Tim is coping; he's actually doing a remarkable job of coping. He was born to cope, to cope with mom leaving, to cope with being hungry all the time, and being cold when dad was too drunk to pay the gas bill, and dad was never home to feel cold anyway, compared to all that two weeks of, (shocks and serums) of that, is nothing.

He was born to cope. And he was doing it now. He smiles at Dr. Saunders, a very prestigious doctor who had been hired with Wayne's copious amounts of money to help poor Alvin Draper, orphan of no relation to Bruce Wayne who was recently harassed and tortured by the Joker for reasons totally unrelated to Batman. Dr. Saunders, of course, knows the real facts; he needs to be to 'help' Tim. Later when they talk about the rough spots in his life (27 needles, all in the sweet spots, 28 needles, mind the baby's soft spot) Tim will cry. He is expected to cry, he would like to thank the academy and his family for his performance.

Dr. Saunders wants to talk about Tim's childhood. Tim is pretty certain he never actually was a child. Not after mom left. Dad didn't tell him, he found out anyway, mom never even made it to Vegas; her car was number four in an eleven car pile up 58 miles before Los Vegas. Sometimes it's easier to make your peace with your parent's grave then it is with them. Mom never got the chance to tell Tim; it wasn't that she didn't want kids; it was that she didn't want Tim. (Hush little baby don't say a word, momma's going to buy you a mocking bird) Tim could always choose to believe now that she was intending to come back. Dad too, he totally would have come back, and realized how fucked up his life was, he was going to get a job, maybe it wouldn't pay much, but if just quit the whiskey (the chemicals, the toxins) it would have been enough. Maybe Batman would be willing to conveniently die, so that Tim can pretend that he always intended to let him out of here, not make him live out Alvin Draper's fucked up life.

He's not willing to lie, to protect Batman, not any longer. Alfred was a different story. And Barbara. Alfred came to visit poor little Alvin. Barbara came to visit Tim. He was so out of it that night, after Slade and Slade's needles, (I'm not the bad guy, this time) but he remembers her red hair and warm tears burning down his face, they weren't his tears. He cried all his tears, he had dried his tear ducts, and he had burned their crops and salted their lands.

He copes with living here. He knows where all the cameras are. Well, most of the cameras. Cameras are just something else he has to cope with, these cameras and the other ones, the ones that clicked as they turned the film reels, where does anyone even buy film anymore, how do you get film developed? Film of him (Mommy's little JJ) of him… he can't even complete the thought, he's got coping mechanisms for that though. He saw some of the films, films the Joker made him watch, with Harley running her hands through his greasy unwashed hair (Just give daddy what he wants, we don't want to hurt you baby) the Joker thought his mind would break faster if he watched his body being broken.

He didn't break; he survived those cameras, now he's got these. He puts on his show for the cameras, he shows them remorse and regret. He tries to hide the pills he was supposed to take, the sharpened shanks, the improvised tools. He knows he's not hiding all of them.

He wonders when he became the bad guy, but he can probably guess. When Harley died (blood, so much blood, blood on Tim's hands, but he couldn't stop, or he wouldn't stop, not until Slade stepped in) Batman always had to define the good guy (I'm not the bad guy, this time) and he had a pretty narrow definition. The good guy never killed anyone; the good guy always turned the other cheek. If Tim had died, would Batman then have offered them Barbara? Tim shudders to think, if the Joker had captured Barbara. She has a harder time coping then Tim does.

Dr. Saunders asks him what he is thinking about, Tim had zoned out again. "I'm thinking about the similarities between the Joker and my father"

And it's true. The cameras, the restraints, and locked doors, the drugs, and needles. He doesn't tell Dr. Saunders that, instead he says "all they wanted was a son, but a son on their own terms" and that is also the truth.

And where was 'father' when Tim needed him? (You're not Batman). He hired a villain to rescue Tim. Slade was a villain.

Why was Slade a villain? Because he killed people? Tim killed people. (You didn't kill her, I did) All Tim knows about Slade are the stories. Dick's stories. Tim wonders how accurate those stories are. He knows Dick is the one, who actually negotiated with Slade, he obviously, despite his professed hatred, had a way to call Slade. A deal was struck. Tim didn't know the details, but he remembered what Dick told him about Slade, about what the man really seemed to want, an apprentice. (He deserves to know you're Ok, and you can't stay with me) Dick's absence was suspicious. The lesson Tim was learning is that Slade was the bad guy, except when you needed him. Except when it was convenient to forget.

In the dining hall Tim sits with his 'friends'. Sullen angry children like him, trapped here by families who couldn't deal with them at home. He didn't really like any of them except Abby. Abby who was rich once, who was smart, and who recognized Tim Drake immediately. They had met once or twice, years before, at some Gotham social event, before her family lost everything in lawsuits. They used to have too much money and a funny uncle. Then they had not enough money and two fucked up daughters. Until Libby's suicide, then they just had Abby, bitter, brittle Abby. Who wore long sleeves, and who never ate quite enough; who despite being more fucked up then Tim was easily his favorite person in the world.

In the dining room she's pretending to eat. Jack and Greg are there too. They don't need to pretend. "I'm getting out" she says, "Hallelujah, I'm cured" Tim knows better. Her family can't afford to keep her here any longer. He's been looking for his own ways out, without her he'll be motivated to find that sooner, the money to keep him here is never going to run out. "I'll be back for you soon" he wonders how she could know that, he always had some theories about her. Meta, he suspects, not powerful, some kind of foresight or mind reading, he's not really sure which. If she has powers at all, they're not much to speak of. He wonders if her sister had them too, to be able to see the terrible events coming, and unable to stop them. Tim would have killed himself too.

When she said she was getting out, she meant tomorrow. Tim would have missed his chance to say good bye if she hadn't stalled. He was having a session with Dr. Saunders when her family showed up. Tim can tell that they blame her, but they don't say it. It wasn't Uncle Henry's fault; it was her fault, and Libby's and the other girls. Ice couldn't melt with this family. He would hug her goodbye, but she doesn't like to be touched.

Instead he just stands there, and she smiles wanly. She gives him her Gamepod, she wraps her arms around herself. She turns to leave, she doesn't say goodbye. He says it for her. She just turns and smiles again.

The next two days go by in a haze. He doesn't talk to Greg or Jack, no point without Abby around. In his head he hears Harley singing that damn lullaby, driving him (crazy, baby is a little bit crazy, don't you think so Pudding?) up a wall.

He avoids the cameras. It's second nature now. He examines the doors. The door to his room is locked manually, he can pick it. The door the wing is electric. If only he could find a way to over ride it (time for baby's favorite!! Shock therapy) with an electrical current, it wouldn't take much if properly applied.

His mind wraps around the idea while he deliberately keeps it off other (screaming, screaming until he's gasping for breath, until the screams themselves tear through his throat like knives) less savory thoughts.

The Gamepod that Abby left him. Her father had frowned when she gave it, it wasn't the best Gamepod, but it was hers to give. The battery in it was about the most powerful battery he had access to. (the clamps make a 'Ka-Chunk' noise as they are connected to the metal table he is strapped too) It might not work (the needle full of serum makes no noise at all)

Tonight is the night he tries. If he fails the Batman will increase security, or move him, really he won't be any worse off. He has no idea where he will go when he escapes. He doesn't know the terrain. One step at a time.

At 3:30 am he picks the lock to his door, his improvised tools that he had collected were not ideal for the job, but they worked. He knows he can't stay entirely in the camera's blind spot (Smile for the camera baby) but he tries. He leaves his pillow and a pile of clothing stuffed under the blankets just in case.

The doors to the wing are, are entirely predictable, to Tim's pleasant surprise. The Gamepod battery was just enough to over load the circuit and open them. All the doors after that are manually locked. They don't have enough money to autonomize everything. Not here, though had he waited, Wayne's contributions might have changed that.

He makes it to the last door before the alarm sounds. He knows better then to be distracted. He focuses on the goal, escape. He doesn't react until the guards are on him, and even then, they barely slow him down. They're trained to restrain normal crazy people, they're not prepared for Tim (little Joker Jr.).

When Tim feels the fresh breeze, he wants to stop, to really feel it when he inhales, but he doesn't have time, he takes off running. He's stopped when a car pulls out. He takes less then a moment to comprehend before he opens the door and jumps in, seems like he's always being saved these days (You're not Batman).

"Told you I'd be back for you soon" Abby says, from the driver's seat as she guns it. It's an older model Buick Century. Nothing pride inspiring, but if it gets him away from here, it's a golden chariot.

When they hit the highway she goes west, opposite of Tim's inclinations, but he stops himself from saying anything. Her intuitions got her this far.

She laughs from the driver's seat "An Adventure!" she shouts as much to world beyond her rolled down window as to Tim. She definitely wasn't cured.

When they stop for gas at a truck stop, Tim finds her talking to a young dark haired boy. "I think you should get off here, Tim".

The kid she was talking too was hitchhiking. Abby is smart, she knows there will be helicopters and video cameras when they find her; she knows she needs a dark hair boy to make the escape seem realistic. When she smiles, Tim can almost believe she intends to survive this adventure. "Go to Chicago" she says as she walks back to the car, hitchhiker in tow. Tim resists the urge to warn her to be careful around strangers.

He finds his own ride, in a semi, with a lady at the wheel. He is more inclined to trust women. She has a cross hanging from the rearview mirror, he gives her his best winsome smile and most believable story. She takes him as far as Peoria. He gets off, he finds another ride. Chicago or bust baby.

He's drinking coffee at a truck stop diner with the handful of small bills Abby pressed into his hand on the road when he sees the news. Escaped mental patient and former patient die in horrific car accident. The fire blazing on the TV screen shows that it will take weeks to confirm dental records. They don't show Alvin Draper's photo, Tim wonder's how much Wayne had to pay to keep that off the air. Just Abby, smiling, pretty Abby, as she looked years ago, hair well trimmed, highlighted professionally, wearing her best Sunday smile. Not the real Abby, dark haired and sullen. He knows it's how she wanted it; she had always been ready to finally escape, to find Libby. That doesn't make Tim less sad. He can cope with that too.

Chicago is like Gotham. More refined maybe; more museums, and colleges, and college kids on bicycles, more street side vendors and parks with public restrooms; he's almost safe on the subways. Go to Chicago, she said, there must be a reason. The money she gave him doesn't last long. He can cope with that, he did it before Batman.

But he's not the kid he was before Batman. He can fly. At least he used to be able to fly. Flight is gear, is line launchers and reinforced capes and, always being able to find the sweet spot, the anchor spot on any building. It doesn't take Tim long to find a rooftop to call home. It's not warm but it's…. it's almost as good as flight and there is just enough space to sleep in the maintenance stair case, almost cozy with his blanket and his growing stash of supplies.

He made a grapple. Not a good kind, but the kind you have to throw, and it took him almost 6 hours of tossing it to get the aim right. To get the aim good enough to risk his weight on. Even then it was slow. He didn't know how to travel this city by rooftop. Often he'd wind up on a roof just to find that the only one accessible from it was the one he just came from. Then he'd have to rewind the grapple, by hand, and toss it again, sometimes two or three times, just to go back the way he came, slowly and tediously. After months at Shady Meadows, it was heaven.

He was traveling across rooftops at night when he first spotted the figure.

Slade.

At first he thought it was Batman or Nightwing. When he realized it wasn't, he could have kicked himself for making such an obvious mistake. When he looks, really looks, the differences are night and day.

Slade was traveling by moonlight. He had search tools, binoculars, and …. Robots? Dick had mentioned robots, sladebots, he would think the name ridiculous if he hadn't worked with a man who drove a batmobile if he hadn't once prized a batarang above all other possessions.

He was looking for something. Or someone, Tim shuddered at first, to think of the hunter looking for his prey, but then he remembered, he was once the prey. He was found, he was saved. (from scalpels that cut quick and clean)

First he was scared, and then he was intrigued. He couldn't follow, his equipment wouldn't allow it, so he lurked. He swiped a camera from tourists in Millennium Park, zoom lens for viewing. For three nights he lurked, catching glimpses here and there, until finally Slade stopped on his rooftop. He thought it was Slade, it moved different, more chaotically then the others, but still methodical. He was reasonably certain it was not a robot.

"Robin" and when he says it, it's unlike Tim remembers his voice, it's a low purr, it's soft and warm and like a blanket fresh from the dryer.

"I thought I told you" Tim says from his shadow "I'm not Robin anymore"

"I can work with that" Slade says, in that pervasive voice.

……………………

Whew!!! You guys wouldn't believe how hard this was to write. I started it 4 times before I had a version that would take. I really wanted to write this whole thing from Slade's POV, but it didn't work out. Next chapter will be from Slade's POV

So if you're wondering about Abby, she is, or was, a Plot Device. I made this prison for Tim and then I didn't know how he would escape it, so I invented a plot device, I named her Abby.

Also, in my alternate version, Tim was rescued after only two weeks. So let's all pretend he was rescued before he really went off the deep end.

The next chapter will absolutely be from Slade's POV, it will be of him looking for Tim, and finding him. As soon as I've figured out how the first conversation will go, I will know the rest of it, I already have most of the later parts figured out. If anyone reading this has an idea how that first conversation will go, please contact me via private message. I need a little inspiration. I'll figure it out eventually anyway.