'I’m going to a place,' Tim silently ponders. Amidst anticipation and stabilizing, reliable systematic measures—there is time to ponder. Different than planning. He ponders while the limo escorts him to tonight’s charity event with no hitch. Bruce wasn’t hosting. But it feels like routine is catching up to Tim, as he’s reminded:

'I’m going to a place where everybody’s pretty, but they’re all dead and vacant inside.'

Tim makes it past flashy cameras immortalizing his least flattering angles. The red carpet stretching into another bleak evening of practiced postures, practiced smiles, practiced speeches. Prepared outfits of varying shades and scales of opulence. Tonight’s subtext invites a secret mission: find any gossip yielding oncoming terrorist plots buried under business proposals, scandals and fabricated fables. Reveal characteristic foibles. Intel.

The elite, they’re all the same with different memories. It makes Tim wonder how they used to be.

His visage, his presence—he’s never fit in, Tim knows. Over the years he’s managed, planned ahead with the heavy mass that is his overclocked, overcooked brain. Once more, as routine leads down a familiar trajectory travelled by his train of thought: 'I don’t look like them, will they turn on me?'

'… I need a drink, for sanity.'

“Tell me,” Tim asks an ongoer, his fingers still circling the champagne glass he’s plucked for himself. “Am I any different?”

Could they make him understand?

He’s not sure why he’s asking. Who he’s asking. Civilian, friend, hidden ally, hidden enemy? Tim can’t remember if he’s starting a conversation, or if he’s already in the middle of one with his straying mind. A momentary existential crisis has bled to the surface.

Sleepless nights, endlessly pored over code and research. The weight on his bones, on his shoulders, concealed behind azure eyes. Eyebags that tell; that cannot lie easy as oblivious sinners. All the imaging he’s seen, as Tim Drake. Tim Wayne. Robin. Red Robin.

There’s nothing there but a hollow man.