Chapter Text
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Tim wasn’t sure if he could pinpoint the exact moment he became, well, Tim.
But, at some point, he realized something wasn’t quite right. His hands hadn’t always been this small, and he was sure he used to be able to walk with much more confidence. As it stood though, he was still unsteady on his feat.
He blinked blearily at the mobile spinning above his head. It was a collection of different animals one of their rich neighbors gifted his parents. One of his only "childish" items. The beady eyes of the tiger in particular appeared to be staring into his soul. Tim refused to look away, lest it win.
He assumed something must have happened to lead him to wake up in the body of his infant self, but for the life of him, he couldn’t figure out what. The last thing he remembered from before was doing paperwork at his desk at Wayne Industries. There was nothing unusual that day, nothing at all to nudge him in the right direction.
He had been an adult, and then he wasn’t.
A sound from across the room startled him from his very serious staring match. He cataloged the room through the bars of his crib, trying to locate the source of the noise. There, across the nursery, sat a second crib. Inside it was, supposedly, his twin sister.
‘Marinette,’ as his parents and nanny called her, was a normal thirteen-month-old as far as Tim could tell. She could say a few words, was quick to cry when upset, and was far more empathetic than Tim thought a baby had any business being.
And she was also smart. Not smart in the way Tim was, it was obvious she was mentally a toddler, but she caught on to things faster than normal, and sometimes Tim would find her staring off into the distance with a contemplative look that didn’t belong on her baby cheeked face.
The strangest part of all this was that Tim knew he was an only child. Or at least, he used to be. So, where had this tiny human with features oh-so-similar to his own come from?
Tim continued to watch his sister, even as their nanny woke them up an hour later. She seemed almost… normal, the way she stood holding the bars, whining and demanding her “baba” when she saw the woman. She wouldn’t be getting one, their parents were obstinate in their intent to wean them now that they were a year old.
Her childish demeaner was a stark contrast to how Tim lay silently in his crib as he waited to be lifted out.
Their nanny was a stout woman, with black hair pulled into a low bun and a small smile on her face. She hadn't introduced herself and Tim didn’t recognize her, so he assumed she was one of the many who didn’t stay for long. She spoke quietly as she dressed his sister, before she lay her back down. She ignored her small cries of “out" as she lifted Tim up and went through the same routine, too few hands to dress Tim while keeping Marinette out of trouble.
If Tim had been a normal baby, this would have gone differently. He would have cried while he waited, which would have set off his sister, and it wouldn’t have been fun for anyone. With how rich his parents were, he was surprised there weren’t two nannies. But, from what he’d observed so far, things were the same as they had been the first time. The only outlier was the tiny, almost identical infant and her matching crib.
After the two were dressed, the nanny brought them to the bathroom down the hall.
Tim remembered how Janet had bragged about how quickly he had potty trained during the few parties he attended when he was a toddler. While she talked about it like it was some impressive feat, like he had learned to toilet early because he was ahead of his peers, Tim remembered it differently.
His memories of that time had faded with age, but he remembered it had been hellish. He was always so thirsty and confused. No one really explained things to him, just withheld water and screamed in his face when he made a mess.
Tim frowned as he watched the nanny hold Marinette over the toilet. The actual toilet, not a kid-sized one, because his parents didn’t believe in childish nonsense like that. He wasn’t sure who she was yet, nor was he confident there wasn’t any magic involved, but right now, this girl was just a baby. She was a confused infant, and Tim had the memories of a 27-year-old.
She was his sister, even if she didn’t used to be, and he wasn’t going to let her experience the same childhood he had.
He was going to protect her.
Once they were pottied and dressed, their nanny carried them down to the breakfast table. Tim couldn’t remember the last time he was held. If their legs had been any longer and steadier, he was sure she would have made them walk. Jack was always insistent that he not be babied. But, as it stood, they were still too young. Tim knew how fleeting these moments were. He leaned into the touch.
Tim got his first glance of his parents when they reached the dining room. As the nanny set them in their chairs, he took in their appearance. They both looked young, though somehow just the same as he remembered. Jack still had the ever-present crease between his brows and Janet’s expressions were as sharp as it ever was. The Drakes were never ones known to change.
“Ah, Timothy, Marinette. Good morning,” Janet commented absently after she finished instructing the landscaper on what flowers she wanted in the front garden come spring.
“Morning,” his sister chirped as she chewed her eggs. The words caused a few mashed-up bits to leave her mouth, and Tim leaned away to avoid catching any flying pieces.
“Marinette,” Janet said sharply. Tim jumped along with his sister, suddenly feeling very small. “Chew with your mouth closed or you won’t be given anything to chew at all.”
Marinette curled in on herself and nodded, waiting until their mother looked away before hesitantly placing another bite in her mouth.
The two of them relaxed more and more the longer their parents’ attention was occupied. Tim made sure to shove as much food down his throat while they weren’t looking, but Marinette ate at a much slower pace.
He wanted to yell at her to eat faster, to explain that she wouldn’t get to finish at all if she was too slow. Tim had been through this song and dance; he knew the way mealtimes worked here. He wanted to tell her, but he wasn’t sure she would understand if he did.
So, instead, Tim pocketed his toast. It was almost instinctual, a habit from his childhood he easily fell back into. He would save it, just in case. Besides, toast took a lot longer to mold than regular bread, right? He wished he had access to a computer so he could look that up.
Luckily for his sister, their mother and father left before she was finished. He felt bad that he was relieved to see them go, he hadn’t seen them in years. But, this was different than 27-year-old Red Robin/Tim Drake-Wayne meeting up with his estranged family. Here, he was just little Timothy Drake. Here, he had no power or voice.
Here, he had nowhere to escape to when he got scared.
After breakfast was outside time. No one told him that, he just knew. He’d stuck to the same schedule every day until he started preschool. Something about ‘molding the young mind,’ or some other rich people's excuse to be excessively controlling.
As the nanny left to take their plates to the kitchen, Tim sat waiting on his chair, but Marinette turned to get up at the first sign of boredom. She slid down, dangling her feet as she stretched for the floor. She kicked and kicked, but the chair was built for an adult, and her legs were too short to reach.
Unable to reach the floor, she decided to jump. Given that she was an uncoordinated infant, this, predictably, went wrong. She landed sideways and fell on her butt, hitting her forehead on the lip of the chair.
There was a beat of silence in which Tim slipped from his own chair to reach her, before she burst into tears.
Tim had never used a highchair or booster seat as a child. He’d never had anything made for kids, really. He had been plopped at the table and expected to eat like an adult, even though he could barely see over the edge of his plate. He used to be proud of this fact, thinking he was mature for his age. Now though, he wished there was at least some sort of buckle on their chairs.
Nanny rushed in to see what happened while Tim examined Marinette’s forehead. It was red and would probably bruise, but that was it. No concussion.
Marinette, what with being an actual baby, didn’t get the memo that it wasn’t that serious. Tim sighed, then brushed his sister’s hair out of her face, internally cringing at the snot that stuck to it, and planted a kiss on her forehead. She stopped screaming, staring at him with wide eyes as the tears continued to fall.
“Shh, it’s all better, okay?” he said quietly.
She blinked at him slowly, then nodded as she wiped the tears from her eyes.
“All better.”
Tim could walk, if somewhat unstably with how bundled up in his coats and mittens he was, but Marinette couldn’t. Nanny held her hand to keep her steady as they slowly made their way through the garden.
Tim stumbled across the path ahead of them, wide-eyed. Everything looked so… different. Bigger, from this close to the ground. It felt like the world had grown ten sizes overnight, and despite his initial fear at his predicament, he couldn’t help but giggle.
Everything was almost brighter, in a way.
“Having fun there, Timothy?” their nanny called, smiling. Tim gave her a grin, picking up a nearby leaf and examining it closely. There were seven points, and it was red, so the tree it came from was deciduous. Northern red oak, if Tim had to guess. A common tree in New Jersey.
Confidently, Tim strode over to his sister and handed her his prize. She took it with a look of reverence, then immediately stuffed it in her mouth.
“Oh dear, Marinette! That’s not food,” the nanny cried, crouching down and pinching the girl’s cheeks between her hand. “Spit it out.”
Sadly, Marinette did as she was told. Nanny took the slobbery leaf, curling her lip in disgust, and tossed it on the path. “Honestly,” she complained, “Just because it can fit in your mouth doesn’t mean it belongs there.”
Marinette plopped down on the path to stare at the leaf despondently, but didn’t reach for it again. Nanny grumbled about the girl dirtying her pants, but crouched with her to see what she was looking at, Tim joining them.
There, slowly creeping out of the grass was a garden snail. The siblings watched as it reached the soggy leaf and began to eat it.
“That’s a snail,” nanny explained. “Can you say snail?”
Tim frowned. He was getting sick of this baby talk.
“’Nail,” Marinette obliged, not tearing her eyes away from the creature.
“That’s right! Snail,” she praised, as if she had just gotten the last Fortune 500 question correct, rather than repeat a simple word. “Can you say snail, Timothy? Snaaail.”
Tim glared. He was not buying into this, it would only encourage her further.
She sighed at him. “Alright, let’s say goodbye to the snail now, we need to finish our walk.”
Marinette chirped out a, “Bye bye,” with Tim begrudgingly waving along.
They only made it a few feet before her attention was drawn to something else. She gasped, pointing to a blur behind one of the hedges in front of them. “Hi!” She waved.
At the sound of her voice, a small black cat poked its head out. It blinked its bright green eyes owlishly, before trotting over and rubbing its back on the tiny girl.
Nanny was quick to shoo the cat away, yelling about “bad luck” and “dirty vermin.” Both the cat and Marinette were upset at being separated, and the animal continued to lurk around the garden, watching, despite the nanny’s best attempts to get it to scram.
The rest of their walk continued much the same. They would make it a few feet before some insect or animal would take interest in Marinette (or vice versa) and they’d stop to watch it while nanny tried to keep it from touching them. There was even one instance when a swarm of butterflies landed on and around the group. Nanny hadn’t known what to do then.
It was strange, to say the least, how… enthralled animals seemed to be with her. It was almost like…
Time stopped, his sudden halt causing Marinette to bump into him. She would have fallen back, had nanny not been holding her hand to keep her steady.
Tim pat her head absently in apology, unable to fully tear his thoughts away from his realization.
Marinette was a Meta.
It made so much sense, too much sense for him not to at least consider it. There had to be some reason he woke up in the body of his younger self with a twin who never existed, and this could be why. She was unusually empathetic, and it was already obvious she had some sort of animal-related power. No sane animal would willingly approach a sticky-fingered toddler. It wasn’t outside of the realm of possibility to consider she might be responsible for the rest of this situation as well.
It was either that or magic, and Tim would rather not subject his brain to thinking about the confusing miasma that was that particular can of worms.
Still, Tim thought as he watched nanny scold his sister for trying to put a handful of dirt in her mouth. Even if she was responsible, it was obvious she didn’t know any more about what happened than Tim did. Less, if the way her face soured at the woman for interrupting her snack. She didn’t seem to have any memories from her before at all. She was just a baby.
She was just a baby, Tim couldn’t blame her for any of this, even if she was involved. He didn’t know if this was all in his mind, or if he really had gone back in time, but whatever it was, he was sure of one thing.
She was a child, and she had meta powers. Jack hated Metas, it was one of the few things he remembered him ranting about from a young age. He thought Metas were less than human, that they were dangerous and didn’t belong with the rest of the population. If he found out...
Jack already thought Marinette was less than because of her gender, but she would have things much worse if he ever discovered this. Tim might not have his fine motor skills down, and sure, he was a bit wobbly when he walked, but Tim was also a Robin, and Robins protected the innocents.
Marinette may not have been his sister originally, but she was now. He would make sure she never grew to resent that.