Opening Up

Jack is surprised the first time it happens. Intellectually he knows that Tim was Robin, but Tim isn't, has never been, very talkative, very open. He was in Gotham during No Man's Land, too, and Jack had known about that even before it had ended, but Tim had never said anything about that unless he was asked directly. Even then, he never said much. So Jack is surprised.

"I caught him once," Tim says, gesturing at the TV screen.

"What was he like?" Jack asks. He isn't sure he wants to know any more about the man who could have killed his son. One of the men. But a sick sense of curiosity draws the question out of him.

"Oh, you know, the usual," Tim says flippantly. "He wasn't much of a challenge. Closer to the ones we laugh about than the ones who give me nightmares." By we he means him and other people who were or had been superheroes.

"You have nightmares?" he asks, and then mentally kicks himself. He's seen Tim having them, but he'd always thought they were just normal nightmares, or about NML. He should have realized.

"Some things will give anybody nightmares," Tim says, and he's using the Robin voice that Jack's only heard a few times before, like it's the only way he can keep his voice under control as he thinks about whatever gives him nightmares (and it's Tim, who used to fight supervillains while getting straight A's and not letting on to anybody, so whatever it is, it has to be bad), because he's trained his Robin voice to be even no matter what. And then he reaches out and hugs Tim, and it shouldn't feel so foreign to hug your own son, but it does. And Tim's stiff because he isn't expecting it and it's foreign to him too. And then he relaxes, and it's all right that he has to force himself to do it, because he isn't hiding it from Jack.