Chapter Text
“What’s your thing with mirrors?”
Tim’s head snaps up, not expecting the random nonsequitur. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but my face has been permanently mutilated.”
“It’s not that,” Jason says. “And I know it’s not because that’s why I don’t look into my reflection.”
That makes Tim pause. “What do you mean?”
“Tim,” Jason says. “I died 4’10” and 100 pounds soaking wet and when I came to from the catatonia and foggy madness I was a foot taller and two years older. The body I have now and the routine I’ve got packs muscle so easily that I feel like I’m starving on the streets again from how hungry I am trying to maintain my body weight. I don’t recognize the man I see in the mirror and I haven’t for years. It doesn’t feel right. This body, this face, this me. I know it’s mine. I know I’ve had it and I will have it but it just… it doesn’t feel like it’s mine.”
“I’m sorry,” Tim says, not knowing what else to say.
“Don’t be sorry,” Jason says. “I know you get it. But what’s your thing with mirrors?” He gestures vaguely to all of the mirrors that are turned around or covered in Tim’s apartment.
“It’s the reflection,” Tim says. “Not just mine, but all of them. I feel like they’re following me. Like the person in the mirror is going to come out and get me. And I know that that person is me but sometimes it isn’t.”
“Well, shit. That’s definitely not gonna keep me up tonight.”
“You fucking asked!”
“Yeah, well now I’m regretting that!”
Tim picks up a Barbie from the floor that Moss & Minnie had left from when they were playing. “Sometimes I felt like a doll. When he had me. I was just a toy for him to play family with. I was whatever he made me to be.”
“You’re not a doll and your not a plaything or whatever the fuck kind of metaphor you’re about to make.” Jason snatches the Barbie from him. “Besides. Barbie’s whole thing is that Barbie can be anyone and anything. Doctor, ballerina, president. Barbie is whatever a kid’s imagination can make.”
“Well, apparently our kids are imagining them being mafia slash mermaids that have a candy smuggling front on the docks.”
Jason buries his face in his hands. “They got into my case files.”
“Yeah, they definitely did.”
Jason peeks at Tim through his fingers and starts to laugh. “God. No one ever talks about this part of parenthood.”
“What part?”
“The part where it’s fucking ridiculous. And where little girls are fucking weirdos.”
“Hey, you were a weird kid too,” Tim says. “You used to do Warrior Cats roleplay with Gargoyles.”
“How the fuck do you know that?! Why do you know that? Oh my God that’s fucking mortifying.”
“I’ve got pictures somewhere,” Tim says.
“I always forget that’s how you got into all of this,” Jason says. “I don’t get it. I don’t get what was so interesting about us. About me.”
“Everything,” Tim says. “You were… you were my hero.”
“Still weird.”
“Yeah. You were never cut out for fame, huh?”
“There’s a reason that I spend my nights wearing a mask and punching out drug dealers not Twitch streaming.”
“Oh, that I need to see.”
“Absolutely not.” They laugh again and Jason watches as Tim’s head is thrown back, his smile genuine and not the manic pull of his lips, just his lips pressed together in a small grin.
Today had not started as a good day.
There’s a reason Jason had asked about the mirrors and it wasn’t just curiosity.
.-~*~-.
When he comes to pick up Minnie, he finds Moss and Minnie sitting on the bench down the hall from Tim’s apartment, Minnie asleep with her head in Moss’s lap.
“What are you doing out here?” Jason asks Moss.
“Boy Me is having a Bad Day.”
Jason’s heart drops. “You stay here, okay?”
“Wasn’t planning on going anywhere else,” Moss says. “Did you know that White’s tree frogs are sedentary and docile? That’s why they’re often pets. But they’re very social and do better with friends.”
“Well, I need you to keep being a good friend to Minnie while I go talk to Tim,” Jason says.
“White tree frog mode activated,” Moss says, saluting seriously.
Jason salutes back and runs to Tim’s place, hearing the muffled sound of laughter from the other side of the door.
It takes him too long to get the keys in with his trembling fingers, but he finally gets in and finds Tim curled up under the dining room table, cackling hysterically broken by his loud sobs.
“Tim,” Jason says, desperately pushing back the trembling terror at the sound of his laughter, too similar to the Joker’s, the cadence oh so familiar as it haunts his nightmares and waking hours.
He squats down to get to Tim’s level, his knees nearly buckling on his way down, and his hands immediately reach out to grab Tim’s wrists to stop him from knocking them together, bruises already forming on them.
Tim screams when Jason takes his hands, lashing out in his grasp. “No! No!”
Jason quickly realizes that that was the paper-thin string holding Tim together, the repetitive motion self-soothing even if it was also hurting him.
Jason takes his hands again and starts squeezing them, trying to replicate the tempo Tim had kept, squeezing over and over again until Tim finally stops shouting and his breaths start to even out.
Jason doesn’t know how long they stay like that, just knows that his knees have given out and he’s sitting crisscross applesauce when Tim finally comes to.
“Moss?” is the first thing Tim asks.
“Down the hall with Minnie,” Jason says. “I can get her—”
“No, don’t. She shouldn’t have to see me like this.”
“Seems like she already has. Said that you’re having a Bad Day. I’m guessing capitalized going by her tone.”
“It wasn’t easy when she first got here,” Tim says. “I had been alone for so long, I didn’t know how to cohabitate a space, especially with a kid. I did everything I could to keep it away from her and establish a healthy enough boundary, but she’s a smart kid and she knew what was going on. The walls are only so thick.”
“Well, at least for me, I think it’ll give me some peace of mind if they’re here, safe and not sitting in the hall. And I can send them right to their room until you are feeling up to seeing them.”
Tim nods slowly, eyes drooping with exhaustion.
“Or you can take a nap while I get them.” He’s not even done with his sentence before Tim lies on the floor, still beneath the dining table, curled up in on himself and hugging his chest as his eyes droop shut.
Jason takes his hand and squeezes it one more time before going to get the girls.
Moss spots Tim under the table, fast asleep and at peace in a way he can’t be when he’s awake, and she tucks Cilantro into his arms before pressing a kiss to his forehead the way he always does when he tucks her in.
Jason ends up spending the next hour with the girls playing with their dolls until Tim wakes up, disoriented and out of it, the crash from a hard breakdown.
He’s softly squishing Cilantro between his hands in the same rhythm from before and it hits Jason why Moss always has Cilantro with her.
The next day when Jason returns from his patrol, it’s with a box. It’s a discarded cardboard box that he wrote “Tim” on with a Sharpie and Tim tilts his head curiously as Jason hands it to him.
“What’s this?” Tim says. “It’s not my birthday nor is it any other gift giving holiday.”
“Just open it,” Jason says.
Tim shakes it and is only confused by the rattle that comes from the inside. When he pulls it open he stills.
“I did some research on stim toys. I don’t really know much about them or about what you’d like but I figured your parents weren’t ones to let you have stuff like this. Moss has Cilantro and I figured you should have something like that.”
Tim looks up at Jason with awe, tears pooling in his eyes. “This is… Jason…” He jumps into Jason’s arms and pulls him into a hug. “Thank you.”
Tim takes a liking to the spiky ball that fits between his palms, pricking into his skin but without breaking it. He rolls it between his hands or squeezes it lightly or tosses it mindlessly and is at ease in a way Jason has never seen him be.
And Minnie and Moss have a field day with all of the toys Tim doesn’t want.