less than a hour later to his back spasming again. He’d had to force himself up and do some stretches for ten minutes, teeth clenched and arms trembling, before the pain finally let up enough that he could lie down again.
(Then that whole scene repeated itself again a few hours later.)
At least he managed to get dressed this morning without any more muscles seizing up on him. The key seems to be moving at the pace of a geriatric snail—something which unfortunately is making him a pretty inconsiderate carpool partner.
“Alright, well, I’ll be in the car,” Jason hollers back, sounding a little exasperated. “If you’re not down in five, I’m texting Alfie that he needs to drive you. Hanson’s been cracking down on first period tardies and I’m not getting a lunch detention ‘cause your sleepy-ass kept hitting the snooze.”
Tim winces. It wouldn’t be the first time Tim’s been the cause of Jason’s spotless school record getting blemished.
(To be fair, the other time was for decking Jack Drake in the face, and it hadn’t even remained on his record a full hour before Bruce’s lawyers got it expunged, but it doesn’t mean Tim’s stopped feeling bad about it.)
Stuffing his feet into his shoes, Tim grabs his backpack (he’d already cleared it of all nonessential items earlier this morning to lighten the load) and starts down the stairs. Each step sends tendrils of pain reverberating through his back, but he grits his teeth and manages to keep himself moving all the way down. Bruce is already at the office for an early morning meeting and Alfred’s working outside in the garden, so no one is there to give him the ‘I told you so’ speech as he sneaks another four ibuprofen from the medicine cabinet.
By the time he makes it to the garage, Jason’s already sitting in the driver’s seat of his Jeep, scrolling through his phone.
“Oh look,” he mutters as Tim opens the passenger door. “He lives.”
“Sorry,” Tim says sheepishly. “I didn’t get a lot of sleep.”
Glancing up from the screen, Jason lifts an eyebrow. “Didn’t you go to bed at like, nine last night?”
Tim opens his mouth, but before he can respond, Jason groans and smacks a hand to his forehead.
“Aw crap. I forgot my econ project.” He unbuckles and hops out of the car, hollering an order of, “Do not say a word!” over his shoulder as he races back inside.
(Tim hadn’t been planning on it.)
He’s just managed to haul his stiff body up into the seat when Jason comes jogging back out carrying a massive tri-fold poster board and two protein bars.
“Here.” He tosses one of the bars onto Tim’s lap before loading the poster board into the backseat. “Eat something. You look peaky.”
“...Peaky?” Tim echoes, eying the wrapper. Twenty grams of protein, it proudly boasts, so he’s pretty sure it’s going to taste like ass.
“Yeah, you know. Groggy. Pale. Sickly.” Jason climbs into the driver’s seat and shuts the door. “Liable to pass out from low blood sugar and make us late to class.”
Tim rolls his eyes. “I’m not gonna pass out.” If there was a moment for that, it was last night when he was staring up at the stalactites on the cave ceiling trying to get his breath back.
“That’s right,” Jason agrees, whipping the car into reverse and backing out of the garage at Batmobile speeds. If Alfred were watching, he’d definitely yell at him for it. “‘Cause you’re gonna eat that bar and bask in the chemical glory of artificial cookies and cream while you enjoy your morning chauffeur service, slowpoke.”
Tim just scoffs.
The rest of the drive passes uneventfully, and by the time they reach the parking lot, Jason is distracted enough wrestling his poster board back out of the backseat that he misses the tiny grunt of pain when Tim gingerly slides out. They go their separate ways, Jason racing off to APUSH while Tim steels himself for a day of stiff-backed chairs and dragging himself from one class to another through the crowded halls.
The school day is about as miserable as Tim expected. He keeps shifting around in his seat, desperate for any position that will take some of the strain off his back—which prompts Josh Andersen to crack some joke about hemorrhoids just low enough that the teacher doesn’t overhear. Tim’s face burns and he forces himself to sit still, which only results in his back seizing up again during an in-class reading.
His third period class is up two flights of stairs, so Tim shows up several minutes late. Luckily, Ms. Gillian hardly ever remembers to take attendance (at least until the secretary emails her about it), so there aren’t any repercussions. Thank god, because if Tim had to sit through a detention like this, he might actually start crying. He can’t focus at all on what his teachers are saying, and he spends the majority of his independent work time just counting down the minutes until the school day is over and he can lie down.
Lunch consists of three more contraband ibuprofen and just enough bites of his sandwich to keep them down. He eats in the library, primarily because it’s on the same level as the class before it and he’d like to move as little as possible.
Then it’s time for gym.
Since it’s early May and the weather is decent, Tim’s hoping—desperately hoping—for an outdoor P.E. day. Those usually involve a few lower impact options, such as ‘standing in the outfield pretending to play kickball’ and ‘walking aimlessly around the track between cliques of gossiping girls.’ But since the universe has decided to fuck over Tim in particular, Coach Miller dashes his hopes by uttering the five most horrifying words Tim could possibly imagine:
“We’re starting fitness testing today.”
All of the students groan, but all Tim feels is cold dread settling in his stomach as the full extent of just how much he’s screwed sinks in.
Fitness testing. That means this week is going to consist of push-ups, sit-ups, the stupid sit-and-reach flexibility test, the one mile run, the—
“I figured we’d go ahead and start with the PACER,” Miller announces gruffly to another chorus of teenage groans. “Get everyone’s favorite out of the way.”
(More like get Tim out of the way. Because he’s pretty sure he’s about to die.)
For the sake of efficiency, Tim’s class is combined with two other gym classes, including Strength & Conditioning—the school’s advanced weightlifting and physical education class, which is offered exclusively to upperclassmen.
(AKA, the class Jason’s currently in.)
“Remember not to go too hard,” Jason murmurs in Tim’s ear as he takes his place next to his brother on the starting line. “You’re not in any sports and no one knows you’ve been training with me and B, so it’ll look kinda sus if your score suddenly goes up by like, thirty laps, you know?”
“Mh-hm,” Tim replies, lips pressed tightly together as he mentally starts writing out his own will.
The droning voice on the audio recording reads off the instructions. It’s a simple enough test to understand:
1) Run twenty meters across the gym to the opposite line of cones before the beep.
2) Run back to the starting line.
3) Repeat, ad nauseam, while the beeps get progressively faster, until you physically cannot continue.
4) Once your lungs are burning and you’re seeing a bright light beckoning somewhere in the distance, report your final score to the coach so he can enter it into the computer system.
5) Chest heaving, stumble back off the court and collapse onto the ground with your marginally less fit classmates.
6) Wait for all the cross country kids to finish.
Now, Tim’s never been exceptionally athletic, but he is small and he is light, and he did spend a good portion of his formative years running around the streets of Gotham every other night chasing vigilantes. Last time he did the PACER, he’d managed a very respectable forty-five laps.
Today?
He does two.
Well, two and a quarter, technically. That’s when his back muscles seize up so sharply that his vision actually goes hazy for a second. He freezes a mere five meters from the start line, teeth clenched to keep from gasping.
“Drake!” Miller has to shout over the sound of the test’s funky EDM beats. No one, not even Aaron Turner—who is notorious for having the worst asthma of the entire sophomore class—is out yet. “Let’s go! I wanna see some effort!”
Tim forces himself forward four more steps before another stabbing pain shoots across his back. He stops again, muscles screaming and tears involuntarily springing to his eyes.
Nope, that’s it.
He can’t do this.
He literally can’t.
“Drake?” There’s a frown in Miller’s voice now.
“I’m out,” Tim chokes out, drawing in a shuddery breath. “I’m out. I got two, I’m out.”
Miller is saying something else, but the audio track is still blasting and Tim’s ears are ringing so loud that he can’t make it out as he limps back off the court. He doesn’t think he’s ever been more ashamed of himself. This is the consequence he’s supposed to endure as a direct result of his own stupidity, and he can’t even take it like a man.
Pathetic.
He can barely see where he’s walking, his eyes blurred with hot stinging tears that haven’t quite spilled over yet. He needs to sit down, but he’s scared to lower himself down onto the floor. He isn’t sure if he’ll be able to get up again.
The next thing Tim registers is Miller’s holler of “Todd, get back on the—” cut off by a sharp retort of “Just give me a zero!” and then Jason is jogging up behind him.
“Tim! Tim. Hey.” He puts a hand on Tim’s shoulder, his face etched with concern. “What’s wrong?” he asks, keeping his voice low. “What just happened?”
Tim doesn’t see any point trying to come up with a lie; it’s all going to come out soon anyway. “I hurt my back,” he gets out.
“Your back?” Jason’s frown deepens. “Just now?”
Tim shakes his head a little. “Last night. Downstairs.”
He can practically see the mental calculations going on in Jason’s head as he tries to puzzle out when exactly that must have occurred. Tim decides to just make it easy on him.
“It was stupid. I was trying to do a flip,” he forces out. “Off the beam. After you left. I thought I could do it, but I landed kinda weird, and—”
“Did you land on your neck?” Jason interrupts, sounding more serious than Tim’s ever heard him.
“Not my neck,” Tim says, and his brother relaxes just the slightest bit. “It was more my back. It – it got kinda… twisted?”
Jason winces, sucking in a breath through his teeth. “Did you hear anything when it happened? Like a snap? Or a pop?”
“I- uh—” Tim forces himself to think back. “...Maybe?” He hadn’t really been paying attention; he mostly just remembers the resounding echo in his head of what an absolute idiot he’d just been. “I don’t know.”
“Well what did Alfred say?” Jason demands. “When you told him?”
“I…” Tim’s voice cracks a little. “It was my fault,” he admits, resigned. “I knew better.”
Jason purses his lips for a moment. “You didn’t tell him, did you?”
Pain stabs through Tim’s back, and a low whine, barely audible, slips out. Jason’s grip around his shoulder tightens.
“Tim? What is it?” he asks worriedly.
“I wanna go home.” Only as Tim hears himself say it does he realize just how true the words are. “Jason,” he pleads under his breath, “I just really want to go home.”
It’s a pipe dream; a fantasy. He might as well say he wants to win the lottery for all he thinks it will matter.
“Oh, so you’re expecting a reward now?” his mother asked sarcastically as she gazed down at her ten-year-old, who was sitting at the kitchen table picking disinterestedly at a piece of dry toast. “After I explicitly warned you not to go overboard last night, now you think you should have a day off of school?”
It had been a mind-numbingly boring gala—some kind of fiftieth anniversary corporate gathering for a company Drake Industries once brokered a deal with. Four hours in, Tim was sick of people watching and had already finished counting all of the floor tiles (in English, French, and Mandarin), so he’d devised a sort of game to keep himself occupied. It mainly consisted of seeing how many of those little canapés he could swipe off of the passing waiters’ trays without them noticing.
The answer turned out to be a frick-ton (not to mention a couple tiny flutes of champagne he’d snagged for the lols), and by the time his parents were ready to wrap things up, Tim was having some serious regrets about his choice of activity.
Somehow, he’d made it through the night without puking, but he felt gross enough by the next morning that he almost wished he had.
“Please, Mom?” he’d begged, a little bit of a whine slipping into his tone. “I really don’t feel good.”
“And you’ve no one to blame for that but yourself,” Janet had told him primly. “Now please get in the car. We’re going to be late.”
Not even a full hour into the school day, his stomach was hurting bad enough that his homeroom teacher sent him to the nurse. She was an older lady, only a year or two out from retirement, and she hadn’t had any more sympathy for Tim’s plight than his mother had.
“Natural consequences,” she’d agreed with Janet over the phone after hearing what had occurred the night prior. Then she’d given Tim two saltine crackers and sent him back to class.
Three hours later, Tim was back in her office after having thrown up in the middle of the cafeteria, in full view of about half the school and immortalized forever in a seventh grader’s snapchat story. Miserable and thoroughly embarrassed, Tim had been barely holding back tears.
“Does he have a fever?” Janet asked over the phone.
“No,” the nurse replied, looking over the glasses perched on the tip of her nose down to the thermometer. “Ninety-eight point six.”
“Then I’m sure he feels better now that all that junk is out of his system. Please send him back to class,” she’d instructed, to which the nurse had wholeheartedly agreed.
It was one of the longest days of Tim’s life. By the time school let out, he’d thrown up twice more in the bathroom, then proceeded to be sick out both ends at home for a good forty-eight hours after that.
It wasn’t until it came out in the tabloids that, in the wake of the gala, a half-dozen other wealthy and influential members of Gotham’s elite had been treated for food poisoning (it was the calamari, apparently) that his parents became a little more sympathetic to their son’s misery.
“Okay,” Jason murmurs, drawing him back to the present moment. “Okay. I hear you. I’m gonna go grab my phone from the locker room and call B, alright? Don’t move.”
“He won’t come,” Tim says miserably. He can already imagine Bruce’s disappointed look; Alfred’s stern reproval. “It’s my fault I got hurt. I wasn’t supposed to try anything new on my own. He won’t come.”
“He’ll come,” Jason says firmly. “He’ll come, Tim, I promise. And if for some reason he can’t, then I’ll drive you home myself.”
Tim shakes his head immediately, throat tight with emotion. “You can’t. You’ve got your presentation thing.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Jason says seriously. “I’ll do it another day.”
“No, you can’t,” Tim insists as he recalls the endless rants Jason’s given him about what a hardass his economics instructor can be. “Your teacher won’t let you.”
“He will,” Jason argues. “If I tell him I had a family emergency, he will. And if he doesn’t, fuck it. I’ve got a ninety-three in that class. But it doesn’t matter, because B’s going to pick you up anyway. Wait right here, okay?”
Then before Tim can mutter another word of protest, Jason turns and takes off at a speed that should put all the PACER kids to shame.
The next thirty minutes or so are kind of a blur.
While the other students continue to run laps back and forth across the gym, Jason ushers Tim—very, very slowly—down to the nurse’s office. She’s at least a little more sympathetic than her predecessor, and gives him a couple of ice packs and lets him stretch out on one of the vinyl covered cots while he waits. Jason asks about pain meds, but she says she can’t give Tim anything, not even ibuprofen, without parental approval.
(It’s just as well, Tim thinks. Considering what he’s already taken today, any more would probably make him puke.)
Tim doesn’t feel much like talking, which luckily Jason seems to pick up on. Even so, he still stays through the end of the period, much to the exasperation of the nurse who keeps trying to send him back to class.
“I told Miller I’m taking a zero. I’ll be quiet,” he replies simply, then spends the remainder of gym sitting in the plastic folding chair beside Tim’s cot and playing Temple Run on his phone.
Bruce arrives just before the bell rings to signal the end of the period. He’s dressed in his work clothes, and the look on his face is one of deep concern.
Pocketing his phone, Jason stands and gives Tim’s knee two quick pats before moving past him towards the door.
“Go easy on him, okay?” he murmurs as he passes Bruce, so low that Tim almost misses it. “He didn’t think you’d come.”
Bruce’s frown only deepens at that.
It’s not until Tim is signed out and sitting stiffly in the front seat of the car on the way to Leslie’s that Bruce finally addresses him.
“What happened, bud?”
His tone is far gentler than Tim was expecting, and it throws him for a loop. He searches Bruce’s face for signs of exasperation or judgment, but all he finds is something vaguely sad in his eyes.
“We’ve had a lot of conversations about this kind of thing,” Bruce goes on evenly, causing Tim’s cheeks to flush as he picks at a loose thread on his gym shorts. Between Bruce, Dick, and Alfred, he’s had the ‘no trying anything new without a spotter’ rule explained to him at least five times.
Bruce purses his lips, then very softly, asks, “Tim, why didn’t you tell anyone you were hurt?”
The question catches Tim off guard. He’d been expecting Bruce to launch into a lecture about proper gym safety procedures; not accuse him of trying to conceal an injury. He looks up in surprise. “I wasn’t trying to hide it.”
“...You weren’t?”
“No, really,” Tim insists. “I wasn’t.”
“Then why didn’t you tell anyone that you were injured?”
Tim lowers his gaze back to his lap. “Because it was my fault,” he mutters. “I broke the rules, and I got hurt.”
“You did,” Bruce allows, “but that still doesn’t explain why you didn’t say anything.”
(Doesn’t it, though?)
“Were you afraid of being punished? That we wouldn’t let you in the Cave anymore?”
Tim shakes his head, frowning. He hadn’t even thought of that; maybe he should have.
“Did you think we would be angry at you?”
“Not angry, exactly…” Even his parents were rarely ever angry with him. They usually stuck to ‘annoyed’ or ‘exasperated’ or ‘muttering under their breaths about what a mistake procreation turned out to be.’ But rarely was it ever actual anger. “Just like… you know.”
“I don’t,” Bruce says gently. “Not unless you tell me.”
He shrugs a little, tugging at the string again. “I guess I just thought no one would really care. Since, uh– you know. Since I only got what I deserved.”
No sooner have the words left Tim’s mouth than Bruce is pulling the car over into a gas station and throwing it into park. He turns to face the passenger seat, looking almost as pained as Tim feels.
“Tim, no,” he says seriously. “You got hurt. That’s not the same thing as getting what you deserved. And it definitely doesn’t mean no one would care that you were in pain.”
“But it was my fault,” Tim points out. “I’m the one who messed up.”
“That doesn’t matter,” Bruce says firmly. “Tim, even if you had decided to backflip off the roof, we still would have helped you. That’s what family does.”
“That– no.” Tim’s head is swirling. “No. That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Why not?”
“Because–” Tim starts, then stops, frowning. He tries again. “I mean, there still have to be, like, natural consequences, right? Otherwise how are you ever going to learn anything?”
Bruce is quiet for a moment.
“Tim,” he says thoughtfully, “what do you think a natural consequence is?”
(What is this, kindergarten?)
“It’s like…” Tim trails off, thinking for a second. “Well, it’s like the result of whatever bad choices you made. If you do something stupid, you have to deal with whatever happens because of it.”
“All on your own?”
“Well, I mean…” Tim frowns again. “Yeah, pretty much. Because you have to learn.”
“...And the only way to learn something is if no one shows you any love, help, or compassion?”
"I–" Tim starts, but that's as far as he gets.
He closes his mouth again.
Bruce’s expression softens. “Tim,” he says gently, “everybody makes mistakes. And yes, sometimes those mistakes have consequences—like getting hurt after doing something unsafe. But that doesn’t mean that no one will care, or that you have to suffer through those consequences all on your own.”
“But–” Tim’s throat feels suddenly tight. “I mean– My parents, they wouldn't—” He takes a shaky breath. “If it was my fault…”
He can’t get any more out than that. It’s partly because of the lump in his throat, and partly because he twists, ever so slightly, towards Bruce without thinking, which causes his back muscles to seize again. He squeezes his eyes shut, teeth clenched, and tries hard not to whine.
“Tim?” Bruce asks, instantly alert.
“It– it just hurts,” he grits out, shifting around in an attempt to re-find that one position that had been causing him the least pain. “Whenever I move wrong.”
Frowning, Bruce maneuvers the car back out onto the main road, already pulling out his cell. “Okay. We’ll finish this up later,” he says, pressing the fifth contact from the top on his favorites list. “After we see what the MRI says.”
Later that evening, Tim is stretched out on a beanbag chair in the family room of Wayne Manor, alternating between ice packs and a heating pad for his badly strained ligaments. He’s feeling a little floaty to be honest, drifting on a cloud of painkillers and muscle relaxants (which he’s been strictly prohibited from self-administering, especially since he’d had to fess up to Leslie about his contraband ibuprofen stash).
“So…” Tim begins slowly, still trying to wrap his slightly muddled brain around the conversation they’ve been having on and off for the last few hours, “me not bringing a coat to soccer practice, and then getting really cold would be…?”
“A natural consequence,” Bruce supplies, nodding.
“And…” Tim frowns a little, “then afterwards, when I called Dad to ask him to pick me up because it was starting to rain really hard and there was still twenty minutes before the bus would come, him being all like, ‘that’s why I told you to bring a coat’ and hanging up on me…?”
“Not a natural consequence,” Bruce says, at the same exact moment that Jason declares, “Asshole behavior.”
“Huh. Huh,” Tim says, filing that one away for later. “Okay. What about, like, if I broke something, so my parents made me pay to fix it?”
“Hmm,” Bruce looks thoughtful. “That’s more of a logical consequence.”
Jason’s eyes narrow. “What’d you break?”
“My wrist,” Tim says simply.
Both of them stare at him.
“I mean, I was doing something dumb,” Tim adds. “I was climbing the trellis outside of my window, which they told me, like, five times not to climb. And I didn’t have to pay the whole bill, because they do have insurance. Just like, the eighteen hundred dollar deductible, which they sold a couple of my camera lenses to pay for. And then once the cast was off, I had to buy my own brace for it and stuff.”
Bruce blinks, then clears his throat. “I take it back. That one’s asshole behavior.”
“Fucking thank you…” Jason mutters.
(Tim’s learning all kinds of things tonight.)
The following day, Tim is back at school.
It’s not comfortable, exactly, but it’s certainly more manageable now that he has the appropriate medication to take the edge off and an official doctor’s note to excuse him from gym for the rest of the week. He’ll still have to make up his fitness testing at a later date—probably during a lunch period, since Miller teaches during study hall—but Tim’s not complaining. It seems more than fair.
He’s also not allowed in the Cave unsupervised for the foreseeable future. That’s a logical consequence, Bruce explains, because it’s directly connected to what he did, and it’s intended both to keep him safe and reinforce the lesson he learned.
(Again, Tim doesn’t complain.)
The only point at which Tim starts to wonder if he is actually being punished is once he’s finally healed enough to return to his gymnastics lessons and both Bruce and Dick massively increase the amount of flexibility drills he has to complete. They have him progress through the exercises slowly, making certain that Tim’s ready for each new level, but holy shit do those suck.
“Arms by your ears, feet together, big swing, stay tight,” Dick recites six weeks later as Tim plants his feet and leaps backwards into the air for his eighth consecutive attempt at a back handspring that evening. It’s supposedly easier than the back tuck, but Tim has his doubts.
Dick spots him with one hand on his lower back and the other pushing Tim’s legs over his shoulders to ensure his body completes the motion. Tim springs off his hands, arches up, and lands with both feet on the padded gym mat, staggering a little, but managing to stay upright.
“Better!” Dick encourages. “You’re still not opening your shoulders enough, though. And you gotta stay tighter.”
“I was staying tight…” Tim grumbles.
“Tighter here,” Dick says, grinning as he lightly kicks Tim’s rear end with the side of his foot for emphasis. “I want those glutes burning.”
With a sigh, Tim moves back to the start position and readies himself to try again.
“After this, we’re gonna do some conditioning,” Dick warns.
Tim lets out a low groan. “Again?”
“Yes, again,” Dick laughs. “B wants it every session now. But—” he leans into Tim’s ear, whispering, “tomorrow, I’m thinking we can hit up the trampoline park. Start working on your double back.”
Tim grins. “You're on.”