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fanfic-obsessed · 1 month ago

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Uncoditional Love

So I had this idea and while I was thinking about the scenes the ending split in two and now I’ve got a bigger idea with options. So I figure I better start writing it down before I end up with a choose your own adventure in the form of a Tumblr post.

Before I start with my usual disclaimers I do want you all to know that I HIGHLY encourage people reading my ideas to run with them and write their own additions or maybe even write a full fic if they feel inspired. I adore seeing additions or ‘but what ifs’ or questions or random asks, because then I may be inspired to write more. All I can really ask is that if you post something inspired by my ideas you tag me or share the link. I also want it known that I would prefer my idea not be fed into anything that is related to Generative AI, feel free to send me an ask if you want my rant on that subject.

Now for my standard warning, do not expect anything from canon here.

Let’s get started…

It is important as part of the foundation for this ,to know that Tim Drake and Jason Todd are about 16 months apart in age. Also Jason is adopted by Bruce not long before he turned 10 and starts being Robin before he turns 11 (this information is not as important but I wanted you to know).

They meet on Jason’s first solo patrol, just after Jason turned 13 (Tim is 11). Jason noticed Tim’s picture taking and decides that he is going to convince Tim to stop following vigilantes into the worst parts of Gotham, or barring that at least make sure Tim makes it home as unharmed as possible. Jason does not tell anyone about Tim (at first because he wanted to prove himself by convincing Tim to give up, then out of fear of how Bruce would react to Tim having discovered their identities -and how long Jason had known that Tim had known and kept it to himself-, then after a time because they could not figure out a way to have Jason, the civilian, meet Tim and not have it be immediately obvious that the two knew each other and well). Over time Tim and Jason begin to date and fall in love. A week before Jason (14, three weeks away from his 15th birthday) dies in Ethiopia, he proposes to Tim (age 13) who accepts. Jason gives Tim Catherine Todd’s wedding ring. They still have told no one, but figure that they have time since it would be several years before they could tie the knot.

Jason dies in Ethiopia.

As is typical for the kind of rich and famous that the Wayne’s were, there are immediately dozens of people coming from the woodwork to claim some connection to Jason. Including more than a few ‘Jason was my lover’. If there is any good time to tell your dead, secret fiance’s family that you got engaged but cannot offer any proof (as anything Tim could offer could have been faked) it is most certainly not after the local new ran a very noticeable article about three women loudly proclaiming that Jason Wayne-Todd (forever age 14) fathered their children.

Tim says nothing about his connection to Jason. He continues to say nothing as he becomes Robin. Tim very carefully compartmentalizes so that no one realizes his grief over Jason’s death is far more personal than it should be. His only concession to his own grief is being entirely unavailable for a single day in April every year (the anniversary of the day that Tim first asked Jason on a date), where he locks himself away with the mementos of his time with Jason and mourns what could have been.

During this time, Tim does make an effort to move on. He dates other people, is even content with them (including a brief romantic relationship with Kon). But there is always something missing. By the time the Red Hood attacks Titan’s Tower, Tim has accepted that he will never love anyone like he loves Jason, and does not pursue romantic relationships.

Between the head trauma from his death, the hypoxia that came with digging himself out of his own grave, and the issues that come with being dunked in the Lazarus Pit, Jason has entirely forgotten his relationship with Tim. Has forgotten Tim entirely. So Jason goes to beat the crap out of his Replacement and reveals himself to be Jason Todd. Still Tim says nothing to the Bats about the forgotten connection (He does tell Kon, Bart, and Cassie after the incident at the tower, after that point they always treated Jason a little strangely when they crossed paths with him). Because the only worse time to tell your should-have-been in laws and not-as-dead-as -we-thought fiance about Jason’s proposal is when it became clear that Jason did not remember and the only recognizable proof you might have (Catherine’s ring), you would likely be accused of stealing.

So Tim says nothing, not through Jason's anger and hatred. Not through his slow reconciliation or Damian’s arrival. Not even as Tim realized that he was just as in love with Jason, the Red Hood as he had been the boy who proposed all those years ago. He continues to keep silent through retrieving Bruce from the time stream. Tim still takes his one day a year to be completely unavailable, to mourn. There was even one year where there was an Arkham breakout and Kon, Bart, and Cassie came to help in Gotham in Tim’s stead. At no point was Tim planning to let on.

Now we get to the options, in the reveal. Let’s be honest about half the draw of this kind of idea is the reveal. Two reveals came so strongly to me that I could not just pick one. I am calling them the Magic Option and the Non Magic Option. Let’s look at the magic option first.

MAGIC OPTION

When Jason is 21, a magic user hits him with a spell that will deage him, but only mentally (To be fair it still could work with a full deaging but I do like a mental deaging only here). His mind reverts back to the day after he proposed to Tim. Constantine is able to determine what happened before Jason wakes up and that the spell would wear off within 12 hours but Jason would be stuck with his younger mindset until it did. Jason wakes up and is only told that he has temporary amnesia. Once Jason is told his age, he starts to subtly look around for something. Unbeknownst to the rest of the Bats he is looking for Tim (who was out of town on a mission with the Titans). If Jason is 21 then Tim is 19 or 20, which means they should already be married. But he does not want to bring it up, in case something happened and he and Tim were trying to keep the relationship a secret (he also kind of feared the reason why he could not feel a wedding ring on his finger).

Before Jason can gather the courage to bring it up, Tim comes in through the Zeta, his mission complete. He takes off his mask and Jason immediately recognizes Tim. Jason races across the cave, grinning and calling out for Tim (Timmy!!) to the absolute confusion of the other bats (as this version of Jason should not know who Tim is). Jason stops right in front of Tim and says “Wow. You got even prettier than I thought you would…”

Tim goes “Jason, what’s wrong?” Tim is just as confused as everyone else, because Jason has not looked at Tim like that since before the other boy went to Ethiopia. This version of Jason knows how to read Tim just as well as Tim knows how to read Jason. He immediately realizes that Tim is far less comfortable with Jason than he should be. Jason jumps to the conclusion that he (Jason) had screwed up, Tim had rightly kicked him to the curb, and starts to apologize for ‘whatever his future self did to fuck up’.

In the background the rest of the Bats watch, very confused as Tim verifies the date of Jason's last memory and Jason asks what happened. Tim smiles really sadly and says ‘About a week after your last memory you died, from what you’ve said you came back to life about six months later. Not all of your memories came with you’.

This is news to all present. Because Jason tended not to want to talk about the time before his death, no one else had realized that he was missing memories (not even him). Jason puffed up, utterly offended at his post death self ‘I FORGOT YOU!?!?’ and then starts asking why they had not gotten back together, asking in a really small voice if Tim had moved on, and was not in love with Jason any longer. Tim told him “I will be in love with you for the rest of my life, but I don’t think you’re interested this time”.

And Tim hates himself a little. Because he is strong enough to make sure Jason is aware they are not together, he is strong enough to insist that they go no further than they did when they were together (at 14 and 13, they had gone no further than kissing and frankly going any further than that now would have some strange consent issues). He knows he should be strong enough to leave, knowing that the present day Jason does not want him in the same way the past one did. But faced with the man he has been in love with for almost half his life, looking back at him with love for the first time in years, who wants to cuddle and kiss him for the next 12 hours. Tim is only human. He stays and commits these moments to memory. Tim will accept no questions from the rest of the Bats (though he does answer the ‘why didn’t you tell us’ from Dick with a ‘and when would be a good time to mention my secret engagement to Jason have been?’), he does give some answers to Jason when Jason asks.

Jason is more than willing to play along and not ask anything that would give the Bats more answers. Instead he spent those 12 hours trying to give Tim as much affection as he could, even asking to see Tim’s most recent photos (There is a small part of this version of Jason that also hates himself a little bit, because he knows that being there is hurting Tim but he cannot bring himself to send him away-only a touch because Jason also knows Tim would gladly face the pain if it meant being with Jason again). Jason even takes the time to record a video for himself, as they are aware that Jason will not remember these 12 hours, to wax lyrical about Tim.

Jason’s memories come back at the 12 hour mark and the confusion of the spell breaking lets Tim slip away. He goes and sits next to the gargoyle Jason proposed at (which had always been in a camera blindspot), decked out in his vigilante costume. Though Tim is good at compartmentalizing, he had spent the last 12 hours living what was his version of Heaven and was drawn to the familiar place,

An hour later Tim is approached by Jason, sans helmet but with domino firmly in place.

“You found me earlier than I would have guessed” Tim’s voice was quiet.

Jason shrugged even though Tim was turned away, “I left a video for myself, said you might be here, if things hadn’t changed too much” (Jason does not mention that his younger self had also said Tim was the best thing that had ever happened to him, that Jason had apparently become a moron in the intervening years, and that if the current Jason truly could not love Tim then he needed to find a way to give the other boy closure). Jason paused for a few seconds, weighing all the questions that he could or could not ask before finally settling on “Will you tell me?”

Tim gave a short, soft chuckle. “To this day, I have no idea when I changed from being the irritating kid you needed to keep safe to being your friend. Just one day I realized that we were coordinating your patrol routes so I could take pictures and I was helping you run lines for your drama club and you were asking me questions about my skateboard.” Tim looked over his shoulder to slant a mischievous glance at Jason, “The look on your face the first time you brought me home and realized I lived next door was almost as good as your face when you realized I knew who you were under the mask. I will always regret not getting either on film.”

Jason found himself sitting next to the other boy, not quite shoulder to shoulder. He couldn’t figure out which question to ask. What information to ask for.

The silence was finally broken by Tim, “I’m not going to hold you anything you said then. I know you don’t love me anymore and I have made my peace with it.”

The next words slipped from Jason’s mouth like they had been greased. “Go on a date with me?”

At that Tim’s mouth dropped into soft shock. “Wha..?”

Jason bit his lip, feeling suddenly anxious “Date me. You’re right, I’m not in love with you. Once the Pit was no longer an issue I figured any chance I had with you died a bloody death in Titan’s Tower. So I never let myself think about you like that. But we can try…and even if we can’t get back what you had, at least you won’t be wondering about what ifs?”

Jason forced himself to look directly at Tim’s face, partially covered as it was. At last Tim nodded, slowly. “Ok. On two conditions.” Both vigilantes had enough experience with the Domino masks that they could make eye contact through the white out lenses. Tim waited until Jason was making eye contact. “First, don’t force emotion that you do not feel; If you say you love me please be sure. And second, I cannot be casual with you. If you’re not mine I can force down the pain of you being with someone else, pack it all away. But I can’t do that and let myself be with you. So it's monogamy or nothing.”

Jason agreed, and privately decided that unless Tim indicated he wanted sex they would not cross that line until Jason was sure he loved Tim. They started dating. Incidentally they decided to keep messing with the rest of the Bats by not answering any questions. It did turn out that Jason and Tim were still physically and romantically compatible and they actually had many interests in common. They kept dating (One of their favorite dates was to be cuddled up on the sofa at one of their apartments, Tim’s head on Jason’s chest while Tim told Jason stories of their time together).

However Jason was not sure he was in love with Tim and could not bear the thought of hurting Tim by saying those words before he was sure (Roy, to whom Jason talked about this frequently, was sure. He was distressingly sure and wanted Jason to say the words so Roy did not have to hear Jason overthinking things any more). The irony is that Tim knows what Jason’s eyes look like when he is in love. Tim knows what Jason’s eyes look like when he is in love with Tim. So Tim is well aware that Jason has fallen back in love with him, however Tim can also tell Jason is having a bit of a crisis around it so is content to wait.

Jason’s crisis then resolves in the worst way possible.

Kon, Tim, Bart, and Cassie leave for a last minute mission, technically a follow up to a mission from their Young Justice days. This mission (which I have made up wholesale) saw them being accidentally dumped into a side dimension via magic where they had to play in a high stakes game resembling checkers to gain a treaty that would protect their home dimension from being destroyed. Now on the anniversary (which happens at random times because time runs differently in this dimension) they are brought back to the dimension to celebrate and resign the treaty. Due to the nature of the inhabitants of this dimension, and their paranoia, they are not allowed to tell anyone where they are going and the portal will pick them up from a random location with about half an hour notice.

They get the notice, rearrange their plans to be ‘unavailable/incommunicado until further notice’ and get picked up from an abandoned building in Metropolis. Mere moments after the portal whisks them away, a robot stolen from Lex Luthor vaporizes the building (The robot is built in such a way that it is capable of vaporizing a Kryptonian, an Amazonian, and a Speedster). In the aftermath, Oracle is doing routine cleanup and sees video of the four of them entering the building that is now simply a hole in the ground. Concerned, she checks the tracking data for Red Robin. Tim’s trackers as well as the bio data tracked by the suits, all of them, go offline simultaneously (due to not being in the dimension any longer) at what appears to be the exact moment the building he was in ceases to exist.

Oracle calls the Justice League. By every measure that they have Red Robin, Superboy the first, Impulse, and Wonder Girl were in the building as it was being vaporized and can only be dead.

They are considered dead to all that knew them for twelve days.

Distantly Jason feels the realization of ‘Oh, I am in love with Tim’ which is overshadowed by the screaming in his head going ‘Tim is dead, gone forever, I will never hold him again’. An even more distant part is going ‘This is what Tim felt’.

Jason contains multitudes. Jason’s mind also shuts down all unnecessary systems in the face of Tim’s death. Looking back later, Jason barely remembers anything of those twelve days, there is little record of Jason doing anything but sitting in his apartment.

Ten days after Tim and co hop dimensions, they are deposited via a magical portal on the Watchtower (for them it had been fifteen hours). Several newer members of the Justice League assume that they are imposters trying to assume the lives of the recently lost and much mourned Young Justice and they are locked in a Justice League cell until Green Arrow makes his way to the Watch tower two days later (Normally there would be at least one major JL member on the watch tower at all times, but the recent loss has left them all reeling).

After they have proven their identities, Young Jsutices’s various mentors are called (I just want you to know that Clark collects Kon and actually takes him to visit Lex. Lex had not reacted to his robot killing his son well, and Clark and Lex had really talked for the first time since they were teenagers. Not friends again precisely, but accepting that the other cares for Kon, at least).

It is Dick that shoves Jason into a shower and drags him to the cave. This is where Jason finds out that Tim is actually alive. Jason pulls time into a hug that would rival Dick and tells Tim he loves him. Jason absolutely needs Tim to fall asleep.

Jason also starts planning a real identity. He owes Tim a wedding after all.

NON MAGIC OPTION

This starts when Tim is 21. He had never intended for anyone to know of his relationship with Jason. That Tim does not date because he cannot convince himself that he is not still engaged. That he wears Catherine Todd’s ring around his neck and that once a year he lets himself think about the could have been and cry.

As part of the Wayne family, his dating or lack thereof is noticed and rumors abound.

If Tim had been any less tired, up for 60 hours and miles to go before his sleep, he would have deflated the interviewer's question. As it was, Tim was just tired enough to answer, to a point, when asked about his love life. He managed to avoid naming names or even gender when talking about a childhood sweetheart who he had thought he would marry but had died unexpectedly. Tim said that any attempts to date had ended with comparisons to his sweetheart, which was not fair to anyone.

Some part of Tim had hoped that the uncommonly open answer would quench the fire and stop people hitting on him. Sleep deprived Tim was naive. This tragic backstory adds fuel to the flame (men and women dreamed of being the one to ‘heal’ Tim Wayne-Drake’s heartbreak).

At first most of the family think that Tim was making something up, or hallucinating. However it becomes rapidly obvious that this was not the case (Tim apologizes to Steph, because part of the issues he had while they were dating stem from the loss of his sweetheart). Tim refuses to give any information, save that his sweetheart died before Tim became Robin.

There is no record to find, no one to interrogate, and Tim is not giving any information. The only one who does not ask Tim directly is Jason (ironically the only one whose questions Tim would have answered). Jason simply mentally marks it as another reason he and Tim were never going to happen and moved on. At some point the entire family, sans Tim, discusses Tim’s one day off in April but no one can find the significance.

This goes on for another two or so years. Then, on a weekend that Tim happened to be on a mission with his Team, Jason decides it is finally time for him to clean out his pre-death bedroom, which had not been entered by anyone but Alfred since Jason left for Ethiopia. It had been almost a decade, after all. He drags the rest of his siblings into it. They throw out the old homework and make plans to donate the old clothes. Jason looks at his old keepsakes and realizes that he does not remember all of them(as Tim was not the only memories he lost). In Jason’s old nightstand there was a lockbox that they decided to bring down to the dining room to open.

The very top item was a picture, looking to be a polaroid. The photo was framed a little strangely, like the earliest selfies. It was very clearly a picture of Jason in the Robin costume, without the mask, crowded in next to what was also very clearly Timothy Drake. They were both grinning and Tim was holding up his hand to show off a loose ring on his finger. Across the bottom, in bold letters, were the words ‘HE SAID YES!!!’ Underneath the picture was a pair of ticket stubs (an out of the way theater in the bowery where they went to see a play for one of their dates), tokens from an arcade (Where Tim and Jason had gone on their first date), several picture of Jason’s Robin (all lovingly taken by Tim, with annotations on the back that were practically conversations between Tim and Jason) including one where Jason was being scolded by Batman with a cackling Nightwing in the background (Bruce was scolding Jason for showing off-which he only did because Jason knew Tim was taking pictures) and other such keepsakes.

Even without the context for the majority of the keepsakes it was clear that Tim had known Jason for much longer than anyone had realized. Each of the Bat Children makes the connection between Tim saying he was engaged and the picture, and everyone looks at each other a bit awkwardly, realizing that it meant that Jason was the one that Tim was in love with. When Tim gets back from his mission, they decide to confront Tim about it.

Dick is not the only one who expected Tim to be defensive when Jason brought out the lockbox. Tim is not. He looks fondly at the contents, adding context when Jason asks. Tim speaks fondly of their time together and, before Jason could work himself up into the idea that Tim only loved the person he was, outright states that he loved Jason (the Red Hood who shot a pimp in the knee last week for trying to buy a fourteen year old girl, and a her businessman father in the shoulder and the groin for trying to sell her) as he is now just as much as he loved the boy Jason once was. Tim also points out that Jason is not as different as Bruce would like to think he was (though he is more different than Dick would ever admit).

Jason asks Tim on a date and falls back in love with Tim quickly. Once they get to the point where Jason is sure, Tim starts making plans to resurrect Jason Todd specifically. Bruce gets irate about it but Tim makes a good point that anyone Tim dates will be under extra scrutiny, after the interview. They might as well bring Jason back to life, because they would have to put the same level of work into any alias of Jason’s. Particularly since Tim was very open about the fact that his childhood sweetheart had died.

Eventually they fall back on the good old faithful, the abducted with amnesia. The story was Jason had never died, but instead had amnesia from the head wound. The corpse Bruce brought back and buried had not been Jason. A random series of events had brought the amnesiac Jason into contact with Tim, his childhood sweetheart and fiance, which sparked the return of his memories.

This time Tim gets to be the one to propose.

#batman #jason todd #bruce wayne #tim drake #dick grayson #batfam #damian wayne #jaytim #character death #but its jason so #childhood sweethearts #marriage #engagement

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