Disclaimer – You recognise it, I don't own it.
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"Okay," Jason sighed, "Let's just do a recap here. Tim has been missing for over a fucking month. We've been looking for four fucking days."
"Don't remind me." Dick murmured from between his arms.
"We still haven't found his clues to crack his fucking password."
"Honestly, a seventy-eight letter password is more than a little ridiculous!" Babs put in.
"He was last seen leaving Cussler's at about 2 in the fucking afternoon."
"Tt, at least the Maître d' has a good memory." Damian added, "The security cameras there are not worth a fraction of the price they paid for them."
"Cussler's guests have a certain expectation of privacy." Bruce sighed, "Security is not usually something they expect the restaurant to provide. Certainly not at that time of day. I would normally insist on taking bodyguards. However, Tim isn't comfortable with bodyguards."
"It's a high class restaurant." Steph frowned.
"But just on the outskirts of one of the worst areas." Dick returned.
"Gentrification." Babs sighed.
"Are we sure that McCaffery isn't involved?" Dick managed to lift his head to look at Babs.
"Checked their system, records and everything else." Babs declared, "Dinah was very keen to get involved. And don't talk to me about Helena… I practically had to hold her back from going and interrogating everyone involved. Zinda wasn't helping either, she was offering to replace their drivers. But both electronic and physical files match… They were up to something. But no violence was intended. Browbeating was the worst thing they had planned. Tim managed to duck and dive out of it. Even the attempted alcohol consumption."
"He wasn't driving his crappy car. So we don't know how he got there." Jason carried on listing.
"Unlikely he walked." Steph stated.
"He was taken for the fucking Padua Project, which would find him if it was fucking working!"
"And it's Tim who made it work in the first place." Bruce muttered, "Finally managed to dig through all the reports and find the document that proved it. He's been spending time in the R&D department helping them out."
"Tt, that would explain why he was not comfortable with me working in that department." Damian sniffed.
"And we are going to talk about that at some point." Dick muttered, "Not sure how happy I am that you are working already."
Bruce laid a gentle hand on Dick's shoulder to end the argument before it began.
"He's been a busy little bird," Jason continued, "CEO duties, R&D time, his scholastic studies. And who knew he had an interest in Art History?"
"I would have put money on Photography." Dick stated.
"He has some kind of relationship with a man, none of us know about or can even identify."
"I'll get there." Babs swore, "No one can hide forever."
"What odds are we giving that this man was involved in Timmy's kidnapping?" Jason queried.
"I am not prepared to make a judgement at this point." Bruce shook his head, "We don't even know how close the two of them are."
"And we don't know anything about him." Dick felt anger burn within him for a moment, "Tim used to tell me everything."
"Tt… Do not sully yourself stating such a falsehood, Grayson." Damian fired back, "Drake has always kept things to himself. He is more of my father's son than he ever was his own."
And that one stung. It was the truth. Something that Dick had often thought about. Of all of the Bat-Boys, Tim was the one who was the closest in nature to Bruce. Even Damian didn't have Bruce's taciturn nature; his was more brusque, more defensive.
Bruce lived in the shadows. He was the Night.
Tim lived in silence. So what did that make him?
Dick knew that he had always been the Flying Robin. Even before the idea that there would be another Robin had even existed. Even in his earliest of days.
Jason had always been the Fighting Robin. Fierce and bold and brave. It had been part of the reason Dick had had a hard time accepting his new brother. He had been scared that he was being replaced by someone better than him. Because Jason had always had the potential to be a better fighter than Dick. It was only the anger that Jason had never been able to shake that stopped him from achieving that.
Nobody knew what Damian would be remembered as. It was not as clear as the others. He was changing little by little every day. He had once been an angry youth. Almost as angry as Jason had been. Now he was outwardly cold, but it was just a wall of ice protecting his very fragile heart.
Tim… Tim had always, always been the Thinking Robin. Clever. Intuitive. Smart. Capable. Self-sufficient. Unwilling to ask for help… Or perhaps unable. Even a baby crying in their crib stops crying when no-one comes to help. Even a baby learns silence, when noise does not help.
Had he caused this? Had Dick not been there enough? Had he not shown Tim that he could be relied upon?
Okay, maybe he had kinda sucked at being Tim's big brother recently… But everyone screwed up now and again…
But wasn't that what Tim was used to? To being the favoured child and then ignored for months at a time?
Dick had actually gone and researched the amount of time Tim had spent with his parents before their deaths… Scarily Janet hadn't even spent a single year in the same city as Tim before her death, in total! Jack didn't fare much better, even with his extra few years of life.
Tim was used to being put on the shelf and ignored when he wasn't wanted or needed…
He probably thought it was the same way with them… With him!
It was just… There had been so much to do! Jason had been weakening in his stance of hatred. And Dick was going to do whatever it took to bring Little-Wing back home.
Damian had needed help adjusting. The changes he had had to go through had been disturbing and troubling. He had needed a steady presence and companion through the emotional upheavals.
Bruce had been reaching out to Damian and Jason. His efforts at reconciliation with Jason and compassion with Damian occasionally clumsy. Needing Dick to help him realize where he was going wrong and how to resolve it.
Babs had been dealing with some PTSD flare ups, along with keeping the Birds out of trouble. Which shouldn't have been a full time task, but it pretty much was. Dick had been helping her with the PTSD and doing whatever grunt work she desired to help the Birds. Besides, although she considered Tim her younger brother, he was quite firmly in her mind catalogued under "Dick's People". Thus unless she had a reason to worry, she didn't go hunting him out.
Steph was still uncomfortable around Tim. Uncomfortable because of her guilt. She knew that she had hurt Tim badly all those years ago when she faked her death. And so she didn't go out of her way to encounter him. She wouldn't shy away from him, if they crossed paths. But if she suspected he was avoiding her, she wouldn't force a confrontation. Of all of them she had noticed that she hadn't seen Tim in a while, but had thought he didn't want to see her. So she had said nothing. Instead sinking slightly into a low mood, which Dick had tried to chivvy her out of, without knowing the cause.
Everyone had needed Dick to some degree or another. And he had given himself to all of them…
Meanwhile Tim… Tiny Tim had needed Dick. But hadn't said anything. He had just let everyone forget him.
Tim had just… Slipped through the cracks.
Until he was painfully brought to their attention once again.
And it hadn't just been the Bat-Clan… Every single hero, outside of the core Titans, hadn't noticed Red Robin's disappearance.
"We've scoured Gotham twice over." Jason continued listing, "The League and others have searched the world and we still can't fucking find him!"
"To be fair," Steph muttered, "We still could have missed him."
"It was a rough search." Babs agreed, "There's hundreds of places he still could be."
"And to top it all off," Jason carried on, as if he couldn't hear them, "He's missing his fucking spleen! That's the flaming cherry to this entire fiasco! How come we didn't know he had lost his fucking spleen?!"
Babs had found out about the spleen thing, when she had hacked into the Police Database, to keep an eye on the case. She wanted to make sure that the Bats had up-to-date data at all times. Any development she wanted to be made aware of at the earliest opportunity.
She hadn't been expecting that titbit of information to be tucked away in an interview file.
To be fair, it had blindsided all of them.
"It is perfectly possible to live a full life without a spleen, Master Jason." Alfred put in.
"Yeah," Jason nodded, "But considering Timmy's current situation? It ain't a good thing."
And that was a truth they all acknowledged.
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The Desk Sergeant looked up as he heard crutches approaching. Looking up he could see three teenagers approaching the front desk. One of them with a pair of crutches jammed up under his armpits, clearly due to the casted leg. The other two hovered in the background, clearly wanting to help, but also nervous about doing so.
"Good morning, Officer," The boy on crutches addressed him, "Could I speak to the Detectives investigating the Drake case? I have some pertinent information for them."
"One moment," The Sergeant turned away.
He quickly made his way to where Montoya was looking over case files.
"Montoya," He interrupted her, "There's three kids up front. One says he's got information for you. On the Drake case."
"A lead?" Montoya looked up hopefully.
"Possibly," The Sergeant returned, "But I wouldn't give it much credence. The other two kids look really nervous. Could just be a prank."
"The case was dead before we got it." Montoya shrugged, "I'll take anything. Even a prank."
"Well, they're up front. It's the kid on crutches. Do you want me to tell Bullock?"
"He's out on another case. I don't want to call him back if it's just a prank. I'll figure out how legitimate it is, then call him in."
She rose and wandered over; if nothing else it was a distraction from the endless case files which were going nowhere.
She scanned her eyes over the trio of boys; she recognised one of the them. It was Conner, he gave her a sheepish smile and ducked his head, before returning his gaze to the central boy. The other boy resembled the few pictures she'd seen of Bart Allen. She was starting to get a feeling that this lead wouldn't be another dead-end.
"I'm told you might have some information for me?" She addressed the central figure.
"Detective Montoya," The voice was hoarse, but familiar, even if she couldn't place it, "I'm glad you were assigned to this case, it makes everything much easier."
"Why?" She frowned.
"Because you should recognise me," He raised one hand to brush his long hair back out of his face, "Tim Drake, at your service."
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Please Review.
I write stories because I can't draw. I have all these images in my head that I cannot reproduce. So I try and describe them with words. If anyone else would like to try to translate what I have written into what they think I saw in my head, they have my permission. I only ask that I be notified of it, so that I may look and go "OOoooh!".
Many thanks to my reviewers:
Loftcat27 – You're welcome
JasonTKD – I'll keep my secrets for a while longer… A long while longer.
Inthenightguest – I grew up reading Agatha Christie… I learned a lot from her.