metalogs | i see myself in the mirror, myself in the mirror is all I see (closed)

Entry tags:

i see myself in the mirror, myself in the mirror is all I see (closed)

Who: Tim Drake

mostdangerousbird plus bonus Kon-El (

lowercase_el)
What: Tim approaches Tim. Two Tims for the price of one.
When: a few days into April
Where: Central City
Content Warnings: references to Jack and Janet Drake's horrible parenting, mention of homophobia

The first few days, Tim mostly spends information-gathering. This universe doesn't seem to be under an active Reach invasion, so it has that going for it, and limited amounts of other things. What really catches his attention and holds onto it is the evidence of other Bats here - and not just other Bats, another him. There's another Tim Drake on this Earth, and aside from one baffling OurPowers post, he seems to be older than Tim is. (There's also... other things... that Tim finds in his search, things that happened to the Robin that seems right for being the other Tim Drake, things that he's going to quietly fold up and tuck away in the back of his mind and not think about for now except for what's absolutely needed.)

It's not impossible or even incredibly difficult to figure out that the older Tim Drake works at the Descendent, which means the right people are probably supposed to be able to figure it out. And after those first few days of holing up and keeping away from anyone, Tim suits up - not in the Robin suit, because approaching this other self in the Robin suit would feel too much like he's approaching him to claim the identity. He puts on the kind of clothes he used to wear while following Batman and Robin around with his camera instead - dark, comfortable clothes, easy to maneuver and blend into the shadows in.

Following the other Tim as he leaves the Descendant quickly turns into a game of I know you know I know, and it's pretty easy to recognize when the other Tim makes a detour intended for confronting his tail. Since letting his older self know that he's here is the point of tailing him in the first place, Tim willingly follows him in.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It’s late.

Not so late in cape terms, but Tim closed tonight, and last call is 2 AM. So his walk home should be pretty quiet. There’s always a few people - late night partiers dragging themselves home, people gathered on street corners that he marks for later but detours around. Sometimes, he’ll see someone sleeping rough and note them, too, to try to come back and give them a list of services.

By and large, he’s never had a problem. He keeps his head down and up at the same time, and most of the people who live in “bad” neighborhoods just can’t afford to live somewhere else.

But… sometimes, he gets that feeling. That someone’s watching him a little too closely.

He’s usually already watching them.

This is different, though. There’s the faintest footsteps. Sometimes. He can’t always hear it, but it’s enough to make him stoop to pick up a can that missed a trash can, get a subtle glance back. If there’s anyone besides his paranoia, they’re directly on his six.

That’s why he ducked down the alley. He knows this one well - three blocks from home, blind, fire escape but the windows have sheets and flags for curtains. Can’t be drawn. It’s a good shortcut up over the rooftops if he ever needs it. And he might.

He’s armed - he always carries weapons at the bar. Some of the Descendants clientele are… interesting. If anyone is behind him, he’d rather not be seen defending himself in street clothes.

The alley is darker than the street, but Tim can make out a dark silhouette coming into the alley, backlight by the street lights. Must be a runner for the local corner boys - Jason will be pissed that someone’s recruiting this young. “Out kinda late, aren’t you?”

"I've never been great at sleeping through the night," Tim admits, a touch rueful. There's no voice distortion or anything - again, that would defeat the point of coming to see his older self. He has his hands tucked away in his jacket pockets, and yeah, there's an unextended bo staff in one of those pockets in case a little sparring happens, but his posture is relaxed and not threatening. "I feel like that's probably a constant?"

He shrugs up a shoulder. Anyway. "Hi, um, Tim. That feels kind of weird to say."

The light may make it hard to distinguish the person, but the voice is a dead giveaway. Maybe a little younger sounding, but that’s either another Tim Drake or a very convincing mimic.

“No, you haven’t been. There’s a mutation of the DEC2 gene that causes people to feel well-rested with less sleep, but they don’t test for it.” Tim moves back towards the mouth of the alley for a better look, but doesn’t come within conversational distance. If he wasn’t aware of less than savory versions of himself and Bruce, he wouldn’t be so cautious.

The height, the shorter hair. He can’t be more than 15. “It’s weird to hear, if it makes you feel better. Hello, Tim.”

If anyone else knew there was another Tim Drake, they’d be blowing up his phone. That doesn’t mean his younger self is fresh off a Confluence. “How long have you been here?”

“A few days. Did a little research before approaching anyone.” Enough to be convinced it would be reasonably safe as well as help him figure out how to handle the issue of another, already-established, better Tim Drake already being here. (Staying at the Diadem hasn’t felt ideal in the meantime, but given his only money source is presumably just as monitored as the Diadem is, he’s accepted it as the most reasonable option for now. If it’s bugged anyway, the bugs are very well hidden.)

Obviously, he’s probably been stalking them and built up up a memorized dossier.

He looks clean enough, so it either hasn’t been that long or he has a place to stay. Whether or not it’s the Diadem remains to be seen.

“And you approached me first.”

That says … something that Tim doesn’t want to spin out on the fly. He himself wouldn’t go to another Tim first, not with the option of Dick Grayson. No offense to the others, but Dick is the safe bet. “We both have questions. There’s a 24-hour diner a block west that’s almost clean. Ask me what you have to here for you to go there. We’ll do the personal stuff there, and I can get something to eat. Follow-ups can wait until morning.”

"How long have you been Robin?"

Maybe it's not a have to for him to trust this Tim enough to go to a diner, but he wants to know. He wants to know how much time this Tim Drake has on him, how much older and more experienced. Tim's still pretty young as Robin, comparatively speaking, and Dick's only just started trusting him leading teams back home. If this Tim said butt out, Robin's his thing, then - it'd hurt, and it wouldn't necessarily mean he'd stay off the streets entirely (but there's no Batman here anyway and that was the point of being Robin, right?), but - he would, probably. Or he'd try, anyway.

Overlapping sets of memories make it hard to parse out when he was Robin and when he was Red Robin, but the overall time is consistent. Tim’s answer is prompt. “Five years at home, with some time going by Red Robin. Nearly six, if we’re counting the time in this universe. I’m 19.”

Drake is not a code name up for discussion. “What about you?”

Edited 2023-04-03 01:54 (UTC)

“A couple years. Less if we don’t count training.” Though the Robin name was pretty much his during that time, and he was allowed to help in limited amounts before he actually went out in the suit.

Both of them would probably rather get a read on the other before answering any questions about whether it’s okay if there’s two Robins around, so he holds onto that for now.

“It counts. Everything from the minute you introduced yourself to Alfred counts.” That works as both a figurative and literal sense of timing when one becomes a Robin.

And that would make him fourteen or fifteen, depending on how precise he’s being.

Maybe it’s because he’s thinking of Alfred, caring and resolute and welcoming, but Tim is not going to make this acceptance as difficult as Bruce once did. “What else do you need?”

Tim needs nothing immediate. He’s familiar with the multiverse and confident that, if he’s judged badly, he will survive an attack from his younger self.

"The Reach - did you have them on your Earth?" he asks, because, well - he can't not, can he? This Tim might be from another universe, but it's a chance to ask about, maybe, some possibility of how this invasion ends. Not that he can do anything with the information here, but he can't just pretend it wasn't happening just a few days ago from his perspective, either.

“The Reach?” Tim has to really think on that one. There’s something about it -

“I might’ve read something about in the JLI files. You could ask GL, if you want to be sure.” From how he knows Jason, he’s likely from the same universe. “Speaking of friends, I need to send a text to my roommate if you agree.”

Offering permission to reassure him that nothing untoward is happening. Tim holds up his phone and shows the contact and then the message Grabbing a bite on the way home with a friend from work.

It's a relief, at least, that the other Tim has to think about it. That it sounds familiar, but his Earth isn't overrun. Maybe there's something useful in that, maybe there isn't, but it's nice to hear, at least.

Anyway. There's no particular coded message in the text that he notices, not that he's sure he would care if there was. He's not necessarily trying to make the other Tim keep this a secret, although he'd like semi-privacy to start with. That said: "Is that Conner?"

“Oh, good, you’ve met him already. He’s from my universe, but he’s using -“ Tim sighs so hard, and his eyes nearly roll out of their damn sockets. “Bolt Diesel as his name here to make me suffer.”

And to keep his current, unregistered vigilantism as Guardian far away from the House of El and the name Kent. ”You’ll find a number of familiar faces if you dig, but I think you know that already.”

Tim sends the text, and palms the phone.

"That sounds like a made-up name? That sounds like a name a character made up in a movie by picking out things they could see in their immediate vicinity," Tim says, sounding genuinely bewildered.

That's not... really the kind of thing Conner would do, on his Earth. It's not really the kind of joke he and Conner would have. He and Conner don't even have jokes. They don't even spend all that much time together?

“You can’t win that argument when Diesel, or Dießl if you want to be accurate, is a German surname.”

As much as he hates it? Tim’s also fond of it. That Kon can still dig deep and surprise Tim with the hair pulling chaos that used to fill his weekends. It’s charming and stupid.

(Mostly stupid.)

(Mostly charming.)

“As for Bolt, people name their kids random words all the time. Griffin. Chase. Flint. Why should Bolt be any different?”

"But it still sounds fake?" Tim points out, even more bewildered that this is even a conversation that they're having. "It's still not a great alias if it sounds like an alias, unless it's supposed to sound like an alias."

“I’ve been told Alvin Draper sounds fake, and, to be fair, our surname is Drake. It’s more common than Diesel, but it’s still a name that’s also an emoji. And this isn’t important enough to stay out in the cold.”

Tim claps his right hand on his younger self’s right shoulder, arm across his back, and uses the contact as a misdirect to cover the way he angles his left hand. The phone is still in his palm, with his hand curled just so to keep his skin off the screen and one finger crooked between palm and screen.

He steers Tim towards the street. “Let’s get something to eat, and you can tell me my friends are dumber than your friends.”

It's not that he freezes up or anything, at the hand on his shoulder. He just - stiffens, because while he's gotten used to some bats (Dick) initiating unnecessary contact, it was unexpected from... himself. Which is, in itself, distracting enough to keep Tim from noticing what the other Tim's doing with his phone.

" - Okay," he says after a beat, having lost that open, I am not a threat posture he was maintaining earlier in the conversation to the tense set in his shoulders.

That was a reaction. Shit, Tim doesn’t clench like that unless something is heavily weighing on him And the touch is too much to process.

He wasn’t smiling, but he’s careful to not let his face fall in any way. What was happening when he was fifteen…

Any number of things, and a lot weren’t great. Tim took everything to heart too. Can’t let it seem like he’s disappointed- even if he isn’t, this is about setting an impression.

He drops his arm now that they’re facing the right direction and starts waking slowly to see if Tim follows along. “Quick cover for the server chatter: brothers. You’re Tim, I’m TJ. Just flew in from Jersey - Newark, no Gotham here - on a red eye, getting chow before going home to bed.”

Tim's pretty quick to regather himself once the contact is removed. That wasn't a big deal, he was just - startled, because he wouldn't have put his arm over another Tim like that so he didn't expect it, but now it's over and he knows not to expect exactly the same kind of physical instincts as he has from this Tim.

"Okay. I can work with that. You've been to this place before?"

Okay, he’s fine.

(Fine enough to pull it together and fine enough to barely have slipped it all is high-level fine. Tim can respect that.)

“Rarely and only for takeout, and I give my last name when they ask for the order. They don’t know me.” There’s no chance of a waitress remembering details and calling them out on the flimsy story, nor will they have to remember tonight for future performances.

They do think alike though. That is going to be disconcerting. Tim asks questions that Tim already has internally answered for. He doesn’t know if he likes or dislikes the idea that that might hold true beyond this initial conversation.

(There’s a finite number of options, being Tims, that they will both want to cover as far as how do we handle being the same person and how are we different and who is responsible for your feed and care.)

Tim holds the door open for his younger self.

"Okay."

That is, in fact, exactly what Tim was fishing for when he asked the question. He should've figured someone with the name Tim Drake wouldn't have overlooked the possibility of a slip-up that obvious.

As they pass through the door, there's another shift in his body language. There's been no sign of him being tired throughout this conversation, but Tim Drake, Little Brother, was on a red-eye flight, so just to keep things consistent for the servers, there's more than a touch of exhaustion in the way he holds himself now and lets the older Tim take the lead on getting them a place to sit.

An unexpected consequence of seeing his alternate self slip into a disguise, even a simple one, is apparently pride. The kid’s good, which means Tim’s good. Tim doesn’t need to reach so much - he’s older, so this isn’t unfathomably late for him to be out. He acts like someone who’s been up since 9 and worked a full shift, because that’s what he did.

The diner hasn’t been updated since the 80s. The mauve sign says please be seated, because there’s no wait at this hour. “Let’s grab a booth.”

And he heads to the far corner with a weak wave at the waitress. Tim slides into the side that has a view of the entrance. Both sides have a side view of emergency exit.

The menus are in a rack by the salt and pepper shakers. “Get whatever you want, but remember it’s a diner.”

The fancy stuff will only disappoint. “It’s weird, right? Being here after Jersey?”

Setting up the opening. “It was cool seeing how everyone’s doing.”

The other Tim choosing seats first means that Tim's in the least favorable place as far as having a visual on the diner goes, but the uncomfortable truth is that sometimes you have to sit down and trust that your alternate self will alert you if something happens. (Also, he might be surreptitiously glancing around for a reflection angle on what's behind him, just in case.)

"Yeah. It would've been cooler if Mom and Dad had actually showed," he says, working under the assumption that the older Tim is fishing for information on family and starting with the most obvious: his parents are around, but not around, as usual.

Oh. Oh, it’s Tim’s turn to glitch. Tim says it like they could’ve showed, and the math doesn’t compute. Cannot divide by zero. Maybe his dad, but not his mom. Dana was okay, but she was never Mom.

If this Tim was a little younger, if he hadn’t spent so long as Robin. Maybe. It’s certainly true that they might not have showed up for an event. Not a lowercase e event for Tim.

(Sometimes not even an Event, like Christmas.)

“And that’s what boarding school is for,” Tim says with as much joking brightness as he can manage. They’re not here to tread on sore spots.

He asks for a black coffee and a burger when the waitress swings buy for their order. As she leaves, he continues. “So you got more time to hang out with your friends? Was it Dad of War or tabletop?”

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject