Chapter Text
God, Tim hated interventions. Especially with his family.
They were always so melodramatic, eventually escalating into a whole production, complete with way too much hovering and too many people at once in his business.
Sure, he fell asleep in the Batmobile a week ago while waiting on surveillance to finish processing. Fine. You caught him, but that doesn’t warrant this much of a fuss! Besides, in his defense, the heater had been running a bit too warm, and rain had been hammering steadily against reinforced windows in a way that could knock anyone out under the right circumstances.
It just so happened to be the right circumstances.
And yeah, everyone teased him (Jason took pictures, and Cass currently had one as her phone background), but that should have been the end of it. Everyone got their laughs in, whatever, so by that logic, everyone should've just… moved on.
But then he might have (briefly!!!) lost consciousness while leaning against the manor's kitchen counter. Here was the thing, though; briefly was the important word here. His nap, if you could even call it that, lasted around ninety seconds, so frankly, it was an asshole move for Duke to wake him up by clapping beside his head.
Tim, of course, tried buying Duke’s silence with Converge concert tickets, but apparently, Dick was also visiting for the weekend and witnessed them arguing with one another. It was a damn miracle that he was able to reassure Dick enough to stay quiet by promising to catch up on sleep very soon and agreeing to deal with Condiment King the next time he became a problem.
…Then there had been the couch incident (Steph found him).
And the library chair fiasco (Jason again)
And, unfortunately, the very memorable occasion where Cass found him asleep in the cave at three in the morning, sprawled across a stack of evidence boxes with his cheek pressed into his laptop hard enough to leave marks along the side of his face.
After that, everybody knew about the reemergence of his impromptu naps, and with that came the hovering–from Dick, Cass, and, worst of all, Bruce.
It was public knowledge Bruce was always a little paranoid about everything and everyone in Gotham, but when his general concern turned to worry, it became a mess. Really, you’d never exactly know what version of Bruce you’d get when he became worried about you. There were days when he'd lash out, others where he pretended like he wasn't micromanaging you, but the worst was when he completely backed you into a corner so you had no choice but to comply.
So when Tim woke up this morning face-down across his desk with a blanket draped over his shoulders with various case files, laptop, and all of his devices except his phone missing from the apartment, he instantly knew Bruce was worried and determined to force his hand.
Ten minutes later, he was proven right when Bruce called him. He didn't even bother with a greeting. "You need to sleep, Tim.”
He opened his mouth to say something akin to ‘I was sleeping’ before Bruce cut him off. “And I mean eight uninterrupted hours. Passing out the moment there's a lull in one of your cases for two hours doesn’t count.”
Tim hadn't scoffed exactly, but it was a sound similar to it. Bruce ignored him without missing a beat. “You're taking a break, Tim."
Apparently, everyone else had already signed off on this plan, because the lockout started almost immediately afterward.
Oracle’s new security measures were a little much– especially the baby-proofing she put on his phone. Tim managed to brute-force his way through two separate layers of encryption before she remotely kicked him out of the system entirely. A second later, his phone wallpaper changed to a single blinking message.
take a break or i start changing your passwords
He seriously considered testing whether she was bluffing. Instead, he sat there grinding his teeth.
Really? The three active investigations, two missing-person cases, and the arms deal brewing weren't going to politely put themselves on hold because he was "a little sleep-deprived." Everyone was being ridiculous.
Fine. Whatever. If they wanted him away from the computers so badly, he could adapt. Detectives existed before the Internet; He could work old-school. Pencil. Paper. Physical timelines. Notecards pinned across bulletin boards. Maybe some red string if he felt theatrical enough about it. If he was being honest, part of him almost liked the idea.
Well, Tim did until he reached for his favorite mechanical pencil and found nothing but an empty spot on his desk. He checked the cup on his desk (empty), opened the top drawer (nothing), and the second drawer (still nothing).
By the time he’d searched every desk organizer, the kitchen junk drawer, every jacket pocket, beneath the couch cushions, and out of sheer desperation, the freezer, suspicion had already started to settle in.
Okay. One of his siblings took his known favorite pencil. His solid steel mechanical pencil with the red knurled grip that fit perfectly in his hand and made the most pleasant sound when writing against paper.
Tim stood in the middle of his apartment, mentally reviewing suspects.
Dick remained a possibility. Dick absolutely possessed both the opportunity and the personality profile required for petty ass pencil theft if he thought it might keep Tim from working. If anyone had broken into his apartment under the guise of “helping,” it would have been Dick–smiling the entire time he got payback for not catching up on sleep earlier.
But Tim had a stronger suspect.
Because Damian? He had sticky fingers and absolutely no shame about it.
According to the demon, returning an item eventually made it “borrowing,” regardless of whether the original owner had agreed to the agreement. (And no, before you ask, Damian would never allow the reverse to happen).
So Tim’s pencil randomly goes missing the day after someone must have snuck in to take his stuff? Yeah, that had the brat written all over it. Tim could picture it perfectly.
Damian had probably tagged along when Dick, maybe Steph or whoever, broke into his apartment when he was… incapacitated, and on the way out, the kid probably spotted the pencil sitting on the desk. And, because he was Damian, he decided he was going to “borrow” it.
Yeah. Tim felt pretty good about this lead.
So good, in fact, that he found himself driving toward the Manor less than five minutes later under the extremely flimsy pretense of just “stopping by.” Sure, Bruce had made it very clear he thought Tim was only visiting to sneak his laptop back, but that didn’t matter because he, Timothy Drake-Wayne, was on the case and he was going to get his good pencil back. So he could get back to his actual cases.
As he stepped into the manor, a grandfather clock greeted him, groaning somewhere in the foyer; all the while, distant voices drifted faintly from the kitchen beneath the smell of coffee and syrup.
While yes, breakfast sounded good right now, Tim was on a mission. Ignoring his hunger, he shrugged off his jacket and headed deeper into the manor.
His target wasn't hard to find.
Damian was curled sideways in one of the oversized chairs in the movie room, watching a nature documentary. As the narrator droned on about the hunting behavior of what was apparently a Spinner shark, the animal suddenly breached through the surface of the water in a spray of white foam.
One knee tucked against his chest, Damian’s posture was deceptively relaxed, though the slight narrowing of his eyes told him that the kid was following every second of the documentary with his usual level of Damian-intensity.
Man, if you had told Tim years ago that the brat assassin who once tried to kill him would spend his free time watching nature documentaries, he wouldn’t have believed you.
Then, without warning, the screen paused abruptly.
“Drake,” Damian said flatly, not even turning to look at him.
“Father said you’re supposed to be resting.”
“Technically,” Tim corrected, leaning casually against the doorframe,
“Bruce said that I should be taking a break. I am doing that.”
Tim didn’t need to see Damian’s face to know he was rolling his eyes when he unpaused the documentary, effectively dismissing him; however, he wasn't really paying attention to the kid anymore; Tim was instead watching the timestamp in the corner of the screen.
Twenty minutes left.
Oh yeah. He had plenty of time.
Tim checked the brat’s desk and shelves first.
Everything was perfectly organized. His pens were lined up perfectly, his sketch pencils were arranged darkest to lightest, and all of his books were stacked by both author’s last name and height for some reason. Yet Tim’s mechanical pencil was nowhere to be found on his desk.
It wasn’t in the wardrobe, either. Or the closet. Or the extra cabinet that seemed to exist solely for Damian’s manga collection.
Fine. Under the bed then.
Tim carefully lowered himself onto one knee, bracing one hand against the floorboards before reaching into the darkness beneath the bed, feeling around for anything that might have rolled out of sight.
His fingers brushed cold metal first. A knife (because of course he did). Then came a T-shirt, followed by something wet and rubbery that he was unfortunately ninety percent sure belonged to Titus (gross). He fruitlessly looked around until his hand finally caught on something else, something more solid and promising, and for a brief moment, he actually allowed himself to hope.
A sketchbook. A sketchbook meant there could be a pencil.
He pulled it out, seeing a plain black cover and–shit, no pencil. The vigilante fumbled around where the notebook (heh, Damian would hate him calling it that) was for a few seconds anyway, just in case, but nope. Nothing.
Damn, he thought, as he turned over the notebook once in his hands, his thumb tracing the edge, again and again.
Tim probably should’ve left it alone.
He flipped it open anyway.
Come on, he was curious! Damian never let him see his drawings! The closest he ever got to seeing Damian’s artwork was catching only the edge of a portrait just before Damian turned it face-down the instant he entered the room.
So really, if you think about it, this was less snooping and more a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that he would not absolutely regret later, thank you very much.
(...and maybe there was a tiny (deeply) vindictive part of him that wanted to find something incriminating enough to finally even the scales between them. Because it was the brat who, while snooping through Tim’s belongings, not too long ago discovered some awful photos of when Tim had a bowl cut. Upon realizing Tim was embarrassed by them, Damian proceeded to try to blackmail him with them.
So really, if anything, this was justice)
At first, though, there was nothing.
Well, that wasn't exactly true. There were some truly incredible landscapes, both in color and in monochrome, that had Tim questioning why his brother ever hid them from the family, besides maybe Dick. Because damn, these were hang-on-the-fridge worthy.
He flipped a page and found Titus sitting upright, chest puffed broad and proud. It reminded Tim of royal paintings; somehow the wet shine of the dog’s eyes appeared almost regal. A few pages later, Steph was frozen halfway through a flip while Duke sat nearby, one arm raised like he was cheering her on. Both of them had wide and wild grins on their faces.
There were cityscapes, weapon studies, and too many hands in too many different positions. One series of pages that particularly caught Tim’s eyes was the ones with bird wings drawn spread open. On each drawing, tiny notes scribbled about feather layering and bone structure (which, okay, made Tim smile a little bit. Of course the kid would be studying robin wings).
Tim’s favorite, though, was a close rendering of Alfred's hands folded neatly in his lap while Alfred the cat slept contentedly across them. Every wrinkle, every vein, every faint age spot had been drawn with an obvious amount of love and care.
It was sweet. Ridiculously so.
…But nothing worth teasing him about. It was clear that Damian was talented as hell, which was great, he supposed, but he was hoping for… well, he'd half expected embarrassing teenage sketches. Like dramatic anime eyes or something.
Instead, Damian had gone and been genuinely talented (Had Damian submitted any of these for an art show? If he hadn't yet, he should. And if he had... actually, it wouldn't be too surprising if the brat was tight-lipped to Tim if there was an art show or art competition).
“Whatever. This was a waste of time.” Tim hummed in disappointment.
He almost closed the sketchbook before deciding on one last page and–
It was a stranger, at least no one he could recognize.
No. That wasn’t right.
The slope of a nose he knew. The moment the vigilante saw that, everything else fell into place. The slight slant near the bridge was from when the brat got in a nasty fight with Bane that hadn't healed properly, as well as an eyebrow scar carved clean into the graphite, mirroring a scar Damian had gotten before he came to live in Gotham.
Sure, there were plenty of differences too. Whoever was drawn on the page had larger eyes, a smaller mouth, and his hair was the wrong texture. Plus, the character looked a bit taller too.
But come on, it was so obviously Damian! Look at the eye shape! The ears! The signature batbrows!
Tim would give it to the kid; it was different enough that it would be easy to deny and deflect, but Tim is a detective for a living, for God’s sake.
He turned to the next page, and there was the brat. He flipped and- yup. Damian again.
The kid had drawn his doppelganger in every scene imaginable: seated at the dining room table with his chin resting against his fist in concentration, glancing over one shoulder mid-conversation, kneeling beside a dismantled weapon, standing in the rain outside the cave entrance while water drips from his hair in dark rivulets, and him halfway through training, sweat sticking to his forehead while his fist collides with a practice dummy.
So okay. Alright. Technically, there wasn’t anything wrong here. So Tim could just call Damian a bit overly fixated and call it a day. Forget about all of this and just ask the brat directly for his pencil. It would be easy (thereismoretothisandyouknowit).
Whatever. This was a bad idea, He thought. I’m getting distracted.
Tim was about to close the damn thing when his eyes caught red on the edge of the next page. Too curious for his own good, he flipped to it.
Damian, or the Fake-Damian, had his chest ripped completely open. The character’s ribs looked peeled apart, almost like cracked shutters forced wide against a storm. His organs were exposed and slumped forward in slick loops. Tim could practically smell it–that copper-thick rot of an opened body that always seemed to settle into the back of your throat hours after.
As a vigilante, Tim had seen corpses split apart worse than this. God, he had worked cases where victims barely resembled people anymore, and he managed to kneel beside them without throwing up.
But that drawing sent nausea surging violently up his throat so fast that he had to press his tongue hard against the back of his teeth just to keep himself upright.
Tim turned the page too quickly, his fingers jerking against the paper; some frantic part of him prayed to whatever was out there that maybe, maybe, maybe that was just a fluke and please, let that be the only one.
It wasn’t.
There was a javelin, a pilum to be specific, that was driven through Fake-Damian’s abdomen. Tim only knew the basics of drawing, but he knew enough to see that Damian’s perspective was fucking flawless. In just a pencil drawing, you could almost feel the impact vibrating backward through the paper. And the expression– Jesus Christ. The mouth was caught halfway through a scream, jaw straining so hard it looked close to dislocation, while tears had been sketched gathering at the corners of wide, unfocused eyes.
Tim flipped to another.
A Grizzly bear with its jaws sunk into Fake-Damian’s face. Its teeth were buried deep into the cheek muscle, skin stretching under the bite in horrible elasticity. The animal’s muzzle was rendered in frantic strokes that made it feel like it was moving. All of its violent momentum and matted fur and breath that looked hot enough to steam lodged itself into Tim’s mind and synapses.
His grip tightened unconsciously. Paper crackled softly beneath his thumb.
A few weeks ago, Damian had spent an entire night watching a documentary about bears. Tim had walked past the movie room, pausing just long enough to make some comment he didn’t even remember anymore that had Damian demanding he leave immediately, before returning to the screen.
At the time, Tim had assumed it was just Damian being, you know, Damian. Now, though, he couldn’t help but question why he was watching the documentary in the first place. Yes, his brother liked animals and enjoyed learning about them, but was it more than that? Was the kid memorizing every angle of the creature, so he could draw it later?
Was a shark next? Was a shark the next way his brother would depict himself dying?
All of this would’ve been easier if any of the drawings were bad. If the perspective had been off, or looked a bit more like an edgy teenager trying too hard to be edgy, but they–they just weren’t! Everything about them was so detailed and accurate, and fuck!
Tim, well, he-he knew that saying Damian had a rough childhood was an understatement. He understood–damn, he thought he understood the effects it could have on the brat’s psyche. Sure, it took him a while to see past the whole “spoiled-prince” thing Damian had going on. It was one thing trying to kill him, but always feeling the need to drone on and on about the “blood son” made it a little bit more difficult to see Damian for who he actually was. But they were okay now for the most part! And Tim, he thought– he thought he knew him!
Yes, Damian knew about tendons, ligaments, about how the skin separates under pressure, because, well, he was an assassin! He went through league conditioning and had exposure to violence at an age when most children are still learning how to count. Tim was aware of all of that– of course he did! But seeing it this way put everything in fucking perspective. Because this– this was bad, right? This showed that Damian was traumatized. Tim knew the murder-child was affected by his past, but this probably means he was really affected by it.
His detective brain, the one that could detach and look at all of the details objectively, was out of commission, and all that was left was the fucked-up-older-brother brain thinking, Oh my God, my baby brother is 6 layers of traumatized more than I thought he was and I don’t know what to do about it.
It kept on droning, on and on, frantically sputtering, Was this about Damian’s own death? Was his brother haunted by it, or any of their family members' deaths (real or staged, take your fucking pick)?
Tim should’ve closed the damn notebook. He knew he should’ve. He knew he needed to because Damian could come back at any second!
He didn't. His fingers turned the page anyway.
Fake Damian’s hands were removed at the wrists– a wrist disarticulation, maybe. There wasn't anything particularly grotesque about the cut; however, once again, there was something particularly horrifying about his brother’s the character’s expression. Its mouth trembled unevenly, eyes blown wide.
Tim knew that expression. He'd seen it in victims. In civilians. In other vigilantes. Hell, he'd probably worn it himself once or twice. It was the look people got when pain arrived too suddenly for the brain to make sense of it. The moment before screaming and before shock took over.
Damian had captured it perfectly.
More.
This one was fully colored.
The skin of the Fake-Damian’s whole body was stripped back, exposing layers beneath in gruesome gradients-raw-meat crimson melting into clotting maroon, then deeper bruised purples gathering near the edges where tissue had begun to die.
Damian made it look like the wounds were still fresh enough to pulse. How he was able to do that, Tim had no idea.
Shit, that wasn't true. So much time went into these. Hours beyond hours of effort, you needed to draw with care to get that level of detail.
Tim’s stomach contracted so violently that he winced. He pressed a hand against his abdomen because maybe he could physically hold nausea in place, and it didn’t work, it didn’t, it just didn’t.
Yet and still, and still and yet, he kept turning pages.
Because after enough crime scenes, enough autopsies, enough nights spent staring at evidence boards until sunrise stains the windows gray, the brain starts developing some habits. It begins believing that the next picture will contextualize the previous one and that one more detail will finally make the horror settle into something understandable instead of the shapeless unknown.
Tim kept turning pages because he was a detective. Because Tim was a horrible brother.
The next drawing nearly knocked the breath from him.
On the left, Fake–Damian’s body was sprawled across a tile floor. One arm lay crooked beneath him at a strange angle, while the other stretched limply across the tile. His head was drawn, lolled sideways, cheek pressed against the floor, and one eye hung half-open with that unmistakable vacant looseness Tim (and damn it! Apparently Damian!) had only ever seen in corpses.
The tile beneath him had been shaded in muted gradients that mimicked the reflection of fluorescent light in a way that was painfully striking; Damian had even rendered the faint smudging beneath the body, where blood and weight would begin to settle together.
On the page next to it, in the corner of the room, stood another version of Damian. His expression was terrifyingly blank, and his arms hung stiffly at his sides, eerily similar to young kids when they're unsure what to do with their hands. While his face was left mostly obscured beneath the dark, shadowed shading, it was clear this version of his brother was watching his own corpse from a distance.
Damian looked so small. Just so very, very small.
That one. That one was the worst one. It wasn’t gory, but it was– all of it- it was just so damn lonely–
His breathing went wrong. Tim didn’t necessarily gasp or choke on air, but still, it felt just wrong.
Then there were footsteps. Outside the room. Close.
Tim straightened his back so quickly, he was sure he pulled something.
His twenty minutes were done, and there wasn't enough time. He couldn’t hide the sketchbook or wipe the expression off his face. There wasn't even enough time to think.
The doorknob turned, and the door swung open.