Chapter Text
In the beginning, fights in Drake Manor were few and far between. Truth be told no one was around enough to get into fights. The entire family were too tired, too mellowed out enough to allow their negative emotions to broil out of control. Janet Drake was praised for always being calm,cool, collected. All necessary traits to have when running your own business.
Never once in her forty years of life had she ever lost her composure. She had made sure to hammer into that point when Tim was young. Once he was older than two she taught him that ‘tantrums will not get you what you want’ and ‘you won’t get it unless you can calmly ask for it. She also told him that ‘disobedient get what they deserve’.
She would purposely ignore him when he was young, allowed him to cry himself to sleep and would only check on him when his echoing, garbled cries came to a stop. She taught this rule to all the nannies and babysitters.
By the age of three and a half Tim rarely ever cried and by five he completely stopped. He knew that trying wouldn’t get him what he wanted, if anything all it would do would drive his parents farther and farther away from him.
In the matter of a few years, Drake Manor had returned to its same state it was in before Janet had the baby, calm, quiet, hollow. The house was built to echo every step Tim made and for just a moment Tim would falsely hope it was the sound coming from another room, for just a moment he felt like he wasn’t alone before he figured out the noise came from himself and it was just the house humorlessly taunting him. Reminding him of how alone he was.
When he was little he thought the house was haunted. He had watched a few too many horror movies in his youth, which was not a crime, especially since it was usually his nanny who would turn them on for him. At the age of six his babysitter, who was a sixteen year old girl who only listened to My Chemical Romance and shopped exclusively at Hot Topic, read him the novel The Haunting of Hill House as a bedtime story and he couldn’t help but see similarities. Sure, Drake Manor wasn’t old by any definition of the word, it had been constructed a mere few years before Tim was born and had the design to show it.
It was modern and minimalistic with no abandoned rooms, eerie statues or moldy wallpaper. Still, the sound of the air conditioning sounded like winding breathes, constantly he would walk through cold spots around the house that made him feel like he was walking into a freezer, and when he was alone the house felt big, even bigger than it was on the outside, it felt like it was growing every moment he was there, every time he walked through the hallways they felt longer just to remind him of the abounding room only he was there to take up.
Tim wondered if maybe that was why his parents refused to spend too much time at home, it was possible they feared that if they did spend too much time in the manor around him that they would get digested by the large, living house. Still it didn’t explain why they chose to leave him alone there.
When he was seven he tried to talk to the house. Whenever no one was around of course since he didn’t want anyone thinking he was crazy. He tried speaking directly to the walls of the house but that felt a bit too awkward and weird (as if the entire situation wasn’t awkward and weird) eventually he decided on trying to talk to an old vase his parent’s got. It was kept behind a dust covered case.
The vase was out of porcelain, decorated with small lavender flowers adorning its handles and as its mesial it had a cherubic lady wearing a silk bonnet around her blond, billowy hair. It didn’t feel so strange when looking at a face, even when the face was one of a colonial girl painted onto an old artifact his parents brought back.
He talked about his school days, his juvenile friends and his too-sweet teachers. He told the house about Gotham’s heroine Batman and showed it clips of Robin by his side off of YouTube. It didn’t take long for Tim to figure out that the Manor wasn’t haunted at all, that the cold spots and long hallways were all in his head.
That as much as he wanted, the vase outside his bedroom door would never respond. Somehow the idea of his house being a sentient being hoping to eat his soul seemed far less scary than the alternative: that he was truly alone the entire time.
Tim and his Mother never fought, they never really spoke since there wasn’t anything that needed to be said. His father and him however…
The relationship between Janet and Jack Drake never really made sense. They met before they were young, in a bar far outside of Gotham for business. Jack said it must’ve been fate for them to meet. Of course Janet was still a young woman who had fallen for that cheesy line and they had been together ever since.
Their relationship just fit, after a few years it was hard to picture one of them without the other. They work together, travel together, even the names Jack and Janet Drake just came together like the chorus of a song. It wasn’t until you thought about their relationship that nothing about the couple as individuals meshed as well as their names did.
Jack Drake had a notorious anger issue. It didn’t take a genius to pick up on it. Tim hadn’t seen him enough at first to really know anything about him outside of the tabloids but he did eventually figure out the person Jack Drake truly was.
For the life of him, Tim couldn’t remember what the argument was about, what had managed to get his Father riled up so much to the point where they were both holed up into his room. Jack was yelling, shouting about something Tim’s brain had blocked out. He had begun to throw things, nothing at Tim but folders, papers scattering across the once tidy room. Tim avoided looking at him, instead he focused all his attention on picking at the skin around his fingernails until they stung and bled.
His father had only returned a few hours before without his Mother who had decided to get a connecting flight somewhere in the southern hemisphere. Jack hadn’t even bothered to bring up his suitcase before he stormed up to Tim’s room to lecture him.
Tim had wished his Father hadn’t come home at all. He didn’t know why he was bothered by this point. He spent the majority of the year away from his home and his son just to come back for a week at most to get out all the built up anger he couldn’t let out anywhere else without getting media attention. Tim hated him, hated him when he was gone, hated him when he was there.
He didn’t know what he wanted from them, not anymore. He wished he had different parents. Ones who didn’t take pills to keep themselves together, ones who didn’t show any emotions at all, parents who lived with him in the same house, haunted or not.
“I hate you,” Tim muttered venomously down into his lap. He couldn’t help it, the sound of Jack’s voice had begun to grate on his ears and he wanted to take back all the times he wished his parents would come back to him. He wanted Jack gone. Out of the one safe space Tim built for himself that wasn’t saturated in desperation and abandonment.
“What was that?” Jack asked, but he hasn't brought his volume down. The ground underneath him shook, or maybe that, too, was just in Tim’s head.
“I hate you!” Tim repeated, bringing himself up to his feet. “I hate you, I wish you weren’t my dad!”
“ don’t you think I wish that too, everytime I come back here and have to look at you I regret letting Janet ever have you!”
Jack paused and Tim froze. It wasn’t shocking. Tim knew he was a mistake, it didn’t take a genius to figure it out.
Even at his ripe old age of seven he could see the lingering distaste in his parent’s eyes whenever their gaze landed on him. He tried to fight it, to change it in every way he knew how, every way he thought he could win their affection back. He didn’t cry or shout, he did well in school, he behaved at galas and did everything they asked of him but still he knew that at the end of the day his parents never wanted a child and still wanted nothing to do with the one they already had.
It felt like watching a meteorite fly towards you, seeing it far in the distance and waiting for the impact and still crying in pain from the feeling of your skin being burnt and your bones being crushed. He knew his father regretted having him, but it still hurt to hear him say it.
“Tim-” Jack started but then stopped. “Tim,” he started again. “I didn’t mean that.” but Tim knew he did. He showed it in every action. The fact that he so easily abandons him shows it perfectly, Tim wasn’t sure why he bothered to take it back. Maybe it was because Tim was still young, that he was too young to know the truth about how his father felt about him, the truth he had known for years.
Then his Father left. Not like he left the room or went outside for a breath of fresh air, like he actually left. When Tim finally gathered the courage to leave his room, stepping over the crumpled up papers left on the floor, he noticed that the still-packed suitcase in the foyer was gone as well as his father’s shoes.
Tim knew it was wrong to say, which is why he would never say it to anyone, but he wished his father continued to yell at him, he wished he threw something, even hit him. Anything other than leaving him alone again. But he should’ve known. He knew crying and shouting didn’t get him what he wanted, all it did was drive everyone else away.
Still it hurts. He hated himself, hated himself for saying anything and driving him away. Miserably he walked himself back into his room, stopping outside the door. The silence was far more unbearable than the sound of yelling. His eyes shifted to the abandoned vase that still stood behind the protective case.
He hadn’t talked to the house ever since he drew the conclusion that the house wasn’t haunted after all, yet he dropped himself in front of the old artifact, staring into the all-too-familiar painted eyes of the little colonial girl. He wanted to be comforted, even if the only thing there was to comfort him is the sound of his own voice. Yet, when he opened his mouth all that came out was a choked sob, and then another and then another. He couldn’t help it, couldn’t stop it if he wanted to.
He cried for the first time in years to the unmoving porcelain girl, staring at her painted-on pearly smile framed by her rosy cheeks as runnels of tears made its way down his face, snot coating his upper lip. He cried as quietly as he could to not manage to drive anyone away even if there was no one else he could drive away, no one else left that could leave him since porcelain vases couldn’t go anywhere.
He learned not to yell back, in an attempt to keep his Father as close as he could he kept his mouth closed. He let him get it out, he yelled, threw things at him and hit him when he got too-drunk. Tim could handle it, he would handle it, if it meant his Father didn’t leave again, that he wouldn’t get ignored again. He bit his lip till it bled and stayed in his seat until it was over and would cry silently to his non-sentient house.
—-------------------------
Bruce didn’t yell, not in the same way that Jack Drake did. He didn’t get angry in the same way. He had never hit Tim nor did he ever get drunk. He wasn’t Tim’s dad, not by any definition of the word. Tim had a Dad, a man who shared half his DNA and his last name who couldn’t dream of having Batman’s self control.
Tim was glad, Jack Drake was sloppy when upset, he almost always missed when throwing something at Tim even when Tim didn’t dodge it. When Jack was drunk his grip was weak and he maintained barely any strength behind his hits. Batman never missed and he was far stronger than Jack could ever dream of being, so Tim was glad that Bruce didn’t have the same violent tendencies.
His way of resolving conflicts was far close to Tim’s mother’s. Once Tim had witnessed Dick and Bruce get into an argument a few months after Jason’t return. Bruce maintained his usual tone, level and monotone but Dick, who had a far loser grasp on his emotions, got louder. His voice echoed against the stone ceilings of the cave, scaring the bat’s that settled up there.
Tim expected Bruce to lose it at some point, reach his snapping point with Dick, hit him, force him out or worse. Instead, Bruce told him to ‘take a breath’ before leaving the cave.
He left.
Dick went home a moment later, ignoring Tim on his way back to his bike to go back to his apartment two hours away. Tim made sure to never lose his control when talking to Bruce. Whenever Bruce would berate (berate, not yell, since Bruce never yelled) him he kept his mouth shut and eventually Bruce would sigh and invite Tim upstairs for dinner.
It didn’t take long for Tim to learn how to keep Bruce from pushing him away. Tim was good at following rules, all the teachers at his schools praised him for it and even though it felt almost impossible to keep his parents happy with him, Bruce was far easier to place as long as he obeyed him and followed his teachings.
He expected that he would be able to continue being able to keep Bruce near after Jason came back. He thought since Bruce was happier and that he still allowed Tim to spend time with him on patrol and in the manor. Bruce had even promised ( promised ) that he wouldn’t abandon him the one time Tim opened up about his relationship with his parents. He promised that he wouldn’t ever up and leave him and of course Tim believed him because why wouldn’t he . Batman wasn’t one to lie just to have something to say nor was he one to make promises that large flagrantly.
He didn’t expect it to get worse. Now that Jason was spending more and more time at the manor and had finally reached the point in his healing process where he can stomach rehashing memories from his Robin days, Bruce couldn’t help but constantly compare Tim to Jason and Dick as if Tim wasn’t doing that already.
Bruce had never said it out loud but Tim could feel the disappointment radiating off of him whenever Tim couldn’t do something just as well as Jason or Dick could. It was just like being home with his Mother. Every negative emotion was expressed in unspoken words.
Bruce began to doubt Tim’s abilities in the field as well, not trusting him to go anywhere out of his eyeline. Once Bruce had even told Tim to ‘stand behind him’. At first Tim laughed loudly before he found out Bruce was completely serious.
Tim’s been trying to ignore it until it went away but with every passing patrol it became more obvious, like a lingering smell on the both of them that managed to taint every moment between them. It wasn’t until a month later that he couldn’t keep it together anymore.
It had begun almost unbearable, the stench of disappointment, to the point where every failure stopped Tim from being able to look Bruce in the eyes for days. He no longer wanted to maintain the peace between the two, he just wanted Bruce to come out and say it, admit that he didn’t trust Tim or his abilities instead of continuing to skate around the issues as if neither of them had noticed.
He became angry and resentful. He had spent months and months training with him, reforming himself so that he would be fit for the position of Robin, that he would meet Bruce’s expectations of him just for him to still fall short without Bruce even admitting it to him.
He wanted to get him to snap, to yell, to just come out and say what he feels instead of just constantly hiding behind his self-made mask of disinterest. He could feel it like a flaking,irritated rash lying just beneath the skin.
Usually on the drive back on patrol Tim is too distracted by the speed of the batmobile, the lingering adrenaline was still flowing in his veins and he felt happy or at least at ease. The feeling you get when you crack all your knuckles or when you change out of dirty clothes into your pajamas. Everything just made sense in those moments, he felt right. A rare feat for him that he held dear.
Now he could only focus on the fact that he smelt like rotting garbage and piss from the sewers. The roaring motor was deafening in his ears and Bruce’s hands were clenched around the leather steering wheel. He was angry, although he wouldn’t admit it but he didn’t need to. Tim learned early on how to read the signs.
Instead of that freeing feeling, the car felt like it was shrinking around him, like a boa constrictor grabbing at his vulnerable throat. Most nights he would try to melt into the seats. Tim had become naturally quieter, at least in comparison to Dick who Bruce seemed to be constantly getting into arguments with before and after Jason came back.
Jason had always been expressive and Tim had a front row seat to Jason’s ‘emotional outbursts’ which were worsened by the effects of the lazarus pit. It was difficult at first but slowly Tim was able to catch the signs and come up with ways to help Jason regain control of the situation. Tim wasn’t like them, partly Tim was convinced that Bruce liked that about him.
The fact that he never had to deal with Tim’s more unsightly emotions because Bruce never saw them, he and tim had never gotten into a two-sided argument, he had never seen Tim cry, all in all he was completely different than the first two robins. Bruce had never made a comment about it but he got the sense that he appreciated the simplicity of his relationship with Tim, that tim tried his hardest to keep his emotions in control just like Batman, just like his mother taught him.
But Tim didn’t feel like keeping his emotions in check just then, he was angry, suffocated by the emotions building up inside of him. The jealousy he felt whenever Jason or Dick stayed at the manor and Bruce gave them all of his attention, even when he and Dick got into an argument, even if Jason was in a bad mood, and he wouldn’t leave them, ignoring them all throughout training and patrol.
Worst of all, he treated Tim like he was incompetent, like he was stupid and weak. He had spent so much time proving his worth just for Bruce to go back to treating him like a whiney, disobedient child.
The churning, bitter feeling also came from the imminent dread from all the warning signs. He could see Bruce pulling away, sending Tim to bed early, going easy on him during training, constantly checking his location whenever he was out of sight. The signs shouted out at him like blaring alarms, the signs that Batman no longer needed a Robin, or at least wanted a Robin better than him.
Which wasn’t fair . Tim had worked so hard, he dedicated the past few years of his life becoming the best Robin he could. He spent sleepless nights working on cases, he worked his bones tired training, just to prove that he could be helpful, that he had some worth.
And for what? Just for Bruce to cast him aside once he no longer saw Tim fit to be Robin. After Tim found the closest thing he could find to a real family. After he finally replaced his loneliness with the only thing that brought him real happiness.After Bruce promised him that he wouldn’t leave him.
All of his lessons from youth flew out the window. Tim wanted to scream, he wanted to cry, he wanted to wrap his hands around Bruce’s thick neck and throttle him until he told him why . Why he wasn’t enough. Why he could abandon him so easily. Why he wants to break his promise.
TIm could feel it brooding inside it like a sickness, an ugly disease that just wanted to hurt Bruce like he was hurting. He crossed his arm tightly across his body, digging his blunt fingernails into the flesh of his bicep to keep his thoughts grounded. He wanted Bruce to notice but he wasn’t surprised that he didn’t. He wasn’t even surpsied that Bruce didn’t notice the way he brutally slammed the doors to the batmobile when they got back.
It wasn’t until Tim threw his staff onto the ground hard enough for the clattering noise to echo against the walls that Bruce finally turned to look at him.
“Is there something wrong, Tim?’’ and my god, Tim was bad at picking up social cues but how obvious does it need to be for Bruce to pick up something was wrong. Chances were Tim could’ve lit the cave on fire and even then Bruce would question if ‘something was wrong’.
“When are you just going to say it? How long do you expect me to wait?” Tim shot back. He just wanted to bite the bullet, get Bruce to finally say he no longer needed Tim as Robin. That he could go back home and the Wayne family can go back to existing as if he never existed in the first place.
“ Tim, I’m not sure what you're referring to” Bruce responded in that aggravating, poised tone he always used. Even when Tim could feel himself falling apart inside.
“Like shit you don’t know what i’m talking about!” Tim shouted back, his voice growing in pitch and volume.
“Tim I-”
“Stop treating me like I'm a child!” Tim interrupted.
“ I am not treating you like a child.”
“ God, will you just stop lying to me? I can see it, I'm not a dumb as you think I am. I’m not blind I can see that you don’t trust me anymore.” he was shouting now. Loud enough so that his squeaky voice was beating itself against the walls and back into his own ears.
Somewhere he knew, he knew he shouldn’t yell at Bruce. He had no reason to. He wasn’t like Jack Drake, he didn’t yell at him, didn’t judge him and used him to take his anger out on. Bruce was good, he was gentle.
But the thought that Bruce would take it all away, would take Robin away alongside his new happiness was too painful to bear. The idea of going back to Drake Manor, back to Jack Drake instead of Bruce made it hard to breathe.
“Tim, I am not lying to you, about anything.” and there he was, still calm and collected. Like the idea of losing Tim didn’t scare him. Because it didn’t. Not in the way that losing Bruce scared him.
“ Yes you do! Stop lying! You are constantly comparing me to them. To Jason and Dick. Because I'm not them. I can never be them to you. No matter how hard I try you’re always going to want me to turn into them when I won’t. And you just can’t accept that, can you?” he could hear the cracks in his voice as he aggresively jabbed his finger into Bruce’s expressionless face.
It didn’t count as an accusation because it was true. They both knew it. Tim had always known that somewhere deep
inside Bruce he wished Tim was Jason. And who could blame him? He lost his son after all. And Tim would’ve given anything to be Jason, or Dick, but he just couldn’t. He was stuck being Tim Drake.
He would never be the first two Robins, he would never be Bruce’s real sons and that hurt far more than any of the times Jack Drake had yelled at him. Because Bruce Wayne had always mattered more than Jack Drake ever could’ve.
“You just can’t stand that I'm not them, that I’ll never be as good as them as much as you like to pretend that I could ever be a replacement for Jason.” Tim closed in on him, bodies almost touching as he fingered a handful of salt into Bruce’s bloody wounds.
The same wounds that Tim had so desperately tried to help Bruce repair. Because he was hurt, because he could feel all the acrid resentment and jealousy burning its way up from his stomach and into his mouth for him to vomit up like acid.
“I-” Bruce finally had gotten louder and for a moment Tim thought he had finally broken him. The mention of Tim ever being good enough to replace Jason Todd was finally the thing that got Bruce to snap.
He thought he would yell, he would push Tim as far away as possible. He thought he would finally tell him he was no longer needed as Robin and that he could go back to Drake Manor and rot.
But he didn’t. He stopped for a moment, took a step away from Tim and sighed. He rubbed the bridge of his nose as he so often does before looking back at Tim with his same stern look.
“We’ll talk tomorrow but you need to get some sleep. Go back home and we can talk tomorrow.”
And that was that. No shouting, no admittance of Bruce’s bottled up disdain for him. Nothing. He just left.
Tim wanted to scream. Tell him to come back. Remind him that he promised not to leave, not to abandon him like his parents did. He wanted to point out that by leaving he was just proving his point. But he didn’t. He watched idly as Bruce stripped himself of his cowel before leaving the cave completely.
When his mouth did manage to unhinge itself he expected a jumbled scream to come out but what came out was far more pathetic. He let out a small garbled sob that sounded like he was choking on his own spit.
The cave became blurry from his tears and he didn’t have the strength to carry the weight of himself upright. He cried, like he was a small child left in his crib with no one to comfort him. He hoped he would eventually cry himself to sleep but he doubted the tears would ever stop.
Because Bruce had broken his promise. His dad had left him.