Chapter Text
Tim sat cross-legged in front of a worn chunk of clay his parents had missed his last birthday to find, and distantly heard the grandfather clock in the hall strike one.
His ankle was throbbing, a reminder of why he wasn't out watching Batman and Robin or doing something useful. He twisted it a few nights back and it was stubbornly refusing to go back to normal. Possibly because he didn't want his teachers asking awkward questions, and was therefore walking on his throbbing ankle to the bus station and through school every day while pretending nothing was wrong.
In his defense, he iced and elevated it after school. That was two-thirds of the day doing what he was supposed to! It could have been way worse.
He'd been trying to jump from one fire escape to another to move between buildings and caught his foot on a rusted-out railing. Flailing, he managed not to plummet to the alley below or smash the camera swinging wildly around his neck. He had, however, wrenched his ankle so badly it felt like it was on fire. Tim thought he might be able to walk it off.
Tim was an idiot.
He was a nocturnal idiot, though, and just because he knew better than to go out at night with one out of two legs functioning didn't mean he could convince his brain to sleep during prime bat-watching hours.
He'd settled for wandering around the manor, ghosting through the empty halls with a blanket cape on his shoulders and makeshift cane in one hand. Without really thinking, he'd ended up here: sitting in the room where his parents stored their favorite artifacts, staring at its most recent addition.
Looking at it should probably make him feel something. His parents had been ecstatic to bring it home. They spent hours reliving the dig once they got back, savoring the memory of dust and sweat and grumbling about customs and red tape with a heat that made him flinch, even though it was directed at someone several continents away.
The thing is, he tried to like archaeology. When he was eight he went on a weeks-long research binge, thinking if he learned enough to be useful his parents might let him come with them the next time they flew away. He read about the latest archival techniques and how to protect delicate pieces of history from damp and bugs and sunlight. He gave himself a primer of every historical era his parents had ever taken interest in.
Eventually, he fell down a rabbit hole of ethical treatises. Who owns the past, and who should be allowed to go digging it up?
Say Time found an interesting plate at a gala and took it home. This would make a lot of people very upset. His parents would be even madder than that time he caught a flu before the Waynes' winter gala and failed to hide his pale-faced shivering under casual remarks and a polished smile. Bruce Wayne himself had asked if Tim felt alright. His parents had to act surprised and take him home to prevent any ugly rumors from forming, even though Jack hadn't finished negotiating the potentially very lucrative deal with the Jeffersons family he came there to make. Tim could still vividly hear the lecture he got on the way home, even though by that point in the night his vision had gone fuzzy.
How embarrassing, Timothy. You said you could push through, Timothy. Did you ever stop to think how poorly it would reflect on us if Bruce Wayne realizes we brought a sick child to his gala, Timothy?
Anyway.
After a person has been dead long enough, suddenly Jack and Janet Drake were all for making a mess in their house and carrying off their possessions. But was it really fair to call finders-keepers just because it wouldn't make a scene among Gotham's elite?
Museums were one thing. Tim read a lot of passionate defenses of public collections, their benefits for the people they served and the complex struggles to deal with the fact that they had so many pieces with less than savory origins. There were some interesting efforts in Gotham's museums to de-colonize their collections, returning what they could and bringing in consultants from the cultures they displayed to tell the actual story of their ancestors.
The display room at Drake Manor was not a museum. If anything, it was a dragon's hoard.
Even eight-year-old Tim knew that was bad.
He'd put together a whole essay and a PowerPoint presentation about the ethical obligations of archaeologists, riding a wave of sleep deprivation and righteous indignation. It lasted until his parents returned from their trip and Janet snapped at him to “go to your room, Timothy, you're underfoot” before he'd even read them the title.
(That might've been on him. The title alone took up an entire line and had a colon-separated subtitle to boot. His writing was so immature back then.)
His parents were jet-lagged and irritable the whole night, making conversation too dangerous to attempt. Tim tried one last time over breakfast to bring up his research, hoping a few hours of sleep would smooth over the sharp edges of their moods.
His father immediately began ranting about closed-minded people who didn't understand the importance of them bringing their finds to the wider world (and out of the country they came from).
His mother told him sternly to not trust everything he read on the internet. He'd know better when he was older, she said. Until then he shouldn't concern themselves with adult things he couldn't understand.
He'd cited peer-reviewed journals and academia. He would have said so, if they'd given him a chance to speak. .
After a long and tense meal, Tim had collected and washed the breakfast dishes. The housekeeper didn't come every day, after all, and it was important for children to practice self-sufficiency. Then he went upstairs and tossed his paper (printed, seventeen pages not including bibliography) in the trash. He systematically deleted his PowerPoint, his writing doc, and every downloaded pdf from his computer. Cleared his search history. Emptied the trash.
It didn't make the strange, hollow feeling in his chest go away, but it didn't make it worse.
He should still care. The new Robin, who practically burned with with fury at the injustices of Gotham city, would probably care. But Tim hadn't seen his parents in five months and his ankle hurt and he just. Couldn't find the energy for it.
Looking at this red-brown shard of pottery, shielded by glass and gallery-level security, Tim just felt tired.
Then he heard the telltale whisper of a door sliding open and terror hit him like a shot of espresso.
His parents were in Greece.
Ms. Mac, the housekeeper, only came on Friday afternoons. It was an hour past midnight on a Tuesday. He's supposed to be alone in the house and his back was to the only door in the room and the only way to access this room was to waltz into the heart of Drake Manor and someone just walked in.
Tim felt the prickle of eyes on his neck like a physical weight. He turned.
"Hello, kitten," said a lean figure dressed in black. "Shouldn't you be in bed?"
Oh thank god. It was just Catwoman.
Tim had gotten about three good shots of Batman and Robin meeting Catwoman in all his years of night photography. Batman always had a vaguely disapproving tilt to his posture when they spoke, but he never moved away when she leaned into his personal space. The Robins had always seemed more amused (in the case of Dick) or exasperated (when Jason took over) than wary of her. And the way Bruce Wayne acted around Selina Kyle only cemented Tim's conviction that, despite her criminal tendencies, Catwoman was far from the worst Rogue to run into in a dark alley.
Plus, Selina Kyle acted the same around Bruce Wayne as she did around Batman, which meant she knew. It was the reason he'd been able to connect her identity to her nighttime persona. And he didn't seem upset or bitter that she knew, so she probably didn't figure out the connection on her own and spring it on him.
Batman wouldn't reveal his true identity to someone if he didn't trust them. Anyone trusted by Batman was good enough for Tim to trust. Ergo, his heart could stop trying to bust through his rib cage like a jackhammer any time now.
"Hi, Ms. K-Catwoman," he said. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to get in your way. Should I go?"
She tilted her head. "You do know what I'm here for, right?"
"Like which piece? Or in general?"
“I was referring to the ‘robbing you’ part.”
“Oh, I know," Tim said. “You don't have to worry about the cameras — I messed with the servers a while back so nothing they record gets saved properly — but the cases themselves have alarms that call the police if the glass is tampered with."
The words startled a soft, throaty chuckle from her. "You're a strange one, kitten."
"So I've been told." By a lot of people. But kids at school, Ms. Mac, and random people he bumped into around Gotham at night never said it the way she had. Like it was both surprising and somehow delightful.
“The glass won’t be an issue,” she added, offhand.
Tim narrowed his eyes, mentally calling up the display's blueprints. Glass boxes on top of stained wood pillars, with a magnetic circuit that would trigger an alarm if the glass was separated from its base. A sophisticated system of laser grids that would trip if the glass was shattered or compromised in a way that allowed a person to reach through the space where it ought to be. It had just been upgraded earlier that year.
The door to his bedroom had been broken as long as Tim could remember. The latch had been twisted out of place at some point and now it didn't lock. He'd told his parents about it, even emailed them links to where they could buy a replacement, but they’d never followed up.
Focus, Tim. He reviewed the specs and saw the opening. "Are you going to go through the wood?"
"Good instincts," said Catwoman. She flashed a sharp grin. "You can watch, if you'd like."
And maybe he didn't have anything better to do. Maybe it was stupid. Maybe that scrap of praise was more positive attention than he'd received from any adult in weeks.
But Tim stayed to watch a burglar in a catsuit pull mechanical pieces from near-invisible pockets, assemble a diamond-tipped drill, and then carefully wiggle a priceless shard of pottery out of a newly-made slit in a display case's wooden base.
He should probably be upset about that. If for no other reason than he was pretty sure they'd find a way to blame him for it when they noticed the piece missing.
But he found, to his surprise, only a quiet contentment. There was something nice about sitting together in silence while Catwoman worked; something satisfying about watching a plan come together, even if it was at his parents' expense.
Which reminds him. "It'll be another month before mom and dad get back," he said.
"I know," she said. She produced a small, protective pouch and stowed the shard, slipping it away in another improbable pocket that Tim could've sworn wasn't there a second ago. "They're on a dig and won't be back until November. I do actually do my research before I take a job, kitten."
“Right,” said Tim. He was being annoying, he realized, trying to help when she clearly was a professional who didn't need it on the off chance she would praise him again. His face felt hot. "I just meant — it won't be reported stolen until then. I won't tell.”
“I appreciate it." She finished packing away her supplies and stood, padding across the hardwood floor without a sound.
She hesitated at the door.
"I did research," she said again. “Surveillance.” She seemed to be looking for a response.
“Okay,” said Tim.
"I didn't see nannies or childcare workers entering or leaving the building."
“Oh, I take care of myself.” Tim frowned. "I'm almost twelve. I'm not a baby."
"The first evidence I saw of a child being present in the house was when one climbed down a trellis with a backpack in the dead of night."
Ah.
Tim shrugged, awkward. "I take care of myself," he repeated.
He’d been sneaking out for years and always managed to some back in one piece. He can sort of see how it would seem odd, to someone who didn't know him that well. In general, kids shouldn't be out at night without supervision. But Tim was different. He could handle it — had been handling it. So it wasn’t that big of a deal.
Catwoman looked at him for a long moment, and Tim wondered if the goggles she wore could somehow see right through to the center of him. He shifted, drawing his half-forgotten blanket cape tighter around his shoulders.
Finally, she nodded.
"I won't tell," she said, echoing his earlier promise. "But — be careful, kitten." With that she slipped out the door, closing it behind her with a soft click.
"I will," Tim said, a second too late. The words fell heavily in the silence, like stones in a deep pond.
And if his voice was a little less than confident, well. No one was around to hear it.