Chapter Text
When Jason Todd wakes, it’s to the smell of rotting garbage and the feeling of something unholy crawling under his skin.
He’s on his side. Asphalt grit sticks to his cheek, wet with something that’s probably not water. His knuckles are raw.
He rolls, slowly, and his ribs grind like broken glass. There’s no sound but the hiss of a leaking pipe and the thin, ragged edge of his own breathing.
Gotham, he thinks. It has to be Gotham.
But the sky above him isn’t Gotham-black. It’s a grayish smear caught between skyscrapers that don’t match the skyline he knows by heart. The air tastes wrong — brine and diesel and burnt sugar — and the shadows are all in the wrong places.
He sits up too fast and the world tilts.
His stomach lurches. He clutches at his jacket — no, not his jacket, this is someone else’s coat, coarse wool that smells of mold and sea-spray — and squeezes his eyes shut until the vertigo passes.
Memory is a film reel caught on a loop. There was screaming. There was a crowbar. There was a warehouse. And then green, green everywhere, boiling and luminous, thick enough to drown in.
He thinks maybe that’s just death. People say there’s a light at the end of the tunnel; his light was poison-bright.
When he opens his eyes again, the alley is still there: a dented dumpster to his right, a cracked neon sign buzzing somewhere above. Cars hum in the distance, but the engines sound newer, cleaner. He drags himself upright and staggers toward the street, one hand on the wall for balance.
The people out there don’t look up. They walk fast, eyes on their phones. The ads plastered on the bus stop are for companies he’s never heard of. Stark Industries. Roxxon. It’s hot enough to be summer.
There’s a paper tacked to a lamppost with a date in the corner. 2012.
That’s not right. It was 2011. He was seventeen.
“Bruce,” he croaks, and his voice breaks on it. He swallows and tries again. “Batman.”
No answer. Of course no answer.
Jason fumbles at his pockets for his communicator, for anything, but all he finds is lint and a rusty subway token. His fingers tremble. The thing under his skin keeps shifting, crawling, like fireflies trapped under glass. He shoves his hands into his sleeves to stop them from shaking.
He starts walking.
The city’s edges are unfamiliar but its bones are the same. Alleys, rooftops, fire escapes. He ghosts along them on instinct, slipping into shadow when uniforms appear — except the uniforms are blue and say NYPD, not GCPD, and their badges aren’t where they should be.
He tells himself it’s just a different borough. He tells himself Bruce will find him any second now.
By the time dusk hits, his muscles have gone slack with exhaustion. Hunger gnaws at him. Every time he blinks he’s back in the warehouse, back under the crowbar, back in the green. He doesn’t know how long he’s been walking or what borough this even is. He ducks into another alley and slides down the wall, hugging his knees to his chest.
He should be dead. He knows that much. Dead kids don’t get second chances. Dead kids don’t crawl out of their graves into strange cities. He presses his palms over his eyes until he sees sparks.
The burn under his skin pulses once, twice, like a heartbeat that isn’t his.
“Get a grip, Todd,” he mutters, but his voice is small in the dark.
Jason drags himself upright again when the cramps pass. The sky has gone from dirty gray to iron blue. Neon starts to flicker alive across the street — bars, bodegas, a pawn shop with a name he doesn’t recognize. He sways there for a moment, hands braced against cold brick, waiting for his pulse to slow.
Every smell is too sharp: frying oil, gasoline, perfume. He can hear footsteps blocks away, the whine of a dog pulling against its collar, the squeal of a subway brake under the street. It’s like his senses have been stretched on a rack.
Jason claps his palms over his ears, but it doesn’t dull the sound; it just pushes the hiss inside his skull higher.
Something green flickers at the edge of his vision and he spins, heart hammering. Nothing. Just a puddle catching the light of a neon sign.
But when he looks down at his hands, the veins at his wrists are standing out dark against skin that feels too hot. His nails are dirty and torn and they’re shaking again. He presses his fists against his ribs, and tries to breathe slow.
He stumbles out onto the sidewalk anyway. People glance at him, then away. He probably looks like any other runaway, dirty and glassy-eyed. He wants to scream at them Where’s Bruce, where’s Alfred, where’s Gotham, but his throat won’t work.
He follows the street without thinking, drawn by the rhythm of traffic. Times Square should be up ahead if this is New York. Maybe he can orient himself there. Maybe Bruce will be waiting.
His boots scuff the concrete in time with his heartbeat: thud, thud, thud. The heat under his skin pulses back, a second rhythm, out of sync.
By the time he reaches the lights, it’s full dark. Screens the size of buildings flash videos he’s never seen, ads for companies with names that mean nothing. A stylized A in a circle flickers past between perfume spots and movie trailers.
People are laughing, taking pictures with their phones. Jason stops dead in the middle of the crowd, staring up at a banner that reads STARK EXPO 2012.
It’s like falling. The dates don’t add up. The names don’t add up. The city doesn’t add up.
He doubles over, gagging, hands braced on his knees. Someone curses at him and veers around. The green is back now, stronger, crawling up his arms in a phantom wave only he can feel. He rakes his fingers through his hair and finds it damp with sweat. He can taste metal on his tongue.
He bolts.
Down another alley, over a fence, across a loading dock. His body remembers how to run rooftops even if his mind is a mess. The climb steadies him a little, the rhythm of brick and ledge and jump. For a second he almost feels like Robin again.
Then the world tilts.
His vision whites out, bright poisonious green at the edges, and his knees give. He hits the roof hard enough to knock the breath out of himself. The sky above him spins. Lights blur. He can’t tell if the sound in his ears is sirens or blood.
He drags himself toward the roof’s edge and peeks down. Cars like beetles below. No Batmobile. No grapple line. Just an ocean of strangers.
The green heat under his skin pulses once, twice, then surges like a tide. He claws at the roof gravel, trying to hang on, and a low sound escapes him — not quite a groan, not quite a growl.
“I’m not—” His voice cracks. “I’m not dead.”
The city doesn’t answer. The only heartbeat he can hear is his own, and the other one under his skin, and they’re both out of time.
He curls onto his side, pressing his forehead to his arm. He has to think. He has to plan. He has to survive. Bruce will come for him. Bruce always—
A shiver runs through him, sharp as a knife, and the thought scatters. His vision tunnels, narrowing to a single point of green.
The smell of garbage from the first alley is back, stronger now, inside his nose and mouth. The last thing he’s aware of before the dark closes over him is the hum of some enormous power under the city, like magic or machinery, and the taste of ashes at the back of his throat.
———
Tim Drake has a dozen tabs open on the old desktop in his room, and all of them are paused at the same second: a blur of shadows carrying a body out of a graveyard.
It’s not even a good camera.
The cemetery's security system is one of those mid-nineties grainy models that spits footage to tape. Tim got it because the caretaker’s office keeps its backups in a box under the desk. Breaking in was the easy part. Getting the tapes home without anyone noticing was harder.
He leans closer to the screen anyway, fingers tightening on the mouse. The time stamp reads three nights ago. Location: Gotham Cemetery, west wing. The grave marker just out of frame belongs to Jason Peter Todd.
Tim knows because he’s been there. He’s been everywhere.
His notebooks are full of dates, maps, and blurry photographs. Everything he can scrape up about Batman’s second Robin and the day the boy stopped coming home.
On the screen, a figure in a dark cloak vaults the fence and lands silently. Two more follow. They move like smoke, faces turned from the camera.
One bends, working at something just below the lens line. Dirt spills over a shovel edge. Then the frame jitters — a glitch in the tape of a deliberate interference — and when it stabilises again, they’re lifting a shape out of the earth.
Tim hits pause. Zooms. Grain on grain. There’s a flash of white — an arm, a hand — before a cloak swings shut around it.
He sits back, heart hammering.
It’s not Bruce Wayne. Not his butler, either. It’s not anybody GCPD would send.
Tim’s cross referenced every League file he can hack from public servers, every scrap of footage of Batman’s allies.
These aren’t cops. They’re not vigilantes. They’re not Justice League affiliates. They move too smoothly, too synchronized, like dancers or ghosts.
He rewinds, and plays it again. Dirt, shovels, body. Cloaks. Gone.
“What the hell?” He whispers to himself, like the question will make any difference.
On the desk beside him, a cold cup of coffee trembles when he sets the mouse down. He’s thirteen years old, and he feels like he’s been awake for days. Maybe he has.
He flips open a notebook. His handwriting crawls across the pages in cramped lines — dates of Jason’s patrols, sightings, whispers in back-alleys, articles about “a second Robin” dying in an explosion overseas. He’s drawn maps of shipping routes between Gotham and Europe, traced red lines between airports and ports, written names in columns: Talia al Ghul, Ra’s, Lazarus Pit.
All Rumors. All guesses.
He taps his pen against the column marked PIT? The word looks stupid in his neat handwriting. But he’s read the stories. He’s seen the patterns. People die, disappear, and return different.
And now he has a picture — not proof, not yet, but enough to tell him that Jason Todd isn’t in the ground anymore. Somebody took him. Somebody with resources to cross continents without a ripple.
Tim drags a hand through his hair.
His reflection stares back at him from the dark window, pale and sharp-eyed. He knows he should go to Batman. He’s just the kid next door, the one who takes photos at charity galas and on rooftops, the one nobody notices.
But Bruce has been… off since Jason. Colder, harder. If Tim goes to him with a wild theory about pits and assassins, he’ll shut him down.
So he keeps watching the footage. Frame by frame. Looking for an angle, a pattern, a way to follow. Anything.
Outside, Gotham rain ticks against the glass. In his notebook, under PIT? He writes one more line in block letters:
FIND JASON.
Then he circles it until the paper almost tears.
———
Jason groans into the night, eyelids heavy, lungs burning, when the shouting cuts through the air.
“Hey! Get off me!”
He sits up, squinting down a side street. A kid, no older than twelve, is being shoved against a brick wall by two men in leather jackets.
One of them has a glinting crowbar. The streetlights catch it, and for a heartbeat, Jason doesn’t think. Then instinct kicks in, muscle memory sharper than thought.
Robin doesn’t stand by. Robin steps in.
He’s still in his own skin, still Jason Todd, still carrying the reflexes, even without the red tunic. He vaults off the dumpster, silent and fast, and lands behind the taller man. The leather jacket guy whirls, eyes wide.
“What the–!” The second thug shouts, swinging at him. Jason ducks under it, grabs his wrist, twists, and the man collapses into a heap on the sidewalk.
The kid scrambles back against the wall, wide-eyed. “Who– who are you?”
Jason exhales sharply, voice rougher than he means it to. “A friend.”
“I– I was just–”
“Not anymore,” he says. “Stay behind me.”
One of the attackers groans and struggles to rise, cursing. Jason’s chest pulses with the familiar burn, with something crawling beneath his skin, but now it’s different — sharper, more insistent.
He’s not in Gotham. None of this is Gotham. His instincts are right, his reflexes are right, but the city, the smells, the hum of traffic — all wrong.
He pushes it aside. Right now, the kid comes first.
A swing from the first attacker catches him across the shoulder. Pain blooms, hot and sharp. He stumbles back, then flips forward, rolling into a crouch. Every motion is precise, every landing calculated, but something still feels wrong.
The men don’t move quite like humans do. Maybe the weight of their punches is off. Or the momentum.
Jason’s breathing hitches. He’s still Robin, but not really. Not here. Not in this city. Still, he fights. Always fights.
He lands a hard elbow into the stomach of the first thug, spinning him around. The second tries again, and Jason counters with a swift kick that sends him sprawling against a lamppost. Sparks flicker briefly where the post meets the concrete. Jason freezes for half a second, realizing he might be causing damage in ways he doesn’t understand.
Not his city, not his rules.
The kid behind him takes a shaky step toward the edge of the alley. “I—I didn’t mean—”
Jason glances back. “Stay down!”
A crowbar swings toward the kid again. Reflexively, Jason launches himself forward, catching the bar mid-swing. He grunts, twisting and throwing the man off balance, but the burn in his veins intensifies. His heartbeat is double, triple, off. He stumbles, barely recovering.
The fight stretches, looping, expanding. Each move — kick, block, shove — takes longer than it should. The city feels heavier, edges sharper, sounds louder. Everything is amplified. Every strike, every impact, makes him more aware that he doesn’t belong here.
Another sound cuts through the alley: the metallic slap of boots on pavement, faster, heavier. Jason freezes mid-swing, the last attacker charging at him.
Then a blur drops into the street ahead.
It’s a man. Tall, broad-shouldered, shield strapped to his back, moving faster than human reflex should allow. The air shifts when he lands; the city seems to hush.
Jason freezes. Every instinct screams wrong. He doesn’t know who this is, doesn’t know what this shield is, doesn’t know what kind of human — or not-human — he’s facing.
The attackers glance at the figure and hesitate. The attackers vanish into side streets, fleeing as fast as their legs will carry them. Jason doesn’t watch.
He grabs the kid’s arm. “This way!”
The boy stumbles as Jason pulls him backward. He drags the kid into the shadows, pressing them against a brick wall, heart hammering.
The man steps forward, slow now. His shield is at his side, posture deliberate but not threatening. “Kid,” he says, voice steady, carrying authority. “You okay?”
Jason tenses. His muscles coil. The man looks like he could snap him in two. “I– yeah,” he croaks. “We’re fine. I’m… we’re—”
His words stumble over themselves. He doesn’t know what this man wants, nor what kind of fight he’ll be pulled into next.
“Listen,” the man says, shield shifting slightly on his back. “I’m Steve. Just… step away from the street. It’s clear you can handle yourself, but–”
“I’m not leaving until he’s safe,” Jason cuts him off. The kid curls behind him, eyes wide. He glares at the strange man. “Just— give me a second.”
The green fire under his skin crawls, the burn shifting, insistent. He presses a hand to his forehead. He’s alive. He’s still fighting.
But he doesn’t belong.
———
Tim’s room smells like solder and old paper and the faint copper tang of a dead battery.
He hasn’t slept properly in two nights. He hasn’t eaten anything worth noting. On the screen, the paused footage flickers again: shadows moving like smoke, a body hoisted from the earth. Jason Todd.
But the thing is — he’s not here.
Tim rewinds the tape. He studies the frame. Dirt clumps under the shovels. One figure bends to gather the boy. Then the frame jitters. Then they’re gone. The grave is empty. His heart hammers so hard he can hear it in his ears.
He pulls up news archives. Every article about Jason’s death, every CCTV snippet, every street camera from Gotham. Cross-references locations. Checks timelines. Draws maps.
Lines crisscross the city. Every trail ends in a blank space. Nobody knows anything, because nobody should.
Tim’s fingers curl around his pen until it bends. He scribbles:
NOT IN THIS UNIVERSE?
He blinks at it. It’s a stupid note, stupid idea, but it fits. Everything he knows about Jason — the patrols, the friends, the identity — points to one ending. Jason died. But something moved him. And whatever it is, it isn’t normal.
He hacks.
He looks for patterns in strange satellite feeds and old WayneTech sensors that log anomalous radiation. He runs calculations on residual energies, readings from when the Lazarus Pit was disturbed in the past.
It’s messy work, barely understandable even to him, but he doesn’t care. He just keeps running numbers.
Then he sees it: a spike.
It’s faint, a subtle pulse, buried under the normal hum of the desert sun. He traces it through layers of spectral data. It’s coming from somewhere in the Arabian Desert, coordinates lining up with a League of Assassins compound.
But that’s not the strange part. The strange part is the frequency. It’s — wrong.
He runs it through every sensor calibration he knows, every standard for physics, for quantum signals, for electromagnetic anomalies.
Nothing matches. Not a single pattern he’s ever seen. It doesn’t belong to this Earth. To this reality.
He rubs his eyes. His skull aches. His pen scratches across his notebook
DOES NOT BELONG HERE.
He traces the lines again, more slowly this time, fingers hovering over the screen. Every anomaly he’s catalogued, every red line connecting ports and shipping routes, every warehouse in Istanbul, every clue he’s ever had — gone. It’s replaced by something else. Something that doesn’t exist in the world he knows.
And yet it’s real.
Tim leans back and listens to the hum of the desktop fans. Outside, the city hums with rain. The thought circles his mind like a predator: If he’s not in this universe, then where is he?
He pictures Jason under the dirt in Gotham, the way he used to picture him in class, in the park, in the cave. He imagines him lying in the grave, and then the motion from the footage: shadows, hands lifting, cloaks. And then he imagines the spike, faint and alien, stretching across a desert no map should contain.
He grips his notebook until the edges tear.
The room feels smaller now. He knows he should sleep. He should rest. But he doesn’t. Because if he rests, if he sleeps, Jason might already be gone somewhere else. Somewhere unreachable. Somewhere else entirely.
Tim’s hands shake as he pulls out the physics texts he’s been collecting, the ones with advanced quantum mechanics, the ones nobody at his school is allowed to touch.
He flips to pages on vibrational resonance, dimensional overlap, theories about entanglement across realities. The words are messy and dry, but they make sense to him, the way only numbers and logic can.
He sketches diagrams on a fresh page. Circles, spirals, points of intersection. He writes equations over them in pencil, then erases and writes again. This is not about understanding. This is about reaching. About stretching a finger through something nobody else can even see.
Outside the rain hammers the windows. Tim doesn’t hear it. He doesn’t hear anything but the pulse of the alien frequency, the thought of Jason somewhere, awake or dying or worse, alone.
He checks and double-checks. Triple checks. The numbers line up. The pattern is consistent. The frequency originates from the desert compound. But the underlying signature is off.
Quantumly misaligned.
Bingo: not his universe.
Tim presses his face into his hands. Success doesn’t feel like success.
He’s thirteen, the neighbor kid. Not Robin. Just a genius billionaire child with a laptop and a stubborn brain that won’t let him stop. And yet he’s going to do the impossible.
Because Jason Todd is out there.
And Tim Drake will follow, no matter where.
———
Every nerve is still on fire.
The distant hum of the city presses in, neon signs flickering over puddles, but all he sees is the small trembling figure in front of him. Heart hammering, green burn crawling under his skin, he glances back at the street where the thugs ran. He doesn’t know if they’ll return. He doesn’t know what else is out there in this alien city.
His body wants to move — to run, to fight, to vanish — but the kid is frozen in the corner, wide-eyed and pale.
Jason crouches down, shielding him with his own body instinctively. “You okay?” he asks, voice low but firm. The boy nods, blinking rapidly.
“I– I think so,” the kid stammers. “I– I didn’t think anyone would—”
Jason exhales slowly, letting his shoulders relax just slightly. Not fully, but enough that he can bend closer to the boy. “Good,” he says softly. “You got a name, don’t you?”
“Peter,” the boy repeats, voice still trembling.
He lets himself breathe a fraction easier, his shoulders dropping. This is what Bruce taught him: protect first, plan later.
“Alright, Peter. Listen. You’re safe, but if anyone ever comes at you like that again, you need to know what to do. Understand?”
Peter nods eagerly, still pressed close to Jason. “Y-yeah. I– I think so.”
Jason’s gaze flicks down the alley, toward the streets. His gut is telling him to run, vanish, leave this kid behind — but he can’t. Not yet.
Not while Peter is trembling like that, not while the memory of those leather jackets and crowbars still presses against his mind. He kneels fully, guiding Peter’s shoulders gently.
“Good,” Jason says. “Now, look at me. If someone comes at you, you can throw a punch. Not just any punch. A real punch. Want me to show you?”
Peter nods, eyes wide and desperate.
Jason demonstrates slowly, stance first. “Feet shoulder-width apart. Chin down. Wrist straight. Follow through. Not too hard at first — you don’t want to hurt yourself.”
Peter imitates him awkwardly. Jason adjusts his little fist. “Better. Control it. That’s how you make it count. Now, one more time.”
The kid punches the air, clumsy but determined. Jason corrects his elbow angle, the rotation of his wrist. “There. That’s a proper punch. Remember it.”
Peter beams, a little of the fear melting away. “Thank you. Thank you, Jason. You… you saved me.”
Jason swallows. His heart loosens, a fraction. Peter hugs him —small, tentative, grateful. Jason’s arm wraps around the boy’s shoulders, steadying him. “It’s okay, Peter. You’re alright.”
The hug lingers for a beat too long, but Jason doesn’t pull away immediately. He lets the kid feel that he’s safe. One hand rubs over Peter’s back, soothing, familiar.
Finally, he steps back, hands up slightly, letting Peter move. “Alright. Go home. Somewhere safe. Don’t forget what I showed you. And — don’t go into alleys alone at night, okay?”
Peter hesitates, glancing at Jason. “You’re… not coming with me?”
Jason shakes his head. “Not this time. But I’ll be around. If someone ever tries to hurt you again, remember the stance, remember the wrist, remember to follow through. Got it?”
Peter nods eagerly, courage blooming in his small smile. “I will. I promise. Thank you, Jason.”
Jason watches him run, staying low, ensuring Peter disappears safely around a corner before he allows himself to exhale fully.
For a moment, he stands alone in the alley, shadows stretching long under the neon, the city humming alive and alien. The green burn under his skin still pulses, insistent and wrong. But for now, the kid is safe. That’s enough.
He glances up just as a figure steps back out of the shadows — shield in hand, cautious, alert. Steve.
Oh, great, Jason thinks bitterly as he remembers the man’s existence. An adult.
———
Tim has tried three different setups already. Three. And each one fizzled.
The first one blew a fuse when he underestimated the current. The second one sparked a tiny fire, singing the corner of his notebook, but he had it out almost instantly.
The third one hummed, shimmering faintly, then collapsed into a wobbling smear of energy that made him step back fast enough to bang his elbow on the desk.
“Of course it fails,” he mutters. His voice is tight, almost a hiss. “It’s me. Everything I touch — fizz, pop, smoke.”
He rubs his eyes, scribbling equations in his notebook, then erases them. He sketches the frequency again, over and over, trying to make sense of the spikes.
But the signal pulses faintly from the desert. Alien. Wrong. But consistent.
“I just— I need to line it up. Come on.” He bangs a pencil against the table. It rolls off and clatters to the floor. He doesn’t pick it up.
Instead, Tim tries again. Coils, sensors, scrap circuitry. Power. Adjustment. Hums and sparks, but overall: nothing.
“Why is this so— why is it so stubborn?” He sinks to the floor, forehead pressed to the linoleum. “Jason… I know you’re out there. I know you’re — somewhere.”
A soft whistle of air hums past the window. Rain taps the roof. He sits up, wiping sweat from his face. “Okay, okay,” he mutters. “Reset. Reset.”
Back to the desk.
He strips the coils, swaps the sensors, and rewrites the control program on his laptop. He murmurs the math aloud. “Quantum overlap, vibrational resonance… cross-dimensional — no. No, that can't be right.” He bites his thumbnail. “Wait — maybe it is.”
Another test.
He steps back as the first pulse of shimmer runs along the coils. A blue haze, faint, flickering at the edges. Tim grins, then frowns. The shimmer wobbles and collapses. Sparks hiss.
He kicks the desk lightly. “Ugh! You stupid… stupid piece of junk!”
Sitting back on his heels, he talks to himself like any non-mad teenage scientist looking for a boy they’ve never met and only half-way stalked.
“Okay, okay. Think. You said it yourself. The frequency — not from here. So maybe your frame’s too… rigid. Too confined. Just let it breathe. Let it…” he trails off. He snaps his fingers and throws his hands up. “Let it flow! Yes. Flow. Right.”
He rewinds the footage on his laptop, eyes scanning over the blurry frames of the League lifting Jason from the grave. He talks over it, narrating: “You see that, Tim? That’s him. That’s your signal. Your job is to follow it. Don’t screw this up.
Tim stands again. Third prototype dismantled, fourth begins. Wires, coils, sensors, an old WayneTech array salvaged from the trash behind the research lab.
His fingers shake. Sweat drips into his notebook. One false touch and — sparks. Smoke. Another reset.
He sits on the floor and runs a hand through his hair. “Why does this feel like… like it’s alive?” He whispers the word, small, almost afraid, like it’s listening. For all he knows, it might be. “Jason, I know you’re alive. You have to be.”
Hours pass.
Maybe minutes. Probably minutes. His calendar suggests days.
He’s in a bubble of solder smoke, cold coffee, and paper scraps. The frequency pulses again, soft and alien. He traces it, murmurs equations aloud, fingers twitching over the controls.
“Come on, come on… line up. Please line up.”
Prototype five. He’s exhausted, body cramped, eyes stinging. But something clicks. The shimmer runs along the coils, brightens, and holds.
Tim freezes, his pulse racing. He mutters, to himself and the portal, “That’s it. That’s it.”
He checks the readings, aligns the frequency and adjusts the pulse. Then he breathes shallowly. “Hold. Don’t fail.”
The shimmer grows.
It bends the air, almost like a heat haze. Tim leans closer, notes dancing in his hand. “This is it. This is it. Okay. Okay.”
He steps back. The hum rises. The blue-white frame of energy curls, stretches, then stabilizes. Not perfect, not final. But stable. Real.
Tim’s knees buckle and he drops to the floor, hands trembling. “It works,” he whispers. “It actually works. Oh, God, it works.”
He pulls his backpack closer. Inside: notebook, spare tools, a photo of Jason smiling from months ago. Folded carefully.
“Don’t screw this up,” Tim tells himself. “You’re coming home. You have to.”
The hum pulses again, synchronized with the alien frequency. Tim’s skin prickles. The lights in his room flicker. He feels a pull, small at first, then stronger. Like standing in front of a waterfall. Like the air itself is breathing.
He takes a shaky breath and steps forward. The shimmer curls around him. The room bends, colors stretching and warping.
“Just… find him,” he whispers. “Then come back.”
He steps in.
The world folds.
———
The alley is quiet now. The distant hum of traffic, the flicker of neon, the faint scent of burnt oil—it all presses in, alien and overwhelming.
The green burn under his skin has calmed slightly, but it’s still there, an insistent reminder that he’s not supposed to be here.
Steve studies him carefully, shield resting lightly against his arm. Not aggressive. Just assessing.
“You’re… good at this,” he says quietly. “You clearly know what you’re doing. That was precise. Controlled. Even under pressure.”
Jason stiffens, wary. “Thanks,” he mutters, voice clipped. He doesn’t look at Steve. He doesn’t need someone watching him like he’s a specimen. Not here. Not now.
Steve doesn’t press immediately. “And you clearly know how to throw a punch. That wasn’t luck. That was skill. That was practice.”
Jason shifts, finally glancing at him. There’s a flicker of surprise in his gaze—not recognition, just… noticing that Steve actually sees him, not the kid or the chaos, just him.
“Yeah. Practiced,” he says cautiously.
Steve nods, slow and steady. “I can see that. Look, I don’t know where you came from, or why, but you’re out here, and you handled yourself. That says a lot.”
Jason exhales, a low, uneasy sound. “I don’t need a lecture. I know I can handle myself.”
“I’m not lecturing,” Steve says softly, shield lowering a fraction. “I’m offering help. A place to regroup. A safe spot. You’ve clearly got skills, but being good at this doesn’t mean being safe in a city you don’t know. You need somewhere to rest, somewhere to figure out your next move.”
Jason shakes his head quickly. “I don’t need—”
Steve cuts him off, calm but insistent. “Look, you don’t have to explain anything. Not to me. Not right now. But I can make sure you don’t get hurt while you figure it out. You need that. And you know it.”
Jason’s jaw tightens. He wants to refuse. Wants to disappear into the city and figure it out alone.
But the truth sits heavy under his ribs: he doesn’t know this city. He doesn’t know the people. He doesn’t know how to survive here for long.
Steve takes a careful step forward, hands open slightly. “I can’t force you to trust me. But I can offer you a place. Shelter. Food. Somewhere to rest. Nothing else. No questions if you don’t want. Just a roof over your head for the night. That’s it.”
Jason hesitates, body coiled, eyes flicking between the streets and Steve. The pulse under his skin thrums insistently. He’s tired. Hungry. On edge. And somewhere warm sounds nice.
Finally, he exhales, small, almost reluctant. “Fine,” he mutters. “But I’m not making a habit of this.”
Steve nods, a faint, approving smile tugging at his lips. “Fair. I wouldn’t expect you to.”
Jason stays tense, eyes flicking around the alley as they start moving. Steve doesn’t push, doesn’t ask for explanations. He simply walks beside him, shield resting against his back, observing without intruding.
The uneasy truce is silent but clear: Jason will accept help for now, on his terms, and Steve will provide it — without forcing trust, without prying, but making sure Jason can’t get hurt.
The city hums around them, alien and overwhelming, but for the first time since waking in this strange place, Jason allows himself to imagine a small thread of stability. Tentative. Uneasy. But real.
———
It’s not like falling or flying or walking.
It’s like every part of Tim’s body gets stretched out into threads of light, woven through something vast and cold, then snapped back together again. The floor under his sneakers isn’t there. The air around him isn’t air.
His first breath tastes like metal and ash. His stomach flips inside-out.
He drops to his knees on slick pavement. His palms sting. His ears ring.
For a long moment, Tim can’t see. The portal’s light burns behind his eyes. Every nerve feels like it’s vibrating out of phase. He clutches at his chest, fingers white around the fabric of his hoodie, and drags in another breath.
“Okay. Okay. You’re fine,” he mutters to himself. His voice sounds warped, like it’s coming from underwater. “You’re — fine.”
Gradually, the ringing fades. Shapes sharpen. He’s in an alley — the smell of fried oil and wet cardboard hits him first, then the roar of traffic, the hiss of steam from a grate. Neon bleeds on damp brick walls. Somewhere above, a siren wails and dies.
Definitely not Gotham.
Tim pushes himself upright, knees trembling. The buildings are taller here, glass and steel catching neon and streetlight. The air feels thinner, not quite right. He flips up his hood and forces himself to breathe slowly.
“Where…?” His voice trails off. It’s not like anyone would answer him, anyway. He fumbles for his phone, but the screen’s dead. Burnt out. “Great. Good job, Drake. Science experiment number one fries your only means of communication.”
He shoves it back in his pocket, rubs his face, and takes in his surroundings with a detective’s eye. Street signs at the corner — 8th Ave, W 47th Street. A hotdog stand on the corner. The familiar but not-quite-right buzz of a city that doesn’t sleep.
“New York?” He mutters. “No. Not my New York.”
Some strange frequency still hums under his skin, faint as an aftershock. He presses a hand to the wall for balance. The bricks feel too warm, as if the universe here runs a degree hotter.
A garbage bag bursts near his sneaker. Tim flinches, then laughs under his breath. “Scared by trash, really impressive.”
He reaches into his backpack, pulls out the small scanning unit he built — the one that survived the jump. Its display flickers, struggling to stabilize. Frequencies he’s never seen scroll across the screen.
He whispers numbers committing them to memory. “Definitely not home. Definitely not — anything on record.”
A faint vibration runs through the alley, like a plucked string. Tim freezes and looks around.
No one.
Just steam and neon and the low growl of traffic. But the vibration’s not in the air; it’s in him. In his teeth, in his bones.
He swallows, shoves the scanner back into his bag, and heads for the street. Better to blend in. He tugs his hood lower, shoulders hunched, moving fast but not running. He needs bearings. He needs to find Jason.
He’s halfway to the mouth of the alley when the air shifts.
It’s not a sound. It’s not a sight.
It’s like the atmosphere itself rearranges, a soft ripple of pressure. The hairs on Tim’s arms rise. His instincts — honed from years of watching the Bats from afar — scream: magic.
Tim stops. He turns slowly.
The steam parts in bursts of gold.
A man steps into the alley without walking. He simply is — one moment not there, the next there: tall, dark hair streaked with gray at the temples, goatee sharp as a blade.
A crimson cloak moves around him like it has a mind of its own, brushing the brickwork without touching. His eyes are steady, precise, and focused directly on Tim.
Tim’s hand slips into his hoodie, fingers brushing the small batarang he carries out of habit. He narrows his eyes. “Okay,” he mutters under his breath. “Not a mugger.”
The man tilts his head slightly, assessing. “That… wasn’t a normal arrival,” he says at last. His voice is deep, resonant, calm. “Who are you?”
Every line of Tim’s body says flight, weight shifting to his toes, but his eyes are sharp, bright and calculating. He might be a brat, but he’ll at least look like a dangerous one.
The man takes a step closer, the cloak whispering against the air. “You don’t belong here,” he says. “I felt you come through. Where did you come from?”
Tim tilts his head, smirking faintly — the practiced, brittle smirk of a kid who’s spent too long bluffing adults.
“Wow,” he says lightly. “Do you pop out of alleys on everybody who visits New York, or just me?”
The man’s mouth doesn’t move, but Tim feels a ripple of power like a shift in gravity. His grip tightens on the batarang. “It was a joke,” he says quickly. “Back off, Dracula.”
The man’s eyebrows twitch. “Dracula?”
“Red cloak. Creepy alley. Floating in.” Tim shrugs, feigning ease. “You do the math.”
Something flickers in the man’s expression — amusement, faint but real. “I’m Doctor Stephen Strange,” he says, like he’s practiced how to say that sentence a thousand different ways. “And you are trespassing.”
Tim snorts. “Yeah, well, story of my life.”
Strange’s eyes narrow a fraction as he studies the boy in the hoodie. The Cloak of Levitation stirs against the damp air, its hem lifting as though tasting the charge still clinging to Tim.
“You’re out of phase with this reality,” the wizard says quietly. “Temporal and quantum residue. Not something you pick up on a field trip.” His gaze sharpens. “Who sent you?”
Tim swallows but doesn’t flinch. “No one sent me,” he says. He shrugs, casual as he can manage, thumb still hooked on the edge of his pocket. “I came on my own.”
“You came,” Strange repeats, a note of disbelief. “Through what? How?”
Tim tilts his head. His smirk wobbles but holds. “Trade secret.”
Strange’s cloak — which seems to be a living thing — shifts forward a little, brushing Strange’s arm as if it’s impatient. Strange doesn’t move, but Tim gets the sense of a predator scenting something new.
“Let me try this another way,” Strange says. “Why are you here?”
Tim hesitates just long enough for it to be noticeable. His heartbeat stutters. Jason. Focus. This guy’s not a cop or a fed or even a League-type magic user. He’s something else. He needs a story, fast.
“I’m… looking for my brother,” he blurts. The lie slips out smoother than he expected. He adds a shrug for good measure. “Jason. He came through first. I followed.”
Strange’s brows rise a fraction. “Your brother.”
“Yeah.” Tim keeps his face neutral, voice steady. “Tall, dark hair, about seventeen. Probably mad. Definitely confused. Have you seen him?”
Something in Strange’s gaze shifts — the first hint of a crease between his brows. He doesn’t buy it completely, but he’s listening now.
“You opened a cross-dimensional rift,” Strange says slowly, like he doesn’t believe Tim’s lie, “to look for your brother.”
Tim lifts his chin. “Do you see any interdimensional travel agencies? Somebody had to do it.”
The Cloak twitches like it’s amused.
Strange’s expression doesn’t change, but the air eases a fraction, the invisible pressure that had been pressing against Tim’s skin letting up.
“You’re nine,” Strange says. Not a question, but an observation.
Tim’s ears go hot. “I’m thirteen,” he snaps. “Almost fourteen.”
Strange actually blinks at that, then exhales slowly. “Thirteen,” he repeats, voice dry. “You’ll forgive me if I’m sceptical. Children don’t usually open holes in reality.”
Tim folds his arms, glaring. “Guess I’m exceptional.”
Something like the ghost of a smile crosses Strange’s mouth. He takes a step closer, lowering his voice. “Look. Whatever you built to get here disrupted the local field. I felt it from Bleecker Street. If I hadn’t come, someone else might have— someone a lot less friendly.”
Tim huffs out a breath. “You’re not exactly rolling out the welcome mat.”
“I was expecting a hostile incursion,” Strange says bluntly. “What I got was a very small scientist.”
Tim bristles. “I’m not small.”
“You’re out of your depth,” Strange says, but his tone has softened a fraction. “And you’re lucky you ended up in a place I can reach quickly.”
Tim glances at the street, then back at Strange. Then he starts to grin. “You’re… magic, right? Some sort of wizard?”
“Sorcerer.”
“Same thing.” Tim’s tone is still tinged with skepticism, but his eyes are bright with calculation. “Or, at least, close enough that you can help me find him.”
Strange studies him for a long moment. The Cloak shifts again, its collar angling like a bird tilting its head.
“If I help you,” Strange says at last, “you’ll have to tell me the truth about where you came from. And about what you are.”
Tim hesitates.
He’s good at bluffing, at lying on the fly, but the man in front of him radiates power in a way no one in Gotham has ever, not even Zatanna. There’s no way to outplay him with half-truths forever.
“I’m — from another universe,” Tim says finally. He keeps his voice low, tight. “Jason died. And then he wasn’t dead. And then he wasn’t… anywhere. So I built something to track him. It led me here.”
Strange doesn’t speak immediately. His face is a mask of professional composure, but his fingers move in a tiny, precise gesture — a sigil to test the boy’s words. The air around Tim flickers faintly.
“You’re telling the truth,” Strange murmurs, almost to himself. “Or at least you believe you are.”
Tim glares. “I’m not making this up.”
Strange exhales, shoulders loosening a fraction. “All right. You’re not making it up.” He looks past Tim to the mouth of the alley, where the city glitters wet and bright.
“Another universe,” he repeats with half a laugh. “No wonder the wards screamed.”
Tim shifts his weight, watching him warily. “So… will you help me?”
Strange looks back at him. The faintest trace of wry amusement flickers in his eyes. “I’m not in the habit of abandoning lost children between worlds,” he says. “But you’re going to have to let me stabilize you first. Your body’s still resonating at the wrong frequency. If we leave it too long, you’ll—”
“I’ll what?”
“Slip,” Strange says simply. “Fade. Get torn apart by the differences between realities. Take your pick.”
Tim swallows hard. “That’s… bad.”
“That’s very bad,” Strange agrees. “So: you come with me. You don’t touch anything until I tell you it’s safe. And you answer my questions honestly.”
Tim hesitates, then gives a tiny, defiant nod. “Fine. But I’m not a baby, so you don’t treat me like one.”
Strange’s mouth twitches again. “Thirteen, right.”
“Almost fourteen,” Tim mutters.
The Cloak stirs as Strange gestures, opening a faint golden circle of sparks in the air. “Stay close to me,” he says. “We’ll start stabilizing you. Then we’ll discuss your brother.”
Tim eyes the circle, then the wizard. “This isn’t going to fry me, is it?”
“Not unless you bite it,” Strange says dryly. “Shall we?”
Tim squares his shoulders and sets his jaw. “Let’s.”
He steps closer. For a second, as the circle’s light brushes his sneakers, he feels every inch the kid he looks: thin shoulders, too-big hoodie, the tremor of exhaustion under his bravado. Then he straightens, chin high, and follows Strange through.
The cobblestones under Tim’s sneakers are real this time. He stumbles, then straightens, pushing his hood back to get a better look.
They’re in a small, quiet courtyard hemmed in by old brick and ivy-covered balconies. A fountain splashes softly in the corner. No neon. No sirens. Just the faraway rumble of the city.
Tim shoves his hands into his pockets, trying not to look impressed. “Nice secret base.”
“It isn’t a base,” Strange says. He’s watching Tim carefully but not with the hard edge from before. “It’s a quiet place. Easier to feel what’s happening to you.”
“What’s happening to me is jet lag. Interdimensional jet lag,” Tim says, making a face. “I’ll walk it off.”
Strange moves his fingers in a short, precise motion. A faint pulse of gold flickers over Tim, like static electricity.
Tim jerks back, batting at the air. “Hey! Warn a guy.”
“A diagnostic spell,” Strange says calmly. “You’re… misaligned. Not badly, but enough that it would become dangerous if ignored.”
Tim scowls but doesn’t move away. “Misaligned. Great. Do I need a chiropractor for that?”
Strange almost smiles. Tim’ll get him there one day. “If only it were that simple. You opened a door with technology, not magic. That leaves you only half-anchored. I can dampen the effects for now, but we’ll need to stabilize you properly if you stay.”
“I’m not staying.” Tim rolls a shoulder, trying to look like it’s no big deal. “Just long enough to find him.”
“Your brother,” Strange confirms, voice neutral.
Tim nods. “Seventeen. Dark hair. Came through first, like I said.” He keeps his tone even. “He’s — had a rough time. I’m trying to bring him home before he gets in trouble.”
Strange studies the boy for a long moment. They can both feel the jagged edges of the portal residue clinging to Tim, the faint echo of another signature already absorbed into this reality.
“You risked tearing a hole between dimensions for him,” Strange says — not a question but not a fact. A hypothesis.
“Yeah.” Tim’s mouth tightens. “Somebody had to.”
Strange exhales, a low sound that might almost be sympathy. “You care about him very much.”
Tim shrugs, eyes fixed on the cobblestones. “Family’s family.”
Strange lets that stand. Instead of calling the bluff, he flicks his hand again; a small orb of light detaches from his palm and hovers before Tim’s chest. “This will stabilize you temporarily.”
“How?”
“Think of it as a seatbelt,” the sorcerer reassures him. “It won’t hurt.”
Tim hesitates, then stands still as the light sinks into him. A cool sensation spreads across his skin; the vibration under his bones eases a fraction.
“Huh,” he mutters. “Feels weird.”
“Better weird than disintegrated,” Strange says. “We’ll find your brother. But while you’re in my care, you do as I say. Understood?”
Tim looks up at him, weighing. Then he gives a small, crooked grin. “Sure. You’re the wizard. Lead the way.”
Strange’s eyebrow twitches at the word wizard but he turns, cloak flowing behind him. “We’ll start at the point where his energy signature entered this world. You explain your technology to me on the way.”
Tim falls into step, hands still in his pockets, eyes flicking around to catalogue exits and escape routes out of habit.
“Jason,” he mutters under his breath. “You better be worth this.”
Strange glances at him but says nothing, filing away the name. For now, they walk out of the courtyard together, an odd pairing heading into the New York night.