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Bruce moved in next to them five years ago.
Tim had received a pair of binoculars for his eighth birthday, and a digital camera for his ninth; he took photos of the city at night, often from his father's office, then outside it, and when Bruce moved in next door, he was 15, and he seemed to move past that phase of needing - *needing* this camera, because he said the city would die as it was and he'd never seen it like that before.
Like when Tim was three. Counsellors came and went: Tim had 'adjusted' quite well.
Bruce was living there. Bruce, the dark-haired, dark-eyed rich weird man in the old church manse. Bruce and Richard 'Robin' Grayson, his dark-haired, dark-eyed, brown-skinned 'ward', who didn't look more than five years younger than Bruce, but apparently he was just abandoned, was Robin. Bruce plucked him out of the orphanage when they'd met on the street, both as young men, and started 'talking'. His father thinks they're fucking. Dana thinks it's their own deal: at dinner, Bruce says they're 'past' that sort of thing.
They're fucking, of course. Tim has seen it. Well, he's not seen tab A go into slot... A, he's just watched open windows and a lithe, brown body twisting and winding around Bruce's own like a wind sock. (Not like a snake: Robin lives in the air, and he doesn't walk, he dances, he doesn't speak, he --)
-
A year before Tim's mother dies, Carmine Falcone can't come to court, because, his doctors claim, he has leukaemia.
According to a court-mandated check, he does not, he has severe anaemic symptoms and a loss of weight as to imply one of a dozen sorts of cancers.
He hands over control to his lawyer, who enacts his will two days before his death.
-
The first person Tim remembers putting their arms around him is living with Bruce Wayne when Tim could swear he saw him fall a storey in the middle of a tent and die.
He's fucking Bruce Wayne, and when Tim takes their picture, the less important of the two is always in shadow, always behind the curtain, leaving only shots of shadow bending and taking that body...
Robin called him 'bro' when they first met and he was blandly suspicious.
Robin called him 'little brother' in his birthday card when Tim turned 16.
Robin has given him an open invitation for him to come over anytime, anywhere. Thirty-somethings can be gotten rid of at the drop of a hat, he says.
Robin leaves the house on a bike and Tim follows, marks down his trajectory. Tim takes shots from rooftops while Robin beats a pimp.
Tim tries to take a photo when something follows Robin, and shades and winds around and *drains* (says the news) what Robin leaves behind. It, of course, is not big and black, it's covered in the shadows of the alley.
-
Two years after his dad meets Dana, the cleric who had been jailed for his mother's murder contracts leukaemia. Except he doesn't, he's showing signs of twelve other disorders. It is immediately assumed to be the Bat, but soon develops more complications than just weight loss; the cleric is immunocompromised after a contaminated transfusion, and takes his own life in the hospital.
-
Tim has given Richard his number. This makes no sense, because Richard's room is opposite Tim's, and the night is completely silent, and they're actually making direct eye contact and both are trying not to laugh. Tim is succeeding more.
Tim texts: 'Do you know who I am?'
'Unless you're some kind of Soviet sleeper agent who missed many memos and was born too late, I think so?'
'I went to the circus.'
Richard stops, and looks up, and stares straight ahead.
'I know you're following us but I don't know who you are.'
'You hugged me and you did a somersault.' Tim's back is to the window. 'You said it was just for me.'
'Was this the last night? And it's been five years since you should've told me this.'
Tim closes his blinds. Richard calls, and he's going to let it ring and not answer it.
"I'm still me, Timmy."
"You're killing people, both of you --"
"We don't kill anyone." His voice isn't honeyed, actually, at all; Tim thinks it should be, that he should be more sibilant about this. More convincing. "Bruce is 45--"
"How long has he been 45?"
"Two *days*, you dick, it doesn't work like that. Bruce and I are -- we're the same, in a lot of ways, he wants --"
Tim is crying, because this should have surprised him more and he should have just stayed hidden. He could've gone to college in Bludhaven instead of staying with Dad and Dana.
"Timmy. Little brother. Let me come over there and tell you."
"He's going to kill me. He's going to come after and --"
"You took pictures of us, Timmy. You saw who he feeds on."
"I saw him feeding from you, when you --"
"Only playing, trust me. A third-pint. If that." Dick's voice is clear, because he's not in his house anymore, he's squatting in Tim's window. "I'm acting like it's not weird, aren't I? I've been living like this since I was eight, Bruce... Training me. Keeping secrets."
"I won't tell anyone--"
"I don't care. We've been neighbours for five years and we love you. Come to me." Tim's been standing at the window now for a few minutes, staring at the shadow. He knows what Dick's wearing, right now: the cargo shorts, wifebeater, nothing else. He's gripping the sides of the windowsill with his toes, the top frame with his fingers. Tim pokes his fingers around the curtain -- Robin doesn't say *anything* about dramatic effect, which is the most considerate thing in the world, considering how he must look, and --
On the roof. Eyes --
Two horns and two hooks, and wreathed fingers slithering down the window --
Just watching for now.
Tim steps back, and Robin's surprised -- *hurt*. He turns back -- and flips the Bat Man the bird. The creature slides into the roof, appearing to move between when Tim focuses on him.
"He's g--"
"He's a *prick*, Tim. He's jealous of all my friends. Even the ones he loves. I can't ask you to invite me in, since I'll probably suck y-"
The window's open, and Tim opens it (not Robin), and he pulls Dick inside, who promptly wraps him up and *lifts* him up and is saying something incomprehensible into his neck. Tim feels not like a child being held, but a favourite pet.
A piglet, maybe.
"Little brother, he smelled you following us and he held back in case you got hurt, in case you *fell*. He -- his parents died when he was young, in -- a lot like mine. Nothing like mine, actually, they were just shot. All of them. All of our parents. They were all -- shot. But mine were in a circus, his in Crime Alley. A long time ago."
"You're -- punishing -- ?"
"Fighting... Saving."
"Are you--"
"Not for two years. Do you see what we're doing, here?"
-
There was an exorcist who worked for a special church, who quit, and started hosting late-night comedy.
Except he didn't quit, and he kept working as hard as he could. Dick refused to kill him. Bruce refused to kill him.
-
Was he being groomed for this? The nightmares -- and the blood pressure problem -- left Tim once Bruce and Robin moved in.
"I really don't understand your little legal argument here, Timbo. It's not vigilantism."
"We are -- and have for several years been -- fully deputized."
"Support your local law enforcement community."
-
Jason's jar is still uncannily expressive for what looks like a football trophy. Tim is willing to believe the ashes are trying to be encouraging.
-
The mutations, Bruce says, were not entirely deliberate, and not entirely expected. The change to his body was going to 'increase' and 'fix' over time, and the mirror (the house? Alfred?) gladly displayed predictions. Like the most embarrassing porn Tim's ever gathered.
All with the ears and hooks and cloaking wings, of course, but varying in the precise shade or mix of grey-or-black. And presence of a tail, which really does make or break the cloaking effect; and the length and hookedness of his talons, which of course -- Tim regularly argues with him now.
"You have never spread a single viral or parasitic disease to the criminal element, Bruce, stop *acting* like this. I don't care how much you dislike the look of the other bats, or how little they are, you aren't this -- pestilent thing."
"...I spr-"
"Shut *up*."
-
There's a lot of stone in the building now. Good, old stone. Really airs the place out.
The three of them slit with the knife and drip into the trophy jar. Barbara isn't saying it in rhythm like when they practised, but she can still pronounce dead languages correctly, and very quickly they learn that's enough, and yes, Jason was listening, and waiting for them.
-
"You're not fucking eating."
"Jason, we don't have a mammal's appetite any more. I can survive like thi-"
"You lost your finger to that maser weapon. You're eating tonight or I'm fucking *bringing* you food and *making* you, little bro."
"...Please. Jason. You saw, you know I can't--" But Jason has his eye now, and mouths it again: 'little brother'. Then he starts again, because Jason is like life, and he is unfair:
"You can, little brother, and you've fucking got to... Just come here." Tim does, of course, and lays his head down, and shouldn't he be immune to posthypnotic suggestions that are more than forty years old now? "You need a pint a night," Jason whispers, that useless coat of brown winglets shivering next to Tim. (What right does he have to mutate *faster*?) "You're having a pint a night, little brother. You get me...?"
"Yes. Yes, I get you."
"I love you. We all do." Jason smiles wider: "Little brother, we all love you."
It never gets weaker. It's always true, from them -- anyone Bruce made before him. In a spiritual sense, apparently, because when Napier incinerated Todd it was to stop what his mother was calling 'witchcraft'.
See how that turned out.
There was an exorcist, and everyone of worth outlived him.