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By the time Damian came back into the apartment, Tim was throwing things. Big things, heavy things, leaving dents in the walls and seconds away from a breakdown.
From another breakdown.
He could see the tears in his brother’s eyes, the ones he refused to shed, even though he probably should. Damian wasn’t much for crying himself, but he understood the value of the act.
“Should I call Todd?” Damian asked, stepping carefully around the dropped mixing bowl still lying on its side on the floor. “Or perhaps our sister?”
“No.” Tim barked, launching a heavy book against the wall, leaving a dent from the novel’s spine. “I just. I…I want…” He sighed, dropped his arms and looked over at Damian. “Why aren’t you furious?”
Damian shrugged. “It’s what I wanted, isn’t it? Grayson alive.”
Tim shook his head, turning away to look for something else to throw. “He lied.”
“We don’t know that.” The denial was barely a whisper.
“We do. I do.” Tim snapped, spinning in a circle, looking to get his hands on anything he could. In the end, he opted to rearrange. Sat everything on the coffee table – two mugs, a stack of magazines, new mask prototypes, a couple television remotes – on the side, and began spreading them out like the table was a battle map. “I know the look.”
Damian moved forward. “What look?”
“The look of someone who died!” Tim shouted, jerking his head up. “The look of someone who has literally been to hell and back, the look of someone who went through the pain of resurrection. Jason has it, Kon has it, Bart has it, you have it! But you know who didn’t? Do you know who didn’t have it, Damian?” He picked up the remote, and launched it downwards, bouncing it off the carpet. “Our father. Just now. Our fucking brother. They don’t have that look, Damian. They didn’t have the haunted eyes, the blank stares, the anger. They look like they both just got back from a…fucking year-long vacation to an island.”
Tim paused for a breath, and Damian didn’t say anything. Tim didn’t know if it was because he agreed or if he merely had no counter argument. Instead, he just stared, with the same misty, eerie gaze he had since he returned from the dead. Those innocent, worried blue eyes that Tim suddenly found himself on the receiving end more often than not. The eyes that he couldn’t stay this mad at, not when they were staring at him so openly.
His voice was quiet as his shoulders slumped. As he returned Damian’s watery gaze with his own empty one. “I can’t do this anymore. I can’t…I’m not a rubber band. I can’t be pulled back and forth, and back and forth. I can’t keep losing things, grieving them, only to have them come back completely unscathed like nothing ever happened.”
“I know.” Damian nodded. “And no one could ask you to, Drake.”
“Because it did happen. And because even when they come back, it all still hurts.” He continued, and he felt pathetic. Like he was the real child here, and Damian his parent. How stupid. “And they never seem to realize that.”
“I know.”
Tim blinked. Felt a sensation through his body, like his soul was leaving him, like everything was useless and pointless. “…Bruce and Dick weren’t ever dead, Damian.”
And surprisingly, Damian whispered discontentedly back. “…I know.”
Tim sighed, closed his eyes and collapsed back onto the sofa. He flopped his head against the back of the couch, strained his neck so that when he reopened his eyes, he was staring at their patterned white ceiling.
“What do you think the worst part is?” Tim asked, voice hoarse as he listened to Damian move towards him, bend and begin to pick up some of the items he’d thrown. “The fact that they lied to us, that they willingly stayed away from us for a year,” He paused, letting the anger in his heart cool, become bitter disappointment and borderline despair. “Or the fact that Dick didn’t come home when we got you back?”
Silence reigned once more as Damian settled all the items he had picked up on the coffee table. As he sat quietly next to Tim. “…I’d like to believe he had a good reason not to.”
“Do you think he did?”
“I said I’d like to believe that, not that I did.” Damian spat, but it was sad. Tim didn’t move as he felt Damian push into his side, waited until the younger’s shuffling was complete to lift his arm and wrap it around Damian’s shoulders. Like he had been since they’d moved in, Damian allowed the gesture without complaint. “…We shouldn’t have kicked them out.”
“No?”
“We should have listened to what they had to say.” A hesitation. “We should have listened to their excuses.”
“Yeah?” Tim hummed, leaning his head on Damian’s, glancing out at the Gotham skyline beyond their balcony. “Do you want me to call them back here?”
“Yes. No.” And Tim could sense the boy’s dilemma. Because there was no one in the world Damian Wayne loved more than his father and his eldest brother, a father figure in his own right. He would do literally anything for them, probably had, so the realization that they were both alive and well, that, for some inexplicable reason, the two let their family, their youngest and most vulnerable, believe them to be dead for twelve months, it had to be a low blow. A total shock, a sucker punch to the jaw. The worst heartbreak he’d ever had to endure. Because all he wanted was them back, was his family to be whole once more. Tim knew that because that’s all he wanted, too. “…I don’t know.”
“That’s okay.” Tim promised. “I don’t either.”
There was a lull before Damian murmured, “We should still call Todd and Cassandra. Let them know. At least, if they don’t already.”
“We will.” Tim sighed. “In a minute.”
“…You ruined dinner.” Damian observed, and Tim felt him glance over towards the kitchen, where the mess was still on the floor. “We’ll have to order out.”
“We’ll order a pizza.” Tim offered. “Guilt Jason into picking it up.”
“Good.” Damian agreed monotonously. “…I’m sorry Father and Grayson hurt you, Drake.”
“Me, too.” Tim muttered. “I’m sorry they hurt you too, Damian.”
“They should have known better.”
And now it was Tim’s turn to start the litany of: “I know.”
“…We’ll have to speak to them eventually.”
“I know.”
“Probably some time soon.”
“I know.”
Another pause.
“It’s going to suck.”
Tim couldn’t help but laugh sourly, smack his lips to Damian’s hair and slap gently at Damian’s arm before giving it a tender squeeze. He exhaled, bitter, exhausted and resigned turning his head back towards the city.
“You’ve got that right.”