Opulence of Time

by cherubic_cherry

Summary:

Tim died.

he could still feel it, the way death’s cold breathe lingered under his skin. rotten pieces of wood still embedded in his fingers from when he tried to claw himself out, and his throat still stung from when he took his last breathe. He was buried alive, so why was he still alive?

Maybe it was a blessing that Tim Drake never existed in the new universe he woke up in. Even if in that universe Tim was homeless, the Bats preying on his every move, and freaky white spiders were following him everywhere he went. And there he was thinking his life couldn't get any weirder.

Chapter 1: Prologue

 Tim watched Kill Bill when he was younger.  

Jack was a Quentin Tarantino fanatic and insisted on watching one of his earliest films with his son in their basement home theatre. It was one of the only films the two had ever watched together but both concluded that Kill Bill was one of Tarantino's more unfortunate movies.

Jack had a grudge against Uma Thurman for some undisclosed reason, and Tim thought the movie was too ridiculous to even enjoy as a comedy.  

for starters, the ´infamous' being buried alive scene where Uma manages to punch through a wooden coffin and dig herself out of a six-foot deep hole is ludicrous.

Even if he were able to punch through solid wood, the dirt would collapse into the coffin and she´d suffocate even faster. She’d run out of air before even getting close to breaching the surface.  

In real life by the time she woke up, she’d be running out of oxygen. She would suffer through the typical symptoms of oxygen deprivation such as confusion, shortness of breath, weakness, and nausea.

 

With the rest of the oxygen, she left and figured out she was buried alive. There was no way for her to survive this, that she would die alone with no one to even find her body when she was gone.  

 

with false hope, she might try to claw at the lid above her, but she’d be able to do anything. she’d pass out a few moments later to never wake up again. Of course, this trail of events would make a terrible movie which explains why somehow Uma ends up surviving being buried alive and later reuniting with her daughter.  

The older he got the more he thought that movie was ridiculous, from the way she managed to magically will herself out of being paralyzed, to the amount of blood that spewed out when someone gets their neck cut.

Tim knew from experience that the blood poured out more like a stream than a geyser.  He could still remember how it cascaded down his neck on nights; he couldn’t sleep, slow, and steady, and dark.  

He also knew that out of the torture that he had endured- electrocution, waterboarding, sensory deprivation tank-that being buried alive seemed the worst. In Tim's eyes it was the one thing he couldn’t escape; no training could stop oxygen deprivation.

There was no person to fight, nothing holding him back other than the 456 pounds of weight pressing down on the lid of the coffin he was in. There was a taste of bile sitting restlessly near the back of his throat.  

Tim wasn’t The Bride in Kill Bill with plot armor as thick as steel. He knew he was going to die. He could feel the way his heart was beating; he could almost hear it echo against the walls of the corroding coffin he was in.

He should steady his breath to conserve the limited air he still had left but his body couldn’t help but heave for air. His lungs were greedy, and the air left felt so thin.  

No one would be coming to save him, even if someone was, he would be impossible to find. He had been dragged into a forest Tim didn’t even know existed. It was at the very edge of the island and the entrance was shrouded in purpling vines. No one would think to look there, even when he dies no one will be able to find the body. There was no point in trying to call for help.  

 

They left him without a light in a small rotting cage. The wood smelled damp, and his legs reached the bottom of it. Desperately he tried to kick the bottom out through the pain of his burnt leg. He felt blindly at the edges, feeling for a weak spot in the wood, a missing nail. 

He slammed his fist into the wood and ignored the way it made his fist ache. Always look for a way out a familiar voice rings in his ears. Except there was no point, there was no fighting the inevitable.  

Even when Tim was young, he knew there was no surviving being buried alive. As his blunt fingernails scratched at the top of the coffin, he could almost feel the weight of the dirt above him, the distance between him and survival was so vast that Tim lowered his arms back to his side.

Maybe it was the fighting response that Bruce instilled into him so deeply that it had become muscle memory. Or maybe it was the disorienting feeling that the lack of oxygen was causing. His fingers felt fuzzy and the pain in his arm and leg felt distant, too far for Tim to hold onto in order to ground himself.  

 

The coffin was quiet. There was no noise other than his labored breathing. The walls were tightly wrapped around him, it almost felt like the ground was hugging him. It had been so long since he had been hugged. It had been days since he had slept properly.

It was so quiet, and his brain made it difficult to think. He had even begun imagining a purple light replacing the dampened wood that hung dauntingly above him.  

A bolt of fear shot through him with the idea that if he closed his eyes there would be no opening them later. He wouldn’t see his parents again, or Bruce and the rest of his family. His body would stay in an abandoned, overgrown forest and no one would visit.

The thoughts passed quickly, and they didn’t seem all that terrible. His eyelids felt so heavy, and he began to wheeze with every breath he tried to take. He squeezed his body together tighter to bring some warmth to his numbing skin. 

One. Two. He breathed in.  

Three. Four. He breathed out.  

Five. Six. Tim closed his eyes and felt like he was being swaddled to sleep.  

He was right, this would’ve made a terrible movie.  

Chapter 2: Leave a Message at the Beep

Tim woke up to the feeling of dampened grass pricking his back and spiders crawling across his face. They moved slowly across his torso; their steps were so soft that Tim managed to ignore the feeling.

It wasn’t until they began to walk on the burns spread across his right forearm that his body tensed, and his eyes peeled open. It was a struggle, his left eye was too swollen to open more than halfway and even then, it hurt to open it at all.

The view that greeted him was dark, so dark that a part of him thought that he was still inside the coffin. It wasn’t until he spotted a star in the sky that he realized he was above ground.

Stars littered the sky above him, an unfamiliar sight for a Gothamite where the city was too heavily polluted to see the stars properly.

He ignored the aching feeling in his neck and propped his head up. He watched as the spiders that were crawling all over his upper body began reverting off his body and back up the tree that they came from.

Maybe the sight of an army of white spiders would have alarmed him at a point but now all he can do is relish in the fresh air that surrounds him. Tim tries to take a deep breath but is interrupted with a painful hacking cough.

He begins to drool as his body attempts to push out his organs. To ground himself, He sinks his fingers into the mud. He turned his head to be greeted by feet of grass that had grown high over Tim’s head. There was no hole in sight.

 

There was no hole. The thriving grass had hardly been touched, there was no sign that the ground had been disturbed at all except for the silhouette Tim left behind beneath him. Was it fear toxin? Had he imagined the whole thing? No, it couldn’t have been in his head.

Tim could still feel the aching feeling in his chest whenever he took a breath, a numbness overtook his skin, and pieces of moldering wood were imbedded in the tips of his fingers from when he tried to scratch his way through.

He stared at the splinters still inside of him. It wasn’t a dream, he remembered dying, taking his last breath in a small coffin. He died there when the oxygen ran out and the pain faded away.

But now he was sitting on the forest floor, breathing in fresh air while his body throbbed. The feeling of death still sat there, rooted deep in his bones like a memory he couldn’t quite reach, but could be sensed faintly throughout his body.

He looked beside him for anyone who could’ve saved him but was met by nothing but ominous trees that hung heavy with their branches skimming the ground beside him. he struggled to make his way onto his feet.

He peeled himself off the ground and felt the mud cling onto his skin and clothes, the burns on his leg flared loudly as he balanced himself onto his feet. Verdant willow trees surround him, so dense and vast that they covered the view a few feet ahead of him.

It was hard enough with his swollen eye. They hadn’t left him with anything to arm himself, not even the knife he kept in his boot; his suit was torn through and scorched by the fire. He had no sense of direction as he walked forward.

When they dragged him out there, he was delirious and almost unconscious. There was nothing distinctive about the forest either, every branch he pulled away only revealed more branches, the grass and vines were muddling themselves together so much it was impossible to distinguish them from each other.

He heaved his feet forward as his shoes sunk into the soft ground below him. White spiders weaved their way between the trees above him.

He didn’t know Gotham had such a huge spider problem until now. The only spiders he saw were long legs, these ones were the size of his palm and were nearly clear.

They mostly ignored him. He listened for any speaking, or moving cars, any sound of civilization. The farther he went the less he could see of the stars and the more the green in front of him looked like a sickly purple, like a bruise. The vines crossed beneath him as if they were wrapping around his ankles.

The forest was closing in on him, trying to squeeze the life out of his already frail body. It was just like the coffin, swaddling him tightly to steal his air.

The leaves held onto him so tightly that he struggled to move his arms away from his body. He kept moving, even if he didn’t know what he was trying to move towards, what he would do if he did manage to get out.

Finally, his hands hit something solid and unmovable. It was the entrance, a rickety fence that enclosed the area. Just past it he could hear the roaring sound of cars even this late at night. He had never been so happy to see poorly paved roads and a convenient store far off in the distance.

He stumbled forward on his weakened legs that felt liquified from the walk. His mask was long gone but he still wrapped his shredded cape tightly around his torso as a blanket. Partly, it was because he wanted to cover the R embroidered on his chest, and because his skin felt like a long sheet of ice encasing him.

The sidewalk was empty other than the usual shady man and woman smoking in the corner. There was no way to tell what time it was. He looked above him and saw the stars were still visible. He wouldn’t quite place where he was, nothing about the place was discernable.

There were no signs anywhere for him to see and any nearby building was far too formulaic to be helpful. A Drug-Mart, Gas station, telephone booth. Nothing.

The beginning of spring was creeping up, but the nights remained cold. The wind was abusive and most nights it poured rain on Gotham.

Tim remembered walking home on days like this when the sky hung menacingly and dark. The stars provided small bits of light this time. He should call somebody his brained nagged. Bruce was worried by now.

He thought he was dead by now so it would be good to clear that up as soon as possible. The telephone booth was surprisingly clean with no rotting food in the corners nor lingering smell of weed or piss.

 It wasn’t until he slowly closed the door behind him that he noticed how small the booth was. It was hardly enough space to spread his arms out and there was only a small amount of light from the overhanging light.

The walls seemed even smaller every moment he stood still. It was so quiet, so quiet and small and dark. His breath quickened. He pressed his hands against the glass and pushed outward, pushing them away from him before they crushed him.

Suddenly a small thumping noise echoed in the telephone booth. Through the glass he looks down and sees a kid through the glass paneling, wide eyed with his little hands pressed up against it. Tim fought the muscle memory to smile, he could only imagine how terrible he looked through the eyes of a five-year-old.

Not smiling didn’t do anything though. The moment their eyes locked together the kids' lips parted, and he let out a shrill sob that Tim heard perfectly through the thick doors. 

He scrambled to hide his face away with his hands, but it didn’t help as the kid continued to wail loud enough for the entire street to hear.

Just a few steps behind the boy were his mother, not crying but just as wide eyed as she took her son into her arms to quiet him.

Tim turned away back towards the telephone. It was almost disturbing the way he remembered the Waynes house phones’ number than he remembered his own.

The ringing noise resounded against the narrow walls of the booth, but it only had the chance to ring for a moment before someone picked up.

“Wayne Residence,”

A thick, aged British accent makes its way across the line. Of course it was Alfred. It took Tim minutes to find his voice again where it was deserted at the back of his throat. He recognized that he sounded like a killer by the way he was heavily breathing into the receiver.

“Whom do I speak to?” Alfred asked after a few moments of silence. 

“It's Tim,” Tim winces at the sound of his own voice. His words were hardly discernible from the scratchy sound of his throat. He really sounded like some slasher.

Next, he was going to start quizzing Alfred on horror film trivia. He expects Alfred to demand his location, access his injuries, and give him an ETA on Bruce. What he doesn’t expect is to sit in more silence.

“I’m sorry Mr. Tim, we weren’t expecting any calls tonight. Were you looking to speak to Mr. Wayne? It is quite late for a phone call, is it not?”

Mr. Tim, Tim repeats it in his head. Alfred was never one for cheap jokes.

“Yeah, I-yeah, can I talk to him?” Tim forces out. Alfred doesn’t pause this time. “Unfortunately, Mr. Wayne was pulled away from home for business earlier this evening, but he is scheduled to arrive sometime Tuesday afternoon. I’d be happy to leave him a message about calling you back if I could get a last name.”

‘Business’ has always been a codeword for league business, except for the fact that Bruce hadn’t been called away for league business that day.

He should’ve been in the cave or still looking for Tim’s body. Alfred should also remember him instead of addressing him as a stranger. Neither is true now.

The air was knocked out of his lungs and suddenly he’s coughing clutched over with the receiver pressed to his chest. He hoped that people would clean this thing every few hours, but he doubted that was the case.

Alfred doesn’t hang up the phone when Tim becomes unresponsive, instead he waits until Tim finds air again before continuing to speak.

“Poor lad, that cough needs immediate medical attention. If you give me your location, I can help you find someone you can treat you,”

of course even if Alfred ‘doesn’t know him’ he’d still come out and help a stranger calling him at some random hour of the night. He couldn’t accept that help though.

“No, no I'm fine. I’m trying to get in contact with Tim Drake, do you have his number?”

“Ah, I don’t know anyone by that name. I do know a Janet Drake, but she hasn’t visited Gotham in quite some time.”

“What about Jack Drake, her husband?” Tim asks just a bit too quickly after Alfred got the words out.

“From what I am aware Janet is unmarried, are you sure you are alright, lad?”

“Yes, I am fine. I’m sorry for calling so late.” Alfred tries to say something, probably another offer for a ride but Tim doesn’t wait to find out, he slams the metal phone down.

He sinks his body back onto the ground and is reminded of how small the phone booth is, tightening around. He blinks and can smell the dampened wood.

Alfred doesn’t know who he is. Jack and Janet aren’t married. Bruce isn’t in Gotham.

Tim looks up and sees a sky full of stars.

There are stars in Gotham now.

Again, he is interrupted by knocking on the phone booth doors. They are pushed open, and he is met with the woman from before. She balances her child on her hip on one side and holds a large canvas bag on the other.

She seemed young, no older than early twenties with dull red hair that her kid gently pulled at. They both had matching green eyes. Her kid was almost as big as her entire torso and was no longer crying. Now he just stared down at Tim.

 

He pulled his cape so that it covered the burn scars and tried to shield his face into his knees. “I'm so sorry,” she finally blurts.

“He usually isn’t like that. I know every parent says that, but I really mean it. He was just startled. Of course, that doesn’t make it okay, but I just wanted to apologize.”

When she finished, she was heaving for breath. “This is for you,” she says and hands Tim the black bag she was holding. He must’ve looked truly pitiful to be receiving handouts.

He hadn’t seen himself, but he could feel the cuts on his face that had barely scabbed over. His puffy lip and swollen black eye. He wasn’t sure if he even wanted to look.

“Thank you,” he said quietly and saw the way her face twisted at the sound of his voice. She honed it back to normal in an impressive amount of time.

“My name is Nicole; this is Niccolo,” she pointed at her son that she still held in her arms. He responded to the mention of her name by saying, “I’m Nico!” excitedly while waving. Tim tentatively waved back.

“I got the idea from Gilmore Girls, the whole ‘naming him after myself thing’, which I know is a terrible way to name a child.” she laughs gently at her own joke.

“it’s Italian, means victory of the people.” It’s also the same name of Niccolo Machiavelli who ironically was famous for believing in totalitarian government and achieving power through immoral ways. He didn’t say that part out loud though.

She smiled and pulled out a small piece of paper from her jacket pocket. “there’s a clinic not too far from here. They don’t charge anything, and they don’t ask any questions.

They treated Nico when he got strep last year. I wrote the address down.” she paused and said, “I also put my number down, in case you need anything.”

She didn’t wait for Tim to say anything before disappearing again with Nico waving Tim goodbye over her shoulder. He stares down at the notecard now in his hand. He could recognize the address as Leslie’s.

It was a good idea to go get checked out; he wasn’t sure what type of bacteria was around that forest and he would like to make sure he isn’t a member of the walking dead. Tim was too afraid to check his pulse to make sure.

There were also the chances that she might still recognize him and tell him that Alfred got exposed to some new gas that makes him lie. Her number was written underneath, but Tim already knew he had no intention of using it.

He had combed through the bag that she gave him once she was gone. His mother always taught him it was greedy to open a gift while the person was still there, and he’d much rather consider this a gift rather than charity.

It had those calorie-dense strawberry flavored protein shakes his mother used to buy when she was on a new fad diet. New clothes to replace his Robin uniform that included a thick raincoat.

A smart choice since he could faintly smell petrichor in the air. It seemed warm, too, far warmer than the tattered cape he kept draped over his shoulders. There were also white bandages and an adhesive eye-patch.

Hesitantly, he picked up the eye patch. He could hardly see out of his right eye anyway and the skin around it stung when he tried to widen it anymore. He gently peeled the backing off and stuck it on.

The sun had yet to come up, it felt like it had been years since he was on patrol. The minutes he spent underground went on for eons and he wasn’t sure he’d ever manage to leave the forest.

No matter the time he knew Leslie’s would still be open. Sloppily, he pushed himself up to his feet and began to walk until things gradually began to look familiar.

 

-------

“He seemed young, no older than thirteen, I think. Black hair with big blue eyes. "Well, one blue eye the other one is black and brown and all swollen” Nicole retold as Nico kept himself busy with the contents of her purse.

“And you saw him at the phone booth on Cedar?” Jason repeated. He had a notepad in his hand. He had been surprised when Nicole spotted him patrolling through an alley and demanded to speak to him. Her eyes were wide, and she looked like she had run there.

“Yes, he looked awful. The skin on his wrist was all fucked up and I think there was something wrong with his leg. His eye, oh god. And he was caked in mud, it was all over his clothes and hair. He was shivering badly, and his voice sounded like he was smoking a pack a day.” She looked nauseous just retelling the story.

“Did you get a look of what he was wearing?” Nicole paused; her brows furrowed in thought. “It was weird, he was wearing this blanket thing around his shoulders, but it was all torn and singed. His shirt was red, but it was he covering it up. It had the letter R in the corner. There was some green on his pants, I think. I gave him some new clothes, though. A black raincoat, so he’ll probably change into that soon.”

Jason wrote quickly. Burnt blanket and an R with a question mark after. Possibly an initial? “I can reimburse you for the coat.” he offered but Nicole quickly declined with a shake of her head.

“You said he was in a phone booth. Could you hear who he was talking to, did he seem panicked?”

“I couldn’t hear who he was talking to, the call was pretty short, and he had a coughing fit in the middle of it. He ended up hanging up abruptly.”

Jason nodded, that didn’t help much. It could be that he was calling for help and decided to back out. Could've been anything, really.

Nico was getting bored fidgeting with his mother's wallet. “how’s he doing?” Jason asked signaling to Nico who had now put the wallet into his mouth. Jason pulled it out.

“he’s good. He got a little spooked earlier, but he calmed down quickly. But, umm...” Nicole began worrying her bottom lip between her teeth.

“Do you think you’d wanna let Batman know or something? It's just that whoever did that to that kid must’ve been dangerous.

Like, a real freak. He also had a scar on his neck. It was old but went all the way across and probably deep. I doubt that he’s old enough to be involved with anything that bad. We haven’t seen anything like this since Joker.”

Her eyes didn’t leave Nico the entire time she was speaking, and Jason could easily place the look in her eye. It was the same look Bruce gave him when the Joker was still out and around.

She was afraid for the boy she met but also for her own child's safety. He didn’t have any interest in letting Bruce get anywhere near this case, but he could hear the fear in Nicole’s tone. He remembered the fear that lingered in the street when Joker was still out.

“I’ll keep him in the loop,” he promised. Nicole nodded shakily and squeezed Nico’s hand into hers. Nicole wasn’t so much older than Jason.

Nico was born while Jason was still fighting alongside Batman, and he had a feeling that maybe Nicole had put the most recent Robin and Red hood together.

“By the way I gave him the address to Dr. Thompsons clinic. You might wanna look there next to see if he stops by.”

Bruce may never be able to understand Park Row like Jason did. Bruce believed in living out his parents dream by protecting Gotham, but he would never see it firsthand.

Bruce didn’t have Caroline as a mother, he didn’t live on the streets for months or meet people like Nicole who looked out for others as much as she could, and her little boy who she wore on her hip like a purse.

Jason could never hold his background against him, but it did mean that Jason is a better protecter for his home. because he loved Park Row more than Bruce ever would be able to.

He turned away from the pair before Nicole called out, “Hood! Thank you.”

Jason didn’t respond. The thank you was unnecessary and premature. He didn’t deserve a thank you until he found the kid and made sure he was safe.

He turned out of the alley and headed towards the clinic. Leslie was not going to be happy to see him.

Notes:

TBH most of my chapters will be pretty short, usually no longer than 3-4k if anything since I like to split my chapters up with scene changes. Most chapters will also be split up by pov changes. Half of it will be Tim’s and the other will depend on the chapter. I’ll occasionally throw in a few second-person POV since I’m experimenting with it. I also take forever so my apologies in advance and thank you so much for reading. Any kudos or compliments are deeply appreciated<3

Chapter 3: Do They Accept Medicare?

Notes:

btw as some backup information, I aged down Tim by one year, making him fourteen, and has only been Robin for a year. this is because I wanted Tim to be newer to Robin and not used to being around Bruce and having a set dynamic between the two of them. I'll explain more about the differences between Tim's universe and the new one. instead, of just being one huge difference, there are many small timeline changes, similar to the alt-universe in Arcane. I purposely don't explain anything until the next chapter because I'm mean and I like to keep people guessing.

if you are looking for an AU that follows cohesive rules and logic, you're in the wrong place my friend, because I will be making up stuff as I go on. The logic is completely illogical but I like to think that is what makes it fun. There are no rules when it comes to writing fanfiction about interdimensional space travel.

The clinic lobby looked different. Not overwhelmingly so, but just different enough. It looked more normal, like a regular hospital room, with outdated magazines on a dusty coffee table. There was an old plant with flowers that were slowly withering away.

It was a forced type of normalcy, it was clearly meant to make it look customary but there were still elements that were familiar: the wobbly chairs, flickering lights and creased posters on the walls telling the patience to get tested for aids.  

It was as nice as could be given that the patients were never charged for the service. He didn’t know how the clinic stayed open, but he felt that Leslie might’ve had a secret family fortune she never mentioned.  

It was better though. Well-lit and there is a fancy rug underneath the table. There was a secretary now, too.

The floor creaked when he walked through the threshold and the girl behind the counter shot up in her seat. Her eyes went wide when she saw him, and she quickly looked away to school her expression back to normal.  

Tim didn’t move from his spot. It was rare for there to be anyone other than Leslie there. The girl couldn’t have been any more than a few years older than him but was dressed professionally in a crisp collared shirt and her pixie cut pinned away from her face.

He wondered if she was being paid but he doubted it and assumed it must’ve been a volunteer position. Tim smiled at the thought of anyone doing such a shit job free of charge other than Leslie.  

 

He was glad he changed into the raincoat before he arrived, he could only imagine his tattered cape would’ve made her reaction worse. Although he can’t imagine it made too much of a difference.

His sleeve was rolled up to expose his wrist and he could feel that there was still mud in his hair. He avoided looking into a mirror but by the way he felt he probably looked bad enough to make even Bruce wince.  

He took a seat while she pretended to shuffle papers, he could feel her eyes follow him all the way down to his seat. His head was pounding, and needles pricked the back of his eyes.

He avoided thinking about the differences in the room, or the call with Alfred. There was only so much he could handle in a single moment.

He pressed his skull against the tips of his fingers in a desperate attempt to alleviate the pulsating pressure. It felt like his brain was going to explode, it was all just too much.  

“Have you been here before?” the girl finally asks. Her eyes were no longer tied down at her desk and she was now outwardly watching him. It was creepy.

Even if he looked rough, it couldn’t have been the worst thing the clinic had seen. His mother had forbidden him from staring for too long from a young age, but he might’ve been the only one.  

They were the only ones there, the only noise other than the girls heavy breathing was the muffled scraping sound coming from behind the soundproofed door. He looked up and blinked before shaking his head.  

“Well, Dr. Thompkins is the doctor, she’ll treat you free of charge and prescribe you with anything you need. We have a ‘no questions asked’ policy so you don’t need to share anything with us if you don’t feel comfortable and we won’t ask any questions.

If you do feel comfortable or just need someone safe to talk to or someone to call for help, we’re here for you.” the message would’ve been touching if it wasn't for the way she said it all in one breath.  

He nodded when she looked at him for confirmation. He didn’t trust his ability to talk without coughing. She continued to stare hard enough that Tim began to sink himself further into his seat.  

“How old are you? You look younger than me.” 

“Wylan!” a booming voice shouted, and the once locked door was shoved open to reveal an irate Leslie.  Other than the way her teeth were gritted, she looked calmer. Her white hair laid on the beginning of her shoulders in neat curls.

She wore a pristine white coat over a simplistic brown dress that went down past her knees. Her face carried less wrinkles around her mouth and the color around her eyes was lighter.  

 

She glared heavily at the girl behind the counter who apologized with a sheepish smile. Leslie pursed her dark, red-painted lips together into a thin line and took a pained breath. He was familiar with the facial expression. She then turned towards Tim who sat stock-still in his chair, eyeing her for any other differences.  

“I apologize for her; she’s my sister's daughter. You know what they say about mixing family in business.” she didn’t laugh as she said it, only giving Wylan another scrutinizing glance. 

She beckoned him to follow her into the next room. Tim stared into her eyes for any semblance of familiarity to cross into them when she looked at him, but her gaze was completely blank.

She looked at him like one would a total stranger. The room was colder than the waiting room but warmer than outside. The color of white nearly blinded him.  

 

Tim didn’t need instructions to take a seat. Her brown heels clicked across the floor as she approached the bench. She quickly pulled on a black pair of latex gloves over her slender hands.

She didn’t speak as she softly peeled the eye patch off. It was her years of experience that kept her face perfectly neutral when she saw it. Her mouth parted for a split moment, probably to ask what had happened, but in the end decided against it.  

She moved down to the skin on his wrist. “I’m Nico,” he said without prompting. His throat burned when he talked. Leslie paused from her poking and prodding to look up at him through her bangs.

“it’s nice to meet you Nico.” she responded before going back to her work.

Leslie was never overly nice to him but there was a gentleness in her voice. It was a softness he so rarely heard.  

“Do you have a cough?” she asks after hearing his hoarse voice. He nods. “Are there any more symptoms?” he thought for a moment.

There was a sharp pain at the front of his head and the sterile room felt like a suffocating tundra wrapped around his body even though his body was oozing sweat. 

the intimate taste of vomit sat at the edge of his tongue. His breathing still came out as pants that echoed in the room's overbearing silence.  

“I'm cold, and my head hurts. My throat hurts too.” she nodded as she felt the skin of his leg. He couldn’t help the way he jerked away from her. She took note of that. Him and Leslie were the only morsel of color in the immense white room.

The room was bigger, cleaner too, with three white beds and jars of cotton swabs sitting neatly beside the sink.  

It was so white it made his eyes sting. It was hard for him to remember the darkness that sat right outside the door. There was a twitching in his fingers that wanted to press his fingers to Leslie’s now-smooth face.

Feel it be real and not some odd coma dream. But even when he knew Leslie it would’ve been a weird thing to do so he drew his hand into an even tighter fist on his thigh.  

“The scar on your neck, new or old?” she asked while avoiding looking at his neck, but his hands shot up to cover it. He forgot how visible it was, a thick colorless line that bulged jaggedly from his skin that was pale on its own. 

  Not old enough , he thought while following the line beginning to end with his tender fingertips. An old habit he picked up when the wind blew too thickly on his back.

Not old enough for it to heal; not old enough for it to become a distant memory. Just as the scar protruded from his skin, the memory of how he got it is bulbous in his mind. Always in the foreground of his thoughts on quiet night and it took him too long to fall asleep. 

 Almost all his nights were quiet, and he rarely slept.  

 

“a few months old. I got it treated.” he answered, his hand still wrapped around his neck. She nodded and allowed herself a short look at his face again.

Her crescent glasses hung low on her nose as she observed his eye once more before fully removing the adhesive eyepatch.

The gloves were cold and plastic against him. Fake skin on fake skin. Or maybe not. It was too much to think about this late at night. With a small bottle she rinsed the burnt skin that already had dirt imbedded into its crevices. He winced and looked away.  

 There was one window beside the bench. Small flickers of light settled onto the floor, but it was still too dark to see the view outside, most likely some dingy alley from what he could assume.  

She turned on her heel towards the counter where her ‘doctor clipboard’ sat. He watched as her hands moved furiously to create illegible cursive across the page. She was writing a lot and even though that should’ve worried Tim, for now he didn’t think much of it.

She comes back with a crinkled white bag in one of her hands and an indescribable plastic tube. She untwisted the top and began applying a watery, cool ointment across his ankle.  

She began to fill the soundless void with her level voice. “You’ll need to apply these two to three times per day for the next few days to aid in healing. Afterwards, you can reapply the bandages to avoid the skin getting infected.”

She sounded like a machine when she spoke; everything she said came out like an order. It reminded him of Bruce the last time he spoke to him, a truly unmemorable moment he found himself latching onto.  

“There is a possibility that you have a hair fracture in your fibula. Unfortunately, there’s no way to know unless you get an x-ray. If not, you might not be able to walk and there’s the possibility that it will worsen over time.

The average healing time is six weeks but that doesn’t account if the injury is left untreated.” she tells him and although her voice comes out sharp, he knows he technically has a choice to just get up and leave.

He doesn’t, though. “I’ll get the x-ray.” he tells her, and her unbending lips curved into a small smile, or the closest she is capable of while she’s working. 

 

“Good, I’ll-” she is interrupted by disparate knocks on the door, rushed and booming, before Wylan peaked her head through the door before being allowed in.

Her alabaster skin turned cerise and her eyes buzzing in their sockets. She blinks three times in quick succession and then three more times slowly. Not Morse code but some kind of signal.

“there’s somebody who wants to talk to you. Now.” Wylan’s words come out as one continuous word. She had the tendency to talk too fast.  

Leslie exhales laboriously and lifts herself back up from her knees which makes a small clicking noise when she straightens herself back up. Her conical gaze rallied between Wylan in the threshold and Tim who sat stock still on the bench.   

 

“I apologize for this. I will be back shortly.” She finally decided on it and Tim could see all the small indications that her mood had soured.

She bit the inside of her mouth slightly and there was a soft tapping of her heel. Her eyes stayed trailed on Wylan as she slowly left the room, opening the door just a crack to leave so Tim couldn’t see what was on the other side.

Wylan didn´t go, she just continued to stare at him shell-shocked. He could see the million questions behind her bronze eyes, but she didn’t say anything, possibly because she couldn’t choose one, or possibly because she knew Leslie was still standing a few feet away.  

¨Hi, ¨ Tim finally said and she looked surprised that he could talk. She still said nothing and looked uneasy about taking her eyes off him.

Her wispy eyebrows furrowed in contemplation before she finally backed out of the room keeping her eyes on him as she did so. Tim relaxed on the couch when she finally disappeared into the other room.  

The burnt skin now felt slimy from the ointment, and the cold sweat of his body cooled to a dampening sheen. He laid back, sprawling himself on the thin, crinkling paper that covered the unwelcomingly cold table.

He kept his eyes wide open, knowing that if he allowed his eyes to close and his muscles to slacken, he would fall asleep immediately in the middle of the clinic. He didn’t even blink in fear that his drowsiness was uncontrollable.  

He closed his swollen eye but kept his other eye so wide that his eyelids completely vanished into his head. A poster hung above him. A small kitten with grey stripes and small pink paws was being held by a little blond girl who held it tightly to her chest.

She smiled widely against a cerulean sky backdrop. ´Get your rabies shot´ was written above it in purple block letters. It looked like a scene taken out of sesame street if cookie monster developed a biting problem.  

Parallel to it was the continuation of fluorescent lightbulbs which made Tim’s eyes water from looking at them directly. He counted the tiles in the ceiling piece by piece, but he quickly got bored of it before he reached fourteen.

If only they had buried him with his phone in his pocket. He had quickly come to the daunting realization that they destroyed his phone, and he hadn’t backed it up since last March and all his progress on geometry dash would be lost.  

Once everything was sorted out, getting his high score back would have to be his top priority. All those sleepless nights ended up being for nothing. Honestly, he was madder about them destroying his phone than the whole ´being buried alive´ thing. 

 Actually, He’s equally mad about both. 

His eye drifted close for a moment to block the blinding light shining above him. In the darkness the spacious room closed in on him.

The walls pressed into his arms oppressively and the feint sting in his fingers was now blistering. He shot back up, both of his eyes no longer even risking a transient blink.  

The walls receded and the pain in his fingers went back to a dull ache, the lights were still unbearably bright, but he preferred the brightness to the darkness lurking just behind his eyelids.

His eyes refocused on the room, the tiny tray of sharp medical instruments, containers of alcohol wipes, and a box of unused needles. Wylan had left the door open, he noticed, just enough to see the spartan chairs in the waiting room.  

Tim shifted slightly in his seat-slowly so no one noticed that the door was left open- just enough to see Wylan back behind her desk. She wasn’t sitting, though.

She hovered over her seat and her eyes still gaping. Tim would nominate her for a national staring competition; it couldn’t have been healthy to blink so little.  

Wylan´s eyes were trained in front of her where Leslie was leaning in and whispering aggressively with the ´mystery caller´.  his eyes first met the red helmet that he held against his hip with two eyes and no mouth.  

The lack of oxygen made his eyes water. The helmet warped into just a blur of bloody red above him. A boot pressed heavily into his chest. There was a loud snap. Another rib broke. Tim let out a pathetic sob; there was a laugh above him, warbled and cruel in his ear.   

Jason was standing in the waiting room in the same heavy boots, the same leather jacket almost covering the crimson bat on his chest, the same red helmet now pressed against his hips. Except it wasn’t his Jason; it wasn’t his Red Hood.  

His feet were lead. He stumbled through the barren hallways. The lights violently shuttered above him, lighting up the way in front of him for a fleeting moment before submerging him in darkness again. His boots made a measured thump against the floor only a few feet behind him. He stumbled and now he was only a few steps away.  

 

He was now shorter by a few inches. His skin was more tan too, no longer the sickly pale color it was the last time he saw him. He looked his age instead of a personified tank  

He pushed him against the floor in a moment. His broken ankle fell from underneath him. The man above him reached behind him, Tim thought he’d pull out a gun but instead, he pulled out a knife. Small and gleaming severely in the moon's light. Tim could feel his crazed smile without seeing it.   

 

Nicole must have said something. He couldn’t be mad at her, she was just trying to help, not knowing that she led his biggest threat right to him. Or maybe not. If Janet didn’t live in Gotham`, then maybe Jason didn’t know him. Maybe he didn’t want him dead now. 

He was showing Leslie a small notepad that looked vexatiously familiar. Leslie looked bored and a bit irritated by his presence.

She pointed at the door with a spiked finger. He continued talking reverently until she eventually began to open her ears to him.  

The knife cold against his neck. His hands tight around his wrists. It hurts.  

His hair was loused up from his helmet. Thick black hair stood up in all directions. Colorless hair laid on his forehead like strokes of white paint. But now it was less, more subtle.   

Nobody was coming for him. He was going to die. He was dying. He was dying. He was dying.   

His posture was more relaxed. His face was fully revealed other than the black domino mask that concealed the skin around his eyes. It was the most he ever revealed of his face, and it clearly was giving Wylan a stroke by the way she stood stiff.

He couldn’t make out their words, he couldn’t even begin to lip-read from how fast they were moving. His eyes kept shifting away from Leslie’s face. Scanning Wylan, the magazines on the coffee table, the posters on the wall.  

 

It was so hot; his blood was fire. It was burning his skin. Why does he keep hitting him, how much more can he take? How much blood did he have?  

His eyes narrowly missed Tim’s. His speech didn’t waver, but he could tell that he saw him.

His eyes slithered up to his face with no emotion in his eyes until he reached Tim’s face. Jason’s eyes were a brilliant blue, the same color as the sky in the rabies poster that hung on the ceiling.

They had an agonizing softness to them that made Tim feel ten years old again with a metal camera clutched in his hand. He didn’t look like his Jason; he looked like robin, but older and in the wrong colors. Tim quickly shifted his gaze back down to his shoes. 

¨ Robin, ¨ he sobbed and the hand on his neck squeezed harder. He coughed and he couldn’t stop, he couldn’t breathe. A jagged scar went down his face. It was Jason but older, sharper, lethal. He turned his eyes back towards him; his eyes were a vile viridian green instead of blue. He could see delight in them when the knife broke skin and Tim stopped coughing to scream. His eyes blurred from pain and the only thing he could make out was the barbaric eyes that glowed fervently. All he could see was green, glittering hate.   

 

Leslie had a tentative look on her face. She ran a sloppy hand through her white hair and uttered the word, “Nico,” loud enough for him to make out. Jason’s eyes flitted back to hers. Jason was there for him, there was no question.  

Tim’s fingers traced the scar on his neck and remembered when the stitches were fresh, and he felt like the rag doll from the beginning of Coraline. With frail lines of thread holding his head onto his body. Without it, his body would piece apart.  

There was so much blood. Why was there so much blood? Why is no one here? The blood flowed thickly past his fingers as he tried to pinch the skin back together with splintered hands. It kept coming, and coming, and coming. Constant and endless. He couldn’t tell if it would ever stop, if he’d ever run out, or if it would keep pouring out forever.  

His eyes scanned the room and quickly fell on the window. steadily he raised himself off the bench, wincing at the sound of the paper crinkling at the change in his weight. Leslie and Jason didn't look up. He shifted to put the ointment into his bag and threw it back over his shoulder.  

They slowly made their way closer to Tim’s door. He crossed the room slowly and cautiously to escape the doorway.

The window opened silently, not releasing a creak when he pushed it open which he was afraid of.

Their voices began to grow in volume as they neared the door. His fake name Nico was thrown between them and the clicking of Leslie’s heel was deafening.  

 

The light from the room was snuffed out completely. It was quickly consumed by the darkness that sat a few inches away which left the alley pitch black. The only thing visible to his eye was the outline of garbage bags strewn across the alley’s edges.

His body hung above them, but his fingers dug into the windowsill. Leslie’s bony knuckles rapped against the door that was still askew.

“Nico?” she called out and Tim could hear Jason’s heavy footsteps behind her. He threw himself out the window ignoring the distance between him and the ground. His combat boots punctured the garbage bag and submerged his entire calf into something Tim couldn’t stomach to think about.  

 

The door above him creaked open and Leslie called out his fake name another time before her eyes quickly fell onto the window he left open during his escape.

It was a sloppy escape, but it wasn’t like she could’ve suspected anything else. Jason tried to call out for him even though he knew that he wasn’t there.

Tim was surprised Leslie ended up letting him in. It went against her very clearly stated principles that a patient can’t be questioned. Tim does tend to be the exception to these types of things, though.  

His shoes made a dull thud as he made his way to the window. “Nico?” he called out through the window. Red hood's voice was always concealed by a voice modulator making it deeper and scratchy, like nails on a chalkboard.

This Jason's voice was more like Jason’s real voice if not pitched slightly lower but still held the same faint accented twang that came from living in crime alley but was buried by the years he spent in Bristol.  

His hands became visible, his fingers peaking over the window ledge as his vivid blue eyes squinted at the alley’s impenetrable darkness and failed to see Tim who was still standing directly underneath him. Tim broke out in a run, ignoring the fact that him moving gave Red hood the opportunity to chase him. A race that Tim would lose.  

 

There were no flickering lights above him to light up his way, instead the alley remained in its sheltered shadow. He stumbled over garbage bags littering the way ahead.

His feet were too far away from his eyes for him to make out. His legs crashed into a ditched wooden chair, the arm of it banging into his knee. His face crashed face-first into the rutted cement, but he gave himself no time to wallow in the pain.

It had taken only a moment, one trip on his feet for Red hood to catch up to him, to wrap his hands around Tim’s neck from behind and snap his calf down the middle. He pushed himself up with his hands and continued running.  

His knee clicked now when he ran, and his breathing failed him so many times that he resorted to holding his breath as he continued.

Over and over, he tripped over the abounding piles of Gotham trash and caught himself with his hands which were now bloody from the gnarled surface they caught themselves on.

He couldn’t hear any footsteps behind him, couldn’t hear anything at all through the gushing blood in his ears.

The idea of slowing down to look back and meeting green eyes that glowed ardently through inky black only made him want to run faster through the pain in his leg and knee.  

 

His body flared with pain, but his mind flashed to moments before. Blood, a gleaming knife, a red helmet. His feet fell over themselves and he slammed into the floor. Before he could even process the newly added pain in his knee and hands, he looked above him from where he lay on the floor, expecting Red Hood to be leering above him with a knife drawn out or a rifle pressed into his forehead, but he saw nothing.

Only the star-filled sky loomed above him, the rest of the alley was completely deserted other than the torn-open trash.  

It was eerily quiet with not even the sound of moving cars to fill the silence.

Desperately he tried to push himself up, but his knee resisted relentlessly. ‘If Bruce can attend a gala with three broken ribs, then surely he could walk with a busted-up knee’ he thought determinedly.  

Except he couldn't, and he didn’t really feel like trying. It took all his energy to push himself to lean against the dead end of the alley.

He could never amount to Bruce anyway, or Dick and Jason in anything, much less his pain tolerance so he allowed himself to bawl up tightly to shield himself from the cold and try to soothe his aching bones and muscles.  

 

It was going to be okay; Tim was never one to jump to the worst scenario. He would figure it out in the morning once he got to the library. Tim could fix everything the moment he got to a computer. A computer was all he needed, and everything would sort itself out.

He surely had been in worst situations than dying and somehow waking up in a Gotham where no one knew who he was. Sure, he couldn’t think of a worse situation at the moment but that didn’t mean it never happened. 

All he had to do was stay rational and keep a level head. He couldn’t allow himself to lose his cool. He kept his eyes peeled.

It was possible that Red Hood didn’t notice him, or that he took a wrong turn and lost him in the endless twists and turns of Gotham.

Tim couldn’t let himself sleep, couldn’t close his eyes in fear that Red Hood would catch up to him, in fear that when he did the walls would close in on him again, that his throat would close, and his legs and arms would be pinned down with no room to escape.  

 

He had to stay awake until morning, all he had to do was stay awake, not fall asleep for just a few hours. 

But he didn’t. He fell asleep before he even noticed his eyes closing.  

---------------- 

 

 

 

The Secretary’s eyes were disturbingly large. It was like looking at an ostrich head on. She didn’t speak either, just stared at him and opened and closed her mouth. Maybe it was exhaustion, it was almost dawn, after all.

There was also the possibility she was frightened by his red helmet that deepened his voice and the fact that he was bedecked in guns ranging in size. Who could say?  

He took off the helmet before speaking up, he was afraid she would faint if he waited a moment longer, but it didn’t seem to make too much of a difference because she continued to keep her eyes wide and alert, scanning every inch of him in a way that made him feel freaked out.

Someone who starred was the worst person to hire to work at a clinic where their motto is ‘don’t ask questions’. He would have to bring that up to Leslie when he saw her.  

“I’m looking for Dr. Thompkins, I need to speak to her,” he asked, trying to sound calm but it turned out mostly awkward. It was hard to hide the concern in his voice. He wasn’t sure if the boy even came here if he trusted the address enough to get checked out.

He might be long gone, out of Gotham by the time Jason finally got there. He could feel the way his hair stood up unruly and his domino mask sat loosely on his skin, still on but not as secure as it should be.  

“You’re the Red Hood,” she blurted out, almost shouting. Before he could respond with some kind of witty remark she blurted again, “The doctor is with a patient.” Jason could easily tell that his presence was stressing her out, so he backed away, he put his hands out in mock surrender to show her he had no plan of shooting her in the face with the gun strapped to his thigh.  

“I had a feeling, but this is urgent. Blink three times quickly and then three times slowly, she’ll know what it means.” The girl behind the counter just nodded and scurried her way over to the only other door.

She seemed too easily spooked, far jumpier than Leslie’s last secretary. He would have to talk to her about her questionable hiring practice when he saw her. He hadn’t had people that afraid of him since he dropped that bag of heads into the bay with his name carved into their tongues which he would argue was more extra than scary.  

He fought himself against tapping his feet on the floor impatiently. A sharp pinch in the back of his head made him wince in pain.  

Behind the door. It whispered, still quiet but crawling itself in the front of his head. He's behind the door. Open it. Open it. He had adjusted to ignoring the nagging voice long ago. It's an odd request though. It was the first time that the pit told him to do anything that didn’t involve sticking a rifle into someone's eye socket or cutting someone's throat with a wire.

It was odd, but no good could come from listening to the pit that had only managed to steer him into more violence. So, he stepped closer to the entrance and away from the door.  

Leslie finally emerged, slipping her slender figure through a narrow crack in the door. He tried to angle his head to see what she was insistent on hiding behind it, but Wylan covered the view.

The pit grew in volume and Jason’s more reasonable side started to question why the pit wanted to see what was on the other side while Leslie was just as determined to keep it secret.  

Leslie stood in front of him, annoyance oozing out of her features, “I am with a patient.” she said flatly with each word filled to the brim with a noxious amount of ire. It clashed with the loud echoing voice that kept telling him to throw her to the side and fling the door open.  

It was pounding out at him. Thud, thud, thud. Like the person on the other side was desperately trying to escape, to get closer to him. He rubbed his eyes and tried to focus on Leslie whose mouth was moving at a furious pace.  

“A Woman asked me to check on a boy who's supposed to be coming here sometime tonight.” He cut her off from trying to force him out. He pulled out his notepad that sat idly in his back pocket.  

“No questions asked. That’s my policy. You of all people should be familiar with that. So, I won’t stand here, and have you scare away my patient!” she whispers as loudly as she can. She was avoiding the patient hearing her, so he whispered too.  

“It was a boy, no older than thirteen. His injuries were severe. He was tortured, Doctor. With scars months old, they slit his throat. Whoever did that to a child poses just as much of a threat to him as the rest of Gotham.”  

A wave of recognition washed over Leslie’s face and Jason could tell that she had seen him.  

“He’s in danger. We need to find out who did this to him and get rid of them. For the good of Gotham.” ‘For the good of Gotham’ sounded impossibly cheesy, it was a quote he stole from Bruce that he teased him about ceaselessly, but it managed to have its desired effect on Leslie who pushed her crescent glasses back up and sighed heavily.

It had been a long night for her, and the weight of it all still lingered in her furrowed brows and tight shoulders. Wylan slowly lowered herself back into her chair, leaning her body forward to hear the whispered exchange.  

“He said his name was Nico,” she said and Jason bit down on a laugh. It could’ve been a coincidence that he had the same name as Nicole’s kid, or more likely that it was an unimaginative fake name.  

“He came in with two burns on his ankle and wrist. New. Couldn't be more than a day old and untreated. He had splinters of wet wood in the tips of his fingers that I removed. He has severe ecchymosis from blunt trauma to the face. He’s suffering a cough, some kind of throat damage and possibly a hairline fracture to his leg.” 

She listed out the prognosis as Jason quickly wrote down more of his physical description. There were no fires for the last two weeks, so it must’ve been some type of torture tactic. The splinters could mean that he came from the forest bordering the city, although the last time he checked Bruce was thorough in keeping that forest heavily gated off.  

“He’s waiting for an X-ray of his leg. I gave him some ointment for the burns that should last him for the rest of the month-” 

“He’s here!” Jason startled out, interrupting the oh so fragile atmosphere that had formed made up of hushed whispers and quiet aggression. She only nodded before continuing. “He had a scar on his neck. He told me it was old and had been treated but I would place it as only a few months old.” She spoke but Jason could hardly hear her over the blaring rush in his ears.  

His eyes darted to the crack Wylan had left in the door that had widened from the draft. A sliver of a boy appeared, slouched over on the medical bed in soiled and torn clothes, his shoes lying on the floor beneath him.

He wasn’t tall enough for his feet to touch the floor, and his face was unbearably small. Every inch of it was splattered in cuts and bruises that stained his pallid skin. A fourth of his face was puffy and browning, like a rotting apple with the core being his swollen eye he couldn’t open.  

 
Even from a distance, Jason could see the feint white line that circled his neck, he had never seen a scar so severe on someone so young. His black hair- scraggly, with dirt clumping at its tips- was long and long enough to engulf his entire forehead. He could see the unyielding grip on the seat beneath him.

It was so tight that his fingers turned white. He hunched himself into the oversized raincoat as his legs twisted and untwisted together and even with the painful cuts, he still bit his lip between his teeth so hard that he was moments away from drawing more blood. He stared out from the crack at the door, but his eyes were unfocused.  

The one undamaged eye was a blue that resembled a clear summer sky, one where if you looked up at it, you’d get blinded by the sun. His gaze was glazed over but his eye was blown wide.

He was staring at either something far off in the distance or at something that wasn’t really there. He looked afraid, a deer staring at an oncoming car with no way to stop it from crushing every one of its bones.

He was shaking in his spot with his large eye staying stock-still. It almost felt like that for an instance their eyes met before the boy's eyes shifted back down like he didn’t see anything.  

He's bleeding. They drew his blood. You need to protect him. Protect him. He's hurt. Somebody hurt him. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them. Kill- 

Jason doubled over, green invading his retinas and blinding him. In the darkness of his palm, he could see the glowing green. He could hear Wylan fly out of her chair a few feet behind him and he didn’t notice the way his body bullied its way towards the door until Leslie put a soft hand on his back.  

“Jason? Jason, can you hear me?” she called, and Jason continued to rub his eyes viciously to focus on what's in front of him. The pit gripped him, almost forcing its way out of his skin towards the door that Jason fought as toughly as he could. A cacophony of ‘kill them’ and ‘protect him’ clashed in his head sending sharp prickles across his brain. 

“It’s fine. Just a headache.” He said through gritted teeth, mostly for Wylan's sake since Leslie knew the truth. “It just flares up sometimes for no reason. It's fine. I’m fine.”  

When he opened his eyes, he saw that the unassuming waiting room was now bathed in the garish green color. He tensed his muscles before releasing the tension slowly. He tapped each of his fingers with his thumb, counting as she went. It was all the tricks Dick had taught him, but the green didn’t let up, it felt like he had been hurt just as badly and the pain was his to bear and seek vengeance for.

Suddenly he felt cold. He pulled his leather jacket tighter against his arms, but the imaginary restless breeze continued to pinch his skin. He took another small step towards the door and felt slightly warmer from the minute movement.  

“You should sit down,” Leslie crowded incessantly. Jason shook her off sloppily and attempted to face her while his vision was still slightly blurred.

“I need to talk to him.” and not only just because he had promised that he would to Nicole, but because the pit was scraping the inside of his skin, the most restless it had been since he reunited with Bruce, and he could feel himself buzzing out of his skin.  that, and he was so damn cold. Seriously, did someone turn on the air-conditioning or something? 

Leslie gave him a glare that meant that she was even more unwilling to let Jason talk to her patient, but she also knew that she wasn’t going to have any luck turning him away, so she led him into the other room, her arm ghosting over his as if he was going to topple over. Doctor instincts, Jason guessed.  

She called his name, but she didn’t wait for the other boy to respond before she pushed the door open. The room was empty, there was a crinkled piece of exam table paper left but the boy Jason had just seen was gone. Leslie didn’t look surprised at all, but she did look more annoyed at Jason.  

She called for his most likely fake name as if there was a possibility that he was just hiding underneath a tube of antiseptic cream. Jason couldn’t help but join in and fruitlessly check behind the door. He approached the window, wrapping his hands on the sill, and squinted out at the darkness.  

He called for him again but wasn’t surprised when he didn’t receive an answer. Jason hung his body out the window, even with the harsh late-night breeze it felt warmer the farther he stuck his head out the window. He was close, Jason could feel it under his skin, and the pit became a quiet rumble in his mind. He was close, but he still couldn’t see him.  

His eyes turned green again. His hands dug into the wooden sill beneath his grip without him noticing until the wood splintered apart. He was gone and Jason didn’t even have a clue where he was going, or why he was going there. He doesn’t even have a real name.  

 

The green convulsed throughout his body, shaking inside of him hardly contained by the thin layers of skin that stood between it and chasing the boy down the street, running all around Gotham just to hold him in his arms.

It was just Jason’s skin that kept the brewing storm between the need to kill and the need to protect inside. Shocks of thunder echoed in his head, and he could feel the bitter rain sprinkling on his bones.  

Leslie grabbed his arm before lightning struck. “You need to sit,” she ordered. Her face hard and she didn’t wait for him to respond before dragging him to the bed the boy was just sitting on moments before. He wondered if she could feel the storm raging under her hand or if he looked normal. He couldn’t tell if his eyes were green or not.  

“I doubt he’ll get far with that ankle of his,” Leslie noted as if the idea of the kid being on the run while suffering a severe burn injury making it painful for him to walk would make Jason feel better about the situation. Jason knew a few things about pushing through the pain and knew enough that while it was possible, it wasn’t preferred.   

“He won’t be returning to the clinic unless he runs out of antiseptic which would take a while. With that, I still don’t think he’ll get out of Gotham. Take deep breaths,” She orders and Jason notices that he wasn’t breathing, too occupied with imagining the boy limping around the streets of Gotham with a busted arm and leg, unable to see through one of his eyes.  

He made the perfect target to be tortured even more. Jason squirmed in his seat restlessly. Leslie gave him another look and Jason could feel her tangible judgment. “Maybe you should get in touch with your dad.” she offered and turned her body fully towards him.  

It felt demeaning when Leslie insisted on referring to Bruce as ‘his dad’, even when they were both in uniform. Normally he would snap at her or make some catty comment about her treating him like he was still in his early years of Robin but now all he can focus on is the open window, the building coldness, and the roaring scream in his ears. Jason couldn’t help but nod while pressing the tip of his fingers into his forehead in an attempt to alleviate the throbbing pain.  

Leslie looked at him expectantly. “Yeah.  I'll tell my dad.”  

Notes:

This will probably be the longest chapter for a while, and the pov of the characters will switch between Tim and other characters, Jason in most cases but occasionally others, either in the middle of a chapter or between chapters. There are a lot of small differences between the universes so after my next update, if you all have any questions feel free to clarify anything and I thank you in advance for dealing with my bullshit.

Chapter 4: That's Rough, Buddy

Notes:

This chapter mostly just explains some of the random changes between this world and Tim's. The changes aren't based on anything from the comics and I just changed them to whatever I felt like. Also, I made Tim Vietnamese, that's not a difference between the dimensions, I just wanted him to be Asian. There will be more subtle changes between the dimensions that will be revealed farther down the road (in the next chapter) so there's more to that. Sorry, this chapter is a bit boring :p

White spiders were his new alarm clock, crawling from the darkened corners of the alley and circling him. A brave individual would make its way onto his leg and once they knew Tim wasn’t moving the rest would follow.  

Their dainty but pointed legs would sprinkle their way up on his bare skin, burrowing themselves into his clothes and out through his collar where they’d make a home on his face. 

 It was the way ecosystems of insects and decomposers would form around deer carcasses, feeding off the rotting flesh left on his legs and finding refuge in his hollowed ribs.

Except Tim wasn’t dead, even if he did look close to death, so the spiders making a home in the innermost crevices of his person was not appreciated.  

 

Tim woke up to the high-pitched coo from a puny bird perched on the tip of his nose. It spread its small wings and flapped aggressively, letting out a loud cry as it shooed away the spiders. Tim felt the spiders quickly disperse, back down his neck and off from his fingers and toes and back to where they mysteriously appeared from.  

The bird stayed on Tim’s face, both the bird and Tim standing still. The bird turned away from the spiders and looked back towards Tim. It's dainty beak nearly pecked into Tim’s eye and yet Tim couldn’t get himself to blink.

Its eye was less than an inch away from his own. Its pupils nearly took up the entirety of its wide eyes with a thin brown ring filling the borders. The warm sepia color of its eyes matched the color of the feathers on its head and wings.  

Tim could see its sharp claws at the end of its feet, but they felt dull where they stood on his nose. Tim couldn’t help but feel scared of the bird, being shocked back awake and now unable to get himself to move away.

The way it stared at him so intensely made him feel sickeningly uneasy. Like he was a worm he was hunting, or a dead insect he was debating feeding off. 

 “Thank you,” Tim whispered and when his lips moved minutely the bird shook. It still didn’t move, if anything it got closer with its beak barely missing his eyeball.

Its pupil grew until it was all black and then smacked its bony wings into his face- the feathers feeling oddly sharp against his sensitive skin- and took off, chirping into the bright blue sky.  

Tim wished he could just take off into the sky, but no,his parents had to be human, and he had to walk everywhere he wanted. Even when his knee was seriously broken, and his ankle burned every time, he moved his ankle.

He didn’t even have his skateboard which would save him at least thirty minutes of time getting to the library. Instead, Tim had to pathetically drag his body four miles to the library like some historical figure who existed before the wheel was invented. 

Public transportation was an obvious no. His appearance was too recognizable, so he had to minimize the number of witnesses he had going around Gotham in case Red Hood interrogated them for Tim’s location.

Tim didn’t want their inevitable rematch to be in a public library while he was half-blind and unarmed. Tim refused to lose even worse than he did the first time.  

 

He pulled his jacket's hood over his face and began his walk. Most people in downtown Gotham hardly looked up at him, half of them too busy to even notice if the sky was falling or not and the others avoided looking at the teenage boy with torn-up clothes and a limp.

They were probably afraid that if they made eye contact with him that Tim would ask them for money. Typical.  

The 9:00 sidewalk crowds parted for him. Men and women in business suits and pencil skirts burrowed their heads into their phones and pulled their leather briefcases tightly to their torsos as they scooted awkwardly around him.  

One woman even prematurely brought her elbow to her face to shield herself from Tim’s nonexistent disease. He struggled to not be offended by being treated like scum as he kept his gaze down on the cracked cement overrun by people's shoes.  

On the positive side, he was able to grab a man's wallet, a man who pretended to be looking into the road to avoid looking at Tim. Given his recognizable Tom Ford suit, the same brand that Tim’s dad wore to his important meetings, he seemed like he'd have enough money.

You would think that resorting to pickpocketing would be more of a moral dilemma to Tim, but it ended up being pretty easy. 

 

The guy was an asshole; Tim could tell just by the cut of his suit and the sound of his voice. Being able to tell if people are assholes based off the color of their tie was a genetic superpower that got passed down from his mom.

He had a stupid Tallahassee accent that grated on Tim’s ears and if that wasn’t proof enough that he was from out of town he was wearing a legitimate Rolex out on the street like a total idiot begging to be robbed.  

Normally while Tim was out with Bruce on patrol it was his job to keep an eye out for petty thievery, but Tim found that a bit unnecessary and most times turned a blind eye. This also was a very particular case where he’d say that he needed more than that Tallahassee jerk.   

He didn’t have any money on him and from what he knew there was no way for him to get any. The only things on him were four protein shakes and an already damaged raincoat. So, yeah, he’d say he was owed a few quick dollars from this asshole who couldn’t even meet his eye.

He also stole his watch, just to be petty and teach this guy a lesson. Now when he got to his meeting, he could tell everyone about the ‘disease ridden teenage brat who stole his 1,000-dollar watch on the way there’.  

That’s what you get for being a Gotham tourist. He shoved the watch into his pocket as a backup plan. He wouldn’t make much money from pawning it off, at least not as much money as it’s worth, but it was something.

It was disturbingly easy to slip the watch from his wrist the way he was so preoccupied with ignoring him that he didn’t notice the nimble fingers slyly undoing his clasp.  

The subtlety of his Robin training disturbingly paid off when it came to slipping a wallet out of a person's back pocket. Tim tried not to think about it too hard and reminded himself that he wouldn’t be doing it if he was in a better situation. The thought was successful in quelling any lingering guilt.  

The walk was painful. He couldn’t close his fists in fear of re-igniting the burn of his skinned palms, papery flakes of his skin scarcely hanging from his hand. He could almost see the purpling bruise underneath his pants where his knee bent.

It let out a whistle-like scream when he leaned too much on his right leg. The damage wasn’t permanent, Tim couldn’t go back to the clinic even if there was something wrong with it.  

The libraries ceiling was being repainted. It was loud with the creaking of ladders and clinking of pain cans as the crew worked. Because of that, there were no other patrons to distract the librarian from noticing Tim slip in.

The librarian, however, seemed to be too busy visibly expressing her displeasure at the noise.  

Her bony fingers were plugged into her ears that were being weighed down by gaudy golden hoops that made her earlobes sag.

She glared at the painting crew over her red crescent shaped glasses as if they would implode from her eye contact alone. Tim pulled his hoodie farther down and narrowly slipped through her hairy stare.  

Tim thought of Leslie’s newly improved clinics as he made his way through the overflowing aisles. Except it was more than just a new coffee table.

Tim couldn’t remember a time that the library got a new book much less a full new paint job where the once greying walls were now velvety green. It was bigger too, almost twice the size and every book dust jacket weren’t literally covered in dust.  

There was a kid section decorated with plush bean bags and painted bears dancing across the walls. Boxes of toys and puzzles sat orderly in a line.  

“Excuse me, are you lost?” a small voice asked and lightly tapped his back. The boy couldn’t have been older than seven but spoke in a voice like an old British narrator. Tim quickly tried to cover his face properly before turning around but from the angle the boy was standing, he could see it purposely.

He didn’t flinch, though, he didn’t even make a face like Wylan did, he just blinked silently and waited for an answer.  

“I, umm- I'm looking for the computers if you have any?” Tim’s voice came out even worse than it had the day before but again the boy didn’t seem to notice.  

“We have computers in the back. I’ll show you, follow me.” The boy grabbed Tim’s arm and began to drag him forward. Tim had to stop himself from grabbing his hand back to prevent the little boys' hand from pressing directly on his burns.  

“I know where everything is around here. I might as well be a librarian by this point. My mom is a librarian, so I come here after school. I don’t have school today, so I've been here the whole day.

Ask me where any book is, and I can find it since I spend so much time here. I want to be a librarian when I grow up so I can work here and since I know the place so well, I won’t even have to go to school for it.  

I hate school but I like to read. I’m really good at it. I don’t even read the books in the kid section anymore since I’m so good. Right now, I'm reading Tale of Desperaux.

Most kids in my grade can’t even pronounce the title, What’s your name? My name is Edmund like from Narnia. It was my mom's favorite book. Some of my teacher’s try to call me Eddie but I hate that”  

 If Tim was being honest, he would have to admit that he hardly caught anything Edmund had said. He was too busy trying not to get nauseous as Edmund dragged him through crisscrossing aisles, leading them so deep into the library that Tim doubted his ability to find his way back out.  

“...Wylan. My name is Wylan.” He answered, not spending too much time thinking of a better name.  

“Have you ever read The Avatar comics, Wylan? have and in it there’s this guy named Prince Zuko. You look like him.”  

“Is Prince Zuko cool?” Tim asked hesitantly. He wasn’t a big reader back in elementary school and he wasn’t sure if that was a cruel insult or not. 

“Oh yeah. He’s super cool. He can shoot fire out of his hands and is all mysterious. He’s a lot cooler than Aang anyway. He’s too much of a coward to kill anybody, lame. Zuko is also king at the end of it which makes him the coolest by default since Aang is the main character and isn’t king of anything.

That's a spoiler but I read that book back in kindergarten. My mom says that’s because I have a high lexicon-that means I have a high reading level- and all the other kids in my class are stupid and have a low lexicon which is why they are slow readers. Do you have a high lexicon, or are you stupid? Except my mom says calling people stupid is mean so I shouldn’t say it.” 

“I skipped two years of school because I was academically ahead. But that was more because I was good at math than because of my reading skills.” Tim didn’t know why he was showing off to this seven-year-old.

Being ahead in school was never anything he was proud of, if anything he hated being younger than everyone in his class, but it was something his parents loved bringing up at parties.

Edmund looked at Tim like he hung up the stars when he told him, though. His mouth was slightly agape and his eyes wide, Tim was his new Madonna.  

 

“You’re cool, Wylan. Like Prince Zuko. Even though you’re quiet, but that works out since Zuko was quiet too.” The boy smiled at him. He’s got a missing tooth in the back of his mouth and a small scratch on his cheek.

Before Tim moved up two grades the kids in his class didn’t like him, they thought he was a know-it-all and for an entire two months would push him onto the sidewalk every time they saw him outside.

One time a boy threw a handmade pinch-pot he made in art class at Tim’s head through the window of a moving bus. Tim dodged it but it hardly missed him.  

He looked down at the boy again, small and probably incapable of defending himself if someone else decided to pick on him.

He hoped that wouldn’t be the case, Edmund seemed like a nice kid, lively at the very least, and reminded Tim of himself with the way he talked to anyone who’d listen, despite them being total strangers, and his lack of shame in showing off his abilities which is something you should proudly show off.  

Maybe that was a narcissistic reason to like a kid, but he was also the first person he’d seen who hadn’t winced when he saw him and that counted for something.

Edmund wipes his nose with the frayed sleeves of his sweater that matched the color of the library’s wall. “This is the computer room,” He gestured to the room they finally arrived in was a sea of computers nice enough to be Wayne Industry tech and a lot nicer than the three half-way broken computers they had before.  

“The computers might be difficult to work with so ask me if you have any questions. Even if it's an easy question like how to turn it on and stuff like that.

We have two printers that both print in color which is cool, and there’s a stack of papers by each computer in case you need to write something down. I like to use them to draw but I'm not very good.”  

“I doubt that’s true,” Tim interjected, but Edmund wasn’t looking for a response, he just smiled up again at Tim before disappearing back into the labyrinth. Tim pulled up a piece of paper and began writing down a nearly endless list of questions.  

Wayne Industries 

Who is Janet Drake? 

Who is Jack Drake? 

Bruce Wayne 

Jason Todd-Wayne's death 

Gotham library restoration 

Drake Manor Gotham 

Bruce had been busy, that much Tim could tell. Business for Wayne enterprise was booming which had opened a bigger possibility for Bruce’s philanthropy projects.

He donated for the remodeling of Gotham’s public library which explained the new computers that Tim discovered were Wayne tech.

He had opened homeless shelters across Gotham and poured money into public transportation, and tearing down abandoned warehouses, most likely because those were always a rat's nest of rogues. Last year he paid to have the Gotham bridge rebuilt with a stronger metal which created loads of jobs.  

Bruce looked different in his photos but that might’ve just been Tim’s imagination, his image of Bruce was becoming blurry from the lack of sleep, but he was pretty sure last time he saw Bruce he was cleanly shaven, and his hair was usually more gelled when he went out.

Also, whenever he went out, he always pretended to get drunk and do some crazy shit to get him on the front page of the Gotham Gazette.  

He dialed it far down before Tim became Robin and Bruce stopped attending any of the Gotham socialite parties after Jason died but now when Tim searched for his favorite article where Bruce ‘got drunk and swam in a hotels koi pond’ nothing showed up.

Nothing showed up when Tim searched for Bruce taking out Adriana Lima the night of her Victoria secret fashion show.  

Through the hundreds of articles about him, none of them were about insane scandals or minor misdemeanors. Almost all of them were the typical ‘CEO of a company’ type things with Bruce shaking hands with politicians and kissing babies. The only thing that Tim found was that Bruce was still voted ‘hottest man in Gotham’ for three four years running, but now he replied, ‘no comment’.  

Dick was the same. He moved to Bludhaven and worked as a part-time police officer but now he visited Gotham far more often.

There were photos of Bruce taking Dick to charity events with both wearing matching ties and Bruce’s hand on Dick’s shoulder in most photos.

Bruce visited Dick in Bludhaven as well according to the paparazzi's photos. Bruce had even attended Dick’s Police Academy graduation. 

He scrolled through the hundreds of articles and photos of the Waynes and reached into his satchel for one of his protein shakes. If he had two a day, one in the morning, and one in the evening, he wouldn’t have to worry about food for two days.  

He peels off the wrapping and pours the thick, room-temperature strawberry milk down his throat while not looking away from the screen.

The artificial sugar in the drink was nauseating. The chemical sweetness lingered on his tongue and enveloped his mouth with the taste of the protein shake even after he finished the drink in just two minutes.  

Tim was glad to see that just like Leslie’s Clinic and the library, Bruce and Dick’s relationship seemed to be better and Bruce no longer was stuck with playing the ‘Brucie Wayne’ role at parties every few weeks. Tim looks up Jason’s name before he can talk himself out of it and freezes at the first thing that comes up.  

JASON TODD-WAYNE SPOTTED AFTER RECOVERY FROM A 9 MONTH COMA. 

Coma? That didn’t make sense. Jason died. He was buried in the ground.

Just like you did , a voice in Tim’s head hissed. You died. You're supposed to be dead and still you’re here. Why?

Tim ignores it and looks back at the article. Tim had visited Jason’s grave after he died, he even spent the first winter cleaning the headstone, but Jason had never died.  

He was hospitalized for six months after a brutal attack. Doctors doubted he was going to make it, and Bruce Wayne disappeared from Gotham for the last two months of his coma, most journalist speculated that he couldn’t handle seeing his son in his last moments, but a few days after Bruce finally came back to Gotham Jason miraculously woke up.  

It was a medical mystery and for two years afterwards Jason completely disappeared from the public eye. Some sources claim to have seen him in Nepal and other say he was in Chile only a week afterwards.

Finally, Jason was seen back in Gotham. The photo the article referred to be a blurry photo of Jason from a distance on Bryer’s street with his hood drawn up.  

The article detailed Jason’s return to Wayne Manor and still perfectly evading the paparazzi. The story just didn’t make sense.

Tim had seen the Red Hood, Jason’s alter ego he created after being brutalized and killed at the hand of the joker and coming back from the Lazarus Pit with a heart full of vengeance and a new craving for blood and tears.

It was the Lazarus Pit that made Jason into Red Hood, that made him want Tim dead and get so very close to getting his wish.  

He was about to look up the most recent articles about Red Hood, or any newfound crime lords in Gotham before his fingers froze, hovering above the keyboard.  

What was this even for? What was Tim trying to discover? He knew this Gotham was different than his own and somehow being buried underground in a forest he’d never seen before patrolling led him to waking up after dying in a place where Alfred didn’t recognize him.

His plan was just to see how different everything was. To see if he could just go home and pretend that nothing has changed, that he never died, that Jason never tried to kill him, and everything was the same as it was. His plan was banked on the fact that he still had a home to go back to.  

He typed in Janet Drakes' name in the search bar. His fingers stung when he pressed his sensitive fingertips into the metallic keys.  
 
 
His mother wasn’t difficult for him to find given her high profile. A quick search pulled up thousands of thousands of articles came up about her expeditions.

A bowl from the Indus Valley, a pot from the Hittites, a possible makeup palette from Old Kingdom Egypt. It was what he expected. She hadn’t come to Gotham since last year's February. Also, what he expected.  

He scrolled through pictures of his mother standing in front of her discoveries in various museums across the globe but instead of his Father standing next to her a shorter, softer-looking Vietnamese Woman had her hand wrapped around her.

They had the same almond eyes and smooth hair, except the older woman’s hair was slowly turning gray as he scrolled through the pictures.  

It was her mother, the article said. A woman that Tim had never met, and Janet had never mentioned. According to the articles though they were a famous duo in the archeological world.

They had lived in Gotham for a short time in Janet’s youth after they immigrated from Vietnam, but they didn’t stay there for long. Now they only visit for the occasional party invite. In her biography there was no mention of ‘Drake Industries’.  

One picture stood out to Tim. The only picture of Janet on an actual dig site. Her hair was pulled loosely into a ponytail with flay-away hair creating a bird's nest at the top of her head.

There was a streak of orange mud staining her smooth skin, and instead of a dress and heels like Tim would always see her in she was wearing oversized khaki pants covered in stains and sagging pockets.  

She was smiling, and not the way she would in pictures where the ends of her lips would be parallel to her pupils and her head tilted to the right at a specific angle. Her teeth were borne and her eyes squinted up at the beating sun.

Her mother was standing beside her instead of her husband. She had no home in Gotham to come back to, no son waiting for her in her large, hollow mansion. 

Tim printed out the picture and put it in his bag. The area of the library remained empty, and Edmund didn’t come back. Still, Tim couldn’t stop looking over his shoulder.  

Jack Drake was harder to find. For one thing, his last name wasn’t Drake it was Adamik. Secondly, he wasn’t nearly as high profile as Janet.

He was a stockbroker at the World Trade Center in New York. There were no articles written about him; the only thing up was his public Instagram account. 

The photos started with Jack in college, without his mustache and receding hairline with a group of his college friends either at a bar or a football game.

Tim watched as Jack aged through his photos, changing from his college hoodies to suits and ties. Some photos at work parties, photos with his college friends that were traded out with new friends. There were travel photos in China and Chile but always for pleasure instead of work and never to Gotham.  

He ran his tongue over the inside of his cheek, tasting the strawberry aftertaste and licking the stickiness left on his chapped lips.  

The photos became more personal. One of them was Jack sitting in what looked like his apartment, his mustache fully grown in and his forehead thoroughly wrinkled. A large dog was scratching at his feet, a leash bitten between his sharp teeth.

A woman stood behind him with a large grin and was tugging at the dog's collar to get him to let go of Jack’s pant leg. Her kinked coiled hair took up a foot of space. She was visibly younger than him by at least five years.  

She looked straight out of a workout video from the 70s with her pink leotard and purple leg warmers, her big, brown hair being pulled back by a thick headband.

Jack never let Tim have a dog. He said that they were too messy and would destroy their furniture.  

The last photo was of the woman and Jack in formal black-tie attire. They were standing in front of a gazebo with only one light shining on both of their faces. She was kissing his cheek, possibly getting a small amount of saliva into his beard.

Jack was scrunching his nose but still pulling the woman closer by the waist. Her hand was shoved out at the camera with a large, round diamond adorning her ring finger.  

 

 Her account was linked in the photo. Dana Winters was her name, and she worked as a language interpreter. In her free time, she enjoyed mountain climbing, Pilates and hanging out with her husky Jane who was named after the main character in 27 Dresses, her favorite movie. Recently she moved in with her new fiancé. 

She wasn’t like Tim’s Mother at all. She was white with shaggy hair. Her job was simple but fulfilling, with no noticeable prestige. She loved cooking, and sunny days at Central Park, two things his mom hated.

Her smile was wide and crooked but never faked, and she was the most visibly happy when she was with her new family. She was absolutely nothing like Janet Drake and yet Jack seemed to love her regardless.

He loved her more than he loved Janet, at least from what Tim could remember since he was a child.  

Tim wondered if Jack still had his ‘moods’ where he’d get drunk on expensive whiskey and smash the bottle. He wondered if Janet would still lock herself in her bedroom for hours on end while staring at the curtains.

He wondered if they both still had terrible memories and anger issues or if all those things had melted away now that they were living their new and improved lives, with Janet dedicating her life to her passion without being emotionally pressured into a marriage she didn’t want, and Jack being in a relationship with a woman who was able to love him back.  

Were they now the people Tim always wished would be for him?

Except no, they couldn’t be, because their happiness relied on Tim being in neither of their lives. Neither of them had children and Jack had never been to Gotham. Drake Industries wasn’t there for Tim to inevitably inherit. The house Tim spent years of his life in waiting for his parents to come home that was never built.  

There was no Timothy Drake, or Timothy Adamik, and this world didn’t flinch at his absence. He was alive but dead. Alive but dead. He slammed his fist against his chest to feel his heartbeat, to feel the swift drum underneath his jacket.

He did it again, and again, beating his chest against his ribcage like he was trying to dislodge the forming weight in his throat by giving himself the Heimlich remover.  

If a tree falls in a forest and nobody is there to see it, did it ever fall. He thought of those long summer days in his bedroom while his parents were away, where he'd walk through the halls, his fingers skimming the barren walls and circling the empty rooms.

Those endless nights after he limps back into his house after patrol and waiting for a text from Bruce that would never come.

That day when Red Hood broke into the tower, and he was left in a puddle of his own blood, pathetically trying to close his own gaping wound with the lurid red emergency light blinking tauntingly in his face.  

Each time he tried to calculate how much time it would take for someone to notice if he disappeared. How long he’d wait for his parents to come home and notice that Drake Manor was missing its consistent resident.

How many nights would have to pass before Bruce got worried enough to stop by his house and find it desolate.

How many minutes would pass before Dick and Bruce would respond to the emergency signal, or if they would be too caught up with Jason’s arrival to notice Tim’s absence and see the blinking light coming from the monitor. He wondered if any of them would even care.  

 

Now Tim couldn’t wonder because in this world his parents wouldn’t be pulling up to their Manor for Tim to greet them at the gate. Bruce hadn’t ever met the annoying neighbor and let him be Robin. There was a blinking emergency light in his head but there was no one to respond to it.  

What could Tim do now? Take a plane and confront Janet to tell her that she had a son she didn’t remember having and force her to take him in?

Go to the Manor and explain to Bruce that his name was Tim Drake- a boy who didn’t exist in any databases- he's the son of Jack and Janet Drake- two people who have never met- and he used to be the third Robin until he was buried alive and woke up in a universe where the world was only slightly different than his own and he didn’t exist.  

Bruce would lock him up in Arkham for insanity before he could finish his first sentence. There was no way he’d believe him, and Tim didn’t even have a way to explain what had happened. Was this just what happened when a person died? Probably not.  

Tim pushed himself out of his chair and fumbled over his feet. He caught himself on the chair and was reminded of the stinging in his fingers that worsened when he was typing.

He blinked vigorously to clear his blurred vision. A plan, he had come here to come up with some kind of plan, a way to fix this, a way to get back home, wherever that is.  

Tim was good at making plans, great at it. And whenever he couldn’t think of something he could go back to his room and sleep in it or turn to Bruce who almost always had the answer when Tim didn’t.  

His head was pounding violently, his heartbeat was thumping in his brain. He needed to think but it was impossible when the bookshelves surrounding him were shaking.  Or was he shaking? He couldn’t tell. What would Bruce tell him to do?

Go back to the scene of the crime and retrace his steps would be the first thing. Well, the first thing he would tell him to do is to stop keeling over the bookshelf and clenching his shirt between his fist like he was in the midst of a heart attack.  

Then he would tell Tim to think, take a deep breath and try to remember when things last made sense. But his brain was fogged with Dana Winters and the new weight of his mother’s photo in his bag.

He couldn’t remember when his mind was last clear, before waking up in that coffin, before the burning building and being mobbed right after, before he went out on patrol on his own.  

He couldn’t remember the fire, or the patrol, or any of it, or maybe he could if he managed to tune out the deep, searing voice in his head saying you don’t exist, and the world is all the better for it. Your parents are finally happy, and Bruce can be with his real sons.   

He shook his head and grabbed the shelf tighter to steady it-or was it to steady himself? - this wasn’t about Bruce or his parents, they were never there for him before.

Tim had always had to rely on himself to fix his problems, he couldn’t go crying to his mommy and daddy to help him, and he never had turned to them or Bruce for help. Even when he was a kid, he didn’t need as much help as the other kids, he was smarter than them and more capable than most adults.  

But now there was no safety net, no emergency cash for him to tap into, or house he could ride out the storm in.

No wiser man that could help guide him out of this situation, someone whom Tim could turn to when his heart was beating painfully against his ribs and his brain was throbbing out of his skull.

The safety net was pulled out from under him, and he was now pummeling towards the ground and just hoping he’d stick the landing.  

He used the shelves as a crutch towards the front of the library. His legs were vibrating and voices amalgamated in his head. He could do this; he was Robin for Christ's sake, and more importantly, he’s Tim Drake.

He didn’t need his parents and their money, nor did he need Bruce to come bail him out like some child. He could figure this out without him, he didn’t need either of them.  

The painting crew was still working the verdant green into the wall. The protein shake's synthetic flavor shifted back up his throat to the back of his tongue.

The paint cans clanked together, clank, clank, clank. The paint's smell was pungent and made its way over the dusty book smell the library would normally have back home.  

“Excuse me. Are you okay, young man? Do you need me to call somebody for you?” the librarian asked, her thin-rimmed glasses perched high on her crooked nose.

She pulls out a phone from her skirt pocket and begins to hand it to Tim so he can dial a number. Any number. Except Tim didn’t have anyone he could call, not now, and maybe not even before.  

 

Tim tries to get as far away from the library doors as possible before he throws up since it is wildly inconsiderate to vomit on the newly built library steps.

Despite his efforts, he only gets to the mailbox nailed down to the sidewalk before he pukes. It was watery and neon pink, no chunks because Tim hadn’t eaten anything in 38 hours.

The sidewalk was empty, people were already at work or had already come home from work. Tim hadn’t checked the time before he left, all he knew was that the sun was now shyly peaking over the library’s cerulean dome.

The librarian had not followed him out, nor had Edmund come out to look at him.  

On the empty sidewalk, on the abandoned street where no one was coming to look for him, Tim let himself puke into the mailbox again, even if the only thing he could force up now were traces of bile.  

Notes:

I wanted the chapters to all have POV switches between Tim and someone else, but because this chapter ended up dragging a bit I decided to split the two into different chapters which is what I'll continue doing, most of my other chapters were I don't need to info-dump won't have this problem. Thanks! please leave any compliments or critiques down below, I love hearing all of your guy's thoughts and opinions:^)<3

Chapter 5: Out, damned spot!

Notes:

I read Macbeth recently and I want to make it everyone's problem, even if I have to cram them in wherever they fit. I also just find the idea funny that in a chapter that's Jason-centric to make it Shakespeare themed. This chapter is also kind of hot trash since it's a dumping ground for background info:(

This side of Gotham had warmed up enough to melt the mounds of snow and frost, the water seeping into the ground, moisturizing it enough the grass to soften and for yellow tulips to sprout along the flower beds, and stand out from the grim, grey stone. 

The tips of the spires were still dusted with pure untouched snow, but it was difficult for Jason to see that high from the corroborating grey wisps of clouds that strew above the manor.

It was about to rain soon; Jason was too aware of the faint petrichor in the air and the chill from the incoming winds. It worsened the chill that he hadn’t been able to shake. Jason quickly hurried inside.

Wayne Manor was a good place to be when it began to rain, the stone walls were strong and solid, the warmth of the fireplace down in the den ruminate through the halls all throughout the first floor and met Jason politely as he crossed through the threshold. 

The smell of corn beef and cabbage mixed along with it, Alfred had not met him at the door because Jason hadn’t knocked, instead he used the house key that sat in his coat pocket as a constant weight.

 

Alfred was busy preparing the strawberry shortcake he had promised Dick now that the berries were in season. Alfred knew that he didn’t need to escort Jason inside. It was his home, after all, even with everything that’s happened.

 Dick was the first to notice the heavy oak doors opening and closing.  He peaks his head out of the kitchen like a labrador would out of a moving car, his teeth bright and pearly as he exclaims in excitement, “Jay! What took you so long? It takes me a two-hour commute and I even got here like three hours ago. Dinners have been done for forever, but Bruce insists we wait for you, which is unfair since you guys start without me all the time.’’

Dick grabs Jason without a second into an embrace, a light one. With only one of Dick’s hands wrapped around Jason’s shoulder.

It was simple, casual, because Jason had been seeing Dick more and more often, they had just been together last week the last time Bruce had them both over for dinner.

Bludhaven had warmed up quicker. Jason could tell from the blue cashmere sweater Dick had decided to wear with his signature worn leather jacket instead of the huge puffer coat he’d been wearing for the last four months. The leather carried the thick smell of fire and cabbage instead of its usual stink of city, and sea salt.

 His grown-out mullet was pulled into a lazy ponytail that Jason craved to yank like a second grader. Normally Jason would push himself to ignore any violence, no matter how small, but because it was Dick he pulled Dick off him with a tight grip on his hair.

 

Dick let out an overdramatic, shrill, scream and shoved Jason off his hair. He swiftly looked back, looking for either Bruce or Alfred to have caught him in the act, but Jason’s crime was one without witnesses. Dick turned back to him, cradling his own ponytail with his left hand, “that took me like an hour to do!”

Jason looked back up at Dick’s hair, heavily gelled in the front and a stub of a ponytail in the back with most of the hair leaking out the bottom. Jason grimaced at the sight

. “that’s actually pathetic. It looks like a rat's nest. An actual rat's nest, with the sticks and straw, I wouldn’t be shocked if I found some droppings in all that gel.”

“I’m going for a ‘not trying, I just look like this’ look. And look at who’s talking, you still have helmet hair. That thing should be marked as a biohazard. It's defying the laws of gravity from the way it's sticking up.”

“At least I don’t spend two hundred dollars a month to do that to myself. If you were to wash out your comb, we’d have an oil spill on our hands.”

“You got that from Full House,” Dick accused, pointing his long nail into Jason’s chest.

“Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t. The point is that you wouldn’t need so much gel if your hair wasn’t so flat.”

Dick gasped, his eyes blew wide, and he clutched his shirt with his hands like Jason shot him. “You take that back,” he shouts, outrage permeating from his voice. But he still swung a heavy arm around Jason and dragged him to the kitchen.

“I miss when you were the perfect height for an armrest. Those were really your best years.” Regardless of that, Dick kept his arm resting on Jason in an uncomfortable position where he had to crane upward to look Jason in the eye. He hadn’t been that short since he was ten.

 It was around his thirteenth birthday that he got his growth spurt and had to learn to fight with gangly arms that got in the way and long legs that tripped over themselves. Luckily the acne waited until his fifteenth birthday to kick in.

Now he had a confident four inches on him, and a decent amount of muscle mass to add to that which made Dick need to stretch his whole arm out to reach his opposite shoulder.

Dick liked to pretend that ‘he finally grew into himself’ but that wasn’t really the case. The real reason went unsaid, and who was Jason to destroy the mirage everyone in the manor insisted on drinking from.

 

Jason didn’t mind the idea of being a normal teen who didn’t spend two years in a coma, reanimated by his father and brought back in a suffocating rage, ran away from home, and became Red Hood. It was hard though, with the loud hum resonating in his bones, cold and echoing. Like the constant sound of the refrigerator running. 

He couldn’t stop himself from leaning into Dick’s arm wrapped around him and trying to feed off the warmth of his jacket, except the leather was too thick for any of Dick’s body heat to make it through.

Alfred didn’t turn when Dick waltzed into the kitchen. Instead, blindly he said, “I assure you that Master Jason’s patience has been tested quite enough.

I can recall numerous times where you have left us waiting for dinner, Master Dick. And I can assure you we have been left waiting for far longer than this” there was a hint of humor in his voice that was favoring Jason with his tone.

The rubicund juice and small seeds from the strawberries stained his hands up to traces of his white-knuckle hair. The strawberries were imported from the other side of the coast, they were too fresh-looking to be bought locally; they were a bright ruby red and bled sweet juice profusely every time Alfred cut them to look like roses. 

 The apron Alfred wore still remained clean. It was a worn-out looking thing on top of his finely pressed uniform; it childishly read “kiss the chef” and was a gift that Bruce made back when he was young.

The letters were hand drawn and the fabric frayed at the edges, but Alfred refused to let anyone purchase a new one.

 

Jason followed the instructions dutifully and kissed Alfred on the cheek as a greeting. “I am just glad that you were able to join us this evening.”

“Of course,” Jason responded, even though he forced himself to come over that evening.  Originally, he planned on canceling to bury himself in three plush blankets and all the jackets that he owned. But after an hour of sitting in his apartment alone, the silence became too much, he needed some kind of distraction, and he needed to see Bruce that day.

“Is Bruce home yet?” Jason asked and tried not to seem jittery while his eyes avoided Alfred’s red-coated hands. They were too red. They reminded him of earlier that day when he was chasing down some thug.

 He ended up breaking his leg, it was cruel and unnecessary, the man didn’t pose that much of a threat, and he could’ve stopped him using less force. He had forced the habit of using as little force as possible for people like that, people whom Jason could easily deal with. 

He didn’t even notice what he was doing until it was over, he hadn’t noticed how green the alley had gotten, or how loud the whispering was until he heard the snap.

The pit has been incessant since the night before with Nico. It wouldn’t let him sleep or think clearly, and he’d been so cold until he was chasing that man and then his blood felt red hot.

 If Bruce was there, he would’ve told Jason not to try go out at all, and not just because he was having a flare-up of uncontrollable homicidal thoughts, but because ‘it’s dangerous to go out when you’re not able to be present mentally’, as if Jason wasn’t the one who was dangerous .

Weirdly enough, the moment afterward, after he fled the scene, all he wanted to do was tell Bruce what had happened. Like he was going to confession and admitting what he did would somehow absolve him of guilt. It was stupid, so unbelievably stupid, but he still had the need anyway.

 Guilt combined with the chill on his back and made his arm hair stand up. There was a tightness in his chest and a repeating ‘snap’ in his ears. He squeezed his jacket around himself tighter.

Dick pulled himself up onto the counter and sat beside the cake tower and bowl of whipped cream frosting.

 

“Of course, he got home forever ago. Got out early. One of the guys lost his folder and the whole meeting had to be cut two hours short.” Dick shrugged. He was eying the bowl with an impish look that Alfred quickly caught and moved the bowl before Dick could even reach out for it.

“He should be in the parlor, if not, I would advise you to check the study.”

Jason left Alfred behind to protect the ceramic bowl of frosting from a ravenous Dick and went to go find Bruce. He looked in the study first and then the parlor, but he didn’t find him in either.

Instead, he finds him in the lounge, the deepest part of the house which Jason discovers is the source of heat. The fireplace was slowly burning and Bruce sat across from it, sitting upright on the sepia leather couch. 

Jason almost saw Bruce’s ear twitch when he walked into the room. He eyed him for a moment, the fire’s glow left a tired tint on the right side of his face as he turned to face him.

It took a while for Bruce to remember that he was meant to say anything, it felt like Bruce was content just staring at him with a contemplative look on his face.

“You look cold,” he finally said. Not a ‘hello’ or ‘Jason, my dearest son, I am so elated to see you’ which technically Bruce has never said but one could only hope.

“Come visit by the fire,” he beckoned, and Jason didn’t wait a moment longer before hustling over to the fire. He sits with his back to it, so close that if the fire were any bigger, he would have to worry about his jacket catching fire.

He could feel the blazing heat kissing his back and finally allowed himself to intense just slightly and relax his death grip on his arms. He faced Bruce who was still staring at him like one of Edward’s puzzles.

“There’s something bothering you,” he finally says. Nice of him to include Jason in his thinking. For a moment there he thought Bruce was simply brooding some more. He looked concerned, though, underneath that stupid thinking face he made.

“I broke a man’s leg today. But the thing is that I blacked out. Whenever I kill it’s to keep people safe. To protect Gotham and eliminate some sort of threat but this time it was just mindless bloodlust. I needed to hurt someone, and it didn’t even feel better when I did. I just felt lost.”

 

Bruce didn’t say anything for a moment. If you didn’t know better, you’d think he was upset about the man, but Jason already knew that Bruce didn’t have a stick to draw a line on the sand.

“You’re blacking out again,” he said, just stating the obvious. That made Jason mad, even though it shouldn’t have. Bruce only said it out loud to clue Jason into the fact that he is processing the information and not just ignoring him while sitting in silence.

He was probably just surprised. It had been months since Jason had lost his memory, not since he came back to Gotham. It was always the thing Bruce worried about most when it came to the pit.

 Weirdly enough, the bloodlust was on the backlist of his concerns, the top problem was memory loss. He had mentioned that it made him worry about the pits' control on the other parts of his brain, which was boring and nerdy, so Jason didn’t pay attention.

“Yeah,” Jason said lamely. “Has anything happened lately, something you haven’t been able to keep from your mind, something you’ve been thinking about a lot lately that could be keeping your mind overactive?” he asked, as if the answer wasn’t obvious. When something didn’t happen would be the better question.

 His literal job was to break up gang fights, take knives to the chest and spit out bullets, he’s made a hobby of stopping human trafficking, and an extracurricular in breaking people's kneecaps.

Having things unable to leave your mind was a part of the job description, or at least that’s how Bruce made it seem. Part of him didn’t even want to answer the question because of how stupid it was. 

And he wouldn’t have if it weren’t for the fact that he knew exactly what the answer was, knowing full well when the bitter coldness washed over him like a hurricane and chose to stay, and what unsettled him so much that the Lazarus pit was no longer dormant, but was now gurgling with boiling magma, threatening to burn its way out of him in a fiery explosion. Steam was lapping off him in waves and he was choking on the smell of sulfur.

“There was a boy, the other day. Maybe two days ago,” Jason didn’t know, it wasn’t long before, but he hasn’t slept since then which made the hours blurry.

“A boy?” Bruce repeated, seemingly noting Jason’s choice of the word boy instead of man. And he wasn’t- a man- that is, not even close.

“I got a report about him. Somebody spots him at a telephone booth on Cedar making a short phone call. He was young, around thirteen or so and a bit short from his age and skinny, too.”

He watches and is comforted by the way he can see Bruce calculating, logging information in the archive behind his eyes.

“He was injured badly, some old, some new. Burn marks on his wrist and ankle that singed his clothes, not too severe, though. Cuts but nothing bigger than two inches. His eye was completely swollen to the point that he couldn’t open it, dark brown and bleeding a small amount

. I found him again at Leslie’s and she gave me the report. He had old scars, too, a concerning amount and nothing small. He had a scar going around the front of his neck which was only a few months old. Slowly healing bruises too, from what Leslie could see.

 

“Leslie didn’t get the opportunity to check anything else since he ran out a few minutes after I got there. He must have seen me and thought he was in trouble. He was really scared, he was in no shape to get anywhere, blind in one eye and probably a broken leg. I don’t know what he could have been involved in to run like that, and with that scar on his neck with him being that young...”

He trailed off thinking about who could have put that scar there, a flash of green, biting and sinister wanting to wrap your hands around their neck, feel the thin skin hardly covering their fragile, breakable neck, just a flick of the knife and he’d dig into their trachea, show them what they did to that child. Seek justice. Seek justice.

He bit the inside of his mouth hard enough to sting. Drawing blood usually calms him down. That blood couldn’t be his, but he thought it might at least make the pit shut up for a moment and let him think . 

But even the rational part of him had agreed somewhat. He wanted justice with blood, to teach Gotham what happened when you fucked with the wrong people, but more importantly he wanted the kid safe, which is what he needed Bruce for.

“He couldn’t have gotten far, couldn’t have left Gotham, but he’s going to be avoiding any homeless shelters for as long as he can. I saw him in Leslie’s clinic. Only for a moment through a crack in the door, but Bruce, he was so, so- I don’t know-small. and hurt and scared but somehow all out of it at the same time.”

Bruised Legs too short to touch the floor. Waxy black hair with nubs of dirt overgrown onto his face almost covering that big blue eye that glowed under the LED lights, the other too gashed and swollen to see. Bloody, stubby fingers gripping onto the edge of the bed. Fear stunk up the room like sewage and methanol. Body shaking with still eyes staring off into the distance.

Familiar in the way that a mother’s blood brings you back to when you were pushed out of her womb, or vomit making him think of his mom when she was barely alive.

The sight of a ticking red clock makes his skin burn from how familiar it feels. It was a bad familiar, the kind of familiar that haunts you. Those blue eyes and small legs haunted him.

“When I saw him, I felt-” Jason tightened his fists and looked up at Bruce who was still listening attentively, undisturbed by the long pauses Jason would take. “Cold,” he finally decided on, the icy bite that’s teeth hadn’t dislodged themselves from his skin. “And hot. Burning.”

He hadn’t felt like this since he left the hospital, since those nights when he had first left Gotham, a culmination of sandstorms and blizzards homogenizing together under his skin; hate and grief rolling off his skin like pellets of sweat with that damned voice taking over his every conscious thought.

“I want you to tell me what it is. Where it’s from, how you got it. I need to know.” It was clear to both of them what Jason was referring to.

The Lazarus Pit: a chemical that, if injected, can grant healing powers and bring people back from the dead. Main side effects: a homicidal parasite that hijacks the mind and can create an unquenchable bloodlust if not kept in control.

He had hardly allowed Bruce to finish the name before Jason ran out without thinking. He ran because he had woken up older, bigger, with green walls encompassing him and a voice in his head that wasn’t his own, deep and cruel. Bruce was still holding the needle in his hand.

The three months he spent away from Gotham gave him enough time to become well acquainted with the Lazarus Pit, or Lizzy as he would occasionally jokingly refer to it as, and when he came home Bruce was mostly unfazed by the differences in Jason. This might've been because Bruce had also changed while Jason was in his coma.

He had helped get the Pit under control, to curb the bloodlust so Jason could focus on cleaning up the streets in the most efficient way possible.

The rushing roar had turned into a subtle drip and over months his body became his own again. Still, he hadn’t asked Bruce any questions about what the chemical was. 

He had spent so much time after it happened resenting him for it, turning him into a monster just so he didn’t have to mourn, with no thoughts of how it would give Jason a half-life in exchange. 

It was unnatural, and Jason was reminded of it every time he saw his eyes turn green, saw how much taller he was than Dick now, saw how much stronger he was now than when he was Robin.

 

Once he was able to forgive him, he couldn’t bring himself to ask any more than Bruce could bring himself to offer the information willingly. They performed an awkward waltz around the subject. Jason had assumed that Bruce had made some deal with a morally dubious rogue or listed somebody on the league's help.

Bruce’s face looked like someone with tons of Botox sucked a lemon. His face is mostly frozen still from years of a lack of visible expressions, but his lips were pursed together and his eyebrows scrunched to look like the hungry caterpillar.

He shifts in his leather chair and Jason can hear the splintering of wood from the fireplace release a crackle. 

“Do you remember Jacob Maddox, the Arkham patient. You were fourteen when he was admitted. He was the one who-”

“Who blew up that building and carved his own eyes out. Yeah, that story rings a bell.” Jason cuts off and knows exactly why he brought it up. A rogue who lost his mind from grief because of his daughter.

She died in some accident in Ethiopia, a murder most likely, or possibly some freak accident and during his trial Jacob claimed that when he went to Ethiopia, he met a woman in the ghost town of Dallol. A woman with no eyes, who he claimed could ‘see into multiverses and control fate’.

At the time Bruce chalked it up to a combination of dehydration to the point of hallucinations and extreme grief. Jason could name at least ten rogues with a similar origin story. It didn’t help that he was a physicist, and scientists in Gotham have a notoriously bad track record.

Attempts to open portals just ended in property damage and destruction. It wasn’t until it spiraled that he became dangerous. Failed science experiments can only get so far but when he discovered an old history book about some cult. 

“Children of the eye” or some generic cult name like that, with their old followers living in early 1900s Gotham, as if Gotham needed a more fucked up history.

 They all took turns pouring acid into their eyes since they thought it’d give them ‘powers to travel between the multiverse’ which was ridiculous since Jason knew many blind people who, all unsurprisingly, didn’t have interdimensional abilities. Jacob Maddox had blinded himself, gouged his eyes out in the middle of downtown.

The photos covered the Gotham Gazette for weeks. Psychosis plain and simple, the newspaper claimed, and Bruce had no reason to disagree.

But he still sympathized with him, unlike the other inmates of Arkham. He understood the toll grief had on the mind, and not for the first time Jason thought about the time Bruce spent while he was in a coma.

His eyes were intact, but he couldn’t be sure of how tethered he was to reality at that time. Dick and Alfred avoided the conversation as if two years never passed at all, but he couldn’t avoid the differences in Bruce. 

The fundamental changes in every facet of his person were palpable. His eyes weren’t missing, but there were other things that Bruce had lost during that time as well as things that he had gained.

 

A scar on his ear and below his eye. New calluses on his hand. His eyes a darker shade than he remembered.

“Yeah, I remember Maddox.”

“Two months before you woke up, I left Gotham. I traveled to Ethiopia and got to Dallol.”

“Jesus,” Jason muttered under his breath. Bruce really had gone crazy, which really shouldn’t have surprised him.

Bruce was always a little bit nutty, but usually not ‘running to a ghost town in the middle of the Danakil Depression’ crazy. Clearly, he had too much faith in the man.

It looked like Bruce was looking at him, his hands clasped and forearms resting on his knees, but when Jason looked at his pupils, he could tell that Bruce was looking at the fire, the ochre light flickering over Jason’s shoulder and resting on Bruce’s stoic expression.

“There was a sandstorm, but I did meet a woman there near a cave opening. Could hardly see her over the storm. The sand in my eyes didn’t help much either, but it helped that she was glowing.”

“Glowing?” Jason repeated in a tone that Bruce failed to pick up on.

And it was as if Bruce was still there, blinking the sand out of his eyes, coughing it out of his lungs, clearing it out of his ears as he made his way forward, the sand scraping at his skin like a colossal hand holding him back.

 He couldn’t see his hands wrapped in bandages or his feet now buried deep within the dunes. But he could still see that woman near the mouth of a cave. 

He gripped onto her dress made of a fabric that brought him back to the Gothamite woman at galas emotively moving past him in fine silks and satins, repeating the same ‘accidental brush of the shoulders’ to procure his attention.

 

The silk flowed endlessly down from her head onto her shoulders and long passed her fingers. The pure white poured down like a waterfall before blending into the endless sea of sand, it was not clear where she ended, and the desert continued.

“Her skin glowed. Blue. With a black cut down the middle.” the sky on a bright, sunlit day, only interrupted by a jagged caustic scar that snaked down her face, gaping and deep like an endless chasm.

 It was less of a scar than an open wound that was still bleeding. But the blood wasn’t a fresh crimson, instead an inky black that oozed on the sides once it reached her neck. Inside he could almost see flecks of white, like stars.

“She wore a bandage around her eyes. Black, with roman numerals forming a circle in the center. Just as Maddox described. She talked to me, but I couldn’t make out what she was saying.”

most likely because of the rushing whirlwind surrounding them, or the sand still lodged in his ears. He could only see her mouth moving and the gentle curve of her lapis lips. 

Her breath was warm and sweet smelling from where she stood, only inches from him and she reached out a hand from her robe to reveal that her scar had spread to the tips of her fingers.

She nearly touched his face, and he couldn’t help but wonder how her skin would feel. Would it feel as soft as a cloud in contrast to the grating sand, or would it feel sharper, like a knife dragging against his skin.

“I entered the cave to hear her better but once I went in, she disappeared. Instead, there was another woman. Thalia Al Ghul. Apparently, she knew me. I had appeared in the Himalaya's, in an alternate universe. In that universe Thalia and I had an... Intimate relationship.”

Bruce didn’t need to look up to know what face Jason was making but he still peeked to see Jason’s confused expression transfigure into a queasy grimace.

“She was a part of the League of Assassins. A dangerous group in their universe. Mercenaries, Assassins, and Bodyguards working for Ra’s Al Ghul. Thalia’s father.” Because of course, the only girlfriend Bruce would ever have would be the daughter of a cult leader. Jason wouldn’t expect anything different from his father.

“In that universe...” Bruce takes a pregnant pause, and Jason figured in that three second pause that whatever followed was going to be a gut punch.

“You had gone to Ethiopia to find out more about Sheila, the woman who gave you up, but it ended up being a trap set up with a joker. I didn’t get there fast enough. I wasn’t fast enough. And you died.” 

Bruce’s voice breaks the moment the fireplace lets out a deafening crackle as the wood splits. He looks down at his knuckles and the cuts that circle around them. He rubs them as if he’s trying to crack them open again.

“The league protects the Lazarus Pit. It's a supernatural restorative pool. It heals injuries instantaneously and has the ability to bring people back from the dead. They had used it on themselves numerous times.”

He remembered seeing Thalia’s reflection in the verdant pool that she had taken to him, leaning over it, her tanned hair nearly skimming the surface. He noticed quickly the glowing green color of her eyes matched the Lazarus Pit exactly.

“In that universe Thalia had used the Pit to bring you back to life, and it worked. I thought that Woman had sent me there to find a way to save you. I had to find something; I wouldn’t have gone back to Gotham otherwise. I was desperate.”

Jason shook his head, allowing the white hairs to block his eyes. “I don’t know what I was expecting.” Because what was he expecting? Something slightly less unbelievable?

“Did you know how it would affect me? I mean how did it affect the other me, in this ‘other universe’?”

Bruce thought harder about the time, what he and Thalia had talked about, what she had told him about the Bruce she had been in love with and his own family, his Dick, his Jason, and a third that went unnamed. 

Another Robin. His brain twisting around itself like a sopping rag being wrung out. Trying to find the words is like collecting rainwater into open palms. 

“You have to understand Jason, that this other Jason isn’t you. It took me a while to understand it myself. The whole ‘multiverse’ concept is something that no man can fully wrap their head around. It’s enough to drive them insane. But… this universe is vastly different from ours. 

The events we go through in life are what makes us who we are, they shape our character and affect the decisions that we make going forward.

In this alternate universe, the events that take place are different, therefore the people we become are not the same. You cannot compare the morals and actions of another person to yourself.” 

 

 It didn’t make much sense to Bruce, even when he was sitting across from Jason telling him all this, but it was all the same things he told himself when he found out about the ‘other Bruce’, the one who had lost his son. 

The only way he could rationalize it to himself is if he came to terms with what the Other Bruce had done, the decisions he made. The only thing that could justify it, is if they were two distinctly different people, despite being alternate versions of each other. 

 

Jason doesn’t buy it. He could sense when Bruce was cushioning the blow, laying down feathers and pillows for Bruce to drop him on. He could tell that whatever he did in this alternate universe was bad, really bad, and Bruce was stalling for time. 

“What did I do, Bruce? What are you not telling me ,  he wanted to say.

“You didn’t do anything Jason, this wasn’t you. These people aren’t us.”

“Fine. What happened to this completely different me, that bears no similarities to me at all,” Jason huffed, finally giving in and saying what Bruce wanted him to say. 

 

Bruce sighs heavily, debating if Jason was ready to know, debating if he was even ready to tell him. But he knew he couldn’t keep it from him anymore. 

“The differences between the universes are too many to count. Thalia was purposely vague when explaining this to me. Our relationship was one of those differences, and the existence of the League of Assassins. The severity and outcome of your accident is also one that she pointed out to me. 

Personality-wise she told me I was different to her Bruce. Your loss had a severe toll on my mental stability.” he pauses, and it is then that he stares down at his hand and rubs roughly at the skin, the red fire’s shadow making his hands look coated in blood. 

Here’s the smell of blood still : all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand ,  Jason thinks. 

“The rest wasn’t clear, but I believe that I may have had a son..another one, younger than you and Dick” Bruce doesn’t pause this time to allow Jason to interject, Thalia hadn’t specifically told him this, but he was able to extrapolate. 

“A year after your passing, the Other Bruce had allowed another child to be Robin. Thalia hadn’t given me many details about who he was, just that another Robin was active.”

Bruce breaks, peeking up from his hands to look at Jason. He expects him to yell, to shout, storm out of the room at least, but Jason just sits there and waits. His hands are wrapped tighter around his arms. 

“Jason, you know that I’d never replace you. Even if there was another kid, I’d never give him Robin. I don’t understand how it would be any different, but I would never do that to you.”

“Yeah-yeah I know Bruce,” Jason tries to process what he’s being told. To be honest, it shouldn’t matter what another Bruce did in an alternate universe.

Hypothetically speaking, when it comes to alternate universes, there were probably some where they never met, some where Bruce isn’t even Batman. 

Given how the whole multiverse logic worked, there was probably some universe where Bruce wears a rainbow suit and adopts a starfish. Still, the picture of another Robin pricks a sour note in his chest that vibrates nauseatingly against his ribs like pounding mallets on a marimba. 

 

“You still haven’t told me everything.  I can tell,” Jason forced himself to ask, even if he doubted he wanted to hear any more. Bruce didn’t want to say any more, it was clear by the way his stubble-coated cheek crumbled in on itself when he bit the inside of it. A battle takes place behind his eyes, what he wants to tell him and what he can get away with leaving out. 

 

Ultimately, he decides that anything he’d leave out Jason would be able to sniff out like a bloodhound, something Jason always had a talent for was sensing any secrets Bruce tried to keep.  

“Because of the extent of the injuries, instead of being injected, he was fully submerged and trained under the league of assassins. During the time your brain was malleable, they reshaped it to fill him with hate and revenge, so they could use him as a mindless weapon against me.”

Revenge, word rang in his mind. Was he the one to kill the joker? But that couldn’t explain the enmity behind his voice.

Prickling needles replaced the chill scratching down his arms, he replayed what Bruce said in his head and the mention of the other Robin. Did Jason kill Bruce?

 The idea was unthinkable, even when he hated Bruce the most for using the Lazarus Pit to bring him back to life, even when the pit had its teeth lodged in his throat, when it was impossible to see past the green smog that blinded him, the idea was unthinkable. 

 

He was full of bloodlust and resentment, undoubtedly, but he never brought himself to hurt Bruce, it was that lingering sense of self-control that stayed even when the Pit tried to rip it away from him, it was that lingering love for Bruce that brought him back. 

Jason has killed, he knows it and isn’t afraid to admit it, he didn’t regret it, even if he wasn’t in a clear headspace at the same time. The people he hurt were killers, and he wouldn’t take it back even with a gun to his head. 

But there were things he said that he wished he could take back, words said when the pit was tearing his brain apart, when the blood in his veins turned to burning acid, things he said that still hung between him and Bruce like rotting fruit on a shaky tree branch.

The idea of hurting Bruce was more than he could live with, but clearly the other Jason didn’t agree. 

“He gave himself the same name, but he purposely kept himself distanced and kept his identity anonymous. He was made clear to be a threat to Robin..” the sound of the word Robin rolling off of Bruce’s tongue sounded so foreign yet so familiar, it made Jason lean in, farther away from the hissing fireplace and closer to hear what Bruce was saying. 

“He was sent out of Gotham for his protection but he was left unsupervised.” 

“I killed him,” Jason jumped to breathlessly. 

“No,” Bruce quickly corrects. “You did not kill him, you had nothing to do with this, Jason. And Robin didn’t die,” he clarified, as if that made all the difference in the world.

 “ That Red Hood's goal was never to kill Robin either, he intended to… hurt him severely- but not kill him- in order to send Batman a message about his choice in allowing another child to be Robin after his son’s death, and to prove the danger of the position.”

“It did make me hesitate, but it helped me realize the importance of helping you emotionally adapt to the change, and steer you from dominant outward influence as you adjusted.” 

At first Jason thinks Bruce is joking, a real sick joke is what it sounds like, but as they sit a nauseating air percolates out of the wallpaper, a blistering hatred begins churning deep inside him pointed towards himself, crawling itself deeper in the pit of his gut. He might throw up. 

“You’re telling me that because I was brutally murdered by a deranged killer I decided to… what? Torture a child for being Robin instead of me to prove a point?! Sounds pretty deranged to me.” 

Jason jumps out of his seat, the jacket that before was protecting him felt like it had caught fire, leather melting and fusing into his skin. He throws it off.  

Bruce gets up with him, “Jason I need you to listen to me, this wasn’t you, I know you would never.” Jason wants to hear him, but he can’t make out what Bruce’s saying over the rushing noise in his ear. 

“Yeah,  it was just me if I spent a few extra months away from home. The wrong voice in my ear and I turn into a child killer! You can’t pretend like we’re not nearly the same,” Jason shouts back, not noticing how loud his voice had gotten, it was likely that Alfred and Dick could hear them from the kitchen. He takes a breath but it feels like he’s breathing in smoke, his lungs tremble and he almost falls over. 

“I need to go, I need some air. "His head had been shoved into the fireplace, he’s breathing in fire, the smoke was making his eyes burn.

He stumbles around, using the leather chairs as a crutch but before he can get past the stairs Bruce finally reaches out and grabs his arm. 

“Jason, don’t go,” Bruce asks but it teeters towards begging. Through fuzzing vision Jason stares down at Bruce’s hand that, despite Jason’s growth spurt, still engulfs his own.

 The grip is almost too-tight and red smears onto Jason’s pale palms. Crescent-shaped cuts cover Bruce’s palm from where he balled his hands so tightly that he cut himself.

Scratch marks were aggressively red on his wrist and his cuticles had been picked to nonexistence. 

Their joint guilt bled together in the hot, humid air of the room like a corroborating scab.

The nearly-tangent metallic smell of it made Bruce’s eyes water and squeezed Jason’s neck so tightly that he could hardly choke out an, “Okay, yeah, I’ll- I just need to sleep for a bit. I won’t go anywhere.” 

Carefully, he slipped out of Bruce’s grip and turned towards the stairs. Too-softly Bruce called after him, “We’ll talk about this more in the morning.” 

He wasn’t sure if Jason heard him, but he couldn’t get himself to repeat himself. Green mold fuzzed over his brain, he hardly got up the stairs while leaning his body weight on the railing. 

He buries himself in his bedroom and closes his eyes as tightly as he can, sinking to his knees and blocks out the image of a faceless bloodied Robin, lying still on the floor. Just a small child in green and yellow colors with his blood on his hands.

 He’s overwhelmed by a feeling he hadn’t felt so strongly since he first woke up. Fear. fear of himself, of what he could do. 

In recent months the Pit served more as a demonic Jiminy Cricket, a constant violent mumbling in his ears, but as time passed he figured that the Pit hadn’t changed him completely. 

It altered him undoubtedly, added another voice in his head, and made him far more comfortable with violence, but that made it so that Jason only needed to be stronger-willed. 

But was that just false comfort? All he needed was a bad example, some villain whispering into his ear, and he became someone he couldn’t recognize, a puppet to his every negative emotion. 

The truth was that he didn’t know anything,  he put too much faith in himself. In horror, he thought of the parasite living inside of him and knew that he didn’t know what he could do, what he would do if pushed just a bit harder, who would he hurt, A civilian? His family? A child? 

He hears Dick quietly pad upstairs and leave a plate outside his room. It’s a slice of cake with a dollop of extra frosting on top and Jason’s favorite spoon.

 It was clear that Alfred allowed Dick to help from the way some of the strawberries were barely cut, and the frosting was smudged onto the sides and slowly sliding off.

He stared at the plate for so long that the thick, red jam began to drip down like blood down the sides onto his hands. 

He throws the ceramic plate down, allowing it to nearly crack on the polished wood floors and rubs at the spot but it doesn’t come out, instead it splatters down his arm. 

Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood clean from my hand? 

Slowly, through molded vision he limps towards the bed, trying to ignore that his sky blue walls shifted to a jarring green.

He stared at the ceiling and watched how in pitch black a lake of red pooled above him. Sticky red drops dripped down on his face, into his eyes until they were forced to close. 

  No, this my hand will rather the multitudinous seas incarnadine,making the green one red.

 

Notes:

I know it's a bit cheesy of a chapter but essentially it's meant to show the lore-differences between Tim's universe and this one which will continued to be explored and explained as it continues. please ask any clarifying questions in the comments cause I know this early in the story it's all over the place, love y'all<3