AN: Not gonna lie, I briefly and vaguely considered holding off on this chapter until it'd been the exact amount of time between the posting of the first chapter and the posting of this last one to match how long Tim was missing, but then I realized that'd be another like. Four months. And I'm not that mean. Also not gonna lie, I teared up a little writing this. Gonna miss this story. :')
"I hate this," Tim says to the ceiling of the Batcave.
Dick leans over him, face open with sympathy as he offers Tim a hand up. "Yeah?"
For a moment, Tim almost wants to deck him. Obviously yeah. Obviously it's hard to get back into training as a vigilante when he's had basically two years confined to a single room with a lot more on his mind than physical conditioning. Obviously this part of his identity is something he wants to get back, and it's difficult to get back, as evidenced by the fact that Dick just knocked him flat on his back for the fourth time in a row in this spar, and that's with Dick promising Bruce to take things at a "reasonable rate" for Tim's "progress in retraining." Obviously Tim hates all of this.
Tim breathes through it. He focuses on the fact that he's grateful his kids are otherwise busy and not watching him get taken down over and over. Then he takes Dick's hand and gets up again. "Okay. Again."
Dick raises his eyebrows. "Really? Again?"
"Again," Tim says determinedly.
"You want to get whupped again that bad?" Jason asks from where he's supposedly working on an assignment for a college class but has mostly been watching them spar. "Because that's what's going to happen."
Tim rolls his eyes. "Wow. Thanks for saying I suck."
"You're welcome," Jason says easily. "Because you do suck."
"Jay," Dick says chidingly.
"He does!" Jason says, lifting his hands defensively. "What I mean is, he sucks as bad as I did when I was trying to restart my training after coming out of the Lazarus Pit."
"That doesn't mean-" Dick begins.
"What do you mean?" Tim asks, cutting in.
"I mean that when I was with the League of Assassins, right after the Pit, I was clumsy and awkward, trying to get used to training again but with more height and different muscle mass and a bunch of lost time," Jason says. "Kind of like you are now."
Tim nods thoughtfully. "Okay. And?"
"And I had to scrap my old way of training for something new," Jason says.
"Oh," Dick says. "Yeah, that's actually fair for you to say."
"You don't have to sound shocked," Jason teases.
"Ah, but then who would keep your ego down at a normal level?" Dick teases back.
"Has his ego ever been at a normal level?" Tim asks, tapping his chin in mock thought.
"Oh, so this has turned into pick-on-Jason hour, I see how it is," Jason grumbles, but he's smirking. "I thought this was going to be help-out-Tim hour."
"I'm equally happy for it to be help-out-Tim hour," Tim says. "What were you thinking?"
"You ran an analysis on how best to retrain, I bet," Jason says.
Tim nods. "Well, mostly Bruce did, but I did some of it."
"Did you run it based more on how you used to train or how you could be training now?" Jason asks.
Instead of answering, Tim walks over to the Batcomputer and sits down to start typing.
"More on how he used to train," Dick answers for him.
Jason is quiet for a moment, like he's nodding, before he joins Tim by the Batcomputer and says, "I thought so. But the thing is, a lot has changed since then. You probably want to keep the same way of training, but that could backfire. We can't hold onto the way things used to be, or we'll miss the way things are now and the way they could be in the future."
"When did my baby brother get so wise?" Dick says dramatically from next to Jason.
Jason makes a rude gesture in response, making Tim twice as glad his kids aren't down here for this whole situation.
"Hey! It was a compliment, I said you were wise!" Dick protests.
"By implying I wasn't always wise," Jason says.
"I mean," Tim says, drawing out the words.
Jason makes another rude gesture, this one at Tim.
Tim valiantly ignores him and finishes pulling up the retraining analysis. "If I change the parameters to be based more on my current abilities and current physique rather than based on the methods I used to use for training and the abilities and physique I was hoping to return to…"
"We might get a more helpful training scenario," Dick finishes.
"And as the British say, hey presto," Jason says in his best imitation of Alfred.
"They say it just like that, huh?" Dick teases.
Tim laughs. "Yeah, just like that."
"We've got a couple of main options," Barbara says, linking her computer to the television screen and displaying part of a presentation. "For most people in the world, the idea of four biological children popping up out of nowhere makes them think, you know, some kind of hidden pregnancy."
"But for Char to be nine already, I would've been…" Tim says, his voice trailing off as the implications of the timeline become clear. He shakes his head. "Oof."
"And for there to be four of them, spread out over that time frame?" Barbara says.
"Not the implications we'd be most fond of," Bruce agrees.
"So, not my favorite option," Tim says.
"But we do have the fact that you've been presumed dead for close to two years to work with," Barbara says. She flips to the next slide of the presentation.
Bruce continues on. "There's the option of presenting them as children with no relation to you, whom you became attached to while in some kind of captivity. That solves the issue of where you've been, and if we play our cards right, maybe weave in some story about Wayne Enterprises being targeted over time, it can also solve the issue of you being rescued."
"Implying vigilante involvement in finding us and getting us home," Tim says, looking at the slide's explanation.
"Which isn't a lie," Bruce says.
"But saying we aren't biologically related is a lie," Tim says slowly.
"Would that be a sticking point for you?" Barbara asks.
Tim pauses. "You know, I don't know. Obviously I don't believe biological relationships are the end-all be-all of family…"
"I should hope not," Bruce says wryly.
"I know, right?" Tim says, smiling a little. "I'd sound like Damian when he first got here. 'The blood son' and all that. So it's not the most important thing. The most important thing is that we're a family, and that we stick together."
"I don't think we'll have to worry about that part," Bruce says. "With my varied circumstances of adopting you, Cass, Jason, and Dick, not to mention the logistics of getting Damian acknowledged, I'd say I'm more than experienced enough to pull the strings to get the kids situated under you as a parent legally."
"Experienced enough and rich enough," Barbara says.
Bruce shrugs with a smirk.
Tim thinks about it for a moment. He imagines presenting his kids to the world as adopted, as children whom he met while he was in a harsh situation and whom he couldn't help but care for, as the family he chose to love despite the odds. The reality of it makes him smile. "I think that's the best situation we can work with."
Tim can't seem to stop rubbing his hands together. The feeling of the gloves between his fingers is both somewhat foreign and incredibly familiar. The outfit isn't his permanent one, as he's still considering if he's returning to being Red Robin or if it would work better to take up a new identity. He's got a few name and outfit ideas in the running, although at the moment he's mostly been looking at names based on birds that are supposedly good fathers, which admittedly might not be the best method. The point is, he's not wearing the Red Robin suit.
He's wearing one of his old Robin suits, altered to fit him again for the occasion.
And Tim is still rubbing his hands together, and he tries to stop.
"It's okay," Cass says quietly. He can tell she's watching him, and he tries even harder to stop.
"It's okay that I'm basically freaking myself out for no reason?" Tim asks.
"It's okay you are nervous," Cass corrects.
Tim deflates at that. "Yeah. Okay."
"They missed you," Cass says. "They will want to meet you. They want to know."
"I want them to know too," Tim says. "It's just… There's so much that's changed. How do I know our friendships will be the same?"
Cass thinks about that. "Maybe they won't be."
"You're supposed to be making me feel better, not worse," Tim grumbles.
"They may be the same. They may not be. You changed, and they changed, and you still value each other, so you will change but be good together still," Cass says.
Tim shakes his head automatically.
Stepping closer, Cass puts a hand on Tim's shoulder.
Tim pauses. He takes a deep breath. He repeats, "Good together still."
Cass gives his shoulder a few pats.
"Yeah," Tim says. "Okay."
Steph leans around the hall corner. She gives them a thumbs-up.
Steph was in charge of telling Kon, Bart, and Cassie that something happened that they needed to know about, and she's done a good job, Tim's sure. He trusts her. And he trusts Cass.
And he trusts his friends.
In fact, Tim thinks with a grin, the only reason Kon, Bart, and Cassie aren't already out here in the hallway, swarming him with hugs, is that Steph was strictly instructed to not tell them exactly what they needed to know about.
Tim gives Steph a thumbs-up back.
"You're ready, then?" Steph asks. "You better be, because Impulse is vibrating so hard with anticipation that I'm starting to get concerned about if the floor's going to give way, and Superboy and Wonder Girl probably aren't that far behind."
Tim takes another deep breath.
Cass pats his shoulder again.
"I'm ready," Tim says simply, and he goes to meet them.
"That's silly!" Ian chortles.
Sandy and Sonny give each other a high-five, their matching milk moustaches dripping a little at the motion and at the huge smiles they're wearing.
"Silly and kind of gross," Char says, but he's smiling too.
"Indecent, one might even say," Damian says, sipping daintily from his own milk glass.
Sandy and Sonny droop a little.
At that, Damian hurries to add, "However, indecency sometimes has its perks."
"It does?" Sonny asks.
"It may," Damian says quickly. "But only sometimes, perhaps very rarely, so don't get too many ideas."
"I always have too many ideas," Sandy says proudly.
Char laughs at that.
"What?!" Sandy protests. "I do too!"
"That was an agreeing laugh," Char says. "I was agreeing with you."
"I've never heard of an agreeing laugh before," Sonny says slowly.
"Well, you heard of it now," Ian says.
"Have heard," Char corrects. "You have heard of it now."
"Is that really the right way to say it?" Ian asks, looking over at Alfred, who's bringing another plate of cookies over.
"I would trust Master Char's instincts in this instance," Alfred says.
"And in all instances," Char says. "Because I'm the oldest, so I'm always right."
"Noooo," Sonny says.
"Yeeees," Char says.
"Noooo," Sonny and Sandy chorus together.
"The oldest person is not always right," Damian points out. "Sometimes the oldest person is actually wrong."
"To hear you make such a claim right in front of my elderly ears hurts my poor heart," Alfred says with a sigh.
Damian sputters. "I meant-"
Alfred gives a chuckle.
Damian shakes his head and laughs too. "You are teasing me, stop!"
"I thought the entire point of this occasion was teasing," Alfred says fake-innocently, and he takes the top cookie off of the plate and bites into it to make his point.
"Yeah!" Ian crows, snatching another cookie and holding it aloft. "Teasing and cookies!"
With a chuckle, Tim turns from the doorway from where he'd been watching them. He heads down the halls and up the stairs before he makes it to the family wing hallway.
He opens the door to his own bedroom, but he stops before he goes in for the well-deserved nap he'd planned to take.
Turning back, Tim looks around the hallway.
There's Ian's room, and there's Sonny's room, then Sandy's room, then Char's room, each with a cheerful name plaque and several decorations on the door.
Tim helped set them all up. He helped his kids pick out bedding and carpet, he gave options for colors of paint and patterns of wallpaper, he showed off varieties of curtains and dressers, and of course he helped them pick out toys and books and clothes and every little knickknack they wanted.
Tim got his kids started. And now, with the help of the rest of his family, he and his kids would continue on, making their choices and exercising their freedom. His kids each have their own bedrooms, and they have the whole world to explore.
Smiling at the thought, Tim goes into his bedroom and shuts the door behind him.
AN: And that's a wrap, folks! Let me know what you thought, and have a great day!