Chapter Text
For a long time, there's nothing but whispers of dreams traipsing through Tim's mind, fragments of images there and gone too fast to hold onto.
A robin flies above him through a star-filled sky, but he can't seem to get it to come back to him, no matter how much he calls. He's lying in the desert, and the sand is hard and frozen beneath him, and all he tastes is blood. He's falling, falling, and his cheek aches like something is broken beneath the skin. He'll hit the pavement soon, and all of this will be over, but at least Bruce will be proud.
Tim hopes he'll be proud.
The dreams clear slowly when he finally wakes, leaving nebulous impressions behind like stubborn morning mist down by the shore. Tim blinks — blinks again, and finds that the pain in his cheek is still there, stronger now, throbbing in time with his heartbeat.
For a moment, he doesn't know where he is; it's not a hotel room, anonymous and bare — not his apartment, anonymous and even barer. He's lying on a couch, and the top of his head is pressed up against something warm. The room's lit by a softly flickering glow, and someone's thrown a blanket over him.
There are hushed voices talking in the background, snatches of words that swim in and out of his awareness. Recognition filters through the odd haze that's settled over his thoughts, and the part of Tim that's always tense, always holding its breath for the next terrible thing, puts its hackles down when the voices slot into place: Dick and Jason.
He settles, as he recognizes them — relaxes, finally, melting back against the couch cushions — keeps his eyes closed, allowing himself to drift as the words wash over him.
"It's fucked up, is what it is," says Jason, and he sounds like he wants to go a round or five with a punching bag.
Probably that ought to be alarming. There's a part of Tim, that little boy who almost died beneath the impact of unforgiving hands and a lurid glare of impossible green light, whose instinct is to shy away from that tone.
But he's older now. There's space between that and this — a thousand almost-deaths, at the hands of people who have been far crueler in the aftermath than Jason has.
And besides. Besides, Tim's so tired he can't seem to dredge up the energy to move, just at the moment. The blanket is very soft.
"You think I don't know that?" says Dick, voice pitched low but edged with something fraught. "We got lucky. It could've been anyone else. I keep asking myself — what if it'd been someone else?"
"Oh, no you don't," says Jason. "I'm not holding your hand through this one. This is on you, Dickface."
Something in Tim's brain turns over, sluggishly, suggesting that perhaps he ought to be paying closer attention to this. That perhaps this is relevant to him.
But he really must be tired, because his thoughts drip slowly down like molasses, strange and disconnected.
"I'm not asking you to," says Dick, voice tight. "This is my screw up."
"Damn straight it is," says Jason. "But hey, he's still breathing, so you and Bruce are doing better than the last time you lost a Robin."
That's important too, Tim thinks. If he could only keep his thoughts from drifting off, he's sure he could make sense of it.
The silence that follows stretches for a long time.
"Dick," Jason starts, at last.
"No," says Dick. "No, I had that coming." A pause; a swallow. "Did you know he got into it with Ra's al Ghul? Didn't think to mention it until tonight."
"Shit," says Jason.
"I know," says Dick, and he sounds — miserable, honestly. He sounds miserable.
It's not the way Dick's suppose to sound, and even though Tim's brain still feels packed in cotton, the disconnect is jarring enough for Tim's eyes to flutter open, with considerable effort.
"Mmrh?" he manages, the question he'd been aiming for coming out muzzy with sleep, a wordless sort of nothing-sound.
His brothers go still and silent.
"Go back to sleep, Timmy," says Dick. Something touches his forehead, carefully stroking back a strand of hair. "It's not morning yet."
"Mm," says Tim, and leans into the touch.
There's something about this that should bother him — some reason, he thinks, why he shouldn't be quite so blatant about the way he tilts into Dick's hand — but it feels amazing, honestly, and he can't seem to remember why he'd been so set on avoiding it.
There's a brief pause, and then that hand strokes through his hair again, careful.
Tim sighs and settles, eyes slipping closed, and the touch carries on, slow and even, like petting a cat.
Another hand comes to rest on his ankle, broad and warm, an anchoring point of contact.
And Tim — Tim feels safe. For the first time in forever, he feels like he can breathe again.
If it wasn't for the aching in his cheek and the way his thoughts can't seem to swim up from under the blanket of exhaustion, he thinks that this moment, wherever he is, whatever his brothers are talking about, might be perfect.
That hand strokes through his hair again, and sleep rises up to draw him back under.
His dreams are full of blood.
Damian pushes him, and when he falls, he lands hard on the desert sand, broken and bleeding. Small hands peel off his cape and mask, and when Tim starts to gasp, ragged and desperate, demanding to know why, Dick appears from nowhere and explains to Tim that Damian needs them.
His dreams are full of eyes.
They glitter with malevolence and amusement, there above a knowing smile. Ra's al Ghul stands above him, and then Ra's al Ghul kneels beside him, and then Ra's al Ghul is setting a hand on the sectional, there beside Tim's cheek. His lips graze Tim's ear when he leans in to whisper: "Are you ready to play again, Detective?"
His dreams are full of people — familiar faces, beloved faces — every one of them turning away.
Tim's friends disappear like morning mist. His parents tell him, "Honestly, Timothy, think of the optics," and then they leave again, for Angola this time.
"Who the hell do you think you're fooling, Replacement?" says Jason, and he tries to slit Tim's throat. Dick says, "I'm worried about you," and he closes his eyes, and he doesn't listen when Tim begs him for help.
"Report," says Bruce, and Tim lays it all out for him in stumbling explanations: every endless moment for months and months on end, spent waiting for a blade to slice him open; cuffs on his wrists and cuffs on his ankles, and an empty room with no one to realize he's gone; the bitter chill of the desert at night, his extremities growing colder, and knowing — knowing — that if he dies here, no one will ever find him.
When he finishes his report, when he stumbles at last to a stop, Bruce tells him everything he's done wrong.
When Tim wakes again, the world is brighter.
Afternoon light slants in through the blinds, and Tim's head pounds a sickly rhythm through his skull.
Half his face feels like it's on fire, and all the rest of him feels like it's freezing. He blinks vaguely upward, expecting to see stars — expecting to see the desert spread all around him, the unforgiving sand leeching away his warmth while it laps up his blood.
It isn't there.
Tim closes his eyes for a minute, and when he opens them all that greets him is the sectional beneath him, and a tv that's off now, and the pleasant afternoon sun. He makes as though to stand — wobbles as he gets to his feet. His knees buckle, and then he's down on the floor, in a puddle of blanket, wondering how he got there.
It's hard to think, over the pounding in his head.
But the blanket's warm — it feels like the only thing that's warm — and so he winds it around his shoulders and pushes himself up to his feet again. He should wash his face. If he washes his face, maybe it won't burn quite so badly.
"I'll put on a pot of coffee, shall I, Master Timothy?" says a mild voice from the other room.
Tim ignores it and staggers toward the bathroom.
The light when he gets there is too bright — is glaring. He kicks the door closed, fumbles his way to the toilet and uses it, leaning hard against the counter. Flushes and then scrubs his hands with soap in the sink, the motions clumsy but rote.
In the mirror, the face that greets him is ghastly pale, high spots of color in the cheeks below too-bright eyes. Tim stares at himself for a long time before he reaches out to take hold of the bandage plastered beneath his right eye.
When it comes free, the area around the stitches is ugly and red, visibly swollen. Tim thinks about a prescription bottle on a bathroom counter — turns to look for it, before he realizes that the pills he's thinking of are in another bathroom, in another apartment, halfway across the city.
But there was something else he needed here, wasn't there?
He can't seem to remember what.
The thoughts swim up to him slow, churning in place like a person wading through marshmallow.
His cheek. Of course.
Tim turns the water on again, and he splashes it on his face, hissing at the way it burns. He sways on his feet — catches himself on the counter, the blanket fluttering to the bathroom floor.
"Master Timothy?" says that voice from the kitchen, again.
Tim closes his eyes. Opens them.
There's a figure standing in the now-open doorway, looking at him with hard, dark eyes. "Tt," says the boy, a narrow thing, all sharp edges. "I do not see why Father suffers your presence here. You truly are pathetic."
Tim laughs, only it doesn't come out as a laugh. It's a strange hitching noise, from somewhere low in his chest. He gropes on the counter for a weapon, instinctive, and comes up with the soap bottle. Ceramic. Heavy. It will shatter, if he throws it with enough force.
The shards will be weapons in and of themselves.
"I know," he rasps, and he sways again, and he has to catch himself against the counter.
"Jesus Christ, would you let him use the fucking bathroom in peace?" comes a voice floating from somewhere very, very far away.
The boy in the doorway narrows his eyes and sneers, and then he turns on heel and stalks out of view again.
Water drips from Tim's face, still. The collar of the t-shirt Dick lent him is soaking wet with it, or maybe that's sweat.
He was supposed to be doing something, he thinks. What was he supposed to be doing?
"Tim?" says a voice, from somewhere very far away. "Hey, Timmy?"
Tim blinks at his face in the mirror. He blinks at the blanket on the floor.
He lurches toward the doorway, feeling drunk — feeling how he pictures being drunk would be, anyway, because he's never — he doesn't like not to be able to think straight, hates it when his brain feels like it's swimming through molasses, the way it is now.
He leans hard on the wall as he staggers back out into the living room, charting a vague course back toward the couch. He'll have to let go of the wall at some point, he thinks with great regret.
But he can do this, he tells himself. It isn't very far.
Tim lets go of the wall — takes a step, and then another, and then a third. It's farther than he remembers. His legs are trembling; his lungs are heaving, like he's just chased a league of Arkham escapees halfway across the city without pausing for breath.
Four steps, five, and his legs buckle under him. He sinks slowly to the floor.
He sort of wishes he had the blanket, still. Where did the blanket go again?
It's cold in the desert at night.
"Hey, Timbit, what gives," says a voice, near at hand.
Then another voice, decidedly more alarmed: "You with me, baby bird?"
Tim blinks up at the ceiling, where faces have swum into view, peering down at him. "Am I?"
"You tell me," says the first voice, and a broad hand reaches down to touch Tim's forehead. It feels nice, honestly. Most of him's freezing, but not his face. That's too hot. And the hand is cool and careful against his skin, more soothing than it has any right to be.
Tim makes a small sound and presses into the touch.
"Fuck," says the voice. "He's burning up."
"Am not," says Tim, vaguely. "It's cold."
Another hand joins the first, brushing hair out of Tim's face, gentle. "Jesus," says the second voice. "Get the thermometer, would you? I'm gonna lay him down."
Tim's already laying down.
"M'already laying down," he says, the words sloppy and indistinct.
Strong arms slide underneath him, below his back and beneath his knees. Then he's being lifted, and the world spins dizzyingly, and Tim squeezes his eyes shut against it.
He means to open them again. Really he does.
But it seems harder than it ought to be. Something warm tucks in around him, and someone's talking, voice a comforting hush by his ear.
It's nice, Tim thinks, before he sinks down into sleep again. It's been a long time since anyone's talked to him like that.
The nightmares make less sense, this time. They flicker through his skull, fever-bright and fear-toxin-surreal, melting into one another to build something more horrific than the sum of their parts.
A cuckoo pushes him from the nest, and he breaks all of his bones on the ground below.
Tim stands, and he falls, and he stands again. The broken legs don't hold him, but he walks on them anyway, out into the desert, where there are ancient bat wings carved into the cave walls.
Far above him, out of reach, the Bat Signal gleams on the clouds. A dark shape swoops in to take it home again, leaving Tim behind to make his own way, each step a new lesson in agony.
"Wait," gasps Tim, and his chest chokes on a sob. "Don't go."
He blinks, and a face leans in above him; a hand strokes at his hair.
"I'm not going anywhere, chum," someone says, voice a deep rumble, and a hand presses something cold to his forehead.
Tim tries to close his eyes again, but another voice says, "Not yet, Timmy, hold up a second."
"Antibiotics first," says the deeper voice, firm and commanding.
"Yeah, I got it."
Something warm surrounds him — shifts him until he's sitting mostly upright, and the world reels, dizzying as a kaleidoscope. Fingers touch his lips, urging them open; he complies, muddled and confused, and something presses down on his tongue, small and plastic-smooth.
"Now the water," says the voice, and a cup presses to his lips.
Tim swallows, and water spills into his mouth, cold and soothing. He hasn't realized that he's thirsty until this moment — gulps down mouthfuls, only vaguely aware that some of it's dripped down to damp his collar.
"Easy," says that voice again, and lowers the cup away. "Now something for the fever, okay?" More pressure against his lips, and he opens for this, too — swallows down the pills, and more water afterward.
"Okay," says that voice again. "You ready, baby bird? Going back down."
Tim shifts again, something lowering him flat. Wherever he's lying, it's very soft.
"S'cold," says Tim, vaguely. Steady hands tuck a blanket in around him, obliging, and something about that, that easy kindness, just for the asking, makes it feel as though his chest has cracked wide open.
His cheeks are damp and sticky, somehow; Tim's not sure when that happened. But it's alright, he thinks, as darkness rises up around him again to swallow him whole.
Someone's reaching out to dab beneath his eyes, already, gently wiping them clean.
The next time Tim wakes, he's drenched with sweat. His shirt — Dick's shirt, actually — clings to him in a way that's sort of gross, and his hair feels lank and greasy.
The throbbing in his face is bearable again. His thoughts wobble like a newborn foal, but he can string them together to make anything like a coherent sentence, which is a new and exciting development.
"I feel awful," he croaks, to the room at large.
"Yeah, well, you look like shit, too," says Jason. "Least you're consistent."
"Funny," says Tim, in the sort of tone that indicates he does not in fact think it's funny.
Or he would, anyway; instead he coughs, choking on his own bone-dry throat, until Jason says, "The hell, that wasn't permission to go and die on me."
Tim gropes sideways, toward where he vaguely recalls there having been a cup of water — doesn't get far before it's pressed into his hand. He shoves his other hand behind him, levers himself into an almost-upright position, and swallows down a couple of mouthfuls until his lungs give up on trying to kill him.
When he puts the cup down again, he feels wrung out, like he's run the Gotham City Marathon in mid-summer.
"Pill, too," says Jason, and presses something into his hand. Tim blinks down at it. Had he gone back to his apartment to get his meds, after all? The orange bottle on the bedside table's got his name on it, but the date's from just a couple days ago.
"These mine?" says Tim.
"Doc Thompkins said you need em till the infection's gone."
Hell. So he's lost time. Lost a whole appointment with the good doctor, apparently, busily out of his mind with the fever.
Tim swallows the pill down — chases it with another sip — grimaces. "I should've swung by my place to get the old ones. Lesson learned, I guess."
"Lesson learned," says Jason, in a flat, not-quite-a-question tone.
"Sure," says Tim. "Don't skip your meds unless you want a bad time." He waggles his fingers slightly, in a vague impression of a shooting star, and offers up a sardonic smile. "The more you know."
Jason presses a hand to his forehead, and Tim scowls and swats it away. "I don't have a fever anymore."
"Could've fooled me," says Jason, with a snort. "You bother mentioning those meds of yours to anybody who could update your file?"
Tim shrugs, with just one shoulder. "I've been busy."
"Yeah, you said," says Jason, in a nonchalant drawl. "So let's hear the Cliffs Notes version."
Tim eyes him, sidelong. "Thought you hated those things."
"Cause they're cheating!" says Jason, with feeling. "The whole point of reading a book's to read the goddamn book." He reins himself in, fixing Tim with a no-nonsense stare. "We're not talking classic lit, though, this is need-to know. So make with the summarizing already."
Tim stares out across the room, toward a spot on the far wall. "Bruce got a little trapped in the timestream," he says. "No one believed me when I said he wasn't dead, so I went digging."
Jason gives a considering sort of hum — nods toward the hallway, vague enough to encompass the whole of the manor. "Looks like you found something."
"Proof," says Tim, and his voice wavers just slightly, but there's something fierce in it, too.
Maybe he doesn't measure up to Bruce — or Dick, or Jason. Maybe he never will. But he walked through hell and came out the other side dragging what Bruce Wayne needed to get help, and that — that's not nothing.
He tilts his chin up, just slightly — meets Jason's eyes. "Came with some trouble along the way, but what else is new?"
"What kind of trouble we talking?"
Tim shrugs. "The League and their rivals, mostly. I don't think they like me very much anymore."
"Dick said something about Ra's al Ghul." Jason's watching him, eyes canny and evaluating.
"He extra doesn't like me anymore," Tim tells him, with a hard smile.
The grin that Jason flashes him back is a little fierce, and a little proud, and it lights up something in Tim's chest like a candle flame.
He doesn't examine that — sets whatever it is at arm's length, deliberately, and tells it to quiet down.
"Good," says Jason, vicious.
Tim settles back in among the absolute pile of pillows propped up on the bed behind him. "So like I said — trouble, but nothing I couldn't handle."
"And the meds?"
"Antibiotics." Tim waves a vague hand. "I'm on them for a couple of years."
"Uh huh," says Jason, flat. "Cause that's normal."
Tim could lie about it.
He probably should lie about it. He doesn't really want to sit here in bed getting grilled about his absolute nightmare of a year.
He wants a shower. He wants a cup of coffee.
He realizes, reluctantly, that the fastest way to get those things is probably to tell the truth.
"It's the recommended treatment regimen," says Tim, tone detached and board-room-presentation informative, "for someone who's missing an organ."
There's a beat of silence; Jason sits up in his chair a little straighter. "Come again?"
"My spleen," says Tim. He presses a finger to the scar, through Dick's shirt. "Ran me straight through."
When he looks up again, Jason's staring at him, eyes wide. "Well, fuck. Let me guess. In the desert at night?"
Everything seems to screech to a stop.
Those words have no right to be here, out in the open, no matter how much Tim has lived and breathed them — no matter how much he's seen that place in his dreams, with the moonlit sand blackened by his own blood.
"What?"
"You were talking about it," says Jason. "In your sleep."
Tim sits bolt upright. "What?" His voice is a half-octave higher than it ought to be.
"It was a hell of a fever," Jason tells him.
Tim's mind races backwards, over the jumbled mess of the last few — hours? Days? He can remember just enough of his nightmares that the thought of having spoken any of them out loud makes his heart thud in his throat, juddering rabbit-quick.
"Hey," says Jason. When Tim looks up, he reaches out with a broad hand to tousle Tim's hair. "Nobody heard anything we're going to spread around. Alright?"
Tim can feel his cheeks burning, and not from the fever. "Was it bad?"
"Most of it didn't make much sense," says Jason. "Just nonsense stuff, you know?"
The muscle in Tim's jaw works. "And the rest?"
Jason glances sideways, toward the door. He puts a bookmark in the tattered paperback open face-down on his lap, and he sets it on the bedside table.
"Couple things, here and there. Think you were talking to us, once or twice."
Tim's teeth are clenched so tight he feels like he might crack a molar. Wouldn't that just be perfect? Straight out of one infection-prone area and right into another.
He takes a shaky breath in. His chest feels tight; he can't seem to get enough air.
"Who's us?" he demands, suddenly terrified to ask.
The only thing he can think of that might be worse than Damian in the room with him while he's unconscious and unable to fight back is Damian in a corner, listening as Tim spews all his greatest nightmares and insecurities, spread out like an open wound, raw and glistening for the world to see.
"Me and Dick," says Jason. "Bruce and Alfred."
"That's all?" Tim's distantly grateful for how steady the words are. They don't tremble, even a little.
"Haven't let the little demon in this wing since you went down."
Tim lets out a breath, rough and shaky. He scrubs a hand over his forehead.
Jason makes a show of stretching out his legs, all casual unconcern. "Look," he says. "You really do look like shit. You want to lay back down?"
Tim doesn't, really.
He still wants that shower and a cup of coffee.
On the other hand, he thinks that if he relapses on the fever and starts talking about who-only-knows-what in his sleep again, he may actually die of humiliation.
So. Lesser of two evils it is.
"…maybe for a little while," Tim allows, at last.
He doesn't think he's tired. Who knows how long he's been asleep already?
But as soon as his head touches the pillow, he's out again, completely lost to the world.