you know what i want? i want some more of that time when jack drake benched tim after he found out tim was robin. specifically, i want jack drake having to deal with the fact that his son is robin.
oh he’s angry. his son goes around beating up criminals and breaking the law and he knows batman. but the thing is, batman and robin have been these distant, almost mythological figures for so long. gotham thinks of the duo as heroes, as not as people. and jack drake didn’t realize what exactly constitutes as being robin.
jack can’t hear his son anymore, not unless he wants to. granted, he had always been a quiet child. but now, his footsteps were completely silent. his breathing was almost nonexistent. his voice could carry across a room if he wanted, then shroud itself in fog, muffling it instantly. tim would just suddenly appear, at the kitchen counter, in the office, next to or behind jack. jack never saw him coming. and when jack reminded his son of these things, albeit a little shakily, tim blinked in surprise, as if he wasn’t even aware he was doing these things.
there are scars all over his body. objectively, jack knew that. batman and robin fought brutally, of course they would be injured. seeing the marks littered all over tim’s skin, however, is another matter. there are slashes and stabs. puckered skin that looks like a bullet hole. clean lines with little hashes, a nicely healed and well-taken-care-of injury. ugly, jagged streaks that scream pain, that jack felt nauseous seeing, let alone having the strength to bear it. tim acts like they’re normal, acts like assimilating all these scars were a mark of progress, a mark of strength. he rubs lotion on them a couple nights a week, falling into a routine. there’s a story behind each and every one of them, a life saved behind each and every one of them. jack doesn’t know whether to be somber or relieved at the fact that tim will never tell them to him.
tim’s reflexes are catlike, his instincts sharp, his mind always working a split-second faster than anyone else’s in the room. jack will accidentally drop something, and tim will catch it out of the air, easy as breathing, and hand it to him. as a test, jack dropped a ceramic mug filled with coffee on purpose. it landed in tim’s perfectly outstretched palm, not a drop of the drink spilled. tim was still on his phone with the other hand, but he looked away enough to raise an eyebrow at jack. jack didn’t question how tim knew he had done it on purpose. tim knows things, things that he has no reason to know, until he explained how he knew them. he had all of jack’s nervous tics memorized, apparently, and picked up things from other people uncannily accurately. dana poured acceptance and affection into the kid, and jack loved her for that, but he knew that tim scared her, just a little. jack was left wondering when his son had become the modern-day sherlock holmes.
and tim knew people. he’d casually reference batman or nightwing in a conversation, acting as if he knew them personally. which. well. apparently he did know them personally. but it wasn’t just the heroes from gotham, no. someone had once called tim while he, jack, and dana were cooking dinner together, sort of a bonding activity. tim had answered, then put the call on speaker, then continuing to chop a couple vegetables. (he looked far too comfortable with a knife in his hand. tim flipped it between his fingers and in the air with an ease and grace that made it impossible to tear his eyes from. and he wasn’t even trying.) then the sounds of an explosion came in, causing jack and dana to flinch, but tim didn’t even more. apparently, the flash was calling him, all the way from central city, where he was fighting killer robots, and asking for advice because apparently, someone named ‘bart’ had told the flash (the! actual! flash!) that tim had worked out a way to defeat them once before. tim advised them on how to get under armour platings and where the weak spots were while mashing potatoes with a fork. then tim said goodbye and good luck with a cheerful tone before hanging up. because apparently the flash calling him was something that didn’t faze him anymore. jack never said anything about the pictures hanging up in tim’s room, of a too-small kid in a robin suit, a boy in a leather jacket and an earring, someone more hair and goggles than boy, a girl with a confident smirk flexing her biceps, a girl with a bow and arrow, and a literal ghost. he also didn’t say anything about the photos of tim and that boy in the leather jacket, just to two of them. in those pictures, tim was laughing harder than jack had ever seen in his life.
tim was still his son, but he wasn’t entirely himself. jack couldn’t get rid of robin, no matter how hard he tried. tim moved like a predator when he was just walking down the stairs, a new grace in his movements. his eyes flicked to all possible exits any time he entered a room. he was no longer afraid to walk the streets of gotham at night, treading calm and sure even as jack and dana hurried quickly home with their shoulders bent.
his son was important. his son was powerful. his son walked and talked and laughed amongst gods, and they showered him with respect. jack was beginning to think he was foolish for ever believing he could take robin away.
