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The thing that makes it really dangerous is that it would be so easy. So, so easy. She’d be as good as dead by the time she’d fallen two-thirds of the way down the building, and all it would take is a moment of imbalance or a faulty grapple or just—if she just didn’t throw off a line—
Tim doesn’t get vertigo, but she’s dizzy from the way Gotham City is twinkling underneath her, and it would be… so… easy.
“Tim?” The word is a whisper on the wind, miles away for all that it’s only a few feet behind her. She doesn’t remember having taken her cowl off, but the same frozen wind that carries the voice to her is nipping at her cheeks and sending her hair flying over her face, briefly obscuring her view of Gotham below. “Sweetheart, what are you doing?” The voice is getting closer, and she unthinkingly shifts her weight forward, away. “Tim?”
“It’s okay, Dick.” She gathers her hair up in one hand and holds it away from her face so she can see again. She doesn’t like hearing Dick sound so upset, but she can’t look away from the little streets below to comfort him.
“Yeah?” Jason’s voice is tight with stress, too, and she hopes he and Dick will take care of each other. That way, she won’t have to worry. “Then why don’t you come stand back here with us?”
It seems like an easy enough request, but she can’t do it. Even if she wanted to, her body is being held at the edge of the roof by some force of gravity. “Jason—”
“Tim, get away from the ledge!”
“—Dick, I love you.” She doesn’t know until the words have tumbled out of her mouth that she’s going to fall, but it seems right and natural when it happens.
“No!”
The wind on the way down is harsher, hitting her like a physical force and knocking the breath out of her. Then there’s an arm hooking around her, bruising her ribs and knocking the rest of the air from her lungs. Within moments, she and Dick are tumbled back onto the rooftop, where he Dick wraps his other arm around her and squeezes too tightly. “I’ve got you, Tim, it’s gonna be okay, you’re going to be okay—”
Jason collapses onto the roof in front of her and grabs her face with shaking, gloved hands. “Jesus. Jesus, Tim, you just, why the fuck would you ever—”
“I’m okay,” she says because she doesn’t know how else to make the crumpled look on his face go away, but it doesn’t seem to help much. He just looks worse, even more hopeless, so she says again, “Jason, it’s okay.”
“No, it’s not. Christ.”
She wants to reach out and feel his face, but her gloves are in the way. She fumbles trying to pull one off—her fingers keep getting tangled up and they’re shaking.
Jason grabs hold of her hands and holds them still. “Let’s just—let’s go home. Dick?”
“…Yeah. Okay. Yeah,” Dick says, but he’s not moving. Tim tugs a hand away from Jason so she can pat him on the arm, but Jason ends up being the one to pry Dick away from her long enough for them both to stand back up.
“There’s a safehouse a couple blocks away,” Jason says. “Call me crazy, but I’d rather walk on the ground than swing right now.”
Dick has his hand around her wrist and is squeezing tight again. “We can go through the building.”
“Yeah. But—shit, where’s your cowl, Tim?”
She glances around at the rooftop, but it’s nowhere in sight. She shrugs.
“I have a spare mask.” Jason starts digging through his pockets. “Give me two seconds,” and she does, waiting obediently while he presses a red domino over her face.
Dick squeezes her hand.
The walk home is uneventful, if you discount the occasional stare they attract by being three vigilantes walking at street level. She doesn’t really remember much about it, except that they’re quiet and Dick holds her hand the entire time. Then they’re guiding her through the door of a little safehouse with a miniature kitchen, a sofa, a bedroom, bathroom, and not much else.
“Suit off,” Jason announces as he moves ahead of them, flipping light switches. “And we need all your weapons.”
She starts to undo some of the catches on her suit, but her fingers are doing that thing again, where they’re never quite where she needs them to be and she can’t make them stay still. Useless. She can’t, she can’t even—
“Hey.” Dick guides her hands back down to her sides. “I’ll do that.”
Little by little, he peels Red Robin away from her, until she’s blinking down at her bare arms. They look paler than she remembers, and suddenly, she can picture what they would look like if she grabbed a knife and—
It’s like standing on the edge of the roof all over again, the thought pulling her over with a gravity of its own. Jason’s in front of her, applying solvent to the edges of the domino on her face, and he’ll have something sharp on him, he always does. She moves fast but it feels dreamlike, slow-motion, and she gets as far as her fingers closing on the handle of a knife before Jason jerks back and Dick squeezes her wrist in a way that makes her fingers numb and release without her input.
“What the fuck?” Jason says, and then Dick is pinning her so she can’t move her arms.
“Bed,” Dick says from behind her left shoulder. “Jay, find some kind of restraints.” He walks her to the bed and sits down with her, keeping her immobilized as much as he can. She struggles a little, but not hard. The room is spinning.
For the first time since she tipped off the roof, it occurs to her that there might be something wrong. “Dick…”
“What is it, sweetheart?”
If she twisted her arms just so, she could probably break Dick’s hold, but she’d also dislocate a shoulder. She should discard the idea—she doesn’t even really want to get away from Dick right now—but it won’t go away, bright and sharp compared to the way the rest of her thoughts are swimming.
Her shoulder pops out of its socket with a burst of pain, just like she predicted, but Dick manages to grab her again, shouting something in her ear. Jason is in front of her, and he sprays something in her face that makes her even dizzier before—
She can’t… move her arms. She tugs at them a few times, but all it does is make the straps around them (and, weirdly, her shoulder) hurt, and a hand falls on her wrist.
“Don’t, Tim,” Dick says, too quiet. She turns to look at him, and he’s… he just looks tired.
“I can’t…” She wriggles experimentally, but she’s really thoroughly tied down. “I can’t move, Dick.”
He shifts so that his hand is resting over hers. “I know.”
“Am I… supposed to safeword out?”
“We need to talk, Tim.”
He’s… he sounds so sad. She has to twist her arm a little, but she manages to rotate her wrist enough to curl her fingers around his hand. “What’s wrong? Dick?”
“Why did you try to kill yourself?” he asks, and it takes her a moment to understand what he just said because he can’t have—she doesn’t know what he’s talking about, and his voice is so unnatural, so dull and not Dick.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Tim, please.” His voice cracks and that’s worse because now he sounds like he’s going to cry and it makes her want to cry and she doesn’t understand why this is happening. “I can’t—you have to tell me the truth.”
“I am. I don’t—where’s Jason?” she asks, a hint of desperation creeping into her voice because she doesn’t know what’s wrong and maybe Jason can help, if she can just talk to him—
“I’m right here, Tim.”
She hadn’t noticed him before, but Jason’s sitting in the corner of the room, the same look of exhaustion in his face as Dick. “I don’t understand.” She pulls at the straps holding her arms in place again (she was trained by Batman, for God’s sake, she should be able to get out of them) but it doesn’t do much good unless you count the streak of pain running up her left shoulder.
Dick squeezes her hand. “You’re just hurting yourself, sweetheart.”
“Let me go. Just—let me go, Dick. Jason. Please, I don’t want this.”
“It’s for your own good.” Jason—he must have stood up while she wasn’t looking—kneels down next to the bed so his face is level with hers. “Tim, what do you remember about last night?”
Wind. Voices. Strong arms holding her. “I. I don’t know.”
“You jumped off a building, Tim.”
That’s—no. No.
Dick’s holding her hand so tight it feels like he’s grinding her bones together, and it sparks off a sense-memory of being held tight before, too. “I caught you. I caught you, I—Tim, why?”
“I don’t know! I don’t!” she snaps, and she feels bad for it because Dick’s actually crying now but she doesn’t remember and his hand is bruising hers. “Dick, please, you’re hurting me.”
He lets go.
“I must have been drugged, or hypnotized, or something. I don’t remember, but I swear I didn’t jump. I wouldn’t have.” It’s unexpectedly painful to say because there’s a voice in the back of her that whispers liar but it’s the truth. It’s the truth. Once upon a time, she might’ve jumped from a building without a grapple but that was years ago. Now? Maybe she’d think about it involuntarily, but she wouldn’t do it.
“We took blood samples, sent them off to get tested.” Jason presses his thumb to her cheek. “If you were drugged, we’ll know.”
If. The word is sour echoing in her thoughts. If you were drugged, if we believe you didn’t try to kill yourself. “Will you let me go?”
“No,” Dick says, his voice tight.
“If someone stays with her at all times—“ Jason says.
“Not until the results are back.”
There’s no give in the hardness of his eyes, but she tries anyway. “Dick, please.”
“You jumped, Tim.”
She was wrong. There is something other than hardness in his eyes; there’s a plea. There’s a don’t make me catch you again. She swallows. “…Okay.”
He sighs, air collapsing out of his lungs like that’s what was buoying him up, and presses his hand against hers again, careful not to squeeze this time. “Okay.”