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The only thing Tim had that was truly his, was his name.
Everything else, he took from others: their likes and dislikes, their hobbies and friends, their concerns and responsibilities. The clothes off their backs and the beds they slept in. Their families, too. Their faces. And hands, and legs, and hearts, and lungs and other miscellanea. And their names as well, because he could hardly expect to be called Tim when no one knew he was Tim at all.
No, “Tim” was a secret shared only with himself, where no one else could know or hear, only in the dark hidden place his thoughts arose from, the place that was the true him, not the body he inhabited.
He didn’t remember anything else about who he had been, originally, but he knew his name, at least.
And that he’d probably been human, once.
He wasn’t sure if he was anymore—the thought first occurring to him (slowly, then all at once, like a tide rushing in, worrying at his edges like a hungry rat) when he was Alvin, turning the pages of Tolkien in one of the cozy chairs in the back corner of the public library—or how long it had been since he had been one. How long did it take to change? Like Sméagol into Gollum; a person into something else.
The soul usually detached from the body a bit before the moment of death. It was gentler that way, something of a self-defense mechanism.
But sometimes the soul didn’t go to wherever it was supposed to go after. Sometimes it hung around. Like Tim had.
But usually it didn’t.
And that meant if he was at the right place at the right time, there was a small window of opportunity for Tim to slip inside the vacant, still breathing body.
He’d gotten very good at finding himself in the right place at the right time. He’d had a lot of practice.
Cath—Catherine Hill—nannied to put herself through med school.
She was putting herself through med school primarily because getting a residency would make it a lot easier to steal her insulin (a lack of which had allowed Tim to become Cath), but as intriguing as it would have been to become a doctor, he knew he’d have to find someone new to become before then.
Cath was fast approaching her expiration date.
The problem with getting your bodies pre-owned was that they wore out extremely fast.
They usually weren’t in… well, super habitable condition when Tim got them. He could keep them alive himself in the short term—take manual control of any malfunctioning automatic systems to keep the heart beating and nerves sparking—exhausting as the process was, and damaging in its own way, like forcing a car to drive on a flat tire.
(Worth it, to experience the world again through sight and touch and sound, as more than a spirit, a wisp, a wraith.)
But a taken body that had recovered and was in all respects entirely healthy would still inevitably fail for no reason discernable to modern medicine. Doctors and preachers alike spoke of the power of the human will to live, and it must be true, because Tim himself was the exception that proved the rule: the bodies—insofar as spiritless flesh can be said to know and understand—never recognized Tim, rejecting him like another donated organ.
And so his furious and desperate pleading—more so at the beginning of all of this, before he accepted the conclusion as inviolate—to “work, damn you! Just work! It’s not fair, I’m not ready to lose this all again!” were as effective as screaming into the wind. Without their original animating force, the empty bodies he took would simply wind down like old clocks and couldn’t be started up again for love nor money.
The longest he’d ever managed to keep one was a bit more than three years—usually much less.
But Cath nannied in the meantime, so he sat on the couch in the living room of his charge’s parents’ fancy Gotham Heights condo, textbook open on his lap and some game show playing in the background.
He’d been studying for an upcoming exam—top ten-percent of his class and he meant to keep it that way!—and worrying if he’d even make it to his internship—not only because he deserved it after all the hard work he’d put into his studies, and had been genuinely looking forward to it, but (he couldn’t deny it, he had to be practical about this) also because he was hoping to get a chance to do a loop of the terminal ward and keep an eye out for any patient on the cusp he might be able to move into once he couldn’t be Cath any longer.
Even thinking about what would happen if he couldn’t find a new body before he had to vacate the old one made goosebumps raise on his arms that had nothing to do with the slightly too chilled air in the Drake’s air-conditioned apartment. He wasn’t doing it again. He couldn’t, he couldn’t, he couldn’t! He refused.
Prior to lucking out with Cath, he’d last lived as a runaway named Calvin who had relinquished his body on a bitterly cold night in Gotham while asleep, curled up on a piece of cardboard under an overpass. Not much changed when Tim took over. But even the desperate and hungry life of a homeless teen was life.
“Ladies and Gentlecaths, the sight you are about to see will astound and amaze,” JJ—Jackson Drake II, or Jack Jr., who Tim had been acting as live-in caretaker for for the last two months while his parents were out of the country—announced in a stage voice as he appeared at the railing above Cath sectioning off the second floor where the apartment’s bedrooms were located.
“Whatchu doing, kiddo?” Tim called up.
“Bruce Wayne adopted Dick Grayson from the circus,” Junior said in his normal voice, crouched down to press his face against the gap between the bars of the railing.
The kid was obsessed with Bruce Wayne, and full of facts about him. It was cute, in a weird kind of way. Like a little girl with her favorite Disney princess, but instead it was Gotham’s prince. And rather than getting a matching dress and carrying around a doll everywhere, he asked Tim to buy the celebrity gossip magazines at the grocery checkout so he could clip out any pictures or articles that had the Waynes in them.
“I was there, you know,” JJ continued, standing up again before pulling himself up to sit on the top of the railing, feet swinging back and forth over the drop as Tim twisted around on the couch to look up at him, a small worried frown forming on his face. JJ did this a lot, no matter how many times Tim told him to get down before he hurt himself. “When Haley’s Circus performed in Gotham. Bruce Wayne was there, too!
“I remember that night really, really well. I dream about it a lot. I can see it when I close my eyes.” JJ did close his eyes then, as if watching it again, before opening them with a look of intense concentration on his face.
“I’m pretty sure I got the routine figured out by now. I’ve been practicing a little on the playground with Darla—the flip part, I mean—but the monkey bars aren’t high enough, and we have to wait for the teacher to look away because he keeps yelling at me.”
The kid’s hands gripped the railing tight and he levered himself up to a crouch, and Tim began to get an inkling of what was about to occur, too late.
“But once it’s perfect, I can show Mr. Wayne! Watch!”
JJ jumped. Tim leapt up too, alarmed, unsure if he was trying to catch the kid, or just get out of the impact zone—the kid was clearly aiming for the couch.
JJ managed a full rotation in the air, but didn’t complete the second, so when he hit the couch, he didn’t land right, bouncing his head off the armrest with a loud crack, then falling to the floor, limbs loose as a doll’s.
Tim didn’t have time to debate the pros and cons.
This was happening now.
Cath fell to the ground.
Jack Jr. sat up.
Later that night, 911 responded to a call where a young boy in Gotham Heights reported his nanny had fallen asleep on the couch before dinner, but dinnertime had come and gone and she wasn’t waking up, not even when he shook her shoulder and shouted her name.
No, he didn’t think she was breathing. He didn’t know how to take a pulse. Should he try CPR? No, he hadn’t taken classes but he’d seen it done on TV. Okay, he would wait. No, there was no one else here and he didn’t know the neighbors. Yes, he would stay on the line.
Catherine Hill was pronounced dead on arrival.
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So it turns out Bruce Wayne was Batman. Which should have explained why JJ was so obsessed with him, except that the kid’s discovery had been that Bruce Wayne was Batman, not that Batman was Bruce Wayne.
The stars in his eyes had already been there; watching the billionaire console the sole surviving Flying Grayson after the accident at the circus that night with a gentleness and compassion that could be felt from the stands—rushing out onto the sand of the ring from the audience section without a moment’s hesitation or thought to his own reputation to take the trembling child into his arms, while everyone else, even the ringmaster, were still frozen in shock—provided JJ with a vicarious comfort he needed in the moments after the horror he witnessed, and made the kid imprint hard on the dazzling celebrity.
He’d apparently figured it out when his concern and suspicion over the man’s many “polo,” “skiing,” and “sailing” injuries collided—there was no way he was in the Bahamas this weekend; none of his planes left the airfield, even if the flights records were later adjusted to show they had (suspicious!), and the timeline just doesn’t make sense!—and he noticed they coincided with injuries Batman suffered, thanks to his friend Bernard’s daily “Batman and Robin Update” in the lunchroom. The jawlines matched when he compared them. After that a million other little things fell into place.
So pretty cool, all told. But it wasn’t the reason JJ liked Bruce Wayne to start with, so it was only another cool thing about him, not the coolest thing. Tim remained a devoted follower of Bruce Wayne fan accounts, and made sure to lavish him with praise whenever Bernard mentioned Batman took a particularly hard hit, to try to cheer him up. Mr. Wayne probably did not manage his own social media presence, but if he did, he would probably feel good to know someone was appreciating his efforts to improve the city during daylight hours too.
Plus, it made JJ feel good to know he was helping Mr. Wayne in his own way by keeping his secret.
Tim liked being JJ. He thought he’d probably been pretty young when he died—his original body, he meant—because younger bodies always felt more natural to him, even if they were harder to get and not as practical to take as adults were. Even Cath had been a little older than he felt comfortable being, even if she was the ideal age in most respects.
But JJ had loving parents who lavished him with gifts and attention when they were home, but also spent plenty of time not at home, giving him freedom he usually didn’t have as a child without being homeless.
And JJ had an awesome house. Tim had convinced JJ’s parents to not get him a new nanny under the argument that Cath dying in front of him had been massively traumatizing and he’d have panic attacks at the idea it might happen again with anyone else they hired. He’d managed to evade boarding school as well with the argument he didn’t want to lose his friends, too (Tim had never been to boarding school, and had thought it might be cool, like in Lord Eberwolf’s Magician School for Boys, but JJ would run away from home, as ill-prepared as he was to do so, before ever going to boarding school).
The compromise ended up being that they moved out of the Gotham Heights apartment and into a new house out of the city, in Bristol, outfitted with more security features than the Gotham Art Museum and every amenity he could need.
(Plus, it was next-door to the Waynes. Tim may have pushed for this particular house for that reason. He might see Bruce Wayne out jogging!)
+ + + + + + + + + +
Tim spent a lot of time in front of the mirror. Did he have black hair as well, originally? Were his eyes blue, like JJ's? He had almost convinced himself they were, but he knew it was just as likely wishful thinking. He liked this life. He wanted to keep it. And maybe if this body was meant to be his, like– like– a reincarnation of his original self, then he wouldn't have to leave it. Maybe he could just stay.
(It was wearing out too fast for that. He wasn't even particularly compatible with this one, apparently, and it wasn't fair.)
So it was a stroke of tragic luck that JJ's very best friend Ives had terminal cancer.
Tim went to visit him in the hospital a lot.
If he couldn’t be JJ anymore, wasn’t it the deepest expression of his love that he be Ives?
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Tim had never, never, killed someone to take their body. But he had also failed to take action to prevent a death when he could have.
And Gotham General had an angel of mercy roaming around. At least, he assumed so. It probably would have been in the news if he'd been caught. Dr. Fields liked to “keep people from suffering,” especially women and children.
It was giving Tim a crisis of conscience.
Ives would die. He was stage III and not responding to treatment. Which meant Tim didn’t need Dr. Fields’s intervention anyway, and he should report him.
But Ives was miserable—he was in pain and nauseous and cold all the time and hated the way he was causing his mom and sisters to cry with no way to relieve their worries, so maybe it was better for him to pass painlessly in his sleep rather than to let him endure potentially months more of agony and stress. And his family would be happy too, when he made his “miraculous recovery.” Which meant he should let Dr. Fields do his thing.
But Ives was still excited about things, and didn’t want to die—they’d made plans to see the upcoming Warriors & Warlocks movie coming out this summer (Tim would much rather see it with Ives, than as him) and now that they were entering middle school and had some control over their class schedules, they’d spent long hours debating the merits of various electives and clubs together. He couldn’t deny Ives the possibility and hope of a future, the same future he craved. If Ives’s death was still something he’d run from and not towards, Tim should put a stop to Dr. Fields.
But even visiting as often as he could, Tim couldn’t be sure he would be here when Ives passed on, which meant he’d lose his chance. First he’d lose JJ and Ives, and then he’d lose Darla and Ariana and Bernard and afternoons at the skate park and the little gelato place that sometimes gave him a free scoop if he greeted the owner politely in Greek, just like his parents taught him while telling him about their latest expeditions—which they never would again—and so long to the secret hollow he’d found in the woods near his house and getting praise from Mr. Matthews on his math scores and cyber-stalking Bruce Wayne, and— ! So he should let Dr. Fields do it. Tim could do it, he could let Dr. Fields inject air into Ives’s IV line if it meant he could keep Ives, and something close to his life as JJ. A planned death was a lot easier to schedule attendance for than an unplanned one.
But the last time he’d taken one of Dr. Fields’s victims (more than a decade ago, it made his stomach churn to realize how long) he’d been desperate, between bodies. He couldn’t exactly invisibly stalk the doctor as JJ to know precisely when he'd do it, and he wouldn't do it with an audience, so was there even any reason to keep Dr. Fields in the equation? So Tim should turn him in.
But there was no reason to even suspect Dr. Fields would target Ives over any other kid in the pediatric unit. He wouldn’t turn Dr. Fields’s eye on Ives if it wasn’t already there.
(Tim knew that whatever he was, wasn’t human anymore. But between Sméagol and Gollum, he hoped he was still only something in-between, and not yet the pitiful monster he knew he could be.)
So he needed to find Dr. Fields, he concluded, relieved to have any final decision-making put off for now. And if Dr. Fields didn’t know or care about Ives, then he didn’t need to make a decision at all (‘Just because you don’t need him today doesn’t mean you won’t need him later. There’ll come a day when we’re desperate again,’ the part of himself he didn’t like reminded himself). It was only if Dr. Fields decided to “help” Ives that he would need to make a choice.
So he went looking.
Which is how he discovered Jason.
+ + + + + + + + + +
The situation with Ives and the ticking clock on JJ's body had been distracting him. Tim didn’t have as much time for JJ’s habit of following every photo and mention of Gotham’s prince across printed and social media, although he thought he remembered something about them leaving the country for some reason or other. Africa, maybe. Humanitarian, vacation, he didn't catch.
But to be fair, he imagined their return was something the Waynes were working hard to keep out of the press.
Because that was Jason Wayne, in the coma wing, hooked up to half a dozen machines and casts on three of his four limbs. And that was Bruce Wayne, sitting at his bedside, head bowed and holding his only uninjured hand between both of his own, shoulders hitching in silent sobs.
+ + + + + + + + + +
Maybe Tim was a monster, and JJ was just a naive, selfish kid. But Robin was a hero, which made what had been a stressful decision suddenly an easy one.
When Jason woke up, the first thing he did was accuse Dr. Fields of trying to kill him.
“I could hear you, you asshole!” he croaked, furious tears burning in his eyes. “Every. Damn. Word. About how you were going to send me to a fucking better place so I wouldn’t hurt any more? Like all the others?!?! News flash, I’m not passing on any damn messages for you, and they’ll never have to hear your voice or see your face again, because you are not going to the same place as them when they throw your ass in the electric chair!”
The trial made national news.
(In the obituaries, a short, formal article detailing none of the following: Jackson Drake II was found collapsed in the hallway of the hospital, with his visitor badge still clipped to the front of his shirt. An autopsy tentatively diagnosed it as a brain aneurysm.
Sebastian Ives was transferred to another hospital, his family moving out of state to get him better treatment. Jason never had a chance to meet him, while awake. Tim lost track of him after that.)
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and
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so
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When Jason woke up, he woke up screaming.
Bruce rushed into his room, immediately scoping for threats and untensing slightly when he found none before moving to the bed.
“Hey, hey, it’s okay, you’re having a nightmare. It’s okay, son.”
“It’s– it’s– there’s a– we need to leave!” he gasped out in hitching breaths.
“We’re at home, in the manor. You’re safe. Deep, slow breaths for me,” Bruce instructed, rubbing circles on his back.
Jason reached up, clawing at his shoulders in desperation. “The Joker! He set this place to blow!”
Bruce’s eyes softened in understanding, projecting calm. “You’re fine. We’re both fine. I got you out in time. You’re not in the warehouse anymore. Nor in the hospital. There’s no Joker here, no Dr. Fields.
“That’s three years behind us, chum. You’re safe.”
“The hos–? Who?” Jason stopped struggling against Bruce’s hold, still breathing heavily, and looked around the darkened room in confusion, eyes landing on the unfamiliar leather jacket lying over the back of his desk chair, the photos of himself with a boy and a girl—both with red hair and green eyes, but the girl had orange skin—tucked into the mirror frame, the Gotham University pennant sticky-tacked to the wall. He patted himself down for injuries that weren’t there, long since healed. Then he paused, staring at his hands, larger and more calloused than he remembered them.
“Did you say… three years?”