Chapter Text
Your name is Tim.
You are safe here. If you are scared, that is okay. If you do not remember anything, that is okay too. Call any of these numbers, they will answer and they will explain everything.
Bruce Wayne 735-185-7301
Alfred Pennyworth 735-341-3940
Dick Grayson 735-188-5080
Jason Todd 737-892-5027
Barbara Gordon 735-489-2189
Cassandra Cain 749-284-0952
Damian Wayne 961 1 629 999
The last name was written in a different ink, like it had been done in a different time to the others, and its styling was different too. The note was shaking in his hand and while he wanted to scrunch it up or rip it to pieces, he didn’t. His head was spinning, his body sore, and he wanted to curl up into a ball under a table and cry but he didn’t do that either.
He didn’t know what he should do. He was some place he didn’t recognise, holding a crumpled note he’d found in his pocket, and his head was fucking killing him.
Your name is Tim.
It didn’t feel right. Surely he would know what his name was, everyone knew what their name was. There shouldn’t need to be a note to tell him something he already knew except he didn’t know it, not really. The name felt unfamiliar and yet he wondered if his name was in fact Tim.
None of this felt right.
There was a weight in his other pocket and when he brushed up against it, he found a phone. He didn’t know how he knew the passcode, though if it was his phone of course he would know the passcode, but all the same it unlocked and he brought up the call function. He stilled.
He didn’t need to call anyone. He was fine on his own, he could work out where he was and who he was but of course he knew who he was because everyone knew who they were and oh god his head was hurting.
“Drake?”
Who was Drake? He blinked quickly, vision pulsing. The voice sounded young, even with only a single word being spoken and he blinked again as he wondered if that was why the name had been the last addition to the list. He went to hang up, not wanting to bother a child, but he blinked again, leaning up against the table as if to keep himself from falling.
“The… Note…” He swallowed, his words slurring. “Said to call?”
Everything felt slow and even when he dropped the note, his hand was still trembling.
“I’m on my way.”
He didn’t want the voice to disappear but the phone toned, whoever this ‘Damian Wayne’ hanging up. He braced himself against the table again, a wave of dizziness crashing over him. He should know that name. He did know that name.
The chair beside the table shifted and he was on the ground. He curled up, ducking his head between his knees and his chest. His face was burning but he didn’t know why. When he tried to raise a hand to touch it, it was shaking too much.
He scrambled for the note on the ground, reading it again and again.
Your name is Tim.
You are safe here.
Your name is Tim.
You are safe here.
He didn’t feel safe. He didn’t even know what safe felt like but it sure as fuck didn’t feel like this, his heart pounding and his head spinning and practically all of him shaking. And now he had rung a kid, hoping beyond hope that the vague familiarity of the kids name and voice meant that the kid was actually going to come to wherever he was. He? Tim? No. He.
He swallowed roughly.
The note fell again but this time he left it there.
His hands were still shaking. He willed them to still but they didn’t, or couldn’t, he didn’t know. What did he know? He was in a dining room, there was fancy shit all around him, and he was sitting on the wooden floor. There was a smashed mug a few feet away from him with the crumpled note sitting in between.
The smell of coffee in the air. He knew that coffee. It was… Something. He was blinking again, scrubbing his face as if that was going to help him remember. The mug itself was in three pieces and without having to touch them, he put the design together and found that it was Superman’s symbol. Who Superman was, he had no idea but for some reason he knew it was funny.
He laughed, rough and near hysterical. The burning on his face was back and he dully realised that it had been tears this entire time. He was crying, like some lost child. How pathetic. He was pathetic, always had been.
The tears stopped and he stared at the mug. How was it he didn’t know anything apart from the fact that he was pathetic? That was pretty fucking depressing. Thanks Mom and Dad for the trauma. He blinked. Parents. He had parents. Had was the operative word.
His name was Tim Drake and his parents were dead but he was at Wayne Manor and he was safe for the first time in his life. He was loved here, even when he made mistakes. He was… He was curled up on a couch. There was a heavy blanket laid on him, a pillow tucked beneath his head. No, not a pillow.
There was a stranger above him and he scrambled away, slamming hard onto the ground.
“Whoah Timmy, it’s okay!” The stranger said.
His head was spinning and his hands were shaking and he was going to throw up except he really didn’t want to. The stranger was standing now, inching towards him with raised hands.
“I… I don’t…”
“Your name is Tim.” The stranger said.
He shook his head, flinching when it made his dizziness worse. He knew his name, of course he knew his name. He knew things, he wasn’t stupid, never stupid.
“You’re safe here.”
The words were familiar, as was that voice but he would have remembered meeting someone with such beautiful blue eyes.
“Damian called me,” The voice continued.
He knew that name too, of course he did. He wasn’t stupid, he wasn’t stupid. He wasn’t…
“You’re not stupid Tim,” The stranger said as if he had spoken aloud. “You were hurt a few weeks ago, pretty badly. It’s messed with your memories but Leslie says it’ll get easier in time.”
“Leslie’s a doctor.” He whispered.
“Yes.”
“I don’t like doctors. I don’t need them. I… Like her though?”
“Yeah, bud, Leslie’s great. A pain in the ass but only because she cares so much.”
He didn’t know a Leslie and he certainly didn’t know a doctor on a first name basis. He didn’t know this young man in front of him either and he didn’t know what was happening even though he knew that he should and he knew he should know his name but he didn’t and that realisation utterly terrified him.
His hands were shaking. He tried to still them but they didn’t and his eyes started burning.
“I was hurt?” He croaked.
The man stiffened. He sat back on the couch, taking a deep breath before speaking but when he did his voice was warm and it felt like home.
“You saved a little girl. But, in the process, you were caught in an explosion.”
“Her hair was brown.”
“Yeah, bud. Her name’s Mihaela. She’s doing well, even named a new teddy bear after you.”
“Mihaela.” He sounded out. His own words seemed sluggish, his mouth not quite listening to him. “What did she call it? The teddy bear.”
The man shifted again.
“Tim.” He said. “She named it after you and she called it Tim but she promised not to tell anyone that.”
Because she wasn’t meant to know that Red Robin was Tim Drake but Mihaela had been scared and it was only when Red Robin took off his mask and told her his real name that she calmed down and let him guide her from the building but by then it was too late. Tim had gotten her out but then he was being thrown forward and his head was cracking against the pavement and everything was on fire around him and he was screaming and he was-
He was at Wayne Manor. Dick was waiting patiently on the couch, though he was fiddling with Tim’s weighted blanket because Dick Grayson was never not in motion.
“Dick?”
Dick’s smile was as warm as his voice and Tim was vaulting up and was crashing into Dick’s chest.
“It’s okay, Timmy,” Dick soothed, holding Tim tightly. “You’re okay.”
He wasn’t fucking okay, he had somehow forgotten his own stupid brother and this wasn’t the first time and it was going to keep happening and he didn’t want to forget.
“Shh, it’s okay. You’re safe.”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”
“There’s nothing to apologise for Tim, none of this was your fault. You’re a hero.”
Tim didn’t feel like a hero because all he could do is clutch onto Dick’s shirt and cry. Even when his sobs settled to whimpers and his shudders became more like trembles, Tim just couldn’t stop the tears and he couldn’t stop his head from spinning.
Again and again he heard the crack as his head hit the pavement, he felt the pain explode alongside the building and he kept staring at the crumpled note he kept in his pocket unable to recognise the names but knowing deep down that they were important. He had forgotten his family, his real family, again and again and even though that note helped sometimes it didn’t always.
Sometimes he doubted it, he figured that if he couldn’t recall his own name he shouldn’t trust some random note in his pocket. Other times he searched the names and numbers online, looking through forums all about billionaire Bruce Wayne and the thousand kids he’d taken into his house and he would stare at the portrait of Tim Drake and wonder just who that boy was.
Tim hated this, hated all of it. He should be better, he had to be better, Tim couldn’t keep forgetting or else this new family was going to realise just how pathetic he was and they were going to leave him, same as his parents had.
Dick shifted, pulling the weighted blanket over top of the both of them and Tim felt the tension in his body ease. He nestled in close to Dick, suddenly exhausted, eyes drooping.
He didn’t want to sleep. If he slept he could forget again and he didn’t want to forget and he didn’t even remember Damian coming home even though he knew that he had called Damian and Damian had been the one to call Dick and he didn’t want to forget and he didn’t…
“Rest, Tim,” Dick mumbled, pressing a kiss on top of his head.
“I can’t.” Tim croaked. “I don’t… It’s going to happen again.”
“It might.” Dick said softly and Tim realised that Dick hated this just as much as he did. “But if it does, it’ll be okay. I’ll be there, even if you don’t know who I am.”
Tim woke up slowly, listening to Dick’s steady heartbeat. He didn’t remember falling asleep but that was only because it had happened so quickly, not because his stupid brain got rid of stupid memories. His name was Tim Drake and he was on the couch with Dick Grayson and he was recovering from a traumatic brain injury and he really had to pee.
He didn’t want to get up, realising that Dick was asleep, but he couldn’t very well stay here either. Dick only had two forms of sleeping, so lightly a pin drop on another continent would wake him or like the dead in which he was impossible to wake and which only happened when he felt truly safe, an unfortunately rare occasion.
As far as Tim knew, the latter only happened at Wayne Manor and even then it was only when everyone was safely at home and not about to rip each others throats out.
“Stop thinking so much Tim.” Dick rumbled.
Tim ducked his head.
He stayed there a little longer, enjoying the warmth, but then he really really had to go so he climbed off of the couch with a quick assurance that yet he was fine and yes he knew who he was and where he was and yes Dick, he would say if he had a headache.
They both knew he absolutely wouldn’t but it was the thought that counted. The headaches were near constant nowadays anyway, though alongside the amnesia episodes were the migraines which weren’t much fun either. Not for the first time he wondered just how long he was going to have these aftereffects from his injury, he refused to even accept that there was a risk it would be permanent.
It was just a simple head injury, they’d all gotten concussions before. This one was just sticking around a little longer than it should have and Tim was just going to have to put up with it until it went away.
He really needed it to go away. He couldn’t spend the rest of his life like this, being completely fine one moment and the next not knowing who he was or where he was or what the fuck was happening to him.
When Tim returned to the living room, he found that Jason was now on the couch, though not in Dick’s arms like Tim had been but instead stretched out and taking up as much room as he possibly could and Dick was totally faking his irritation.
“Drakey-Boy!” Jason boomed.
Jason was happy to see him which meant that Tim was immediately suspicious.
“What’s that look for?” Jason asked jovially, gesturing for him to join them on the couch.
Tim stayed standing and judging from Dick’s smile it was the right call and judging from Jason’s insistent tapping on the couch, it absolutely was the right call.
Tim made a show of sitting on the armchair instead, kicking his legs up and laughing when Jason gaped at him, whatever plan Jason utterly defeated. It felt nice to be here with his brothers because as annoying as they could be sometimes, they were his.