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incrediblyaccuratethoughts · 2 years ago

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I’m Gonna Tell ‘Em (Don’t you Dare)

Ao3

Tim just wanted coffee. That’s really all he desired in life. Coffee. His position as Red Robin. And Wayne Industries to get its shit together for one goddamn day. In that order.

“Are you shitting me? I was a fucking crime lord you little terror, I don’t give a fuck-”

He’d done an all-nighter in the Batcave. Again. Trying to crack a cold case he was sure had something to do with Riddler's vague warning a few nights ago. And he was so close, but his eyes had started to close for just a little too long.

So tell him why he walked into an argument that seemed to be based around the topic of murder, at 7 in the morning. Between Jason and Damian. Who both tried to kill him at least once. Respectively.

“And I am the Demon Prodigy of the League of Assassins. I could kill a man before I could speak.”

Tim stands in the doorway, contemplating if his need for coffee is higher than his potential rate of getting maimed in the dining room.

“Yeah, but you were fucking sheltered inside the bases like goddamn Rapunzel in her-”

“I was not sheltered. You of all people should know of Mother’s harshness for disobedience-“

“Oh and I’m sure you were so disobedient Mr. Goody Two Shoes-“

Ultimately, the urge for coffee wins. Tim crosses the kitchen as unnoticeably as he can, skirting the edges and keeping his footsteps as light as he can manage on 10 hours of sleep in the last week.

He’s busy, okay?

“I’ll admit I wasn’t raised to go against the orders of a higher-up but that did not mean-”

“Bull. Fucking. Shit.”

“Did my propensity for sneaking animals into the house escaped your notice? I thought you were better trained-“

“So what? You save every bird with a broken wing you come across, but you’d willingly slit the throat of a human?”

“Yes, Todd. That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

The coffee pot is half full. Tim counts this as the one redeeming factor of this morning. The threat of getting stabbed is nothing in the face of sweet, sweet caffeine.

“What’s your fucking number then?”

“I can’t possibly know the exact-“

“Oh no, you don’t get to pull that shit on me-“

Tim considers pouring himself a cup, but he’s gonna drink the whole thing anyway and he’s exhausted enough to zone out during Alfred’s inevitable lecture, so he takes the whole pot and tips it back.

“I was sent out for missions when I was barely more than a toddler. You can’t expect me to remember every-“

“Ra’s had files on every fucking mission I did while brain dead and high on Lazarus rage, there’s no fucking way he didn’t have an exact-“

Tim chugs his precious coffee. The temperature is surprisingly cool enough that he doesn't immediately burn his tongue. Not that a few scorched taste buds would stop Tim from inhaling the only thing between him and unconscious. But it’s the thought that counts.

“What’s yours then, Todd?”

“Nope. Not until you tell me yours first. I’m not about to have you raise the number because I told you mine.”

“That’s preposterous. I would do no such thing.”

Tim calculates his chances of making it back out of the kitchen with a quarter pot of coffee in his hands and decides his caffeine fix is safer off with a few counters between him and his homicidal brothers.

And yah know. His physical well-being. But that’s pretty low on his ‘fucks to give list’ at the moment.

“I don’t trust a fucking word coming out of your mouth-“

“There’s an easy way to settle this if you’d just-“

“What? Shut up? Drop the argument? No fucking-“

“We can write it down separately and then show it to each other at the same time."

“…huh.”

Tim looks up in genuine fear when both of his siblings go quiet. That’s never a good sign. Not in this house.

There’s a window to his right that he could probably smash through if it came to it.

Neither of them are looking at him though, just regarding each other with much less animosity than a few seconds ago. Tim decides he’s probably fine and goes back to his coffee.

“I will go retrieve a piece of paper and two pens.”

Damian leaves the room and Tim freezes like if he stays still enough it’ll keep Jason from noticing him. Unfortunately, now that his older brother’s attention is directed to his surroundings and not just screaming at a 12-year-old, he makes direct eye contact with Tim.

“Oh hey, Timmers. How long have you been here?”

Tim stares at him blankly. He- doesn’t know what answer Jason wants from him and he’s not willing to face his older brother’s wrath if he’d been having what he thought was a private conversation.

“Sorry about the noise. I hope we didn’t wake you up.” Jason says after it’s clear that he isn't getting answers out of Tim.

As if the manor isn’t literally soundproofed. For this exact reason.

Tim’s 17 years of social etiquette training won’t let him just not answer the open-ended comment, but god does he wish that it did.

“No, I was already up.”

Jason nods as if he was expecting that answer. Which is fair. Tim’s sure he looks just as tired as he feels. His eye bags could hold all of his emotional trauma. They’re Guchi.

“And does Alfred know you’re drinking straight from the pot?” Jason motions to the carafe Tim’s clutching like a lifeline. Because it is.

Tim opens his mouth to lie through his teeth, but is saved by Damian’s re-entry. Wow, he’s never been so glad to see his stab-happy younger brother.

True to his word, the kid’s carrying a few pieces of paper and pens. Tim could leave now. He could casually walk right past them, out of the kitchen, and back to the cave to keep working on his case, but dammit, he’s invested now.

He’s still not sure what this argument is about exactly, but he’s willing to wait a few more minutes to satiate his curiosity now that he’s tentatively sure that the argument isn’t going to evolve into physical violence.

“I’ve acquired the tools to finish this once and for all, Todd.” Damian announces, sliding half of his spoils to Jason.

“Great. We’ll write our body count down and on 3 we’ll turn ‘em around. Got it?”

“Don’t tell me what to do” Damian grumbles, but writes dutifully anyway. The kid would be funny if he didn’t back his threats up with swords.

Tim is. Still lost, but he’s always secretly wondered how many people his brothers have killed. In a morbid way. Mostly because he wants to know if the murder attempts on him were a particularly special event or just a pattern. For his mental health's sake.

“Got it?” Jason asks, holding his paper close to his chest so no one can peek. Tim doesn’t know who would, considering he’s the only one in the kitchen that’s not a part of this squabble, but Damian copies the movement and Tim finds himself inching closer, taking the last swig of his coffee.

“One.”

“Two.”

“Three!”

They flip the papers around and for a moment the kitchen is quiet.

“FUCK YEAH!” Jason pumps his fist in the air with a whoop. “Ha! Take that, Demon Brat! I’m the Robin with the highest kill count!”

Tim spits out his coffee and coughs violently. It’s partially because he got some in his lungs, but also to cover the incredulous laughter bursting uncontrollably out of him. It takes him a good few seconds to get his breathing under control, but when he looks up, his brothers are staring at him.

For a moment he’s tempted. So fucking tempted. Because he hasn’t told anyone anything more than bits and pieces about his time with the League. Hell, the only reason his family even knows about his little stint playing lap dog for Ra’s, is because he choked out a vague explanation about his missing spleen when he went into sepsis.

They don’t know about the missions he was sent on. The people he sold out. And most importantly, the multiple bases he blew up because he was crazier than the Joker after Bart and Kon’s death and then the near miss with Bruce.

The bases he absolutely didn’t evacuate. With hundreds of people inside. A few actually avalanched down mountainsides, and he’d eat his Batarang if any of them survived.

The only word he’d confidently use to describe his mental state then, is feral.

He didn’t have to blow them up. He really didn’t. A good few of the bases he’d never actually seen before he snuck in to level the place, but he’d been having a shitty year so naturally, he was going to make sure Ra’s got to have one too.

Not to mention that Tim was as depressed as he’d ever been and wasn’t particularly giving a lot of fucks about if he died during his warpath. He’d already lost a spleen, what were a few more organs?

So this argument? This competition? He finds it objectively fucking hilarious.

Damian and Jason are still staring at him in bewilderment, and for a moment -just a wild moment- he thinks about telling them.

Explaining how he was just. So done. And could only think of one way out, so he systematically hacked into every base he could get his hands on. Stole as many files as he could during his time constraint. And then blew all of them sky-high.

Thought about telling them how on one particularly bad night, gone through every log of the people in those bases. How he hadn’t been ‘sick’ as he claimed the week after he managed to crawl out of his safe house.

He was just too horrified to look anyone in the eye.

It would be funny to watch his family’s expressions go through the five stages of grief and add a few more just for funsies, if they even believed him at all. But no. Tim had his secrets and he was going to take them to the grave.

He grinned at his brothers, patted Jason on the shoulder with a quiet congratulations, and strolled out of the kitchen.

Tim had cases to solve and letting his family assume he wasn’t capable of murder was better for all of them in the long run.

No matter how wrong they were.

👻

In my defense. Writing prompts make the brain noodle go brr. You can blame @coffinbirds and @batcavescolony for these posts.

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