"Let the rain wash away all the pain of yesterday.

I know my kingdom awaits …

… and they've forgiven my mistakes."

-Skylar Grey; "Coming Home"

Tim was in Steph's apartment by the time she got back from class.

Steph couldn't tell anyone who asked what the class had been about. She had gone on auto-pilot, sat in her seat, pulled out a pencil, and zoned out for the next hour. Then she had gotten in her car, driven back to her apartment, and found the door unlocked.

"It wasn't supposed to hurt," Tim informed her quietly from where he was sitting against the wall and under the window. His face is a mask of shock and confusion.

Steph's bag hit the floor beside her, and she fell back against the door in exhaustion. "Life doesn't work like that, sweetie," she reminded herself as much as Tim. It was a hole deep inside, and Steph had already cried herself out once today. Now she just felt that awful, sick kind of hollow that normally led to marathon-napping.

"It wasn't supposed to hurt," Tim repeated numbly. "He wasn't anything to me. I hated him, Steph. I hated him, and it wasn't supposed to fucking hurt!" His face twisted and one of Steph's potted plants was sacrificed in his uncoordinated lunge upright. The crash seemed to stop him short, and he landed hard on his butt with the rug rucked up under his left foot.

Steph dropped to her knees and scooted forward, wrapping Tim tightly in her arms. He had spent so long building up these walls after that terrible year of loss after loss. Bruce's supposed-death had cracked them; Steph knew that just as she knew Tim hadn't been going crazy when everyone else feared the worst. Tim built himself back up though. Tim moved out, on, all the metaphors work for Tim in this situation. The walls got taller, the bonds got weaker, but everything is still there inside of Tim regardless of his stubborn determination. The Joker-incident that no one will talk about proved it.

What was one more death, Tim asked, what was this-Damian-to him?

"It hurts anyway," Steph insisted, burying her face in his wet hair. It was raining outside, and they were both varying levels of damp. Neither one cared.

It took a full two minutes before Tim's arms reluctantly circled her back. His fingers dig into her cheap raincoat, and he turned his face into her neck. There's another thirty seconds before Steph feels the flutter of eyelashes against her neck and Tim's shoulders begin to shake. Tim hated to cry in public. He was a messy crier, and the snot was a force to be reckoned with, but maybe Steph wasn't completely out of tears either.

It wasn't fair.

What was 'fair' anyway? What the hell was 'redemption' even worth when everyone just died anyway? Why that bratty little boy who could make Steph smile even when she wanted to shake him?

She taught him how to play at ten years old. She was pretty sure that Dick was the first person to ever stick up for him, and . . .

"He never had a chance," Tim gasped out into her neck. "He was just a pawn in their games, and I knew it, but I didn't do anything to stop it."

Steph slapped him upside the head. The guilty rambling stopped, and Steph hauled him in again, rocking Tim back and forth. She tried to remember a time when she had hugged Damian or held him while he was conscious. Nothing came to mind. Steph kept up the soothing motion long after the tears stopped until somehow, she had stopped too. They were just leaning against the wall together, side-by-side, holding hands and just sitting in companionable silence as the room grew dark around them.

"I could have taken him and run," Tim started up again. "After the Jezebel Jett incident, and again when Bruce tried to f-fake his death. I could have looked at the whole mess of Batman, Inc. anytime in the last year, and I could have just yanked him out. Alfred would have packed for the both of us, and Talia knows squat about my resources these days."

"I could have stayed in Gotham," Steph sighed softly, because wishing and self-blame were things that came with grief. "I could have stayed when Dick left, and picked up Spoiler's hood again. Batman doesn't make my decisions for me. I could have been there for little D in person instead of through e-mail and a few texts. I could have called you and said that Talia's lost it . . . that nothing was improving. I could have made that call to get Damian out too."

Tim swallowed reflexively: "He didn't want an out."

Steph shook her head. "He wanted his Father, and maybe his Mother, and Dick even, if Damian thought there was a way he could have had all three." She smiled fondly, too tired to cry. "He wanted to be a hero."

"They made him that way," Tim spat. "We made him that way. It wasn't fair."

Stephanie stroked his thumb in silence, and closed her eyes to imagine a Robin standing on a roof outside the hospital with a silent salute.

What was a 'hero' anyway?

How did Damian just know?