Chapter Text
Tim is sitting at the kitchen table reading The Secret Garden (which he’d had to start over—getting three years older in between chapters isn’t exactly an ideal reading experience) when Damian comes in to empty his lunchbox after school the next morning. He waves, and Damian nods back.
“How was school?”
“Uneventful. How was patrol?”
“Uneventful.” Tim parrots back, smiling. “Bruce is never gonna let me near anything big while I’m the wrong age, but it was good to be out there.”
“I see.”
It’s weird to think that the Tim he is now will be gone so quickly, but he’s kind of looking forward to being older again, so he can patrol every night if he wants to. And so he can do whatever it is he normally does besides sit around all day, because he’s starting to run out of things to do.
It’s a problem he’s always had, spending as much time alone as he does, but usually he has more options. At home he’d play video games, plan outings into the city at night to take photos, edit a previous night’s photos, or do research on his laptop, or homework, or whatever else. Here, he’s not quite sure what to do.
Actually… if he’s Robin now, and Red Robin in the future, it’s probably been a while since he’s taken any Bat pictures, right? He’s got insider knowledge of patrol routes now, and way better roof-running and stealth skills. He’ll have to sneak into his older self’s room to find his camera and hope he can figure out how to use a camera from the future, but now he has plans tonight.
~~~
He can tell not all of his things are here at the manor when he opens the door to his room. As he looks around the room, he wonders if he still lives in his parents’ house, or if he has his own place. The bed is neatly made (obviously by Alfred) so he can’t tell when it was last used, and the clothes in the closet and dresser span a range of seasons and occasions. There’s a skateboard under the desk, a Warlocks and Warriors book on top of it, and a nice pair of headphones on the nightstand.
And on the dresser, his goal: a camera bag. He sits down on the floor to unzip it and take a look at the camera inside. It’s not his old one, but it’s not too different. He plays with the settings, taking a few shots of random objects in the room to familiarize himself with everything until he thinks he can quickly adjust each setting as needed in the field at night. The bag is a dark gray, newer than his old one, but still compact enough to fit in a small backpack for the trip out into the city.
He goes through his older self’s room for supplies, putting everything together in the most nondescript bag he can find (a brown sling backpack that had been under the bed). This is going to be fun.
~~~
Tim slips out of the house after Bruce and Damian have left for patrol. He’s wearing the plainest and darkest of the clothes he has in his current sizes, though they’re not as good as his old nighttime wardrobe (he used to have well-worn clothes in dark colors that would help him blend into shadows and look like he isn’t worth mugging). He’d found a wallet in his older self’s room with a little bit of cash in it, so he can pay for the bus into town and back. Thankfully the Gotham bus system hasn’t eliminated cash fare in the years he doesn’t remember.
He has a comm in his ear just in case, but it’s turned off for now. There’s a plain domino hidden in his backpack, too. No one can say Tim doesn’t come prepared. He gets off the bus in the east side and slinks into an alley to climb up a fire escape, just like old times. Dad and Dami will be passing through here, and he’ll be waiting for the perfect picture.
It’s early enough in the night that he can estimate their timing even without listening to their progress on comms, and sure enough, they stop on a rooftop across the street, diagonally adjacent to his. Bruce perches on the corner like a gargoyle, surveying the streets below. Damian crouches in his shadow, the black of his cape covering the lighter colors of his suit so that he blends in. Tim snaps a picture, knowing he has a similar one of Bruce and Jason from years ago. Batman and Robin are like a constant, even when the role changes hands. Each of them passes things on to the next. Was he ever like this too when it was him at Batman’s side? He only remembers the awkward beginning, trying to find his footing when he isn’t wanted.
When Bruce and Damian have moved on, Tim slips back down the fire escape and starts moving on to the next photo opportunity. In the old days, he was never guaranteed to get even one picture of his heroes, but tonight he’ll get plenty.
He’s slower than them traveling solely on foot, whether by rooftops or on the ground, but he doesn’t have to follow them directly. He lies in wait at a couple of spots with decent enough lighting and gets a few good shots: the two of them flying, Damian consoling the victim of an attempted mugging, and Bruce silhouetted against the light of an office building’s window.
Eventually he has to stop to decide where to go next. He wants a good action shot. Normally he’d be keeping up with the news of who’s in or out of Arkham or Blackgate, and using his phone to track Batman sightings. It’s too easy to miss any good fights if he just trails along behind. Maybe he can cheat a little, he decides as he switches on his comm to listen in a bit.
It beeps to indicate that he’s connected, though he’s muted his mic. Babs will see him linked in, but he’s pretty sure she’ll understand what he’s doing and agree not to snitch. She didn’t tell anyone about him snooping on the Batcomputer, after all. He’s definitely not expecting to be addressed directly on a private line as soon as he connects.
“Red Robin.” Alfred’s tone suggests he’s been waiting for Tim to turn the comm on. “Might I ask what you’re doing out in the city at this time of night? As a civilian, no less?”
Despite the phrasing, it’s not a request. He’s lucky Alfred hasn’t already told Bruce or sent someone to retrieve him.
“Just taking pictures.” He says sheepishly, unused to having an adult notice he’s not in bed at night. “I’ll come home, sorry. I just thought it might be nice to have some pictures of Batman and the current Robin.”
“Hm. Provided you keep your comm on and return by two, I suppose I could allow it. I do say a hobby does a young man good, after all.”
“Really?”
“I expect check-ins with me and a call on the main line the instant you believe yourself to be in any danger.” Alfred warns, but he’s not making him go home, so it’s still a win.
“You’re the best, A.”
“I’m aware.”
~~~
After switching to listen in on the main channel, Tim had found his way to some really good pictures before heading in for the night to keep to Alfred’s curfew. Alfred had scolded him for sneaking out and extracted a promise not to do it again (at least until he’s back to his normal age) before sending him off to bed.
In the morning he helps himself to his older self’s laptop and spends a little while guessing the password before putting the camera’s SD card in and going through his photos from the night. He picks out the best ones to edit and print out (his older self even has a nice printer in his room here!). He doesn’t know where his secret album is, if it’s even here at the manor at all, but now he has enough pictures for a few pages of Damian’s Robin era, even if his older self doesn’t have any at all.
Now that he actually has people around (and they already know the secret), it might be nice to share his photos. He’s not about to tell Dad he snuck out (adult Tim can deal with that one), but Alfred already knows. Maybe Alfred would like to see them, he thinks as he gathers them up to bring downstairs.
He’s a little nervous to show anyone his photos, but Alfred would be nice even if he thought they sucked, and older Tim’s probably showed them off before anyway, so he can share these.
Alfred’s in the laundry room taking a load of clothes out of the dryer. Tim sets his photos down on top of the washing machine and helps to sort the clothes by owner and fold the ones in his own pile that belong in the dresser.
“Thank you.” Alfred lays a warm hand on his shoulder when he adds the last shirt to Dick’s pile, surprising him a little. Even though he remembers the casual affection from the past few weeks of being younger, the memory of feeling alone at home and unwanted at the manor at his current age is more recent in his mind.
“Can I show you the pictures I took last night?” He asks, picking up the stack as he circles back to his original reason for coming down here to avoid feeling awkward about his reaction. “So you can see it was worth letting me stay out.”
“Of course.” Alfred accepts the photos and begins to look through them, giving each one due consideration. “I doubt you remember at the moment, but I’ve always said you have an eye for this.”
“Thanks.” Tim ducks his head a little at the praise as he accepts the stack of prints back from Alfred.
“You might consider sharing them with Damian as well. I don’t believe you’ve photographed him before.” Alfred suggests.
“You think he’d like them?”
“I do.”
Tim nods. He’ll ask if Damian wants to see them when he gets home from school.
~~~~~
Damian has left the sign on his door displaying the “You May Knock” side when he comes home from school, so it isn’t very surprising when someone does knock while he’s reading.
“Come in.” He calls out, and Timothy opens the door with something in his hands.
“If I did something I technically wasn’t supposed to do, would you tell on me?” He asks, apropos of nothing. Damian considers it.
“…Is keeping whatever this is a secret going to impact me at all?” He doesn’t want to get involved in anything that’s going to turn out to be trouble.
“No. Plus Alfred already knows, and he’s not going to tell anyone.”
“Fine, I won’t tell. Now what is it?” If Pennyworth has agreed to keep quiet, it can’t be anything too terrible. He marks his page and sets his book aside.
“I don’t know if I’ve told you about it before, but I used to take pictures of Batman and Robin out in Gotham before I became Robin. And I was thinking yesterday that since I’ve been Robin and then Red Robin for so long now, that I probably hadn’t taken any pictures for a while, so—“
“Impossible. I’d have noticed you following us.” There’s no way a barely-trained twelve-year-old could stalk him closely enough for photos, even if he may remember parts of his future training. Timothy, raised with different manners than Damian himself, tries not to look smug—and fails.
“I can prove it. That’s actually why I’m telling you about it, I wanted to show you these.” He holds out whatever he’s brought with him. When Damian accepts them, he finds they’re photos of himself and Father from last night, just as Timothy had said.
A strong part of him is displeased that he’d been so unaware of a tail on patrol—he’s better trained than that—but another part is fascinated by the way Timothy has captured him.
Media coverage and internet gossip hadn’t been very positive towards him at first. It’s not that he cares what the public thinks of him personally, necessarily, but Robin needs to be trusted in order to help people. The appearance of a new, more heavily armed Robin with what Damian will admit was initially a bit of an… attitude problem had earned some criticism. Even though he’s earned that trust by now, he’s still a different sort of Robin than the others. But here, in Timothy’s pictures, he looks like… like the way Richard talks about being Robin. Like magic, a light in the darkness.
“May I have copies of these?” He asks.
“You can keep those, I’ll just print more for my album.” Timothy looks pleased to have been asked.
“How long have you been doing this?” He nods at the photos.
“Since Jason was Robin. Or, I guess maybe just when Jason was Robin? Since I obviously wasn’t taking pictures of myself like this, and older me is probably too busy for photography now.”
“Hm.”
“I’d show you the album if I knew where it was, but I’m not sure it’s here.”
“You do have an apartment in the city.” Damian tells him, though he’s never been (and isn’t sure exactly where it is). The two of them hadn’t been friendly enough before all this for him to have been invited. The idea bothers him now that he’s been getting to know Timothy. Will he be welcome there when the magic finally wears off and Timothy returns to his normal age?