genderbender Version OfJourney to You

Chapter 1

Tiana stared up at Wayne Manor with her backpack secured onto her shoulders and her duffle bag in hand. She had thought that she would feel more, looking at the building that she had called home for the past four years. But she was wrong. Instead, Tiana just felt numb saying goodbye. If what this was could be called a goodbye.

Tiana had blackmailed her way into being Robin at the age of thirteen after the second Robin, Jason Todd, was killed by the Joker in Ethiopia. Batman's grief had been violent. So violent that the Dark Knight of Gotham had gotten close to breaking the only rule he had made for himself when he first donned the cowl nine years prior.

Batman was close to killing someone, and if he did, Tiana knew that it would shatter the already broken man. So, she set out to become Robin. The one person that Batman could trust and rely on completely. The balance the Dark Knight needed.

That being said, it wasn’t for entirely selfless reasons that Tiana had made her way to Wayne Manor all those years ago.

She had knocked on the door and politely told Alfred Pennyworth that she knew Bruce Wayne was Batman. Informing him that she had proof and would give it to the press if she didn’t speak with Mr Wayne. Tiana remembered walking through the castle sized Manor and briefly thinking that it felt the same as Drake Manor. Cold. Empty. A house, not a home. But had pushed the thought aside in favour of hope and the dependency she had on her belief that she would belong in the Bat clan, and with the Wayne family.

At first, Tiana was denied the position of Robin, but she had persisted, and the blackmail helped.

Tiana had completed a month’s training when the first Robin came to meet him.

Dick was warm, encouraging and friendly. He helped in his training, teaching her things that she had learnt as Robin, and as Nightwing, and Tiana had taken that as proof that she was supposed to be there, that she was cared about.

Once Tiana was let out into the field as Robin, time seemed to fly by.

Tiana had been Robin for a year before the Joker got his hands on her and turned her into Joker Junior. When she finally broke free from the mixture of chemicals and manipulation, Tiana couldn't sleep and instead became a caffeine addicted insomniac. When she did sleep she woke up screaming, sweat dripping from him and terrified, only to run to the bathroom and upheave the contents of her stomach. Every time Tiana slept, her dreams replayed all of the things that she had done as Joker Junior, so, Tiana didn't sleep.

After the 'incident', Batman had been distant, Bruce Wayne had been distant, and it made Tiana feel worse. Bruce was the only real parental figure she had; Jack and Janet Drake were neglectful at best. They didn't care about her beyond the fact that she was their heir they didn't even realise that their daughter had been 'missing' for the six months because they were away and never checked in.

What followed, after little recovery time, was the Red Hood arriving in Gotham with a vendetta against the Dark Knight of Gotham and the Clown Prince of Crime. But it wasn’t until Tiana, as Robin, got close to Red Hood in a fight that they realised the Crime Lord wanted to kill her as well. And the Red Hood nearly succeeded.

Tiana had only just managed to escape from that explosion, only to have the Red Hood stand over her, gun pointed at her head as she lay wounded and near unconscious at the Crime Lord's feet. Then Batman swooped in and Tiana remembered nothing.

She woke three days later to find out that the Red Hood was the resurrected Jason Todd, her favourite Robin, and that Bruce was trying to reconnect with him.

Tiana understood. Jason was Bruce's son, but it did not change the fact that Jason had nearly killed her and had murdered over a hundred people. Yes, those people had deserved it, so that little voice in the back of Tiana's head whispered, but inviting Jason into the manor, into the home that Tiana lived in when her parents were away, was a dismissal of the trauma and PTSD she had received from the older boy's attempt to kill her.