Work Text:
He doesn't actually understand it. He knows he died, knows he shuffled off the mortal coil and he feels… unpleasant. It's not the sort of unpleasant that getting shot is or even needing to vomit is. It's baser than that, deeper within him and less able to be defined. Something feels sort of off. All he can really say is that he's annoyed. Annoyed to be alive, annoyed to be dead, annoyed to feel like he's fucking anchored to the end of Tim's bed. He can't leave and he doesn't understand that either.
He sits and Tim doesn't wake. He stares at the walls, the ceiling, the framed fucking picture of Tim and Dick and Bruce and he hates it. It should be him there, not this fucking replacement. He doesn't know how he knows that Tim's taken his place either or how he knows who the damn hell Tim is, but well, he does. It's a pain in the ass, is what it is.
Taking out one of his knives, he sets about cleaning his oddly dirty nails, scraping dirt and grime from under them, brushing it off his pants one in a while. It's gross and he hates cleaning them this way, but he's stuck to the fucking bed and god he's angry about it. His anger swells and then just as abruptly it's gone, evaporated, and Tim startles awake a few feet from him, jerking upright in the bed and voicing a loud, "What the hell?!"
Jason now knows why he's here, it's instant and a bit confusing, but he opens his mouth and lets the words out anyway. "Move or you're about to get drenched, kid."
"What?" Tim stares at him like he's… well, like he's a dead man sitting on the end of his fucking bed, he supposes. What does that make him? A zombie? A ghost? He feels solid to himself, but that means nothing.
There's a sickening groaning sound and then a crack and a second later Tim's sitting in a waterfall of frigid water, absolutely drenched, the broken pipe above him spraying straight down onto his bed. Sputtering, he leaves the bed and Jason stands, feeling free to move now. He tips his head at Tim's drenched form and he shrugs. "Told ya."
Just like that, he's gone, lacking existence, lacking anything but suffocating blackness.
It feels like seconds, though from the change of scenery, from the change of Tim's height, he's pretty sure it's been a year or more. It's a quick assessment, one that only a former Robin could have done so quickly, and he takes it for what it is and tries to decide why he's here and why he isn't even disoriented about it. He warned Tim last time, didn't know what he was warning about until it was almost too late. He doesn't like that idea. He's never been bad at his job… well, except when- no, he won't think about that.
He looks around them, wonders why Tim hasn't noticed him yet. He realizes he doesn't breathe, doesn't make sounds as he steps. Tim cannot sense what isn't there, he supposes. He takes in that Tim's clearly on a stakeout, turns and views the surrounding buildings. It takes him a minute but he sees the glint and he says, "Tim, sniper, eight o'clock."
Tim rolls out of the way, acts on autopilot and he's behind the nearest AC unit moments before the shot pings off where he was crouching. Jason contemplates why he's still here and he moves to be with Tim, stands and surveys because he doesn't feel like he can die again, so he figures it's okay. He wonders if anyone else can see him. He figures not or the sniper would have aimed at him first.
He glances down at Tim staring up at him and he can see the confusion even behind the mask. "I have no idea why I'm here anymore than you do." He looks around, he listens to Tim prattle the reason he's here off to him and Jason peers over the side of the building, his heart freezing as he sees the little girl being dragged along by some asshole with a gun. He knows what's about to happen and he knows he cannot intervene. "Hostage: child, pink dress. Guy with a semi-auto, he's about to throw her in the street." He turns to say "go" and never gets it out of his mouth, Tim already making the leap, grapple thunking into the neighboring building and he's gone. Jason sees the save and then he's gone, too, back to his black abyss.
The next time he appears, he's in a coffee shop and he's more than a little confused. Tim stands at the counter, putting far too much sugar into a huge cup of coffee, talking on his cell phone. It sounds like a boring Wayne Enterprises thing. Jason's a little pissed that it's clearly been a long fucking time since he's been back. Tim's no kid anymore. He glances down and takes note that he's not a kid anymore either and he wonders about the aging process when he's still half fucking dead.
There's probably twenty people in here and Jason starts cataloguing them, wondering if one of them is the reason he's here. He's watching a woman remove something from her purse when he hears an engine revving too much for the street outside.
He reacts on gut instinct alone and he tries to push Tim out of the way, can't touch him, but he's got his attention. He manages, "Car!" and points and that's all it takes for Tim to drop his phone and his coffee, to grab the young woman beside him and tackle her out of the way, yelling, "Car's coming through the store!" as he goes down, rolls away from it with the woman.
Jason takes a breath, sees the glass sticking out of Tim's thigh and he mutters, "Fuck," a second before he's gone and the stupid fucking blackness is back.
It feels shorter this time, he's convinced it is when he appears in Tim's bathroom and he sees the bandage over where the glass would have gone in. He wonders how many stitches and how much damage that caused. He wonders if he's a shitty guardian angel at this point. Then he wonders why he's here. Except… it's so obvious when he glances at the counter, at Tim. He sees the bottles, how many are open, how much is scattered around and the way he's swaying. He sees the tears running down his cheeks and he sees the note on the counter. He doesn't know what he's supposed to do here. He knows vomiting doesn't actually solve it so he can't even make Tim gag himself to get it out. He reaches for him when he starts to tip and he can, surprisingly, touch him. He eases him to the floor and then looks around. He sees the phone and he picks it up, uses Tim's fingerprint to open it, though he has no idea how he knows to do that.
He taps an app that has the bat symbol on it and Bruce's voice comes across the line a second later, more Bat than Bruce, and Jason has to force himself past the anguish to speak, to hope to god he can be heard. "Tim's ODed, suicide note, he's still alive, just took it, please. Can you hear me?!"
Bruce's voice starts to say Jason's name, chokes on it, and then indicates Alfred and he are both en route, asks if he can do anything and he's quiet for a second and then whispers, "I don't know." He stands up instead and shoves down anything else he feels and begins reading the labels on the bottles that are open that match anything scattered across the counter, the dosage, the name. He sees they all belong to Tim, they all have the same doctor on them, and he takes note what many of them are for. He wonders if Bruce knew before today. He wonders if Tim sees anyone. He gets up and goes to unlock the bathroom door and then the front door and the sliding glass door in case it's Batman who arrives instead of Bruce.
He goes back and he waits by Tim, kneeling there and wondering why he couldn't possibly be more useful than this. Why didn't he arrive before Tim took the medication? Why does he always have to arrive at the cusp of the end of life instead of where he'd actually feel more useful? He wonders if it's because here, on the edge of death, he and Tim can exist simultaneously.
He sits and he waits and he watches Tim's shallow breath and he holds his hand, surprised he can.
Bruce and Alfred arrive and it's as if he isn't here to them and he thinks, perhaps, that he's right about why he can be here with Tim at these times and then he wonders just how close Tim is to death if he can touch him. He gets his answer as they work, when he loses the ability to touch him just before Alfred says he thinks they got here in time, and then he's gone, popped from his fragile existence once again.
Jason feels tired the next time he pops into existence. He feels like it's been too long and like he's been on the verge of being pulled back here several times and hasn't been. He wonders if it's perhaps a contemplation on Tim's part that dredges him half to the surface and then his decisions that send him back to sleep. He takes in that he's in someplace dark and slimy and it smells like sewer in here. Tim's strung up and hung in the center of the room from two chains, bound around his wrists. He's clearly someone's captor and they've left him bleeding for what looks like far too long, a puddle growing under him and when Jason rounds him, he can touch him. This time he knows he can help. He opens Tim's pouches until he finds the quick clot and he opens it, presses it into the wound and holds it there until it warms and Tim jerks in pain. He pushes the packet back into his pocket and picks Tim's locks for him with tools from another pouch. He narrowly gets him down before he feels himself fading out and he whispers, "Good luck," before he's gone.
He jerks into existence this time with a gasp and a stumble, and he finds Tim hooked to a machine, finds him in the batcave and he makes it to Tim's side, trying to access through the strange tingle in his brain. Tim looks at him, his eyes clear and brilliant. He reaches up and makes the illusion of cupping Jason's cheek. "We're working on a way to get you back for good. That is… if you want it."
Jason stares at Tim. He feels full and pleasant and despite the tingle in his brain, he feels settled now. He nods and whispers, "I want that." And then tacks on, "But only if you'll let me keep saving you."
Tim gives him a sad smile and murmurs, "I think I have that under control now." He sighs and then breathes, "I can't stay like this long. I'm sorry, but you'll keep coming back for a few seconds at a time for a while as we work on it."
Jason nods and Tim unplugs the machine. Jason goes back to floating in the darkness.
For what feels like forever, he pops in and out of existence, a few seconds at a time and then gone again. He doesn't like that he knows that it means Tim's hedging death over and over again for him. He wishes he'd said no when he thinks about it like that.
He appears again somewhere that's not the cave and he finds Tim alone in his apartment. He's quiet, working on his computer, coffee beside him. He doesn't look distressed, but Jason kneels down next to him anyway, offers a quiet, "Tim?"
Tim's gaze jerks to him and then to his surroundings. He moves his hands from the keys of his laptop and starts to get up just as a loud cracking boom issues outside and the whole apartment surges, the lightbulbs shatter, the computer's smoking. Tim stares at it and breathes out, "I could have died," and just like that, Jason's gone.
He goes back to the seconds of existence, the ebb and flow he sort of gets used to. It's interspersed with little visits to Tim on other things, one of which is fire and explosion and Jason narrowly avoids panicking himself trying to fix that one. He manages and he spends a while more conscious than usual in his black sea, sorting himself out.
He's fairly certain it's years later when he blinks into existence in the batcave and he doesn't feel imminent danger. Tim's hand wraps around his wrist and injects him with something and then he's dragged toward a table. "Trust me," is all Tim says before he hooks him up to an IV bag, his fingers deft, calculated. He feels chilled and then odd and then free and then grounded and he looks up at the bag, the blood in the bag, Tim's name written neatly in the blank. He's injected a few more times via the IV line's access port and then Tim sits with him, holding his hand. He looks around, curious, until he sees the gun on the table and he narrows his gaze on it.
"I made like I was going to kill myself so you'd come."
Jason looks up at Time, studies him. "Are you planning on it?"
"Not today." Tim tips his head. "I can never promise more than today, but I'm working on it one day at a time, Jay."
He blinks and looks back at the bag, watches it for a while and then asks, "So how is this to work?"
"I'm hoping to anchor you to me, tie you to me in a way that leaves you here, not… wherever you go back to. Of course, that also means if I die, you die, so it kind of puts us in a situation where you have to be with me all the time, though I think that satisfies the part where you said you wanted to keep saving me."
Jason smiles a little at that, feels oddly comfortable with the idea of it. He thinks of the picture on Tim's nightstand. He thinks of Bruce and Alfred and Dick. "Will they be able to see me?"
"I don't honestly know."
Jason ponders that and he decides he's okay with that, though he sort of wishes he knew they'd be able to, even if once. He wants to tell Bruce it's okay, that he's forgiven him for not saving him. He wants to tell Alfred he loves him. He wants to tell Dick he misses him. He chews his lip and he murmurs, "I think I wasn't ready to leave."
"No shit," Tim murmurs, his hand tightening on Jason's forearm. "I'd imagine not."
Jason wonders what Tim's going to be like as a full-time job. He smirks a little at the idea that Tim's a job. He's sure to like that assessment. He sits and he waits and little by little he feels whole again.