Chapter Text
The day Timothy Drake-Wayne dies, Wayne Enterprises’ stock drops two-hundred and thirty seven points by close of market.
At a nineteen percent decline, it’s the largest single-day crash the American market has ever seen because at seventeen, Tim was the best thing to happen to the conglomerate in over three decades. The Wayne’s may have started the company, but it was built on the back of a very young, very calculating Drake, and Gotham knew it—the world knew it. So when the headline splashed across every paper and news channel for the entirety of the daily cycle and into the weekend, public confidence shattered under the reputational shadow of ‘Brucie’ Wayne.
Clips of the playboy billionaire resurface, cycling back into the scrutiny of the public eye to be dissected. After all, the man who once tripped into a fountain—head down, ass up, thong on—couldn’t be trusted to lead.
Would the retired Lucius Fox step back into the role until a replacement could be found? The press could only question. There was too much uncertainty, and every second Bruce Wayne refrained from making a public statement, it only grew, compounding into a swelling void of discontent that could be heard across the world affecting international markets.
Over the following days, it didn’t matter what statements Richard Grayson released, ensuring the durability of WE and requesting privacy for their family at this time, Bruce Wayne couldn’t be found. Only his voice would cease the onslaught.
But he’s gone. Lost, though the public didn’t know that carefully, strategically guarded secret.
So day by day, press releases by opinion pieces, everything the Waynes built crumbles one stock at a time. It’s easy really, to shatter something that has always been seen as ‘too big to fail’, all it takes is a lack of confidence. All it takes is a knife of tragedy twisted in deep. The board of directors, chairman, and advisors are human; they’ll fall for it like the public.
By market open on Monday, when the stock has hit its lowest since the recession and a shiny coffin is being lowered into a private cemetery marking the end of the Drake line, thirteen shell companies covering a single private investor buys each and every last one of them.
It’s not a controlling share, and it nearly wiped out his reserves, but everything goes according to plan.
Tim had expected and could afford nothing less than perfection because this was just step one—a black pawn slid into position, a challenge met and posed.
In the past 72 hours, he has broken nearly a dozen laws, and if the FBI ever caught wind of it he’d have to plan a prison break next, but he’s not going to get caught. He’s too good, too well-trained, and too damn desperate to fail.
Failure has never been, and never will be, an option. The second you’re not good enough, you’re done—not just with your stolen cape but dead. Cruel words, honest and unrepentant cut through the dissonant fog that fills Tim’s head the moment he spots the coffin… his coffin.
Though it holds a cloned cadaver, as humanely sourced as a dead body can be, and enough of his spleen to really sell it, the coffin had always meant to be his. A little too small and short to be comfortable—he had, after all, picked it out upon Bruce’s order when he first became Robin. It was his, and that fact does something to Tim’s brain, makes him pause on a held breath and go utterly still until the world begins to blur in the edges of his vision… or that could just be the rain as it picks up, hammering down onto his head as he lingers back in the shadows, unable to get any closer.
The dreary paints the perfect picture. Tim isn’t the only one who thinks so; behind a police line, dozens of paparazzi snap away, until their camera blends in with the lightning cracking in the distance.
A deluge approaches but this mockery of a ceremony will be over long before it hits.
Amongst the trees, Tim is covered from the worst of it, and he’d feel sorry for the pallbearers as they walk his coffin in… if he knew them.
And that too cuts through the haze with a sliver of morbid humor, for all the love he held in life—fans lusting after him, companies and CEOs and rouges hunting him for his mind, heroes respecting his skill, and citizens for his sacrifice—no one holds him now.
Only Dick, Helena, and a hired crew.
Where are the masses now? Where are his school friends? Moved on in his absence overseas, abandoning him as he abandoned them in his quest to find Bruce. And his team, those he fought beside, bled with, gave everything for? Well, they can’t exactly show up at the funeral of Timothy Drake, but maybe that’s just an easy excuse. He doesn’t let himself consider it too long.
Tim blinks for the first time in too long, eyes burning but dry, and scuffs his foot along a root growing out of the grown, scraping the mud from the bottom of his patent leather oxfords.
The only people here who knew him, or at least, knew beyond the barest minimum of who he is—was—are Dick, Damian, Helena, and Barbara.
Dick doesn’t corral his emotions but lets his devastation rule his face, carve deep under his eyes and etch across the corners of his mouth; it plays for the camera as well the single tear streaking from the corner of Bab’s eye. Especially compared to Helena’s rage and Damian’s blank mask as he stands to the side of the empty front row, reserved for family. Only because Tim is looking, does he notice the way Damian’s hand tremors once or twice every few minutes, strained by the fist he holds like his sword, and he only looks because he can’t look at Dick.
Dick who stays.
Stands silent, who tries to speak and offer words but can’t—for once in his life—get them out and just flounders up there until Helena swoops in with a curt yet emotional address. As she speaks, she looks to the sky, to where the heaven she believes in lies beyond the storm, but she won’t find him there… Tim thinks they both know it, just for different reasons. Heroes, anti-heroes and vigilantes like them… they operate too much in the grey to see those pearly gates.
Tim can’t hear any word she says over the rain and roaring blood in his ears; it’s probably better this way.
Easier to stay still and hidden as they drop their dirt and lay their flowers. He swears Dick slips something under the stack of white roses, but he can’t see exactly what.
And then it’s over.
Like it never happened and Tim’s life was but a passing moment, the small crowd of associates file out and the press fizzle away with the rain.
But he can’t move, rooted into place, stuck amongst the trees, Tim stays until the coffin is strapped to the lever and lowered, as slow and respectful as the process can be.
He’s not alone.
Dick waits, watching so silent and statuesque until he breaks on a gasp and tilts his head back to the sky. Any tears he may cry are washed away with the rain. And Tim—he wants to break too. He wants to drop to his knees and let failure settle upon his shoulders because for a moment its call is sweeter than that of revenge, and justice.
Never before has he wanted to forget the mission, abandon his plans and just take a step—a single step.
There’s a twig in front of him, storm or not, that's all it would take to be seen.
To end this.
But he can’t. He can’t.
So Tim pulls at the raw edges of his soul, marches back into the memory of the last time he saw Dick Grayson and just sits in it, the hurt, the betrayal, the shock of being replaced as Robin when it was the one thing—the one thing—that held his sanity in check. Dick stole it from him, gave it away to Damian. It still hurts when he thinks about it, like a bruise he only really notices when it’s pressed, but that’s what he does, touches the memory and grinds his thumb down until he can’t take that step. Petty and spiteful, he won’t let himself do.
Even as he curses the sky with Dick. That’s all they have now… no longer brothers, or partners in crime to fight back against the neverending night, just men under the same sky. Men with bodies under their feet.
Dick stumbles as the coffin lowers under the edge of the earth, not even half-way down yet, but his knees seem to weaken. He takes a step back. Another. Gasps for air and holds it, and then just like that, sorrow is replaced with rage. A visual shift so entrancing, Tim sways, almost taking an unwitting step before he stops himself.
Tim thought he knew anger incarnate, thought he met him as a child when he threw himself in front of a grieving man to save Gotham herself from his wrath. But Dick has always held a well of rage, let it warm behind his smile.
A shiver rakes down Tim’s spine—wonder, perhaps even awe at the sight. Or maybe just the cold setting in as his suit lays wet and plastered against his skin.
Never before has Dick looked so much like a god of old, like Achilles, as he walks away, standing taller, moving with just refined grace and fluidity and purpose, one thing on his mind.
Revenge.
In this, too, they are the same.
Don’t fuck up. Batman’s final order rings out with the crack of thunder. Tim wonders if Dick can hear it too, the echoings of their mentor. He wonders if Dick hates him a little bit too.
Probably, probably not. They were Robins by choice. They are who they are now by choice. One way or another, Dick and Tim have chosen this life every step of the way, what happens now is just… a ball rolling down the hill, set in motion years ago, too late to save.
They can only move forward. Keep rolling.
Tim watches him slip into his car, rage against the wheel—losing control the same way one steps off a building, with a breath, a beat of silence, and then a scream ripped from his lungs. Tim cannot hear a sound of it—their cars are too advanced—but god how he moves, anger in motion, all fists and shaking head until… until he stops, a marionette with its strings cut.
Dick presses a single finger to the dash, accepting a call, Tim notices a moment later, when he starts speaking, though his mouth is nearly shaded by his too long hair as it falls over his face. Another thing, another small thing that sings the passage of time, he’s been away from Gotham for too long.
The call doesn’t last long, but it seems to rally Dick, drawing him up like a bow, an arrow pointed to the heart of the city where only darkness lies.
A mission. A purpose. A plan.
They have never been that different… but Dick would have stepped from the shadows. He would have failed, and not seen it as such. Tim has never been afforded such leeway.
So he watches Dick speed off, engine roaring too loud to be respectful to the lurking ghosts, and turns back to the grave.
Staying until the end, Tim swears he feels it in his soul the moment his coffin settles in the dirt, but he doesn’t stop to consider it, dusk is upon them.
And he has work to do.
***
According to a highly specific contingency plan coded into the Batcomputer, the surviving party of vigilantes cannot announce the death of a civilian identity at the same time as the mask. Even in death, their secrets take priority.
So as Tim flies through the night, motorcycle engine a muffled purr, revving as he drives too fast through the lingering traffic over the bridge, the streets do not whisper that Red Robin is dead.
No one outside of the Bats know, and yet those in Gotham who lived through the dark days after Jason’s death did, not in so many words nor any idea of who died, but on a base level, they know.
From the moment after the funeral when Dick appeared in the skyline as Batman—Robin nowhere to be seen—something in their hind brains flared. It’s instinctive, like the very make up of their DNA had been recoded that year. The smart goons and rouges scurry away, cockroaches determined to live another day, battening the hatches to brace.
But the new, foolish, or perhaps most audacious criminals pay no such heed.
Tim, of all people, knows better than to go out tonight, but the funeral and seeing Di—the coffin and his parent’s graves have turned him reckless. He should be in his safehouse, preparing for tomorrow, but the itch under his skin has made the cosmetic touches required for his new identity all but impossible.
A suit, however, is easy to pull on. He’s worn a mask nearly every night for the past ten years, he can put it on in his sleep. Even if it is… different than the one he wore last.
The goggles irritate him in a small way; he still hasn’t gotten used to the change in his field of vision or the way they press into his cheeks in a way his domino never did. Distracting when he focuses on it, the differences don’t end with the goggles or even the pointed ears, but continue into every inch of the suit—even the fabric has changed, more flexible and slick, less structured armor. No touch of red, just black and small touches of cat-bright silver.
Nothing of his past.
Though he has not held the name in years, Tim is no longer Robin. Red Robin is gone, only Stray remains. As cats so often do.
Little survivors, just like him.
A new mask. A new name. A new purpose… and yet—and these days there is always a yet—Tim is feeling reckless, hungry, frothing with need and an urge he cannot fight. He is suddenly a kid again, camera in hand, chasing shadows and knowing how to see while being unseen.
Only an hour, just one detour, that’s what Tim tells himself, but he has never been good at control when it comes to Dick Grayson, this is—and has always been—his first mistake.
Just to check on him, this too is a lie, but one that leads him to a drug deal in a port warehouse.
High in the rafters, Tim watches uselessly as he has done all day. All week.
Ever since that night, his last one as Red Robin, Tim has been stuck on the sidelines, observing what Gotham has become, what has been left in his wake, refamiliarizing himself with key players and the skyline he saw only in his dreams. Soon Stray will make his debut, but as for tonight, he has to remain undetected a little longer.
Easier said than done when Dick kicks the double doors open wide and says nothing.
No quip.
Not a single word.
Just the heavy judgment and damnation of silence.
There’s a pause, a shuffle, the goons torn between the duffles of drugs and those of cash. They take a step back, but Batman—Dick—is already moving.
He carves through the men like a blade. Yet he draws none.
Batman doesn’t reach for a single weapon as the dealers and goons recover from their shock and launch into action, closing in on him.
Not his modified escrima, batarangs… nothing.
The past and present play before Tim, overlapping with uncanny déjà vu. He has seen this before. Only this time, with this Batman, no child will throw themselves in front of the victims of his grief. Damian knows how to follow orders, or he respects Dick enough to comply for now.
A shot rings out, one and then several. Tim startles from his trance, lurching to—to do something, help Dick, but he’s already moving again, a shadow blurring across the floor as bullets deflect and ricochet.
Unfaltering. Butal in a way he rarely was as Nightwing, using moves and attacks he never taught Tim—some he doesn’t think Bruce knows Dick can do… he doesn’t look like Batman. No, this man was trained, perhaps unwittingly, by Deathstroke, and it shows as he rips apart the dwindling group.
But how long will this expulsion of emotion last? They haven’t spoken in a year. Haven’t seen each other. Haven’t been on the same continent, much less the same city. Surely, Dick does not hold this much of Tim in his mind or heart. His grief will pass like storm winds, raging and destructive, to a cold breeze, and then nothing at all.
Good, Tim thinks, forcibly nodding to himself. Good. The sooner Dick stops… emoting, the easier this whole thing will be. The last thing Tim needs is his biggest weakness—the fault line forever in his foundation—getting in the way of his revenge.
Heart in his throat, Stray watches as Dick fights, breaking from his rage only when there is no one left standing.
Not even him.
Batman lays in a crumpled, devastated mass of black fabric.
Tim swallows, realizing at once how his hands hurt from holding onto the beams. Knuckles aching and finger’s bloodless, he held himself back. His claws are dug deep, wood splintering under them. He pulls his hands away slowly, peeling up his fingers one by one, counting each measured pant—sob—below him.
And god, Tim wants—he wants so much.
But he backs away, hands shaking to reach out, pick Dick up off his feet and brush him off. Take off his goggles and disguise and feel the brunt of Dick rage like a hammer to the head because it would be better than this, but Tim can’t. Won’t let himself.
And maybe, just maybe if he has to pull up the memory of seeing Nightwing replace him as Robin with a boy who tried to kill him, dust off the image like a film strip and let it replay in his head just to take a step back, maybe he does.
Because Tim takes a single silent step back, and then another.
He walks away.
It feels like a damnation upon his soul, but he does it.
Tim pretends he doesn’t count every breath, measuring every meter between him and the warehouse as he drives away. It’s a lie he tells himself, along with another: Dick will be fine by morning.
He just had to get it—Tim—out of his system. He’ll be fine, and Tim will be able to complete his mission.
Everything will be fine.
And thinking this is the second mistake Tim makes. Because for all the effort and strategy he put into his plans, they end after claiming a controlling share of Wayne Enterprises. There is no ‘and then’. That’s it. He owns it, and for all the sleepless nights he tried to draft something more—nothing.
There simply isn’t a plan.
It makes him itch, feeling unsettled, but if there is one thing that can make him focus on the world around him, bring his brain back to the moment and task at hand, it’s the wind rushing over him… and the knowledge that he’s about to break into the Wayne Tower.
It’s something he never thought he’d have to do, but even seventeen year old Tim knew himself well enough to plan for it.
He once created backdoors into the security systems, little breaks in the code only he knew how to exploit. He knows the bandwidth, resolution, and frame rate of every camera, how far they lookout on the street, and those that monitor in the building. The night guard rotation has been scheduled in his brain like an internal clock, and there was a time he knew each by name.
And if Tim paused to consider the previously incredibly low turnover rate of those employed by WE, he’d come to the conclusion that they probably are still the same, but he doesn’t pause. Secure in the fact that he won’t get caught or see any of them, Tim pulls his bike into his chosen alley a block over from the tower, hides it conveniently behind a dumpster, and initiates the antitheft-electric protocol.
He turns slightly, standing in the shadows of the alley and looking up at the blue glow of external lights that halo the Wayne Tower.
Nightwing blue. A bright, protective blade. A message subtle and overwritten in the high-tech aesthetic all innovative companies seem to chase, but there. The glow of the tower is a visual cue of who protects this city, even if the citizens themselves don’t know how to read it.
Tim turns his back to the light, lifts his arm, and fires a grapple.
You see, there are several ways to break into a building. The standard con takes you in the daytime, smoothly talking your way through, or an even better planned strategy of blending in with a work crew.
There’s the inside man approach. A rat or mole, at the end of the day, is just a man looking for a check, and Tim’s pockets are deep enough to pay, but where’s the fun in that. At least with a robbery, Tim can come gunslinging, getting what he wants, and getting out—a sledgehammer approach that came too close to what his predecessor would do. And that is simply unacceptable. He’s already toeing too close to Jason’s dramatic plot line, best to keep it different when he can.
So, Tim’s approach is a scalpel. Burglary, pure and simple. Getting in and getting out without ever being noticed.
The tower is no easy target but that’s common knowledge. In fact, it’s impossible. You can’t go through the roof because of the sensors. The batcomputer gets an alert anytime someone lands, and if it’s unsanctioned, Babs will send a vigilante to intercept. Can’t go in on the street level because the cameras, reinforced the glass, bombproof doors, and locking mechanism. Break a single window, get caught.
That’s to name the basics. It doesn’t begin to cover the upgrades to account for every contingency Bruce and Tim could both come up with at one point or another.
Conclusively impossible.
But the moment the soft soles of Tim’s boots hit the ledge, he doesn’t slow. He has two blocks to travel, a well mapped route he has run several times over in a simulation, and he needs to get high—high enough to jump onto the small balcony outside his old executive office.
The balcony is monitored, the tiles hiding pressure panels… except for one he disabled years ago.
Stretching his legs and arms, grapple-gun firing at the last possible moment to send him launching up, careening around corners, and over alleys, Stray runs like it’s the first time he’s felt alive in years.
The Gotham air—laden with pollutants, both smog and lingering poison that has been known to give respiratory issues to newcomers—smells like home. Lights, fuzzy in the haze, are familiar but if Tim thinks past the next step, next roll and stretch, he still wouldn’t feel like he’s home.
Such a thing is beyond him now.
Homes are for the comfortable. The moment Tim is comfortable, he’s complacent, and complacency kills quicker than any sword.
He has to keep moving, keep running.
Never stop. Never rest.
That’s how he dies.
But cats always land on their feet, so when he’s sprinting across the roof’s ledge, a misstep from death, Tim digs his toes into the corner lip and jumps.
Wind rushes through his hair and grips at nothing—his suit is too slick to catch and ripple against skin, and he has no cloak to slow him down. There’s no controlling the fall, not like he’s used too and for a split second, panic claws into his throat like a scream.
The balcony reaches up to grab him, growing closer and closer until he can make out the specs of silver in the marble tiles as they glimmer in the blue light.
Gaze locked on on the spot he aims to land, Tim twists, reaching back and firing over his shoulder to anchor and slow, and if he misses, if he doesn’t make the connection he’s—
Tim’s shoulder pops as he’s yanked upward and swung back a foot. The lurching force is brutal and unforgiving, but he slows and launches back up before his toes hit a pressure tile—and pancakes himself, but that’s secondary to getting caught.
Releasing the line, Tim drops to the balcony on target. He takes the impact in his knees, going against training, but he can’t exactly roll with the momentum or drop back for three points of contact.
He takes it and keeps moving.
Twenty four seconds, that’s how long he set the external cameras to freeze and loop. Just long enough for him to come into frame and get inside his old office, so he’s barely felt the sledge hammer to his knees by the time he’s dropping into a crouch and launching forward.
See, years ago when he was bored and avoiding a meeting with Lex Luthor, he rewired this specific tile to open the door when pressed with enough force than a single step could carry. It’s his first lucky break that it still works, that he doesn't smack face first into the plexiglass door, instead flies right through the doorway, tucks into a roll, and comes to a stop braced on the carpet of his old office.
Panting, Tim waits with his head tilted to the side as he listens intently. The cat ear headset and helmet acts as an amplifier for his hearing and connects to his computer interface that he set up at his main safehouse.
Without backup, he’s a one man show, relying on his AIs and wit alone.
For now, he’s enough.
No alarms sound, his computer isn’t notified that the Batcomputer has pinged his entrance.
The camera had switched off the second he landed on the balcony, one by one they’ll black out and loop until he’s out of range—nifty this little trick he picked up overseas.
And just for a second, relief eases the vice in his lungs. He drops his head and loosens his shoulder—one breath, that’s all he gives himself.
But he catches a soft, lingering scent. The spice of a cologne that is all but imprinted in his lungs.
Dick has been here.
Tim looks around, taking in the office beyond the cursory glance darting over security measures, entrances, and exits, and sure enough, Dick has taken over the space. A slow encroachment like ivy on the walls: an unfamiliar framed sketch here, a hand-painted mug there, new pictures on the desk of—he can’t tell from this angle, but they weren’t his… Tim never decorated. At least not beyond the tasteful pieces his aids picked out.
Something sharp scrapes the inner sanctum of his heart, a pain deep and uncomfortable.
Tim bites the inside of his cheek and shakes it off, stamps everything down.
Keep moving, never stop.
The moon is still high; he’s not safe yet.
Tim is back on his feet. He doesn’t go straight for the desktop, but for the door.
If this were a made-for-TV spy movie, he’d plug a flash drive into the nearest computer and ‘hack the mainframe’, but the truth of the matter is that most companies—especially those dealing with proprietary, classified, or sensitive information that goes beyond trade secret and competitive advantages—are locked down against external drives.
At best, he wouldn’t be able to click the download button and transfer the lines of code that would allow him entry. At worst, IT would be notified the second the computer registers that something unallowed has been plugged in.
But if you can get to the servers, there’s a way around it. Which means the next problem is getting to the servers and past the layers of security made explicitly to stop you.
These measures—for most companies—ward against internal errors, corporate espionage, and to protect the customers because the likelihood of a normal company being broken into to steal information is pretty slim… unless you’re Wayne Enterprises, then it’s just a Tuesday.
Slinking down the halls, Tim navigates to the nearest stairwell, pausing only to disconnect the wire that helps track when the door is opened. Which is just overkill in his opinion. Hell, as Avin, Tim broke into a museum that was less guarded than this place.
Making a note to reconnect the wire to the base later, Tim pulls out his grapple again, hops up on the stair rail and jumps.
He counts as he falls, floors racing by until he reaches the one that hosts the serves—the one that you can’t get to in the elevator without a special badge keyed to the specific floor.
Fire safety code means they have to connect to the stairwell, and breaking through the keypad lock is easy work.
The combination rotates on a quarterly basis, but the formula stays the same and the only thing that changes is the root value that counts up. Tim works it out in his mind, remembering what it was the last time he saw the code and considering the time that passed.
He works it out in a matter of seconds.
Finger to his ear, Tim laughs to himself, “I’m in.”
He could do the rest in his sleep, all he has to do is find the correct server and plug in his drive. It will upload his code and set off a chain of events.
First, Dick’s calendar will be updated to include a morning meeting about the new consultant.
Of course, he won’t remember setting this up, so the second thing is a backdated email chain from the executive admin with Tim’s swapped meeting minutes to the board reviewing a very real meeting they had—a bug Tim setup years ago in the conference room to solve an inter-company harassment case, once again very useful.
The only thing changed in the notes, is a line addressing the fallen stock value and company image, in which the core action item is to hire the best consultant money can buy, a cover Tim carefully cultivated an online presence for.
It will hold against scrutiny, for now. If Dick starts to see the cracks… well, Tim hopes to be long gone by then.
Finally, the last piece, is the filled and filed paperwork for an in-house consultant onboarding, ready to be pulled up at the click of a button from a harried HR professional.
Everything is in place, a stage set for curtain fall, and at seven fifty-five on Monday morning, Tim strides into the lobby of the Wayne Tower and smiles at the receptionist.
“Caroline Hill, here for a meeting with Richard Grayson.”