Chapter Text
He knew it was a dream from the moment he looked down at his arms and saw the gloves. Tim hadn’t worn his full suit in months. Which meant this was a dream from before. One specific dream, or more of a nightmare, really. The one that haunted him the most lately. Tim lifted his head, and sure enough, the muted outline of one of Gotham’s rougher streets stretched out before him, the shapes around him liquid and shifting, as they only could be in a dream.
Somewhere ahead of him, the majority of Gotham’s protectors were trying to subdue a new magic user that had shown up in the city and had started to wreak havoc with volatile powers he barely had control over. Tim rushed to reach and help them, just as he had done then, after falling behind to aid a couple to get out of harm’s way.
By the time he got there, the scene was already a disaster. Cass and Steph were busy trying to save civilians from falling rubble and stray energy blasts. Tim could hear Jason shouting through the comms, but he couldn’t see where he was. Batman and Nightwing were closest to the magic user trying to take him down, followed closely by Robin, who could never be one to stay out of the heart of the battle, even when ordered to. Then, that moment came.
This far away from the fight, Tim was the only one who saw it.
One energy blast, a thing of dark purple energy and black particles, heading towards Robin’s back, towards Damian. Before he even knew it, Tim was there, pushing Damian out of the way so hard he stumbled and taking the brunt of the blast.
Things in the dream get blurry after that, shapes disintegrating in sharp purple lights and black spots, senses lost in a vortex of blinding pain, similar to how it had happened in real life.
One of the last things he remembers is Damian’s stunned expression, bleeding on his face even through the domino mask - swords slack in his arms, as if he couldn’t believe Tim had actually done that. Which, yeah.
And the last thing Tim saw was Dick’s hand. An electric blue stripe in his fading vision reaching out, always reaching out to him, and Tim had reached back, Tim reaches back now, but it’s pointless.
Dick’s fingers slip through his own like mist and a purple nothingness envelops him. Tim is no more. He is falling. He is —
-
Tim jerked awake — covered in cold sweat and every muscle in his body tight as a bowstring. He counted his breaths until his pulse felt less like he had just jumped from the rooftop of a thirty feet tall building. Usually dreams didn’t affect him that much, but no matter how many times he dreamt a variation of this nightmare, it never failed to get to him.
The funny thing was, the dream in itself was not that bad, it was what came after it - waking up in the real nightmare.
Tim reached out an arm and blindly searched for his phone, buried somewhere in the mess on the nightstand next to his bed. He found it, and the screen lit up the entire room in artificial blue light, the numbers on it reading 04:47 in the morning.
He huffed and ran a hand through his hair. It was way too early, but he knew that it was pointless to try and go back to sleep. He got out of bed and headed for the bathroom. Through the thin walls of the apartment he could hear the drunk snoring of his Uncle — and wasn’t that a surprise when he first got here.
After Tim got hit with that magic blast and blacked out, he hadn’t expected to wake up again. He’d been injured before, too many times probably. Ugly, and grave, and life-threathing injuries, but nothing had hurt quite like the pain from the blast. It had felt like his whole body, every atom and quark, were set on fire. Like some force was trying to pull his entire being apart.
So, it was entirely logical for him to assume he was dying.
Besides that realization, Tim didn’t even have much time for last words. Just a stray thought:
It’s family dinner today. Alfred will be sad that I’m not going to make it.
But Tim had woken up again. In an unfamiliar bed and unfamiliar room. With no apparent injuries on his person, and to a gruff voice he didn’t know shouting his name through the door.
Things had only gone downhill since then.
He had quickly figured out that this was an Alternate Earth. One that had more differences than similarities with his original one, significant differences, but when there were similarities, they often ended up bizarre.
By all means, this was a completely ordinary world; no superheroes/vigilantes, no magic, no aliens. Cities like Gotham, Metropolis, and Bludhaven didn’t exist, so people like Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson, Clark Kent and so on, also didn’t.
For some strange reason, archeologists Jack and Janet Drake, along with their son, Timothy, existed. Though this version of his parents' lives were quite a bit different from Tim’s own, they weren’t particularly wealthy for one, but their fate was ultimately the same even if it happened differently — death. Janet and Jack Drake perished during an accident on their camp while on an archeological dig, leaving a thirteen year old Timothy in the care of his paternal uncle, Eddie Drake.
And, who could guess that the fake uncle Tim had created once upon a time in a complicated scheme to temporarily avoid getting adopted by Bruce(which he fell for), actually existed on another earth?
Tim certainly couldn’t have guessed that. Which is why it was such a fun surprise when he woke up after being convinced he was dead to some random man chewing him up for sleeping in late.
A little bit over eight months had passed since that day, and Tim had been tirelessly trying to find a way home, but this world was significantly less advanced in terms of technology, making it nearly impossible for him to make any kind of progress.
Still, he hasn’t given up.
After a quick shower, Tim got ready for his day to start early. He grabbed the bag with his laptop and headed towards the kitchen, but stopped before reaching it. In their small living room, the figure of his passed out uncle was sprawled out on the couch. Tim hesitated for a second before throwing a stray blanket over him, and continued towards his destination.
The contents of their cupboards were a sad thing that could make Alfred cry. It was mostly pre-packaged meals and leftovers from takeout. And, of course, alcoholic beverages. The only real food they had was from when Tim was the one to buy groceries and cook proper meals.
Turns out, Tim wasn’t missing out much with his previously non-existent uncle. He was a dour guy with an addiction problem, who survived mostly on disability. In the beginning, Tim had tried to get to know him better, curious about this person who he was technically related to. But his uncle had no such interests, and after one too many questions about why his nephew was acting so damn strange, Tim decided to keep the distance that clearly was the norm.
The breakfast of the day was a simple sandwich, Tim shoved it in his backpack while leaving the house and checked the time again. 05:11.
Not the worst, but definitely the most annoying thing about being stranded here, was that Tim had to go back to school.
It felt a little bit like the universe was fucking with him for that one. Well, the whole situation felt that way, but this in particular. Just a few months prior to getting zapped by a magic beam, Tim quit school to search for Bruce, emancipated himself, and then forged himself a diploma, because a seventeen-year-old high-school dropout couldn’t really be the acting CEO to a multi-billion dollar company.
He had gone from student, to a literal assistant executive officer, and now he was back to a high-school student.
Tim briefly considered quitting, of course, to fully commit his attention on finding a way home. And he hadn’t really bothered to go the first two months he was stuck here. But he doesn’t actually know what happened to this universe’s version of himself. Maybe they switched places. Maybe it was another complicated multiverse travel nonsense, but Tim didn’t want to risk ruining this kid’s life in any case, so school it was.
Though, his classes didn’t start for another two hours. The joy of having a distorted sleeping schedule and a gallery of nightmares to haunt you when you did manage to fall asleep.
He could kill one hour in a paced run to the building, working his body and hopefully erasing the last traces of stiffness left from the nightmare. Then he would probably break in the library again and keep himself busy with one of the projects on his laptop.
Tim’s day dragged slowly from that point. He did what he planned, then headed towards his first class once the bell rang. And so he went: from class, to class, to class. The majority of it was background noise for him, with the school curriculum not being interesting or complex enough to capture his full attention. And since his alternate self was apparently a loner, he didn’t have to worry about keeping up with social relationships with people he knew nothing about.
Finally, his last class ended. But instead of heading home, Tim started walking in a direction for the school stadium for the only thing that made him feel a bit more alive while maintaining this tedious routine — Exy.
In the beginning, Exy was just another obligation Tim had to participate into.
It was a particularly annoying one, considering he knew nothing about the sport, but was expected to play like he had years of experience, because the version of Tim here did. It would be kind to call the first couple of weeks that he actually bothered to show up for practice a disaster. His coach couldn’t believe how Tim, in the span of two months, managed to go from one of her star players to someone who didn’t know basic rules of the game.
Tim blamed it on a head injury.
He almost quit, but the look Coach Hill gave him before managed to say the words stopped him. She believed his explanation, because really, what other possibilities were there, and had been understanding, but couldn’t hide her disappointment. And Tim, he felt bad about it. Not only about the position he was putting her in, having a vital player dropping out in the middle of the season, but all of it. His counterpart had clearly been good at this sport, maybe even college-scholarship-securing good.
So, to keep up with his intent of not ruining this kid’s life, Tim stayed on the team.
And now, some six months since he started playing, he was decent at it. That hadn’t really surprised him, Tim being an athletic person was a byproduct of all the training constant vigilantism required. No, the part that surprised him was how much he came to enjoy playing the game.
Exy was an interesting sport. A young one, with a short but curious history, and an amount of violence allowed in the rules that made him question whether the people who designed it had a sadistic streak, or were just mad. Whatever the case, at least the ferociousness, speed, intensity, and complexness were enough to keep Tim entertained during the games.
Today was maybe the last match of their season, depending on the outcome of it. Tim did his usual routine of changing in the empty shower room, and getting out on the field before anybody else. After around an hour of the teams getting ready, the game started.
Tim played as if it was a fight.
Avoiding the players trying to tackle him with lightning-quick predictions based on body language. Holding himself steady against stick checks that should have made a normal player’s arms fail, and hurling the ball towards the goal with a trajectory calculated before it even left his racquet. He was letting a little bit of his training leak into his playing style, and while this was something he absolutely would have never allowed himself to do if he was back home, here nobody trying to connect Tim Drake to a secret identity existed.
Exy was a brutal sport and Tim let himself embrace its rougher aspects. He let himself get lost in it. The heat licking his side from rough tackles and savage elbows. The way the world blurred around him as he ran and avoided opposing backliners. The pounding of his heart after executing a play, adrenaline spreading through his system like electricity through water.
The way, for a moment, Tim forgot where he was, and just played.
By the end of the game Tim had scored six out of the nine points his team had, but it didn’t matter since the opposing team had eleven.
He couldn’t deny the pang of disappointment he felt at the results of the game, but quickly discarded it. It was fun while it lasted, but he didn’t know when, or if he would play again.
Back in the changing room his teammates were taking their time, the disappointment with the game’s result clear by their moodiness. Tim, like every time, hung back to use the showers only after everyone had left. One of the main reasons he couldn't participate in any sports back home, even if he wanted to, was because it was too risky. Every time he would have to change around teammates risked them seeing whatever injuries and scars he had that day. The sheer amount of time he would have to spend training for both said sport, and his activities as Robin, risked making him too tired, and leading to mistakes in the field.
So, in general sports were a big no for him.
But here things were different. Tim was sure Bruce still wouldn't have liked him playing, especially the way he did, using parts of his training. But Bruce wasn't here, was he?
Nobody was.
Tim was emptying out his locker when Coach Hill came up to him.
‘’Hey, Tim. Before you go home, I have something I want to discuss with you. Come to my office when you are done here.’’
Tim stared at her, a bit conflicted. He had a feeling what this was going to be about, and wasn't sure how to navigate it
Nonetheless, he followed her to the room. After all, she didn't give him a chance to refuse.
Inside waiting for them was a broad man standing near the desk. He looked to be somewhere between late thirties and early forties. Tribal flame tattoos sneaked up along forearms, and there was an open folder held in his hands. From where he was, Tim could see a picture in the top left corner. A picture of him.
The man looked up at their entrance, but didn't say anything. Probably waiting for Coach Hill to introduce them.
“This is what I wanted to talk to you about. I know you have complicated feelings about this matter, but I couldn't at least not try. Tim, this is David Wymack. He is from a university team.”
And here it was. Coach Hill had tried to talk him about playing further multiple times, even after the whole ‘head injury’ thing. Tim had either deflected the conversation, or had given ambiguous answers. He hadn’t shut down the idea, because it wasn’t his decision to make, not really. He had hoped to find a way home before he had to deal with this exact situation.
‘’I’m not sure I’m interested,’’ Tim said.
Wymack snapped the folder closed and turned his full attention to him.‘’So I’ve been informed, but you could at least give me two minutes to listen to my offer since I’m already here. It was a good game today.’’
So he had been here long enough to watch the game as well. Tim vaguely recalled seeing somebody with similar appearance watching the game from the first line of seats.
‘’We lost.’’
‘’Yes, but not because of you. Not to say your team was bad, but It’s not often I see someone putting so much of themselves in every step, every throw, every moment of the game. That’s the kind of player I want on my team.’’
Tim internally debated on how to continue this conversation. Whether it was his place to make this decision or not, it looked like he would have to.
‘’I appreciate the offer, but compliments won’t change my mind.’’
Wymack huffed out a dry laugh.
‘’Believe me, kid, I’m not the kind of guy to give compliments to people. What I said was simply the truth.’’
Tim studied Wymack. He didn’t really look like most coaches, let alone the ones that worked at a university level. There was something about him, Tim couldn’t describe what exactly, but it piqued his interest.
‘’Even if that’s true, it still doesn't change my decision,’’ Tim replied.
‘’Then let me change it. You sign this contract’’ — Wymack placed the piece of paper on the desk — ‘’and you are mine for five years. In return you get a full ride everything and a chance to play on a Class I team. It's a pretty good deal if you ask me.”’’
It did sound like a good deal, which served to further confuse Tim. He knew he was decent at Exy, but doubted his stats were all that impressive, especially counting in the last months. After all, he had technically been playing roughly half a year. Wymack didn’t exactly come off as desperate for new players, but there was something in there.
‘’Why me?’’He finally decided to ask.
Wymack took a second to answer. ‘’Because you have potential. I’m offering you a chance to turn that potential into something real. Something that can get you out of here and get you anywhere you want.’’
The phrasing of the last sentence was odd.
‘’What’s that supposed to mean?’’
Wymack looked at him, then at Coach Hill, before asking.’’Have you heard anything about my team, the Palmetto State Foxes?’’
No recognition flashed through his mind.‘’I don’t keep up much with sports news and the like,’’ Tim answered, but knew it was the wrong thing to say the moment he caught Hill’s look.
She looked confused by his reply. Crap. Maybe this earth’s version of him knew of the team, and had talked about it with or around his coach. Before he had a chance to say something to smooth over that slip-up Wymack spoke again.
‘’I have certain standards for my recruits that are unorthodox. That tends to narrow the field. But your Coach sent me your file and I think you fit the criteria, as well as being an impressive athlete. That’s why you.’’
That didn’t really explain much.
‘’What kind of standards exactly?’’
At that, Coach Hill, who had stayed silent for the entirety of the conversation, spoke up.
‘’I think…I’ll leave you two to discuss this.’’ Gone was the confusion from earlier, and in its place was a kind of nervousness Tim hadn’t seen from her before. Almost like she was feeling guilty.
Wymack waited for her to leave the office before continuing with his explanations.
‘’I recruit those who under normal circumstances will probably get skipped. Not because of how they play, but who they are. People who have been given up on, and who have given up on themselves. I try to give a chance to those who could use it.’’
Whatever Tim had been expecting him to say, this was so far away from it. It startled a surprised huff from him. What kind of recruiting practices were these, and what management of a professional team would actually allow them?
‘’And how exactly,” Tim couldn’t help asking, genuine curiosity in his voice, ‘’do I fit this criteria?’’
‘’Your Coach says she has seen you come to practice with bruises.’’ Wymack’s voice, despite the context, was even and unbothered. Like he was talking about the weather today. ‘’And you don’t interact much with your teammates, or anyone in general.’’
‘’I see,’’ Tim replied, tone mild.
The bruises Wymack was referring to were from the occasional times Tim still went out in the night. In this world, where vigilantes didn’t exist, every time he did this was a risk for unwanted attention. So these days he mostly stuck to problems and issues he could solve from his computer. But there were some nights where Tim couldn’t sit still. His attention would cycle through fifteen different topics in the span of four minutes, and his hands wouldn’t stop twitching at random intervals. His energy, because he had much more of that now he wasn’t running himself ragged on a regular basis, would hum under his skin like trapped electrical current.
On those nights, he went out.
He didn’t bother with anything fancy, just dark clothes, a mask over his nose, and a hood. Most of the time he didn’t even run into any major crimes, since the city he was currently in wasn’t that big and had nowhere near the criminal rates of Gotham. But hours spent jumping rooftops under the midnight sky managed to settle something in him that nothing else did. Even if he was doing it alone.
That he hadn’t bothered to cover up the aftermath of some of these nights wasn’t deliberate. Not really. Still.
‘’My Coach doesn’t know how to mind her business,’’ Tim said at last, not bothering with the politeness of earlier. ‘’And neither do you apparently. You know nothing about me.’’
Wymack didn’t react at all to the conversation taking a less-friendly tone. ‘’Maybe. I do think I know something else though. Remember when I said I rarely see a player putting so much of themselves in the game. The truth is, I didn’t see someone trying to win a game. I saw someone trying to drown themselves in it.’’
Tim didn’t have a response to that. Wymack wasn’t wrong and that was the problem. That this random guy had managed to perceive him spoke of how much Tim had been careless lately. He knew it wasn’t an excuse, but the past few months he had gotten used to nobody paying him much attention.
Wymack took the silence on Tim’s part to add:
‘’And you are wrong about one thing. I don’t care about your business or anything you do in your free time, that’s above my paygrade. The only thing I care about is how you play on my court.’’
Tim’s lip twitched. So Wymack was one of those I-don’t-care, but I-care types. Tim didn’t even have to ask him if his recruiting standards were a publicity stunt, or were genuine. He knew the answer.
‘’Can I have time to think about it?’’ Is what he finally ended up saying.
He needed to gather more information before making this decision.
The Coach checked something on his phone before answering.
‘’My flight doesn’t leave until 11:00 pm tomorrow. If an early hour isn’t a problem, we can meet again in the morning.’’
Tim agreed and they parted ways. Outside, Coach Hill had waited for him with a nervous, but hopeful expression. Tim spared her only a few short words. He knew she was only trying to help, but he didn’t like being recommended to a team for a, crudely said, “there’s something wrong with you” reason.
Nonetheless, she seemed pleased by the pair of documents in his hands.
-
When he got home, the first thing Tim did was to open his laptop and search up the Palmetto State Foxes.
To say there were a lot of results would be an understatement. He spent the next couple of hours digging through all the information. The more he found, the more his interest grew. Deaths, overdoses, charges of murder, and so much more, all centred around a team that currently didn’t have more than eleven players. Honestly, it was a little hard to believe that such a team existed on this normal, peaceful Earth.
And this was only what was available to the public.
What wasn’t was even more interesting.
How does a team accidentally recruit the son of a notorious gangster? How does their arch nemesis team accidentally do the same, except they don’t recruit them, said person is(was) the leader, and has connections to the Yakuza.
The answer probably had little do with any kind of accidentality.
By the end of his research, Tim was positively intrigued by the team famously known as the Foxes. But that alone couldn’t have been what made his decision. After all, he couldn’t make it only for himself.
So, he decided to do something he previously had ignored, and went through some of the notebooks and journals kept in his room.
If an alternate version of himself ended up in his place back home, he certainly wouldn’t have appreciated it if they went through his stuff. Even if they were technically the same person.
So, Tim hadn’t done this before, despite all the time he has been stuck here. But now he needed information. Needed to know if this other Tim had indeed known of the PSU Foxes, and maybe even wanted to play there.
-
The next morning, Tim met up with Wymack in a cafe near school.
The first five minutes after they sat down consisted of complete silence while Wymack went through a large cup of coffee at a borderline unhealthy speed. Finally, Tim broke the spell by taking out the signed contract from his backpack and placing it on the table between them.
Wymack glanced at it, a glint of satisfaction passing through his eyes for a second, before taking the piece of paper in his own hands to examine it.
‘’Good. Now, we only have to settle a couple of more things. Your information tells me that your eighteenth birthday is still a couple of months away?’’
His eighteenth birthday. Sometimes Tim feels like he’s been seventeen forever.
‘’Yeah,’’ he answered.’’What about it?’’
‘’Is parental consent going to be an issue?’’
Ah. It made sense Wymack would question that, considering who knows what Coach Hill told him about Tim(maybe he should take a peek at their exchanged emails).
Tim shrugged. ‘’Contract is signed, isn’t it?’’
He forged his uncle’s signature, of course. He didn’t know how Uncle Eddie would react to him leaving, and he planned to find out later.
Wymack regarded him for a second. Tim looked back at him. The issue was dropped.
‘’Right. One last thing. I offer this to every new Fox. If you need to move in early, or a place to crash, you can do that either in our team nurse’s home, or my apartment. It isn’t a five star hotel, but it’s got four walls and a couch.’’
Tim was about to automatically refuse, but he stopped himself.
While he didn’t necessarily need to move in early, and definitely not because of whatever Wymack was suspecting about his home life, surveying where he was going to spend his time the coming months wasn’t actually a bad idea. He liked to know his surroundings. And it wasn’t like he was overflowing with money at the moment to spend them at a hotel room.
‘’I may need to move in a week or two early. If it's not a problem.’’
‘’Wasn’t going to offer it if it was, kid.’’
After that there were only a couple of more minor details to settle. It took fifteen minutes and they were done. Tim was walking out of the building, nearly out of earshot, when Wymack said to him,
‘’Welcome to the line.’’