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At first he'd been overjoyed that the cloning had worked. Then, as the weeks went by, he realized just how messed up of a thing he had done. Tim still remembered the faces of everyone after he told them. There were mixes of shock, horror and disappointment. He'd been unable to face both Bruce and Clark for a while after that.
Now Tim sat in a rocking chair within the newly decorated nursery. He looked down at the baby in his lap, who returned his gaze with a blank one of his own.
He sighed as he turned to peer out the window. It was a full moon tonight. "They're mad at me, I know," he finally spoke. "I can't really blame them either. It wasn't fair to Conner. To his memory."
Tim turned to look at the baby once more. He stared into the baby's eyes. Those painfully familiar eyes that were at the same time new and foreign.
"It wasn't fair to you either."
Tim reached down and brushed a bang out of the baby's eyes. "But I swear I'm going to make it up," he continued. "Starting by giving you your own proper name."
Until now, that baby had been referred to as just that. Baby. If not that it was the clone, the child or Conner's clone. But now that Tim had firmly decided he was raising the baby, the kid needed a proper name.
"Hmm," Tim pondered. "What about.... Kevin?"
He received yet another blank look.
"Okay... how about Alex, Wes, Kyle? Timothy Jr?"
Blank stare.
"You could be Douglas. Doug for short."
At that the baby seemed to almost quirk up his eyebrow. As if to say, "Are you serious?" Though that was probably Tim's mind playing tricks on him.
"Yeah," he said with a soft chuckle. "I wasn't really feeling that one either."
Tim closed his eyes and tilted his head to the side. "Mark, Luke, Ezekiel, Thomas, Elijah..." Great, now he was just listing off Bible names.
"Daniel..." he muttered absently.
Suddenly, Tim heard a giggle. He looked back down at the baby to see him cooing softly.
"Wait, you like that? Daniel?"
The baby giggled again. This time reaching up towards Tim. Hesitantly, he raised his hand towards the child. He couldn't help the soft gasp that escaped him as the child grabbed onto his pointer finger.
"Ok, Daniel it is."
Except for something still didn't feel right. Tim leaned back and stared at the ceiling as his tried to pinpoint the feeling of wrongness. Then it hit him. He hated whenever people used his full name. It always felt stuffy and formal. It reminded him too much of disappointed looks. Of hands gripping his shoulders or pulling at his ears, telling him to behave.
"Say," he murmured. "Mind if I give you a nickname buddy? How about Dan?"
Daniel scrunched up his eyebrows. "Ok ok, you don't like that one. I get it. Then how about Danny?"
Daniel seemed to appreciate that nickname a whole lot more as him went back to cooing contently. Tim couldn't help as a smile of his own crept onto his face. "It's settled then," he grinned, holding his child up in the air. "Welcome to the family Danny Drake-Wayne!"
He then pulled Danny close into an embrace, closing his eyes as he took in the scent of baby powder and formula. "I promise, you'll have a better childhood than either I or Kon did. I'll make sure of it."
Edit: original prompt for anyone interested
Danny, having been dead for a very long time, decided to reincarnate, because I love that trope.
He reincarnated into the clone baby of Kon that Tim was trying to make. But Tim couldn't ever get over the hurdle that kept making the clones inviable, so the 100th was just half his DNA and half Kon's.
Danny is the son of a teenage father, who is grieving the death of his other father, and apparently a lot of other people if the ghosts surrounding the teen hero have anything to say.
Danny had reincarnated for a go at a lazy, nice life. Just relive being mortal for a bit.
Instead, he's kidnapped by Ra's Al Ghul to force Red Robin to take care of the Council of Spiders.