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Oranges were magic. Tim had been fully convinced of that even before his adventures in Crime Alley orange delivery when he was younger. (He’d had to stop when the scrutiny from the Bat got too intense. It wouldn’t do to be noticed, after all.)
Other citrus was good, too. Not as good as oranges, of course.
When he was 12, a wizard wiped out almost all of the oranges in the world before the Justice League managed to take him down. (He’d been trying to eradicate fire. Honestly, Tim was kind of disappointed in the Justice League for letting him get that far.) It took over a year for the supply to even remotely recover, and in the intervening months Tim’s fatigue returned again full-force. In desperation, he bought and ate a lemon, two limes, and a grapefruit. Tart and bitter they might be, but they did work. He felt excellent once again.
Jason died while Tim was dealing with the fatigue. Batman spiraled out of control. Tim developed a plan to blackmail Nightwing into returning to Gotham - Batman needed a Robin - but was unable to execute it when a scar he’d gotten ages ago during a particularly photogenic Arkham breakout opened up again .
That was when he bought the other citrus.
Not much after that, Batman vanished from Gotham. In his place, Justice League members patrolled, telling anyone who asked that Batman was on “Bereavement Leave”. Tim didn’t dare to patrol. He might be excellent at avoiding Batman, but he didn’t know the other heroes nearly well enough to dodge them.
Bored out of his mind, Tim decided to teach himself hacking. He got pretty good at it - good enough to find some mysterious gaps in city surveillance footage.
Hunting those gaps down took several more weeks, but eventually he managed it. What he found made him forget how to breathe for several long moments.
Jason was alive.
Jason was alive.
…he probably needed oranges.
Tim was going to give his Robin an orange if it was the last thing he did.
Tim’s quest to give Robin an orange might be the last thing he did.
After some further digging, he’d discovered a mysterious group called the League of Assassins, an enemy that Batman had apparently tangled with before. But unfortunately it seemed that his digging had also led to the League of Assassins discovering him too.
That was his running theory, anyways. Since he’d been kidnapped by ninjas, and all.
In between druggings, Tim was vaguely aware of being in at least one car or van and a plane or two. He would have been concerned had he not been, you know, drugged.
When they finally came to a stop, he was dragged out under what felt distinctly like desert sunlight. Sure enough, the blindfold came off (ow) and he saw a compound directly in front of him. Made of sandstone, it blended in very well with its surroundings. Tim wasn’t even sure if a place like this would show up on satellite footage.
Oh yeah. Tim was in deep shit now.
Soon enough, he was in a fancy room, forced to his knees (rude) in front of an older man who was giving off some seriously rancid vibes.
Tim shared the thought.
Evidently, Rancid Vibes Man didn’t enjoy being called that, based on how he signaled one of his goons to smack Tim upside the head for it. He was Ra’s Al Ghul, the Demon’s Head, and Tim was to address him as Master. Ra’s Al Tool had apparently decided that a neglected boy of Tim’s intellect could be quite useful to him, so he was to be trained in proper manners and behavior and act as a tool for the old bastard.
Yikes.
Tim had seriously underestimated the creep factor going on here. Fortunately for him, galas with his parents had prepared him pretty well for this kind of interaction. All he had to do for now was stall, lie, and deflect to buy time until he made a plan.
Almost a month into his time with the League, Tim was dying for some citrus. After a few interactions with the man, Master Nasty had apparently decided Tim was smart enough to become not just a peon, but a protege. Which apparently meant a lot of games of chess while the old bastard tried to seduce Tim (yuck) into declaring his loyalty forever and ever. Tim was just glad he’d taken to playing an overly-complicated version of chess online a while back that forced him to think of the game forwards, backwards, and upside-down. Apparently, his “unconventional strategies” made him hard to predict, which bought him more time.
He had “calling Superman’s real name” as a last-ditch backup, though he’d rather not get on the Justice League’s radar that hard. His plans beside that were coming along alright, though. Ra’s hadn’t yet figured out what Tim craved most, so he was having trouble seducing him to the Dark Side. When Tim brought up oranges, Ra’s had made one hell of a sour face, so there was that character analysis confirmed.
Damian Al Ghul Wayne, grandson of the Demon’s Head and son of the Bat, was a proud boy. So when his grandfather’s attention, previously belonging almost entirely to him, shifted to someone else, he noticed.
Some light reconnaissance uncovered the issue. Grandfather had caught a boy he found interesting, and was attempting to convince him to swear undying loyalty. Damian was begrudgingly impressed with the boy’s resisting for this long. Evidently, Grandfather’s usual enticements (money, power, eternal life) weren’t working. Soon, he would move to torture.
Damian found the idea distasteful.
Perhaps he could win the boy’s loyalty himself? If Damian managed to bring the boy under his own sway, grandfather would surely be impressed and the natural order of the world would resume.
And so Damian took to shadowing the boy through the halls. (His situational awareness was terrible. Damian would have to fix that.) Soon enough, he was rewarded with valuable intel.
“God, I think I’d sell my soul for some citrus,” groaned his soon-to-be-servant to the air. “I swear, I would do anything for an orange right now.”
Perfect.
Damian had been quite put out to discover that their gardens did not contain oranges. However, Mother informed him that the candied peel of the Buddha’s Hand was a far superior citrus experience.
Damian took care to candy the peel himself. Candied peel, his research said, was an art. Damian knew art. It was only meaningful when one took the time to truly immerse oneself into it. He needed almost two days to perfect the recipe, but when he finally did he displayed the treats beautifully in a little basket and placed the basket at the boy’s door, carefully knocking in the way the servants delivering food were wont to do.
Damian hid around the corner.
His vassal opened the door and cocked his head, birdlike, as he examined the basket. Bending down, he picked it up and pulled out a piece of candied peel to nibble on it.
“holyshit the orange gods heard me-”
Was Damian’s servant broken? What on Earth were the orange gods?
Damian’s confusion was interrupted by the sound of a slamming door.
He would introduce himself with the next basket, he decided.
Grandfather was going to be so pleased.
Bruce Wayne was absolutely losing his mind with boredom.
Though he’d never admit it, the break and therapy his Justice League colleagues had forced on him were… necessary. With the benefit of hindsight, he was very aware of just how out of control he had gotten before their intervention.
However.
Now, doing much better, Bruce was beginning to realize that he’d been occupying his mind with high-complexity puzzles nearly every day for years. Without that kind of exercise, his mind was spinning in circles.
He took to haunting the security camera network of Gotham, sending tips to the Leaguers who were covering for him when he discovered things he didn’t think could wait.
It was because of this obsession that Bruce happened upon the abduction of one Timothy Jackson Drake.
He didn’t know who the boy was at first, of course.
All he saw was a young boy, pulled into the shadows by bodies that looked suspiciously League of Assassins-shaped. Since the League in Gotham was pretty much guaranteed to mean trouble, he was of course obligated to investigate.
...
League confirmed.
Well, shit.
...
His parents were gone for how much of the year?
...
Absolutely not. There was no way that his next-door neighbors had neglected their son so badly without him even noticing. Not even a nanny since the age of eight?
...
Bruce stared at two side-by-side images. In one, stolen from League cameras on one of their more remote bases, a slight, dark-haired boy squinted at the sunlight.
In the other (found while digging through the cameras they had facing the approach road to Wayne Manor, which also led to Drake Manor), the same boy, dressed in a black sweatshirt with a horrible pun on it, walked alone.
He remembered, with a pang of grief, Jason’s months-long hunt for the boy. He would have been furious at the idea that the boy was so close to them the whole time.
He’d have demanded that Bruce take Tim into their home immediately.
Bruce stood up.
“Clark, we have a time-sensitive mission.”
Damian never got the chance to win Timothy’s undying loyalty. Instead, his sleep was interrupted by the ringing of alarms.
The Bat was here.
No.
The Bat had been here. He and Superman had come, and they had taken Damian’s rightful ally!
Damian dove into his training. If he wished to win Timothy back, he would have to defeat his Father.