The Gothic Haunting

Okay so I was reading The Gothic Haunting of Tim Drake-Wayne by EchoMikeMike22 (Emmalie22)

And I was listening to Halloween IV: Possess Me by Ashnikko

I cannot shake off the idea of Danny and Tim just matching the essence of this song sooooo much, dissect the lyrics with me okay?

“I hope you didn't see me, see me unhinging my jaw

Don't be scared, do not run

I need you to be patient with me, I'm no angel dove (dove)”

Danny being scared of being inhuman, (unhinged jaw) and wishes for Tim to not be scared of him. He’s no angel dove, he is the afterlife itself, the balance between living and death.

“Possess me, lightweight Lexapro, affect me

Exorcism sexy, wet leaves and fresh meat

Connecting wet swamp sex sounds to set scene

Hex me, dissect me, swords out, protect thee (possess)”

In this fic Tim is a switch, so he is seen topping and Danny finally have someone to take the lead, unafraid, and willing to use Danny. Or as I see it, he wants Tim to have power over him bc his entire being is sovereign over the balance. Literally NOTHING to check his power. So Tim is there, to be the influence that power checks him.

“Lick it, lock it, diva demonic

I might scheme and plot it, the veil is thinning tonight

Hedonic, okay, gossip (gossip, gossip, gossip...)

I want it, oh, my, you're the creature I like (ooh)”

This is Tim, he seeks the knowledge of the afterlife, he seeks to right the wrongs of the justice league. And he seeks to do right by Danny. To love him the right way.

“Labyrinthine libido

Find me peep show, teach me how to love like people

Pierce my ego, suck me in like mosquito

All black like Neo, is it magic or placebo?

Fill me up with it, anyways (possess me)”

Danny seeks humanity in Tim, he seeks to embrace his own humanity. He seeks to tether his entire being to Tim. Even if that also means embracing Tim’s love (the unknown) to fill it up anyways despite his fears.

“In this sleepy town, they speak to me in whispers

Say my name out loud

I dare you, free me now

I need you to see me now

I call you, draw you out”

This where the two meet halfway.

“I dare you, free me now” Tim also seeks a reprieve of his vigilante life, and CEO life, he wants to find himself in love. Allow Tim to have his own life outside of responsibilities. And Danny might be his tether to his own freedom.

Danny seeks for his own freedom outside of it all, he wants Tim to see him for who he is as a human outside of being King. They call to each other to see each other as who they really are.

“I am a shadow in the shape of a girl

I'm a bad omen with malevolent urges

They warned you, you want me

Together, we can bring ruin to the kingdom”

Jason: -no a text won't do shit, you gotta call him or it isn't funny enough.

Tim: what are you guys doing?

Dick: oh, Bruce just finished a two week long undercover case where he got shot in three places and he's taking a nap upstairs for the first time in... six days. so we're fucking with him.

Tim:

Tim: he's so lucky to have you both as children.

Jason: hey we were the first ones he tried 'parenting'. we were the trial periods. we fuckin' earned this.

Dick: *nodding*

Tim, sighing: ok what are you gonna do?

Dick: Jason wants to prove that i'm B's favourite, because he's stupid.

Jason: you ARE-

Dick: I'M REALLY FUCKING NOT-

Tim: he's right, he isn't.

Dick: THANK YOU- also oi?

Jason: trust me. you call him now and tell him while he's half asleep and hopped up on pain medication that you've killed somebody and need his help hiding the body, he will be there in seconds. he wouldn't let his little golden boy down like that. he'll pay off anybody he needs to to make sure you get off scott-free.

Tim: Jesus Christ.

Dick, dialling on his phone: this is so stupid,

*phone rings*

Bruce, sounding 3 minutes from perishing, slurring his words and barely conscious: -guh, Dick? i-is this an emergency?

Dick, valiantly putting on the most over-dramatic panicked voice possible: *whimper* B- dad, dad i need help, please,

Bruce, instantly: DICK?

Dick: Bruce i killed somebody and i need help hiding the body. i don't know what to do. it was an accident but i have to hide it. help.

Bruce:

Bruce:

Dick: dad...?

Bruce, grunting: get Jason t' do it *hangs up*

*silence*

Jason: W H A T

Tim: does that count as letting Dick down? he did hang up, but like technically he gave him a referral first.

Dick: i'm honestly a little bit offended

Jason: HE'S PIMPING ME OUT FOR MURDER WORK? AFTER ALL THE SHIT HE GIVES ME ABOUT FATALITIES-,

Dick: like does he think i'd call him first? Bruce man, if i call you for help with a body, it's because i've already contacted Jason and he's unavailable. you are never going to be the first choice.

Jason: -THE SWITCHING TO RUBBER BULLETS, THE DISAPPROVAL, THE LECTURES ON RESPONSIBILITY, AND NOW HE'S SENDING PEOPLE TO ME WITH MURDERS?!?!?!?

Tim: i honestly don't know what we expected, when has B been anything other than a massive hypocrite.

Jason, grabbing a fire extinguisher off the wall: well his fuckin' nap's over now, i'll tell you that much-

Dick: Jay, Alfred is gonna get so mad if you do that-

Tim: why would Alfred care about us waking up B?

Batman: I- I’m 27!!!! How is that old????

Robin Dick Grayson: Gee…. That’s a rough 27.

Robin Damian Wayne: Wait, how old are you?

Batman Dick Grayson: Wait, guess.

Robin Damian Wayne: 36.

Batman Dick Grayson: What?!

Robin Damian Wayne: You said guess...

Batman Dick Grayson: That was so far off! That wasn't even that close!

Robin Damian Wayne: Why are you yelling at me?

Batman Dick Grayson: Like normally when people play that game, Oh, like they guess a little bit younger! Was that a little bit younger guess?

Robin Damian Wayne: Yeah, are you 39? Are you-?

Batman Dick Grayson: What?!

Robin Damian Wayne: So was I right?

Batman Dick Grayson: No.

Robin Damian Wayne: What are you-?

Batman Dick Grayson: I'm not in my thirties.

Robin Damian Wayne: Oh.

Batman Dick Grayson: I'm in my forties.

Robin Damian Wayne: Oh. I knew it! I was just being nice-

Batman Dick Grayson: I'm not in my forties! What do you mean "I knew it!" I'm 27! What the fu-

Robin Damian Wayne: Oh, god damn, you're old!

Batman & Robin: Year One #8 (2025)

That being said, Dick is still in the wrong, here, but not for the reasons Batman said.

Dick could have accidentally pulled the trigger and killed that man. He literally put his finger directly on the trigger while pointing it at him. Any basic gun safety course would tell you that you NEVER put your finger on the trigger until you're ready to pull it, and never point a gun at something or someone you aren't willing to destroy. You DO NOT point a gun at someone's head "just to scare them."

I fully agree with your point that it should be more about the lack of gun safety and no killing rule

(Batman 1940 #410)

(Batman 1940 415)

So I’ve noticed there seems to be a fair bit of confusion on where Tim went to high school, whether he dropped out or not, if he went to private or public school, etc., so I thought I’d create a general chronology of (Pre-Flashpoint) Tim’s tumultuous high school career. The confusion about this is deserved, as Tim has literally gone to no less than FIVE high schools and also homeschooled for a bit, so it’s a LOT to keep track of. Tim has attended both private schools and public schools, and has gone to school in Gotham and Bludhaven (and almost Keystone!), ultimately ending his school days when he dropped out of Gotham City High School during his senior year to go search for Bruce after the events of Final Crisis.

Here’s the breakdown:

Pre-High School: Tim attended private boarding schools until he was about 13-14 years old. To my knowledge these schools are never specifically named, but 13-yr-old Tim mentions in Batman #441 that he attends a boarding school just outside Gotham. In Robin III #4 Tim angrily tells his dad that him and Janet “shipped [Tim] from one boarding school to another and nobody paid any attention as long as [his] grades stayed high.” This seems to imply that Tim attended a number of different boarding schools, when there’s really no reason for him to have attended more than two (an elementary and middle school), and even then a number of private boarding schools are actually K-8 (if not K-12) so I don’t know why he attended so many schools?? Nevertheless, from K-8 Tim attended private boarding schools, primarily in the Gotham area presumably.

Tim was probably still in middle school in his earliest appearances (Batman: A Lonely Place of Dying, Batman: Rite of Passage, etc), but he starts high school right around the time he finishes his Robin training (around the time of the first  Robin miniseries).

High School #1—Gotham Heights High School: The first reference to Tim being in high school comes from the 1991 Robin II miniseries. Tim has recently started at Gotham Heights High School as a ninth grader. This comic takes place after Tim’s parents were kidnapped and poisoned, and so while Jack is in the hospital Bruce is acting as a guardian of sorts for Tim. It’s at Gotham Heights that Tim befriends Sebastian Ives, as well as his friends Hudson and Callie Evans. When Ives asks Tim about the fact that he seems too rich for public school, Tim explains that he used to go to private school but that Bruce had him transferred into public school because he thought it would be “more broadening.” Even after Jack gets out of the hospital he allows Tim to stay at Gotham Heights HS, although Jack clearly has a low opinion of public schools. Tim presumably started at Gotham Heights HS at the beginning of the ninth grade and attended for about a year and a half.

Interlude—Keystone: After the events of Cataclysm, Tim’s family moves to Keystone to avoid the chaos going on in Gotham. (They only end up staying a few weeks at the most, but they moved with the intention of living there permanently, meaning that Tim was transferred out of Gotham Heights HS.) In Robin #63 Jack mentions trying to get Tim into Keystone Academy, but that it’s tough in the middle of the school year and that he was working on getting him a tutor in the interim. Tim was supposed to meet his new tutor the same day that he went back to Gotham to be with Steph while she had her baby. He left without telling his dad, and so Jack and Dana come back to Gotham to get him and they all decide to stay in Gotham after all. It’s unclear if Tim returns to Gotham Heights HS briefly or if he just doesn’t return to school until he’s enrolled at Brentwood.

High School #2—Brentwood Academy: After the events of No Man’s Land, Tim is enrolled in Brentwood Academy, a boarding school in Bristol Township (a wealthy suburb directly to the north of Gotham, where the Drakes and the Waynes both live). After missing so much school, Jack forces Tim to go to a boarding school so that his grades will hopefully come up. (I think the reasoning here is that if Tim lives at school then he’ll have no good excuse for missing class?) In Robin #75 Tim refers to himself as a “new sophomore,” and he transferred to the school some time after sophomore year started (almost definitely after winter break, but I can’t find an issue that confirms this?) but before spring break. Tim’s main friends at Brentwood are his first roommate Ali, his second roommate Wesley, and his classmates Buzz, Kip, and Danny. Tim isn’t at Brentwood for very long though. After only a few months (maybe even less) of Tim being at Brentwood, Jack finds out he’s lost a good portion of the Drake family fortune in bad investments. He’s forced to withdraw Tim from school as he can’t afford the tuition anymore, and the Drakes sell their home in Bristol Township and move into their townhouse in inner-city Gotham.

Interlude—Rest of Sophomore Year: When Tim left Brentwood it was rather late in the year, and it was apparently too late to re-enroll him in public school, so he took the rest of the school year off. That summer he has to take a placement test that will keep him from having to repeat the 10th grade. He passes, so when he re-enters public school he does so as a junior.

High School #3—Louis E. Grieve Memorial High School: Tim starts his junior year at Louis E. Grieve Memorial HS, where he quickly befriends Bernard Dowd and Darla Aquista. He doesn’t attend school here very long, probably for about 3-4 months (he’s only been at Grieve Memorial HS for a few weeks when he’s forced to quit being Robin, Steph takes over for about 2 months, and then it’s only another couple weeks until the events of War Games). During War Games, Tim’s friend Darla is targeted by several mobs (because her father is an Italian mob boss) and mobsters take over his school and end up killing several students, Darla included. Darla’s funeral is one of three that Tim has to attend in as many days, his dad being killed during Identity Crisis and Steph “dying” at the end of War Games.

High School #4—John Wayne High School, Bludhaven: After War Games and Identity Crisis, Tim moves to Bludhaven to try for a fresh start. He picked Bludhaven specifically for an in-patient facility that will help his stepmom, Dana, process her grief over Jack’s death. Tim moves to be close to her and starts attending John Wayne High School. He probably only attends for about two weeks though, before he has his (fake) Uncle Eddie withdraw him from the school to start homeschooling. Tim withdraws with the intention of homeschooling until he can test out of school early. But it isn’t long (maybe another month or so) until Infinite Crisis, and then Tim and Dick go on a nearly year-long training journey with Bruce.

Interlude—OYL: During the missing year* between Infinite Crisis and One Year Later, Tim isn’t in school at all, as he and Dick and Bruce are travelling the world and training. 

(*Also, with the nightmare that is comics continuity and the passage of time, Tim really couldn’t have been gone for more than like,,,,6-8 months, as it was late winter/early spring when Infinite Crisis happened—at least according to the Robin series—and it’s summer when he returns to Gotham. He’s still 17 early in the Red Robin series so it couldn’t have been a year and a half that he was gone, therefore he could only have been gone for like half a year.)

High School #5—Gotham City High School: After the OYL time jump, Tim starts attending Gotham City High School. He starts during the “summer session” (presumably to make up for the semester he missed during OYL?) before his senior year. His main friends here are Zoanne Wilkins (who he starts dating), Jared Walton, Craig Pulaski, and then both Ives and Steph transfer to GCHS during Tim’s senior year (altho Steph is usually a year older than Tim in Pre-52 canon, so it really makes no sense for her to be there??). This is the high school Tim is attending when he drops out of school in his senior year to travel the world looking for Bruce. In Red Robin #17, Tim and Ives meet for lunch (after Bruce has returned and Tim has moved back to Gotham) and Ives mentions Tim not finishing senior year. Tim asks Ives how senior year is going—implying that the events of the first arc of Red Robin only take a few months—and catches up on how Ives and Zoanne are doing.

鬼王丹尼 :)

Lil bobbin’ robins

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Close ups:

Cass and Steph are going out one night and get ready at the Manor, Bruce sees their outfits and he's like, 'is there a cardigan or a coat you can wear over that?'. It isn't that he is shaming them but Bruce knows what the Gotham club scene is like. Alfred just lifts a brow and reminds Bruce that when he was that age he never wore a shirt longer than his waist because 'it was the fashion, you said, sir' and Bruce grumbles but he hasn't a leg to stand on.

Bruce is telling Tim off for sneaking out to meet Kon or Bernard though he was grounded when Alfred, dusting a nearby lamp, asks Bruce whether he should replace the ivy. Because, surely Bruce remembers the hassle of replacing the ivy after he himself fell off of it, sneaking out of the house for Oliver Queen's 17th birthday bash though he himself was explicitly grounded?

Bruce lecturing Dick about missed classes or dropping out of college and Alfred just sighs in the background, touching the space on the wall next to Thomas Wayne’s doctorate where Bruce's would have hung if he bothered to stay in med school.

Bruce having a meltdown when Damian gets an earring (his brothers took him), ranting and raving only for Alfred to disrupt the argument by casually laying down polaroids of teenage Bruce and the diamond stud earring he got at fifteen.

Bruce fighting with Jason over something that happened on patrol only for Jason to slam his door and yell ‘I hate you’ or ‘you aren’t my dad’ and Bruce turning to Alfred, hurt and looking for sympathy is met with a cool neutral look and a shrug. ‘It will pass’ because if Alfred had a dollar for every time Bruce said the exact same thing… well, he would be rich as a Wayne.

Bruce who when gets interviewed at a charity events will use his air time to talk only about that charity and its goals rather than who he's wearing or who is date is.

Bruce on a panel show hearing a female guest being asked a personal or a sexist question, like about what's she is wearing or whether she's dating a certain guy, and politely shutting that down or answering the question like it was for him or pointedly wondering why he wasn't asked the same question.

Bruce when asked something personal or not pertinent to the reason he agreed to do the interview, asking why they are wasting time on questions like that when they could ask him about important matters. The reporters ask like what and he begins listing off social problems in the city or worldwide.

Bruce who will answer questions from reporters in their own language or talk to people in their own language

Bruce at some show presenting an award and escorting his female co presenter down the stairs.

Bruce Wayne ruining creepy camera shots of women on the red carpet by walking into the shot.

Bruce will proudly wear pins or t-shirts to support organisations, not limited to LGBTQIA+ charities.

Bruce going in cognito to small local cafes and restaurants for a peaceful lunch and gets to know the server, hears about them working for college tuition or being a single parent leaves a massive tip.

Bruce who matches a child's charity raising efforts or participants in events where he's hands on or will wear and do silly things for the kids

Bruce getting crowded by reporters when he's out with the kids or some fans, just very politely asking for some space.

Some socialite telling him that he can’t bring his kids to events, asking what his mother would have said and Bruce deadpans and goes, ‘I think she would have liked to have met her grandchildren. But of course, she never did’

His med school lecturers threatening to flunk him if he doesn’t hand in his essay on blood loss, only for Bruce to say ‘it’s just a touchy subject for me’ and the lecturer blue screening because shit

Some rogue tries to kidnap Bruce at some event, holding a gun to his head, just for Bruce to look at the rogue, almost tearfully and be like ‘i always knew I would end up like my dad’ and the rogue just panics because now they are in a room with a bunch of pissed off people because they’ve almost made the Princess Diana of Gotham cry.

Clark gets mad at him over something, yelling at him and of course Bruce is just no listening so Clark just snaps, Ma Kent’s favourite phrase of ‘who raised you???’ Only to completely fucking choke, pray for the ground to swallow him up because Bruce’s expression just slips a little (inside he’s hysterically laughing). Clark comes by again with a batch of cookies.

Tucker: Who is it this time?

Danny: Hmmm, a cult in Gotham trying to bring the end of the world. They're offering a robin.

Sam: robin, like the bird or like someone's name?

Danny: *scrolls* Doesn't say

Tucker: You going to answer?

Danny: I don't know. I mean, I have finals, and my job hours are a mess right now since Wes put in his two weeks. Not to mention the college interviews Jazz wants me to prepare for. I just have too much on my plate to go states away and fight off another cult.

Sam: But what if it is a person and the cult kills them if you don't answer?

Danny: Ugh fine, I'll answer. But I'm not happy about it. *Types on phone* I'll be back by seven tomorrow. Cover for me?

Tucker: Always. Have fun man.

Danny: This isn't fun. These requests could have just been a simple email and not a summon through the screen bull- *Gets sucked into phone midrant*

Sam: There he goes. Off to save another life as the great and powerful Ghost King. Maybe this time he'll come back with something better than more truama.

Tucker: Are you still trying to get Danny to fall in love with one of his sacrifices?

Sam: It's one of the greatest love story tropes in the Goth community Tucker!

Tim: Hey

Danny: This is nerve-wracking, huh? Meeting the big boss. Is this your first day, too?

Tim: In a way. I've been working remotely.

Danny: Lucky, I wish I was remote, too. Gosh, I just hope I dont make a fool of myself. I'm terrible at first impressions.

Tim: I don't know about that. You're making a good one with me.

Danny: Really?

Tim: Yeah, man.

Danny: Thats great! My therapist will be so proud of me. Now he's hoping Mr.Drake feels the same.

Tim discreetly pocketing his badge: Oh, I think he'll like you.

girl help my house is infested with wild birds

While simultaneously being young enough to be called “kid”