Chapter Text
The first thing he remembers is the water. Like almost all living things, he was borne into it.
“Neural systems online,” is the second thing he remembers along with a sudden douse of light.
“Optical nerves functioning. Electrical systems respond to stimuli. Things are working perfectly, Doctor.”
“Good, draw it up.”
There was a whirl of machinery and he was brought up from the water and into the breathing air.
Unlike most living things, he did not make a sound when he gasped his first breaths. The world was runny and swirling around him as he tried to make sense of what was around him. Objects he didn’t have names for came into vision.
“Run quality checks tonight. I want it shipped out first thing in the morning.”
The last thing he remembers from his first moments is being put into a box and hearing the lid as it was sealed shut.
The only sound was the pulse pound of his internal machinery as it began to quicken. Something in his chest told him that this was wrong.
He decided that he hated the dark.
But then his life became full of darkness.
Tim yelped when he felt a jab in the small of his back, shoving him towards the tiny closet.
He should listen and make his feet move but… he couldn’t physically make himself do it. His limbs were heavy. His electric systems were screeching under his synthesised skin. The pulse pound of his internal mechanic thumped in his ears and became the only thing he could hear.
He knew it wasn’t fear.
(He wasn’t allowed fear. Fear was for living things. Not robots who had fooled themselves into thinking they were alive.)
But he always imagined that fear felt like what his mechanics did when he was dragged towards his closet.
“Get in there,” Jack Drake growled as his iron grip wrenched Tim towards the dark space.
“Please,” he whimpered, his pulse pound was a frantic beat in his chest. “Please, I won’t say it again. I won’t say it again.”
“You forget your place,” His father (no. no. He wasn’t allowed a father.) nearly popped his arm from his socket and his wiring sent flares of phantom pain up his neck. Tim stumbled as his electricity screeched and it was enough of a pause for Jack Drake to throw him into the closet.
Tim smacked against the opposite wall and the metal under his skin groaned.
“Please,” he begged again as he turned to the light streaming out of the open door. “Please. I won’t use his name again.”
“You sure as hell won’t,” Jack Drake hissed and the sound had Tim flinching back. “You’re not Timothy Drake. You’re just a replacement for him. You can’t bring him back.
He...He doesn’t get...”
For a second, Jack Drake’s face crumpled. His eyes broke, grief pulled at the wrinkles around his eyes and softened away the fury. He looked at Tim and saw a ghost of his son staring back. Tim was older than Timothy had been when he died. He had mimicked the growth Timothy would have had, an echo of what could have been if things were different.
Copies were supposedly manufactured to ease grief, but… it never seemed to ease the Drake’s grief.
It just seemed to hurt them.
Jack Drake’s face pulled in grief and vicious sadness for one more second, but then as quick as it came, the expression dissipated and turned to fury.
“You’re just a fucking piece of metal.”
And he… he was right.
Tim wasn’t Timothy Drake, the boy he was designed to mimic.
He might have had his neural network, his personality, his body, but he didn’t have his memories. He didn’t have his soul.
He wore his face and his name, but he was just a Copy. Not the original.
It didn’t matter that Timothy Drake was the only name that he had ever known. It didn’t matter that this was the only home that he’d ever known. It didn’t matter that these were the only parents that he’d ever known.
It was all a lie that had been programmed into him at birth.
He knew it…
And yet he still fell for the illusion of life every single time.
“Please, I can… I can—”
“You’re not my son.” Jack Drake’s voice was cold and it sent a chill down his spinal cord. “You’re not a human. You’re just a Copy of one.”
Silence stretched between them and Jack Drake reached for the door handle.
“Shut down, 7FH638K.”
“No, please, no… I…” But Tim already felt his body disengaging. His control slipping away until he couldn’t move. His optic units darkened taking away any hope of light. The pulse pound of his mechanical heart stilled and he couldn’t feel anymore.
He didn’t hear the door close, but it didn’t matter as he slumped to the ground.
His systems all came to a dead stillness, leaving him screaming inside of his own pitch-black mind.
He didn’t know how long he stayed in the closet. His temporal systems were down along with his optic nerves and motor abilities. He was completely in the dark and in the dark he had no time.
Just swimming nothingness.
His mind struggled with the sensory deprivation. It kept trying to find something in the dark —a sight, a sound, a touch, anything— and kept getting more and more panicked when it didn’t find it.
It was like he was trying breathe, struggling to the surface, his body screaming at him to take in air, he almost taste the sky, but he couldn’t break through.
He was lost, drowning.
(What a stupid metaphor for him to use. He didn’t need air. He wasn’t human. Why did his mind keep thinking it was alive?)
He wanted to scream and beg, but no one would answer. Did anyone even know he was here?
Please , he whimpered internally. Please. I’m still here.
“Wake up, baby,” a voice said, and the whisper was like a scream. His mind caught on to it immediately and flooded with the sensation of being spoken to.
I’m here. I’m awake. Please come get me.
Suddenly, he could feel his fingers and he wanted to cry.
“It’s okay, sweetheart,” Miss Mac whispered into his ear. She had leaned his forehead against her shoulder so she could access the panel on the back of his neck. “I’m turning you back on. You’re okay.”
His optical nerves snapped back online and the darkened view of the closet flooded in around him. The side of Miss Mac’s neck filled his vision and he blinked back tears on her skin.
“Everything working?” she asked quietly and Tim jerkily nodded against her collarbone.
Her arms came around his body and Tim was being held instead of freefalling inside the endless space of his own mind.
He sobbed. His breath was hitching and his internal mechanics stuttering in his chest. He knew he should be calm and draw away from human touch (he wasn’t a human. He was tricking himself into trying he was alive again), but he couldn’t force himself to do it.
He stayed in Miss Mac’s arms as the woman hushed over him and rubbed up and down his back.
“I’m sorry, baby,” she said, so so gentle. The most gentle thing in Tim’s life. “I’m sorry. I should have found you earlier. I should have been here sooner.”
But he was so grateful that she was here at all. He knew his parents would have forgotten. They would have forgotten years ago and Tim would have been shut up to collect dust in a closet while his mind screamed and deteriorated. He would have been one of those broken shells of a Copy, shut down for so long that when they came back online, they were just… wrong. Only Miss Mac remembered he was there. Only Miss Mac took him out and turned him back on.
He wanted to say thank you but his language systems were always slowest to come back after he had been shut down for a while.
So he just clasped on to her tighter, holding her greedily after now getting any stimulation for he didn’t know how long.
Suddenly, he realised… she was crying.
“They shouldn’t do this to you… you’re just a baby… you shouldn’t get...I know you’re not real but…oh, all that fear can’t be fake.”
Miss Mac was clutching him just like he was living thing.
“You don’t deserve this. You deserve more than this.”
Tim didn’t say anything, even though his language systems were back and all his internal mechanisms were fully functioning.
His mechanical heart was beating again. His faux lungs mimicking breath. Stimulated emotions racing inside his head, running so fast that he didn’t know how to interpret them.
Which was fine. He was a Copy. A fake version of a dead boy. He shouldn’t need to deal with emotions because in the end… he wasn’t real.
He was fake.
Everything he was doing...feeling...thinking… they were just reactions to stimuli, a simple knee-jerk reaction that was programmed into him by someone else. That’s all he was, a machine acting on base instinct, a manifestation of 1 and 0’s.
It felt real, but it wasn’t.
So he tried not to think of the darkness or the spiral of the emotions he shouldn’t have and just let himself be held.