Now, Tim wasn't stupid enough to assume that his family would never find out about his lie; he predicted that it would probably be around the 28th or 29th when Dick would send him an angry letter, meaning Tim would find out sometime in the beginning of January about it. However, even when Tim thought he wasn't being hubristic, he usually was. He really should have given the World's Greatest Detective and his protégés more credit. But, of course, he didn't.

These assumptions made the morning of the 22nd come as that much more of a shock to Tim than it really should have. Tim himself was awake at the crack of dawn, not that he had ever actually gone to sleep the night before. He had been holed up in the library, combing through Daily Prophet articles from the late eighties to see what the coverage of the war had been like at the time and what he could glean from it.

He had just returned to his dorm when he was drawn out of his work by the sound of flapping wings in his window. Confused, Tim dropped his bookbag onto his bed and moved to detach the small scroll that was tied neatly to its leg. It clearly wasn't a letter from anyone he knew back home—they all used envelopes, so it was from a wizard of some kind. Or maybe—yes!—Constantine had written him back.

It would behoove you to come down to my office at once.

~ Albus Dumbledore

Without so much as a second glance, Tim hurriedly started to get dressed while his brain began to work through what was going on. The weirdly formal yet urgent tone of the letter utterly confused Tim. It wasn't the cordial invitation he had gotten a couple days ago when he and Hermione had been told about the attack on Arthur, but it wasn't urgent enough for Dumbledore to come running or to send someone up.

Whatever the reason, Tim thought it best not to keep the headmaster waiting, so he tossed on his sweater as he ran out the door and tied his necktie as he descended down the stairs. Tim choked out the password to the griffin and took the time going up the stairs to catch his breath. Before grabbing the door handle, he took a moment to compose himself. This was an urgent matter; he had to bring his best self to the table.

Tim had barely walked through the doorframe when he felt a sharp pain in his left knee, and he stumbled forward, trying to regain his lost balance while simultaneously searching for the source of said discomfort.

"How am I not surprised that you're late?" the short boy in front of him sneered, folding his arms across his chest.

Tim's automatic retort died in his mouth as he processed just who was here.

"D-Damian?" he choked out, rubbing his eyes as though he expected the insomnia-induced hallucination to disappear.

It did not. In fact, it only moved to kick Tim again. This time, though, he was able to see the attack coming, and Tim picked up his own leg, forcing the attack to land on the side of his shin.

"Hey—stop kicking me!" he growled, reaching to grab the boy's ankle. Damian, however, was too fast for him, and he drew back his leg before Tim could get his hands on it.

"You deserve it, Drake," Damian hissed. "Trying to pull one over us like that."

Tim blinked, looking Damian up and down. He looked the same as he had when he and the rest of the family had seen Tim off, though the scowl on his face was more pronounced than before.

"Excuse me?"

"It's laughable how stupid you think we are. What kind of magic school sends a train out if its students aren't going anywhere?"

Tim was still in shock at the fact that his younger brother was standing in Dumbledore's office. He glanced around, catching sight of Zatanna observing the office while Dumbledore sat at his desk with that mysterious smirk of his.

"W-why are you here? How are you here?"

Damian rolled his eyes. "Obviously, I'm here to pick you up. Trust me, it wasn't my first choice either, but neither Father nor Grayson have the magic in their blood necessary to get through the wards to this place."

"We used a portal," Zatanna explained as she examined one of the silver instruments on Dumbledore's desk.

"To…pick me up?" Tim repeated, feeling torn. On the one hand, he was shocked and frustrated and embarrassed at how quickly his family had found him out. On the other hand, it had been months since he had seen any of his family members, and his heart was fluttering with an unadulterated joy, the likes of which he hadn't felt in a very, very long time.

They were here to take him home. They wanted him home. He was going home.

Oh, wait. Nope. He had work to do. It didn't matter whether or not he wanted to go home and curl up in the old, velvet armchair by the fireplace and eat Alfred's gingerbread and never come back to Hogwarts. The fate of the world was in Tim's hands. This happened to be an incredibly important mission that, Tim reminded himself, I signed up for. Well, he was asked, technically, and maybe he said yes because he didn't want to let everyone down. God knows I've done that far too much.

Tim took a deep breath through his nose and mentally steeled himself for what he was going to say. "I can't do that, Damian."

"Tt. Of course you can. Otherwise, I came all this way for nothing."

"I have a lot of work to do."

"Shocker," said Damian. "Go get your stuff, we leave in ten."

"Twenty," Zatanna corrected from afar.

"Twenty," Damian repeated.

"I'm staying here," Tim repeated without any passion.

Damian glowered at Tim, looking offended. "What's wrong with you, Drake? I thought you'd missed us or something. I mean, not me specifically, but the family as a whole."

Yes. Yes. I miss you all so much. I miss waking up to the stupid texts that Dick sends me in the middle of the night. I miss Cass forcing me to go out for ice cream with her and relax. I miss Jason making me breakfast because he knows I won't. I miss your awkward mix of bullying me and complimenting me, usually within the same sentence.

I want Bruce to hold me in his arms and tell me that I've made him proud. I want Duke to throw popcorn at me when I make fun of the anime he's watching. I want Alfred to scold me and tell me to go to bed while handing me a cup of Earl Grey. I want Steph to punch my arm way too hard and tell me I'm a handsome idiot.

Without missing a beat, Tim replied, "I'm fine, Damian."

Damian raised an eyebrow, though Tim could see the hint of doubt creeping up onto his face. "So…you don't want to come home?"

"No, Damian," Tim repeated robotically. This is the right thing. This is good. I'm going to accomplish so much! Really!

All hesitation vanished from Damian's face, much to Tim's surprise.

"Tt. Yes, well, he thought you'd say that," Damian said, and he reached into his coat pocket and pulled out something that looked suspiciously like a stun gun.

Tim would later realize that this was because it was, in fact, a stun gun.

The subtle scent of Earl Grey wafted into Tim's nose.

"Ah, good morning, Master Tim."

Tim groaned, sitting up. "Oh my god, that little demon tased me."

"I believe it was a stun gun."

Tim rubbed his eyes. He was in a bed. His bed. His bed in the Manor. The Wayne Manor. And that voice…

"Alfred…?" he whispered, as if speaking too loudly would dispel the illusion. Standing a couple of feet away from Tim's bed, Alfred Pennyworth held a tray with a teapot and teacup laden on it along with a small, buttered roll.

Alfred smiled when he and Tim made eye contact. "It's been a while, hasn't it, Master Tim?"

Tim nodded slowly and rubbed his eyes again. His palms came back wet.

"Oh, Tim," said Alfred sweetly with a concerned look on his face, setting the tray down on the side table and coming over, arms outstretched.

Tim returned the embrace with the eagerness of someone who had been walking in a desert and had finally stumbled across an oasis. His throat tightened.

Wait, no, no no no, you're supposed to be working, you haven't done any work, you haven't earned this yet—

Tim squeezed Alfred harder and let out a sob.

"I—I—I missed you—so—much—!" he choked out, his face tucked into Alfred's neck.

"And I missed you so very much," Alfred whispered, his voice strained (oh no, is he crying too, did I make Alfred cry?), and he started rubbing Tim's back. "We all did, Tim."

Three cups of tea and one buttered roll later, Tim got out of bed at Alfred's behest and headed down to one of the parlor rooms, the one that actually got used on a daily basis and that they had converted into a general living room over time. Immediately, he noticed the giant, dazzling star that topped a gigantic Christmas tree, large enough that the top rose above the walkway on the second floor. It was seated several feet out from the grand staircase, the centerpiece of the great hall during the winter. He had just rounded the tree and had gotten approximately halfway across the great hall before being barreled into by his eldest brother.

"TIM! You're back! Omigosh I missed you so much!"

Tim couldn't really respond to this, being thoroughly enveloped in a classic Dick Grayson bear hug, the kind that practically swallowed you up.

"I—I missed you, too, Dick," he mumbled into the man's shoulder once he was able to catch his breath.

Dick grabbed Tim by the shoulders and held him out in front of him like he was looking Tim over. "Look at my little wizard brother, going to wizard school all by himself and refusing to answer my letters!" He said this all quite cheerfully, though Tim could tell the last part had not been slipped in on accident. Before Tim could open his mouth to apologize, Dick hugged him again and ruffled his hair. "You better write me back next semester, or I'll be the one hopping through a magic portal to drag your ass out of school, got it?"

Tim nodded, a slight flush crawling over his face. "Y-yeah, of course."

"You better," said his other older brother, who had just walked out of the drawing room and was now leaning on the doorway. "If I have to endure one more patrol with this drama queen whining about you, I swear I'm gonna start using real, lead bullets again."

"Guess they'll just let anyone spend the holidays at Wayne Manor now," Tim shot back with a smirk.

Jason took this jab just as Tim expected, which was to say that he placed a hand on his chest and gaped at Tim. "Ex-cuse me, but I brought éclairs with me. I've earned my right to be here."

"Interesting…I've never had to bribe my way into a Wayne holiday," came the snide voice of Damian from the parlor room.

Jason let out an indignant gasp. "I'm sorry, are you saying that all this time, the rest of you have just been showing up without an offering?" He continued to spout similar playful nonsense as Tim ripped himself out of Dick's grasp and dashed over to the parlor room, leaning in and immediately locating Damian, who was laying sideways on the loveseat reading some kind of Platonic dialogue in Ancient Greek because the boy was just a show-off like that.

"You tased me, you little fucker," Tim hissed, jabbing his finger at Damian, who didn't even have the decency to look up from his reading.

"How perceptive," the boy replied dryly, turning the page. "No wonder Grandfather is so enamored with you, your deductive ability is truly mind-blowing."

"Ha, ha, hilarious," said Tim, rolling his eyes. "I know I should probably be used to you attacking me without precedent, but is it too much to ask why?"

Damian snorted and finally looked up from his book. "Tt. Are you kidding me? How else were we going to get you back here? Certainly not by reason—we tried that, remember? And you were all, 'I can't do that, I have a lot of work to do, I'm an emotional masochist!'" This comment was only made worse by the fact that Damian's imitation of Tim's voice was, as usual, impeccable, and it almost made Tim question if he had actually said all of that. Almost.

Tim gave Damian the most withering glare he could manage right now, which Damian dutifully ignored, returning to his book. Beside Tim, Dick shook his head, disappointment lacing his every feature, and Tim felt a small pang of guilt at the scene.

"Tim, of course he tased you, you know the family motto," Dick started, and, as tradition dictated, everyone in the vicinity (Tim included) chimed in and announced, "'Talk shit, get hit!'" except for Damian, who recited, "'Si audaces loqueris, icieris,'" the Latin they'd originally translated it into so it would sound official when guests asked about the plaque Jason and Damian had made and hung in the gallery.

Something finally seemed to register on Jason's face only moments after they'd finished. "Holy shit, he tased you?" he said from right behind Tim. "I think I have a new favorite brother."

Tim elbowed Jason in his gut harsher than he would to any normal person, but, since this was Jason, Tim felt absolutely no remorse whatsoever. In fact, the gasp of pain was satisfying more than anything else.

"Speaking of favorite brothers," Tim asked, turning around, "where's Duke?"

"Oof, harsh," Dick hissed, rubbing his arm like it had been bruised alongside his ego.

"Probably in his room or out with friends," Jason suggested. "You know how he's always the last one in the house to hear about things."

This was an accurate claim. Once, they had planned a family vacation to Hong Kong, and Duke had only found out halfway to the airport. To be fair, Wayne Manor was a huge house, and word didn't always get around as fast as one might hope. Tim briefly entertained the idea of texting Duke now that he was back in the lovely world of internet connectivity, but Tim had seen his own luggage in a pile in his bedroom's sitting room, and that was all the way upstairs, which was way too far away for Tim right now.

"He is at Robinson Park. With Izzy and Riko."

Oh, how Tim had missed the beautiful sound of his sister Cass's voice. He spun around and shoved Jason out of the way ("Whoa, okay—!") before blindly running towards the spot from whence he had heard her voice. And there she was, walking down the grand staircase like she owned the place, tilting her head to the side with a little smile when she and Tim made eye contact.

"Hi, Cass," he grinned, grabbing her and spinning her around. She was so light, which was impressive, since about ninety percent of her was pure muscle.

"Hi, Tim," she whispered back, wrapping her arms around his neck and leaning into the gesture. Of course, the moment he placed her down, she grabbed Tim around the waist and spun him around, effortlessly lifting him up a foot off the ground.

When she set him down, she gave him one look and then frowned. "You're sad," she signed to him. "You know that, right?"

Tim bit his lip and nodded. "I'm working on it," he signed back, which was true, if 'working on it' meant surrounding himself with family to distract himself from how lonely he'd been the past couple of months.

She rolled her eyes, obviously not buying it, which Tim really should have expected from her. Nothing got past Cass.

"Oi!" Jason called from across the room, and when the two of them turned to face him, he signed, "If you don't call Wren within the next ten minutes and set up an appointment with him, no éclairs for you."

This seemed like a serious enough threat that Tim would do as his brother ordered. Unfortunately, that would require actually confronting Wren, whom he had been basically ghosting for the past four months. Tim tried to stay in this moment as long as he could, chilling in the great hall with everyone and gushing about how much he missed them all, but Jason managed to catch his eye around the nine-minute mark and made the sign for "call" repeatedly with his right hand while flipping Tim off with his left.

Dick grabbed Tim's hand and gave it a squeeze. "You got this, Timmy."

Tim now sat on his bed with his phone pressed to his ear, hearing his heart pounding a mile a minute. One ring…two rings…oh boy, three rings…

Four rings? Oh god, I knew it, this is totally payback for ignoring his let—

"Tim?" the gentle voice of his therapist came through.

"Uh…" Tim took a deep breath. "H-hi, Wren."

"Oh my god, Tim! It's been so long! I've been so worried about you!"

"Yeah, I'm—I'm really sorry I never sent any letters back to you, I just—well—I didn't mean to—I dunno. I'm sorry." It all came tumbling out of Tim's mouth in a garbled mess of excuses.

"That's okay, Tim. You have nothing to be sorry about," Wren immediately replied, and even now, after having been with this therapist for a year and a half now, the words were like a breath of fresh air for Tim. "You've been really busy, from what I can tell."

Tim nodded, shakily exhaling all his worries away. "Y-yeah."

"Do you want to talk sometime?" he asked.

"Yes," Tim blurted out before he could get cold feet. "Yes, definitely, um, can we talk tomorrow?"

"Oh! Well, I'm actually at my boyfriend's family's house in Midway City for break—"

Oh god, oh no, fuck, I messed up, I probably interrupted him, he probably didn't want to worry about work over his winter break and now I—

"—but I'll be back in Gotham by the fifth. We can meet any time after that."

"The sixth," Tim replied immediately. "Do you have openings on the sixth?"

"I think so. Let me check." There was some movement on the other end of the line and some voices too muffled for Tim to make out.

Please, please, please let there be an opening on the sixth, I want to talk, I need to talk…

"Yeah, so I've got ten to twelve-thirty and three o'clock. Any of those work for you?"

"Is eleven okay?"

"Totally! Let—me—get—you—in—" Wren started doing that thing that Tim could only assume meant he was entering in the information while he was telling Tim that he was entering in the information and was thus barely managing to multitask, leading to the barely-pieced-together sentence. "—aaaand there we are. Eleven o'clock A.M. on January sixth. Sound good?"

"Sounds good," Tim echoed back, his heart finally slowing down.

"Awesome." There was a pause and then, "Hey, Tim?"

"Yeah?"

"Thanks for calling me."

"Y-yeah, no problem. I—I mean, your welcome." That was one of the things they had been working on, Tim accepting thanks and not downplaying the importance of his own actions towards others.

"Nice save."

"Bye, Wren."

"Bye, Tim. Happy holidays!"

As soon as the call ended, Tim let out an enormous sigh, his whole body more relaxed now that the call was over. He did it! He had an appointment! It was a small victory, but a victory nonetheless, and Tim went downstairs with a weight off of his chest.

A weight that returned tenfold when Tim felt a hand fall on his shoulder, large and calloused. He'd recognize that hand anywhere.

"Alfred let me know that you'd arrived, but it took me a while to find you in this ridiculously large house. Apologies, Tim."

Tim felt his heart rate double, and he slowly turned around and tilted his head up to see his father towering over him.

"Bruce," Tim breathed. "I…uh…" He wasn't really sure what to say. Was now supposed to be when he apologized for lying to them all? Or should he wait until everyone was in one room?

He wasn't given the chance to think upon the matter further, as Bruce took Tim's moment of hesitation as an invitation to give him a hug. It was an all-enveloping embrace, like Dick's, but instead of evoking a warm and fuzzy feeling, Bruce's hugs were like a shield to the outside world. Tim always felt safe in Bruce's arms.

"Welcome home, kiddo," Bruce whispered, tucking his chin down into Tim's shoulder. "I missed you."

Tim wasn't sure that, "I missed you, too," fully encapsulated how homesick he'd been feeling the past few months, but he said it anyways because he couldn't come up with anything better. They stayed like this for what felt like hours but what was probably on the order of one or two minutes before Bruce finally pulled away and ruffled Tim's hair. When Kon did that, it was his way of teasing Tim. When Bruce did that, though, it was an acknowledgement of everything Tim had gone through, everything Bruce had helped him through. It was a promise to always be there.

"So, how've you been?" Bruce asked him, putting a hand back on his shoulder like Bruce needed that physical contact. Tim certainly needed it.

"Oh, um…" Tim paused, trying to find a way to articulate all of the complicated emotions he'd felt over the past nearly four months. "Everything is so much more complex than I thought it'd be. There are so many layers to the whole situation, but I feel like I've only just scratched the surface of it all. Ugh, and not having WiFi makes everything so slow, especially research, and there are some parts of the—"

"Tim," Bruce cut him off, squeezing his shoulders gently, "How are you?"

"I'm…" he started, trailing off, "I…I just…missed you. All of you," he whispered. "So much. Like, it's scary how lonely I was sometimes."

Bruce hummed in agreement. "We all noticed your absence. Gotham isn't the same without you." Even though he knew this was an exaggeration, Tim still felt his heart flutter at the man's words.

"It's true," Bruce added, as if reading Tim's mind. "You know, a couple weeks ago, Eddie was asking where you've been."

"Seriously?"

"Uh huh. Said he wrote his last set of riddles with you in mind." As he spoke, he led Tim towards the living room (one of many), opening the door for the both of them and sitting down on the couch. "I promised him that you'd look them over when you had the time."

"I'll see what I can do."

"I hope you don't mind that I gave them to Duke. He wanted to time himself, see if he could solve them before you."

"Probably could," Tim admitted. "That kid's a genius, I swear." If there was one thing Tim and Duke bonded over (besides anime and speedrunning old Zelda games), it was their shared passion for riddles. The Riddler had nearly had a breakdown when Duke showed up on the vigilante scene for the first time, as he'd been the first Bat in a while that truly matched Eddie's skills.

"Don't sell yourself short, kid," Bruce chuckled, patting Tim's shoulder encouragingly. "If I recall correctly, you're still the one with the fastest-solved Riddler case on record."

Tim grinned. "The ol' Salmon Hatchery Caper, how could I forget…"

The next day, Tim woke up feeling better rested than he had all semester. He was in an uncharacteristically morning mood, such that he hadn't even lay in bed for the usual half-hour having to come up with reasons to get out of bed. No, today, he just slid out of bed and headed downstairs for breakfast. One of the many benefits of living at Wayne Manor was that one could always rely on breakfast being ready for them when they woke up. Alfred got up at impossible, ungodly hours of the morning to prepare something new every day, as he was convinced that breakfast was the most important meal of the day. Tim had yet to be swayed by that sentiment, but he certainly noticed a difference for the rest of the day when someone else made him breakfast in the morning.

Tim entered the kitchen bleary-eyed and sat down on a stood at the counter, mumbling a hoarse, "G'morning," to Alfred, who slid a plate of something absolutely delicious over to him.

"Good morning, Master Tim. Today we have French toast with strawberries and cream," Alfred announced, returning to the stove.

"Thanks, Alfred," Tim replied, picking up his fork and digging into breakfast.

"I believe the one you should be thanking is Master Stephanie, as she was the one who requested it."

It was then and only then that Tim realized that Steph was sitting to his left on an adjacent stool, shoving forkfuls of toast into her face like she expected someone to steal it from a slower eater.

Tim dropped his fork, which clattered loudly onto his plate.

"S-Steph?" he stammered. "How—how long have you been there?"

"For the past ten minutes," Steph replied plainly through a mouthful of toast, "I didn't get up much earlier than you did."

Tim felt his face turn a bright red at his utter lack of situational awareness. "When did you—?"

"I spent the night after patrol," Steph explained before Tim could finish. This in and of itself was not unusual—Steph staying at the Manor, that is. After the Cataclysm wrecked Wayne Manor and they were forced to rebuild, Bruce made a point to have several uninhabited bedrooms built into the new Wayne Manor, alongside a variety of other changes (the Manor hadn't always been wheelchair-accessible, after all). This had ended up being a wise decision on Bruce's part (which is why Tim always suspected that Alfred had been the one to come up with it), because then Cass and Damian and Duke had all been adopted, and then there were people like Barbara and Steph who had their own personalized bedrooms in the Manor despite not living there full-time. It was an open invitation to stay whenever they wanted.

So, the point was that Steph had full right and was well within reason to stay the night at the Manor. Tim just hadn't expected it because Steph herself was an unpredictable force of nature, like most of the Bats.

"You gonna finish that?" Steph asked, staring intently at Tim's plate.

"You…can get more, you know," Tim finally said, raising an eyebrow at his significant other.

"I know," she hissed through her teeth, "but I don't want to have to ask Alfred—" She perked up the moment Alfred rounded the counter and wordlessly exchanged her empty plate with another full one.

"Thanks, Alf," Steph cooed, fluttering her eyelashes.

Tim snorted out his orange juice.

"So," Steph started, hopping onto Tim's bed and laying herself out spread-eagle, "tell me about anything and everything that's on your mind. Go."

Tim chuckled, sitting down on the bed and carefully laying himself down next to her. She had always been rather blunt about them being open with each other. It was one of the many things that had attracted Tim to her in the first place.

"Wizards have slaves," he said, because that was the first thing that popped into his head for some reason.

Steph rolled her head over to face Tim and said, "What the fuck? Are you serious?"

"Yep," Tim sighed. "And the worst thing is that the sentient species that they enslave has been bred to be subservient. They genuinely want to work for wizards. How fucked up is that?"

"On a scale of one to ten?" Steph asked. "Probably a twelve and a half. Got any solutions in that big, bright head of yours?"

"I think it has to start with rediscovering and reconnecting with whatever culture was lost when wizards took over," Tim explained. "There's this girl named Hermione who I'm friends with who has a lot of better thought-out plans, but we both agree that it's going to take a while."

"I already like her," Steph grinned. "Okay, next topic. Go."

"There's a war coming, so I'm helping teach the kids how to fight," Tim told her. "I couldn't tell you that because our letters were being monitored."

"Is that why you stopped answering to all of us?" Steph asked innocently. "Or did you just get into one of those shut-in moods."

Tim sighed. "Both, but mostly the second one. It was bad. I told Damian I didn't want to come home."

Steph threw her hands over her face. "Of course you did," came her muffled reply.

"Enough about me, though," Tim countered. "This is supposed to be a back-and-forth. Tell me about anything and everything that's on your mind. Go."

"My statistics teacher was lowkey racist," she told him bluntly.

"That sucks," Tim agreed. "How bad was it?"

"He came into class drunk one day and started ranting about 'black privilege.'"

Tim took a moment to process this. "Oh, so he was highkey racist, then."

"Yeah, I probably shouldn't be giving him the benefit of the doubt like that," she admitted with a hollow laugh. "It just sucked to be in the same room with him for multiple hours of the week. Back to you. Go."

They went on like this for a while until both of them felt like they'd said everything that needed to be said, and then they made out a bit, and then they finally went downstairs late into the afternoon.

Wayne Manor underwent an odd sort of transformation that was both tangible and intangible during the holiday season. One couldn't quite assign a single holiday to it. Martha Wayne had grown up in a Jewish household, and Thomas Wayne had grown up in a Protestant household, but neither of them had really kept their faith. Thomas occasionally went to church, and Martha would go with him to support him, but it wasn't a huge part of their day-to-day life as Waynes. All of that religious spirit stayed under the floorboards for most of the year; that is, until winter rolled around. Despite Martha and Thomas's lack of practice in their faith, they both had a particular attachment to their respective winter holidays.

Thomas considered Christmas to be the most important holiday of the year. It was the time when the hospital got the most donations, when people were most likely to smile at you on the street, and when every storefront decided to jazz up their displays. Thomas was really big into the gift-giving spirit and would always save his largest grants and donations until Christmastime. He was fully devoted to the ideal that every child (and every adult) have a present on Christmas, no matter where it came from, which is why Wayne Enterprises gave such generous bonuses throughout the company.

Despite a lack of attachment to the religious side of her family, Martha had always kept Hannukah in her mind when winter rolled around. It wasn't the most important holiday in her family—it wasn't even close to the most important holiday in the Jewish faith—but it was the time of year when everyone in her family did everything in their power to get off from work to spend time together. Hannukah was the time of year for family. To that end, there was always someone new at the Kane family table each night of Hannukah. Sometimes it was someone off of the street. Other times, it was someone from work and their family. Either way, the Kanes were devoted to all kinds of families, whether they be related by the water of the womb or the blood of the covenant.

All these sentiments ended up mixed together when Martha and Thomas got married and had Bruce. At first, both were too shy to push their respective holiday forward, but, as time went on, all of their traditions sort of mashed together. This, in turn, was how Bruce ran the Wayne household since his parents' untimely demise. Hannukah was celebrated when Hannukah occurred, and Christmas was celebrated when Christmas occurred, and when the two happened to cross paths, then they did what they had to do to honor both traditions.

Each child in the Wayne household was allowed to celebrate whatever holidays they so chose and ignore any holidays they did not connect to. Of course, eventually everyone started celebrating everything with everyone else, but the option was always provided, just in case a new Bat had particularly strong ties to a specific religion.

In some ways, the transformation at Wayne Manor was very tangible. There was a huge Christmas tree that stood in the entrance hall and towered into the overlook from the next story. Every mantle had a hanukkiah. Candy canes and dreidels were scattered around the house and would remain there for most of the spring.

But other ways were not so tangible. They were hard to explain, these feelings. It was the feeling of drinking Alfred's homemade eggnog and shaving a fresh nutmeg into the top (and sneaking a bit of rum in when Bruce was looking the other way). It was the feeling of watching old claymation Christmas movies that everyone could quote too well. It was the feeling of listening to Kate whisper soft songs in Hebrew, the meanings of which would forever remain unknown to Tim. It was the transition from blustering, harsh winds to the equally untamable fireplaces in the Manor. It was shaking the table and hoping that would somehow change the fate of the dreidel. It was the tree staying lit all night, gracing the quiet, dark halls of the Manor with its soft but ever-present glow.

Wayne Manor in the winter was a place of healing. It was where Jason first came to a family dinner since his resurrection, and where he ended up breaking the case in the Batcave with his old Robin suit in it only a year ago. It was where Dick and Bruce first talked to each other after Jason died. It was where Tim first called Bruce 'dad.'

One night over break, Tim had another nightmare. It followed a similar path to most of his other nightmares, although this time, everyone getting hurt was someone from Hogwarts. First it was Cordelia. Then it was Hermione. Then it was Ron. Then it was Aruna. It went on and on, and when Tim finally woke up from it, all he could think of was how incredible that Calming Draught was and how he'd give anything to have some of that right now and feel its peacefulness overtake his body. It was only ten minutes later, sitting in front of the tree with a mug of hot cocoa and wrapped up in his comforter, that Tim realized that he didn't need the Calming Draught because this was winter in Wayne Manor, which meant that everything was going to be okay.

My middle school: you will learn Latin because it will help you understand the English language better and make you a well-rounded individual
Me, years later: *translating "talk shit, get hit" into Latin*

I will never get over the fact that my upload schedule worked out such that I first posted this chapter on AO3 on Christmas day, even though I started publishing this story on AO3 on a random Saturday and just arbitrarily decided that Saturdays would be my upload day. And then, Christmas comes rolling around and I'm like "holy shit I'm posting the winter break/holiday chapter on Christmas. how." Truly the Lord works in mysterious ways...