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Tim never learned how to swim.
His parents talked about getting him lessons when he was younger, something for him to do after school so he wouldn’t be home alone getting into trouble. Tim had begged, pleaded, and bargained his way into gymnastics instead, swearing he’ll get straight A+s for his entire school career, that he’ll work hard to skip grades and graduate early and get into a good college.
(He never told them it was because he was memorized by that day at the circus, watching the Flying Graysons dancing through the air like songbirds until they weren’t. He’d been forbidden to ever speak of it after that night, so he’d never told them when he figured out Robin’s secret identity, then the Batman’s.
He never told them when he started sneaking out at night to watch Robin dance under the stars just like his parents, a songbird flitting around a Bat, cracking jokes and making Gotham’s Protector crack a smile of his own.
He never told them that he dreamed of flying just like that himself one day.)
They eventually relented, and gymnastics became Tim’s thing, before they boarded a plane to Egypt and promptly forgot about it.
They forgot about the postponed swimming lessons, too.
When Tim started training, Batman had a long list of things he needed to learn before he could fly as Robin.
But he was grieving. Some things were overlooked.
Tim thought his chances of ever falling in Gotham Harbor were small, anyway.
(He installed a self-inflating personal flotation device in the Robin suit, anyway.)
His school swim tests were a problem at first, but like his father always said, if you throw money at the right people, your problems magically disappear.
So, no, Tim had never learned how to swim. It wasn’t a problem, it was just fact. He wasn’t actively avoiding it, he wasn’t scared of the water or anything, but with his busy schedule, it just never seemed like the right time to learn.
Being slung over Red Hood’s shoulder like a sack of potatoes as the crime lord walked toward the Gotham docks seemed like a good time to learn, though.
Tim slapped a hand against Jason’s back. His fist connected with solid armor under leather, and the man’s strides didn’t slow. Tim huffed. “Is this really necessary?”
“Yep,” Jason chirped, sounding as if he wasn’t literally just shooting at Tim a few minutes ago. “This is what happens to birdies who fly into my territory. ”
“It’s not like I had a choice! The gang ran into your territory first. I just followed.”
“You should’ve stopped at the boundary lines, Replacement.”
Tim frowned. He had the sudden urge to cross his arms, but one was pinned beneath him. And also falling asleep. Ouch. “I didn’t see any boundary lines painted on the ground.”
Hood’s grip on his legs tightened to a painful level, and Tim yelped. “Trust me, after tonight, you will.”
Tim didn’t respond.
He let his head fall against Hood’s back, the blood rush making his eyes hurt a little.
He wasn’t scared of Jason. He knew Jason didn’t want to kill him, not really, not anymore. Fine, maybe he did, but he wouldn’t because that would break the truce set between him and Bruce.
The truce that included the Bats not crossing into Red Hood’s territory without explicit permission.
… The truce that Tim broke earlier that night…
Tim’s blood turned to ice in his veins. Okay, maybe Jason did plan to kill him tonight.
Tim slowly raised his wrist and activated the emergency beacon, even as he knew it was useless. Batman was at the Watchtower, and Dick was on a vacation with the rest of the Teen Titans. Alfred… Alfred might see the alert if he went down in the Cave, but Tim hadn’t told him he was going out on patrol tonight. Alfred had probably already gone to bed.
He wondered if Jason could feel his heart racing through both their armor.
Maybe he could, because he chuckled. “What? Scared of a little water, birdie?”
“No,” Tim said, maybe a little too quickly. He was not afraid of water. He’d even been to the beach a couple times, even if he’d never gone past knee-deep waters. Bruce had given him a detailed guide on how to save drowning victims, but… he’d never told Tim what to do if he was the drowning victim.
Tim relaxed. He had his flotation device. As long as Hood didn’t see it and, like, stab it with his knife or something, then Tim would be fine.
Jason came to an abrupt stop. Tim’s chin hit his back with the force. He let go of Tim’s legs, wrapped his hands around Tim’s waist, lifted—
“CANNONBALL!” Jason yelled, throwing Tim off the dock.
Gotham Harbor, like always this late in the year, was freezing cold, and it took all of Tim’s willpower not to instinctively gasp and suck in a lungful when he hit the water.
Tim could distinctly see the light shining from above through the water, but everything below was murky, ink black. Tim couldn’t see his hand in front of his face. He clicked a button on the side of his mask, activating his night vision. Not that there was much to see.
After a minute he tried to relax, or at least stop struggling against the waters. He couldn’t afford to waste his energy. His arms floated weirdly above his head.
He couldn’t activate the flotation device right away. He needed to give Jason time to walk away looking for him, or get tired of waiting for him to resurface and just leave. He had no doubts there was another fight waiting for him when he got out of the water, and Tim had only installed the one device. If Jason popped it, Bruce would be fishing his body out of the waters whenever he got back to Earth.
The inky blackness enveloping him was disconcerting, but Tim was just glad bullets lost traction underwater.
The world seemed to slow down underwater. He wondered what would happen if he sank all the way to the bottom, what he would see. Lots of trash, probably. Dead bodies, bones. The GCPD did regular sweeps, but this was Gotham. People were murdered here everyday. (He wondered how many of those were courtesy of Red Hood.)
Aquaman would probably have a cow if he knew how polluted Gotham’s water was. People dump toxic waste here on a regular basis. Heck, Poison Ivy threw a city-wide fit about it once a month. Half the time she had valid reasons and Tim didn’t even blame her, he just wished she didn’t drag them into it. Tim had allergies for days afterward.
Tim’s lungs were starting to burn. He wondered how long he’d been underwater. He could hold his breath for 2 minutes (that, at least, he can practice out of the water) but he hadn't been counting. He should’ve been, because now he has no idea if the fire in his chest was from lack of oxygen or just panic.
Tim was pretty sure you could hold your breath longer underwater. He read that in a book once, he thought. He should ask Bruce about it when he gets back. Or Alfred. Alfred seemed to know everything.
Okay, Tim couldn’t take this anymore. He reached up to his collarbone and felt around for the hidden button. He’d never actually had to use it, aside from a few tests he did while he was designing it and the one demonstration he did for Bruce to okay the addition (which he was very happy to say Bruce seemed to be impressed with; seriously, 13-year-old Tim didn’t stop smiling for like, two weeks) so it took a few seconds for his numbing fingers to find the button.
He pressed it, then shut his eyes. In about three seconds, it would inflate similar to a lifejacket and he’d be sent careening up to the surface. Hopefully he would be able to climb onto land before Jason got ahold of him, but best case scenario, Jason wouldn’t even be there anymore.
One second.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Five—
Why wasn’t Tim floating up?
Tim pressed the button again, harder, in case it was jammed. He felt it give under his finger, but he still wasn’t rising.
Tim’s heart sped up. He pushed the button frantically. No, no, no, no, no, this couldn’t be happening. No!
Tim’s lungs couldn’t handle it anymore. He sucked in a lungful of polluted water and immediately choked on it. Ice invaded his lungs, and he gasped, but there was no air. There was nothing but the murky abyss.
Spots dotted his vision, and for a moment Tim thought his mask’s night vision was going out. Then he realized it was his vision going out.
He was drowning.
Huh.
If Jason was expecting another fight, he was going to be sadly disappointed.
The Red Hood tapped his foot impatiently.
“Where are you, little bird?” Jason growled, staring at the empty water in front of him.
It’d been three minutes and Tim still hadn’t come up. Jason had expected him to try and make a get-away and swim away like a little fish, which was why he’d slapped a tracker onto the Robin suit. His suit. The colors he’d died in. The one Tim shouldn’t have ever been wearing in the first place.
But the tracker must’ve fallen off in the water, because so far the tiny blip on his phone’s radar still showed it was under the dock Jason threw the little bird in.
Jason huffed. Welp, he was never buying tech from that guy again. Man was lucky he didn’t mess up an important mission for Jason, else he’d have a few new bullet holes.
Not that teaching the brat a lesson wasn’t important. If Bruce refused to believe putting kids in the Robin suit was a dangerous idea, then Jason would gladly terrorize each and every one it took until Bruce stopped adopting them.
Heck, Tim didn’t even have superpowers or a tragic backstory. Bruce had no excuse for training him. He’s not like Dick, who needed to take down his parents’ murderer for closure, or Jason, who even Bruce admitted was headed onto a path of crime. (A darn good one, too; Jason snagged the Batwheels at 12, and now look at him. He made a name for himself in Gotham without any help from Bruce or Batman.)
No. Tim was nothing like them. He had parents, a home, money. No criminal record, no dead relatives. He had absolutely no business being in the suit, and Bruce had absolutely no reason to have given it to him, besides the fact that he was frickin’ Bruce Wayne and he would never admit he was wrong.
Tim could’ve been a normal kid. He could be going to school, playing sports, going home to his loving parents and white picket fence and dog or polo horse or whatever else rich people see as the perfect life.
But no. Bruce had dragged him into the vigilante life, and once you were in, it never let you back out.
Jason could attest to that.
He growled and threw the device on the ground. The screen cracked, and he stomped on it until it was no more than shards of plastic and glass. Then he kicked it into the water and stalked away.
The edges of Jason’s vision were turning green. He wanted to hit something. He wanted to rip someone to shreds. Maybe if he was lucky, he would find members of an opposing gang on the way back to his safehouse to take his rage out on.
Stupid Pit Rage. Stupid Batman. Stupid Robin .
If Jason was lucky, maybe Robin would catch pneumonia from the cold water. If he was lucky, Robin would slink back to the cave to lick his wounds and not show his dumb face for awhile. If he was lucky, Robin had sunk to the bottom of the ocean like a rock and would be waiting there when Batman came.
Jason stopped.
He looked back at the water.
Oh no.
Tim opened his eyes and immediately puked.
Someone rolled him onto his side so he wouldn’t choke, and Tim spat out what felt like an entire lake.
“Get it out, birdie.” Someone rubbed circles into his back. “There, now doesn’t that feel better?”
No, it didn’t. Tim’s throat burned like fire, and so did his lungs. He was freezing cold, and he couldn’t stop trembling.
When Tim was finished puking his guts out, he flopped onto his back, gasping in oxygen greedily.
After an eternity, when he was finally breathing somehow normally and didn’t feel like he was going to pass out, a dark figure moved in front of him, blocking the dim light and casting a long shadow over him. Tim thought it was Batman, and felt momentarily relieved.
That moment was over when the figure spoke. “Are you an idiot?!” Jason yelled down at him. “Do you have a death wish?! Why didn’t you swim back up!”
Tim groaned. He threw an elbow over his face. Maybe if Jason saw that Tim wasn’t up for another round, he’d just leave.
A boot nudged him in the ribs. “Answer me, Replacement.”
Tim was too exhausted to lie. “I can’t swim.”
Jason paused. The boot retreated. “... You can’t swim.”
“I can’t swim,” Tim confirmed. Gosh, his mouth tasted bad. Did all the water taste like this? No wonder Ivy hated so many people.
There was a beat of silence.
“Well, why not? Are you injured or something?” Hood kicked Tim’s feet. “Got some cement shoes weighing you down that I can’t see? Because I sure as heck know that B didn’t let you out of the house in that uniform knowing you don’t know how to swim.”
“He never asked.” Tim frowned as he rubbed his chest. “Why do my ribs hurt?”
Jason’s voice was very nearly a scream. “BECAUSE I JUST GAVE YOU FRICKIN’ CPR!”
Tim flinched at the sudden loudness, then froze as the words registered. CPR?
He looked up at Jason, who was pacing in and out of the light now. His shoes made a soggy noise as he stepped. His jacket was nowhere in sight. “I got you out of the water and you weren’t breathing.” Jason stopped and looked down at Tim. “Why didn’t you tell me you couldn’t swim? What did you think was happening when I carried you here ?”
Tim made a face. He tried to push himself up, but it hurt too bad, so he decided to stay on the ground. The ground is nice. “Would that have stopped you?”
“YES!” Jason raised both hands to his hair and started pulling on it. The white streak nearly glowed in the night. At some point he’d lost the helmet, too. “Dangit, kid, I wasn’t trying to drown you!”
“You weren’t?” It was meant to come out as a quip, but instead sounded like a genuine question.
Jason slowly lowered his hands. “... No. No, Tim, I- I wasn’t.”
Tim didn’t know what to say to that. So he just laid there, welcoming oxygen back into his body and wondering how many bruises he’d have on his chest the next day. Cracked or even broken ribs sometimes happened during CPR, and Tim wasn’t too sure his ribs weren’t either of those things. He definitely wouldn’t be able to go on patrol for a while.
A minute passed. Jason slowly lowered himself down to the ground, sitting cross-legged beside Tim. He seemed deflated. “You… you know I don’t want to kill you anymore, right?”
“I know about the truce—”
Jason waved a hand to cut him off. “No, this ain’t about any truce. I haven’t wanted to kill you in a long time.” His voice turned soft. “That- that was all the Pit. I thought you knew that.”
Jason… didn’t want him dead? That was news to Tim. Especially since Jason made a point of shooting at him at least every other week. But, now that Tim thought it, the shots went wide too often for such a skilled sniper. They couldn’t have been aimed to hit.
“Well, how am I supposed to know that if you never told me?” Tim snapped. He wasn’t a mind reader. Jason was always threatening his life. To Bruce, to Dick, to Tim’s face. Tim had spent so many sleepless nights wide awake from nightmares that ended in Jason slamming a crowbar on his head and everything going dark. It got better after Batman and Hood struck a deal, but Tim didn’t fool himself into thinking that changed the way Jason felt about him. About his lousy replacement.
(Tim always tried to pretend that it didn’t hurt his very being that his idol hated him so much.
He really was a Pretender.)
Jason didn’t respond, and Tim thought that was the end of it. He started trying to figure out how he was going to get home. He was freezing, and after Jason left, Tim knew it was only a matter of time before someone else showed up. The docks were well-known to be a place to strike shady deals, and if some criminal found a broken-winged Robin? Tim didn’t stand a chance in the condition he was in.
Well, that was if he didn’t freeze to death first.
Tim was contemplating breaking into somewhere to borrow a phone and call Alfred to come pick him up, when a laugh startled him.
Tim slowly lifted his arm to turn and look at Jason.
The man was hunched over, his face buried in his hands. His shoulders were shaking with laughter. The sight was unnerving, to say the least.
“... Hood?” Tim asked cautiously. Jason just laughed harder. “Stop that. It’s creeping me out.”
Jason removed his hands. There was a huge smile on his face, but there was none of this he should find funny, except the fact that Tim almost died… but he just said he didn’t want Tim dead anymore?
The sight was eerily reminiscent of the Joker, and Tim desperately wanted to get as far away from him as possible.
“I’m sorry, it’s just—” Jason gestured to their surroundings. “I planned out your murder for years, and the moment I finally stop, I almost kill you by accident.” Jason stopped smiling. “I almost drowned you,” he said quieter. “I almost drowned my baby brother.”
Jason was talking nonsense now. He couldn’t have been calling Tim his baby brother. Had Jason hit his head when he fished Tim out of the water? Should Tim check for a concussion?
Jason stood up and started walking away. Tim was about to try and make a break for it, no matter how numb and cold he was, but then Jason stepped back into view, a bundle of fabric in hand. “Here.”
Jason put a hand under Tim’s back and pushed him up into a sitting position, then guided Tim’s arms through the sleeves. Tim was still shivering, but the jacket was a blessing. It was way bigger on him than it was on Jason, and Tim pulled it tight around him, even as he wondered what the heck was going on.
“Come on.” Jason helped him to his feet, taking on most of his weight as he guided him along the way they came. “I’ve got a safehouse not far from here. We can warm up, then I can drop you off at the Manor.”
… Warming up did sound nice. But was this a trick? “Why are you helping me?”
Jason shrugged. “We’re family, aren’t we?” He looked down at Tim. “Family helps family.”