Tim wished he could just pass out. He was so tired of being in pain. So tired of feeling his heartbeat in every whiplash and cigarette burn. Tired most of all of the relentless throbbing in his shattered, mangled hands.

But his eyes remained half-open, gazing sightlessly out the window as the streetlights of Gotham flashed by, the Batmobile traveling at insanely dangerous speeds. The car was on autopilot. Bruce was still holding him in his arms. Tim's ear was pressed to hard Kevlar and thin cloth. If he tried, he might be able to hear Bruce's heartbeat instead of his own. But his own pulse was so loud.

Bruce didn't talk, and Tim had nothing to say. He could have told him about the men who had taken him, but Bruce must already know, since he'd tracked them down and rescued Tim eventually. They didn't matter, anyway. Batman had beaten them badly enough to cause near-permanent injuries, he was aware of that. And whatever he hadn't done, Red Hood would finish.

He ought to feel guilty, but he didn't. Hadn't he become Robin to temper Batman's darkness? That was the whole point. Batman had been getting too brutal after Jason's death, so Tim had stepped in and offered himself as a point of light. What a presumptuous and arrogant thing to do. He knew that now. Now that he didn't have any light left anymore.

The Batmobile made a turn and started to slow down. They must be getting close. Bruce shifted slightly, not much, but it still made all of Tim's various aches and injuries flare to agonizing life again.

"I'm going to have to leave you," Bruce said. His voice was hushed, almost blank. Conveying facts, but Tim still heard the anguish deeply buried in it. He'd spent a long time learning to understand even the tiniest nuances of Batman's voice. "Right after I promised not to leave you alone, too. I'm sorry about that. But I'll be back, as your dad, as quickly as possible. You won't be alone for long."

Tim grunted in understanding. He'd known that from the second Bruce said that he was going to take him to a hospital. It would make no sense for the Batman to hang around after rescuing Timothy Drake-Wayne from villainous hands and getting him to safety. The price they paid for privacy was loneliness. It had always been that way.

The Batmobile slid to a stop, but Bruce didn't immediately jump out. He paused for a moment, his arms tightening enough to make Tim lose his breath at the pressure. He felt Bruce trembling, and he marveled at the sensation. Imagine that. The Batman himself, wavering at the thought of leaving a broken, useless kid alone in an emergency room for a few hours. He never would have guessed.

Then Batman pulled on the mask and opened the door and left the car with Tim in his arms. He shouted for help, gravelly and bellowing. The next few minutes passed in a blur of light and pain and voices yelling far too close for Tim to make out what they were saying. Still, he couldn't pass out, as much as he wanted to. The breath left his body when somebody dropped him down on a surface, and his vision fled in sparks of white and red. He thought he might have screamed. Then he felt the burning in his throat and knew that he definitely had.

There were too many hands on him, and his breath sped up in unreasoning terror. He knew these hands were here to help, somewhere underneath all of the agony and shock and the overwhelming environment, but they hurt. He tried to move his own hands, tried to brush them away, and screamed again.

Things got very blurry. The next time he was aware of what was happening to him, he was staring up at a white light and blinking at the tears that streamed out of his eyes. Someone was leaning over him, a woman, holding his face in her hands. A nurse. "Calm down, Mr. Wayne," she was saying. "We need you to hold still. It's okay. You're going to be okay."

His throat worked. His arms twitched, and he realized that they were strapped down by the forearm. Panic twitched through him again at being restrained, but he forced it away. "Tim," he whispered, voice raw and cracked.

The nurse blinked. "What was that?"

"Tim," he said again, a little louder. "Don't call me Mr. Wayne. Please. Tim." At least that name belonged to him. Wasn't borrowed, wasn't stolen. His.

"Tim," she repeated, and she managed a smile. Good customer service. He would leave a favorable review for this hospital, eventually. Her thumbs stroked the side of his face. "Do you think you can calm down for me, Tim? We're here to help."

He nodded jerkily, more tears running down. "Sorry."

"No need to apologize." Her thumbs inscribed little circles on his temples. He could feel that other people were doing other things on other parts of his body. Things that hurt. A lot. But the gentle touch on his temples was distracting, and he focused on the nurse. "Everything's going to be okay."

Yet more tears flowed down his temples, a helpless surge of them, just at someone saying those words. Tim sniffled, but it would be normal for a pampered rich kid who had just survived twenty hours of torture to cry, so he didn't fight the tears too hard.

A dark, cold part of him knew it wasn't true, that she was lying to him. Everything was not going to be okay. You didn't just come back from injuries like this. He knew that. But he nodded for the nurse, letting her comfort him with soft deceptions. "Where...where's my..."

My family. He wanted to say. Didn't want to say. Didn't dare to say.

The nurse looked teary-eyed with sympathy. "Batman said he already called your dad. He's on his way."

For a moment, Tim was overwhelmed with a wave of pure longing. All he could think, all he could feel, was Jack Jack Jack Jack Jack. He wanted his dad. He wanted his dad.

"I want my dad." It came out on a sob.

The nurse sniffled. "He's on his way, honey. He's on his way."

But that wasn't Jack. That was Bruce. Tim closed his eyes and breathed. What difference did it make, anyway? Neither of them had really wanted him that much, though both had eventually found a way to deal with the fact that he was in their lives.

The medical treatment felt like being tortured again. His mind started to drift, falling into the pain. He still couldn't pass out. The nurse's touches felt more and more distant. Her words made less and less sense. He wanted his dad. No, he wanted someone who cared about him. Someone who wasn't a stranger, someone who knew him and liked him anyway, but he didn't know who that would be.

He felt raw, stripped bare and left on a rock to bleed in the sunlight. His mind spun in lazy circles, caught in loops of pain and helpless longing. He wanted things he didn't deserve and could never earn. He wanted to go home, but he didn't know where or even what that was.

Then another voice intruded. It was loud, sonorous, pitched on the edge of hysteria. "Let me see him! Let me see my son!"

Tim opened bleary eyes and stared upward. The nurse was leaning away, her hands still on his face, looking toward the commotion. Then she looked back to him with a smile as her fingers tightened gently on the sides of his head. "He's here."

Tim blinked, and she was gone. In her place was Bruce leaning over him, pale and sweaty, eyes raking him anxiously from head to foot. He was wearing a polo shirt and probably khakis underneath, and the collar was mussed and had a smudge of lipstick. Brucie was disheveled and frantic, and no one could have blamed him for seeking the comforts of a lady friend while waiting for news of his kidnapped son.

But he was here now, and that was all that mattered, right? Tim shivered. Bruce started to give him a crooked smile, a try at reassurance, when his gaze landed on the restraints around his forearms. His eyes flashed, and for a moment Batman looked out from behind them. His head snapped up, and he bared his teeth at the doctors, pointing at the restraint with a trembling finger. "What is this? Get it off him! Right now!"

A doctor tried to argue. "Mr. Wayne, he was hurting himself..."

"I don't care! Get it off!" Brucie's fingers were already fumbling at the strap. They looked clumsy, but the strap had already come undone before anyone could stop him. "My son was just kidnapped and tortured, that's what Batman told me, and now you're tying him down to a table? How dare you!"

His voice was a roar, and someone finally leaped to release the other strap. Tim gasped as soon as he was free, though he didn't move so much as a centimeter. Tension ran out of his shoulders and back, flopping him down on the table, and his eyes closed in pure relief. He hadn't realized how terrified and out of control the restraints had been making him feel until they were gone.

Hands were on his shoulders. Big, tough, shaking. "Timmy, Timmy. Can you look at me? Please, Timmy."

Bruce's voice, trembling and afraid. Tim opened his eyes and looked up at him. Another sob tore free against his will. Bruce gave him a watery smile, hands tightening on his shoulders. "Hey, kiddo. It's so good to see your eyes. I'm so sorry this happened to you, but I promise, it will never happen again."

Tim nodded. The tears ran down. His head ached with dehydration, throat sticky and coagulated, but he couldn't make it stop. Maybe Red Robin could have, but not Tim. He was helpless in the face of his pain and his adopted father's naked concern. There was nothing to do but lie there, and tremble, and cry.

"Oh, Timmy. Timmy." Bruce lifted shaking fingers and swiped at the tears, succeeding only in smearing them around. "I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry, kiddo. It's going to be okay. We're going to make it be okay."

The confidence of a rich man, certain that if he just threw enough money at it, he could make any problem go away. Broken fingers, shattered bones, a tortured psyche, everything could be fixed if you had the right connections and hired the right people. Batman knew better than that, but Bruce was saying all the right things, playing by the right script. A traumatized rich man, shocked and horrified by what had been done to someone he genuinely loved and cared for, but still a rich man. Tim might have laughed, if he'd had the energy. Bruce was so good at this. It was something to see.

Instead, he closed his eyes with a sigh and did his best to relax despite the pain still roaring through him. A rich son would be reassured by these words from a rich father, so that was the part he would play. It itched and ached and burned, but he would do what he was supposed to do for as long as Bruce would allow him to do it. It was all he had left.

Sooner or later, Bruce would recognize that he didn't need a partner with crippled hands, and all of this would go away. Not a CEO, not a hero, not even a son. Once he let himself realize that, it would all be over. But for now, Tim could pretend.


A/N: I've been reading a lot of comics, catching up on stuff I missed, so I have a better grasp on this story and what I want to do with it. I've made some decisions about which parts of canon to pay attention to and which ones to ignore, while others are still in flux.This happens in a universe, not particularly attached to canon, where:

Bruce is Batman
Dick is Nightwing
Jason is Red Hood
Tim Drake is Red Robin
Damian is Robin
Cassandra is Black Bat (currently in Hong Kong being cool and awesome)
Stephanie is Batgirl
Alfred is Alfred

Bruce Wayne was "dead" but has returned from being lost in the timestream.

Damian has not died. Dick has not died. There's plenty of drama here without even more death and resurrection.

Jason returned, went on a rampage, and now has a uneasy peace with the Batfam. He is trying his hand at non-lethal methods of subduing criminals in an attempt to live within the Batfam code of conduct, but he is wary around Bruce and is a tenuous ally at best. Most of the disconnect comes from fear, which expresses as anger.

Dick went back to being Nightwing in Bludhaven when Bruce returned and took back the Batman cowl. He is on good terms with his family in Gotham and visits often. Damian misses him.

Tim is the current CEO of Wayne Enterprises. It was supposed to be a temporary position while he figured out what to do with his life after retrieving Bruce, but he's been spinning his wheels for a while, going out as Red Robin and working with the family to keep crime down but not living at the manor. He is an emancipated minor and has his own apartment in the city where he spends most of his off-duty hours, which are precious few.

Tim and Damian are not on good terms. Damian still insults Tim every time he sees him. It's part of the reason Tim is living in the city instead of at home. Damian is also trying to live by the code, though, and is eager for Dick and Bruce's approval.

Bruce loves all of his kids but is still getting his feet under himself after the whole journey through time and coming back. He wants to repair things with his more estranged children, Tim and Jason, but is not certain how and is not good at expressing his emotions, in any case.

War Games happened, but not quite like canon. Stephanie still went into hiding, and Leslie faked her death, but Steph was not captured and tortured, because that's gross. (Apparently only boys are allowed to be tortured in my canon, noIdonottakeconstructivecriticism.) Bruce and Tim were not told, but Bruce figured it out through being an obsessive detective while Tim was too grief-stricken even to think about it. Tim felt majorly betrayed when Steph came back and sort of blames her for it, even though she had no idea that he was being kept in the dark. It's complicated. He still cares about her, but doesn't really want to look at her right now.

After Bruce's "death," Cassandra gave the Batgirl mantle to Steph and went off to, as mentioned, Hong Kong, to be cool and awesome as Cass always is. Steph works with Babs and the Birds of Prey and is also cool and awesome, but not quite as much as Cass. She crosses paths with Bruce and the other bats occasionally on patrol, but isn't hugely connected to their lives at this time. She still cares, though.