Chapter Text
Gotham had a way of hollowing you out.
It didn’t happen all at once. It was a slow, gnawing erosion, like water over stone. You didn’t notice it until you stopped to look in a mirror and realized your reflection didn’t look back the same way it used to.
Stray stood at the edge of the rooftop, the wind biting through his coat. He wore all black—no symbol, no cape, no allegiance. A mask, sure, but one that barely covered the shadows under his eyes.
The city sprawled below him, rotting in its own light. Sirens wailed in the distance. Someone was screaming three blocks away. He didn’t move.
Behind him, Nightwing landed with the quiet grace of someone who was too used to catching people just before they fell.
“Bit close to the edge, don’t you think?” Dick’s voice was casual, but not light. There was always that edge now. Concern wrapped in years of disappointment neither of them ever said out loud.
Stray didn’t turn. “It’s a rooftop. That’s kind of the point.”
Dick took a step closer. “You know what I mean.”
“I really don’t.”
“You’ve been off comms for two weeks.”
“I’m not on your comms.”
“You’re supposed to check in with someone. Anyone.” Dick’s voice softened. “At least with her.”
Stray’s jaw tightened at that. Her. As if Selina was still his partner. As if she wasn’t busy playing house with Bruce down in the manor, wearing diamonds over Kevlar, sharing secrets he was never allowed to keep.
“She’s not my anything anymore.”
Dick exhaled. “Tim…”
“I go by Stray.” He finally turned, mask half-lit by the flickering neon of a broken sign across the street. “You know that.”
There was a pause, thick with things unsaid.
“You weren’t at Jason’s check-in,” Dick said. “He asked about you.”
Stray looked down at the street, cars crawling like insects under the hazy amber streetlights. “He shouldn’t.”
“Tim—”
“Stray.”
“You don’t have to do this. You don’t have to… vanish like this. We're not— You're not alone.”
Stray laughed once, low and bitter. “I’m not Robin, Dick. I never was. You and Jason—you had names, colors, family. I had rooftops. I had lockpicks and alleys. That’s all I ever had.”
“And Selina.”
“That was a long time ago.”
The silence that followed was sharper than the wind.
“You know she didn’t—” Dick stopped himself. Changed course. “You walked away.”
“She chose him.” Stray’s voice cracked. Just a hairline fracture. “You all always do.”
Dick didn't argue. Maybe because it wasn’t entirely untrue.
Stray shifted his weight, boot heel half-hanging over the ledge now. He wasn’t going to jump, at least, not in the way Nightwing feared, but he wasn’t backing away either.
“I’m not gonna fall, Dick.”
“Not the way you think, maybe.”
Stray looked up, eyes catching the faint shape of the Bat-Signal reflected off the low-hanging clouds. Even that light looked tired tonight.
“I don't think I know how to be anything else.”
“What?”
“Normal. Stable. Whatever the hell you all became. I tried. For years. But I’m still out here chasing muggers through smoke just to feel something real.”
Dick stepped forward again, hands relaxed at his sides.
“You don’t have to chase ghosts, Tim. You can come back.”
Stray flinched. Tim. It had been a long time since someone used his name without a sneer or an edge of betrayal behind it.
But he shook his head. “There’s nothing to come back to.”
“I’m standing right here.”
The wind answered for a while after that.
Stray turned away from the edge, finally, and pulled his coat tighter around himself.
“I have a place in Old Gotham. Above a pawn shop.” He looked over his shoulder. “Don’t send anyone.”
“I won’t.”
“But you can… tell Jason I’m not dead.”
Dick managed a soft smile. “Sure.”
Stray gave him a nod. Not goodbye, just something like gratitude, and disappeared into the shadows, leaving the rooftop colder than it had been in a long timr.
°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°•°°°°°°°
The apartment above the pawn shop smelled like dust, rust, and rain that never quite dried from the bricks. Tim never bothered to fix the leak in the ceiling—it felt appropriate somehow, the slow drip of water echoing into silence. A constant reminder that even the most solid foundations cracked under pressure.
He tossed his coat onto the back of the threadbare couch and sat down on the edge of the bed like he might not get back up again.
One of the cats—he hadn’t named them, never had—jumped up beside him. White patch on her nose. She meowed once and headbutted his arm, trying to draw him back to the present. Back to now.
He didn’t pet her. Not yet.
Outside, Gotham breathed its usual chaos. Inside, there was nothing but the sound of that slow drip. A clock ticking wrong. And a man trying to remember when everything started falling apart.
There was a time when rooftops meant something more.
Back then, he wasn't Tim Drake. He wasn’t Robin. He wasn’t even supposed to be there. But he was fast, and quiet, and angry at the right things. Selina had found him on a rooftop when he was barely fifteen—blood on his knuckles, a cheap lockpick set in his hand, and a bruise on his face shaped like a man’s ring.
He never said whose.
She’d looked at him and said, “You’re in the wrong game, kid.”
He'd said, “Maybe. But I wnat to do something. Anything really”
And she’d smiled like she saw something in him that no one else ever did. Not Bruce. Not Dick. Not Alfred, who tried, god knows. Not even his parents, when they were alive, and certainly not when they were dead. The boarding schools didn’t see much in him ether, just Timothy Jakson Drake.
Selina had made him Stray. Not Robin, not some carbon copy of the boys in red and green. She’d taken the broken pieces and told him it was okay that they didn’t fit together right.
“You don’t have to be a soldier,” she’d said once. “You can just survive. And do whay you want and will. For your owen gain, or for others. But i would say your owen comes first” she had told him one night.
He had followed her through every crack in Gotham. Learned the alleys better than the skyline. Learned how to pick every lock and every lie. Became a ghost with sharp claws and sharper silence.
And maybe he loved her (Not like a lover would I like to make clear)
Maybe she was never meant to be loved. But she’d let him stay close. She’d told him secrets. She’d called him her partner. Her little Stray.
Then she chose Bruce.
He didn’t blame Bruce. That was the worst part.
Batman hadn’t done anything wrong. He hadn’t stolen Selina. He hadn’t pushed Tim away. He just… existed. Like a planet too big to orbit around for long.
And once she started standing beside him in the light—draped in black and velvet, diamond-tipped whip at her hip, there was no place for Stray in the story anymore.
Selina didn’t say goodbye. Didn’t explain.
Just left.
Tim remembered the night he realized she wasn’t coming back to the rooftops they used to share. He’d waited six hours in the rain, watching a warehouse they used to hit together, just in case.
She never showed.
The cat finally settled in his lap. Tim blinked once and pet her absently, fingers brushing the soft fur like he was trying to remember how to feel something simple.
He didn’t cry. He hadn’t in years. Crying felt like a kind of privilege people like him didn’t get anymore.
Disappointment was heavier when it was your own reflection you couldn’t look at.
There was a knock on the door.
He didn’t move at first. Half-hoped whoever it was would go away. But it came again—three times, sharp knuckles on old wood.
He opened it to find Jason Todd leaning against the frame, looking like hell and home all at once.
“Nice place,” Jason said. “Very murder-chic.”
Tim raised an eyebrow. “Did Dick send you?”
“No. This was all me. Believe it or not, I do things on my own sometimes.”
Tim didn’t smile. “Then what do you want?”
Jason glanced over his shoulder, then back at him. “You’re on a lot of people's minds lately. Some for the wrong reasons. You’ve been poking around the docks?”
Tim didn't answer.
Jason pushed past him and stepped inside without waiting for permission. He looked around like he was measuring the weight of the life Tim had built here.
“…Christ, Tim.”
“It’s Stray.”
“Right. Stray.” Jason looked back at him. “You always hated being called Tim when things got bad.”
“They’ve been bad for a long time.”
Jason sat on the arm of the couch. “You know, I used to think you had it easier than me. You weren’t raised in the shadows. You didn’t have to die for Bruce to notice you.”
Tim’s voice was quiet. “He still didn’t.”
Jason blinked. That one hit deeper than he’d expected.
“I didn’t fit,” Tim said, crossing his arms like he needed to hold himself in place. “Not with Bruce. Not with you or Dick. Not with the mission. I didn’t want to wear someone else’s costume. I wanted to be something else.”
“You were,” Jason said. “Selina saw it.”
“She left.”
Jason exhaled. “Yeah. She did.”
“I must’ve done something wrong. Said something. Pushed too hard. Or maybe I was just convenient until Bruce came around again.”
Jason stood up slowly. Walked over.
“She’s not good at staying,” he said. “None of us are.”
Tim’s eyes flicked up.
“You think I don’t know what it’s like to be replaced?” Jason said. “You think I don’t know what it’s like to come back and find out the world moved on without you?”
Silence again.
“She cared about you. Still might. But that’s not your job to carry.”
Tim looked away. “Then what is?”
Jason shrugged. “Survive. Stay angry. Stay smart. Gotham’s still yours, even if no one else sees it.”
Tim didn’t say anything. Just watched the rain blur the windows until the city outside looked like a memory.
Jason reached into his jacket and tossed a small flash drive on the table.
“Something’s happening at the docks. Thought you might want a look. You know, since you’re already skulking around.”
Tim picked it up, turning it over in his hand.
Jason headed for the door, pausing only once.
“You’re not a ghost, Tim. Just lost. For now.”
The door shut behind him.
Tim stared at the flash drive.
Then, slowly, he got up and plugged it in.