Chapter Text
The walkie-talkie is an unusual sight.
In Gotham City you can find most anything littering the streets and rooftops. People are just tossing things everywhere. Muggers running away with a purse, discarding everything but the money. Dumped goods, ditched weapons, Tim even found a gun once.
He’d stayed pretty clear of it. Didn’t want his prints to get smeared all over what was most likely a murder weapon, with the way this city is.
So, finding lost or tossed things isn't unusual. But the lone walkie-talkie, laying discarded in the corner of a rooftop certainly is a little strange.
At first, Tim thinks he might have stumbled upon the middle of a scheme, because it’s impossible to walk two steps in Gotham without ending up in some great, villainous plan. Someone is probably going to come here, grab the walkie, and start talking to whoever’s on the other side, detailing an escape-plan or say some stuff like The Eagle has landed.
If Tim was a smart child, he’d stay away. Find a different rooftop and forget he ever saw the walkie.
But the thing is, this rooftop is the best vantage point for Batman and Robin’s current patrol routes. It’s the best spot, because right over there is the glow of the city, and any minute now, Batman and Robin are going to come swinging, and Tim is going to get the chance to take the best photos ever.
So Tim walks up to the walkie-talkie and locates the talk-button. When he presses it down, a loud kschhh is heard, and he startles and drops it. He casts a quick look around, but no one is sprinting out from the shadows at the sound, so he turns his gaze to the walkie again. He was sure it was going to be broken, or at least cracked. But it looks fine.
Actually. It looks more than fine. It looks high grade. Sturdy black plastic, slipped into a buttery leather case. A little screen that’s showing what channel he’s tuned into.
But he doesn’t have time to get distracted. He casts a glance on his watch, shoves the walkie deep into his jacket pocket, and scrambles into a crouched position behind the parapet. He positions his camera, fiddles with the focus and then there they are.
Batman and Robin are soaring through the sky, capes billowing and the lights of the city making the background a soft, blurry glow. Time feels like it’s slowing down, and Tim is grinning as he snaps photo after photo of the vigilantes.
Then, in a rush, it’s over. And Tim feels empty again as he gazes at the disappearing vigilantes, now mere dots on the horizon. He packs up his camera, and begins the trek back to his lonely home.
-
Here’s the thing:
Tim is lonely.
He’s always been alone, and it’s not that big of a deal. His parents are home approximately 7 days a year. And by home Tim means with him. They’re in Gotham more frequently than a week a year. But they don’t usually spend any time with him when they are. They’re already away in the mornings before he rises, and come home after he’s gone to bed.
The times that he wakes up in the morning to the smell of his dad’s coffee and the sound of his mom’s smoothie being blended, those are the days when he practically throws himself down the stairs to the kitchen. Because if they’re home, then maybe he can help his dad solve the morning crossword, and maybe he can get his mom’s opinion on some of his photography, and maybe they will even spend the whole morning together?
And maybe, if he’s really, really, lucky, they’ll even eat lunch together later.
But those times are rare. Rarer than whatever bones or ceramic shards that his parents are always away digging up. Maybe if Tim had died and gotten buried beneath the floorboards 1500 years ago they would come home and spend some time with his bones, at least.
Tim is always alone. He should enjoy it. It’s every tween boy's dream to have a mansion for himself. He can skate through the hallways, slide down banisters, eat candy for dinner every day if he wanted to. And though Tim skates through plenty of hallways, and slides down a fair amount of banisters, and always has a jumbo bag of marshmallows stocked in his pantry for when his sweet tooth gets the better of him, he would give it all up in a second for some company.
But, no company will come. Not until he’s finished school and can move onto university. Not until he can start a new life for himself. Because the one he’s currently living feels more and more hopeless with each passing day.
Every one of those days passes kind of the same. He wakes up, goes to school, comes home to a house that smells of their housekeeper’s citrus floor-cleaner, does his homework, checks where in the world his parents might be, goes out to photograph Batman and Robin, and then he goes to bed. Rinse and repeat.
It’s not very fun, but at least he has school to keep him somewhat occupied. The real trouble starts on the first day of summer vacation.
He sleeps in. That’s sort of nice, he guesses. Now that he can sleep in, he can stay out later when he’s photographing Batman and Robin. No need to worry about school. He can sleep however much he wants to.
But at a certain point, Tim knows, he’s gotta get out of bed. Lest he starts to fuse to it and won’t be able to ever leave it again. So he rolls out of it and onto his floor. Miserable and already bored, even though his day has barely started, he stares at the ceiling from the floor instead of from his bed. Everybody give it up for variety!
He rolls over with a sigh, and stares at the dust bunnies beneath his bed. His jacket is under there. He should probably hang it up. That’d give him something to do, even something boring is better than wallowing in self pity.
Tim sits up and tugs his jacket out from under his bed, and is surprised at the weight of it. It’s a very light jacket, and it’s heavier than he remembers.
The answer lies, of course, in the walkie-talkie. It’s still in his pocket, and for a horrifying second Tim thinks that he’s stolen it from a thug, or something.
But if whoever had left it there would have had a need for it, surely they would have spoken into it at some point. And surely Tim would have heard it.
So. He’s stolen a walkie-talkie. What now?
He’s a thief. Should he turn himself in to the police? To Batman? That seems a little extreme. Maybe he should just put it back where he found it. But what if he goes to put it back, and whoever he stole it from is there, waiting to beat him up? Lost and Found services in Gotham are all scams, except for the one at the library. But even so, he can’t leave it there. What if someone sees him and asks him where he found it? Then he’d have to lie, but they probably wouldn’t believe him, and then he’d have to tell them the truth. If he told them the truth, then he’d have to explain why his parents are letting him be out on Gotham rooftops at night, and then his parents would probably end up in jail, and while Tim doesn’t maybe like his parents that much (he doesn’t know them well enough to form an opinion) he doesn’t want them to go to prison!
Tim swallows and presses the speak-button. Static is heard, and Tim tries to sound like an adult.
“Hello. Is anyone there? Over.”
He lets go of the button. Waits for an answer. But no one answers.
After a while he tries again.
“Hello. Is anyone there? I’ve got your other walkie. Over.”
Still nothing. Maybe the other one is broken.
And.. If it hadn’t been for the walkie, Tim probably wouldn’t have uttered a word to anyone all day. Possibly all week, or longer, depending on whether he’d be home when the housekeeper came around.
It felt kind of nice to speak, to hear his own voice. Even if nobody else heard him. He bites his cheek, leans against his bed, and presses the button again.
“This is…” He trails off. He can’t use his real name, in case someone actually is on the other end. He’ll have to be a bit sneakier. “This is T, reporting live from my room. All is quiet. A regular, boring morning. Nothing new on any fronts.”
He snorts, a little embarrassed by himself, but also a little giddy. It’s like having his own radio show. Except no one is listening to him, so it doesn’t matter how embarrassing or stupid he sounds.
But pressing down the button every single time he wants to speak into it is kind of annoying. He fiddles with it, looks around at the different little knobs and wheels, and finds one that’s labeled PERM. TRANSMIT. When he flicks it to ON, there is a static sound, and then there is just a slight buzzing. He turns down the volume, and it dissipates into a barely noticeable hum.
He speaks into it again, and sees the little meter measuring sound levels on the screen bounce up. His voice is still there.
Sweet. No need to hold down that button every time he wants to say something. He’s not sure if someone on the other side could talk to him when he’s got permanent transmit on, probably not, but it doesn’t really matter anyway. The other walkie might be destroyed, and it’s not like anyone else is going to tune into his specific frequency anyway.
Speaking of.. There are a couple of preset channels, but all of them display strange frequencies, and after a quick google search, Tim finds that the walkie-talkie is certainly not a normal one. It’s nowhere near the 400-something megahertz frequencies that most two-way radios use.
But the static is still there. And it seems fully functional. And no one has tried to contact him. So Tim doesn’t really care.
He grabs a pair of headphones, plugs them in, and hangs the walkie on his belt Sony-Walkman style. Then, to the kitchen for breakfast, or lunch. Brunch?
“This is T again, coming at you hot with riveting news about sustenance,” He says in his best radio-announcer voice. “Today’s menu features mouthwatering options such as..” He opens the fridge, “Cereal and milk. Or eggs, if I manage not to burn them again.”
He starts to pour himself a bowl of cereal.
“Did you know that the brand Batwing Bunches is not, in fact, approved by the FDA, and are also banned in all countries, including America, for their questionable ingredients, 4% of which are dissolved organic matter that most likely is just straight from Gotham Harbor,” He says, grabbing a spoon and marveling at the sound of his own voice. “They’re only sold in Gotham, since we don’t really subscribe to the law anyway, and no one is brave enough to battle thousands of radioactive Gothamite kids for them to be removed from the shelves. Fascinating, truly. Not to mention the GMO’d vegetables. Is it really GMO if they’re grown through Ivy’s magic-”
He keeps babbling about food as he munches on his cereal, and finds a sort of peace settle within him. A satisfaction that he pretends comes from finally eating breakfast, but which probably stems from finally being able to talk freely to someone.
Well. He doesn’t actually know if someone’s on the other end. He doubts it. But he can pretend, and that feels like enough.
-
“This is T again, your faithful sports-news host and commentator, coming at’cha live from today’s epic one-man skateboard championships. We’ve reached the semifinals, and our champion, me. T. I’m the champion, since I’m also the only competitor. Does that also make me the loser? Whatever. I’m setting the world record for most hallways skated through in two minutes. The conditions are wonderful! Carpets, removed. Floors, waxed. The only thing stopping me from a gold medal is the fact that I thought it would be too pathetic to buy one for myself. On your marks! Ready, set, go!”
Jason snorts as the slightly warped sounds of skateboard wheels rolling over hardwood fills his headphones.
He doesn’t know who the other kid is, or how on Earth he got ahold of the Bat-grade walkie, but he finds him hilarious. He’s been tuning into ‘the T-show’ ever since he heard his walkie randomly start chattering while checking over his equipment. They rarely use them, relying instead on comms. But Batman is a prepper through and through, so of course they have walkie-talkies. The other one seems to belong to Batman, and Jason is willing to bet that he’d dropped it somewhere while out fighting and forgot to replace it.
Jason secretly replaced it for him. And replaced his own. And set them to a different frequency. This one, he keeps to himself, so he can listen to his daily summer-break podcast.
Is it weird, listening in on some random kid talking to himself all day? Maybe. But Jason has burnt through too many audiobooks for him to be able to count, and this one is unpredictable. He never knows when T is going to start talking, if it’s early morning or late night. And the kid is broadcasting on a channel. Anyone…
Well. Not anyone. Batman’s walkie-talkies are specifically made so that none other than them are able to tune in to the specific channels. But the kid probably doesn’t know that. The kid probably thinks that anyone could tune in, if he knows anything at all about two-way radios, which Jason would put good money on him doing.
T is smart. If it wasn’t for how young he sounded, Jason would’ve thought that T was older than him. But as it stands, T is probably around eleven or ten years old. He’s also on summer break, but Jason doesn’t know from what school. He’s got a Bristol accent, but it’s slightly dimmed, as if he’s not around Bristol-y people that often. Jason pegs him as upper middle class, since his house is apparently big enough to skateboard in.
Big enough to crash in, too, if the groans and muttering coming from the walkie is anything to go by.
Which brings Jason to another thought.
The kid never mentions his parents, ever. In the three weeks that Jason has been listening, not once has T ever spoken about his parents. And, because of the strange times he broadcasts, because of the fact that no one ever interrupts or tells him to go to bed, Jason is starting to seriously wonder where his parents are.
He wonders sometimes if he should investigate. It couldn’t be that hard to triangulate where the kid is broadcasting from, right? Barbara or Bruce could probably figure it out.
But… that would mean involving them. And then Jason would have a whole lot of explaining to do. And also, this is one of the few things that he has that no one else in the whole world knows about. Not even Bruce, and Bruce knows everything.
He’d considered telling Dick about it, but had decided against it for the same reason.
So it’s just Jason, and this random kid who was now proclaiming himself the winner of the epic one-man skateboard championships. Not that the kid knows that Jason is listening, but hey. Maybe that’s for the better.
-
Tim is having a blast.
No, for real. He is having the time of his life. Definitely. This is absolutely the best day of his life. He’s never felt better. Truly. This is just wonderful. Everything is so great.
Okay, maybe he’s a filthy little liar. Maybe he’s having the shittiest day ever. Maybe his parents had promised to come home for his birthday, and maybe he’d been stupid, stupid, stupid and believed them. And maybe they’d canceled their flight home because of some ‘really great opportunity’, and maybe he’s currently sitting on his kitchen floor, trying not to cry into his birthday cake.
But he’s having a great day! At least that’s what he’s telling himself, because it’s his birthday! Isn’t that fun? That’s supposed to be fun, right? He’s supposed to be happy, so that’s what he’s trying to be.
He pushes down the talk-button. Listens to the kschhh that he’s come to know so well over the summer.
“Today’s update of the T-show,” He says, ignoring the way his voice wobbles. “It’s my-” He takes a deep breath. “It’s my birthday. I’m twelve years old. Almost a teenager now. Heh.” He lets go of the button. Listens to the empty silence. The sun is setting, the light coming through the windows is painting the kitchen with glowing orange squares. He’s leaning back against the counters, bare feet cold on the tiled floor despite it being July.
Tim’s birthday’s have always been cold, in one way or another.
He presses down the button again.
“My parents sent me some money, which is nice I guess.” He sniffs and spoons himself a piece of cake, but doesn’t eat it. It’s his favorite, but Tim guesses that it will just taste like ash in his mouth. It would probably feel more appetizing if he hadn’t had to buy it for himself.
“I would- I would have preferred if they were here to deliver it in person. But I should have known they wouldn’t be. Stupid of me to think anything to the contrary, really. I’m… I’m smarter than that. I should be grateful. At least they remembered.”
He lets go of the button. Picks at his cake. He lets go of the spoon and tips his head back against the cupboards. Stares out the window. There are trees in their garden, crowns dipped in gold from the setting sun. Apple and pear. A gardener comes once a week to pick the dropped fruit off the pristine lawn. The fruit could be used for pies, strudel, any kind of dessert really. Juice. Cider.
But there is never anyone there to watch it grow from bud to flower to fruit. To harvest the fruit. To take it and actually make something meaningful of it. Tim is the only one there, and he doesn’t even know how to make apple pie.
He could google a recipe, but what’s the point? Who is going to eat the pie? Who is going to look at what he’s made and say ‘Wow, Tim. Great job! That looks really nice.’?
Kschhh goes the button.
“Happy birthday to me, I guess,” He mutters. He keeps pressing the button for a little while longer, just to hear the walkie make a sound. He knows the silence after will be too much.
But he can’t hold it forever. And there is no use turning on permanent transmit mode, because he has nothing else to say. So, he lets go, one final time.
The voice coming from his walkie-talkie makes him freeze up.
“Happy birthday, T.”
Tim knows that voice.
-
“What?” Breathes T’s voice through the walkie, “Is there someone there?”
Jason raises his radio. He’s sitting in his windowsill, looking out over the Wayne gardens. The sun is playing with the water in the pond, making it glitter.
“Is there someone there over,” He says, a small grin on his face. “You need to learn proper walkie-talkie etiquette.”
“Hey,” T says, the teary voice from before now slowly disappearing, “You’re not saying over.”
“Not saying what? Over.” Jason holds back a laugh at the groan T lets out.
They’re quiet for a bit, and Jason thinks through what he’s just done.
It was a spur of the moment thing, to start talking to T. He’d been listening in since early June, not saying a word. Just listening to T ramble about everything from mundane updates about what he was doing that particular day, to deep dives into crime statistics in Gotham during non-denominational holidays.
(April Fools came in first, with International Women’s day last on the list, because apparently the rouges respected a woman’s right to have one damn day of peace. The solstices and equinoxes apparently had high numbers as well. Interesting.)
Jason has broken the illusion of secrecy that T might’ve had. He has no idea if T had thought that anyone had been actually hearing him, but now Jason had confirmed that someone did indeed listen to his little podcast. He doesn’t know if that will be the end of it. Maybe it will. Maybe T wouldn’t want to continue now that he knows that Jason is listening. Maybe he’d get embarrassed, or something. Jason would mourn the loss of his daily entertainment if that’s the case.
But, it had been worth it. Because T had sounded utterly crushed at his parents being gone. He’d sounded like the loneliest boy in the world, thinking that no one cared about him.
Jason couldn’t just sit by and let him think that. It’s the kid’s birthday, for fuck’s sake. And apparently, the kid’s all alone in his house, celebrating with absolutely no one.
Jason knows what that’s like. It sucks. So he’d told him happy birthday. Just to make sure that someone would.
He’d do it again in a heartbeat. No regrets.
“Who are you?” T asks, and Jason thinks about it.
He can’t say his real name. He doesn’t want to get that personal. And obviously he can’t say Robin. T’s name obviously isn’t T. It might be the first letter of his name, or something. So Jason goes the same route.
“I’m J,” He says into the radio. It’s silent for a moment, and then T speaks again.
“Like J A Y, or just the letter J?”
“Just the letter.” Jason shifts in his position at the window. Settles deeper in the cushioned seat. It’s his favorite place in the entire manor, this window in his room. The sunset is nearly gone now, just a few tendrils of pink lingering in the sky. The shadows in the garden are turning blue.
“I’m gonna call you Jay. Like, the name. Just calling you a letter feels weird,” T says, and Jason snorts.
“Well, then I’m gonna call you Tee. Like, T double-E.”
“What, like a T-shirt?” Tee sounds mildly offended, but amused.
“Yup. The T-shirt show. I’m remakin’ your brand here. A totally new and fresh vision. You should thank me.”
Tee is silent again, for longer this time, and Jason bites his lip anxiously in wait for a reply. When it comes, it’s careful.
“You’ve been listening to me?” Tee asks, and Jason wonders how to phrase it without giving away too much. He elects to lie a little, just in case.
“Yeah. I found this walkie while I was takin’ a walk. And I could hear someone talking. So I kept it. Been listenin’ since early June. It’s real fun, I-” He pauses but doesn’t let go of the button. He furrows his brows. “I hope you don’t stop just ‘cause you know I’m listenin’ in. You sound like you’re enjoying it. I don’t wanna take that from you, or whatever.”
He lets go, hoping he hasn’t made a fool of himself. Tee takes a while to respond this time too. But when he does, Jason breathes a quiet breath of relief.
“I’m going to keep doing it,” Tee says, voice a little dimmed, “I don’t think I can stop. It- Okay, it’s a bit stupid, but it does actually feel a little better to know that someone was actually listening to me.”
Jason doesn’t know why he says it, but the words come out anyway.
“People don’t usually listen to ya, do they?”
He winces at his own words. It sounded a little condescending. He really didn’t mean it that way. He hopes Tee understands that.
“No,” Tee says with a bitter humor in his voice, “There’s never anyone here to hear me speak, anyway.”
“Well,” Jason says, trying for a light tone, “Now you know that I’m listenin’. I might not be able to answer all the time, but you know I’m here.”
“Yeah,” Tee says, “Thank you.”
-
Tim knows that it’s Jason. He knew it immediately, because he’s been following Batman and Robin on patrol since he was nine. He’s heard Jason speak countless times, and though the voice filter that Robin uses does a little to conceal Jason’s voice, there’s something about the dialect and melody that you can’t really filter away.
So. Robin is listening to his little podcast.
Tim tries not to freak out about it. He also realizes that he must be more careful of the information he gives away about himself, because Jason is technically his next door neighbor. Jason is also very smart. Too many tidbits of information and he’s going to connect the dots harder than anyone has ever connected dots before. Tim really can’t afford Robin to get involved with his situation too much. Robin would maybe call CPS if he found out about Tim’s parents never being home, and as already established, Tim doesn’t want his parents to end up in prison. He also doesn’t want to become a ward of the state.
The less Jason knows, the better.
But luckily for Tim, he has a million other things to talk about. And though sometimes he still sticks to the T-show radio-host shtick, he now finds himself addressing Jay more often than not. It feels good to have someone to talk to. Or, talk at. Tim usually keeps permanent transmit on, because he doesn’t want to keep pressing the button every time he wants to speak. If Jason wants to interject something, he’ll press a button that makes Tim’s radio buzz once, and Tim will turn off perm-transmit so that Jason can talk.
“-And I don’t know about you, but I thought the last few chapters were lacking in action. Nothing happened, it was just-” He laughs at the frantic buzzing from his radio. Flicks off perm-transmit.
He’s in the garden, swinging in a hammock as August nears its end. The day is sunny and the sky is bright, bright blue, so he’s sticking to the shade. Soon school will start up again, and he won’t be able to talk to Jason as often. They go to the same school, but Jason is a year above him even with the grades Tim has skipped. They won’t see each other, and Tim prefers it that way.
No he doesn’t. He’d actually love to talk to Jason in real life. Maybe. He could always arrange an accidental meeting between the two. Say something that will make Jason recognize him. But he won’t. He’s too afraid to ruin the friendship that has been budding between them over the course of the summer. There’s not a chance in Hell that he will risk the only connection he has for some childish wish to have a real-life friend.
No way.
What they have is good enough. Tim gets to talk to Jason, who seems to like listening to him. They have fun conversations, they're friends. It makes his days less lonely, and he still watches Batman and Robin at night. Not as often, though. He doesn't need to, not when he's got Robin right here in his radio. Not when Robin is his friend.
It's so surreal. It's so nice. Tim doesn't want to ruin it.
“That’s the point!” Jason practically shouts, “They’ve been through hell, gone to the wizard, found out he was already dead, and have to move onto plan B, which - by the way - sucks! They need a cooldown to gather strength! And it’s a great way to learn more about each character’s inner workings. You’re just-”
“An action junkie,” Tim fills in with a grin after cutting Jason’s signal off. “I know. But come on. It’s three chapters describing different kinds of bread and soup. Please. It’s like the beginning of Lord of the Rings. Bo-ring,” He drags out the last word and flicks off perm-transmit again.
Jason’s ranting is almost incoherent with how quickly he’s speaking. Tim laughs to himself as he swings in the hammock.
No. He can’t approach Jason. And it sucks that their talks will have to grow shorter during the fall, but Tim will survive. It’s for the best.
And, besides. If Jason wanted to talk to him in real life, then surely he would have mentioned it at some point, right?
-
Jason loves school. He really does, it’s a lot of fun and he gets to crush Martin The Asshole in Debate Club on a regular basis. It’s everything a guy could dream of, really.
But lately, he finds himself longing to go home. Because at home, stashed away safely under the floorboards in his wardrobe, wrapped in a sweater to muffle any noises, is his walkie-talkie. Him and Tee are usually home around the same time, and Jason longs for their talks.
Because he loves school, but he doesn’t have that many friends there.
People tend to stay away from him, because he’s the ratty street kid that Bruce Wayne took in. Or they try to get close, because he’s the ratty street kid that Bruce Wayne took in. No one seems to want to get to know him just for him.
But Tee doesn’t know who he is. Tee just wants to talk, and is happy that Jason is listening. Even happier when Jason responds. He can hear it in the other’s voice, how he perks up when Jason buzzes his radio to indicate he wants to say something. How the conversations get livelier when they’re talking.
And they talk about anything. From helping each other with schoolwork to discussing series and books to debating the best rogue to be kidnapped by.
As Autumn trods by like a horse on a gravel road, Jason realizes that he might only have one friend. One friend, whose name he doesn’t even know. He doesn’t mind it. It’s alright, because at the end of the day they’re still friends, whether they know each other's names or not.
And because they’re friends, Jason feels like he owes him this, at least.
He buzzes, and Tee stops his rambling about skateboard wheels.
“Yeah?” Tee says, shutting off permanent transmit to allow Jason to talk.
Jason is quiet for a bit, trying to sort out what he’s going to say. He’s been thinking about this ever since he found out, and Tee is the only one he’s going to tell. Bruce wouldn’t let him, neither would Alfred or Dick. But Tee doesn’t know the gory details of it. He doesn’t know who Jason is. Jason can tell Tee about his plan. Partly, at least.
He finally holds down the button. He listens to the static sound it makes for a second before speaking.
“Hey, Tee. I’m- I’m gonna be away for a while, so I won’t be able to respond. Maybe for a week, at most.” Jason says. Something about the tone of his voice seems to halt Tee for a second. He hadn’t meant for it to come out so serious, but he’s been thinking about it nearly every waking second this past week. It means so much to him.
“Okay,” Tee says, sounding a little wary. “Where are you going?”
Jason sighs before pressing the button.
“Just some family business that I need to sort out.” To put it mildly. “I’m leaving tomorrow, but I’ll be back before you know it,” He promises.
“I’m holding you to that.” Tee tries for something playful, but Jason hears the carefully concealed anxiety in his voice anyway.
“Don’t worry,” He reassures him. “I’ve no intention of ditching you. You know I can’t live without my T-shirt show.” He teases, and it seems like it works, because Tee’s next reply is a snort.
“I can’t believe you’ve renamed my highly respected and super-serious radioshow to ‘The T-shirt show’. It sounds positively vapid.”
-
When nightfall comes, Jason tucks in the walkie-talkie under the floorboards in his wardrobe. It’s wrapped in two sweaters so no one will hear Tee if he keeps talking into his radio while Jason is gone.
Then, he leaves Gotham. Travels to the other side of the Globe.
Just for a little bit. His mother is there, after all. He needs to see her.
-
The Joker leaves Jason bloody and bony and bruised on the floor, and his laugh echoes as the door shuts and locks with a soul-crushing finality.
He wished he’d taken his walkie with him, so he could say goodbye to Tee. He will never know what happened, why Jason just stopped answering one day.
The timer ticks down and Jason’s breaths are shallow. He mentally pleads one last time for Bruce to come, but closes his eyes in resignation when the timer reaches ten seconds.
If Bruce comes now, it’ll still be too late.
He had a good run, he thinks. But he can’t even make himself accept it. He has so much more to give, so many things he wants to do, so many-
-
Two weeks later, in a cold and lonely Drake Manor, Tim reads the news in the paper.
He picks up his walkie with shaking hands.
Kschhh goes the button.
“Jason?” He whispers, a childish plea for it to not be true. “Jay, please- please come in.”
He lets go of the button, and the silence after tells him that he is all alone once more.
He clutches the walkie to his chest and hopes that it’s waterproof.
At least no one is home to hear him crying.
But then again, no one ever is.