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Tim wakes to the first few notes of a haunting piano tune.
He’s confused, at first, as to where the sound could possibly come from. Damian’s the only one out of their makeshift family with any interest in playing an instrument; and even then, he usually favors the violin.
It takes a moment for Tim’s tired eyes to adjust to the darkness around him. Blinking back grit, he props himself up on his elbows. The room’s cold, empty, sterile, dimmed with shadows. He almost doesn’t recognize it.
But it hasn’t changed one bit. The white sheets are still protectively covering the same old furniture. The photographs he spent hours perfecting do not hang on the walls; masterful paintings, studies in still life, unblemished decorations in their places.
Tim takes a moment to adjust.
Then, he’s out of bed, running before he’s even registered the sensation of his socked feet hitting the ground.
He crashes through the door and stares. The corridor is just as he remembers it. Dust swirls around in faint light beams, disturbed by his arrival.
“No, no, no.” He mutters in a voice that’s hoarse with disuse, taking a sharp turn and using the bannister to drop down to the first floor.
It doesn’t take long. He’s skidding in the living room in under a minute, wiping spiderwebs from his face, when, once again, he’s forced to a stop.
There’s nothing on the other side of that table.
Of course there isn’t.
The body’s long since gone. Buried. He was at the funeral, he should know that. Knows that. More than that, he’s been back here since. There’s no trace it ever happened. Once the police finished investigating, someone arranged for clean up.
Some things leave a stain, Tim thinks, trying not to stare from the very spot he was in when his father bled out, a boomerang sticking out of his back like some sort of grotesque handle.
Racing to the Batmobile when he hears the crashes, tumbling into his room, out of the Robin suit, the last phone call even as Bruce is trying to keep him calm, whispering his name over and over TimTimTimTim and over but offering no empty promises-
His breath hitches. He startles. Breathe in to the count of eight. Hold. Breathe out. Pay attention to your heartbeat, keep it under control. Steady. Breathe with me, Tim.
Tim breathes.
No need to panic. It’s his childhood home. Just his childhood home. Still, his fingers start drumming an unsteady beat on his thigh with a mind of their own as he stares down that spot, like held in place by an icy grip around his middle.
He feels all of ten years old.
Concentrating on the rhythm his fingers tap, in perfect time with the melody that’s still playing, no matter what room he’s in– and Oh, Tim remembers this now; the old tapes he used to play to give some life to the house, to give the illusion that it’s his mother there, just one or two room over, giving the piano her all.
He did so love that illusion. His mother the next room over, his father in his study, maybe. Each doing what they love, and Tim would see them in just a few hours, a tiny bit later. Living in the illusion until it shattered, only it wouldn’t. It wouldn’t because that tiny bit later, Tim ran to the streets, and the reason he wasn’t seeing them was because he was out, not because they weren’t in.
Drake Manor is darker than he remembers it being. Emptier. Hollower. The shadows more menacing.
Tim realizes then that he’s grown too reliant on having a home. On having people around, if he’s this panicked at the thought of spending the night here.
Tim breathes. Tim rationalizes the situation and calms himself.
How, exactly, did he end up here.
He was-
The tune plays. The dust dances in the shadows out of the corner of his eye, but Tim can’t drag them away from where his father’s corpse once laid.
Emotional flashback, Tim rationalizes. Again. He’s losing his touch, if he has to concentrate this much on this. Twice in less than a minute. Tim breathes and tries to think back to the last thing he remembers.
He was on patrol. He’s sure of it. Fighting– Penguin? Maybe. Investigating his new illegal alien weapons deals. Damian had gone down-
Damian had gone down.
Tim has his phone in hand and is dialing Alfred’s number in the next second.
Each ring drags out, excruciatingly slow compared to Tim’s racing heart. It’s pounding in his ears.
The last time he was on the phone, trying to hear from a loved one, staring from this spot-
“Wayne Residence.” Alfred answers in a clipped voice.
“Hey, Alf.” Tim breathes, relieved. Alfred sounds irritated, but his voice is firm, sure. Damian is most likely alright. “How’s-”
“Mr Drake.” And Alfred’s voice is cold, cold, cold– “If you do not stop calling, be assured that I will involve the police. Neither Master Wayne nor myself are interested in hearing more of your delusions. Good night.”
Alfred hangs up.
Tim stares at the phone dumbfounded.
–––––-
Damian’s down, Damian’s down, and he’s bleeding from where he took an orange beam to the head, his chest is bleeding and Bruce is losing it. Penguin’s deal has gone so very wrong, Bruce’s yelling– yelling at Tim, yelling at Jason, taking him to E-
Robin cannot die.
Tim’s distracted. Tim’s distracted he takes a energy beam to the chest.
He gasps in more air, green-ish air, Gotham’s air full of smoke and chemicals. His re-breather is cracked, and his head is dizzy, dizzy from the pain, from the blow, from the sight of Robin on the ground. Or maybe his lungs aren’t working, and Tim nearly passes out, Damian sightless lenses staring at him.
–––––-
“RED! C’mon. C’mon, Red, breathe. That’s it, just like that, nice and easy, kiddo, yeah, keep your eyes open for me, okay? It’s gonna be okay, but you gotta breathe, nice and easy. You gotta keep -”
Tim breathes.
Tim can’t seem to stop inhaling. He can’t seem to exhale, but Tim breathes.
Alright. So he’d been on patrol. Damian had gone down and Tim had taken a light beam to the chest.
None of that explains Alfred’s anger.
Do they blame Tim? It had been his fault the night has gone belly-up. He’d been tired, distracted, unable to even keep track of his gear. But they usually try to talk about the problem with him.
Tim is missing something. He intends to find out what that is
There are signs of life in this house. Small ones. Ones Tim can recognize as his own. A stray cup or two. A tie, abandoned on the back of a chair. Less dust all the way to his old room.
Meds, in one of the bathroom. The very same kind they give Joker in Arkham.
Tim lets them fall back in the sink like he’s been burned. They clatter against the porcelain, little round pill scattering everywhere.
Tim breathes. He looks up, shares a tired look with his reflection in the bathroom mirror.
He looks… older. Not much. A year or two older. The bags under his eyes are slightly more pronounced, he has the beginning of a stubble. His eyes are bloodshot.
All in all, he looks like he’s just closed a case, after a few days of hard work.
The pills almost look like they’re gleaming against the white porcelain and Tim breathes.
–––––-
Tim fishes his laptop out of his old room.
The covers he’s thrown back on the bed in his haste to rush downstairs are the only sign of life of the whole room.
–––––
Here’s what Tim knows.
He was on patrol. He took an energy beam to the chest. He’s woken up in his old room, and no-one, nothing is the way it should be.
The two main possibilities are:
Either Tim’s gone crazy, and lost part of his memories of it, or he’s in an alternate universe.
He looks his family up.
There’s not a single mention of a Batman. According to the news, Jason Wayne is dead, and has been for years. No mentions of a Red Hood either. He shelves that for later. ‘Ric’ Grayson-Wayne is in New York, dating a supermodel. There’s no mention of a Nightwing. No mention of Robin either.
Alright, so alternate universe. Maybe. He hopes so.
No result for Damian Wayne. Should their vigilante alter-egos not exist here, it’s possible that Bruce simply doesn’t know yet about Damian. Maybe he’s never made a public appearance. It’s fine, Tim knows all there is to know about hacking and/or infiltrating the League.
‘Error’ his screen mocks him.
Tim searches harder.
Damian Wayne doesn’t exist.
Damian Head doesn’t exist.
Talia Head doesn’t exist.
Talia al Ghul doesn’t exist.
Damian al Ghul doesn’t exist.
Robin doesn’t exist.
Something collapses in Tim’s chest. A little pocket of air catches in his throat.
He stares.
He starts typing again, faster.
Cassandra Cain doesn’t exist.
Stephanie Brown is dead.
Jack and Janet Drake are dead.
Conner Kent-
Conner Kent is alive.
“KON-EL.” Tim shrieks at the top of his lungs, all semblance of countenance forgotten. “KON-EL. KON. Kon.”
There’s a whoosh. The window breaks. Papers fly and scatter around Tim, and he could sob in relief when Kon appears, floating a meter above the ground, face twisted into something enraged.
He does let a sob out, when Kon looks right through him, unseeing.
“What the fuck is wrong with him?!” says Kon’s voice, but his lips aren’t moving and he’s not seeing Tim. He looks around the room, flies through Tim.
Then back out the window.
Gone, almost as soon as he’d come.
––––––
Damian stares through him, unseeing.
“C’mon, kiddo, that’s it, that’s nice, in and o-. B. B ! He’s going into card-”
––––––
The house is old.
The house is empty.
Tim goes through the rest of it, explores, tries to make sense of it all.
Tim feels all of ten years old again.
–––––
This Tim does not work for Wayne industries.
This Bruce can not stand Tim. Tim discovers that the hard way.
–––––
“That’s it.” Bruce, Brucie, says, when Tim tries to talk to him in person. “I am filing a restraining order.”
“Mr Wayne-” Tim says, and the words burn coming out of his mouth. Tim is thirteen, getting rejected by his hero as he spirals down in a tornado of violence and self-destruction. Tim doesn’t even know what he came here to say, but he needed to see Bruce for himself. “If you’d just-”
“My son is dead.” Bruce says. Thunders, face very pale, not looking Tim in the eye. “My son is dead. There has never been a bat-vigilante in Gotham. I don’t know who or what the Joker is. My son was murdered by Jack Napier and I do not need you reminding me of that every other day."
Tim has no answer to that.
Bruce swallows.
“Please. Mr Drake. Tim. Just.” Brucie sighs, and he looks sick to the stomach. “I know you mean well. I know you and Ja– you and Jason were friends.”
“We were?” Tim wonders.
Bruce looks sicker.
“Please, Mr Drake. Take your meds. Leave me and my family alone.”
–––––-
The days blur together. Tim has no family, Tim has a boring job at Drake industries.
Tim goes to the League for help.
–––––––
“Fuck. Fucking hell, Timbo, not like this.”
There is no League.
“30. Then we switch.”
His chest hurts. Tim feels like he can’t breathe, and yet, more days blur together.
“Clear. C’mon, Timbit. Don’t do this to us.”
Tim isn’t so sure anymore whether there really are two Tims or if he should just take his meds.
“ B! ”
––––––-
Tim opens his eyes to the first few notes of the same haunting tune.
He’s confused, at first as to where the sound could possibly come from. He’s destroyed that damned recording in a fit of – rage? Fear? – in a fit of something yesterday.
He chokes on a sob, low in his throat. His chest feels like an elephant stomped on it. The humming stops when he tries to move.
“Tim.” Bruce says, carefully brushing strands of sweat-soaked hair from his forehead.
That feels nice. So nice. Too nice, but Tim’s crazy and he can’t let himself grow dependant on this again and-
“Shhh, sweetheart.” Bruce whispers, brushing his thumb against Tim’s cheek slowly even as Tim wails. “Shhh, it’s alright.”
A shadowy form rush into the room. No dust is disturbed by their arrival.
“Shhh, sweetheart. I’ve got you. It’s alright. Scarecrow had you. But we got you back Robin, it’s alright, we’ve got you.”
Tim can almost believe him, this time.
He certainly wants to.