All Healed Up Jason Who Just Decides To Move Back Into Wayne Manor, And He Suddenly Takes Up His Role

As Damian’s 16th birthday approaches, Tim gets more and more anxious. He spends more and more time with Damian, until they’re almost attached at the hip. Offers, with a tone of suppressed desperation that does not suffice to make Damian agree, to take Damian out of the country for his birthday. Starts to stand firmly in between Bruce and Damian every time they’re in the same room, twitching every time Bruce moves toward them.

Damian’s 16th birthday passes without incident, if you don’t count Tim hovering at his shoulder the entire time, armed, checking every present before letting Damian take it.

Tim is staring at the clock as it hits midnight, and his body goes almost limp, the constantly-held tension of weeks dropping. Then his face fills with confusion. Then goes blank. He leaves, with the party still in swing, and Damian feels the absence at his side immediately, the spot just behind him that he’s grown used to having a protective presence in finally empty.

No one sees Tim for weeks.

My cat gouged a hole in my lip accidentally and I forgave him immediately after stopping the bleeding and gave him treats as an apology for briefly saying his name semi loudly so I can’t judge either.

Prev thinks that dc is the worst fandom ever, and is absolutely not a fan of nightwing

New REBLOG Game

Just fucking lie about the previous poster

God I love moral delemas

Time Travel Batfamily fic idea, but instead of your typical "the world is worse" or "something is still missing" tropes, a world where Bruce's parents don't die and he doesn't become Batman is an objectively happier, better world -- at least, for Bruce it is.

Bruce Wayne is a charming, intelligent young 20-something who went to Yale or Harvard or somewhere equally impressive. He works for his father at Wayne Enterprises and has taken over as the "face" of their charity work. His parents are alive and well. Alfred is the head of a happy, busy household.

Bruce Wayne himself isn't missing a mission. He is fulfilled by the work he does at WE and for the Wayne Foundation. He has a deep sense of justice and fairness, and he uses it day to day. He isn't "missing" anything, in that sense.

But Gotham is missing Batman. The philanthropy isn't enough, because it never was. But Bruce Wayne might not realize that, or maybe he doesn't realize his ability to alter that balance. He hasn't seen that violence and pain close-up. He hasn't been driven to the edge of grief, hasn't boiled in his own pain to the point of desperation. He has his family. He has Alfred. He has meaning.

Gotham still suffers. And the Batkids have to grapple with the realization that for their city to be saved, it needs Batman. And you don't get Batman without crippling this Bruce Wayne's life and happiness. Gotham improves when Bruce Wayne's life falls apart. And you have to be the one to do that to your father, to right the timelines. You have to reach out for this happy, lighter version of your father and tell him to sacrifice more. To lose even more, and still it's not enough.

This is the man they always wanted as a father. He isn't laden by grief or anger. He is so light, so beautiful, so beloved by this city. And yet, it isn't enough.

I want all the bats to wake up in a world where Jason never died and Tim never joined the family and it just…absolute chaos. I’m talking like, competent Lex Luther but it’s Tim Drake.

Idk how but he was still trained by Shiva (was going to visit his parents at a dig over holiday and took a wrong turn). And it’s not like he’s a villian. he’s an anti-hero. Morally grey at best. He never stopped with the night stalking, he just expanded it to more than the bats. He is *the* info broker of Gotham City. Nothing happens in his city without him knowing.

The key thing here is that Tim never adopted Bruce’s mission. And as a kid with too much money, too much time, and a penchant for being where he shouldn’t be, Tim grew into the most feral of gremlins.

I’m talking chaos for chaos sake. Pulling one pin out of a well crafted plan by either the bats or the rogues just to see it all fall apart and watch them rush to improvise on the spot. I’m talking blackmailing a boardroom of executives because they voted against creating a skatepark in a lower income area of the city (kids deserve safe places to play). I’m talking catching a wiff of the League of Assassins in his city, tracking down all info on them back to their main HQ finding out about Damian, and calling in Mama Shiva to do a two person wipe out of an entire base to abduct who Tim has officially claimed as his little brother (aka Damian).

And yes, Damian does eventually make it to Bruce, but not before Imprinting on Tim, which is how Tim *finally* gets dragged into the family. Because despite his general ruthlessness, he has not, and probably never will be able to, say no to Damian when he flashes his puppy eyes at him.

Bruce is exasperated. He doesn’t know how to fix this. Jason is kinda impressed. Dick is wallowing because where’d his cute baby brother go. Who is cleverly disguised, feral trash panda.

Meanwhile in the other room Damian and Tim are sitting together sharing a secret smile.

“How long do you think it will take them to realize we’re the same Damian and Tim from their dimension?”

“Depends on how good your acting is Drake.”

“Plsss. I give it 6 months.”

“A year,” Damian challenged. Because it was a challenge.

“Deal.” Tim agreed, because this time around he gets to be a bit more chaotic and also dote on his baby brother without the threat of being assassinated. Oh yes. The younger brothers are going to have fun with this one.

God that is insane

can you please explain what happened on tim’s sixteenth birthday if it’s not too much trouble?

Anonymous said: what did Bruce do on Tim's birthday???

@gothamsiren4: i’m afraid to ask what happened but what happened

I would have just included screenshots of the other ask + reply but I need the image space for panels . tumblr and this stupid image limit is going to kill me

ALRIGHT LETS GO OVER ROBIN #116-120!

So, Tim just had a whole adventure from #112-#115 where he was out of town undercover (it was a WILD time. there was a giant monster, this random guy Stephen that could let Tim walk with him through the woods really fast, Tim accidentally wore a mullet wig nearly the whole time- chaos, truly) and when he gets back to Gotham he is fucking exhausted and his sense of time is all sorts of screwed up- something Dana notices as soon as he gets home, when he doesn't recognize an important date coming up that week.

(Robin #116)

So Dana calls up Steph & Ives to come help celebrate, and they all give Tim a particularly surprising surprise party- because he forgot his own birthday! Things are going great until the end of opening presents- where Cole (the guy who works the elevator in their building) has joined the party and it's revealed a mysterious box was left for Tim earlier and they have no idea who it's from.

This makes Tim's Robin anxiety kick into high gear, leaving him paranoid basically the rest of the night

(Robin #116)

Later after the festivities, Tim brings the box to Bruce to start examining it, and Bruce ya know forgot Tim's birthday (Alfred didn't though <3)

(Robin #116)

They do some analysis, follow some leads, and narrow down the guy that delivered it at least. But ultimately they don't get very far before the box… activates, while Tim is alone away from Bruce. It shows a hologram message apparently from a dystopian future Alfred (from the year... 2012... for reference, this issue was written in 2003) who says that in his time period someone in the Bat Family is going to go bad and cause the bad future- and that Tim needs to stop them in present day before it’s too late. But the message is disrupted by Future!Alfred getting shot and killed with some laser thing before he can say who it was, right in front of Tim.

(Robin #117)

Which... well all of this is a lot on Tim's mind. He's torn between 'is it fake or real' and ultimately doesn't tell Bruce about what happened, instead deciding to try to handle this on his own. He at first thinks okay- it's gotta be fake, but who is trying to manipulate me with this and what are they trying to get me to do. He thinks someone is tailing him, and his prime suspect is Jaeger: a guy he'd gone up against a few times previously when dealing with monsters (Man-Bats and Charaxes). He runs into Dick (bc he wanted to wish Tim a happy belated birthday) who helps out- they stage a very convincing (they are ridiculous) fake fight to try to fool anyone potentially trailing Tim, this way Dick could then follow at a distance to observe and see if someone really was following him.

Ultimately though, nobody was tailing him, but Tim keeps investigating the Jaegar idea until eventually finding out he's actually in jail, so clearly not involved in this. When Tim gets home he's got an urgent message from Bruce, about some crazy new high-tech interrogation methods he used on the guy they tracked down, Yak, that had delivered the box to Tim's house and apparently unknowingly made it under a kind of hypnotic state.

(Robin #118)

And the voice from these recordings Bruce was able to get from Yak's mind, that gave him commands for building the box and delivering it? That's a voice Tim recognizes alright- it's the voice of the future Alfred! So now Tim is distressed because the hologram of future Alfred being real and him needing to stop a teammate going bad to prevent a bad future... is suddenly the most plausible scenario, and the only lead he's got.

Tim tries to go hook Yak back up to Bruce's new machine himself, to see if maybe the name that future Alfred got cut off from saying was somewhere hidden in his mind, but Yak had escaped his holding cell and in the ensuing fight he breaks the machine, so Tim can't use it. Instead he's stuck, forced to be paranoid about his friends- investigating them to see who could be the person that goes bad.

(However we do get a slight detour from the main plot to check in on some stuff with Steph- who'd been lying to Tim for the last few issues. Since finding out her dad died, rather than going home and facing her mom like she promised she would in Robin #111, she'd been renting a room on her own. Tim helps do some mediation with Steph and Crystal, so that she can feel comfortable going home again. Then that night he resumes investigation)

He trails Cass first (remember, this is 2003. She’s still like the newest Batfam member and the two of them aren't that close yet), but comes to no conclusions. He theorizes possible scenarios for how it could be Dick, then Babs, and we find out he spends about 10 days straight trailing basically all his Gotham allies trying to figure out who it could be.

He forms a plan to try to test his allies, by writing up a whole planned manifesto of the sort of ideals that led to the bad future according to that future Alfred, with the idea of showing/explaining it to each one and gauging their reaction (thinking that someone who didn't react extremely negatively could be the person who goes bad). However before trying this method out on anyone, he gets paranoid that maybe him doing this is the thing that plants the seed in someone's mind- and freaks out a bit... before-- WHAT?!

Future Alfred comes back- not just a hologram this time! A real physical person! He explains that more things happened in the future- yes Tim saw him die its okay they were able to fix it- but ultimately Tim starts noticing holes in his story, for example his robot arm suddenly being on a different hand than last time.

(Robin #120)

Tim rips off this guy's mask and it's- PRESENT DAY ALFRED?

(Robin #120)

The "Have a drink, sir. I don't care what your birthdate says-- after tonight, you are of age." as Alfred pulls out a flask fucking killed me the first time I read this, it's such a funny line in the middle of this tense mess.

But yeah, it's revealed this was all Bruce's doing. Tim calls it a trick, Bruce calls it training. The entire situation was basically a test of Tim's abilities, to take him to the "next level" and Bruce is overall pleased with how he did... despite then going on to point out some of the flaws in how Tim handled the situation.

(Robin #120)

"I mean really, time travel?" is infuriating. Bruce. You know damn well time travel has happened in this universe.

Timmy is, understandably, fucking pissed.

(Robin #120)

This is one of the not-too-common instances of Tim swearing (like, in a way that needs to be censored. That's what's rare for him, he uses 'damn' and 'hell' regularly like most teen characters). He kinda quits- and very seriously contemplates doing so for real because this whole thing seriously fucked with his head... but after venting to Steph about it, he ultimately decides to go back to Bruce.

But it uh... doesn't get... resolved. Bruce does not apologize. Tim doesn't ask him to. The story just... ends. The ending feels extremely rushed imo. This was the last issue of Lewis' run though (Willingham's run starts the next issue) so idk maybe he thought he'd have more time to spend on the aftermath and that just didn't happen, I don't really know how that transition between writers went since ya know it was 18 years ago.

But yes, anyways, while a lot of these events happen after the actual day, this all started with Bruce having the box delivered to Tim on his 16th birthday.

A slight side tangent to this already very long post- but I do wanna bring back up how Meghan Fitzmartin talked about picking Bernard for Sum of Our Parts because of Tim's mental/emotional state (feeling unsure about himself and his place in things) around the time he met Bernard... because this story is definitely something we could consider part of that. This birthday arc ends in Robin #120, and Tim first meets Bernard the following issue in Robin #121! Very shortly after that, Tim nearly decides to quit again- because he thinks he killed Johnny Warlock (in #123-124). When he gets out of that funk and decides to go full swing into Robin again- that's right when his dad finds out and makes him quit in #125 (Issues #126-128 are Steph's time as Robin... then we begin War Games. Tim goes back to Robin at the start of Act 2 of the event, in Detective Comics #798, so between Robin #129 and #130). As evidenced by this constant back and forth, this is absolutely a period where Tim is going through a lot of uncertainty and identity issues.

I had a vision

my friends r so talented. rb if ur friends are talented

mclaren racing ltd, est. 1963

I disagree, b should be right after j but other than that it’s perfect

Tim, texting Dick: Had about 9 energy drinsk today and now i can see inside out through time. dont have any blood left. just vibration. going to alphabetise the alphabet (it's all wrong. will explain later) then going to fight the moon. good night and good morning and thanks