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There are four opportunities for Tim to escape. He takes none of them.
Tim actually spoke early. When he tracked down one of his old nannies, she told him that he would hold complete conversations in nonsensical baby-babble. He said “Mama” and “Dada” ahead of schedule and said his first real word—“bird”—at 11 months.
And then he stopped.
It was two years before Tim spoke again. At least, before he spoke with his mouth. When his nanny at the time realized that he wouldn’t be speaking verbally any time soon, she taught him basic signs, which he used constantly. That same nanny was fired, and Tim was forbidden from signing.
“It was a crutch,” his mother said, several years later, as she daintily raised her teacup to her lips. “You had to be set free.”
Eventually, Tim figured out how to force the words past his lips and his parents took him to a circus to celebrate and for a while, everything was good.
Until Tim started school and his parents realized that he was broken.
Tim wakes up to the feeling of cool metal pressed against his wrists and thinks Really? Did this have to happen today?
Quickly, he takes stock of the situation.
First, injury status: He’s pretty sure he has at least one bruised rib, going by the feeling in his chest. Thankfully, the pain is just there, not excruciating. There’s an ache in his temple from where his ambusher got in a lucky hit, but he doesn’t feel too disoriented. Maybe he’s concussed, maybe not, but he’s currently cognizant enough to fight.
Next, location: Even through his closed eyelids, Tim can see the bright, florescent lighting. He’s lying with his arms secured by his sides on something that feels kind of concrete. From the tight feel around his ankles, he guesses that those are secured somehow as well. He can’t feel the familiar weight of his cape around his shoulders, but he can feel the pressure of his Robin body armor.
Which means that even though whoever captured him didn’t just tie him to a chair with rope, they’re clearly an idiot. Or idiots. Hopefully, a singular idiot.
Because Tim is Robin, which means he has exactly twelve lockpicks hidden on his person, and he bets his kidnapper caught one of them. Two at most.
Okay, so kidnapper-wise, Tim seems to have hit the jackpot. Setting-wise…less so. There’s no way to cut through his bonds and Tim really doesn’t like not being able to move his limbs.
Carefully, he lets his eyes open just a crack. Immediately, the light hits his eyes and he winces. He grudgingly updates his status from “maybe concussed” to “likely concussed.” Tim’s lying on a raised table, and the floor just to his right seems to have a drain on it. Okay, deep breaths. Fairly typical mafia torture room, though the table’s a bit new.
The deep breaths don’t help at all, because Tim’s breathing isn’t the problem. It’s his brain, spiraling away about how he’s going to be tortured and he thinks he can handle that without giving anything up but that’s a bad thing because he really wants to just be weak and not be tortured but Robin has to—
I am myself, I am myself, I am myself. Tim’s brain’s breaker switch kicks in and repeats the meaningless phrase three times, banishing the other thoughts from his mind. When he finishes, his brain is mercifully clear.
Tim is not going to be tortured, not by whatever idiot kidnapped him and didn’t bother to remove his lockpicks. He begins shifting his body to get at one of the lockpicks he hid in his waistband. It’s still there—amateur. Tim twists his wrist up, inserts the lockpick into his right cuff, and begins to pick the lock. Meanwhile, he keeps his gaze on the far wall, where the large, metal door is.
Tim’s parents loved him, they did, but even Tim was aware that they weren’t too interested in actually parenting. In their defense, Tim was really not an easy kid to parent.
He didn’t play correctly, messing up the other kids’ games. When he wasn’t trying to play with the others and causing problems, he refused to play with them. Instead, he sat off in a corner lining up the toy figures he snuck in his backpack and pretending they were Gotham Rogues.
Tim didn’t eat correctly, either. He ate weird foods and refused other foods. And, as his nannies always shrieked at him, he couldn’t even make up his mind which foods he did and didn’t eat. Sometimes he loved eggs. Other times, eggs tasted too much like eggs. Tomato texture was fine only when paired with American cheese, but if he ate tomatoes alone or even with sliced cheddar, he gagged until he threw up. And Tim threw up a lot.
And it wasn’t like Tim was harmlessly strange either. He’d refuse to change activities at school. He’d have huge tantrums in the middle of galas, ruining his parents’ business deals. When someone tried to pinch his cheeks or pull him away when he wasn’t responding, he fought, and people got hurt.
Tim needed to be fixed. But his parents were too busy to do the fixing, so they decided that Tim was Someone Else’s Problem.
That Someone Else was the Institute.
Just as Tim almost finishes, he hears the doorknob rattling. He flinches, then palms the lockpick and closes his eyes, pretending to be unconscious. A moment later and the door scrapes open, heavy footsteps entering the room.
A pair of heavy footsteps clomps right over to him and someone shakes his shoulder. Tim’s eyes flicker open for just a moment, betraying him. “He’s awake,” the guy announces, and then slaps him in the face.
Ouch. Tim opens his eyes to glare, but lets his gaze flicker around the room. Three men, all wearing suits—probably mob related. The man who slapped him looks like a fairly typical enforcement-type guy, big and bulky and sporting a black eye. The second man, who tends slightly closer to Tim, is slimmer and his suit appears nicer—likely whoever’s supposed to be doing the talking. The man hovering near the back is carrying some sort of metal stick, about twice the length of Nightwing’s escrima sticks. He’s grinning, his eyes filled with a wild excitement that makes Tim’s stomach churn. It’s never a good thing when kidnappers look anything other than annoyed to be saddled with the “kidnap Robin” mission.
“Good morning,” Tim says. “How are you on this lovely morning. Evening? Afternoon? Midnight? Work with me here.” He’s blatantly fishing for information, but again. These seem to be idiots.
“Robin,” Talker says. His voice sounds surprisingly normal, like he’s having a conversation about the grade he got on a test. Normally the goons try to play it up a bit more, make themselves gruffer. “This can either be very easy or very hard.” He shrugs. “Your choice.”
It always is.
“Yeah, I’m gonna say ‘no thanks.’ I’ll be taking the nearest exit, located to your back. Do you guys have a gift shop or something?” It is a lame joke, but Tim is actually more than a little scared.
Okay, a lot scared. He’s been captured before as Robin and been beat up, but this feels different. Tim knows why it feels different. Lying down with his wrists and ankles restrained makes him vulnerable, weak. It brings back memories. And Tim would really rather not think about the Institute right now.
“You will tell us your name, Batman’s name, and Nightwing’s name. Then, we will let you go.” The men aren’t wearing masks—not that they really need them considering Tim’s deficiencies. But they don’t know that Tim would struggle to recognize them, so there’s clearly no way they’re actually planning to let Tim go.
“You realize that if you kill me, Batman won’t like that, right?”
Talker completely ignores him. “You have until a count of ten,” he says, gesturing for Stick to come closer. Stick happily obliges. “One. Two. Three.”
“If you let me go now, Batman won’t be too mad.” That’s probably true—Batman would be more mad at Tim for letting himself get captured by a bunch of idiots than he would be at the idiots. But Tim doesn’t know what Talker is going to do when he reaches ten and he doesn’t want to find out.
“Four. Five. Six.”
Tim’s heartrate picks up. He can feel it pulsating in his clenched-up fist with the lockpick—
The lockpick—
Shit, Tim’s been distracted, he hasn’t even tried to pick the lock with the men here yet, he’s off his game and he knows why, but it’s still unacceptable, and he needs to apologize, but mostly he needs to apologize to himself because Talker is still counting and—
“Ten.”
Tim’s heart jolts. He’s missed three numbers, missed whatever chance he had to bargain, to stop this—
Stick slams the metal rod into Tim’s stomach with a wicked smile. For a moment, Tim grunts in pain and thinks oh, okay, I can handle this, and then—
Pain shoots through Tim’s body, lighting his nerves on fire. He screams, arching his back and writhing, trying desperately to shake the electricity off in a sudden loss of rationality. White spots dance in his vision and Tim feels like his blood’s turned to bleach and is cleaning him out from the inside. The pain is everywhere. Tim slams his wrists against the cuffs in a desperate plea to distract himself, but it doesn’t stop. They don’t stop. Why won’t they stop?
The Institute for Autism Rehabilitation’s acronym, IAR, was pronounced “ear” by its staff. For some reason, this bothered Tim immensely. Every time someone said it, he felt like nails were scraping on a chalkboard inside his stomach. On his first day, he asked one of the teachers to stop saying “ear.” She refused. Tim learned that he’s not allowed to ask anything of anyone. This rule was surprisingly similar to his rules at home, but not to the rules at the schools he had attended.
The consequences, however, were not similar to the ones at home. Three hours after his arrival, Tim was fitted with a device that administers electric shocks. And the teachers used it for everything.
The Institute had a lot of rules. Break the rules, and you were punished. Shocked, or locked away, or refused food, or strapped to a board and shocked. Tim didn’t like to break the rules, but he kept breaking them accidentally. Flapping his hands. Staring into space. Not eating when no one had told him he was allowed to eat.
Once a punishment started, it collapsed down like dominoes. Shocked for flapping his hands. Shocked for moving (while being shocked). Shocked for screaming (because that was all he could do to stay still while being shocked). Shocked for being shocked for being shocked. It just kept going, only stopping when the teachers got bored.
Tim was pretty certain that the Institute was a Rogue plot, which meant he had a civic duty to escape and find Batman. And Tim was good at escaping. He was small and nimble. The computer systems that watched the “students” 24/7 ended up having very little cybersecurity. He knew how to pick locks. But most importantly, Tim knew how to watch and how to think.
He attempted to escape four times. Escapes 1 and 2 were unsuccessful. He left the premises on Escape 1, but was picked back up before he could get away to Gotham Proper. On Escape 2, he didn’t even make it past the fence because the girl he was planning to help out snitched on him. Tim didn’t blame her. Maybe he did at first, but he couldn’t over the course of the next week when he was strapped down and unable to move and thinking that he would do anything to not be hurt.
Escape 3 was successful, in that he got away. Tim timed it perfectly so it coincided with when his parents were home. He reached his house and rang the doorbell. He sobbed into his mother’s chest. He gave them a detailed list of what was being done to him.
They told him he was lying and brought him back. The Institute was a school and it had excellent reviews.
On Escape 4, Tim didn’t bother with his parents. He plotted out Batman’s patrol routes and then met him on top of a rooftop. Only, Batman wasn’t there. So, Tim left a message for Batman on top of the church tower where he ended his Friday night patrols (which took him hours) and the police station. That second place was where he was caught, identified, and then sent back to the Institute.
Tim inhales a sharp, stuttering breath. It doesn’t give him much oxygen, so he breathes again, gasping for air. That’s when he realizes that the mind-numbing agony is fading into pain. Normal pain, and that Tim can deal with. He clenches his fists, grounding himself there and focusing on that feeling. Opening his eyes (Tim hadn’t even realized they were closed), Tim sees two men standing over him. What did he call them again? Talker and Rat? The guy with the stick looks kind of rattish to him.
Tim’s thoughts are spinning.
“What are the names?” Talker asks calmly.
And for a brief instant, Tim does consider saying something. But then the remnants of the electric shock are joined by a crushing sensation of guilt for even thinking about it. It’s been—a minute? If even. Revealing Batman and Nightwing’s identities would doom them and so many others. And what, because Tim’s feeling a little pain? (A lot of pain, a lot of pain, he can’t—) Tim has to get out of this. Pick the locks on his cuffs, steal the stick, escape. Grab another lockpick during the next bout of shocks and then use them to injure Rat, steal the stick, and escape. He reorients the lockpick.
Apparently, though, he’s taking too long to answer, because the stick slams into his stomach again and the whiteout returns. Tim screams, frozen as the current races through his body, tearing away at his thoughts. It hurts so much that Tim can’t even call it hurt, can’t label it as hurt, because all concept of pain is just—gone. There’s only this.
Again, Tim’s body realizes he’s free before his mind does. He breathes again, choking on the air. His body is trembling and he can’t control it, he’s out of control. If he’s out of control he’s going to get shocked again and he needs to not get shocked again.
No. That’s not what’s happening. Tim isn’t Tim Drake, isn’t Timothy—he’s Robin. The bad guys want information from Robin. Robin isn’t going to tell them that information.
“What are the civilian identities of Robin, Batman, and Nightwing?” Tim bites his lip. The salty taste of blood is grounding, helping distract him from the aftereffects of the electricity. “It isn’t causing us any trouble to wait. But this man here isn’t going to get tired. Tell us the names, kid, and you walk.”
Tim focuses his energies on dissecting that messed-up speech. Listing Robin as a separate entity from Tim. “This man here,” to separate Talker from his torturer. “Kid” to sound friendly while emphasizing Tim’s vulnerability. A reminder of what he has to gain. But Talker’s so clumsy it’s laughable. Tim would feel worse about giving up someone else’s identity—at least this way, if he cracks, he’ll be getting his just desserts and suffering too. And Talker’s not going to induce any form of Stockholm syndrome in him in the short amount of time it’ll take for Batman to find Tim. So, really—
“Or we can do this the hard way.”
How long will it take Batman to get here? How much can Tim stand?
One more round, and he’ll give them a false name to see what they’ll do with it. But—no, what if he chooses a name that has an actual plausible Robin attached to it? Some other kid and his family would get hurt and it would be Tim’s fault. And Tim can’t do that, can’t be Bad, thought that being Bad was trained out of him, and—
Tim screams before it even starts this time. But that can’t ward it off and the pain still crashes into him, blinding sparks dancing in his eyes. He can hear the electricity buzzing through him, vibrating in his ears. It feels like his atoms are colliding and collapsing into one another. He’s burning up into everything, because nothing would be quiet but this is so so so loud. Everything is tilting and Tim’s eyes are jammed shut and there are tears leaking down his face. Tim wants it to stop, he wants it to stop, he wants it to stop, he knows how to make it stop.
Batman didn’t come. Days turned into weeks into a month. Tim failed.
Or, maybe Tim didn’t fail. Maybe Batman knew but didn’t care. Maybe he, like Tim’s parents, thought that the Institute was necessary. Maybe he didn’t want any broken children in his Gotham.
So Tim stopped trying to escape. He kept breaking the rules—there were so many of them and it was so hard to control himself at all times—but he learned how to be Good and not make the punishments worse. Shocked for screaming, so he didn’t scream. Shocked for flinching, so he hid his flinches. Shocked for flapping his hands, so Tim did his best to become a statue.
In the end, the Institute was shut down through the actions of Bruce Wayne. Tim went home.
And Tim was better, after. He didn’t get in trouble at school—in fact, he skipped two grades. He didn’t argue with his parents. He made it through galas.
Tim was better. But he thinks he hurt less before he was fixed.
Tim bites down on is tongue, making a strangled shriek and then going quiet. He holds himself impossibly rigid, wrists and ankles pressed up against the cuffs of the board. Quiet and still and it still isn’t stopping.
Multiply out (x+3) times (x – 1). X^2. And then 3x and then—Tim makes a choked gasp, but he’s being Good, he has to be quiet—and then—and then -x and that makes—Tim strains against his bonds, jamming the lockpick in one final time—2x and then -3 and 1 or no 3 times -1 that’s -3 so it’s—the lock clicks open and Tim could push the handcuff off right now, he could escape—x^2 plus 2x minus 3.
It stops and Tim almost sobs in relief before catching the sound in his throat. He just breathes. Breathes, breathes, breathes.
Air is good, he thinks deliriously, and almost laughs, because in that moment it feels like a very funny joke. Some Internet meme or something. Air is good. Air is good. Air is good. The repetition leaves his brain mercifully blank. He notices the unlocked cuff on his right wrist. The teachers must be getting sloppy.
Should Tim point it out so they can correct it? No, they don’t like him correcting them. But if he doesn’t say anything, then they might think it’s his fault and—
Fear jolts through him, a pure shock more painful than the electricity pumping through his body. He’s holding a lockpick. Tim is holding a lockpick. He had decided, he’d decided that he’d learned, that he was done trying to escape. And here he is, holding a lockpick. Numbly, he unfurls his hand. They must know. They must know and that’s why it wasn’t stopping when he went quiet.
Tim won’t try again, but he did try again. “I’m sorry,” he whispers. “Please, I’m sorry. Pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease!”
And then Tim is lost again.
Tim is lost again.
Tim is lost.
Tim is
He just wants it to stop but he’s silent and someone’s asking “what the fuck is wrong with this fucking kid” and it hurts so much—
The agony recedes. Someone says something but Tim doesn’t hear them. Tim keeps his mouth shut—he needs to be quiet, needs to—
Again.
Again.
Again.
The electricity fades away again and Tim breathes and he tries to make his limbs loose because maybe it’s not just the screaming, it’s the reaction, any reaction at all, and Tim is trying but he doesn’t know how he can just not react at all when it hurtshurtshurts but—
I am myself, I am myself, I am myself. Tim’s still spiraling. Cucumber ice, cucumber ice, cucumber ice. I am myself, I am myself, I am myself.
Tim becomes aware that he’s rocking back and forth. That’s not allowed. That’s not Good. But—
How is he rocking back and forth if he’s on the board and the electricity is searing through him and he can’t move and—
I am myself, I am myself, I am myself.
And mercifully, Tim’s thoughts suppress themselves under the weight of the repetition. He breathes. He breathes.
Breathing is good, he thinks and makes a small, choked chuckle.
Something presses on Tim’s shoulder. No—he doesn’t want to go back! No!
But he can’t say that, he’s not allowed to say that. So, he lets himself flop over.
Arms wrap around him, but they don’t pick him up to strap him down again. Instead, they wrap around him in a parody of a comforting hug. A parody—
But then why does this feel so safe?
Someone is talking, but they’re not saying mean words. His voice is soft and saying the same, wonderful, false things on repeat. “…you’re safe, it’s okay, you’re safe now, it’s okay. You in there? Can you hear me? You’re safe now. You’re okay. You need to breathe. Just breathe.”
That’s not the problem. Tim is breathing. He’s just trapped.
“I am breathing,” he whisper-snaps. Whispers? Snaps. Definitely snaps.
“Okay! Okay. Can you match my breathing though, Robin?”
Robin. Tim is Robin. Which means that this isn’t the Institute and the voice is Nightwing and the sounds outside aren’t Tim’s mind messing with him, they’re Batman punching someone.
Fuck.
Tim looks up and lets his surroundings slowly register. The table, the restraints, the drain. Nightwing. And, now, Batman, who’s just entered the cell.
Tim’s breath hitches.
“Robin, just follow my—”
“I’m breathing fine!” Tim says. He has to get off the ground, has to get to his feet, somewhere he can fight. He needs to escape.
But he had his chances to escape and, like an idiot, he ignored them. So, reluctantly, he turns to Batman.
“Robin?” Batman asks. The growl is gone from his voice, but Tim is pretty sure he’s angry.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers. (“Speak up, Timothy!”) “I’m sorry,” he says again, clearer this time. “I was ambushed on patrol. They got me in the temple. Woke up here.” No, unclear. Who woke up? “I woke up here. There was…at least three people involved. Were at least three people involved. There were at least three people involved, sorry. Though I suspect mafia connections. They wanted our identities.” He looks up at Batman, widening his eyes. Tim doesn’t know if that conveys his desperation, or if Batman even cares, but he tries it anyway. “I didn’t tell them anything!” He thinks. The pain stopped, near the end. That was probably Batman and Nightwing arriving, but Tim can’t be sure.
No. He didn’t tell them anything. He had forgotten where he was, thought he was back at the Institute. Tim wouldn’t have been screaming about Batman’s identity—he hadn’t even known it at the time.
“Can you stand?” Nightwing asks, voice soft.
Tim thinks so. But first, he has to tell Batman something. “I failed,” he admits. “There were—” He counts them in his head. Grab the stick as a weapon and hold Rat hostage. Use lockpicks as a weapon and hold Rat hostage. Lie as a delaying tactic and then unlock his other restraints. Use the taser hidden in his body armor. The Robin suit is an arsenal and Robin is an escape artist. Tim is fairly certain that if he hadn’t been drowning in his own thoughts, he would’ve been able to pull all of them off. “There were at least four ways I could’ve escaped.” (More.) “I couldn’t focus and I failed.”
He looks down at the cement floors. At least there’s no blood there. At least he still has all of his fingers. At least there’s probably no permanent damage. This could have been a lot worse. Tim should’ve been able to handle a few shocks, he knows he can handle a few shocks. (That’s the problem though.)
“I unlocked my right cuff.”
“Yeah,” Nightwing says encouragingly. “You did. Good job, Robin.”
Tim shakes his head violently. “I unlocked my cuff and I didn’t do anything. I’m sorry.”
“We’ll review your training on similar scenarios,” Batman says gruffly.
Tim nods. He really, really doesn’t want to do that, but he knows he needs to. Especially if Batman thinks so.
“C’mon,” Nightwing says. “Lean on me. We’re gonna get you outta here.”
Tim wants to walk on his own. He wants to take a moment to rest. He wants to close his eyes. But he really doesn’t want to argue with Nightwing, so he struggles to his feet, leans on Dick’s shoulder, and limps out into Gotham’s smoggy air.