Archive of Our Own

Tim was a soft child. Sweet. Gentle.

He had the kindest hands in the world that Dick loved to press loud, wet kisses to as he carried the toddler around on his back just to hear Timmy bury his giggles into his neck and ear. They were giggles that never failed to bring smiles and butterflies to Dick's gut.

Tim was still far too young to begin training with the rest of the Flying Graysons. Something that Dick had asked about because he’d been Tim’s age when they started teaching him all their tricks and letting him join in on the morning stretches!

His parents had been quick to explain that that was because An Exception had been made specifically for Dick!

Because by the time he'd been three years old, he'd been climbing up on all the dressers and trailers and leaping off to try and imitate his parents. So teaching him how to safely tuck and roll was just a measure to make sure he didn't accidentally break his neck when no one was looking.

Dick had been a spirited baby, they said. Always so eager to learn, so eager to copy everything he saw and be involved. He’d loved everything about being a performer since he could walk. The costumes, the music, the stage, the crowd.

Dick had been a born performer.

And Tim would be too one day. Once he was a little bigger the Grayson 3 would become the Grayson 4.

Unlike his older brother, baby Timmy was a rule follower.

He was the troupe's littlest helper. Always eager to follow directions and be rewarded with soft caramels or little chocolates.

Something that their mama despaired over more than once, warning the other performers to stop plying her baby with candy and spoiling him rotten. Dick decided to keep quiet about the fact that Timmy often shared his rewards with him at night when they whispered under the covers of their bed.

“Don’t show mama,” Timmy would whisper, little grin wide and eyes shining with mischief as he passed Dick half a square of baking chocolate.

His Timmy could be such a sneaky little thing. Still, Mama littered his baby cheeks with adoring kisses every morning before fondly asking him-

“Is my baby going to be good today?”

And getting a chirped ‘Yes mama!’ in reply.

But Tim was a good baby. He played with his toys by the mats while Dick and his parents practiced their routines and developed new choreography for their different shows. He didn’t wander off if anyone took their eyes off him, didn’t scream or cry like a lot of the other babies that came to the show.

Timmy was a good baby.

He listened to their mama when she stressed that he had to wait before they could teach him to fly.

He pouted initially, of course he did, because he knew their papa always gave in when he’d offer his little face to them streaked with want and sadness.

But mama was firm.

Dick thought of maybe teaching Timmy something small. Like how to do a simple front roll. Or a cartwheel. But his baby brother never came to ask.

Because he was a good baby who listened to his mama when told no.

Which was a good thing for Dick because he wasn’t sure if he’d have been able to deny his little brother’s request if he’d come to him and asked to learn.

Timmy was an avid watcher of their practices and of their dress rehearsals.

Because he was their biggest fan.

During their shows, Timmy would be in the stands seated by one of the stagehands and cheering louder than the next ten people around him. Clapping and screaming with euphoric delight when the ‘Flying Graysons’ were introduced over the speakers by Mr. Haly.

Timmy had never missed a show. Not since he was born and attended the first one swaddled in a bassinet inside the soundproofed booth with the sound techs.

Dick would always dedicate a flip for him during every show. It was tradition.

A quadruple somersault, Dick’s specialty.

It was Tim's favorite move and Dick happily indulged his little baby brother.

.

.

.

But…

That night...on that night.

Dick had made a lot of mistakes.

He and his parents usually did photo ops an hour before curtain call. It was the typical show business stuff; greeting and posing for families and their children. On a few occasions Mr. Haly would have the local radios announce a contest where the prize would be a meet and greet with some of the headlining acts.

That hadn’t been the case when the circus came to Gotham.

It had just been more of the usual, regular, routine Dick had become used to.

Timmy had been beside them, dressed warmly in a long sleeve shirt and a pair of little overalls that had once been Dick’s when he’d been that small.

He’d been munching on the bit of cotton candy he managed to beg out of Meghan, Haly's Circus' head confectioner. She had a sweet spot for Tim's bright red, chubby little cheeks.

Most people did.

The night had been busy with lots of families and children crowding the ground. Opening night in a new city was always the most packed. It’s why mama had stressed to him about keeping a closer eye on Timmy than usual.

Dick saw a lot of families.

A lot of children, a lot of teenagers, a lot of old people.

All kinds of people.

Rich, poor, middle class.

Man, woman.

White, black, latino, middle eastern, east asian, west asian.

He shook hands with a lot of them too, did little tricks, charmed them with his personality to get them excited.

Many of them didn’t even realize the little boy with his mouth stained blue from candy, the one kicking his baby feet and sitting on a little stool by them was with them.

A few did though. Mainly mothers corralling their children to sit still for the $5 photo to remember the day.

They’d make sweet eyes at him. Whisper how adorable he was. But it was the same face and whisper they’d say about Dick.

Still. Dick would proudly puff up his chest when the other parents would coo over Tim. Because they were right to!

Normally since opening night was so busy, they handed Tim off to stagehands who could mind him while they finished behind the scenes work. Like setting the lights, prepping the confetti for the finale.

But they’d been running behind that day. Mr. Haly had hired a couple of local laborers to help with carrying equipment. But they’d never showed up. So last minute schedule changes had shuffled people around and now Dick was in charge of waiting with Timmy until a stagehand could come get him to take him to the stands.

Timmy didn’t like sitting still. He got fussy and restless like all babies.

It’s why mama had let him have a treat while they waited. A sort of apology.

One of the families, a couple on a date, had been one of the last of the groups to get their picture taken.

They’d noticed Timmy sitting quietly and smiled at him. Softly asked him his name which Timmy had sweetly provided alongside Dick.

When they’d posed for their picture they’d done something none of the other families had done. They’d asked to include Timmy in it.

Dick hadn’t minded, had even thought it was a great idea to include Timmy!

But he did notice how his parent's expressions had… twitched slightly when the man, the stranger, knelt down and picked Timmy up without them saying it was okay.

A quick flash from the camera.

Followed by Dick’s mama dropping her pose and turning her practiced ‘audience’ smile to the man and woman.

At the time, Dick had been confused at why his mama had quickly taken Timmy into her arms after Constanza, one of the circus guest-photographers, snapped their shot.

The photo op had ended after that couple and despite the smiles on his parents' faces as they waved the guests away, Dick could tell his mama was upset.

He recognized that tight pull to her blush painted cheeks and the slightest furrow on her rhinestone clade brows.

Dick hadn’t gotten the chance to ask why because Timmy was quickly handed to him along with very clear instructions to take Timmy to Dan, who would still be helping set up the control board for the lights.

Dick hadn’t understood.

But Dick had listened.

He walked away from the guest areas, past the ticket booth, and to the backstage.

All while bouncing a giggling Timmy who gripped the front strap of Dick’s leotard in a little fist with one hand, and waved back at mama and papa with the other.

(Privately, he dreaded the day Timmy would be too big for him to carry around.)

Dick passed several people warming up for their shows, or putting finishing touches on their costumes or their makeup.

He nodded to a few, exchanged smiles with others. But he didn’t stop to chat because his mama had given him a job to do.

Dick hadn’t even realized Timmy wanted his attention until a chubby hand patted his cheek.

"Who dat?" Timmy asked him, sweet voice thick with the smell of sugar. When he tilted his head back and away from Dick’s chest, Dick was able to see where a bit of the blue dye from the cotton candy stained Timmy’s lips and cheeks.

Tim was still looking over Dick’s shoulder, eyes big and curious eyes and staring back at their parents.

"'Who was that?' you mean, baby?" Dick asked, fond smile tugging at his lips as Timmy furiously nodded.

Honestly, Dick was pretty sure that his Timmy was the smartest baby to ever live.

He already spoke so clearly and pointedly even though his mouth was uncoordinated in the way all babies were.

"They're here to see your big brother, Timmy!" Dick exclaimed. "They're here to see me do flips!"

Tim perked up at the word and immediately clashed his little baby fists to Dick's cheeks so he could stare at his face.

"Qwadouple sowmersault?" he asked intently before breaking into a brilliant smile at Dick's nod.

Tim's clapping attracted some attention, a few of the performers looking over with small smiles and grins.

Tim was dropped off quickly. Settled down on a bench in his little overalls with a kiss to the cheek and a pinky promise to be good.

Dan nodded at him in acknowledgment, casting a soft look towards Timmy before he went back to scratching his head over why the opening lights were red instead of yellow with Alexei.

"If the wrong color lenses were put on we'll just have to do the show like this- it's too late to change them." Dick heard them mutter as he walked away. Alexej said a bad word under his breath in Czech and Dick suppressed a grin at the thought of telling mama about it and getting meanie Alexei in trouble for saying bad words around her baby.

It was 10 till curtain call by the time Dick managed to maneuver around the crowds flowing in to reach their seats. Dick was speed walking to get into position because he did not want to get scolded by papa for the tardiness.

The backstage was near vacant. Makeup bags left open, costumes for the finale laid neatly in plain view. The air smelled like powder, chalk, and hair spray.

Dick was speed walking in quick, soundless steps, fiddling with the buttons on his suit and doing a final quick check of his tights for any snags or rips.

Then Dick heard someone. Loud footsteps that came from the sound of rubber soles shoes that no one in the troupe used.

Then he saw someone. The back of their head was covered by one of those hats ‘gentlemen’ wore to dinner along with a long black coat that ended at their ankles.

They were walking past a wall of vanities and Dick saw their plain featured face in the reflection.

It was not a face Dick knew. So it was someone he knew shouldn't be there, where the performers finished getting ready.

A lost guest perhaps? An eager fan? An admirer?

Some of the older members of the troupe sometimes got candy and flowers from fans. His mama had gotten a bouquet of gorgeous lilies when they performed in England in the summer.

Normally Dick would stop.

Normally he'd tell them they weren't allowed this far back into the tent. Normally he’d lead them out, help them find the ticket counter or the areas for the audience members.

But it was 7 to curtain call so Dick hurried away because he didn’t want to be late on opening night.

Someone else would spot the wayward audience member and lead him away. Plenty of guests had gotten lost before and there was always someone around to help.

Dick had so many chances to do something about that guest on his way to get into position.

He’d needed to take a shortcut through a high traffic area and past the bathrooms anyway.

He’d had so many opportunities to tell a stagehand, an equipment handler, a peanut salesman, one of the photographers, anyone.

All he’d had to do was say a guest was backstage and might be lost.

Then maybe they would've seen the bulge in his pocket.

Then they would've noticed that it was part of the safety gear from the trapeze rig.

…

Obviously, one piece of machinery wouldn't lead to the equipment breaking down immediately.

It took time for the strain and pressure to be too much and for the swings to snap. It could have happened at any point during the 20 minute time slot the Flying Graysons got while center stage.

It was just bad luck that it happened when they took down the safety nets.

Bad luck.

Rotten luck.

Awful luck.

Red was all Dick could see. All he could smell. Iron was thick and tangy in the back of Dick’s throat. It made it hard to breathe, it made him nauseous and dizzy. It made him want to puke.

Red seeped into and soaked the knees of his suit, down his leg, and into his shoe as he knelt beside his parent's bodies.

Red from the lights above him casting a crimson glow.

There was screaming. Distant and muffled. Like someone was yelling while Dick had his head underwater.

The crowd was stampeding to vacate the stands and leave the tent. Panicked and fearful. Like ants scattering for safety when it started to rain.

The big top of Haly's Circus could seat 1,900 people with an attachable expander that could fit an additional 500 more.

But that was for when they had a full house.

Rarely did they have a full house.

But that night they did.

Mr. Haly didn't have an electronic ticket system set up, they were still saving up for one. So when someone purchased a ticket, they paid cash.

Mr. Haly had a simple set up.

A booth, a cashier, and a big roll of pre-printed tickets.

Haly's Circus didn't ask for ID only that anyone under 13 be accompanied by a parent, guardian, or someone over the age of 18.

There was no record of who bought a ticket that night.

Dick would live with the shame for the rest of his life, but he wasn't the one who noticed Timmy was missing.

"The crowd was like a wave!" Dan was frenzied. Distressed and panicked as he paced the row in front of the soundbooth by himself because Alexej was somewhere outside searching through the crowd for a missing boy.

He was on the verge of tears as he explained what was wrong to the GCPD officers that showed up. "They just swept him up! Carried him away! Please! He's just a baby!"

But the wonderful GCPD had a more important matter to deal with.

Two dead people took precedence over one missing child. One who they said was probably just wandering around lost and confused after being separated from his guardians. They would search, they assured Dan, but waiting for the ambulance, controlling the scene, and taking statements took priority.

Half an hour.

That's how long it took for those two cops who first arrived at the scene to start looking.

Forty-five minutes.

That's how long it took for them to call for backup in the search.

An hour and thirty minutes.

That's how long it took for them to start casing the neighborhood, asking the other performers what Timmy looked like, what he’d been wearing.

Dick had already been crying, already vomiting from grief and choking at the state of his mama and papa.

But then he heard they still hadn't found Timmy.

Timmy was so small, he had these little baby legs that desperately tried to keep up but he was just TOO small.

Dick carried him everywhere otherwise Timmy would be ten paces behind and bobbing after him.

'Like a baby duckling' their mama would coo.

She had her little robin and her duckie.

Dick felt like the air had been ripped out of his lungs when he heard them all talking that they hadn’t found Timmy. They hadn’t found Timmy. Theyhadn’tfoundTimmy.

Dick bent over when he heard. His head was throbbing with pain.

His fingers dug into his stained knees, slipping with the blood coating them and pushing it under his nails.

Veins were visible in Dick’s throat, bulging, as he tried to hold back the vomit that wanted to rip a burning trail out of his throat. His abdomen was cramping from the force of his sobs, chest stuttering and making him lightheaded with the air getting squeezed out of him.

Dick was crying so hard he could barely get a breath in.

The paramedics that arrived from some hopeless idealism that his parents could be saved had to put an oxygen mask over his face.

Dick hadn’t known they were trying to help him.

All he’d known were hands trying to pull him away from his family, pulling his hands away from where they were scratching at his throat. Something hard had been getting pressed to the front of his face and he hadn’t known what it was, so he’d kicked and tried to push the hands away.

Montha later, during a quiet moment. Bruce explained to him that paramedics were only supposed to use sedatives to calm violent patients.

But that night they’d decided to inject a hysterical child who’d just watched his family die with something to make him 'easier' to deal with.

Bruce confided that fact to him with clear displeasure on his face.

Dick felt a lot of hatred for many different people present the night his parents were killed.

Dick would never forgive the paramedics that had “treated” his panic attack that night.

The decision of those paramedics was why Dick hadn't been able to get up and go looking for Timmy himself.

He could have still been close by.

He could have been hiding.

Maybe he’d run out with the rest of the crowd, panicked and afraid and only running to get away from that horrible sight.

Maybe he would've come out of whatever hiding spot he found if he'd heard his big brother Dickie calling out for him.

Dick would never know.

It was just another horrible 'what if?' from the worst night of his life.

Dick hunted down Tony Zucco with a fury and wailing pain unlike anything he’d ever felt.

It was not a logical conclusion that he was the one that took Timmy.

Bruce pointed that out to him afterward.

Zucco had been heading away from the tent when Dick spotted him.

By the time the rig gear failed he'd been long gone.

Alexej had been able to account for Timmy being present up to about two minutes before…before mama and papa’s lines snapped.

Dick, deep in his heart, knew Zucco didn't have Timmy.

But Zucco had already taken so much from him he didn't know what else to do but blame him for that as well.

Haly's Circus couldn't get custody of Dick and even if they could Dick would refuse to leave Gotham.

Not when his Timmy was still out there.

Lost.

Afraid.

Waiting for Dick.

Dick couldn’t leave the last place his baby brother had been seen.

"Gotham City is a hub for traffickers," Bruce explained to him, a heavy weight in his voice.

They had airports, train stations, bus stops, and ship ports that were all used to move product into Gotham and then to the rest of the country.

Bruce laid it out plainly for him; Gotham was a mecca for crime.

Sometimes… goods didn’t stay in the city long. Bruce estimated that when moving hot products, something was only in Gotham for about 45 minutes before it was ferried out of the city to its next destination.

But that was rare.

The Gotham underground wasn't a big 'producer' ; they were more of a market for criminals to buy, sell, and trade products and services.

Meaning Timmy could either still be in the city or he could've been sold to someone else.

But, Bruce cautioned him, it was rare for children to just be snatched up and trafficked.

Typically the targets for trafficking were children that didn’t have eyes on them.

Homeless children, foster system children, runaways.

Typically the traffickers weren’t strangers. Often it was family members, neighbors, or trusted friends that sold a person out to be used.

It was always the person you knew. The person whose face you trusted.

For a person to just… snatch Timmy up?

A complete stranger?

They had no way of knowing that Timmy's parents had just died.

That meant they'd taken advantage of the chaos and singled him out. That was a BIG risk for someone to take.

"Someone you know or met might've taken him. That might be why he didn't scream or fight back." Bruce tells him and the thought sent a terrifying chill through Dick’s body. Just the thought of his baby Timmy crying and stretching up his arms for a stranger with a familiar face to pick him up and that stranger taking him.

The thought is more terrifying than the nightmares Dick had been having of Timmy running down an empty street and getting dragged into a nearby car.

Haly's had only been in Gotham for two days before that horrible night.

He and Tim were forbidden from wandering away from the circus grounds without an adult. Gotham was a city they didn't know and it was a big city. They couldn't just go off to explore.

Dick was friendly but even he didn't strike up conversations with strangers in a strange city he'd never been to.

Bruce tries. To his credit he does try. But he’s just one man.

He pulls on every lead, follows every string.

Nothing.

It's like Timmy just vanished into thin air.

Bruce puts as much time as he can into Timmy’s case, every spare moment that he has he tries to help Dick look for his lost family member. He puts Timmy’s face on the nightly news, has his sweet smile printed onto milk cartons and the back of newspapers, prints fliers and posts them in every newsstand, gas station, and convenience store. Offers a reward with money for any information.

There were 1,900 people at Haly's that night. Someone saw something. Someone knew something.

The reward only forces them to sort thorough flat out lies and empty leads before those also die off.

But crime in Gotham never stops and with no new leads…

Bruce tells him that it doesn’t mean he’s giving up. That Bruce still has informants keeping open ears on the street, he’s still cross checking every bus, every plane, every train, every taxi that went in or out of Gotham that night. He’s still compiling a list of attendees, still interrogating those he tracks down, still building a criminal profile of who they are looking for based on the barebones of the case.

Dick never stops looking for Timmy. He can’t.

And it kills him.

Every toddler with dark hair and a wonderful giggle that he passes in the street or sees playing in the park is his Timmy.

Every unaccompanied child isTimmy.

More than once Dick causes a scene in a restaurant, at the mall, or in the street when he runs after a child only to stop when he sees that the shape of the mouth, the eyes, the shade of hair, the nose is wrong.

Dick sees Timmy in his dreams. In his nightmares.

He sees Timmy crying out for him and begging for his big brother to save him.

Dick wakes up screaming and covered in sweat. He wakes up shaking and wrapping his arms around his stomach and holding himself to try and fade away the images seared into his brain of big hands grabbing his Timmy.

Gotham is not a nice place.

Every case that involves children has Dick returning to the cave and throwing up.

His face goes white, his knees lock, and he can't stop shaking for the rest of the night because he keeps imagining Timmy in their place.

Dick cries himself to sleep sometimes, terrified and afraid for his Timmy.

He's seen the things that sick and depraved people do to children.

Bruce starts keeping the cases away from Dick once he sees what they do to him, but Dick still seeks them out.

Every pedophile, molester, pervert, murderer, or kidnapper could be a lead to Timmy.

Years pass.

The hole in Dick's chest never stitches closed.

It always feels as fresh as the day he realized no one knew where Timmy was.

Sometimes Dick has good days. Days where he's so happy he almost forgets everything he’s lost.

But then other days he can't even get out of bed because the pain is just too much to bear.

Dick becomes a hero.

He meets magic users, heroes with abilities, a man who can identify anyone in the world by just their heartbeat.

Dick has the resources to find Timmy now.

He tries.

More dead ends.

Dick is not in a good place when Jason comes into the picture.

He's just off another failed attempt to use his blood to find and locate any close relatives with Zatanna.

Another failure because it turns out Bruce had done something years ago. Another of his contingencies, a defense protocol so that if any of their DNA was ever left behind at the scene - it wouldn’t be able to be used to track them.

At the time Bruce had done it to protect their identities.

But now it screwed up the ability of Dick’s blood to be used in magic tracking spells.

Bruce hadn’t done it on purpose but it hadn’t mattered.

Dick had been angry. He’d come to the cave angry and in pain and holding back the hurt tearing inside his chest.

When he saw a child.

Dressed as Robin.

His colors.

Dedicated to his family.

Colors that he picked out and wore so that his Timmy would know he could trust him if he ever saw them.

Even if he was just a baby when it happened Dick was absolutely certain Timmy would recognize the colors from the suits his parents and brother wore when they performed.

Dick was not proud of how he reacted.

There was no way Jason knew the meaning or significance behind that suit.

He yelled at him regardless. Charged and tried to rip that suit off him anyway and only stopped when Bruce barged in and got between them, shielding Jason.

The sight of him had only enraged him more. He screamed at Bruce, raising his voice over his, over Alfred’s. Because he knew. He fucking knew what that suit meant to him.

It’s the last time Dick steps foot in the manor for a long time.

He throws himself into looking for Timmy with a new fervor because fuck Bruce fuck Bruce fuckBruce.

Dick will find his real family all on his own.

Then Jason dies.

In his colors.

Dick has lost yet another little brother.

The pain brings him to his knees when he hears.

Dick remains distant from Bruce afterward. He’s not angry anymore. He’s just…tired.

He stays in San Francisco with the Titans. Even gets an apartment for when he needs some space.

Until a little thing knocks on his door early one morning, squirming in through the gap when Dick cracks it open.

Dick doesn't hear the soft, young voice and its gentle pleading at first.

He just stares at his face. Those long lashes, dark hair, and blue eyes, the sweet button nose, and perfect peachy lips.

His name is Tim.

Dick tries his best not to let the pain of that name show on his face.

It’s not as hard as it should be. Dick's had years of practice.

Tim talks about...that night.

Tells him how his parents took him to the circus, how he saw Dick's flip.

How he recognized it years later while watching the news.

Tim becomes the new Robin.

Dick tries to do for Tim what he didn't do for Jason but it's..hard.

A boy with dark hair whose name is 'Tim' wearing that suit and those colors.

Dick catches himself falling into a wretched yearning fantasy.

A fake reality where Tim was never taken and Bruce took them both in.

A reality where Dick was teaching his baby Timmy all the acrobatic moves that fascinated him so much. Of Dick passing on their birthright to his baby.

Tim is a good kid.

A little quiet but still sweet and shy.

His parents are world travelers and he talks about them with so much brightness and affection that it makes Dick feel guilty for thinking poorly of the fact that they're gone most of the year.

"They send me presents in the mail all the time!" Tim brightly tells him when Dick asks about whether they return home to celebrate Christmas and his birthday.

One time, after probing about whether his parents would notice him leaving his boarding school so often, he gets a saddened look. Just a flash, for a brief moment before he shook it away.

"I do wish they'd stay home sometimes though,” Tim confided once. They’d known each other for a few months by then and Tim had finally begun opening up a little more. “They used to do that a lot when I was smaller. They used to take me with them too, when they went to Paris and Berlin and Shanghai."

After that Tim gets a distant look in his eye. A cloudy sort of look like he was a million miles away.

Dick doesn’t ask anymore questions after that. It feels rude. Dick knows better than anyone after having spent so many years raised by Bruce, that sometimes parents were…hard.

Dick likes Tim. He’s an easy kid to like. He imagines that if he’d given Jason a chance that Dick would’ve found him easy to like too.

It’s been years since the worst day of Dick’s life. Lifetimes.

When he’d been a kid Dick had been certain he’d never recover. That he’d always walk around with an open, leaking wound everywhere he went.

But. And he’s not sure when it happens, but after a while…after a while he barely even feels that empty twinge in his chest when he catches sight of a little boy with dark hair or hears his name.

Tim is smart and clever and quick on his feet which more than makes up for his small size. Tim is also a good partner to Bruce. He helps him be less…Bat.

Tim is good for him.

The two of them work in tandem and develop a better dynamic than the one Dick had with Bruce.

Tim takes good care of Bruce and it lifts a weight that Dick hadn't noticed he'd been carrying.

Dick can't be the one to lift Bruce. Not anymore.

Dick always searches for his Timmy, he never stops. But just like in the beginning- there's always something that needs to be dealt with. Some problem, some issue, some other pressing matter.

Tim experiences problems with Robin. Something Dick learns about when Bruce calls him late one night because he needed someone to talk to.

Jack Drake is a protective man. He and Bruce learn that quickly.

Just as they learn he’s the sort of parent that becomes hostile, not worried, when he discovers that Tim is Robin.

He threatens Bruce, Dick, and even Alfred to not come near his family again. Tells them what he’ll do in low biting words both in person and over the phone when they try calling Tim one night, just to check up on him. Jack Drake is in the middle of moving his family out of Gotham, in the middle of signing Tim up for boarding school in Germany so that he can put a continent of distance between Gotham and him.

Then he dies.

And the vitriol, the…the hatred that dripped from his words when he spoke to them that hadn’t made any sense at all; it doesn't seem to matter because he dies.

He dies so soon after learning that Tim had been spending holidays with the Waynes and staying at the manor over breaks, and that he even had his own room that Bruce had personally decorated.

Dick attends the funeral, along with Bruce and Alfred. Even if the man hated them, cursed them, threatened them.

They don’t want Tim to have to stand in front of that grave alone. Dick stands in that graveyard and watches Tim’s father be buried beside his late wife while their only child stands in front of both graves and sobs.

Tim is heart broken at his father’s death, of course he is. But he’s also… confused and unsure because it felt like he’d never known his own father. That this man was both a stranger but also someone he remembered loving him so much. That he can feel the hands that used to stroke his back and rock him when he was upset and he can’t comprehend that memory with the father that would tell Tim to spend the holiday at a friend’s house. Tim agonizes over it, he spirals and Dick’s little brother needs him and he… he can’t dedicate the time he usually does to searching for Timmy. Because Tim needs him.

Dick has a consultation with Constantine that keeps getting put off when Red Hood and then Damian enter their lives.

Constantine makes him start paying deposits after the fourth cancellation, he tells Dick over the phone that blood magic was the nastiest sort of magic and his blood being equipped with an anti-casting field made things more complex. More dangerous. That besides, magic worked better with lineage spells. That every magical society and culture that ever existed had some spell or ritual to identify a bastard child.

So Dick is left with the proposal of digging up his own father to get a sample of his DNA in the hopes it would lead him to his baby brother.

The call doesn’t help. All it does is bring more grief.

Grief that is amplified by the loss of Bruce. Something that costs him.

Dick makes mistakes in the wake of his second father’s death.

He and Tim have an odd tension between them when he returns from Europe with the proof of Bruce being alive.

Things never quite settle to how they were before. Tim doesn't…trust him as much, at least not in the way he used to.

He's wary about Dick just as he is with Damian and Jason.

But the four of them get through it. It's slow going, they hit rough patches, they fight, they forgive. But they're brothers.

.

.

.

Despite that. Dick doesn't talk about his Timmy often.

The pain of that night was still raw and throbbing.

Dick's parents are dead and he will always carry the weight of that. The pain of that will never fade - Bruce is living proof of that much.

But… it's a different pain from what he feels for his Timmy.

Because at least Dick knows what happened to his parents.

Every few months Dick cycles through the same grief, the same fears. The possibility of Timmy being alive and out there never leaves Dick.

Dick has seen it.

Cases where people who’d been kidnapped and held in captivity for years only to survive and escape and reunite with their families who had never given up on them.

Dick clings that hope, that possibility because it’s a real possibility.

Miracles happen all the time to completely random people. Why can’t it happen to him?

Dick’s not sure if the way he thinks is healthy.

He’s not sure if he cares.

Bruce never gives up either.

It’s something Dick learns when he takes up the mantle of Batman and finds the files upon files upon files gathered on the batcomputer and protected behind a 36 digit password.

Work logs, hotel guest lists, every documented police arrest spanning the 6 weeks before and 6 weeks after that night at Haly’s. Piles of receipts for transactions from every store in Gotham that included children’s clothing and children’s medicine in the purchase dated nearly a month after Timmy disappeared. Compiled lists labeled ‘people of interest’, lists spanning thousands of names getting whittled down bit by bit over the years.

But the final one, the thing that chokes Dick up when he finds it is the tip line phone number. The one Bruce setup years ago for people to call with any information. It was still active.

It was always easy for Dick’s anger and bitterness to cloud his sight.

For him to believe the voice in his head telling him he was the only one looking, the only one who cared.

Bruce cared.

It showed in the way he’d introduced Dick to every person who could possibly help him. Like Superman and Martian Manhunter.

Superman had tried, had offered his services in whatever way he thought they’d help. But nothing could change the fact that he couldn’t track the heartbeat of someone he’d never met.

Martian Manhunter had been the first time Dick had experienced true disappointment with his search. He’d thought he’d finally figured it out when he asked Martian Manhunter to enter his mind, to search his memories. The subconscious mind had access to details and information Dick’s conscious mind couldn’t reach. It’s possible Dick had seen what happened that night. Seen it but had just forgotten it.

But it didn’t work. Dick had never taken his eyes off his parents for even a second once it registered to him the equipment was failing.

Only Bruce and the people he and Dick have reached out to in his search know about Timmy.

Dick had never brought himself to be able to talk about it to anyone else. Not his friends, not past girlfriends.

No one except the people he thought could help.

He's not sure how they get onto the topic but one day, when Dick and his three brothers are together, Jason mentions how much of a...dick Dick had been when he found Jason wearing his suit.

Dick can see the edge of pain in Jason’s eyes as he tries to talk about it like it was nothing. As he tells Tim and Damian what Dick had done to him when he found him in the cave playing with his new cape.

It’s been years and the shame never fully left Dick.

So. Dick…starts telling.

"It's not so much that you were wearing it that made me angry… but the fact that Bruce gave it to you when he knew what it meant to me."

Jason nodded from where he was slouched on one corner of the cough, a knee dangling over the edge while the other was folded under his thigh.

"Yeah he… he told me about your parents and the suit. After"

Jason’s eyes darted slightly, brow furrowing like he’d flashed back to that moment in the cave.

Dick shook his head.

"No, no Jay it wasn’t that - it was more than that it... it was-"

Dick took a steadying breath. His lungs felt constricted as he took a breath, his stomach felt sick and he didn’t know why.

Everyone knew about his parents. Everyone. It made the front page of the newspaper the day after. A couple of years ago a direct-to-tv low budget true crime movie had been released about it. Dick once watched a youtube video ranking the top ten worst freak accidents that occurred during a live performance. His parents had been number three in the countdown.

Dick is used to his pain about his mama and papa being…visible.

But. Something in Dick’s gut still swirled uneasily as he opened his mouth to tell them about the… the fourth victim of that night.

His Timmy.

Sweet baby Timmy and how he'd been swept away and disappeared when he’d been just a foot away from the sound booth where someone had been minding him

How neither he nor Bruce knew what happened to him after that night.

His brother's faces go from confused to a pale faced shocked.

"I...I didn't know that." Jason shifted uncomfortably, looking down at his lap where a fist was gripping at the loose fabric of his sweatpants.

Haly's Circus grounds had pitched their tent right outside crime alley.

As good of a job as Jason had done cleaning things up, things had been horrendous back then.

Dick knows that the theory both he and Bruce had developed over what likely happened was that Timmy, when he was swept away with the crowd, stumbled in, and was swallowed by Gotham.

Bodies are dragged out of the gutter every few months, fished from the harbor, or reported from homeless camps.

Hundreds of people die unidentified in Gotham every year and as much as Dick wanted to believe that Timmy was alive...chances are he was one of them.

It was a thought that never failed to bring tears to Dick's eyes. Wondering how it happened. Thinking of Timmy wandering the streets hungry, crying over the pain aching in his baby belly, sobbing for Dickie because his tummy hurt. Timmy shivering and cold, stuck in a rainstorm and finding a dry cardboard box to crawl into while yearning for the warmth of mama and papa’s arms.

Dick’s throat tightens with a wad of emotion, his breathing getting shaky.

Tears gather in the corner of Dick’s eyes and he wipes them away discretely then clears his throat while his brothers avert their eyes.

"You've never found evidence of what happened to him?" Damian asked, eyes oddly intense. His gaze felt heavy and loaded. It was probably his way of trying to express his concern and distress over the state of Dick’s reddening eyes.

Dick knew Damian had a fondness for him. That out of all his brothers Damian was the most attached to him.

Dick shook his head.

"Me and Bruce reviewed the files so many times I have it memorized. No security cameras at Haly’s or surrounding businesses, no witnesses, nobody ever came forward."

Flyers and missing person's posters had covered Gotham for four months.

Before they'd been pasted over with the posters of another person.

Bruce had kept paying for people to keep printing and putting up flyers but it hadn’t felt right to use Bruce’s money so Timmy was the only person in Gotham who’d ever gone missing.

Tim's brows were furrowed. His brows had been creased with concern, his hands hovering slightly away like he was unsure how to reach out and help Dick.

"What was his name?" he asked, voice soft and comforting.

Two other sets of eyes flickered to Dick with thinly veiled interest and Dick bit back the startled choked sob that almost left his mouth at the fact that Tim was asking for Timmy’s name.

"His uh.." Dick sniffled voice thick with emotion, "his name was Timmy."

Dick's voice cracked and he couldn't hold back the fresh wave of tears that burned hot streaks down his cheeks like they were made of vodka.

Tim's forehead creased in guilt, regret already visibly painting his face.

"N-no Tim, it's okay!" Dick insisted, knowing his younger brother's tendency for guilt. "I've uh...I've had years to get used to it. When I was a kid-" Dick let out a strained clucky laugh, "- I used to… I used to chase after every toddler with dark hair and I'd uhm hyperventilate if I heard the name 'Timmy'."

Dick had been a wreck those first years.

He didn't even remember his first few months at the manor and both Bruce and Alfred got a distant, haunted look in their eyes whenever Dick asked about it.

Dick bit his lip, and roughly wiped away another flow of tears.

He hadn't wanted to ruin the mood.

Jason's brows were furrowed, displeasure on his face as he probably worked through the likelihood of what had happened to Dick's little brother.

"How old was he?" Jason's question was thick with tension and Dick felt another pulse of pain throb in his throat.

"Three.” He admitted quietly. “He was just three."

Jason cursed viciously.

"That's a fucking baby," he spit out, "I swear if it ever find out that somebody laid their hands on the kid-"

Dick swallowed back a pained whimper and tried to ignore the slideshow of horror that started playing behind his eyelids when he closed his eyes to steady himself.

Damian was hesitantly patting Dick's knee in comfort when-

"Wait. I was three."

Three pairs of eyes flickered to Tim whose brow was furrowed in thought. Tim had a finger pressing thoughtfully to his jaw, something he did everytime the cogs in his brain were working and shifting together the pieces of a puzzle. Dick had seen Tim perform borderline miracles whenever he’d do that.

"That day at Haly's Circus,” Tim began slowly, speaking softly like he was talking more to himself than them, “it was my 3rd birthday and we got a picture with your family as a treat."

Tim straightened up, pushing himself up to his knees and then socked feet while Damian turned to him.

"Are you saying you were there that day?" Damian asked, brows furrowed.

Jason was similarly frowning.

Tim turned to them both with a surprised expression. "Uh yeah? I mean I told Dick and Bruce about it, it was how I found out they were Batman and Robin, the day at Haly's Circus was like my earliest memory."

Tim shook his head for a moment before turning back to Dick, an analytical look in his eye. it was the same look he got when he found a break in a case.

"I have a picture." Tim's lips spread into an eager smile.

"It caught a good amount of the crowd because the line was right behind us! If we can track down even a few of them we've got a good pool to start with and it shouldn’t be hard to run them through face recognition!" Tim was up and darting across the carpet, maneuvering around legs and booking it towards the door, likely racing to his old room where he’d stored a bunch of his things after his dad died.

Dick felt a ball form in his throat.

"Bruce and I were never able to track down anyone who'd been there that night." Dick painfully admitted.

A few dozen people had tried filing lawsuits against Haly's Circus for emotional damages for what they witnessed but it was Gotham and unless you were willing to pay for your case to be seen by a judge, it was all thrown out. Bruce had looked into everyone who filed. Half had been by ambulance chasers whose clients hadn’t been anywhere near Haly’s the night of the accident.

Both Jason and Damian straightened up at Dick's words and all three of them turned when a widely grinning Tim carried in a blue photo album still in its plastic sleeve packaging.

He laid the spine of the album on the coffee table and opened to the first page.

"Right here!"

For a moment it felt like everything went still. The world outside the window, the planes flying overhead, the bird chirping, the sound of a lawnmower from the landscaping company working on the manor grounds - it all went quiet.

Dick barely covered his mouth to muffle the sob that burst out. Timmy.

It was his Timmy.

Held in the arms of a broad-shouldered man in a brown suit that Dick instantly realized was Jack Drake.

But that wasn't what mattered.

What mattered was the toddler in his arms whose mouth was stained blue from cotton candy.

"Oh Timmy, there you are-"

Dick felt his tears blur his vision as he shakily stroked a finger against the soft curve of that chubby cheek he'd kissed so much.

Dick sniffled and let out a shaky cry as he stared at that picture.

The last picture of his sweet baby Timmy. Alive.

Tim was right about the line of people in the background but Dick was only focused on one thing.

"There's my father," Tim pointed, inching the photo album to the side, showing Jason and Damian who were also crowded around the table,"there's my mother, and there's me." Tim pressed a finger to Dick's Timmy.

Dick frowned.

"No."

Three pairs of eyes turned to a frowning Dick.

"No, that's not you."

Tim frowned.

"Uh..yeah it is Dick? See, that's my father, that's my mother and there I-"

"No." Dick stressed the word. "That's Timmy, that's my Timmy. I remember that night! A couple took a picture with us and wanted Timmy in the photo. Mama was upset that they picked him up without permission, she told me to drop him off with Dan right after."

Dick pointed at the picture that clearly showed how upset his mama was. His finger pressed to the small bit of tension in her brow.

Dick's papa’s eyes were pointed away from the camera but still smiling, although tightly.

Then Timmy, who was confusedly looking up at the stranger holding him.

When Dick looked back up all three of his brothers were staring at him, thin veils of concern in their eyes.

"Uh...Dick," Jason began slowly, "that's pretty clearly Tim."

Tim shifted, his face flashed with discomfort as Dick flickered over to him.

"I mean...it was a pretty bad night for you." Tim began unsteadily, "it's understandable if you...don't remember things perfectly-"

No.

No.

Dick knew exactly what happened that night. He remembered every detail.

Some people's memories faded, but not Dick's.

He remembered Timmy's candy sweet breath, remembered dropping him off with Dan, kissing his nose, his little hand, the pink promise to be good before promising him another-

"You promised me a quadruple somersault, remember?"

Dick froze. His guts suddenly clenched oddly as Tim's big blue eyes stared at him with some sympathy as he tried to 'jog' Dick's memory.

Dick stared at Tim. Really stared at him.

He took in his eyes, his lips, his nose, his eyelashes.

Looking at Tim had hurt in the beginning, he was so soft and young. So pure and bright.

He looked like what he imagined a grown up-

"Timmy." Dick breathed.

"Timmy"

Dick didn't notice he pushed the photo album aside from where it’d been between them until Tim let out a startled noise as Dick wrapped both arms over his shoulders, reverently cupping the back of his neck.

"Timmy, i-it is you o-oh shut, holy fuck, oh my god- here, here, let me look at you-"

Tim's eyes were wide staring up at Dick.

"Timmy." Dick whispered breathlessly. "I found you."

XxX

They freak out.

Dick's brothers are sure that he's lost it and they keep glancing over at Dick as he's seated in the medbay, staring at Tim while Alfred drew some blood and took his temperature.

Bruce is frowning down at the photo album in his hands.

"-might have gotten dosed? Or hit his head? Or maybe just talking about it made him...uhm-"

"Tim's trying to say he thinks Dick has snapped." Jason is tense standing beside Tim and partially blocking the view of Dick who was in soft restraints and tied down to a gurney.

He'd been the one to pry Dick off of Tim even though Dick clearly hadn't wanted to let go.

Jason had scratches on his arm, not deep. Not bleeding, but the lines were red and felt hot when he pressed his palm over them.

"This is Jack and Janet Drake." Bruce began, frowning down at the photo, "and you're saying that Dick thinks this-"

He points at the cotton candy-stained baby.

"-is his brother."

Tim nods uneasily before listing more suggestions, perhaps because Tim being in the appropriate age range at the time of the photo means Dick is just projecting memories. Maybe the pain of remembering made him see his brother where he wasn't.

“Do you know what Dick’s brother looked- looks like?” Tim asks after a beat of silence from Bruce.

Bruce’s eyes are intense and dark and it strikes Jason as odd that Bruce had yet to…say anything.

The first thing he offers after Tim asks him that question is-

“Dick spent five nights in juvenile holding after his parents were killed.”

Bruce’s voice is empty and toneless. “There weren’t any open beds at any of the shelters or boys' homes. Due to his age and status as a witness to a crime he hadn’t qualified for emergency placement with a foster family. So they made him sleep in a cinderblock room with four other boys who were going to be processed into a youth detention center.”

Bruce’s mouth tightened, his eyes going flinty as he glared past the album and at the cave floor.

“By the time I got him out they’d destroyed all but a handful of his things.”

Bruce breathed heavily through his nose, eyes briefly pressing closed, expression pained.

“One of those things had been a photo of Timothy William Grayson at his second birthday party. It was the photo we shared with the media when we listed him as a missing person.”

It felt odd to hear Bruce say those words. It was even more surreal when he started over to the batcomputer and started opening files about the case.

The entire time, Damian had been remaining silent, staring down at the photo album.

He hadn't said a word so far until-

"Why are there only two tickets?"

A pair of tickets printed with the words 'Admit One' were pressed into the protective sleeve beside the picture.

“A family of three attended the circus that day so why are there only two tickets?"

Tim stared at Damian blankly, shooting him a disinterested look from the corner of his eye.

"I was a kid Damian.” Tim replied back flatly. “Some places admit people under a certain age range for free."

Jason picked up the slightest edge of condescension at the same time as Damian based on how the kid immediately bristled with irritation.

"Not Haly's Circus." Bruce interjected, seemingly sensing the mounting tension behind him. "It's a production geared towards children, they'd lose a lot of profit if they didn't charge the kids."

Tim turned his eyes to Bruce, expression blank.

"Are there no other baby pictures of you Drake?" Damian asked, ripping the book from Tim's hands and beginning to flip through the thin book. No one said anything to stop Damian as he mumbled under his breath, skipping pages and pages of blank, unfilled space.

"The cover says 'My First Memory Book' and yet the first page starts with a picture of you at the circus of all places."

Tim's jaw tightened. Jason saw the brief flash of clenched teeth before it was replaced by thinly pressed lips.

"I don't like what you're implying." Tim's words were tense.

Damian's eyes flickered up to him, his hands clenched tightly around an album that was 70% blank pages.

"And what am I implying, Drake?"

Tim's teeth bit down on the corner of his lip, where an old white scar lay visibly against his skin. He breathed harshly through his nose before sniffing and looking down at Damian like he was a bug on the pavement.

“Cut the wannabe detective attitude Damian, you’re not making some grand discovery just because my parents didn’t keep their first ultrasound.”

“Then where are the photos from your first year of life, your second year of life? Even my trainers maintained a detailed log and photographic database of my progress following my birth.”

Some of Tim’s edge stopped and deflated at that. Jason could see how the flash of sympathy sparked in Tim’s eyes before he muffled it.

"If you must know,” Tim began, his testiness not as sharp, “I wasn't, strictly speaking, born in the U.S.A"

Even Bruce turned to look at him, turning away from his task at the batcomputer, his eyes narrowed on him even from behind the cowl.

"You have a U.S birth certificate, a social security, I saw nothing in your documents that-"

"My parents paid for some...expedited paperwork.” Tim made a face at the admission, “I'm not sure it was all fully legal but I was born when they were on the road and they hadn’t really stopped to get all the proper documents filed so…when we went back to the states they were worried I wouldn't be let into the country with them unless I had a U.S passport so..."

Tim shrugged.

"I was already a year or something old by that point and digital cameras didn't exactly exist yet so…no baby pictures."

Tim’s mouth was tilted down. His shoulders were taught, tightly wound like he felt defensive about what he’d just said.

Eventually Tim dragged his gaze away from Bruce to shoot Damian a narrow eyed look.

"Is that a good enough explanation for you?" He asked coolly.

Damian glared at him.

"Your birthday is coincidentally the day that Grayson's sibling disappeared, that's not odd to you detective?"

The way Damian said ‘detective’ edged a little too close to mocking.

Bruce frowned at him, already picking up at the beginnings of a fight.

"Dami-"

Damian cut his father off.

"By your own mouth you admit that your earliest memory is seeing the Flying Graysons perish, that's not odd to you?"

"Hey kid-"

Jason was similarly ignored as Damian turned the album and lifted it close enough to Tim's face that he couldn't look away.

"And it's not odd to you that your parents were seated at R-34 and R-35, four feet from the sound booth that Timothy Grayson disappeared from?"

Damian went down like a sack of rocks from the force of Tim's sudden punch.

Both Bruce and Jason let out similar shouts.

Scalding reprimands were on the edge of Bruce's tongue, his hand reaching out to grab Tim and ask what he thought he was doing.

Bruce wasn’t going to hurt Tim, of course he wasn’t.

Still, Tim was suddenly yanked back with a startled yelp into Dick's arms.

"Don't even think about it!" Dick half turned away from the three of them, body covering Tim's as a snarl creeped on his face.

"Don't you dare lay a hand on Timmy! He's a good boy!"

Dick's eyes were dark as they glared at Bruce.

Glared at him like he was...a threat.

Damian was already rising to his feet, pushing away Alfred’s hands as he stood back up and spit in Tim’s direction-

“I’m not one to shy away from beatings I’ve earned Drake,” He hissed, unconcerned with the red welt forming along his jaw, “but this one is firmly the fault of your wretched parents.”

“Damian. I'm warning you.” Tim’s voice was dark and grave. It was a tone he rarely used and Jason couldn’t help the flash of discomfort he felt at the…unfamiliarity of it.

The kid was making a huge accusation and one based mostly on coincidence and happenstance. Damian was the youngest, the least experienced of them. Like Jason, he wasn’t really what came to mind when someone wanted a mystery solved.

But there was one edge Damian had that he beat them all in, hands down.

The kid had an intuition unlike anything Jason had ever seen; and he’d seen the best.

And it was becoming overwhelmingly clear Damian was not going to be letting this go.

“You’re going to defend them?” Damian asked, almost goading Tim, “after what they’ve done?”

“They haven’t done anything!”

“They stole a child!” Damian shot back “They stole Grayson’s brother! They condemned him to a lifetime of agony, of wondering what happened.”

“Say that they did.” Tim replied sharply, eyes like daggers aimed at Damian. “You think my parents evaded a decade long manhunt led by The Batman?”

“No witnesses, no DNA-” Damian began counting off on his fingers.

“Stop grasping at straws.”

“No criminal records, no identifiable motive, no accomplices to turn them in aside from each other; you said you were raised outside the country? Have you not considered that if you’re a criminal who has just kidnapped a child, would you not then flee the city where you committed said crime?”

“They came back - explain that.”

“Offenders often return to the scene of the crime to relive the moment.”

“You’re sick Damian.” Tim spit out, looking like he was holding back from actually spitting at Damian’s feet.

“Maybe.” Damian said dismissively before the hardened look on his face twitched. “But at least I am not so blind as to deny what is right in front of me.”

Damian’s hand shot out, fist clenched into a white knuckle shaking fist that remained steady aside from his pointer finger that stretched out - pointing at the batcomputer.

On the screen was a picture of a chubby cheeked baby, eyes creased with delight. Frosting clung to his chin and cheeks as chubby hands clapped in front of him.

Jason’s eyes fell back to the album with a picture of that same little boy and his cotton candy stained cheeks.

XxX

A DNA test confirms it all quickly.

Tim is devastated.

Inconsolable.

They can all see it in the way his eyes drained of their light when he stared at the results.

No one aside from Dick can find it in themselves to try and stop him when he turned around and started up the stairs of the Batcave.

From the monitors they can see as he locks himself in his room. They can see as Dick stands outside of it, begging for Tim to let him in.

Bruce had initially tried intervening, getting between Dick and his attempt to follow Tim because Tim had needed space. He hadn’t been able to get an inch close without Dick's head whipping around to face him and barking at him to back off.

Both Jason and Damian were similarly treated and Bruce laid a comforting hand on Damian's shoulder when he saw his expression crease in hurt at the rejection.

Not even Alfred had been able to get more a few feet away before Dick eyed him with suspicion.

The only thing that let Bruce drop it and allow Dick to follow had been the desperation in Dick’s eyes to follow Tim.

Bruce didn’t know how to begin approaching the situation. He’d seen Dick’s pain, saw how the loss of his only family had crushed him.

(Bruce still had dreams of Dick’s first few months at the manor. The wailing, the screaming, the way he’d refused to eat, refused to move. The way he’d sat in a corner and growled like an animal anytime someone came close. The way Bruce had been so sure Dick was trying to… die by wasting away.)

Bruce had spent decades looking for that little boy. The little boy whose door Dick was standing outside, leaning against, and begging to be let in.

It was clear on the monitors Dick hadn't barged into the room. Even though it was overwhelmingly clear he wanted to.

Bruce understood the behavior.

He knew it was rooted in over a decade worth of nightmares, fears, and imagining the worst-case scenario for that little baby Dick lost.

Still.

It…hurt to be treated with such blatant suspicion and distrust.

Whatever happened between Tim and Dick…there wasn’t anything more they could do.

But Bruce couldn’t stand by idly. It made him too restless.

So he’d turned to the batcomputer. To the files he’d spent years building for a case he wasn’t sure he could ever solve.

There were still questions Bruce had, things he needed answered.

"Sickos." Jason shook his head beside Bruce, scowling down at Tim's fake birth certificate displayed on one of the nearby monitors. The day he was taken from Haly’s Circus was used as his date of birth. Beside it was Tim’s original birth certificate, his real one.

Tim’s birthday was actually the 16th of October. Not the 19th of July.

"What kind of pieces of shit would do this?"

Bruce asked himself that question every night. He asked it a million different ways about a million different people and things.

He and Jason were doing a deep dive into Jack and Janet. Running through and ripping apart every seam of the life they’d lived to find what they’d truly been.

They were both already long gone. Long dead with no chance of ever being brought to justice for what they’d done. They’d lived their lives having gotten away with what they’d done to Dick and Tim.

Those kinds of cases are always the worst.

Still. Bruce had thought it would be good or helpful to get perspective on their son and brother's kidnappers. His captors.

The more Bruce looked, the worse it got.

"Look at this shit."

Jason handed him a print out of Jack and Janet's finances. It was from a number of different health facilities from a list of countries that stretched around the block.

Norway, Switzerland, Argentina, the United Kingdom, Singapore, Canada-

Hypnotherapists, electroconvulsive therapy, child psychologists. Office visits and billings for sessions that were paid in cash and off the record.

Bruce was certain if he plugged those dates and countries into the Drake’s travel itinerary they’d kept a detailed record of, he was certain both would line up.

"They put a toddler through ECT." Jason's grip on the paper tightened and Bruce felt his chest similarly begin to crumble under the painful tightness that enveloped it.

He knew there’d been a gap in Tim's memory.

He'd learned about it the first day he'd met him. Memory loss, gaps in memory were side effects of electroconvulsive therapy.

He'd thought the gaps a bit strange but never lent much thought to it.

Tim's first memory, according to him, had been when he was three. It'd been the night at Haly's Circus.

His next memory had been when he was nine- the night that he saw Dick perform the quadruple somersault on the news and discovered his identity as Robin and Bruce's as Batman.

Six years in a dissociative state was a clear sign of massive mental trauma.

Tim had no memory of life before Batman.

He’d had no memory of life beyond Robin.

XxX

Dick holds his Timmy tenderly, as soft as he used to. His Timmy has grown bigger.

So much bigger.

He's shaking like a leaf in the wind as Dick holds him.

He whimpers like a hurt dog at every stroke Dick passes through his hair.

He's buried under his blankets while Dick lays on top of his bed and tries to soothe him just like he used to on the nights there were thunderstorms and Timmy would run to Dick instead of their mama and papa.

"I’m here now Timmy, it's okay, it's okay now; I promise nothing bad will ever happen you you again-"

Timmy sobbed.

The sound stuck a dagger through Dick's heart as he crawled closer, hugging the lump that was his baby brother.

“I'm sorry Timmy-"

Dick rubbed his forehead against where the crying was coming from.

"I looked for you, I looked for you everyday. I'm so sorry that I let those horrible people take you," there was a lump in Dick's throat that burned like he'd swallowed vinegar.

Rage had ripped through him, tearing and pulsing so fast and hard it made his head hurt when he realized that Jack and Janet were the couple that had creeped out his parents all those years. Mama and papa had known what they were from the start.

They were the ones who had taken his Timmy.

What had they done to him in that time?

Dick couldn't even imagine the horrible things that'd been done to Timmy, things he must have kept silent about.

Tim had spent the last few years directly supervised in Bruce's care and he hadn't felt anything off in that time.

Not one thing.

Dick could've had Timmy back years ago.

He could've been helping his sweet baby learn to be soft again, to open up just like the darling little flower he'd been when he chased after Dick like a little duckling.

Tim was secretive.

Tim kept to himself and pulled away from people.

He was nervous about attention and didn't like to be put into situations he couldn't control. Tim got upset when people raised their voices at him.

Dick's Timmy hadn't been like that.

Dick's Timmy had been tender.

Sweet.

Loving.

Small.

Dick's.

He'd laughed out loud and pressed kisses to Dick's cheeks while asking him to play with him. While begging him to teach him how to fly, that he wouldn’t tell mama. It would be their secret.

But Bruce had dropped the ball.

'World's greatest detective' Dick's ass.

Bruce had hurt Tim as well. As Robin.

Jason too.

He'd slit his throat, he'd nearly killed him and Damian...if help had gotten to Tim too late he would have bled out.

Timmy wasn't safe here.

Not with these people.

Dick had lost part of himself that day. That horrible day.

And now Timmy was here, in his arms again.

And he'd grown up so beautifully.

His features were wonderfully soft and Dick could see the hint of their mama in Timmy's lips and eyelashes.

They both shared the same coloring as their papa.

Staring down at teary eyes and Dick could even scout out a few features he shared with Dick.

They both had the same small ears and high cheekbones.

Timmy's…everything was much smaller.

He wasn’t as muscular or tall as Dick.

It looked like he got mama's height.

Dick tightened his grip on Timmy's hips, squeezing them in comfort as Timmy sniffled while staring up at him with tearful eyes.

"Oh Timmy." Dick nuzzled their foreheads together, just like he did when they were young.

When they were both innocent, unscarred, and happy.

Timmy whimpered and Dick pressed gentle kisses to Timmy's soft cheeks and brows.

One on his left cheek, one on his forehead, one on his right cheek, one on his nose, and one on his lips.

Just like when they were kids.

Timmy would always giggle when Dick did that and press his face up to kiss him back.

As the youngest members of the troupe and the only kids, the two of them had really only had each other for company.

When Timmy had disappeared he'd taken half of Dick's heart. Half of his soul.

Now they were together again and Dick could start rebuilding.

"It's you and me Timmy," Dick whispered against his lips.

"Just you and me." Dick would never let anything happen to Timmy ever again.

A knock echoed from the door that Dick had locked behind him when he slipped in.

Dick turned his head and stared as the brass doorknob tried to turn with a chair propped under the handle.

Dick was going to look out for Timmy from now on. Nothing and no one would ever touch him again.

"Richard?"

Another knock followed the call of his name. Vaguely, distantly Dick thought it sounded a lot like Damian’s voice.

Dick stayed quiet.

Answering didn't matter. The people on the other side of the door didn't matter.

All that mattered was Timmy.

'Dickie?'

Dick could hear his baby Timmy's sweet voice in his head again.

Usually, that only happened when he was alone and miserable. But he wasn’t miserable. How could he be? When he was SO happy.

“Yes, Timmy?"

'We stayin towgehder?'

Dick nodded.

"Yes baby, we are."

Timmy shifted under him, making a soft noise.

'Like-like mommy an daddy, Dickie?'

"Yes Timmy, just like mommy and daddy."

An angel's giggle rang in Dick's ear as he pressed a kiss to Timmy's soft forehead.

Timmy used to love their pretend weddings,

Draping a sheet over his face like a veil and waiting for Dick to lift it up and kiss the bride.

Timmy used to cheerfully tell their parents and the other performers that he and Dickie were going to get married when he grew up.

They'd all coo and pinch his cheeks because Timmy was every inch adorable as a baby could be.

Dick could still see the image in his head.

Little chubby hands holding a bundle of fake flowers usually kept in a vase while a bed sheet covered Timmy like he was pretending to be a ghost.

'You gon kiss me, Dickie?'

Dick carefully peeled back the sheets covering Timmy's face, exposing his red face and tear-streaked cheeks. His puffy eyes stared back at Dick with misery thick in his expression.

Dick leaned down.

'Noooo! You gotta say 'I Do'! Dickie you gotta!'

"I do." Dick pressed his mouth to Timmy's, humming in contentment as some ripped, raw edge of himself began to stitch itself back together.

Timmy's lips tasted salty from his tears. He made a muffled 'mph' sound as Dick pressed closer, letting his body cover Timmy's.

'I do' Dick thought. 'I do I do I do'.

He pulled away with a quiet 'smeck', staring down at Timmy's hazy expression and starlight eyes.

Timmy's mouth was slightly open, exposing the pink waterline of his little mouth.

"Till death do us part baby brother,” Dick whispered as he leaned down again.