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[Fanfic] Museum Mishap | the BatFam

I’m posting an older fanfic to kick off my attempt to be more involved with the Tumblr Fandom community!

Museum Mishap | Chapter 6/6

Fandom: the DC Universe, Batman & co. Pairings: Jay x Tim Characters: Jason Todd, Tim Drake, Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson Rating: Gen Audiences Warnings: None

Total Word Count: 38,590

Summary:

Middle-School Tim Drake is on a field trip to the Science Museum, but with a WE exhibition of top-secret new technologies being staged in the basement, Tim separates from his classmates and breaks into the staff-only areas by using the skills he's developed over years of stalking Batman and Robin.

Current-Robin Jason Todd catches him in the act, but he's not there to confront Tim for trespassing or truancy - he's there because there's a rumor on the street that Tim Drake knows Batman's real name. And the rumor's gaining ground, quick, drawing in the wrong kind of attention.

When a Drug-Lord decides to take the rumor seriously enough to kidnap the little genius, Jason jumps into the crossfire. It all goes downhill from there. Fast.

(Jason is 14, Tim is 12)

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Museum Mishap Chapter 6: Safe

It’s five weeks after Jason disobeyed Batman’s orders to drop the idea of investigating the rumor that a random rich kid knew the vigilantes’ secret identities.

Five weeks since Jason let himself be kidnapped by the upstart drug lord Lorenzo Sabini in an attempt to protect the kid who was Sabini’s real target – the kid rumored to know impossible things about Batman and Robin.

Five weeks since Jason’s leg was broken – in the line of a duty he never should’ve been asked to shoulder, never should’ve been allowed to feel bound to carry – and Bruce Wayne rediscovered the impossible duality of being responsible for the life of a child that he’d somehow managed to forget. That had faded from his mind when Dick had grown up enough to go off on his own – without his Guardian having any legal say in stopping him.

Batman has been able to bury the raging concern, the guilt he bears for introducing Jason to such a dangerous lifestyle – for not doing more to discourage his interest. Batman is able to silence the voice that says Jason acted honorably, if stupidly, by insisting that Robin needs to do better, to be better, so that he can keep the boy inside the costume safer.

But Bruce is having trouble letting Jason heal.

‘Suffocating’ Jason calls his attentions, merely ‘stupid codling he doesn’t need’.

Jason submitted to three weeks of strictly bedrest – a godsend if Bruce could ever believe in such things. He’d offered only mild resistance to being benched for six weeks – to rigorous and thorough PT, and light, careful exercise and a slow return to the training regimen that kept shaping Robin’s growing body into something more heroic than the average simple human.

But there was no point in even trying to bring up the idea of retiring Jason’s pixie boots for good – of trying to convince him to stand down from the Vigilante fight.

Bruce knows that, but he still tries it – once, in a terse conversation that gets shut down before he even makes it to the first point of reasoning – and then he swallows the rest of the worry and buries it in silence alongside his fury at Jason’s constant reckless disregard for his own safety. Bruce knows he can’t stop Jason, can’t force him out of the cape, so Batman vows to train him harder, push him further, make him stronger, make him faster, more durable, more prepared – keep him safer.

It’s a compromise.

And it has to be enough.

Because Jason is already back on his feet.

He broke his own way out of the cast almost a week ago – refused to apologize or sit for another casting – and though Alfred’s managed to somehow force him into a sturdy brace, guilted him into maintaining his use of the crutches… Jason’s been back inside the Cave twice already while Batman has been out – at least twice.

The Cave’s security cameras have caught him on the Salmon Ladder the last two nights in a row – going through two sets his first night back, and four the next. So that was two nights, at least, that security footage showed Jason working out inside the Cave, but it was possible there were nights he wasn’t tagged on the Cave’s security footage. Dick had certainly learned to sneak down without being caught on camera. Bruce doubted that Dick would share his secrets with Jason – but it was not beyond possibility.

Bruce kept meaning to add more cameras, to ensure that every inch of the cave was covered by an unblinking eye equipped with filters in Starlight and infrared, but that project kept getting sidelined somehow. He kept getting distracted.

Because his kids kept getting hurt.

But it’s been five weeks since Jason got hurt.

He’s getting better, and his bullheaded determination is just the same as it was before the injury – the stubborn streak still apparent, now even more so if anything had changed.

But there’s something else about Jason that’s different.

Bruce almost can’t see it – almost convinces himself it’s not happening, because he’s so damn hopeful that it is happening that his chest constricts with this strange kind of joy or pride or something and he doesn’t know what to do with it.

Because Dick and Jason are talking.

Not fighting, talking.

Alfred’s caught them playing video games. Together.

They were supposed to be doing homework – Jason’s been back at school for three weeks and while Dick’s purposefully selected freshman college classes don’t require constant attendance, they do give assignments that need to be turned in online – but still…

Dick and Jason are getting along.

His adopted sons are becoming brothers.

Bruce notices.

And wants it to be real so badly that it hurts.

Batman notices, too.

But Batman notices other things, as well.

Batman notices how the Wayne Boys have befriended the kid Jason got himself kidnapped alongside.

Batman notices how Nightwing volunteers to swing off on his own every night for a cursory once over of deterrence through Coventry and around the area in the Upper West Side where Sabini’s gang and the rumors they’d acted on had run amok – had being the operative word, seeing as how the entire area had been scared so straight there hasn’t even been a purse snatching in over a month.

Batman notices how quiet the supposed-civilian kid at the center of those rumors is when he’s home alone – which is often – how the only thing he talks about out loud, in range of Batman’s listening devices, is how much he admires the caped crusaders and how much he wants for their ramshackle team to work together as brothers and sisters in arms – to work through their issues and be a kind of family.

Batman notices.

And he watches.

And he’s concerned by what he sees.

So tonight, as Nightwing swings off towards Coventry – with a big smile and a wholly unnecessary flip – Batman decides to investigate the kid firsthand.

The civilian’s name is Timothy Jackson Drake and he is twelve years old, enrolled as a sixth grader at Gotham Preparatory Academy Primary Campus. His parents are Jack and Janet Drake, famed globe-trotting researchers and archeologists, and the second generation of Drakes to head up Drake Industries – a leading Wayne Enterprises competitor. The Drakes reside in the mansion that neighbors the Wayne Estate – another statement of how DI both complements and competes with WE.

Timothy Drake seems mostly unremarkable.

He’s skipped two grades, and his teachers say he’s got a remarkable mind, but he lacks significant social skills and spends most of his time alone – tinkering with some project or other. He’s never demonstrated a particular drive to be anything when he grows up, but he’s applied to the Wayne Tech summer camps three years in a row – despite being under the age requirement – and his bedroom is littered with DI equipment and half-finished robots he’s clearly engineered himself in the hours and hours he spends unsupervised.

Lucius Fox likes him.

In the way that some people like puppies.

Bruce isn’t even entirely sure how Lucius Fox discovered the Drake kid, but it’s in his files in the Batcomputer – Fox has his name on a recruitment list, circled in red sharpie with a smiley face next to it.

So, Timothy Drake is a smart kid.

But he’s just a kid.

According to all of Batman’s information, Timothy Drake is just a kid.

A civilian who happened to have a bad stroke of luck and got his name wrapped up in a rumor founded on nothing more than a junkie’s word and some evidence that the kid in question was a vigilante fan.

Is still a fan, somehow, despite the circumstance that admiration landed him in.

Timothy Jackson Drake seems like nothing more than a dedicated fan – a child, not a threat. But the evidence is so peculiar – there are ridiculously strong indications that the rumor carried truth, and yet… the notion that the child knows nothing is so convincing that Dick and Jason agree on it… which in and of itself makes the evidence seem suspect…

Thus, Batman is set on investigating the matter further for himself.

A twelve year old civilian would be in bed at this time of night, tucked safely into the labyrinth of the Drake Mansion.

So as Nightwing peals away to the west, Batman plots a course northward.

He’s planned this carefully. His choice of direction does not immediately alert Nightwing to his intentions. He’s been rotating where he patrols after splitting off from Nightwing, moving counterclockwise by a dozen blocks every few days. Now he’s pointed right towards the Robbinsville area, where he’s stashed one of his getaway vehicles – a rather bland, all-black motorcycle that’s nothing special, but is quick and maneuverable enough to get him to the Drake Estate and back before Nightwing realizes he’s deviated.

He even has Batgirl prepped to back Nightwing up if something happens – Barbara is visiting her father this weekend and doing research for her own case in Chinatown. She might not be actively patrolling, but Batman had been sure to give her warning of his activities.

He trusts her discretion, and he knows she would be as worried as him about Nightwing's probable – and possibly willful – oversight of the threat posed by Drake. Batman does not want to think Nightwing would be so foolish as to dismiss a threat simply because it doesn't seem actively threatening – or worse, because he wanted to curry favor with his adoptive brother – But it’s always better to be safe.

So, Batman is tracking north – from slightly further east than he’d originally planned, drawn off course by what seemed to be a mugging, but quickly resolved as Batman ID'd a drunk man resisting as his friend took away his keys – and he’s determined to get to the bottom of Drake’s capabilities and influence.

He’s about to swing down to the last tall building before the midrises and family homes of Robbinsville take over Gotham’s footprint when he spies a figure huddled on the rooftop.

Had Batman been approaching from his planned route, he wouldn’t have seen the figure until he touched down on the roof – within easy knife throwing distance of the stranger, with no chance to react if an attack was imminent.

Carefully, Batman swings around to the far side of the building and climbs silently up to roof level after landing on a balcony. He creeps close enough to ascertain that the would-be assailant is small – even with a massive jacket attempting to keep out the late January chill, the figure is miniscule… a child.

Concern leaps, unbidden, into his chest as he wonders what could possibly bring a child onto a freezing cold rooftop in the middle of the night. The apartment building is not the lowest rent residence in the region, but it has its fair share of alcoholics and abusers. It would not be unheard of for a child to sneak away for what respite they can get and the Bat knows that this situation takes precedence to his Drake investigation.

Batman is just about to announce his presence – From far enough away to hopefully prevent the kid from falling off the roof in fright, though he has his grapple gun ready just in case – when the kid shifts.

An eerie blue glow lights up the crouching figure’s face as his phone flares briefly to life.

It's Timothy Jackson Drake.

Batman frowns, continues to silently observe.

Drake curls more tightly around his knees. He huffs – breath turning instantly to steam that catches in the city's light – And mutters, “He should be here by now... There’s no sirens, no breakouts, nothing to keep him away… unless he’s not coming this way tonight… but he should be… he’s been moving north… but maybe I miss-counted the interval, or maybe I’m too far north… but this is the best vantage to check on Robinsv-”

His mumbled monologue – which Batman is certain he is not intentionally speaking aloud – is interrupted by a sneeze.

“Bless you,” Batman says, stepping from the darkest shadows.

“Thanks,” Tim returns.

A beat passes, and then Tim whirls around with a string of oddly pronounced Chinese curses spilling from his tongue.

“Batman,” Tim breathes, awestruck and a little bit fearful.

“Timothy,” Batman returns, “I hear you’ve been looking for me.”

It’s true, the kid had just mumbled as much. There was no one else he could possibly be waiting for here, not with the details he’d murmured about having tracked to find him.

“Um, kinda,” the kid admits.

He’s not as surprised by Batman’s recognition of him – of the Bat using his name directly – as Batman would’ve thought. He is nervous though, antsy. Batman scans him for weapons, but nothing notable shows up in any of his cowl’s filters and the coat is too cumbersome for any shapes beneath it to be positively identified.

Tim does have something in his hands, though – something he’s clutched close to his chest. Bare fingers glow ghostly in the night, tremble in the freezing air.

It’s not a weapon that he’s holding, or a camera – like might be expected and acceptable from a fan. It’s a set of note cards. Note. Cards. Like he’s practicing for a speech.

On an ice cold Gotham rooftop in the middle of the night.

Bruce Wayne is thrown by that. Far enough to make Batman pause.

Batman regards the kid standing before him in the darkness.

Timothy Drake stares back.

“Did you have a reason?” Batman asks eventually.

“Huh?”

“To be looking for me, did you have a reason?”

Timothy looks down at his hands, at the half-crushed note cards he’s holding. “Yeah,” he says slowly, quiet with the kind of resignation Batman knows is guilt.

“Well?” Batman prompts when Timothy offers nothing more.

The kid flinches, and Batman fights a wince of his own.

The obvious reasons Nightwing has for underestimating this kid assert themselves plainly. He is a child, small for his age and easily frightened. There seems no reason to suspect him of anything – except that he was waiting on a rooftop for Batman, intentionally. A rooftop even Batman didn’t know he would be visiting until about a week ago.

“I’m worried about Robin,” Timothy admits. “And Nightwing, and Batgirl, for that matter, but mostly Robin.”

“Why?”

Another flinch. Bruce Wayne consciously tries to reel back the Batman ‘grr factor’, as Dick has termed it. And yet… Timothy clearly knows more than he should. Perhaps the gravel and growl is worth it to extract that information.

“Because they need you to listen to them – that’s why you fought with Nightwing to begin with, right? You, um, you passed his mantle on without letting him explain why he didn’t want you to?” Tim’s actively struggling to make eye-contact.

Batman doesn’t verbalize a response.

He’s evaluating how this kid could possibly know what he does without knowing the names beneath the masks – it’s possible, he supposes, but extremely unlikely.

“I get why you didn’t, he was still a kid and not very good at making his important points clear, but when he went to California, he didn’t want you to let him go, he wanted you to bring him home,” Timothy rambles, losing his battle for eye-contact.

Batman scowls.

Timothy swallows dryly. Consults his notes.

“They need you to help them,” Timothy says.

Batman’s scowl deepens, and he must make some sound because Timothy doesn’t just flinch this time, he yelps and curls into himself. His cards get squeezed so tightly they pop out of his hands and scatter across the rooftop. Timothy dives after them, but the roof is wet with the afternoon's snow shower and the antifreeze that keeps it from becoming ice.

There is no recovering the careful presentation Timothy clearly had planned for this meeting. But Timothy isn’t willing to admit defeat immediately.

“Timothy Jackson Drake,” Batman says as the kid in question scrambles with his wet paper, frowning at the smudged and ruined ink like he should have been able to plan for that – like he should’ve had a contingency.

At Batman's voice saying his full name, Timothy freezes and stares up at him like a frightened deer.

“Tell me how and why you have come to know so much about the relationships between the Gotham masks.”

“That’s not important,” Timothy says. Quick, dismissive, like the point truly doesn’t matter in his world-view, or to his understanding of his place in it.

“It’s not?”

“No. What’s important is that you’re not letting them do their jobs,” Timothy accuses.

And then he promptly freezes and stares up at Batman like he just then has realized not only what he said, but how – how direct and confrontational it was.

“They don’t have jobs,” Batman replies, level and calm. “They are children.”

“Not when they're wearing masks,” Timothy snaps back immediately. “When the masks are on, they’re vigilantes. Nothing else.”

Batman narrows his eyes at Timothy's temerity.

And fights himself to keep from agreeing with Timothy’s point. But his disagreement doesn’t make it any less true. No matter how much he wants to remember that under the masks the heroes who have joined his crusade in Gotham are children, he can’t ignore the truth of Timothy Drake's words: when the masks are on, they’re not children – They can’t be.

Batman cannot ignore that – can’t pretend it away.

But he can insist on one smaller truth. “They do not have jobs.”

Timothy glared – actually glared at Batman in full cape and cowl and scowl – and said firmly, “Their job is to make sure you remember why is it that you do yours.”

Batman blinked behind the lenses of his cowl.

“That’s not how it works,” Batman defends. Weakly – he knows.

But he’s not entirely sure what to do with this child, this strangely mature tiny human with hope and sweetness and innocence – and uncomfortably valid points – lecturing him like Batman is the errant child here.

“You can’t possibly be that stupid,” Timothy says – a moment later looking wide-eyed and horrified by his words, yet still going on with speaking as if his mouth had detached itself from is brain and was running on a will of its own. “They care about what happens to you, which makes you care about it. They need you alive, and you – on some level, at least – recognize that need. It keeps you safer. And it makes you be a better person, in trying to set a good example for them to follow. And that’s important.”

Tim pulls more air into his lungs, enough for another leg of his tirade, and goes on, “Without Robin, Batman is too violent, too aggressive… like Green Arrow starting to gain ground in Star City; you’re too much like the criminals you hunt to make a genuine, lasting difference. Without Robin, you’re just scary. Robin tempers you; makes you an inspiration – makes people believe that you aren’t just hurting bad guys, but also protecting good ones.”

Tim manages to close his mouth and keep it shut after that – if only by the simple force of his clear mortification sealing off his words.

“Timothy.”

Terrified eyes peer up at Batman.

“What do you know about us capes? There was a reason Sabini had an interest in you and I’m not convinced it was just a junkie’s word and evidence that you’re a fan,” Batman lays out simply – calmly, regaining control of this discussion.

“I know that you’re necessary,” Tim replies in a squeak.

Eyes narrow behind the lenses of the cowl.

Tim ducks his head, fully aware that he has not answered Batman’s question.

“I know that Gotham needs you,” Tim reiterates. “I don’t know who you are beneath the masks, and I don’t want to know. I just want to help you keep Gotham safe. Because I’m not a mask, I’m just a fan… but I can still help.”

Batman regards the young civilian carefully. He has Jason’s spirit and determination, Dick’s unyielding sweetness, and Barbara’s practical acceptance of humanity’s flaws.

“You don’t know our civilian identities?”

Tim shakes his head. “I don’t care about them.”

Batman does not believe him – does not believe that he doesn’t know, or that he doesn’t care. Timothy Drake knows more than enough to be dangerous.

Dick has always been a terrible judge of character – in some ways, he always sees the best in people, in their potential – so his support of Timothy Drake as a non-threat means little.

But Jason is the most astute observer of humanity Bruce has ever encountered – he can read a person’s entire psyche in a gesture, find their cracks and weaknesses and apply just the right leverage to break them. And he’s never thrown from thinking that a seemingly innocent person is capable of doing a great deal of damage – would never underestimate a threat like that.

Case in point: how he hadn’t let go of the potential threat Tim posed to begin with.

Jason had decided Tim was safe.

Batman decides to trust his Robin’s judgement; Bruce puts faith in his son.

Batman heaves a sigh.

“It’s time to go home, Timothy,” he says. “This is no place for a child to be, and you shouldn’t be out at this time of night.”

Timothy frowns.

“It’s my city, too,” he mumbles.

Batman takes no quarter and as soon as he gets a nod of permission – Jason’s taught him how to work with children who aren’t like Dick, with an insatiable desire for physical contact – Batman hoists Timothy up and settles him on his hip. Batman holds tight to the child and shoots his grapple gun to carry them down to street level. He sits Timothy on his motorcycle and speeds across the city to Drake’s own door.

There is no one home.

Concerning in a very different way.

Batman knew the Drakes were away. Bruce didn’t realize the implications of that beyond how Timothy was left unsupervised – hadn’t until right now.

“Do you want me to come in,” Batman asks, awkward and uncertain of whether it would help at all to walk the kid to his bedroom. Batman should not linger – should not even consider the idea of tucking this neglected child into bed – but Bruce cannot quite bear to drag himself away just yet. He needs to know that Timothy is safe.

Timothy is staring at him like he’s shown up as Batman to a career day at school.

“Why?”

“No one’s home.”

“No one’s ever home,” Timothy replied blankly, adding. “I don’t need a real babysitter, let alone Batman. But Nightwing probably needs backup.”

Batman nodded. Accepted that he needed to push the Bruce in him down until they finished with the night’s patrol.

Tomorrow he could look into Timothy Drake’s circumstances.

“Be safe, Timothy,” Batman fare-wells. “Stay off the streets, and be careful, or this will not be our last conversation.

“You be safe, too,” Timothy replies. “Or I’ll just have to find you again.”

Batman almost chuckles. He waits until Timothy locks the door behind him, and then he takes his motorcycle back to where he’d stashed it across the bridge from Robbinsville.

He meets up with Nightwing and finishes patrol.

If he’s more reticent than usual Nightwing doesn’t comment.

The teenager is still wearing the blinding goofy smile of his, broader now after a successful sweep of Coventry – no new rumors of Tim Drake. And he’d saved a cat from where it had gotten stuck on a gargoyle after it had slipped out of its apartment and ventured off an inopportune ledge beside the balcony.

And because that’s the kind of hero Dick is, he chatters on incessantly about the cat and how it wailed and scratched him at first and yowled as he swung around the building, but then it purred and refused to let him go when it realized he’d brought it home.

Beneath the cowl, Batman almost smiles.

When he and Nightwing make it back to the Cave, Jason is not down there – the only evidence that anyone has been down there since he and Nightwing left is the snack left out for them by Alfred. Jason is in bed, asleep and dead to the world when Bruce slips in to check.

Jason is safe.

And Dick is safe.

And Alfred and Barbara are safe.

His family. Safe.

And Tim is… safe enough for the moment.

Tonight, Bruce will sleep.

Tomorrow he will reevaluate the child and his circumstances.

But tonight, Bruce Wayne basks in the truth that has a Family.

And his family is home, and safe.

It’s a foreign feeling.

But a good one.

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