Work Text:
Batman doesn’t kill.
Robin doesn’t kill.
Timothy Jackson Drake most definitely does kill.
He took his first life at thirteen, a poor woman in an alley who had committed the crime of buying drugs.
She clearly wasn’t very old, not a teenager anymore, but she reminded Tim of his English teacher, Miss Hannah, who knew all the latest slang and compared the more difficult and tedious books to The Simpsons episodes. The dealer had passed out at the mouth of the alley, his leg at a nauseating angle and a batarang in his shoulder, but this woman had kept resisting and fighting Batman, and he had just kept punching…
She was dying. Tim knew it, and from the look in her eyes, she knew it too. It was late enough that no ambulance would want to come to this part of the city, but the wheezing-hissing breaths that she gasped through her punctured lungs were bad. Tim had nothing to make it quick, even though she gave him a nod when he held her hand. Growing up in Gotham made you prepared to die at any moment, but it didn’t comfort Tim when he put her out of her misery by kneeling on her throat, still holding her hand and sobbing as he apologized. He held her hand for hours before he remembered the dealer was still there. Then, he took his second life with a batarang to the jugular, quick and cold despite his sniffling and tears.
Batman cannot kill.
Tim can.
The police thought it was just a deal gone wrong, no sign of the Bat’s involvement to be seen and no witnesses.
Tim kept the bloodstained batarang under his bed.
Next Tuesday, he got himself transferred out of Miss Hannah’s English class due to the fact that he kept having panic attacks during class. The Principal thought it was the workload and pushed him down a grade in English, even though he had been allowed to skip a year in all his subjects for the first time ever. His mom had been worried, asking him if he was sleeping enough and said that she would book a plane straight back, but his dad talked her out of it, said she was smothering him. Still, Jack Drake had a discreet talk with the principal and his nanny and Tim was encouraged to join more social clubs and given leave to drop two of his academic ones.
Tim joined the swim team, because the only time he felt like there wasn’t blood under his fingernails was when he was covered in water.
He gave two more mercy kills in two other separate locations, nearly almost perfectly spaced out by a fortnight. By the FBI’s current definition, Tim is a serial killer.
He never washes the blood off that batarang, no matter how many times he has used it to slit throats. He tried, but he can still see it coating the slick black metal.
By the time that Tim becomes Robin, he is an opportunistic serial killer. He doesn’t want to kill, but he has to. He has to.
As Robin, he stops killing. There’s no need for it now that Robin’s there to physically get in between Batman and his victims. Now that he’s got a tranq in one pocket and a heavy duty painkiller in the other.
Everything is fine and everything is stable.
Until it’s not.
Batman made the crucial mistake of sending Tim Drake to France. Not Robin, but Tim.
Lady Shiva is an assassin of unparalleled deadliness. She kills with her hands, with her legs and arms and hips and mouth. Lady Shiva demands deadliness.
Tim Drake gave it.
Tim has found that he hates killing with his hands. It is too easy to kill with his hands, too easy to wield a weapon every day of his life. With a blade (with his batarang ), he has to make the decision to pull it out, he has to look at a person and think about killing them, think whether or not they deserve it.
So he gained a Bō, a dull weapon that he cannot accidentally kill with. So he gained his birdarangs and wingdings, a shape he cannot mistake for his batarang and far duller.
He kept the batarang on him. He integrated it into a belt buckle, then into his boots, and even a necklace when he’s out of costume.
He keeps it on him, just in case.
It’s not really just in case if he uses it.
He was patrolling alone, Nightwing and Batman were arguing in the comms, and Oracle was helping them. They weren’t paying attention to him. There was a blind spot in the alley. It was a paedophile, they had solicited an alley kid and now theres a dead kid and a man taking back the money he handed over…
Tim took off his mask, put it in his pocket, and killed unprompted for the first time.
Tim Drake’s kill count tipped over into the double digits.
From then, it was just a case of figuring out when something was a Robin case or a Tim Drake case. Tim never went out searching for someone to kill, never craved it or planned it, but if someone who needed it fell into his lap, then…
The FBI classified opportunistic serial killers as some of the deadliest due to the simple fact that they tend to lack a pattern. They were disorganised, without clear strategies or plans, and lacked one of the most important part in catching a killer: a victim profile. They could kill a teenage girl one day and an old man the next, and their killings tended to only have one thing in common. Richard Chase would kill anyone with their doors unlocked, Harold Shipman would kill anyone he could pass off as illness, Richard Ramirez went after anyone he could make cry, the Dnepropetrovsk maniacs killed anyone they could with a hammer in the woods.
Tim Drake kills anyone who deserves mercy from a more painful death, or anyone who he knows would get a death penalty if the Gotham Judicial System was just.
Tim was always mission-oriented, why would that change now?
His mom died far away from him, and his dad fell into a coma.
The last time he talked with them on the phone, they asked him whether he was getting enough sleep. His mom wanted to cut their trip short early and come back, said that his school counsellor had called them concerned about him, said she was so sorry that she was missing so much of his teenage years and wanted to know about his dating life. His dad spoke about enrolling him in wrestling to give him an outlet for his temper, promised him that he was coming back to show him the ropes even though Jack did boxing in high-school, not wrestling.
Tim snuck into his school counsellor’s office and looked at their files.
“ Timothy Drake is displaying concerning levels of apathy when reading the EngLit assigned stories. His responses show no empathy for the characters despite his clear understanding of them and their motivations. During our reading of Atonement, Tim expressed a distaste for the main character, in one essay going as far to question why she did not commit suicide for the mistake she made.”
Tim hasn’t had Miss Hannah as his English teacher for years at that point, but it is her face he imagines when he thinks of sinking his batarang into his Literature teacher’s throat.
He doesn’t do that, however. Instead, he dropped out of school, partially due to the pitying stares his classmates gave him, partially due to the itch to kill his teacher and school counsellor, partially due to needing to find a way to illegally emancipate himself so Bruce doesn’t get a messed up sense of responsibility towards him.
He gave himself a month to make himself a fake uncle, to figure out how to finagle life and health insurance to keep his dad’s bills paid, and kill his mother’s killer.
The Obeah Man greased the right hands and got out of prison not even a full month after Batman put him in it.
Tim hated killing without his batarang, but he needed to get up close and personal with these guys. He had to feel their skin against his, all these corrupt people who let his mom’s killer go free. But the Obeah Man? Tim brought his batarang back out, but he didn’t just slide it into his neck.
The Obeah Man was found in so many pieces that the Haiti Police went straight into investigating the supernatural. It was only several months after that they switched the tracks of their investigation after magical investigation came up with nothing. It was so unlikely to be the work of an actual human that it barely came up on Batman’s radar; it was barely a footnote on his parent’s file.
Tim was sore for two weeks after his trip to Haiti. That much anger and force and steadiness… Tim liked being precise, but he didn’t feel precise at all when he was removing the sinew and muscle from rib cage. When he was skinning a man alive.
It was more than he had ever done, but it felt… good.
A part of him was terrified of that, another part was content. Tim decided to ignore either side, because he had things to do. The fake uncle fell through after only four months, damn B’s detective skills, but Tim had successfully completed all his other tasks and even re-enrolled himself in a new school. Making new friends was difficult, but necessary.
Tim was doing so well. So, so well.
His killings were spread out, methodical, but never pre-planned. Always merciful, always kind, because he was only trying to fulfill a mission, this was never personal.
He refused to let it get personal again.
Sometimes, he got the itch to make it so, but those were stupid urges. Spoiler wasn’t like the monsters he killed or the victims he gave mercy to, even if she hit him over the head with a brick.
Tim contemplates hitting her over the head with a brick, seeing her passed out at his feet before stabbing her in the throat. She wouldn’t even feel it, passed out and prone. It would almost be a mercy from the horrible life she said she had, but he refused to.
Even when they kissed, and dated, and she complained that he liked biting her too much.
Even when she died and it wasn’t by his hands. He couldn’t mutilate her body, that wasn’t part of the mission.
Even when she only faked it and turned up alive again. He couldn’t make it personal even when he still had the brick she hit him with squirelled away to fantasize with.
Still, two months later, the Black Mask turned up floating in the Harbour with a single stab wound to the throat.
That’s when he went from a middle priority to a high one in Batman and the GCPD’s eyes.
“They’re disorganised,” Commissioner Gordan spoke in front of hundreds of journalists. “Using blitz attacks and attacking with an angled serrated blade. Usually, this is a comfort when searching for serial killers, that means they don’t know how to clean up after themselves and leave clues.”
“But this guy can’t make our job easy,” Dick muttered, sitting beside Bruce on the couch, all of them watching the broadcast together.
Barbara rolled her eyes, “Since when has our job been black and white in this city?”
“This killer is smart,” Gordon continued. None of them noticed how Tim preened with pride on the inside. “They clean up after themselves, and have a very broad victim profile. They appear to be mission oriented, killing only criminals or the victims of criminals, only people who they presume won’t be missed.”
Tim twitched. No, no that’s not his mission at all. He’s ridding the world of the scum, and easing the lives of everyone who is struggling. Addicts and homeless children, those without hope. Not… not people who won’t be missed. All of them are all so dearly missed.
Bruce grunted, “They want to be a vigilante.”
Tim is a vigilante. No. No, Robin is a vigilante. Tim is a killer. Tim and Robin aren’t the same, and that’s why he kills.
“They are young, likely in their 20s to early 30s. Between 5 foot 3 and 5 foot 8, slim and unassuming. At the current moment, the GCPD and the Bats believe this killer is likely to be a woman, due to the height and angle of the strikes, alongside the organisation of the crimes.”
Tim had been a genius to suggest that, and it got all suspicion off his back.
“We believe they have an isolated home life, with a domineering family member who controls their life.”
Without thinking, Tim spoke.
“Sounds like you, B,” he joked.
B just grunted, giving him a disapproving eye. However, Stephanie cackled .
“Maybe B has a secret murder child,” She laughed. “That would fit the description perfectly .”
Tim’s fingers itched for a brick and a batarang. Still, they had no idea how true those words were.
Red Hood came onto the scene with a bang. Literally.
Severed heads and bullets between the eyes, Tim was reluctantly impressed. He would kill those guys too if only he hadn’t learned his lesson long ago about destabilising the criminal underworld of Gotham. In his ears, the shots that killed Darla echoed.
The Red Hood did not slow down, did not let up, and so Tim Drake drew out of Crime Alley. Although it was the best place with good hunting, Hood was completing the mission too. Tim respected that, and respected his methods. Did he like how loud he was? No, but not everyone could be as perfect as Tim about it all.
Then, his life started spiraling again, and when Tim finally swam out of the haze, his muscles were so stiff and tense that he could barely move.
His dad was dead, but so was Captain Boomerang. And half of the criminal life of Gotham.
Dana was traumatised, and Tim couldn’t just leave her like that. Leave her in that state of shock and grief, it wasn’t right. It wasn’t merciful.
Boomerang wasn’t killed by the Gotham Angel Killer, not officially because they couldn’t find the signiture throat puncture wound. They did find his body and head in two different suburbs, but everyone attributed him to Hood’s rampage.
However, Dana Winters? Dana was considered one of Angel’s victims, and Tim was supposed to act devastated for some reason. Tim was supposed to screaming and crying and freaking out, just like they expected him to react after his parents died, but he couldn’t. Tim didn’t feel that way. Tim didn’t feel anything but anger that they died by someone else’s hand.
So, he left for Titan’s Tower. If he didn’t know how to react, then he would simply not react at all.
Of course, that’s not how it worked out.
Hood attacked him, and he didn’t understand why. Did Jason not understand they had the same mission? It was stupid, it was grating, it was irritating, and Tim snapped . This wasn’t supposed to be personal, so Tim did not bring out his batarang. He couldn’t bring it out and make a mess, Bruce would be simply so upset .
Tim did not win the fight, but he fought like a feral animal.
Later, when Jason rejoined the family, he commented on it.
Tim was pretending to be asleep at the Batcomputer desk, but he could still hear the replies.
“Drake? Feral? Tt, Todd, that is obvious.” Damian dismissed, “Most animals are more organised in their attacks than him.”
That is a lie. That is a lie . Tim is the most organised of this family, and he can prove it. God, how he itched sometimes to kill Damian with his batarang, shove it back in his face about how Tim could make him face his own father’s weapon–
“You caught him at a really bad time, he had some pent up anger at you too.” Dick replied, dripping sympathy and understanding like the perfect older brother he was. Tim loved him for it. Loved him so much. He wished he could spare Dick from this life and give him mercy, but Tim was so selfish, he would miss Dick too much.
“What?” Jason replied.
“Well,” Dick likely shrugged at that point. “His died like two weeks beforehand, and then you killed his dad’s killer and Tim was pissed off that he didn’t get any real justice, and then the Angel killed his traumatised and half-comatose step-mom, so he went to hide at the Tower for a week…”
“Wait,” Jason interrupted. “Who did I kill? Was his dad involved with the mob or some shit?”
“No, it was Boomerang.”
Oh shit. Shit, shit, shit, fucking shit–
“I didn’t kill Boomerang? Who said I killed Boomerang?”
“He was beheaded and his head was left on the GCPD’s steps,” Dick sounded bewildered. “Like the same month you also beheaded a bunch of guys. You telling me that wasn’t you?”
“No!”
“Shit.” Yeah, Tim agreed with him here. “B is going to be pissed we made that assumption. Fuck, Tim is going to throw a fit.”
Tim would politely smash a cup or plate when they tell him, then clean it up and run off somewhere so he doesn’t have to fake a reaction for any longer than he has to. He hates having reactions, hated how he used to have so many when he was younger and now it seemed like he burned through all his flinches and tears in his first few dozen kills.
“Wait.” Damian interrupted. “Drake’s step-mother was killed by the Gotham Angel? The serial killer? And Father has yet to capture her?”
“The Angel has hundreds of kills attributed to her,” Dick said. “They’re smarter than you give them credit for. They’ve only slowed down now because they refuse to go into the Alley anymore. B thinks they’re scared of Jason.”
“They better be,” Jason growled. “I saw one of their child victims. Who the fuck kills children?”
The poor child had been starving, already in the throes of hypothermia. They wouldn’t have lasted long, and their quality of life would have been terrible if Tim saved them any other way. It was mercy. Tim is always so careful to give painless mercy to children.
His siblings wandered off after that, and Tim stayed there until Cass finished her patrol.
“Little brother,” She poked him, knowing right away that he wasn’t asleep. “You are angry again.”
“Dick told Jason something that I didn’t want anyone to know about.”
Lie. Truth. Something similar, at least. He always says just enough to trick Batman, and does his best to be open to mislead Cass.
He hates misleading Cass, it makes him want to carve his own eyes out.
“More angry than that.”
“Killing is bad, right Cass?”
“Yes.”
“Sometimes, I want to kill someone.” Tim admitted, still keeping his head laying down on the desk.
“No,” It is not a denial, but a refusal. Tim is not allowed to kill.
“Yeah,” He simply sighed.
He doesn’t know what she sees in him: the desire to kill or the experience of a killer.
“It is… bad.” Cass spoke, and Tim did not look at her. “The way the killed act. It is… haunting.”
“I don’t want to be haunted.” Sometimes, at night, Tim still thinks of Miss Hannah. He can’t tell if it is regret or desire anymore.
“Then do not kill.”
Tim does not reply to her, and Cass moved on. Her advice is far too late for him.
It is only years after his first kill, and a little over five hundred deaths by his hand, is Tim finally caught.
It was a gala. Just a stupid, insignificant little gala that the Joker decided to hold hostage.
Tim wasn’t even fighting, he was under the tablecloth, running point with Oracle, acting like the little scared Drake heir. He was pretending to stutter on the phone, whispering panicked instructions and information.
Then, Batman kicked the Joker down, right at Tim Drake’s feet.
Robin didn’t kill. Red Robin did not kill. Tim Drake… Tim Drake killed so many people.
He did not hesitate, did not even think about it.
One second, the Joker had fallen in front of Tim, back landing hard on the floor. The next, Tim had yanked his batarang off its chain hiding under his shirt and stabbed it in that perfect little spot in the throat.
Blood sprayed in that perfect angle, the one that meant there was only a single arcing squirt before it spilled out like wine over a too-full glass, dribbling and building a puddle under the newest target of the mission. Tim’s eyes went wide with delight at the red against white, a nice pale throat that jumped and choked, and he smiled. Mocking, cooing, like a nurse over a difficult patient.
And then he pulled the batarang out, ready to clean it off with one of the antiseptic wipes he always kept on him, but it was taken out of his hand.
“No!” He lunged after… Cass? Why was Cass stopping his mission? “Give it back! Give it back! You can’t! Give it–!”
“Oh my god!” Steph screamed, scrambling away. “It’s you! It’s you!”
For a second, Tim thought about snatching the batarang back and shutting her up with it, but then he was pulled back and restrained.
Batman was holding him down, a knee on his chest, just like Tim had killed that first girl in the alley.
“Tim,” He said, broken. Broken just like when they first met.
Why was he broken? Tim killed for him. Killed for him to stop being broken. Why was he broken again?
“Let me go!” He thrashed, fighting with all he had. “Let me go! I have to finish it! I can’t leave it like this, I have to clean it up and make it perfect and let me go !”
He’s crying. Why is he crying again?
Oh, that’s right. He killed Miss Hannah to spare Batman.