Work Text:
Fifty-one hours and twenty-six minutes.
That’s how long Tim’s been forced to stay awake.
He knows this because of the infernal clock mounted on the wall. It’s there to taunt him, that’s been made obvious enough.
He’s curled up in a corner of the room, trying to stay as far away from the door as he can. He’s been in a constant state of anxiety for the past several hours, and with how sleep-deprived he is, it’s not too difficult for his brain to start conjuring up twisted shapes out of the shadows in the room.
His breathing is too erratic. His mind is too foggy, barely able to form a coherent thought. More than that, though, Tim’s just so, so tired.
He scratches at his skin until he draws blood to stay awake. He forces himself to stand, though it’s becoming harder to do. His body is barely responding to his commands, and he’s so dizzy when he stands up that he can’t even take two steps before his knees give out.
The ticking of the damned clock is slowly driving him insane.
He curls in tighter on himself and buries his face in his knees.
They’ll find him.
It’s been three days now.
Seventy-two hours and five minutes.
Tim can’t really breathe properly. It hurts to inhale, and it hurts to exhale. It hurts to swallow. His throat really hurts. Along with every part of him. His fingers have long gone from tingling to numb. His arms and legs shake and ache from constant electrical shocks.
They’ll find him.
They’ll find him.
Tim has nothing but the darkness around him and the ticking clock. No one’s opened that door since he was shoved in here, three days ago. He didn’t see any obvious cameras in the room, but there’s no doubt there’s one somewhere. Probably in the clock.
He’s completely alone but his eyes keep wandering to the other corners of the room where the shadows are darkest. Sometimes he sees them moving. Sometimes, he sees them form vaguely humanoid shapes.
It always feels like they’re staring directly at Tim.
Tim collapses on hour eighty-two.
Or eighty-five.
Eighty something.
Numbers are sort of blurring together and he can’t quite remember where the hands of the clock were pointing the last time he checked.
He can’t remember the last time he checked, either.
He closes his eyes and despite the painful shocks that make his muscles seize and breathing near impossible, he can’t force his eyes open.
He’s so far past tired, past exhausted, that his brain is slowly shutting down.
It shocks him until his tongue tingles and his mouth tastes like metal and his brain fills with static. His thoughts are reduced to nothing but a jumbled, disjointed mess. The shocks hurt, though. His ears ring and he can’t tell if he’s screaming.
His throat hurt like hell, though that could just be the collar.
His limbs twitch and his cheek touches cold, wet stone. He shivers. It feels like his brain is turning into slush.
Tim’s eyes open and the shocks stop. Through a blurry vision, he sees that the door is open. Two people walk in and his heart soars, briefly thinking he’s finally getting rescued.
They nudge him and one of them says something. Through the static buzzing in his ears, the answer only sounds garbled.
It’s not a rescue. It’s his captors, and they’re only here to wake him up. They pour what feels like an entire bucket of icy water onto him.
He gasps, the sudden shock of cold burning him. He can’t breathe. He gasps and inhales water.
Tim rolls onto his side, coughing, retching up water. His muscles lock up.
He hears his captors laughing and one of them kicks him in the side. His arms-- shakily holding up his weight-- crumple and he goes down hard. His chin hits the hard ground and he bites his tongue. He spits out the blood pooling in his mouth.
His ears aren’t ringing so badly now, and he feels more clear-minded than he has in a while. Tim hears the door slam shut and hears the locks turn.
He releases a shuddering breath. Tim feels a lump forming in his throat and hides his face in the crook of his elbow.
They’re still not here. The incessant ticking of that stupid clock is a humiliating taunt.
“You expected them to come for you? Pathetic. It’s been nearly four days and you’re still here.”
The tears come, and Tim allows himself this moment of weakness. He’s alone here anyway, with no one to keep him company but the shadow people and that stupid clock. It’s been four days. He’s still here. No one came for him. It’s been eighty-five hours and he can’t sleep.
Tim nods off again. He can’t help it. He tried. He tried, and tried, and tried. But eventually even digging his nails into his arm until it bleeds isn’t enough. He’s still drenched shivering, but managed to crawl back into his corner. He feels safer there. He can’t feel eyes on his back if his back is pressed against a wall.
The shock forces his eyes back open.
His head hurts. His limbs twitch and spasm painfully. The clock ticks on, the minutes dragging, the noise drilling into Tim’s temple.
They’re not coming.
Sometimes the clock turns into a grinning face, and it starts taunting him, and it sounds like the little voice in his head.
“They won’t come for you. They’re finally rid of you. You won’t get out of this place. You will die here.”
He will. He’ll die here, alone and in pain and paranoid and seeing things that aren’t there.
The shadowy shapes start to look familiar after a few more hours. Tim’s eyes flicker around in a dazed panic, expecting to see a person standing just out of the corner of his eye.
A familiar shape dressed in bright blue approaches and Tim tenses up.
“You’re not real,” he croaks.
His voice sounds absolutely wrecked.
He’s too tired to cry. He’s too tired to do anything except stare at Nightwing and Spoiler standing in front of him.
This is the worst thing his mind’s been doing. The first time he saw Batman he felt hope surge up before realizing it was just a hallucination. It’s been a hundred and ten hours and Tim’s still here. He sees Batman, and Robin, and even Jason sometimes, and he’s still here.
Sometimes they taunt him.
And sometimes he believes the warped words they hiss.
He closes his eyes and presses his hands against his ears. He can’t block out the voices in his head.
Tim is suffocating.
He can’t really breathe right. His throat feels swollen and painful and the collar’s metal and plastic edges dig into his skin. His breathing comes out shallow. He’s not getting enough air into his lungs.
Everything is slightly blurry and he can’t seem to focus his eyes. He tries to keep his eyes closed. It helps with the headaches. And it’s better to see nothing than to see bleeding walls.
It’s horrifying, watching the walls bleed like a melting candle. It looks a bit like the world is a painting and someone poured water all over it, making the colors and shapes mix together. Paint dripping down the canvas.
It’s disconcerting, to say the least.
Plus it makes him feel like he’s losing his mind.
You are losing your mind.
He is. But Tim wants to pretend he’s not. He’s been here five days, and he can only deny it for so long.
The door opens.
That’s a new one for Tim. In a way, he was glad he never hallucinated the door opening. Seeing Batman or Nightwing stand in a corner and taunt him isn’t much better, but at least it’s not like staring at an unattainable freedom.
He almost bursts into tears when bright light fills the room. Damn his mind and damn those hallucinations. He’ll take a talking clock over this any day.
It doesn’t help that the walls are still bleeding, or that the darkness looks grainy, like Tim’s staring through an old camera.
The light is blinding and it takes a few blinks to make out the shape of Nightwing standing in the doorway. His heart sinks. He closes his eyes, but the footsteps come closer. A hand ghosts over his arm and he flinches. Tim tries to move back, but he’s already leaning against the wall. There’s nowhere for him to go.
“Hey,” Nightwing’s voice is gentle, like he’s talking to a spooked animal. “Are you with me, Tim? It’s just me.”
No. It’s not.
“I’ll get you out of here, okay?”
He won’t. Tim’s not dumb enough to fall for this one again. Promises of rescue before blinking and finding himself alone in that room.
Tim shakes his head. “No,” he says, quietly because he doesn’t think he can talk above a whisper. “You won’t.”
This gives Dick pause. His hand is warm where it rests on Tim’s knee. He must’ve finally snapped.
Or maybe he’s hypothermic. That one doesn’t sound right, but Tim’s brain feels like overcooked spaghetti and it’s hard to think.
“Let me--”
Tim barely registers the hand lifting his chin, but his eyes snap to Dick’s face when he trails off. He’s half expecting the hallucination to be gone. Instead, he finds himself staring at thinly veiled rage and horror.
“Let’s get you out of here.”
Fake Dick’s hands are on him again, around his wrist, wrapping under his knees, like he’s gonna pick Tim up. This makes him panic. Because Dick’s not here. Is he hallucinating his brother in the place of one of his captors?
Tim’s losing his mind. No, Tim’s already officially lost his mind, his sanity, and whatever else has to lose.
“NO!” he screams, voice breaking at the end. “No!”
He thrashes in the hands holding him, lifting him off the ground.
“Let me go!” he screams and he’s too exhausted to feel embarrassed about the tears. “Just leave me alone!”
“Tim, stop!” Fake Dick says.
There’s an edge of desperation, and it sounds genuine enough that Tim almost stops. But it’s not real. It’s been five days. It’s not real. It’s his mind fabricating another lie to get his hopes up again.
He shakes his head and tries to pull away.
“No,” he croaks out. “No. You’re not real. Please. Stop.”
I can’t take it anymore.
“I am real, Tim. We’re here. I’m sorry it took this long.”
There’s grief and guilt in Dick’s voice. Tim shakes his head, trying to block his ears in hopes it’ll make the hallucination go away.
“You’re not,” he sobs, shaking. “You’re not. You’re not. You’re not. You can’t be.”
There are fingers running through his hair and Tim yearns for this to be real. The mind can truly be cruel, sometimes. He hears another voice and wonders if someone else is here, too.
If this is how he dies, he decides dimly, then maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad way to go.
Tim passes out very briefly before another shock tears through him. He makes a noise and one hand squeezes the arm of the person holding him.
When the shock’s over, he feels hands prodding the sensitive skin of his throat and he flinches. He tries to shy away, but he’s too tired to move, and there’s nowhere for him to go. He feels something cold touch his neck and a shiver runs down his spine.
He keeps his eyes closed and his breathing measured. It’s hard to keep himself from falling back asleep. It would be easier if he tried to keep his eyes open, but that would mean staring at Fake Dick’s face, and he can’t handle that right now. He’s too scared of opening his eyes and finding out it’s all been another hallucination.
Minutes drag by with the occasional shock to pull Tim out of the open arms of unconsciousness. Tim almost wishes for his captors to kill him instead of-- instead of doing whatever it is they’re doing. It almost feels like they’re cutting through the collar, which brings a whole new wave of sudden fear.
He tries to pull away, but the arms around him hold him still. The noise he makes is pathetic.
“Don’t worry,” Fake Dick’s voice whispers. “You’re safe now, Tim. I promise.”
The pressure around his neck vanishes and it barely registers in Tim’s mind that the collar is off before his brain shuts down and everything vanishes.