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Tim was… not who Jason thought he would be.
Now, don’t get him wrong—he understood why. The guy had literally died and then gotten brainwashed by a bunch of crazy murder furries and turned into another murder furry. That could fuck a guy up for sure, and he’d only been back with them for… what, a month? A month or so since that series of failed attacks against Batman, since they’d managed to figure out who the new Talon was and get through to him enough to get him home. A month of Tim Drake sitting in a comfortable containment cell (it looked almost identical to one of the bedrooms upstairs, even) in the Cave.
The thing was, though, the thing was, he hadn’t said a word the entire time.
Most of what Jason had heard about him involved how much he liked to talk. About photography, about cases, about skateboarding, about his friends, anything he could think of. Tim loved to talk. All he did now was nod or shake his head, if anything at all. They’d even tried sign language, and he clearly understood it—as well as spoken language—he just didn’t respond. Dr Thompkins had suggested he might just be overwhelmed, might need time to readjust, but how much time would it take before Jason could hear his big brother’s voice?
(He ignored the fact that Tim was never adopted before he died—Jason was counting him whether he liked it or not. He’d always wanted siblings and now that he had them he wasn’t missing the opportunity for more.)
The lack of responses meant that nobody really talked to Tim, either. Not past greetings and maybe general updates on life outside the Cave followed by awkward silences. Jason didn’t like this. How was Tim supposed to get better if he felt like he was being ignored? He wasn’t, it was just hard to talk to someone that didn’t talk back, but it probably felt like he was. All because the implied pressure to speak seemed to be too much. Possibly. It’s not like Tim was telling them the reason.
So, one afternoon, when Jason would normally be holed up in the library with a book, he went down to the Cave instead. He sat down on one of the camping chairs that had been set up outside the plexiglass front wall of the cell, and with Tim’s glowing yellow gaze on him, he started reading. Out loud. He’d gone with The Secret Garden—it was, primarily, about healing. It felt right.
Jason stayed there all afternoon until he’d finished the book and had to go up for dinner with his siblings. Tim’s eyes hadn’t left him the whole time. When Jason said goodbye with a small wave, Tim’s hand even seemed to twitch. Barely noticeable, but it was there. Like he wanted to wave back but was stopping himself. Jason counted it as progress.
Someone always stayed in the cave with Tim overnight, so he wouldn’t be alone, and tonight it was Damian’s turn to eat dinner with him and sit on comms while the night shift patrolled. Jason and Damian crossed paths when Jason was heading to the dining room, and if Damian thought it was strange that he was coming up from the Cave, he didn’t say anything.
Jason did the same the next day, and the next, then for a full week, each time with a different book. They each only took an afternoon to finish and they were all ones he’d read before so he could even try to give characters voices based on his memory of them. His family had definitely noticed by now and seemed to approve. He’d caught Duke doing something similar one morning, though with a collection of poems he’d written rather than a book.
That day he’d chosen a more modern book; One Of Us Is Lying by Karen M. McManus. He hadn’t read it before, just because of his general preference for classics, and he added that as a disclaimer before he got started. He didn’t know if it would be good, was his point there, however it seemed to be some kind of murder mystery inspired by The Breakfast Club. That seemed up Tim’s alley, kind of.
It… didn’t end up being the best thing he’d ever read, in Jason’s opinion, though the twist at the end was interesting, if predictable. He’d had to grimace and glaze over a scene in the middle between the token gay character and his secret boyfriend (“‘Pulls me…’ okay, these guys are two seconds away from fuckin’, I ain’t readin’ that, even if it’s only a paragraph. Not ‘cause they’re guys, I just— not out loud to my brother.”) which might’ve gotten some kind of sound out of Tim (a laugh?), but that could’ve just as well been a bat from the ceiling.
When Jason looked over to the beanbag that Tim was sitting on (it hadn’t been that close to the glass yesterday, did he move it?) Tim was looking right back at him.
“You figured that out as soon as they mentioned the water bottle thing too, didn’t you?” Jason asked. He wasn’t expecting an answer, but Tim surprised him with an amused smile. “Earlier?” A nod. “Damn. I’ll see if I can find a better one tomorrow, maybe Dad’s got some good ones.”
“Master Jason.”
Jason sat up straight and turned to face Alfred. He hadn’t heard him come down the stairs. “Yeah?”
“Dinner is almost ready. Would you like to come up to eat, or are you staying down here with Master Timothy for the night?”
“Uh…” He looked back to Tim. Glowing yellow eyes bounced back and forth between Jason and Alfred. “Do you… care if I stay down here?”
Tim’s gaze stopped on Jason and he blinked owlishly (ha). There was a long stretch of nothing where Jason thought Tim wasn’t going to do anything. Then he stood up and moved over to the round table on the opposite side of the cell to his bed and pulled out one chair, then sat in the other. He propped his elbows up on the wooden surface and rested his chin in his hands, looking expectantly at Jason.
“I believe that to be an invitation, Master Jason,” Alfred said, a small upturn to his lips.
“Wait, we’re allowed in there?” Jason was surprised. He knew Damian and Cass would eat in his cell with him, but Bruce had instructed the others to give him space. Jason assumed that Bruce was worried about them being attacked, even if Tim had only ever been hostile to Bruce, and even then only when he was at his least lucid. His usual reaction to Bruce was to hide in the back of his cell where nobody could see him and he couldn’t see them.
“With invitation from Master Timothy. He needs space to heal, yes, but nobody deserves to be alone when they wish for company. That was the reason you began reading to him, yes?” Jason nodded, and got a single tip of the head in return from his grandfather, as well as a wider smile. “I shall be down with your meals soon.” Alfred turned and left, leaving Jason to shrug and turn back to the cell.
He left the book on the chair and unlocked the door—code, fingerprint, biometric scanner—with Tim’s eyes on him all the while. He was slightly nervous, if he was being honest. Tim seemed harmless enough with strong plexiglass between them, but the man had tried to kill Bruce. It hadn’t worked, obviously, and it hadn’t taken too much to bring Tim somewhat back to himself, but still—he was dangerous. There was a reason only Damian and Cass were brave enough to go all the way in.
But Jason sat down, and Tim smiled and brought the pads of his fingers up to his lips before moving his hand down and closer to Jason.
Thank you.
Jason blinked rapidly for a stunned second. “Uh— for what?”
Tim face screwed up slightly. He pointed to the book.
“Reading to you?”
A nod.
“Yeah, I— I guess I never explained that, huh? I just… ya seem like you’re havin’ trouble talking, so… don’t gotta talk back to books, y’know? Not unless you wanna. So, no problem.”
Tim nodded again. “Talk hard, listen easy,” he signed. His movements were somewhat robotic, out of practice, and his face didn’t match up with what he was saying, too focused on getting his hands right.
“Makes sense. Guess I’ll keep doin’ it until we run out of books.” Jason grinned. “We’re gonna get down to some real bullshit if I start gettin’ desperate though, so you should try and get better before we’re down to fuckin’… I dunno, James Patterson? No shortage of those, I think he gets ghostwriters to do most of his books anyways.” He mentally crossed out Maximum Ride—he only knew the rough plot synopsis, but it felt a little on the nose. He’d heard it wasn’t very good anyway.
Tim pressed his lips into a line and started slowly fingerspelling. “Chuck Tingle.”
“Who?” Jason dug into his pocket for his phone. He didn’t know if it was allowed in the cell, but Alfred hadn’t said anything about it. “Don’t tell me, I’ll just Google it.”
When Alfred came down with two full plates, he was amused to find Jason with his forehead pressed to the wood of the table, a groan emanating from him. Tim was hiding a mischievous grin behind his hand.