Chapter Text
Tim wanted to be a hero.
Every day, day after day, he dreamed. Every night, night after night, he slid from the top window of his three-story house and scaled down the oak tree, ready for a night of Bat hunting.
Not actual bats, no. Tim was chasing vigilantes.
From the tender age of nine, Tim had figured out the identities of the Batman and his protege, the beloved Robin. At ten, he was gifted his first camera, for his supposed love of ‘taking in his surroundings’, as his doting parents had put it. At eleven, Tim took up sewing; his parents had been slightly worried at the sight of the ‘girly’ hobby, but Tim had formulated a plan.
At twelve, after years of studying Batman and Robin and all of the other young heroes that had been slowly added to the mix, he debuted as the vigilante named Kestrel, self-made suit and all.
It had been excruciating, at first. Fighting with grown men twice his size, watching the life drain out of victims he’d been too late to save, being hunted by the Bats. Because no, Batman had not been pleased at the sudden arrival of a new vigilante.
Sometimes, he patrolled with the younger members of the Bat clan. Spoiler and Signal and Batgirl, though Batgirl was often dismissive of his work; Tim had preferred when she had first appeared, when she’d been mute, as terrible as that sounded. Despite his familiarity with the other vigilantes, Tim had never patrolled with any Robin.
One day, Tim would be a Robin. It was his lifelong dream. Batman just had to recognise him as a competent hero first.
He had been going strong, until now. He’d stopped plenty of crime, even as a scrawny twelve-year-old. He’d been able to stay out of the Bat’s watchful eye. He had no powers, but he had a willingness to help the people of Gotham, if only for a chance to be like his idol.
Until now, he had been the people’s vigilante, the friendly helper, who kept to the shadows but brought forth the light by saving people from the crime that even Batman overlooked, busy with the rogues as he was. Until now, he had been happy and fulfilled, a top student at school and one of Gotham’s favourite heroes under the cover of darkness.
Now, he was sixteen.
Now, he had a gun in his hand.
Now, he had a man bleeding out on the floor.
Tim loosed a gasp from his chest, shaking from the echoes of the gun’s recoil (no, that wasn't right. Tim didn't even own a gun). The only sounds in the room was the heaving coming from his own mouth and the soft creaking of whatever was in his hand (what was it?) as he clenched it in a white-knuckled grip, paired with some far-away drip, drip, drip of a leaky faucet and the whistle of the wind outside as it battered at the window panes.
And, the horrible gurgling as the man before him choked on his own blood. (Was he choking on his own blood? No, Tim pushed that thought away. He hadn’t killed him. He didn’t even own a gun. He was probably choking on spittle, or maybe he had horrible asthma).
A muffled sob cut through the grisly ambiance and Tim spun around, training the thing in his hand (a gun, a gun, a gun) on the corner of the room, behind the splintered door that he had kicked open to get through. The young woman’s eyes were wide and terrified as they stared up at him with nothing but fear, shining in the gloom of the dimly-lit room. As he approached, she desperately tried to scoot further into the space behind the door, clutching the ripped top of her satin dress to her chest in an effort to cover herself up.
Tim tilted his head, confused. Why was she scared?
Ah, of course. She was obviously still scared of the man on the floor. He was a real piece of shit, wasn’t he?
Tim advanced carefully. His hands were still clutching (the gun) something- maybe his med kit? Yeah, that sounded right.
“It’s okay,” he said softly, slowing his pace as she squeaked and tried to frantically huddle backwards, her hands trembling with the jagged movement. “You’re safe. You’re okay. I saved you, he can’t hurt you anymore.”
The young woman’s eyes were dilated and trained on him. Her jaw was clenched, and her hand that wasn’t holding the torn fabric of her top to her chest slowly lifted, then was balled in a loose fist, as if she wanted to… hurt him.
Why would she want to hurt him? He’d just saved her from-
“Please,” she gasped, the ragged noise interrupting Tim’s train of thought and jolting her whole body as if it had been torn from her throat. Even she seemed surprised by the noise from her own mouth. “Leave me alone.”
Tim stilled. Nobody had ever told him, The Kestrel, the hero of the little guys, to leave them alone. He wasn’t a villain, not like the grotesque man he’d just pulled off her moments before. He’d never hurt anyone. He’d never even looked at someone with the intent to harm them, only to stop them. The man on the floor was unfortunate, but he was most likely alive. It wasn’t like Tim had shot him or anything. He didn’t even own a gun.
Still, he stopped his pace, heeding her wishes. She was doubtlessly afraid, and he didn’t want to make her uncomfortable in any way. Tim squatted down in front of her, still keeping the thing he was holding- a medkit, he was sure of it- near her face.
“I won’t hurt you,” he murmured. Of course, she was still shaken from her ordeal. “I would never do what that piece of shit tried to do to you, okay? I’m just here to help you. Do you want to stand up?”
The woman’s eyes were darting to his hands, near her face, and then up to his eyes.
“Can you-” she whispered, sounding terrified, “Can you please stop pointing that at me?”
Tim blinked, confused.
What is she talking about?
Then, he realised, and smiled warmly, hoping his friendliness would be enough to melt the ice of this interaction. “The medkit? I’m not pointing it anywhere.” Distantly, he struggled to remember if he’d put his medkit in his utility belt before he’d left for the night. He pushed that thought aside.
The woman’s lip trembled. “No, " she whispered, “Not the medkit. The gun.”
He tilted his head again. A gun. He- he didn’t own a gun. She must be high on adrenaline, still viewing everything as a threat. That was understandable. Always be kind to the victims was Tim’s motto: you never knew what a situation was like in their eyes.
Still, he lowered his hands, if only to make her more comfortable. He would always do anything to make the people of Gotham more comfortable- it was what his idol would do. Briefly, a flash of relief crossed the young woman’s face, and Tim offered her his empty hand to help her up. Hesitantly, she took it.
“Kestrel,” she whispered, a tremble in her voice as he pulled her gently to her feet, “I don’t want anyone to know what… what he tried to do to me. Please don’t tell anyone.”
She seemed to huddle in on herself as the words worked their way out of her mouth, and Tim felt sadness rise in his gut.
Tim smiled sadly. “Your secret is safe with me, don’t worry. I’ll protect it with my life, if that’s what it takes.”
She stared at him, unsmiling, and then whispered “thank you,” with only a slight amount of hesitancy.
Then, she stumbled towards a door on the far side of the room, opposite to the one Tim had kicked open, and opened it with one pale, trembling hand, disappearing up the staircase with a wobbling gait and a swish of her torn satin dress.
Tim glanced around the office. When he’d heard the young woman’s first yelp of fear, he had been bounding from rooftop to rooftop, enjoying the feeling of the breeze weaving through his messy hair. He didn’t really know what building he was in.
He strode over to the desk, which was strewn with papers. The morning newspaper had been tossed carelessly to drape over the back of the large, rather ornate chair, and Tim could see the headline, ‘Local Mayor Fights Hard to Stop the Spread’. Curious, he leaned closer, half his body over the desk, to scan the deck; it read, ‘Mayor Turnbull Leads Gotham Against the Distribution of Joker Toxin’.
Huh. That was odd. Nobody bought the newspaper anymore. This guy must’ve been some kind of fan of Joker Toxin, or maybe a fan of the Mayor. Joker Toxin made more sense, as the guy that lay in the centre of the room was no doubt a villainous piece of shit.
Why could he hear police sirens, getting louder by the second? He hadn’t called the police.
Oh! He would need to check on the unconscious man. He couldn’t have anyone dying on his watch. The Hero Kestrel never allowed people to die, not even villains. Batman had a no-kill rule, so Kestrel did too.
He stood up from where he had draped himself over the desk, still clutching his medkit(?). He would likely need this to help the man, as he didn’t usually pull his punches with rats that bullied the little guys. Yeah, he had it all figured out.
Flashes of red and blue lit up the surrounding room, and Tim shuddered in sympathy. The cracked window, where Tim had shoved the man into when he’d raced to save the young woman, refracting the light into beautiful dapples across the roof. Tim vaguely felt his heart sink, hoping distantly that whatever poor person was in trouble would be okay.
Then he strode over to the face-down man and nudged him with the tip of his steel-toed black combat boot.
“Get up. Scum.”
The man did not move to stand, only shifting slightly from the force of Tim’s jab, his head lolling to the side.
“I said,” Tim raised the medkit(?) threateningly, “get. Up.”
He brought it down on the back of the man’s head with a nasty crunch, peeling back his lips in some mimicry of an arrogant smile at the criminal’s subsequent wheeze. So he was awake. Good.
But then, Tim rolled him over until he was laying on his back. The man’s head lolled again, his face illuminated by the flashing red and blue lights of the police cars outside.
One of his eyes was gone.
Or, more accurately, half of his face was gone. It looked like a tiny explosion had gone off and had cleaved off the man’s nose, eye and the top quarter of his head. Blood was matted in his hair and splattered across his chubby cheeks, which were oddly… colourless.
Oh.
He would definitely need medical attention. Luckily, Tim had a medkit.
He raised it in front of the man’s half-mangled face and struggled with the latch. Part of his mind was screaming at him, saying that something was wrong, but Tim chose to ignore it- his mind had been funny, lately. Finally, his trembling fingers found the dratted clasp and tugged it.
It was almost as if a small bomb went off. Tim tipped backwards at the force of the medkit jumping in his hands. His ears rang. He sat back up and, oddly, his vision cleared. Tim didn’t even know that his eyes were blurry in the first place.
The man now had no face, instead of half of one.
Tim was not holding a medkit.
Oh.
He was covered in blood, could feel the warm liquid splattered across his face and arms and torso, could feel it oozing between his pale fingers and dripping from his hair. He raised his hand to drop the gun, it was a fucking gun, and touched his feathered mask; it covered his eyes in a mimicry of a Kestrel head, the beak covering the bridge of his nose but leaving his nostrils and the tip of his nose free. It, too, was coated with sticky crimson, and Tim felt vaguely faint as he looked at his scarlet hand.
Did he… kill a man?
You monster.
His breath came in short gasps. Faintly, he could hear footsteps pounding up the stairs, muffled shouts and yells that faded in and out as his breathing picked up. Tim reached down and picked up the gun, eyes unfocused, mind muddled.
A man burst through the empty doorframe, and Tim, Kestrel, did not think.
Panic raced through his body as he spun on his heel. He did not think as he pulled the trigger. He did not even blink as the man, the policeman, fell, blood spurting from his throat, choking noises gurgling free from his chest.
More shouts. More footsteps. More bullets. More dead policemen, as Tim emptied the clip, firing again and again and again.
More blood pooling on the ground, creeping slowly towards the steel toes of Tim’s boots like a predator advancing on her prey, trapped in a hunter’s snare.
The gun clicked. It was empty. Police surged forwards, advancing on Tim with stern words and shouted orders. Tim caught eyes with a female officer, splattered with blood but alive and standing, and he felt a smile spread over his face.
The young woman that he’d saved. She reminded him of the young woman that he’d saved.
This was worth it, Kestrel. You saved an innocent.
“Kestrel,” she was saying, “come quietly with your hands up.”
Tim didn’t want to come quietly. He wanted to be free.
Without a word, he turned. He could hear the clicks of guns behind him as officers raised their weapons, but he didn’t care. He needed to breathe.
He darted for the cracked window, and leapt out.
The night air was soothing as it brushed against his skin. He flipped onto the rooftop and took off running, breathing in the polluted stink of Gotham’s rancid atmosphere, which was comforting in the way that it reminded him of home. Gotham seemed to cradle him in her arms as he drifted in and out of conscious thought.
One moment, he was jumping from one rooftop to another.
A separate moment, he was running down a dark alleyway.
A new moment, he was darting across a deserted park, shouts ringing out behind him.
Then, he was bashing his fist into a man’s skull, the terrified screams of his trafficking victim, a little boy, rising from a dim, damp corner.
He was running.
He was fighting.
He was-
Hide.
Tim leaped over the rim of a dumpster and closed the lid after him, settling into the noxious space with shallow breaths as movement sounded outside.
“Kestrel’s gone rogue,” a deep voice, with a slight adolescent lilt. Tim wrung his hands together, slight fear rising in his gut.
A second voice answered, this one also quite deep, but distinctly female. “He can’t have gone this far. Batman just wants us out of the action while he plays catch-a-killer.”
She sounded annoyed. Tim huddled himself further down in the dumpster, suddenly afraid that his hiding spot wasn’t enough.
The girl spoke again, her voice softer now. “I mean… I can’t believe Kestrel, of all vigilantes, was the one to go rogue. He seemed so… fun.”
“Maybe that was his problem,” the guy said, darkly. “Fun and smart don’t mix- like Joker, or Riddler. Maybe he just got bored of being good.”
The girl made a noise of assent. “He did seem very upset when I spoke to him last, and he was very arrogant in general. But like… we patrolled with him, Signal. We patrolled with him a lot. And I… I felt like we were super close with him, y’know? Like we could’ve been friends in real life. He seemed like he was our age, Signal. Surely we should’ve seen the signs.”
The boy’s voice, who Tim now recognised as Signal, sounded again. “Nobody recognises signs like these, Spoiler. Sometimes people just… snap. You never know, maybe he was under the influence of something.”
Spoiler whispered, “Like Joker toxin?”
Signal made a sound like he was exhaling air through his teeth, a low whistle. “Maybe. I hope not. The Mayor did a lot to eradicate it, but I suppose Kestrel could’ve accidentally come across some.”
Spoiler’s voice, quiet. “Or maybe he’s just…gone off the deep end. Just a bad apple. Maybe he took some, for all we know. On purpose. I mean, for heaven’s sake, Signal, he killed the Mayor!”
The voices faded as Spoiler and Signal presumably moved off in some other direction, leaving the alleyway behind. If they had stayed, Tim wouldn’t have continued listening in on their conversation anyway, his mind caught on the last sentence.
Wait. The Mayor?
Tim thought back to the office, to the ornate chair, to the newspaper draped over the back of it and the man on the floor.
The Mayor. He’d killed Gotham’s favourite Mayor in over two decades.
He’d killed someone. Oh God, he’d killed someone-
Gotham’s favourite Mayor in over two decades was an undercover piece of shit.
That doesn’t matter. You’ve made him a martyr, do you understand that, Kestrel? You’ve made a martyr of a terrible man, who doubtlessly did terrible things behind closed doors. You’ve made him a hero, while engineering the downfall of your own heroism.
You’re a villain now, Kestrel. Your idol is hunting you.
The thought of the Bats catching him, sending him to Arkham Asylum, made Tim freeze up with fear. He didn’t want to go to Arkham. He wasn’t crazy. The Mayor’s death had been a complete accident.
He didn’t even own a gun.
Tim knew where he’d gotten the gun, now. He remembered the young woman’s scared face as the Mayor had pressed the gun to her temple and, with a sleazy, smug little grin, had ordered her to-
Tim couldn’t go home. He didn’t want to look his mother in the eye while knowing he’d slaughtered the parents of other children, that he’d ensured some poor kids would grow up knowing their parents died while just doing their job.
Dead, just because they tried to protect the world from Tim.
Guilt churned in his chest. His parents would think him dead. It wasn’t just the families of the police officers that would be torn apart, no. Tim would destroy the lives of his mother and father.
Regardless, Tim could not go back to being the Drake heir if he wanted to keep being Kestrel, and freedom mattered far more than the stuffy, enclosed life of luxury ever did.
But my parents…
Tim pushed that thought aside.
So he was homeless, and alone. He’d fallen from heroism, and was now considered one of Gotham’s rogues by his favourite vigilante. He would never be one of Batman’s Robins. His lifelong dream, all his time and effort and good deeds, were for nothing.
Tim took a deep breath in. He didn’t need to be one of Batman’s Robins. He was Kestrel, protector of the little guys. He was Kestrel, murderer of men.
He was Kestrel, the fallen bird, and he would not make a mistake like that again.