Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

He wakes up.

He doesn’t even know who he is.

At this point he knows two things. He is awake. And he is in pain.

This seems an appropriate time as any to scream. And Writhe. And Wail. And Cry.

But he doesn’t, because he can’t seem to get the scream out of his throat.

There is blood everywhere. On his clothes, in his mouth on his hands.

In his eyes. Blinding. The world spins and heaves and whorls around on its side pressing into his pupils with a red tinged fog.

His bones ache, and his skin feels seared and raw. His nerves are on fire and there is a dull pounding in the back of his skull.

Distantly, through the haze of pain, he’s aware of small hands pressing against his forehead. And the sound of one voice slices through the thick air of agony. Garbled and mangled, like someone threw a recording in a blender and poured out a smoothie of language, but still present.

These are the words he can hear: Please. Dad. Hurt. Help.

Over and over these words swirl through his mind, until he blessedly slips into the cooling embrace of unconsciousness.

---

Tim swings his feet back and forth, perched on the very edge of an uncomfortable plastic chair. Sometimes, the tips of his sneakers catch against the linoleum, and create streaks through the sanitized white squares.

There’s one big window on his left, and as the icy blue of morning light starts to filter in, the expressions of his fellow waiting room guests come more into focus. Tight, tense lines draw their way through their features, pulling every mouth into a determined frown. A baby cries, and its distant-eyed mother rocks back and forth just like Tim does.

Back.

He’s been in a hospital waiting room before. Once, because he accidentally fell from a fire escape while tailing Batman and Robin and broke his arm. (He’d had to pass it off as a skateboarding accident, but aside from the nurses and a teacher or two, no one had even noticed he had a cast.) And once, when he was very young, with a Nanny to keep up to date on his vaccinations.

And forth.

Now, Timothy Jackson Drake sits stupidly in the same kind of plastic chair all hospitals must have, thinking the same thoughts everyone else in the waiting room must be thinking too.

Back.

A hushed, relentless, anxious thought pacing around behind his forehead like a caged animal.

And forth.

What’s going to happen now?

Tim honestly should have left a while ago—shouldn’t have even gotten into the ambulance. Regardless, he should be leaving now. He should slip out those wide swinging doors and scurry off into the long shadows of Gotham at Dawn and climb back into his big bed in his cold house in quiet Bristol Bay.

But for some reason, Tim has become stuck to the chair. He’s grown roots that tie his still swinging feet firmly to the Gotham Memorial Hospital Floor.

As Tim stares down at his sneakers—red, like Robin was—someone else’s shoes join his tunnel vision. Tim follows the line of generic pleather to the scrubs, to the long white coat, and then pulls himself up to look the Doctor in the eye. She’s tall and wears her black hair in a slicked back bun, her eyes are warm and dark, with crow’s feet carved into her skin that show she’s typically more chipper than on a Wednesday at five thirty in the morning. Doctor Carson’s been assigned to Tim’s “Dad”, and she’s visited him in the waiting room twice before—once to tell him that his father had been ushered into surgery, and a second time with paperwork to fill out. She holds onto that same manilla folder Tim had stuffed mostly blank documents in.

Tim might be smart enough to skip two grades, but he didn’t have it in him to create a fake insurance claim or a working social security number.

Well. He definitely could. It would honestly be a fun project. But not Now, still covered in blood and alley grime and exhausted. Not while he’s stuck in a hospital without his laptop and a stable internet connection.

Doctor Carson taps her shoes and draws his attention back again. She’s wearing an expression that seems like she stopped halfway through a smile. She looks simultaneously accomplished and disappointed with herself.

“Your father made it through,” she tells him kindly. “He had something called an intracranial hemorrhage, and we had to rush him through to brain surgery. But he’s out of it, awake and well.”

Tim musters up a smile. “That’s great!” he says, ready for the doctor to head back into the patients’ section so he can finally peel himself up and get out of here.

“But,” Doctor Carlton says, painfully slow and patiently calm, like she’s trying to soothe someone significantly younger than Tim is. He tries not to puff up with indignation. “Your Dad,” she continues, oblivious. “He’s showing symptoms for retrograde amnesia. He says he doesn’t remember anything.”

“Oh,” Tim says.

“He remembers you making the call for the ambulance,” she says. “And he’s asking to see you.”

“He can’t remember anything else?” Like, theoretically. General Villainy. Batman. Batman trying to punch him to death in an alley. Riddles. Etc.

“Not so far,” the doctor says. “We’ll be pulling him to do more tests soon. But for now, it’s safe to say he has a long road to recovery. And to memory.”

“Oh no,” Tim says softly. His eyes are wide and panicked, but not for the reason that she probably thinks.

“For the record,” Doctor Carson says with that soft half smile Tim’s teachers sometimes give him when he answers a particularly hard question in class. “I’m glad he has a son as dedicated and responsible as you. You did a good job calling for help when you did, and I’m impressed with how you handled the situation. It could have been a lot worse.”

Tim smiles, and shrugs, letting the words wash over him. His heart beats wildly in his ears and there’s a sinking feeling in his stomach, like how he expects swallowing a ten-pound weight might feel.

What the hell has he gotten himself into.

---

He blinks awake, eyelids still sticky with sleep. He rubs away at the crust that’s collected on his face and glances around the room as he collects his senses from their leave.

It’s a hospital room, how he knows this he has no idea, just that it is. The sheets are starchy and stiff under him, and crinkle as he rolls his head to the side.

A boy, small, birdlike, with pronounced dark circles under his eyes, is whispering something to a woman wearing pale blue scrubs and a stethoscope around her neck. He relaxes, that must be the doctor, and the kid…

“Good morning,” his doctor says kindly. “I’m Doctor Carson, your nurse—Lindsey?” When he nods in soft agreement, she continues. “Lindsey told me that you were looking for your son. I brought him in here for you--do you mind if we go through a few questions? Tim here can help us out if we get stuck.”

His son’s name is Tim. His heart gives a lurch. Or maybe that’s his stomach. He wonders if what he just felt was hunger or guilt.

Guilt, probably.

Since he’s a terrible father who doesn’t even know his son’s name.

The son looks warily at him, waiting for a reaction probably.

He gives a small smile. Does he call Tim by his name? Or by a pet name? Best just play it safe for now. “Thank you, Tim,” he says. His voice is different than he expected, lighter and not full of gravel.

Tim nods slowly and under the gentle prodding of the doctor, comes to sit in the beige near the hospital bed.

Doctor Carlton produces a folder, opens it, and clips the papers inside to a clipboard. She pulls a pen out of her pocket and uncaps it. “Alright, we just have some stuff to fill out so you can spend the night and we can make sure you’re healing up okay. Right here it asks for the patient’s name. Do you remember your name, sir?”

“No, I—” He shakes his head. They both turn to face Tim.

“Ed Dra-,” Tim says, before clearing his throat. His eyes dart wildly around the room, catching on foot of his bed, the floor, before landing on the curtains. He coughs again. “Ed Draper.”

“Okay,” the doctor says, scribbling on the paper. “Nice to meet you, Ed Draper.”

Ed mouths his name to himself. It settles over him like a wool blanket, almost scratchy but mostly heavy and warm.

“Date of birth?” Doctor Carlton says.

Ed shakes his head again. This time, Tim shrugs.

“Social security number?”

Nothing.

“Insurance?”

Tim grimaces.

“Place of employment?”

Tim looks disturbingly nauseous. Ed reaches a hand out, and rests his palm on his son’s (his son!) shoulder, before turning to his doctor. “Doctor Carlton, thank you so much for everything. But I don’t think Tim knows this stuff. Maybe tonight, when he goes home, he can find my documents and bring them in tomorrow morning.” He pauses, catching Tim’s wild gaze with a reassuring smile. “It’s been a rough night, I’m sorry bud. Let’s pick this up later.”

Doctor Carlton looks them over before letting out a sigh that makes her an inch shorter. “Well, I suppose that’s the best we’ll be able to do. We have some more tests to do, Mr. Draper, but I think it’s fair to presume you have something called retrograde amnesia. Its hard to say when—or if—you’ll regain your memories.”

Ed feels a pang of loss but tries not to let it flicker over his face. “Well,” he says, turning to his son. “I’ll just have to work to make more then, right?”

Tim smiles back, it wavers a little bit and its small, but it blossoms over his face like sunshine. Ed resists the urge to reach out and give him a hug.

He pauses, why can’t he hug his son? He goes to give him an embrace, but the pounding headache reminds him how lovely it is to be in a reclining position. He settles for giving Tim a firm pat on the shoulder, and tells him how proud he is to have such a good son.

Tim goes beet red.

He feels good about this.

---

This is weird.

This is really fucking weird.

This is really fun.

He clicks on the text box on his laptop—he’s on his third birth certificate and counting. Tim wonders if this is how writers feel, look out Jane Austen, Tim’s coming through! But, it’s more than just creating fiction. Tim is creating a life.

It’s lucky that Gotham is so behind the rest of the world in digitizing their records. It’s (literally) criminally easy to create fake records.

And it’s not Tim’s fault that the dark web has such great how-to videos on forging documents.

So far, Tim has made fake parents for “Ed Draper”, as well as their birth and death certificates. He’s making Ed a birth certificate as well, and he’s already finished a standard high school diploma and an insurance account that looks like it’s five years old with Wayne Inc.

Tim doesn’t feel that bad about the last one. Even if the Riddler is a criminal, it’s Bruce Wayne’s fault he’s in the hospital, so he can pay for it.

He presses print on the finished birth certificate and lifts his fingers off the keyboard. He stretches until he can feel his back crack and his muscles ease. He’s been sitting in this chair for—his eyes dart to the alarm clock on his nightstand—way too long. In two hours, Gotham’s night life will head to sleep and the rest of the city will begin their day.

Visiting hours for Gotham Memorial start at nine, Tim can probably get in a nap and then head into town, drop off Ed’s shiny new life in the baby surrendering box. There’s no security cameras and it’s outside, and they check that thing like crazy, so it’s Perfect for Tim. He can be in and out of Ed’s life like that, and no one will be the wiser.

Tim has effectively taken a Gotham rogue out of the running. Take that Nightwing. Take that Batman.

And he did it with kindness. Not beating people up and repressing his emotions.

With the feeling of victory spreading warmly across his shoulders, Tim crawls into his bed and pulls the covers to the tip of his nose.

Tim thinks about Batman glaring down at him, thinks about Nightwing telling him to stop sticking his nose into other peoples business. (He’d said it a bit kinder than that, but the point still stands).

He thinks about how Ed smiled at him, how grounding his hand on Tim’s shoulder had been. He thinks about Jack Drake and the last time he’d smiled at Tim. He comes up empty—maybe he’s the one with memory issues if he can’t remember. He thinks about Janet Drake and thinks about the last time she put her hand on his shoulder, and he can’t remember that either.

He thinks about how warm Ed’s gaze had been, how he called Tim his son.

Tim thinks about every lie he’s ever told. Thinks about every lie he’s going to tell in the future.

Maybe, he thinks to himself. He can go to the hospital and he doesn’t have to check on his soon-to-be former fake father. For the sake of everyone involved, it’s better if Tim drops Ed’s pretend past on the doorstep of the hospital, and let Gotham citizens do the rest.

Tim might even be able to hack into the cameras and erase the fact that he was ever there.

Yeah, Tim thinks, letting his eyes droop closed. That sounds like a good idea.

He falls asleep and doesn’t dream about anything important.

---

Tim shouldn't be out this late.

The moon is small, only a sliver of a light like a Cheshire cat smile as it beams down and into Gotham's darkest alleys.

Tim hops from roof to roof, trying and mostly succeeding, in not injuring himself. Save for a few scrapes against his palms.

Eventually he finds his way to the warehouse.

It's imposing in the darkness in the Bowery. Waves lap up against the shore. Cars drive-by blocks away. The last Riddler clue in the newspaper—the last clue definitely led to this.

The peace doesn't mean anything.

He creeps closer to the warehouse. One of the doors is unlocked when he pries it open, wincing when it groans a little bit, but no one seems to hear. The inside of the warehouses is steeped in darkness and shadow, he slips unnoticed, inside.

He hears something…wrong. It sets every bit of his nerve endings on edge. A wheezing. Something like a sick animal, a death rattle.

He gets closer and closer and looks on at The Riddler. Splayed out on the ground in the center of the warehouse as one the sliver of silvery moonlight shines through a dim window.

There's a Batarang nearby—kicked off to the side in a scuffle.

A one-sided scuffle, it looks like. Coated in slick red The Riddler is a lump of battered flesh. He wheezes ominously. This is going to haunt Tim forever—the wrongness of it all. A human shouldn’t be bent that way.

Tim's hands flurry through his pockets, searching for his phone. He dials 911.

Hello, the operator says their voice is garbled with static. What is your emergency?

Tim doesn't know how to explain this situation. He reaches for anything. Who would he even be calling for? He can't call for the Riddler. No one will show up if they know they’re coming to help a super villain, but he can't just leave him to die.

A terrible idea seizes him. But an idea is an idea.

My dad, he says into the phone, slowly, through the nausea. My dad is really hurt. Please help him.

---

Tim gets caught almost immediately.

He’s spotted by a nurse as he’s walking around the hospital, hood pulled over his head so that the cameras can’t catch sight of him as he goes to deposit Ed’s fakes in the baby box. He’s so focused on avoiding any cameras, that he completely misses the bright-eyed nurse that took care of Ed yesterday.

“Tim Draper?”

Tim stops comically, one foot off the ground as he turns to meet Lindsey’s direct gaze.

She’s got a cigarette in one hand, holding it away from herself, with a puzzled expression on her face.

“What on earth are you doing out here? The entrance is on the other side!” Lindsey says, dropping her smoldering cigarette on the ground before smudging it into the pavement under her purple clogs.

“Sorry, ma’am,” Tim says, adjusting his backpack straps and looking up at her with wide, unsuspicious eyes. “I must have just gotten turned around.”

He tries to see a way out of this, but Lindsey checks her rhinestone studded watch. “Well, my break might as well be over anyways. Let me walk you back kiddo.”

Tim stifles a reluctant sigh and follows close behind.

There goes plan A.

---

Ed nibbles morosely on the raspberry jello a nurse gave him and ponders the documents that built up a life he no longer remembered.

Tim, who is eating the lime jello Ed had tried and deemed an affront to humanity, lazily flips through a home improvement magazine.

Ed traces his own name on his birth certificate. It’s slightly crumpled, maybe Ed-With-Memory hadn’t been very careful with it.

They’d taken his insurance card, assuring him that it was very good, and he’d probably be almost completely covered. So that was one point of anxiety erased.

But the second…

Well.

Ed wasn’t exactly seeing any permanent address or billing statements.

“Tim,” he said, hesitantly breaking the silence. “Are we homeless?”

“Uh,” Tim said, which didn’t inspire a lot of confidence in Ed. “It depends on how you define home.” He finally settled on.

“How do you define it?”

Tim fiddled with his magazine. “Where the heart is?” He offered.

While sweet (and suspiciously like something you read on a sign in a middle-class dining room) Ed was a little distracted with coming into the conclusion, that not only did he not have a job—judging from his paperwork—they also didn’t have a place to live.

He doesn’t have long to be anxious, unfortunately. Because Lindsey ducks into the room, pulls back the curtains, and announces that there’s a police officer about to interview him for a witness statement.

Great!

Chapter Text

The officer that walked in looked like every other officer in Gotham. He had the same permanent look of disgust, disinterest, and genuine contempt that had etched its way across all Gotham city police officers, like some unforgiving slow-moving river had sloughed away at the sediment of their skin. 

(Tim had recently come off a very interesting science class lecture about geology.) 

He was carrying a large plastic bag–the kind of trash bags that one could buy for cheap at bulk stores. The kind that restaurants or motels use. 

Janet Drake had once fired a personal assistant that had stocked the Drake Mansion with the same plastic garbage bags. She’d said they looked tacky and low grade. 

Even the Drake’s trash had to be given a certain level of care and cost. 

The bag and the overflowing assortment of clothes it held was bulky and soft and so no one truly protested when the officer threw it at the foot of Ed’s bed. 

Doctor Carlton might have protested but was too tired to do much more than give a half hearted sigh and mumble about the unprofessional qualities of Gotham's finest. 

Officer McDaniels apologizes slightly, in the way that all people who think that they’re so much more important apologize. A stilted half sort of apology where they don't meet your eyes and they roll them a little bit, and they really don't care for what they're saying at all. 

“Anyways,” McDaniels says with the tone of someone excruciatingly bored with the situation. “These are the possessions of everyone we picked up on the night of your... incident.” 

The way he said ‘incident’ made it very clear how little Officer McDaniels believed in Ed Draper’s legitimacy. Tim could hardly blame him. After all, Tim knew firsthand how legitimate Ed Draper was. And the answer was not at all. 

To Tim, who knew the whole situation, it made sense. 

But to a low-level Gotham beat cop: a suspicious, amnesia-claiming man beaten up by the Batman in a sketchy warehouse was hardly an upstanding citizen. And was more likely a low-level beat cop’s worst enemy: a low-level henchman. 

One summer, Tim's parents had bizarrely signed him up for a robotics camp. Tim had really no interest in robotics. Fortunately, the school that hosted robotics camp was also hosting a variety of other camps. Tim had managed to go to one week of Drama Camp before his parents found out and relegated him back to robotics for the rest of the summer. Tim hadn't learned much in those four weeks of robotics camp–however he had in that one week of drama learned how to improvise. 

Improv, if you really thought about it, was actually just a lot of lying. So, Tim was kind of confident that this could go in his favor. After all, a cop believing his “father” was just a plain two-bit henchman was much better than a cop believing his “father” was actually a local villain: The Riddler. 

“Tim? Buddy?” Ed says, probing the silence where Tim has let it stretch. “Are you still with us?” He lowers his voice, eerily parental for someone who has only known Tim for two days, and says, “If it's too much, you can wait outside. No one will judge you, okay?” 

Tim pauses and checks his hands to make sure that he wasn't steepling them together like a stereotypical villain in a kid's movie. His internal dialogue was beginning to sound a little bit... Intense. 

“No,” Tim says hastily, pasting on a smile that had only fooled 30 other middle schoolers. A summer and a half ago. “I want to stay.” 

Ed smiles reassuringly at him. 

Tim ducks away from the expression and makes abrupt eye contact. With the bag on the bed. Tim frowns. “Why is there so much of it? I thought this stuff was supposed to stay at the police station?” 

The police officer picks at his nail beds. “Couple of the guys at the station pool our dry cleaning together, saves a lotta money. The evidence from your Dad’s case might've gotten a little bit mixed up, but we found my boys’ clothes. You're the first, uh, victim, to get your stuff back. Pick through it and grab what's yours,” he says. “Not like I care. You're lucky it's clean. That shit was nasty.” 

“There are kids present,” Lindsey says. 

Tim stops himself from looking around. He's heard a lot worse. 

Officer McDaniels waves the air around him, as if physically batting away her words. He doesn't look too repentant. 

Luckily, no one presses him. Tim stands up and starts pulling articles of clothing out of the plastic bag. He pulls the frayed khaki cargos to the side and folds them clumsily. He lays the plaid button down with wooden buttons on top. The long suspicious coat that's embroidered with green and purple? That he pushes very firmly to the bottom of the bag. 

"Now, while the kid does that,” the officer says, pulling out a notepad and pen from his pocket. "Let's go over one last time, shall we?” 

"Sure." Ed says, long-suffering. “I don't know how much help I'll be, considering I don't remember any of it. Well,”  he amends. “Most of it.” 

"Sounds like as good a start as any,” the officer says. “EMTs found you unresponsive in a warehouse on 42nd and Pine. Care to tell us what you were doing there?” 

Tim continues to dig through the mound of clothes trying to find something he could pass off as Ed’s. Stuff that wasn't too suspicious, but still fit and looked the part. He slows his pace, alert for anything that Ed can't explain. 

Ed scratches his head as if trying to pull the information out physically. “I don't remember. I remember getting beat up by someone I couldn't exactly see.” 

The officer scribbles this down lazily as if he's already made-up his mind. “And did this... figure… say anything to you?” 

“Maybe?” Ed says, furrowing his brow. “My head was pounding. If they were saying something I'm not even sure I would have understood it. And then I passed out.  I woke up a couple times in the ambulance. Then Tim was there.” He shrugs his shoulder over to Tim, who was concentrating on his search for the least whole-y socks.

 "Tim Draper, was it?” the officer asks. Newly interested in another witness.  “Do you remember anything from the event?” 

Tim reluctantly sets down the mostly assembled outfit of least suspicious wear and shakes his head . "I got there after my dad passed out, and then I called the cops. I didn't see the guy attacking him.” 

 "Did you see anybody fleeing the scene? Anyone suspicious around the area?

 "It's Gotham,” Tim says and holds the pause. "It was pretty empty, the streets,  I mean. I tried to look around for help, but no one was there.” 

 "And what exactly,” the officer says probingly,  “what was your dad doing in such a dangerous part of town, all alone, Tuesday night?” 

 The officer says it with such finality that Tim bites back rage. Like he's caught him in some impenetrable trap, but the officer said, like, three sentences, and Tim is smarter than that. Not smart enough to stay away from the Riddler, but smart enough at least to come up with a conceivable back story as to why he's in the hospital now. 

“First off,” he says with all the righteousness of a child prodigy. "It was technically the wee hours of Wednesday morning. And he was looking for work.” 

"At 1:00 in the morning?” the officer asks suspiciously . “Who's even open then?” 

 "Denny's, IHOP, all 24 hour diners, bars, convenience stores,” Tim ticks off on his fingers. Holding up his full hand with pride. "Plenty of places.” 

They both hear what Tim hasn't said, but vaguely implied. Looking for work? At 1:00 in the morning? In one of the sketchiest places in town? They both know what kind of work Ed is looking for. It helps Tim's case, too, that multiple rogues are currently out and about looking for hired help. 

“Got it,” the policeman says, reexamining his notes. “Well. That clears up a few things.” He pockets his notepad and pen, smugness radiating off of him as he gives Ed a perfunctory once over and turns back to Tim . "Well? Did you find anything?” 

 Tim pats the pile of inoffensive clothes on the bed, "all right here.” 

 "Well, let's have you look over them, give them a touch, see if anything sparks a memory,” Officer McDaniels nods to Ed . 

 Tim turns to Ed for the first time in what feels like a while, cautiously taking in Ed’s befuddled expression . Tim hands over the pile of clothes and watches as Ed carefully unfolds them, holding them up to the light and to his discerning eye. 

It’s not the most... stylish outfit ever. Tim thinks that if his mother saw it she would drop dead due to its hideous nature. But Tim isn't trying to make Ed stand out, and so he's made do with the odds and ends from the bag to create the most benign and possibly ugly outfit ever. 

 The khaki pants aren't that bad, a little worn, but durable Tim hopes. He hadn't been able to find any socks, but that might have been a blessing in disguise. Tim might not be the most germ averse, but that does sound a little disgusting–wearing socks that came from an evidence locker. The shirt is a blue and green button down flannel that's about a size or two too big. But the only other option had been a black cropped tank top that said “iheart Gotham”. So Tim had chosen the lesser of two evils. 

The crowning glory of the outfit is the extraordinarily bulky Workman's jacket. At one point in time it had probably been grey, but age and wear had turned it sort of beige. It had numerous stains, seemingly from oil and dirt, but it felt a little waterproof, which was a necessity with Gotham's weather. 

 Tim and Officer McDaniels watch with uneasy anticipation as Ed examines each and every item diligently. Running his hands over the zipper, frowning at each mark of evidence that this garment has had a life before him. But when he shakes his head, both Tim and McDaniels deflate, with relief and disappointment respectively. 

 "Sorry,” Ed says, appearing genuinely apologetic. 

 McDaniels shrugs and gathers up the remaining bag of clothes. Tossing it over his shoulder like a meaner more corrupt version of Santa Claus. "Whatever. Case closed.” He drops his business card on the side table on his way out . "Give me a call if you start remembering anything.” 

 He slams the door on his way out, rattling the paper thin walls of Gotham General Hospital. 

 Lindsey, who Tim had regretfully forgotten was there, stands up from her seat and brushes some imaginary dust off her scrubs. "Good riddance,” she says. “He was an asshole.” 

 Doctor Carlson pinches the bridge of her nose and sighs . "All right, Lindsey, let's let the Drapers relax.” She turns to Tim and Ed. “We'll run some more tests tomorrow. But for today, just try to take it easy.” 

Tim and Ed just nod as Lindsey and Doctor Carlson shuffle their way out the door, shutting it with a lot more care than the police officer before them. 

“I'm getting the sense,” Ed takes a deep breath,  “that I wasn't a very good father. Or am a good father now,” he corrects himself. “I'm sorry about that.” 

 Tim shrugs. Takes his own deep breath. "I wouldn't say you're a…bad father.”

 Ed shakes his head. "Disappearing in the middle of the night? Leaving you alone working late hours? Those aren't exactly markings of a great parent!”  Ed laments. “Don't worry, Tim,” he says, “I'm gonna do better.” 

 Tim blinks, surprised. He can think of a dozen times off the top of his head his parents did exactly the same things Ed described. Jack and Janet weren't awful parents, he knew that. They clothed him, they fed him, and even if they did forget his birthday occasionally, they typically bought him a pricey enough camera that he wouldn't mind. 

 Tim wasn't exactly sure how Ed was going to do better than that, so he nodded his head and pasted on a small smile.

… 

The very first week of Ed's experience so far had sprinted past. It seemed one moment you were waking up in a hospital bed, and then the next moment,you were signing forms to leave. 

With each day, he failed to remember anything about his past but still managed to regret doing things he'd never done. 

Ed, before a head injury, had apparently been able to mix himself into the wrong crowd, lose his house, his job, and apparently his ex-wife. 

This had all made itself very clear to Ed when he asked Tim where he went after visiting hours. 

"Er…."Tim mumbled. "I was staying at my mom's house.” 

His mom? 

"Your mom?” Ed said with horror, had he forgotten about a wife as well!? Not only could he add bad father to his resume but now bad husband?! 

"You're not married,” Tim patted Ed comfortingly. Ed must have been talking out loud. 

No matter, Ed thinks as part of him grows optimistic. Tim has a mom! Ed has a co-parent! He's not in this alone. Well yes, he did react negatively to the idea of having a wife, for some strange reason, but it's also incredibly relieving to know that he's not alone- 

 “She really hates you,” Tim offers unhelpfully. 

Ed's mood plummets through the floor . "Really?” he asks disbelievingly . Not disbelieving in that someone could not like him, Ed isn't exactly sure that he likes himself, but disbelieving in the sense that this is really his luck. 

 “Yeah,” Tim says . 

 "Do you know why?” Ed asks. 

 “No,” Tim shakes his head. "Well, she does say you don't clean up after yourself.” 

 Ed thinks that that is probably not the whole reason but decides to move on for the sake of his sanity. "Well, I'm glad that you've had some place to stay. Do you think your mom and I could meet somewhere to talk about next steps while I find us a place to live?” 

 Tim shakes his head rapidly. "No! She hates you, like really really hates you! And she's out of town! On a business trip!” 

 Ed startles, "but I thought you were staying at her house?” 

 "Yeah,” Tim says. “I didn't say she was home.”

 “That... can't be legal,” Ed says . 

 Tim looks at him and arches one judgmental eyebrow. Look who's talking, the judgey eyebrow seems to say. Ed's child is only thirteen but he has an unmatched level of sass. Ed kind of wonders what he did to be on the receiving end of said sass, but soldiers on regardless. 

“And you're good to stay at her house until I find a place? Right?” Ed asks, his voice taking on a note of distress. “Can I at least call her?” 

 Tim squints at him. "I guess I can give you her email,” he says slowly. 

 Ed gets the feeling that this will have to be enough. He smiles and thanks his son, confident at least that Tim will have a place to crash even if Ed can't look out for him. 

 It doesn't even hit him, until Tim leaves that Ed doesn't have an e-mail address or a computer at all. 

… 

 Over the course of the lightning quick week, Ed had been provoked and prodded with many a needle and finger. 

 They had taken X-ray after X-ray, that revealed a cracked rib and a sprained ankle. 

 Blood tests showed that he had a swirling cocktail of antidepressants in his system. The nurses had worryingly given him the business card of a psychiatrist with cheap prices and told him not to self medicate anymore. The blood tests had also shown that he was severely lacking in vitamin D, something that the nurses assured him was a fairly common experience for Gothamites. 

 Other things he learned about himself,  included but were not limited to: a slight need for prescription glasses, quick reflexes, an aptitude for sudoku (from a book he had been given from another patient, who had already filled out half of the puzzles), and an assortment of scars, of which he obviously had no memory of receiving. 

 He had also relearned how to tie his shoes, how to brush his teeth, and how to make a resume. 

 So now, outside of the hospital, he stood clutching a handwritten resume on a piece of printer paper feeling slightly confident about his plan. 

 Tim surveyed him suspiciously, and then hoisted his backpack over his shoulders. "Are you sure you'll be alright?” 

 Ed nodded and smiled reassuringly, "of course.” 

 "And you know,” Tim says nervously, worrying at the strap of his backpack. "If you find a payphone, you can always call me.” 

 "I'll be OK, Tim,” Ed says, ruffling his sonny's hair. "I'm just going to look for a job and a place to live.  How hard could it be?” 

 Tim shrugged and flattened his hair back down slowly like he was trying not to offend Ed by fixing it. Ed smiled, his insides warm with what was presumably fatherly affection. 

 "Now,” Ed said. "I think I see your bus, you should probably start heading to school.” 

 Tim nodded and mumbled a goodbye under his breath.

 Ed watches his son walk away, and stand at the bus stop, as the ancient city bus rolls over the hill and pulls into place before calling out "Have a good day at school, kiddo!” 

 Tim waves shyly back at him, before stepping on the wheezing bus. 

 Ed watches as the bus rattles and shakes its way over the street and out of his sight before he turns away and faces the rest of Gotham. How hard could it be? 

 Really. How hard could it be?