Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The Joker is dead. Batman is dead. One of those things is good and one is bad, but she’s not sure which is which right now.

There’s a child sitting on the floor between them, laughing hysterically. That’s an easy one—bad.

She looks around the room, and spots a flashing red light in the corner.

“Today, the world learns Batman’s name,” Joker had said this morning.

Shit, she thinks. She goes to the corner, and pulls out a camera. “Shit,” she says, out loud. They’re live.

Batman is dead, and Robin killed him. On live television.

He didn’t even tell her he was filming.

Well, since when does he tell her anything?

Robin. Robin. She’s gotta get this kid out of Gotham. Quick.

“Robin.”

He doesn’t react.

“Tim.”

Nothing.

“Junior.”

He looks up at her. Stops laughing like flipping a switch. Oh, that’s not good.

That’s a problem for the other since of the border. She may be crazy, but she ain’t stupid. Presidential elections are in less than two weeks, and a teen hero turned psychotic killer is exactly what Lex Luthor’s anti-vigilante campaign needs. Bastard’ll probably adopt the kid, spend the next few years parading him around. It’ll be a fucking nightmare.

Tim’s had enough of those.

Batman is dead. She hasn’t seen Batgirl in months, or Nightwing in weeks. That leaves her or Lex, and maybe she’s biased, but she’s pretty sure she’s the better option.

She crouches down in front of the kid, between the two cooling corpses. She can feel the blood on her knees.

“We gotta go, honey. Right now. You gather up the big guns, empty out the fridge. Load everything in the white van. I’ll handle the rest.”

She’ll have to leave Bud and Lou.

It’s fine. She leaves them every time she goes back to prison, and they always take care of themselves. Tim’s not gonna.

-

The camera must not have been linked to their location, or things would never have got so far. She calls 911 and gives the address before throwing her phone in the harbor. She doesn’t want the bodies to be—she just doesn’t want things left, like that.

Tim’s asleep, thank whatever gods are taking requests from fucked up circus rejects tonight, by the time they reach the city limits, by the time all the Bat’s identities are blasted on the radio. She turns down the volume, but she can’t turn it off—she needs to know who’ll come looking for them.

Kid’s got a black eye he didn’t have earlier tonight. She doesn’t know if he got it from his dad or Mistah J. Doesn’t really wanna.

This isn’t how it was supposed to go. She doesn’t know how to do this. There’s an abused kid in the passenger seat, and she’s the one who abused him. Where the fuck does she go from here?

She helped the Joker torture a child. What the fuck was she thinking? What the fuck is she going to do next? Batman is dead. Batman is Bruce Wayne. Is there—is there other family? Bruce Wayne hasn’t adopted another kid since the last one died—he hasn’t adopted Tim. Does he have an actual family somewhere?

Does it matter? She can’t hand the kid over to his family when his identity is public. Especially if Luthor wins the election.

Get the kid out of the country. Wait for election results. Go from there.

She can do this. She has to do this.

-

It’s a long, awful few days. She drives until she can’t drive anymore, then sleeps on the side of the road. She wakes up to Tim laughing or staring at her. He never asks about his family. He never says a single word.

She keeps the radio on.

There's a lot of speculation about her and Tim, about what she might be doing to him now. A lot of talk about the riots in Gotham, which must have started just after she got Tim out of town. Interview after interview after interview with Luthor and his team. Harley listens in real time as public perception shifts under Luthor's influence, as people go from blaming the Joker to blaming Batman.

Look, Harley was dating the Joker, and even she knows this mess isn't Batman's fault.

She glances over at Tim, staring out the passenger window, apparently unbothered by Luthor's current rant about how a normal child, not already corrupted by over a year of vigilante work, would never have snapped under the pressure of three weeks of torture and killed two men. A normal child, apparently, would have waited quietly for rescue, then gone to therapy and been fine. Unlike Tim, who will require special rehabilitation that Lex, an expert in the dangers of superheroes, is uniquely qualified to provide.

The other heroes are, apparently, just as much to blame as Batman. Where, Luthor asks, was Superman? Where was Nightwing? Where was Wonder Woman? Where was the Flash?

Probably, Harley thinks, busy with the two alien invasions and several natural disasters that have happened over the last month. And Nightwing hasn't been sighted in weeks.

She steals less distinctive clothes for Tim from a gas station—all they had at the base in his size were the Robin suit and the Joker suit. She gets their food from drive thrus and sneaks Tim into gas stations to pee. They sleep in the car. They have plenty of money to get them to where they’re going, but it won’t last forever, and she doesn’t dare to leave the kid alone for longer than it takes to pump gas. They use the family restrooms. She tries not to sleep when he’s awake, but somehow he’s always up before her. Staring at her. He doesn’t talk.

He killed Batman. He killed the Joker. She wouldn’t be surprised if he killed her too.

He’s asleep. She can get them a little farther tonight. (It’s a 36 hour drive from Gotham to Mexico—she checked before trashing her phone. But she’s lost count of the hours. She just keeps going south.)

She turns up the radio a little. She’s so sick of the news, and she’s not sure how long she can manage to be responsible. She hasn’t been sane in a long damn time—she should not be in charge of a kid. She’s holding it together, but she can feel—she knows—there’s something shadowy in the corner of her eyes that probably don’t exist, and shit’s gonna get bad soon.

“—parents of Tim Drake found dead this morning in—”

She slams the power button on the radio, but it’s too late.

Tim makes the same sound he did the first time he was electrocuted.

She parks the car and reaches toward him, careful, not sure if he wants her comfort. He throws himself into her arms, then climbs practically into her lap, and she spends an hour holding a sobbing child, and she has no idea what the fuck she’s doing.

He falls asleep. She keeps on driving with him still in her lap. They reach the border that night, and she gets a motel room, carries him inside and to bed. Tucks him in.

He has parents. He had parents, and now they’re dead.

To get back at Tim for killing Batman? To get back at him for killing the Joker?

She should have done more research, she should have—

No. What good would giving him back to them have done? He’d have just been killed too. Maybe if she’d kidnapped the parents and brought them along for him?

It doesn’t matter. It’s too late now.

She leaves Tim in the motel, asleep. She doesn’t like to leave him, but it’s easier this way. She unloads the van. She drives it over the border, makes sure to get her picture taken.

She finds a closed pharmacy, breaks in, steals anything that might—might—keep her a little steadier. It’s a lot of stuff. She’ll do more research later. She finds the security camera, makes sure it gets her. Here she is, in Mexico.

She abandons her car, crosses the border again more stealthily—no one ever expects how good she is at sneaking around. Everyone will be looking for her in Mexico, but she’s not stupid. She and Tim aren’t just white, they’re unnaturally pale, and she stopped taking Spanish in seventh grade.

No, she has another border to cross.

She buys a crappy minivan, cash, as discreet as she can. She goes to the store and buys two boxes of hair dye, both in the color Tim’s was before they bleached it and dyed it green.

It would be better if she could get him a different color, make him look a little different. But she doesn’t think he can pull off anything but brown, without it being very, very obviously not natural. She doesn’t want to call attention to him, any more than she can help.

Which reminds her. That smile. What is she going to do about that smile?

Tim is still asleep when she gets back to the motel, hours later. Not surprising—it’s the first time he’s been in a real bed since she helped kidnap him.

What was she thinking? He’s a child.

She lets herself sleep in a real bed, too, just for a few hours.

Tim wakes before her; he’s sitting there, staring, when she sits up.

“Tim?”

He doesn’t answer.

“Junior?”

He leans forward a little.

“Okay, honey. Okay. Breakfast, then we have a quick project to do, and we’ll be on our way.”

Dying two heads of hair is not actually, in any way, a quick project.

She gets half a banana into Tim, which isn't much. But she didn't eat breakfast at all, so it's not like she can judge. Her stomach's been feeling weird—stress, probably. But she's a reasonably healthy adult, and she can skip breakfast if she wants. Tim's been pretty much starved for three weeks, so he can't.

"Tim? Tim? Junior? Can you look at me please?"

He does, though he stops just short of making eye contact, gaze settling around her nose.

"Can you talk to me?"

He blinks once, twice, and doesn't speak.

"Can you—can you give me something, buddy? Anything?"

Just—she just needs him to do something other than sitting there and following orders. She needs him to act like a person, and not just something the Joker made. She needs to know—to know exactly what they've done, and what they have to work with.

Tim sits there, and stares at her nose, and gives her nothing. He eats one more bite of banana, then lets her move him around like a doll to do the hair.

He had so much fight in him as Robin. He never stopped fighting, and he never shut up, and how—how did they do this to him?

She does his hair first, the dye and then a haircut, a style a little different from what he had before. She lets him sleep in the bed while she does her own, the same color, a part on the other side of the head, eight inches off the bottom, bangs. She carries Tim out to the new van, still asleep, when it’s done. They have a long, long drive ahead of them, and she doesn’t plan to stop at another motel anytime soon. Tim needed the rest, after—after his parents, and she needed a place to put him while she did her work. And she wanted to be noticed, yesterday. She can’t afford to stop and hold still for so long again.

They drive for four days. Tim never speaks, only alternates between sleeping and staring. On the fifth day, she stops at a public library, looks up an old classmate—a plastic surgeon who got his license revoked last year.

It’s easy to find an address.

“He's gonna fix your face, Timmy,” she says, and hopes she’s telling the truth.

Chapter Text

One flaw in her plan—she doesn’t want Donny to know she’s a brunette now.

Actually, she probably should have done this before faking the move to Mexico.

Whatever. She’ll figure it out. A really good wig’ll cost more than she wanted to spend, but it’s for the best.

She puts on one of her most distinctive outfits, then her new wig, very carefully. She dresses Tim in the filthy Joker suit again, hating herself, while he sits and lets her, limp and doll-like. She doesn't bother with a wig for him. He's just a kid, or will be if she can get his face fixed. She's the one who stands out. Put Tim in the suit, and Greeley won't remember anything else about him.

There's a duffel bag of weapons and a duffel bag of cash in the backseat, and she's so glad she didn't dump the weapons with the car. She chooses a colorful pistol and a serrated knife. And a handful of zip ties.

After some brief consideration, she unloads a second gun and hands it to Tim. Just for appearance's sake.

She breaks in quietly, and wakes Greeley with the knife against his neck. "Hey, Donny. Got a job for you."

"What?"

"Junior, hit the lights."

He does. Greeley sits up slowly, when she holds back the knife enough to let him.

"Harleen?"

She wrinkles her nose. "Come on, Donny, don't full name me. Did our time together mean nothing to you?"

"Our time together?"

"Two classes, Donny. An entire week in ENT during residency. I lent you my notes once!"

"Of—of course. What can I do for you, Harley?"

She flips the knife in the air and catches it. "Well, I got this kid, see." She points at Tim with the blade.

Greeley doesn't answer.

"See?" she repeats.

"I see him."

"Great! So." She flips the knife again. "You're gonna fix his face."

"His face?"

"Junior, sweetie, come show Dr. Greeley your smile."

Tim takes a few shuffling steps forward, gun dangling loosely from his left hand.

"I'm not sure—"

Harley throws the knife, imbedding it in the bedframe a few inches from his head. "Donny. You're gonna fix my kid's face."

"I—I specialized in nose jobs and boob jobs, Harley. And I lost my license."

"Yeah, I know. You know what that makes us?"

"What?" he asks, wary.

"Medical malpractice buddies! Do you think we should get T-shirts? I think we should get T-shirts." She retrieves the gun from her waistband, flicking off the safety. "Up. Now. We have work to do. Junior, grab Mommy's knife."

She should not be having Tim handle a knife right now. She knows that. But the less stable she looks, the easier it's going to be to manage Greeley. She knows he's going to blab everything to the police as soon as she's out of here, and she needs to control the narrative he gives them.

"Harley," he says, stumbling out of bed, "I really—I really don't think—"

"Knife," she snaps, and Tim darts forward to hand it back to her. She spins it a bit, then points it at Greeley's face, just a few millimeters from the tip of his nose. She still has the gun in her other hand. "Donny. Honey. I'm on the lam here. And that smile? That smile is a blaring neon sign. So you're gonna get rid of it, or I'm gonna get rid of you."

"It's not that easy."

"Then make it that easy. You wanna operate with nine fingers? Eight?"

"Fine," he says, huffy, like he ever had a say in this. "My operating room is in the basement."

"An illegal operating room in the basement? I'm gonna say it again—medical malpractice buddies. We could do beautiful things together, Donny."

It's a fantastic illegal underground lab, highly unethical, and Donny's definitely headed for jail after this.

"How did his face get that way?" he asks as he gathers his equipment.

"Some weird chemical shit. Mistah J didn't go into details."

"Without a clear understanding of what caused this, I can't promise—"

"You're a plastic surgeon. Fix his face."

"Harley, I don't want you to come back here and kill me over a botched job when I tried to warn you—"

"What are the risks?"

"Permanent damage to his facial muscles. Maybe to the nerves."

"Will it hurt?"

"Right after surgery, yeah. Long term, no."

"Will it impact his ability to eat or speak?"

"No."

She weighs the risks and benefits, spinning her knife again. She doesn't want to do any permanent damage—any more permanent damage—to Tim. But his smile is so wide, so unnatural, so obviously Joker-ish. She will never be able to protect him with that smile.

She points the knife at Donny again. "Do it. Anything goes wrong—any pain, any more damage than you said, any complications, we come back, and I kill you. Got it?"

"Got it."

They give Tim a mask anesthetic, and he doesn't fight back at all, even though Harley knows what was in it, last time they put a mask on his face, and this is so bad. So bad.

“I thought you were in Mexico,” he says as he works.

“Yeah, well. Mexico extradites. I got fake IDs and plane tickets, just as soon as we’re done here.”

“You sure you don’t want any more work done?” he asks. He’s relaxing now, less worried with the gun and the knife put, for the moment, away. “Kid’ll still look like himself. And you—maybe a rhinoplasty? A new nose can give you a whole new face.”

“I’m good, thanks.” She doesn’t trust him enough to be put out, and she doesn’t trust herself to hold still through a cosmetic surgery awake.

He finishes, and she pulls out her gun again. “Okay, good work. Into the chair, then.”

“Harley!”

“Come on, man, I’m a supervillain. Look, I won’t hurt you, okay? Because we’re medical malpractice buddies.”

She zip ties him to the chair, then picks Tim up carefully; he hasn’t woken up yet.

“Thanks, Donny. I’ll send you a postcard.”

Someone will find him eventually. And when they do, they’ll also find his illegal operating room.

Sucks to be Donny.

-

Their next destination is a few hundred miles away. She trusts this guy more than she trusts Donny Greeley—she has to. She’s giving him everything.

He got on Joker’s bad side a few years back, and she got him out of town. He owes her. And he makes great fake identities.

She’ll need a new name. Something not too different from her real name—something she’ll remember to respond to.

Arlene is very similar to Harleen. But she’s never met anyone under eighty named Arlene. Besides, Tim remembering the new name is more important than her remembering it, and he’s never called her Harleen.

She needs something that sounds similar to Harley. Similar enough that if Tim calls her Harley, people will assume they misheard him.

Hallie? Haley? Holly?

Holly. Holly Queen. No, no relation to Oliver, but I used to tell the other kids at school we were cousins.

Holly Queen, and this is my son Tim.

Tim has to keep him name. He’s already got Tim, Robin, and Junior to juggle, and he’s currently only responding to Junior. She needs to get him back to his own name, not add a new thing to confuse him. Timothy is a common name. And if she can’t get him back there—

Timothy Queen Junior. She can use Tim or Junior.

She looks over at him, still asleep in the passenger seat. She’ll change them both back out of their costumes next time they stop, but she wants to be at least four or five hours away first. She doesn’t know how long it will take for someone to find Donny.

-

She listens to the radio. Donald Greeley is found in his basement, and arrested for several counts of unlicensed surgery, as well as suspected mob ties. The FBI, or whoever's looking for Tim now, turn their attention from Mexico to the airports. But it took them forty eight hours to find Greeley. If Harley was flying to a country that wouldn't extradite, she'd have gotten there already. The search is basically over; everyone thinks they know where she is. Luthor will talk about the search occasionally, to remind everyone of Tim and the dangers of superheroes, but no one will actually expect to catch them.

-

She can’t make it all the way to Mitchell’s without a proper stop. Neither of them have showered in days. She’s been taking some of the lighter meds she stole every twelve hours, and she can’t tell if she feels so wild because they aren’t working, or just because she’s been cooped up in this car for a week.

They spend one night at the cheapest motel she can find. She throws Tim in the shower first, and he stands there for a long moment, un-Joker-ized face slack, eyes blank. She puts a bar of soap in his hand, and he stares at it for a bit.

Harley sighs. “Wash yourself, Junior.”

He does.

This kid. What the fuck is she going to do with this kid? They brain-fried him and they brainwashed him, and he’s—

She doesn’t know what to do.

She gets him out of the shower and into the bed. She showers, too, makes sure he’s asleep, takes a jog around the parking lot, showers again, and goes through all the pills she stole, trying to figure out what’ll work for her.

Tim probably needs meds, too, but she doesn’t trust herself with that.

-

Election day comes. Luthor wins in a landslide. Harley drives a little faster.

Chapter Text

Mitchell’s as good as she remembers. She doesn’t need to put on a show for him. She and Tim go up in their real clothes, with their real hair, and Mitchell takes photos and asks the questions he needs to ask, and not a single one that isn't part of his job.

Names, relationships, backstory, destination. He does it all, and Harley paces his apartment, stir-crazy, and Tim sits and stares at the wall.

“Education?” Mitchell asks. “Certification? Degree?”

She considers it. She can’t go back into healthcare. She was—her license was revoked for a reason. She can’t trust herself with other people’s mental and emotional wellbeing right now.

There’s her gymnastics. Teaching, competing, performing. But she has such a distinctive style. She can’t risk being found because a new generation of gymnasts is moving like Harley Quinn.

“Give me a bachelor’s in something generic.” She’ll just have to figure it out later. She can’t work now, anyway—she can’t leave Tim unsupervised.

-

It takes Mitchell fourteen hours to get all their paperwork in order, which feels like forever but she knows it’s probably pretty fast. She paces, and paces, and paces, and Tim naps on the couch.

From Mitchell’s place, it’s another three days of driving to cross the Canadian border, with their new passports declaring them Canadian citizens. Harley drives for another day after that, until she hits a city that feels right.

Her back aches, and her shoulders, and her head, and her eyes. She's feeling a little motion-sick. People are not, she thinks, meant to drive all day every day for nearly this long.

She can't tell how Tim feels, but she's betting he feels worse than she does.

There was so much electricity.

She really, really needs to get him to a doctor. Just as soon as she can find one who won't deliver him right to all the people looking for him.

She can't let Lex get his hands on this kid. She already gave him to the Joker; she's not going to make the same mistake with a second psychopath.

She has to fix things, as much as she can. She has to protect him.

Overnight, she’s gone from being a sidekick to the world’s greatest supervillain, to the single mother of a child who’s terrified of her.

She’s crossed the border. No one is looking for Tim here. She could—drop him off somewhere. A hospital, a shelter. Let someone else take custody, hope he never gets recognized.

And what happens if someone triggers some latent bit of brainwashing? What if something startles or upsets a kid with intense combat training and too much trauma or brain damage to remember how strong he is?

She can’t just dump him somewhere. Things are only going to get worse if she does that. She helped make this mess—now she has to clean it up. Because she’s the only one who can.

-

She gets a room in the cheapest motel she can find, and hopes she can get an apartment fast. Usually places don’t let you in until the first of the month, but maybe she can get an exception? She’s a single mom with a sick kid, on the run from an abusive ex, and she will milk that semi-fabricated story for all it’s worth.

She needs an apartment and several doctors. She needs a job. She needs to offload this car before it stops running.

First priority—clean-up. She takes Tim to the thrift store. She’d rather not have him in an unfamiliar place like this, but it’s better than leaving him alone in the motel, or the car—the heater just went out.

He’s fine, or as fine as he ever is. He trails behind her silently as she picks out a few outfits for each of them. Something nice, for her—the kind of thing you wear when you’re interviewing to get an apartment. Not her color, but it’ll do. She buys a bra at the thrift store, because she really needs a spare, and they’re really expensive. But that’s where she draws the line. She gets the rest of their underwear new. Hairbrushes, toothbrushes, toothpaste, deodorant, razors, and some food she can cook in the motel microwave from the dollar store. She can use the shampoo, conditioner, soap, and towels included with the room.

She’ll probably steal the towels when they leave. She’s abandoning her life of crime, yeah, but come on. It’s towels. She can get away with that.

She takes a very thorough shower, then washes all their clothes in the tub with dollar store laundry detergent. She drapes them over the radiator to dry while Tim showers, and resists the temptation to poke her head in and make sure he shampoos. Kid deserves some privacy, even if she did see it all when Mr. J first changed him into that purple suit.

He definitely did not shampoo, she decides, later, when his hair is dry.

Not totally unexpected. He’s both a fourteen year old boy and dealing with an undetermined amount of brain damage. She washes it for him in the sink, and he lets her without reacting.

This is really bad. He hasn’t spoken since—she’s not sure, exactly. Long before Batman showed up. She has to figure out if that’s a side effect of the brainwashing, the brain damage, or just general trauma.

He has a tremor. Occasional laughing fits. Motor skills seem largely intact, tremor aside. He can walk. Grab and hold and carry things. Bladder control is fine. Hygiene isn't great, but that’s probably a combination of assorted trauma and being a teenage boy. He’s able to eat and drink, but doesn’t, much, and only when prompted.

Whether or not he’s currently able to speak, he can at least understand others. Her, voices on the radio. He reacted to the news of his parents’ death. So he’s still in there—something of what makes him Tim Drake has survived. That’s good. It’s a start.

It’s been so long since she’s worked to help broken people put themselves back together. She’s—she’s become the person who breaks them, instead.

When they both look less like they’ve been living in a van for weeks, Harley finds a library, gets her card, and starts her apartment search.

She takes the computer, and gives Tim a stack of newspapers, which sit, untouched, in his lap.

As soon as she has some apartments lined up, she’s going to find a doctor.

Several doctors.

She’ll start with a neurologist.

She sets up three interviews with potential landlords—the cheapest, closest-to-everything-she-needs places, because she can’t afford another car when this one kicks the bucket.

Then she writes down the numbers of every neurologist she can find. She’s not buying a phone yet. There’s a sketchy payphone in the sketchy gas station across the street from the motel. That’ll work for now.

-

Canada in November is cold, and Harley’s car is on its last legs. Or wheels. It’s fine—she got to her destination. She just needs it to hold out long enough to furnish an apartment.

(“Harley’s so impulsive.” “Harley never thinks ahead.” Fuck those assholes—Harley bought a minivan two weeks ago for a reason.)

-

She puts down all the back seats in the minivan, and takes Tim back to the thrift store. It’s not easy, but she manages to stuff a lumpy couch and a wobbly coffee table in the back. Tim helps, some. The employee at the back loading dock helps more.

That’s all the furniture they need, for now—they can sit on the floor to eat off the table. She gets dishes and utensils and bedding at the thrift store, too, and doesn’t realize until after the maintenance man has helped her drag the couch and the table upstairs that they’ll need beds.

Thrift stores don’t sell mattresses, and she’s not buying them new. Back to the library, to google “where to buy used mattresses,” and then she has to set up a Facebook account, so she can use Facebook marketplace.

She sleeps on the apartment floor that night, and lets Tim sleep on the couch. But the next night they have two twin mattresses to put on the floor—she can’t find a bed frame for under a hundred bucks, and it’s not worth it right now.

With that done, she abandons the car in a random parking lot, figuring it’ll get towed eventually. It’s making increasingly worrying sounds—she thinks the brakes are shot. It’s not registered to her, and it’s not her problem anymore.

She has twenty thousand dollars left, after the trip, the new IDs, the deposit on the apartment, and the furniture. American dollars. Mitchell got it converted, got her a Canadian bank account, but she hasn’t checked the conversion rate. It’s not a lot. It is, but not for what she needs—to start a whole new life, for herself and a severely injured child, when she can’t make any more money, can’t think about working until it’s safe to leave Tim alone, which honestly it might not ever be. Half of it’ll be gone in a year of rent payments. It won’t get her very far. Not far enough.

But healthcare is free in Canada, right? So that should leave her with just food, rent, and utilities to pay for.

She can do this. She knew how to be frugal, once, before she started taking anything she didn’t have. Right? She tried, at least. She got through school—that was a tight time.

This’ll be like college all over again.

Not that she did that great in college. But at least it’s a point of reference.

-

They’re not in Gotham anymore. He doesn’t—he doesn’t know—things feel different, now. There hasn’t been any more—any more—any more—

Everything hurts so much. But there hasn’t been new pain for a while now.

-

You can do this, she tells herself, over and over. You can do this. You used to do this every day.

Don’t call too much attention to yourself. Don’t overwhelm the patients. Sometimes the best way to help is with some professional distance.

Don’t talk to yourself. No big gestures. No strong emotions.

She remembers how it became more and more clear, throughout college, that there was something off about her. She remembers arguments with her roommate—“For fuck’s sake, Harl, you’re a psych major. You know you need help.”

She’d thought about how some of her professors and classmates talked about hypothetical patients. She’d thought about movies and TV shows she’d watched. And she’d been sure that if she got help, she would never be allowed to help anyone else.

She’d been young. She’d been sick. Maybe she’d been wrong. But it wasn’t a chance she could take. If she was officially Mentally Ill, she would become a slightly different class of person. She would lose trust and respect. She would be pushed out of the program. She wouldn’t get to help other mentally ill people in the way she had always planned, in the way she didn’t trust her healthier classmates to do.

So she’d gotten better at playing normal, and she’d gotten a new roommate in the fall, one she never let get so close, and life had gone on.

(The Joker had seen something not normal in her, and he had claimed to love it. No one else had ever loved that part of her. It had been—it had been such a relief. It had spun so far out of control.)

(If she hadn’t been so afraid to get help, she wouldn’t have fallen for the Joker.)

(If she hadn’t been so afraid to get help, she wouldn’t have needed to go into this field in the first place. She’d wanted to be the doctor who Got It. The doctor you could trust.)

(But you have to put on your own air mask before helping others. And she never had.)

She’s had a lot of time to practice playing normal. She can do it again. She’ll get help, too. But these things take time. For now, she’s gonna bring Definitely Not Mentally Ill Harley back.

She can do this. She can do this.

Just pretend Tim’s a patient. Start with good patient care, and build from there.

He’s sitting on his bed on the floor, leaning against the wall, staring at nothing. Normal, for him.

They haven’t really talked much. She should—she should try, right? She should try. She crouches down.

“I know we…didn’t have a good start. And I’m really sorry about that. I know this situation might feel like you’re just still being held hostage, and I’m—I’m sorry about that, too. I just—I don’t know where else you can go and be safe. I don’t know who else can protect you.”

He doesn’t react. She doesn’t really expect him to.

He responds to orders. What if she ordered him to talk?

Bad idea. She’s not—she’s not going to make him do anything, ever again, except for things he has to do, like eating and sleeping.

Chapter Text

“Tim,” she says, and he doesn’t answer, doesn’t let himself react at all. Tim is the wrong name. Tim is a trap.

“Tim,” she says again, softer, gentler this time, but he’s still not falling for that.

“Junior?”

He looks up at her slowly, carefully. She has that worried wrinkle between her eyes, and she’s not wearing her outfit, and she’s not smiling. She hasn’t, either one, not for a long time. He tries to smile, even though there’s nothing to smile about, but it makes his face feel weird.

“Junior, honey, I need you to eat something, okay? I just need you to eat.”

-

Frugality is…well, it could be going worse. Probably.

Harley’s never been good with money. Before she was a thief, she was a reckless spender. But she can’t be. Not now. She has slightly less than twenty thousand dollars, and she can’t earn more until she can safely leave Tim unattended.

Beyond bills and necessities, what she needs to spend money on is ways for Tim to engage.

Fourteen year old boy. Brain damage. Neurological damage. Brainwashing. So much PTSD. Known interests include vigilante crime fighting.

She takes him to the library. Sits him down with a young adult book chosen at random, and goes to the nearest computer. Types “Tim Drake” into the search bar.

There’s a lot of articles about Luthor, first. A lot of articles about what happened to Tim, without any acknowledgement of him as a person. She finds a few interviews with generic information—he was a sweet kid, decent student, never would have guessed he was fighting crime every night, never would have expected, etc.

It takes a long time to track down an interview with a kid who must actually have been his friend, a kid who talks about Tim the person, not Tim the unexpected vigilante, not Tim the victim, not Tim the Batman-killer, not Tim the face of Luthor’s anti-vigilante campaign.

This kid tells the interviewer that Tim likes skateboarding and photography. He says Tim fell asleep in class a lot, but always tried to pay attention in history so he could keep up with his parents when they talked about archeology.

She finds another interview, from another kid, and then a social media page, all covered in messages from friends and classmates, like Facebook pages always are when someone dies.

Tim isn't dead.

She glances over at him, just where she left him, looking down at the cover of his unopened book.

He isn't dead. She’s going to fix this.

The Tim of the Facebook shrine takes martial arts classes at the community center. He watches Wendy the Werewolf Stalker and plays Wizards and Warlocks. He was on the school baseball team for a year. He's good with computers.

“Hey, Tim?” she says.

No reaction.

“Junior?”

He looks up slowly.

“C’mere a minute?”

He does, carrying the book.

“I need your help with something. With the computer.”

She stands, and herds him into the chair. He shifts the book from his right hand to his left, and takes the mouse carefully. He holds it like a foreign, fragile object, which, Harley thinks, is really not a good sign.

She hasn’t actually come up with any computer thing for him to help with. She doesn’t know much about computers—just the usual, basic things. She’s looking for another little piece of the old Tim—the kind of piece she saw when his parents died, but in more pleasant circumstances. The way he's holding the mouse isn't encouraging, and she thinks, again, of all the little pieces of a brain that can be decimated by things like head trauma and electrocution.

“Can you—can you erase my history?”

He looks over at her, then back at the computer. He moves the cursor slowly, clumsily across the screen. A tremor takes him, and the mouse and cursor both shoot off course. Harley puts a hand on his shoulder, and keeps it there until the shudder stops. She bends to pick the mouse up off the floor. He turns back to look at her again.

“It’s okay,” she says, and hands the mouse back to him. He stares intently at the screen.

He might not know how to do it. He might be afraid of letting her see he does know how to do it. There’s just—there’s so much she doesn’t know, here.

He glances back at her again. He produces a menu in the upper right corner of the screen, and clicks an option labelled “clear history.”

Harley wonders if it’s really that simple, or if there’s something fancier, more complex, that someone like Batman would use.

“Good job, Tim,” she says. “Are you ready to go home?”

As expected, he doesn’t react. She picks up his book, dropped at the same time as the mouse.

“Do you want to take this home? Do you want to read it?”

Nothing.

She flips it over to read the summary on the back cover.

“Okay, yeah. I wouldn’t want to read that either. Let’s just go home.”

-

Taking Tim to the doctor is the best way to blow their covers. It’s also absolutely necessary. He’s not well enough now that she’s confident he’ll be able to understand the secret they need to keep. But he’s probably not well enough to spill that secret in a coherent manner, either. He still isn't speaking. Hopefully by the time he can communicate effectively again, he’ll also be able to understand what he can’t say, and trust her enough to listen.

She takes him to the emergency room first.

“Okay, honey, we’re going to—we’re going to go undercover, okay? You remember being undercover, right?”

He stares at her, and doesn’t react in any way to the question.

“When we’re undercover, I’m going to call you Tim, and you can call me Holly or Mom. Okay?”

No reaction, as expected. Given how unlikely it is he’ll call her anything, this is probably a non-issue. All she has to do is keep him calm, spin her story, and get an urgent referral. Possibly several urgent referrals.

“I don’t know what happened,” she tells the nurse. “He’d—he’d been violent before. My husband. And it had escalated dramatically over the last few months. I was—I was working on an escape plan. I had a part time job he didn’t know about. I worked while he was at work, and had the money deposited in a new account. I always gave myself plenty of time, at the end of my shifts, to be home before he was. But he must have—he must have come back early. I don’t know how early, how long he was—I don’t even know what he did to him. I don’t even know why Tim wasn’t at school. But he must have come home, found me gone, and taken it out on Tim.

“He was—he was like this when I got home. I took Tim and left that night while he was sleeping. This is the first time I’ve taken him to a doctor. I didn’t—I didn’t dare to—at home—my husband has such a wide reach. I was afraid if I stopped at a hospital, we’d never get away.

“He’s Timothy Junior. But it’s always been Tim. He hates Junior. Just, since the—the incident, he won’t answer to anything else. Won’t even react to Tim.”

“You shouldn’t have moved him,” the nurse says, “with head trauma from an unknown source.”

“I know. His father had already moved him when I got home.”

“Why didn’t you call an ambulance?”

“He always—he always said that if I told anyone he was hurting Tim, he’d tell them it was me instead. And they’d believe him, and I wouldn’t be there to protect Tim anymore. He was—important, in our community. Respected. I was afraid.”

“I’m referring you to a neurotrauma specialist. I want you to see her yet this week. Wait here while I have someone call the clinic.”

-

They go back to the apartment.

“You did such a good job, Tim. Such a good job.”

He doesn’t react.

“We should—we should celebrate. I’ll get cupcakes, yeah? Will you eat a cupcake for me, Timmy? Junior?”

-

They sit in the waiting room together. Tim is motionless and expressionless, which is his current baseline. Harley is anxious and fidgety. She’s never had to protect a secret identity this long. She’s never had someone innocent and vulnerable dependent on her ability to keep a secret. She’s very aware that she’s on both the wrong medication and the wrong dosage.

She doesn’t know what the right med is yet. She can’t be her own psychiatrist. And it’s going to take her longer to get in than this thing with Tim.

She’ll start with a therapist, who will refer her to a psychiatrist—possibly, hopefully, an urgent referral, especially if Harley mentions she’s the sole caretaker for a disabled child.

If she can’t keep it together, she doesn’t know what happens to Tim.

But that’s a problem for later. She’s gotta take care of Tim first. She’s fine for now. For a few weeks, probably.

She doesn’t know how he can sit so still. She unties and reties her shoes. Fiddles a little with her still-unfamiliar new hair. Plays for a minute with one of those toddlers’ bead toys you always find in waiting rooms. Picks up a magazine—some celebrity is getting divorced. Picks up a newspaper—Lex Luthor is filling half the front page. She skips to the bottom—shit. There’s a photo of Tim, too.

At least he's in his full Joker Junior getup. He doesn’t look anything like that, today. She skims the article, an interview with Luthor, troubling lines jumping out at her—“won’t rest until Tim is found”—“personally oversee his rehabilitation”—“vigilantism is a disease, but there is a cure.”

“Tim?” a nurse calls, and Harley gets him out of his seat and across the room, paper still in one hand.

The nurse glances down at the paper as she escorts them to an exam room. “Slimy, right? Poor kid.”

“Out of the frying pan, into the fire,” Harley agrees, cautiously.

“No one wants to see that kid wind up with Luthor. Let’s stop here for a height and weight. Tim, can you get on the scale for me?”

-

“These are burn marks,” the neurotrauma specialist says, brushing Tim’s hair from his temples.

“Are they?” Harley asks.

“Do you have any idea what might have caused bilateral temple burning?”

“Um. My husband had a taser? Maybe if he held it right against the skin?”

“Maybe an improperly operated ECT machine,” the doctor says.

“Maybe,” she agrees, not daring to look up at her.

“Ms. Queen,” the doctor says, and Harley raises her head slowly. “There’s some real evil in this world.”

“Yeah.”

“I was in Metropolis on business, about three years ago. The week Luthor rampaged downtown in that Kryptonite powered robot. I watched that robot step on a daycare building. Watched the firemen carry away the little bodies. I know Luthor got acquitted, but I never really believed those stories about cloning and mind control.”

Harley doesn’t answer.

“Let’s be honest with each other. Are there any Bats left?”

“If there are, I can’t find them.”

“All right, so you’re what he’s got. It’s not ideal, but it’s better that your boyfriend, and it’s better than Luthor, and frankly I don't know what else to do with him. As long as you take good care of him we won’t have a problem here, but I need you to tell me everything you know.”

Harley does.

Chapter Text

The bad things visit his brain at night. He tries not to sleep, but that doesn’t work, because he's always so tired. The bad things visit in dark shadows and neon lights, and sharp jolts of electricity. He wakes up vibrating in bed, and cries muffled into his pillow until the shudders stop. He wakes up panicking on the couch, and he holds his breath and counts to ten, because screaming summons the bad things.

If you scream, the big bad bat will hear you, and he’ll come and steal you away from Daddy.

If you scream, the Joker will rip your tongue out of your head.

Both of these things are true. Both of these things are lies. These things are equally incomprehensible and equally terrifying.

They cauterized his brain. He could smell it burning.

You cauterize to prevent infection, right? Was his brain infected? Did the Joker infect it, or did Batman?

He can’t remember. He can’t remember.

He’s so tired. So tired. But sleep is when the bad things come.

Maybe his brain is still infected. Maybe the cautery didn’t take.

-

They meet their neighbors. Two women in their sixties, sisters, Lutheran. A retired accountant and a still-working teacher.

They invite her to church. Harley tells them she’s Jewish. They tell her their church has potlucks every third Sunday. Harley decides she can be Lutheran, one day a month, for free food.

“I’m home all day,” Paula, the retired one, says. “Let me know if you need someone to check on Tim while you’re at work.”

She doesn’t trust anyone else with Tim right now. But it’s a nice offer.

-

“Anatomically, there’s no concerns with the throat or voice box,” the doctor says. “What we need to know is if this is trauma-based—mental trauma—or if it’s because of damage in the parts of his brain that process speech and language.”

“Well, how do we figure that out?”

“We start by working on nonverbal communication. You said he’s understanding you? Reacting to things you say?”

“Yeah. Not much. If I tell him to eat his dinner or wash his hands he usually will.”

“Are you getting nods? Head shakes? Shrugs?”

“No.”

“How about reading and writing?”

“No.”

“All right.” She turns her attention to Tim. “Tim, buddy, I’m gonna need your help here, okay? We’re just gonna do some experiments. We’ll start easy. Can you nod your head for me?”

Tim glances over at Harley. She nods. He nods.

“Good,” the doctor says. “Now can you shake your head?”

Tim looks at Harley. Harley nods. Tim shakes his head.

“Okay. Now I’m going to ask you some questions, and I want you to either nod or shake your head to answer. Okay?”

Tim looks to Harley.

“You can answer her. It’s okay.”

He turns back to the doctor and nods.

“Very good. Is the sky blue?”

He nods.

“Is grass red?”

He shakes his head.

“Is your name Tim?”

He turns to Harley again, looking suddenly and absolutely panicked.

“It’s okay, Tim,” she says. “You can answer her.” But she has the answer to the main question, now. That face says it all. This is trauma, not damage. Or at least, not only damage. She remembers the Joker, saying to him—

“Okay,” the doctor says. “It’s okay. We don’t have to answer that question. It’s okay.”

Tim continues looking between Harley and the doctor, expression increasingly distressed, breathing speeding up. He doesn’t know the right answer.

“Your name is Tim,” Harley says, but that doesn’t help—why would it? Why should he trust her?

“You’re not in trouble, Tim,” she says. “Junior. Okay? Daddy’s not here. You’re not in trouble.”

He calms slowly.

“All right,” the doctor says. “Maybe we should call it a day?”

“Yes, I think that would be best.”

“We’ll see about reading and writing next week.”

When they get home, Harley sits Tim down on the couch, and she sits on the coffee table, studying him.

She remembers the Joker saying, “You don’t talk. In fact, you don’t communicate at all. If you speak, I’ll rip your tongue out and feed it to Bud. If you try to use hand signals, I’ll rip your fingers off and feed them to Lou. I don’t ever want to hear another sound out of you. Children,” he’d said, hitting Tim with each word he said, “should be seen and not heard.”

She tries to remember what triggered that tirade. She can’t. Anything—anything—could set him off.

“You killed the Joker,” she tells Tim. “He’s gone, and he’s not ever going to hurt you again. I’m—I’m not going to hurt you, either. I wish—I wish I could have left you with someone safer. Someone you could trust. I’m sorry I couldn’t. But I promise I’ll keep you as safe as I can. And maybe when you believe me, you can try talking again. Okay?”

Tim stares at her for a long moment, then nods, very slowly.

“Great. I’m gonna make us some lunch.”

He doesn’t react.

She’s—she can’t do this. She can’t. She hurt him too much.
Tim deserves to be with someone he can trust. But there's no one. No one but Harley.

Maybe she could give him to some non-Bat superhero. Someone like Superman.

Superman. She thinks about that, for a minute. Superman—he would care. And he would try. But Tim needs to be someone's priority. He needs to have someone available 24/7. And maybe Harley can't quite be constantly available, not if she has to keep paying for the apartment and everything. But she can do better than Superman, who has to drop everything every ten minutes to save the world.

A superhero protects the whole world. Tim needs someone to protect just him. Harley can't trust someone like Superman with Tim.

If Nightwing or Batgirl was around, she thinks they would set everything else aside, and put Tim first. But they're not around. The only heroes she can trust are Bats, and the only Bat left is sitting on her shitty three dollar couch, staring at nothing, lost somewhere in his own head.

-

At the next visit, the doctor asks questions and has Tim write down the answers. Then she talks and has him write down what she’s saying. Then she has him read a passage, asks him questions about it, and has him write down the answers. All of which he does, slowly and reluctantly, looking to Harley for approval several times throughout the process.

“His language skills seem to be intact, at least enough so for basic communication. He’s just not speaking.”

“So it’s most likely trauma based.”

“Most likely.”

Harley gets Tim a notebook, so he can communicate with her even if he’s not speaking.

He doesn’t use it. He’ll nod, sometimes, if she asks him a direct question. He won’t shake his head, or shrug—nothing that could be perceived as disagreeing with her.

Because he’s afraid of her.

She shouldn’t have taken him.

But what else could she have done? Batman is dead. Batgirl and Nightwing are missing. The Justice League didn’t seem to be helping Batman look for Robin, and in a few weeks Lex Luthor will be doing his best to disband them—Tim wouldn’t be safe there.

His parents—maybe she could have kidnapped his parents, too, on the way out of town. If she’d known they existed. Maybe that would have been a solution. But they’re dead now, and if she’d just left Tim with them, he’d be dead too.

She wishes there was someone else to handle this, but she can’t think of anyone. And she’s tried. She’s tried. She’s been going in circles for weeks now. There is no better option. It’s her. It’s only her.

-

She’ll need a job, eventually. Probably soon. But leaving Tim unattended sounds like fifteen kinds of bad idea.

She decides if she’s spending money on Tim instead of herself, it’s okay as long as she doesn’t go overboard.

The doctors talk about improving his dexterity and keeping his mind engaged. So she buys him fidgets and puzzle toys. She finds a toy skateboard, just an inch or two long, and buys him that. She buys a disposable camera—she didn’t even know they still made disposable cameras.

She knows she needs to save her money. But she sucks at saving money. And Tim isn't going to get any better, sitting and staring at the wall all day.

Tim getting better is even more important than saving money.

She’s tried library books—they aren’t nearly as effective as puzzle toys.

She wishes he was willing to communicate with her. She isn't sure if he just doesn’t like reading, or if he’s struggling because of his injuries. She knows he can read, but not how easily—he does struggle with focus.

But fidgets and puzzles work—his fingers keep on even when his brain’s reached its limits.

-

It’s different now. Daddy’s gone. And the dogs. He can’t—he can’t—he can’t—

-

Tim wakes up screaming six nights in a row, and Harley crawls over to his bed in the dark, and holds him while he shakes, and hopes desperately that they won’t get noise complaints.

Paula and her sister Betty drop off cookies, and Betty promises to talk to the upstairs neighbors about the noise—they’ve been friends for years. Harley checks out library books to read out loud to Tim, because she can’t afford a TV, and if she gives him a book he’ll just stare at whatever page she opens it to, sometimes for hours.

She takes him to the doctor. She takes him to the library. She slowly puts together a list of all the places she can get them free meals—clubs, charities, religious organizations, restaurants with kids-eat-free nights who believe her when she says Tim’s eleven. She makes a lot of canned soup and boxed mac and cheese. She’s keeping the kid alive. He’s even gained back a tiny bit of the weight he lost.

It’s not enough. She’s not enough.

She feels—unhinged. She hasn’t—she hasn’t done anything. Hasn’t hurt anyone. But she’s bad, she’s wrong, she isn't safe.

Sometimes when Tim’s asleep, she locks herself in the bathroom, runs the water to drown out the sound, and laughs and laughs and laughs, even though nothing is funny, even though nothing has been funny in years.

She plays with her stolen meds, and it’s fine for a while, until it isn't. They make her tired, they make her crabby, they make her nauseous—she’s been so nauseous lately—but all of that is manageable.

Then something hits a little harder than she expects. She starts lunch, and stumbles to the couch, feeling dizzy and exhausted, and wakes up six hours later to Tim, sitting on the floor and staring up at her.

He took the soup off the stove before it burned too bad, which might be progress, but he didn’t eat any of it until she woke up and told him to.

She can’t lose hours in the middle of the day like that, and she’s damn lucky that’s the worst her experimentation’s gone so far.

Every week Tim sees a neurotrauma specialist and a physical therapist and a therapist-therapist he sits and ignores for an hour.

She’s done as much as she can for him, for now, and she needs to take care of herself.

Chapter Text

Tim’s therapist gets her in with a colleague fast. Harley schedules their two therapy appointments for the same time, so she doesn’t have to bring Tim along to hers, but it means Tim is completely alone with a person other than her for the first time since—

Since.

“Where are you from, Holly?” her therapist asks.

“Gotham,” she admits, because she’s an idiot who can’t keep her damn cover straight.

“Hm. Gotham’s a crazy place, right? I went there with my ex once—he was kind of an adrenaline junkie. Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn went by and my idiot ex said—well, it doesn’t matter what he said. But Harley talked Ivy out of killing him.”

“That a good thing, or a bad one?”

“Good. He was an idiot sometimes. But I didn’t want him dead.”

“Good,” Harley repeats. She tries to remember it, and can’t. How many people have she and Pam almost killed? How different would this appointment be, if they’d killed this one?

“You’ve got a kid,” the therapist asks, “right?”

“Right.”

“I think you need a psychiatrist, Holly. Urgently.”

“Yeah. I think you’re right.”

“I’ll make a few calls when we’re done here.”

-

She brings him to the talking doctor. She brings him to the talking doctor, and she leaves.

He sits on the couch. He tugs on his sleeves. He looks between the doctor and the door—the closed door, with her on the other side.

She’s never left before.

“How are you feeling today, Tim?” the doctor asks.

He tugs at his sleeves. Maybe—maybe—

She’s not here, and Daddy’s not here—maybe he could answer?

But—but—she wants him to talk. She keeps trying to make him.

It’s not—it’s not a trap, is it? He doesn’t think it’s a trap.

But he doesn’t think at all, much. He tries not to.

His brain—his brain—it isn't right. It burns.

“Tim?” the doctor says again.

That’s not him. That’s not him. It can’t be.

“Tim, I don’t know when I’m going to have you alone again. If you need to tell me anything your guardian shouldn’t hear, if you need me to contact someone, if you need help, you need to tell me now.”

He shakes his head, and presses himself farther into the back of the couch. The doctor wants—the doctor wants to take him away. But he doesn’t have anywhere else to go.

They’re dead. They’re all dead and it’s all his fault and he can’t remember the details, he can’t let himself remember the details, but he knows that much.

“Tim,’ the doctor says again, and leans forward.

He stands and shoots past him, out the door. He has to—he has to—he has to find her. He has to find her.

Why did she leave him?

He opens one door, two doors, three. There’s shouting and there’s people behind him, and he can’t go as fast as he could, he’s so shaky, always, so shaky and stumbly and tired, but it’s okay because he finds her in the third room, before any of the shouting people grab him.

She stands up. There’s another lady in the room with her.

“Tim? Honey? Are you okay?”

He shakes his head, and stumbles forward—so shaky and stumbly, always, now—into her arms, and she wraps them around her, and he cries.

They’re dead. They’re all dead, except for her. He killed them.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart, I’m sorry,” she says, and he doesn’t know what she’s apologizing for. “It’s okay.”

The other lady sends his doctor and the hallway people away, and they all sit down, and he stays pressed close, and they’re talking, he thinks, but he isn't listening. He doesn’t have the energy.

-

It’s been a week, and Harley still doesn’t know what happened to Tim at his last therapy session, but he’s refusing to go back. Plopping down on the couch when she says it’s time, refusing to get up, silent but stubborn.

Which is maybe good, because it’s the first time he’s refused to do anything—that’s gotta be progress, right?

But his therapist won’t tell her what happened, although he’s very apologetic about Tim’s reaction, and Tim either won’t or can’t tell her. But he won’t go back, either.

If she called him Junior would he go? If she called him Junior would he tell her what happened?

It’s not worth the cost to find out. He’s so—it’s so bad, still, but it’s getting better. She’s not going to try getting her way by activating a deeper layer of brainwashing.

Tim is still on the couch; she crouches on the ground in front of him.

“Did the doctor hurt you, Tim?”

Nothing.

“Junior?” That’s fine, that’s within her normal usage of Junior—for when he isn't responding to Tim, and she needs to know he’s present and aware she’s talking to him.

Nothing.

“I just need nods or head shakes, okay, honey? I just need to know. Did he hurt you?”

Very slowly, Tim shakes his head.

“Did he touch you at all?”

He shakes his head.

“Did he threaten you?”

He shakes his head.

“Did he say something that upset you?”

He nods.

Okay. That might—that might not actually be bad? Therapy is upsetting sometimes. “Was it something mean?”

He hesitates for a moment, then shakes his head again.

She doesn’t know what else to ask. Not when she only has yeses and nos to go on.

“Okay. Okay. I have therapy today too, though. Will you come with me? You just have to sit there with me and my doctor—you don’t have to see your doctor, and you don’t have to talk to my doctor.”

He stands up, which is as good as a nod. Harley stands too.

“Will you go back to therapy if we get you a new doctor?”

He shrugs. It’s the first time she’s gotten a shrug. Today’s the first time she’s gotten head shakes, really, too. It’s progress. They’re making progress.

-

Tim sits quietly and plays with his puzzle toy through her therapy appointment. Two days later she brings him to her psychiatrist appointment, and gets new meds. By the next week, she has him set up with a new therapist in the same practice, but she doesn’t dare to leave him alone again, so they’ll be going to each other’s appointments for a while.

-

It’s raining, and Tim getting a cold on top of everything is the last thing she needs. Especially when she thinks she might be coming down with some sort of stomach bug, herself. They’re not walking home in this.

Fortunately there’s a bus stop nearby. Harley goes to check the sign for a schedule. Tries to figure out which bus she wants, to get close to the apartment. Checks the sign again. Glances back at Tim.

He's not standing right beside her anymore. He's wandered off a few feet, and he's—Harley darts forward and grabs him before he steps into the road.

"Don't do that," she says, and tries to remember how to breathe.

Was he trying to walk into traffic, or just not paying attention to where he was going?

She can't even ask him.

Well, she can, but he won't answer.

“Don’t do that,” she says again. She sits him down at the little covered bench, and hovers over him, waiting for the bus.

Was he trying? She knows he’s not happy. Knows he’s in pain, knows he's afraid, knows he doesn’t eat unless she tells him to, and has nightmares far too often.

She knows how much of that is her fault.

She doesn’t know how to fix it.

Tim shifts a little, on the bench, and Harley drops down beside him, suddenly exhausted. He scoots a little closer to her, and she wraps an arm around him, then freezes, not sure she should be touching him, not sure he wants to be touched, by her especially. But he leans in.

“I’m sorry, Tim,” she says. “I’m sorry. I’ll make it better. Somehow.”

She wants—she wants to take good care of him, to take such good care of him. She wants him to be protected and safe and given whatever he wants. But she’s not safe, and she’s rapidly approaching broke, and she doesn’t even know what he wants. She doesn’t even know how to figure it out.

So. She’ll just have to try harder. She can do that. That’s the least she can do.

He likes being near her, even though he probably shouldn’t. (It’s probably not about her; he’s probably just lonely.) He plays with the puzzle toys she gives him, and that might not be because he likes them, might just be a nervous habit. (And she can’t really find out because if she asks a question like that he’s just going to nod.) So she’ll—she’ll figure it out. She’ll watch him closer, work out which ones he likes best. Work out what kind of books he likes best, when she’s reading out loud, or if he even likes it at all. He's so hard to read she doesn’t even try sometimes and that’s—that’s not as shitty as kidnapping and torturing him, but it’s still pretty shitty.

She’ll try harder. She’ll do better. She’ll make it right.

Chapter Text

He’s tired. He’s so tired.

They went to church today. He doesn’t think they’re going to church for the church. He thinks they’re going for the food, maybe?

They go to this church—Paula’s church—some days. Not often. He doesn’t know how much—how much time is happening. But they have church then lunch. There’s another church they go to sometimes where they get supper then church. There’s another church—no, not a church, it has a different name. But there’s another place they’ve gone to a few times and not gotten food, so he thinks that’s the one they go to for the church.

They go to the churches and the restaurants and he thinks—he thinks it’s about money. He thinks she’s not paying for everything at the restaurants. (He doesn’t think she’s stealing, but he doesn’t understand why.)

It doesn’t matter if there’s a good reason, because he's going to do what Mom says either way, because he—because he—but he thinks it’s about money.

But they’re loud and crowded and his head hurts so bad, his everything hurts so bad, and he’s tired.

She comes back into the room. “Hey, Timmy. You wanna read a book or something?”

He shakes his head. Maybe he—maybe he—no, he doesn’t need to lie to her. He doesn’t need to agree with her.

“Okay. You want me to sit with you for a bit?”

He nods. That would be—that would be really nice.

-

Paula and Betty bring over cookies for them—it’s a weekly occurrence, at this point—and Tim and Harley sit on the couch and eat cookies for supper, and Harley reads the newest book from the library. It’s not her thing at all—YA fantasy, lots of wizards and dragons, and dragons are cool, she supposes, but there’s not enough girl characters and the fight scenes are unrealistic and there’s zero romance and she’s bored. But Tim looks as interested as he ever looks, looks like he’s maybe paying some attention, so she keeps on going, until her throat starts to hurt a little.

She looks over at Tim. He’s asleep, curled in on himself to only take up two of the three couch cushions, and one hand dangles over the edge, still holding the Rubik’s cube he was working on when he fell asleep. His feet are tucked under her thigh, and she has no idea when that happened, whether he was asleep or awake when he decided to use her as a foot warmer. Or how long she’s been reading to a sleeping audience.

She thinks about this morning, when he wandered into the kitchen wearing a blanket cape, and pressed himself against her side to watch her scramble their eggs.

Yesterday, when he grabbed her hand. Sunday, when they were at the Lutheran church for a potluck, and some kid knocked over the drum set, and Tim plastered himself to her side as soon as the noise started.

He trusts her. He feels safe with her.

Does he have Stockholm Syndrome?

Does Stockholm Syndrome exist? The data is shaky, at best.

Does it matter? Tim needs to feel safe, and Harley is the only person here for him to feel safe with.

-

She’s not out of money. She’s got enough money to last a while longer, if she’s careful.

But she wants to get Tim a tablet. And she wants to buy them better groceries. And they have some medical expenses that aren’t completely covered by the Canadian system. And the money won’t last forever, and she wants to be prepared.

But Tim. She takes him to therapy with her, but she doesn’t think she can take him to work.

“You seem stressed,” Paula says, when she brings over some leftovers Harley knows she made on purpose, because she worries about them, the unemployed single mom with the traumatized, mute teenager who screams the building awake at least once a week.

She sighs. “I just—I need to get a job. But I can’t leave Tim alone. Not while he’s—sick.”

“I could watch him for you,” Paula says, just like she did that first day.

Harley hesitates. She thinks about Tim. How he was tortured and brainwashed and molded into the image of the Joker. How he was trained to take down men three times his size, before that. How she’s never sure just how aware of his current surroundings he really is. How he singlehandedly killed two of the most dangerous humans in the world, at fourteen, while mostly out of his mind.

She can’t leave him alone with a retired accountant, right?

The closest he's come to a display of violence since shooting Mr. J is throwing a book at the wall.

If he kills Paula they’ll have to run again.

If he kills Paula, Harley is gonna feel really bad. She likes Paula.

She really needs money.

“I’ll talk to Tim about it.”

-

“How do you feel about me going to work?” she asks, and he doesn’t answer because it’s not a yes or no question.

“You would be alone in the apartment, but Paula would be right across the hall if you needed anything, and she’d come check on you, and make you lunch.”

She’s looking at him like he’s supposed to answer, but he doesn’t know how to answer that. It isn't even a question.

“I’ll come back, Tim. Every day. I promise I’ll come back, and I promise I won’t hurt anyone while I’m gone. But I need to go to work. Okay?”

He nods.

-

She gets an office job, part time. Eight hour days three days a week. She doesn’t dare to go full time, at least not right away—too much change for Tim. Even this feels like too much. He just—he stares at her so much, when she comes home, and he sticks so close.

“Paula’s going to check on you at lunchtime,” she reminds him over breakfast. “I need you to eat lunch, okay? Tim? Junior? You’ll eat lunch for me?”

He nods.

“Promise?”

He nods again.

“Okay. Okay, good.” She knows that skipping lunch isn't going to kill him—if he doesn’t eat for Paula, he’ll eat for her when she gets home a few hours later. But she knows that he only eats because she tells him to. Even desserts and candies and junk foods—only when she tells him to. (Which is why she’s dragged him out of bed early to feed him before she leaves today.) And it’s so stressful. Especially since she’s never been good at eating on a schedule, and she’s been so damn nauseous lately she doesn’t often want to eat at all. She has to remember all the mealtimes to make sure he eats, and remembering all the mealtimes is something she’s never bothered with before.

She goes to work. She comes home to Paula’s report that everything went well, that Tim ate and behaved himself and didn’t kill her, and there were no issues at all, and so she goes to work again. And again.

She uses her first paycheck to buy a used tablet. She can’t afford wifi, but Paula lets them connect it to her network. She downloads a few games and apps, and pulls up a few websites that she thinks he’ll probably like, and leaves him to it.

It takes him a couple days, but he uses the tablet. He actually uses it.

He won’t read books she puts in his lap. He won’t touch the computers at the library unless she tells him exactly how to touch them, exactly what she wants him to do. But he uses the tablet.

She doesn’t know exactly what he uses it for, doesn’t ask questions or look over his shoulder, because she doesn’t want to know, because it’s the only privacy she can give him, sharing a bedroom and even going to therapy together.

Although he does shower properly without supervision or guidance, now. Sometimes he gets the shakes, and drops something or falls, and it’s so nerve-wracking, hearing the thuds, but they have a system. He gets up, and knocks twice; if she doesn’t hear the knocking within sixty seconds of the thud, she’ll go investigate.

(That’s only happened once. She ran in, and he was just sitting there, on the shower floor, so she turned off the water, grabbed a towel, and got him up again. Nothing seemed sprained or broken, no signs of concussion, just a big bruise on his knee. She doesn’t know what happened.)

So he has his tablet, and he uses his tablet, and what he uses it for is his business.

Chapter Text

Mom is gone a lot.

She’s not—she’s not his real mom. He knows that. But every time he tries to think about it, his insides go twisty and his vision goes dark, and he can’t think about anything for a long time. His brain is a maze, and if he thinks about the wrong things, all the walls move and he’s lost again.

There’s a lot of things he can’t think about, painful things that put him in the maze, dangerous things that send phantom jolts up and down his spine. There are lots of dangerous things, so he sticks to the basics.

He lives in an apartment with his mom, and she’s gone a lot, but the neighbors check in. They all call him Tim, but he can’t answer to it. They all want him to talk, but he can’t—something bad will happen if he does, but he can’t remember what, so he can’t decide if it’s worth it.

Maybe he could figure it out, if he could think about it for a while, but thinking is dangerous and it hurts, so he tries not to.

There are bad things that are bats and bad things that are clowns, and both kinds are dangerous. So he looks out the window, and plays with the Therapy Toys Mom gives him, and tries not to think or remember at all.

-

Holly always leaves food in the fridge for Tim, so Paula can just stick it in the microwave. Paula never does.

She’s working 24 hours a week, and Paula doubts she’s getting paid well. They’re both so pale, and Tim’s so skinny, and they spend so much time at the doctor. Any free food Paula can get into them, she will.

She’s got a casserole today, just out of the oven; it takes both hands to carry, so she knocks on the door with her elbow. “Tim, honey, it’s Paula. Can you let me in?”

It takes him a minute; he must have been on the other side of the apartment. He can’t move very fast—something wrong with his leg, and those shakes he gets.

He smiles at her, his little crooked smile that seems a little off somehow. She thinks there’s something wrong with his facial muscles, too.

It’s none of her business. Something happened, but they got out, and he’s safe now, and Holly’s doing her best. That’s all Paula needs to know.

“You have a good morning?” she asks him, while she takes the casserole to the kitchen.

He doesn’t answer, but then he never does. She’s seen him nod or shake his head for his mom, but that little smile is the closest to a response she’ll get.

“Why don’t you set the table while I get this cut up?” she suggests, and he does.

They eat their casserole, and Paula tells Tim the stories Betty told her about the kids at school yesterday.

She stays for a couple hours after lunch—she enjoys the company, and she likes to think Tim does, too. Most days she works on her crosswords or sudoku, while he plays on his tablet.

Her phone dings—time to go. She’s helping clean the church this afternoon.

“Remember your mom’ll be home late tonight—she’s got that appointment. I’ll come check on you around four, okay?” Now that Holly’s willing to leave Tim home alone sometimes, she’s going to try going to her own doctor appointments without him. But this is the first time, and Paula knows she’s worried about how Tim will react to the change in routine.

“Four o’clock,” she reminds him, and gets another little smile in response.

-

“How are you feeling about the meds?” the psychiatrist asks at their next check-in.

“It’s—it’s working.” She feels better. She feels steadier. The laughter doesn’t threaten to swallow her up, and her brain doesn’t spin in circles so much. It’s good. Mostly. “The side effects—but I knew there’d be side effects.”

“What side effects are you experiencing, Holly?”

“Nausea. Weight gain. I’ve been sore, and tired, and I have a lot of heartburn. And I always have to pee.”

The doctor stares at her for a long moment. “When was your last menstrual cycle?”

“Oh, I don’t know. They’ve never been regular.” They’re not, for gymnasts. “A few months ago. Definitely before we left Gotham.”

“Is it possible you’re—”

“No,” she says, immediately, even though it probably is possible.

“Holly, some of those are normal side effects for this type of medication, but even those are rare for this particular med.”

“I need—I just—I need to think.”

Their last time. Her, trying to distract him from the child in the next room, trying to give Batman the time to find them without betraying Mr. J. Their last several times, actually—it had been an effective distraction. It had given Robin a bit of peace, a little more time.

Sitting on the floor with Bud and Lou, after, Lou licking at her bruises while she hid her face in Bud’s fur, and Tim screamed, and the Joker laughed.

The last time she took birth control. Longer—longer ago than that. Six months? Eight? Ten? She’s never taken it consistently. But she’s never menstruated consistently, either. And she hasn’t exactly been in the best frame of mind to keep track of things like that.

“I need to take a pregnancy test,” she says.

-

It’s positive.

She could—she wants to keep the baby. Let her have this one good thing. Tim is a constant reminder of all of the mistakes she’s made, of how stupid and deluded she was, of how cruel the man she loved could be.

But there were happy times, too. Moments they fit together, moments he loved her. Let her have this one good thing, this one reminder that it wasn’t all bad. Let her carry one piece of the Joker that isn't a regret.

It’ll be a lot of work. A lot of money. She has no idea how to take care of a baby.

She has no idea how to take care of a teenager, either, but she’s managing. He’s not—he’s not okay, but he’s happier and healthier than he was when they left Gotham, and that’s—that’s something, right? That’s something.

She can do this. She can. And Tim—everything was very sudden, with Tim. She’ll have time to prepare for the baby. Months and months and months.

She couldn’t have kept the baby, if she’d kept the Joker. She couldn’t—she could never have had them both.

It will be better this way.

-

“Timmy, honey, you’re going to have a sibling,” she tells him.

All his insides jolt. He feels—he feels like he’s on fire. He feels like he’s drowning. He feels like he’s being dragged out of his body, into a lightning storm. He can’t breathe.

He can’t breathe.

“—im, Tim, honey, Junior, Tim, it’s okay, it’s okay.”

It’s not okay. It’s not okay. It’s not.

There’s a sound—there’s a sound, it’s coming from him, and he’s not supposed to make sounds, he’s not, he's not, he’s not, but he can’t stop.

“I’m sorry, Timmy, I’m sorry. It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.”

But it’s not. It’s not.

She’s holding him, rocking him, and he feels safe, here with her, but he's not. He’s not.

Chapter Text

After she tries to tell Tim about the baby, after Tim has a panic attack, the hyperventilating and the awful, keening cry, after Tim falls asleep in her lap, after she carries him to his bed, Harley panics, too.

She just—she wants this so bad. She didn’t expect it, but she wants it so bad.

It’s her baby. Hers and his, and it’s only been a few hours but she loves it so much, and she doesn’t—she can’t—

She doesn’t understand.

What set Tim off? He hasn’t panicked like that…ever. Honestly he's weeks past due for a total breakdown, but why—why this?

Timmy, honey, you’re going to have a sibling. That’s all she said. What’s so terrifying about that?

How does she fix this? What does she do? What about the baby?

-

He feels—bad.

He always feels bad. Everything hurts and everything is too hard and the physical therapy helps but it doesn’t fix it. He always feels bad.

He feels worse, this morning.

Mom—Harley, she’s Harley. Harley’s in the kitchen, making pancakes. She turns and smiles too big when he comes in.

“Hi, Tim. Are you feeling better?”

He doesn’t answer. He never answers. He's not supposed to make a sound.

He made so many sounds last night.

They eat their pancakes, and she doesn’t talk, and he doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know what to do.

“We should talk about last night,” she says after cleaning up, and everything in him goes tight and tense and bad.

“You’re not in trouble, honey. Everything is going to be okay. I just…I don’t understand why you’re so upset about me being pregnant.”

Pregnant? She’s pregnant?

She frowns. He must look surprised.

She’s—she’s too good at reading him.

“Timmy, what did you think I mean, when I told you you were getting a sibling?”

He—he opens his mouth.

He closes it.

He can’t. He can’t.

He thought—he thought—in the alley. In the—in the—the alley and the bleach and the electricity, and we’re going to be a family, now, Junior, we’ll be the mommy and the daddy and you’ll be the baby and we’ll be such a happy family.

“Timmy, honey,” she says, slow and sad, like she knows, like she knows even though he didn’t say anything, didn’t make any sounds. “I’m never going to hurt you again. I’m never going to let anyone hurt you again. And I’m not going to hurt anyone else, either, not unless they deserve it. I’m pregnant.”

That’s—that’s—he doesn’t feel so tight and bad, anymore. He feels like he can breathe, maybe.

“Is that okay?”

He nods.

“You’re okay with having a little brother or sister? With a baby living here with us?”

He nods again. That’s—that’s fine. That’s okay. Babies are—he thinks babies are nice. Cute. He thinks he likes babies.

“Okay. Great. That’s great. I don’t have to go to work today. Do you want to hang out here, or do you want to go to the library?”

He frowns. He hates when she does that. He can’t nod or shake his head to an either or question.

“Sorry. Do you want to stay here?”

He nods.

“Okay. Do you wanna watch a movie together on your tablet?”

He nods again and goes to get it. They sit on the couch together, close so they can both see. He gives Harley the tablet, so she can pick a free movie on Youtube, and leans on her shoulder.

“You don’t wanna pick?”

He shakes his head. He’s tired. He just wants to sit here. They can watch whatever she wants.

“Okay. I’ll find something good for you.”

-

She hates this. She hates this. Being pregnant is the worst. She feels weird. Her body is weird. She has to get new clothes she can’t afford, and baby stuff she can’t afford, and there’s more doctor’s visits, and a whole bunch of blood work because of all the stolen drugs she was taking without a prescription while she was pregnant, the names and dosages of which she doesn’t all remember, which she had to tell her psychiatrist and her OBGYN about—and that was a super fun conversation.

But the baby is healthy. The baby is a girl.

The synagogue and the Lutheran church both give her a bunch of baby stuff, even though the Lutherans must know by now she’s only using them for their potlucks. Work gives her more hours when she asks—she needs to save money now, before she has to take time off for the baby. (And she really needs to figure out how maternity leave works.) But she hates leaving Tim alone more.

He’s been clingy, lately. He wants to sit right by her, all the time, and she feels conflicted, because it’s not good if he’s becoming more dependent on her, right? Because she hurt him, and it’s not healthy. But also she’s been taking care of him for months now and he feels like her kid and it feels so good that he wants to be around her, that he feels safe with her. But also her emotions are all over the place and she needs her space and it is literally impossible to have any space unless she’s in the bathroom. But also she doesn’t want to hurt him or scare him or push him away so she has to stay calm even when he’s being really fucking annoying.

She thought he felt safe with her before, after what happened with his first therapist, but he definitely feels so much safer since his freak-out about the baby.

He thought—he really thought—he’d been cuddling with her on the couch and seeking her out for comfort and he still thought she would kidnap and torture another kid to make their family bigger.

She’s a horrible person. She’s a horrible mom. And she’s going to have a baby.

-

“I shouldn’t have a baby. I shouldn’t even have a teenager! I only have the teenager because I’m not quite as bad as Lex fucking Luthor! And now I’m going to have a baby, too? Why are you letting me have a baby?”

“Maybe,” her therapist says, “we should talk about your history with Tim.”

“It’s on Youtube.”

“The last forty minutes of your time with Tim in Gotham are on Youtube. Tell me about the three weeks before that.”

It had been her fault they’d caught him. She’d been the one who lured him in.

She knew he’d killed the last Robin. She knew. He bragged about it all the time.

He’d said, “Get me Robin, and then you and me will make a family.”

She hadn’t known what he’d meant.

And then everything—everything had been happening, and it had been too late.

“You knew he might kill Tim,” the therapist says.

“Yeah.”

“You didn’t know what he was actually going to do.”

“No.”

She hadn’t—people—other people—hadn’t felt like people, in that time. Everything outside herself felt so far away.

“How long had you been off your meds?” the therapist asks.

“Since the last time we broke out of Arkham. Maybe—maybe six months?”

She’d felt—she’d felt—when he died. She knows he didn’t have a drop of magic in him, but it felt like a spell breaking. She hadn’t been—she hadn’t been okay, hadn’t been anywhere near okay, but it had shocked her out of whatever sort of episode she was having, which shouldn’t even be a thing, but it—

No, it wasn’t him dying. Not really. It was everything, with Tim.

“Why didn’t you stop him?” the therapist asks.

“I was scared.” She was scared. She was selfish. She was evil. He was a child, and he was suffering, and she was scared.

“What were you, personally, doing with Tim during that time?”

“I bandaged him up, after—after—when the Joker took a break. I was—he wanted us to be a family, and I knew—I knew—but I didn’t think it would hurt, to try to act like a mom. I wanted to—I wanted to—and I distracted him. When I could. That’s how the baby happened.”

“Did you actively participate in torturing Tim?”

“That doesn’t make it okay! I was there. I was complicit. I didn’t stop it.”

“You’re right. It’s not okay. But it sounds like, despite being there and complicit, you were doing things to help and protect him. You were the closest thing he had to safety while he was being tortured. Do you see why he feels safe with you? Attached to you?”

“But he shouldn’t.”

“Probably not. But this is what we have to work with. There’s nowhere else for him to go, so you need to make him feel as safe as possible with you.”

“So I hurt him, and I hurt him, and I hurt him, and now I get to just…be his mom?”

“Unless you have a better solution.”

Harley nods. “Then I have to be the best damn mom I can be. For both of them.”

Chapter Text

Harley’s gone. She’s gone all the time, lately—work and baby doctors and brain doctors. He puts down the puzzle toy he’s been working on, and shuffles across the hall. Paula opens the door when he knocks.

“Tim! Are you okay?”

He nods, and she looks surprised.

“Hm. Your mom has an appointment today, doesn’t she? You lonely over there?”

He nods again.

“You go sit on the couch, honey. I’ll make us some tea, and then tell you what those twins in Betty’s class have been up to.”

-

She comes home, and the apartment is empty, and the door is open.

There’s no signs of struggle, but depending on who—on what—she isn't sure how much he's able to struggle, or if he cares enough to try.

They’ve gone over the plan so many times. If someone comes to the house, he’s supposed to go to the Methodist church, because it’s right across the street, and they’ve never been there before so no one would think to look there, and no one likes to make a scene in a church. If she doesn’t come for him in six hours, he’s supposed to go to their therapy office, since it’s only three blocks away, and find her therapist, because she actually talks to her therapist, so she knows more than Tim’s therapist. She knows if Tim shows up without her something’s wrong, she said she would hide him. They had a plan.

“Holly? You home?”

It’s Paula, standing in the still open door.

“Paula, I—Tim is—Tim is—”

“Tim’s asleep on my couch. He came over about an hour ago—he was feeling a little lonely.”

“He’s—he’s okay?”

“He’s just fine. Why don’t you come and see? Maybe you could stay for dinner?”

“You don’t—you don’t have to—” Paula’s always feeding them, and it makes her feel guilty. She doesn’t know she’s feeding a supervillain.

“Of course I don’t have to. But maybe I’m feeling a little lonely, too. Betty’s supervising an overnight field trip.”

Harley goes across the hall.

Tim’s on the couch, just like Paula said, asleep and perfectly safe. Harley sits down beside him. She’s so tired. She’s always so tired.

-

Someone is shaking him. He makes a sound—not a word, he may be half asleep but he knows better than to talk, just a protesting sound in the back of his throat.

“I know, honey, I’m sorry. But it’s late. We need to head home. You slept right through supper; Paula packed up some leftovers for you.”

Harley. He sits up. He never—they didn’t talk about—she said he should come to Paula if anything was wrong, but nothing was wrong, not really.

“Come on, kiddo,” she says. “Time to get out of Paula’s hair.”

He follows her home.

“Did you have a good day today?” she asks.

He nods, even though it wasn’t—he didn’t have a bad day. But he mostly just slept. He isn't sure if that counts as good.

“Good. I’m glad. You know you can go see Paula whenever you like as long as you’re not bothering her, yeah?”

He didn’t know that, but he nods anyway.

“I need to know when you’re over there, though, okay? I was worried when I got home and you were gone. Do you think maybe you could leave me a note?”

He doesn’t answer. He—he doesn’t know.

He knows he's allowed to talk again. He knows Harley wants him to, even. But he—he can’t. He can nod, and he can shake his head, and sometimes he can shrug, but writing a note—writing a note is talking, basically, just without his mouth, and he could do it when the doctor made him, but that wasn’t—he doesn’t know.

“Okay,” Harley says. “How about this?”

She gets a piece of paper, and writes “Across the hall” in big letters, and sets it on the counter.

“If you want to go over to Paula’s, you just take this magnet, here, and you stick this note on the fridge for me. And I wrote the note, so it’s okay, right?”

He nods.

“You can do that for me? You can stick the note on the fridge before you go across the hall?”

He nods again.

“Okay. Thank you, Tim. Do you want your supper?”

-

Harley doesn’t…enjoy her job, exactly, but it’s all right. Much less stressful than working at Arkham, or working as a glorified evil henchman. She hasn’t gotten a single death threat since she started.

It’s tedious, repetitive, but easy enough, and her coworkers are friendly but not too friendly. She doesn’t think any of them have recognized her. At least, they haven’t said anything. But she’s a few months out now from being big news, and they may know she has a sick kid named Tim at home, but they’ve never seen them standing side by side to make the connection.

She doesn’t let herself talk to them too much. The more she says the more she might give away, and she’s not going to lose everything to office gossip.

Tim’s note is on the fridge when she gets home. Good. That’s been happening a lot more over the last couple weeks. Any willing engagement with someone other than her is something to celebrate, even if that engagement just looks like sitting silently on someone else’s couch instead of hers.

“Come in,” Paula calls when she knocks. “It’s unlocked.”

Harley finds them sitting at a table, which is an improvement from the couch.

“We’re just finishing up a card game,” Paula tells her. “Tim’s winning. Should we deal you in for the next round?”

-

“How are you doing today, Tim?” the therapist asks.

Tim doesn’t answer; he never does.

“Did you do anything interesting this week?”

Harley waits the usual amount of time for an answer that isn't coming before telling her, “Tim played some card games with our neighbor the other day.”

“Oh? Did you have fun?”

Tim glances at Harley. Harley nods encouragingly. Tim looks back at the therapist and nods too, which is the highest level of communication they can ever hope to achieve in therapy.

Harley doesn’t know how the therapist can manage such endless patience, but she’s grateful for it.

Everything would just be so much easier if he could communicate. School, for example—all his doctors agree they shouldn’t even consider school until he can manage something. Where they are now—no speaking, no writing, no sign, occasional head and shoulder movements only for people he knows pretty well, and even then usually only with prodding from Harley—putting him in a new environment with hundreds of strangers is pretty much guaranteed to be a disaster.

“How’s the physical therapy going?” the therapist asks Harley when it becomes clear she’s not getting anything else out of Tim about the card game.

“Better, I think. We’ve been able to take longer walks without him getting so shaky and worn out.”

“That’s good. Do you like walking, Tim?”

He doesn’t answer. It’s so hard to get anything out of him, outside the apartment.

At least it’s getting better at home. She feels less like she’s being haunted by past mistakes, and more like she’s taking care of an actual person.

He's not very expressive—which might be her fault, might be what she made Greeley do to his face—but she’s getting better at reading him. And he’s getting better at shrugging and shaking his head, instead of just nodding—better at disagreeing. She can get him to make choices by pointing at one of the options, now, though he’ll only do that for her, not anyone else. He beat her at that card game, which she doesn’t think he would have dared to, a few months ago. Last time they went to the library he wandered a little farther away from her, pulled a few books off the shelves and looked at them.

And she knows he's making choices, having preferences, when she’s not around. Knows he’s choosing which games to play and which videos to watch and which audiobooks to listen to on his tablet. It’s getting better. She knows it’s getting better.

She also knows that she’s a disaster, and that she’s hurt him before, and it would be really nice if he could actually engage with his therapist so his therapist could agree with her that he’s getting better.

Chapter Text

“Library day,” Harley announces after breakfast. “Do you want to come along?”

Tim nods. He likes leaving the apartment for something other than doctor appointments and physical therapist-mandated walks around the block.

Harley likes to use the computer at the library, which he doesn’t really understand. She checks the news and her bank account usually—those seem like things she could just do on his tablet.

Maybe he’s not paying enough attention. Maybe she’s doing other, Harley Quinn things she doesn’t want linked to Paula’s IP address.

Maybe that possibility should—bother him?

He doesn’t have the energy for that.

“Walk or bus?” Harley asks him.

He thinks about it. It’s not a very far walk, but sometimes it’s too far, on days when he feels extra bad. He thinks he can walk, today.

“Walk?” Harley asks again. She likes to do it like that—give him both options, give him a minute to think, and then give him the options separately so he can nod or shake his head.

He nods.

“All right. Do you need anything before we go?”

He shakes his head. They go.

He likes leaving the apartment. But also he kind of hates it? There’s so—they’re out in the open, and anything could happen, anyone could—could—

But it’s so nice to be in the sun, and their apartment is so small, and it’s—

But he doesn’t like people seeing him. He feels weird and wrong and twisted up all crooked in skin that doesn’t fit right, and he can’t—he can’t—

He can’t even think about it, because if he thinks about one bad thing, all the others come rushing in, and it’s too—it’s too much. He can’t.

“Okay, Timmy?” Harley asks, and he nods.

They get to the library, and Harley goes to the computer.

“Do you want to use the computer?” she offers, because she has more questions for him all the time, and he—and he—

He shakes his head.

“Okay. Why don’t you see if you can find any interesting books?”

He wanders off. He’s trying—he’s trying going farther, a little. Trying to not stick right next to her all the time. Because he’s—he’s allowed to. It makes him nervous still, and he can’t—he can’t tell why.

Is he nervous because he doesn’t like being away from her, because he feels safer when he’s close to her, because he knows she’ll protect him if anything happens? Or is he nervous because he doesn’t want to get in trouble with her?

But he won’t get in trouble. She wants him to go off on his own. She wants him to talk.

But he can’t. He can’t.

It’s safe. It’s over. He’s gone. Dead. He can never—he can never—and even if he did, Harley wouldn’t let him.

But she did, before.

But she wouldn’t now. She wouldn’t. She wouldn’t.

He feels itchy and bad and too far away, and he hurries back to the computer area, sliding up into Harley’s space until their shoulders bump together.

“Hey, Timmy. You okay?”

He doesn’t answer. She frowns, and he should—he should nod, but he—but he—

“Hey, honey. It’s okay. It’s okay. Why don’t you just sit here with me, yeah? I’m almost done with this, and then we can go look for some books together. Okay?”

Okay. Okay. He can—he can do that, that’s okay.

She keeps one arm around him while she uses the other for her computer stuff, and he relaxes, slowly. She wouldn’t—she would—Harley takes care of him. She did even when they were—and after he—after he—she could have just—but she kept taking care of him. And everyone else is—there’s no one else to—he doesn’t know what would have happened to him, if she hadn’t. Arkham, maybe.

He sort of—drifts, for a while. He drifts a lot. It’s easier.

“Timmy, honey? Junior?”

Oh. She’s probably been trying to get his attention for a while—she only used Junior if he doesn’t react to Tim. He straightens up slowly.

“You wanna look for any specific kinds of books today?”

He doesn’t.

“Okay. I was thinking maybe I’d like to see the children’s section. I know she’ll be too little for it to matter, at first, but I don’t know anything about little kid books. Should start prepping now, yeah? What books did you like when you were little? I remember my mom read me this one where a guy adopted a bunch of cats and they all ate each other. And this other one where a guy had a whole bunch of hats that got stolen by monkeys. Oh, and this one where a guy made so much spaghetti it took over the whole town. Did you ever read that one? I liked that one.”

Harley goes to the children’s section, sits on the floor, and starts pulling books off shelves. Tim sits down next to her.

“Here, look at this one. It’s about crayons.”

She drops it in his lap, and he looks down at the page she’s got it opened to, and—

Oh. Oh.

He reads a few pages. He sets it aside and grabs another book from Harley’s pile, reads a few pages of that, too. It’s—it’s easy.

“Hey, look at that,” Harley says. “Your doctor was right.”

He looks up at her.

“Do you remember that conversation?” she asks.

He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t remember. He doesn’t always really listen to the doctors. Usually if they say something important, Harley gets his attention and makes them say it again.

“She said with the head trauma, maybe it would be a little easier for you to read simpler books.”

Tim frowns. He doesn’t like that. He can—he can read. They didn’t break his brain so much he doesn’t know how to read anymore. It just—makes his head hurt. So he doesn’t, unless he has a good reason to.

“Head trauma changes how you process things, Tim. It doesn’t mean—it doesn’t mean your brain doesn’t work as well as it used to, it just means it works differently, and we need to learn how to work with it. You’ve been listening to audiobooks, right?”

He nods. She’s the one who downloaded the app onto his tablet, and connected it to the library account.

“And are you understanding them?”

He nods again.

“So it’s not a comprehension issue. We just have to figure out what the issue is.”

Tim frowns again. He thinks it’s—it’s not the actual words on the page. It’s not that the words in the picture books are smaller or easier. It’s that there’s less of them on the page, more spread out. It’s not as overwhelming.

He doesn’t know how to explain that to Harley.

Well, he does. Out loud, with words. But he—he can’t.

“You have an idea, don’t you?” Harley asks, because she’s getting really good at reading him.

It makes things easier, how well she can read him. But it’s scary, too.

“Can we try a project?”

He shrugs.

“Can you maybe pick out some books that seem easy, and some that seem hard? And then maybe I can get an idea what you’re working with, too.”

Okay. He can—he can do that. He nods.

“Awesome. While you do that, I’m gonna see if I can find that book where a bunch of animals move into a mitten.”

It doesn’t take him long to find some picture books that have big walls of text on one side of the page and big illustrations on the other. He puts those ones in Harley’s hard pile, and the ones that only have a sentence or two per page in her easy pile.

“Big blocks of words. Too much going on all in one place. Yeah? That’s what you’re having trouble with?”

He nods.

“Okay! We can work with that. I’ll tell your doctor about it, yeah? Are you ready to go home? Do you want to check anything out?”

He shakes his head. All these books are easier to read, but that doesn’t mean they’re very interesting.

“Bus home, I think. You look tired, and I feel like shit. Being pregnant sucks. Never get pregnant, Tim.”

Since Tim isn't actually capable of getting pregnant, he doesn’t bother acknowledging this. They go out to the bus stop; it takes a while for the one they want to come. Harley is hot, so she stays in the shade, under the little roof, and Tim goes to sit on the ground a few feet away, where the sun is shining.

Chapter Text

Paula knocks on the door at her usual time, and allows a few minutes for Tim to make his way to the door.

He doesn’t. She knocks again.

“Tim? You okay in there?”

Nothing.

“I’m coming in, okay?”

There’s no sign of Tim in the main living area. She finds him in the bedroom, and—oh, he’s been sick. It looks like the mess is all on the floor, at least.

“Tim? You awake, hon?”

He opens his eyes and blinks at her, once, twice.

“Let’s get you up, okay? You can come lay down at my place, watch some TV on the big screen, and we’ll see about getting some food in you.”

Tim drags himself out of bed slowly and stumbles after her, making a brief detour to the kitchen to stick something on the fridge.

“You just lay down on the couch. I’ll get you some ginger ale and saltines.”

-

Tim wakes up to Harley’s voice, too loud, saying something about the hospital.

“It’s just a stomach bug,” someone else says. Not Paula. Paula’s sister? Betty? “Half the school had it last week.”

“Does he have any autoimmune issues?” Paula asks. “Anything that puts him at higher risk with things like this?”

“I don’t think so,” Harley says.

“Is this the first time he’s been sick since…”

She trails off, and Tim doesn’t hear the answer. The couch dips, and Harley is sitting next to him.

“You awake, Timmy? How you feeling?”

Bad. He’s feeling bad.

“He’s kept the ginger ale down for a couple hours now,” Paula says from somewhere behind them. “If you want to take him to the hospital I’ll drive you, but I think you should wait until morning, at least.”

“Yeah,” Harley says, “okay. You ready to go back home, Timmy? We’ll try crackers again, maybe, and then get you back to bed. Paula cleaned everything up for us. Good thing I’m not working tomorrow.”

He lets her herd him back across the hall, and then falls back asleep before she can get the crackers.

-

She’s so bad at this. She doesn’t even know what to do about the stomach flu—the neighbors had to walk her through it. When did he start getting sick? Did she miss something last night, or before she went to work this morning?

She’s not waking him in the mornings for breakfast anymore, since he’ll usually feed himself if she reminds him the night before, and did she—did she even check on him before she left today?

She can’t even take care of one kid right. What is she going to do with a second one? A brand new, tiny one, completely dependent on her?

She has no idea what she’s doing. She’s a clinically insane former supervillain, and she’s trying to parent a kid she fucking tortured, and she doesn’t—she doesn’t—

The baby kicks—again, she’s been so kicky lately—and Harley sits down.

She didn’t even clean up the puke herself. She couldn’t even get him to eat the stupid crackers. She’s useless.

What’ll she do if the baby gets sick? What do you even do with a sick baby? She can’t give crackers and ginger ale to a newborn.

What if Paula and Betty are wrong, and Tim’s throwing up because of something worse, because of something the Joker did? What if he’s bleeding internally? What if he hit his head after she left for work and he’s throwing up because he has a concussion? The last thing Tim needs right now is more head trauma.

Maybe she should have Paula take them to the hospital, just in case.

No, if she goes to the emergency room because her teenager’s had the stomach flu for twelve hours, they’re gonna realize she’s a completely clueless, incompetent parent, and they’ll take Tim away, and then Lex Luthor’ll find him, and she’ll—and she’ll—

She needs to calm down.

She could take another pill.

She’s not due for another pill yet. She’s not going to start abusing her meds, on top of all the other things wrong with her. She just needs—she needs—

She needs to punch something, or shoot something, but she can’t.

She paces, back and forth, back and forth, across the apartment, and tries to calm down.

She falls asleep on the couch, and wakes up to Tim tucked into her side, asleep, a little flushed, maybe, but not hot-hot, not dangerous fever hot, and she needs to get some water in him, and check if he threw up in his bucket in the night, and—mom things. There’s other mom things she should do, probably, for a sick kid, right?

Tim shifts closer, and she decides the best mom thing she can do, for now, is not wake her sick, sleeping kid by getting up when he’s lying on her.

-

“Holly?”

“Yeah?” she asks, absently, attention mostly on the paper in front of her.

Then it registers that Tim’s just spoken—he’s the only other person in the apartment.

Then it registers that he didn’t say Holly, he said Harley, speech garbled by—several different factors, actually. Which is part of why she chose a false name that sounded as much like Harley as possible.

She turns slowly, carefully, to face him. He hasn’t spoken in nearly six months. She doesn’t want to—to spook him, or anything.

He’s sitting cross-legged on the floor in a little patch of sunlight, tablet in his lap. He’s looking at her expectantly. He doesn’t seem aware that he's done anything remarkable.

“Everything okay?” she asks.

He stares at her steadily, waiting, until she decides he’s not going to spook, probably, and makes her way slowly across the room to join him on the floor.

He hands her the tablet, and she reads the headline: “Nightwing Found!”

“Dick, “ he says, his second word in six months. “He’s—he’s live.”

She reads the article. Out loud, because she knows Tim struggles with focus on large blocks of text.

Apparently, Nightwing and Starfire have been travelling in space for the last several months. Returning home to find that Nightwing no longer has a secret identity, and that they’re both wanted criminals under the new Anti-Vigilante Act, they’ve chosen not to land or enter American air space, but have given an interview via phone.

They left the planet before Tim was kidnapped. They were knocked off course and returned home much later than originally planned.

Dick Grayson is mourning Bruce Wayne’s death. He’s distressed that there are no reports on the whereabouts of Alfred Pennyworth following the destruction of Wayne Manor. He’s shocked and disturbed by the actions of Lex Luthor in his absence, and disturbed but not shocked by the actions of the Joker. He’s glad the Joker is dead. The deaths of Batman and the Joker are in no way Tim Drake’s fault. No, he doesn’t know where Tim is, but he wouldn’t tell a journalist if he did, “Not even you, Lois.”

They have no intention of landing on US soil, though Dick would like to point out that he has committed zero vigilante acts on-planet since before the Anti-Vigilante Act was passed, and should therefore be legally in the clear.

There’s more. It’s a long interview, mostly between Dick Grayson and Lois Lane, with occasional comments from Starfire.

“Did you know he was off planet?” Harley asks Tim.

He frowns. “Can’t—can’t remember. Everything—fuzzy. Round that time.”

“Okay. Do you want to try to contact him?”

She doesn’t want to lose Tim. But Nightwing, a mentally stable adult who’s never been a supervillain and never stood by while Tim was being tortured, is undoubtedly a better choice of caretaker than her.

She expects Tim’s face to go careful, the way it does when he’s not sure of the right answer, or not sure she’ll like it. Instead he goes panicky, eyes widening and breath quickening as he shakes his head.

“Okay,” she says, touching his knee in a way she hopes is reassuring. “Okay, we don’t have to. We won’t if you don’t want to.”

“Promise?” he asks, and wow, he’s really gone from zero to sixty on the talking thing.

“I promise.”

Tim scoots closer to her, and she tries wrapping an arm around his shoulder. He leans in. They sit there together for a while, until the sunny spot moves away.

“Tim,” she says.

He doesn’t answer, but she feels his head move, knows he’s looking up at her.

“Do you want to talk about why you don’t want to contact Nightwing?”

She can feel him tensing, but he doesn’t answer. She doesn’t push.

“Okay. Dinnertime, I think.”

-

“It was nice to hear your voice today,” she says.

Tim continues pushing his food around the plate. He doesn’t look up.

“Do you think you might keep talking?”

“Feels—weird.”

“Yeah? Well, it’s been a long time. We could call your neurologist, get a speech therapy referral.”

He’s silent for long enough she’s sure he won’t answer.

“Kay,” he says, finally.

“Great! I’ll call in the morning.”

Chapter Text

It becomes clear, with the speech therapist, that Tim’s resumed ability to speak doesn’t extend past Harley. Or, at least, doesn’t extend as far as the speech therapist. He looks at Harley with big, frightened eyes, and can’t make himself so much as nod until she specifically tells him to.

“It’s okay,” she says when they get back to the apartment. “We’ll keep working on it. There’s no rush.”

He nods.

-

Sometimes—sometimes he can talk for Harley. Not always. But it’s—it’s stupid. He’s not just allowed to, she wants him to. And he has now, even. So he doesn’t—he doesn’t understand why he can’t.

When she’s at work, he sits on his bed and tries to force the words out, and he knows no one can even hear him, so he definitely can’t get in trouble for it, but they won’t—they won’t come out.

He watches videos online and mouths along the lines with the characters, and his throat refuses to make sounds.

And he’s been—he’s been fine without talking for—for months now—it doesn’t even—it’s not even—

If he just focuses on this, he doesn’t have to think about Dick.

He—he—he—Bruce is—Tim was—he ki—

He bites his lip, and stops trying not to think, and tries to not cry, instead.

He fails.

Dick is—Dick was—Dick got lost in space and came back to a world where—a world where—

Bruce is gone.

Mom and Dad are gone.

It’s all Tim’s fault.

“Tim?” Paula calls from the doorway. “You in here, hon? I’ve got lunch.”

He wipes his eyes and forces himself to stand and walk out of the bedroom.

“Oh, Tim,” she says when he joins her in the kitchen.

He doesn’t answer, because he can’t.

“Just sandwiches today,” she says. “I’m due for a grocery run.”

He nods.

“Would you like me to stay, or do you want to be alone for a bit?” she asks.

He shrugs.

“Okay. I’m going to sit on the couch and read my book, and you just go on back to the bedroom if you need some space.”

He stays in the kitchen for a while before grabbing his tablet and slinking over to join her on the couch. She must be worried, because she stays all the way until Harley comes home. He sinks into the corner and eavesdrops on them, talking quietly in the kitchen.

“—been crying when I came over for lunch.”

“Do you know what upset him?”

“I have no idea. He was in the bedroom.”

He stops listening. Paula leaves, and Harley comes to sit with him.

“Are you feeling okay?”

He nods.

“Did something happen this morning?”

He shrugs.

“Okay. I’m going to get supper started—let me know if you want to talk about it.”

“Okay,” he whispers, and she smiles, big but not clown-scary, like she always does when he says something.

-

There's a small, hesitant knock on Paula's door, and she opens it to find Tim. It's a little later in the day than he usually comes over.

"Everything okay?" she checks, not expecting an answer, as she steps aside to let him in.

"Mom's late," he says.

She stares at him for a moment, and he looks down, shuffling his feet a little and tugging on the sleeve of his sweatshirt.

"She hasn't come home yet?"

He shakes his head without looking up at her.

"Okay, well, I bet she just missed her bus, and had to wait around for the next one. How about we give her another twenty minutes, and if she's not back by then, we can go looking."

Tim glances up at her, then down again. He nods slowly.

Holly shows up ten minutes later.

"I want you to use my car," Paula says, as Tim comes over and attaches himself to her.

"What?"

"You were late today. Tim was worried. You're in your third trimester. I don't like the idea of you being alone on the other side of town, reliant on the bus schedule. I don't even use my car, most days, and the school year is almost over, so we'll have Betty's free, too."

Holly hesitates.

"It would make Tim and I both worry less. You can tell me your work and appointment schedule, so we can plan, and then you let me know if you need to make a grocery run or something."

"Okay," she says. "Thank you. I'm sorry I worried you, Timmy."

"Tim spoke to me today," Paula says.

Holly lights up. "Did he? Did you? That's great, Tim!"

He shrugs.

"We should celebrate. I'll get you a cupcake next time I go out."

-

Tim opens up Lois' interview with Dick again. He doesn't bother reading it, just looks at the photos. One current selfie of Dick and Kory, because they couldn't do an in-person interview with a photographer and everything, and a few older pictures.

He tries to remember the last time he saw Dick. There was—there was a wedding.

Dick and Kory. Dick and Kory got married, and they went on an outer space honeymoon, and that's why—that's why Dick wasn't there.

He remembers. He's pretty sure he remembers. It was—it was a superhero wedding, and they were going to do the civilian one later, so no one would make the connection. Back then before Tim gave away Dick's secret identity.

They didn't tell Lois, though, in the interview. Lois already knows, she was at the wedding. But the interview didn't mention it.

Dick's afraid to come home. Because of Lex. He's probably—he's probably waiting to see what Lex does, next. Kory's a princess, which means that Dick is a prince now, and he has dual United States/Tamaranean citizenship, if they filed everything properly on Tamaran like they were supposed to. Probably Dick's hanging onto that information until the right time, depending on what Lex does next.

It was a really nice wedding. Everyone was there, wearing weird combinations of wedding outfits and superhero costumes. Barbara came, and it was the first time she'd been at a superhero thing since—since—

He really hopes Barbara's okay. There were riots in Gotham, weren't there? He doesn't know how to find out what happened to Barbara.

Dick got married. He got married, and went on his honeymoon, and everything was supposed to be happy, but he came home to find his dad dead and his grandpa missing and his childhood home burned down, and his secret identity is gone and he's a criminal and it's all Tim's fault. Everything is Tim's fault.

He wants to scream. He wants to scream and cry and break things, but he can't, he can't, because he already broke so many things, already broke all the most important things, and he knows Harley doesn't have a lot of money, and the baby is coming soon, and they've probably had noise complaints already from his screaming nightmares.

He wants to go home. He wants to go home, but he can't, ever, because it's gone, because everything is ruined and it's all his fault, and all he has left is Harley, and the least he can do is try not to ruin everything for her, too.

-

The therapist talks, and Harley talks, and Tim looks out the window and doesn't listen.

He's so tired. So tired. He doesn't have the energy for the therapist right now.

Harley's therapist knows who they really are, and so does his neurotrauma specialist, but his therapist doesn't. He thinks maybe Harley's waiting for him to tell her himself? But that's not happening.

"Tim, honey? What do you think about that?"

He turns to look at Harley. He has no idea what she's talking about.

"We were wondering if maybe we should try private therapy again," she says.

"No," he says quickly. He doesn't want to be alone with the therapist.

"Can you explain why?" Harley asks him.

He shakes his head. "It's—bad. Not safe."

“Tim,” she says.

“It’s okay,” the therapist says. “Maybe the two of you would like to discuss it more in private? Thank you for talking to us, Tim.”

He feels a horrible jolt of panic, electricity running up and down his spine, when it registers that he talked to the therapist, but it’s—it’s okay. He’s allowed to talk to the therapist. Harley wants him to talk to the therapist. She wants him to talk to the therapist alone, really, and he doesn’t—he doesn’t—he can’t. The other therapist wanted to separate them. He didn’t think Tim was safe with Harley.

He—he wasn’t—she did—

But he’s safe with Harley now. He can’t be safe without her.

“Tim, honey. Tim. It’s okay. It’s okay. You did good. You did so good.”

He looks up at her. “Home?”

“Sure, let’s go home. We’ll try again next week.”

Chapter Text

It’s getting better. She thinks. He’s talking more around the apartment, and he’ll answer very easy questions for his doctor and his physical therapist, though he remains very wary of the other therapist, and she still doesn’t understand why. He thanked a lady at the grocery store the other day.

He wants to see the speech therapist again, because he feels like his voice sounds weird—he has some articulation issues that seem pretty mild, all things considered, but she can tell it bothers him—but he says there’s no point yet. He told her he doesn’t want to go back until he thinks he can actually talk to her, more than a few words.

He’s getting better at telling her what he wants. Speech therapy, but not yet. Hard boiled eggs, not scrambled. Soup for lunch, not mac and cheese. What movie he wants to watch with her before bed, when he wants to sleep in longer, what groceries he thinks they should buy. Nothing huge, but all little signs that he feels more comfortable.

And the tablet. The tablet. He’s gotten a lot more comfortable listening to and watching things while she’s in the apartment, instead of just when she goes to work and he's alone.

Dick Grayson's given a video interview. Tim's listened to it so many times Harley has large chunks of it memorized.

"At the time of my departure, the Justice League's activities were authorized by both the United States and the United Nations. As a documented associate of founding member Batman, my activities were permitted under subsection thirty six of our contract. I have not set foot in the United States or participated in any vigilante activities since the laws permitting said activities were repealed. Any attempts by President Luthor to arrest me are unlawful and a gross abuse of power."

"The damage caused by my last fight in New York was in the process of being repaired when I left. The repairs were funded by the Justice League, which was funded by Bruce Wayne, whose assets were illegally seized after his death. The repairs stopped when the money stopped. I would love to help personally with repairs, but my assets were also illegally seized, and I can't set foot in the country without risking that unlawful arrest. If Lex is so concerned about the damages, maybe he should put his money where his mouth is. He is still a billionaire, right?"

"Bruce never made Tim fight the Joker. Bruce never let Tim fight the Joker. This was not some sort of fight gone wrong. Tim was kidnapped and tortured. Did the Joker target him specifically because he was Robin? Probably. But the Joker was one of the most dangerous criminals in history. He kidnapped, tortured, and murdered dozens of people. What happened was not Bruce's fault. It was not Tim's fault. It was the Joker's."

"No, Tim's parents didn't know he was Robin. No, I'm not defending Bruce's choice to let a minor fight crime without permission from his guardians. But Tim went out to fight crime multiple times without training or permission from Bruce. He was going to do it either way. Bruce trained and supervised him so that he could survive."

"Nothing that happened here was Tim's fault. Tim is not somehow culpable in his own kidnapping because he happened to be wearing a domino mask at the time. Lex Luthor's implication that Tim is partially to blame for what happened, by virtue of his vigilante work, is frankly disgusting. Tim is a fourteen year old boy, and he was tortured, and Lex's clearly documented plan to rehabilitate him by parading him in front of the media to further his political agenda certainly doesn't give him the moral high ground here."

"Are you sure you don't want to talk to him?" Harley asks, catching him before he restarts the video.

Tim shakes his head.

"Okay," she says, and he restarts the video. She should probably look into getting him some headphones. Especially with the baby coming.

-

She misses Bud and Lou so much. She always does—it’s her least favorite part of being sent back to Arkham. But this time—this time it’s forever. You can’t live in hiding with hyenas.

She misses their warmth, their softness. Their tongues on her skin. The feeling of their bodies rising and falling under her hands as they breathe.

She should get a pet. Something small, quiet. It wouldn’t be the same, but it would be something.

Not a dog. She and Tim are both always on edge, and the barking would just worsen that.

Maybe a cat.

Maybe a small animal would be beneficial for Tim’s mental health. Something for him to take care of, something to keep him company while she’s out.

If nothing else, it would be good practice for the baby, for her.

“Hey, Tim, honey, what do you think about getting a pet?”

He stares at her for a long, intense moment, like he usually does, before answering.

“What kind?”

“I was thinking maybe a cat?”

He stares at her for another long moment. “What happens to the cat if I’m bad?”

She thinks of the night she gave Tim a pillow and blanket, and the Joker, enraged that Tim’s deep fried brain wouldn’t let him respond fast enough, took them and tore them apart.

She thinks of the day Tim, exhausted, terrified, and in incredible pain, couldn’t keep up with the Joker’s demands, and hurting him worse didn’t help, because he already hurt so much that more hardly made a difference. He’d turned on Harley, instead, hurting her until a frantic Tim had figured out how to listen, because Tim, even pushed well past his limits, was a good kid who never wanted to see someone suffer.

(She’d distracted Joker for a while, after, and convinced herself that what they were doing was his apology for hurting her. She hopes that’s not the time that made her baby.)

He didn't get to keep good things. And others weren't safe from his punishments.

(If you're going to co-parent a pet with a deeply evil man, Harley strongly recommends large, wild animals. He could never take out his anger at Tim, or at her, on the hyenas.)

“Nothing happens to the cat, Tim. I promise.”

“I can—I can pick it?”

“You can pick it.”

“When?”

They should probably take a few days to think about this. She should probably have taken a few days to think about it before mentioning it to Tim. She knows how her spontaneity can come back to bite her.

But how often does Tim seem genuinely excited about something?

“We can do it right now. There’s a shelter three blocks from here. I pass it on the way to work.”

-

“We need one that’s good with kids,” Tim tells the woman at the shelter, speaking in that slow, careful way he does around strangers, hyper-aware of his trauma induced speech issues. And look at that, the cat’s already good for him, and they don’t even have it yet. He’s talking to a new person, voluntarily, when he could have just left it to Harley.

They leave twenty minutes later, Tim carrying a large gray cat, Harley carrying its carrier.

It occurs to her, as they walk home, that there are several factors she didn’t consider. They’ll need food, litter. A litter box. Toys. A scratching post.

No, not a scratching post. The lady said she was declawed. Kept on bringing up how the shelter didn’t do that, how it’s not legal here and she came that way.

Well, maybe she’d still enjoy a scratching post.

Harley doesn’t want to leave the cat unattended in a new place. She also doesn’t want to leave Tim unattended with the new cat—it’s a major change to their environment, and a small, vulnerable change, and she doesn’t know how he is with animals. She should have got the supplies before she got the cat.

It’s fine. She’ll have to borrow Paula’s car to get the supplies, anyway—she can ask her to watch Tim while she’s gone.

The cat is four years old. Gray, with short, but incredibly soft fur. Her eyes are yellow and her nose is pink, and her tongue on Harley’s wrist feels just like Bud and Lou’s, but smaller. The shelter called her Linguini.

“What do you want to name her?” she asks Tim.

“Barbara,” he says. “Barbara Linguini Queen.”

Chapter Text

Barbara Linguini is, Tim thinks, the best thing that has ever happened to him.

She sleeps on his chest all night every night, purring. She sits in his lap for hours. They spend their days moving from sunbeam to sunbeam together, and she licks and licks him with her scratchy tongue, and sometimes they play catch with jingle balls and pom poms. She's always here even when Harley and Paula aren't, and she doesn't want him to do anything like—like talking, or contacting Dick, or being okay, doesn't want anything from him except for more treats and maybe another game with the laser pointer, and he loves her so much.

He doesn't have to be Tim, or Robin, or Junior; he just has to be the person who pets her and cleans the litter box, because pregnant people aren't supposed to clean litter boxes, the lady at the shelter said.

She's so soft. And she only ever looks sad when he doesn't give her enough treats, not when he's just—just being here, and he hates that just looking at him makes Harley so sad, but he can't help it, and it's her own fault anyway for—for—

Harley looks at him sad, and Paula does, and Betty, and all his doctors, and their nurses and receptionists, and the ladies at the library, and he just—he just—he's so tired, and everything is so hard, and Tim doesn't want to make everyone around him sad. But Barbara Linguini makes things feel easier.

-

The cat is really cute, and Tim is visibly happier, and this was such a good idea. She definitely prefers Tim to Harley, which is good, because Tim needs a therapy pet worse than she does, and Harley's about to be very busy with a baby. But she does like Harley, too, and her tongue is actually a lot nicer than a hyena's, and it's great to be able to just pick your pet up when she starts misbehaving.

So. Harley likes the cat, but not nearly as much as she likes watching Tim with the cat.

She finishes washing the dishes, and tries again to decide where to put the crib.

They only have one bedroom. She really wants to be able to put a door between Tim and the baby, because babies scream in the middle of the night, and sleep in the middle of the day. But she doesn't want to kick Tim out of the bedroom—she's taken enough from Tim already. But if she puts the crib in the living room, then they'll have to be super quiet whenever the baby naps, and she won't be able to put a door between the baby and the cat. Which, probably the baby and the cat will be fine, but she does want to have the option to separate them without locking the cat away.

They need more doors.

Maybe she'll just move the crib around through the day. That could work.

The closer they get to the due date, the less sure she is that this is a good idea. Babies are so helpless, and they need so much, and she's going to mess up. She's going to mess up a lot, because messing up is what she does.

She's going to be so small. What if Harley drops her? She hasn't handled a newborn since residency, and she wasn't much good at it then.

She hasn't even assembled the crib yet. She should probably do that now, and figure out how portable it's going to be.

Maybe she doesn't have to hold the baby. Maybe she can put her in a crib or a stroller and just wheel her everywhere, and then there won't be any drop risk.

No, that's stupid. Humans need touch. Especially brand new humans. She knows that. She's just nervous.

The cat walks across the room and twines herself around Harley's legs, purring. Tim follows a moment later, and holds out his tablet silently; today hasn't been a talking day, so far.

"Movie?" Harley asks, and he nods. "Okay, but we have to assemble the crib, after."

-

It's a nightmare. He knows it's a nightmare, but it still hurts, and he doesn't know how to wake up. Don't scream, don't scream, don't scream, he reminds himself. He doesn't know whether screaming in the dream means screaming in real life, too, but he doesn't want to wake half the building again.

The electricity is interrupted by a weirdly pleasant earthquake, and he wakes to Barbara Linguini on his chest, purring. He wraps an arm around her, and rolls over onto his side, and cries. She purrs more, and licks his chin.

He didn't scream, at least, or Harley would be up now.

Barbara Linguini gets sick of being pinned down and having her fur cried on; she wriggles out of his arms and walks away, and he follows her. He doesn't want to sleep anymore.

He doesn't have to think about it when he's awake. He doesn't, ever. Doesn't let himself. It's okay as long as he doesn't have to think.

He knows what happened. What he did. He remembers the sound Bruce made when—

But he can't—he can't—

If he doesn't think it's okay. He doesn't think about before it happened. Doesn't think about anything before the apartment with Harley. (He doesn't really remember getting to the apartment with Harley. Maybe he could if he tried, but remembering more is the opposite of what he wants.)

He can't control what he thinks in his sleep, though.

He puts on his new headphones, and plays Dick's interview again, and doesn't let himself think about why Dick had to give the interview in the first place. Barbara Linguini sits in his lap and purrs.

-

She finds Tim asleep on the couch, his tablet on the floor, open to the page for Dick Grayson's interview.

He's watched it at least a hundred times. Does someone monitor things like how many times something is viewed on the same device? Can Lex Luthor use Tim's internet history to find them?

Can Dick Grayson use Tim's internet history to find them?

Would it be good or bad, if he did?

She can’t decide.

Tim wakes up not much later, and they have pancakes for breakfast.

Harley really needs to look into getting a real table and chairs. Sitting on the floor to eat off the coffee table isn't nearly as comfortable as it was a few months ago, and she doesn't know where to put the high chair.

She has to remove Barbara Linguini from the table six times over breakfast. Why does a cat even want pancakes? She thought cats wanted meat, and fish, and milk. Barbara Linguini wants anything she can get her paws on.

She waits until the pancakes are done, and the cat is licking syrup off their plates, to say, “I think we should talk about contacting Dick Grayson.”

Tim goes pale and panicky immediately. He shakes his head, and has to open and close his mouth a few times before he can get any words out. Harley starts going to him immediately, but he’s on the other side of the table, squished between the table and the couch, and they’re sitting on the floor, and just—

“I'll—I'll be good,” he manages to get out just as she’s shoving the table away to make more room for herself beside him. “I'll be better. I'm talking like you wanted, and I'm waking you up less at night, and I'll—you'll need help, with the baby, when you go back to work. You need me to watch the baby.”

"I'm not trying to get rid of you, Tim. I don't want to get rid of you. But Dick is your family, and he's sane, and he's not technically on the run, and he's never—never hurt you like I have."

"I can't go back to Dick."

“Why not?”

“I killed his dad.”

Well, that answers the question she was never going to actually ask, about whether he actually remembered what happened that night, after all the electricity to his brain. “That wasn’t your fault, honey.”

“But I still did it.”

“He said it wasn’t your fault. In that interview.”

“But I still did it, Harley!”

“Okay.” She wraps an arm around him, feels him relaxing against her. “Okay. We won’t contact Dick.” For now. She’s pretty sure he’ll want to, eventually. She waits until Tim seems calm again before asking, "Can people track your internet history?"

"I'm using a VPN," Tim says, which doesn't tell her anything because she has no idea what a VPN is. "It's not Bat-grade. But someone would have to look to find me. And if I—if I was still—and I went with you willingly, I wouldn't—care. And if I was a prisoner, you wouldn't be letting me watch it. So why would anyone use the views to look for me?"

“All right. That’s good. I’d better clear the table before Barbara Linguini eats any more syrup.”

He doesn't talk for days after that. She can't tell if he's upset with her, or if the whole conversation was just too much.

Chapter Text

Harley'll be having her baby any day now, and she's stressed. She's trying not to act stressed, but Tim can tell, so he's trying to stay out of her way.

He’s stressed too. Because—because—Dick. He’s still trying not to think about it. He can’t think about it, not for long. Longer than he could before, but his brain still sort of runs away if he thinks too much. To protect him, he thinks. He thinks his brain is trying to protect him from the bad things. So. He’s not thinking about it.

But Dick lost Jason while he was off planet. And Tim isn’t like Jason, isn't his brother or anything, but he’s still—he’s still Robin, and he knows Dick cared about him, and he—and he didn’t just go and get himself killed, he brought down the whole operation, and that’s—that’s probably a lot of trauma for Dick, and he—

But Tim can’t. He can’t.

He can handle things, just as long as things are exactly like this, with him and Harley and the apartment and the cat and the baby, and he doesn’t have to talk if it’s hard and he doesn’t have to be alone with anyone but Harley and Paula. He can handle this. But only this.

Well, he hopes he can handle the baby. She’s not here yet. But he thinks it’ll be fine.

-

She’s working on the cake mix when Tim emerges—he had another nightmare last night, which means he spent a good chunk of the late morning and early afternoon sleeping, which she’s been using to her advantage. He stands in the doorway for a while, watching her.

"It's your birthday. Your real one, so don't tell anybody. Officially, you're fourteen for another four months."

"Cake?" Tim asks.

"Yep. I thought I'd make it myself, since it's a special occasion. I've got food coloring—what color frosting do you want?"

He finds the box and dumps it out.

"It's gonna turn out pretty light," she warns him. "If you put in too much food coloring, it tastes weird. So light blue, light green, yellow, or pink. Or we can mix colors."

He hands her the blue bottle.

"All right. Do you want to help? You don't have to if you don't want to."

He nods. Not a morning for talking, clearly. Again. But she got one word out of him, so that's something.

"I bought the frosting—I suck at making my own. So you can mix the cake batter, or you can mix the blue into the frosting."

He chooses the batter, and she gets the pan greased before coloring the frosting. She wrapped his presents while he was still sleeping. She wanted to get him some video games, but consoles are expensive, and they don't even have a TV. She'd settled on some handheld thing, used, and still too expensive. A couple board games they can play with two people, a few new puzzle toys—he always seems to like those—and a couple large print books she's hoping will be easier for him to read. He can set his screen to reformat his ebooks for easier reading, but she thought it would be good for him to not be staring at a screen all day, and if this works she'll get him more. If it doesn't, she'll get him ebook versions of these ones.

He's said one word so far this morning. Which is more words than he said all day yesterday. Or the day before, or the day before that. Which—okay, some days he's more talkative than others, and it wasn't so long ago that he wasn't talking at all. But he's been a lot less clingy, too.

And she's pretty sure it's not normal, like, developmentally, for a fifteen year old boy to be super physically affectionate with a parent or guardian. Or for anyone to be physically affectionate with a woman who kidnapped and tortured him. So maybe this is normal and healthy? But it doesn't feel right. It happened right after she offered to find Dick Grayson again, and he freaked out on her.

No, not right after. He stopped talking right after that conversation, and he kept to himself for the next hour or two, maybe? Which is pretty standard. He was sitting on the floor with the cat, doing something on his tablet. But then he was back to normal for the rest of the day. It wasn't until the next morning that he really started keeping his distance.

She felt like shit the next morning. She was really crabby. Did she snap at him?

She can't even remember if she snapped at him.

But he hasn't seemed skittish or anything. Just keeping his distance a little more than usual.

Tim bumps into her—lightly, to get her attention, which is good on the physical contact front, and bad on the talking front. She checks the batter. "Looks good. Dump it in the pan and I'll set the timer. Presents?"

“Presents,” Tim agrees. He smiles at her, and bounces on his toes a little.

They’re going to be all right, she thinks.

-

Dick wants to go himself. But everyone gangs up on him, insists the first time he sets foot back on planet can't be to commit a crime that was a crime even before Lex took office. They send Donna, instead, because she has diplomatic immunity. Not that she'll get caught, any more than Dick would have. But it adds an extra layer of protection.

There's nothing left at the manor. Alfred destroyed the cave, and the rest was burned down in a riot. They only have what Alfred brought back with him.

Tim's home was looted by whoever killed his parents—no arrests have been made, but Barbara thinks it was some of the Joker henchmen who died in a riot later that week. Janet's wedding ring was found in one of their apartments, anyway. But he could have stolen it from the killer. They'll probably never know for sure.

His home was looted, but Donna is able to find a few things that'll matter, that Tim will want back. She goes to Dick's apartment next. Technically both trips count as breaking and entering, since Lex's illegal seizure of Dick and Bruce's assets screwed up the auto-pay on his rent. And then she steals the wedding ring from the police station, too.

She doesn't get caught, and it doesn't take long. She comes up to Kory's ship for a while, and when she leaves, Dick and Alfred start going through Tim's things.

They haven't found him yet. Barbara's been searching from the beginning, and Dick from the moment he got back, but there's nothing. They could be anywhere in the world.

They don't even know how willingly Tim went. How—how—they know Tim killed Bruce and the Joker. They know it wasn't his fault. But is he still—is he still—

They don't know anything. Not anything that matters.

He should have been here.

Bruce should have reported Tim missing. Not Robin, Tim. Dick doesn't know what he was thinking, and Alfred doesn't seem to, either. Maybe he was just trying to protect his secret identity? From the general public or from the Joker. Superman had been helping, but there is so much lead in Gotham architecture. (Maybe that's why they have such high rates of criminal insanity? Maybe it's lead induced.) And they'd lost two weeks of police involvement.

Tim had gone missing the night after his parents left for a business trip. They'd been gone for a week, and someone had cancelled on the woman who was supposed to be checking on Tim during that time—they're pretty sure Tim did it himself, so he could have more privacy for Robin. They'd gotten home the day after Tim was supposed to be leaving for a week long school trip. Which Bruce had cancelled, for...some reason. Presumably the same reason he'd intercepted reports of his unexcused absences the week before. So the Drakes wouldn't worry? So he could return Tim, unharmed, with his parents none the wiser?

He must have had a good reason. But they don't know. They'll never know.

The Drakes called the police when they went to pick Tim up from the school after the trip and learned he'd never been there. It had taken another week for Bruce to find him, and by then it was too late.

He should have been here. He would have been here, if the engine hadn't done—whatever it did. Not something earth engines did, and not something Kory could find translatable words for. But he wasn't. He was on his fucking honeymoon while his little brother was being tortured.

He's absolutely never going to space again.

They'll find him. They will.

Chapter Text

She’s woken at three in the morning by a knock at her door, and opens it to find Holly in Wonder Woman pajamas.

"Paula? Sorry, I know it's late, but I'm—I think I'm having my baby, now."

"Let me wake up Betty to sit with Tim, and I'll drive you to the hospital."

-

He wakes up in the middle of the night, and Barbara Linguini isn't in his bed, and Harley isn't in her bed. He finds Paula's sister sleeping on the couch, and Barbara Linguini sniffing at her. He can't wake her. He can't talk to Paula's sister—he can barely talk to Paula. Probably—probably Harley is having the baby. She said it would happen any day.

He picks up Barbara Linguini and goes back to bed. The next time he wakes up, he finds Betty in the kitchen, buttering toast.

"Tim, you're up. Paula took your mom to the hospital last night; she was still in labor when I checked in a bit ago, but she's going to call as soon as the baby is born, and then I'll take you over to meet your sister."

Tim manages a nod, and takes the plate she gives him to the coffee table.

He doesn’t like being here with Betty. He’s glad Paula is with Harley, because he trusts Paula, and she shouldn’t be having a baby alone. But he wants Paula to be with him, too.

He doesn’t know Betty. She’s been around more, because it’s summer, and sometimes he goes over there and plays card games with both of them. But she’s not the one who checks on him when Harley’s working. She’s not the one he can talk to sometimes. He doesn’t know her. He doesn’t want her in his space, when Harley and Paula aren’t here. He takes Barbara Linguini back to the bedroom, and waits for Paula to call.

-

She's the most perfect baby Harley's ever seen, even all red and wrinkly.

She doesn't look like anyone. Harley's always hearing people talk about their tiny babies having people's eyes and chins and noses, but she can't tell any of that.

Maybe she never will be able to. The Joker—she knows he wasn't born with features like that. Knows his smile was chemically induced, and the rest of his face stretched and squeezed around it. She doesn't know what he would have looked like, without all that. Maybe Lucy will look exactly like her dad, and no one will ever know.

Lucy J. Quinzel. Well, Lucy J. Queen, on her birth certificate. The J. doesn't stand for anything, except sort of for Joker, because, because—

He was evil. The world is better without him in it.

But she did love him. And he is Lucy's father. And she'll probably never tell her much about him or even show her a picture. She can't tell her his legal name or any medical history from his side of the family, beyond the obvious mental health stuff. That initial is the only thing Lucy will ever have from her dad.

He would have been a terrible parent. She knows that. He might have been better with Lucy than he was with Tim, but not enough better to not be a danger to her. She could never have had Lucy and the Joker. She’d have had to choose, and if she’d chosen Lucy, she’d probably have had to go into hiding, like now. Joker didn’t seem to care much about her half the time, but he sure cared when she tried to move on. She couldn’t have just dumped him. She’d have had to disappear.

Could she have ever dumped him, anyway? They’d been on and off sometimes, and she’d known—she’d known what he was, but somehow she’d always gone back.

He’d been—he’d let her just be—even Pam thought she was crazy and stupid and annoying half the time, and he—

Okay, so he had, too, sometimes. But he’d—

He was evil, and the world is better without him. But she had still loved him. And he’s still Lucy’s dad.

-

She falls asleep, not long after they take Lucy away to get cleaned up. When she wakes up, she has Paula call Tim right away—it's getting late, and he's probably getting anxious. She wants him to be able to meet the baby before visiting hours end.

She gets Lucy back from the nurses, and tries feeding her.

She's so tiny. Smaller even than Barbara Linguini, and not nearly as capable of taking care of herself. What if Harley drops her? What if Harley accidentally sits on her? She's done both of those things to Barbara Linguini, and it's been fine, but it definitely would not be fine with a newborn human baby.

She wishes she could breastfeed. Her psychiatrist said no, and she gets it, but formula is going to be expensive.

Lucy is asleep when Paula lets Tim in, then closes the door behind him so they can have some privacy. He approaches the bed slowly, and stares intently at the baby in her arms for a long moment.

“I can touch her?” Tim asks.

“You can touch her.”

He reaches out slowly, poking her gently in the cheek with one finger.

“Do you want to hold her?”

He shakes his head. “Not—not yet.”

“Okay. Was everything all right while I was gone?”

He nods. “Barbara Linguini misses you.”

“I missed her. And you.”

“You’re coming home now?”

“Not until tomorrow morning. They said at least twenty four hours. And they don’t want me leaving in the middle of the night.”

Tim frowns. “Is Paula coming home now?”

“She should be.”

“Okay. I want Paula to be there.”

“I’ll talk to her before you leave.”

-

Evening is well underway by the time they get back home. They feed Tim at their place, then Paula goes next door to spend the night on Holly's couch. It would be her turn, even if Holly hadn't mentioned Tim wasn't so comfortable around Betty. They're too old to be spending multiple nights on a couch.

She'd considered having Tim sleep on her couch, but he already seems anxious about having his mom away, and she doesn't think sleeping in an unfamiliar location will help any.

She'd considered leaving Tim alone for the night, and checking back in tomorrow morning, but she doesn't want him to wake up alone if he has one of those nightmares that wakes the whole building. And she doesn't want to invade his privacy by sleeping in the same room as him, on Holly's bed.

So. A night on the couch.

Tim doesn't have any screaming nightmares. She gets him some breakfast, then heads back across the hall and leaves him to his own devices until it's time to pick Holly up from the hospital. She goes back to let him know she's headed out.

He's laser focused on his tablet, frowning at the screen and, when she gets close enough to see, zooming in and out of a random photo.

"I'm going to pick up your mom from the hospital," she tells him, and he doesn't react, or even look up. "We'll be back in at hour at the longest. Betty's still across the hall if you need anything.”

-

The first thing Tim says when Harley walks into the apartment with Lucy is, "Robin isn't dead."

She's not sure what he's talking about, but it doesn't sound good. Is he referring to himself in the third person? Why? And why like that? Neither of them has used Robin in months.

He seemed fine at the hospital yesterday.

"What do you mean?" she asks him, carefully.

In response, he turns and runs toward the bedroom. So. That's—

She follows him there, so she can get Lucy out of the car seat and into the crib. Which is in the bedroom, for now. Hopefully she'll stay asleep long enough for Harley to figure out what's up with Tim.

He shoves the tablet at her as soon as her hands are free, and she studies the photo he's pulled up, which doesn't tell her anything. A woman a bit younger than Harley, and two boys, one a few years older than Tim, and one several years younger, sitting at a table outside a cafe. The younger boy looks vaguely familiar. But Harley can't place him. The text below the image says, "New Lex Corp CEO Brings Sons to DC for a Meeting with President Luthor."

She leaves the bedroom, and Tim follows her.

"I don't understand," she says when there's a closed door between them and the sleeping baby.

He points at the older boy. "That's Robin."

"You're Robin."

"That's the last Robin. Jason."

"The one Mr. J killed?"

Tim nods.

"But he's—he's dead. He was blown up. He was blown up when he was your age; he shouldn't be alive and older than you."

"That's him," Tim insists. "I was at Bruce's all the time. I saw a million pictures. It's definitely him, and I think that other kid is Bruce's, too."

Harley looks again, and okay, it's possible that he's familiar because he looks a lot like Bruce Wayne. "Do you know the woman?" she asks.

He shrugs. "The article says she's Talia Head, and Jason and Damian are her sons. I don't recognize her, but I know Bruce used to date a lady named Talia, and her dad was, like, immortal or something because of some magic pit, so maybe—probably that's her, because Damian is definitely related to Bruce, and maybe she put Jason's body in the magic pit so he isn't dead anymore."

All right. Well. She doesn't know anything about magic immortality pits, and she's not totally convinced that kid is the dead Robin. But Tim isn't talking about himself in the third person, and he is talking about his life before the Joker, and without freaking out, which has never happened before. So overall this is probably a good thing.

"Do you want to...do anything about it?" she offers. She doesn't know what they could do. She wasn't sure how she would have contacted Dick Grayson, either; she'd just been hoping Tim could remember an email address or something.

He shakes his head. "I never met any of them."

"Okay. Then I need to set up the baby monitor and make lunch."

"Betty did that. It's in the fridge."

"Okay. Then I need to set up the baby monitor, and you need to set the table for lunch. Were you all right last night while I was gone?"

He nods and heads for the kitchen. Harley goes to find the baby monitor. She wants to sleep for the next ten years, but she's got two kids to look out for now, so. It'll be a long damn time before she even gets to sleep for ten hours.

Paula offered to stay and help more, and Harley kind of wishes she'd let her, because she's really, really sore and tired, and so far out of her element, and now she has this Robin thing to worry about, too.

But she can't get into the habit of relying too much on the neighbors. She's already let them get much closer than she should have, already lets them babysit Tim and make them cookies and lend her a car and drive her to the hospital.

She's a supervillain and a fugitive, trying to hide a child who has the personal attention of the president of the United States and probably most of the superhero community because he killed Batman and the Joker. Being too close to her—to them—is dangerous. And they’re closer to Paula than even to all the doctors who know the truth. She can't risk Paula more than she already is by letting her get even closer.

Besides, she can do this herself. Probably. Maybe. She read books and stuff.

When in doubt, she'll just do the exact opposite of whatever Mr. J woulda done. It's a foolproof strategy. Probably. Maybe.

Okay, she might need more help from Paula. But she can make it until tomorrow, for sure. She has to be able to get through one day alone with her own kids.

She'll get Paula when she needs her. She won't let her kids suffer because she wants to be self-sufficient. But she'll see how far she can get on her own, first. She pulled off a massive museum heist and kept Joker from killing anyone (because there was a surprise third grade field trip to the museum, and they didn't need to see that) on two hours of sleep, a day after she fell (was pushed) out a second story window, twisted her ankle, and bruised her ribs. So she can take care of two kids after most of a night of sleep and fourteen hours of labor.

(Fourteen. Hours. And they said she was lucky it went so fast.)

She's totally got this. Probably. Maybe.

Chapter Text

He doesn't understand the Jason thing. His theory doesn't explain how Jason is definitely older than when he died—if his body's been alive long enough to age that much, there was plenty of time for him to come back to Bruce before he—before Tim—

He doesn't understand it, but he doesn't really need to. The important part is he doesn't need to feel guilty anymore.

Well, he still has plenty of things he's going to keep feeling guilty about. But he was feeling guilty because he thought maybe Dick would be worrying about him, and maybe he would want him back, because he really didn't seem mad like he should be in the interview. But now Dick can have Jason back, which is way better than having Tim back, because Jason is his actual brother back from the dead, and he's never—never—like Tim did. So he doesn't need to worry about it anymore. Dick will be fine.

Lucy is crying. It seems like she's always either crying or sleeping. It's not even that loud; it just makes him anxious because she's upset and he can't do anything about it. He pulls on his noise cancelling headphones and goes to see if Harley needs help. He's not much help with Lucy, yet—she mostly just wants Harley. But Tim can make lunch while Harley's busy with Lucy. He thinks it's about lunch time. He's not very good at keeping track.

Harley’s on maternity leave now, which means she’s around all the time, which is mostly really nice, but also he feels bad about going across the hall, because he’s leaving Harley and making Paula babysit him when she doesn’t really need to. But it’s nice to be away from the baby sometimes. And from Harley’s fussing. She’s worried about him feeling—replaced, or something, he doesn’t know, but he needs some space.

Only after a few days, he thinks maybe she’s fussing too much on purpose? Like she wants him to leave and go play video games on Paula’s couch instead. And then he starts getting anxious. And then she starts fussing more, and then he’s confused and anxious.

If he leaves, he can't bring Barbara Linguini, which sucks.

He hesitates by the door, cat in his arms, console in his pocket.

"Are you going across the hall?" Harley asks.

"Dunno."

"Okay."

"You want me to go," he says, half a question.

Harley sets the baby down and focuses on him. "What's wrong, Tim?"

"You said you didn't want to get rid of me. But you're happy when I leave. You try to make me leave more, sometimes." He hugs Barbara Linguini tighter. "I—I'll be useful, I'll help with the baby. I just don't know how yet."

"I don't want to get rid of you, Tim. Wanting more independence is normal and healthy for a fifteen year old boy, so I'm happy that you're spending more time away from me, and even getting a little annoyed with me, because I think it's a sign you're recovering more from what—what we—what happened. But I'm happy about you getting better, not about you being gone."

"Oh. Okay." He sets Barbara Linguini down and comes back to sit on the couch.

"I'll stop being overbearing on purpose," Harley offers. Tim nods, and pulls out his console. He doesn't want to leave if Harley doesn't want him to. And Barbara Linguini is coming to sit on his feet, so he can't, now, not until she moves.

-

Appointments are difficult. Leaving the house at all is difficult, but they don't have to much aside from the appointments. People keep bringing them food. Paula and Betty, the synagogue, the Lutheran church, her coworkers, that other church they go to for potlucks sometimes. She doesn't have to go grocery shopping, or to work. But they do have lots of appointments.

She can leave Tim alone for her appointments, like she has been, but she's not ready to leave Lucy behind, not even with Paula or Tim. Tim is fifteen, and Paula is great but she's not—family, or anything. Do Paula and Betty even have much more experience with babies than she does? Betty's a teacher, but that's much older kids than Lucy. And she doesn't think either of them have any kids of their own. At least they've never mentioned any, and she hasn't seen any pictures around their apartment.

She's not ready to be away from Lucy. And she can't be skipping any of her appointments; it's more important than ever that she keeps her shit together. So everywhere she goes, the tiny baby and the large amount of stuff the tiny baby might need go too. At least Paula's still letting her borrow the car. Walking all over town with Lucy, or taking her on the bus, would be harder.

At least she gets to show off her adorable baby to a whole lot of people. But it's hard to focus on her therapy when there's a baby in her lap. It's hard for her therapist to focus on her therapy when there's a baby in her lap. Babies are very distracting.

The hardest thing is Tim's therapy appointments. Because he still won't actually engage with his therapist. Months ago, he said five or six words to Harley in the therapist's presence, a couple times he's shaken his head when asked if he had anything to say, and that's the closest they've gotten. He won't answer any other questions with nods or head shakes. He won't write things. He will not engage with the therapist, and he won't tell Harley why.

So right now she's trying to calm down a fussy, tired baby while being the middleman for Tim's therapy.

Maybe she should stop telling the therapist what's actually going on and come up with something so outrageous Tim will be forced to speak up and set the story straight.

Or maybe she shouldn't abuse the trust she's inexplicably earned to communicate on Tim's behalf.

She just really wishes he would talk to the therapist.

She's worried about him. She's always worried about Tim, and it's her own damn fault for letting so many worrying things happen to him.

He seems mostly fine. He has for a while now, aside from the talking thing. Quiet, tired easily, a little shaky still sometimes, and more interested in spending time with her than most boys his age. Which makes sense because the rest of his social circle is his doctors and women in their sixties. But on the other hand it doesn't make any sense at all, because she's not actually his mom, she's the woman who kidnapped and tortured him.

He shouldn't be doing this well.

There was torture. There was electrocution. There was brainwashing. And it's the brainwashing that's really bothering her at this point. Because the Joker was trying to torture and brainwash him into thinking that he and Harley were Tim's mom and dad. And now Tim acts like Harley's his mom. He calls her by her name when they're alone, but he acts like—

And, okay, that was such a relief, for a long time. Because it made her feel less horribly guilty for everything, and made him a lot easier to take care of. But it doesn't seem like he should be keeping that up and just...getting better. She feels like he should have had some sort of big breakdown or freak out or something, more than the nightmares and handful of panic attacks. He shouldn't be worrying about her not wanting to be around him, because he shouldn't want to be around her. He should want to be with Nightwing.

And she doesn't know if it's the brainwashing, or the guilt, or both. But there shouldn't be any guilt, because it wasn't his fault. None of it was his fault. Even if he'd been fully, like, sane and aware of what was going on, it wouldn't have been his fault, because he still would have been a kid and it still would have been under duress. And if he's only sticking with her, the woman who tortured him, because he feels guilty and thinks he doesn't deserve to be with his family, that's a problem. And if he's only sticking with her because he was brainwashed to think of her as his mom, and the brainwashing hasn't broken down as much as she thought, that's a problem too.

She doesn't know how to figure that out. She can't be objective, she's way too close to this. She can't figure out how Tim is actually feeling about things, especially if Tim himself isn't actually sure, because her bias is going to impact her interpretation. She needs a separate therapist. She needs a therapist Tim actually talks to.

Maybe they need to try someone new? But she doesn't think it's actually an issue with this therapist. With the first one, yeah, he did something to upset Tim. But he doesn't seem to dislike this one; he just refuses to talk to her. He's the same way with his other doctors most of the time, and he was with Harley's therapist and psychiatrist when she was still bringing him to her appointments.

Why doesn't he want to talk to the therapist? Is it the same reason he didn't want to talk at all, before? How does she get him past this?

And should she try? Because, okay, even if he's only calm and comfortable and stable because there's lingering brainwashing, or because he's decided and accepted that this is his punishment for what he did, isn't that—isn't that better than him being actively distressed? When she doesn't actually know how to get him to Nightwing?

When she doesn't actually want to send him to Nightwing?

She wants to keep him. He's her kid.

But he's not, really, and he shouldn't feel like he is. Should he?

None of this is a new problem, even. She just doesn’t have the stress of the pregnancy to distract her anymore. Not that babies aren’t also stressful, but she hasn’t had any mad urges to dunk Lucy in acid or carve her smile a little wider. She didn’t realize how worried she was about that, until Lucy got here and she got the confirmation that no matter how tired and overwhelmed she is, her first instinct is never violence toward the baby.

Lucy starts to fuss, and Harley realizes that she hasn't been paying any more attention to the therapist than Tim has for at least fifteen minutes. She shifts Lucy to her other arm, and looks at Tim, who's staring at the wall above the therapist's head, and then at the therapist, who's realized no one's listening and stopped talking.

"I'm sorry," Harley says. "What were we talking about?"

The therapist shakes her head. "It doesn't matter. I was thinking we should talk about school.”

Tim actually looks at the therapist. So he’s paying some attention. Good.

“I thought we were waiting until we made more progress with communication,” Harley says.

“For in person classes, yes. But I’m wondering if you might like to try online classes, Tim, to ease back into things, and have something to occupy yourself.”

Right. What they were talking about before Harley spaced was her concern that Tim might be bored or lonely, now that they’ve temporarily cut way back on out-of-the-apartment activities like library trips, grocery shopping, synagogue, church, and kids-eat-free nights at various restaurants.

“We only have a tablet,” she says. “Will online school work on that?”

“It might depend on the program you choose. And I believe some of them will send you a laptop. Why don’t the two of you discuss the idea this week, and we can talk more about it, and some options for programs, next time?”

Harley glances over at Tim. He nods.

Chapter Text

Tim loves Lucy, but she's so little and breakable. Getting bigger—it’s been weeks—but still so little. He'll hold her more when she can hold up her own head. Holding her in his lap while he's sitting down is okay, but not carrying her. And if he gets shaky the way he still does sometimes, he won't hold her at all for two days. Because he doesn't want to shake her, doesn't want her to be a shaken baby. He likes to lie on the floor in front of the playpen or her little bouncing chair, so he can keep an eye on her while he does whatever he's doing on his tablet that day.

Barbara Linguini is fascinated by the baby. She'll sit there watching her for hours sometimes. Tim doesn't think she's that interesting—he loves her, but mostly she just lies there. He doesn't know what warrants all the staring.

It's just the three of them right now; Harley fell asleep on the couch, and Tim didn't want to wake her. Lucy was still in her crib in the bedroom from her nap, so he didn't have to pick her up at all. He gave her a couple toys, and she seems pretty happy chewing on one. She loves chewing on things.

As long as she doesn't get hungry, they won't have to interrupt Harley's nap. She's on formula, because Harley's meds aren't good for her, so Tim could maybe feed her himself. He's watched Harley mix up the formula and warm it up. But he'd have to hold her to feed her. And she'll cry, and that'll wake Harley.

He gets his tablet, and tries to decide which subject to take the placement test for next. They've decided to try the online school, but it's not as easy as just picking up where he left off, because it was the middle of a semester, and the Canadian system is a little different, and because he doesn't really remember what was going on in school when he stopped. His memories are kind of a mess. He remembers Dick's wedding—he didn't until the interview, but he does now—and that was—that must have been weeks before he was—before the Joker—Harley said it was three weeks. And he knows—he knows it was before the election. Because he saw, online, Luthor was talking about it at his last interview before the election. So he's missing weeks, between the wedding and the Joker, and he's not sure he remembers everything before the wedding, either. And he only remembers bits and pieces of while he—when they—and then he doesn't really remember anything, after shooting—shooting—he doesn't really remember anything until he and Harley were already here, in the apartment, and he doesn't know how long they'd been here, when he started remembering it.

So. He's missing lots of school memories, and he has to take placement tests for every subject before starting. He did English a couple days ago.

He almost picks history, but then he remembers he's in Canada, and he doesn't know any Canadian history, so that's gonna be a hard one. He chooses math instead, and checks on Lucy one more time—still happy—before starting.

-

It takes almost a year to find Tim.

Things have just been—so hard. Oracle was only an idea when Bruce—when Tim—she hadn't started yet. And Alfred had followed protocol and destroyed the Batcomputer and all its backups, so she'd had to start completely from scratch instead of pulling a lot from his system the way she'd planned. The equipment she needed had been so expensive, and she had no problem stealing from criminals to fund her crimefighting, but she had to move slowly and carefully enough that no one would wonder where she got all the money.

And then there had been the state of Gotham, with no active vigilante in town, after losing Bruce Wayne, Batman, and the Joker all in one night. Everyone had been angry about something. Everything had been chaos. Riots and looting and a skyrocketing crime rate. She'd done what she could, which mostly involved tracking the bad guys and trying to get the police to the right place.

She’s still fully capable of fighting, herself. But getting to the fights in time had proven all but impossible. Crimes weren't exactly planned around wheelchair accessibility, and Gotham had so many old buildings (and a concerning number of new ones) that weren't up to code. She just couldn't get around fast enough.

Alfred and Tim had both disappeared, and Tim's parents had been killed, and then Dick hadn't come back when he was scheduled, and no one in the Justice League had known why. She'd been searching, for Alfred and Tim both, every time she had a moment, which wasn't nearly often enough, since she was also trying to keep the entire city from falling apart.

Someday, Oracle is going to be incredible. Someday, when all her systems are fully integrated, when everything is up and running, she'll be able to find anyone, anywhere, with the press of a button. But she isn't there yet.

According to that guy Greeley, Harley was headed for somewhere that wouldn't extradite. So she'd been searching for flight records—which she now knows never existed—and compiling a list of everywhere on earth that didn't extradite to the States. She'd been going one location at a time, hacking into every camera system she could find, and then running facial recognition software through each system, starting with the most recent recordings and going back to the day Greeley said he'd seen Harley.

She was still working on that when Dick finally turned up. And Alfred had immediately made contact with Dick the way he hadn't with her, so that was two problems solved, at least. And Dick had immediately joined the Tim search. But neither of them could spend as much time as they wanted on it, because Gotham was still falling apart, and Lex Luthor was still president, and Dick still couldn't safely exit the spaceship.

And then Jason had turned up, alive, with Talia al Ghul and a miniature Bruce Wayne. And Talia was apparently in Luthor's inner circle, which had complicated safely making contact, and then they'd tried to extract Jason, at least, though they hadn't been able to justify rescuing Damian from the only parent he'd ever known, even if she might be evil, but Jason hadn't wanted to be extracted, which had hurt, for all of them, and—

Everything has been hard.

They'd run out of places to search on their no-extradition list, and started widening the net. And finally, finally, Barbara had found a clip from some little Canadian boutique's security camera, of Tim and Harley walking into an animal shelter across the street.

She and Dick had both started combing through every recording from every camera in a twenty mile radius. They'd found their apartment building, researched every tenant until they'd found their new names, and hacked every signal there until they found Tim's tablet. They'd hacked the local library, found Harley's card number, and tracked all her internet activity. They'd found her bank account. They'd found her medical records, and Tim's. They'd gone through everything.

And it's looking like the Jason situation all over again. Tim isn't a hostage. Until Harley's baby was born (and Harley having a baby is just...so concerning), she was often leaving him unsupervised for hours at a time. He could have emailed Barbara. He could have gone across the hall to his neighbor and borrowed a phone. He could have gone to the police station a few blocks from the apartment. He could have shouted for Superman.

He hadn't.

Maybe—maybe it's the brainwashing, or maybe Harley is controlling him in some way Barbara can't see from here. But she doesn't think so. Because he's watched Dick's interview hundreds of times. And because Harley keeps on trying to get him into individual therapy without her present. And because several medical professionals clearly know who she is—they don't say it in any of their official records, but she can read between the lines—and haven't made any attempt to separate them. Because Harley bought him a cat and a tablet and so many little toys and games. Everything she can find indicates that he's safe and at least healthier than when he was taken, and not trying to get home.

So they have to take it slow. They can't have another disaster like they did with Jason. The first step is to make contact in a way that won't feel threatening to Harley. They'll rescue Tim if they can, if he'll let them. But trying to rescue Jason just pushed him closer to Talia. So they have to be careful.

Chapter Text

"Do you want a new therapist?" Harley asks.

Tim looks up from the paparazzi photo of Talia, Jason, Damian, and Lex Luthor. (He doesn't like Jason that close to Lex Luthor. It doesn't look like Jason likes it, either.)

"Why?"

"Well, you clearly aren't comfortable with this one. Maybe we could find someone you can actually talk to?"

Just the thought of talking to a therapist is enough to shut down the talking part of his brain. He shakes his head.

"Okay. Why not?"

He tries and fails to get the words out, and shakes his head again.

Harley frowns. Not mad at him, just thinking. "Could you write it down for me?"

He shrugs. Harley gets him a pen and some paper.

"Take your time, okay? Don't stress about it, just write it whenever you're ready."

Lucy is making noises, so Harley goes to get her from her crib, and Tim sets the pen and paper down. He'll try after he's read the article that goes with the photo. He doesn't understand why Jason is still there—Dick should have gotten him by now.

If Dick isn't even rescuing Jason, he definitely wouldn't want Tim around. Which is good, because Tim can't—he can't—by why wouldn't Dick rescue Jason?

-

It's almost an hour before Tim hands her a slip of paper, disappearing into the bedroom before she can look at it. She's in the middle of warming Lucy's bottle, so she feeds her, burps her, and sets her down in the playpen before reading it.

"If I talk at all she'll want to talk about it, and if we talk about it I have to think about it, and I can't think about it. Everything is fine if I don't think about it."

Okay. Well. She knows what he means by "it," and her first instinct is that that's not healthy. But she's never specialized in PTSD in adolescents, and Tim's trauma is probably being compounded by his living situation, and she needs a neutral third party to decide whether or not avoidance is an appropriate strategy here. But Tim won't talk to a neutral third party about it—that's the whole point.

She can talk to her therapist about it. She has, at length. She could talk to Tim's therapist about it, but not in front of Tim, because listening to someone else talk about it would make him think about it, too.

(How is he constantly watching that Dick Grayson interview? Doesn't that make him think about it?)

Tim is sitting on his bed, playing some video game on his console. She sits down on her own bed, and waits for him to finish and look up at her.

"Okay. We don't have to talk about it. But we do need to sort of talk around it for a minute. Is that okay?"

He nods.

"Okay. Do you feel safe here?"

He nods. Which doesn't necessarily mean anything, because if he didn't, he sure wouldn't tell her.

"And you know we can figure out how to contact Nightwing any time you want, right?"

He nods again.

"Is it okay if I talk to your therapist about what happened? You could sit in the lobby while we talked, and then she can figure out how to help you without talking to you about that."

"And she—she won't make me talk about it, more?"

Well. Harley can't promise that, because she isn't sure that avoiding the topic is going to be what's going to be best for him. "I'll make sure she understands how you feel about it, and we'll come up with a plan."

Tim shakes his head. "I can't—I can't—can't talk about it. If I talk about it I think about it, and if I think about it I get lost in my head with the bats and the lightning, and if I get lost in my head I can't talk anymore."

"Okay. Can I tell your therapist about that?"

He nods.

"Do you want to hold Lucy?" she offers. Tim likes Lucy. Maybe that will make him feel better?

"Too shaky. Can I—can I sit by you while you hold her?"

"Of course."

-

Amy Minser is not a stupid woman. She's been seeing Timothy Queen for months, always with his mother present. She's read her predecessor's notes, and Tim's relevant records from neurotrauma, speech therapy, and various other specialties. Admittedly, she didn't recognize either of them right away; she doesn't pay that much attention to news from the States, and the shortish brown hair with bangs does significantly alter Harley Quinn's appearance.

Tim's neurotrauma specialist didn't see a need to separate the two of them. Amy's colleague who does therapy for Holly must know, and the psychiatrist she knows Holly sees, and they haven't done anything about it. So she's just been waiting for someone—preferably Tim—to come clean. And making a point of only thinking of them by the names she's been told, so she doesn't accidentally say something she shouldn't.

It would be nice if she could see her patient without his suspected kidnapper, but, well. Her patient won't communicate with her directly, so the kidnapper is necessary to have any idea at all what's going on with him. Assuming Holly is telling her the truth, which Amy is inclined to think she is—about their daily lives and Tim's behavior, if not about their history. She comes off as very genuinely concerned about him.

Amy is going over her notes from last week, and her tentative plans for today—touch base about the online schooling, see if Tim is still doing all right with the baby, ask if there's anything he'd like to talk about, because someday he might answer—when Holly walks in alone. Which means two children unaccounted for, one of whom is her patient.

"Where are the kids?"

Holly sits on the couch. "I left Lucy in the lobby with Tim—I thought she would help distract him. He wanted me to talk to you without him here."

"All right." She sets aside her notes. "About what?"

Holly frowns. "You know, right? What happened? Why he—how we—who we are?"

"I have some idea, yes."

"I was waiting for him to feel comfortable enough with you to talk about it. But I don't think that's ever going to happen. Not because of you. Just, it sounds like he disassociates any time he thinks about it. So thinking about it long enough to have a conversation about it is basically impossible. I told him I would talk to you about it while he wasn't here, so you have all the information and we can maybe make some actual process."

Amy takes a moment to think. “All right. Tell me all the details I might not have worked out, and we’ll go from there.”

-

Tim sits on the floor in the lobby, so he can be closer to Lucy, who’s still in her car seat. He could take her out and hold her, but she’s sleeping right now, and he doesn’t want to wake her. The receptionist looks at him funny for a minute, but he doesn’t know if that’s because he’s sitting on the floor, or because he's in the lobby while his mom is in his appointment. She doesn’t say anything, so he ignores her.

She’s getting bigger so fast. He feels better about holding her now. Still a little nervous, but it’s okay.

She’ll probably wake up before Harley gets back; she has a lot to explain to the therapist before Tim risks going back in there.

He goes through the diaper bag for toys to occupy her, once she wakes up. There’s probably more toys than she needs; he packed it this morning. He likes to keep track of all her favorites.

The too many toys might possibly have crowded out the diapers. But he remembered one spare! And he’s not changing her diaper, anyway. He does it sometimes at home, but when they’re out it’s always Harley’s job.

When she wakes up he gives her the purple rubber teddy bear to gnaw on, and she babbles a little and looks around the room. There’s nothing interesting to see where she is, so he turns the carrier around for a better view. A couple more people come into the lobby, and a lady crouches down to looks at Lucy, and tells him how cute she is, and asks if she’s his sister. Tim nods, and the lady goes and sits down.

Lucy’s looking bored, so he offers her the ring toy in exchange for the bear, and puts the bear in a plastic bag so it doesn’t get lint on it from the blanket he packed her.

Harley’s therapist comes and calls the lady who talked to them back, and Tim’s old therapist comes for someone else. Tim resists the urge to hide behind Lucy, and the therapist doesn’t even notice him.

His appointment time is almost over when Harley comes to get them. She unbuckles Lucy and hands her to him once they’re both sitting down in front of the therapist, and having her in his lap helps, a little.

He really doesn’t want to be here.

“Can you look at me, Tim?” the therapist asks.

He does.

“We don’t have to talk about anything you’re uncomfortable with, okay? If something is too much, you can tell me, and we’ll stop.”

Tim looks back down at the top of Lucy’s head. “Okay,” he says.

“Great. Do you think you’ll be able to talk to me?”

“I’ll try.”

“Do you want to keep having your mom here, or do you want to try coming alone?”

“Mom,” he says. He knows Harley wants him to do therapy without her. But not—not yet. He’s not ready yet.

Chapter Text

Harley wakes up to screaming from one side and crying from the other.

Okay. Okay. Tim first—Lucy's probably just crying because of the screaming.

It's been a couple weeks since this happened.

She calls his name a few times, and whacks him gently with her pillow. Tim tends to flail, and he's much stronger than he looks. If she gets hit or kicked trying to wake him, they'll both be miserable in the morning.

He doesn't wake up, and she tries a second pillow-whack. "Tim, honey. Tim, wake up."

Nothing. If the pillow and the talking and the crying and his own screams aren't enough to wake him—

"Junior," she says, and he snaps awake immediately.

It's the only time she calls him that anymore, and she hates it.

"Sorry, Tim. It's okay. I gotta grab the baby."

She picks up Lucy, who's already calming down a little now that the screaming's stopped.

"Lights," she warns Tim before turning on the floor lamp; she leaves the overhead light off. When she turns back to him, still bouncing a fussy Lucy, he's huddled in the corner of the bed, looking small and pale and miserable.

"Do you want some hot chocolate?" she offers. "Or that tea you like?"

He doesn't answer, which is pretty normal—he's never very communicative right after a nightmare.

"I'll boil some water," she says. She takes Lucy to the kitchen, giving him a few minutes of privacy to collect himself. He'll either stay here, follow her to the kitchen, or go sit on the couch, and that'll give her an idea of what to do next.

Tim hasn't emerged by the time the water is boiling and Lucy is drifting off in her arms, which means he's unlikely to actually drink anything she gives him. She makes the tea—it has a stronger smell. Lucy is settled enough to put back in her crib by the time it's finished, so she takes the baby and the tea both back to the bedroom, and puts Lucy down before crouching down to offer the mug to Tim.

He's right where she left him, and he doesn't look at her, or reach at all.

"Tim?"

Nothing.

"Tim, honey, take the mug."

He does, because he responds to orders the way he responds to "Junior," when he's really out of it (and fortunately only then). Which means she generally avoids giving any, but the heat and the smell will help.

On the bed means give him space. If he follows her to the kitchen after a nightmare he's pretty clingy, and if he sits on the couch she'll sit beside him, but she doesn't touch his bed without express permission. She sits down across from him on her own bed and waits.

Tim uncurls partially to get a better grip on the mug. (Harley used the biggest mug they own for that reason. She bought the biggest mug they own for that reason.) Barbara Linguini wanders in and wraps herself around his legs. She usually sleeps with him, but the screaming scares her off.

After a couple minutes, he unwraps one hand from the mug and balances it on his knee so he can reach down to pet her. She purrs, and rubs her head against his leg. She climbs into his lap, or tries to—he's got his legs pulled up against his chest, so there's not exactly room for her. He's forced to rearrange himself to accommodate her, which means he's no longer curled up in a tight little ball.

Harley waits a few more minutes. Tim keeps petting the cat, and holding on tight to his mug without drinking anything.

"Better?" she asks, when he starts to look a little more relaxed.

He makes eye contact for a second, which is probably all she'll get before morning.

"Do you want to try to go back to sleep?"

He stops petting the cat briefly to wrap both hands around the mug, which she takes as a no. She would like to go back to sleep, herself, but she feels weird about sleeping while Tim is sitting up right there, and she doesn't want to ask him to go out to the couch. It's been a while since he's had a nightmare and hasn't gone out to the couch or the kitchen.

On the bed means give him space.

"I'll just be in the next room if you need anything," she tells him. She grabs the baby monitor on her way out.

This is a good opportunity to work on that book Tim's neurotrauma specialist recommended to her. It's about the effects—positive and negative—of electricity on the brain, and she's making her way through it slowly, hindered by the fact she's pretty sure Tim'll freak out a little if he sees it. She mostly works on it in the waiting rooms at appointments Tim doesn't come along for.

She gets most of the way through her chapter before realizing she's going to fall asleep out here, and it needs to be out of sight before she does. She puts it back in her purse, and lies down on the couch.

-

Sometimes when the nightmares are really bad, it takes a while for his brain to remember it's safe here.

He knows—he knows he is. He's pretty sure he's been with Harley longer than he was with Batman, now, and nothing bad has happened since they—since he—since the Joker. But sometimes the nightmares make him forget, and it takes a while to feel safe again.

He knows he doesn't remember everything, but he doesn't remember Harley hurting him at all. He remembers her stalling, and distracting the Joker, and talking him out of some things that sounded really painful.

She was—she was still there. She was still with him. She didn't stop him, or get help. She could have gotten help, but she didn't.

But she never hurt him, and she's—it's different now. It's different. The Joker wanted to make them a family, and he—he did. Only he doesn't get to be part of it.

Tim can feel his thoughts trying to jump away from him the way they do when things are Too Much, and he really needs to stop thinking if he wants to stay outside of his head and remember the next several hours of his life. He pets Barbara Linguini some more, and tries to drink his tea, but it's gone cold and gross. He leans over to set the mug on the floor beside the bed.

He lies down, and he can't sleep again, partly because closing his eyes is a little dangerous, and partly because the cat is a freight train in his ear, but it's still nice, him and Barbara Linguini together, and Lucy right across the room, and Harley far enough away he doesn't feel panicky for no reason, but not too far away to not come back if they need her.

-

He has some time alone the next day—more time than usual, since Harley stopped working, because Lucy has a checkup and Harley has a therapy appointment, close enough together that it doesn't make sense to come home in between.

It's not enough time that Paula needs to check on him, not now that he's doing better, and can go find her if he needs something. So it's just him and Barbara Linguini for a couple hours. He finds a sunbeam to sit in, and checks the internet for any news about Dick and Jason and Barbara. Barbara's running for—some office, he forgets which one, but it means she's in the news sometimes, so he can make sure she's alive.

(Gotham ends up having lots of elections at weird times. The corrupt ones get caught working with supervillains or the mob and arrested. A lot of them get murdered. Every couple years one has a non-fatal traumatic experience and steps down so they can move somewhere safer.)

There's no updates, so he pulls up a random video he can half watch while he dozes in the sun. He feels a lot better than he did last night, but it's still nice to have some space.

Not too much space, though. Space with a definite end time that he can plan around.

It's weird, because Harley was—she and the Jo—but she's always here. No one else has ever been here this much, and it makes him feel safe. He feels so safe with Harley, as long as he doesn't think about—about—

His parents did their best, but they were so busy. And Batman mostly just tolerated him, and he never spent that much time with Alfred, and Dick and Barbara were both so nice, but really busy, too, and Dick was mostly in Bludhaven, and Barbara was mostly in the hospital and rehab, and it's just—really nice to have an adult who's around.

He falls asleep in his sunbeam, and wakes up to the sound of the door opening. Harley's back, exactly when she said she would be, because Harley Quinn, weirdly, is the most reliable parental figure he's ever had.

"I got you a sorry-for-the-nightmares cupcake,” she says, and he wonders if it’s sorry-you-had-them or sorry-I-gave-you-them. But that’s not—that’s not a good thing to think about. She got him a cupcake. Probably from the grocery store bakery, and the grocery store bakery has really good cupcakes.

“Are you feeling better?” she asks, and he nods. “Great! You can come get your cupcake whenever the cat lets you up.”

Barbara Linguini’s still sleeping in his legs, so he can’t move yet, obviously. He ends up falling back asleep, and doesn’t get to the cupcake until after dinner.

Chapter Text

“I’m going to the store,” Harley announces.

“Okay,” Tim says, drawing the word out so it’s half a question.

“Alone,” she adds. “Paula’s coming over to help you keep an eye on Lucy.”

“Okay,” he says again. “The grocery store?”

“Yep.”

“We’re out of chips, and that cereal you like.”

“I’ll get some more.”

Of course Tim’s not stressed; she leaves him home alone all the time. But it’s the first time she’s ever left someone else in charge of Lucy. Unless you count the time she left Tim and Lucy in the therapist’s lobby, which she doesn’t, because she was right down the hall. She’s going across town now, and she has to trust Paula with the baby, and that’s terrifying, even though Paula is great and she trusts her with Tim all the time.

She could probably leave Tim in charge of Lucy—he’s good with her, they did fine in the lobby, they do fine if Harley falls asleep and Tim doesn’t wake her. But she likes having another adult there for backup.

It’s going to be fine. Everything’s going to be fine. Tim and Paula are fully capable of watching a baby for maybe an hour. She has Paula’s car, so she doesn’t need to worry about missing the bus and taking longer than planned. Paula even lent Harley her phone, so she can call on Betty’s if anything comes up.

She’s still so nervous. It takes her so much longer than it should to finish at the grocery store, because even with her list, she keeps getting distracted, and skipping aisles she needs to go down.

When she finally gets home, Tim is playing with Lucy, and Barbara Linguini is watching them. Paula is in the kitchen, doing dishes.

Harley was way behind on dishes. But she was totally going to do them soon! Betty and Paula just can’t seem to resist the urge to do stuff for them. She knows that. She should have done the dishes before she left, if she didn’t want Paula to, but she was too nervous to think of stuff like that.

It is really nice to have people who want to help. She’s—it’s been a long time, since she had that. Or since she had that like this, anyway. Her first college roommate wanted to help. Pam wanted to help her get away from the Joker, and so did Batman, but that wasn’t—it wasn’t—this feels different. Less dramatic, maybe? Just every day, normal-people kindness. Just someone doing what they can to help her get through day to day life when it get hard.

She bends down to kiss Lucy’s little forehead—and wow, she really needs to start stretching again. She doesn’t think an average person could bend that far at the waist without bending her knees, with two grocery bags in each hand, but it should be a lot easier than this for her.

She hasn’t done so much as the splits or a cartwheel in close to a year. Between the guilt and the chaos and the pregnancy and the limited space, it just hasn’t been something she’s thought about.

That’s a problem for later. She sets down the bags in the kitchen, and has Tim come out to the car to help her with the rest. She bought a lot of groceries today; she’s hoping not to have to go out again for a while.

-

"Is there anything you'd like to talk about today, Tim?" the therapist asks.

He shrugs. "Dunno."

It's been going...okay, so far, actually talking to the therapist. They don't talk about anything from before he and Harley got here, like she promised, so it's okay. He knows he'll have to eventually, but he's—not yet. His brain isn't ready for that. He doesn't like what happens to it when he thinks too hard about before.

There's a lot of time before the bad part of the before. Maybe—maybe that's safe?

"My parents' anniversary is tomorrow," he says. "It was—it was going to be twenty years, and there was going to be a big party."

“Were you looking forward to the party?” the therapist asks.

He nods. The words still aren’t so easy, some days. Maybe most days.

“Do you miss your parents?” she asks. Which is coming pretty close to breaking her promise, but it’s not like she’s asking about the Bats, or the Joker. His parents are—separate. And he brought them up. So it’s okay.

“Yeah.”

None of them talk for a minute. Lucy makes a baby noise, and Harley digs something out of the diaper bag for her.

"People kept saying they were bad parents. But I think—I think it's just that I was at public school, and—and—" He can't make himself say Bruce's name. "And around weird rich people. Lots of people have nannies and boarding schools and stuff. Lots of people are really busy, and have to go on business trips, and don't have a lot of time for their kids. My parents weren't weird until they let me switch schools. Everyone's parents were like that at my boarding school."

"Who told you they were bad parents?" the therapist asks.

"Some kids at school said so. A lot of teachers and a lot of other parents just—I could tell they thought so. And—Dick, and everyone. They got weird when I talked about them."

"Do you want to talk to me about them now?"

"I don't want you to tell me they were bad, too."

"They were your parents, and you loved them, and they're gone. I don't see how me saying anything negative about them would help you."

"Okay," Tim says. "Okay. Can I hold Lucy?"

Harley sets her in his lap, and he wraps his arms around her, and that—helps. It's not like holding Barbara Linguini, but it still helps.

"They were archeologists. They were going to let me spend this summer on a dig with them." This summer is over, and none of them are ever going on a dig again. He holds Lucy a little tighter, until she makes a little sound—a grumpy sound, not a hurt sound—and he has to stop. "I miss them," he says again.

It's easy to miss his parents. It's easy to think about his parents. It hurts, but it's not the same. It doesn't hurt in a way that threatens to break his whole brain.

It was still his fault. They wouldn't be dead if he hadn't been Robin, if the Joker hadn't—if he hadn't—it's still his fault. But at least he wasn't the one holding the gun.

“Tell me more about them?” the therapist asks, and he does.

-

"I hate this," Dick tells Barbara.

"I know. Me too. But we can't risk spooking them."

He moves the phone to his other hand, and closes his door to muffle the sounds of Alfred's Tamaranean cooking lesson in the next room. (It doesn't seem to be going well.)

"Everything we found points to him being there willingly and in his right mind."

"I know." Dick's seen it all. The footage from the grocery store last week—no audio, but good visual—of Tim and Harley having what appeared to be an animated but friendly argument in the produce section. The footage two weeks ago of Tim rolling his eyes and ignoring Harley outside the library. Tim's internet history, which doesn't appear to be restricted in any way. Not Tim's actual medical records, but all of the appointments they were able to find with multiple providers, indicating Harley has been working hard to get and keep Tim physically, mentally, and emotionally healthy.

He doesn't seem afraid or uncomfortable at all. He's not acting like he did in the Joker's footage. Doesn't look brainwashed or traumatized or like a hostage. He seems like himself.

"But if he really is okay, why would he rather be there than here?"

"I don't know."

They end the call, and Dick risks joining the Tamaranean dinner preparations.

He asks Kory, later, when they're alone in their bedroom, "Do you think Tim's mad at me, too?"

She sits up, looking thoughtful. "I don't think Jason's even mad at you, not really. He's just young and hurt and scared, and you're the only one left for all his feelings to go to."

"He wanted to stay with Talia al Ghul, Kory. And Tim wants to stay with Harley Quinn. Am I—I don't think I'm worse than Talia al Ghul and Harley Quinn."

"Of course not. It's getting better, isn't it?"

"A little." Jason's answering his weekly emails about half the time now, but he's still ignoring calls and texts.

Kory lies back down, and presses close, and they stay like that for a while. He's starting to fall asleep when she asks, "Do you think Tim would like a butler?"

Dick sits up this time. "Kory!"

"I like your grandfather. But it's a small spaceship."

"I know."

"Maybe Jason wants a butler."

"He actually would probably like having Alfred around. And we'd all like having eyes on Talia."

She sits up, looking excited. "And Talia works with Lex, so if Alfred was with her, Lex couldn't go after him."

"But how do we convince Talia?"

"Talk to Jason first. He'll guilt-trip her."

"Perfect. In the morning. We'll have to talk to Alfred first, but I'm sure he'll be on board." It really is a small spaceship.

Chapter Text

She’s in the kitchen, holding Lucy with one hand and stirring the soup on the stove with the other, when she hears the knock on the door. Tim’s in the bedroom, hopefully sleeping. (They were both up half the night with a fussy baby—she has an ear infection, and the medicine hasn’t kicked in yet—and then almost as soon as they got a chance to sleep, he was up again with a nightmare. She’d meant to sit up with him, but she’d fallen asleep on the couch.)

She pulls the soup off the burner before going to answer the door—it’s probably one of the ladies across the hall, and they’ll probably end up talking for long enough that it’ll boil over and make a mess.

She deposits Lucy in the playpen on her way to the door.

Harley’s first reaction to seeing Poison Ivy in her hallway is a surge of joy. Her second reaction is panic.

She grabs Pam’s arm and pulls her inside, shutting the door as quickly as she can. “What are you doing here? How did you find me? Who else knows?”

“Relax, Harley. You’re still safe here—I promise. You and the kids. I’ll explain everything. But first, introduce me to your baby?”

She hugs Pam, then picks up Lucy and hands her off. Pam sits down on her lumpy couch with her.

“Lucy,” Harley says.

“Lucy,” Pam repeats. “She’s beautiful.”

“Yep. Tell me how you found me?”

“I didn’t. There’s a new player on the superhero scene—calls herself Oracle. No one’s ever seen her, but she’s supposed to be some sort of computer genius. She contacted me and offered to give me your location if I’d make a delivery for her.”

“What are you delivering?”

“Some stuff for the kid—Tim. You have him, right? Oracle said you did.”

“Yeah, he’s in the bedroom.”

“I’m supposed to give him the stuff now, then take a picture before I leave.”

“So he has time to read any messages, and he can send some sort of signal back in the photo?”

“That’s what I figured.”

Harley glances at the clock. “We’ll give it half an hour. He’s napping—didn’t sleep well last night.”

“Is he,” Pam starts, and doesn’t continue.

“Is he what?”

“Is he gonna signal Oracle to come rescue him?”

“No. I’ve offered to track down Nightwing for him. More than once. He’s—he’s scared. There’s some misplaced guilt there. But he knows I’m not stopping him from—he doesn’t need to be rescued.”

“All right,” Pam says. She smiles down at Lucy, who smiles up at her.

“And this—this Oracle. She found me. She won’t—she won’t—”

“She said she wasn’t after you, as long as Tim was safe. I—I think I believe her. If it turns out I’m wrong, we’ll run together.”

“Okay. Okay.” The panicky feeling is fading. Maybe Oracle is out to get her. Maybe she’s not. But either way, she gave Harley a friend back. “Tell me what’s happening in Gotham?”

“I got Bud and Lou into a good wildlife reservation. I’m holed up in Robinson Park again. Been doing some work with Victor—he helps me with the environment, I help him with Nora. We can’t wake her yet, but there’s progress. Luthor is pouring money into Gotham to control us—fucking hypocrite. Three years ago he was begging me to help him kill Superman.

“Things have been pretty quiet, though. For about a month after, it was chaos. You could hardly tell who was on what side. The Drakes were killed, and Wayne Manor was burned down. The official story is that Wayne’s butler probably died in the fire, but there’s a rumor the Bat stuff in the basement was destroyed before the main level of the house was set on fire, so he may have trashed it and fled before the fire.

“Crime rates aren’t much higher than usual, even without Batman, because Joker’s gone, of course, and Jon and Jervis died in one of the early riots. It’s been pretty quiet lately. Oh! You remember the Commissioner’s kid?”

“Which one?”

“The daughter. Redhead. Joker shot her—”

“Oh, I was so mad at him that night. She was such a nice girl! She used to volunteer at the library and the homeless shelter—I ran into her a lot before I was—you know.”

Pam nods. “She helped me apply for a grant, that time I was out on parole. She was the librarian, by then. Anyway, she’s running for office. Senate, I think. Everyone in Gotham is rooting for her—the rich, the poor, the evil. She’ll run circles around Luthor.”

“Did she get back—”

“Figure of speech, Harl. She’s still paralyzed.”

“Right.”

Lucy starts crying, then. Harley pulls herself away from Pam reluctantly.

“She’s hungry. Bring her to the kitchen for me? I’ll prep her bottle.”

Tim wanders out while they’re in the kitchen, Harley getting the bottle ready while Pam tries without much success to soothe the baby. He’s got Barbara Linguini draped over one shoulder, and he’s rubbing blearily at his eyes.

“Harley, do you need help with—oh.”

He stares at Pam, eyes wide, and Harley can’t tell what he’s thinking.

“Tim, honey,” she says, careful, not wanting to spook him. “Pam brought us some presents from home. She’ll show us once the baby’s fed. Would you like to take her?”

Tim nods, setting down the cat and reaching for Lucy. Pam hands her over easily, and Tim takes her back to the couch, shooting a few anxious looks back at Pam as he goes.

“So,” Pam says. “Robin.”

“He doesn’t like that. Just Tim.”

“All right. Just Tim. Your bottle ready?”

“Yeah. It’s ready.”

They join Tim at the couch, Harley struggling to decide what seating arrangement will make him the least anxious. She wants to be in between Tim and Pam—she thinks that’ll make him feel safest. But she also wants to feed her baby, and she’s not confident Tim will feel like Lucy is safe sitting next to Pam. He’s tucked into the corner of the couch; after a moment Harley points Pam to the opposite corner, then takes Lucy from Tim and sits on the coffee table.

She could lunge forward in an instant to separate Tim and Pam—not that she’ll need to, but Tim needs to know she could—and Lucy is out of Pam’s reach. She gives her the bottle.

“Okay. Presents!”

Pam leans forward for the backpack she left on the floor; Tim flinches when she moves.

Maybe Harley should be sitting next to him.

“It’s okay, Tim. I trust Pam.”

He makes a face that suggests he doesn’t have much confidence in her skills as a judge of character, which is probably fair.

“I’m sorry to spring this on you. I didn’t know Pam was going to be coming here. I didn’t tell her where we were.”

Tim turns to address Pam directly, which is probably a good sign.

“How did—how did you find us?”

“Do you know who Oracle is?”

Tim shakes his head. “Should—should I?” he asks Harley. He doesn’t always have much faith in his own memory.

“I don’t think so. I never heard of her before today.”

“It’s my understanding that she’s new,” Pam says. “Superhero or superhero-adjacent. I gather the two of you have some mutual friends. She found you, and she asked me to make a delivery.”

“What does she look like?”

“I don’t know. No one’s ever seen her.”

“Oh.”

“Presents?” Harley suggests again.

Tim seems fine, this time, when Pam reaches for her bag. She starts pulling out the contents, slowly—she’ll know Tim doesn’t feel safe with her.

“I’ve got your mom’s wedding ring,” she says, “and your dad’s watch.”

Tim takes both, staring at them for a long moment before shoving them into the pockets of his sweatshirt.

Pam reaches into the bag again. “I’ve got this—um. Stuffed…thing.”

“It’s a jackalope,” Tim says.

“Cool. Jackalope. And the last thing is your uncle’s camera.”

Tim stares at it for a long moment. “I don’t—I don’t have an uncle.”

“Then there’s probably a message for you somewhere in the camera,” Harley says. “Maybe you can look for it while I talk to Pam?”

“Okay.”

“She has to take a photo before she leaves—proof for Oracle that you’re okay.”

“Okay,” Tim says, and wanders off, camera and jackalope in hand.

“What the fuck is a jackalope?” Pam asks as soon as they hear the click of the bedroom door behind him.

Harley laughs.

-

Barbara Linguini is waiting for him, sitting on his pillow. He sets down everything else so he can pick her up and hug her.

Poison Ivy is in the next room. Poison Ivy is in the next room with Tim’s baby sister.

It’s not like she’s as evil as—as some people. She’s Harley’s best friend. But the J—he was her boyfriend, so it’s not like relationships with Harley make you trustworthy.

He doesn’t think Poison Ivy’s ever murdered a baby before.

There’s a message for him somewhere here. If he finds the message, Poison Ivy will take the photo, and then she’ll leave, and Lucy will be safe.

Harley’s right—it’s probably the camera. He sets down Barbara Linguini and picks it back up. It’s his camera, his favorite, the one his parents got him for his twelfth birthday. He flips it over carefully and opens the film slot. There’s a piece of paper in the slot, in from of the film. He pulls it out carefully, not wanting to mess up the photos. He can’t remember how far along he was, how many pictures he has left. There might, he thinks, be extra pictures, pictures he didn’t take—more messages. He’ll ask Harley to take him to get the film developed, later, when Poison Ivy is gone.

He unfolds the paper to reveal a letter in Dick’s familiar handwriting.

“Tim -

I love you so much. I’m so sorry that I wasn’t there when things went down, and that it’s taken so long to find you.

We’ve been monitoring for a few weeks. It looks like you’re safe. It looks like you’re not being held against your will. It looks like you’ve had opportunities to reach out, if you wanted to.

Maybe I’m wrong. If I am, please, please use the comm, or signal me in the photo, or just shout for Superman.

I’m not going to come to you without an invitation. Not unless it seems like you’re in danger. I know you’ve been through some really bad things while I was gone, and I know trauma is complicated, and I know Bruce and I both let you down in a big way.

But I want you to know that I love you, and that nothing that happened was your fault, and that I’ll always be here if you need me.

-Dick”

The comm?

He sets aside the note to carefully squeeze his jackalope, until he finds the hard spot where the comm must be hiding.

He doesn’t need it. He pets Barbara Linguini a couple more times, then goes back out for the picture. He signals safe with one hand, and stay away with the other, and then he takes Lucy with him to the bedroom so he doesn’t have to worry about her while Pam and Harley talk. He hasn’t been shaky in days now, and he’s not taking her very far—it’ll be fine.

Chapter Text

Barbara sends on the photo and Pam’s assessment—which is that Tim doesn’t want to see Dick because he feels guilty—as soon as she gets them. Dick stares at the photo, at Tim’s anxious face and clear hand signals, for a long moment, with Kory reading over his shoulder.

"Guilty? Why would he feel guilty? I'm the one who wasn't here when he needed me."

"He's the one who killed Batman," Kory says.

"That wasn't his fault!"

"Of course it wasn't. But does he know that?"

Dick sighs. "So what do we do now?"

"We either leave him there, or force him to come here even though he wants to stay there."

"It would be for his own good."

"Maybe," she says.

"I thought—I thought if he didn't want to come home, it would be because he was mad at me, not because he thinks I should be mad at him. But if we force him, he will be mad at me, and I don't—I don't—"

"Let's give it some time," Kory says. "Keep watching. See if he contacts you. Maybe reach out in a few weeks?"

"Reach out how?"

"Hm. The comm link would be...too much, yes? If you suddenly started talking to him, and he was startled and unprepared? Is there an email address? Surely Barbara could find out."

"All right. We'll give it a couple weeks, then see about initiating contact."

He sighs again. Both of them. He's not perfect or anything, but surely he'd be a better guardian than a supervillain is.

-

Harley is exhausted. Pam stayed until late, late last night, long after Tim and Lucy were in bed. It was risky, having her here, but since it’s so risky, this might be the last time they’re ever together in person. They have each other’s email addresses, and Harley has Pam’s current phone number, but it’s not the same. It’ll never be the same.

Lucy is napping, so it would be a good time for Harley to do the same. Tim’s across the hall playing cards with Paula and Betty.

Which means that this time, when there’s a knock on the door, she knows it’s neither of them, and she’s much more nervous.

It’s Pam again.

“I thought you were headed back to Gotham.”

“I was. I am. Oracle contacted me—she’s got another message.”

Harley steps out of the doorway to let her in. “Yeah? Is it—is it bad?”

“No, I think it’s really good, actually. Whatever signal the kid gave in those photos, it must have been good. She said Tim had an inheritance from his parents and from Batman. She set up a bank account where she’ll deposit two thousand dollars a month until Tim’s twenty one, you both have access to the account, and she’s trusting you to only use it for things that’ll benefit Tim.” She pulls a slip of paper out of her pocket. “Bank account number, routing number, pin. And she found—I don’t know, an offshore account or something. Joker’s money.”

“She’s giving me Joker’s money?”

“Yeah.”

“But she’s—you said she’s a superhero. That’s all stolen.”

“I did ask about that. Oracle said the money came from Luthor. He paid the Joker to do…something. She’s not sure what yet.”

“Destroy the country’s faith in superheroes by having Robin kill Batman on live TV?”

“Yeah, that’s what I’m afraid of.”

Harley thinks about it. “Luthor—that wouldn’t have been what Luthor asked for. Mr. J didn’t take direction well. Luthor might have paid him to discredit superheroes somehow, but torturing and brainwashing Robin? That was—that was all Joker.”

“It may not have been Luthor’s idea, but he didn’t hesitate to take advantage of it.”

“I know. I’m not defending him. But it’s—I’m trying to be honest with myself. About what Joker was. He wouldn’t have done that because he was paid to. He did it because he wanted to. Because he thought it was funny.”

Pam nods. “Well. The money’s yours.” She hands her another slip of paper. “It’s a lot. Get some bed frames and a kitchen table, okay?"

She leaves quickly this time, which is good—the longer she lingers the harder it’ll be to watch her go. Harley puts both papers in a safe place, and goes to check on Lucy.

She tells Tim about the money, though not the detail about Luthor, which just seems like more than he’ll be able to deal with.

“We’ll have to get cards and a checkbook and stuff,” she tells him. “They put it in a bank with a local branch, so it should be pretty easy. Tomorrow, maybe.”

He nods. “I have film. From the camera she brought.”

“Then we’ll get that developed tomorrow, too.”

-

They’re at the bank forever. They dropped the film off, so at least it should be ready by the time they’re done. Tim tries to keep Lucy happy while Harley does all the banking stuff.

They sent them money. Bruce’s money. Even though he—he—

He’s been on edge ever since Poison Ivy came. He just needs to calm down and not think about it. Everything is fine. Everything is fine.

When they finally finish at the bank, Harley gives him a debit card, which he really doesn’t need since he doesn’t go anywhere without her and also she says when she gives it to him that she’s going to handle all the money stuff still and he shouldn’t worry about it at all, and if he sees anything he wants she’ll buy it for him. He really doesn’t care—they have pictures to pick up.

He wants to look at them right away, but he makes himself wait until they’re home, because he knows they’re full of recognizable people no one should know he's connected to.

At home, Harley takes Lucy into the bedroom, and he sits with Barbara Linguini on the couch, and flips through the pictures carefully. The first several, he must have taken, though he doesn’t remember it. About halfway through the stack, he finds the pictures that aren’t his.

Photos of Dick and Kory. Barbara. Alfred.

Alfred is alive and safe. He was the only one Tim wasn’t sure about, one way or another.

So now—now he doesn’t have to worry about them. And they don’t have to worry about him, because he gave the right signal in the photo. So everything is okay now. Everything is fine. He can just—they just—yeah. They don’t have to think about each other or worry about each other anymore, and everything is fine.

-

Harley plans a backstory and a shopping list.

Her husband was well off, they never divorced, and he never made a new will after she took Tim and ran. When he died, an old friend contacted Harley and she was able to claim the money and assets he left behind.

They need a two bedroom apartment, a kitchen table and chairs, bedframes, and cell phones for both her and Tim.

She needs to think about the future. How far will this money go? Does she need to go back to work? She probably should, as much for her mental health as anything else—routine, getting out of the house, being around other adults, being away from the kids. But she can't put Lucy in daycare—what if someone finds them, uses Lucy to get to her?

She had thought that by the time she went back to work, she would be able to leave Tim in charge of Lucy, with Paula across the hall for emergencies. But if they get a new apartment Paula won't be across the hall. And if their goal is to get Tim into in-person school, he won't be home to watch Lucy.

Maybe she can get a remote job? But that doesn't help with getting her out of the house and away from the kids. But her mental health is obviously secondary to everyone's safety, as long as it doesn't deteriorate enough that she's a threat to their safety.

She has time to figure it out. The first thing to figure out is the new apartment—no sense in buying furniture now and then having to move it.

The timing is good, because she was just about to renew her lease. But it means she has to get a new place figured out fast. She takes Tim and Lucy to the library—it's pretty nice out, so they walk—and starts researching while Tim sits on the floor with the baby and reads her picture books. Once Lucy falls asleep, maybe she can have Tim start researching cell phone plans.

Chapter Text

Harley wakes to the sound of laughter.

His laughter.

It's coming from Tim, a sound she hasn't heard since he broke down after shooting them, nothing at all like his usual laugh.

Lucy starts crying. Harley gets up and turns on the lamp. She thinks Tim's awake—he's sitting up, and his eyes are squeezed tightly shut. He's laughing so hard he's shaking with it.

Her usual method of talking gently and hitting him with a pillow does nothing. Her emergency method of calling him Junior does nothing.

She's pretty sure he's awake. Which just makes this more alarming.

"I'll be right back, Tim."

She takes her wailing baby across the hall, where they're almost certainly awake, because the Joker laugh is not quiet. "I need you to watch Lucy," she says, when Betty answers the door. She thrusts her into her arms, still crying, and runs back across the hall.

She hates leaving behind her crying baby. But something is really, really wrong, and she doesn't want Lucy here for it.

Barbara Linguini is standing in the bedroom door, fur all standing on end. She hisses when Harley goes past—Barbara Linguini never hisses. Harley ignores her, and crouches down on the floor by Tim's bed.

"Tim, honey, I need you to stop. I need you to open your eyes."

He shakes his head.

"Can I touch you?"

Nothing.

"Okay. I'm going to touch you."

Harley doesn't touch Tim's bed. But something is really wrong. She climbs onto the mattress and wraps her arms around him. He's shaking hard. He looks miserable, pale and sweaty, face all screwed up tight except for his laughing mouth. She doesn't think he's able to stop. She doesn't know what to do.

Paula walks in—she must have left the door open?

"Lucy?"

"She's fine. Betty got her calmed down. What do you need?"

"I don't—I don't know. He can't stop." She looks at Tim's face again, sees the tears falling from his closed eyes. "Can you drive us to the emergency room?"

"Of course. Let me get the keys and tell Betty. Do you need help getting him to the car?"

"I can do it." She's stronger than she looks, and Tim isn't struggling. He just can't stop laughing. She ends up half-carrying him just because he's so unsteady, shaking so hard, but they manage. She buckles him in, and worries about Lucy, and calls and leaves messages with Paula's phone for Tim's therapist and neurotrauma specialist, and tries not to panic.

She has to get him to the ER, because something is obviously seriously wrong. But this—this could get them caught. He sounds just like the Joker. It's a distinctive sound. And there's video footage of Tim laughing just like this after killing them.

-

There's something in his brain that isn't his, that isn't him. He can feel it creeping around the edges, looking for a way to get deeper in. He's being invaded, he can feel it, he can feel it, there's something wrong inside him.

His body—his body—he doesn't have any control over what's happening with his body. He can't worry about his body right now—there's something in his brain.

-

They get jumped to the head of line at the ER largely because they're creating such a disturbance. The only way they can get Tim to stop is sedating him—it's been going on for a couple hours by then. They promise to have someone here from neurotrauma—preferably Tim's usual doctor—by the time he wakes up.

Which will be hours from now. Harley and Paula are advised to go home and get some rest.

"I can't leave him." She doesn't want to be away from Lucy for hours, either. Lucy is a baby. Lucy needs her more. But no one is looking for Lucy. Tim is unconscious and therefore extra vulnerable after doing something that could easily have put him back on the radar.

Paula nods. "Lucy's on formula, isn't she? How much does she get and when? I'll leave my phone with you, and you can call Betty if anything comes up."

Harley really does not know how she would get by without the neighbors.

(She wants a better apartment where Tim can have his own room. But moving means new neighbors, and she needs these ones.)

Paula goes home to help Betty with Lucy. Harley steals a scalpel from a drawer, stands guard at Tim's door, and tries to decide if she should contact Nightwing. She could call Pam, who could call Oracle, who could call him.

Tim doesn't want to see Nightwing yet. But if someone uses this incident to track them, Harley could use the backup.

She'll wait and see what the doctor says in the morning. If Tim's better when he wakes up, she can talk to him about it before making a choice.

She can tell when Tim's waking up because he starts laughing again. She pushes the help button, and a nurse comes in, followed a minute later by Tim's neurotrauma doctor.

(Harley doesn't let go of the scalpel in her pocket until the familiar doctor appears; that nurse could be anyone.)

It's hard to examine a kid who can't stop laughing or shaking. Harley holds him as still as she can, but it's not still enough. The doctor tries to ask him a couple questions—Tim will talk to her occasionally, and he's usually fine with nods and head shakes—but he's too distressed, and laughing too hard, to respond.

"Did anything trigger this?" the doctor asks. She's sent the nurse away, so Harley can answer honestly.

"Maybe a nightmare? He was already laughing when I woke up."

"Has this ever happened before?"

"Not since—since the night we left. Right after he shot them. And it wasn’t like this."

The doctor nods. "I want to get some imaging. It would be nice to see what's going on while he's laughing, but I don't think we'll be able to get a clear picture with him shaking this hard."

"Sedation again?"

"We'll try a lighter one than last night. But we need to find out what's going on."

They sedate him. They get a scan, and then another. The doctor pulls out Tim's older scans to compare. She takes some blood to run labs. They keep him sedated, because it seems more comfortable.

She shows the scans to Harley. "There's something right here—you see that little dark spot?"

Harley nods.

"I'm not able to get a clear enough image to determine what it is. We're going to have to get in there to figure it out, and probably remove it."

"Brain surgery?"

"Brain surgery."

"Was it there before? Or is it new?"

"I'm not sure. I can almost convince myself I see a trace of it here, on our last image from a few months ago. But this is the part of the brain that was hit the hardest by the electricity. We've got scar tissue and some abnormal activity that are making it difficult to get a clear view. The good news is overall his brain has healed a fair amount since our last scan—if today's images looked like last time's, I don't think I would have been able to find this spot."

"So when do we do the surgery? And how risky is? And how long does it take? And how long does recovery take? And what kind of—"

"Holly. One thing at a time, okay? Normally we'd be looking at a few weeks' wait, but he's been laughing nonstop any time he's been conscious, and I'm not confident in his ability to eat or drink with that going on, so we're going to expedite this as much as possible. I'm hoping for later today, but I need to get a team and an operating room, and I'm not sure how long that will take. Let me talk to some people and get the ball rolling, then I'll come back and answer the rest of your questions."

She calls Paula and Betty to fill them in, talks to Lucy for a minute just to make herself feel better, then borrows a phone charger from a nurse.

She won't be able to be there when they take Tim to the operating room, and having him out of her sight right now is terrifying. She's gone to the bathroom once since getting here, and it was awful. The surgery is going to take way longer than peeing does, and there are going to be so many people there that Harley just has to trust are who they're supposed to be.

Tim's not going to be awake again until after the procedure. She's going to have to decide without his input whether to contact Nightwing beforehand or not, and she's going to have to decide soon.

It's surgery. It's diagnostic surgery for something abnormal in his brain. Nightwing was his family before Harley was, and he'll want to know what's happening.

She calls Pam, and ends up panicking and crying for most of an hour before she even gets to the Nightwing thing.

"If Oracle doesn't already know Tim's in the hospital, she will soon," Pam says, when Harley's calmed down a little. "You'll look better to her and Nightwing if you tell them instead of letting them find out for themselves. And Tim just didn't want to see him, right? He won't; Nightwing can't show up at the hospital without blowing your covers."

"Okay. Okay. You'll contact Oracle?"

"I will. Do you know when they're doing the surgery?"

"Not yet."

"Okay. So you've got time to kill. Tell me about Lucy. She talking yet?"

"Talking? How old do you think she is?"

"I'm a plant doctor, not a baby doctor. Human development is a mystery to me."

"Uh huh. If you say so. She's not talking yet. She's sitting up, and I think she'll start crawling soon, and this is the longest I've ever been away from her and I'm freaking out."

"Okay, not a safe topic. Tell me about that job you were doing before she was born. Or something else that's not about the kids. Something that won't make you worry more."

"Nothing won't make me worry right now. You tell me something. How's your project with Victor? Are Bud and Lou okay?"

Pam distracts her for another hour. Twenty minutes after she hangs up, Harley gets a text from an unknown number that can only belong to Nightwing.

"How is he? Is there anything I can do?"

"sedated until surgery. waiting for more info. something in his brain." She took a photo earlier of the scan, and circled the weird spot—she sends that to him. "can you or oracle look into his family history? check for, like, brain tumors or anything?"

"Of course."

"thanks. this isn't my phone. don't text me on it after today."

Tim's neurologist finally comes back not long after she talks to Dick.

"I've got a room reserved, and the neurosurgeon should be here in about an hour. We'll start as soon as he's ready."

Harley knew that neurologists and neurosurgeons weren't the same, and that Tim's doctor was an ologist, not a surgeon. She knew that. But somehow she didn't think until this moment about how it would be a total stranger actually doing the surgery.

"I'll be there the whole time, Holly. I won't be doing the operation, but I'll be right there, since I'm the expert on Tim's case. He won't be out of my sight until I hand him back over to you. And your surgeon is great—I'd trust him with my life. I actually have trusted him with my cousin's life. He'll come and talk to you before we start. Okay?"

"Okay," Harley says.

Things happen quickly, after that. A lot of preop checks, and meeting the surgeon, and then Tim is off to the operating room, where Harley can't see him.

Dick texts her "No family history of brain tumor. No family history of any brain/neuro issues except his grandpa had Alzheimer's."

She texts back, "In surgery. Will let you know when he comes out."

She calls Paula and Betty, and twenty minutes later they show up with Lucy and some food. Harley holds her baby tight, and tries not to cry again.

Chapter Text

Tim gets wheeled back in hours later, still asleep, with a couple nurses and his neurologist, keeping him in sight like she promised. She looks exhausted. She waits until the nurses are gone to pull a little plastic bag out of her pocket. There's a tiny piece of metal inside.

"It wasn't a tumor, it was a foreign body. Some kind of computer chip. Do you know anything about that?"

"No. It must—it must have been him, right? But I never saw him do anything like that, or bring anyone else in for it. And he definitely wasn't capable of any brain surgery that wasn't immediately fatal."

"Did he have contacts who would be?"

"Maybe. Probably? Or he could have threatened someone—he probably would have killed them when he was done."

"How long would you have been away? Would there have been time for a brain surgery without you noticing?"

She thinks about it. "I was gone—or separated from them at least—for—I don't know how long. Most of a day and night. It was a little more than two weeks in? He was being awful, worse than usual, and I was trying to talk him down. He said I was getting in the way, and told me to get out, and I said maybe we should both get out, take a break, grab something to eat. He got even more mad, and he started waving his gun around, and I said—I said he was gonna kill the kid if he didn't take a break, and he said he would kill the kid if I didn't get the fuck out, so I got the fuck out, and I was pretty upset then, so I asked around if anyone had seen Batman or Nightwing—Batgirl had been missing for months already by then—and no one knew about Nightwing, but there was a rumor going around that Batman had left the country following a lead on Robin. I thought about going to the cops, but they're harder to talk to than Bats, and a little more trigger-happy, and I still didn't—I still didn't want Mr. J dead. I ended up going to Pam—to Poison Ivy—and she said I looked like shit and gave me something to make me sleep. I was asleep for a few hours, and then I tried to get Pam to come back with me—I thought she could help me get Tim and the hyenas away without really hurting the Joker, and then we could drop him off at the police station or something.”

She should have done more. She should have done it faster. She shouldn’t have let Pam help her sleep, not while a kid was being tortured.

"Pam went back with me, and Tim and the Joker were both gone, and there was—there was a lot of blood. He'd been really mad when I left, and I was worried he actually had killed Tim, but it was—it was a relief, too? Like, at least he couldn't get hurt any worse. Pam was planning to leave town that night, and she tried to get me to go with her, but I wanted to be there when the Joker got back, try and talk him down if he was still riled up, see if I could find out what he'd done with the body and at least get that back to Batman.”

It had all seemed like the best she could do, somehow, at the time. It seems so useless and pathetic now, so obviously not enough.

"Pam left, and I figured out where he'd locked the hyenas and let them out, and it was another couple hours maybe before Joker came back with Tim, still alive."

"Was Tim any different when they came back?"

"Not—not really? He was conscious, but pretty out of it, which was standard at that point? Listless, unfocused. I think he'd stopped talking already by then. Joker wouldn't tell me where they'd been or what they'd done, just said it was father-son bonding time and I wouldn't understand. He was in a really good mood, and I didn't want to set him off again, so I didn't ask any more questions.”

She hadn't asked any more questions. She hadn't stopped him. She hadn't asked Pam to come back to Gotham, she hadn't tried again to find Batman, she'd just—she'd just—

Now is not a good time to wallow in guilt. There are things to do.

"Can I keep the chip?" she asks.

"What for?"

"I've made contact with Nightwing. Maybe he can get it to someone who can figure out what it does?"

The doctor hands her the bag, and Harley puts it in her pocket.

"I'm sure everyone who was in the operating room is wondering why there was a foreign body in the brain, but I've told them all Tim is in witness protection and they absolutely can't talk about it. I'm putting a special lock on the op note when it's finished, so it can't be included in a general release of information with other records; you have to approve it separately and specifically for anyone else to have access. My main concern right now is insurance. I trust the staff here not to violate HIPAA, but I don't know about anyone in insurance who might see the records. I'll talk to a couple people and see what we can do, though."

"Do you know why it was making him laugh?"

"The presence of a foreign body alone shouldn't have caused a reaction like that, positioned as it was. I would assume it's related to whatever programming the chip has, but we have no way of reading it."

"Why would—it doesn't seem like it was doing anything, until now. Why would it just start like that?"

"It may have been a response to some stimuli, someone with access to the programming may have activated it, or it could be related to the healing in Tim's brain—it's possible that scar tissue or damaged neural pathways were blocking the function of the chip until now."

"But you can't know for sure."

"We can't know for sure. Maybe Nightwing can figure it out. Tim should be waking up in the next hour. I'll come and check in on you guys in a while."

She looks Tim over carefully once they're alone again. He looks like he has since they sedated him. She doesn't see an incision site. She pulls the chip back out, flips it over a couple times. Thinks. She remembers a happy day in a hideout in Gotham. The Joker, leaning over her shoulder, his hair tickling her cheek.

"What if I was a computer virus?"

"Boring," she'd said, without looking up from her magazine. Nothing else gave her power over the Joker like that one word. Sure, sometimes it got her hit, and once it had broken them up for six months. But when it worked, it was magic. On the days he cared about her, nothing could stop him in his tracks like the accusation that he was boring.

He would turn to her, and sort of pout, and say, "You don't think it's funny?"

And then she would say something like, "Too obvious," or "Overdone," or "Too avant-garde—what's the point of a joke no one gets?" And then he wouldn't do whatever it was. Sometimes it was something stupid, like breaking into the Batmobile just to put whoopie cushions under the seats, which seemed like an awfully big risk without much to show for it. Sometimes it was something evil, like blowing up a daycare.

This time, when he said, "You don't think it's funny?" she'd said, "When have you ever seen a funny virus? They're just annoying."

And then he'd said, "But you could live forever in a virus."

Which had been taking things in a weird direction, for him, so she'd put down her magazine and turned to really look at him. She hadn't been trying to talk him out of anything, because she hadn't thought he was planning anything. It was just a conversation.

"It wouldn't really be you, though. It would just be programmed to act like you. And what if it was wrong? A computer could never be as funny as you. It would get all your jokes wrong, and eventually everyone would remember the Joker virus instead of the real you."

He'd frowned at her for a few seconds, then jumped up, beaming again. "Robots! A whole army of Joker-bots, wreaking havoc on Gotham!"

"Sure. Who's gonna design them?"

They'd spent the next four hours brainstorming about robots, but nothing had ever come of it, or the virus. That had been probably two or three years ago.

Has something come of it? Did he put a computer virus in her kid’s head?

She puts the bag back in her pocket, and checks Tim again. In an hour. In an hour he'll be awake, and hopefully not laughing.

She should have asked when he would be discharged. Probably not until at least tomorrow, after brain surgery.

Being away from Lucy this long is awful. But she really doesn't feel safe leaving Tim unsupervised. So many people heard him laughing in the lobby. She can't ask Paula to bring the crib so Lucy can sleep in the hospital room with her, can she?

Well, maybe that would be better than making Paula and Betty watch her for another night?

At least another night. How much recovery time do you need after brain surgery? If that was what Joker had done while she was gone—and it must have been—he didn't have any recovery time, then.

Which is absolutely in no way an indication of what recovery period is actually appropriate.

She texts Dick a photo of the chip. "the thing in his brain was some sort of computer chip. you can have it if you send someone to pick it up. maybe oracle or the justice league can figure out what it is. he's out of surgery, should be waking up soon."

While she's waiting for him to answer, she calls Paula, who says they can absolutely take Lucy for another night, of course she doesn't want Tim alone overnight after a brain surgery, and Harley really does not know what she would do without the neighbors.

Still. If Tim's staying another night after this, maybe she'll ask Pam to come up here. She could trust Pam to watch Tim while she was with Lucy.

Not that she doesn't trust Paula with Tim. She just doesn't trust Paula to know what to do or how to do it if a bunch of ninjas or robots or something come for him.

Tim probably wouldn't feel safe if he woke up in the hospital and found Poison Ivy watching over him. But the only other bodyguard-capable person she can call for is Nightwing, and Tim specifically said he didn't want to see Nightwing.

Maybe Nightwing would be able to send someone else? Someone Tim could trust who wouldn't potentially be upsetting to see?

He'll be awake soon. She's not sure how lucid he'll be immediately post-brain surgery, but she can at least try to ask what he thinks about it

Chapter Text

He wakes up feeling hazy and weird and safe. Mom—Harley—is there when he opens his eyes, and no one else is, so he closes them again.

-

Tim wakes up—just for a couple minutes, and he doesn't do anything, just opens his eyes, glances around the room, and closes them again. But he doesn't laugh; that's the important part.

His neurologist and the neurosurgeon come back, and go over a few more details of the surgery and recovery. The neurologist has clearly filled the surgeon in on some of Tim's history. They understand her concerns about Tim being tracked to the hospital, and agree to discharge him as soon as it's safe. But they won't have any idea when it'll be safe until he's woken up long enough to have a conversation. And it's pretty late now, so that probably won't happen until morning.

She doesn't mean to fall asleep, not when Tim's unconscious and there's no one else here. But she wakes up at dawn to find Tim sitting up, staring at her intently. It reminds her of the early days, on the road, when she was almost afraid of him.

"Hey, Tim. How are you feeling?"

He blinks a couple times, then manages the tiniest of shrugs.

"We're in the hospital. You had brain surgery yesterday, after you couldn't stop laughing."

He doesn't really react to that.

"The doctors wanted to talk to you once you woke up, so I'm going to call for someone, okay? And then we can see about breakfast."

She pushes the call button, then goes to sit on the side of the bed. "Paula and Betty are watching Lucy and Barbara Linguini for us. I have Paula's phone so we can check on them. But we'd better wait a couple hours—they're probably still sleeping."

He doesn't answer, but he does lean just a little closer to her.

It's okay. Not every day is a talking day, and the last couple days have probably been really stressful and exhausting for him.

A nurse comes in, checks Tim's vitals, and promises to come back with a doctor and two breakfasts.

It's an unfamiliar doctor, which makes sense, because the familiar doctors were here until pretty late last night, but Harley would rather have someone Tim knows, or at least someone she knows. The doctor asks Tim several basic questions that he doesn't answer, which Harley explains isn't necessarily unusual for him, and then does some reflex and motor testing that Tim does great on.

He leaves again. They eat their breakfast, and Harley calls to check in on Lucy. She tries some of the questions Tim wouldn't answer for the doctor, and has some luck with the yes and no ones, though he's still not talking. No nausea. Some pain. He knows where they are.

Paula brings Lucy down, and Tim holds her for a while. He seems—she thinks he seems fine. Unfocused, and less communicative than usual even for a not-talking day, but it's been a rough couple days and he just had brain surgery. That's probably normal.

Tim's neurotrauma specialist shows up, and Paula leaves the room to give them some privacy. Harley keeps Lucy with her.

The doctor asks Harley a few questions which she answers, and Tim a few questions which he doesn't. She checks the chart notes made by the other doctor this morning. She orders another scan, which comes back clear. She decides Tim needs to stay for three days for observation, and if there are no issues in that time he can go home.

Three days is a lot of days for Harley to figure out what to do about.

Her best idea at this point is to keep Lucy here at the hospital with her—she'd need more supplies, but it could work. Tim's the only one in this room, and Lucy's a good baby, and there's kind of enough space for her.

But if someone does come looking for Tim, the last thing she wants is her baby caught up in the fight.

But even if there's not a fight, and even if she can trust someone else to watch over Tim, she really doesn't want to leave him right after brain surgery.

She waits until Tim's sleeping again, and until Paula's come and gone, with promises to come back toward the end of visiting hours to either collect Lucy or drop off supplies, to text Dick again.

"Tim's awake. Really don't think he's up for visitors, but I could use some backup. You know anyone who could maybe stake out the hospital for a couple days, quietly take care of any issues?"

"Give me 4 hours. I can park the spaceship overhead and cloak it. Star and I will watch for anyone suspicious."

Okay. Okay. There's a plan.

She's not going to tell Tim Dick'll be here. Not until she has a better sense of how he's feeling. She does not want any panicking this soon after brain surgery. Dick has a spaceship which can apparently be here within four hours, so if Tim actually wants to see him later, he can come back. She thinks about asking permission to keep Lucy here, but decides to go with forgiveness instead. Nightwing and Starfire will make sure Harley, Tim, and Lucy are safe in the hospital, and Harley won't be abandoning either of her kids. And a spaceship overhead means they can make a quick getaway if someone does come for Tim. They'd have to come back for Barbara Linguini, but she's sure Paula and Betty would look out for her until they could.

She feeds Lucy, and changes her, and plays with her for a while until naptime.

Tim wakes up not long after Lucy falls asleep, and Harley gives him his tablet, which Paula packed in the diaper bag. He's still not talking, or reacting much at all, but it hasn't been long enough to worry about it, really.

"Lucy's going to camp out with us for the next couple days," Harley tells him, and then lets him focus on his tablet. She still has Paula's phone, but she really doesn't want to mess with it beyond the communication she needs to do. She digs around in the diaper bag some more, and finds two books that must be Paula's. One looks like a murder mystery, and she's pretty sure the other is an Amish romance.

Well. It's something to do.

-

Everything hurts, but especially his head. He feels like he woke up in molasses, his brain all slow and sticky. There was something—something bad. He doesn't want to remember what. Lucy and Harley are here, and his brain feels—safe, just slow—so it's okay. It would be better if Barbara Linguini was here, but it's okay.

-

She reads one chapter, and pretends to read another while she watches Tim. The screen of his tablet is lit, and he's looking at it, more or less. But she doesn't think he's really looking at it? There's no volume, and his eyes aren't moving the way she'd expect if he was reading something.

"Do you want to watch a movie?" she asks him.

He holds the tablet out to her, which she interprets as a yes, so she checks on Lucy in her carrier, puts down her book, and gets up on the bed beside him.

"Do you want to pick one?" she asks, and he offers her the tablet again. "Okay, I'll pick." She chooses one she knows he likes, with the volume down low so it's less likely to wake Lucy, and he leans on her shoulder, and falls asleep within fifteen minutes.

She has to untangle herself before the movie ends, to get to Lucy right when she starts making noises, before she starts crying and wakes Tim. (She'll have to ask Paula to bring more toys tonight, along with her fancy stroller to sleep in.)

Both kids are sleeping when Dick texts to say they’re over the hospital.

She texts back, "I don't want to tell him you're here. He's just out of brain surgery, and last time I pushed him to talk to you he had a panic attack."

She considers for a moment how Dick will probably feel reading that text, and adds, "It's not you. He loves you. Watches your interviews on repeat for hours at a time. But talking to you would bring him too close to things he's not ready to cope with."

It's over half an hour before he texts back, "Yeah, I get it."

And Harley feels like shit about it, but what is she supposed to do? Obviously she's not going to do something that'll hurt Tim, and obviously Dick wouldn't want her to, even if he's sad.

-

They spend some time adjusting the outer cameras, making sure they can cover the entirety of the hospital without moving the ship. And then they realize they’re too close to a helicopter landing pad on the roof, so they have to move and adjust all the cameras again.

It’s good. It keeps him from thinking about Tim, and how thinking about talking to Dick gives him panic attacks.

He needs to get whatever they pulled out of Tim's head. Maybe once it gets dark Kory can drop him off in an alley or something, and he can go meet up with Harley in disguise.

Or maybe he can send Kory to meet Harley in disguise. She's harder to disguise, but Dick's not sure he can actually come face-to-face with Harley without losing his temper in a way that's totally inappropriate when they're meeting in the hospital because a kid they both love just had emergency brain surgery.

He does believe she loves him. He's seen a lot of video footage of them together.

But she’s Harley Quinn. She kidnapped him. She helped the Joker.

Dick loves him too, and he’s so sick of losing people.

All he can do right now is keep him safe from a distance. So. The brain chip. And Harley said she doesn’t have her own phone—that could be a problem. They can handle that, too.

-

Harley's first alien encounter is in the hospital parking lot, where Starfire spends some time appreciating the cuteness of Lucy, takes Tim's brain chip, and gives her two cell phones.

"Easier and more secure than borrowing your neighbor's. All the important numbers are in there—Dick, Barbara, Alfred, me. Superman for emergencies. Tim should recognize the code names we used. We picked them up from Oracle on the way here, so no one can track them."

Well, she's going to have to come up with a lie for Paula about why she doesn't need her phone anymore, but this is great, overall. She leaves pretty much as soon as the exchange has been made—Dick is still in the spaceship watching the hospital, but Tim's in the room alone, and she doesn't love that.

He's still asleep. She gets Lucy to bed, too, and starts playing with her new phone. Dick texts her almost immediately, so at least she knows which contact is him.

Chapter Text

"How are you feeling?" Harley asks when she notices he's awake.

Tim doesn't even try to answer. He's sore and tired and a little scared, and there are no words inside him. Something—something bad happened, but he can't quite remember what. It's hard to hold onto his thoughts, right now.

“Okay. That’s okay. I’m going to have a doctor come check on you.”

-

Around midafternoon, Harley remembers the date.

Shit. Their lease. It’s ending, and she hasn’t picked a new apartment.

She calls the apartment manager, explains that she's in the hospital with her son, and asks if she can extend her lease by a month. She lays it on thick, starts crying a little on the phone. I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, my baby just had brain surgery, I can't renew the lease for the year because I need more space for the kids, but I haven't been able to find a new place because we're all in the hospital.

Harley’s a fantastic guilt-tripper, and the apartment manager doesn't do well with people crying. He reads through the official policies out loud, obviously stressed, stumbling over his words. Harley sniffles some more, and he caves. He tells her a two bedroom apartment just opened up upstairs, and he can give her an additional week after they get discharged from the hospital to move their things. Harley says she'll take it.

And then she thinks about the money. She knows the universal healthcare doesn't cover absolutely everything.

She finds a nurse, explains she's American and doesn't understand the insurance, and gets a meeting with someone in billing, who comes to meet her in Tim's room; fortunately he's sleeping again, so he won't overhear the money talk and worry.

It's not bad. They can definitely still get the apartment, and all the other things they need.

Well, there was never any question of them not having enough, really. But she wants to do everything out of her bank account. She's not sure the Tim account is a trap, but she's going to treat it like it is. She's not going to use Tim's money, not even for things for Tim—she's going to leave it collecting interest until Tim's an adult, and then he can use it himself. She's the parent, and she'll use her own money to take care of him.

-

"Do you remember how we talked about moving?" she asks Tim the next time he wakes up.

Tim doesn't answer.

"Well, I found us a new apartment. It's in the same building, but it's bigger, so you can have your own room. We can move in after we leave the hospital. Is that okay?"

Nothing.

"I need some kind of response, Tim. I don't want to make this big a choice without you."

He shrugs.

"Okay. Thank you."

Shrugs are about all she's gotten out of him since the surgery. Which—if he's not going to talk, shrugs are probably the most promising option? A shrug doesn't say "I can't communicate more," or "I'm afraid to communicate more;" it says "I'm choosing not to communicate more."

It’s not what she wants. But it could definitely be worse.

Paula comes by during visiting hours again. Harley gives back her phone—she's already erased the call history—and makes up a story about a friend from synagogue picking one up for her. She'd had all the plans made for getting the phone plan before the hospital, so it was just a matter of using Tim's tablet to place the order, and having someone go get it.

She promises to call Paula when she needs a ride home from the hospital, and if anything else comes up. Paula promises to keep feeding Barbara Linguini.

Then they're alone.

The hospital is boring. Which is for the best—the hospital is not a place where they want excitement. Tim's still quiet, still staring at his tablet without actually using it, so she pulls up a new movie for him every couple hours, except when he's sleeping, which is about half the day. She has to leave the room several times to pace up and down the hall with Lucy, when she gets fussy and Harley doesn't want her to bother Tim.

-

It's been two days, and there's been no suspicious activity at the hospital. He's so close to Tim, and he can't see him, can't talk to him, can't even tell him he's here.

At least he can email Jason, and he'll answer sometimes.

Why is seeing Dick the problem? Harley's the one who kidnapped him and helped the Joker, and he sees her every day.

He doesn't want there to be any suspicious activity at the hospital, of course, but it would be a good distraction from worrying about Tim.

If some totally innocent person who just looks suspicious could show up, he could run a background check, and it would keep him busy for a while. Someone wearing garish colors or with a really weird hairstyle, maybe—someone who dresses like a Gotham criminal.

But there’s nothing.

“Are you okay?” Kory asks.

“Fine.”

“You should get some sleep. I can keep watch.”

“I can’t. Not—not knowing he’s down there.”

“If someone does come, and you’re exhausted, you won’t be able to protect him.”

Well. She’s right. She usually is.

“Just a couple hours.”

“I’ll wake you if anything happens.”

-

The next few days are about the same. No one objects to Lucy's presence. Dick texts occasionally to check on Tim and assure her he's not seeing anything suspicious. Doctors and nurses come check on Tim, and don't find anything wrong. His scan comes back clear, and he's officially discharged.

But he still hasn't spoken, and Harley is starting to really worry.

He just had brain surgery, on top of what must have been an extremely traumatic night. His scans are fine. He just needs time. It’s not as if he's never gone a few days without speaking before, especially after something stressful or upsetting.

Chapter Text

Almost as soon as they get home, they start packing to leave again. Well, Harley does, because Tim’s recovering, and can’t do anything strenuous.

Tim's not sure about moving. But he doesn't have the energy to think about it much. He doesn't have the energy for anything, lately. Mostly he just holds Barbara Linguini and watches Lucy while Harley packs.

It's good to be with Barbara Linguini again.

Harley keeps stopping to check on him. She keeps asking how he's feeling, if he's okay. He doesn't know. He feels weird. He feels like a guest in his own body. Or sometimes like a prisoner in his own body. He feels weird and off-balance and far away from himself. And it shouldn't be possible to feel far away from himself and stuck inside himself at the same time, but he does.

He really doesn't understand what—what happened, with the laughing, and the hospital. He knows Harley's explained it. He knows she's explained it more than once. But things aren't sticking in his head.

He's so tired.

Harley asks—something. About beds? He doesn't—his brain really isn't working right. She frowns, and crouches down, and asks again if he's okay. He doesn't answer. He doesn't know.

-

Tim is clearly not okay, and she doesn't know what to do. Should she take him back to the hospital? There's nothing new wrong. He hasn't gotten worse since coming home. He just hasn't gotten better. And she's sure the upheaval of moving isn't going to help him, but they have to—they already got an extension on their lease.

It’ll get better. He just needs time.

-

He has his own room in the new apartment. He's not sure how he feels about it. The privacy is maybe nice, but he doesn't feel right, and he's not sure about being alone right now. Harley said something about decorating the room, but he definitely doesn't have the energy to think about that. He sits on the couch with Barbara Linguini, and stares at the wall. Something was—something was in his head. And his body doesn't feel safe anymore. His brain doesn't feel safe anymore.

The new apartment has bedframes and a real kitchen table and chairs. Which is good, probably. It definitely isn't bad. But it doesn't look like theirs anymore.

Probably he just needs more time to get used to it. But he doesn't want everything to be changing. Even the furniture. He doesn't have the energy for all this change.

-

Dick calls her, late the night they finish officially moving in to the new apartment.

"Tell me you didn't know this thing was in my brother's head."

"I didn't know. I swear. What have you found out?"

"The chip contains an artificial intelligence based on the Joker's personality, designed to basically override everything that makes Tim Tim. It would have been a slow process—we're talking maybe months, but probably several years. And that's starting from when it's activated. Which it wasn't until now. If you didn't activate it—"

"I didn't. Not unless I could have done it by accident, by saying a random word or something."

"No, someone had to initiate the program on a computer. We're still trying to track it. We're not sure yet if it was activated on purpose by someone who worked for Joker, or if it could have been done by accident by someone who found the equipment, like a cop or a lawyer going through evidence. But it malfunctioned. It shouldn't have triggered that laughing fit—if it hadn't we might never have caught it."

"You'll track it?"

"We'll track it."

"If it was activated on purpose—I know you don't kill. So let me know, and I'll handle that part."

"Yeah," Dick says, instead of discouraging murder. "How is he?"

"Still not talking, or communicating much at all. It seems like he's having some trouble focusing. He's just had brain surgery, and now we're moving, so I'm hoping he'll go back to normal in a few weeks, when things settle a little."

"Do you need to take him in again?"

"I called the neurologist. She says we'll do another scan in a week."

"Okay. Let me know how it goes."

-

He's not getting better. He's back to not engaging with anyone but her, and even then, never verbally or in writing. He doesn't touch her or stick close to her like he did. He's spending way too much time just staring at nothing. He hasn't touched his schoolwork. He's not nearly as interested in Lucy as he was. She's either taking him with her wherever she goes or leaving him with Paula, because she's afraid to leave him alone.

His scan came back clean, and the neurologist says to give it time.

She's keeping a massive secret from him—she's been communicating with Dick Grayson regularly for over two weeks now. She shouldn't be hiding that. But he's already not doing well, and she doesn't want to push him over the edge.

She emails his therapist for advice about how to bring it up.

It's really nice to have her own phone. Makes doing things like that a lot easier. But it does mean they haven't been to the library in a bit.

"Do you want to go out for a while?" she asks Tim. "Maybe to the library? Or the park? Or we could go out to eat tonight."

Fresh air and a change of scenery would be good for him. And the weather's unusually nice today; if she bundles Lucy up well they can walk.

(She needs to get a car.)

(She hasn't even given Tim his phone yet—if the contact list is full of code names he'll recognize, that'll tell him she's in contact with Dick before she can break it to him gently.)

(She still doesn't know who any of the built-in contacts in her phone are except for Dick.)

Tim, unsurprisingly, doesn't answer.

"Come on, find your shoes. Let's go on a walk."

Tim does not find his shoes. Which, okay, him being comfortable not doing as he's told is still a good thing.

"Okay, do you want to pick a restaurant for tonight?"

He shakes his head, which is also a good thing.

"Do you want me to pick?"

Another head shake.

"Do you want to stay home?"

He nods. So. Communication going as well as it has since the hospital, but that's a no-go on fresh air and change of scenery—she's not going to ignore him when he's actually expressing what he wants.

"How about we get something delivered?" she offers, and he shrugs. "Okay. I'll find a few options for you to choose between."

-

Tim lies on his bed, on its bedframe, in his own room. Which still feels weirdly fancy after all this time. Barbara Linguini is sprawled across his stomach, so he can't move, which is fine, because he doesn't want to anyway.

He's so tired. He's always so tired. Thinking at all is exhausting.

It's kind of nice, having his own room, because he can tell Harley's worried. If he goes into his room, he can just drift around the edges of the bad parts of his brain, and not see her worrying.

There was something inside his brain. Something bad, something that didn't come from him, that didn't belong there. He thinks—he thinks it's gone. But it stirred up all the other bad things, and now he can't think too far in any direction without running into a problem spot.

Barbara Linguini rearranges herself so her head is up by his, and she's purring right in his ear. He works up the energy to turn on his tablet—he hasn't checked on Dick or Barbara or Jason since he—since the—

Barbara won her election. There's a photo of Alfred and Jason both glaring at Lex Luthor over Damian's head. That's new. Last he heard Alfred was with Dick. He still doesn't understand why Jason isn't with Dick, but it's good that he's got Alfred. Alfred can handle Lex Luthor.

He'll read the article that goes with the photo later. He's too tired now.

-

They've spent the last three days helping with a landslide—Dick, Kory, Superman, and a handful of others—and Dick is exhausted.

There's no way Lex can touch him for this. Helping with a natural disaster doesn't count as vigilante activity, and the landslide wasn't in the States. He's curious about what Lex will have to say about it—he'll have to say something, reporters will ask him—but that can wait. He's just going to check the most important things quick, then sleep so much.

Voicemail from Alfred. Damian is warming up to him slowly, after a fight between Jason and Damian, where it was impressed upon Damian that, quote, "he's not a servant; he's your fucking grandpa." Jason is currently grounded for swearing at his brother, and therefore will not be replying to Dick's most recent email for several days.

(Not that he would have necessarily replied anyway, but it’s nice to know he can’t.)

Text from Harley. Tim seems a little less tired, a little more engaged with his surroundings, but still isn't talking. His therapist wants to wait to talk to him about Dick until he's a little closer to his preop baseline.

Text from Barbara. No luck tracking the origin of Tim's chip activation. The device it was activated from may have been destroyed, but she'll keep looking.

And he already knows there's no email from Jason, so that's everything, and he can go to bed. Kory's already asleep. She didn't even shower first, and he's not going to bother, either. They can wash the mud out of the sheets later.

Chapter Text

Tim has a screaming nightmare, for the first time since they've moved, and in a weird way it's a relief—it's the most noise she's heard from him since they sedated him to stop the laughter.

The sound hasn't woken Lucy yet, so she leaves her there and hurries to Tim's room. He leaves the door open when he sleeps, though he'll close it if he's in there during the day, and it makes her feel less like she's intruding on his space.

She brings her pillow along to whack him—she’s really hoping it’ll work, because she does not want to call him Junior when he’s as off as he's been.

It works. His eyes snap open, and he sits up, looks at her for a moment, and bursts into tears.

She hovers there for a moment, unsure.

"Do you want me to come up?" she asks.

He nods, so she gets onto the bed, and wraps an arm around him.

He cries for a long, long time before he falls asleep in her arms. She stays there, sitting up in his bed, until Lucy wakes up and starts fussing. He wanders into their new kitchen about an hour after she finishes with Lucy's breakfast.

"Hey, honey. How're you feeling?"

"Kay," he says, which is great—actual words coming out of his mouth again!—and sits down at their new dining room table.

"You have opinions about breakfast?"

He shrugs, which isn't surprising. There haven't been very many opinions since the surgery.

"Okay. I'll get you something. I've got therapy today—do you want to stay up here, or go hang out downstairs with Paula? Or you can hang out in the office lobby."

"Here," he says—more words!

"Okay. I'll bring Lucy with me. You have your cell phone charged up?" She gave it to him the other day, after removing all the contacts so she wouldn’t have to talk to him about Nightwing yet—she’ll put them back in later. As far as she can tell he hasn't really done anything with it yet. He's been getting slowly less listless since they got home, he's using his tablet again occasionally, and sometimes he'll play a card game with her or the neighbors. But he spends too much time just sitting, doing nothing, and he's hardly touched the new phone.

He nods, and she starts breakfast.

-

He's in the new apartment alone. He hasn't been alone, really, since they got here. Harley's been worried. Probably she only left him alone today because he managed to talk a little.

Everything is just so hard. He's so tired. He was starting to feel better finally, but now his body and his brain both feel like they're wading through molasses again. He hasn't tried school at all since they got home.

He pulls up Dick's interview, and sets it to repeat, then sets down the tablet and lies on the floor in the sun with his eyes closed. Barbara Linguini comes and kneads his chest for a while before curling up and taking a nap on top of him. He keeps his eyes closed, and tries to think through the molasses.

There was something in his brain. Something bad and wrong that made him laugh like the Joker. And it's gone now. They took it out. Was it—was it him that shot them, or was it the thing in his brain?

He thinks it was him. He doesn't want it to be him, but even through the molasses, he thinks it was. He felt invaded when he was laughing, felt like he wasn't the one controlling his body. He didn't feel that way when he shot them.

If it wasn't him, if it was the thing they took out of his brain, then it wouldn't--it wouldn't have been his fault. And he could see Dick again.

And then what?

He doesn't want to go live on a spaceship with Dick and Kory. He doesn't want to leave Lucy and Harley and Barbara Linguini.

He doesn't want to leave them, but he wants to go home. He misses his mom. His real mom, not affectionate and always here like Harley, but his. He misses the clack of her fingers on the keyboard when she brought her laptop to the table and worked through breakfast. The smell of her perfume, lingering in the house even when she'd been gone for days.

Once, when he was little, he'd thrown a tantrum when they were going on a dig and leaving him behind. She'd bought him a sandbox before leaving, and buried fake artifacts in it, and he'd spent the entire time they were gone digging things up.

He wants his mom.

He misses his dad, too, but he can't think of him except as part of a unit, mom-and-dad, or he gets all tangled up in his head with the Joker—dads aren't safe anymore.

He can't go home. Mom and Dad are gone, and it's his fault, and he doesn't want to leave anyone else behind. He has a mom and a sister and a cat here, and he hasn't seen Dick in over a year.

-

Tim's asleep on the floor when she gets home, which is pretty normal for him; he and the cat chase sunny spots across the room all day, and fall asleep in them half the time. The sun has moved on, and the cat with it. Harley sets Lucy down and starts on lunch as quietly as she can.

He wakes up reasonably alert—he is getting better. Brain surgery is a big deal. It's just frustrating, feeling like they've lost so much of the progress they'd made. She asks how he's feeling again, and he says, "Tired."

He plays on the floor for a while with Lucy, and picks the movie they watch before bed. It's a good day. If the rest of the week goes this well, maybe she can bring up the Nightwing thing at his next therapy appointment.

-

“Hey, Tim,” his therapist says. “Do you feel up for talking today?”

“I’ll try,” he offers, which is the most words he’s said in therapy since the surgery, so Harley is cautiously optimistic.

“Okay. Your mom had something she wanted to talk to you about. Is that okay?” Harley had emailed her last night about broaching the topic of Dick today.

Tim nods.

“Great! Harley?”

"When you were in the hospital, I needed some help, to make sure you were safe. I didn’t have a lot of options. I trust Pam, but I know you don’t. So I called Nightwing.”

“Dick?” he asks. And the need to double check the identity isn’t super encouraging as far as his mental state today, but she’s in too deep to back out now.

“Yeah. He didn’t come in. I know you didn’t want to see him. But he stayed by the hospital and watched for any trouble. And we’ve been talking since.”

“He was here?”

“Just outside the hospital.”

“Okay,” Tim says.

They all sit in silence for a few minutes. Lucy fusses, and Harley shifts her in her lap, and digs a teething toy out of the diaper bag.

“Is there anything you want to ask Harley about Dick?” the therapist checks.

Tim shakes his head.

“Okay. Are you okay with Dick and Harley talking?”

He nods.

They don’t get anything else out of him during the appointment. That’s okay—this has been more productive than the last several.

“How are you feeling?” Harley checks, when they’re on the bus home. They haven’t walked in a while—Tim’s too worn out. Besides, it’s raining today.

He shrugs. “Can I hold Lucy?”

“Sure.” She shifts him over into his lap, and he wraps his arms around her.

“He wasn’t—he wasn’t mad?”

“Dick?”

“At you? For—you know.”

For torturing and kidnapping him, he can’t say on public transport. “He didn’t say anything, but we had more important stuff going on. I’m sure he doesn’t like it, but he’s been focused on you.”

Tim nods.

“Do you think he should be?”

“I’m not,” he says, which isn’t an answer, and also—yeah, she knows he’s not. But he really should be. She waits to see if he’ll say anything else. It takes about a block. “Dunno if he should be. Thought he would be.”

“You said you wanted to stay here. So probably he doesn’t want to pick a fight with me.”

“Yeah,” Tim says. They don’t talk for the rest of the drive.