Chapter Text
Contrary to what many believed, Tim was not, in fact, allergic to emotions. If anything, he was more in tune with his emotions than anyone ever gave him credit for. It wasn’t something that came naturally to him, not really, and—sure, his reservoir of feelings wasn’t as diverse as it should be, all of his emotions a different shade of blue, but Tim was an expert on the ones he counted on, and that for him was enough.
The truth was, Tim didn’t have the same upbringing as other kids did; when others would go to extremes to hide their emotions, Tim had many solitary hours at his disposal to scream and cry to his heart’s content. He didn’t have over-bearing parents ready to smother him to bits, no, what he had were two adults that sometimes existed in the same room as him, working bees too busy to deviate from their path. Jack and Janet were not parents, not when they had to be CEOs, archeologists, and renown Gothamites to society. So no, Tim hadn’t been an emotionally stunned kid—really, he hadn’t been much of a kid before. Tim had been Tim, and for a long time, just being him was enough.
(The thing that no one ever bothered to talk about was this:
You don’t have to like whoever you are forced to co-exist with; you just have to understand them. Moods, what makes them angry and leap with joy, the little thing that can keep them entertain for hours till no end, the shit that gets them out of the season blues—all those silly things.
It had taken…a while, and many tries, but Tim eventually became very good at understanding himself.)
But Tim was no fool; he knew he lacked a lot of data in the emotions department. Emotionally, his parents never provided much, not more than necessary. From them, Tim learned how apathy felt on the skin, what dread could do to one’s bones, why panic smelled acidic, at what temperature loneliness sat, and at what point it boiled to the point of insufferability. The basics, truly. Jack and Janet had taught him enough to survive, must-haves to succeed. And those were his constants, the data he knew would not fail him any time.
In some ways, in ways that mattered, these emotions were sufficient. In other ways, the ways that were only obvious in the presence of the Waynes, Tim felt like he truly didn’t know much about emotions in the first place.
Still, what could he do if that was his reality? What was one supposed to do with insufficient information? He investigated, sure. He cataloged any inconsistent variants that he hadn’t encountered before, too. He observed what happiness looked like in others, analyzed the way love tasted on his tongue and got caught on his gums whenever an ounce was sent his way. And yet that data was circumstantial at best, realistically groundless and unsubstantial. Whenever Tim got close to knowing what any of that actually felt like, something or another got in his way and pushed him back to his constants.
God, he was fucking tired of his constants.
Sometimes, he craved the new emotions like a thirsty person craves water. He craved the giddy feeling he got whenever Dick ruffled his hair, the drowsy comfort that settled with just the gentle pat on his shoulder that Alfred greeted him with at breakfast, the overwhelming warmth that burned his veins in those rare times a corner of Bruce’s mouth would tick upwards in a smile after a good patrol, or even the buzzy glee he tried to hide every time Jason would pinch his cheeks with faked strength just to annoy the living shit out of him. Those—those unruly, untamable feelings that Tim still couldn’t categorize, destroyed something in him he didn’t even know existed in the first place. They were an unwelcome, needed disruption that left him in limbo.
He wondered if the others could see it in him too, the way their affection ruined his normalcy at a helpless speed. It was just—God. to get used to seeing shades of blue, to facing yellow for the first time. How was Tim supposed to behave now that he knew something else existed out there for him too? It frazzled him, the unknown. How was he supposed to keep it if he didn’t know what it was in the first place? And he wanted it, selfishly. Shamelessly. Tim wanted to rip those unknown variants from his chest and sketch them in a graph, analyzing where they rose and fell. He wanted to chart them, or outline them, or fit them in an equation that suddenly made them rational—easier to digest.
Tim understood formulas, science. He saw the world and saw a great number of wonders, yet the science was still there, hidden and waiting for him to find it. This, too, had to be quantifiable, a science that if Tim looked hard enough could reveal itself any time now.
(Subject A, lying on a medical examination table.
NAME: Timothy Jackson Drake. AGE: Fourteen. OCUPATION: Volunteer. PROJECT: Emotions examination. STATUS: Active.
SYMPTOMS LOG:
When questioned about his biological parents: Heart rate and blood pressure increased significantly. Accelerated breath, activity in the bilateral amygdala, the hypothalamus and areas of the left frontal cortex, elicit sweating, slow digestive system, and dilated pupils. DIAGNOSIS: Fear.
When questioned about being [REDACTED]: Increased heart rate and blood pressure, There is activity in the right hippocampus and the bilateral hippocampus. DIAGNOSIS: Surprise.
When questioned about what happened in The Bowery, June 5th, at 1:00AM: activity in the left amygdala, the left inferior frontal cortex, and the insular cortex. DIAGNOSIS: Disgust.
When questioned about the Waynes: Activity in the right frontal cortex, the precuneus, the left insula. Activity of the right occipital lobe, the thalamus, the hippocampus. DIAGNOSIS: Sadness Happiness UNDEFINED.
CONCLUSION: PENDING.)
Yet, in all honesty, Tim had to admit that he got easily sidetracked whenever he was close to the Waynes. It was just…so effortless to get distracted by their affection. It used to be easier, back when his parents were the biggest mystery he had faced. Jack and Janet were simple people with simple rules he had to follow—No crying. No mess. No clinging. No clinging, Timothy!—but they had failed to properly indoctrinate him the moment they took him to the circus, the moment he had laid eyes on the Graysons and their vivid love and branded it so deep in his brain that by the time Janet had dragged him out of the circus, a tiny seed of doubt had already been planted in his brain.
If the Graysons were the ones to plant the seed, then the Waynes were the gardeners who made sure it fully bloomed. By the time Tim had figured out why his parents were not like the others, he was already one foot in the Wayne household and too busy with his new conundrum to even bother to look back.
It didn’t take long for him to realize that those unnamed feelings were good, that if he worked hard enough—if he was smart enough—he could keep them forever. The goal was to have it figured out before it could be taken away from him, but no matter how intelligent Tim was, he was still a very weak person. It had been so easy to get used to having a family that Tim had pushed his research all the way to the back of his brain, snugged tight next to his own parents' research work in a cabinet somewhere in his head. Somehow, he had convinced himself that he could just...feel. Feel the love and joy, and everything else would come naturally, just like it had happened to everyone else around him.
It had worked, actually. For an entire year, Tim had let himself just feel, the good and the bad feelings. He accepted Bruce’s apathy for the first few months as readily as he had accepted Dick’s overwhelming affection and Jason’s suffocating hatred when he first came around. He let it all wash over him and smother him without putting up a fight, the foolish conviction that things would right themselves before they turned irreparable driving his very being. He was free, in some ways. No longer caged in his parents’ shades of blues and now submerged in a sea full of possibilities. All he had to do was trust that the good would outweigh the bad, and suddenly science wasn’t as indispensable as he thought it was. Not knowing was…okay.
Of course, till it wasn’t.
Tim hadn’t considered—and how hilarious was that? Tim. Not thinking—the possibility of it all being taken away from him, of having the rug burned from beneath his feet. Tim had one role he had perfected; he was the little brother. He knew how to be that—he knew what the consequences and benefits that such a position brought him. It was his. He had carved it all by himself. He had forced his way to being Robin and to being some sort of family for the Waynes. It hadn’t been just—just handed out to him. He fought for it, he bled for it. Why did he have to bleed for it again?
The world was swinging around him, something sticky and metallic invaded his mouth what seems like hours ago now. He was somewhere by the docks, he thought. Someone…A Rogue had escaped, was it Two-Face? Scarecrow? Tim’s head was fuzzy, his vision more blurred than anything else. Shit, okay. It didn’t matter who it was, did it? Tim was fucked either way. He tried his comm again, but Damian liked to mess with it just for fun, and the static response was not that surprising anymore.
It was still annoying, though.
Apparently, if Tim’s hazy head was to be trusted, he had crawled behind a disgusting, moldy trashcan somewhere between getting his ass beat and realizing backup was a no-go. For all he knew, it could have been hours now, sitting next to a rat and a possible dead racoon while waiting out whichever Rogue escaped this time. If he was honest, he had been waiting to see a looming shadow staring down at him with concern or maybe even a half-hearted quip from above about being a sitting duck, yet no one came. He hadn’t reported back in thirty, maybe even an hour, and still no one looked for him. He tapped a weary hand to the R attached to his suit, where the small tracking device should still be functional.
Right. He let a dry chuckle leave his mouth, a familiar lump clogging his throat impossibly tight. It was funny, hilarious even, how stupid he could be. How could he have missed all the signs—all the evidence right under his nose? The—the never ending space between them, the way they all dismissed Damian’s aggression towards him and only him, the lack of touch. They didn’t touch him anymore. Not a pat on his shoulder, or a ruffle of hair, or a tight hug that squeezed just right, or a well-meaning pinch on the soft side of his belly. He thought it was normal, just like before, when Bruce had been distant and then he wasn’t, or when Jason had been so angry and then he wasn’t. But it wasn’t like that, was it? Not for six months, not since Damian joined the family.
His breath kept coming in short, sharp inhales, rattling his lungs uncomfortably. Logically—logically, Tim should be cataloging his injuries and trying to get out of the open before whoever he was fighting realized that he was still around, yet his brain didn’t allow him to move an inch, the new realization rebooting his brain.
When Tim had been younger, way before he had been Robin and when he was still trying to figure out his parents, he had the hypothesis that if he could perform a certain number of deeds that could please his parents and document the ones that did make them happy, then he could eventually figure out a pattern that would guarantee their love. Although the idea had been good in theory, his parents were never around long enough for him to realize which acts pleased them beyond an absentminded nod. Tim had wanted their praise, their verbal or physical recognition and acceptance—Tim craved for that pattern, the cheat code that would have allowed him to finally have a happy family.
While that didn’t happen, Tim couldn’t help but perfect his research. If he wanted to find the perfect pattern, then he had to have the perfect numbers. After that, it didn’t take much to find the Fibonacci numbers—perfect numbers, following a perfect pattern. By the time he had met the Waynes, he had the ideal equation to ensure their love. It wasn’t…standard, he knew that. It was unorthodox, bordering on immoral. Who was he to narrow love to numbers? To shift something so celestial only so his human brain could manipulate it best? Tim hadn’t lied to himself, not ever. He was desperate, and desperation made ugly people do ugly things. The moment he had taken Robin without it being gifted to him, he tarnished something sacrosanct with his selfish needs. This was a bigger feat, yet not different to anything he hadn’t already done.
That was why he centered his equation around giving back to them, paying them back for corrupting love. From the moment he joined the family one year and a half ago, he implemented his equation into their daily lives. It was rather simple; in six months he committed one hundred and forty-four carefully picked actions that he considered the Waynes would appreciate, divided that by the seventy-nine praises he got, and got an average of fifty-five percent. A perfect, Fibonacci, fifty-five. After that, the pattern was easily written right in front of his eyes; he knew exactly what to do or say that would make them happy, that would make them love him. It wasn’t flawless, of course. Tim has always been more flawed than human, and even when he had it all written out for him, he still managed to fuck up every now and then. Still, it had been perfect. Thanks to it, Bruce warmed up to him, Dick stopped treating him like the ghost of his dead brother, and Jason—eventually—stopped hating him.
It had been so good, so effective, Tim just…paused. He forgot that he had been doing it for a reason.
Tim made a mistake. The moment he suddenly stopped searching for the why and the how, and decided that—what? That he was normal? That he too could have good things just because? That he could be like Dick, or Jason, or Damian? The moment he thought he could be chosen, or saved, or just accepted without a fight, at that moment, Tim made a mistake. He wasn’t them. Tim had fooled himself long enough to think he was another Wayne, one of the family, but it was just play-pretend. A lie, or more like a failed experiment, he even forgot he was testing.
Tim was Jack and Janet; his constants were blue. Only a fool would look for something else, and Tim had proven he truly didn’t know anything at all.
(A Methodological Approach to Love: As of Six Months from the Latest Wayne Acquisition.
Participants.
A total of two (2) participants took part in the study. Participant1: Male, mid-teens. Identified by: TJD. Participant2: Male, pre-teen. Identified by: DTW.
Stimuli.
-Experiment 1: TJD.
Participant evaluated the emotional-response the W family had when committing one hundred and forty-four (a Fibonacci number) deeds associated with joy, happiness, content. The participant’s task was to obtain as many approval gestures as possible, whether verbal or physical, he could get when performing said actions. The participant chose to take most of the weight in the line of work, chores around the household, and actions tailored to each habitants of the Wayne Manor. After compiling the data, it was inputted into the following equation:
EA (emotional affection) = # of praise/total of good deeds.
When applied current data:
EA: 35 / 144 = 24.30%
-Experiment 2: DTW.
Participant evaluated the emotional-response the W family had when committing one hundred and forty-four (a Fibonacci number) deeds associated with joy, happiness, content. The participant’s task was to obtain as many approval gestures as possible, whether verbal or physical, he could get when performing said actions. The participant made subtle but significant shifts in his personality compared to how he acted when he arrived six months ago. After compiling the data, it was inputted into the following equation:
EA (emotional affection) = # of praise/total of good deeds.
When applied current data:
EA: 128 / 144 = 89%
Results.
Participant TJD: Failed. Received less than ideal percentage in the past six months since DTW joined.
Participant DTW: Passed. Received more than optimal percentage, and a perfect Fibonacci number.)
For a second, a small one, Tim considered staying right where he was all night. Would they have cared if he never came back to the Cave? Would they have noticed his absence like a missing limb, a phantom ache that was not physically there? For a second, Tim considered running a different experiment than his usual, one that involved letting nature run its course and timing how long it would take for anyone to just notice. For a second, Tim closed his glazy eyes and accepted his fate with an eerie calm. For a second, Tim didn’t feel human at all.
But then a second passed, and Tim was back to being the same broken boy he had always been, only that this time he wasn’t sure he could recover from losing another family.
He hadn’t noticed he was crying, now. Broken sobs tearing one right after the other, a vicious thing wrecking his throat. He couldn’t draw a breath, his lungs constricting before he could even finish inhaling a gulp of air. Oh god, oh god. What was he supposed to do now? He tried standing up, a shaking hand grabbing a metal rod from the dumpster and pushing up with all his force. He fell with a resounding thump, his injuries burning and aching with vigor. Fuck, okay. Fuck. He had to breathe so he could think. If only his fucking lungs could get with the program and just let him think.
He pressed again on his comm, and another sob escaped his mouth when all he heard back was static. "Batman! Do—do you copy?" Tim bit his lower lip when his voice came out shaky, his heart rabbiting in his ribcage. Silence. "Nightwing? Hood? Please! This is Robin, can anyone copy?" The white noise kept growing louder with every word he said, the static louder than his own voice. Fear trickled down his spine when he realized that all he could hear was that—nothing.
One of his bloody hands came up to his hair, pulling it as desperation tried to take him under. He had to—they had to come for him. They had to. He was going to die, and—who was it? Bane? Joker? They were going to find him, because they were looking for him, weren’t they? Tim didn’t remember much, but he remembered running and getting knocked out and being dragged and beaten and there had been so much blood. Oh god, oh god. He was going to bleed out, wasn’t he? He pulled at his hair hard, his vision whitened out slightly, and his chest rising and falling in quick huffs. He was dying, he was being hunted. Tim felt something come…loose, and when he lowered his hands, all he could see was black. Black hair, all his hair. He had pulled out all his hair. He stared at the handfuls of hair in panic, his mouth gaping open in disbelief, a trail of something viscous rolling from his scalp all the way to his chin.
The pain followed shortly after.
A hot, searing sting raged in his skull. Tim bit down on his glove when a pained scream tore from his mouth, barely in time to muffle the sound. Bile punched the back of his teeth so hard that all he could do was turn his head to the side before dumping everything in his stomach on the sidewalk. He coughed, dry heaving when his stomach kept constricting painfully. He was scared. He was so, so scared.
"Please! I’m so—sorry, please," He sobbed into the open comm, his skin burning with fear. "I’ll fix—the, the calculations. The equation! Don’t—don’t leave me here, please, B. I can be good! I can change! Why—Why aren’t you here, Dad?" Tim doubled-over, the pain in his scalp a faint memory compared to his breaking heart.
Tim had always been flawed, therefore if he thought logically, his theories and formulas could also be flawed. Still, this heartbreak, this pain. Nothing could have prepared him for grieving a love he didn’t have in the first place. He wondered what he was supposed to now with all the misplaced love in his heart. What was he supposed to do now that he had given everything for a family that didn’t want him back. Tim wanted to be angry, to rage and loathe till he ran out of breath, to rip himself apart and say to them: ‘Do you see here and here? Can you pinpoint the place it hurts the most? The memories I wish I didn’t own? The feelings that you forced me to have? Tell me if you see it, show me where.’
Instead, Tim ached. He felt empty, like a puppet with its strings cut. He didn’t have the strength to sob, but he was still crying violently, the fear of truly being alone locking his muscles in their place. He allowed his mind to slowly detach from his body, the need to no longer be present bigger than anything else.
Tim opened his mouth, an ‘I love you’ uncomfortably lodged in his throat. Before he lost consciousness, he could almost have sworn a shadow jaw swallowed him whole.
-
Waking up to the weird smell of damped air and Alfred’s favorite Febreze freshener settled down the bubbling panic growing in his belly that Tim hadn’t even been aware of. He opened his eyes slowly, forever grateful for the dimmed lights inside the Cave when his head twinged pitifully. God, what had happ--?
“Hey there, bud,” A soft, deep voice greeted him from his side. Bruce was sitting on one of the uncomfortable chairs that were usually in the med-bay, a tired but warm smile on his face. “Do you remember what happened last night?”
Tim slightly shook his head, furrowing his brows with what can only be a bemused expression on his face. “Did—” He coughed into his elbow when his dried throat punished him, nodding gratefully when Bruce pushed a glass of water into his hands. “Did we fight a Rogue last night? Is everyone okay?” The panic from before flared up when he noticed that the Cave was empty, his instincts screaming at him that something wasn’t right.
“It’s okay, everyone is okay. The others are upstairs resting for a bit, it was…a very eventful night.” Bruce winced after the words left his mouth and Tim couldn’t help but chuckle when he saw it.
“I’m assuming we did fight a Rogue last night, then,” Tim said with a smile tugging his lips, an embarrassed flush creeping up his cheeks when he realized that he was the only one that got hurt during the fight. “God, please don’t tell me I messed up too bad. Jason still hasn’t forgotten the whole cuddle-pollen thing from March.”
At that Bruce was the one to chuckle this time, his eyes melting into something fond. “I promise, you didn’t mess up last night. It was—” He stopped, wariness morphing his face so fast it almost gave Tim whiplash. Bruce never hesitated, ever. “It was Scarecrow. He was experimenting with a new Fear Toxin strain last night that targeted the limbic system in the dogs from the trafficking case you were following.”
Dread crawled beneath Tim’s skin, faint memories of last night's events slowly coming back to him. “The limbic system, the one that controls emotions.” He felt his face fall, the need to hide in his closet like when he had been younger pushing him to go. Instead, he drew his legs up to his chest, hugging them tightly when more memories kept bursting in his brain.
Bruce simply nodded, too much and too little on his face for Tim to figure out what he was thinking about. Before Bruce even opened his mouth, Tim rushed and said, “I don’t want to talk about it, please. Not now.” He knew Bruce wasn’t going to let go just like that, but he could already feel the telltale heat settle behind his eyes, the itch on the tip of his nose waiting for him to cry.
“Okay, okay,” Was all that Bruce said, a heavy hand stuttering for a small bit before settling comfortingly on Tim’s head. Absentmindedly, his brain recognized that he still had a full head of hair. “But I want you to listen closely, and then we can talk about it later, all right?”
If Tim truly knew Bruce, which he did, then he knew he wasn’t budging on this. Careful not to disturb the hand that was now stroking his hair, Tim nodded a tiny thing. “All right.”
Bruce hummed in approval, and deliberately stood up from his chair and sat on the edge of the cot, the hand that was once on his hair now gently cupping his jaw. “You are my son, and I love you. I know I have failed you—all of you, and that there is still too much I have yet to make up for, but—but,” Bruce stuttered. Tim... had never heard Bruce hesitate before. “I will always, always, come for you. There is nothing in this world that could keep me from coming for you. Do you understand?”
Tim bit down hard on his lower lip, muffling a sob. He couldn’t do anything to stop the tears from spilling, but Bruce’s calloused fingers rubbed them away with a gentleness Tim had never been privy to before. He nodded again, a bit more firmly this time. He knew it wasn’t the end, that there was still a painful conversation left to have, but right now Tim just wanted his dad, and that was enough.
He threw himself forward, sinking down on Bruce's chest, and felt relief soothe his aching heart when strong arms wrapped around him, the safest place Tim could ever be. “I understand,” He mumbled softly but true—softly but loved.