Sorry that this has taken so long... enjoy... XD


No

No. No

No. No. NO!

The man blinked, scrunched his eyes tight, and opened them wider than ever before. It was a trick of the light, a hallucination, a dream. Tim was dead, gone, gonegonegone, and was never coming back. There were no evil aliens with time distorting Omega Beams; no inter-dimensional, multiverse altering crisis; there was nothing but a small dead cold body in a casket six feet under.

He's imagining things, Tim's not there, never there in the corner of his eye, staring at him in the mirror.

You're just imagining things, seeing what you want to see.

Because Bruce wants Tim… no he needs Tim. Needs to hold him close, to touch, to feel, to reassure himself that he's all there, that he's not crazy, that this has all been a dream, that Tim's not dead, just on business somewhere.

He needs Tim's insight, his endless intelligence and wisdom, he just needs.

Bruce needs to be needed. Because Tim needed him like he needed Tim. Not in the ever present parental role, though he wishes he could have been that for Tim, but in the silent presence, that reassuring body in the room who thinks the same as you, who knows what you're thinking, that's so in tune with you that you can go a whole night without talking and have no problems at all.

So he turns his back on the ghostspiritshadow mirror and does something he hasn't in years, since Jason died.

He curls up on his son's bed and cries.

I'msorryI'msorryI'msorryI'msorryI'msorry

Tim may have been his son but he was never Tim's father. He missed that chance, because Tim was never his responsibility, he had a family; Bruce wasn't needed… until he was and he never stepped up, not really. And yet Tim stuck with him through everything, Tim brought him back from the brink of insanity after chasing him through time, only for Bruce to abandon him again and again and again.

Because everyone else just seemed to be more pushy? Come first? Be more important?

Does it really matter anymore; Tim is dead, and he can't make excuses.

There are no excuses to give.

He holds double standards when it comes to Tim.

He trusted Dick when it came to Tony Zucco, did he not trust Tim to make the right decision when it came to Boomerang? Or was it just because Tim came to him at the beginning. No tragedy, not orphan, just a little boy wanting to help his hero. And so Bruce made him work harder, pushed him more, was colder, and didn't praise him even when he exceeded both his predecessors. Just because Tim was expected to always be better, to be perfect, to not be allowed the oh so human characteristic of having flaws. Because Tim was not his son by choice or blood, he was just some teenager who moved in next door, a useful tool, commodity, that Bruce could take out at night and then put back in its box during the day and forget about.

And forget he did on more than one occasion.

And, as he looks back, evaluates, judges himself and his decisions; it seems that just because Tim's smarter and probably better at strategic planning than all of them put together meant that he didn't get to make mistakes. He didn't get to be a seventeen year old kid just because Bruce said so.

How was that fair? How could he make that demand of anyone? But especially Tim; who just never gets a break from tragedy or disaster.

He starts crying again. When did he stop? Words flow out of his mouth, but he doesn't hear them. They're probably along the lines of "I'm sorry, forgive me, I failed you."

"It's my fault you're dead"

Because it is, this isn't him blaming himself over some contrived thought that he might have been able physically stop it.

It's his fault that Tim has… had- some sort of self-sacrificing protocol engrained on his brain that told him that everyone else is more important than him. "Because Bruce doesn't treat me like he did them, or he does Damian, because Bruce pushes me harder, wants me to get it perfect more often than them before he lets me move on to the next skill" things like that, the small things that add up, that cumulate into Bruce no longer knowing his third son. Things that coalesce into him seeing more of his 'staying away from Gotham for the next few monts to take down some large drug cartels' older brother in one week than he does his heir and co-worker who is on the same floor as him in Wayne Tower in a month.

Things that Bruce never got to apologise for.

And never will.

Because Tim is dead, gone and never coming back.


Dick leaves it a few hours before trying to find Bruce. Well, not find, more 'attempt to talk to'. Or talk at. Because in his heart of hearts, from the moment he held his little brother's lifeless body, he knew this day was going to come.

The day when they were all reminded that Tim had his whole life ahead of him, that Tim really was smart enough to get into MIT, Harvard and even Cambridge in the UK… the day when they'd all have to face the fact that that life was now gone.

He finds Bruce still in Tim's room, lying on top of the bed sheets, tear streaked face and heavily breathing. At some point he was probably hyperventilating, so Dick stroked large slow circles into his back, as though that would sooth all the pain, as though it would make Tim come back.

"Hey, Dad, it's okay; I've got you. We'll get through this, all of us, together" Because he had made mistakes also concerning being forced to deal with grief alone. "He loved you, like no one else in the world." Because he knew what Bruce was thinking about, because he's Bruce Wayne, the Goddamned Batman, the Dark Knight, the man who thinks he can't be a good father. "You were his father"

Dick doesn't catch Bruce staring intently at the mirror on the other side of the room; he also doesn't catch the figure in it mouthing desperately. But he does catch Bruce's sudden movements and open mouthed shocked expression as he sat up in shock and whispers;

"Tim's alive"