Chapter Text
The older boy doesn’t talk to Tim.
When Tim is 11, Batman kidnaps him from his empty house. His kidnapper gives him a week to get “acclimatized” to a different, somehow more oppressive manor. The manor is big and empty, with more locked up rooms than open ones. As far as Tim can tell, he’s one of only four people on the premises. There’s Batman, of course. There’s an old butler who makes food and looks at him sadly. And there’s Damian, Batman’s son.
Damian’s a couple years older than Tim, a couple inches taller, and he barely acknowledges Tim’s existence. His eyes have a way of sliding over Tim, looking at him as if he’s part of the furniture.
The only time he interacts with Tim is on the third day, when Tim does something to piss Batman off. Tim doesn’t even know what he did wrong. But Damian’s father instructs the older boy to put him in one of the cells without even sparing a glance at Tim.
Damian obeys his father, wordlessly leading Tim downstairs. Tim stares pleadingly at the older boy when he opens the cell door, but the only change in Damian’s face is the slightest thinning of the lips.
That night, Tim sleeps in a cell in the cave lair of the man who kidnapped him. He sleeps within eyeshot of the rotting head of Harvey Dent, who had been District Attorney before Batman had very publicly killed him. In the morning, Tim wakes up to the scrape of metal and Damian standing in the open doorway.
Tim glimpses Damian a couple more times that week, but Damian is quick to leave any room Tim enters. Tim, not wanting to find out what happens if he pisses off Batman’s son, doesn’t follow after him.
Exactly seven nights after Batman brought him to the manor, the man deems his introductory period over. He brings Tim to his room.
The next hours are pain upon pain.
Then Batman leaves, the heavy wooden door slamming behind him. And Tim is alone. He’s gross and sticky, face wet with sweat and tears. It’s quiet, almost too quiet, and all Tim can hear is his heart beating in his chest.
But the silence doesn’t last long. Tim hears the click of the door handle being turned. He tenses, entire body hurting at the movement, but it’s just Damian. The other boy looks at him for a long moment, assessing him. Tim watches as his expression shifts to alarm. He feels woozy, breaths coming in short bursts. The world spins around him.
Damian’s mouth flattens in a grim line. That’s the last Tim sees, for a little while.
When Tim comes to, everything hurts.
He’s trapped, caged in by arms. He thrashes for a second only to realize he’s being carried — and by Damian of all people. All Tim can think about is how he doesn’t want to go back to the cell beneath the manor. He thrashes harder, stilling only when Damian shoots him a look.
It’s all snapshots, after that. The butler, pressing a bundle into Damian’s hand. Dark woods, an empty train car, deft hands wrapping up a wound in Tim’s side.
When Tim is coherent enough to pay attention, Damian makes up for a week’s lack of conversation. He narrates what he’s doing, what medicine he’s giving Tim, why he’s changing some bandages and not others. He doesn’t need Tim to fill in the gaps in conversation — which is good, because Tim’s throat hurts and his body hurts and he thinks he might be in shock. Damian’s narration is endearingly awkward. Tim wonders, for the first time, how long it’s been since Damian talked to someone his own age.
It takes a few days for Tim to realize that Damian’s plan didn’t amount to much more than get away. In all fairness, that’s further than Tim had gotten. They have some money, a little food, and fake IDs that the butler managed to pass to Damian during their escape. But there’s an understanding that it might not last, hopping on empty train cars and sleeping under the stars and buying shitty food at shittier convenience stores.
And it doesn’t.
Tim knows it’s over when a man appears from the sky, eyes cold and sharp as steel. But even more, he knows it’s over when he glances over to see the look of resignation on Damian’s face. The same look, Tim realizes, the older boy had when he’d first seen Tim at the manor.
They don’t go back to the manor right away. The strange man (who calls himself Superman) tells them that Batman promised him a finder’s fee. He smiles when he tells them this, but there’s nothing behind his eyes. Nothing at all.
(His finder’s fee is that he gets to dole out the first punishment. Even just days prior, Tim would’ve thought there was a threshold for the amount of pain a body can bear. He learns this isn’t the case — or that the threshold is a lot higher than he thought. This is not an enjoyable lesson.)
The sad butler isn’t there when Superman deposits them back at the manor. The next day, Damian has dirt under his fingernails and the rose garden has gained a conspicuous mound. Damian doesn’t cry. But Tim understands Damian better now, the mask he’s wearing to protect whatever fragile pieces of himself he’s been able to salvage. Tim wonders how long Damian has been with Batman. Tim wonders how long he, too, will have to endure.
After they heal from their punishments, Damian doesn’t talk to Tim. But Tim knows, now. An alliance has formed between them, an alliance that will one day become a brotherhood. Damian and Tim are in this together, for better or for worse. Maybe, one day, they’ll make it out of this alive. But it’s just as likely that one or both of them could end up buried beneath the roses.