Work Text:
Robin, it seemed was composed entirely of shadows. The first time Conner saw him; he was a shade sitting, wrapped up in his black cape. He was ridiculously pale for a crime fighter—even if he was one of the nocturnal vigilantes that haunted the streets of Gotham. Hell, Batman’s skin (from the little that his costume showed) was tan and Nightwing was practically brown during the summer. But Robin had the pale cast that belonged to full time bloggers or video game players. And his hair was as black as the mask on his face. There wasn’t a sun-bleached streak in it.
Then there was the way he moved. He could slip out of windows like a ghost, and he seemed almost to faze in and out of rooms, walking so quietly that Conner could barely hear him. Robin said he loved the city because he loved the way he could slip into the shade of a building and watch without being watched himself. Yeah, Robin was a question made of shadows and night. And Conner was sure he couldn’t be anything different
vvv
Tim Drake, Conner realized was made of summer. He had a slight tan around the edges of his mask where the skin around his eyes was—if you could believe it—even lighter than the rest of him. But you could only see it if you looked for it or if you leaned in really close and the sun hit his cheekbones just right. He smelled like fresh air. Well, as fresh as Gotham air could get, and it always made Conner think of summers on the farm, of lazy days spent in grass fields, slow, sweet kisses, and apple pie.
His eyes were the exact color of clear July skies, and the first time Tim peeled away the mask Conner was stunned by the color of them. Tim told him once that his eyes were blue, but that word didn’t do them justice. After their first fight, Conner saw the way they turned the color of slate grey thunderclouds and later when Conner gave the heartfelt apology, they turned the lightest clearest turquoise, and Conner thought that he had never seen anything so beautiful. Yeah, Tim was made of warm summer days and long summer nights, but he also had the anger of a thunderstorm and the passion of wildfires that burned in the summer heat. Conner knew that nobody could fill him up with sunlight the way Tim could, and he sometimes felt that maybe he didn’t need the sun to power him up. Maybe Tim’s love was all he needed.
vvv
Tim Wayne was made of blood and bones and a human heart. And Conner always knew that one day one of them would fail him; a leg would break and he’d get stuck in some death trap, he’d get shot and he’d bleed out in some alley, or his heart would give out while he slept. But Conner always thought about it in an abstract sense. It would always happen, but not today, not this time. Tim always had a plan. He was so alive and so very much a part of Conner’s world. There was no way Tim could die. Not yet, anyway.
But here Conner was. Standing over Tim’s coffin. His eyes were closed, and they’d done something to make the dark circles that were constant shadows under his eyes go away. The lips that used to make Conner go crazy were turned up into his fake Mr. Sarcastic smile. His hands—always so agile and always so small in Conner’s—were clasped across his chest. Conner supposed that all those “not yets” had finally caught up with him. And someday had become six days three hours and fourty-five minutes ago.
And suddenly Conner hated summer days because they reminded him of sweet, slow kisses, lazy days in grass fields, and apple pie. He shut himself in his room because he couldn’t stand to smell the Gotham air, even all the way from Smallville. He stopped going to Metropolis because it was too easy to blend in with the shade and watch the world pass.
And he thought that nothing could fill him up with sunlight, and he raged against the world with all the anger of a thunderstorm and he was plagued by the thought that he should burn down the world that let Tim die. And because Tim wasn’t there to make him see that shadows were just as important as summer sunlight, he thought that someday soon he just might do it.