If Tim just… never met Dick Grayson that day
Imagine a Tim Drake, who never visited Haley’s circus on his third birthday with his parents. A Tim Drake who didn’t witness the horrifying deaths of the Graysons as victims’ child screams over their dead bodies. Who didn’t take a picture with them just an hour or so before to commemorate the occasion. Only because his parents had missed the day due to an emergency board meeting that his parents needed to attend and couldn’t come in time.
Imagine a Tim Drake who didn’t cope with his infant trauma by obsessing over the Bat and later Robin. A Tim Drake who didn’t care all that much about the Dark Knight and bundle of anger and joy that Robin was. At least, not beyond the superficial interest.
Now imagine Tim Drake who was starved for the warmth of his parents because all they do is business and meetings and job and whatever else they do. Tim knows a bit of their schedules, if only because Jack and Janet feel so horrible leaving their beloved son alone and had decided to make their schedules available for him to look at. Janet at a press conference held somewhere in California for the new medical advancement they made, Jack at a Board meeting in the Drake Industries HQ… business, business, business.
So, five year old Tim decides it’s the best idea to go into business! Like his parents! So that he can be with his mama and papa and they’ll be always together! Tim knew that was a pipe dream even at that age. Most of the time, Jack and Janet barely even meet during their trips unless they specificly make the effort to come back to Gotham, to their child. It’s not that their relationship was bad per se, it was just that they both were too busy.
Now, imagine. Their horrified faces as Tim exclaims his wish to be a businessman when asked about his dream job. They knew the game in that space, they had been in it for a long time. The competitiveness, the veiled threaths and less than legal stuff. They knew that one day, no matter how much they try to protect their little Duck, he will inheret the family business and everything that comes with it. But both Jack and Janet promised themselves and each other that Tim wouldn’t step foot into that world until he reached at least teenagehood. And they will keep that promise, they tried. They tried to keep Tim away, sent to a boarding school where he could make fiend, forget about his dream for a little while. Promised to teach if he only stays on his best behaviour.
Jack and Janet had hoped he won’t. There was no punishment waiting for him when Tim misbehaves, there wasn’t. Only gentle relief that maybe, their son wouldn’t turn out like… them, the rest of their kind of people. Vultures.
Only thing was, the little Duckling had always been too bright for his own good. And they kept going back on their promises, it would only result in a broken, fractured bond.
Tim knows love. He does. He also knows obsession, perhaps more than love. As he grows older, more mature, more… like his parents, Tim understands that his focus had shifted somewhere along the way. His goal wasn’t as pure as it was when he was younger, his thought process had morphed and distorted. He does, really.
But when people say they want money, they mean power. Power, over everyone else. Tim hadn’t wanted warmth for a long time now. Obsession had morphed his desire for love into the unsatiable need for power and control. Maybe it started when Jack Drake died in a plane crash. Leaving his mother widowed and him, fatherless. Maybe it was because he had seen the uncontrollable rage and unconsolable grief on his mother’s face. Maybe it was Tim’s own sadness that distorted his wants into something grimer, darker.
But, in the end, Nothing stopped him from going down that path. Spiralled, someone would say. Untreated self-destructive behaviour, he heard his own voice. But that doesn’t matter when you have already planned what you need to do for the rest of your life, right? Janet Drake had died due to a manslaughter. Leaving her orphaned son and his uncle there to handle the fall out. The media drinks his salty tears as Tim cries perfomatively. And as soon as emancipation is approved, Tim clutches DI with an ironclad fist.
What Tim wanted was simple. The betterment of the people and peace. He started slowly, With Central city where the DI HQ is set up. Set up more charity for the homeless, the strays, and those suffering. Then exploited and blackmailed the rich—never as himself, no. Rather as a shadow, a faceless being who… just knew. He forced them to pay up their taxes, nothing as drastic as stealing and giving to the poor. But a subtle redistribution. A long-term plan.
Tim set himself up as the saint to the public while ordering hitmen and torture specialists to march their way to the less obedient dogs. It worked, for some time. His influence spreading and his reach expanding as at one point, the wjole of US became his playground. Tim had the power. He had power over the most powerful men over this country. And unlike them, Tim was planning ahead, going the long-term, never too shy to throw money away when it benefited him.
It wasn’t enough, this power. At 27, Tim decided that the whole of earth should be his playground.
Now, resting in his childhood home, the Drake manor, Gotham (as clean as it could get, as safe as it could be), Tim sits in his office sofa. True unadultared power over humans themselves resting in his palm, metaphorically. At 30, he had made a deal with the devil—no, a demon. Had used it’s resources, a single magic stone capable of mass destruction in the wrong hands. Tim had superficial control over almost every powerful men and women. Subtle, doing as they were told yet never truly not themselves. Nothing out of place for people to start questioning. Gotham had been a special work. Required more attention, even partnership with it’s heroes.
Cassandra Wayne, the current Batman, and he, Tim Drake, had made a deal. That the vigilantes would handle the rogues, the villains, the criminals. And Tim would deal with the 1%. Court of Owls had been a hectic group to deal with, no, it was still up and running. The talons are quite difficult to penetrate through.
The power Tim had obsessed over for most of his life had been achieved. The world was a better place, but that was never his intention. Tim knew very well that after his death, after this was all over, the world would back to being what it was. There would simply be no one who could manage all that.
Right now, at this moment. Sitting across the demon in his childhood home, in what used to be his father’s home office, Tim— age 40— would be paying his due. For the single stone that made it all so easy to gain what he wanted. Tim was ready for it all to end.
After all, there was only one reason why Ra’s al Ghul hadn’t touched it after finding this powerful tool. The price—for a man like him—was too great.
It used the life of the person. Shaved off years the more it was used. Tim calculated it; how long he would live. The way he used the stone, it was careful, subtle, and not at all excessive. Yet Tim’s life expectancy was around 40. 42 if he stretched it as much as he could. Tim had only used the stone’s power for a decade.
He was ready for death knock on his door. Which is why he had decided to finally let loose and cause mischief.
When Timothy Jackson Drake died at age 40, sitting in his office in his childhood home, no one really saw a Ra’s al Ghul dressed in a classic clown costume, complete with the wig and makeup, running in the shadows. But it happened. It happened and that’s all Tim—a dead man—would ever care about.
andulkaphoto
snowghoul
baratheonpilled
areudirty
vaporwave
