Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Conner Kent has been dead for three months, two weeks, and six days.

“Initiate cloning attempt number twenty-one.”

Tim can feel eyes on his back, burning through the skin and searing his spine. If he didn’t already know that ghosts can’t use heat vision, he might be concerned. “I can feel you judging me.”

“Good. My face is sore from scowling.”

Conner is leaning against one of the room’s glass pods, his arms crossed over the torn S-symbol on his chest. His normally carefree atmosphere has been replaced with an air of judgement—a mile leap from the Conner Kent who was all brass and thunder, jokes and lifting contests with Cassie.

It makes Tim feel like even more of a creep than he already does, skulking around in the basement of Titans Tower with Conner’s eyes on him the entire time. The shame of his actions has weight now, getting heavier with every advancement he makes. He resents Conner’s presence as much as he needs it. Craves it.

“You need to stop this,” Conner says, not for the first time.

Tim doesn’t look at him. He prints out the latest data report in a foot-long sheet. There must be some component to the cloning process that he’s missing. Some bonding agent he hasn’t considered. “Then drag me out of the room.”

“I’m serious, Tim. You passed the point of crazy, like, two weeks ago.”

“Since when is saving a life considered crazy?”

“Since there’s no life left to save. I’m dead, Tim. And yeah, it sucks, but there’s nothing we can do about it. You can’t keep working like this.”

“Watch me.”

“You’re killing yourself. You realize that, right?” If Tim could walk away knowing that Conner wouldn’t just follow him like a worm on a string, he would. “When’s the last time you ate? The last time you slept? Do you even know what day it is?”

“January.”

“This is irresponsible. It’s stupid. If Bruce knew how far gone you were, he’d take you off active duty for a week. Probably longer.”

“Which is why he’ll never find out.”

“That’s not the point, Tim!” Conner makes no audible footsteps, but Tim can sense when he comes nearer, like a tugging sensation in his stomach. Tim has his own gravitational pull, it seems; any ghosts in the area are drawn towards him like magnets. He can always feel Kon, no matter how far away he is.

Conner stands in front of him now, putting Tim at eye-level with his chin. When Tim doesn’t look up from his notes, Conner blocks the data sheet with a translucent hand. “You’re being a dumbass. You need to start taking care of yourself again.”

Tim turns away. “Yeah, well, I need my best friend back more. You should be all for that, so would it kill you to shut up and let me work?” Fuck. He needs a pill. He takes one from the handful he keeps in his utility belt and swallows it dry, ignoring Conner’s damning stare.

He’s been needing more, lately. He hadn’t noticed until Conner brought it up a few days ago, but Tim has upped the dosage to six, seven pills a day. He tries not to think about what’s changed. Even if he is using drugs to cope with the circumstances the universe has thrown his way, it’s not like he would be completely clean, otherwise. Feeling like his grief is miles away with every dose is just a happy side effect. It’s manageable.

Conner shakes his head. “I can’t believe you.”

“What am I doing that’s so wrong?”

“The fact that you shouldn’t be doing this in the first place. I’ve accepted what happened. Why can’t you?”

“Maybe I don’t want to accept it.”

“Do you really think that bringing me back to life is going to help anything?”

“Don’t you want to be alive? To see Clark again, Cassie, Martha, everyone who loved you? Don’t you want that?”

“Of course I do.”

Tim throws his hands in the air. “Then why are you fighting me on this? How can you stand there and tell me that I’m not doing the right thing when I’m trying to accomplish something that’ll make everyone happy?”

“Because it won’t work.” Conner materializes in Tim’s path again, forcing Tim to look at him. It’s painful to see the open wounds on once impenetrable skin, the smoldering edges of his t-shirt. Instead, he focuses on Conner’s face. Unblemished. Untarnished. Just as it was in life.

“Tim, even if you find a way to make this cloning stuff work, I won’t be there. You have to understand that. You’re too smart not to. It’ll just be another cheap copy of the original, like Match and Bizarro. But me—the real me? I’m staying right here, dead as hell. You can’t change that.”

Tim waves a hand. “That’s just a minor setback. Once I get the cloning process perfected, all I have to do is call up Constantine or Zatanna and convince them to help me figure out how to restore your soul. You’ll be back in a brand new body, and everything will be back to normal.”

“Do you hear yourself, man? You sound like a crazy person. You sound like Lex.”

“I don’t care.”

“You should!” Conner explodes, his eyes glowing with radiation he can’t unleash. “You should fucking care! What, do you think I’m going to come back to life and pretend that the cost of it wasn’t you destroying all the good parts of yourself? Do you think I’ll just forgive myself for that?”

Tim shrugs. He should be feeling more, but the meds have kicked in by now. A pleasant hum runs through his blood. “That’s exactly what I expect. It’s what happened with Jason, remember?” Tim goes back to the computer to upload the latest attempt report. “You don’t remember being dead, just blinking out and blinking back in. Everything that you experienced while you were gone, it all gets erased. You won’t even remember this conversation.”

Conner shakes his head. Tim would be lying if he said the disappointment on his face didn’t make his stomach twist. “This isn’t right. I care about you too much to sit back and watch you lose yourself like this.”

“Do you think I want you here, watching me fall apart? I know how crazy this looks. I know I must be breaching every ethical code in the book. And I would give anything to make you go away long enough so I can work in peace, but I can’t control that. The ghosts stay, whether I like it or not. So if you can find a way to check out on your own, then be my guest.”

Tim turns back to the computer, his eyes stinging. He takes another pill.

Conner sighs. Tim can feel him hovering behind his shoulder, a mop of messy black hair in the corner of his eye. Tim shivers when Conner touches his shoulder. “I miss you, Tim. I’m sorry my death broke you.”

“Yeah. Me too.”

As stressful as it is being the leader of a bunch of clueless teenagers, at least they’re unobservant. Tim can be more lax about his habit here. If he ever gets caught taking a pill, he can say it’s a painkiller for an old injury. He can tell the semi-truth and admit he struggles with anxiety. At the manor, he must be hypervigilant about the drugs to keep anyone from catching on that not all is as it seems.

Tim searches his room at Titans Tower, rifling through the drawers and throwing discarded clothes and objects on the floor. He tries to be quiet to avoid disturbing the others, but he grows more frantic by the minute.

Rose is a light sleeper, and it’s just poor luck that her room is closest to Tim’s. She’ll never let Tim live it down if she finds out their fearless leader needs benzodiazepines to keep his life from spiraling out of control. Vic would be disappointed. Eddie would lose all respect for him. Cassie would finally have a problem to set her focus on that isn’t about losing Conner.

Tim dumps out his desk drawer, littering the floor in pens, post-its, and spare masks. Nothing. “Damn it.”

“What are you looking for?” Conner asks.

“My meds.”

“Didn’t you already take some a few hours ago?”

“I need more.” Tim rummages around under his bed, pulling out crumpled papers and sifting through dust bunnies.

“This is addiction. You know that, right?”

“No, this is medicine. Medicine that I need to be able to function the way everyone needs me to. It’s healthy.”

“Uh-huh, sure. And what happens if you go off it?”

“You know what happens.” Withdrawal. Headaches. Shaky muscles. Ghosts.

“Would that really be so bad?”

“Yes, Conner, it”—Tim grunts when his head knocks against the bed frame as he sits up—“it would be that bad. You know exactly how bad it can be. You are how bad it can be.”

“You can always get rid of me.”

Tim knocks over his desk chair, sending it crashing against the far wall. “No, I can’t! Haven’t you been listening? I don’t have any control over this! I can’t just make the ghosts go away at will. This is the only thing that works!”

Conner’s expression doesn’t change but for a sagging of his shoulders. “You really hate me that much?”

“The opposite. It hurts like hell seeing you here, not even being able to hug you. If I could make you go away, I would. It would be better for both of us.”

“You can’t just—”

Someone knocks on the door. “Robin?”

“Shit,” Tim hisses. He kicks as much of the clutter under the bed as he can, but it’s not much of an improvement. He quickly plasters on a mask and opens the door. Eddie stands in the hall, his hair in a messy bun and his eyes glowing orange in the dim space. He wears a pair of Superman pajama pants.

Tim holds the door open halfway, blocking Eddie’s view into the room. “Hey. Did you need something?”

Eddie scratches the back of his neck. “Sorry to bother you, it just...it kinda sounded like you were yelling at somebody? I wanted to make sure no one, like, broke into the tower again or something.”

“I was just on the phone with Batman.”

“Oh. Is everything okay?”

“It’s fine. He’s just...well, you know how he can be.”

“I heard some stuff moving around.”

“I was organizing my room. I organize things when I’m stressed.”

Eddie shifts awkwardly. “I guess that makes sense.”

“Yep. Everything’s perfectly fine.” Tim tries not to look as impatient as he feels, but it’s a battle. He fakes a yawn. “Was that all? Because I’m kind of tired, so…”

Eddie blinks. “Yeah, sorry about...” He jerks a thumb back to his own room. “I’ll just go now.”

“Goodnight, Eddie.”

“G—”

Tim shuts the door. He waits until he hears a sigh on the other side, then footsteps retreating down the hallway. He presses his back to the door and releases a breath. Close call.

Conner is sitting on Tim’s bed, one eyebrow raised. “He’s definitely not going to suspect anything, now.”

“Shut up.” He’ll apologize to Eddie in the morning.

Now, where hasn’t he looked yet? The stash Tim keeps in his nightstand ran out around noon today, but there must be an extra bottle somewhere. He’s too smart to forget spares. He rips the sheets off his bed and checks the lining of the mattress for loose pills.

“Why am I different from the others?” Conner asks.

“You’re still on this? Can’t I get a few minutes of peace?”

“I’m serious. Why isn’t your dad here, or your mom, or someone else you cared about? Why am I the only one who keeps coming back?”

“Because you’re a persistent ass?” When Conner says nothing, Tim sighs. He rips open his pillow with a batarang and sifts through the stuffing. “I understand this ghost nonsense about as much as you do.”

“Because you don’t try to understand. You just shut it out.”

“And I’m perfectly okay with that. It’s better than wasting my time trying to figure out why I can’t get rid of you.”

“I think you need me.”

Tim rips open a second pillow, pulling out stuffing by the handful. “I don’t want to need you. Not this version of you. If you want to do me a favor, then be quiet and let me bring you back. I can’t have you watching me every second, judging every move I make.”

“Somebody has to. You know you haven’t eaten in two days?”

Tim didn’t know that, actually. He shrugs. “So? I’ve gone longer.” His hand closes around something and he crows in triumph. He pulls out a small plastic baggie with a handful of pills in it. He knew he had extras in here. He pops two into his mouth, closing his eyes as the daze takes effect.

“You need to stop this, Tim. You need help.”

Tim doesn’t care. He can’t care—not when the only thought his mind can latch onto is, wow, if only everyone could feel like this. Weightless. Free. Like he’s drowning, but without the panic, without the wrenching suffocation. Swimming in the fog, Tim can breathe.

He sits on his gutted bed and leans against the backboard, letting the drugs soak into his system. Everything quiets. He can still see Conner, can still hear his droning lecture, but he’s muted. He warbles, like he’s speaking from underwater.

It’s bearable. It’s enough.

Tim knows what the others are saying about him. As humiliating as it is, he can’t blame them for it. He would be concerned, too.

First his parents, then Conner, then Bart, and now Bruce. The dominoes keep falling, one after the other, and Tim can’t hold them up. He loses every time.

He sits outside of the Batcave after Dick and Alfred think he’s left for upstairs, listening in on their conversation. Not the most honorable move, eavesdropping, but when one is the topic of someone else’s conversation, questionable morals get the green light.

“I’m sure losing Bruce so close to losing his father to Boomerang and Conner to Superboy-Prime and Bart to the Rogues—hell, all that loss back to back…” Dick sighs. Tim can picture him running a hand through his hair, feeling the weight of Gotham as well as Wayne Manor settling on his shoulders.

“He appears to be in denial,” Alfred says.

“We all deal with death in our own way. If this is how Tim’s gonna cope with it, then we have to respect that.”

Tim considers making his presence known—maybe arguing, protesting that they don’t know what they’re talking about. But don’t they? Is what they’ve said so untrue? If Tim weren’t in denial like they say, he wouldn’t be waiting for Bruce to come home. He wouldn’t still be scouring the known universe for ways to resurrect Conner. He wouldn’t be searching for Bart every night, hoping to finally track down his spirit.

If Tim is in denial, then he’s perfectly fine staying where he is. Denial is painless. It’s weightless. Tim slips a pill past his lips and stands, brushing the dirt from his jeans. Dick and Alfred’s voices warp under the drug-induced haze, their words no more than music notes in the distance.

Everything is easier with drugs.

Tim didn’t bring any pills with him to the cemetery. He’s starting to regret that now. It wasn’t because he knew Cassie would find him there, nor was it because he was afraid of getting caught. Even while knowing that the body in the ground wasn’t Bruce’s, it felt like Tim would be desecrating something.

Bruce would be so disappointed if he knew that his death was the reason Tim loses count of how many pills he takes each day.

Dick doesn’t believe him. Tim told him the truth—the whole truth, ghosts and all—and still he doesn’t believe that Bruce is alive. Tim shared secrets with Dick that he’s never shared with another living person before, and he just. Didn’t believe him.

Maybe Bruce is simply too difficult to find, he said. Maybe his ghost didn’t stick around. Maybe Tim’s abilities don’t work the way he thinks they do. Anything but the truth.

Tim did everything he could, but it wasn’t enough. He went off his meds for as long as he could stand it, tried so hard to conjure Bruce, but he was met with silence every time. That means Bruce has to be alive. How can Dick not see that?

Tim went to the cemetery to clear his head. Then, when Cassie showed up wanting to help, Tim let himself believe that someone might be in his corner after all. Dick didn’t believe him, but Cassie would. Titans trust each other, to the very end.

But she thinks he’s crazy, just like the rest of them. And now, when Tim is so horribly alone, he has only one thing to lean on. One thing left to keep him afloat.

Tim slams his bedroom door shut, lacking the energy to care about Alfred’s door-slamming policy. Tim isn’t sticking around Gotham long enough for him to enforce any punishment. He drops to his knees and prods the floorboards under his bed, searching for the loose one.

“Tim—” Conner starts from somewhere behind him.

“Shut up. Don’t talk to me.”

“You need to slow down. Think for a minute.”

“Actually, I don’t have to do anything you tell me. You’re dead. Your opinion is irrelevant now.” Tim finds the loose board and struggles to pry it up, digging his fingers into the tiny crevices between the wood. One of his fingernails cracks and bleeds.

“I’m still your friend.”

“Then you know I love you when I say that you need to shut the fuck up and leave me alone.” Tim manages to free the board, revealing the bag of pills he smuggled under there a year ago for emergencies. It’s enough to keep him going for three days, easy.

“Will you at least look at me? You’re starting to freak me out.” Conner lets out a heavy sigh. “I know you’re going through a hard time, but maybe Cassie had a point. Maybe you should talk to someone.”

“I know I’m right.”

“You said the same thing about me, and where has it gotten you? Nowhere.”

Tim wheels on Conner, making the boy of steel flinch. “How can you say that? You know me better than anyone. You know what it means if I can’t see him.”

“No, I don’t! That’s the point, Tim! Not everyone sticks around after they die. Why else haven’t you gotten in touch with Bart yet, huh?”

Tim tightens his hold on the bag. “I’m working on that.”

“You’re denying what’s right in front of you. I love you, but you need to face the facts. Sometimes you can’t reach people after they die. And Bruce? He died, Tim. Clark watched it happen. He gave you a body to bury.”

“That’s not good enough for me!”

“Why not? Why isn't it good enough? Do you have any idea how lucky you are? When you lose someone, at least you still get to see them. You don’t have to lose anything.”

“Then why does it feel like all I do is lose?” Tim demands. “If this is such a blessing, why is everyone I care about gone?”

“I’m still here.” Conner reaches out to touch Tim, to take his hand, but his fingers pass right through him. Just as they always do. A shudder rattles Tim’s spine. Goosebumps riddle the skin Conner touched. “I know it’s not the same, but at least it’s something, right?”

Tim steps back, away from his ghostly touch. “It’s not enough. It’s not fair. So many people come back from the dead: Jason, Oliver, Clark, Steph. Why can’t you? Why can’t he?” Tim doesn’t care that his voice breaks on the last word. He doesn’t care that there are tears dripping onto the rug between his feet.

Conner swallows hard. “Tim—”

“No. Stop talking.” Tim covers his ears. When did his heart start beating so quickly? “Go away. I don’t want you here.”

“Yes, you do.”

“No. I want the real Conner. He’s—he’s real and solid and alive, and you’re not him. You’re not.”

Ghosts can’t cry. The closest they can get are dry, tearless sobs. Conner looks halfway there. “I’m sorry, Tim. I really am, but I’m dead. And so is Bruce.” He reaches forward again, a silhouette of icy fog.

Tim jerks away. “Don’t fucking touch me. Get out.”

“I can’t.”

“Get the fuck out!” Tim grabs the nearest object—a bottle of cologne Alfred gave him one birthday—and throws it at the apparition. It shatters against Tim’s dresser. “Get out of here! Get out of my head, out of my life, get out!”

This is torture. It’s torture. Seeing Kon, hearing his voice, but not being able to feel him. Not being able to hug him. Conner is gone but present at the same time, trapped in a purgatory for them both. No, worse than purgatory—this is hell. It’s the worst hell Tim is ever going to get.

But it doesn’t have to be. Tim opens the bag of pills: lorazepam, diazepam, alprazolam, and assorted others that Tim can’t identify. It doesn’t matter. Not anymore.

He downs a handful, not bothering to think about consequences. He doesn’t care. He can’t care—not when the drugs kick in almost immediately, making his head swim. He just wants it to stop.

Conner is yelling Tim’s name somewhere far away. Tim can’t see his face, and it takes a moment for him to realize that he’s fallen to the floor. He apparently caught himself on the puddle of sharp-smelling cologne and broken glass. His sinuses hurt worse than his hand, but it takes only a minute for that sensation to fade as well. Tim drifts, rolling with the current wherever it’ll take him.

Conner’s voice gets frantic, and in the back of Tim’s mind, guilt pangs the pieces of him that can still feel. Conner couldn’t do anything now if he wanted to. Ghosts observe, nothing more. Conner’s voice gets quieter and quieter as Tim slips away into the blissful fog, until pretty soon Tim can’t hear him at all.

Finally.